Event and Text in the Early First Isaiah

Part VI

Concluding Poems and a Retrospect on the Proto Isaiah Text

 

            This is the last talk in this series: “Event and Text in the Early First Isaiah.” It has been rather difficult to face up to the final talk in this series, as it has been an exciting adventure and any closure must be prefaced with the admission that much is left undone, and that whatever is done is subject to revision as we continue to work our way through the Isaiah scroll. Our thesis has been that chapter 3 through 12 is a distinct literary unit whose composition is comparatively transparent. In terms of ancient text, including the Bible, it is sophisticated literature. It includes a number of well-crafted poems; all of which have been marshalled to the purpose of making possible a theological reflection on some specific events that defined the life of Judah and Jerusalem between 641 and 730 B. C. E.  This composition has been done with a firsthand experience with these events, which makes it most exciting!  There are other examples of sophisticated literature in the Bible.  For example, the Joseph story, Genesis 37-50, is virtually a novella in a modern sense. The Book of Job is a powerful philosophical debate cast in poetic terms.  But in either case, their historical ground is hidden, generally, if vaguely referred, to as late wisdom literature. The immediacy found in this section of Isaiah means that the text, in particular, 3 through 12, provides a special insight into the development of the Bible as a whole.   

             This early Isaiah unit is preceded by two chapters, each of which are prologues, composed at later dates, and used to reorient the material of the scroll to the historical horizon of these later editors. This narrative unit is followed by a collection of prophetic oracles, chapters 13-28, relevant to the following period, dated in and around the year king Ahaz died, 715 B. C. E.  This is followed with a return to narrative, chapter 29- 39, centered on the siege of Jerusalem in 701 including a brief coda, which reflects the end of Hezekiah’s reign. Both of these succeeding sections reflect back on the proto-Isaiah unit which provided their authors with literary, historical and theological guidance.   

            Though out our study thus far, we have noted that the text includes a number of poetic elements which are not simply collected but thoroughly integrated into the narrative.  In other words, the poems do not appear to be inserts from other sources, but creations in and by the very milieu that was producing the text.  An interesting test of this claim can be seen with the poetic unit in chapter 11, which I passed over in the last talk, a promised to discuss in this talk.  We are likely to recognize this unit, chapter 11:6-9 as the “Peaceful Kingdom,” a term made famous by the 19^th century American artist Edward Hicks. “The wolf shall live with the lamb; the leopard shall lie down with the kid . . . and over the eyeball of the adder a weaned child shall stretch forth his hand.”

            The opening lines of chapter 11 are a description of a spirit endowed successor to the throne of David, and they employ metaphors based on the battle dress of a king. This king is girded with the belt of righteousness and his loins are covered with faithfulness. The lack of any transition from the opening lines, and an entirely different set metaphors drawn from the animal kingdom, indicate that the origin of this poem is separate from the origin of the other.  We argued in our prior discussion of chapter 11 that 1-5 were originally connected with 10-16 and that the lines 6-9 obscured that link. My conclusion at that time was that the poem of the animal kingdom was located here by a second editor, or by a second thought of the first editor.  That said, it is likely that 6-9 was composed within the Prophetic School of Jerusalem at the at the same time that the text of 3-12 was coming together, sometime after 733 but before 722 B. C. E.  

            Certainly, the Isaiah school had the poetic capacity to compose this poem, unique as it is. The reference to a child connects with a number of children who appear in the early Isaiah text: the child conceived, 7, the child born, 9, the child with ability to number the remaining trees of the devastated forest, 10, to the children of Isaiah with their telling names, 8. This context supplies the means for properly understanding the poem, which is commonly subject to misinterpretation.  One form this takes is as “a return to paradise.” Edward Hick understood it in that way as I suspect a number of other moderns, in their fantasy. There is, however, no orientation to paradise to be found in the Isaiah text, which to the contrary argues that there is no going back to a past; that nothing in the past remains valid, as what God is doing now is new.  An alternative misinterpretation claims that the poem is eschatological, something that happens outside of history or at the end of it. Eschatology has also no place in Early Isaiah. It is true that the reprise of this poem in Third Isaiah chapter 65:25 (which is a good example of the regard later authors of the Isaiah scroll) is properly understood as eschatological, but this is some 200 years later, in very different circumstances than those of the authors of early First Isaiah where the new is never separated from the now.

            In the context of early First Isaiah, it becomes clear that the poem is a comment on the nature of human society.  The wolves, predators, of society in the transformed kingdom will not devour the lambs.  Understood in this way it becomes a description of the transformed, social order.  Since the social order is a corollary of the monarchy, we can see how the editor upon a second look concluded that this poem, too precious to lose, belonged here. The monarch transformed as a servant king is to be matched by a kingdom of servant people, whose social order would be just and peaceful.

            The commitment of the Prophetic school Jerusalem to poetry is further illustrated by Chapter 12, which is a single poem noted for economy and eloquence. The editor or editorial staff, at this point said, let us bring our text to an end with a poem. And with that, this exquisite poem was composed.

            The poem is introduced to the text by means of language common to introducing an oracle: “On this day,” The phrase actually occurs it the poem, verse 4. At the beginning of chapter, it provides the means for the poet/performer to introduce himself and to identify his audience.  His audience is those who are living under the wrath of God, as he is, and he prays that this wrath may turn and he and his audience, may in the meantime be comforted by the act of song.  The message of 3-11 is that Israel, specifically, Jerusalem and Judah, are living under the conditions of a divine wrath which is connected with the rise of the Assyrian Empire.  This wrath is not random but has purpose.  It will work a change in the life of Israel and when that change is complete, as noted in 10:12, the wrath will be turned.  The poet/performer therefore sings under the condition of wrath, and his singing is a relief from wrath. It is God himself, Yahweh, and not some future outcome, that is his salvation. To his audience, he declares that they will draw water from the springs of salvation. Recall that the center of this literary unit takes place at the Gihon Spring, Jerusalem’s source of water.  He asks his audience to “thank the Lord,” “call upon his name,” and to “publicize his deeds.” The Israel transformed by the regime of wrath will become a servant people whose mission is to make God’s deed known to all lands.  This concise well-wrought poem comes to an abrupt end with a single line consisting to two balance clauses:

 

Shout and praise, O Dwellers of Zion,

for the great one in the midst of you is the Holy One of Israel.

 

צהלי ורני יושבת ציון          

כי -כגדל בקרבך קדוש ישראל

 

The title “Dweller of Zion” has occurred in 10:24. The “holy one of Israel” in 5:19 and 10:20, which indicates how tightly the poem is linked with the text that has preceded it.  Even as the poem summarizes the text that precedes it, it provides it with an effective stop. Nothing more should be amended or extended.  Poems are effective barriers to emendations or extensions because as a poem it is structurally complete and their assonance and rhythm makes it difficult to alter.   

            If this literary unit, which I have dubbed Proto-First Isaiah, is marked and bracketed by poetry, it also contains a significant narrative.  Narrative is a significant mark of the Bible, we have only to think of the patriarchal narrative or the exodus narrative, both of which make a substantial contribution of the Gospel narrative. However, each of these narratives are qualified by a substantial temporal separation of event and the act of narrative.  With the Isaiah narrative there is little or no separation between event and the act of narration, which gives it a peculiar relevance to incarnational theology. Indeed, it a most instructive place to experience historical theology at work. It is also important to note that theological transformation associated with the Isaiah text: from a henotheistic local God to a monotheistic, transcendent universal God and from a God that acts episodically to a God who acts constantly include acting by means of human agency, are already in play in these early chapters, giving them a foundational role in the long unfolding history of the Isaiah scroll.

            As we undertake additional studies of the Isaiah text, we will never be far from it, as was the case for the successive authors, poets and editors of the Prophetic School of Jerusalem who continued to build the Isaiah text. Its preservation and its relative exemption from re-writes indicates that this early unit was regarded by the later Isaiah school with a special reverence.

            The next phase of my Isaiah Project will take on the collection of prophetic oracles which constitutes chapters 13-28.  Like the pervious section they are grounded in current history, the history of the decade that is centered around the death of king Ahaz in 715.  The challenge that these oracles present is that they do not have the same kind of linear development as the material which we have been looking at in this past series. This has makes them more vulnerable to emendations and more difficult to interpret. It will be interesting to see what sense we can make of them and how they filled the gap between two great crises that rocked the life of Judah and Jerusalem at the beginning of the 8^th century B. C. E. The first was the crisis of the 730’s which has been our focus these past few months, and the other the siege of Jerusalem in 701, which I hope will be our focus in latter part of 2025. I am anxious to get started, realizing, of course, that whatever form a study of the Isaiah text takes from here on out will cause us to return to 3 through 12 for guidance and for reassessments of what we have made of it.