General Editor’s Preface

ONE OF THE DIFFICULTIES of applying the wisdom of Isaiah to the perplexities of twenty-first-century life is audience. It always seems as if Isaiah is talking to someone else. Let me explain.

Isaiah, son of Amoz, spends much of his writing time relating visions of destruction and visions of blessings about the divided nation of Israel and her surrounding neighbors. Listen to some of the subject headings the NIV editors scatter throughout the book: “A Rebellious Nation” (ch. 1); “Judgment on Jerusalem and Judah” (ch. 3); “Woes and Judgments” (ch. 5); “Assyria, the Lord’s Instrument” (ch. 8). The list goes on and on through the sixty-six chapters of the book.

Admittedly this can make for exciting reading, particularly if you enjoy hearing about other people’s problems. But it is difficult to see what the Lord-defying words and deeds of Israel have to do with us. One of the great strengths of this commentary on Isaiah, written by John Oswalt, is that he shows how to read this book—that is, how to avoid reading it solely as a chronicle of others people’s problems and to see instead how it relates directly to us. Put another way, even though Isaiah seems to be warning a country that has an immoral domestic and foreign policy, at a deeper level the warnings and judgments are for you and me.

So how are we to read this book in a way that best communicates God’s message to us?

(1) Expect to hear God’s voice to us in Isaiah’s words. This means bringing one’s faith to a reading of the text. When Isaiah tells Israel to “go into the rocks, hide in the ground from dread of the LORD and the splendor of his majesty” (Isa. 2:10), it may not be necessary to load up your backpack and head for the Colorado Rockies. But it is necessary to expect that in that admonition there is a message for me.

(2) Recognize that the message is not in narrative prose but is embedded in visions, oracles, metaphors, and allusions. Isaiah was not a straight-talking prophet; he was a poetic prophet. Look at the way the type is laid out on the pages of your Bible. It looks like poetry. Only rarely in the pages of Isaiah do you see the blocks of type we associate with the narrative portions of the Bible or with other books we read.

In order to understand this kind of writing we need to think about why someone chooses to write in poetic form. The most important reason is that poetry is best at communicating the sort of wisdom that our culture makes it difficult to hear.

(3) Notice that a subtle shift takes place in Isaiah that moves us away from seeing these visions as oracles aimed directly, solely, at the nation of Israel. To see this shift, a little history reminder is in order. Most of the people of Isaiah’s day (including the Israelites) were henotheists by upbringing. That is, they were used to thinking of gods as tribal gods. Each tribe, each people group, had their own god. The question was not primarily whether those gods were real (the assumption was that they were). The real question was whose god was the most powerful.

Contrast that with the way we look at God today. Most of us today assume that God is strong; our focus is on God’s relating to individuals, not to groups of people. As a result, many modern exegetes of Isaiah think that the subtle shift apparent in Isaiah is from viewing the gods as tribal gods to viewing God as the God of individuals. Perhaps. There is no question that the image we end up with in taking the Old Testament texts as a whole is not henotheistic but monotheistic, a righteous God concerned about individual persons.

But the real shift in Isaiah is toward a view of God as the Lord not of just tribes, not of just individuals, but as the Lord of all:

This is what the LORD says:

“Heaven is my throne and the earth is my footstool…

Has not my hand made all these things, and so they came into being?” (Isa. 66:1–2)

God reigns over all. Let the Lord be glorified that we may see your joy.

Terry C. Muck