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 19th
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 8th 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.