Rebirth as Re-creation, Ruin as De-creation

Isaiah characterizes the cyclical rebirth of persons who ascend to higher spiritual levels as God’s “creating” or “forming” them each time they ascend. His definition of God’s creation, in other words, is that of re-creation. Even God’s creation of the heavens and the earth are a re-ordering of existing materials: “Who measured out the waters with the hollow of his hand and gauged the heavens by the span of his fingers? Who compiled the earth’s dust by measure, weighing mountains in scales, hills in a balance?” (Isaiah 40:12). People who descend, on the other hand, like those in Isaiah’s Babylon and Perdition categories, are de-created and suffer ruin.

We observe Isaiah’s ascending order of spiritual levels when God “creates” and “forms” Jacob/Israel “to be my servant” (Isaiah 43:21; 44:21); Zion/Jerusalem “to be a delight and its people a joy” (Isaiah 65:18); God’s sons and daughters—“all who are called by my name, whom I have created, molded, and wrought for my own glory” (Isaiah 43:7); the hosts of heaven, a celestial category of persons whom he calls forth, each one by name (Isaiah 40:26); and God’s endtime servant, whom he “creates” as a “light to the nations, a “covenant of the people,” to “free the captives,” to “restore the Land,” and to “reapportion the desolate estates” (Isaiah 42:6–7; 49:8).