Eerdmans Commentary on the Bible: Isaiah

By Margaret Barker

This extract from the Eerdmans Commentary on the Bible provides Barker’s introduction to and concise commentary on Isaiah. The Eerdmans Commentary on the Bible presents, in nontechnical language, the best of modern scholarship on each book of the Bible, including the Apocrypha. Reader-friendly commentary complements succinct summaries of each section of the text and will be valuable to scholars, students, and general readers.
 
Rather than attempt a verse-by-verse analysis, these volumes work from larger sense units, highlighting the place of each passage within the overarching biblical story. Commentators focus on the genre of each text—parable, prophetic oracle, legal code, and so on—interpreting within the historical and literary context.
 
The volumes also address major issues within each biblical book—including the range of possible interpretations—and refer readers to the best resources for further discussions.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Eerdmans
• Release date: Jun 18, 2019
• ISBN: 9781467453783

Margaret Barker

Margaret Barker has always enjoyed writing but it wasn’t until she’d pursued several careers that she became a full-time writer. Since 1983 she has written over 50 Medical Romance books, some set in exotic locations reflecting her love of travel, others set in the UK, many of them in Yorkshire where she was born. When Margaret is travelling she prefers to soak up the atmosphere and let creative ideas swirl around inside her head before she returns home to write her next story.

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Isaiah

Margaret Barker

INTRODUCTION

Reading Isaiah

The book of Isaiah was not written by one person at one time and in one place; rather, it was the product of a long and complex history. Traditionally, we have read the final form of the text and allowed the words to make their own impact. The complex literary history of Isaiah has been unknown to most of its readers, but this has in no way diminished the value of the book or the power of the prophetic word. Nevertheless, the fruits of scholarship can greatly enrich any reading of Isaiah and enable an appreciation of the processes by which the words of the prophets, not just Isaiah, were preserved, transmitted, augmented, and interpreted as part of the living tradition of the faith community.

The ancient view, recorded in the Babylonian Talmud (b. B. Bat. 14b; 15a), was that Isaiah’s oracles had been collected and preserved by King Hezekiah; but modern study has detected a more complex process. First it was recognized that the book was not a unity. By the end of the eighteenth century, scholars had recognized a division at the end of ch. 39; then in 1892 Bernhard Duhm suggested that the two sections had originally been separate works, joined together after the time of the Chronicler. He also suggested a further division at the end of ch. 55. Chs. 40–55, he said, were the work of a prophet who lived and wrote in Phoenicia during the exile. Many, but not all, scholars adopted this new prophet, Deutero-Isaiah but most located him in Babylon as the prophet of the exile. The theory which eventually emerged was that the first section (chs. 1–39) consisted of the oracles of Isaiah in Jerusalem in the period 750–700 BC; the second (chs. 40–55, Deutero-Isaiah) came from an unknown prophet in the exile in Babylon, and the third (chs. 56–66, Trito-Isaiah) was a postexilic work. The date suggested for this final Isaiah varied between the late sixth century and the third century BC. Subsequent study suggested that the first section was not the work of one author but rather a collection of material adapted and interpreted over several generations. The same was then said of the third section; it was a collection of prophetic material from many different voices.

The second phase was a study of how the various materials in the book had been assembled and transmitted. It soon became apparent that the words of the prophets had remained a living force in the community and that they were, as a result, used and reused by subsequent generations. These later readers did not simply collect and read the texts; they added their own interpretation, set the older prophecies within new frameworks to show their relevance to a new situation, and so on. This reuse of prophecy may, in some cases, have shifted the emphasis of the original or even altered it. All these stages of change and growth can be detected within the text, and the intention of the redactors (or editors) emerges from the texts they had transformed while transmitting and preserving them. One theory is that there was a major reworking of the original Isaiah oracles about a hundred years after the prophet’s death, in the time of King Josiah (Barth 1977). Another proposes eight stages in the development of Isaiah 1–35: the original, a seventh-century redaction, two reworkings by Deuteronomists during the exile, a further reinterpretation in the early fifth century by priests returned from Babylon, additions by Torah-oriented Jews who wanted the unfaithful destroyed, a further fourth-century redaction, and some early Hellenistic additions (Vermeylen 1977). The most recent, comprehensive theory is that Isaiah 1–55 is the work of Deutero-Isaiah, who took the earlier prophecies and reworked them for his new situation in the exile as well as adding the oracles formerly attributed to him. The message of Isaiah became one of punishment followed by restoration. Thus the elements of chs. 1–39, which resemble those of chs. 40–55, are explained (Williamson 1994).

Some scholars envisage a group of the prophet’s disciples (mentioned in Isa 8:16) who wrote down, or perhaps memorized, the original sayings and then handed them on to their own disciples. All the teachings of that school would have been attributed to the founder, the original prophet, much as the laws of Israel were attributed to Moses or the psalms to David. The sayings of the rabbis, centuries after the time of Isaiah, were transmitted by their disciples in this way, and a similar process is thought to underlie the Gospels. The sayings of Jesus were originally memorized by disciples and reached their present form only after a period of oral transmission within the Christian communities. The problem with this theory is that there is no real evidence for such schools of disciples in the OT period unless we find links to the bands of prophets who appear in the stories of Saul, playing music and falling into ecstasy (1 Sam 10:5–6). There were groups like this in Jerusalem; in the Chronicler’s account of the temple service certain of the sons of Asaph were appointed to prophesy in the temple with lyres, harps, and cymbals (1 Chr 25:1). The story of Elijah’s mantle falling on Elisha shows that at least one prophet had a designated successor (2 Kgs 2:9–13), and Jeremiah had a personal scribe named Baruch who wrote down his words (Jer 36:4, 32). The three court officials mentioned in Isaiah 36 may have been responsible for collecting the earlier Isaiah material, the basis for the talmudic tradition of Hezekiah and his retinue.

Closely linked to the problem of material added to the original words of the prophet is the question of pseudepigraphy, writing under a false name. This was not seen as forgery but rather as a close identification with the master in whose name the words were uttered or written. The extraordinary exchange between Jesus and his disciples (Matt 16:13–14 and pars.) shows that even in the first century AD people believed that the prophets could return from the dead, and that Jesus was originally identified as one of them. In John’s vision of the heavenly Jesus in Revelation 2–3 he is told to write down the (new) words of Jesus and send them to the seven churches. These were accepted as the words of Jesus, received by his disciple in a state of inspiration. The prophet continued to speak after his death. There were also many writings in the name of Enoch, clearly from different periods yet assembled into collections and preserved by people committed to their characteristic traditions. All are anonymous except insofar as they bear the name of Enoch, presumably received and transmitted by the followers of the ancient sage.

Something similar happened with the oracles of Isaiah; he continued to speak through his disciples, and his name was still being attached to new compositions as late as the first century AD. A complex and possibly composite text known as the Martyrdom and Ascension of Isaiah described the martyrdom of the prophet on the orders of the wicked king Manasseh. Incorporated into the story are two visions of Isaiah, both describing the early years of Christianity. The present form of this text is clearly a Christian composition and raises the interesting question: Why should the first Christians in Palestine (which is where the work probably originated) have attributed their own visions to Isaiah? It may have been because he was the prophet of the last things (Sir 48:24), the particular concern of the first Christians. New material, however, attaching to the name of Isaiah was still appearing in the early Christian period, a fact which must be borne in mind when considering how the book of Isaiah reached its final form. The period between the final additions to the canonical book of Isaiah and the earliest stratum of the Martyrdom cannot have been very great.

A more prosaic explanation of the collection and transmission of Isaiah material is that it was the work of scribes. The most extreme version of this theory is that chs. 40–66 were odds and ends added to the original Isaiah scroll to fill up the space since Isaiah was shorter than Ezekiel and Jeremiah. Or, it is suggested, the basic prophetic texts were expanded with all sorts of material not necessarily prophetic in origin. This process, a rolling corpus, has been compared to a snowball growing in size as it rolls along (McKane 1986: l–lxxxiii). The oracles ascribed to any one prophet were expanded in the light of other texts and traditions known to later scribes, and thus the similarities between, say, Hosea 13–14 and Isaiah 26–27 could be explained.

The most recent phase of Isaiah scholarship has returned to a study of the whole text as it now stands, the final form of the book. This literary reading of Isaiah, while being aware that it is not the work of one author, nevertheless accepts the overall unity of the book. Thus canonical criticism adds theological as well as literary reasons for accepting and reading the final form of the text; this is the book which the faith communities accepted as Scripture, not any of the hypothetical earlier forms. This is also the form which is used today, and the present context of Isaiah is the faith community which reads it as Scripture.

In addition, it is important for Christian readers to know how Isaiah was understood in the first century AD since it accounts for most of the OT quotations and allusions in the NT. More than half the quotations attributed to Jesus himself are from Isaiah, suggesting that he identified closely with the book and possibly also with the prophet himself. The names Jesus and Isaiah are similar in form and meaning, and Isaiah’s Servant was central to Jesus’ self-understanding. The story of the synagogue sermon at Nazareth may be one of Luke’s literary creations, but if there is a substratum of accurate recollection, it must be that there was an Isaiah scroll in the synagogue of Jesus’ home community. Scrolls were expensive items, and poor communities would have had very few; perhaps only the Law and the Psalms. If Jesus’ home community possessed an Isaiah scroll, he would have been very familiar with its contents, and this could account for the extraordinarily prominent place it has in his teaching and in the early church. Jesus identified himself as the prophetic voice of Isaiah 61 at the start of his ministry (Luke 4:18–21), and Matthew presents the ministry as largely the fulfillment of Isaiah’s prophecies. This may be one of Matthew’s literary fictions, but it could just as easily be an accurate record of what Jesus thought he was doing. The book of Revelation is also steeped in the words and images of Isaiah.

One complete scroll of Isaiah and part of another were found among the Dead Sea Scrolls, so it is reasonably certain what was in an Isaiah scroll in the first century AD. With some significant exceptions, which will be noted when the passages are discussed in detail, the Hebrew text is the one generally used today. But having the words is not the same as knowing how those words were understood, and for this we are dependent on the Targum, a translation of Isaiah into Aramaic. When Hebrew was no longer the everyday language of Palestine, readings in the synagogue were translated, not as a literal, word-for-word rendering but rather as a free translation incorporating a variety of other material, showing how Isaiah was understood at that time. The Targum of Isaiah (Tg. Isa) is particularly significant for understanding some of the messianic prophecies used by the first Christians, and these, too, will be noted later.

An Outline of the Book

Prophetic Speech

The words of the prophets were not delivered and recorded in the normal day-to-day speech patterns of their time. Investigation has shown that certain forms of speech frequently recur, and these can give some indication of the setting in which the prophets spoke. There are, for example, oracles of judgment, when the prophet warns of impending doom and gives the reasons for it. Some were directed against Judah and Jerusalem, for example, Isaiah 5 among the early material and Isaiah 58 in a later and slightly different form; others were directed against foreign nations (e.g., Isaiah 13–19). There are also oracles of salvation, announcing that help from the LORD was either assured or at hand. Many of these are to be found in Isaiah 41–44, and it has been suggested that oracles of this type in the earlier part of the book are a sign of reworking by Deutero-Isaiah.

Oracles of judgment and salvation probably originated in the temple. In response to Hezekiah’s prayer for help against the Assyrians, for example, Isaiah delivered an oracle of judgment against the king of Assyria (Isaiah 37). Presumably this was a typical setting for his pronouncements. How the oracles of the prophets related to the oracles of the priests is a matter for speculation; there is no concrete evidence. They could have been the same; Jeremiah and Ezekiel were priests. Deutero-Isaiah, the prophet of the exile, adapted the traditional forms to a new situation. Since he had neither king nor temple, he was responding in recognizable style to the pleas of his people in exile.

There were also trial scenes which could have been based on the everyday court procedures of the time, but it is possible that these, too, originated in a temple setting. Ps 73:15–20 describes the judgment of the wicked in the sanctuary of the temple, the place of the LORD’s throne, and Psalm 82 describes the heavenly court where worthless heavenly beings are judged. When a prophet described how the LORD judged Israel (Isa 3:13–15; Mic 6:1–5), the gods of the nations (e.g., Isa 41:21–24), or even the high priest himself (Zech 3:1–5), it is likely that he was describing the heavenly court and a corresponding temple ritual.

There are hymn forms, and again we are pointed to a temple setting. The style of Deutero-Isaiah in particular (e.g., Isa 42:10–13) was much influenced by the formal hymn style found in the Psalms, and those who argue that the original Isaiah prophecies were reworked by Deutero-Isaiah consider Isaiah 12 as another of his characteristic hymns. It has been suggested that the whole of Isaiah 40–55 was a reworking of traditional liturgical patterns and that the autumn New Year festival from the first temple was the basis of Deutero-Isaiah’s message of hope and renewal (Eaton 1979).

The most intriguing questions raised by the forms of prophetic speech are those most often overlooked or taken for granted because they are so familiar. Some of the prophet’s words, such as the threat of the Day of Judgment in Isa 2:12–19, described what the LORD was about to do. These pronouncements suggest that a prophet had access to the heavenly court where these matters were decided (Isaiah 6; Amos 3:7). This right was also granted to the high priest (Zech 3:7), and, like Isaiah, he had to have his iniquity taken away before he could enter the presence of God (Zech 3:4; cf. Isa 6:7). This is the setting of the earliest material in 1 Enoch. The seer described his experience as a sleep in which he saw visions and was summoned into the presence of the Great Holy One to hear his words (1 Enoch