ISAIAH
“Jehovah has saved.”
Prophet of Judah under the kingdoms of Uzziah, Jotham, Ahaz and Hezekiah (Is. 1:1; cf. 6:1; 7:3; 14:28; 20:1, 2; 36:39). He was the son of Amoz, who should not be confused with the prophet Amos.
There are few indications about his personality. But based on some passages, it is clear that it is a humble and compassionate character (Is. 6:5; 16:9; 21:3; 65:2). There are also few indications about his family. His father was Amoz, who is also mentioned in 2 Kings 19:2.
According to Isaiah 7:3 and Isaiah 8:13, 18, the prophet was married, and the father of at least two children.
(a) PERIOD.
The time of Isaiah is easy to determine, as we have already seen from the data provided in the book. He was called to the prophetic office in the year of the death of King Uzziah (Is. 1:1; 6:1), around 758 B.C. He exercised his ministry until the end of Hezekiah’s reign (invasion of Sennacherib, 701-700 BC).
Between these two kings there were the reigns of Jotham and Ahaz (32 years in total, 2 Chron. 27:1; 28:1). But everything leads to believe that he continued his ministry under Manasseh (2 Kings 21), at least for a year or two. What this allows us to assume is:
(A) The set of prophecies about the misfortunes of the exiled people (Is. 40-66), which reflected already known evidence, and
(B) the Jewish tradition that Isaiah died a martyr under the reign of the wicked Manasseh. According to this tradition, he was sentenced to death for having dared to say that he had seen God (Is. 6), and for having compared Jerusalem to Sodom and Gomorrah (Is. 1:9; 3:9).
Another tradition says that he was killed for having added, with his oracles, to the Law of Moses, or for having contradicted it. It matters little why, what seems certain is that he died a martyr, and it is said that, having taken refuge inside the hollow trunk of a cedar tree, the king gave orders to saw down the tree with him inside. It is possible that it is this fact that is alluded to in Heb. 11:37.
Hezekiah’s reign was 29 years (2 Chron. 29:1), so Isaiah’s activity must have been carried out for around 60 years, from the death of Uzziah, in the year 758 BC, until the beginning of the reign of Manasseh, in the year 698 B.C. If it is assumed that the prophet was only 20 years old when he was called, his life lasted about 80 years, and the date of his book can be placed between 750 and 700 BC.
(b) HISTORICAL FRAMEWORK.
Isaiah was from the kingdom of Judah, and there he prophesied, in one of the most critical periods of his country’s history. To understand his message, it is necessary to have knowledge of this story. Below is the summary of the monarchies cited by the same prophet (Is. 1:1).
Uzziah’s relatively peaceful reign (cf. 2 Kings 16:3; 2 Chron. 26:1, 23) was followed by a series of calamities (2 Chron. 26:16-23). Under Jotham, Rezim, king of Damascus, and Pekah, king of Israel, had tried to destroy the kingdom of Judah (2 Kings 15:37; 16:5).
The fighting continued well into Ahaz’s reign. It is at this time that Isaiah prophesied the near fall of Judah’s enemies and the rise of Assyria’s power (Is. 7-8).
Shortly afterwards, events confirmed his preaching: Syria and Samaria were invaded by Tiglath-pileser and Damascus was taken (732 BC, cf. 2 Kings 16:7; 15:29; 2 Chron. 28:16; Isa. 17:1, 3). Ten years later, the fall of the northern kingdom was precipitated, with Samaria falling in the year 722 while Hezekiah reigned in Judah (2 Kings 17:3; 18:9; Is. 28:1).
Sargon undertook a campaign against Palestine and Egypt (Is. 10; 20). Later, Sennacherib invaded Judah in the year 701 BC, laying siege to Jerusalem, a siege that had to be lifted due to a miraculous intervention of the Lord (Is. 14:24, 27; 17:12, 14; 38; cf. 2 Kings. 18:13; 19:37). Then the prophet proclaimed the fall of the Assyrian empire; The Babylonian empire was re-emerging, and in its search for greatness it was trying to find allies. He even sent a delegation to Hezekiah (2 Kings 20:12-13).
(c) MESSAGE OF ISAIAH.
Led by the Spirit, Isaiah denounces the infidelities of his people. He sees in these infidelities the basic cause of the misfortunes that befell the northern kingdom of Israel, threatening Judah with a similar punishment in a more or less long term.
Prophet of Judah, he reproached his people for their superstition, their formalism, their idolatry, their cruelty, their immorality and greed. But he also attacks the sins of Judah’s enemies (Babylon, Is. 13; 24; 47; Tyre, Is. 23; Assyria, Is. 10; 33; Edom, Is. 34-35).
In any case, his message does not fail to give a note of hope. This note of hope dominates his work. If he predicts captivity and prolonged suffering to his people, he also announces the return from exile and liberation (Is. 40).
He even goes so far as to specify the name of the liberator, and this two centuries before his birth, in the person of Cyrus (Is. 44:28; 45: 1, 13). And, beyond the vision of Judah’s deliverance and restoration (Is. 44; 45; 60; 61), the prophet, whose message is essentially messianic, has the sublime vision of the Servant of Jehovah.
This “Ebed Yahveh” will come, not only to help Israel, but to give to all the peoples of the earth his Spirit of peace, justice and salvation. This Servant, in short, is revealed to the prophet under the traits of the Man of Sorrows, of the Messiah who bears upon himself the sin of the people and who, through their sufferings and atonement, will become the victorious Messiah and the Savior of the world. . It is this vision, whose most sublime expression is found in Isaiah 52:13-53:12, that allows Isaiah to be called the fifth evangelist.
Many exegetes, when examining chaps. 44 to 53, have expressed the following opinions regarding the identity of the Servant of Jehovah:
(A) For some, the prophet would have seen him under the traits of Cyrus, the liberator of the exiles (Is. 44; 45), but this is an untenable opinion. In chaps. 44 and 45 only deal with the restoration of Jerusalem and the Temple and Cyrus never receives the epithet Ebed Yahveh. The prophet calls him: my shepherd (king) (Is. 44:28), anointed (Is. 45:1), and he is presented as a liberator (cf. Is. 45:13).
(B) For others, the prophet would have had a vision of a double character:
(I) In principle, the prophet would have seen in the Servant of Jehovah a community. This community had the name “Jacob”, “Israel” (Is. 44:1, 2, 21; 45:4; 48:20; 49:3, 5). It is, examining the text carefully, a remnant. The exiles were, like most of their ancestors, unfaithful (Is. 48).
The prophet saw the Servant in a remnant of Israel, ground and purified by the sufferings of exile, and spiritually victorious over the trial (Isa. 45:20-25). Hence the call to the exiles who remained faithful while many of their brothers had succumbed to the temptations of Babylon; hence the powerful proclamation of Israel’s calling (Is. 46:3; 49:6).
(II) Later, the prophet, aware that no residue, that no community could carry out the messianic work desired by God, was led in his vision to focus on seeing the Servant in a person. The overlap between the collective vision and the individual vision is perceptible, especially in Is. 50-52:1-12.
The truth is that neither the people of Israel as a whole, nor an elite of this people, could pretend to fulfill the will of Yahveh-Savior. This could only be done by an individual set apart, different from the sons of men (Is. 52:14), qualified, by his double nature, human and divine, to bear our diseases and take upon Himself our iniquities (Is. 53: 4-5).
It should not be surprising that these two successive plans are offered to us in the messianic message of Isaiah. Israel had been chosen as a nation to be a light to the nations, and to bring salvation to the ends of the earth (Isa. 49:6).
By remembering this vocation that a faithful remnant should at least have carried out, just as by reducing the faithful Servant to a single person, the prophet is also launching a reproach to his people.
This is how the apparent overlap of the two visions of the Servant of Jehovah can be explained: the collective Servant of Jehovah, who is the remnant of the nation, in the midst of which appears the true Servant of Jehovah, the person of the Messiah. Just as Israel was a vine planted by Jehovah, but which bore wild grapes (Is. 5:1-7), the Messiah could say, “I am the true vine” (John 15:1).
And He is also the faithful Servant, in the midst of a residue that, as long as it recognizes Him, will also become the Servant of Jehovah. Thus, the prophet presents the Servant-Person breaking in and dominating everything.
And Christians, enlightened by the Gospel, cannot fail to perceive the patent identity of the only Servant, as it appears in chaps. 52:13-53:12, with the person of Jesus Christ. This is one of the high points of prophetic inspiration, along with Psalm 22 and other prophetic gems.
Isaiah’s message goes beyond the framework of the history and spiritual salvation of Israel and the nations. He describes the messianic times, that is, the kingdom of God on earth. In relation to this one should read Is. 24-27; 60-65; 8:23-9:6; 11. Thus, it has an eschatological character.
The panorama that Isaiah offers us is vast. It covers the long period of time from the time of the prophet to the second coming of Christ, and his reign of peace. The message of the book can be classified around these three fundamental themes:
(A) Specifically historical themes (Is. 1-39, except some eschatological passages: Is. 8:23-9:5; 11; 24-27),
(B) messianic theme (Is. 40-55),
(C) eschatological theme (Is. 56-66 and 8:23-9:6; 11; 24-27).
(d) CRITICAL PROBLEM.
If for us the authenticity of the book of Isaiah cannot be questioned, this is not the case with a large number of critics.
It can be stated that “official theology” rejects “isaicity”, that is, the paternity of the entire work on the part of Isaiah. Below is a very summarized account of these critical hypotheses, with a summary of the reasons for rejecting them.
Higher Criticism affirms that this book was written by a minimum of three authors: Isaiah, one of them, undoubtedly, and two later anonymous authors who would have placed their writings under the cover of Isaiah’s authority (literary fiction). We recapitulate the allegations presented as follows:
(A) Isaiah would have written chaps. 1-39, except for a number of passages throughout these chapters, which could not be attributed to him.
(B) Chaps. 40-55 would have as their author an anonymous writer from the time of exile, who is given the name “deutero-Isaiah.” The prophet describes here a situation totally different from that of the previous chapters, that is, the situation about which he had to bear witness to the return of Babylon.
The style would also be different, as would the vocabulary. And anyway, how could Isaiah have announced the name of Cyrus almost two centuries before this king’s birth? This section would have been written around 540 BC.
(C) Finally, chaps. 56-66, with a more lyrical and more mystical style at the same time, with an essentially eschatological theme, they would belong to another author from a very uncertain time (300 BC for some, around the year 200 BC, for others). This section is called the “Isaiah trito.”
The hypotheses of Higher Criticism can be answered concisely with the words of Edward Strachey: “The norms of criticism impose on us the acceptance of Isaiah as the sole author until we are proven otherwise.”
These tests have not been given to us, and the norms on which the hypothesis of the two anonymous authors rests are extremely fragile: psychology and vocabulary (or style). These are deeply subjective arguments.
Why reject that a prophet who predicted the exile could also predict the return from the exile? Nor is there any difficulty in admitting that an author who has been writing for almost 60 years has been able to manifest different literary styles, with variation in vocabulary, between the writings of youth, those of maturity, and those of old age.
The style and vocabulary of “The Christian Doctrine” and of certain poems and letters of John Milton are very different in style and vocabulary from his “Paradise Lost”, so that there too, following the methods of Higher Criticism, it could be assumed different authors And the examples could be multiplied. On this topic, C.S.
Lewis has an interesting article entitled “Fern Seeds and Elephants” in a book of essays and articles that bears the same title.
The real reason that explains why these hypotheses are proposed is the “a priori” rejection of the supernatural, the denial, from the outset, of the inspiration of the Bible.
Higher Criticism refuses to admit that a prophet could predict events that would occur many centuries after him; refuses to admit that the Isaiah of the 8th century B.C. He could have given the name of a person from the 6th century BC, Cyrus, because he does not believe in the Bible, the Word of God that announces things to come from the beginning (Is. 46:10).
For anyone who believes with Paul that “all Scripture is inspired by God” (2 Tim. 3:16), the unity of the author is no problem. Isaiah, the prophet who signed and dated the book of it (Is. 1:1), is the only human author of it.
And this was the position of Jesus Christ and his apostles, with all the authority that this has. It is to Isaiah that he unquestionably attributes the paternity of chapters. 40-66, as well as chaps. previous. Mt. 8:17 quotes chap. 3 of Isaiah in these terms “…so that what was spoken by the prophet Isaiah might be fulfilled.”
Likewise, Mt. 12:17-21 quotes Is. 42:1-4; Lc. 3:4 quotes Isa. 40:3; Lc. 4:17-19 quotes Isa. 61:1-3; Jn. 1:23 quotes Isa. 40:3; Jn. 12:38-41 quotes Isa. 53:1; etc Finally, it should be noted that the unity of the book of Isaiah has been mathematically confirmed by the complete scroll of Isaiah discovered in Cave I of the mss. of Qumran, in 1947.
This scroll, which has been assigned a date of 100 to 120 BC, is a plus. which reproduces the prophecy in its entirety, and without any indication that could lead to confirming the hypotheses of Higher Criticism.
With W. H. Guiton (“Introduction to the Bible, p. 142), we can say of the book of Isaiah that “it is a majestic edifice in which we seem to find all styles, but in a way that gives the impression of harmony.
On the façade of this building appear, in flamboyant characters, these words: «Holy, holy, holy, Jehovah of hosts; The whole earth is full of his glory” (Is. 6:3).