A New Kind of Highway - Reflections on Isaiah 35:1-10, Third Sunday of Advent, Year A
by John C. Holbert on Saturday, October 11, 2025
Advent texts from the Hebrew Bible invariably employ passages of joy and hope that are difficult to place historically. Is. 35 is no exception. It seems, given its focus on a happy return by the holy highway of YHWH, that the text may find its provenance in the exilic or post-exilic period of Israel’s history, perhaps in the 6th or 5th centuries BCE. We are certainly here far from the 8th-century setting of Isaiah’s work, focused as he is on the social abuses and continual idolatries that suffused Jerusalem and Judah during the time of his prophecy. In Is. 35 we read of the ingathering of the scattered people, returning to Zion on the “Holy Road” of YHWH, who will precede the exiles’ return by taking this new road before them, leading them to their reconstituted home. However, highways were already well-known in Israel, but this particular road sounds significantly different, considerably more inviting, than some of the highways Israel knew from its past.
Israel regularly spoke of the “way of the wilderness,” during that 40-year period in their distant past, that was both blessing and curse. God led them, they said, but also their wandering was a time of severe testing by their God; the highway was long, the way at times unclear and dangerous. Job on several occasions spoke of highways that his enemies (his so-called friends among them!) used to attack and plague him (Job 19:12; 30 :12).
The several prophets that fall under the long and complex book entitled Isaiah themselves use the image of highway in multiple ways. At Is.7:3 the prophet enjoins King Ahaz of Judah along with his son Shear-jashub to meet him via “the highway to the Fuller’s field” in order to tell him not to be afraid of the foreign kings of Aram and Israel. In the course of this meeting Isaiah employs the infamous tale of “a young woman about to conceive,” informing the king that before that child “learns to discern bad from good,” the foreign kings will no longer be a problem (Is.7:3-17). Ensconced in this oracle is the famous text—7:14—that KJV mistranslated as “virgin,” leading to no end of theological struggle down the centuries.
Later in that same Isaianic corpus we find that wonderful passage concerning the peaceable kingdom, wherein a highway can be found that leads from Assyria directly back to Israel on which “the remnant of the people” will find their way home (Is.11:16). And, of course, in the Is.40:3-5 we remember that famous “highway for our God,” running straight through the wilderness, that presages the lifting of valleys and the leveling of mountains, in order that “the glory of YHWH will be revealed” for all people together.
Still, not all highways were recalled as places of hope. In Joel 2:8, the terrible locusts of God’s punishment come inexorably and unstoppably on a “highway,” on which the insects “do not jostle one another” but keep “each on their own path.” Highways in the Hebrew Bible are thus metaphors of mixed concern.
But here in Is. 35, this highway is designed by God only apparently for the good of the returning righteous.
8) There shall be there a highway;
It shall be named “Holy Road;”
those unclean shall not travel there;
it exists for God’s people (lit.”them”);
no traveller, not even fools, shall go astray.
Here indeed is a road for those who seek to return to God, a highway where “even fools” can walk a straight path! “Fools” are of course in the Hebrew Bible those people who are contrasted with the “wise,” and are often ridiculed and rejected by those “in the know.” But on this new road of God, this “Holy Road,” those called fools may find their path. I find this surprising inclusion of “fools” on the highway instructive for those of us who imagine ourselves to be among the “in crowd.”
This road is not built merely for the so-called righteous. It is a far more inclusive road than that. On this road,
The ransomed of YHWH will return,
and come to Zion with singing;
everlasting joy will be on their heads;
they shall gain joy and gladness,
and sorrow and sighing will flee away. (Is.35:10)
Even the fools! A highway of God for fools! This Advent may we open our ways to the newness of the coming of the Christ child, and remember, with Paul, that God has spoken what appears to be foolishness to shame the wise. Yes, the “wise still seek him,” but don’t forget the fools!