An Introduction to the Prophecy of Isaiah

Welcome to our new study in the Yom Yom blog. We have had a lengthy summer hiatus between the end of our Romans study and this new one. As I think many of you know, I try to correlate these blog studies with the adult Bible study which my wife and I conduct for our church choir. And since that runs from early September through the end of the following May, this tends also to be the period of each study unit. In our church class we try to alternate years of the study of a New Testament book with years studying an Old testament one. Hence, last year Romans, this year Isaiah.

You may be wondering why we are not starting at chapter 1 of this wonderful book. If this were a regular course in a school or college, we certainly would. But pragmatic factors involved in squeezing everything into about 20 class sessions and the difficulty of deciding where to break each week's session—all this is much more complicated with Isaiah than with Paul's letter to the Romans, which we studied last year. We decided that, if we were to study Isaiah at all this year, we should limit  the material to be covered to the second half of the book, where the prophet focuses most on God's promises of redemption through his Servant the Messiah. So I will provide you in this opening session with a brief overview of Isaiah's life and career, and the contents of the first 39 chapters of his prophecy—an unbelievably ambitious task, but for that very reason forgivable if it is very superficial! (I like that!)

Isaiah's Life and Career

Isaiah, the son of Amoz, was born, raised and served God as a prophet for his entire life in the southern kingdom of Judah. According to Jewish tradition, he was of royal blood, the brother of Amaziah king of Judah. Modern scholars have inferred from the easy access to the king that he enjoyed that he was, at any rate, of noble descent; but prophets throughout the ancient Near East regularly addressed their kings. Apparently, kings had to respect anyone who was widely believed to have direct access to a god.

Like many of the prophets, Isaiah was married and had children. He lived all his life in Jerusalem, the capital city of Judah.

Isaiah received his call to become a prophet in the year that King Uzziah of Judah died, which was 740 BC.  About two years later Micah, who also lived in the southern kingdom of Judah, was called by God to serve as a prophet. The two young men prophesied in the name of Yahweh contemporaneously for the rest of their lives. In the northern kingdom at this time another true prophet of God named Hosea prophesied to the last 7 kings of Israel.

Since there was no requirement of retirement from service as a prophet—unlike the priests and Levites—and since the book of Isaiah says he prophesied into—perhaps even through— the 30-year reign of Hezekiah (716-686), we should assume that he did not live long after Hezekiah's death. Jewish tradition claims that he was killed during the persecution of the loyal prophets of Yahweh during the reign of wicked King Manasseh, who followed Hezekiah. If he was around 20 when called to be a prophet in 740 BC, this would put his birth around 760, and make him 75 years old at his death in 685.

Until Isaiah was about 40 years old (and 19 years into his prophetic ministry, in 721), there was also a northern kingdom of Israel, officially worshiping the God of Abraham and Moses—whose name was Yahweh—but which in practice was very unfaithful to God and tolerated widespread idolatrous worship of Canaanite and Phoenician gods and goddesses. You probably remember that one notorious king from a generation before Isaiah, whose name was Ahab, was married to the daughter of Ethbaal, the king of Sidon. Her infamous name was Jezebel, and she encouraged her husband not only to worship pagan gods, but also to hunt down and kill the prophets of Yahweh. One of the prophets whom she sought to kill was Elijah. Internal spiritual conditions had not improved in the northern kingdom during the 100 years since the death of Ahab in 850 BC. In addition to idolatry, there was the abuse of power and wealth by the nobles and verdicts in the courts could be bought and sold. The laws of Moses which enjoined charity to the poor were trampled underfoot. People who called themselves after the name of Yahweh, the God of Israel, were a moral embarrassment. The time for God's judgment had come. And it came in the year 721, when the mighty Assyrian army from the northeast swept into Israel, besieged and captured Samaria, and deported most of her leading citizens far to the east to Assyria and neighboring lands. Isaiah himself prophesied this in the famous Immanuel prophecy (Isaiah 7:15-17), saying of the child to be born as a sign to King Ahaz:

 15 He will eat curds and honey when he knows enough to reject the wrong and choose the right.  16 But before the boy knows enough to reject the wrong and choose the right, the land of the two kings you dread will be laid waste.  17 The LORD will bring on you and on your people and on the house of your father a time unlike any since Ephraim broke away from Judah—he will bring the king of Assyria.

Judah was spared the same fate at that time, but 20 years later, c. 701, the army of a later Assyrian king named Sennacherib besieged Jerusalem and demanded surrender. Isaiah encouraged King Hezekiah to trust in Yahweh and not look to the help of political allies such as the Egyptian pharaoh. In fact, by a miracle, which the Bible describes as an angel killing off Assyrian troops, the enemy was forced to break off the siege and retreat in humiliation. But shortly after this marvelous victory, Hezekiah entertained ambassadors from the court of the king of Babylonia and showed them his treasures. Isaiah warned him that this was unwise, and predicted that the Babylonians would eventually do to Jerusalem what God had kept the Assyrians from doing.

The moral basis for this judgment was provided by the kings of Judah following Hezekiah, who had been a relatively upright ruler. The worst of these was Manasseh, who introduced paganism into the very temple of God in Jerusalem, and under whose persecution of true prophets, such as Jeremiah and Isaiah, Isaiah is thought to have died.

But in his final years Isaiah was given by God visions and prophecies intended for a remote generation of Israelites living in the Babylonian exile and for the generation that returned from the exile. These prophecies are found in the second half of the book, chaps. 40-66, and served during the years to come as Isaiah's ministry by proxy to Jews who long outlived him.

The Book as a Whole

John Oswalt has suggested that the book of Isaiah is like the Bible in miniature. Like the Bible, it has two major divisions, like the Bible the main theme of the first is judgment and that of the second is hope. Its sweep is from Creation to the New Heavens and Earth. It contains all the themes of the Bible: the Sinai covenant is the moral and ethical basis for the many criticisms of Israel's lifestyle, the charges of rebellion, and the specific relationship between God and Israel. Yahweh's covenant with David is the foundation of the promises of a messiah from David's line. The dual picture of the messiah as Suffering Servant and glorious Divine King makes God's plan for the salvation of mankind understandable for the first time in Scripture. 

Isaiah's prophecy has an overall unity that cannot be denied. It is not a mosaic of disconnected oracles, organized only randomly. Nor is the style of its parts inconsistent with its being the product of a single human author. Yet without question, in its three main subdivisions God through his prophet addresses readers in three distinct historical settings. In chapters 1-39 the hearers/readers live in Judah during the lifetime of Isaiah (c. 720-685 BC). In chapters 40-55 the readers addressed seem to have been living during the final years (c. 570-525 BC) of the Babylonian captivity (c. 595-525). And in chapters 56-66 he appears to address Jews living again in Judah after the return from captivity.

Yet, in spite of the belief in non-Bible-believing circles that chapters 40-66 were not written by Isaiah, but by a whole school of later prophets who passed their prophecies off as Isaiah's work by appending them to his (which constituted most but not all of chapters 1-39), the evidence against this theory is simply overwhelming. Not only is there no manuscript evidence from as far back as we can trace the book (100 years before Jesus was born) that it was anything but a unit, not only did our Lord Jesus refer to passages in all three sections as the words of Isaiah, but it is unbelievable that later prophets did not refer to more specific historical events and conditions of their times in the last half of the book.  Early chapters in the book addressed to Isaiah's contemporaries are replete with historical details, while those later parts addressed to subsequent generations contain only one such detail, the prediction of Cyrus the Great's role in Israel's return from exile.  The very vagueness of the historical and sociological description of those times argues that they could not have been composed then, but were seen only in general outline ahead of time by a prophet endowed with God-given foresight.

And why would these later prophets have tried to give the misleading impression that their prophecies were those of Isaiah? They were entitled to their own books, just as Jeremiah, Ezekiel, Hosea and the others were. It is no good arguing that they did this because their viewpoints were those of Isaiah, because the viewpoints of Jeremiah, Ezekiel and others also shared Isaiah's theology. After all, the same God was giving these prophecies!

Furthermore, chapters 1-39 as they stand are clearly incomplete. It is unthinkable that Isaiah would have left off the book at the end of chapter 39. Many hints in the first 39 chapters indicate that the prophet intended to elaborate on what might happen after Judah was sent into exile. Surely Isaiah was familiar with Deuteronomy, whose final chapters predict not only an exile, but a repentance and return. And he even named his son Shear-jashub (Isaiah 7), which means "A remnant will return [from exile]".


Also in chapter 6, which records his prophetic calling, God orders him to prophesy to the people in spite of the fact that they will not understand or heed him (6:8-12). When Isaiah then asks: "How long [will the people's blindness to my message last], O Lord?" The answer is until Judah's cities lie in rubble, and I have sent everyone far away into exile. It also might mean "for how long [shall I prophesy to them]?" In fact since Isaiah died before the fall of Jerusalem, this would have been before the described conditions occurred. After the city fell, the people would naturally understand that God's warnings and predictions of judgment through Isaiah were true. Their eyes would be opened, but too late to avoid the exile. But then God added (v. 13): Although a tenth of the people will remain in the land, it will again be laid waste. But the chopped down tree leaves a stump which can sprout again and regrow the tree. This was a clear indication of God's intention to restore Israel to her land. They are the ones called here "the holy seed". So it stands to reason that Isaiah would be given predictions also of the restoration, what we in fact have in chapters 40-66. And just as the people of his day would fail to believe or understand the predictions of the exile, so also chapters 40-66 would have been incomprehensible to them.

There is a parallel to this in the Book of Daniel. For there the prophet is given visions of the remote future and told to "seal up the prophetic vision, for it refers to the far future.

Dan. 8:26 The vision of the evenings and the mornings that has been told is true. As for you, seal up the vision, for it refers to many days from now.”

No, to divide this majestic book among three authors is to do a grave injustice to its structure and the fabric of every chapter. It is also to fail to understand what Isaiah says in each of the passages of the book as a whole. For each chapter and paragraph have their roles in the great message of the book.

The tripartite structure of the book was not dictated by multiple authors, or even by multiple audiences. Rather there is a tripartite theme, reminding us of the tripartite structure of Paul's letter to the Romans that we studied last year.

•  chapters 1-39 Why Israel (and all mankind) must be judged for their sins (Romans 1-2)
•  chapters  40-55 How God will save them by redeeming them through his Suffering Servant (Romans 3-11)
•  chapters  56-66 The new life of the redeemed under the Kingship of the Suffering Servant (Romans 12-16)

Themes of Isaiah 1-39

The first half of the book, chapters 1-39 are mostly occupied with calling the nation to repentance for their sins. Chapter 1 is typical: the people are loaded with guilt and have forsaken God. They aren't even as smart as an ox or an ass that knows its own master. They are described as a body full of bruises from punishments received. Their cities have been burned by invaders (v. 7) , their fields stripped of crops. Yet they have not learned from the judgments God has sent upon them. Their leaders—king, priests, false prophets—are described as "rulers of Sodom" (v. 10). They seem to think that God can be pacified by a multitude of sacrifices and gifts, rather than by genuine repentance and obedience (v. 11). It is a pitiful situation, but there is yet hope.

Many oracles of judgment also on the surrounding nations.

Some predictions of ultimate glory, but rather few and always interspersed with warnings of judgment. Chapter 2 is typical here. 2:1-5 is a beautiful picture of the coming kingdom of God. The Lord's temple mount will be the center of earth's nations' pilgrimages (v. 2). They will come to Jerusalem in order for God to teach them his ways and his law (v. 3). God himself will adjudicate the disputes of nations, so that there will be no need for wars to settle them (v. 4). The prediction closes with a beautiful invitation to Israel, as the nations' teacher, to "walk in the light of the Lord" (v. 5).  But the warnings begin in v. 6.  God's people are described as full of superstitions from the lands to the east of Israel (i.e., Assyria, Babylonian, and Persia). They consult pagan gods like the Philistines do (v. 6).  They are rich and well equipped with luxuries like horse-drawn chariots. But their cities are full of idols, for idolatry is a worship that promises riches, and the worship of the god of Israel never guarantees that.  In vv. 10-21 a time of intense judgment and national disaster is described in the bleakest of terms. Although God's own people will go through it, the description seems to imply that all peoples will experience it. It will be a time of worldwide humbling of the arrogant and the godless (v. 17-18). It will be a time of overwhelming fear of God and his judgment (v. 19-21). The lesson God (through Isaiah) wants Israel to learn from this prophecy is to stop trusting in human ability (v. 22) and glorying in it, and begin to trust in God. The New Testament gospel equivalent of this lesson is that no one can save himself or herself by good works (Romans 1-2).

Among all the passages warning of judgment and predicting an ultimate triumph of God and his kingdom, there are a few passages that focus on a future ruler. He is not given the title "messiah", but these prophecies are quoted in the NT as fulfilled in Jesus. the best known ones are in ch. 7 (the sign of the virgin-born child named Immanuel), ch. 9 (9:1-7).  These are some of the best-loved parts of the book. But in these early sections of Isaiah's prophecy God has not yet made clear how this God-Man ruler's rule will be able to take place, if the people of Israel are still beset with sin. The answer to this riddle will await the prophecies in the last half of the book, those given to Isaiah in his last years, when he was given visions of his people returning from Babylonia and from exile to a new life in the land of Promise.

Themes of Isaiah 40-66

Unlike his prophecies recorded in chapters 1-39, the visions for future generations in exile and later are by an large messages of hope and encouragement. They answered twin questions in the minds of the exiles: (1) Is Yahweh only the God of Canaan who is now powerless to help them almost 1,000 miles to the east in Babylonia and Persia, and (2) if he is able, is he willing? Does he have any desire to help them, or has he abandoned them forever? God's answer through Isaiah was (1) that he is the mighty Creator of all nations on earth and has unlimited power to save and restore them (40:15-27).

15  Even the nations are like a drop from a bucket, and are accounted as dust on the scales; see, he takes up the isles like fine dust. Lebanon would not provide fuel enough, nor are its animals enough for a burnt offering. 17 All the nations are as nothing before him; they are accounted by him as less than nothing and emptiness. 22 It is he who sits above the circle of the earth, and its inhabitants are like grasshoppers; who stretches out the heavens like a curtain, and spreads them like a tent to live in; 23 who brings princes to naught, and makes the rulers of the earth as nothing.  24  Scarcely are they planted, scarcely sown, scarcely has their stem taken root in the earth, when he blows upon them, and they wither, and the tempest carries them off like stubble. 25 To whom then will you compare me, or who is my equal? says the Holy One. 26 Lift up your eyes on high and see: Who created these? He who brings out their host and numbers them, calling them all by name; because he is great in strength, mighty in power, not one is missing.

His answer to the second question is that he has not discarded the ancient covenant obligation to Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, even though their ancestors violated it and brought judgment on themselves. The passagew we werejust readig continues:

27 Why do you say, O Jacob, and speak, O Israel, "My way is hidden from the LORD, and my right is disregarded by my God”? 28 Have you not known? Have you not heard? The LORD is the everlasting God, the Creator of the ends of the earth. He does not faint or grow weary; his understanding is unsearchable. 29 He gives power to the faint, and strengthens the powerless. 30 Even youths will faint and be weary, and the young will fall exhausted; 31 but those who wait for the LORD shall renew their strength, they shall mount up with wings like eagles, they shall run and not be weary, they shall walk and not faint.

We will find in these chapters lofty poetry, celebrating the most soaring truths imaginable, describing the one true God in terms that were rarely used previously in the Bible. Yahweh, the God of Israel and the Creator of the world is contrasted with the weak and inept "gods" of the nations: Marduk, Nabu, and Ishtar of Babylonia, and Ashur of the Assyrians.

Also for the first time in Isaiah's writing, there is introduced the concept of the Servant of Yahweh, a role that is initially ascribed to Israel herself (41:8-10),

8 But you, Israel, my servant, Jacob, whom I have chosen, the seed of Abraham, my friend; 9 you whom I took from the ends of the earth, and called from its farthest corners, saying to you, “You are my servant, I have chosen you and not cast you off”; 10 do not fear, for I am with you, do not be afraid, for I am your God; I will strengthen you, I will help you, I will uphold you with my victorious right hand.

Israel was the true seed of Abraham, for the Hebrew word "seed', like our equivalent word "offspring", can refer to a group as well as to a single individual. They were intended to bring God's blessing to the nations. But since they failed initially, the "seed" concept first began to be restricted to the remnant of faithful Israelites, and eventually focused on a single individual who epitomizes all that other Israelites could never attain to. 

This individual is predicted to bring justice to the nations of earth, to make known the glory of God, and to suffer for the sins of the nation and the world. Isaiah doesn't use the term "Messiah" for this person, but it is clear that those prophecies were fulfilled by one person only, Jesus of Nazareth, the Messiah/Christ, the true king of Israel, and the Son of God. This is the One whom Isaiah described in the early part of his career as Immanuel and Mighty God, Everlasting Father, Prince of Peace. In those early parts of Isaiah's prophecies he was not called the "Servant" of Yahweh. In those chapters the focus is on the messiah as a might king.

But we must remember that kings too occasionally carried the title "Servant of the god X or Y". Anyone who carries out the will of God is his servant. But in biblical terms it is reserved for those who in a special way implemented Gods's plan to redeem his people. So Moses led Israel out of Egypt and is called the "servant of Yahweh". And Jesus suffered for the sins not only of Israel but of all humanity, and is called "the Servant of Yahweh".

Finally, what should you and I look for, as we study Isaiah chapters 40-66? I want to suggest that the following as samples:

When we feel that life is getting too much for us, pressures as work, conflict in our families, set backs our own health or of those we love, we should meditate on the passages that show that God is able to sustain us and bring about blessing for us and those we love.

3 “Listen to me, O house of Jacob, all you who remain of the house of Israel, you whom I have upheld since you were conceived, and have carried since your birth. 4 Even to your old age and gray hairs I am he, I am he who will sustain you. I have made you and I will carry you; I will sustain you and I will rescue you.  (Isaiah 46:3-4 NIV)

When we feel that our failures are merely the inevitable result of our own sinfulness and we despair that we can ever live in a manner that brings honor to the God whom we love, we should meditate on the passages in Isaiah that declare God's forgiveness

Isaiah 1:18 “Come now, let us reason together,” says the LORD. “Though your sins are like scarlet,   they shall be as white as snow;  though they are red as crimson, they shall be like wool.

and those that express his desire to make us to triumph in our conflict with sin.

28 He gives strength to the weary and increases the power of the weak. 30 Even youths grow tired and weary, and young men stumble and fall; 31 but those who hope in the LORD will renew their strength.  They will soar on wings like eagles; they will run and not grow weary, they will walk and not be faint.  (Isaiah 40:29-31 NIV)

Surely there is no book in the Bible better fitted to encourage you and me, to reassure us that the God who died for our sins and rose again, so dearly loves us that what he has now begun in our lives he will personally carry it through to completion. As Paul also wrote centuries later to some gentile belivers in the Greek city of Philippi,

3  I thank my God every time I remember you. 4 In all my prayers for all of you, I always pray with joy 5 because of your partnership in the gospel from the first day until now, 6 being confident of this, that he who began a good work in you will carry it on to completion until the day of Christ Jesus.  (Philippians 1:3-6 NIV)