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THE PROPHET ISAIAH

IN THREE MOVEMENTS
LECTURE 16

The book of Isaiah has three distinct movements. Each one has a specific
historical context. The book as a whole is one piece, intentionally
woven together around 520 BCE. This lecture gives an overview of the
book’s contents.

An Important Time and the First Movement

The book of Isaiah puts the prophet in Jerusalem at an important time.
He’s there when the Assyrian Empire has conquered the northern kingdom
of Israel. The Assyrians also overran most of the kingdom of Judah. King
Hezekiah and the city of Jerusalem survived, and Isaiah is there for that
event, as the book of Kings describes. This is roughly 720 to 700 BCE.
Isaiah was in a high enough position to interact regularly with the king.
 Understanding the Old Testament

King Hezekiah and Isaiah

Early in the book, Isaiah’s denunciations are primarily about social injustice.
For instance, in chapter 5, he calls out individual owners gaining more
and more land. Isaiah also calls out the masses, who didn’t know the law
properly, and who didn’t know who God was so that they could emulate
him. Isaiah says the punishment for such crimes will be exile.
The book of Isaiah is not all bad news. An important notion emerges in
Israelite religion in the early part of the book: the concept of the Messiah.

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 Lecture 16 | The Prophet Isaiah in Three Movements

The Second Movement

Beginning in the 12th century CE, rabbis noted that something happens
after Isaiah 39: The prophet Isaiah is no longer mentioned, and the entire
context seems to have changed. Since 1775, biblical scholars have proposed
that Isaiah chapters 40 to 55 are the work of an author later than Isaiah of
Jerusalem, the product of the Babylonian exile in the 6th century BCE.
The audience’s situation has changed because the enemy of the Jewish
people is not Assyria. It is Babylon. The environment of the people has
changed because they’re living in Babylon, not Jerusalem. Additionally,
the vocabulary is different. The theology is different as well: The overall
message of Isaiah 40 to 55 is comfort and a promise of restoration.
One of the main themes of this section is that Israel’s redemption will come
at the hands of Persia. The prophet is under no illusion that the Persian
king Cyrus acknowledges God or believes Yahweh has granted him victory.
But the Israelites are assured that behind the scenes, Cyrus’s conquest of
Babylon is God’s doing.
Another theme in this section of Isaiah is a literary character known as the
suffering servant, who is presented in a series of so-called servant songs. The
term was coined in the 1920s by the German scholar Bernhard Duhm, who
identified the servant songs.
In the New Testament, Christianity identified the suffering servant as Jesus.
That’s because in Isaiah, God accepts the servant’s suffering and death as
reparation, while, on the other hand, the frail, obedient servant of the Lord
ends up elevated to an almost divine status. However, another reading is that
the servant is Israel. Israel suffers. God accepts its suffering as reparation
and extends God’s salvation to the Gentile nations.

The Third Movement

The third and final movement of the book of Isaiah is the section after
chapter 55. Scholars have come to date this to a later period when the people
of Israel—having returned from the exile in Babylon—resumed life as a free
people in the land of their ancestors and rebuilt Jerusalem. The name Isaiah
is not found in these chapters.

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 Understanding the Old Testament

The setting of these chapters is Jerusalem, and Jerusalem is in ruins, not

much rebuilt. The salvation promised is for a small remnant, not for the
whole nation. The situation, however, is tense and divisive, unlike that in
chapters 40 to 55. Also, unlike all of the earlier chapters of Isaiah, observance
of the Sabbath becomes important.
Isaiah 58 gives a description of people who are much more pious than in
the opening chapters of Isaiah. But there’s a problem: Israel’s values are still
distorted. People are trying to cover up injustices with fasting, praying, and
hearing righteous ordinances, which are synagogue practices.
Another important feature of this section of Isaiah is a new universalism:
an outgrowth of salvation to the nations. This can be viewed as a prediction
that foreigners will also be included in the highest form of worship to the
one God.

Questions to Consider
YY What does it help to read the parts of Isaiah against three distinct
historical settings?
YY What would King Cyrus have thought of Isaiah if he had read it?

Suggested Reading
Cook, Conversations with Scripture: 2 Isaiah.
Heskett, Messianism within the Scriptural Scroll of Isaiah.

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