Introduction

ACROSS THE YEARS Isaiah has come to be known as “the prince of the prophets.” A part of the reason for this title is the possibility that the prophet was a member of the royal family. While there is no indisputable evidence of this, the easy access to the kings that he seemed to enjoy may point in this direction. But the real basis of the claim is the nature of the book known by Isaiah’s name. There is a majesty in the book that sets it off from almost any other in the Bible. It contains an unparalleled sweep of theology, all the way from creation to the new heavens and new earth and from utter destruction to glorious redemption.

The book’s view of God is equally comprehensive: He is the austere Judge who decrees destruction on a rebellious people, but he is also the compassionate Redeemer who will not cast off a hopeless and despairing people. Nor are these ideas merely presented one after another and then left behind. Rather, they are interwoven in artful ways that suggest the symphonic art that appeared in musical style two millennia after Isaiah. Motifs appear, disappear, and reappear in ways that keep the thoughtful reader involved in an active dialogue with the writer.

Along with this intricacy is a style that moves back and forth from sonorous to lyrical. Chapters 6 and 40 are very different, yet they share the same spare, economical use of words, which makes them both memorable and effective. They have both a power and a beauty that make them unforgettable. Isaiah 52:13–53:12 is a different type of literature, but it is also an example of a style that matches beauty and power.

In many ways the book of Isaiah is the Bible in miniature. Like the Bible, the book has two major divisions, and like the Bible the main theme of the first part is judgment and the main theme of the second is hope. Beyond this, all the main themes of the Bible can be found in Isaiah. Though the Sinai covenant is not mentioned explicitly, it is everywhere assumed. It is the basis of the charges of rebellion, and it is the essential ground of the supposed relationship between God and Israel. The Davidic covenant is mentioned, and it is the foundation of the promises of the Messiah. If the house of David has failed, God’s promises have not. Here the whole question of the uniqueness of God vis-à-vis idols is explored more completely than in any other book of the Bible. And it is here that the glory of the Davidic Messiah and the shame of the Suffering Servant are brought together in a way that helps the New Testament picture of Christ make sense. So whether Isaiah was actually of the royal house or not, it is true that his work, in its theological sweep, towering vision, and powerful language, sets him apart as a prince among the prophets.

Historical Background

ALONG WITH THE princely qualities of the book are several conundrums. One of these is the fact that it seems to be addressed to at least two, and perhaps three, different settings. The first of these is that of Isaiah’s own times, from about 740 to 700 B.C. But chapters 40–55 seem to be addressed to the Judean exiles in Babylon between 585 and 540 B.C., and while the evidence is less clear than it seems to be for the preceding two divisions, chapters 56– 66 seem to reflect conditions in Judah after the return from exile in 539 B.C.

On the face of it, this seems odd. No other book of the Bible does this. Several speak about future times, but no other seems to speak to future times as Isaiah does. This is one of the chief reasons why it has become common in scholarly circles to consider that the book is the result of several different authors, with those involved in writing the second two divisions having lived in those times. While it is not impossible that the book is a composite, the book itself seems to make every effort to deny that conclusion, naming only one author throughout and giving no clues as to the life-settings and places of the other supposed authors (see below on Authorship and Date). Nor, if predictive prophecy is granted to be possible, is it out of the question for Isaiah to have understood enough of the general outline of future conditions to have addressed persons in those settings.1

But if we grant that Isaiah is responsible for the entire book, why would he have written to future generations as well as his own? Since the Bible itself does not offer an explanation, we cannot give a definitive answer. But there is a plausible possibility. In chapters 6–39, Isaiah is given a sweeping vision of God’s absolute superiority over the nations of the earth. All of history is in his hand, and he is able to deliver those who trust him out of the hands of the nations. This was climactically demonstrated in the deliverance of Jerusalem from Sennacherib narrated in 37:36–38. However, Isaiah is permitted to see the future, a time when Judah will not be trusting God in the face of the Babylonians and when the Babylonians will devastate God’s city and remove God’s people far from the land he promised to them. What then? Will not future events have invalidated what Isaiah was given for his own day?

Furthermore, Isaiah sees that though there is a return from exile (predicted in the naming of his son Shearjashub [“Only a Remnant Will Return”]), it will be to vastly different conditions from those that pertained before the destruction of the city. Judah will simply be a backwater in the vast Persian Empire. Judah will have no king, no army, and no independence, and it will be faced with a much more subtle danger to their distinctive faith than the outright hostility of the Assyrians and Babylonians, namely, a syncretistic outlook that encouraged them to see their God as only a local manifestation of a universal deity worshiped by all religions.

Is it not possible that God gifted Isaiah with the ability to see the future of his people in order to show them (and us) that God is still superior to the nations and their gods (see 40:15–24) even if circumstances and situations are vastly different from those in which the original revelation was given? Is God the Lord of Babylon even if Jerusalem is not delivered out of Babylon’s hands? Yes! Is God still the Lord of Judah even if he, because of her sins, has had to drive Judah from the land he promised her? Yes! Is it possible to experience the kingdom of God even if there is no kingdom of Judah? Yes! Is Judah’s God the Lord of the nations even if Judah herself is no longer a nation? Yes! If the book had ended at chapter 39, we the readers would have had an incomplete picture of God. We would not have known that God’s true lordship of history is not to be found merely in his ability to direct its events, but perhaps even more so in his ability to respond to events in such a way that his original strategy can remain unchanged. Not only is he the King of history; he is also the Redeemer of history.2

740–700 B.C.

BETWEEN 900 AND 609 B.C. the nation of Assyria was the single most prominent force, both politically and militarily, in the ancient Near East. Operating from their home base on the middle Tigris River in Mesopotamia, they had spread their domination in all directions, but especially southward to Babylon and the other southern Mesopotamian city-states and westward and then southward toward Egypt. The small nations on the eastern coast of the Mediterranean Sea stood in the way of this latter advance. Assyria had to go through them to reach the ultimate goal of Egypt because the sea stood on the west and the desert was on the east.

Furthermore, these small nations constituted rich prizes in themselves, having amassed wealth through agriculture, natural resources, and trade. Recognizing the threat, the small nations had formed a coalition to fight the Assyrians at the city of Qarqar in northern Syria in 853 B.C.³ The outcome of the battle seems to have been inconclusive. The southward thrust of the Assyrian king Shalmaneser seems to have been slowed, but it was by no means stopped since he continued to press southward during the remaining twenty-five years of his reign. His two immediate successors continued the same aggressive policies.

All of this put immense pressure on the kings of Israel and Judah in the century between 885 and 785 B.C. Much of their time and wealth had to be devoted to attempts to deal with the Assyrian threat. But beginning in 782, there were three Assyrian kings who were less aggressive.4 The third of these died in 745. This meant that for about forty years prior to 745, Judah and Israel had enjoyed a respite. Coinciding with this respite, and perhaps also because of it, both nations enjoyed unusually long and stable reigns. Israel was ruled from 793 to 753 by Jeroboam II, while Judah was ruled from 792 to 740 by Uzziah (Azariah).5 Since it was possible to devote time and resources to things other than defense, both nations experienced a time of wealth and prosperity unlike anything since the days of Solomon.

But all that came to a crashing close with the accession of a new Assyrian monarch in 745 B.C. This man, Tiglath-Pileser III (2 Kings 15:29, called Pul in 15:19), inaugurated a new period of Assyrian aggressiveness that was to continue right up until the final disappearance of the Assyrian Empire a century and a quarter later. Suddenly everything changed. Now the predictions of imminent destruction of Israel, which Amos and Hosea had made earlier and which had seemed so far-fetched at the time, did not seem far-fetched at all. Undoubtedly the death of Jeroboam II in 753, the almost immediate assassination of his son, and the subsequent chaos of succession contributed to the sense of impending doom. It seems clear that the kingdom of Israel was ruled for at least a dozen years between 752 and 740 by two kings simultaneously, with the warlord Pekah ruling in the Transjordan area until he could take complete control in 740.

In Judah also there was a change of kingship at this time, although it was not accompanied by the chaos found in the less-stable north. Here, Uzziah was succeeded in 740 by his son Jotham, who probably had been acting as coregent with his father for some ten years before Uzziah’s death.6 Nevertheless, in spite of a greater stability on the throne, Judah could not help being embroiled in the wrenching crisis. By 740 the region north of the Sea of Galilee had been taken from Israel, and almost all that was left of Syria was the capital city, Damascus.

Desperate for some way of stopping the juggernaut, Israel and Syria conceived of another coalition (2 Kings 16:5–6; Isa. 7:1). None of the small countries on the Mediterranean coast had a hope of standing up against the Assyrians alone, but perhaps together they could at least achieve as much success as they had gained at Qarqar a century earlier. By this time (ca. 735) it appears that Jotham had been forced by a pro-Assyrian group in Judah to accord his son Ahaz a coregency. In fact, Jotham may have been effectively replaced, because Ahaz is the one acting as king at this point.

Undoubtedly, the call for a coalition against Assyria placed Ahaz in quandary as to whether he was a pawn of a pro-Assyrian party. To take a stand against Assyria had serious consequences if the stand proved to be futile. Whatever else the Assyrians were, they were ruthlessly efficient. Their armies showed both a higher level of organization and of armament than had been known previously in the ancient Near East, and their policies were equally well thought out. There was no lenience offered to those who insisted on opposing them, for the simple reason that such lenience might prompt others to run the risk of such opposition. To oppose the Assyrians and fail was to be subjected to as much destruction and terror as the Assyrian mind could conceive and the Assyrian might could carry out. Sieges were costly and time-consuming. If enemies could be convinced to surrender by looking at what previous enemies of Assyria had undergone, it was all to the good.

So Ahaz king of Judah had to weigh his options carefully. If he agreed to go with Pekah of Israel and Rezin of Damascus and they failed, there was no question that he himself would die by torture in as slow and as agonizing a death as possible and that his city would be systematically destroyed and his people scattered across the empire. But if he would not join the coalition, Israel and Syria would attack him; and if they were successful, they would depose him and put someone else on the throne who would be amenable to their plans (someone named “the son of Tabeel,” according to Isa. 7:6). There was yet another option: He could actively throw in with the Assyrians and ask them to help him as their vassal.

This latter option is what Ahaz chose. He sent a large sum of money to Tiglath-Pileser and asked for protection from his two enemies (2 Kings 16:7– 9). If this seems to us at this distance as though three mice are having a fight and one of them is asking the cat for help, we must remember that Ahaz’s political options were limited. But what Ahaz seems not to have taken into account was God. Ironically, the way in which the Bible presents the account is that Pekah and Rezin had already failed in their attempt to take Jerusalem before any intervention from Assyria occurred. If Ahaz had considered God’s plans and promises, he might have saved himself a great deal of money.

At any rate, Tiglath-Pileser, perhaps using some of Ahaz’s funds, succeeded in capturing Damascus in 732. With this fortress no longer posing a danger in his rear, the Assyrian conqueror was free to push on through northern Israel and on down the coast toward the Philistine cities. Initially Hoshea, Pekah’s successor on the throne of Israel, submitted to the Assyrians and paid tribute to them (2 Kings 17:3–4). But, predictably, he wearied of that burden. Thinking he had procured help from the Egyptians, he stopped paying the tribute in 726 or 725. This was early in the reign of Shalmaneser, Tiglath-Pileser’s successor, and it was fairly common for vassals to revolt in the early years of a reign, hoping that an emperor would have too many other things to attend to in order to prosecute a rebellion. If that was Hoshea’s hope, it was a vain one, because Shalmaneser successfully besieged Samaria and captured it in the year of his death, 722.

By this time yet a third successive coregency seems to have taken place in Judah. This time it appears that the anti-Assyrian party was in the ascendancy and had forced Ahaz’s son Hezekiah on him.7 Hezekiah was sixteen by the time of Samaria’s fall and seems to have stepped forward to attempt some sort of rapprochement with the Israelites who remained behind after the deportations (2 Chron. 30:1–11). Perhaps the reality of the Assyrian threat had now come home to the Judeans and Ahaz’s influence was on the wane. At any rate, it seems clear that from the outset Hezekiah pursued a policy that reasserted Judah’s dependency on God and a refusal to consider any kind of a surrender to the Assyrians.

This was, of course, a high-risk position, as outlined above. With Samaria gone, the Assyrians, now led by Sargon II, pushed farther south and attacked the Philistine cities on the Mediterranean coast with impunity. By 715 the last of them had fallen. However, Sargon was not able to push immediately ahead to Egypt because for the next ten years he was plagued by revolts and incursions on his northern border, and apart from occasional punitive raids in the south was unable to follow up on his advantage. During this time Hezekiah was able to carry out his religious reforms and to fortify his country. It also appears from the book of Isaiah that there was considerable pressure among Hezekiah’s counselors for him to ally Judah with Egypt. Undoubtedly Egypt was pushing hard for this too. They could read the signs as well as anyone else. Sooner or later Assyria would be knocking on their door, and by now only Judah, the remnants of the Philistines, Moab, and Edom were left to stand in the way of that eventuality.

Finally Sargon died in 705, perhaps on the battlefield. He was succeeded by his son Sennacherib, who was shortly (703) faced with a rebellion in Babylon. The leader of this revolt was from Chaldea in extreme southern Mesopotamia. His name was Marduk-apal-idinna (the Bible’s Merodach-Baladan, Isa. 39:1). It seems probable that the events described in Isaiah 39 took place some time prior to this revolt as Merodach-Baladan sought to persuade others across the empire to join him in revolt. Whether that is the correct interpretation or not, it is clear that sometime in 703 or 702 Hezekiah led his neighbors in open revolt to the extent of capturing a Philistine kinglet named Padi and imprisoning him in Jerusalem.

Having dealt with the Babylonians, Sennacherib turned his attention to the west and, in the words of Byron, “came down like a wolf on the fold.”8 In short order he brought the hard light of reality to bear on the ephemeral dreams the coalition may have had of actually being able to stand up to the Assyrian might. The promised Egyptian help evaporated, the leading Philistine city of Ekron was captured, and the towns and fortresses of Judah (forty-six of them in all) were captured and destroyed. Only Lachish, southwest of Jerusalem, and Jerusalem itself remained. Hezekiah turned over Padi and sent a large present to Sennacherib, apparently in the hope that Sennacherib would be mollified and return home.

That was not to be the case, however. Sennacherib destroyed Lachish and made it clear he was not going home until the rebel city of Jerusalem opened its gates to him, either willingly or forcibly. He could ill afford to do anything else. There was the military problem. He could not proceed with the attack on Egypt with an enemy stronghold at his rear in position to cut his supply lines. But more importantly, there was the political problem. Hezekiah was the leader of the revolt. Assyria did not allow leaders of revolts to live. If it did, there would be no end of trouble. So Jerusalem had to fall and Hezekiah had to die.

In fact, that is not what happened. Sennacherib does not tell us why. In his own annals, he only boasts that he shut up Hezekiah “like a bird in a cage” and that Hezekiah paid him a huge tribute, agreeing to renew it annually. So Sennacherib returned home and, as far as his records indicate, never campaigned in the west again until his death at the hands of his own sons twenty years later. The door to Egypt, the prize for which Assyria had been straining for almost two hundred years, stood open, and Sennacherib did nothing to go through it. Instead, he was content to fill his palace with huge reliefs of the fall of Lachish. Having been denied the prize, he made do with second or third best. What happened? The Bible gives us the answer in Isaiah 37:36–37. One night most of the Assyrian grand army died at the hand of “the angel of the LORD,” and Sennacherib decided he had more pressing business at home.9

625–540 B.C.

THE ASSYRIAN EMPIRE eventually reached its Egyptian goal under Sennacherib’s successor, Esarhaddon. When Esarhaddon’s son, Ashurbanipal, came to the throne in 668, Assyria stood at the apex of its power and glory. Yet within less than twenty years of Ashurbanipal’s death in 627 B.C., the Assyrian Empire would cease to exist. What happened? A number of factors were involved, but chief among them was the resurgence of Babylon. Relations between Assyria and Babylon had always been tense, with the Babylonians regularly attempting to break free. For two hundred years Assyria had always been able to regain control, but with Ashurbanipal’s death that control was lost irrevocably.

Ironically, Assyria may have contributed to Babylon’s success this time by having decisively defeated Babylon’s enemy Elam during Ashurbanipal’s reign. At any rate, in the upheavals surrounding Ashurbanipal’s succession, a Chaldean general named Nabopolassar took the throne of Babylon and set about driving the Assyrians out. Within ten years he succeeded in this goal and was carrying the fight to the Assyrian homeland. He was aided in this by the Medes, a collection of tribes living in the Zagros Mountains on the eastern border of Mesopotamia. The Assyrians had long spoken glowingly of the warlike qualities of the Medes.

The beginning of the end for Assyria came with the capture and destruction of the city of Ashur in 614. Then in 612 the unthinkable happened. The greatest Assyrian city of all, Nineveh, fell after a siege of only three months. A claimant to the Assyrian throne fled westward with the remnants of the once-mighty Assyrian army. Landing first in Haran, they were ejected from there and fled farther west to Carchemish on the upper Euphrates in what is today Syria. There they were joined by the new Egyptian pharaoh Neco, who was probably trying to keep a weak Assyria alive as a buffer between him and the Babylonians. But in 605 the Babylonian army, now led by Nabopolassar’s son Nebuchadnezzar, struck the final blow, destroying both the Assyrian and Egyptian armies.

Following up on his advantage, Nebuchadnezzar immediately marched south, reclaiming the coastal region for Mesopotamian control. Local rulers who for a short time had acknowledged Egyptian rule quickly changed sides. Among them was the Judean king Jehoiakim. He had been placed on the throne by Neco when Neco had deposed Jehoiakim’s brother Jehoahaz in 609 (2 Kings 23:33–35). But whatever loyalty Jehoiakim may have felt to his former overlord evaporated when Nebuchadnezzar arrived. Jehoiakim surrendered, agreeing to pay an annual tribute, and gave up to Nebuchadnezzar not only some of the temple treasures but also hostages, among whom were Daniel, Hananiah, Mishael, and Azariah (Dan. 1:1–6).

But Jehoiakim’s loyalty to Nebuchadnezzar was as fleeting as had been his loyalty to Neco. After just three years he broke the solemn covenant he had made, apparently hoping that Nebuchadnezzar’s other obligations might be more important than the goings-on in faraway Judah.10 That was not to be the case with an energetic ruler like Nebuchadnezzar. First, he sent various local groups to harass Jehoiakim (2 Kings 24:2; Jer. 35:11), and then he sent the Babylonian army itself. They arrived in 598. It was that year that Jehoiakim died (2 Kings 24:6). It is hard to believe that his dying at just this point was coincidental. This is especially so since his son Jehoiachin was only eighteen and surrendered the city after only three months. But the Bible does not satisfy our curiosity on the question. At any rate, this time Nebuchadnezzar took Jehoiachin and most of the royal family into captivity along with other leaders and craftsmen (including the young priest Ezekiel). The Babylonian monarch replaced Jehoiachin with his uncle Mattaniah, renamed Zedekiah.

If the picture of Jehoiakim given in the book of Jeremiah is of a hard-eyed opportunist, the picture of Zedekiah is of a waffler who tried to please all sides simultaneously while having no firm convictions of his own. The biblical writers did not even consider him to be the legitimate king. As serious as Judah’s spiritual condition was, it is clear from the example of Assyria’s repentance in response to Jonah’s preaching that if there had come a true national repentance even as late as Zedekiah’s time, the city might have been spared and history been quite different. But although Zedekiah was Josiah’s son, he was no Josiah. If he even understood the issues that all the great prophets had raised and that Jeremiah was declaring at that very moment, he certainly had no desire to address them. His popularity might have suffered.

Thus, Zedekiah asked Jeremiah for advice privately but was unwilling to support him publicly. The people drifted deeper and deeper into the kind of attitudes and behaviors that would seal their destruction. The picture God had given Isaiah 125 years earlier of a people with blind eyes, deaf ears, and fat, unresponsive hearts had come true with a vengeance. Part of their blindness was that they could not believe the city would fall. After all, they had God’s temple, where the holy sacrifices were offered. Beyond this, if God was the God he claimed to be, how could he renege on the promises he had made to their ancestors? So, persisting in injustice, corruption, and violence, the Judean people believed their false prophets, who told them God was pleased with them and would shortly deliver them from the Babylonian threat.

It was in this atmosphere that Zedekiah, listening to counselors who assured him that Egypt would help and fearing a revolt among the people if he continued to tax them to pay the Babylonian tribute, decided to rebel, as his brother Jehoiakim had done before him. One wonders whether he really understood the gravity of what he was doing. Like the Assyrians before them, the Babylonians tended to give people three chances. If there were two rebellions after the initial submission (and there always were), total destruction was the result. This was Jerusalem’s second rebellion. The results were entirely predictable. The only question was how soon the Babylonian army would arrive and how long the city could hold out.

The Babylonians began their siege of Jerusalem in 588, and the city was able to hold out for two years. But finally, as it must have done without a divine miracle, the city fell in July of 586. As unthinkable to the Assyrians as the fall of Nineveh had been twenty-five years earlier, the fall of Jerusalem was even more unthinkable to the Judeans. Had God failed? Had they believed lies about his greatness? Were his promises in vain? Had their sin been too much even for God?

All these questions and more must have filled the Judeans’ minds as they trudged off into captivity. Many were in bitter despair, believing that everything they had once believed had been proven false. But here and there throughout the group were those who refused to give up hope. We know they did not because somehow they managed to smuggle out copies of the sacred scrolls. Among these was the book of Isaiah, along with the Torah and the writings of the other prophets. How exciting it must have been for those exiles to open Isaiah and to read what is now chapters 40–55 with new eyes, opened by the radically new situation. There they saw that Isaiah, under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit, had anticipated all their questions and had provided them with answers they had never understood before. They did not need to give up hope; God had not been defeated; he had not cast them off; the Babylonian gods were not superior to him.

Undoubtedly the somewhat different approach of the Babylonians to exile from that of the Assyrians helped to promote this renaissance of hope. Whereas the Assyrians had tried to break up national groups by scattering them in various places across the empire (see 2 Kings 17:6), the Babylonians permitted such groups to settle in one place. So the Judeans were placed together in central Babylon near the Kebar River at a place called Tel Abib (see Ezek. 1:1; 3:15). Thus the faithful were able to encourage those whose faith was wavering by getting them into the study of the Scriptures, especially of the prophets. When they discovered that the prophets had foreseen their present situation in varying levels of detail, they were surely moved to see what else the prophets had seen. There they found that the prophets had not only predicted the Exile but also predicted something that had never occurred before—a national return from exile.

Of course, many could not believe such an impossible thing, but their doubt was surely shaken when they heard their contemporary Ezekiel saying the same thing. What was difficult for them to grasp was the truth that God can do new things. They thought that he could not let Jerusalem fall, and when he did, they were sure that it was because he had been defeated and that therefore the ancient promises were nullified. The thought that God might have engineered the destruction of Jerusalem in order to keep the ancient promises with a purified remnant (Isa. 4:2–6) was “thinking outside the box,” and it is clear both from Ezekiel and Isaiah that most of the exiles were no more able to do that than most of those before the Exile.

By its very nature paganism fosters such “boxed” thinking. The gods are personified natural, social, and psychological forces. They are the result of human thought that seeks to take an often-chaotic world and reduce it to a mental order. Pagan thinkers specifically do not look for the new and unique. Such things are freaks that do not produce order. Rather, they look for the recurring cycles and patterns that are always so. The pagans do not want to go some way they have never been before. That way lies chaos.

This is the basis for the biting satires on the gods that appear in Isaiah, Jeremiah, and Ezekiel. These gods and this way of thinking are a human attempt to get control of life. What good could those things do anybody? Can the creation save the creation from the creation? Not likely! The saving God is the good Creator, who made creation in certain ways but is never bound by those ways. The only thing he is bound by is his own consistent nature. Consistent, yes. Predictable, never. To us fearful humans, frantic to control our little worlds, such a picture is frightening. It means letting go of the familiar and casting ourselves into arms we cannot see, yet believing on the basis of the Word of God and the testimony of those who have gone before that the arms are there, stronger and more loving than anything we could ever imagine on our own.

Some of the exiled Judeans believed what they read in the Scriptures and resisted the temptation to settle down in a new environment and adopt its ways. They refused to give up the ancient promises. They kept their bags packed, spiritually speaking. No better example can be found of these attitudes and behaviors than Daniel and his friends. They refused to be assimilated into the Babylonian culture and religion, looking to the Scriptures for their self-understanding. This is seen clearly when we find Daniel praying for the return from exile on the basis of what he read in the book of Jeremiah (Dan. 9:1–19). As a result, when the man from the east, Cyrus, whom Isaiah had foretold (Isa. 41:2; 44:28–45:6), appeared, these believing Judeans were not surprised. Like Daniel, they had read the Scriptures carefully and knew that the Exile would not last longer than seventy years. So when Cyrus’s decree permitting them to go home was made, they were ready.

The so-called Neo-Babylonian Empire looms large for students of the Bible because it was so pivotal in the history of Jerusalem and the Judean people. But actually, it was a brief interlude between the Assyrian and Persian Empires. It was to a great extent a “one-man show.” That man was Nebuchadnezzar. When he passed from the scene in 562 B.C., after a forty-three-year reign, the winds that would destroy his work were already blowing. From one point of view the Neo-Babylonian Empire only existed while the Medes caught their breath and recruited a new partner, the Persians. The Medes and an associated group, the Umman-Manda, kept control of the northern part of the old Assyrian Empire. After failing to defeat the Persians who were under the leadership of a half-Median named Cyrus, they joined forces with him. He was able to provide a cohesive leadership that had been lacking, and by 547 he had consolidated his control to the point where he began to move from his northern bases south toward the Babylonian homeland.

In the first seven years after Nebuchadnezzar’s death no fewer than three of his descendants took the throne and were removed from it for one reason or another. The man who emerged from all of this was a Babylonian official named Nabonidus, who ruled from 555 until the fall of Babylon in 539. The data about him are somewhat fragmentary; thus, historians vary widely in their estimate of him. Some see him as a scholar and antiquarian who let the crises of the empire go unaddressed. Others see him as a daring and innovative thinker who was overwhelmed by unmanageable realities.11 In any case, we know that he left Babylon to live in the oasis of Tema for ten years, taking some of the chief deities of Babylon with him. He left a viceregent named Belshazzar in charge in Babylon.12

Whether from Nabonidus’s neglect or in spite of his best efforts, Cyrus went from strength to strength. When he finally appeared before Babylon in 539, the city fell to him with hardly a murmur. One of the first things he did was to proclaim that any exiled people who so wished could return home and that the royal treasury would pay for the rebuilding of any damaged temples.13 The Judeans were ready, and some 50,000 made the long journey, reaching Jerusalem probably in 537 (see Ezra 2:64).

540–500 B.C.

IF THE PROMISES of the prophets had enabled the Judean people to survive the Exile, it is possible that those same prophets made it more difficult to survive the Return. Many of the prophets, in a manner continued by Jesus himself, had a way of telescoping future events together.14 Thus, the predictions of the messianic age and the setting up of the kingdom of God seemed to follow closely on the predictions of the Return.15 Since God had proven faithful in the Exile and then in the Return, surely now the returned exiles could look for all the nations of the world to come flowing to Jerusalem, bringing their wealth with them. Surely a descendant of Jehoiachin would soon ascend the throne of Israel in Judah, there to rule the world in righteousness and peace. Surely Jerusalem was about to become the center of a world empire.

None of these things occurred, however. Judah’s condition was not better than before the Exile; in fact, it was worse. At least before the Exile they had had a semblance of independence with their own king, government, and army. And even stripped of much of its golden finery, the temple of Solomon was an impressive structure, fit to be the palace of the God of the world. But now what? They had no king; they had absolutely no independence; they were a subdivision of a division of a Persian region, with their “county seat” being, of all places, in Samaria! Jerusalem was in ruins, and there was neither the wealth nor the incentive to rebuild it. As for the temple of the Lord, when the foundations were laid, it was hard to distinguish the shouts of joy from the cries of those who remembered the glory of the former building (Ezra 3:12). The prospects were so disappointing that the foundations of the new temple lay exposed for sixteen years until the prophets Haggai and Zechariah finally convinced the people to get the task underway again in 520. The rebuilding project was finally completed in 516, twenty years after it began and seventy years after the previous temple had been burned.

In the world around, Persia reigned supreme without a rival. The Babylonians had welcomed Cyrus as a deliverer, much as the people of Ukraine and Belo-Russia welcomed Hitler. But Cyrus proved much more worthy of the acclaim. His proclamation of a return for the exiles was not a fluke. Rather, it was expressive of a new imperial policy, one in which legality, fairness, and generosity would replace terror. The result was a remarkably peaceful two hundred years for the ancient Near East. While it is true that failure to pay the heavy Persian taxes brought retribution again and again, there was little organized rebellion.

When both Assyria and Babylon fell, it was largely due to dissension and revolt from within the empire. That was not to be the case for Persia. Here the quest for legality and fairness had ballooned into a wasteful and elephantine bureaucracy, and the incredible wealth that the empire produced had sapped the original energy and drive that had conquered a world. The result was that when an army of lean and hungry Greeks met a Persian army almost three times larger in battle at Issus in what is now central Turkey in 333, the Persians suffered a defeat from which they never really recovered. After securing the eastern coast of the Mediterranean all the way to Egypt, where he was crowned Pharaoh, Alexander the Great defeated Darius III once again and in 331 captured Babylon, Susa, and Persepolis, burning the latter to the ground.

If the Judeans struggled as to how to define themselves as a people under Persian hegemony, they also struggled with how to define their faith. For all of their history they had thought of Yahweh as standing over against the other gods in competition. It was an either-or struggle. As Elijah said it, “Either Baal or Yahweh is God, and today we will see which one it is” (see 1 Kings 18:22–24). The same continued to be true in Babylon: Is Yahweh God, or is it Bel and Nebo (Isa. 46:1–5)?

But the Persians brought in a different religious policy, just as they did a different foreign policy. Now syncretism ruled the day. It was no longer “my god versus your god.” Now it was “the divine has many faces.” To you it looks like this; to me it looks like that; but we are both looking at the same divine reality. In many ways this created a more serious threat for the biblical faith than the old either-or confrontation. Now it seemed possible to worship Yahweh and Baal-Shamayim (“the Lord of the Heavens,” a Near Eastern title for the Greek god Zeus) at the same time. Now one need no longer endure the stigma of separation and isolation, and equally important, one need no longer worry about whether one was worshiping in the right way or not.

If the Persian premise that all gods and goddesses are manifestations of the one divine essence had been correct, then all of this would have been fine. But of course, that premise is not correct. All the gods and goddesses of the pagan world may indeed have been the manifestation of the same basic understanding of deity, but that understanding is not the same as the one found in the Bible. As noted above, all pagan gods and goddesses are simply personifications of the forces of creation. All of them are built on the premise that there is a basic continuity between all things. Thus, deity can be explained by projecting back from creation. Just as creation is many, so are the gods; just as creation functions in endless cycles, so do the gods; just as creation is determined, so are the gods; just as creation is the result of sexual behavior, so are the gods; just as creation manifests an endless struggle between order and chaos, so do the gods.

But the biblical premise is diametrically opposite. It posits transcendence, with the Creator being radically discontinuous with his creation. Thus, he may not be represented by any created form. He is not many, he is One; he does not function in cycles but acts purposefully; his actions are not determined but are radically free; he is not sexed and does not act in a sexual manner; he is not ethically neutral, containing both order and disorder in himself, but is profoundly ethical. To say that, when the pagan looks at Baal and the Judean looks at Yahweh, they are simply looking at two sides of the same coin is to fail to see the radical nature of biblical religion.

Given both the political and the spiritual factors, it is not surprising that after the burst of energy needed to finish the temple, the former lethargy and apathy seemed to set in again. Clearly, the people were struggling with what is now called a “paradigm shift.” How could they continue to maintain the radical uniqueness of God when they had no king and no kingdom and when the whole spirit of the age said that the maintaining of such an idea was not merely passé but unnecessary, a waste of energy?

Along with these problems, Isaiah 56–66 also makes it clear that there were other issues. Was ethical righteousness really so necessary? They had not been delivered from Babylon because of their righteousness but because of God’s righteousness, his gracious keeping of his covenant with his people. So why try, especially since we seem regularly to fail in the attempt? It is our birthright as the people of the covenant that guarantees our relationship with God. Thus, at the same time as it was becoming easier and easier to blur the distinction between pagan worship and true worship, it was also easier to say that it was merely your genealogy that made you a member of God’s family.

Unquestionably, the strong arguments for the uniqueness of the Lord that appear in Isaiah 40–55 were important to the thinking of the Judeans at this point. Again, Isaiah seems to have understood what challenges the future would hold for the things he had said about God’s lordship over the nations in chapters 6–39 and was inspired to address them. Furthermore, chapters 56–66 address the questions of worship, ethics, and internationalism in ways that are consistent with chapters 6–39 but that carry the discussion further in light of the new situation.

The prophet reaffirms the promises of a new messianic kingdom, demonstrating that the earlier promises still hold true. But he also makes it plain that separation is not in order to keep the pagans out. Rather, it is in order to have a distinctive and coherent message to call the pagan into from their own darkness. God does not hate the non-Judeans; what he hates is their false religion, which is destroying them. Furthermore, Isaiah makes it plain that there is nothing sacred in the Judean bloodline. A Judean who succumbs to pagan religion and abandons the ethics of the covenant is as detestable to the Lord as any non-Judean would be.

At the same time, while the relevance of the message of Isaiah 56–66 to the Return is clear, some of the characteristic features of the postexilic prophets are missing. Chief among these are the importance of the temple and correct worship, such as appear in Ezekiel, Haggai, Zechariah, and Malachi, as well as in Chronicles, Ezra, and Nehemiah. One way of explaining this difference is that espoused by Paul Hanson, in which he argues that those writings are all by the followers of Ezekiel, whereas the followers of “Deutero-Isaiah” were visionaries who had no real interest in institutions but were proto-apocalyptists, who looked forward to God’s universal kingdom at the end of time.16 However, since there is no indication elsewhere in the Bible of such competing groups, it seems that another explanation ought to be given consideration—namely, that these chapters were not written in 540–500 and that that issue, which was of great significance to persons of that time, was not in the writer’s mind when he wrote.

Authorship and Date

AS MENTIONED ABOVE, the book of Isaiah cites no other author than “Isaiah son of Amoz” of Jerusalem, stating that he received his vision during the reigns of Uzziah, Jotham, Ahaz, and Hezekiah, that is, during the last half of the eighth century B.C. This attribution of authorship appears twice in the book (1:1; 2:1). Many believe that the first is intended to apply to the book as a whole and the second specifically to chapters 2–5. This was the view of the church up until the eighteenth century A.D., when the scholars of the Enlightenment began to insist that all truth claims had to bow at the bar of human reason. Scholars had, of course, long noted the absence of historical references after chapter 39. They had also noted certain stylistic and vocabulary differences between chapters 1–39 and 40–66. They had also commented on the announcement of the name of the Persian emperor Cyrus more than a hundred years before his birth and the fact that chapters 40–66 seemed to be addressed to people of the exilic period. But it remained to the German scholar J. C. Döderlein, writing in 1775, to first propose in print that the present book might consist of a conflation of two different works.17

J. G. Eichhorn amplified this idea and gave it further development, asserting that all of chapters 40–66 were written by someone other than Isaiah.18 This view was increasingly popular in Europe, gaining the support of such eminent scholars as Gesenius.19 However, the traditional view did not lack for support either. Such notable persons as R. Stier,20 F. Delitzsch,21and the American J. A. Alexander22 argued forcefully for the single authorship of the book. The influence of these and others meant that there was a certain moderation of tone in the debate in the third quarter of the nineteenth century.

However, this was all to change with the appearance of the commentary of Bernard Duhm in 1892.23 Much as J. Wellhausen had been able to do with the criticism of the Pentateuch, Duhm was able to take a plethora of theories about the authorship of the book and integrate them into one appealing approach. He proposed that there were not two authors but three, Proto-Isaiah being responsible for large parts of chapters 1–39, Deutero-Isaiah for chapters 40–55, and Trito-Isaiah for chapters 56–66. This proposal, along with others he made in the commentary, seemed to solve the various problems encountered in previous suggestions. As a result, the idea of multiple authorship of the book gained widespread scholarly acceptance.

However, if anyone thought that Duhm’s work settled the question of the book of Isaiah’s authorship, he was mistaken. A contemporary of Duhm by the name of Hermann Gunkel was proposing a new theory of the composition of ancient literature, based on the research into the origins of German folk literature by a number of researchers, including the Grimm brothers. This theory argued that folk literature was not produced by single authors but was the product of communities, that written literature had a long oral prehistory, and that the particular function of the literary unit in its community required a particular literary form. Although Gunkel was an Old Testament scholar, his application of form-critical methods to the Old Testament did not gain much initial favor. It was only after the method had begun to be used fairly widely in New Testament studies that it began to be applied in the 1920s and 1930s to the Old Testament.

One of the effects of form criticism was to divide books into smaller and smaller units with increasing skepticism about the actual authorship of any of them. This was certainly the result in Isaianic studies. While chapters 40– 55 tended to be retained for the supposedly brilliant and spiritual “Deutero-Isaiah,” the individual “Trito-Isaiah” disappeared completely with the material in chapters 56–66 considered to be the work of a community in the postexilic period. As for “Proto-Isaiah,” or “First Isaiah,” his work is largely restricted to portions of chapters 6–12 and 28–31. The rest of chapters 1– 39 is a miscellaneous collection coming from various points in the formation of “the Isaiah corpus,” a process that was supposed to have gone on more or less continuously from 740 until the Hasmonean period (165 B.C.).

To explain how this process was carried out, an “Isaianic school” was hypothesized. In this hypothesis the disciples of “First Isaiah” began the process of adding to and amplifying the master’s works. This process went on from generation to generation for more than five hundred years. The reason these persons are not named is twofold. (1) They did not consider they were really saying anything different from what the master had said. (2) Apart from “Deutero-Isaiah,” the work really was that of a community and not of individuals.24

A number of arguments can be lodged against this hypothesis. Above all, it must be said that there is no objective evidence to support it. The earliest text we have is the Isaiah Scroll from the collection at Qumran (1QIsa^a). This scroll is generally dated to the early first century B.C., and apart from certain minor spelling differences and some text-critical issues, the text is identical to that found in the Hebrew manuscripts of a millennium later. Clearly the text had been in existence long enough to become completely standardized with no hint of any complex redactional process leading to this form. Interestingly, the present chapter 39 ends only two lines from the bottom of a column. If the scribes had any sense of the separation between “First Isaiah” and “Second Isaiah,” it would have been easy to leave the last two lines blank and to have started what is now chapter 40 at the top of the next column. But they did not do this. They used the final two lines of the column to begin that chapter.

Another argument against this theory is its dependence on the “Isaianic school,” something for which there is no precedent and no evidence. To be sure, Isaiah speaks of sealing his writings and giving them to his disciples for future generations (8:16). But this is far from demonstrating that what he gave them was the equivalent of a dozen chapters that they and fifteen generations of their descendants developed into the present sixty-six chapters. An analogous process would be if Jesus had actually left only enough words and actions to fill out three or four pages in a book and that his disciples then replicated themselves for five hundred years while adding to and amplifying his supposed words and actions until the Gospel of Mark was actually completed in its present form in A.D. 500. The idea is not credible.

Yet another argument that must be lodged against the hypothesis of multiple authorship of Isaiah is the fact that it has not been able to produce any unanimity of results. While the work of Holladay noted above is one example of how the process is supposed to have worked, there would be almost no scholar who would agree with many of the details of his contentions. Although biblical studies are far from being an exact science, it is still true that if a methodology is correct, it ought to yield substantially similar results in the hands of different researchers. In fact, that is not the case with the study of Isaiah. Two commentators who both share a commitment to form criticism and to multiple authorship of Isaiah may vary by as much as three hundred years as to when a particular unit was written.25 They would disagree just as widely on the literary relation of that unit to those around it. There is something wrong with a methodology that cannot yield more predictable results.

Finally, it must be asked why the supposed authors have intentionally led their readers to believe that the whole is the work of Isaiah ben Amoz of the eighth century B.C., for this is clearly what has been done. The superscription at the beginning of the book can point in no other direction. They want us to believe that this person in the 700s B.C. foresaw what was going to happen to his people over the next several hundred years and conceived a great theological structure to address not only those times but ones further in the future. This conclusion is furthered when we discover that the chief argument for the uniqueness of God over the gods in chapters 41–48 is his ability to specifically foretell the future, something the idols could not and did not do. But if the writers knew at the same time they were making this argument that Isaiah ben Amoz had never foretold what they were saying he had, what does this do to their theological credibility? In fact, they were fabricating false evidence, since Yahweh could no more tell the future than the idols could. The towering theology of the prince of the prophets is in fact built on a foundation of falsehoods, if we accept this hypothesis.26

But how are we to explain the data that resulted in the theory of multiple authorship if we do not accept that theory? Some of those data are: addressing future audiences in ways that betray a more than general understanding of what the issues will be in those future times; stylistic and vocabulary differences between various sections; differing theological foci; the lack of any obvious outline; and so on.

Let us begin with the latter. Ancient literature was not characterized by the kinds of unities that the Greek rhetoricians declared were necessary. Rather, they tended to be a grouping together of relatively independent episodes. Classical examples of this form of composition can be found in the Sumerian/Akkadian Gilgamesh Epic and in the Greek Odyssey. This feature is said to be characteristic of literature that has an oral prehistory.

Whether this is true or not, the same features can be found in the Bible. While the books of Genesis–2 Kings all show a general chronological organization, and while it may be argued that Genesis–Deuteronomy emphasize one theme and Deuteronomy–2 Kings another closely related theme, it is hard to find a logical outline in any of these books.27 The feature is even more pronounced in those books known in the English tradition as the Major and Minor Prophets. In several of the books it is possible to identify units of thought, and in many cases readers from diverse perspectives would agree with the identification. So, for instance, Amos 1–2 constitute judgments on the nations, while chapters 3–6 are messages against Israel, and chapters 7– 9 are visions of Israel’s destruction and restoration. However, it is virtually impossible to discover a logical progression in the thought of the book.

This is true on a grand scale in Jeremiah, where there is even disagreement as to the length of the units of thought. Apart from the call in chapter 1, the hopeful words in chapters 30–32, and the oracles against the nations in chapters 46–51, the commentators cannot agree on what the other units in the book are. Thus, the situation in the book of Isaiah is not something unique. Like all the other prophetic books (with the possible exception of Ezekiel), the material in the book was first given orally and then collected either by the prophet himself or by disciples. As such, the material constitutes a kind of anthology of the prophet’s work. Sometimes reports of the prophet’s life are interwoven with the things he said. It is probable that differing versions of these circulated even during the prophet’s own lifetime.

Again, the Gospels seem to demonstrate the probability of this, as do the differing versions of Jeremiah in the Masoretic Text and the Septuagint. In the case of Jesus, his importance to the Christian community dictated that four authoritative versions of his life and work should be preserved. But in the case of other books, it is apparent that the Judean community fairly quickly recognized one of the versions as having authority, with the rest being discarded. The destruction of Jerusalem in the midst of Jeremiah’s ministry and the fragmentation of the community short-circuited this process for that book and left us with two versions extant. In view of these common characteristics of Hebrew prophetic writing, the somewhat miscellaneous character of the book of Isaiah cannot be said to point necessarily to multiple authorship.

The remaining three issues identified above—addressing different audiences, differing vocabulary and style, and differing theological foci—are all part of one set of issues and must be dealt with together. As discussed above under the historical background, different parts of the book do seem to be addressed to different audiences. This in itself goes far to explain why there are different theological emphases in these different parts. Different situations require different emphases, and different emphases may well require a different language. Thus, the question must be: Is it possible that one human mind (under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit) could have and would have been able to speak to (not about) persons in the distant future?

As mentioned above, it seems to me that the different audiences and theology were necessitated by the sweep of the vision given to Isaiah. He had seen a picture of a nation of rebellious, arrogant, and corrupt people being carried away on a Mesopotamian flood called forth by Israel’s God (6:1– 8:22; 9:8–10:4). Yet he also saw a descendant of Jesse leading a restored remnant of God’s people in a kingdom of righteousness and hope (9:1–7; 10:5–11:16). He saw a people who had refused to trust God and were swept away (8:6–8) redeemed and living in hopeful trust (12:1–6). The breadth of this vision could not be confined to his own day, a day in which God had told him that he would be ignored and rejected. If the vision was to have final relevance, it had to find that relevance in people yet unborn.

If these unborn people were to trust the God whom their parents had ultimately refused to trust, then it was imperative that those future generations should know that God can still be trusted even if we have refused him, experienced the results of that refusal, and are in complete despair. Furthermore, when we have dared to believe again and are indeed delivered, it is then that we need to know that trust is useless unless it issues in a life of righteousness. If Isaiah’s book had stopped at what is now chapter 39, its effect would have been abortive, both in encouraging faith during the Exile and in providing a vehicle for seeing how the changed situation after the Exile could be reconciled with the preexilic faith.

But what about the significantly different language after chapter 40? It is different, there is no question of that. The Hebrew is both simpler and more lyrical. Some words that were common before chapter 40 may appear rarely or not at all after chapter 40. The differences are significant enough that Yehuda Radday concluded on the basis of a computer-based study that the same person could not have written chapters 7–39 and 40–55.28 If we argue that Radday’s conclusions were based upon certain unproven assumptions about the possible limits of variation in one person’s writing, what might account for such a significant difference?

It must be granted that what follows is hypothetical, but it is no more so than the myriad multiple-authorship hypotheses. Sometime after 701, perhaps ten years or more, when Manasseh has joined his father on the throne and it is clear Hezekiah’s reforms are not going to last, the elderly prophet is given a vision of the future and of the ways in which what he has taught and believed all his life will relate to that future. The vision is theologically detailed but historically general. It is a vision of the triumph of the transcendent Creator-Redeemer, the Holy One of Israel whom Isaiah has proclaimed, both in history and in the human heart. It is loosely placed within a couple of future historic settings, but it is freed from any specific bonds of a particularized historical setting. I believe this understanding of the origins of the material within Isaiah’s life might account for the variations.

If it is possible to answer the questions that have led to the multiple authorship theories, we must also ask whether there is positive evidence supporting single authorship of the book. There is such evidence. One of the more interesting pieces of evidence is the even distribution of the phrase “the Holy One of Israel” throughout the book. This phrase only occurs thirty-one times in the Old Testament, and no fewer than twenty-five of these are in Isaiah, with twelve occurrences appearing in chapters 1–39 and thirteen appearing in chapters 40–55.29 And when the one occurrence in the Bible of the synonymous “the Holy One of Jacob” at Isaiah 29:23 is factored in, the distribution is exactly even. If we accept multiple authorship, we would have to posit an attempt by the later editors to be sure that the master’s favorite term was adequately covered in the later material assigned to him.30

And while it is true that there are numerous instances where a word will appear only in chapters 1–39 and not in chapters 40–66, there are also a number of terms that show up in both (or all three) parts of the book and not elsewhere in the Old Testament. Again, one would have to assume that someone did a concordance study of the master and inserted his unique words here and there in the later material. This is especially the case where a rare word shows up only once or twice in chapters 1–39 and once or twice in chapters 40– 66. That this should happen by chance in a multiple-authorship scheme is unlikely.31 We would have to suppose that someone discovered the word in one place and then intentionally used it in the later additions simply in order to create the illusion of single authorship.

Another evidence of the single authorship of the book is the absence of specific historical references for the exilic and postexilic periods. When the book of Isaiah is compared to Ezekiel or to Malachi, these differences become obvious. Whereas it is typical among the Hebrew prophets to root their oracles in specific events and circumstances, and whereas this feature is present in chapters 6–39 of Isaiah, there is almost none of this kind of material in chapters 40–66.

Three possible explanations present themselves: (1) The author did not know this information; (2) the author knew it but did not include it; (3) the author originally included it, but it was removed for some reason. If the author of the material was Isaiah, then the facts are easily explicable. Isaiah knew the general circumstances of the exilic and postexilic periods, but apart from the one startling fact of the name of the deliverer Cyrus, he knew no other details. On the one hand, if the author was writing at the time of the events and knew the details, as in the case of Cyrus, there is no obvious reason to make the rest of his presentation so ahistorical. On the other hand, if the details were originally there but were suppressed in all cases but the reference to Cyrus, then we again are faced with editors who want us to believe Isaiah of Jerusalem is responsible for the whole book while they know that is untrue.32

Not only are the expected historical details absent, but there are also in chapters 40–66 some hints of an eighth-century setting for the writing of these chapters.33 Instead of the expected emphasis on the restoration of proper worship in the face of the syncretistic tendencies of the day, there is the kind of diatribe against ritualism that is characteristic of the preexilic prophets. The attacks on the idols are likewise more like that of Jeremiah and his predecessors than they are of Ezekiel and his successors.34 The concern for the priesthood and its purity, which is characteristic of the postexilic writings, is not found in Isaiah 40–66. While it is possible to hypothesize an anticultic group that existed after the Exile in order to explain these features, that is only necessary if one has already concluded these chapters to have been written in the postexilic period. Apart from that a priori reason, there is no evidence of such a group in any of the biblical books known to be postexilic. A much simpler explanation is that these chapters were written well before the Exile and that while they deal with the theological issues raised by the exilic and postexilic experiences, they do so from within the eighth-century context.

In concluding this section, we must say that there is no a priori reason why God could not have used multiple authors to create a unified work of theology like the book of Isaiah. He is God, and he can do what he likes. But the question is, What does the book itself claim? Here there seems to me to be no question. The book claims to have come through one human mind, that of Isaiah ben Amoz, who lived in the eighth and seventh centuries B.C. and was gifted by God to see the future in such a way that it would forever demonstrate that Yahweh of Israel was not one of the gods. Yahweh’s ability to tell the future in detail was the ultimate evidence that he was not a personification of the forces of creation but was the Creator of creation, the One who made it, continued to direct it, and would eventually redeem it.

All of the multiple authorship hypotheses finally undercut this theological point because their underlying rationale is that God could not have so inspired Isaiah ben Amoz. It seems to me we cannot have it both ways. If we conclude the theological claims of the book are true, then we cannot avoid the implications of that conclusion for the book’s authorship. If we conclude the book was created by a group of persons much later than Isaiah, then we are forced to admit that these persons knew what they were saying was not true but believed it ought to be true and thus tried to create such an account of the book’s origins as would make readers believe it was. Such a book may still be an inspiring piece of theological innovation that is of interest to historical theologians, but it has no claims upon those of us who read it 2,700 years later.35

Central Themes of the Book of Isaiah

WE NOTED ABOVE that the book of Isaiah is rather like a modern symphony, with themes appearing and reappearing in fascinating harmony. Not only is this true of the themes, it is also true of a number of figures of speech, some of which ought to be mentioned here before we deal with the themes themselves in more detail. Some of those figures of speech are: trees,36 highways,37 banners,38 deserts,39 gardens and fertile fields,40 children,41 and light and darkness.42 As can be seen from the references given, these figures crop up throughout the book, giving the careful reader a sense of discovery and delight as he or she recognizes the author’s craft in recalling an earlier figure and using it in a related, but amplified, way.43 On the thematic level, as with the figures, a recurring feature is the pairing of opposites, such as judgment and hope, servanthood and kingdom, trust and rebellion, and arrogance and humiliation. Other important themes are the uniqueness of Yahweh, righteousness, and the nations.44

Judgment and Hope

FROM THE OUTSET of the book these two themes are interchanged. The interchange appears first in chapter 1, where the accusations of 1:1–15 give way to a promise of restoration if there is genuine repentance (1:16– 20). The interchange occurs again in 1:21–27, with 1:21–24 detailing the perversion of the leaders and the destruction that must follow, but with 1:25–27 telling us that the destruction is for the purpose of purification. Finally, chapter 1 ends on the note of accusation with which it began (1:28–31). On a larger scale, the interchange continues through the introduction (chs. 1–5), with chapter 1 being primarily an announcement of judgment; 2:1–5 a promise of hope; 2:6–4:1 reverting to announcement of judgment; 4:2–6 a promise of hope; and 5:1–30 an announcement of imminent judgment. The pattern is then repeated in the book as a whole, with chapters 7–39 giving primary emphasis to judgment and a minor emphasis on hope, while the major emphasis of chapters 40–66 is hope with a secondary emphasis on judgment.

What is the point of this interchange, especially as it is laid out for us in the introductory chapters? Isaiah’s point seems to be that if there is to be hope for the nation, it is only through judgment. To be sure, as chapter 1 indicates, if there were a genuine turning to God as evidenced in a changed way of treating one another, judgment could be avoided. However, as Isaiah’s call experience made plain to him, there was no likelihood of genuine repentance for this people. Therefore, if there was to be any hope for them to become a clean and bright lamp (4:2–6) through whom the nations could be blessed (as per the promise to Abraham, and in 2:1–5), it was only through judgment.

Obviously this was difficult for the Judean people to grasp. They had the ingrained idea that it was either judgment or hope. After all, God had made all these promises to them. They were his chosen people and no one else. They were the custodians of his holy city and his holy temple. If judgment came in the form that some of the prophets were talking about—destruction of the city and the temple, and even of some part of the people—then all the promises of God were null and void. Thus the only hope was to avoid judgment. To all of this Isaiah said a resounding no. The promises of God would only be realized through fire. Just as the unclean lips of the man Isaiah could only be used to proclaim the holiness of God to his people after they had been purged with fire (Isa. 6), so the unclean lips of the nation were going to have to be purged with the cleansing fires of judgment if the nation could ever proclaim those promises of God to the nations of the world.

If the people of Isaiah’s day had difficulty believing there was hope beyond judgment, it is clear from the book that the people of the exilic period would have difficulty believing in hope after judgment. For them the impossible had occurred. As far as they could see, all was lost. God had either abandoned them or they had been defeated by the Babylonian gods. The holy city and temple were forever gone. The priesthood was defiled and could never be cleansed. As much as the pagans had difficulty imagining anything other than what had always been, so did the Judeans. They could not imagine that God was so creative that he could do something completely new to keep the ancient promises.

Thus, the prophet has to keep calling on them to believe what God says he will do for them, to listen to the promises he makes of redemption and restoration. Like their ancestors, they really could not believe that judgment is never God’s intended last word but that his intention is to use judgment to bring about lasting hope.

The message of judgment and hope goes through a third permutation when it is addressed to the postexilic audience. Here the danger is that the restored Judeans will believe that hope realized removes the possibility of judgment. Since they have been restored through no effort or merit of their own, there is a serious possibility they will therefore believe that they can continue to experience the blessing of God while living lives of ritual purity and social wickedness. Here the prophet has to tell them that this is not the case. Yes, God has restored them, and yes, they are in line to experience the fulfillment of the kingdom of God. But that does not remove the possibility of further judgment. In fact, an obedient foreigner or eunuch is more a child of the kingdom than a pure-bred Judean who is living in sin. Yes, it is true that judgment is not God’s intended last word. But unless people repent and live godly lives by the Spirit’s power, it will be his last word.

Servanthood and Kingdom

AS MENTIONED ABOVE, the introductory chapters present the reader with a dilemma. How can the proud, rebellious, polluted, and ultimately desolate Israel that is described in Isaiah 1; 2:6–4:1; and 5 ever become the pure, submissive, and abundant repository of the word of God for the nations described in 2:1–5 and 4:2–6? Isaiah seems to offer his own experience as a solution to this dilemma. Just as his unclean lips were cleansed so that he could declare the word of God to the nation, so the nation’s unclean lips could be cleansed so that it could declare God’s word to the nations. Israel could become the servant of God to fulfill that role.

This is made explicit in chapters 40–66, but it is implicit in chapters 1– 39 as well. In chapter 6 the beginning of Isaiah’s commissioning into God’s service is a vision of God and of himself that makes his condition clear. Without that accurate picture there is no hope of ultimate cleansing. The same thing happens to Israel in chapters 7–39. Here the nation is given a vision of the glory and greatness of God that demonstrates the trustworthiness of God. This is the essential basis for servanthood. Unless we can trust the Master in every respect, there is no hope of our laying aside our pride and putting on the towel of servanthood.

The first lesson in the relationship between servanthood and kingdom is given in the picture of the servant-king in chapters 7–12. These chapters deal with the Assyrian crisis of 735 B.C. Here Judah is threatened not only by her neighbors, Israel and Syria, but ultimately by the Assyrian colossus. Visions of oppression, domination, and terror rear up on every side. Within Judah, the house of David is terrified, shaking like leaves in the wind. What does Judah feel she needs? A king who will be stronger, crueler, and more implacable than any other! And what is the vision Isaiah gives? A vision of a child (9:6)! He sees a child-king who will be wise, perceptive, and righteous, a child who will bring in a kingdom where no one hurts or destroys (11:9; see also 65:25). God’s solution to the cruelty and oppression of the world is not to be more cruel and oppressive, but, as 52:13–53:12, the last of the so-called Servant Songs, shows, it is to take that cruelty and oppression into himself and give back love. This is ultimate power. A similar view of the servant-king appears in 16:5 and 32:1–5.

The way in which the two Davidic monarchs Ahaz and Hezekiah are contrasted in chapters 7–39 reinforces this idea of servant king. In chapters 7–8 Ahaz is depicted as trusting in the power of the world to deliver him, refusing to submit his plans and ways to God. The result is destruction. In contrast, chapters 36–38 show Hezekiah submitting himself to God and calling on his people to do likewise. The result is deliverance, both for the nation and for Hezekiah personally. Ahaz, who speaks pious words but refuses to bow in the servant posture, is contrasted with Hezekiah, whose prayer shows an overriding concern for the honor and name of his Lord (37:16–20). Thus, chapters 7–39 depict a God who has the power to care for his servants and the compassionate heart to actually do so.

The kingly servant is presented especially in chapters 40–55. That he is the king is shown in the functions ascribed to him. Both in 42:1 and 49:6 it is made plain that this Servant of the Lord will do the very things said of the Messiah in Isaiah 9–11; 16; and 32. He will bring justice and salvation to the nations. Yet, how will he do this? He will do it by laying aside the robes of pomp and royalty. He will submit to cruelty and abuse; he will be discouraged and despairing; he will finally give his life. He will become the Servant of both Israel and the world. In so doing he will become the ideal Israel (49:3), who makes it possible for the actual Israel to become the servants they were chosen to be. He becomes both the motive and the means whereby Israel can, out of the fires of judgment, fulfill its calling.

The motivation to servanthood is the unmerited grace of God in restoring his people to himself after they have brought destruction and rejection on themselves and his willingness to use them as his evidence in his legal suit against the gods (e.g., 43:8–13). This gracious refusal to cast them off provides the motivation to exercise the trust that was so amply demonstrated and explained in chapters 7–39. But how can God do this? How can God take sinful Israel back? How can sinful Israel become servant Israel? The means is the Servant. In his atoning death he provides the means whereby both love and justice can be satisfied (53:10–11).

But the ministry of the king is not exhausted in chapters 1–55. What about these servants when they are restored to their land? It was not the power of Babylon that sent them into exile. It was the pervasiveness of their sin and unrighteousness. What is to be done about that behavior? Is the only power of the kingly servant’s death to forgive sin? Can the servants of the Holy One continue in sinful living? The answers to such questions are found in chapters 56–66, which talk about the character of servanthood. Here, on the one hand, God makes it clear that grace is not a justification for unrighteous living. He expects his servants to live righteous lives. But, on the other hand, the servants confess their inability to live the kind of righteousness God calls for. They cannot produce the light for which the world yearns.

What is to be done? Once again, the answer is the Servant. But this time he is presented as the mighty Warrior (59:15b–21; 63:1–6). The enemies he destroys are no longer the oppressive nations. Babylon is gone, and Persia is not a threat to God’s promises. No, the enemy that the Warrior attacks with implacable fury is the enemy of sin in the hearts of the servants. As a result of his work, the light of God dawns on his people, and all the nations are drawn to it (chs. 60–62), just as 2:1–5 predicted. Interestingly, at the center of chapters 60–62, between the two Warrior passages and at the center of chapters 56–66, we have one more view of the Spirit-anointed Servant (61:1– 3). Here he is not the terrifying Warrior, but One who speaks comfort and peace. In other words, servant is his nature while warrior is one of his roles. Nevertheless, he makes it plain that his function is to make persons “oaks of righteousness” (61:3). Whether it be by quiet persuasion or terrifying glory, he intends to make the servants of God like God.45

Trust and Rebellion

AS MENTIONED ABOVE, trust is a major theme of chapters 7–39. Interestingly, rebellion is a major theme in chapters 40–66, which are usually associated with hope.46 The connection between the two is established in chapter 1, where the people are identified as rebels no less than five times (1:2, 5, 20, 23, 28). They are clearly told the contrasting results of these two behaviors in 1:19–20: Be willing and obedient and eat the best of the land, or rebel and be eaten by the sword.

After chapter 1, specific occurrences of terms for rebelliousness are scattered (3:8; 24:20; 30:1; 31:6; 36:5), but the last one is the most telling. The Assyrian officer stands outside the walls of Jerusalem demanding the surrender of the city. Speaking for the Assyrian king he says, “On whom are you depending, that you rebel against me?” We can either trust the nations and rebel against our true Lord, or we can trust the Lord and repudiate all the false alliances that cannot supply what they promise.

This is the way in which chapters 7–39 develop the theme of trust. Chapters 7–12 and 36–39 stand in contrast to each other at the beginning and end of the unit. In chapter 7 Isaiah challenges Ahaz to trust God instead of the nations. Ahaz refuses to do this, choosing instead to trust his worst enemy, Assyria. Isaiah says that Assyria will turn on Judah and destroy it, but that after the destruction has come God will restore his people again under the leadership of a Davidic monarch who will value the well-being of his people above his own skin. Thus, the real trustworthiness of God will be demonstrated (see 12:1–3). Chapters 13–35 explore whether it is God or the nations who is supreme. In various ways these chapters assert the lordship of Yahweh over the nations, concluding in chapters 34–35 that if we trust the nations, we will end up living in a desert, but that if we will turn to God even then, he can make that desert blossom like a rose.

After those lessons Ahaz’s son Hezekiah is put to the test again. Now Isaiah’s prediction to Ahaz has come true: Assyria is destroying the land and is about to complete the task by taking Jerusalem. Will Hezekiah pass the test his father failed? The answer is “yes, but.” In the crisis of the Assyrian threat, Hezekiah dares to defy the Assyrians and trusts God, and he is delivered. So also when he is fatally ill, he turns to God and is delivered. But in the much more subtle crisis when the Babylonian ambassadors come to congratulate Hezekiah after his recovery (ch. 39), he fails, parading his wealth and armaments instead of giving the glory to God. The Ahaz unit begins in no trust and ends in joy, whereas the Hezekiah unit begins in trust and ends in grief, with Isaiah predicting the Babylonian conquest.

What happened? Perhaps the point is this: Hezekiah has provided the positive illustration for the previous lessons: God can be trusted. At the same time, he provides a negative illustration that has a foreboding of the future: Trust is a way of life, not a one-time panacea. At various points the people of Judah turned back to God, yet these moments of trust did not become the settled pattern of their lives. So chapters 7–39 have taught the truth theoretically. All that needs to be said on the subject has been said, and its truth has been amply demonstrated. Yet the lesson has not been applied in an ongoing practical way. Hezekiah illustrates both of these points.

What can actually motivate the servants of the Lord to make trust a way of life, to lay aside the pride and self-interest in a life-changing trust? This was already intimated in 12:1–3. When God delivers his people from the justly deserved consequences of their sin, they will turn to him in trust. But will they actually do so, or will they persist in rebellion? This is the burden of chapters 40–66 in their twenty references to rebellion. God has forgiven their rebellions and will continue to forgive those who turn away from that rebellion to put their trust in him.

But will they turn away? Their fathers were rebels, and they themselves are rebels. The sin problem is not merely wrong acts but a way of thinking about and relating to the supreme Lord of the universe. If we will relate to him in submission and trust, all the treasures of heaven are ours. But if we will not, then the day will come when those who do trust him will see the destruction of us who persist in revolt (66:24). Thus the book ends on the same note with which it began: Surrendering to the Creator-Redeemer in trust is the height of wisdom, whereas rebellion against him is the height of folly.

Arrogance and Humiliation

THIS PAIR OF themes is closely related to the previous one. The primary reason for not submitting to God in trust is human pride, and the primary reason for trusting the nations instead of God is the power and glory of the nations. But human pride, power, and glory are all illusory. They are derived from the only One in whom true power and glory reside. As Isaiah heard in his inaugural vision, “the whole earth is full of his glory.” If there is any glory in the world, says Isaiah, it is derived from the Creator of the world. Thus, for humans to arrogate that glory and act as if it was their own rather than a gift is to be living a lie. And like all lies, it must inevitably betray its perpetrators.

No place in the book is this more powerfully presented than in 2:6–4:1. Here the prophet shows how all attempts to exalt ourselves are doomed to fail. In fact, the very attempt to exalt ourselves will be the cause of our humiliation. This is profoundly true, because by denying that there is a Creator who is sovereign over us, we make ourselves the most significant beings in the universe. And if we are the most significant beings in the universe, then there is no significance in the universe. This is the story of the Enlightenment in the West. We placed human reason on the throne in the nineteenth century, and it led us to bloody trenches, death camps, and addiction to mindless pleasures in the twentieth century. Isaiah saw this 2,500 years ago when he cried out, “The eyes of the arrogant man will be humbled, and the pride of men brought low; the LORD alone will be exalted in that day” (2:11; cf. 2:17); and, “Stop trusting in man, who has but a breath in his nostrils. Of what account is he?” (2:22).

These themes recur throughout the book. God alone is high and lifted up, and everything else will be brought down. In this respect idolatry is mocked relentlessly. The attempt to exalt humanity by making God in our image is utterly ridiculous. In fact, it makes humanity worthless (41:24; 44:9). By contrast, God delights to exalt those who recognize the truth of existence and gladly humble themselves before him. The prototype of this is the Servant who humbles himself even to death, but whom God declares to be high and lifted up, like himself (52:13; cf. 6:1). In the same way 57:15 says that the Lord dwells in the high and holy place and with the humble and lowly. Like some of the other themes, this one is brought to a climax in chapters 56–66, where those who attempt to exalt themselves through ritualistic religion and pious behavior are treated with contempt, while those who take the lower place, humbly attempting to obey God’s covenant in its full implications, are commended and encouraged (see esp. 65:11–16).

The Uniqueness of Yahweh

NO BOOK IN the Bible treats this theme as forcefully as does Isaiah. From beginning to end the idea that God can be compared to the gods of the nations is ridiculed. He alone is exalted. There is no other. As already noted, this point is first made in chapter 2, where it is said that to worship such things is like worshiping bats and moles. It reduces a person to the rocks and holes of the earth. This would have been especially poignant since the gods were typically worshiped on the mountaintops and other high places. But as was said on the previous theme, the Lord is the only One high and lifted up.

This attack on the idols continues throughout the book. In chapter 19 Egypt’s supposed wisdom is denigrated because of its worship of idols. In the conflict between Hezekiah and Sennacherib, it all comes down to whether the Assyrian emperor can treat Yahweh just as he has treated the gods of the other nations. Hezekiah rightly understands that the issue is not whether Judah can escape from the oppressor’s clutches, but whether Judah’s God is a different order of being from pagan gods. In the outcome, the answer is clear: Yahweh is not one more of the gods. Rather, he is the One who brought Sennacherib to Judah and who can send him home again.

But what if there should come a time when the Lord would not deliver his people from some other oppressor, such as the Babylonian Nebuchadnezzar? Would that not disprove the whole point of the argument made so carefully in chapters 7–39? Would it not show that God may be superior to some gods, but not all? Anticipating that development and those questions, Isaiah answers them in advance. He represents the Lord as calling the Babylonian gods into court and challenging them to bring evidence proving that they are gods. He challenges them to explain past events and how those events will work out in the future. Then he sharpens the challenge, calling on them to show that even once they had specifically and correctly foretold a future event. And the captive Judeans are to be God’s witnesses that he had indeed done that very thing in predicting the Exile, naming the deliverer and predicting a return from exile.

The point here is profound. The gods have no hope of doing this because they are a part of the cosmic system. Thus, they cannot have any idea where the system came from or where it is going. They are unable to foretell the events of history because they are a part of those events. But if there were a Creator who was not a part of the system, he could reveal his purpose in creating and what the final end of the creative process would be. Furthermore, he could direct the evolution of history, intervening in it at will. That is, of course, exactly what Isaiah claims. The God of Israel is the sole Creator of the universe, the Lord of history. Much the same point is made in chapters 24–27, although in a more poetic and less didactic fashion.

All of this means that it is foolish to be seduced by the glory of the nations into rebelling against God. Rather, God’s servants are meant to submit to him trustfully and declare the glory of the only God to the nations. This is so because as the sole Creator, he is the sole Redeemer. When creation has lost its way, seeking its own glory and in so doing ensuring its own destruction, it is only the Creator of the system who can redeem the system. Certainly no idea or form created by the human mind can deliver us. When put that way, the idea is laughable. Can a person who has blundered into quicksand save himself by pulling up his feet? Of course not. Help must come from outside, or there is no hope. Isaiah declares that the Creator of the universe is a God of steadfast love, who can save us from ourselves and will, if we would only allow him.

The Nations

WE HAVE ALREADY spoken in some detail about the nations in connection with the other themes, but they are significant enough that they deserve special attention. As in the case of many other themes, Isaiah brings together in one book many of the things said about the nations elsewhere in the Old Testament. The result is a wholistic treatment not found elsewhere.

From the outset Isaiah insists that Israel has a responsibility to the nations. The nations are to learn the intentions and ways of the Creator by means of God’s people. The placement of this teaching in chapter 2 almost at the beginning of the book highlights its importance to the writer. That importance is further underlined by the theme’s appearance in the final chapter. There it is said that some of the remnant will be sent to the nations of earth to tell them whose glory it is that fills the earth, and some from those nations will come to bow down to God in surrender and trust. This is like the picture painted in chapter 25, where all nations are called to a feast prepared by God in which he will remove the shroud of death from the faces of all peoples (25:6–8). The response of the nations there is much like that of redeemed Israel reported in 12:1–3: “Surely this is our God; we trusted in him, and he saved us. This is the LORD, we trusted in him; let us rejoice and be glad in his salvation” (25:9).

But between the announcement of the responsibility and its achievement, there are many slips. Instead of trusting God, Israel trusts the nations. She sees the glory of the great empires and forgets the glory of God. The inevitable result is destruction by the very nations who were trusted (8:5–10). Whatever we trust in place of God must inevitably betray us. But God is supreme over the nations. As the prophet says in chapter 40, to him the nations weigh less than the dust on the scales; they are less than a drop of water in a bucket. And because Israel’s God is supreme over the nations, all of them must come to his judgment bar (chs. 13–23; 47). Isaiah asks Israel in a rhetorical way why they would be overawed by nations who must give an account of themselves to Israel’s God. Furthermore, how could they think that the nations could save them when the nations themselves must look to Israel’s God as their only Savior? Why depend on horses and chariots from Egypt when they can have the Spirit of God (31:1–3)?

Having refused to trust God and thus having become captive to the nations, the Judeans must eventually be driven back to trusting in God. When they do so, they will find that God can deliver them from the nations. Even mighty Babylon will not be able to hold them. They will return home with shouts of joy. And the nations will not only release them but will actually bring them home, as the nations come to worship Israel’s God (60:14). Those nations who refuse to worship the one God in Jerusalem will be forced to serve God’s people. The tables will be completely turned, with the former masters now becoming the servants and the former servants becoming the masters.

However, it is plain that this is not the end of the story of Israel’s relations with the nations. God intends to remove the shroud of death from the face of all the peoples, and Israel’s responsibility is to make that a possibility by declaring God’s glory and saving power to all the world (12:4–5; 66:19–23).

Righteousness

THE MASCULINE AND feminine noun forms of the Hebrew root commonly translated “righteous” (ṣdq) appear in the book of Isaiah sixty-one times (cf. twelve occurrences in Jeremiah, twenty-two in Ezekiel). Clearly, this is an important idea for the writer. Moreover, the terms are spread fairly evenly throughout the book. This means it has importance for all three of the theological emphases the book contains. As is the case with several of the other themes, this one is given special prominence in chapter 1, occurring three times between verses 21 and 27. This point continues to be made throughout the first part of the book: God expects his people to live righteous lives; if they do not, judgment will come upon them in order that they may be purified and live such lives (1:21, 26, 27).

Five words with the ṣdq root occur in chapters 32–33, where it said that righteousness will characterize the messianic kingdom in which the Spirit is poured out. Isaiah 33:14–16 is particularly instructive in that it makes it plain this is not a forensic or judicial righteousness but one that represents a specific kind of behavior:

“Who of us can dwell with the consuming fire? Who of us can dwell with everlasting burning?

He who walks righteously and speaks what is right, who rejects gain from extortion and keeps his hand from accepting bribes, who stops his ears against plots of murder and shuts his eyes against contemplating evil—this is the man who will dwell on the heights…”

Yet the people of Isaiah’s day and after did not achieve that standard. The result was as God had predicted: destruction. But this leaves an unanswered question for those on whom the destruction would fall: “Since we have failed to be a righteous people and have brought God’s just wrath upon us, how can there be any hope for us?” Again in this case, as with several of the other themes of the first part of the book, God seems to have inspired Isaiah to address that question, which future readers would have.

In chapters 40–55 “righteousness” undergoes a dramatic change. It is no longer the righteousness of the people that is in focus but the righteousness of God. How can a people who have utterly failed to be righteous hope to receive the blessing of God’s continued promises? Only through God’s righteousness. But what is God’s righteousness in regard to his captive people? Here it is important to recognize that “righteousness” in the Bible is more than a synonym for “justice.” God had treated the people justly in delivering them over into the hands of the Babylonians. The Israelites had broken their solemn covenant with God again and again. Many years earlier Moses had warned them that such behavior would result in their being evicted from God’s land, which they only held in trust. If righteousness was nothing more than justice, that would have been the end of any relation between them and God.

But righteousness is more than mere justice. It is to act in the “right” way. What is the “right” way for the God of all compassion to act? It is to have mercy, to be loyal to his subjects when they have not been loyal to him, to keep his promises when there is no more legal reason to do so. Thus, God could not in righteousness leave his people in captivity. Did they deserve to be delivered? No. Did they change and live such righteous lives that God was compelled to deliver them? Not at all. Ezekiel makes this plain in Ezekiel 36 when he says God is not delivering them for their sakes, as though they deserved such deliverance (36:22; see also Isa. 46:12). No, they will be delivered solely as an expression of the righteousness of God.47 They will be accounted righteous because of the righteousness of God coming to them through his righteous Servant (Isa. 53:11). The only prerequisite was that they believe God’s promises and take advantage of his offer of deliverance when it came.

But what does this mean for the life of God’s servants? A deadly conclusion could be drawn from the sequence recounted above. The reasoning would go something like this: It is impossible for me to achieve God’s standard of righteousness in my behavior; if I depend on my performance to maintain a relationship with him, I will fail, and there is nothing but judgment and destruction ahead for me; God has delivered me from that judgment solely as an expression of his own righteousness; therefore, it does not really matter whether my life is characterized by righteousness or not; I should espouse it and work toward it, but all the time knowing that I cannot achieve it and that it does not really matter in the end. Those familiar with the book of Romans will know that it is precisely this line of reasoning that Paul attacks in chapters 6–8 of that book. The conclusions he draws are remarkably similar to those found in the book of Isaiah.

In chapters 56–66, there is an interesting blend of the two uses of righteousness seen in chapters 1–39 and 40–55 respectively. On the one hand, the prophet makes it clear in no uncertain terms that God’s standards for the behavior of his servants have not changed from that put forward in the first section. God’s servants are to have ethics like his, period. Note 56:1, “Maintain justice and do what is right.” This is not a forensic or judicial righteousness, where we are accounted righteous regardless of our behavior. Furthermore, if there were any remaining question, it is immediately dispelled in the shocking illustration that the prophet uses in the immediately following verses (56:3–8). Who is the true servant of God? A restored descendant of Abraham who has been delivered by the grace of God and is reveling in his or her imputed righteousness? No, it is a foreigner or a eunuch who lives a life of obedience to the covenant of God. In the Torah, foreigners and eunuchs might not even enter the temple, let alone participate in the covenant, so the prophet is clearly using shock tactics to underline his point. The marks of servanthood are a life of righteousness like God’s (so Rom. 6).

But here we are between the proverbial irresistible force and immovable object. God requires us to be righteous, yet experience shows us we cannot be righteous on his standards. This poignant dilemma is represented twice in this section: in 56:9–59:15a and again in 63:7–65:16. In both of them, the prophet takes up the voice of the people and laments as one of them over their persistent inability to do what is required of them. Far from bringing the light of God’s righteousness to the nations, they grope in self-induced darkness (see esp. 59:9–15a). Here we are reminded irresistibly of Romans 7, where Paul in the same way takes up the lament of his reader over the inability to do what is right.

So what is to be done? Are the servants of the Lord condemned to a life of frustration, giving assent to God’s requirements for righteousness in their minds, while all the time doing the very things they know God hates? Not at all! Here Isaiah artfully blends together the points of chapters 1–39 and 40–66. How are we to fulfill the righteousness called for in chapters 1–39? By means of the righteousness of God, which was revealed in chapters 40– 55. God himself will defeat the enemy of sin and enable us to live lives of righteousness before the world. To be sure we cannot do this in our strength, and any attempt to do so is simply to relapse into pride and arrogance. But those who humbly admit their helplessness and cast themselves on the provision of God in Christ will be able to live the kind of life God requires. Here we come to Romans 8.

As mentioned above, it is the divine Warrior who comes to defeat this last enemy (59:15b–21; 63:1–6). He must do this work alone, there being none to help him; but having done it as an expression of his own righteousness, it is now possible for the light of the Lord to shine forth on the world through his servants (61:1–62:12). Isaiah 63:1–6 especially uses the defeat of the nations as a figure for the victory of the Warrior. Both the historical and literary context make it clear this is a figure of speech. Historically, this material is addressed to the returnees who have already been delivered from the nations; Edom, the specific subject, has already been destroyed and poses no threat to Judah at this time. No, the enemy is the sinful behavior of the servants, which prevents them from being the light-bearers God intends.

The literary structure of this section (chs. 56–66) further underlines this point. It is arranged in what is known as a chiastic format. That is, the units at the beginning and end of the section parallel each other, the next units inward parallel each other, and so forth until the climactic unit is reached in the center. In this case the outer units speak of faithful and believing Gentiles (56:3–8; 66:18–24); the next units deal with the inability of God’s people to do righteousness (56:9–59:15a; 63:7–66:17); the next contain the announcement of the divine Warrior’s victory over the enemy (59:15b–21; 63:1–6); the next describe Jerusalem’s light to the world (60:1–22; 61:4– 62:12); and the climactic one (61:1–3) presents the Messiah, the servant king, who delivers his followers and defeats their enemies, so that they may be “oaks of righteousness…for the display of his splendor.”

The Relevance of the Book of Isaiah Today

LIKE ALL THE books in the Bible, Isaiah has a remarkable relevance to all times and circumstances. One of the evidences that the Bible is the revelation of God is this amazing combination of timeliness and timelessness. Persons from diverse cultures, economic circumstances, and time periods pick it up and find it speaking directly to them. Obviously, some books will speak more forcefully in some times and settings, and others in others. But the impact of the whole is always remarkable.

Because of both its breadth and its depth, Isaiah is even more perennially relevant than some other books, such as Obadiah or Nahum, which tend to be “one-issue” books. Isaiah has something for everyone. What does not speak to one person will be powerfully meaningful to another, and something one may have glossed over at one point in his or her life springs off the page in another. Here I want to point out some of the things in Isaiah that I believe have special significance for the present day.

The Uniqueness of Yahweh

I DO NOT BELIEVE there is any question that this concept is the most significant for our day. We live in an age where exclusivism of any sort is close to being the unpardonable sin. Tolerance is the rule of the day, except that intolerance of those who insist on the possibility of absolute truth is not only permitted but encouraged. Syncretism is encouraged so that it is understood that all religions are equally valid as expressions of each worshiper’s personal preference. What is masked in all of this is that it represents an adoption, whether conscious or unconscious, of a worldview that has profound consequences for human life.

In fact, all of the myriad ways of thinking about reality can be grouped into just two categories: Either ultimate reality is an intrinsic part of the psycho-socio-physical universe, inseparable from it, or ultimate reality is somehow separate from, other than, that universe. All of the religions of the ancient world except one, and all the religions (and philosophies) of the modern world except three, fall into that first category. “God,” whatever “god” may be, is the world as we know it; there is nothing else. What are the implications of such a view? They are strikingly similar around the world, because we are explaining ultimate reality by analogy with this world. Some of those implications are these:

1. There is no ultimate meaning in life. Our existence is an accident. Thus humans are finally without value.
2. There is no goal in life. We came from nothing, and we go to nothing. The only law is survival for the maximum time possible.
3. Conflict between destructive forces (evil) and constructive forces (good) is both endless and inevitable.
4. Ethics are always relative. The only enduring “good” is a maximum of comfort, pleasure, and security.
5. Self-interest is paramount.
6. In view of the preceding, the acquisition and use of power is of maximum importance.
7. Because there is an element of spirit power that is beyond physical manipulation, we must find “spiritual” ways to tap into that power. Since the entire universe is connected, it is possible through use of correct technique to become identified with those spirit powers and have their power at one’s own disposal.
8. Human behavior is largely determined by forces outside of human control or understanding. Furthermore, the only reason for recording behavior is self-serving, so careful attention to actual events is insignificant. Therefore, history writing as an attempt to understand human behavior is both fruitless and pointless.

In all the ancient world, there was only one people who systematically and consistently denied all of the above: the Israelites. Sometimes a people might deny one or two for a period of time, but inevitably they fell back into the overall system. But the Israelites did not. They too felt the tug of this way of looking at reality, and again and again they adopted one or another of its implications. Yet they were always called back until, in the postexilic era, the opposing tenets to every one of these began to become second nature to them. What are these opposing tenets?

1. We were created in the image of a good and consistent God to be the stewards of his creation under his lordship. Therefore, human life is of ultimate value.
2. We are called to share the character of God, and yet we can choose not to. Thus it is possible both to progress toward and regress from the ultimate goal of experiencing his life.
3. The Creator is the Good. There is no conflict in him. Evil is not a cosmic reality but simply the absence of the Good in our lives.
4. The character of the Creator is the absolute standard of ethics, against which all behavior may be measured.
5. Surrender of one’s self-interest into the care of the Creator is the most personally beneficial thing one can do.
6. Acquisition of right standing with the Creator is the most important thing one can do.
7. The attempt to gain spiritual power through the use of technique apart from submissive, obedient relationship is strictly forbidden.
8. Human behavior can be evaluated according to a consistent standard. Furthermore, it is possible to record that behavior with accuracy and integrity. Therefore, history writing is an important key to understanding human behavior.

Why did the Hebrews alone stubbornly hold to these concepts, which became the foundation of all of Western culture? It is because they held a different view of reality from all their contemporaries. They alone believed that God is not the world. They alone believed that deity, humanity, and nature are not all parts of one indivisible whole. That view is nowhere better expressed in the Bible than in Isaiah. The technical term for this concept is transcendence. If God is the ultimate reality behind all things, then there is only one such reality. And if there is only one reality who created the world as an expression of his will and purpose, then to give ultimate obedience to anything else is ultimate disaster.

Such a being cannot be manipulated by means of any created thing; to even think of it is laughable. So how do we acquire his power so that we can meet our needs? That is just it: We cannot. We must entrust the satisfaction of our needs into his hands, believing that he really is true and good and that we are precious to him. That has been the sticking point with humans ever since our first mother and father. We are afraid to entrust our fragile selves into our Maker’s hands. We believe the lie the first rebel told them and us: God is not for you; he wants to use you to satisfy his own self-interest. Fearing to surrender, we create gods in our image, foolishly believing the lie that somehow we can gain power to use for ourselves and never have to surrender.

If the Western world is to survive, we must recover our spiritual roots in the Bible, and there is no book in the Bible that makes those roots more clear than does Isaiah. Somehow we must remind ourselves that the “inclusive” worldview will not help us to become more human but less. To be sure, there is a sinful “exclusivism” that is nothing more than arrogance. That is not biblical faith. Nevertheless, the only basis for human worth is in the biblical understanding that all of us share the image of the one Creator. To embrace some wooly-headed syncretism is not to come closer to righting the wrongs of the world; it is to lose the very basis for saying there is a right and a wrong. In that world the only right is the will of the person who can shout the loudest and hit the hardest. That is not the way of hope.

But suppose, as some think, the battle for the soul of the West is already lost. If so, it becomes doubly imperative for contemporary believers to know the truths of Isaiah. When we are called “bigots” and “closed-minded,” we must know in our own souls why that is not the case. And when it becomes expensive and inconvenient to maintain this faith, we need to be able to know why we should maintain it anyway. There are no better resources for this than the ones we find in the book of Isaiah.

Servanthood

WE LIVE IN an age that, because of its abandonment of the biblical worldview, has made status, position, and power the absolute good. A major function of education has become not the acquisition of knowledge but the enhancement of self-esteem. The irony in all of this, as was argued above, is that in the unbiblical worldview, humanity has no significance whatsoever. We are an electrochemical accident. Thus, the more we cut ourselves off from the transcendent Creator, the less significant we become. The result, as is clearly seen in Camus, Sartre, and Kafka, is a downward spiral of despair. The more we try to puff ourselves up by cutting ourselves off from God, the less there is to puff up.

How desperately we need to hear the words of Isaiah, who tells us that the way to significance is not through arrogance but through humility, not to demand that others serve us but to serve others. How much we need to recover from Isaiah the prototype for what the apostle Paul called “the mind of Christ.” This “mind” or attitude is almost completely foreign to us fearful children of Adam and Eve. We are so afraid of loss, of discomfort, of pain that we will sacrifice almost anything, or anyone, to avoid them. Yet, as Isaiah shows us, the way to real power is through powerlessness.

If we are to believe that, we need to be steeped in Isaiah’s teaching. We need to be reminded again of the folly of depending on human glory for anything lasting. We need to hear again that God can be trusted—trusted enough to lay down our own foolish pride. We need to be motivated in deep ways by the realization that the sole Creator of the universe, the just Judge, the betrayed Father, has not cast us off but has chosen us to be the evidence to the world that he alone is God. We need to learn again that his honor before the world is so precious that it is worth any price to him to find a way to renew his character in us.

How desperately modern Christians, who have allowed their ways of thinking to be reshaped according to the wrong model, need to allow Isaiah’s view of servanthood to reshape our outlook. The cross is still foolishness to the Greeks. To win is to lose? To lose is to win? To die is to live? To live is to die? To rise is to fall? To fall is to rise? To take the lowest place is to sit with the King? To take the highest place is to sit in the dust? Come on! Yet, as we who have found God in Christ know, all that is absolutely true. But how are we going to believe that unless we consciously allow our minds to become saturated with that point of view? If we do not, the other understanding of reality will take us by default.

The Lord of History

CONSIDERED SIMPLY AS a philosophy, transcendence has some serious weaknesses. This is why, apart from perhaps Confucius and Aristotle, it has rarely been considered seriously by philosophers. In the first place, anything that is utterly removed from the psycho-socio-physical universe would have no contact with that universe and could not communicate with it. Thus, transcendence would seem to be an interesting and perhaps useful mental construct, but it would have no relevance to everyday life.

Both the Greeks and Confucius sought for a way around this by positing the existence of certain norms in life that reflect the activity and nature of this transcendent element, which Aristotle called “the Unmoved Mover” and Confucius called the “Tao” or “Way.” Why is it that no culture where everyone lies or everyone steals can long survive? Is it not because there is a single, transcendent originating force behind all cultures? This argument seems to have been more persuasive in China than it was in Greece, because the following of “the Way” became a major cultural force through a great part of China’s history, whereas this way of thinking had largely died out in Greece by the beginning of the Roman period. But even in China the Tao had no means of intervening in the life of the world to right any wrongs that might be there.

This highlights the second serious weakness of transcendence: the necessary impersonality of the originating force. One of the characteristics of human personality is its transitoriness. Our moods flit back and forth like hummingbirds. So do our affections and even our convictions. Surely the element from which all things extend and which forms the foundation of all that is could not have those characteristics. Furthermore, that force must of necessity be completely unconcerned with our response to it. It determines all things and is not itself determined by anything. All of this is much too ethereal and cerebral for most people caught up in the business of daily life, trying to survive for another day.

The other worldview, that of continuity, seems to offer a much more useful and practical way of understanding the way things are. Here the forces of the universe are given personalities on the analogy with us humans. But a study of mythology convinces one that the forces are forces still, only wearing masks that give them the illusion of personality and approachability. But behind the masks they are just as inscrutable and implacable as any “Unmoved Mover.” What the overlay of human personality does give them is an element of capriciousness and arbitrariness that is not good news.

So how do we arrive at the biblical view, which is definitely not the worldview of continuity, but neither is it the same kind of transcendence as has just been described? If we ask the Hebrews where they got their concept of God, they will tell us that they did not get it either by extrapolating from this world or by logical deduction. Instead, they tell us of a God who broke into their experience, revealing a distinct will for their behavior and calling them to submission and obedience. They tell us of a God who interacted with them in their choices and in the consequences of those choices, revealing a complex and many-faceted personality.

How can we ever find God, if he is truly transcendent? The answer is that we cannot. As the New Testament says it, “No one has ever gone into heaven” (John 3:13). On this score the philosophers are right. But suppose the philosophers’ logic is too limited. Suppose the transcendent One can retain his otherness while intersecting his world at any point and in any time. And suppose the problem of personhood is ours and not his. Suppose it is possible to be fully personal and yet entirely self-consistent. Suppose it is possible to interact deeply and faithfully with other persons and never yet vary from what One is in Oneself. This changes the question of knowing completely.

If such a being chose to, he could come to us, somehow translating himself into terms we could comprehend. For the One who spoke the universe into existence, that kind of translation should not be so hard. But what language should he use? Should he use the language of nature? How can he? How can nature convey personhood? How can nature convey an intended will? How can nature convey the necessity of surrender and obedience? How can nature convey ethical absolutes that are a concomitant of a loving, committed relationship? The language God chose was the language of human interrelationships, the language we call history. Why is it that the earliest examples of extended works of history are found in the Hebrew Bible?48 It is because that is the arena in which God chose to make himself known. In the arena of human relationships, choices, and decisions, God revealed his nature and character and the nature of reality to his people.

The Hebrews would deny that their creation of historical narrative betrayed any special perception on their part. Rather, they would tell us that God simply broke in upon them and called them to make certain choices, telling them what would be the consequences of the various choices. When they discovered that those consequences did follow, we can imagine that they said to themselves: “It would be a good idea to record this so that when we come this way again, we won’t make the same mistakes again.” That was precisely what God wanted. How could he teach them a complicated truth like monotheism, especially when all their more brilliant neighbors were polytheists? He could call them into a historical covenant relationship, whose first stipulation was that they must worship him alone. How could he teach them he was not a part of this world, an even more complex idea? He could make it a covenant stipulation that they not make or worship idols. How could he teach them that there are absolute ethics? By requiring them to emulate the character of the one transcendent deity. Thus, their own historical experience became the basis for their knowledge of God.

All of this is portrayed for us in the book of Isaiah. There we see the truth of God being worked out in Israel’s experience. Religion is not about mystic rites. Rather, it is about what you are going to do about the Assyrian threat. It is about how you treat the poor and downtrodden. It is about how you represent yourself and your God to foreign ambassadors. It is about how you continue to function when your entire life has fallen in on you, largely as a result of your own stupid choices. Religion is about ethics in daily life. This is the truth that is always in danger of being lost, and it is especially in danger now as the West progressively cuts its Christian moorings and all unconsciously drifts off into a pagan sea.

The study of history is dying around us. Why? Because such a study must believe that real choices are possible, that real progress toward a worthwhile goal may be made, and that there is a single overarching standard by which those choices may be evaluated and by which progress may be judged. Without these—and biblical transcendence is the only basis for them—the whole reason for studying the past at all is lost. The only thing that matters is me, now. Who cares what some old dead people did? As for learning from them, that’s crazy. We all do what we have to do. The past is gone, and the future will be more of today, only maybe worse.

So what can counter these tendencies? A strong dose of the truth of Isaiah, that there is a God who is at work in the corporate history and in our individual histories. We can know him in the daily experiences of life, as the Israelites did. Knowing him in that way, we can then recover for ourselves, and maybe for our culture, the reality that human choices matter, that we are headed somewhere, and that the transcendent God is calling us to go with him.

Realized Righteousness

ONE OF THE chief values of studying the New Testament in the context of the Old is the corrective value of the Old. Many of the weaknesses in the church today are a result of misreading the New Testament because of ignorance of the Old Testament. For instance, the excessive individualism and privatism of the modern evangelical church is only possible if one is almost wholly ignorant of the Old Testament. To be sure, the Old Testament cannot be read alone. To do so is to fall into the opposite ditch from the one into which exclusive New Testament readers fall. By reading the Old Testament alone, one can easily miss the love of God that is clearly there and come to see him only as an austere and implacable Judge. But when the two Testaments are read together, there is a wholistic, invaluable presentation of the truth.

Because Isaiah sums up so many of the Old Testament teachings, it is especially helpful in achieving a balanced theology. One of these areas of balance desperately needed today is in the area of realized righteousness. Modern evangelical theology has become dangerously one-sided, and this is especially apparent in American public life. At the same time that evangelicalism has become the dominant expression of Christian faith in America, public morality has collapsed. Is this only coincidental? I fear not. Reacting against the loss of a concept of personal salvation in the so-called mainline churches and an increasingly cultic mentality in the holiness movement, evangelical theology in the first half of the twentieth century put increasing emphasis on “imputed righteousness.” That is, God calls us righteous because we have accepted the saving work of Christ on the cross. There was a strong reaction against “works righteousness” with its suggestion that one could somehow earn merit with God by doing good things. This understanding can be wonderfully freeing. We don’t have to wonder whether our behavior is good enough to deserve a relationship with God; we can know we are his simply because we have accepted his offer of eternal life in his Son. This is genuinely good news.

But the problem with this overemphasis on “subjective righteousness” is that it cuts the nerve of “objective righteousness.” The believer can easily feel that in the end his or her actual behavior is of little significance. If this is then coupled with a false idea of the security of the believer, the effect can be pernicious. We can essentially live in conscious sin, secure in the fact that God sees us as righteous and that we can never lose our salvation. Thus, we see persons in the highest offices in the land claiming to be “born-again Christians” while living lives of conspicuous immorality and showing neither remorse nor repentance when caught. How we need to hear Isaiah’s excoriation of such behavior! The people of God must manifest the life of God or give up the right to be called the people of God.

As always, the truth has two sides, and Isaiah makes this masterfully clear. On the one hand, it is true that in ourselves we are incapable of being righteous on the standard required of us by God. We are doomed to failure and deserve the condemnation that comes on that failure. We cannot bring ourselves to God by ourselves, and the failure of the good Hezekiah underlines that point. If we are ever to have a relationship with God, it must be on the basis of his grace alone. He must come to us as he did to the captive Judeans with words of comfort and grace, assuring us that he has not cast us off and that he has provided a means through his Servant whereby we may be restored to a life-giving relationship with our Father. That is one side of the truth, a side that dare not be lost.

But there is another side that equally dares not to be lost. This is the truth relating to the whole purpose of salvation. Why does God bring us into a relationship with him? A truncated view based on a misreading of the New Testament alone would say that it is so we can spend an eternity of bliss praising our Savior. This is an incredibly self-serving picture, both from a human and divine point of view. That is not, however, the New Testament teaching, as becomes clear when we read the two Testaments together. God calls us into a relationship with him so that his original purpose may be realized for us. What is that purpose? That he might share his character with us. This is obvious from the covenant. God’s purpose in giving the covenant is so that the people might be holy as he is holy. Such holiness is not a cultic thing but a way of treating the world and other people.

As discussed above, Isaiah represents this point in a powerful way in chapters 56–66, where he synthesizes the demand for righteousness from chapters 1–39 with the offer of free grace in chapters 40–55. In chapters 56–66, Isaiah, much as Paul does in his letters, asks what that grace was for. Was it in order that God’s people should revel in their chosenness while engaging in religious practices that were self-serving and ultimately perverse? Of course not! It was in order that they should live lives of justice and righteousness and in so doing become a lamp through which God’s light should shine on the nations.

But how is that possible, given a long history of failure? It is possible through the same grace that restored you to a relationship with God in the first place. The demand is from God, but so is the provision. Clearly Isaiah is not promoting some arrogant claim to having arrived spiritually. Nor is he suggesting that the believer’s relationship with God is ever on any basis but divine grace. But he is saying that if a believer is not a conduit for the Holy Spirit’s righteousness (32:15–16; 44:1–5), then he or she is missing a large portion of what the grace of God came to do.