Isaiah

Isaiah or Yeshayáhu (יְשַׁעְיָהוּ "Salvation of/is the Lord", Standard Hebrew Yəšaʿyáhu, one of the greatest prophets of the Hebrew Bible.

Isaiah instructs the stricken King Hezekiah

In his long career, he advised several of the Kings of Judah. He warned Israel and Judah of impending doom as a punishment from God for His people's sin. As court prophet to Judah's King Hezekiah, the Bible reports that he inspired that king to act as a faithful leader who — with God's miraculous help — turned back the rampaging armies of Assyria that had ravaged the entire nation except Jerusalem. As the purported author of the Book of Isaiah, he is credited with having written some of the most memorable lines in literature, especially those predicting the coming of the Messianic Kingdom of universal peace. (Isaiah 9,11,60) In Christian tradition, Isaiah's prophecies of the Suffering Servant are seen as foreseeing the crucifixion of Jesus, although this interpretation is not shared by Jews. The New Testament indicates that the Book of Isaiah was influential on both John the Baptist and Jesus.

The details of the history of Isaiah's life are much debated by scholars, as is the question of which sections of the Book of Isaiah actually record prophecies made by him and which sections reflect later oracles penned by writers who took inspiration from him.

Biography

Family and Prophetic Call

Isaiah was the son of Amoz, not to be confused with the northern prophet Amos, whose oracles do seem to have influenced Isaiah considerably. His ease of access to the court and Temple (Isa. 7:3; 8:2), together with sources that tell us that Isaiah was the cousin of King Uzziah, suggests he was of a family of high rank.

He exercised the functions of his prophetic office during the reigns of Uzziah (also called Azariah), Jotham, Ahaz, and Hezekiah, kings of Judah. Uzziah reigned fifty-two years in the middle of the 8th century B.C.E. Isaiah must have begun his career a few years before Uzziah's death, probably in the 740s B.C.E. He lived at least until the fourteenth year of Hezekiah, who died 690s B.C.E., and may have been contemporary for some years with Manasseh. Thus Isaiah may have prophesied for the long period of sixty-four years or more.

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).

The Prophet Isaiah, by Ugolino di Nerio

"I heard the voice of the Lord saying, "Whom shall I send? And who will go for us?"

"And I said, "Here am I. Send me!"

He said, "Go and tell this people:

" 'Be ever hearing, but never understanding; be ever seeing, but never perceiving.'"...

"Then I said, "For how long, O Lord?"

And he answered:

"Until the cities lie ruined and without inhabitants... until the Lord has sent everyone far away and the land is utterly forsaken."

Isaiah's personal life, like his public persona, was a reflection of his religious calling as prophet whose oracles are destined to fall on deaf ears. He was married to a woman referred to as "the prophetess" (8:3). Isaiah had by her two sons, who bore symbolic names (Isa. 8:18) - Shear-jashub, "Remnant will return" (7:3) and Maher-shalal-hash-baz, "Destruction is imminent"(8:1-4). These sons seem to have assisted Isaiah in his ministry and may have carried on his tradition after his death.

Isaiah's Troubled Times

Contrary to the spirit of the prophecies in the Book of Isaiah for which he is best known, the historical Isaiah was not primarily a prophet of hope. He lieved during a time of terrible military and political upheavals which witnessed Israel and Judah allying with other kingdoms and warring against each other. Eventually, during his lifetime, the northern kingdom was completely defeated and many of its citizens taken into exile in the Assyrian Empire. Later, Sennacharib of Assyria invaded Judah itself, conquering all of its major towns except Jerusalem. Isaiah exercised his ministry in a spirit of uncompromising firmness and boldness in regard to all that bore on the interests of religion. To him, political issues were secondary. The key to Judah's survival was its faithfulness to the commands of God alone.

To dramatize the futility of Judah allying itself with with Egypt against Assyria, Isaiah stripped and walked naked and barefoot for three years, declaring:

The king of Assyria will lead away stripped and barefoot the Egyptian captives and Cushite exiles, young and old, with buttocks bared -— to Egypt's shame. Those who trusted in Cush and boasted in Egypt will be afraid and put to shame. (Isa. 20)

Isaiah and Hezekiah

Isaiah's most dramatic success, according to the biblical account, came during the reign of King Hezekiah. When Sennacharib of Assyria had successfully invaded Judah and taken nearly every Judean town except Jerusalem, Isaiah counseled Hezekiah not to capitulate:

Out of Jerusalem will come a remnant, and out of Mount Zion a band of survivors. The zeal of the Lord Almighty will accomplish this.

Therefore this is what the Lord says concerning the king of Assyria: "He will not enter this city or shoot an arrow here. He will not come before it with shield or build a siege ramp against it. By the way that he came he will return; he will not enter this city,: declares the Lord.

A story preserved in both Isaiah and the Book of Kings then relates that an Angel of the Lord smote the Assryian army, putting 185,000 to death. However, the account in Kings also relates that Hezekiah, in an effort to assuage Sennacharib, had written a note of abject apology to him, saying: "I have done wrong. Withdraw from me, and I will pay whatever you demand of me." The account goes on to say that "the king of Assyria exacted from Hezekiah king of Judah three hundred talents of silver and thirty talents of gold. So Hezekiah gave him all the silver that was found in the temple of the Lord and in the treasuries of the royal palace." (2 King 18:13-16) Sennacharib himself records a similar version of the story in his own victory steele, claiming that he conquered all of Judah except Jerusalem, where "I kept Hezekiah like a bird in a cage."

In Isaiah 38, Hezekiah falls ill, and Isaiah foretells his imminent death. Hezekiah then prays desperately to God for deliverance. Isaiah, instructing that a poultice of figs be applied to Hezekiah's infected boil, declares that God has added 15 years to his life. Not only that, but because of Hezekiah's detemination to act as God wishes, God will protect Jerusalem from the Assyrians.

The accounts in Kings and Chronicles dedclare Hezekiah to be one of the best of Judah's kings, because of his policy of official state monotheism, his destruction of Baal and Ashera worship, his institution of Passover as a national holiday, and his reorganization of the Levite priesthood centering in Jerusalem. It is not know what role Isaiah played in such reform, assuming they are historical. Isaiah himself did not seem completely enthusiastic about the priestly class and its emhasis on sacrifice:

Stop bringing meaningless offerings! Your incense is detestable to me. New Moons, Sabbaths and convocations — I cannot bear your evil assemblies. Your New Moon festivals and your appointed feasts my soul hates. They have become a burden to me; I am weary of bearing them.

When you spread out your hands in prayer, I will hide my eyes from you; even if you offer many prayers, I will not listen. Your hands are full of blood. Wash and make yourselves clean. Take your evil deeds out of my sight! Stop doing wrong, learn to do right! Seek justice, encourage the oppressed. Defend the cause of the fatherless, plead the case of the widow. (1:13-17)

Both Jewish and Christian apocryphal traditions state that Isaiah was killed by being sawed in half, a martyr to the evil policy of King Manasseh of Judah, who liberaled Hezekiah's religioius policy. Such the tradition has a basis in history or constitutes a polemic against the evil Manasseh is hard to know.

The Followers of Isaiah

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

Isaiah may have had disciples who carried on his tradition, possibly even into the period of the Jewish exile in Babylon. Such followers are hinted at in an oracle preserved in Isaiah 8:16-18:

Bind up the testimony and seal up the law among my disciples. I will wait for the Lord, who is hiding his face from the house of Jacob. I will put my trust in him. Here am I, and the children the Lord has given me. We are signs and symbols in Israel from the Lord Almighty, who dwells on Mount Zion.

Second Isaiah, or Deutero-Isaiah, is the title given to the writings that comprise a major part of the Book of Isaiah. Deutero-Isaiah is thought to have been written during the period of exile in Babylon in the sixth century b.c.e.. It includes the great messianic prophecy of Isaiah 60 as well as the Servant Songs concerning Israel's suffering and redemption. These hymns, especially Isaiah 52-53, were later interpreted by Christians to refer to Jesus rather than to the Jews as a people. A "Third Isaiah" is also posited, referring to writings incorporated into the Book of Isaiah from post-exilic times. Some evangelical scholars, it should be noted, deny the thesis of "two Isaiahs," insisting that virtually the entire Book of Isaiah, except for a few narrative sections, is the work of the historical Isaiah of Jerusalem.

==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) was first identified by eighteenth century critical scholars Doderlein (1789) and Eichhorn (1783). They proposed viewing chapters 40-66 as later additions. The basis of this theory is that this part of the book relects an exilic timeframe, with direct references to Cyrus, King of Persia (44:28; 45:1, 13), a lament for the ruined Temple, and and Messianic hopes uncharacteristic of the actural time of the historical Isaiah when a legitimate Davidic king still ruled. 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 provides comfort to a broken people. More recent commentators have propse a third divsion, chapters 56-66, reflecting a post-exilic culture.

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. Inspired by Hebrew Bible literary criticism done by Robert Alter, some 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.

Isaiah in Christian Tradition

Isaiah plays a signifcant role in Christian tradition. John the Baptist echoes one of Isaiah's purported prophecies (Isa. 40:3) in declaring his own mission:

This is he who was spoken of through the prophet Isaiah: "A voice of one calling in the desert, 'Prepare the way for the Lord, make straight paths for him.'" (Matthew 3:3)

Jesus begins his public ministry (according to Luke's account) by quoting a passages from Isaiah 61:

He went to Nazareth, where he had been brought up, and on the Sabbath day he went into the synagogue, as was his custom. And he stood up to read. 17The scroll of the prophet Isaiah was handed to him. Unrolling it, he found the place where it is written:

"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 for the prisoners and recovery of sight for the blind, to release the oppressed, to proclaim the year of the Lord's favor." (Luke 4:16-19)

New Testament writers often refer to Isaiah to explain how Jesus fulfilled prophecy: Matthew states no less that four times (4:14, 8:17, 12:17, 13:14) that a certain event in Jesus life happened in order: "to fulfill what was said through the prophet Isaiah. The twelfth chapter of John's Gospel refers three times to the Book of Isaiah. In Acts 8, the Holy Spirit guides Philip to witness about Jesus to an Ethiopian eunuch who is reading Isaiah. And finally, St. Paul refers several times to Isaiah's writings in his letter to the Romans.

Roman's 10:16 is paricularly important, for it is constitutes the earliest mention in Christians sources of the Suffering Servant propechy interpreted as relating to Jesus: "Not all the Israelites accepted the good news. For Isaiah says, "Lord, who has believed our message?"

Paul's quote is actually a paraphrase. A fuller quotation is:

Who has believed our message and to whom has the arm of the Lord been revealed? He grew up before him like a tender shoot, and like a root out of dry ground. He had no beauty or majesty to attract us to him, nothing in his appearance that we should desire him.

He was despised and rejected by men, a man of sorrows, and familiar with suffering. Like one from whom men hide their faces he was despised, and we esteemed him not. Surely he took up our infirmities and carried our sorrows, yet we considered him stricken by God, smitten by him, and afflicted. (Isa. 53:1-4)

Christians interpret this and other passages from Isaiah 53 to be a clear reference to Jesus, as if the prophet foresaw his suffering. Jews, on the other hand, see the Servant poems (which constitute several chapters of Deuter0-Isaiah)to refer to Israel itself. Rather than refering to the Messiah, Jews see these passages as speaking of Israel's suffering during her exile, during which time she became a laughing stock. In context, these passage are meant to give hope to the Jews that one day they will return to Jerusalem, rebuild their Temple and be redeemed through the coming of the Messiah, a king of Davidic lineage. Given the Gospels' accounts of the disillusionment of the disciples imediately after the death of Jesus as their hoped-for Messiah, it is likely that their Isaiah 53, interpreted as predicting Jesus' death, soon became a source a inspiration to the earliest believers.

Finally we should mention the Martydom of Isaiah, a composite work combining several earlier apcocryphal writings regarding Isaiah together with Christian traditions in which the prophet receives various visions, including very specific details concerning the birth, life, and death of Jesus. A second century work in its current form, the book was well known to the early Church Fathers.

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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