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Book of Isaiah

Author: Leandro Alegsa

06-09-2021

This article is about the biblical person Isaiah. For the name, its variants and other name bearers, see Isaiah (name).

Isaiah (also Isaias; Hebrew יְשַׁעְיָהוּ Jəšaʿjā́hû; Greek Ἠσαΐας Ēsaḯas) was the first major scriptural prophet of the Hebrew Bible.

He worked between 740 and 701 B.C. in the southern kingdom of Judah and proclaimed the judgment of God (YHWH) to this as well as to the northern kingdom of Israel and the advancing great empire of Assyria. But he also promised the Israelites an eschatological turn to salvation, that is, to universal peace and justice, and announced for the first time a future Messiah as a righteous judge and savior of the poor.

The book of the same name in the Bible records his prophecy in chapters 1-39, which since 1892 has been referred to as Proto-Isaiah.

In contrast, almost all biblical scholarship attributes the book portions further back in time as Deutero-Isaiah (Isa 40-55) and Trito-Isaiah (Isa 56-66) to later, exilic-post-exilic prophets and their tradites, who attributed their material to the historical Isaiah of the Assyrian period (8th and 7th centuries BC).

Almost all biblical scholarship assumes a unified book of Isaiah around 200 BC in Jesus Sirach. The oldest known complete Hebrew manuscript of the book, the Great Isaiah Scroll, was produced no later than 150 BC. It plays a prominent role in rabbinic Judaism (Talmud) and in early Christianity (New Testament). In the Jewish biblical canon it opens the series of the "back" prophets, in the Christian canon the series of the "great" prophets.

Name

The Hebrew name Isaiah is written in the Masoretictext יְשַׁעְיָהוּ jəšaʿjāhû. It is a sentence name whose subject is יָהוּ jāhû, a short form of "Yahweh" (YHWH). Its predicate belongs to the root ישׁע jšʿ "save / deliver / help in trouble". Likewise, it is possible to take the second part of the name as a noun derived from this root יֵשַׁע ješaʿ "help / rescue". The name therefore means "Help is YHWH / Helped has YHWH".

Structure

The first part (Isa 1-39 or "Proto-Isaiah") is divided by the respective introductory sentences:

Text	Content
1–12	"Isaiah's vision [...] over Judah and Jerusalem".
13–23	"Sayings" about foreign peoples
24–27	so-called Isaiah Apocalypse
28–35	"Woe" cries
36–39	Third-party reports

Throughout the first 12 chapters there is a fourfold sequence of reproof of sin, announcement of judgment (a historical catastrophe), and restoration by YHWH and/or a future messianic king:

Text	Content
1,2–20.29–31	Sin / Catastrophe
1,21–26; 2,1–5	Restoration (Zion)
2,6–4,1	Sin / Catastrophe
4,2–6	Restoration (Zion)
5,1–8,23a	Sin / Catastrophe
8,23b–9,6	Restoration (Messiah)
9,7–10,19 (+ 20–34)	Sin / Catastrophe
10,20–27; 11,1–16	Restoration (Messiah)

The sections introduced with "Saying for..." are grouped together:

Text	Content
13, 1–2214, 4–2314, 24–2714,28–32	BabelKing of BabelAssurPhilistaea
15,1–16, 1417, 1–1117,12–14 18,1–71920, 1–6	MoabDamascus and IsraelAssurCushEgyptEgypt and Cush (character plot)
21, 1–1021, 11–1221, 13–1722, 1–2523,1–18	BabelDuma/EdomArabiaJerusalemTyros and Sidon

Chapters 24-27 form the goal of the foreign people's claims, now related to the whole earth, and a thematic unity: according to Isa 24 YHWH causes the desolation of the whole earth, according to Isa 25-27 he grants salvation in the midst of this universal desolation (25,9; 26,1), namely at the "mountain" (25,6-10) resp. "Mount Zion" (24,23; 27,13).

Chapters 28-35 are structured by the cry of the dirge ("Woe...") with changing addressees and interspersed words of grace and salvation:

Text	Content
28,1–428 ,5f.23–29	EfraimRecovery
29,1–1429 ,5–8	ArielRecovery
29,15f. 29,17–24	the peopleRecovery
30,1–1730 ,18–26	the sonsrestoration
30,27ff. 32-33	Jerusalem (sparing - catastrophe - sparing)
34–35	the "desolator" (disaster for Edom / return of the redeemed to Zion)

Chapters 36-39 offer narratives about Isaiah and the pre-exilic king Hezekiah, most of which also survive in 2 Kings 18-20 EU. These foreign accounts contrast the foreign and first-person accounts in Isa 7-8 and lastly announce the Babylonian exile (586-539 BC) over 150 years later in Isa 39:1-6. This linked the first (1-39) with the second part of the book (40-66), which promises the end of that exile.