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.