Understanding the Old Testament - Lesson 17

Understanding the Old Testament 
Dr. Miles Van Pelt
ot102-17 
Isaiah 
Lesson Transcript
 

Having completed our introduction to the latter prophets, we now move to the first prophet, Isaiah. The book of Isaiah happens to be the most frequently cited of all the prophetic books in the New Testament. We know, for example, that the prophecy of Isaiah figured prominently in the life of Jesus.

Remember, for example, in Luke chapter 4, when Jesus is in the synagogue teaching and he unrolls the scroll of Isaiah, where it says, the Spirit of the Lord is on me because he has anointed me to preach good news to the poor. He has sent me to proclaim freedom to the prisoners and recovery of sight to the blind, the release of the oppressed, to proclaim the year of the Lord's favor. Then Luke comments, then he rolled up the scroll, gave it back to the attendant, sat down, and the eyes of everyone in the synagogue were fastened on him.

And he began by saying, today the Scripture is fulfilled in your hearing when he was quoting Isaiah 61:1 through 2. The book of Isaiah is often referred to as the fifth gospel because of its special emphasis on the good news that God will reverse the curses of the covenant lawsuit with a new Davidic king and he'll restore the kingdom of God with a new Zion. For example, in Isaiah 40 verse 9, we read where it says, "Go up on a high mountain, O Zion, herald of good news. Lift up your voice with strength, O Jerusalem, herald of good news. Lift up, fear not, say to the cities of Judah, behold your God." Or famously, Isaiah 52:7, "How beautiful upon the mountains are the feet of him who brings good news, who publishes peace, who brings good news of happiness, who publishes salvation, whose test is Zion, your God reigns." Isaiah is the fifth gospel.

The prophet Isaiah was married to someone called the prophetess. We don't know her official name, just that she was a prophetess. And they had two children together. We see this in Isaiah 7:3, where it says, "Then the Lord said to Isaiah, go out, you and your son, Shear Yashuv, to meet Ahaz at the end of the aqueduct of the upper pool on the road to the washer's field. Shear Yashuv means a remnant shall return, a remnant shall return. This is one of the major themes in the book of Isaiah that a remnant of God's people will return from exile. They will not all be wiped out. And then the second one is Isaiah 8:1 to 3, where it says, "The Lord said to me, take a large scroll and write on it with an ordinary pen, maher shalal hashbaz, four words in Hebrew. And I will call in Uriah the priest and Zechariah, the son of Jebarekiah, a reliable witness for me. Then I went to the prophetess and she conceived and gave birth to a son. And the Lord said to me, name him maher shalal hashbaz. And before the boy knows how to say my father or my mother, the wealth of Damascus and the plunder of Samaria will be carried off by the kings of Assyria." Meaning this, that the Assyrian demise is coming and maher shalal hashbaz means quick as a spoil, swift as the prey. Quick as a spoil, swift as the prey. So note how the names of Isaiah and his two sons constitute a summary of the message of the book as a whole. Isaiah means Yahweh saves. Shear Yashuv means a remnant shall return. And my favorite maher shalal hashbaz means quick as a spoil, swift as the destruction of God's enemies. Those are great things. 

Date and authorship. As we saw in our introduction, the date for the ministry of Isaiah according to the list of Judean kings in the opening verse is 740 to 700 BC. Now remember the northern 10 tribes go into exile in 722. So right in the middle of Isaiah's ministry while he's in the south, those 10 tribes go into exile. So he's going to witness firsthand the wrath of God against his people for their covenant infidelity. Just to give you some cultural context, this is right around the time when Homer wrote the Iliad and the Odyssey. In 931 BC, just by way of context, the kingdom of Israel was split into the northern and southern tribes after the death of Solomon with two kings and two places of worship. It's been approximately 200 years since the divided kingdom began and now it's going to come to an end.

Authorship. The notion of authorship is hotly debated in my field of Old Testament studies. Traditionally, the author was understood to be the prophet himself and this seems to be the understanding of Jesus and the authors of the New Testament. Modern criticism, however, has proposed as many as two or three other authors based on uncertain shifts in content and subject matter. If you want to learn more about that, you can see my lectures in biblical training for the Old Testament summary in the upper-level class and the link will be provided for you here. 

In terms of outline, there are a couple of different ways to get at it, but traditionally the best and the most basic outline has three parts to it. This is outline one on your screen. There's Isaiah 1 to 39, 40 to 55, and 56 to 66. In Isaiah 1 to 39, we have the destruction of the old kingdom because of the execution of the covenant lawsuit. Number two, Isaiah 40 to 55, a new eschatological leader, the Davidic servant of the Lord. This is where we get the servant songs in the book of Isaiah. And then the third section is Isaiah 56 to 66, a new eschatological dwelling, Zion, the city of our God. So in some sense, you can think that the first section is about the destruction of the Old Testament order because of its corruption. Number two, that there will be a new Davidic leader to restore it and a new Davidic city or place to have it. That's one option.

There's another one based a little bit more on micromanaging some of these things where you can see Isaiah 1 to 12 is the lawsuit of Yahweh and the call of Isaiah. Then you have in verses 13 to 23, oracles against foreign nations. That is, Yahweh's just not interested in Israel alone. He's interested in all the nations and how they treat Israel and what they do. And, in Isaiah 19, we read that Egypt and Babylon will be God's people and they'll be their first and second sons and Israel will be number three. So it's a remarkable reversal of all this judgment.

In Isaiah 24 to 27, we have the little apocalypse or the eschatological day of the Lord. We're going to talk about the day of the Lord when we get to the so-called minor prophets or the book of the 12 because that's their main theme. There are numerous days of the Lord, but three big ones, the end of the old covenant order, the beginning of the new covenant order, and the consummation of the new covenant order. So you can think about, you know, Jesus' first and second coming constituting the first or the second and third days of the Lord. 

In Isaiah 28 to 33, because of all this going so badly, you have oracles of woe. This is followed in Isaiah 34 to 35 by a kind of judgment of the nations and the return of the redeemed of the Lord.

You move into 36 to 39, which is this biographical intrusion about Hezekiah and Sennacherib. It's kind of the historical context in which this prophecy is occurring. And then you get into some really good stuff in Isaiah 40 to 66, the release from captivity, the arrival of the servant of the Lord, and the restoration of Zion.

In terms of Isaiah's presence at the beginning of the prophets, Isaiah, Jeremiah, Ezekiel, and the 12, you'll notice that Isaiah's call is delayed until chapter 6, whereas Jeremiah and Ezekiel's call is right at the beginning of those books. The reason for that is this, I think, that Isaiah 1 through 5 functions as the introduction to the entire latter prophet corpus. And I think it's this way for this reason. If you read Isaiah 1:2, which I will, so 1:1 just tells us when Isaiah prophesied. And then Isaiah 1 verse 2 says, "Hear me, you heavens, listen earth, for the Lord has spoken. I have reared children and brought them up, but they have rebelled against me." In this verse, when it says, Hear me, heavens, listen earth, the Lord is invoking witnesses to attend to this lawsuit trial. Now you'll recall that I said that Deuteronomy 32 in the last lecture is the backbone of the latter prophet corpus. If you turn then to Deuteronomy 32 and you listen to the first words of that song of Yahweh, it says, Listen, you heavens, and I will speak, hear, oh earth, the words of my mouth. So the author of Isaiah, or Isaiah here, is kicking off the whole latter prophet corpus by quoting the chapter, the beginning of the chapter from which he's basing all of his ministry. So that's, you know, we're big on understanding why books are set in the spot they are in the canon, that macro canonical context we talked about in our introduction. And so Isaiah serves as a fitting introduction to these latter prophets because he's beginning to enter into the prophetic lawsuit stage of the ministry during that brief 300 years of these latter prophets, or the writing prophets.

It's interesting, if you want to know about the message and ministry of Isaiah, you can look at his call in Isaiah chapter six. It's the paradigmatic or programmatic text for Isaiah because the nature of his ministry is set forth. And I'll just read a part of it and have a couple of things to say about it. It says, "In the year that King Uzziah died, I saw the Lord high and exalted, seated on a throne, and the train of his robe filled the temple. Above him each with six wings, with two wings they covered their face, with two wings they covered their feet, and with two they were flying, and they were calling to one another, Holy, Holy, Holy is the Lord Almighty, the whole earth is full of his glory. At the sound of their voices, the doorposts and thresholds shook, and the temple was filled with smoke. Woe to me, I cried, I am ruined, for I am a man of unclean lips, and I live among a people of unclean lips, and my eyes have seen the King, Yahweh Almighty. Then one of the seraphim flew to me with a live coal in his hand, which he had taken with tongs from the altar, with it he touched my mouth and said, See, this has touched your lips, your guilt is taken away, and your sin is atoned for. Then I heard the voice of the Lord saying, Whom shall I send, and who will go for us? And I said, Here I am, send me. He said, Go and tell this people, (ready?) Be ever hearing, but never understanding, be ever seeing, but never perceiving, make the heart of this people calloused, make their ears dull. Then I said, For how long, O Lord? And he answered Until the cities lie ruined and without inhabitant, until the houses are left deserted, and the fields are ruined and ravaged." The ministry of Isaiah is to harden the hearts of God's people. They'll have eyes but they cannot see, ears but they cannot hear, and minds but they cannot think. And the reason for that is this, they are becoming like the idols they worship. They are becoming like the idols they worship.

For example, Psalm 15, begins this way, "Not to us, O Lord, not to us, but to your name give glory. (And then it talks about the idols.) They have eyes but they cannot see, ears but they cannot hear, feet but they cannot walk, mouths but they cannot speak." And it says, Those who worship them shall become like them. And Isaiah's ministry is going to harden the hearts of the unbeliever in this particular context. 

Now, the reason that's important is that this particular theme appears throughout the rest of the latter prophets and even into the New Testament, and even in the book of Revelation it's used. For example, Jeremiah 5:21 and 31, says, "Hear this, you foolish and senseless people who have eyes but do not see, and ears but do not hear. The prophets prophesy lies. Their priests rule by their authority. My people love it this way, but what will you do in the end?" Ezekiel uses it as well in Ezekiel 12:2. "The word of the Lord came to me, Son of man, you are living among a rebellious people. They have eyes but do not see and ears but do not hear for they are rebellious people."

It's used in the Synoptic Gospels. In Matthew 13 Mark 4 and Luke 8, in each of these texts, the quotation of Isaiah 6 is located in the parable of the sower and the quotation functions as an explanation for Jesus' use of parables in teaching because they have eyes but they cannot see and ears but they cannot hear. Note that the teaching ministry of Jesus is to have the same prophetic impact that the ministry of Isaiah had to separate the wheat from the chaff and the sheep from the goats. For those who have ears that are closed, it is a word of condemnation and for those who have ears that have been opened, it's a ministry of salvation. This is doubly affirmed by the location of the quotation following the parable of the sower. 

The Gospel of John uses the same figure in John 12:40 and in the book of Acts 28:26 or with Paul in Romans 11:8. This is all the case here. This whole hardening of someone's heart because they have ears and cannot hear because they worship idols. It even appears in the book of Revelation. Isaiah 6:9 and 10 is the background to the repeated statement in the letters to the churches when it says at the very end, he who has ears to hear let him hear. That's the background of that. That's the significance over there. So Isaiah's call is very programmatic in terms of his ministry but it also is picked up throughout the rest of the Old Testament and the New Testament.

What are some of the major themes in the Book of Isaiah that are worth considering? I'm going to give you five of the major themes I think are in the book of Isaiah. The first theme is God or Yahweh as the Holy One of Israel. The Holy One of Israel. This theme begins with Isaiah's call in chapter 6 and continues throughout the book. Isaiah's favorite designation for God is the Holy One of Israel. It occurs 25 times in the book and only six times does this designation occur outside of Isaiah. This designation highlights both God's holiness and Israel's lack of holiness. That is God's consecrated devotion to his people and Israel's kind of whoring after other gods and they're not being devoted or consecrated to Yahweh. Yahweh is the completely faithful husband. Israel is the completely faithless spouse. Israel's call to be holy as God is holy is not realized. They are unclean people. God shows his complete commitment to his people in this book both in terms of his bringing condemnation on them for disobeying the covenant but also in terms of coming after them in hope because of the Abrahamic covenant. Though God is the Holy One of Israel, he is completely and 100% devoted to his people.

Number two, Yahweh as Savior and Redeemer. Though God was to judge Israel, he would not abandon them completely. He keeps his promises, the promise both to execute the covenant lawsuit and also to atone for his people and his land, Deuteronomy 32. The name means Yahweh will save or Yahweh is salvation. Yahweh is called the Redeemer more than a dozen times in Isaiah 40 to 66 and only four times elsewhere in the Old Testament does that happen. So the whole Goel, kinsman, redeemer, that Yahweh will come after his people and redeem them out of their sin. The verb occurs nine other times with Yahweh acting as being the one who redeems. Yahweh is the Holy One of Israel. Yahweh is Israel's Savior and Redeemer. 

The next theme is that of the remnant, the remnant, or what is left over. Sha'ar Yashuv, the name of Isaiah's son, a remnant shall return. The remnant inherits the promises of God. This is the promise encoded in the name of Isaiah's son, Sha'ar Yashuv.Think of the remnant this way. When God entered into judgment with the world at the flood, only Noah and his family made it through. They were the remnant. The future existence of a group will grow from the remnant. That is from this remnant God's people will flourish. For example, in Isaiah 1:8 through 9 we read this, "The daughter of Zion is left like a shelter in a vineyard, like a hut in a field of melons, like a city under siege. Unless the Lord had left some survivors, a remnant, we would have become like Sodom, we would have become like Gomorrah." Isaiah 17:4 and following, "In that day the glory of Jacob will fade, the fat of his body will waste away. It will be as when a reaper gathers the standing grain and harvests the grain with his arm, as when a man gleans heads of grain in the valley of Rephaim. Yet some gleanings will remain a remnant. And when an olive tree is beaten, leaving two or three olives at the topmost branches, four or five of the most, four or five of the fruitful boughs declares the Lord of hosts. So there will be a remnant."

So we have in Isaiah the theme that Yahweh is the Holy One of Israel, that he's the Savior and Redeemer, that he will leave a remnant to save and that he will serve, and that he will send the servant of the Lord to save that remnant, the servant of the Lord. The so-called servant songs, very well-known songs are found in Isaiah 42 verses 1 to 4, Isaiah 49 verses 1 through 9, Isaiah 50:4 to 11, and Isaiah 52:13 through chapter 53:12. Again, just so you can get that, Isaiah 42:1 to 4, Isaiah 49:1 to 9, Isaiah 50:4 to 11, and Isaiah 52:13 through chapter 53:12. Also, Isaiah 61:1 to 3 is similar, but there is no occurrence of the word servant to make it exactly like that. 

Now, what's interesting here is that several different servants are being referred to in some of these songs. For example, sometimes Israel is referred to as God's servant, or Cyrus the king is referred to as God's servant. Also, there's an individual who is a servant in some of these songs. There's an ideal Davidic king found in the book as a servant. So, the question is, is it Israel? Is it Isaiah? Is it a future messianic king? And the answer is yes. All of those things are obtained in this particular text. Just as Israel is a type of Adam, or as a new son, or just like Israel is a servant, the individual can also be a servant. So, there's corporate fidelity involved here, corporate identity.

And so, yes, Israel can be God's servant, but we also know, for example, that Jesus functioned as the true and better Israel. He was the one who passed the waters and passed the test in the wilderness. So, it doesn't have to be either or. You don't have to bleach it out. Yes, Israel can be God's servant. Israel was to be God's servant, a kingdom of priests, but they failed. And so, when we read these things, you have to find out who the servant is and how that therefore applies as we move forward to the church, the servant of the Lord.  We do know that the New Testament confirms that these passages are to be understood as the Messiah and that the Messiah was Jesus. So, Jesus is the true and better prophet. He's the true and better Israel, and he's a true and better king who allows his people to go home as Cyrus did. The servant of the Lord. 

The last one I want to cover before we bring this to a conclusion is that Yahweh's kingship is another major theme, Yahweh's kingship. You'll recall that in Isaiah's call to ministry, it starts like this, in the year that King Uzziah died, I saw the Lord high and lifted up. So, amid all the bad stuff going on in Israel, the death of the king, Isaiah sees that the true king is still on his throne. There is an emphasis on the future kingdom of a God in Isaiah. This kingdom will be centered in Jerusalem. There will be peace and prosperity. Worship and the law are central in this kingdom, and Jesse's descendant will be on the throne. But there is a greater focus on Yahweh's reign, and this tension can only be solved in the New Covenant when Yahweh becomes the incarnate Davidic seed. So, is it going to be a human, is Yahweh going to reign, or is David's seed going to reign? Is Yahweh going to reign, or is David's seed going to reign? Well, what if Yahweh becomes David's seed through the incarnation? That's the only way these tensions conclude. So, when you're reading those, that's how you've got to solve the crisis here in terms of what's being said.

So, for example, in Isaiah 24:23, we read, "The moon will be abashed, the sun ashamed, for the Lord Almighty will reign on Mount Zion and in Jerusalem and before its elders gloriously." Isaiah 33:22, "For Yahweh is our judge, Yahweh is our lawgiver, Yahweh is our king, it is he who will save us." Yahweh. Isaiah 43:15, "I am Yahweh, your holy one, Israel's creator, your king.: Isaiah 44:6, "This is what the Lord says, Israel's king and redeemer, the Lord Almighty, I am the first and I am the last and apart from me, there is no God. So, the God is going to become a king and he's going to reign through the Davidic line."

So there are five great themes here to think about when you're reading the book of Isaiah. God is the holy one of Israel, God is the savior and redeemer, the remnant of God's people who will be saved, the servant who will save them, and Yahweh's reign over them. Remember, Isaiah is a prophetic covenant lawyer. He is bringing Yahweh's lawsuit against his people. That lawsuit will contain the people's failure to obey the law, the covenant curses that are eminent from that failure, but also the hope of restoration based on Yahweh's grace through the Abrahamic covenant. So, these are the basic tools and categories that you need to study the book of Isaiah.

Remember, this is just a brief survey. For more, you can go look at Dr. John Oswalt's lectures on the book of Isaiah in the Biblical Training Institute with the link below.