Isaiah

Author: Isaiah

Isaiah prophesies in Jerusalem from the reign of Uzziah into the threat of Assyria and the later hope of return.

Outline

  1. Judah under judgment (1–12)

    The prophet charges Jerusalem, and a child-king and a shoot from Jesse are set against the city’s corruption.

  2. Oracles against the nations (13–27)

    Babylon, Assyria, and the neighboring peoples are judged, and a song looks ahead to a city whose gates stand open.

  3. Assyria and Hezekiah (28–39)

    Woe oracles and the siege of Jerusalem lead to Hezekiah’s illness and the visit from Babylon.

  4. Comfort and the servant (40–66)

    A voice says comfort my people, a servant bears iniquity, and the book ends with new heavens and a new earth.

Key verses

  • Isaiah 6:8

    After the temple vision, Isaiah answers the Lord’s question by saying, here am I, send me.

  • Isaiah 9:6

    A child is given titles that include Mighty God and Prince of Peace.

  • Isaiah 53:5

    The servant is wounded for transgressions, and by his stripes there is healing.

Isaiah is the longest of the writing prophets, and it is set in Judah while Assyria is the empire that can actually reach Jerusalem. The opening verse names Uzziah, Jotham, Ahaz, and Hezekiah. The book begins with a courtroom charge. Heaven and earth are called to hear. The people offer many sacrifices and the Lord says he is full of them. He asks them to cease doing evil and learn to do good, and he names the case that matters: justice for the fatherless and the widow. A remnant is promised even while the nation is called a people of unclean lips.

Isaiah’s own commission comes in the year King Uzziah died. He sees the Lord high and lifted up, and the seraphim call him holy. Isaiah says he is undone. A coal from the altar touches his mouth, and he is sent to a people who will hear and not understand. The commission is not a promise of quick success. It is a promise that the word will be spoken until cities are wasted and a holy seed remains in the stump.

The early chapters mix judgment with names that later readers have treated as the book’s hope. A virgin conceives and calls the child Immanuel. A child is born and the government is on his shoulder. A shoot comes from the stump of Jesse, and the wolf dwells with the lamb. These poems sit inside oracles against pride, drunken rulers, and treaties that trust Egypt or Assyria instead of the Lord. Ahaz is told to ask for a sign and refuses. Hezekiah, later, is the king who spreads the Assyrian letter before the Lord. The Rabshakeh stands at the conduit and mocks the idea that Jerusalem’s God can save the city. Isaiah tells Hezekiah that the king of Assyria will not enter the city. The historical chapters close with a different visitor. Envoys from Babylon see Hezekiah’s treasure, and Isaiah says the treasure and some of the king’s sons will be carried there. The Assyrian crisis is not the last crisis the book knows about.

From chapter 40 the voice changes. Comfort my people. A voice cries in the wilderness to prepare the way of the Lord. The Lord asks who taught him, and answers that the nations are a drop in a bucket. Israel is called the Lord’s servant, and then a figure inside Israel is also called the servant, one who does not cry in the street, who is despised, who bears the iniquity of many, and who sees the travail of his soul and is satisfied. The poems do not pause to give the servant a court name. They describe his work. Cyrus is named later as the one who will say of Jerusalem that it shall be built, a king who does not know the Lord and is still called his anointed for that task. The return from exile is promised in concrete terms: waters in the desert, walls, and a people who had sold themselves for nothing redeemed without money.

The last chapters refuse to let the comfort become a license. The Lord asks why they fast and still oppress their workers. He wants the fast that looses the bands of wickedness. Foreigners who join themselves to the Lord are not to be cut off. The book ends with new heavens and a new earth, and also with a warning about those who rebel. Isaiah holds both from the first chapter: Zion will be called the city of righteousness, and the people who forsake the Lord will be consumed. The prophet’s range is why a single chapter cannot stand in for the book. Judgment on Jerusalem, a king who cannot save himself by alliance, a servant who bears sin, and a city rebuilt are one argument, not four separate books pasted together for the reader who only wants the comfort.

Chapters