He will break the gates of brass and cut the bars of iron

In Isaiah we read:

"Thus saith the Lord to his anointed, to Cyrus, whose right hand I have holden, to subdue nations before him; and I will loose the loins of kings, to open before him the two leaved gates; and the gates shall not be shut;

2 I will go before thee, and make the crooked places straight: I will break in pieces the gates of brass, and cut in sunder the bars of iron:

3 And I will give thee the treasures of darkness, and hidden riches of secret places, that thou mayest know that I, the Lord, which call thee by thy name, am the God of Israel" (Isaiah 45:1-3).

In the literal sense this passage appears to refer to the historical Cyrus, a monarch of the Persians. But as usual, we do not want the plinth but the statue; we do not want the literal sense but the spiritual sense of prophecy. 

Spiritually, then, this passage involves the Lord's representing Himself with the personage Cyrus. The Word very frequently uses some personage such as Cyrus or Zerubbabel here to represent Himself:

"In that day, saith the LORD of hosts, will I take thee, O Zerubbabel, my servant, the son of Shealtiel, saith the LORD, and will make thee as a signet: for I have chosen thee, saith the LORD of hosts" (Haggai 2:23). 

We see that Zerubbabel has been identified as signet, an emblem; and such is the case of all such personages designated in thus lofty a manner. For they all represent the Lord or aspects of the Lord.

So let us return to Cyrus. Why would the Lord want to clothe Himself with a Cyrus suit? As we have seen from the prophecy of Daniel involving the he-goat from the west, the goat on the left, and the ram in the east, the sheep on the right, the choice of Cyrus must have something to do with charity, the practice of non-ulterior, unselfish love of God and the neighbor.

The he-goat came from the west, the goat on the left, and defeated the ram in the east, the sheep on the right, to represent the destruction of charity in the Church which reaches a point whereat there is no more faith on earth and the love of many is waxed cold.

One echoes the Lord's words while on Earth, of course, in thus referring to no more faith on earth and people becoming unloving. One might have said the sun became black as sackcloth or that the moon turned to blood and meant the same thing.

So Cyrus represents the Lord as to the practice of charity, which is doing the Word, and the theory of charity, which is hearing the Word.

As Jesus says, "All power is given unto me in heaven and in earth" (Matthew 28:18). In Isaiah, therefore, we see the prophetic, enigmatic version of these same, clear words.

We see that the Lord will subdue nations before Cyrus, and will loosen the loins of kings. When the Lord came to Earth, He took on a human nature marred by sin from His mother; which was the gateway whereby the devils could tempt Him. Devils cannot tempt the pure divine essence, yet it is in temptation that the Hells can be confronted, with their evils subdued and their falsehoods loosened.

So the Lord hatched a plan: He would invite battles with the Hells, and with the sins and errors of the Hells, within the matrix of the maternal human which He came on Earth to make divine; so as to become not only God but the God Man or Divine Human whom we know as Jesus Christ.

By lowering Himself to have a human nature, and thus 'tricking' the Hells into approaching for combat, He laid the trap which allowed them to be subdued as to their sins and errors in His person.

To return to our passage:

"2 I will go before thee, and make the crooked places straight: I will break in pieces the gates of brass, and cut in sunder the bars of iron".

Sin and error is crooked, and our hereditary evil or original sin as inherited from our parents is thus crooked; it is by applying the truths of faith to evils in our hearts and behaviors that the crooked places become straight. Crooked is very much like unequal and straight like equal in this verse from Ezekiel:

"Hear now, O house of Israel; Is not my way equal? are not your ways unequal?" (Ezekiel 18:25).

He "will break in pieces the gates of brass, and cut in sunder the bars of iron". Brass represents good or evil at the natural level of life; just as iron represents truth or falsehood at the natural level of life. We often see brass used in a good sense, like those feet of the Lord's which shine like burnished brass in Revelation; because feet represent our natural lives and feet of brass there represent goodness at the natural level in the Divine Human of the Lord.

Similarly, we saw Jesus represented as a snake made of brass and held up on a pole; at which the Israelites would look in order to be healed of the bites of those flying fiery serpents which were plaguing them in the wilderness. In that case, the episode meant that these carnal people could only conceive of the Lord in terms of natural good and prudence; and thus these were the touchstones of the Lord and the avenues whereby they were healed.

When the Lord breaks in pieces the gates of brass, He destroys evils plaguing our natural lives; and when He cuts in sunder the gates of iron, He destroys falsehoods which support and feed those evils; just as excuses to sin feed sin. If people are mired in sin and error, then the gates of Hell are open. But if the gates of Hell are destroyed, then sin and error have been dispelled; and the gates of Heaven can open.

Let us take another look at gates:

"4 As arrows are in the hand of a mighty man; so are children of the youth. 5 Happy is the man that hath his quiver full of them: they shall not be ashamed, but they shall speak with the enemies in the gate" (Psalms 127:4-5).

Arrows are divine truths serviceable for combatting the sins and errors and devils who wield them amid temptation. When our quiver is full of truths from the Lord, we shall not be ashamed if we practice them and answer the enemies, the devils, with our practice and our reminder of them. 

What did Jesus do in the wilderness? Well, whenever He answered the Devil He spoke with the enemy in the gate. And what did Jesus say to the enemy in the gate? He quoted the Word, because His quiver was full of truths from the Word.

The two-leaved gates of brass and iron or sin and error in natural life break when we practice the truths of God in our lives; and His love flows unintercepted into our practice of those truths, giving them the power which they have to subdue nations, evils, and loosen the loins of kings, falsehoods.

If our guest room is full of sin and error, then there is no room for all of the Lord's stuff, all of His love and wisdom. And there are many evils and errors so noxious that they don't want love and wisdom to enter us at all! They stand in the way, so they have to be destroyed. We see something quite similar here:

"But woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! For you shut up the kingdom of heaven against men; for you neither go in yourselves, nor do you allow those who are entering to go in" (Matthew 23:13).

The scribes and Pharisees were people whose gates of brass and bars of iron had not been broken; and whose 'religion' consisted of strengthening the gates of sin and error in other people so as to make it more difficult for the love and wisdom of God to flow in.

If we apply the truths of faith to the evils present at the natural level of our lives, then the Lord will give us "the treasures of darkness, and hidden riches of secret places"; or in other Words, He will in ways both obvious and hidden give us the goods and truths which can only flow in when the gates of Hell have been broken so that the gates of Heaven can open.

We see the echo of this passage we have been looking at in-depth in Isaiah 48, selected because it should be clearer now why the Lord uses such language:

"4Because I knew that thou art obstinate, and thy neck is an iron sinew, and thy brow brass;

5I have even from the beginning declared it to thee; before it came to pass I shewed it thee: lest thou shouldest say, Mine idol hath done them, and my graven image, and my molten image, hath commanded them.

6Thou hast heard, see all this; and will not ye declare it? I have shewed thee new things from this time, even hidden things, and thou didst not know them" (Isaiah 48:4-6).

The correspondence neck refers to Heavenly conjunction or marriage of love and wisdom; or to infernal disjunction or adultery of sin and error. Here we evidently have to do with adultery, because we see neck in the reversed position; with willful preference for evil and darkness by the Jewish Church stated in terms of "an iron sinew" and "thy brow brass".

We see their falsehoods concerning the will identified as molten images; and their falsehoods concerning the understanding identified as graven images. And again we see, just as in the passage with Cyrus, this reference to hidden things being shown to us; because it is in breaking the gates of sin and cutting in the sunder the bars of error that the Lord can effect improvements in our lives while further enlightening our understandings.

Seen from another angle, what happens when we decisively shun sin and error? This:

"For brass I will bring gold, and for iron I will bring silver, and for wood brass, and for stones iron: I will also make thy officers peace, and thine exactors righteousness" (Isaiah 60:17).

He will transmute our evils and our merely natural goods into spiritual goods; and He will transmute our errors and our merely natural truths into spiritual truths. The 'officers' and 'exactors' which represent the desires we feed and the excuses we make for them -- the 'officers' that rule our lives -- will be turned from dross into gold, from something evil into the basis for growing in love. 

One hopes that the language that the Lord uses in Isaiah will be clearer now; and that the Word seems ever easier to understand so as to see its application to one's life. Be it so. Godspeed.