The Theology of the Book of Isaiah

John Goldingay

• Publisher: IVP Academic
• Year: 2014
• ISBN:
  9780830896196
• Topic: Theology & Religion
• Subtopic: Biblical Studies

Preaching's Preacher's Guide to the Best Bible Reference"Yahweh sits enthroned, high and lifted upA shoot grows from the stump of JesseA Servant pours himself out to deathKings and nations stream to Zion"The book of Isaiah's imagery sparkles as it inspires. It draws us in to meditate and extends our vision toward the future. But what should we make of this sprawling and puzzling book—so layered and complex in its composition—as a whole?John Goldingay helps us make sense of this "book called Isaiah" as a tapestry of patterned collages, parts put together in an intentional whole. The Theology of the Book of Isaiah studies the prophecies, messages and theology of each section of the complex book, then unfurls its unifying themes—from Zion to David to the Holy One of Israel. Like a program guide to Handel's Messiah, Goldingay helps us see, hear and understand the grandeur of this prophetic masterpiece among the Prophets.

Part One

The Theologies in Isaiah

1

Isaiah 1–12

Old-fashioned movies and novels start at the beginning of a story and go through it in the order in which the events happened until they get to the end. More new-fangled movies and novels play games with their audiences and readers. They start in the middle, then flash back, then move forward again. They thereby make their audiences think harder. People don’t get it unless they focus, and unless they let themselves become involved in the story.

Isaiah 1–12 is not a story in the strict sense, but it works a little like that new-fangled kind of story. Whereas Isaiah 40–55 has a linear arrangement and Isaiah 56–66 is a chiasm, Isaiah 1–12 has features of both these structures (which is one reason why it’s complicated, in the way Luther noted in connection with the Prophets). And something of its theology is conveyed by that combination. On the one hand, the chapters affirm that Yahweh is intent on fulfilling a purpose with Judah and that its story is destined to go somewhere. On the other hand, in practice it’s hard to see any progress in the story; what goes around comes around.

Faithfulness in the Exercise of Power

The opening chapters (Is 1:1–5:30) illustrate this point as they alternate between three themes. Precisely because each small section started off life as a separate message, the themes overlap between the sections, but they can be roughly distinguished as follows:

1. Judah is living as if it can ignore Yahweh’s demands on its life (Is 1:2-20; 5:1-24)
2. Yahweh will therefore take action against it (Is 1:21-24, 28-31; 2:6–4:1; 5:25-30)
3. But Yahweh will restore it and turn it into what it should be (Is 1:25-27; 2:1-5; 4:2-6)

Implicitly, and occasionally explicitly, Isaiah indicates that Judah therefore needs to change its ways (e.g., Is 1:18-20) in order to short-circuit this sequence and make it possible for Yahweh to proceed to (3) without going via (2). But by the time the collage is put together, Judah had failed to change its ways, and (2) had happened. In this circumstance, (3) is the promise for the community to live by, but it will not come about unless Judah now hears the message expressed in (1) and reworks its life.

The problem is expressed most pungently in the “song” in Isaiah 5:1-7. Isaiah starts off like a singer entertaining people with a love song, which he says he has composed on behalf of a friend. It’s a song about a vineyard, an image that love poetry often uses. But the love song veers off in a direction that’s unexpected and then shocking. The vineyard produces no fruit; in other words, the man’s courting gets him nowhere. He then turns from love to hate and destroys the vineyard. One might imagine other men listening to the singer-poet, sympathizing with him and with his action.

But the imagery of a vine was also familiar in another connection, and people listening to a prophet might have guessed that there was more to his song than met the eye. They would be familiar with the vineyard as an image for Israel, Yahweh being the vinedresser. Isaiah explains that his allegorical poem indeed refers to Yahweh and Israel. Yahweh too had looked for fruit and found only something that tasted nasty.

He looked for mišpāṭ, but there—miśpāḥ;

for ṣĕdāqâ, but there—ṣĕ‘āqâ.

The conventional English translation of mišpāṭ and ṣĕdāqâ is “justice and righteousness,” so that we might say that when Yahweh looked for mišpāṭ and ṣĕdāqâ, he was looking for social justice, but what Isaiah would mean by “social justice” has different connotations from those of the English expression. Here’s a typical definition of social justice, by Innosanto Nagara:

“Social Justice Work” is work that we do in the interest of securing human rights, an equitable distribution of resources, a healthy planet, democracy, and a space for the human spirit to thrive (read: arts/culture/entertainment). We do the work to achieve these goals on both a local and a global scale.1

These are commitments that Isaiah would sympathize with, but they don’t correspond to mišpāṭ and ṣĕdāqâ.

Neither word has an English equivalent, as is the case with many Hebrew words related to theology and ethics. The broad meaning of mišpāṭ refers to government, the exercise of authority and the making of decisions. The King James Bible often translated it “judgment,” and a positive aspect to this translation is that we expect judgment to be exercised in a way that is just (as we do with government, the exercise of authority and the making of decisions), but we know that it can be exercised in an unjust way. Similarly there can be perverted exercise of mišpāṭ. But “judgment” easily suggests a link with the proceedings of a court; furthermore, “judging” commonly has negative connotations. Mišpāṭ has positive connotations, and the exercise of power to which it refers is by no means confined to the making of decisions by a court.

The fact that mišpāṭ can be exercised in an unjust way links to its pairing with ṣĕdāqâ. Again, the common translation “righteousness” captures an aspect of ṣĕdāqâ, though “righteousness” is inclined to denote individual holiness, whereas ṣĕdāqâ is an essentially relational word. It suggests doing the right thing in relation to other people—in relation to God and to one’s community. “Right” is thus nearer its connotations, but “faithful” is nearer still.

Mišpāṭ and ṣĕdāqâ thus suggests the faithful exercise of power in the community. People with power control resources; they will therefore make sure that ordinary people can share in resources such as land and food. People with power do control decision making in the court, which meets at the city gate; they will see that judicial decisions are made in a fair way. People with power control what happens in community worship; they will make sure that it is offered in a way that is faithful to Yahweh.

The problem is that Yahweh looks for mišpāṭ but sees miśpāḥ; he looks for ṣĕdāqâ but sees ṣĕ‘āqâ. The word miśpāḥ comes only here in the Old Testament, though its connections with other words make its meaning clear enough. It denotes flowing—here, the flowing of blood that is involved in the oppression that is officially sponsored or tolerated in the community. Isaiah perhaps invented this word in order to pair it with mišpāṭ. It suggests the opposite to the proper exercise of mišpāṭ. Similarly ṣĕ‘āqâ suggests the opposite to ṣĕdāqâ, in that it denotes an outcry or a cry of indignation or a cry of pain, the cry of the people who are being treated unfairly and oppressively. With horrific irony, it is a word used to describe Israel’s crying out in Egypt, to which Yahweh responded in delivering people from their positions as state serfs there. It is now a cry that Israelites utter against one another.

The crop that Yahweh reaps in his carefully tended vineyard is one that makes him simply wish to abandon it to the elements.

Holiness

The center of the collage (Is 6:1–9:7 [6]) provides a further entry into under­standing the dynamic of those opening chapters, by reviewing how Isaiah was involved in addressing people about the process those chapters implied. It begins with Isaiah’s account of how he was commissioned to his confrontational ministry. He saw Yahweh exalted as king. It makes sense to picture Isaiah in the courtyards of the temple in Jerusalem, where in the sanctuary Yahweh was invisibly enthroned above the cherubim. It is the year the human King Uzziah died, an important year of transition as one king’s reign gives way to another. Isaiah sees the invisible Yahweh (as it were), his robes filling the temple. The Hebrew word for “temple” is also the word for a king’s palace, and the temple in Jerusalem was an earthly representation of Yahweh’s heavenly palace. In Isaiah’s vision, this earthly palace becomes the heavenly palace where Yahweh is enthroned as the real king of the universe. Isaiah’s response is to realize that his lips are polluted; the reference to lips may relate to his being commissioned to use them as a prophet. He also refers to his people’s lips being polluted, which must have a different point. His prophecies make clear that their lips are indeed polluted; their worship and social life are characterized by falsehood. After Isaiah’s lips are purified, it becomes explicit that (like a human king) Yahweh is surrounded by his cabinet. This cabinet needs someone to under­take a task, and Isaiah volunteers to do so.

Christian reading of the chapter commonly stops when Isaiah says “Here am I—send me,” but this reading thus confines itself to the preliminaries of the story. The commission is to tell Judah to listen and listen without understanding, and thereby to make it harder for people to see the reality of their situation and turn to Yahweh. That process will issue in devastation, comparable to the cutting down of a tree. It is no casual analogy, because Israel as the people of God is often likened to a tree.

At this point we have to recall that Isaiah’s account of his commission is designed for Judah itself to hear. An irony is involved. The prophets’ messages are commonly designed to be self-defeating, at a surface level, to shock people into the change that will mean Yahweh doesn’t need to implement them. Their underlying aim is thereby achieved. Unfortunately, the strategy rarely works. (Jesus quotes these verses in Mark 4 in connection with his using the same technique; he also finds that it doesn’t work.)

The last line of the chapter presupposes the failure of the shock tactic. The story thus needs to be read at two levels. It reflects the nature of Isaiah’s actual ministry (when the possibility of Judah turning is still open), but it also reflects the later context in which this collage is being assembled (when it is known that Judah has not turned). The tree has been cut down. But the closing line (Is 6:13) adds the comment, “Its stump is the holy seed.” There is the possibility that the tree can grow again.

The book’s opening critique of the people was expressed in terms of their being people who have infuriated “Israel’s Holy One” (Is 1:4). Just before the account of the commission, Isaiah has spoken of the scorn for “Israel’s Holy One” that people’s attitude implies (Is 5:19, 24). We have noted that this distinctive title for Yahweh recurs elsewhere in the book, and the word holy plays a key role in the story of Isaiah’s commission. As well as being a vision of Yahweh as king, Isaiah’s vision emphasizes that Yahweh is the “holy, holy, holy” one. The fact that Yahweh is king points toward the connotations of holiness. It suggests God’s distinctively supernatural, dangerous, almost frightening, divine nature, which should make people bow their head simply because they are creatures—let alone because they are people polluted by their wrongdoing.

The point is further underlined by the association of the phrase “Yahweh Armies” with the phrase “Israel’s Holy One.” English translations usually have “LORD of Hosts” for the first of these two descriptions. They thus follow the usual practice of replacing the name Yahweh with the noun “LORD” (elsewhere in Isaiah 6, the word “Lord” printed thus does represent the regular Hebrew word meaning “Lord”). The word for “hosts” is the regular Hebrew word for armies, the word that appears on the back of Israeli military trucks. The expression looks as if it literally reads “Yahweh of Armies,” which is an odd expression in Hebrew as in English, but one way or another it denotes the fact that Yahweh possesses or embodies all dynamic and forceful power, earthly and heavenly.

The holy God can associate earthly entities with him, and they then become holy, and also become dangerous. It’s unwise to mess with them because God has identified with them. So Yahweh made Israel his holy people. That fact introduces danger into their own trivializing or compromising of their holy status, but it also adds to the rationale for Yahweh’s not simply giving up on them (see Is 4:3 as well as Is 6:13). They are the holy seed.

Trust

Isaiah’s account of his commission leads into a story about his confronting the earthly king (Is 7). Judah is under pressure from Ephraim and Syria, and King Ahaz is out inspecting Jerusalem’s defenses. The pressure from Ephraim and Syria links with the broader international context of pressure from Assyria, which wants to extend its empire westwards. Syria, then Ephraim, then Judah, are in its gun-sights.2

Isaiah takes with him a son named “Leftovers-will-return.” The idea of leftovers is important in Isaiah, and there are several ways in which people could understand it. Yahweh is capable of dealing with Judah’s foes in so radical a way that only leftovers will survive to go home and tell the tale; such is the promise Isaiah goes on to give Ahaz. But the account of Isaiah’s commission has also given a warning that Yahweh’s action against Judah itself will mean that only leftovers will survive. Isaiah 10 will later speak of the challenge to such leftovers to return to Yahweh.

Isaiah urges Ahaz not to be afraid but rather to trust in Yahweh. He makes the point by means of a neat double use of the Hebrew verb ’āman, which the New Revised Standard Version captures nicely: “If you do not stand firm in faith, you shall not stand at all” (Is 7:9). Trusting Yahweh is a key motif in Isaiah’s message. It is a key to Judah’s avoiding a devastating fate. Isaiah also sees it as the proper response to that declaration concerning what Yahweh can do to Judah’s attackers. He addresses the king as “David’s household,” which gives a further clue concerning why Ahaz should trust Yahweh’s promises rather than being fearful. Yahweh had made a commitment to David and his successors. Isaiah puts before Ahaz a demandingly impractical expectation: that Israel should live its life in the world on the basis of trust in Yahweh rather than on the regular principles that nations and communities accept.

Isaiah adds further support for trust in inviting Ahaz to ask for a sign from Yahweh. Accepting a sign will put Ahaz in a difficult position, and he appeals to the Old Testament disapproval elsewhere of people testing Yahweh. Yahweh gives him a sign anyway. There is a girl who is going to have a baby, and when he is born she will be able to call him “God-is-with-us,” in light of the way Yahweh has fulfilled his promises. Isaiah reiterates the same point by a different sort of sign when he himself begets a son (perhaps it is the same child) whom he names “Plunder-hurries-loot-rushes” (Is 8:1-4). The name promises the total defeat of Syria and Ephraim.3

Ahaz’s refusal to trust Yahweh means the deliverance will do Judah no long-term good. The name “Plunder-hurries-loot-rushes” is also double edged: in the absence of trust by Ahaz, Judah’s possessions, not those of Syria and Ephraim, will become loot. Isaiah restates these alternatives in a metaphor. Jerusalem’s defenses crucially included its defense of its water supply, which came via the stream issuing from the Gihon spring and flowing to the Pool of Siloam. Those relatively placid waters provide an image for Yahweh’s provision for Judah. But Judah has chosen not to trust in this provision. It will therefore find itself drowning in a more overwhelming flood.

There is a link between trust in Yahweh and the holiness of Yahweh. While any people might describe its gods as holy ones, and Israel is also prepared to describe other supernatural beings as holy ones, Yah...