As pointed out, the poem about the wheel barrow contains sixteen words: “so much depends/upon/a red wheel/barrow/glazed with rain/water/beside the white/chickens.” The full text of Isaiah 1.18 has thirty-four words in the King James Bible: “Come now, and let us reason together, saith the LORD: though your sins be as scarlet, they shall be as white as snow; though they be red like crimson, they shall be as wool.” But, coincidentally, it has only sixteen words in the Hebrew, the same number as in the poem by Williams about the wheel barrow. The LORD, through his prophet, is as economical about the way of salvation as a frugal poet is about the pastime of a boy. The way of salvation is often compacted in few words in the Bible in order for a sinner to be saved by a glance. The reader’s eye can ricochet on a verse and have the substance of it pass through his eye and into his mind. What do we so often hear from saved sinners but that their change came about through quick and close contact with one single verse? Moreover, Isaiah 1.18 could have been even briefer than it is. There are two illustrations of transformation in it of virtually the same import: from ‘scarlet’ color to ‘white as snow’ and from ‘crimson red’ to the color of ‘wool.’ Without the second illustration, there would be only eleven words. God can present the way of salvation in eleven words. He can reduce it to that. A person has no time to read the Bible? Has he time to read one verse? Has he time to read part of a verse? Has he time for eleven words? He has no time to meditate on what he reads? Can he meditate on eleven words? He has lots of time to reminisce. But he has no time to reason with the LORD? We tend to talk a lot about our childhoods, don’t we? But do we reason with the LORD about everlasting-hood? Do we reason with the LORD about where we are ultimately going and how to get clean enough to get to an eternity in heaven instead of a lockdown in hell from which no escape will be possible?
Williams was a poet who used color to convey feeling through a nostalgic voice. Isaiah was a prophet who used color to teach the way of salvation through the voice of the LORD. Like the poem by Williams, Isaiah’s verse is a sentimental monologue, full of tender feeling: “Come now…though your sins be as scarlet, they shall be as white as snow.” The voice in the verse of a modern poet can soothe us; the voice in the verse of an ancient prophet can save us.
