Isaiah

Isaiah is the longest of the prophetic books and, by the count of New Testament quotations, the most influential. It is quoted more than any other Old Testament book in the New Testament, and its theological vision - of God's sovereignty over history, of suffering and redemption, of a restored community that includes all nations - has shaped Christian theology from the earliest period to the present. It is also the book at the center of one of the most significant debates in Old Testament scholarship: the question of whether it was written by one author or several.

The scholarly consensus, reached through careful analysis of the book's historical references, vocabulary, and theological concerns, is that Isaiah as we have it represents the work of at least two distinct periods. Chapters 1-39 reflect the ministry of the historical Isaiah of Jerusalem, a prophet who worked during the reigns of Uzziah, Jotham, Ahaz, and Hezekiah (roughly 740-700 BCE), during the period of Assyrian expansion and the crisis of Sennacherib's invasion of Judah. Chapters 40-55 (Second Isaiah or Deutero-Isaiah) address the situation of the Babylonian exiles in the 6th century BCE - a different time, a different audience, a different set of concerns, and a significantly different vocabulary and style. Chapters 56-66 (Third Isaiah or Trito-Isaiah) reflect the post-exilic period of restoration and disappointment.

This scholarly conclusion does not diminish Isaiah. It illuminates it. The great poems of chapters 40-55 - "Comfort, comfort my people," "They will soar on wings like eagles," "He was pierced for our transgressions" - are addressed to a community in the depths of exile, for whom every promise seemed hollow and every hope seemed dead. Reading them in that context gives them a weight and urgency that reading them as abstract theological propositions does not. They are not simply beautiful poetry. They are a lifeline thrown to people drowning in despair, and the God they describe - the Creator of the ends of the earth, for whom the nations are a drop in a bucket - is being proclaimed precisely because everything Israel had previously trusted had been taken away.

The Servant Songs of Second Isaiah (42:1-4, 49:1-6, 50:4-9, 52:13-53:12) are among the most discussed passages in the entire Bible. Their description of a servant who suffers on behalf of others has been read by Christians as pointing to Jesus and by Jewish readers as describing Israel. The New Testament's engagement with these passages is extensive - Philip uses Isaiah 53 to explain the gospel to the Ethiopian eunuch in Acts 8, and echoes of the Servant Songs appear throughout the Gospel accounts of Jesus's ministry, trial, and death. Whatever one's position on the scholarly questions about authorship and interpretation, Isaiah repays more careful reading than almost any other book in the Bible.