Isaiah is one of the best-loved Old Testament books, used at Christmas as we welcome the babe in the manger, and at Easter as we marvel at the death of that now-grown child in our place. Simon Jones introduces a book that teems with hope and life.
Writers and voices
Isaiah is a complex and rambling text, and it is hard to get a handle on its structure. The old orthodoxy of it being in three sections written by three different authors has given way to a more fluid understanding of the text’s origins through a group who stand in continuity with Isaiah ben Amoz (1:1). As with the book of Jeremiah, the named prophet is not the writer as there is narrative about him in the text.
Biblical scholar John Goldingay helpfully talks about four human voices in the text: ambassador, disciple (between them responsible for chapters 1–39), poet (author of 40–55), and preacher (56–66), each bringing the message of Yahweh, the central character of the book, to a variety of audiences in Judah and Babylon; a message concerning God’s attitudes to, and actions among, his people.[1]
The ‘disciple’ functions as an editor of the whole book. It is this figure who talks of Isaiah in the third person (1:1, 13:1, 37:2, 38:1) and tells stories about this ambassadorial figure (chapters 7, 21 and 36–39), stories that also appear in 2 Kings. A group of disciples is introduced in 8:16ff. This passage implies a group who kept the testimony of Isaiah safe as events unfolded in Judah and then in Babylon and Persia, over a period of two centuries, before they were instrumental in bringing the various parts of the book together and ensuring they were knit together into a seamless whole.
The holy one of Israel
Yahweh is consistently referred to as ‘the holy one of Israel’, a term that occurs 28 times in the book, 14 in each half (1–39, 40–66). It only occurs six times in the rest of the Old Testament. So, this term was significant to the Isaiah tradition, telling us something vital and unchanging about the God with whom Judah dealt. ‘Holy’ refers to the ‘otherness’ of Israel’s God. This God is not like the other deities of the ancient world. And while holiness speaks of moral difference, in Isaiah it also speaks of God’s ways of doing things being different from human ways (notably in chapter 55:8, an oracle about God coming to deliver Judah from exile in ways that those exiles cannot conceive). God’s holiness is, therefore, surprising; in particular, his holiness is down-to-earth, concerned with the everyday life of his people.
This phrase alone – the holy one of Israel – lends the whole book a unity. But the other key unifying element in the text is simply that the whole work is about Judah and Jerusalem, its capital. All the other nations who take to the stage in Isaiah’s great story – and there are lots of them – are there solely because of their effect on Judah and Jerusalem; in some way they are involved in moving on this central story.
God speaks to Judah
Biblical scholar Richard Briggs suggests a key theme of Isaiah – as the tiny nation of Judah is caught in the whirlpool of global events – is, ‘How God’s justice is or is not found mirrored in the lives of the people of God’.[2] Judah is called to be a people marked by justice and the story of Isaiah is about how they shape up in relation to that call. Walter Brueggemann suggests, ‘The book of Isaiah is like a mighty oratorio whereby Israel sings its story of faith.’ He adds that like any good oratorio, there is interaction between the voices and a measure of dissent or counter-narrative. ‘A primary theme is the predominant and constant character of Yahweh.’[3]
Though it is described as a vision and there are visionary episodes recounted (notably chapter 6), the text is mainly comprised of accounts of what the authors have heard Yahweh saying about, and to, his people Judah. Some of these accounts – especially the ones we focus on in our readings – are poetic accounts of what God is doing, about to do, or demanding of Judah. All the human voices recorded in the text claim to speak on behalf of Yahweh. The magisterial poetry is the authoritative voice of the holy one of Israel.
Future hope
A good deal of Isaiah – especially, though not exclusively, the second half – is concerned with the future hope of Israel, hence its popularity for Advent readings. For example, Isaiah 40 talks of God coming to rescue his people in exile and Isaiah 65 talks of the new world that will be possible after the exile. These texts bristle with the hope that God is actively creating better times for his people than they have known in the present.
This feeds into the Advent hope of the coming of a Saviour in the birth of Jesus. This starts in the layered texts of chapter 7 and 9, caught up in the 8th century politics of Isaiah’s day but pointing to greater mysteries in the future, as God fulfills his promise to rescue the human race from Adam’s sin.
Simon Jones is a theologian.
[1] John Goldingay, Isaiah: New International Biblical Commentary (Hendrickson, 2001), pp2-5.
[2] Richard Briggs, Reading Isaiah: A Beginner’s Guide (Grove, 2010), p11.
[3] Walter Brueggemann, Commentary on Isaiah in two volumes (John Knox Press, 1998), p1.