Isaiah 48:22 Meaning There Is No Peace

Akusala: The unskillful Akusala is conduct that wounds whoever does it. Wickedness heard this way becomes a question of handling: grip a knife by the blade and the hand bleeds, whosever hand it is. Spoken from the throne it sounds like a sentence passed down, and it works equally as a plain report on that grip, which Israel, stiff-necked in Babylon, would not loosen.

Kamma: Action and its fruit Kamma is the deed carrying its own result inside it. Peace is not withheld from above so much as never planted below: a seed already holds the shape of the plant, and cruelty holds the shape of a sleepless night. Yahweh announcing the outcome and the outcome ripening on its own are one event described from two heights.

Uddhacca-kukkucca: Restlessness and remorse These two are the agitation and the fretting that keep a mind from settling. Peacelessness has that familiar shape: lying awake turning the same hour over, unable to find a comfortable side of the bed, the deed replaying with no way to reach back and undo it. The furnace of affliction burns here too, close to home, in a chest that cannot put itself down.

Sīla: Virtue in conduct Sīla is restraint in what the hands and mouth do. Its first fruit is small and physical: sleeping through the night because nothing waits to be hidden and nothing is coming back to the door. "Go out of Babylon" is what that costs, a walk away from what cannot be lived beside, and peace belongs to the far end of that road.

Santi: Peace Santi is the coolness left when the fires go out. Peace of this kind behaves like temperature: a fire keeps its heat while fuel keeps arriving, and no decree can cool what a hand goes on feeding. Told there is none for the wicked, one hears a gift refused, though the cooling stands open to anyone the moment the feeding stops.