Judgment And Hope: The Full-Orbed Gospel

By John Oswalt [1]

[John Oswalt is the Beeson Professor of Biblical Studies at Asbury Theological Seminary in Wilmore, Kentucky.]

Isaiah is often called “The Prince of the Prophets.” Why is this so? It is true that the book is characterized by beautiful language, impressive imagery, and lofty themes. But even the most ardent devotee of the book would be hard-pressed to deny that others of the Hebrew prophetic books possess the same qualities in some measure at least. So what accounts for the special place accorded Isaiah by so many?

I believe it is the comprehensive theology of the book which moves it to the front rank. More than any other biblical book it contains all the great themes of biblical theology. So much is this the case that I would contend that if all the other sixty-five books were destroyed, leaving Isaiah’s book alone, we would still have all the essential biblical truth, at least in elemental form. This is certainly a sweeping statement, but consider for a moment. Here are divine transcendence and immanence; original sin and redemption glory; arrogance and humility; implacable divine justice and unmerited favor; the utter untrustworthiness of any created thing and the absolute dependability of God; the majesty of the Divine King and the suffering of the gentle Savior; substitutionary atonement and the destruction of death; salvation by grace alone and the necessity of holy living on the part of the saved; God as the Creator of the Cosmos and the Lord of history; etc. No other prophet comes close to this kind of a binding together of biblical thought. I would even dare to say that no book of the Bible puts all the elements of biblical theology together as Isaiah does. Of course the NT books present the fulfillment of biblical faith more completely than Isaiah does, but, by and large, they do not do the kind of justice to OT truth that Isaiah does to NT truth. Yes, Isaiah is “The Prince of the Prophets,” and in some ways he is the “Prince of Biblical Theology.”

For many years the wholeness of the Isainic theology has been fractured, as higher critical issues and convictions have dominated the study of the book. At least since the appearance of Eichhorn’s groundbreaking introduction to the OT in the final years of the eighteenth century, it has not been the unity of the book, but its diversity which has held the attention of those investigating it.[2] As the various theories of multiple authorship gained credence, scholars sought to find the distinctive character of the work of each author or group of authors. Thus, the study of Isaiah came to resemble more and more a group of persons looking at a great painting with magnifying glasses, trying to discern between the brush strokes of the master and those of his disciples.

Thankfully we live in a new day. In recent years, authorship theories about the book of Isaiah have undergone some changes. Now, instead of believing that the present book is the result of combining three somewhat independent books (1–39; 40–55; 56–66) from the same theological tradition, it is argued that the supposedly later parts were written in the full consciousness of the supposedly earlier parts, and with the purpose of developing the themes already there in the earlier parts. Furthermore, it is now believed that someone has woven the parts together with introductions and seams to make the parts into a coherent whole. The difference in the approaches of Christopher Seitz, a contemporary scholar, and William L. Holladay, who wrote in the 1970s, illustrates how much of a change has occurred.3 To be sure, those contemporary scholars who are re-emphasizing the unity of the book are very careful to distance themselves from those of us who suggest this phenomenon might point to unity of author as well, but we can be grateful for their recognition of what seems to us an unassailable fact: the book is a unit, not because of accidents of redactional history, but because of design.[4]

When we begin to look at the elements of that design, the first which strikes us is what may be called “bi-polarity.” More than most of the biblical books, perhaps more than any other, Isaiah seems to stress polar opposites. So exaltation and degradation, glory and shame, desert and garden, and a host of others, some of which were mentioned above, appear. Perhaps the most prominent of these is judgment and hope, in part made more prominent because they seem to coincide with the two most obvious divisions of the book: chaps. 1–39 and 40–66. In 1–39 judgment receives the major focus, while hope receives it in 40–66. This particular bi-polarity has so much impressed some scholars that they have gone so far as to suggest that all appearances of the other theme in the other section are the work of another hand.[5]

But we do not have two dissimilar books, one about judgment and one about hope, inside a single slip-jacket, as it were. There are too many overtones of hope in chaps. 1–39, and there are too many overtones of judgment in chaps. 40–66, especially chaps. 56–66. Eventually, of course, the recognition of the differences between 40–55 and 56–66 led to the proposal of a third main section of the book (56–66) with authorship different from that of 40–55. I believe, and hope to demonstrate someday, that this third section is designed to synthesize the teachings of the first two sections.

But however we understand the question of chaps. 56–66, it seems clear that we are not intended to read the parts of the book, nor its two great themes, in isolation from each other. Judgment must never be separated from hope, and hope is always seen as coming through judgment and not in spite of it. That this is the way the book is to be read is made very clear by the introduction (chaps. 1–5). It has often been wondered why the call of the prophet does not appear until chap. 6. Did the prophet start preaching before he was called? Of course, that would not be the first nor the last occurrence of that phenomenon, if it were the case, but it seems more likely that the arrangement of the opening chapters is for literary and theological purposes than for chronological ones. What is that purpose? In order to answer that question, we must look at the content of the chapters. One of the first things which strikes the attentive reader is the abrupt and dramatic interchanges which occur. Chapter 1 opens with a powerful word of judgment upon a stupid and rebellious people whose thought processes are so confused that they cannot perform the simplest kind of cause and effect equations. Then without any transition or explanation, the opening five verses of chap. 2 depict the day when all the nations will flow to the house of Judah’s God to learn his ways so that they may walk in them. Note that this same thought is reiterated at the end of the book, in chap. 66 (vv. 18–21), underlining the importance of the idea for understanding the book.[6]

But then in v. 6 of chap. 2, the scene changes again. Once again there is a pronouncement of judgment upon the house of Jacob, a people who have become enamored with human glory and greatness. The point which is driven home again and again is that preoccupation with that human glory which is only a dim reflection of the true Glory can only reduce the persons so preoccupied to utter degradation: “Men shall enter the caves of the rocks and the holes of the ground from before the terror of the Lord and from the glory of his majesty, when he rises to terrify the earth” (2:19, cf. also 2:10, 21). This theme continues on through chap. 3 until it ends with a picture of Jerusalem as a gorgeously bedecked woman who is suddenly reduced to squalor (3:16–4:1).

But the remaining five verses of chap. 4 return suddenly to hope, with the announcement that the daughters of Zion will be holy and clean, dwelling under the kind of protection and guidance which had been Israel’s when she came up from Egypt. When this segment is compared to the previous announcement of hope, it is interesting to note that the former deals with the worldwide promulgation of the law of God, which chap. 1 said Israel did not know, while this one speaks of the exaltation and purification of a Zion which had defiled itself by idolizing human glory. In other words, the announcements of hope are not chosen at random, but are directly related to the prior statements of judgment.

But the happy picture of Israel sheltering under the canopy of God’s presence is not the final one in the introduction. For once again, judgment abruptly blots out those pleasant images. Chapter 5 uses the figure of a carefully prepared and tended vineyard which only yields bitter grapes to describe Israel’s condition. And like the frustrated owner who turns the cattle into the vineyard, the Lord announces that he has called distant nations who are coming with incredible swiftness to devour the nation.[7]

Before turning to the significance of the abrupt interchanges, we need at least to consider the significance of the author’s ending the interchanges on the note of judgment. Obviously, short of asking the author himself, we can only make suggestions. But it may be that Isaiah ended the interchange with judgment because of the reality of the situation he was facing. It is clear that the Israelites expected to hear the note of hope from their prophets, a note which confirmed them in their sinful ways. Isaiah is perhaps wanting to underline that hope is only on the other side of judgment, and that it is the reality of judgment which the people must face and decide how to deal with.

But what of the interchange itself? Why the abrupt oscillations twice repeated? Is not the prophet telling us how to read his book? Is he not prompting us to ask a question and draw a conclusion?

Surely the question is, how can this Israel become that Israel? How can a senseless, rebellious, arrogant, unjust people ever become a holy, submissive bearer of God’s revelation to the world? Although the answer to that question is not a central part of this article, let me not leave you in the dark about what I think it is. I believe Isaiah’s answer to the question he has prompted us to ask is found in chap. 6. When the nation of unclean lips has undergone the experience of the man of unclean lips, then the nation will be empowered to bear a message to the world as the man was empowered to bear a message to the nation. This is why chap. 6 occupies the place in the book it does, I believe.

But what about the conclusion which the prophet wishes us to draw? Surely it is that for Israel’s God hope and judgment are inseparable; judgment, no matter how severe nor how well-deserved, can never cancel out hope. But, by the same token, hope does not cancel out judgment. Israel believed, as we often do, that hope means an escape from judgment, a winking at our sin, or an announcement that we had not in fact sinned at all. They thought, as we do, that it is either hope or judgment, that the two are mutually exclusive. Isaiah will have none of it; there is hope, but it is through judgment, not in spite of it. Thus he tells us that we are to read the terrible condemnations of Israel and Judah in the improbable light of ultimate hope. But he also tells us that we must never allow the good news of grace to lead us to believe that God’s moral law can be ignored. Judgment will always be misunderstood if we forget hope, and equally, hope will always be misunderstood if we forget judgment.

The final chapters of the book confirm this understanding, for we see the same interchange there. There is less concurrence among scholars as to what constitutes the conclusion of the book than there is over the introduction. Many would see chaps. 60–66 as filling this function, but others point out how those chapters are integrated with chaps. 56–59, and question whether chaps. 60–66 can stand alone. Others suggest that 65:17–66:24 are a conclusion, with the announcement of a new heaven and a new earth (65:17) signaling its opening. But 65:17 seems to be closely connected with the earlier part of chap. 65. So there is little agreement on the point.

But be that as it may, the interchanges between hope and judgment are prominent from chap. 56 right through to the end of the book. As most students of Isaiah agree, regardless of their conclusions about authorship, chaps. 56–66 are addressed to the post-exilic community. These are the persons who, against all probability, have been set free from Babylon and have come home again. They are the living evidence of God’s election love and his undying favor. They are the embodiment of hope. It is not that they did anything to earn God’s goodness. They did eventually repent of their sins and believe his promises (as exampled by Daniel’s prayer in Daniel 9). But that did not compel God to do anything. God simply did it, as Ezekiel would say, for his holy Name’s sake. The obvious conclusion to be drawn then is that as election has nothing to do with obedience, obedience has nothing to do with election; as grace does not depend on righteousness, righteousness need not eventuate from grace.[8]

Isaiah’s response to this reasoning is on the same order, and just about as vehement as was St. Paul’s seven hundred years later. In 56:1–57:13 and 58:1–59:15, Isaiah speaks of judgment on those who rely on their status as covenant people to exempt them from careful obedience to God’s expectations. The prophet, in what could only have been the most shocking of terms, says that a eunuch or a foreigner who keeps the covenant is more pleasing than a pure-bred Israelite who is relying on his birthright, his election, to give him status with God.

But interchanged with each of these, that is, in 57:15–21 and 59:16–21, are promises of God to accomplish in his people the righteousness which they are expected to produce, but cannot. Thus, we see the same themes which we have seen before, but from the perspective of a different historical setting. Now, looked at from one perspective, the promised hope will have been realized. Surely the aspect of judgment will be no longer relevant. But the prophet insists that so long as time exists, hope and judgment will be intertwined. As judgment must not be allowed to blot out hope, neither must hope realized be allowed to cancel out the reality of judgment. God’s servants, no matter in what state of grace they are, are expected to live in ways that manifest the character of God. These persons who have received the hope are not doing so; is there then only a return to judgment? No, the answer of God is that there is new hope, and that hope is that he will produce in them the righteousness he demands.

This theme is continued in chaps. 60–66, where the atmosphere is reversed. In chaps. 56–59, the major emphasis is on the failure of God’s redeemed to bring about the justice and righteousness which are expected, with a minor emphasis upon the power of God to enable them. Chapter 60 begins with glorious promises of the victory of God in his people and through them in the world, and this atmosphere of glorious triumph pervades the section. But interestingly enough, this is not the only note, as we might expect. Even here our interchange continues. After three and one-half chapters in which God’s triumph and the redemption of his people are extolled, there is a shift at 63:15, and there enters the picture again the discordant note of the people’s failure to live righteously before God. This element continues through chap. 64 and into chap. 65 until the proclamation of the new heaven and new earth beginning in 65:17. We might reasonably expect that now all would be glory through the final verse of the book. But this is not the case. Even here, against the backdrop of the millennial kingdom, the insistence that disobedience brings judgment is interwoven, with 66:1–4, 15–17 making it clear that mere membership in the community is not what God is calling for. Persons who believe that may as well sacrifice pigs or make a ceremonial meal of mice for all the good their superficial worship will do. And the contrast still prevails to the very end of the book. The last three verses read:

For as the new heavens and the new earth which I will make shall remain before me, says the Lord, so shall your descendants and your name remain. From new moon to new moon and from sabbath to sabbath, all flesh shall come to worship before me, says the Lord. And they shall go forth and look on the dead bodies of the men that have rebelled against me; for their worm shall not die; their fire shall not be quenched, and they shall be an abhorrence to all flesh. (66:22–24)

Again, as you might imagine, scholars dispute the originality of the final verse, or even of the entire paragraph. Westermann sees the paragraph as someone’s attempt to add what they see as a corrective to the excessively universalistic tone of the previous paragraph (vv. 18–21). There, he says, Judaism is defined in terms of the world. Here the move is back to redefining the world in terms of Judaism.[9] It seems to me that such a point of view fails to take adequate account of the structure of the book. As for vv. 22–24 being a corrective to the “real message,” v. 23 says precisely what 2:2 said, and in fact what 66:20 says (“They will bring all your brethren … to my holy mountain Jerusalem”). No, the point is to close the book as it began, but in reverse order. There judgment for rebellion (Heb. פשׁע) (1:2, 28) is followed by the hope that all the world will learn to know God through these people (2:2–4). Here the promise that all the world will learn to know God through them is followed by the assertion that rebels (Heb. פשׁעים) will not escape the judgment of God. Thus, as the first example insisted that judgment cannot blot out hope, the second example asserts that hope does not nullify judgment. Surely we must at least grant the possibility that the final verses of the book are there as an expression of the central theme of the book and not merely as a result of the narrowly ethnic bias of an unknown redactor.

If the beginning and end of the book speak of the inseparability of judgment and hope, what of the middle sections? A survey of these materials shows that the theme which is laid out in the beginning and is reiterated at the end is equally important there. There are, of course, the two significant sections: chaps. 7–39 and chaps. 40–55, which generally describe judgment and hope. An important initial observation is that if the point I have been trying to make is correct, then neither of these sections as we now have them was meant to be read in isolation from the other. If judgment and hope are inseparable, then chaps. 7–39 and chaps. 40–55 are inseparable. The hope which is proclaimed in chaps. 40–55 is unintelligible unless we understand that it is proclaimed to the blind, deaf people who were judged in chaps. 7–39. In the same way, the judgment which is constantly restated in chaps. 7–39 is a judgment upon the people who will, one day, with clear minds and clean lips, show the glory of the holy God to the whole world.

When we look at chaps. 7–39, we immediately observe that the material is bracketed by historical sections, and that both sections have to do with the same subject matter: the response of a Judean king, a son of David, to an external military threat. The kings are of course father and son, Ahaz and Hezekiah. And the son’s threat is the result of the father’s refusal to trust God in the face of his threat. Moreover, the place where the son’s threat is announced is the very place where the father was called upon to believe (by the pool on the highway to the fuller’s field, 7:3 and 36:2). For these reasons, I can only say that I consider the tendency of commentators to refer to chaps. 36–39 as an historical appendix to be gross misinterpretation.

What we have then are three sub-divisions in chaps. 7–39. The first is chaps. 7–12, where Ahaz’ refusal to trust God and the consequences of that refusal are discussed. Then follows the section where the wisdom of trusting God is developed at length, chaps. 13–35. Then, in chaps. 36–39, a son of David is given another opportunity to trust God, and God responds with deliverance.

It is not within the scope of this article to develop the theme of trust as it appears in chaps. 7–39, but I do want to show how judgment and hope continue to be intertwined here, and intertwined around that theme. Judgment is pronounced again and again upon a people who, instead of demonstrating the glory of the holy God to the nations by trusting him, are constantly seduced by the glory of the human nations into distrusting God. This theme is introduced with Ahaz in chap. 7, and it is the final note in chap. 39. Over and over God says to Judah and Israel that whatever they trust in place of him will at the least fail them, and, more likely, will turn on them and destroy them. This is the word which Isaiah announces to Ahaz when he turns to Assyria in the face of the threat of Israel and Syria (7:13–25; 8:5–22). It is the word he declares to Hezekiah’s craven counselors when they advise dependence upon Egypt against Assyria (28:1–30:17). And it is what he says to Hezekiah when Hezekiah tries to impress the Babylonians with his wealth instead of telling them how God has healed him (39:3–8). The word is, “Woe to those who try to make themselves independent of the Lord” (cf. 30:15–18).

But squarely in the midst of all these pronouncements of judgment, hope keeps springing forth. And it is not just in one prominent place, as in Jeremiah 30–33, nor at the end, as in Amos 9, or Ezekiel 33–48; it is, as we ought to expect from the introduction and from chaps. 56–66, interwoven throughout. The interweaving is intricate, but also done on a larger scale. Thus the section which opens with Ahaz’ failure in chap. 7 ends with the announcement of comfort to a redeemed trusting people in chap. 12.[10] Almost too neatly, the section which begins with Hezekiah’s great deliverance (chaps. 36–37) ends with the announcement of the coming Babylonian captivity. The overall point seems very clear: in judgment, never forget hope, and in hope, never forget judgment.

On a narrower focus, note the interchange in chaps. 7–12. Chapter 8 ends by describing the terrible darkness of a lost people who, cursing king and God, look futilely to the occult for some kind of guidance. But suddenly 9:1 proclaims that God’s light will spring forth from the very place where the first incursions of the enemy will begin, Galilee. As the succeeding six verses show, that light is the true Son of David. But the coming of that light should be no source of pride for Jacob, because 9:8–10:34 tell us that unless Israel chooses to live the life of Israel’s God, God will lay the ax of Assyria against the root of Jacob. Nevertheless, out of the stump of Jesse will come a shoot, and from that shoot will spread the whole peaceable kingdom of God’s grace (11:1–12:6). Back and forth the pendulum swings, between hope on the one hand, and judgment on the other.

The same phenomenon continues throughout chaps. 13–35, the lessons on trusting God. Chapters 13–23 contain judgments against the nations, and chap. 24 announces with apocalyptic zeal the destruction of earth’s proud city. But chaps. 25–27 speak of that city whose walls are salvation where God will remove the shroud of death, not just from his own people, but from all humanity (25:7–8).[11]

Chapters 28–33 begin with a picture of the nation of Judah as the armies of Assyria come inexorably closer, just as Isaiah had predicted. Instead of turning to God, the people turn to self-serving and to blind priests and prophets, and the royal court turns to cynical counselors who declare that an alliance with Egypt is the only hope. What none of them will do is to turn to the Lord in patient trust. So Isaiah pronounces doom upon leaders and people alike. But the section does not end with doom; it ends with a picture of a noble king ruling a restored people in a city without walls (chaps. 32–33).

The lessons on trust are brought to an end with a fitting and dramatic contrast. Chapter 34 depicts the fate of the godless world: a barren and desolate desert. But chap. 35 says that for those who will trust him, he can take that desert of judgment and turn it into a garden of hope. Importantly, it is not desert or garden, but garden out of desert, hope out of judgment.

As we have already noted, the section on Hezekiah ends on the note of judgment, thus putting the overall stamp of judgment on chaps. 7–39. But, as we have seen, that judgment is shot through with hope, hope for the near term, and hope for the long term. However certain doom may be, it is equally certain, that judgment is never God’s intended last word.

When we turn to chaps. 40–55, the tone is startlingly different. It is hope from end to end, hope that a captive Israel will take part in a new thing, the absolutely unheard-of thing of the return of an exiled people, as a people, to its homeland. But beyond that is the hope that the sin which precipitated the exile in the first place will be dealt with and Israel will indeed become the servants of the Lord to demonstrate to the world the glory of the holy God.

But even here, in a section which begins with the word of comfort and pardon (40:1–2) and ends with the trees clapping their hands and the mountains singing (55:12), there is the evidence that the same people whom chaps. 7–39 addressed are being addressed here. Already in 40:27, there is evidence that the people do not really believe the promises: “Why do you say my way is hidden from the Lord?” This impression is heightened in chap. 41 with the reiteration of “Fear not.” In chaps. 42 and 43, we see that this is still the blind and deaf people of chap. 6 (42:16–25; 43:8) who do not understand the meaning of what has happened to them. They think they have been doing God a favor with their sacrifices, when all they have really been doing is loading him down with their sins (43:22–28). Furthermore, when God announces that he will do a new thing by means of the pagan Cyrus, their response is unbelief. With increasing stridency God calls them to let go of their pre-conceived notions of how “exoduses” occur and allow him to be God and do a “new thing” (45:9–13; 46:8–13; 48:1–19). Again and again, God calls upon stubborn, rebellious people to open their stopped-up ears and listen to his offers of hope.[12] In other words, both parts of the book are addressed to the same people, people who when faced with threats of destruction refuse to believe them and repent, and people who when offered incredible promises of hope refuse to let go of their apathy and believe. So in the midst of the most incredible announcements of hope, there is judgment, judgment upon rebellion, the rebellion of refusing to trust.[13]

Although there is some diminution of this emphasis in chaps. 49–55, it is there. In 50:1–3, we find a challenge to believe in the power of God’s arm, even against the odds. Then, in 51:17–52:2 Isaiah calls the people to rise from apathetic unbelief and prepare for the deliverance which is at hand. And even the great invitation of chap. 54 is a challenge for those who cannot see beyond judgment to believe that he is really the God of hope. By means of Cyrus he will deliver them from the bondage of Babylon, and by means of the Servant he will deliver them from his righteous anger. Will they persist in their blindness and deafness? Or will they dare to believe?

Now what does all this have to do with Christian theology? I hope that most of the insights have become obvious along the way. But given the possibility that they have not been as obvious as I wish, let me belabor some of what I believe are the most important points. Above everything else, of course, is the wholeness of judgment/hope. These are not two ideas, but one. There is no hope apart from judgment, and there is no judgment apart from hope. This flows from the character of God. Fallen as we are, we constantly hope that we can have God’s love without his holiness, his glory without his righteousness. But this is impossible. God will be holy and he will be righteous. He can no more live with sin than a plumb-bob can hang at a forty-five degree angle to the ground. When we finally really believe that, we are in despair. If the God of the universe is really, implacably, faithful and just, we are finished; we might as well abandon all hope. But Isaiah cries out, “No! He is implacably just and He is endlessly merciful.” He will be just and that means judgment, but he will be merciful, and that means hope, and the hope comes through the judgment. What else is the Cross of Christ than the eternal vindication of the justice of God and the eternal proclamation of the mercy of God? If God can use the Cross to bring us to hope, then no judgment need be final.

A second point has already been touched upon: hope is ever through judgment. Like the Israelites, we want to believe that hope is the magical escape from consequences. If the consequences must be faced, then hope is futile. On the other hand, if there is hope, then I can do what I like and not worry about the consequences. But Isaiah says that we find hope through judgment. How was Israel ever to have any hope of becoming the people of God? If God had allowed them to escape the consequences of their sin, they never would have found him, and the Messiah, if he ever came, would have had to come through some other people. They thought that their election was proof against consequences, but it was only through experiencing the consequences that they were able to live out their election. Precisely because they were the elect, judgment was inescapable. It was the only way for them to gain their hope.

How desperately we need Isaiah’s insights as we look at the Christian hope. It is too easy for us to see this present world as an unreal place where our actions are unimportant. After all, we are the people of God, and God is going to relieve us of all of the consequences in the end anyway. All too quickly, we begin to believe that God is going to relieve us of the consequences now, as well. But Isaiah says that we can never realize God’s plans for us by avoiding the consequences of our actions. In fact, it is as we learn to appropriate God’s grace in and through the consequences of our actions that we are enabled to grow into his likeness. The distinctively American idea that I can do what I want, when I want, and where I want without either responsibility or accountability is neither biblical nor Christian. Christianity is a religion of becoming, a becoming which is the result of the grace of God being revealed in the conflict between the realities of our character and the realities of God’s character.

But, someone may say, does this not nullify grace? Only if we have a view of grace’s primary purpose as being a kind of fire insurance. Isaiah’s view, as is Paul’s, is very hard on the idea that grace’s purpose is to deliver us from the consequences and leave us where it found us. But if grace’s purpose is transformation, Isaiah’s vision is entirely congruent. Ultimately, it was only through judgment that the Israelites learned the extent of their sins. Then it was that they were able to believe God as they had not before. As he had done with Jacob, so God brought Jacob’s descendants to the loss of all things. But God brought Jacob to that point of clarity in order to give him the greatest thing of all, the blessing of God. He brought the nation of Israel to the same point with the same purpose.

Isaiah teaches us that hope is ever new, but that the way of hope is through renunciation and loss into endless abundance.

Notes

1. The substance of this article was delivered as part of the Kenneth S. Kantzer Lectures in Systematic Theology in February 1996 at Trinity Evangelical Divinity School. A revised form of the article appears in the first chapter of “Key Themes in the Book of Isaiah: Their Relevance for Christian Theology,” in Newell Lectureships, III, ed. T. Dwyer (Anderson, IN: Warner, 1996).
2. J. G. Eichhorn, Einleitung in das A.T. (3 vols.; Leipzig, 1780–1783); cf. also J. C. Döderlein, Esaias (1775).
3. C. R. Seitz, ed., Reading and Preaching the Book of Isaiah (Philadelphia: Fortress, 1988); W. L. Holladay, Scroll of a Prophetic Heritage (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1978).
4. I suspect that it will be impossible to maintain the unity of the book and the multiplicity of authorship, but it will be interesting to trace the ways in which both points of view are sought to be maintained in coming days.
5. See, for instance, Holladay’s discussion of whether any of the hope sections in chaps. 1–39 actually came from “First Isaiah” (Scroll, 91–113).
6. It is well-known that Isa 2:2–4 exactly duplicates Mic 4:1–3. If either is the original, it seems likely that it is the Micah passage, since it fits into the context of Micah more smoothly. Some scholars suggest that both are dependent upon a common original. But in either case, it appears that Isaiah has deliberately inserted the piece here, and this underlines the intentionality of the contrast with chap. 1 and the remainder of chap. 2.
7. The rubric, “For all this his anger is not turned away and his hand is stretched out still,” which appears at the end of 5:25, is the same one which appears at the end of each of the four stanzas of the pronouncement of judgment in 9:8–10:4. Some suggest that its appearance here is because of some more-or-less mechanical redactional decision (cf. O. Kaiser, Isaiah 1–12: A Commentary [Philadelphia: Westminster, 1983] 65). Fortunately, the present climate tends to put redactional decisions on a more content-based level. If the material was transposed from some other context (a by-no-means-obvious conclusion), it simply points again to the intentionality of the interchange between hope and judgment in this introductory section.
8. There is a significant difference in the use of צְדָקָה (“righteousness”) in chaps. 1–39 from that in chaps. 40–55, which might easily feed this misconception. In chaps. 1–39 the word is regularly used to describe that righteous behavior which persons in the covenant are expected to manifest. But in chaps. 40–55 it is used to describe God’s actions in delivering his people from Babylon. Thus, one could easily conclude that the only righteousness which really matters is God’s. It is of great significance that 56:1 uses the word in both ways: “Keep justice and do righteousness, for soon my salvation will come, and my righteousness (RSV deliverance) will be revealed.” God’s righteousness (and the hope it brings) is not a release from obedience (and judgment), but ought to be a greater stimulus to such obedience.
9. C. Westermann, Isaiah 40–66: A Commentary (Philadelphia: Westminster, 1969) 427–29.
10. Chapter 12 sounds so similar to what is found in chaps. 40–55 that many commentators assign it to the so-called Second Isaiah, refusing to attend to the counter-argument that its presence at this point might be taken as evidence that Isaiah wrote chaps. 40–55.
11. Again, the similarity of this material with that of chaps. 56–66, and its supposed affinities with apocalyptic, have caused it to be taken from “First Isaiah” and placed much later. But too much attention has been given to rearranging the book according to hypotheses of origins. The most important question has to do with the meaning of the text as it now stands.
12. Recall the use of “rebel, rebellion” in chaps. 1 and 66, and cf. 46:8 in particular.
13. For a helpful discussion of this point, see R. Watts, “Consolation or Confrontation, Isaiah 40–55 and the Delay of the New Exodus,” TynBul 41 (1990) 31–59.