Isaiah

Isaiah the Prophet in Hebrew Scriptures was depicted on the Sistine Chapel ceiling by Michelangelo.

Isaiah or Yeshayáhu (יְשַׁעְיָהוּ "Salvation of/is the Lord", Standard Hebrew Yəšaʿyáhu, Tiberian Hebrew Yəšaʿăyāhû, Greek Ἠσαίας = Ēsaias) was the son of Amoz, and commonly considered the author of the Book of Isaiah. His ease of access to the king and other leaders (ref. Isa. 7:3; 8:2), taken with traditional sources which tell us that Isaiah was the cousin of Uzziah and therefore of royal lineage, suggests he was of a family of high rank.

Isaiah was married to a woman referred to as "the prophetess" (8:3). Why she is called this is disputed. Some believe she may have carried out a prophetic ministry in her own right, like Deborah (Judges 4:4) and Huldah (2 Kings 22:14-20). Others maintain, however, that it was simply because she was the wife of "the prophet" (Isa. 38:1),and not because she was herself endowed with the prophetic gift. Isaiah had by her two sons, who bore symbolic names (Isa. 8:18) - Shear-jashub, 'Remnant will return' or '[Only] a remnant will return' (7:3) and Maher-shalal-hash-baz, 'To speed the spoil he hasteneth the prey' or, 'Destruction is imminent'(8:1-4).

He exercised the functions of his office during the reigns of Uzziah (or Azariah), Jotham, Ahaz, and Hezekiah (1:1), the kings of Judah. Uzziah reigned fifty-two years in the middle of the 8th century B.C.E., and Isaiah must have begun his career a few years before Uzziah's death, probably in the 740s B.C.E. He lived till the fourteenth year of Hezekiah, and in all likelihood outlived that monarch (who died 698 B.C.E.), and may have been contemporary for some years with Manasseh. Thus Isaiah may have prophesied for the long period of at least sixty-four years.

The Prophet Isaiah, by Ugolino di Nerio

His first call to the prophetical office is not recorded. A second call came to him "in the year that King Uzziah died" (Isa. 6:1). He exercised his ministry in a spirit of uncompromising firmness and boldness in regard to all that bore on the interests of religion. He conceals nothing and keeps nothing back from fear of man. He was also noted for his spirituality and for his deep-toned reverence toward "the holy One of Israel." Isaiah and Micah were contemporaries (see Isa. 1:1 and Micah 1:1). They concentrated their prophecies mainly on Judah and Jerusalem (Isa. 1:1). Amos and Hosea preceded Isaiah (Amos 1:1; Hosea 1:1) and they prophesied mainly against the Northern tribes of Israel.

In early youth Isaiah must have been moved by the invasion of Israel by the Assyrian monarch Tiglath-Pileser III (2 Kings 15:19); and again, twenty years later, when he had already entered on his office, by the invasion of Tiglath-Pileser and his career of conquest. Ahaz, king of Judah, at this crisis refused to co-operate with the kings of Israel and Syria in opposition to the Assyrians, and was on that account attacked and defeated by Rezin of Damascus and Pekah of Israel (2 Kings 16:5; 2 Chronicles 28:5, 6). Ahaz, thus humbled, sided with Assyria, and sought the aid of Tiglath-Pileser against Israel and Syria. The consequence was that Rezin and Pekah were conquered and many of the people carried captive to Assyria (2 Kings 15:29; 16:9; 1 Chronicles 5:26).

Soon after this Shalmaneser V determined wholly to subdue the kingdom of Israel, Samaria was taken and destroyed (722 B.C.E.). So long as Ahaz reigned, the kingdom of Judah was unmolested by the Assyrian power; but on his accession to the throne, Hezekiah, who was encouraged by Isaiah to rebel "against the king of Assyria" (2 Kings 18:7), entered into an alliance with the king of Egypt (Isa. 30:2-4). This led the king of Assyria to threaten the king of Judah, and at length to invade the land. Sennacherib (701 B.C.E.) led a powerful army into Judah. Hezekiah was reduced to despair, and submitted to the Assyrians (2 Kings 18:14-16). But after a brief interval war broke out again, and again Sennacherib led an army into Judah, one detachment of which threatened Jerusalem (Isa. 36:2-22; 37:8). Isaiah on that occasion encouraged Hezekiah to resist the Assyrians (37:1-7), whereupon Sennacherib sent a threatening letter to Hezekiah, which he "spread before the Lord" (37:14). According to the account in Kings (and its derivative account in Chronicles) the judgement of God now fell on the Assyrian army. "Like Xerxes in Greece, Sennacherib never recovered from the shock of the disaster in Judah. He made no more expeditions against either southern Palestine or Egypt."

The remaining years of Hezekiah's reign were peaceful (2 Chr. 32:23, 27-29). Isaiah probably lived to its close, and possibly into the reign of Manasseh, but the time and manner of his death are not specified in either the Bible or recorded history. There is a tradition that he suffered martyrdom in the pagan reaction in the time of Manasseh. Both Jewish and Christian traditions state that he was killed by being sawed in half. Some interpreters believe that this is what is referred to by Hebrews 11:37 (in the New Testament), which states that some prophets were "sawn in two". It is also mentioned in the book of The Martyrdom of Isaiah that he lived into the days of Manasseh, and was also sawn in half with a wooden saw.

==Critical scholarship==

File:Paris psalter.jpg

Prophet Isaiah Praying at Night (10th-century Byzantine miniature from the Paris Psalter).

The noticeable break between the first part of Isaiah (Is. 1-39) versus the latter half of the book (Is. 40-66) caught the eye of eighteenth century critical scholars Doderlein (1789) and Eichhorn (1783), who advocated a source-critical reading of the book, seeing chapters 40-66 as later, post-exilic additions, or even totally separate works artificially appended to the earlier composition. The term "Deutero-Isaiah" described the anonymous later writer, to whom some ascribed some redactionary roles as well. Some more recent commentators have further divided 40-66 by adding a third Isaiah, Trito-Isaiah, who wrote 56-66. The provenance of the text in the latter half of the book seemed to support a post-exilic timeframe, with direct references to Cyrus, King of Persia (44:28; 45:1, 13), a lament for the ruined temple, and other details. Also, the tone of the two halves is different; the first seems to warn erring Judah of impending divine judgement through foreign conquest, while the second seems to provide comfort to a broken people.

Other scholars, such as Margalioth (1964) challenged the view of multiple authorship by pointing out the remarkable unity of the book Isaiah in terms of theme, message, and vocabulary. Even certain verbal formulas unique to Isaiah, such as "the mouth of the Lord has spoken," appears in both halves of Isaiah but in no other Hebrew prophetic literature. While clear differences between the two halves of the book were evident, thematically the two halves are remarkably similar, certainly more similar to each other than to any other existing prophetic literature.

Recent trends in critical scholarship have focused on synchronic approaches, which advocate a whole-text reading, rather than the traditional historical-critical diachronic approaches, which tend to be directed at taking the text apart, looking for sources, redactional seams, etc. Inspired by Hebrew Bible literary criticism done by Robert Alter, recent scholars have tended to circumscribe authorship and historical-critical questions and look at the final form of the book as a literary whole, a product of the post-exilic era which is characterized by literary and thematic unity.

External links

• Isaiah (Isaias) at the Catholic Encyclopedia

This entry incorporates text from the public domain Easton's Bible Dictionary, originally published in 1897. cs:Izajáš de:Jesaja (Prophet) es:Isaías fi:Jesaja fr:Ésaïe he:ישעיהו pl:Izajasz pt:Isaías ro:Isaia ru:Исаия sv:Jesaja

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