Part III
Isaiah’s Voice and
the Aftermath of the Event
A study of Chapter 8-9
This is the third
talk in my Series: “Event and Text in Early First Isaiah.” The two previous
talks, “Setting the Stage” and “The Event Narrative,” brings us to Chapter 8: “Isaiah’s
Voice and the Aftermath of the Event.”
One of the curious things about the
beginning of the Isaiah scroll, is that the actual voice of the prophet is not
heard until Chapter 8, sometime after the event at the Gihon Spring. With that observation,
however, I raise the question of whose voice appears in chapter 6, “The Throne Room
Vision. Scholarly debate about its role
in the mission of Isaiah is extensive, and while its authorship is generally
granted to Isaiah, I would say not of fast. The answer to that question of whose
voice is best deferred until looking at Chapter 8 where the voice of Isaiah is
heard loud and clear. Chapter 8 consists
of three units,1-11, 12-16 and 16-23, tied to 3 separate moments in the life of
the young prophet. It is clear from the internal
evidence that each of these occurred after the event at the spring, which dates
shortly after the ascension of Ahaz, 736. But on the other hand before Tiglath Pileser’s
campaign in 733 which overran Damascus, ending the reign of Rezin and shortly
afterward, the northern kingdom ending the reign of Pekah, fulfilling the
prophesy at the spring. The voice in these three units is intensely personal,
defensive and filled with emotion, which come through so clearly from reading
the text in the original Hebrew.
As time passed, days, weeks, the
public became involved and as the public is prone to do, they lost their
patience. If they were to be rid of Pekah
and Rizen, why were they still in power and why were their machinations still
troubling them. Isaiah answers them with
a new word of God: “Speed the spoils, hasten the prey.” מהר שלל חש בז.
The point is not to be taken as an ill omen, but as an encouragement. “It is on its way, the sooner the better.” It
is possible that the words are derived from a slogan of an invading army, but in
apprising them the prophet makes them an omen of the good news. Good because the coming loss and pain is
God’s means of moving Israel into a new future.
Isaiah is directed to write these
words on a tablet, a large posture, in large common letters, the kind that the
people can read. Isaiah claims God has arranged for two trustworthy individuals
to notarize the text: no less than Uriah the Priest and Zechariah a member of the
council, likely a member of the royal household. To own these words in a dramatic and personal
way, Isaiah conceives a child with the prophetess and names the child מהר שלל חש בז , “Speed the Spoil,
hasten the prey.” In this way the words are indelibly written in his own life as
a child from whom his life would be inseparable. This followed his earlier naming
of his first child, אשר ישוב. These two boys and
what they represent are explicitly tied to the eighth century Isaiah, as he
waits out the period of suspense that followed his delivery of the message to
Ahaz. As he put it in rebuttal to a doubting public: “Behold I and the children
whom the Lord gave me as signs and wonders” would wait in patient hope. This is
further evidence that these words belong to the eighth century Isaiah!
Of the latter child, it is said that
before this child distinguishes between mother and father these things that
have been prophesied will come about. The wealth of Damascus and the plunder of
Samaria would be carried off. Rezin and
Pekah would be no more. Thus, a timetable is set for the fulfilment of the
prophesy: months.
The prophetic unit is followed by a
poem of remarkable craftmanship, verse 6-10. Its language is richly metaphorical
using the contrasting waters of the Gihon Spring that flow into the pool called
Shiloah in the lower city, and the waters of the Euphrates River that carves
and floods the Syrian plain. The first stanza introduces the alternative
waters, the one representing the gentle governance of Davidic throne and the
other the rapacious rule of the Assyrians.
Having rejected the one, the northern kingdom, along with all the other distant
lands will be subject to Assyria. Two
succeeding stanzas carry out this picture.
Nouns and modifiers give way to verbs. The rhythm changes from flowing
to staccato and new metaphors emerge bringing the action home to
Jerusalem. The flood comes up to its
neck and to the tips of its wings. Each of these latter stanzas ends with a
refrain: Emmanuel. Emmanuel is a prayer,
but, of course, is also the name of child whose birth was promised in chapter 7.
With the earlier mention of the waters of Shiloah, we are again connected to the
prophetic event in chapter 7. It would appear that this poem is also the voice
of Isaiah and if it is, we have evidence that that the young Isaiah is an
accomplished poet as well as a seasoned prophet.
In the aftermath of this first defense,
the waiting continued. Public doubt
continued to grow as Rezin and Pekah remained in power until the second
campaign of Tiglath Pileser, yet months off.
Schemes to replace Ahaz would have
continued to be in play, giving rise to rumors about conspiracies. These would
have been mirrored by claims of conspiracies that Ahaz was in league with the
Assyrians, or he was making a deal with Rezin and Pekah. The public would have been awash with
conspiracy theories.
Isaiah’s second defense opens, verse
11, in response to a divine oracle:
אמר יהוה אלי כי כח “Thus say the Lord to me.”
This new oracle is
intended to stiffen Isaiah’s conviction in the prophecy which he so recently
been called to deliver. It is delivered not just with words, but also ,בחזקת היד (ba cheqat hayad) with a forceful hand. He is not to call conspiracy what that people
call conspiracy; to fear what they fear.
His fear is to be in the Lord, not in the petty fears of the people. The
fear of God is said to be sanctifying, תקידשו the
process of making one holy. He will
be your fear and terror and it will be for your sanctification, למקדש , verse 14, The occurrence of the
word holy, קדש, links the voice of Isaiah with the vision
in Chapter 6 which resounds with the “Holy, Holy, Holy, קדש
קדש קדש. This may not answer the question of whether the voice of
Chapter 6 is the voice of Isaiah or not, but it does link them in a way that makes
clear that Isaiah has internalized the vision.
The final lines of this second
defense raise further difficulties. Verse 14 appears to begin a series of consequences
for those who fear the Lord. It will be
for sanctification, but also it will be for a stone over which one will stumble,
a rock which causes one to fall; for both houses of Israel, and for a
snare and trap for those who dwell in Jerusalem. The puzzle is solved when one credits the
idea held by Isaiah, that being broken, stumbling or falling, being trapped or
snared is, yes, bad news, but it becomes good news because it is inherent to
the process of transformation.
As the statis quo continued to drag
on it gave rise to yet a third defense, 16-23.
The public is increasingly weary and desperate for answers. The prophets don’t know when things will
change. The time has come, they argue, to take things in their own hands. The prophets have been given their chance, it
is time to seek elsewhere, the necromancers, who use bones to consult the dead
or the soothsayer who chirp mysterious answer.
To this Isaiah responds with a harsh command: “Bind the testimony,
seal the torah.” Is this directed to the public or to his fellows in the
prophetic school? Testimony in this case
stands for the witness that the prophet made at the spring in the presence of
Ahaz. Torah means not law as it comes
to mean in later post exilic Judaism, but light. The original meaning of the word, אור, the root of torah, is light, hence in this case it indicates
illumination or a noumenal sense that results from the testimony. Binding and sealing are what one does with a
scroll. This indicates the testimony is or should be written as text and preserved. He asks rhetorical “Does not a people ask their
God? Does the living ask the dead for torah or testimony? Not asking God, is certain to lead to darkness
and weariness. If the people weary, tired of waiting, the Assyrian are not. They
have, in fact, overrun the land of Naphtali, and Zebulon. This dates this third
defense as late in 734, after the Assyria campaign of that year. Naphtali and Zebulon have been lost by the
Northern Kingdom and incorporated into the new Assyrian province of Dor. This loss, however, is viewed as light, but
the heavy loss was bound to follow soon.
In fact, the campaign that comes in
the following year would move down interior route of the Levant, capturing Damascus
and ending of reign of king Rezin. It would continue south reducing Samaria to
a puppet kingdom. Pekah would be
executed and replaced by a puppet king. And still, the Assyrian assault would continue
southward to Moad and Edom. The campaign
of 734 had taken control of the costal route and the campaign of 733, the
interior route. This left Jerusalem,
whose good fortune was to be in the high land, the Shephlah. off the trade
routes, isolated between the two prongs of the Assyrian advance.
Our next talk will be on Chapter 10
in which I will argue that it found its place in the proto=Isaiah unit, 3-12,
as the overarching theological reflection looking back on the events that
followed in the wake of the prophesy at the Gihon Spring. At its heart is the conviction that Assyria
is the agent of God’s wrath, which is working a transformation of their
life. Here we will find ourselves faced
with this difficult concept, so out of favor in contemporary thought, curiously
so, however, since it seems that nature and humanity in our times are engulfed
in much violence.