Part II

The Event Narrative

Isaiah 7:1- 25

 

            In our prior presentation we looked at the poetic elements of the Isaiah scroll that allowed us to identify a major literary unit, Chapter 3-13, “proto-Isaiah,” as it might be dubbed, which served as the original impulse for the Isaiah text as we know it.   We will now direct our attention to the center of this unit around which its content has been arranged.  At the center of this text is a prose unit which undertakes the historical narration of an event that took place in the year 736 B. C. E., shortly after Ahaz ascended the throne Judah. Another historical narrative in First Isaiah does not occur until Chapter 20, briefly, and them more extensively at the conclusion First Isaiah, Chapter 36-39.  This extended narrative is shared with the Historian of Deuteronomic School, II Kings 16-20. When we arrive there, we will encounter the question of who is dependent upon whom.  We will leave that discussion for later, except to register here the opinion that Isaiah 7 is the work of the Prophetic School of Jerusalem. Unlike that later historical narrative by the Deuteronomy School, where prior source is named, “The Annual of the Kings of Judah,” the Isaiah Historian of chapter 7 is not dependent on sources but is working with a firsthand relationship with the event.

            The account in Chapter 7 begins with a phrase, “It came to pass in the days of Ahaz, ןיהי בימי אחז” which is at home in prophesy as opposed to history, whose practice is to date events with reference to years of a reign.  When Ahaz ascended the throne of Judah, the northern kingdom was led by King Pekah who had set aside the long-standing enmity with Syria. He joined in an alliance against Assyria which was led by king Rezin.  The league between Samaria and Damascus was dictated by real politique as the ascending Empire of Assyria, the first empire was threat to both. They pressed Ahaz to join them, threating war and conspiring to replace him with a king who would do their bidding. What actually happened is unclear as the Isaiah text say enigmatically “they marched on Jerusalem to wage war against it but could not.”  We might imagine skirmishes and conspiracies with factions within Judah and Jerusalem taking place. The opening years of any regime are shaky so as to make such testing doubly disconcerting.

            We have pointed out in our previous section that Ahaz had followed the long reign of Uzziah, which had continued through his son Jotham first as coregent and then after his father’s death, king but still under the control of his father’s counselors.  Ahaz, on the other hand, was surrounded with youthful councilors anxious for their turn. The elders of the prophetic school would have found themselves without the previous channels through which they could communicate their growing concerns about the changing geopolitical situation.  That made the school turn to a youthful member, Isaiah, as their messenger to the youthful king and to seek out a public occasion upon which he could deliver their message.

            According to the narrative, the king went out to examine the spring of Gihon, the crucial source of Jerusalem’s water. This resonates with the issue of a sufficient supply of water raised in opening of Chapter 3, and anticipates the tunnel dug in the reign of the king’s son, Hezekiah, which connected the Gihon Spring with the reservoir in the lower city, known as the Pool of Siloam.  When Ahaz visited it, its water flowed down a channel, “conduit,” that ran along the wall of the city. The prophetic school used this public outing connected with the security of the city to deliver its message to the king, which, of course, they were convinced was God’s message.

            The message they send begins with the charge to listen השמר and to be calmובשקט . Then the substance the message begins with words of assurance, “Do not fear, and do not let your heart be troubled,”  אל-תירא לבבך אל-ירך. These are words that resonate throughout the Isaiah text and with those who have made this text central to their own mission, not least of which are those whose mission comes the Gospel. These are words that were given to Isaiah to speak as he greeted the young king Ahaz. The message continues with the assertion that the two principles who are pressing the king to join them, Resin, the king of Aram, and Pekah, the king of Israel, would soon be soldering stumps, burnt out has-beens. They were not the problem, for in a brief time, they would be no more. 

            The verbal message is reinforced by the presence of the prophet’s young son, a toddler. He bears a name which is the embodiment of the message.  The boy’s name is shar yashuv  “those remaining shall turn,”   שאר ישוב.  This is like the children of the prophet Hosea, whose children bore names that are messages, but in that case the names are laments, “no mercy” and “not my people.” The name of Isaiah’s son is a message of hope. The “turn” is not turning back but turning around into a new future. The prophetic school profoundly loyal the house of David, thinks of the whole as all Israel and the anticipated loss of the north, and possible losses for Jerusalem and Judah would reduce it perhaps to a tenth.  What in any case would remain would be a remnant, made up of those remaining (Judah) and those surviving (of the northern tribes) who would be the future that God willed for Israel.

            The Ahaz is warned: “If you will not believe, then you will not be faithful

                                                              לא תאמינו כי לא תאמנו אם.

The problem in the eye of the prophetic school is not what Jerusalem and Judah would do in the short run, but what they would become in the long run in a transformed world. Not-to-change is not-to-exist. Israel/Judah’s role as a kingdom would be seriously limited, eventually done away with. Its future was as an amen, a faith community.  

            Ahaz’s disbelieve is expected for the prophet school holds the doctrine as it indicates in chapter 6:9-13 that “hearing they will not understand and seeing they will comprehend.” For this reason, Isaiah is prepared a sign, in spite of Ahaz protestation that he would not test God by asking for a sign.  The sign is yet another child in this case who will soon be born of a young woman and his name will be Immanuel.  (God with us).  This child is reflection of an altered state of Israel’s existence, and it indicates that the prophesy will be fulfilled in a short time, before the child knows how to reject evil and choose good, in a matter of months not years.

            It will come as no surprise that this text has resulted in a heated dispute between Christians who take this to be a messianic prophesy and that the mother is to be a virgin and Jews who take this as historic event which would be fulfil in the near future and for the mother to be a young wife in the current court. In fact, this announcement is an announcement of a birth that is to happen in the near present near at hand.  How else could it a sigh for Ahaz? This is confirmed in a special way, for Isaiah, outside of the narrative, in a text composed shortly after the confrontation at the spring, refers to the land, Judah and Jerusalem, as belonging to Immanuel, either because the child has been or will be born in it. In chapter 9, composed not long after the event, the child’s birth is announced: 9:3 “For a child has been born, a son given. . .” The birth of Ahaz’s son Hezikiah seem the best if not the only way to understand this.

            This is the first of a number of uses of a birth and a naming of child as a prophet symbol of hope.  It attests to a passionate belief in the capacity of the Davidic family to produce heirs to the throne and thus to renew the life of Israel.  In time this theme will take on a messianic sense, well before the Christian appropriation, which like other appropriations errors only in claiming to own it.  What is common to this symbol is the orientation of history to an open future.

            The narrative is suspended with verse 17 to make way for a theological reflection, a characteristic of the prophetic school. It comes first as a judgment: “The Lord will bring upon you, upon your people, upon the house of your fathers, days which are unlike any since the when Ephriam turn treacherously form Judah.” The use of a literary unit as ground for a theological relation is a signature of the prophetic school. 

            Ending a text is, however, always difficult, as a later day readers, even the author himself, are tempted to amendment it.  So, in a clumsy way someone clarifies the fly and the bee who God is summoning.  The fly is in from the canals of Egypt and the bee is “in the land of the Assyrians.”  The way is opened for him or others to add a series cameos, as Blenkinsopp calls them, four in all, on the disasters of war.  All of which likely came from within the prophet school as it appears that the Isaiah school did not publish their texts but held them in house for their own use and only sometime in the fifth century actual published the text we know as the Isaiah scroll.  The final cameo will prove to be a hallmark of the school, the disaster of a depopulated land, the bad news, on which “the ox roam freely and sheep and goats wander about” the good news.

            Having such a vivid and detailed record of an event of this order is unusual if not unique.  The reason that this happened is that the prophetic school of Jerusalem identified it a significant, if not the essential source, for the theological reflection that could allow them to find their path through what they had discerned as unstoppable force the Assyrian Empire that confronted them.  By identifying this force as God’s will, they transformed the experience of it from a meaningless wave violence to be endured into a meaning punishment which would transform them into future Israel with a world mission.  Their challenge was the theological discern of how they need to be changed.

            As the Isaiah editor was creating this narrative, other elements of the Isaiah school were creating additional textual material which was to be archived in the Prophetic school.  They continue with theological reflections, which yielded the content of Chapter 9 and 10. And recorded reactions of the part of the youthful Isaiah as lived in the aftermath of the prophesy.  These will find a place alongside of the historical narrative when the school pulled them together into the literary unit which we know as Chapter 3-12, proto-Isaiah. 

            In the next  we turn to the reactions of Isaiah which occurred in the aftermath of the prophetic event.