As Those Who Are Taught: The Interpretation of Isaiah from the LXX to the SBL (SBL Symposium Series, No. 27)

“AS THOSE WHO ARE TAUGHT” T his far-ranging volume offers a survey of the history of Isaiah’s interpretation over the ...

Author: Claire Mathews McGinnis | Patricia K. Tull (eds.)

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“AS THOSE WHO ARE TAUGHT”

T

his far-ranging volume offers a survey of the history of Isaiah’s interpretation over the course of two millennia, from the Septuagint and early versions, continuing through the centuries in Jewish and Christian exegesis, and concluding with the late twentieth century. Each chapter includes an introductory survey of Isaiah’s interpretation within a particular historical context and pursues a particular facet of Isaiah’s interpretation by one of Isaiah’s many readers in that time period. The contributors are David A. Baer, George J. Brooke, J. David Cassel, Alan Cooper, Jan Fekkes III, Robert A. Harris, Arie van der Kooij, Claire Mathews McGinnis, Roy F. Melugin, Amy Plantinga Pauw, Gary Stansell, Marvin A. Sweeney, Patricia K. Tull, J. Ross Wagner, and Catrin H. Williams, representing the fields of biblical studies, rabbinics, and Christian history and theology. An indispensable resource for scholars and students working in the fields of biblical studies, hermeneutics, and the history of interpretation, this volume will also appeal to anyone with an interest in the book of Isaiah and its interpretation. Claire Mathews McGinnis is Associate Professor of Theology and Director of the Center for the Humanities at Loyola College in Maryland. She is the author of Defending Zion: Edom’s Desolation and Jacob’s Restoration (Isaiah 34–35) in Context (de Gruyter).

McGinnis/Tull

Patricia K. Tull is Arnold Black Rhodes Professor of Old Testament at Louisville Presbyterian Theological Seminary in Louisville, Kentucky. She is the author of Remember the Former Things: The Recollection of Previous Texts in Second Isaiah (Society of Biblical Literature). They are both former co-chairs and contributing members of the Formation of the Book of Isaiah Group in the Society of Biblical Literature Annual Meeting.

“AS THOSE WHO ARE TAUGHT” The Interpretation of Isaiah from the LXX to the SBL Edited by Claire Mathews McGinnis and Patricia K. Tull

“As Those Who Are Taught”

Symposium Series Christopher R. Matthews, Editor

Number 27 “As Those Who Are Taught” The Interpretation of Isaiah from the lxx to the SBL

“As Those Who Are Taught” The Interpretation of Isaiah from the lxx to the SBL

Edited by

Claire Mathews McGinnis and Patricia K. Tull

Society of Biblical Literature Atlanta

“As Those Who Are Taught”

Copyright © 2006 by the Society of Biblical Literature

All rights reserved. No part of this work may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying and recording, or by means of any information storage or retrieval system, except as may be expressly permitted by the 1976 Copyright Act or in writing from the publisher. Requests for permission should be addressed in writing to the Rights and Permissions Office, Society of Biblical Literature, 825 Houston Mill Road, Atlanta, GA 30329 USA. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data “As those who are taught” : the interpretation of Isaiah from the LXX to the SBL / edited by Claire Mathews McGinnis and Patricia K. Tull. p. cm. — (Society of biblical literature symposium series ; no. 27) Includes indexes. ISBN-13: 978-1-58983-103-2 (paper binding : alk. paper) ISBN-10: 1-58983-103-9 (paper binding : alk. paper) 1. Bible. O.T. Isaiah—Criticism, interpretation, etc.—History. 2. Bible. O.T. Isaiah— Versions. 3. Bible. N.T.—Criticism, interpretation, etc. I. McGinnis, Claire Mathews. II. Tull, Patricia K. III. Series: Symposium series (Society of Biblical Literature) ; no. 27. BS1515.52.A82 2006 224'.10609—dc22 2005037099

14 13 12 11 10 09 08 07 06 5 4 3 2 1 Printed in the United States of America on acid-free, recycled paper conforming to ANSI/NISO Z39.48-1992 (R1997) and ISO 9706:1994 standards for paper permanence.

For Jerry Sheppard In memoriam April 26, 1946–November 15, 2003

Contents Abbreviations................................................................................................. ix Remembering the Former Things: The History of Interpretation and Critical Scholarship Claire Mathews McGinnis and Patricia K. Tull........................................... 1 “It’s All about Us!”: Nationalistic Exegesis in the Greek Isaiah (Chapters 1–12) David A. Baer......................................................................................... 29 Interpretation of the Book of Isaiah in the Septuagint and in Other Ancient Versions Arie van der Kooij................................................................................... 49 On Isaiah at Qumran George J. Brooke...................................................................................... 69 Moses and Isaiah in Concert: Paul’s Reading of Isaiah and Deuteronomy in the Letter to the Romans J. Ross Wagner......................................................................................... 87 The Testimony of Isaiah and Johannine Christology Catrin H. Williams............................................................................... 107 Isaiah and the Book of Revelation: John the Prophet as a Fourth Isaiah? Jan Fekkes III........................................................................................ 125 Patristic Interpretation of Isaiah J. David Cassel...................................................................................... 145 Structure and Composition in Isaiah 1–12: A Twelfth-Century Northern French Rabbinic Perspective Robert A. Harris.................................................................................... 171

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Contents

The Suffering Servant and Job: A View from the Sixteenth Century Alan Cooper.......................................................................................... 189 “Becoming a Part of Israel”: John Calvin’s Exegesis of Isaiah Amy Plantinga Pauw............................................................................. 201 The Poet’s Prophet: Bishop Robert Lowth’s Eighteenth-Century Commentary on Isaiah Gary Stansell......................................................................................... 223 On the Road to Duhm: Isaiah in Nineteenth-Century Critical Scholarship Marvin A. Sweeney................................................................................ 243 Form Criticism, Rhetorical Criticism, and Beyond in Isaiah Roy F. Melugin...................................................................................... 263 One Book, Many Voices: Conceiving of Isaiah’s Polyphonic Message Patricia K. Tull...................................................................................... 279 Contributors............................................................................................... 315 Index of Ancient Sources............................................................................. 317 Index of Scriptural Citations....................................................................... 319 Index of Authors and Historical Persons...................................................... 335

Abbreviations The abbreviations used for biblical, rabbinic, pseudepigraphical, and Dead Sea Scrolls texts may be found in The SBL Handbook of Style: For Ancient Near Eastern, Biblical, and Early Christian Studies (ed. P. H. Alexander et al.; Peabody, Mass.: Hendrickson, 1999). AB Anchor Bible ABD Anchor Bible Dictionary. Edited by D. N. Freedman. 6 vols. New York: Doubleday, 1992. ACCSOT Ancient Christian Commentary on Scripture, Old Testament AGJU Arbeiten zur Geschichte des antiken Judentums und des Urchristentums AnBib Analecta biblica Ant. Flavius Josephus, Jewish Antiquities AOAT Alter Orient und Altes Testament ArBib The Aramaic Bible ASOR American Schools of Oriental Research Aug Augustinianum ATA Alttestamentliche Abhandlungen ATD Das Alte Testament Deutsch AUSS Andrews University Seminary Studies BASOR Bulletin of the American Schools of Oriental Research BBB Bonner biblische Beiträge BEvT Beiträge zur evangelischen Theologie BETL Bibliotheca ephemeridum theologicarum lovaniensium BGBE Beiträge zur Geschichte der biblischen Exegese BHK Biblia Hebraica. Edited by R. Kittel. Stuttgart: Deutsche Bibelgesellschaft, 1905–6, 19252, 19373, 19514, 197316. BHS Biblia Hebraica Stuttgartensia. Edited by K. Elliger and W. Rudolph. Stuttgart: Deutsche Bibelgesellschaft, 1983. BHT Beiträge zur historischen Theologie Bib Biblica Bijdr Bijdragen: Tijdschrift voor filosofie en theologie BJRL Bulletin of the John Rylands University Library of Manchester -ix-

abbreviations

BK Bibel und Kirche BKAT Biblischer Kommentar, Altes Testament BN Biblische Notizen BSac Bibliotheca sacra BTB Biblical Theological Bulletin BWANT Beiträge zur Wissenschaft vom Alten und Neuen Testament BZ Biblische Zeitschrift BZAW Beihefte zur Zeitschrift für die alttestamentliche Wissenschaft BZNW Beihefte zur Zeitschrift für die neutestamentliche Wissenschaft CBET Contributions to Biblical Exegesis and Theology CBQ Catholic Biblical Quarterly CBQMS Catholic Biblical Quarterly Monograph Series CCSL Corpus Christianorum: Series latina. Turnout: Brepols, 1953–. CSRT Columbia Series in Reformed Theology DJD Discoveries in the Judaean Desert DSD Dead Sea Discoveries EncJud Encyclopedia Judaica. 16 vols. Jerusalem: Keter, 1972. EstBib Estudios biblicos ETL Ephemerides theologicae lovanienses EvT Evangelische Theologie ExpTim Expository Times FAT Forschungen zum Alten Testament FOTL Forms of the Old Testament Literature FRLANT Forschungen zur Religion und Literatur des Alten und Neuen Testaments GCS Die griechische christliche Schriftsteller der ersten [drei] Jahrhunderte HBC Harper’s Bible Commentary. Edited by J. L. Mays et al. San Francisco: HarperCollins, 1988. HTR Harvard Theological Review IB Interpreter’s Bible. Edited by G. A. Buttrick et al. 12 vols. New York: Abingdon, 1951–57. ICC International Critical Commentary Int Interpretation JBL Journal of Biblical Literature JE The Jewish Encyclopedia. Edited by I. Singer. 12 vols. New York: Funk & Wagnalls, 1925. JJS Journal of Jewish Studies JQR Jewish Quarterly Review JR Journal of Religion JSIJ Jewish Studies, an Internet Journal

abbreviations

xi

JSJSup Supplements to the Journal for the Study of Judaism in the Persian, Hellenistic, and Roman Periods JSNT Journal for the Study of the New Testament JSNTSup Journal for the Study of the New Testament Supplement Series JSOT Journal for the Study of the Old Testament JSOTSup Journal for the Study of the Old Testament Supplement Series JSP Journal for the Study of the Pseudepigrapha JSSSup Journal of Semitic Studies Supplement Series JTS Journal of Theological Studies KHAT Kurzgefaßtes exegetisches Handbuch zum Alten Testament LCC Library of Christian Classics LS Louvain Studies LTQ Lexington Theological Quarterly lxx Septuagint Mils Milltown Studies mt Masoretic Text (of the Hebrew Bible) MT Modern Theology NCB New Century Bible Neot Neotestamentica NIB The New Interpreter’s Bible. 13 vols. Nashville: Abingdon: 1994– 2004. NIGTC New International Greek Testament Commentary NovT Novum Testamentum NovTSup Novum Testamentum Supplements NTS New Testament Studies OBO Orbis biblicus et orientalis OBT Overtures to Biblical Theology OTL Old Testament Library OTS Old Testament Studies PG Patrologia graeca [=Patroliogiae cursus completus: Series graeca]. Edited by J.-P. Migne. 162 vols. Paris: Migne, 1857–86. PHS Proceedings of the Huguenot Society PL Patrologia Latina [=Patrologiae cursus completus: Series latina]. Edited by J.-P. Migne. 217 vols. Paris: Migne, 1844–64 RB Revue biblique RBB Revista biblica brasileira RevQ Revue de Qumran SBL Society of Biblical Literature SBLDS Society of Biblical Literature Dissertation Series SBLSCS Society of Biblical Literature Septuagint and Cognate Studies SBLSP Society of Biblical Literature Seminar Papers

xii

abbreviations

SBLSymS Society of Biblical Literature Symposium Series SBS Stuttgarter Bibelstudien SC Sources crétiennes. Paris: Cerf, 1943–. SNTSMS Society for New Testament Studies Monograph Series SSN Studia semitica neerlandica ST Studia theologica STDJ Studies on the Texts of the Desert of Judah StPB Studia post-biblica TSAJ Texte und Studien zum antiken Judentum TZ Theologische Zeitschrift UTPSS University of Texas Press Slavic Series Vg Vulgate VT Vetus Testamentum VTSup Supplements to Vetus Testamentum WBC Word Biblical Commentary WMANT Wissenschaftliche Monographien zum Alten und Neuen Testament WTJ Westminster Theological Journal WUNT Wissenschaftliche Untersuchungen zum Neuen Testament ZAW Zeitschrift für die alttestamentliche Wissenschaft ZNW Zeitschrift für die neutestamentliche Wissenschaft und die Kunde der älteren Kirche

Remembering the Former Things: The History of Interpretation and Critical Scholarship Claire Mathews McGinnis Patricia K. Tull

This Volume’s Origins and Aims In 1990, a group of distinguished scholars, some of whom had been studying Isaiah and its formation for many years, met for a consultation on the emerging issue of the nature of the “unity” or “coherence” of the book of the prophet Isaiah. This consultation led to the Formation of the Book of Isaiah Seminar of the Society for Biblical Literature. For several years participants discussed, from a variety of viewpoints, how readers in an intellectual climate beyond the hegemony of historical criticism might understand Isaiah as a biblical book with its own plot and integrity, given its evident redactional growth over the course of several centuries in Judahite history.1 This annual seminar subsequently became an SBL Group, and it is out of the work of that Group that the present book grew. Over the course of the initial years of the Isaiah Seminar it became evident to some participants that there were questions about seeing Isaiah’s form today that could be better answered with a more complete understanding of the interpretations through which it was read over the past two millennia, interpretations that continue to exert influence—whether consciously recognized or not—on contemporary scholars, both Christian and Jewish. The work of Bernhard Duhm offers a case in point. Duhm’s importance to scholarship of Isaiah for the past hundred years is undeniable. Yet his two most important original contributions, the redactional isolation of four “Servant Songs” in Isa 1. Much of the work from the initial years of the Formation of Isaiah Seminar was published in Roy Melugin and Marvin Sweeney, eds., New Visions of Isaiah (JSOTSup 214; Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press, 1996), now reprinted by the Society of Biblical Literature. An overview of the unity of Isaiah discussion overall, and of the work of the Isaiah Seminar, may be found in the final chapter of this volume, “One Book, Many Voices: Conceiving of Isaiah’s Polyphonic Message.”

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“as those who are taught”

40–55, and the existence of a distinguishable prophetic voice he called “TritoIsaiah” in Isa 56–66, have been identified as having been rooted, at least in part, in traditional Christian presuppositions that are no longer widely accepted by scholars. As John Sawyer has noted, Christian scholars’ fascination with Duhm’s Servant Songs theory was much bolstered by correspondences between the New Testament Gospel narratives and the story that could be derived from Duhm’s four “servant” passages when isolated from their context in Isaiah: “Much of the exegesis of these passages in the twentieth century has been, often unintentionally, the modern critical equivalent of early Christian interpretation” 2 that identified the servant passages with Jesus. Similarly, it has been pointed out that the impetus in Christian circles to follow Duhm in seeing a defining break between Isa 40–55 and 56–66 has been at least partially based on assumptions that the prophet announcing the redemptive return from Babylon would not be interested in the particulars about ritual law introduced in chapter 56. Perhaps not coincidentally, as Marvin Sweeney notes in his essay in this volume, these two contributions of Duhm’s have come increasingly under question in the past generation. Even more fundamentally, we discovered that unless scholars intend to reduce interpretation of Isaiah to what Gerald Sheppard described as “a neutral ‘secular’ territory of discourse apart from the religious,” contemporary interpreters must grapple with the historic distinctions between Jewish and Christian scholarly approaches to Isaiah.3 In the 1996 session of the Isaiah Seminar, which concerned Isaiah as Christian and Jewish Scripture, Roy Melugin and Benjamin Sommer each described particularities within their faith traditions that condition modern critical reading of Isaiah.4 Melugin portrayed traditional Christian interpretation of Isaiah not as a reading of its words as originally construed but as necessary “reinterpretation” for the church’s own life, reinterpretation that employs typological transformation of Isaiah’s imagery to retain relevance to the Christian church’s particular story.5 Sommer called into question the value for contemporary Jewish scholarship of the project of reconstructing the internal unity of Isaiah. He pointed out that, even though modern scholarship is built

2. John F. A. Sawyer, “Isaiah,” in Dictionary of Biblical Interpretation (ed. J. Hayes; 2 vols.; Nashville: Abingdon, 1999), 1:553. 3. Gerald T. Sheppard, “Isaiah as a Scroll or Codex within Jewish and Christian Scripture,” in Society of Biblical Literature 1996 Seminar Papers (SBLSP 35; Atlanta: Scholars Press, 1996), 211. 4. Roy F. Melugin, “Reading the Book of Isaiah as Christian Scripture,” in Society of Biblical Literature 1996 Seminar Papers, 188–203; Benjamin D. Sommer, “The Scroll of Isaiah as Jewish Scripture, or, Why Jews Don’t Read Books,” in Society of Biblical Literature 1996 Seminar Papers, 225–42. 5. Melugin, “Reading the Book of Isaiah as Christian Scripture,” 193–94.

Mcginnis and tull: remembering the former things

upon historical understandings of Isaiah that differ from those of earlier tradition, “a modern Jewish approach to Bible as Scripture must be sensitive to the emphases of older Jewish biblical exegesis,”6 and “in Jewish scripturality, the literary unit of ‘book’ is insignificant. For the midrashic exegete, the next unit after the verse that matters is the Bible as a whole.”7 In those same discussions Gerald Sheppard drew attention to the importance of understanding Isaiah’s interpretive past, in particular the second-century contexts shaping interpretation in the two incipient religious communities who read Isaiah as Scripture, and to the way in which the two traditions subsequently retained similar concepts of revelation but saw different trajectories in Isaiah: “While rabbinic Judaism emphasized the book as commentary on the Torah as well as prophecy of the future, Christians sought to see in the book a promise fulfilled in the Gospel.”8 Sheppard summarized by saying, “If we are going to describe the book of Isaiah as a scriptural book, we cannot ignore this specific religious [i.e., canonical] setting in which Isaiah functions differently in two different religions. Concommitantly, only by acknowledging these differences can what remains the same attain its full significance for both religions.”9 Clearly, a more comprehensive understanding of Isaiah as a prophetic book necessitated a fuller grasp of its treatment in Jewish and Christian interpretive history. Well aware that our training as critical biblical scholars had equipped us with detailed knowledge of the scholarship of the previous century or two alone, we saw the need to learn much more about premodern interpretation.10 So the Isaiah Group spent several years inviting scholars from various disciplines to take soundings in the earlier history of interpretation of Isaiah. Several biblical scholars among us also set out to study particular figures or periods of history. Those explorations grew into this book. It is the product of invitations advanced to experts in a variety of disciplines and time periods to carry out original work exploring a facet of Isaiah’s interpretive history. By no means comprehensive, especially in regard to Jewish scholarship, this volume nevertheless presents what we hope will be a starting point for further exploration of the enormous exegetical effort the book of Isaiah has occasioned over the centuries.

6. Sommer, “The Scroll of Isaiah as Jewish Scripture,” 227. 7. Ibid., 228. 8. Sheppard, “Isaiah as a Scroll or Codex,” 218–20. 9. Ibid., 221. 10. We have deliberately chosen the term “premodern” rather than “precritical” to describe the work of scholarly biblical interpretation before the 1800s. “Precritical” can mean “pre–historical critical,” but in usage it has tended to serve as a synonym for “uncritical,” a judgment that holds up poorly when the sources are studied on their own terms.


The History of Interpretation in Recent Scholarship It was no accident that those interested in the formation of Isaiah should be moved to turn toward the history of interpretation for insight. This turn coincided with a burgeoning interest in the history both of scholarly interpretation and of popular reception of other individual biblical books and of Scripture in general. In 1996 John Sawyer published his wide-ranging book The Fifth Gospel: Isaiah in the History of Christianity, which traced popular use of Isaiah across the centuries and through many cultures. 11 Three years previously, William Holladay had offered a similar survey for the Psalms in his work The Psalms through Three Thousand Years.12 Both of these scholars gathered data from a wide range of sources, more on the analogy of an archaeological survey than a site dig. Other recent studies exploring the story of a biblical book or text in its travels through time include many works on the book of Genesis—mostly on the creation narratives13 and the Noah story,14 but also on

11. John F. A. Sawyer, The Fifth Gospel: Isaiah in the History of Christianity (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996). 12. William L. Holladay, The Psalms through Three Thousand Years: Prayerbook of a Cloud of Witnesses (Oxford Bible Series; Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1993). For other major works on the history of interpretation of Psalms, see David M. Hay, Glory at the Right Hand: Psalm 110 in Early Christianity (Nashville: Abingdon, 1973); Uriel Simon, Four Approaches to the Book of Psalms: From Saadiah Gaon to Abraham Ibn Ezra (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1991); Nancy van Deusen, ed., The Place of the Psalms in the Intellectual Culture of the Middle Ages (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1999); Erich Zenger, Der Psalter in Judentum und Christentum (New York: Herder, 1998); Harold W. Attridge and Margot E. Fassler, eds., Psalms in Community: Jewish and Christian Textual, Liturgical, and Artistic Traditions (SBLSymS 25; Atlanta: Society of Biblical Literature, 2003). 13. Such as Elaine Pagels, Adam, Eve, and the Serpent (New York: Vintage Books, 1988); Jeremy Cohen, Be Fertile and Increase, Fill the Earth and Master It: The Ancient and Medieval Career of a Biblical Text (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 1989); Philip C. Almond, Adam and Eve in Seventeenth-Century Thought (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999); Kristen K. Kvam, Linda S. Schearing, and Valarie H. Ziegler, Eve and Adam: Jewish, Christian, and Muslim Readings on Genesis and Gender (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1999); Gerard P. Luttikhuizen, ed., The Creation of Man and Woman: Interpretations of the Biblical Narratives in Jewish and Christian Traditions (Themes in Biblical Narrative 3; Leiden: Brill, 2000); and Gary Anderson, The Genesis of Perfection: Adam and Eve in Jewish and Christian Imagination (Louisville: Westminster John Knox, 2001). 14. Such as Norman Cohn, Noah’s Flood: The Genesis Story in Western Thought (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1993); Florentino García Martínez and Gerard P. Luttikhuizen, eds., Interpretations of the Flood (Themes in Biblical Narrative 1; Leiden: Brill, 1998); Stephen Haynes, Noah’s Curse: The Biblical Justification of American Slavery (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002); and David M. Goldenberg, The Curse of Ham: Race and Slavery in Early Judaism, Christianity, and Islam (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2003).


other passages.15 Many of these works focus primarily on early Christian and Jewish exegesis, but some reflect another chapter in the history of reception or take a longitudinal approach. While Genesis seems to have been by far the most frequently investigated work up to this point, recent works have also appeared exploring aspects of the interpretation of Judges,16 Ruth,17 Kings,18 Esther,19 Psalms,20 Song of Songs,21 Jeremiah,22 Amos,23 and Jonah.24 Nor have New Testament scholars lagged behind in this enterprise. Histories of interpretation have been especially abundant for the Gospels or parts of them,25 although other sections of the New Testament have been studied as well.26

15. Such as J. T. A. G. M. van Ruiten, Primaeval History Interpreted: The Rewriting of Genesis 1–11 in the Book of Jubilees (Leiden: Brill, 2000); Jerome I. Gellman, Abraham! Abraham! Kierkegaard and the Hasidim on the Binding of Isaac (Aldershot, U.K.; Burlington, Vt.: Ashgate, 2003); J. A. Loader, A Tale of Two Cities: Sodom and Gomorrah in the Old Testament, Early Jewish and Early Christian Traditions (Kampen: Kok, 1990); Esther Marie Menn, Judah and Tamar (Genesis 38) in Ancient Jewish Exegesis: Studies in Literary Form and Hermeneutics (JSJSup 51; Leiden: Brill, 1997); Michael McGaha, ed., Coat of Many Cultures: The Story of Joseph in Spanish Literature, 1200–1492 (Philadelphia: Jewish Publication Society, 1997); and James Kugel, The Bible as It Was (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1997). 16. David Marcus, Jephthah and His Vow (Lubbock: Texas Tech Press, 1986). See also John Lee Thompson, Writing the Wrongs: Women of the Old Testament among Biblical Commentators from Philo through the Reformation (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2001), which investigates the history of interpretation of Jephthah’s daughter and the Levite’s concubine in Judges and Hagar in Genesis. 17. Lesley Smith, ed., Medieval Exegesis in Translation: Commentaries on the Book of Ruth (Kalamazoo, Mich.: Medieval Institute Publications, 1996). 18. David McLain Carr, From D to Q: A Study of Early Jewish Interpretations of Solomon’s Dream at Gibeon (SBLMS 44; Atlanta: Scholars Press, 1991). 19. Barry Dov Walfish, Esther in Medieval Garb: Jewish Interpretation of the Book of Esther in the Middle Ages (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1993). 20. See note 12. 21. E. Ann Matter, The Voice of My Beloved: The Song of Songs in Western Medieval Christianity (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1990); Ann W. Astell, The Song of Songs in the Middle Ages (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 1990); and Mark W. Elliott, The Song of Songs and Christology in the Early Church 381–451 (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2000). 22. Christine Ritter, Rachels Klage im Antiken Judentum und Frühen Christentum: Eine Auslegungsgeschichtliche Studie (AGJU 52; Leiden: Brill, 2002). 23. Sabine Nägele, Laubhütte Davids und Wolkensohn: Eine Auslegungsgeschichtliche Studie zu Amos 9,11 in der Jüdischen und Christlichen Exegese (AGJU 24; Leiden: Brill, 1995). 24. Uwe Steffen, Die Jona-Geschichte: Ihre Auslegung und Darstellung im Judentum, Christentum und Islam (Neukirchen-Vluyn: Neukirchener, 1994); and Yvonne Sherwood, A Biblical Text and Its Afterlives: The Survival of Jonah in Western Culture (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000). 25. See, for example, Sherman W. Gray, The Least of My Brothers: Matthew 25:31–46: A History of Interpretation (SBLDS 114; Atlanta: Scholars Press, 1989); Ulrich Luz, Matthew in History: Interpretation, Influence, and Effects (Minneapolis: Fortress, 1994); Robert W. Herron Jr., Mark’s Account of Peter’s


During the same time period, the production of dictionaries of biblical interpretation, commentaries, commentary series, and large multivolume works focusing on the history of interpretation of Scripture have both provided tools for beginning exploration and brought the matter of Scripture’s pilgrimage through time front and center in the eyes of many.27 Several works by historians, usually centering on the interpretation of Scripture in a specific time period or by a specific figure of religious history, have clarified the value for biblical scholars of seeking cross-disciplinary help in bringing Scripture’s history into focus. A turn toward the history of interpretation has also made itself felt in studies of innerbiblical exegesis, of the New Testament’s use of the Old, and in the study of versions (e.g., lxx and Targum).28

Denial of Jesus: A History of Its Interpretation (Lanham, Md.: University Press of America, 1991); Sean P. Kealy, Mark’s Gospel, a History of Its Interpretation: From the Beginning until 1979 (New York: Paulist, 1982); Andrew Gregory, The Reception of Luke and Acts in the Period before Irenaeus: Looking for Luke in the Second Century (WUNT 2/169; Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2003); Charles E. Hill, The Johannine Corpus in the Early Church (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004); Janeth Norfleete Day, The Woman at the Well: Interpretation of John 4:1–42 in Retrospect and Prospect (BibInt 61; Leiden: Brill, 2002). 26. See, e.g., Daniel Patte and Eugene TeSelle, eds., Engaging Augustine on Romans: Self, Context, and Theology in Interpretation (Harrisburg, Pa.: Trinity Press International, 2002); Robert Schlarb, Wir Sind mit Christus Begraben: Die Auslegung von Römer 6,1–11 im Frühchristentum bis Origenes (BGBE 31; Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 1990); Douglas W. Lumsden, And Then the End Will Come: Early Latin Christian Interpretations of the Opening of the Seven Seals (New York: Garland, 2001); Irena Dorota Backus, Reformation Readings of the Apocalypse: Geneva, Zurich, and Wittenberg (Oxford Studies in Historical Theology; Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000). 27. For dictionaries, see Donald McKim, ed., Historical Handbook of Major Biblical Interpreters (Downers Grove, Ill.: InterVarsity Press, 1998); Hayes, Dictionary of Biblical Interpretation; and R. J. Houlden and J. L. Coggins, eds., A Dictionary of Biblical Interpretation (London: SCM, 1990). For commentary series, see the Ancient Christian Commentary on Scripture series, edited by Thomas Oden, which now includes Steven A. McKinion, ed., Isaiah 1–39 (ACCSOT 10; Downers Grove, Ill.: InterVarsity Press, 2004); The Church’s Bible, edited by Robert Wilken (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans), which offers compilations and translations of early and medieval Christian commentaries on key biblical books; and the Blackwell Bible Commentary Series, edited by John Sawyer (Oxford: Blackwell), which emphasizes the use of the Bible in diverse settings, including literature, art, and music. For other commentaries not centered on the history of interpretation but seeking to include it in the discussion, see Brevard Childs, Exodus (OTL; Philadelphia: Westminster, 1974), and commentaries in the Smith & Helwys Bible Commentary series (Macon, Ga.: Smith & Helwys). For multivolume works, see not only the classic edited by P. R. Ackroyd and C. F. Evans, The Cambridge History of the Bible (3 vols.; Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1970), but also Henning Graf Reventlow, Epochen Der Bibelauslegung (4 vols.; Munich: Beck, 1990–2001); Magne Saebø, ed., Hebrew Bible/Old Testament: The History of Its Interpretation, vol. 1: From the Beginnings to the Middle Ages: part 1, Antiquity; part 2, The Middle Ages (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1996, 2000). 28. Foundational to this work is Michael Fishbane’s Biblical Interpretation in Ancient Israel (Oxford: Clarendon, 1985), which shows the earliest interpretations of Scripture to be embedded


Why the History of Interpretation? In traditional exegesis courses and commentary work, the history of interpretation seems at best to have been tacked on to the end of the more central work of ferreting out the context and contents of the text itself, quite apart from what others, especially in the distant past, have had to say about it. Indeed, the enterprise of higher criticism was largely aimed at shaking free from a long history of traditional interpretation. If we cannot and do not intend to return to premodern assumptions in our study of Scripture, why learn about premodern interpretation at all? Work that has already appeared in the history of biblical interpretation has begun to demonstrate what is to be gained by such study. While our predecessors in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries proceeded with the notion that texts were “containers into which a single, stable meaning has been poured … and which can be extracted by means of the appropriate method,” 29 the present generation of scholars have become much more aware of the gaps in cultural knowledge that render the recovery of a biblical author’s original intention problematic, as well as of the inevitable influence that later hermeneutical assumptions, including our own, exert on our understanding of the Bible. Increased sensitivity to literary theory has helped contemporary scholars understand that the openness of texts to meanings exceeding their authors’ own time-bound understandings is inherent in their nature and, some would argue, native to a skillful writer’s intention.30 While biblical scholarship has benefitted greatly from the historical, scientific, and theoretical discoveries of the past two

within the formation of Scripture itself. Works on innerbiblical exegesis beyond the interpretation of Isaiah are too numerous to name, as are the many, many studies of the New Testament’s interpretation of various portions of the Old Testament. We will note below major studies of this type that are specifically related to Isaiah. 29. Stephen E. Fowl, ed., The Theological Interpretation of Scripture (Blackwell Readings in Modern Theology; Cambridge: Blackwell, 1997), xvii. The words of Benjamin Jowett in his 1859 essay “On the Interpretation of Scripture” may stand in for those of many other nineteenth-century scholars who recognized in critical methodology a means to free interpretation from church dogma and yet were proven by subsequent history to be overly optimistic about the assured results of critical method: “Scripture has one meaning—the meaning which it had in the mind of the Prophet or Evangelist who first uttered or wrote, to the hearers or readers who first received it” (“On the Interpretation of Scripture,” in The Interpretation of Scripture and Other Essays by Benjamin Jowett [London: Routledge, 1907], 36). 30. Mikhail Bakhtin, The Dialogic Imagination (ed. M. Holquist; Austin: University of Texas Press, 1981), 419–22; Bakhtin, “Response to a Question from the Novyi Mir Editorial Staff,” in Speech Genres and Other Late Essays (ed. C. Emerson and M. Holquist; UTPSS 9; Austin: University of Texas Press, 1986), 1–9. For a helpful elucidation of this subject, see G. Morson and C. Emerson, Mikhail Bakhtin: Creation of a Prosaics (Stanford, Calif.: Stanford University Press, 1990), 284–90.


centuries, today’s interpreters are well positioned to appreciate anew the labor of exegetes from previous times. Reassessing Commentary of Earlier Eras

Exploring the history of biblical interpretation often leads to increased respect for the sensibilities, sensitivities, and capabilities of earlier commentators. For instance, as John Thompson has observed, modern commentators sometimes assume that contemporary readers are the first to be troubled by the stories of women such as Hagar, Jephthah’s daughter, and the Levite’s concubine.31 But his study showed that “Christian interpreters through the centuries have regularly wrestled with the texts of terror, sometimes writing volumes ‘between the lines’ of Scripture out of an apparent concern for the women in these stories. Indeed, many struggled with these texts in ways that seem to subordinate their patriarchal instincts to a far more existential concern with issues of justice, humanity, and women’s dignity.”32 In addition, study of the history of interpretation often offers a more balanced understanding of early scholars’ theological views. Many sensitive and important exegetical discussions did not make their way into the wider religious context because “theological systems tend to homogenize the details of exegesis, or simply omit them, in order to establish a consistent dogmatic front.”33 Since doctrinal works from premodern times continue to be read by theologians, while exegetical works, sometimes even from the same individuals, have been overlooked by biblical scholars, the complexity of premodern religious thought has often gone underreported. This is the case, for instance, in John Calvin’s wrestling with Old Testament texts such as Isaiah, as Amy Plantinga Pauw’s essay in this volume shows. His understanding of Scripture’s inspiration is challenged and complicated by tensions between his hermeneutical aim of “finding Christ” in each passage of Scripture and his honest historical assessment of Isaiah’s meaning. Although contemporary scholars do enjoy advantages over earlier interpreters that must not be taken for granted—the latest Bible software, climate-controlled comfort, even printed books themselves, which did not exist for most of the history of the Bible’s reception—our distant forebears also had distinct advantages over us. First, whereas recent developments have imposed ever-increasing specialization, so that biblical scholars tend to be out of practice and perhaps properly insecure when it comes to religious history or systematic theology, pre31. Gen 16:1–16; 21:9–21; Judg 11:29–40; Judg 19:1–3, respectively. 32. Thompson, Writing the Wrongs, 6. 33. Ibid.


modern interpreters had the advantage of nonspecialization, of being able to think more broadly about exegesis and theological or political issues together. Second, lacking electronic databases, earlier interpreters had to approach the Scriptures the old-fashioned way—by knowing them by heart. Steeped in a cultural assumption of Scripture’s divine unity, many premodern interpreters were far more inclined than we to notice correspondences of theme and expression across the canon, to do the kind of text-eminent work to which canonical and literary critics, intertextualists, and biblical theologians are now returning. Third, earlier interpreters stood historically and often, more importantly, sociologically closer to the original communities of Scripture. This is poignantly the case, for example, in the Jewish exegesis of Esther in the Middle Ages, which, as Barry Walfish has pointed out, is much more sensitive to the diplomacy with which a tyrant must be handled by members of minority groups than most citizens of the United States can imagine.34 Although the effect of cultural milieu on interpretation is often viewed negatively, Walfish presents it as a medium for seeing more of the text than might otherwise be seen. Recovering the Contours and Contexts of Earlier Exegesis

An occupational hazard for scholars sitting in splendid isolation with a beloved and much-pored-over text is to begin to assume that it is somehow ours alone, or at least that it belongs to us and the other living scholars who have written extensively on it, who inhabit our footnotes and rebuttals. But it is often the case that if we ourselves puzzle over a peculiarity in a verse, we are not the first to do so, and neither were our familiar forebears of the twentieth century. What we see may have already been worked over, with spectacular results, by Rashi, Jerome, or someone else we do not know. Further, studying the history of interpretation allows contemporary scholars more fully to appreciate our intellectual indebtedness to those who came before us. For example, Bishop Robert Lowth is well known as the eighteenth-century expounder of the idea of parallelism in Hebrew poetry. But the magnitude of his contribution can only be appreciated by recognizing the context into which his ideas were introduced, a context in which there was deep dispute over the best way to render biblical psalms into vernacular languages, as well as a widespread and long-standing assumption among both Christians and Jews that biblical prophets were not in any sense poets. It is ultimately because of his concentrated study of Isaiah in relation to biblical poetry that nearly all contemporary Bibles,

34. Walfish, Esther in Medieval Garb; see especially 157–82 on the relationship of Jews to the royal court.

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including the BHS, represent major sections of the prophetic books in poetic lines. As Stephen Prickett pointed out, it is to Lowth that “we owe the rediscovery of the Bible as a work of literature within the context of ancient Hebrew life.”35 It is equally instructive to explore the origins and contours of interpretations that prevailed in supporting injustices from which we still suffer. Though our individual copies of the Bible lie flat and apparently dormant on the desk before us, it helps to be reminded that the Bible has been the cause, warrant, and excuse for intense and even violent quarrels over the centuries. We do not come to such a text, in the words of Mikhail Bakhtin, “from the sidelines.” Every new attempt to interpret Scripture finds it already “overlain with qualifications, open to dispute, charged with value, already enveloped in an obscuring mist—or, on the contrary, by the ‘light’ of alien words that have already been spoken about it.”36 It may be difficult to imagine today, for instance, how the story of Noah and his son Ham could have been interpreted to justify both slavery and segregation. Yet the seeds of this reading, as Stephen Haynes has shown, were planted centuries before they bore fruit in the American context, and images and assumptions derived from this understanding continue to manifest themselves today.37 Conversely, it is easy to assume that relatively recent prejudices are more ancient and wide-ranging than they may in fact have been. For example, while Eusebius of Caesarea, like many other fourth-century patristic scholars, was sure that the Jews had gone astray in rejecting Jesus, his critique did not extend to a rejection of the priestly traditions of Second Temple Judaism. On the contrary, as Michael Hollerich has noted, Eusebius characterized this period as a time of “deep peace” and prosperity in Judaism and an authentic sign of God’s special favor toward Israel.38 Such an understanding has been maintained in Jewish scholarship all along but was lost to Christian perception for centuries, only to be regained in post-Holocaust reappraisals of Judaism. All of these reasons for more fully appreciating the work of earlier readers encourage in contemporary scholars a proper humility. Without clear understanding of the history of ideas, there is a great temptation to what C. S. Lewis once called “ ‘chronological snobbery,’ the uncritical acceptance of the intellec-

35. Stephen Prickett, Words and the Word: Language, Poetics, and Biblical Interpretation (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1986), 87. 36. Bakhtin, Dialogic Imagination, 276. 37. Haynes, Noah’s Curse, 23–61, 161–74. 38. Michael J. Hollerich, Eusebius of Caesarea’s Commentary on Isaiah: Christian Exegesis in the Age of Constantine (Oxford: Clarendon, 1999), 141–42.


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tual climate common to our own age and the assumption that whatever has gone out of date is on that account discredited.”39 Not all understandings pass away because they were actually refuted. If they merely became unfashionable, they may deserve renewed consideration. “From seeing this,” Lewis continues, “one passes to the realization that our own age is also ‘a period,’ and certainly has, like all periods, its own characteristic illusions. They are likeliest to lurk in those widespread assumptions which are so ingrained in the age that no one dares to attack or feels it necessary to defend them.”40 Knowing the history of biblical interpretation “challenges the ‘absoluteness’ of modern methods,” enlarging our critical horizons.41 Since it is so much easier to see the relationships between interpretation and culture elsewhere than among ourselves, becoming attentive to the impact of the times on what was conceivable in other milieus may make us more sensitive to the impact of cultural assumptions on our own exegesis. Reading works from different periods and perspectives may render unconscious assumptions visible or may bring to the surface questions about a passage that would not otherwise have emerged. Just as the history of interpretation may edify academic work, it also holds out promise for exegetes on behalf of synagogue and church. Premodern interpreters present themselves as potentially rich conversation partners in our ongoing theological quests. As Stephen Fowl observes, “throughout Christian history it has been the norm for Christians to read their Scripture theologically … to guide, correct, and edify their faith, worship, and practice…. Indeed, until relatively recently it would have been unusual to suggest that Scripture might be read for other purposes.”42 The pedagogical value of earlier commentary is similarly reflected in Jacob Neusner’s translation of rabbinic discourses on the readings for the ninth of Av.43 By showing how the sages took account of historical calamity and “transformed the crisis of faith precipitated by the encounter with evil into the occasion for renewal and regeneration nourished by Israel’s prophets in particular,” the discourses represent an important resource for responding to the Holocaust.44

39. C. S. Lewis, Surprised by Joy: The Shape of My Early Life (New York: Harcourt, Brace & World, 1955), 207, quoted in Herron, Mark’s Account of Peter’s Denial, 4. 40. Lewis, Surprised by Joy, 208. 41. Herron, Mark’s Account of Peter’s Denial, 5. 42. Fowl, Theological Interpretation of Scripture, xiii. 43. Jacob Neusner, Beyond Catastrophe: The Rabbis’ Reading of Isaiah’s Vision (South Florida Studies in the History of Judaism 131; Atlanta: Scholars Press, 1996). The ninth of Av is the day on which the destruction of the First and Second Temples, the expulsion of the Jews from Spain in 1492, and other calamities are remembered and mourned. 44. Ibid., v.

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The History of Biblical Interpretation as Uncertain Destination

A tempting shortcut through the vast and relatively uncharted area of interpretive history is, in Thompson’s words, “to pillage the past, to strip-mine the landscape for useful ore and discard the unfamiliar as so much slag.”45 Of course people of present times search the past for what it can teach for the present, but there is much in the past that is not immediately or easily intelligible. It will take patience to get to know past eras for their own sakes, in their own integrity, in order more fully to appreciate their bearing on the present. “What we need first,” according to church historian Karlfried Froehlich, “is a knowledge of the material regardless of its aimed usefulness, inroads into the vast maze the coherence of which we can only guess.”46 Similarly, Henri de Lubac warned against “explain[ing] all the syntheses of the past as a function of our present synthesis”: When one wants to give an account of the present, it is entirely legitimate, by a “regressive process,” to delve into the past in order to do research on the outlines and preparations for the present and to see how the present is anticipated in a more remote time. What is much less legitimate, if one wishes to know the past, is to be primarily interested in it only in order to detect elements in it that might bear some relationship to the present. In this way, a person is liable to reject everything that does not make an immediately useful contribution in terms of a response to the questions of the day…. This failure to appreciate the past on its own terms is a form of contempt that carries within itself the seeds of its own destruction.47

One of the first necessities is to begin patiently to recover a fuller picture of just what the resources in our heritage are. Beryl Smalley’s story is illustrative. When she set out in the 1920s to describe the study of the Bible in the Middle Ages, it seemed to her professors and colleagues that she was on a quest doomed to failure, since it was well known among historians that there was little creativity to be found in medieval biblical interpretation. To the contrary, Smalley discovered a very rich culture of inquiry embedded in the commentary tradition, including the then-forgotten but now much better known twelfth-century

45. Thompson, Writing the Wrongs, 11. 46. Karlfried Froehlich, “Church History and the Bible,” in Biblical Hermeneutics in Historical Perspective: Studies in Honor of Karlfried Froehlich on His Sixtieth Birthday (ed. M. Burrows and P. Rorem; Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1991), 11. 47. Henri de Lubac, The Four Senses of Scripture (vol. 1 of Medieval Exegesis; trans. M. Sebanc; Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1998), xviii (originally published as Exégèse Médiévale: Les Quatres Sens De L’écriture [Paris: Aubier, 1959]).


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student of the literal and historical sense of the Old Testament, Andrew of St. Victor. Smalley came to recognize him as the first Christian in Western Europe who “wanted to know what the authors of the Old Testament were saying to the Jews.” He was also the first Christian scholar in his age systematically and constructively to seek to learn from Jewish scholars, who themselves, thanks to the tradition following Rashi, had within the previous century become newly reacquainted with literal (or peshat) biblical exegesis.48 Calling Andrew a “second Jerome,”49 Smalley traced links from his literal exegetical tradition to Stephen Langton, Nicholas of Lyra, Thomas Aquinas, and John Wycliffe, whose hitherto unrecovered lectures on the entire Bible Smalley found among Oxford manuscripts. Smalley’s wealth of discovery proved to be the payoff of inquiry made without certain knowledge of her destination. Biblical scholars do indeed need to set off to learn for the sake of intellectual integrity and knowledge in themselves. Still, the gains to be had nevertheless prove worthwhile time and time again. Above all, studying the history of interpretation keeps us reminded of the hundreds of generations of readers who stand between us and the biblical text, who wrote, preached, prayed, painted, and composed music under its power. Reading someone else reading Isaiah reminds us of how very large the prophet’s reading community is and how lately we have come to the gathering. The History of Isaiah’s Interpretation in Recent Scholarship and in This Volume This volume is intended to introduce the discussion of Isaiah by a variety of commentators over the course of twenty centuries. Contributors represent a mix of biblical scholars and religious historians. The book unites established and younger scholars, Christians and Jews, and men and women in a common project. We asked each author to offer an overview of Isaiah’s interpretation in the particular temporal and social worlds in which he or she worked and to contribute a bibliography of relevant primary and secondary works. But we left it up to each writer to seek a particular question or theme he or she considered worth exploring within each context. The results were often surprising and always

48. R. W. Southern, “Beryl Smalley and the Place of the Bible in Medieval Studies, 1927–84,” in The Bible in the Medieval World: Essays in Memory of Beryl Smalley (ed. K. Walsh and D. Wood; Oxford: Blackwell, 1985), 9; Beryl Smalley, The Study of the Bible in the Middle Ages (2nd ed.; Oxford: Blackwell, 1952), 171. 49. Smalley, Study of the Bible, 185. It should be noted that William McKane (Selected Christian Hebraists [Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1989], 57) disputes this designation, seeing few signs of Andrew’s proficiency in Hebrew.

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instructive. We hope our volume will offer readers a taste of the careful exegetical work this one prophetic book has inspired in over two millennia of study. Ancient translations of the biblical books from Hebrew into Greek and other languages represent the earliest available evidence of extrabiblical interpretation of Isaiah. In scholarly study of the Greek Septuagint and other ancient versions, the focus of inquiry has shifted away from text-critical relationships to the Hebrew Vorlage and toward attention to these translations as biblical interpretations.50 David Baer’s study When We All Go Home: Translation and Theology in LXX Isaiah 56–66 illustrates this shift.51 Arguing on the grounds of both content and style, Baer concludes that chapters 56–66 of lxx Isaiah do not represent a systematic interpretation of the source text. Nonetheless, as a translation that differs from its source in tone and detail, “the Greek text has its own inner coherence that makes atomistic analysis of particular verses unfruitful.”52 Baer’s study in the present volume, “ ‘It’s All About Us!’ Nationalistic Exegesis in the Greek Isaiah (Chapters 1–12),” demonstrates some of the actualizing tendencies of the lxx translation. As he observes, readers of Isaiah in the translator’s day found in the book allusions to second-century b.c.e. Diaspora life, which the translation expanded and underscored. Baer also argues that the Septuagint translation reflects a nationalistic bent in the various ways in which it preserves a special status for Judah/Israel, nuances absolute judgments or softens violent ones, and foreshortens exile. Arie van der Kooij’s work is also representative of the trend to view the versions as sustained readings of the Hebrew text. In The Oracle of Tyre: The Septuagint of Isaiah XXIII as Version and Vision, van der Kooij demonstrates that the differences in the lxx of Isa 23 with respect to the Hebrew are not random but derive from a consistent technique and perspective.53 He writes, “The Greek text in its own right turns out to be a coherent text to a large extent, syntactically, stylistically and semantically. Significant renderings and passages appear to be related to each other. It points to a translator who aimed at producing a meaningful text.”54

50. See Arie van der Kooij, “Isaiah in the Septuagint,” in Writing and Reading the Scroll of Isaiah (ed. C. Broyles and C. Evans; VTSup 70/2; Leiden: Brill, 1997), 513–29. 51. David Baer, When We All Go Home: Translation and Theology in LXX Isaiah 56–66 (JSOTSup 318; Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press, 2001). Another work that takes into account the interpretive aspects of the lxx as a translation is Eugene Robert Ekblad Jr., Isaiah’s Servant Poems according to the Septuagint: An Exegetical and Theological Study (CBET 23; Leuven: Peeters, 1999). 52. Baer, When We All Go Home, 277. 53. Arie van der Kooij, The Oracle of Tyre: The Septuagint of Isaiah XXIII as Version and Vision (VTSup 71; Leiden: Brill, 1998). 54. Ibid., 87.


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The “meaningful text” produced by the translator, van der Kooij concludes, offers “a reapplication of ancient prophecy” by means of a “fulfilment-interpretation of the underlying prophetic text in Hebrew.”55 In the first part of his contribution to the present volume, “Interpretation of the Book of Isaiah in the Septuagint and in Other Ancient Versions,” van der Kooij illustrates the practice of acculturation in the lxx. He shows how the list of women’s clothing and accessories in Isa 3:18–23 has been understood and (re)formulated by the lxx translator as a list of dowry objects brought to a marriage, as reflected, for instance, in extant marriage contracts and related texts of the Hellenistic and Roman periods. In the second part of his essay van der Kooij compares how “the city” and “the cities” in Isa 24–27 are interpreted differently in the lxx, in the Aramaic Targum, and by Jerome. All, however, are actualizing interpretations, reading the ancient prophecies in reference to events in the recent past, present, or near future of the translators’ communities. George Brooke’s contribution, “On Isaiah at Qumran,” opens by recalling the excitement of scholars over the discovery of the Dead Sea Scrolls, quoting two pieces from the archive of William H. Brownlee’s papers: a personal letter to his fiancée recounting his first encounter with the scrolls in 1948; and a vivid description of the discovery of the Great Isaiah Scroll at the American School in Jerusalem. Brooke then reviews the shifting perspectives on the significance of the Great Isaiah Scroll (1QIsaa). The initial excitement over the variant readings found in this scroll quickly waned; the assessment that many of its variants were “demonstrably secondary” readings led to the view that the scroll simply witnessed to the antiquity and reliability of the Masoretic Text.56 However, given that more recent studies have dismissed those early judgments concerning purported sectarian readings in the scroll, Brooke concludes, a reconsideration of the scroll’s role in the discussion concerning Isaiah’s transmission in the late Second Temple period is in order. He writes, “It is becoming increasingly important for all the variants in the Qumran scriptural scrolls to be considered on an equal footing with other extant readings.”57 Brooke’s essay also discusses the significance of the scroll’s layout for our understanding of the transmission and interpretation of Isaiah and the differences in the kind of interpretive literature spawned by Isaiah and the Book of the Twelve, as compared to Jeremiah and Ezekiel. Finally, using Isa 40:3 as an example, he demonstrates how current reconsiderations of the history of the

55. Ibid., 107. 56. Jesper Høgenhaven, “The Isaiah Scroll and the Composition of the Book of Isaiah,” in Qumran between the Old and New Testaments (ed. F. Cryer and T. Thompson; JSOTSup 290; Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press, 1998), 152. 57. Brooke, “On Isaiah at Qumran,” 76 in this volume.

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Essene movement also give rise to new ways of understanding changes in Isaiah’s interpretation from one point in the history of the movement to another. The growing corpus of literature on the use of the Old Testament in the New has yielded a number of studies on Isaiah. In Heralds of Good News: Isaiah and Paul “in Concert” in the Letter to the Romans, J. Ross Wagner builds on the work of Dietrich-Alex Koch, Richard Hays, Christopher Stanley, and Timothy Lim.58 Wagner’s interests in the study are multiple but related. He first seeks to understand how Paul as an ancient reader approached Isaiah. This includes the question of the form or forms in which he encountered the book as well as the interpretive assumptions and techniques with which he read it. Second, Wagner asks how Paul’s understanding of the gospel and his calling as an apostle shaped his reading of Isaiah, as well as how Isaiah’s oracles helped form Paul’s conception of his message and mission. Finally, Wagner asks how the interplay of Scripture, theology, and mission come to expression in Paul’s argument in Romans and the extent to which attention to these questions enriches modern interpretation of the letter.59 In his contribution to the present volume, “Moses and Isaiah in Concert: Paul’s Reading of Isaiah and Deuteronomy in the Letter to the Romans,” Wagner builds on his earlier study, demonstrating how Paul conflates or juxtaposes passages from Isaiah with those from Deut 29–32 three times in Romans, thereby gaining the “interpretive leverage necessary to recontextualize and reinterpret” the Isaiah oracles as witnesses to Paul’s own mission and preaching of the gospel.60 By reading Deuteronomy and Isaiah in relation to each other, Paul is able to hear Moses and Isaiah as prophesying the divine hardening of part of Israel for the sake of the Gentiles, while at the same time testifying to God’s fidelity to Israel in the confidence that “all Israel” will ultimately attain salvation. Studies on the Gospel writers’ use of Isaiah have also advanced our appreciation of the reception of Isaiah. In Isaiah’s Christ in Matthew’s Gospel Richard Beaton argues that Matthew’s use of a “redactionally nuanced” quotation

58. J. Ross Wagner, Heralds of the Good News: Isaiah and Paul “in Concert” in the Letter to the Romans (NovTSup 51; Leiden: Brill, 2002); Dietrich-Alex Koch, Die Schrift als Zeuge des Evangeliums: Untersuchungen zur Verwendung und zum Verständnis der Schrift bei Pauls (BHT 69; Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 1986); Richard B. Hays, Echoes of Scripture in the Letters of Paul (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1989); Christopher D. Stanley, Paul and the Language of Scripture: Citation Technique in the Pauline Epistles and Contemporary Literature (SNTSMS 69; New York: Cambridge University Press, 1992); Timothy H. Lim, Holy Scripture in the Qumran Commentaries and Pauline Letters (New York: Oxford University Press, 1997). 59. Wagner, Heralds of the Good News, 2–3. 60. Wagner, “Moses and Isaiah in Concert,” 89.


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of Isa 42:1–4 is integral to Matthew’s portrayal of Jesus.61 Similarly, Rikki E. Watts argues that Isaiah’s new exodus is central to understanding Mark’s structure, Christology, and soteriology.62 In I Am He: The Interpretation of ‘anî hû’ in Jewish and Early Christian Literature, Catrin Williams studies the use of the expression “I am he” ()w%h-ynI)j) in biblical and later Jewish literature, in order to understand how its Greek counterpart, e)gw& ei)mi, functions in the Gospels of Mark and John.63 In her essay for this volume, “The Testimony of Isaiah and Johannine Christology,” Williams builds on this work, exploring the central role of Isaiah’s testimony in the christological reflection of the Gospel of John. She observes that, while John’s Gospel generally relies more on allusion than explicit quotation, the public ministry of Jesus is framed by an inclusio of explicit quotations from Isaiah, bringing to the surface “a sustained christological reflection on a series of related Isaian passages.”64 For the Fourth Gospel writer, the climax of “the way of the Lord” is the manifestation of God’s glory to all in Christ’s death and exaltation. The core of the Gospel’s testimony, set forth in John 1:14, Williams argues, is: “We have beheld his glory.” Because Isaiah saw Christ’s glory 61. Richard Beaton, Isaiah’s Christ in Matthew’s Gospel (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2002). Other studies of Matthew’s use of Isaiah include M. J. J. Menken, “The Source of the Quotation from Isaiah 53:4 in Matthew 8:17,” NovT 39 (1997): 313–27; Menken, “The Quotation from Isaiah 42,1–4 in Matthew 12,18–21: Its Text Form,” ETL 75 (1999): 32–52; W. J. C. Weren, “Quotations from Isaiah and Matthew’s Christology (Mt 1,23 and 4,15–16),” in Studies in the Book of Isaiah (ed. J. van Ruiten and M. Vervenne; BETL 132; Leuven: Leuven University Press; Peeters, 1997), 447–65; Weren, “The Use of Isaiah 5,1–7 in the Parable of the Tenants (Mark 12,1–12; Matthew 21,33–46),” Bib 79 (1978): 1–26; A. M. Leske, “Isaiah and Matthew: The Prophetic Influence in the First Gospel: A Report on Current Research,” in Jesus and the Suffering Servant: Isaiah 53 and Christian Origins (ed. W. Bellinger and W. Farmer; Harrisburg, Pa.: Trinity Press International, 1998), 152–69. 62. Rikki E. Watts, Isaiah’s New Exodus and Mark (WUNT 2/88; Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 1977). On Mark’s use of Isaiah, see also Richard Schneck, Isaiah in the Gospel of Mark I–VIII (Berkeley, Calif.: BIBAL, 1994); and Sharyn Dowd, “Reading Mark Reading Isaiah,” LTQ 30 (1995): 133–43. On the use of Isaiah in Luke-Acts, see J. Severino Croatto, “La elaboración lucana de la alegoria de la viña de Isaías 5,1–7 (Lucas 20,9–12),” RBB 64 (2002): 193–204; Frans Neirynck, “Q 6,20b–21; 7,22 and Isaiah 61,” in The Scriptures in the Gospels (ed. C. Tuckett; BETL 131; Leuven: Leuven University Press; Peeters, 1997), 27–64; Thomas S. Moore, “The Lucan Great Commission and the Isaianic Servant,” BSac 154 (1997): 47–60; Edna Brocke, “Die Hebräische Bibel im Neuen Testament: Fragen anhand von Lk 4,14–30” in Gottes Augapfel (ed. E. Brocke and J. Seim; Neukirchen-Vluyn: Neukirchener, 1986), 113–19; James A. Sanders, “Isaiah in Luke,” Int 36 (1982): 144–55; Christopher M. Tuckett, “Luke 4:16–30, Isaiah and Q,” in Logia: Les paroles de Jesus—The Sayings of Jesus (ed. J. Delobel; Leuven: Leuven University Press, 1982), 343–54; Paul B. DeCock, “The Understanding of Isaiah 53:7–8 in Acts 8:32–33,” in The Relationship between the Old and New Testament (ed. I. du Plessis; Bloemfontein: New Testament Society of South Africa, 1981), 111–33; and David Secombe, “Luke and Isaiah,” NTS 27 (1981): 252–59. 63. Catrin Williams, I Am He: The Interpretation of ‘anî hû’ in Jewish and Early Christian Literature (WUNT 2/113; Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2000). 64. Williams, “Testimony of Isaiah,” 122–23.

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beforehand, according to the Fourth Gospel, the prophet serves as a paradigm of a true witness to Jesus. Jan Fekkes’s study Isaiah and Prophetic Traditions in the Book of Revelation represents an important contribution to the understanding of Revelation’s use of the Old Testament.65 There he examines the self-conception of the author of Revelation and inventories the many allusions to Old Testament texts proposed by scholars, assessing their validity and, for those deemed valid, determining their purpose and significance. Fekkes’s essay in the present volume, “Isaiah and the Book of Revelation: John the Prophet as a Fourth Isaiah?” summarizes and draws conclusions from those findings as they pertain to Isaiah. He observes that, while John shares certain christological presuppositions found in other Christian literature, the variety of exegetical and literary devices he uses in Revelation are like those of his fellow Jewish exegetes. Fekkes offers a representative sample of Revelation’s use of Isaiah, arranged in thematic categories, paying attention both to its transformation of the prophetic material to which it alludes and to the role of the allusions in their new settings in Revelation. Although John does not call himself a prophet, it is clear to Fekkes that “he regarded himself … as part of a revelatory network with God’s prior messengers,” taking over where the prophets left off and what they left behind.66 The study of patristic literature has recently come to the fore in the history of Isaiah’s interpretation through book-length studies of individual or multiple patristic interpreters, as well as through translations of patristic commentary on Isaiah. In The Struggle to Understand Isaiah as Christian Scripture, Brevard Childs examines interpretations of Isaiah extending all the way from the Septuagint and New Testament to eighteenth-century interpretation. He focuses attention especially on patristic exegesis, however, including chapters on Justin Martyr, Irenaeus, and Clement of Alexandria in the second century; Origen in the third century; Eusebius of Caesarea, Jerome, and John Chrysostom in the fourth century; and Cyril of Alexandria and Theodoret of Cyrus in the fifth century.67 Steven A. McKinion’s volume on Isa 1–39 in the Ancient Christian Commentary on Scripture Series excerpts interpretive comments on particular passages of the first part of Isaiah from a wide variety of patristic writers. 68 A volume on patristic exegesis of Isaiah, prepared by Angela R. Christman, is expected to appear in 2006 in the series The Church’s Bible, edited by Robert Wilken.

65. Jan Fekkes III, Isaiah and Prophetic Traditions in the Book of Revelation: Visionary Antecedents and Their Development (JSNTSup 93; Sheffield: JSOT Press, 1994). 66. Fekkes, “Isaiah and Revelation,” 130. 67. Brevard Childs, The Struggle to Understand Isaiah as Christian Scripture (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2004). 68. McKinion, Isaiah 1–39.


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Two noteworthy book-length analyses of individual patristic interpreters of Isaiah are Michael J. Hollerich’s Eusebius of Caesarea’s Commentary on Isaiah: Christian Exegesis in the Age of Constantine, and J. David Cassel’s “Cyril of Alexandria and the Science of the Grammarians: A Study in the Setting, Purpose, and Emphasis of Cyril’s Commentary on Isaiah.”69 According to Hollerich, Eusebius’s commentary, written between 325 and 328 c.e., represents the oldest extant Christian commentary on Isaiah; it was until recently only known to scholars in partial form on the basis of medieval catenae. A complete copy was discovered in 1934 in the margins of a Florentine biblical codex but not published until 1975.70 Cassel’s work on Cyril explores the multiple influences that determine the shape of his Isaiah commentary.71 In his contribution to this volume, “Patristic Interpretation of Isaiah,” Cassel demonstrates how early Christian commentary was shaped, on the one hand, by the approach to reading texts developed by the classical Greco-Roman educational system and, on the other, by two underlying interpretive principles evident in the work of Cyril. Like his Christian peers, Cyril viewed the Old and New Testaments as one integrated text to be interpreted through the lens of “God’s self-revelation in Christ as described in the New Testament” and believed that texts from the Old Testament contained both a historical or literal meaning and a second, deeper level, the spiritual meaning. Cyril’s classical approach to texts is apparent primarily in his exposition of the historical or literal meaning of Isaiah. However, “The culmination of the classical grammarians’ structured approach to the text was the evaluation of the work as a whole.”72 It is at this stage that Cyril expounds on the spiritual meaning of Isaiah, finding in it “a rich theological treasure trove.”73 Rabbinic interpretation of Isaiah was likewise rich in the early period. Although both the source materials themselves and contemporary studies of them are still much more readily available in Hebrew than in English, more and more are appearing in translation. Early Jewish exegesis of Isaiah may especially be seen

69. J. David Cassel, “Cyril of Alexandria and the Science of the Grammarians: A Study in the Setting, Purpose, and Emphasis of Cyril’s Commentary on Isaiah” (Ph.D. diss., University of Virginia, 1992). 70. Hollerich, Eusebius of Caesarea’s Commentary on Isaiah, 15. The text of this commentary may be found in Der Jesajakommentar (ed. J. Ziegler; Eusebius Werke 9; GCS; Berlin: Akademie Verlag, 1975). 71. See also his essay “Cyril of Alexandria as Educator,” in In Dominico Eloquio/In Lordly Eloquence: Essays on Patristic Exegesis in Honor of Robert Louis Wilken (ed. P. Blowers et al.; Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2002), 348–68. 72. Cassel, “Patristic Interpretation of Isaiah,” 162. 73. Ibid., 168.

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in its translation in Targum Jonathan,74 in widespread use of Isaiah’s texts in apocryphal and pseudepigraphic literature,75 in references to Isaiah in Josephus’s Jewish War and Jewish Antiquities,76 and scattered throughout early rabbinic literature, including the Babylonian and Palestinian Talmuds.77 As Elsie Stern has shown, Isaiah’s Jewish interpretive tradition is also evident in the selections of Isaiah readings in the Haftaroth, the Pesikta de Rav Kahana (a collection of homiletical midrashic commentaries on lectionary texts, including Isaiah), and the piyyutim (liturgical poems based on the lectionary readings composed in Palestine beginning in the sixth century), especially the prayers of Eleazar b. Kallir.78 The genre of commentary by individual authors developed in eighth- and ninth-century Jewish interpretation. Medieval exegetes continued to respect the authority of ancient rabbis; however, they found themselves increasingly challenged both by the presence of Muslim scholarly interest in Arabic grammar and lexicography and by the rise of the Karaites, who denied the authority of the postscriptural tradition and found divine revelation only in the Bible itself and whose commentaries used grammar and syntax to challenge traditional interpretations. Soon rabbinic exegetes in Spain began to compose dictionaries and grammars and to focus on linguistic issues in their own commentaries.79

74. See the article by Arie van der Kooij in this volume, as well as Bruce Chilton, The Glory of Israel: The Theology and Provenience of the Isaiah Targum (JSOTSup 23; Sheffield: JSOT Press, 1983); idem, The Isaiah Targum: Introduction, Translation, Apparatus and Notes (ArBib 11; Wilmington, Del.: Glazier, 1987); and idem, “Two in One: Renderings of the Book of Isaiah in Targum Jonathan,” in Broyles and Evans, Writing and Reading the Scroll of Isaiah, 547–62. 75. See Michael A. Knibb, “Isaianic Traditions in the Apocrypha and Pseudepigrapha,” in Broyles and Evans, Writing and Reading the Scroll of Isaiah, 633–50. 76. See Louis H. Feldman, “Josephus’ Portrait of Isaiah,” in Broyles and Evans, Writing and Reading the Scroll of Isaiah, 583–608. 77. See Gary G. Porton, “Isaiah and the Kings: The Rabbis on the Prophet Isaiah,” in Broyles and Evans, Writing and Reading the Scroll of Isaiah, 693–716. 78. Elsie Stern, “Beyond Nahamu: Strategies of Consolation in the Jewish Lectionary Cycle for the Ninth of Av Season,” Society of Biblical Literature 1998 Seminar Papers (SBLSP 37; Atlanta: Scholars Press, 1998), 180–204. For excerpts from the Pesikta de Rav Kahana, see Neusner, Beyond Catastrophe. 79. For descriptions of this change in exegetical interest, see Michael A. Signer, “How the Bible Has Been Interpreted in Jewish Tradition,” NIB 1:70–73; and Edward L. Greenstein, “Medieval Bible Commentaries,” in Back to the Sources: Reading the Classic Jewish Texts (ed. B. Holtz; New York: Summit Books, 1984), 213–27. For more general descriptions of medieval exegesis, see the following articles in Jane D. McAuliffe et al., eds., With Reverence for the Word: Medieval Scriptural Exegesis in Judaism, Christianity, and Islam (New York: Oxford University Press, 2003): Barry D. Walfish, “An Introduction to Medieval Jewish Biblical Interpretation” (3–12); Michael A. Signer, “Restoring the Narrative: Jewish and Christian Exegesis in the Twelfth Century” (70–82); and Joseph W. Goering, “An Introduction to Medieval Christian Biblical Interpretation” (197–203).


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The revolution in medieval Jewish biblical commentary in northern France was presaged first by anonymous commentators in the first half of the eleventh century who created lists of French translations of difficult biblical words, and then by Menahem ben Helbo, who began writing systematic commentaries interpreting briefly the plain meaning of the passages.80 Rashi (Rabbi Shlomo ben Isaac, 1040–1105) developed his methods further, pioneering a movement advocating the literal (peshat) interpretation as an approach methodologically distinct from the derash interpretation that had previously reigned in Jewish interpretation and that had been paralleled in Christian interpretation by appeals to “allegorical, mystical, and anagogical” senses of Scripture.81 Rashi’s peshat interpretation began with issues of translation, grammar, and syntax and proceeded to the elaboration of selected midrashic texts that he found to be relevant both to literal exegesis and to the needs of his community. Although he concentrated on the Pentateuch, he completed commentaries on the entire Hebrew Bible that exerted inestimable influence on subsequent Jewish and Christian interpretation.82 Two other primary medieval rabbinic interpreters of Isaiah were Abraham ibn Ezra in Spain and David Kimchi (Radak) in southern France. Ibn Ezra is particularly well known for the frequent hints in his commentary on Isaiah that chapters 40–66 may have had a different author than the chapters that preceded them.83 David Kimchi also contributed greatly to the understanding of Hebrew grammar and philology. His commentaries on many biblical portions, including Isaiah, continued the tradition of offering peshat interpretation while also referring to midrashic traditions.84 In his article in this volume, “Structure and Composition in Isaiah 1–12: A Twelfth-Century Northern French Rabbinic Perspective,” Robert A. Harris highlights the commentaries of two exegetes, Rabbi Joseph Kara and Rabbi Eliezer of Beaugency, zeroing in on their discussions of structural and composi-

80. Avraham Grossman, “The School of Literal Jewish Exegesis in Northern France,” in Saebø, Hebrew Bible/Old Testament 1.2:323, 331. 81. See Eugene H. Merrill, “Rashi, Nicholas de Lyra, and Christian Exegesis,” WTJ 38 (1975): 66–79. 82. J. Maarsen, ed., The Commentary of Rashi on the Twelve Prophets, Isaiah, and the Psalms, vol. 2 (Amsterdam: Hertsberger, 1930). 83. Abraham ibn Ezra, The Commentary of Ibn Ezra on Isaiah (New York: Feldheim, 1948; repr. from edition by M. Friedländer, London, 1873). For a discussion of Ibn Ezra’s reasons for positing a sixth-century anonymous author for the latter prophecies, see Uriel Simon, “Ibn Ezra between Medievalism and Modernism: The Case of Isaiah 40–66,” in Congress Volume: Salamanca, 1983 (VTSup 36; Leiden: Brill, 1985), 257–71. 84. Louis Finkelstein, ed., The Commentary of David Kimhi on Isaiah (New York: AMS Press, 1966).

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tional features of Isa 1–12.85 In the tradition of Rashi, these and other medieval commentators concentrated their efforts on contextual exegesis, drawing the meaning of a scriptural passage from its own context rather than from the midrashic explanations of tradition. The resistance to traditional authority and concentration on attentive readings of Scripture exemplified by Joseph Kara and Eliezer were echoed in both Jewish and Christian circles in the Middle Ages, especially in what became the Protestant Christian movement. Harris presents two issues pondered by Kara and Eliezer that modern scholars continue to explore today: (1) whether chapter 6 is to be understood as Isaiah’s inaugural call, and therefore out of sequence chronologically with chapters 1–5, or whether it represents a later stage in his prophetic career; and (2) how the literary aspects of Isaiah’s written composition contribute to its persuasive force. Complementing Harris’s study of early medieval exegetes, Alan Cooper (“The Suffering Servant and Job: A View from the Sixteenth Century”) turns to a later interpreter of Isaiah, examining the treatment of the Suffering Servant in Isa 53 by the Salonikan commentator Rabbi Eliezer Ashkenazi. Like his predecessors, Ashkenazi asserted himself over against tradition, but in an even more profound way, finding arguments for disengaging Scripture’s meaning from the question of its literal facticity. More central to Cooper’s discussion of him, however, are his exploration of the close correlation of the Suffering Servant with the character of Job and his homiletical insight that Job’s story offers concrete consolation for suffering Jews who await justice in the messianic age. These observations and insights have found parallels, Cooper points out, in contemporary scholarship and liberation theology. Changes in Christian biblical scholarship in the Middle Ages paralleled and were often guided by developments in Jewish scholarship. Scholars at the Abbey of St. Victor in Paris stand out in this regard. In his commentaries on most of the books of the Bible, including Isaiah, Andrew of St. Victor (d. 1175) concentrated on Scripture’s literal interpretation—which was for him, functionally, what the Jews said it meant.86 He consulted extensively with contemporary French Jewish scholars working in the tradition of Rashi. Andrew’s attention to the historical dimensions of the Old Testament came to be valued increasingly

85. This study follows up on his dissertation, “The Literary Hermeneutic of Rabbi Eliezer of Beaugency” (Ph.D. diss., Jewish Theological Seminary, 1997). 86. No critical edition of Andrew’s commentary on Isaiah is yet available. For discussion of the Victorines and Andrew of St. Victor, see especially Smalley, Study of the Bible, 83–195; Michael A. Signer, “Peshat, Sensus Litteralis, and Sequential Narrative: Jewish Exegesis and the School of St. Victor in the Twelfth Century,” in The Frank Talmage Memorial Volume (ed. B. Walfish; Haifa: Haifa University Press, 1993), 203–16; and McKane, Selected Christian Hebraists, 42–75.


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among medieval Christian scholars, including Stephen Langton, Hugh of St. Cher, Roger Bacon, and Nicholas of Lyra. Although the attention paid by Andrew and other Victorines to the historical and literal in scriptural interpretation opened an important door for Christian biblical scholarship, understanding of what was meant by the “literal sense of Scripture” was a profoundly difficult question that could be answered in several different ways—and in fact was. For Thomas Aquinas (ca. 1225–1274), who wrote expositions on Isaiah (most fully on chs. 1–11) as well as several other books of the Old Testament and New Testament, the literal sense of Scripture was the only one from which doctrine should derive.87 Yet for him the literal sense, being what the divine author of Scripture intended, could and did embrace figurative and metaphorical use of language and even Old Testament typological witness to Christ and the church. Nicholas of Lyra (ca. 1270–1349), unlike Andrew, knew Hebrew well, was able to read Rashi, and depended upon him so thoroughly that, according to Johannes Reuchlin, little would remain in his commentaries if Rashi were excised.88 At the same time, he studied Isaiah “to recover the mystery of Christ, his humiliation, and exaltation.”89 Armed with knowledge of Rashi’s exegesis, Nicholas set out to defend christological interpretation over against Jewish understandings of Isaiah. Throughout the Middle Ages and continuing with the Reformers, a tension can be seen between the desire to do justice to the Old Testament’s grammatical and historical meaning and the need to demonstrate its theological place

87. Thomas Aquinas, In Isaiam Prophetam Expositio, Opera Omnia, vols. 18–19 (Paris: Louis Vivès, 1876). In addition to Childs’s exposition of Thomas Aquinas in Struggle to Understand Isaiah, 148–66, see James S. Preus, From Shadow to Promise: Old Testament Interpretation from Augustine to the Young Luther (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1969), 46–60; Denise Bouthillier and Jean-Pierre Torall, “Quand Saint Thomas méditat sur le prophète Isaïe,” Revue Thomaste 90 (1990): 5–47; Denise Bouthillier, “Le Christ en son mystère dans les Collationes du Super Isaiam de Saint Thomas D’aquin,” in Ordo sapientiae et amoris: Image et message de saint Thomas d’Aquin à travers les récentes études historiques, herméneutique et doctrinales (ed. C. Oliveira; Fribourg: Universitätsverlag, 1993), 37–64; and Terence McGuckin, “Saint Thomas Aquinas and Theological Exegesis of Sacred Scripture,” LS 16 (1991): 99–120. 88. Erwin I. J. Rosenthal, “Rashi and the English Bible,” BJRL 24 (1940): 4, cited in Merrill, “Rashi, Nicholas de Lyra, and Christian Exegesis,” 71. Nicholas’s most important work is a commentary on the Old and New Testaments entitled Postilla litteralis super totam Bibliam. For further information on Nicholas of Lyra, see Merrill’s article, as well as Childs, Struggle to Understand Isaiah, 167–80; Karlfried Froehlich, “Nicholas of Lyra (c. 1270–1349),” in Hayes, Dictionary of Biblical Interpretation, 2:206–8; Philip D. W. Krey and Lesley Smith, Nicholas of Lyra: The Senses of Scripture (Studies in the History of Christian Thought 90; Leiden: Brill, 2000); and Preus, From Shadow to Promise, 61–71. 89. Childs, Struggle to Understand Isaiah, 173.

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in the Christian canon. One of these values would tend to be maintained at the expense of the other.90 The conflicts that resulted between understandings of Isaiah that were historically oriented and those that were fundamentally christological created interpretive debates among Christians as well as between Christians and Jews. When on the one hand the events of the prophet’s own day could be viewed as typologically meaningful, and yet on the other hand the “literal” meaning of any given prophecy could be stretched beyond the prophet’s own intention to point to the New Testament, a wide range of interpretations of each passage of Isaiah could hold claims to validity in Christian circles. Whether any particular passage should give rise to a historical, typologically relevant meaning or a traditionally christological meaning depended on the hermeneutical assumptions of the interpreter. Several sixteenth-century Reformers wrote on Isaiah, including not only Martin Luther and John Calvin but also Johannes Brenz, Ulrich Zwingli, Conrad Pellican, Wolfgang Musculus, and Heinrich Bullinger.91 Luther’s comments on Isaiah consist primarily of lectures given in 1527–30.92 His work was traditional in the sense that he agreed with earlier Christians in reading much of Isaiah christologically. At the same time, Luther tended to turn away from the practice of identifying multiple senses. Rather, he saw Isaiah’s prophecies as moving back and forth between discussion of the immediate world of earthly rulers and the anticipation of Christ’s future coming, which for Luther was the central subject of Isaiah and indeed of the whole Old Testament. He reconciled the “letter” and “spirit” of the biblical text by understanding Old Testament prophets as speaking literally, historically, in faith, about the future coming of Christ he viewed as promised by God.93

90. Preus, From Shadow to Promise, 3. 91. R. A. Muller, “Biblical Interpretation in the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries,” in McKim, Historical Handbook of Major Biblical Interpreters, 131–34. 92. For these, see Martin Luther, Lectures on Isaiah, Chapters 1–39 (ed. J. Pelikan and H. Oswald; trans. H. Bouman; Luther’s Works 16; St. Louis: Concordia, 1969) and Lectures on Isaiah, Chapters 40–66 (ed. H. Oswald; trans. H. Bouman; Luther’s Works 17; St. Louis: Concordia, 1972). This work is a translation from the series Martin Luthers Werke: Kritische Gesamtausgabe (Weimarer Ausgabe; Weimar: Bohlau, 1883–). 93. See Childs, Struggle to Understand Isaiah, 181–204, for a detailed description of Luther’s hermeneutics, methods, and theological assumptions as portrayed in his interpretation of Isaiah. For a critical examination of Luther’s prophetic interpretation of the Psalms, see Preus, From Shadow to Promise, 153–271. See also Jesse B. Renninger, “A Study of Selected Isaianic Passages in the Wormser Propheten Übersetzung of 1527 and Luther’s Isaiah of 1528,” in Light unto My Path: Old Testament Studies in Honor of Jacob M. Myers (ed. H. Bream et al.; Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1974), 409–20.


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As the Protestant Reformation movement drew a variety of followers and began to splinter into opposing groups, different approaches to the exegesis of Isaiah emerged. In her contribution to this volume, “ ‘Becoming a Part of Israel’: John Calvin’s Exegesis of Isaiah,” Amy Plantinga Pauw explores the interpretation of Isaiah during this period with a focus on John Calvin. Like some of his medieval predecessors, Calvin read Hebrew and showed familiarity with rabbinic exegesis. His approach was distinguished by a suspicion of allegorical interpretation and an emphasis on the “historical sense.” However, the range of theological and hermeneutical strategies Calvin employed demonstrates his broader Christian concerns for reading the Old and New Testament Scriptures as a single witness. Pauw’s essay carefully examines the hermeneutical practices in Calvin’s Isaiah commentary and in his sermons on Isaiah in relation to those of other exegetes of his time, that is, other Protestant Reformers, Catholics, Anabaptists, and Jews. Biblical interpretation after the sixteenth century experienced a transformation in thinking about history that has been well documented in discussions of the precursors of historical-critical exegesis. Important figures in relation to Isaiah from the seventeeth century are Hugo Grotius (Annotations in Vetus Testamentum) and his younger contemporary Johannes Cocceius (Curae majores in prophetiam Esaiae), both controversial interpreters in contrasting ways. As summed up late in the seventeenth century by Richard Simon, “Cocceius found Christ everywhere in Scripture, while Grotius found Him practically nowhere.”94 Such contrasting approaches have obvious repercussions especially for understandings of Isaiah. In the early eighteenth century, Cocceius’s student Campegius Vitringa (Commentarius in librum prophetiarum Jesajae) presented his exegesis of Isaiah as a via media between the methods of Grotius and Cocceius, pursuing the literal sense of the words and attempting to reconstruct the historical fulfillment of Isaiah’s prophecies in the prophet’s near rather than distant future. Bishop Robert Lowth’s translation of Isaiah in 1778 is the focus of Gary Stansell’s contribution to this volume. In “The Poet’s Prophet: Bishop Robert

94. Richard Simon, Histoire critique des principaux commentateurs du Noveau Testament (1693), 764, quoted in Ernestine van der Wall, “Between Grotius and Cocceius: The ‘Theologia Prophetica’ of Campegius Vitringa (1659–1722),” in Hugo Grotius, Theologian: Essays in Honour of G. H. M. Posthumus Meyjes (ed. H. Nellen and E. Rabbie; Studies in the History of Christian Thought 55; Leiden: Brill, 1994), 199. For discussions of both of these as well as Abraham Calov and Campegius Vitringa, see also Childs, Struggle to Understand Isaiah, 230–50; and Childs, “Hermeneutical Reflections on C. Vitringa, Eighteenth-Century Interpreter of Isaiah,” in In Search of True Wisdom: Essays in Old Testament Interpretation in Honour of Ronald E. Clements (ed. E. Ball; JSOTSup 300; Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press, 1999), 89–98.

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Lowth’s Eighteenth-Century Commentary on Isaiah,” Stansell reintroduces Lowth’s two important works, Lectures on the Sacred Poetry of the Hebrews and Isaiah: A New Translation; with a Preliminary Dissertation, and Notes, Critical, Philological, and Explanatory. Today Lowth is primarily known among biblical scholars for recognizing “parallelism of members” as a prevailing characteristic of Hebrew poetry. What has been forgotten until recently is that in elucidating numerous examples of parallelism not only from the Psalms but from the classical prophets (primarily Isaiah), Lowth overturned the idea that had prevailed for over a millenium among both Jews and Christians, that poetry and prophecy were mutually exclusive genres. Lowth’s presentation of the prophet as poet, and his later translation of Isaiah as prophetic poetry, not only revolutionized the visual presentation of Isaiah and other prophetic books in subsequent biblical translations (and even in the BHK and BHS ) but also ignited interest in “poets as prophets” among British romantic poets and deeply influenced German interpretation of Isaiah, beginning with Koppe and Gesenius and extending to Duhm and Gunkel. Since rehearsals of the history of modern critical study of Isaiah are numerous and easily accessible elsewhere, each of the final three chapters of this volume traces only one particular, though important, strand of the discussion. Respectively, these are the source-critical theories leading to Duhm’s notion of three Isaiahs, the form-critical innovations that reclaimed literary continuities in the book, and finally, at the end of the twentieth century, the variety of critical studies organized around the question of coherence in Isaiah’s final form. Bernhard Duhm’s 1892 commentary Das Buch Jesaia was as foundational to twentieth-century Isaiah studies as Wellhausen’s Prolegomena was to modern understanding of the Pentateuch. Yet like Wellhausen’s, Duhm’s theories were deeply embedded in debate about sources and redaction that reached back more than a century before him. Marvin Sweeney’s essay, “On the Road to Duhm: Isaiah in Nineteenth-Century Critical Scholarship,” traces this discussion, first as it is foreshadowed in the Babylonian Talmud and the work of Ibn Ezra and then as it took shape in the writings of Eichhorn, Gesenius, Hitzig, Ewald, and Dillmann. Sweeney works through the details of these various commentators’ discussions to show that nearly all of Duhm’s contributions that have enjoyed lasting favor were anticipated by one predecessor after another. In “Form Criticism, Rhetorical Criticism, and Beyond,” Roy Melugin begins where Sweeney leaves off, tracing form-critical study of Isaiah through several twentieth-century scholars, beginning with Hugo Gressmann’s 1914 article on Second Isaiah. Early work in this field was accomplished primarily in Germany, by Köhler, Begrich, and von Waldow. The terms of the discussion shifted substantially when it was introduced in the United States through James Muilenburg’s 1956 commentary on Second Isaiah. Melugin examines the influ-


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ence of Muilenburg’s attention to rhetorical form on subsequent interpretation through the work of two more recent critics, Claus Westermann and Melugin himself, and shows how these discussions led into the end-of-the-century explorations of the “unity” of Isaiah, an appropriate, if somewhat ironic, conclusion to two centuries of study of the book’s disunifying features. The concluding essay, Patricia K. Tull’s “One Book, Many Voices: Conceiving of Isaiah’s Polyphonic Message,” brings the volume to the end of the twentieth century by exploring the question in recent critical scholarship of the nature of the unity, or coherence, of the historically and editorially diverse book of Isaiah. Scholars joining this conversation brought questions both diachronic and synchronic, both redactional and theological. While the conversation remains unfinished, its concern to account for Isaiah as one integrated book has brought the discussion full circle from the exploration of Isaiah’s multiple authorship that began over two hundred years ago. In this work we aim to offer readers an appreciation for the varied readings of Isaiah across more than twenty centuries. It is our hope that in examining exemplary interpretations in some detail we are not only answering Karlfried Froehlich’s call for “inroads into the vast maze” but encouraging others to continue mapping the enormous territory of Isaiah’s interpretive history.

“It’s All about Us!” Nationalistic Exegesis in the Greek Isaiah (Chapters 1–12) David A. Baer

The search for insight from the Bible for one’s own predicament is as old as biblical interpretation itself.1 At the earliest edges of the written evidence, the Qumran covenanters practiced “charismatic midrash”2 upon biblical texts. They frequently discovered their own community, predicted and instructed, in their biblical scrolls. During roughly the same period, various of the Septuagint translators also sought wisdom for their day in the texts they made available to their Greek-speaking coreligionists. From the first days of biblical interpretation, reception meant interpretation.3 The translator of lxx Isaiah is no exception. This translation reflects a nationalistic bent, finding a surprising number of references in the Hebrew text to second-century Diaspora life that are expanded and underscored in the lxx rendering. At times, such references describe Israel’s future in a general way. At others, there is a remarkably particular application of texts to the Diaspora reality of the translator’s community.4 Such “nationalistic” exegesis assumes that

1. A preliminary version of this paper, presented at the 2001 meeting of the Society of Biblical Literature Formation of the Book of Isaiah Group, appears in Society of Biblical Literature 2001 Seminar Papers (SBLSP 40; Atlanta: Society of Biblical Literature, 2001), 197–219. 2. See the second edition of Richard N. Longenecker, Biblical Exegesis in the Apostolic Period (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1999), esp. 30. 3. This was the case even during the texts’ formation; see Michael Fishbane, Biblical Interpretation in Ancient Israel (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1985). 4. This feature has been widely discussed. See especially I. L. Seeligmann, The LXX Version of Isaiah (Leiden: Brill, 1948). Arie van der Kooij has written extensively on the topic. See, representatively, Die Alten Textzeugen des Jesajabuches (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1981), 33–60 (“Aktualisierende Interpretation”); “The Old Greek of Isaiah 19:16–25,” in Sixth Congress of the International Organization for Septuagint and Cognate Studies, Jerusalem, 1986 (ed. C. E. Cox; SBLSCS 23; Atlanta: Scholars Press, 1987), 127–66; “ ‘The Servant of the Lord’: A Particular Group of Jews in Egypt according to the Old Greek of Isaiah: Some Comments on LXX

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Jews and their destiny are privileged over Gentiles and theirs. The net effect is to tilt the “nationalist/universalist balance”5 of the text in favor of particularism. Scholars have usually identified such translational habits in lxx Isaiah by focusing upon the more obvious exegetical maneuvers. In contrast, this essay discusses several less evident moves in Isa 1–12 that have been largely ignored in studies of the early Jewish interpretation of Isaiah. These examples corroborate the general outlines sketched elsewhere. This is not to imply that the Isaiah translator felt at liberty to rewrite the Hebrew text. The translation has often and unsatisfactorily been described as “free.” Such a description adequately sums up the actualizing tendencies but fails to say anything about its relatively stubborn adhesion to the Hebrew text. 6 Its conservative method means that such exegesis will usually—but hardly always— leave only subtle traces. Because of this subtlety, some plausible examples of nationalistic exegesis might not stand indisputably on their own. Thus, it is necessary to proceed with caution and give greater weight to the more obvious data. A Special Status for Israel/Judah Some passages in the Greek Isaiah appear intended to preserve a special status for Israel/Judah and its descendants. At 1:9, the Hebrew text expresses just how close the people had come to irrecoverable catastrophe: If the Lord of hosts had not left us a few survivors, we would have been like Sodom, and become like Gomorrah. (nrsv)

wnl rytwh tw)bc hwhy ylwl +(mk dyr# wnyyh Mdsk wnymd hrm(l

It is at the word +(mk that the lxx parts company with the mt. +(mk could go adjectivally with dyr# (thus, “a small band of escapees”; so mt accenIsa 49,1–6 and Related Passages,” in Studies in the Book of Isaiah (ed. J. van Ruiten and M. Vervenne; Leuven: Leuven University Press; Peeters, 1997), 383–96; and “Isaiah in the Septuagint,” in Writing and Reading the Scroll of Isaiah: Studies of an Interpretive Tradition (ed. C. C. Broyles and C. A. Evans; Leiden: Brill, 1997), 2:513–29. See also chapters 6 and 7 of David A. Baer, When We All Go Home: Translation and Theology in LXX Isaiah 56–66 (Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press, 2001), 199–276. 5. H. G. M. Williamson, Variations on a Theme: King, Messiah and Servant in the Book of Isaiah (Carlisle: Paternoster, 1998), 171. Since Jewish prospects were usually understood to be wrapped up with those of Jerusalem, a focus upon Zion/Jerusalem and the cultic functions carried out in that city is included in our analysis. 6. I here make the assumption, defended elsewhere, that the Vorlage was very similar to the consonantal component of mt. The lxx seldom strays from it, though it may reconfigure its elements.

baer: “it’s all about us!”

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tuation) or adverbially with wnyyh Mdsk (“we would have come very close to being like Sodom”). On the one hand, a verse like Ps 94:17 states the case for an adverbial reading: If the Lord had not been my help, my soul would soon have lived in silence.

yl htrz( hwhy ylwl y#pn hmwd hnk# +(mk

The psalmist’s life has been kept from dwelling in silence; +(mk (“would soon have”; lxx para__ braxu__, “would almost have”) seems to emphasize just how closely a more tragic outcome had been avoided. On the other hand, some rabbinical discussion—Rashi, for example—appears to support mt’s adjectival reading. David Kimchi helpfully observes that “to be like Sodom” would mean to have no dyr# whatsoever, whereas in the case at hand Judah and Benjamin—just barely—were left with a dyr#. For its part, lxx fails to translate +(mk entirely: And if the Lord of Sabaoth had not left us a seed, we should have been as Sodom, and we should have been made like Gomorrah.

kai\ ei0 mh\ ku/rioj sabawq e0gkate/lipen h9mi=n spe/rma w9j Sodoma a@n e0genh/qhmen kai\ w0j Gomorra a@n w9moiw/qhmen

This is a silence worth listening to, for the number of what I call “discrete lxx minuses” in the Greek Isaiah is small. Perhaps the translator had an exegetical motive for this silence. Assuming that +(mk did in fact stand in the Vorlage, one can imagine three reasons for the lack of a specific equivalent in lxx: (1) the translator overlooked it; this option must overcome probabilities afforded by the fact that, of eighteen occurrences of +(mk, lxx fails to translate the expression only here and once in Ezra; (2) the translator considered that +(mk dyr# was properly glossed by spe/rma (“seed”), presumably because a spe/rma is by definition a little thing; (3) the translator did not consider the remnant that God had left to be a small thing and so purposely left +(mk untranslated. I would like to dwell for a moment on this last explanation in the broader context of exile and restoration. The Hebrew text of Isa 49:6 says of the Servant of the Lord, a protagonist whom the Greek Isaiah rather consistently glosses in communitarian terms, “It is too light a thing that you should be my servant to raise up the tribes of Jacob and to restore the survivors of Israel.” This, of course, is the prelude to the Servant’s more universalistic commission as a light to the nations. In that verse, the Septuagint translator unreservedly executes a converse reading: Me/ga soi/ e0stin—“It is a great thing for you to be called my servant to establish the tribes of Jacob and to bring back the Diaspora of Israel.” It is likely

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that the following sentence, which explains the Servant’s function as a light to the nations for the purpose of becoming “salvation to the end of the earth,” refers—for the translator—to his role in bringing Diaspora Jews back from such distant places. Similarly, nationalistic dynamics are evident in the striking reversal at 54:6. The assertion of the Hebrew text of 54:6—“For the Lord has called you (Israel) like a wife forsaken and grieved in spirit”—is flatly denied in the lxx by provision of a negative particle: ou)x w(j gunai=ka kataleleimme/nhn kai\ o0ligo/yuxon ke/klhke/ se o( ku&rioj (“Not as a woman who has been abandoned nor [as] a fainthearted [woman] has the Lord called you”).7 This is explained by the imagery of Israel’s temporary abandonment by the Lord in 54:7: “For a brief moment I abandoned you, but with great compassion I will gather you.” When one attempts to explain the oddly missing +(mk at 1:9 in the light of these and a large number of other nationalistic readings, the missing +(mk seems to be no accident. +(mk may have no equivalent in the lxx precisely because our exegete cum translator actualized the text in the light of a very considerable Jewish community in Palestine and the Diaspora, which was, for the translator, no small thing. There may be some corroboration of an early exegetical tendency in that direction in Targum Jonathan. The Targum affirms that the Lord has “left us a remnant in his mercy.”8 It may be worth observing that the meturgeman uses the same word for mercy to describe God’s dealings with his remnant both here at 1:9 and in the more confident expression at 54:7. It is interesting that the space occupied in mt by what is most likely a diminutive adjective (“a few survivors”), and which in lxx appears to be absent altogether, is occupied in Targum Jonathan by an adverbial reference to the Lord’s mercies that does nothing to qualify the resulting remnant as small or unimportant. Nuancing Absolute Judgments Isaiah 1

At times the translator appears to rescue a place for pious Judeans out of judgmental rhetoric which in the Hebrew text is absolute. This is especially evi-

7. The negative conversion continues into the following clause, where waw is glossed by ou)d'. In 54:7, the Lord does concede that he abandoned Israel (Kytbz( = kate/lipo&n se); however, the fact that this was only for “a brief moment” apparently is taken to mean that it was not real abandonment. 8. yhwmxrb )bzy# )nl r)#).


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dent in chapter 1, which paints with a broad brush a portrait of a people and city that have become fully corrupt and totally depraved. Targum Jonathan’s paraphrase of 1:25 stands at some remove from the Hebrew text: “and I will bring again the stroke of my might upon thee, and will purge away all your ungodly (K(y#r; mt Kygys, “your dross”), as one cleanseth with lye, and will remove all your guilty ones (Kbyyx; mt Kylydb-lk, “all your alloy”).” Bruce Chilton detects a note of hope that Targum Jonathan has read into this passage for people who have not become “ungodly” or “guilty.” He observes, “The separation of the wicked (v. 25) [envisioned in the Targum] is in the interests of ‘the ones who have performed the law’: they will return (v. 27), while those who ‘have forsaken the law’ to serve ‘idols’ (vv. 28, 29) are to face the worst.”9 This kind of distinguishing exegesis converges with the interpretive rendering in the Greek Isaiah. In the Septuagint, the villains who correspond to the mt’s metaphorical Kylydb-lk (“all your alloy”) are precisely pa&ntaj a)no&mouj (“all the lawbreakers”)—now over against those who presumably have remained righteous. Both versions appear to take advantage of the identification of certain guilty parties in Isa 1:22–24 to blunt the force of what had been a blanket denunciation of the entire people in 1:25. Unauthorized by any specific details of 1:25, they envisage a kind of refiner’s fire that is indeed purifying rather than merely destructive. However, not only does it purify the people over time; more precisely, it now purifies the people by separating out the lawbreakers. The original Hebrew imagery appears unlikely to have contemplated this kind of distinction. As a result of this exegesis in the versions, it is only the lawbreakers and disobedient who are destroyed, whereas the faithful people is refined by removal of these. The key expression in lxx, “I will remove the lawbreakers from you (a0po\ sou~),” is unauthorized by the Hebrew. The translator’s demetaphorizing approach locates God’s judgment upon evil people who happen to mix with their betters, rather than upon the worthless mass that the people as a whole has become. In this, it seeks to take seriously the presence of good folk—among them no doubt the translator and readers— and may represent the germ of a full-blown remnant theology. It is, in the most subtle of ways, “about us.” Isaiah 3

Isaiah 3 indicts the governing classes of Jerusalem and Judah from start to finish. Between the Lord’s promise to remove “staff and stay” in verse 1 and the

9. Bruce Chilton, The Isaiah Targum (ArBib 11; Wilmington, Del.: Glazier, 1987), 5.

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fall of her men of war by sword and battle in the penultimate lines of the chapter, the powerful, the vocal, and the visible of Zion are brought low. Figuratively, the city is left a ravaged woman, collapsed mournfully upon the ground. In the midst of this frontal assault on Judah’s corrupt leadership, 10 verses 13–14 describe the Lord’s role in the devastation: 13 The Lord rises to argue his case; he stands to judge the peoples. 14 The Lord enters into judgment with the elders and princes of his people. It is you who have devoured the vineyard; the spoil of the poor is in your houses.

hwhy byrl bcn Mym( Nydl dm(w )wby +p#mb hwhy wyr#w wm( ynqz M( Mrkh Mtr(b Mt)w Mkytbb yn(h tlzg

Both the context and the details of these verses conspire to make the elders and princes the deserving victims of the Lord’s judgment. Indeed, 3:2 has already described the elders’ removal and 3:5 their belittling; 3:3 and 3:4 treat the princes similarly. Nevertheless, there exists an exegetical approach, probably triggered by the unexpected plural Mym( of 3:13, that implicates the heathen in this judgment. In some variants, this tradition appears to elevate the elders and princes of 3:14 to the status of the Lord’s co-regents, presiding in his company over the judgment of the nations and, presumably, over Israel’s lawbreakers. The Greek Isaiah may well be the first witness to this interpretive approach. Why, in an indictment of Judah, should we find the Lord judging nations (Mym()? It is a point worth fussing over, and the history of interpretation does not fail to do so.11 The medieval rabbis often read Mym( with reference to Israel by way of an alleged analogy with Deut 33:19 (w)rqy rh Mym(, “They [Zebulun and Issachar] call peoples to the mountain”). Conversely, Rashi understands

10. See Marvin A. Sweeney, Isaiah 1–4 and the Post-exilic Understanding of the Isaianic Tradition (BZAW 171; Berlin: de Gruyter, 1988), 150–51. 11. For example, D. Barthélemy notices the tension between this plural and surrounding singular forms but allows the Hebrew text to stand: “We note that this plural form Mym( is enclosed by four singular forms: ‘my people’ and ‘his people.’ The reading of *G is assimilated to this context” (Ézéchiel, Daniel et les 12 Prophètes [vol. 3 of Critique textuelle de l’Ancien Testament; Fribourg: Universitätsverlag; Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1992], 26). He does not concern himself with possible motives. On the other extreme, G. B. Gray (Isaiah I–XXVII [Edinburgh: T&T Clark, 1912], 69) follows lxx and assigns a motive to a pluralized Hebrew text: “the reading has rather arisen from the desire to turn the particular judgment of Israel into a world judgment.” It seems to me that he is correct in his suspicions but is looking into the face of the wrong tradent. Other commentators follow the suggestion of H. D. Hummel (“Enclictic mem in Northwest Semitic, especially Hebrew,” JBL 76 [1957]: 85–104, 100) that Mym( is a singular with “enclitic mem.”


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the Mym( of Isa 3:13 to be “the nations.”12 For Rashi, Israel’s elders remain the passage’s principal culprits, but it is the heathen who in the first instance “devour my vineyard.” In addition to the plural Mym(, a second exploitable detail in these verses is the uncommon affirmation that the Lord enters into judgment “with the elders of his people, and his princes” (Isa 3:14). In at least one exegetical tradition, these elders and princes come not to be judged but to judge. After reading Hebrew Mym( as “the nations” ()ymm() in 3:13, a variant targumic reading of Isa 3:14 transmits the idea of the Lord’s forensic appearance in association with his like-minded elders and princes.13 Referring to the variant targumic reading, Chilton writes: “bring into judgment” followed by the sign of the accusative (instead of “with”) is the reading of Reuchlinianus, the First and Second Rabbinic Bibles, the Antwerp Polyglot, and Ms. Jews’ College. B.M. 2211 and 1474 have “enter” (the usual translation of Hebrew )wb), and “into judgement with.” But the idea of God’s being with the elders, as at 24:23, has a positive sense for the meturgeman. For this reason, as well as for its departure from the mt, the variant reading is to be preferred.14

If Chilton is correct in his text-critical preference, then there exists early evidence of a reading that preserves for virtuous elements of Judah a much more agreeable role than the Hebrew text would otherwise seem to allow. Septuagint Isaiah appears already to have moved the text firmly, if subtly, in this direction. A recent English translation of Septuagint Isaiah implicitly recognizes this maneuver: 3:13 But now the Lord will stand up to judge; and he will make his people stand to judge them.

3:13 a)lla__ nu~n katasth&setai ei0j kri/sin ku&rioj kai\ sth&sei ei0j kri/sin to__n lao_n au)tou~,

14 The Lord himself will enter into judgment with the elders of the people and with their rulers. But you, why have you burned my vineyard, and why

14 au)to_j ku&rioj ei0j kri/sin h#cei meta__ tw~n presbute/ rwn tou~ laou~ kai\ meta__ tw~n a)rxo&ntwn au)tou= 9Umei=j de\ ti/ e0nepuri/sate th__n a)mpelw~na

12. twmw). 13. mt Isa 3:14 reads wyr#w wm( ynqz M( )wby +p#mb hwhy. 14. Chilton, Isaiah Targum, 8.

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is the spoil of the poor in your houses?15

mou kai\ h( a(rpagh_ tou~ ptwxou~ e)n toi=j oi1koij u(mw~n;

The similarity of expression16 chosen by the translator to render dissimilar Hebrew phrases seems to link the Lord’s judgment with an accompanying judgmental role undertaken by his people and upon the vineyard-despoiling nations. Like many later exegetes,17 the translator has understood the Mym( of 3:13 as the Lord’s people, but rather than being judged they have been “placed in judgment,” presumably to the discomfort of others. A further detail may well mark a thematic change in the translator’s mind at verse 13, one that would probably not occur to a modern reader of the Hebrew text. That is the strong adversative a)lla__ nu~n (“but now”). Not only does this expression appear nowhere else in lxx Isaiah; it is also uncommon for adversative particles similar to these to be inserted when they are unauthorized by the Hebrew text. It appears that the translator too noticed the disparity between the exceedingly negative appraisal of Judah’s leadership in the previous verses and what seemed to be a much more positive statement in 3:13–14 and chose to facilitate the transition with this unusual adversative. A blanket condemnation of the people is thus conditioned, and “good elders” are introduced to the scene. Isaiah 6

At points, judgment is nuanced by importing elements of promise and restoration that are more at home from chapter 40 onwards. This happens as early as chapter 6. In the Hebrew, Isaiah’s desperate lament—“How long, O Lord?”— is met by a tumble of divine speech that promises no turning by the people and no relief for the Lord’s reluctant spokesman. The panorama is excruciatingly pessimistic. Not so, perhaps, for the Septuagint translator, who appears to bring to this passage hope gleaned from later chapters of the text. Verse 11 describes depopulation and exile. In 6:12, the translator must have found something identical or similar to the consonants of mt: … until the Lord sends people far away, and abandonment increases in the midst of the land.

hwhy qxrw ( … d() hbrw Md)h-t) Cr)h brqb hbwz(h

15. M. Silva, New English Translation of the Septuagint (forthcoming; draft supplied by author). See http://ccat.sas.upenn.edu/nets/edition/esa.pdf for the “provisional edition.” 16. (kata)sth&sei and ei0j kri0sin appear three times each. 17. Including D. W. Thomas in BHS, who for text-critical reasons (which I think are mistaken) follows lxx and proposes wm(.


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The translation is striking: And after these things, God will send people far away, and those who have been left will be multiplied on the land.

kai\ meta__ tau~ta makrunei= o( qeo__j tou__j a)nqrw&pouj, kai\ oi9 kataleifqe/ntej plhqunqh&sontai e0pi\ th~j gh~j.

The Greek text’s evolution in a positive direction at 6:12 is frequently noticed but seldom explored.18 The insertion of meta_ tau~ta (“after these things”)—an unusual maneuver, unauthorized by any Hebrew words—introduces restoration where the Hebrew text continues to describe the landscape of desolation. The phrase appears to function here exactly as it does in 1:26; that is, it serves as the pivot between prediction of desolation in the near future and restoration at some point thereafter.19 The synonymous parallelism of 6:12 appears to have been resolved into two independent realities. This happens elsewhere in Isaiah, so it need not surprise us here.20 The most suitable construction to put on these words is that which sees the people as occupiers of the land who—after these things —will be sent packing. In their stead, those who have been left will be multiplied on the land. Oi9 kataleifqe/ntej is a term with a strong pedigree of usage in lxx Isaiah for a remnant. Though katalei/pein can in other contexts translate bz(, the rendering of hbwz((h)21 hbrw (“and abandonment shall increase”) by kai\ oi9 kataleifqe/ntej (“and those who have been left shall be multiplied”) is a “converse translation”22 of no small proportions. The negative and abstract concept of “abandonment” has been supplanted by a positive, concrete, and plural

18. Cf. J. Ziegler, Untersuchungen zur Septuaginta des Buches Isaias (Münster: Aschendorff, 1934), 139: “The idea of a remnant is of great importance to the translator of Isaiah”; also Seeligmann, LXX Version, 116–17. 19. Arguably, it has the same meaning at 44:6, the only other occurrence of meta_ tau~ta in lxx Isaiah. There, amid promises of new things (for example, streams and greenery in the desert), the Lord says, “I am the first and I am the last” (Nwrx) yn)w Nw#)r yn)). The Greek appears to theologize about the return: E) gw_ prw~toj kai\ e)gw_ meta_ tau~ta. Indeed, this may be an incipient terminus technicus for the eschaton (however construed), as has been argued for lxx/Theodotion Daniel and Revelation; see Greg K. Beale, The Book of Revelation (NIGTC; Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1999), 138–39. 20. See Baer, When We All Go Home, chs. 6 and 7, 199–276. For the phenomenon in lxx Proverbs, see G. Gerleman, Proverbs (vol. 3 of Studies in the Septuagint; Lund: Gleerup, 1956), 18, 26–27, and J. Cook, The Septuagint of Proverbs (Leiden: Brill, 1997), 86–87. 21. 1QIsaa lacks the article. 22. See M. L. Klein, “Converse Translation: A Targumic Technique,” Bib 57 (1976): 515–37; R. P. Gordon, “ ‘Converse Translation’ in the Targums and Beyond,” JSP 19 (1999): 3–21.

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concept with strong remnant connotations. A hopeless tone in the Hebrew text is now reconfigured as a very positive statement.23 Whatever the translator’s exact mental processes, the Greek Isa 6:12 now speaks of postexile or, perhaps, of post-Diaspora.24 By means of a fairly modest rearrangement of the available materials, exiled men have become oppressors sent away, and the relentless spread of desolation is now the fecundity of the remnant. The Hebrew text’s dark monotony of chastisement has been interrupted by two pivotal words: meta_ tau~ta. The translator has anticipated the new things of Second Isaiah and rushed forward this dénouement into a chapter where the Hebrew text had no space for it. Softening Violent Judgments At 3:17, the Isaianic jeremiad against the Daughters of Zion approaches its shrill zenith. As the text predicts the Lord’s scabbing of the heads of Zion’s daughters and the uncovering of their sexual “sockets,”25 it appears that the translator can only look away, an averting of the eyes that is also practiced by Targum Jonathan. It is impossible to say whether the moves toward modesty executed by these two versions owe more to their concept of God or to their reverence for Israel, or to both. Stepping away from the pursuit of motives to an examination of the realia, one notes that mt’s xp#w (“and he shall cause to scab”) is glossed by the very common kai\ tapeinw&sei (“and he shall humble”) in lxx. This is a “hapax equivalency”26 in the lxx, one that was perhaps facilitated by the graphic similarity of

23. Indeed, it is possible that the translator has read hbwz((h) almost as a proper noun in the light of Isa 62:4, a passage to which we shall turn in a moment. There the exilic community is assured that “You shall no longer be called Abandoned (hbwz() … but you shall be called My Delight is in Her.” To the translator it might have made perfect sense to read a promise, in 6:12, that “azubah (‘Abandoned’) shall be multiplied.” 24. See Seeligmann, LXX Version, 116: “A remarkable piece of evidence of this amalgamation of prophetic with contemporaneous expectations regarding the future, and at the same time, a fact supporting the above hypothesis, i.e. that the yearning for national deliverance was still vivid in the translator’s breast, is his apparent identification of this Remnant of the people of Israel with the Jewish diaspora in Hellenistic Egypt.” 25. It is possible to propose less jarring meanings for tp, for example, “forehead,” as proposed by G. R. Driver on the basis of Akkadian pūtu (“Linguistic and Textual Problems: Isa i–xxxix,” JTS 38 [1937]: 36–50). Driver is followed by many commentators. Childs accepts Driver’s conjecture but adds “clearly a euphemism,” which would return the reference to the sexual sphere (B. S. Childs, Isaiah [Louisville: Westminster John Knox, 2001], 217). For our purposes the important point is that the lxx translator seems to have understood a sexual reference; otherwise it is difficult to explain the use of sxh~ma, “figure.” 26. That is, the only time in the lxx where Hebrew “x” is translated by Greek “y.”


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xp# to lp#, a word that does indeed produce variations of tapeinou~n. Nev-

ertheless, it looks like conscious exegesis rather than accident. Targum Jonathan swerves similarly but by an independent route: it uses dyb(#w (“and he shall enslave”). The conversion continues with mt’s dqdq, which almost certainly refers to the daughters’ physical head or skull. lxx reads dqdq metaphorically as a reference to social caste, much as #)r is routinely understood in social contexts. The result is a)rxou&saj. This too is a hapax equivalency and has exegetical motives written all over it. Interestingly, Targum Jonathan again adopts a similar approach. It pictures the Lord enslaving the nobles.27 One final horror was to be avoided in the second half of the verse, this time a reference to the Lord’s exposure of the private parts (Nhtp)28 of Zion’s daughters. Rather more demurely in the Greek, it is these women’s “figure” (sxh~ma) that is uncovered, whereas in Targum Jonathan it is once more their “glory” or “nobility” (Nwhrqy) that is tampered with. The lxx, shadowed by Targum Jonathan, has avoided the kinds of divine acts of violence that it frequently prefers to reconfigure. This may have been the translator’s principal objective, perhaps the only one. However, it is not without import for a study of the translator’s nationalistic exegesis that the text spares Zion’s daughters the worst of the degradations that the Hebrew text brings down upon their battered scalps. Foreshortening Exile On at least one occasion, the Greek text of Isaiah transmutes the inevitability of God’s judgment into the foreshortening of their suffering. Isaiah 10:20–22 foresees that “in that day” Israel will no longer lean upon her smiter. Instead, a remnant will return to Mighty God. However, 10:22 underlines the loss to the nation that such a whittling down inescapably entails. A concessive clause affirms that not even the patriarchal promise can ward off the divine fiat that only a rump shall survive the impending catastrophe: For though your people, O Israel, be like the sand of the sea, (only) a remnant of it shall return. Annihilation is determined, rushing forward in righteousness.

l)r#y Km( hyhy-M) yk Myh lwxk bw#y r)# hqdc P+w# Cwrx Nwylk wb

27. tryqy, a word it will repeat with reference to the daughters’ “glory” at the end of the verse. 28. Or forehead, which arguably would better suit the parallelism.

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The Greek text gives a different sense: And though the people of Israel be as the sand of the sea, the remnant shall be saved. For he (God) is completing and cutting short 29 a thing in righteousness, for God will do a foreshortened thing in the whole inhabited world.

kai\ e0a_n ge/nhtai o( lao_j Israhl w~j h( a!mmoj th~j qala&sshj, to_ kata&lleima swqh&setai: lo&gon ga_r suntelw~n kai\ sunte/mnwn e0n dikaiosu&nh| (23) o#ti lo&gon suntetmhme/non poih&sei o( qeo_j e0n th~| oi0koume/nh| o#lh|.

The translator has inverted the purpose of the divine decree. It now works in Israel’s favor rather than to its detriment. Exile—perhaps Diaspora—will not last so long, for God is already cutting it short and bringing it to completion. Remarkably, Targum Jonathan also turns the decree to Israel’s advantage. While not denying the concessive clause of the Hebrew text, the Targum interprets the divine decree as a blessing for the remnant: For though your people, Israel, be many as the sand of the sea, a remnant that have not sinned and that have repented from sin, for them there are done prodigies which are mightily wrought and carried out with virtue. (23) For the Lord God of hosts is accomplishing the extirpation and destruction of all the wicked of the earth.30

In the Targum, whatever violence God brings to bear is apparently absorbed by Israel’s oppressor and results in the liberation of a remnant. Both Targum Jonathan and the Greek Isaiah thus find hope and promise for the communities who hear them in a place where the Hebrew text offers little or none. Nostalgia for Zion and Israel’s Destiny Isaiah 1:26–27

I have elsewhere commented upon Isa 1:26–27, which in the Hebrew text provides a rare glimpse of hope in an otherwise gloomy chapter.31 Here I wish merely to note what appears to be an actualizing piece of exegesis. The Hebrew promises restoration (vv. 26–27) after affliction (vv. 24–25):

29. Ziegler’s contention (Untersuchungen, 140) that “P+w# has been completely overlooked by the translator” is not correct. The translator has not overlooked it, but rather has subverted its function. 30. Chilton, Isaiah Targum, 26. 31. When We All Go Home, ch. 6, 199–231.


26 And I will restore your judges as at the first, and your counselors as at the beginning. Afterward you shall be called the city of righteousness, the faithful city. 27 Zion shall be redeemed by justice, and those in her who repent, by righteousness.

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hn#)rbk Ky+p# hby#) hlxtbk Kyc(yw Kl )rqy Nk-rx) hnm)n hyrq qdch ry( hdpt +p#mb Nwyc hqdcb hfybe#$fw

Leaving aside for the moment the vexed and recently re-explored question of whose justice and which righteousness is referred to in 1:27,32 we will discuss the ambiguity inherent in hyb#w (“her repentant ones” or “those who return to her”). Are those who will be redeemed by righteousness those who belong to Zion and convert or those who return to her? Otto Kaiser points out that Targum Jonathan “reads both into the passage.”33 The lxx rendering of verses 26 and 27 reconfigures the syntax and provides vocalization different from that of the eventual mt, perhaps reading h@yFb;#i (“her captives”) in 1:27 for hfybe#f (“her repentant/returning ones”) As a result, an explicit distinction is made between two terms that in the Hebrew were intended to be taken as synonymously parallel: Zion, on the one hand, in 1:26, and hyb# on the other, in 1:27, which the translator reads as “her capitivity.” 26 And I will establish your judges as before, and your counselors as at the beginning: and afterward you shall be called the city of righteousness, the faithful mother-city of Zion. 27 For her captives shall be saved with judgment, and with mercy.

26 kai\ e0pisth&sw tou_j krita&j sou w(j to_ pro&teron kai\ tou_j sumbou&louj sou w(j to_ a)p ) a)rxh=j kai\ meta_ tau=ta klhqh&sh| po/lij dikaiosu/nhj mhtro/polij pisth\ Siwn. 27 meta\ ga\r kri/matoj swqh/setai h( ai0xmalwsi/a au0th=j kai\ meta\ e0lehmosu/nhj

In the Greek of Isa 1:26 we read that, after affliction, Zion will be called “the city of righteousness” and “the faithful mother-city.” The use of the rare mhtro&polij

32. R. W. L. Moberly, “Whose Justice? Which Righteousness? The Interpretation of Isaiah V 16,” VT 51 (2001): 55–68. 33. O. Kaiser, Isaiah 1–12 (2nd ed.; trans. John Bowden; OTL; Philadelphia: Westminster, 1983), 40. Targum Jonathan: wdb(dw wkzb hl Nwbwty )tyrw) (“and the ones who have performed the law will return to her in righteousness”).

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here is a splendid touch, elevating Zion to the mother-city for which the exiled heart yearns. In due course this Mother’s “captivity”34 “will be saved, by mercy,” according to lxx Isa 1:27. Isaac Seeligmann is probably correct that the translator understood “captivity” as “Diaspora.” Commenting upon just this kind of turn of phrase in lxx Isaiah, Seeligmann is moved to guess that God’s judgment was “looked upon by the translator as the actualized reality of Galuth, i.e. exile.”35 Isaiah 3:25

Isaiah 3:16–4:1 is a particularly savage oracle of woe against the daughters of Zion. It is carried out in third-person feminine plural throughout, except for 3:25–26. There, the rhetoric curiously shifts to second feminine singular 36 and third feminine singular,37 returning to the predominant third plural in 4:1.38 Commentators have found this temporary lapse into the feminine singular unusual. It is probably due to the overarching theme of sinful, abandoned, and feminine Jerusalem, which predominates in these chapters. The lxx provides a far different reading from the mt at 3:25, a reading that escapes discussion by any of the standard twentieth-century works on lxx Isaiah.39 A glance at the texts displays their remarkable differences. mt 3:25 Your men shall fall by the sword and your warriors in battle. lxx 3:25 And your most beautiful son, whom you love, shall fall by the sword, and your strong men shall fall by the sword, and shall be humbled.

wlpy brxb Kytm (ypy) hmxlmb Ktrwbgw kai\ o( ui9o&j sou o( ka&llistoj, o$n a)gapa~|j, maxai/ra| pesei=tai, kai\ oi9 i0sxu&ontej u(mw~n maxai/ra| pesou~ntai kai\ tapeinwqh&sontai.

34. h( ai0xmalwsi/a au)th~j 35. Seeligmann, LXX Version, 113–14. 36. “… your [f.s.] men …”; “… your [f.s.] mighty men …” (lit: “your strength”). 37. “… her gates … she…” 38. 1QIsaa ≈ mt except for minor orthographic differences. 39. Ziegler (Untersuchungen, 62) examines this verse but only discusses the lxx plus, (hmxlmb = maxai/ra|) + pesou~ntai kai\ tapeinwqh&sontai.


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While the lxx translation bears only slight resemblance to the mt, it does ring true to lxx Gen 22:2, where Abraham’s poignant climb to sacrifice Isaac begins with the Lord’s summons to present his son as a burnt offering. That well-known text reads as follows: mt 22:2 He said, “Take your son, your only son Isaac, whom you love, and go to the land of Moriah, and offer him there as a burnt offering on one of the mountains that I shall show you.” lxx 22:2 And he said, Take your son, the beloved one, whom you have loved—Isaac, and go into the high land, and offer him there for a whole-burnt-offering on one of the mountains which I will tell thee of.

Knb-t) )n-xq rm)yw tbh)-r#) Kdyxy-t) Cr)-l) Kl-Klw qxcy-t) hl(l M# whl(hw hyrmh r#) Myrhh dx) l( Kyl) rm) kai\ ei]pen Labe\ to_n ui9o&n sou to_n a)gaphto&n, o$n h)ga&phsaj, to_n Isaak, kai\ poreu&qhti ei0j th_n gh~n u(yhlh_n kai\ a)ne/negkon au)to_n e0kei=

Assuming that the translator had, for the most part, the text represented by the mt, Isa 3:25 has suffered three transformations that bring it into line with lxx Gen 22:2. First, the subject has become singular: the plural noun with a singular suffix (Ktym; “your men”) has been rendered as a singular noun with a singular suffix (o( ui9o&j sou; “your son”). Second, the subject has gained a superlative qualifier, o( ka&llistoj (“your most beautiful son”). It may be that this signals the notion of uniqueness in a way that is functionally equivalent to dyxy/a)gaphto&j in Gen 22:2, since both adjectives share an isolating function: o( ka&llistoj in Isaiah via superlativization and a)gaphto&j in Genesis via differentiation by a superior.40 Third, the subject is also qualified by a subordinate clause, o4n a0gapa~|j (“whom you love”). This transformation is best explained

40. If the Isaiah translator is casting a glance back to Gen 22:2 here, a tendency to produce unique lexical equivalents may by itself explain the difference between lxx Genesis a0gaphto&j and lxx Isaiah ka&llistoj. But it might also be that the translator knew the Genesis passage best in Hebrew or Aramaic and was providing a suitable translation without reference to lxx Genesis. This would require a modification of the second solution I will propose below. The first and third elements of his rendering suggest he was alluding to lxx Genesis; the second, perhaps, to a non-Greek version of it. It may be impossible to decide the case within the limits of the data currently under discussion.

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by assuming an attraction toward Gen 22:2. However, the conceptual world of Abraham’s journey to sacrifice Isaac is vastly removed from that of the present invective against Zion’s daughters. How, then, can the influence of lxx Gen 22:2 on the translation of lxx Isa 3:25 be explained? In what follows, I would like to venture two solutions. A Translational Guess

It seems plausible that the translator, happening upon a rare, unknown word, made a desperate attempt to lean on the parallels, an established habit of the lxx Isaiah translator.41 The common connection in prophetic woe oracles between women (which is this context) and bereaved mothers (which is what the women of vanquished nations too often become) might also have influenced the translation. The pathos of the description in Isaiah might have called to mind, consciously or not, another moment that threatened excruciating bereavement. Such was to be the fury of divine vengeance upon the daughters of Zion that not just some faceless males would fall but rather your son, your fairest son, whom you love. An Exegetical “Nationalization”

There is an alternative explanation. It may be that the translator has briefly lifted the veil covering an ancient exegetical tradition linking the two contexts. In this regard, two verses demand attention, one in Ps 47, the other in Isa 41. Both of these use language very similar to that of lxx Isa 3:25 in order to nationalize the concept of the beloved son, and in a way that may explain lxx Isa 3:25’s odd rendering. Psalm 47 praises the God who rules over the nations for subduing those nations under the feet of Jacob. Psalm 47:5 reads as follows: mt He chose our heritage for us, the pride of Jacob whom he loves.

wntlxn-t) wnl-rxby bh)-r#) bq(y Nw)g t)

41. Ziegler (Untersuchungen, 7–9) argues that the translator’s Hebrew vocabulary was limited. Translations of unknown words were often guided by other biblical passages and by parallelisms in the immediate context. tm is not a common word, and the Isaiah translator’s rendering at 41:14 (ytm bq(y t(lwt l)r#y = Iakwb, o)ligosto_j Israhl) may indicate a failure to understand it as a collective for “males,” or perhaps to understand it at all. The parallels do not help much. At 3:25, the parallel (Ktrwbg) is a positive term, while in 41:14 (t(lwt) it is the opposite. Isaiah 5:13, the other occurrence of tm (ytm) in Isaiah, encourages the view that the translator does not know this word.


lxx He has chosen out his inheritance for us, the beauty of Jacob which he loved.

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e0cele/cato h(mi=n th_n klhronomi/an au)tou~, th_n kallonh_n Iakwb,42 h$n h)ga&phsen

Apart from sapiential texts, the terms ka&lloj and kallonh& are often endowed with nationalistic overtones and used of Israel’s heroes and heroines, as well as for the distinguishing beauty of the nation itself.43 It is not surprising, then, that it should be rendered as Nw)g here, as this is the kind of nationalistic text in which it is at home. However, although kallo- as a nationalistic expression is not uncommon, it appears very rarely in connection with God loving Israel: only here, and perhaps in lxx Isa 3:25. The lexical similarities between lxx Ps 46:5 (mt 47:5) and lxx Isa 3:25 are striking. And, while one might consider this mere coincidence if the underlying Hebrew of the two passages were such as to produce similar Greek translations, Hebrew Isa 3:25 has not by itself produced Greek Isa 3:25. In fact, this verse’s likeness to lxx Ps 46:5 has been produced with no explicit authorization by the underlying Hebrew. Let us now examine Isa 41:8: mt But you, Israel, my servant, Jacob, whom I have chosen, the offspring of Abraham, my friend; lxx But you, Israel, are my servant Jacob, and he whom I have chosen, the seed of Abraam, whom I have loved:

ydb( l)r#y ht)w Kytrxb r#) bq(y ybh) Mhrb) (rz Su_ de/, Israhl, pai=j mou Iakwb, o$n e0celeca&mhn, spe/rma Abraam, o$n h)ga&phsa

42. The enigmatic phrase bq(y Nw)g occurs four times and is variously rendered by the lxx. In Amos 6:8 the Lord swears by himself that he abhors the pride of Jacob (th_n u#brin Iakwb). In Amos 8:7 he vows kaq' u(perhfani/aj Iakwb that he will never forget any of their (evil) deeds. In Nah 2:2, a much more positive passage, the Lord claims to be restoring Nw)gk bq(y Nw)g-t) l)r#y = th_n u#brin Iakwb kaqw_j u#brin tou~ Israhl. In Ps 47(46):5, the present passage, it is also a positive, nationalistic expression. Of the four, the th_n kallonh_n Iakwb translation that occupies our attention is the only one that diverges from standard equivalencies and thus appears to bear an interpretive character. 43. Cf. Gen 49:21; Deut 33:17; 1 Sam 16:12; 17:42; Esth 15:5; Jdt 10:7, 14, 19, 23; 16:6, 10; 1 Macc 2:12; Ps 45(44):3, Wis 5:16; Isa 53:1; 62:3 (of the Servant).

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Here we find no parallel to the ka&llistoj of lxx Isa 3:25 or to to_n a)gaphto&n of lxx Gen 22:2. Significant, however, is the way in which the

Hebrew ybh), which qualifies the subject Abraham (the one who loves me, hence “my friend”), is rendered as o$n h)ga&phsa (“whom I have loved”). By inverting the subject and object of the relationship, the translator brings vocabulary and syntax directly into line with lxx Gen 22:2, whether consciously or not. Of the nine cases in the Hebrew Bible where bh) appears as a participle followed by a first-person suffix, only here is it translated by a verb plus a relative clause. This might suggest that the attempt to render the phrase according to the syntax of lxx Gen 22:2 was a conscious one.44 It may be that the translator was led to nuance his rendering in the direction of Gen 22 by the presence of the term Mhrb) (rz/spe/rma Abraam, which called to mind Isaac. If this move was, in fact, a conscious one, then lxx Isa 41:8 rings as an echo of the promise reestablished in the more somber moment of the closing of Gen 22. This would be, in effect, a minor clarification of an Abrahamic theme that probably resided implicitly in the Hebrew text already. The three passages discussed above (lxx Isa 3:25; Ps 46:5 [mt 47:5]; Isa 41:8) may witness to the lxx translator’s perception of the outworking of the Abrahamic promise among the patriarch’s descendants. But only lxx Isa 3:25 arrives at this via an intertextual route, when its Hebrew Vorlage apparently says nothing of the sort. If the second of the two explanations I have offered for the apparent influence of lxx Gen 22:2 on the translation of lxx Isa 3:25 can be sustained—that lxx 3:25 represents an “exegetical nationalization”—then the translator has pulled the Isaianic judgment oracle of Isa 3:16–4:1 in under the larger theological framework of the Abrahamic promise. Perhaps for this translator the “falling” of Zion’s men in Isa 3:25 was a tragic failure to achieve the promised blessing of Abraham’s seed. More than a casualty-ridden episode in the nation’s military history, it was a reversal of all that Abraham’s daughters and Zion’s mothers should have borne. Conclusion As other scholars have suggested and the foregoing examples corroborate, the translator of the Greek Isaiah reads the Hebrew Vorlage as a text to be mined for insight into the future of Israel and the predicament of the contemporary Diaspora community. By utilizing the elements that the text provides, and rarely

44. Elsewhere it is always a participle or substantive + a personal pronoun, e.g., Exod 20:6,

ybh)l = toij a)gapw~si/n me; Ps 38(37):12, ybh) = oi9 fi/loi mou. In Gen 22:2, the Hebrew is different. It has a relative clause with r#), which very naturally produces o$n h)ga&phsa.


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inventing new materials outright, the translator manages to preserve a special status for Israel/Judah, to nuance judgments that would seem to threaten the entire people’s future, to soften the most violent retribution against that people, to foreshorten the trial of exile and Diaspora, and to communicate a poignant nostalgia both for Israel’s lofty promise and for that nation’s mother city. The Greek Isaiah stood between a received text and a reading or hearing community. No doubt the translator considered that the Vorlage insisted—as the Diaspora community might have presumed—that when the prophet Isaiah spoke, he spoke “about us.” Select Bibliography Baer, David A. When We All Go Home: Translation and Theology in LXX Isaiah. JSOTSup 318; The Hebrew Bible and Its Versions 1. Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press, 2001. Jobes, Karen H., and Moisés Silva. Invitation to the Septuagint. Grand Rapids: Baker, 2000. Kooij, Arie van der. Die Alten Textzeugen des Jesajabuches: Ein Beitrag zur Textgeschichte des Alten Testaments. OBO 35. Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1981. ———. The Oracle of Tyre: The Septuagint of Isaiah 23 as Version and Vision. Leiden: Brill, 1998. Seeligmann, I. L. The LXX Version of Isaiah. Mededelingen en Verhandelingen No. 9 van het Vooraziatisch-Egyptisch Genootschap “Ex Oriente Lux.” Leiden: Brill, 1948. Troxel, Ronald L. “Exegesis and Theology in the LXX: Isaiah V 26–30.” VT 43 (1993): 102–11. Williamson, H. G. M. “Isaiah 1.11 and the Septuagint of Isaiah.” Pages 401– 12 in Understanding Poets and Prophets: Essays in Honour of George Wishart Anderson. Edited by A. Graeme Auld. JSOTSup 152. Sheffield: JSOT Press, 1993. Ziegler, Joseph. Isaias. 3rd ed. Septuaginta Vetus Testamentum Graecum, Auctoritate Academiae Scientiarum Gottingensis editum 14. Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1983.

Interpretation of the Book of Isaiah In the Septuagint and in Other Ancient Versions Arie van der Kooij

Introduction The ancient witnesses to the Hebrew Bible, that is, the biblical texts found at Qumran and elsewhere and the various ancient translations, are of crucial importance for textual criticism. However, the ancient versions—the Septuagint (lxx), Targumim, Peshitta, and Vulgate—also testify in various ways to the early reception history of the biblical books. Produced by scholars who were able to read the biblical texts in Hebrew, the ancient versions show how the translators interpreted the underlying Hebrew text. In this contribution I consider two types of early interpretation regarding the book of Isaiah. The first part, a study of the way in which the passage about the rich women in Isa 3:18–23 has been rendered in the lxx, offers an illustration of the aspect of acculturation, that is, adaptation to the culture of the time, in the Old Greek of Isaiah. The second part illustrates the reactualizing interpretation of ancient prophecies in early Judaism and early Christianity, through an examination of the way in which the motif of “the city and the cities” in Isa 24–27 has been understood in the lxx, in the Targum, and by Jerome in the Vulgate.1 These three ancient versions belong to different periods: (1) the lxx of Isaiah is a Jewish translation of the Hellenistic era, dating to the second century b.c.e.; (2) Targum Isaiah is a Jewish translation of the Roman period, dating basically to the second century c.e., although elements in it may be of a later date, and (3) Jerome’s Vulgate translation of Isaiah is an early Christian version dating to the end of the fourth century c.e. 1. This part of the article is a revised version of my “The Cities of Isaiah 24–27 according to the Vulgate, Targum and Septuagint,” in Studies in Isaiah 24–27 (ed. H. J. Bosman et al.; OTS 43; Leiden: Brill, 2000), 183–98. This paper was presented at the 2001 meeting of the Society of Biblical Literature Formation of the Book of Isaiah Group. A preliminary version appears in Society of Biblical Literature 2001 Seminar Papers (SBLSP 40; Atlanta: Society of Biblical Literature, 2001), 220–39.

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We do not know much about Isaiah’s interpretation in early Judaism. The most important evidence for the era before 70 c.e. is the exegesis of Isaiah in documents from the Dead Sea region, particularly the pesharim from Qumran (see the contribution of G. J. Brooke in this volume). There is, however, one passage about Isaiah and his prophecies that deserves to be mentioned, the Wisdom of Ben Sira 48:22–25 (early second century b.c.e.). The author hails Isaiah as “the illustrious prophet, who saw the truth in visions” (v. 22). The words of this prophet, and thus of his book, are characterized as words about the future, about “hidden things that were yet to be fulfilled” (v. 25). This characterization is typical of its time, inasmuch as it reflects a mode of interpretation that views ancient propheices as referring to events of the age in which the interpreter was living. Ben Sira does not offer an example of how a passage from Isaiah applies to persons or events of the time, but we do have evidence of this type of exegesis in the pesharim of Qumran and in the New Testament. And as has been argued by scholars, this practice also applies to lxx Isaiah. As to the period of Targum Isaiah, we have some scattered evidence of interpretation of passages in Isaiah in traditions that may be dated to the Tannaitic period. In some cases, the interpretation involved is in line with the exegesis in the Targum. In other cases the attested rabbinic exegesis is different or may be in line with another important ancient version of Isaiah, namely, the Greek version of Symmachus, which was produced in rabbinic circles in Palestine (Galilee) at the end of the second century c.e. We are much better informed about the history of Isaiah’s interpretation in early Christianity (see David Cassel’s contribution in this volume). The commentary of Eusebius of Caesarea, the earliest surviving full commentary on the book, was very important to Jerome and was used by him in a number of cases.2 Eusebius and Jerome share a literal and historical type of interpretation of Isaiah—in Greek—with an exegetical focus on the rejection of Israel, the calling of the Gentiles, and the birth of the church. The two also have in common a christological interpretation of Isaiah. Let us now turn to the two topics mentioned above, which will illustrate Isaiah’s interpretation in early Judaism and early Christianity. Isaiah 3:18–23 according to the lxx Isaiah 3:18–23 forms part of a prophecy of doom (3:16–4:1). It indicates that because of the pride and haughtiness of the daughters of Zion, all their beauty, particularly jewelry and fine clothes, will be removed from them.

2. Eusebius of Caesarea, Der Jesajakommentar (ed. J. Ziegler; Berlin: Akademie Verlag, 1975).

van der kooij: interpretation of the book of isaiah

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As is often the case in lxx Isaiah, the Old Greek of our passage differs widely from the Hebrew texts, that is, the Masoretic Text and the Isaiah manuscripts from Qumran. As I have argued elsewhere, the appropriate way of dealing with such cases is to make a comparison between the Hebrew texts and the lxx and to study both texts in their own right before dealing with the issue of the parent text in Hebrew.3 lxx

mt

3:18

And the Lord will take away the glory of their clothing and their ornaments, and the hairclasps and the hairnets and the crescents

In that day the Lord will remove the beauty (tr)pt): the anklets, the little suns (or head bands), and the crescents;

3:19

and the necklace and the ornaments of their face,

the eardrops, the bracelets and the veils;

3:20

and the set of glorious ornaments and the bracelets and the armlets and the wreathed work and the armlets for the right arm and the finger rings and the earrings,

the diadems, the stepchains, and the sashes, the vials of perfume and the charms;

3:21

and the purple trimmed garments and those mixed with purple,

the signet rings and the nose rings;

3:22

and the mantles to be worn in the house and the Spartan transparent dresses,

the festal robes, the overtunics, the cloaks, and the purses;

3. Arie van der Kooij, The Oracle of Tyre: The Septuagint of Isaiah XXIII as Version and Vision (VTSup 71; Leiden: Brill, 1998), 8–19.

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3:23

and the (garments) made of fine linen, and the hyacinth-colored blue ones and red ones, and the fine linen, interwoven with gold and purple, and light summer garments, flowing down.

the garments of gauze, the linens, the turbans, and the shawls.

Comparing mt and lxx, the following observations may be made. (1) Although roughly speaking both texts have in common a listing of ornaments followed by a listing of clothes, the listing in lxx is more strictly divided into two sections: (a) pieces of jewelry (vv. 18b–20), and (b) precious garments and dresses (vv. 21–23). (2) lxx contains a phrase, not attested in mt, that seems to function as the introduction to the passage as a whole: “the glory of their clothing and their ornaments” (v. 18a).4 (3) On the level of words many differences between mt and lxx are to be noted. In his important study of lxx Isaiah, Untersuchungen zur Septuaginta des Buches Isaias, Joseph Ziegler has offered a detailed analysis of our passage.5 He discusses several Greek words in the light of papyri (e.g., e0mplo/kion, “wreathed work?” or “hair clasps?”; mhni/skoj, “crescents”; and daktu/lioj, “finger rings”) and compares the passage as a whole with similar listings elsewhere in the Greek Bible (Exod 35:22–28; Num 31:50; Ezek 16:10–13; and Judg 10:4) and with listings in papyri as well. He argues that those listings may have influenced the translator in formulating his version of Isa 3:18–23. He further states that “the different lists of the Papyri, which include listings of temple inventories and particularly of a dowry (fernh/), make clear that the items listed in Isa 3:18–23 belong to the dowry of women, and that they are enumerated in the Septuagint using terms that would have been customary at that time in Alexandria.”6 Ziegler’s observations have put us on the right track, but I believe more can be said about the meaning of lxx Isa 3:18–23 in the light of the papyri. Although the listings in Exod 35:22 and other places in the lxx are helpful regarding particular terms, the papyri can help us to understand our passage as a whole. In a recent publication, Simona Russo has studied in detail the vocabulary of jewelry in papyri of the Hellenistic and Roman periods.7 She points out

4. See Mosheh H. Goshen-Gottstein, ed., The Hebrew University Bible: The Book of Isaiah (Jerusalem: Magnes, 1995), ad loc. 5. Joseph Ziegler, Untersuchungen zur Septuaginta des Buches Isaias (ATA 12/3; Münster: Aschendorff, 1934), 203–11. 6. Ibid., 211. 7. Simona Russo, I gioielli nei papiri di età greco-romana (Florence: Istituto Papirologico, 1999).


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that the relevant terms mainly occur in marriage contracts and related texts. A close examination of these contracts reveals that the listings of women’s belongings all consist of an enumeration, first, of precious objects/ornaments and, second, of garments. The fact that the listing in lxx Isa 3:18–23 has the same order strongly suggests that this passage has been formulated as a list of objects that made up a dowry, just as in the papyri.8 This is corroborated by another observation concerning the statement in 3:18a that reads “the glory of their clothing and their ornaments.” This statement about “clothing” and “ornaments” is also known from papyri; it refers to the dowry of a woman. A nice parallel is found in P.Eleph. 1 (marriage contract, 310 b.c.e.), where one reads, “she brings with her to the marriage clothing and ornaments (ei(matismo/n kai\ ko/smon).”9 Thus, lxx Isa 3:18–23 reflects a particular interpretation of the passage. It has been understood, and consequently formulated, as a passage about the belongings of women in Jerusalem, listing objects (ornaments and garments) that they had brought into their marriages. As to the introductory clause in verse 18a, it seems that the Hebrew word tr)pt (usually translated “beauty” or “glory”) has been taken here in the sense both of “beauty” and “ornament” and thus has been rendered by a double translation (“glory of their clothing and their ornaments”) in order to make explicit that the listing that follows is to be understood as objects of a dowry. In view of the content of the listing in our passage, it is fully clear that it is about the belongings of rich women (see, e.g., the purple garments). This idea is also present in the way verse 17 has been translated: there “the daughters of Zion” are called a)rxou/saj, “ruling” (cf. mt dqdq, “head”). The text is referring to women of the ruling, upper classes in Jerusalem, “the rich women” as they are called in lxx Isa 32:8. In short, the passage of lxx Isa 3:18–23 reflects a transformation of the text in the adaptation of the text to the culture of the translator’s own time.

8. For inscriptional evidence, see, e.g., P.Mich II 121 r. II ii (A. E. R. Boak, ed., Papyri from Tebtunis, Part I [University of Michigan Studies, Humanistic Series 28; Ann Arbor: University of Michigan, 1933]); P.Mich. V 343 ( E. M. Husselman, A. E. R. Boak, and W. F. Edgerton, eds., Papyri from Tebtunis, Part II [University of Michigan Studies, Humanistic Series 29; Ann Arbor: University of Michigan, 1944]); P.Ryl. II 125 and 154 (J. de M. Johnson, V. Martin, and A. S. Hunt, eds., Documents of the Ptolemaic and Roman Periods (No. 62–456) [vol. 2 of Catalogue of the Greek and Latin Papyri in the John Rylands Library, Manchester; Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1915]). 9. See P. W. Pestman, The New Papyrological Primer (Leiden: Brill, 1990), 67.

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The City and the Cities in Isaiah 24–27 according to the lxx, Targum, and Vulgate The motif of the city functions as a major theme in the prophecies of Isa 24–27. It plays an important role in several passages, namely, 24:10–12; 25:1–6; 26:1–6; and 27:10. These places do not refer to one and the same city, however. The text of Isa 26:1 envisages a strong city in the land of Judah. It reads as follows: “In that day will be sung this song in the land of Judah, ‘A strong city is ours; he (God) sets up salvation as walls and ramparts.’ ” Although the city is not named, it is obvious that here the city of Jerusalem is meant, whose name does occur in 24:23 and 27:13. This city is clearly seen as the city of salvation. In contrast to 26:1, other texts in Isa 24–27 deal with a strong city that will be destroyed. So, for instance, Isa 25:2a: “For you have turned the city into a rubble heap, the fortified town into a ruin.” It is a matter of dispute which city might be alluded to in passages like this one, and various options have been offered—Babylon, Nineveh, or the capital of Moab.10 One could also argue that the strong city to be destroyed was merely meant as a symbol, an ageless type that is open to actualization in different times. It is true that the city of 24:10– 12; 25:2; 26:5; and 27:10 is not named, but this does not exclude the possibility that a concrete city was intended, which at the same time could have a symbolic meaning. One gets the impression that in these passages two cities are to be distinguished: (1) the one of 25:2 and 27:10 (compare also 24:10–12), which is called “the strong city”; and (2) the one of 26:5–6 (compare also 25:12), which is characterized as lying on high (“the lofty city he lays low,” 26:5). The context of 25:12 suggests that the latter may be in Moab. It is not my intention to discuss which cities might have been in the mind of the circle responsible for the composition of Isa 24–27 in Hebrew. What is clear enough is that these chapters are dominated by a contrast between, on the one hand, a strong city of salvation in the land of Judah (that is, Jerusalem) and, on the other hand, a strong and fortified city, or two cities, that will be destroyed. The purpose of this part of my contribution is to examine the motif of these cities in the early reception history of Isa 24–27. This will be done by discussing the interpretation of the most relevant passages as reflected in three of the ancient versions of the book of Isaiah, going backward in time from the latest to the earliest: the Vulgate, the Targum to the Prophets, and lxx Isaiah. I will concentrate on Isa 25:1–3 and 26:1–2, 5–6.

10. For a survey, see Hans Wildberger, Jesaja (BKAT 10; Neukirchen-Vluyn: Neukirchener, 1978), 905–6.


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Vulgate

The biblical scholar and theologian Jerome not only translated the book of Isaiah from Hebrew into Latin but also wrote a commentary on this book, “the most voluminous of all his commentaries, a vast sprawling work in eighteen books.”11 It is therefore reasonable to study the Vulgate version of Isaiah in connection with the commentary. Vulgate12

mt

25:1

O Lord, you are my God, I will exalt you, and give glory to your name: for you have done wonderful things (mirabilia), your designs of old faithful, amen (fideles amen).

Lord, you are my God, I will glorify you, I will sing to your name, for you have done a wonderful thing ()lp), plans from long ago, faithful and sure (Nm) hnwm)).

25:2

For you have reduced (posuisti) the city to a heap, the strong city to ruin, the house of strangers, to be no city (domum alienorum ut non sit civitas), and to be no more built up for ever (et in sempiternum non aedificetur).

For you have turned the city into a rubble heap, the fortified town into a ruin, the palace of aliens a city no more (ry(m Myrz Nwmr)); it will never be built (Mlw(l hnby )l).

25:3

Therefore shall a strong people praise you, the city of mighty nations shall fear you.

Therefore strong people will glorify you, the city of ruthless nations will fear you.

11. J. N. D. Kelly, Jerome: His Life, Writings, and Controversies (London: Duckworth, 1975), 299. For the commentary itself, see Jerome, Commentariorum in Esaiam: Libri I–XI (CCSL 73; S. Hieronymi Presbyteri Opera. pars I, opera exegetica 2; Turnhout: Brepols, 1963). The comments on Isa 25–26 begin on p. 325. 12. The editors have offered a modified version of the Douay-Rheims Bible translation for the benefit of the reader.

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The rendering of verse 1b shows influence from the lxx—this applies to mirabilia (“wonderful things”; lxx: qaumasta/) and amen (“so be it, O Lord”; lxx: ge/noito ku/rie). In his commentary Jerome presents first the exegesis of the Jews. According to Jewish interpretation, Isa 25:1–5 contains words spoken by the faithful people. The city to be destroyed (v. 2) is Rome, whereas “the strong people” (v. 3) are the Jewish people—God will give them strength in times of distress and will deliver them from the persecution by the nations. Jerome then goes on to unfold the exegesis of “others,” that is, of Christian scholars, which he considers to be better and more correct (et melius et rectius). According to that interpretation, it is the prophet himself who in verse 1 praises God the Father for the wonderful thing he did, namely, the passion of Jesus, Lord and Savior. The strong city to be destroyed is not Rome, as the Jews maintain, but Jerusalem. The argument is based on the expression domus alienorum (“house of strangers”): since 135 c.e. Jerusalem was inhabited by strangers, nonJews. He further remarks in his commentary that it will never be rebuilt as a city. This statement is followed by a polemical note against the millenarist view among Christian theologians, expressed for instance by Irenaeus,13 that there will be a glorious future for Jerusalem in which Christ will reign together with his followers for a period of a thousand years. As to the question, who is “the strong people” (v. 3), Jerome says “the strong people” who will praise God, and “the city of the strong nations” who will fear him, is the church gathered from the nations (hoc est Ecclesia de gentibus congregata). Vulgate

mt

26:1

In that day shall this canticle be sung in the land of Judah: the city of our strength is the savior (urbs fortitudinis nostrae salvator), a wall and a bulwark (murus et antemurale) shall be set therein.

In that day will be sung this song in the land of Judah: A strong city is ours (z( ry( wnl); he sets up salvation as walls and rampart (lxw rwmwx ty#$y h(w#$y).

26:2

Open the gates, and let the just nation (gens iusta), that keeps the truth, enter in.

Open the gates, and the just nation that keeps faith will enter in.

13. See Brian Daley, Eschatologie: In der Schrift und Patristik (Handbuch der Dogmengeschichte 4; Fribourg: Herder, 1986), 108.


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The Latin version reflects a different understanding of this passage from the mt, as becomes clear from a comparison between the Vulgate and mt in verse 1. The clause urbs fortitudinis nostrae salvator, “the city of our strength is the savior,” is interesting. First, the Hebrew h(w#$y (“salvation”) has been rendered as salvator (“savior”). Second, this word has been taken as belonging to the preceding words, and not to the following, as is the case in mt. The rendering salvator for h(w#$y is revealing for the way this passage was understood by Jerome. As a matter of fact, this rendering is also found elsewhere in the Vulgate of Isaiah (e.g., 45:8; 51:5; 62:1, 11). It is the way Jerome introduced the savior, Jesus, into his translation of the Old Testament.14 The explanation of this phrase in his commentary is fully in line with his translation. Jerome argues that this city cannot be the city of Jerusalem on earth—again against the millenarist point of view. On the contrary, in line with the exegesis of Eusebius of Caesarea, it refers to Jerusalem in heaven, the heavenly city. And the land of Judah is meant as the region of that city. In favor of this view Jerome quotes texts from the Psalms in which the expression “the city of God” occurs (Pss 46:5 and 87:3), as did Eusebius before him. Jerome further agrees with Eusebius that it is the saints in heaven who will sing this song. However, he disagrees with him regarding the phrase murus et antemurale (“wall and bulwark”). While Eusebius said the wall of the heavenly city of God is Jesus, Jerome asserts that murus symbolizes “good works,” and antemurale, “right faith.” Verse 2 is also taken as referring to the heavenly city. Jerome states that this verse contains the response given by God to the confession of the saints in verse 1: he will order his angels to open the gates of the city of the Lord (urbs dominica) for the faithful people (gens iusta).

26:5

Vulgate

mt

For he shall bring down them that dwell on high; the lofty city (civitatem sublimen) he shall lay low (humiliabit). He shall bring it down (humiliabit) even to the ground; he shall pull it down even to the dust.

For he has brought low the inhabitants of the height; the lofty city he lays low (hnlyp#$y). He lays it low (hnlyp#$y) to the ground, casts it to the dust.

14. For Isa 26:2, see also the commentary of Eusebius, where it is stated that the Hebrew word for “salvation” has the same letters as the name of Jesus in Hebrew.

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The foot shall tread it down, the feet of the poor, the steps of the needy.

The foot tramples it, the feet of the poor, the steps of the needy.

In his commentary on this passage Jerome again mentions the Jewish interpretation of this text but rejects it, saying that “our” interpretation is the better one. The lofty city (civitatem sublimen) of verse 5 is not Rome, as the Jews assume, but Jerusalem. So Jerusalem will be destroyed and humiliated. It is nice and not without reason, he remarks, that the verbal form humiliabit (“bring it down”; mt hnlyp@#$y) occurs twice (cf. mt). The first refers to the destruction of the city and the temple by the Babylonians, whereas the second occurrence alludes to the destruction by the Romans in the year 70 c.e. It has become clear that the interpretation of passages about the city in Isa 25 and 26 by Jerome, hinted at in the wording of his translation and fully expressed in his commentary, is a distinctly Christian one. The city of Isa 25:2 and 26:5 is interpreted as Jerusalem on earth, and the city of 26:1, “the city of the savior,” as Jerusalem in heaven. Two other views are definitely rejected: the millenarist view that was popular among Christians, and the Jewish interpretation, according to which the city of 25:2 and 26:5 is Rome. Targum

As is well known, Targum Jonathan to the Prophets is characterized by explanatory and paraphrastic renderings in oracular passages. This feature is also present in the passages under discussion.15

25:1

Targum

mt

O Lord, you are my God; I will exalt you, I will praise your name; for you have done wonders, counsels which you promised to bring of old you have now brought and established.

Lord, you are my God, I will glorify you, I will sing to your name, for you have done a wonderful thing, plans from long ago, faithful and sure.

15. Unless otherwise stated, the translation of the passages involved is that of Bruce Chilton, The Isaiah Targum: Introduction, Translation, Apparatus and Notes (ArBib 11; Wilmington, Del.: Glazier, 1987).


25:2

For you have made open cities (Nyxcp ywrq) heaps, a strong fortress a ruin; a temple of the Gentiles ()ymm( tlxd tyb) will never be built in the city of Jerusalem!

For you have turned the city (ry(m) into a rubble heap, the fortified town into a ruin, the palace of aliens a city no more (Myrz Nwmr) ry(m); it will never be built (hnby )l Mlw(l).

25:3

Therefore a strong people will glorify before you, the city (tyrq)16 of mighty peoples will fear before you.

Therefore strong people will glorify you, the city of ruthless nations will fear you.

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Verse 2 constitutes an interesting translation. First, the Hebrew ry(m has been interpreted as “open cities” (Nyxcp ywrq), which suggests that it was taken in the sense of “a place that is not a walled city.” The singular in Hebrew has been explained here collectively (“cities”), but this does not apply to the following clause: “a strong fortress/city a ruin.” For the question of which city might be alluded to in the Targum, see below. The Targum of verse 2b presents a striking translation: “a temple of the Gentiles/peoples ()ymm( tlxd tyb) will never be built in the city of Jerusalem” (cf. Hebrew: “The palace of aliens [Myrz Nwmr)] is a city no more, it will never be built”). It has been argued by scholars that the Targum’s rendering is best understood as referring to the plan of the Roman emperor Hadrian (ca. 130 c.e.) to build a temple for Jupiter Capitolinus in the city of Jerusalem.17 This was part of the intention of the emperor to build a new pagan city on the ruins of Jerusalem, which, among other things, gave rise to the second revolt (132–135 C.E.).18 The idea that the heathen temple will not be built is corroborated by the Aramaic version of verse 7, according to which “the face of the great one who is master over all the peoples, and the face of the king who rules over all the kingdoms will be annihilated on this mountain,” that is, on Mount Zion. The Hebrew text of this verse is different: “Then he will swallow up, on this moun-

16. Singular instead of plural (pace Chilton). 17. See Arie van der Kooij, Die alten Textzeugen des Jesajabuches (OBO 35; Fribourg: Universitätsverlag, 1981), 194; Chilton, Isaiah Targum, 49. 18. Cf. Emil Schürer, The History of the Jewish People (Edinburgh: T&T Clark, 1973), 1:540; Peter Schäfer, Der Bar Kokhba Aufstand: Studien zum zweiten jüdischen Krieg gegen Rom (TSAJ 1; Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 1981), 29–50; Ya‘akov Meshorer, The Coinage of Aelia Capitolina (Jerusalem: Israel Museum, 1989), 19.

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tain, the face of the shroud that shrouds all peoples, the sheet that sheets all nations.” One gets the impression that the Hebrew +wl has been associated with the root +l#$, to rule. Be this as it may, the expression “the great one who rules over all the kingdoms” alludes to the Roman emperor. He will be destroyed on the holy mountain, and consequently, the heathen temple will not be built. Targum

mt

26:1

In that time they will sing this song in the land of the house of Judah: We have a strong city; salvation will be set on its walls, and mercy (Nymxr).19

In that day will be sung this song in the land of Judah: A strong city is ours; he sets up salvation as walls and rampart ( lx).

26:2

Open the gates, that the innocent people who kept the law with a perfect heart, may enter in.


26:5

For he has humbled the inhabitants of the height, the strong city ()pyqt )yrq). He will humble it, cast it to the ground, bring it to the dust.

For he has brought low the inhabitants of the height; the lofty city (hbg#&n hyrq) he lays low. He lays it low to the ground, casts it to the dust.

26:6

Feet will trample it, the feet of the righteous (ylgr )yqydc), the steps of the poor, the needy of the people.


The rendering “mercy” (Nymxr) for Hebrew lx (“bulwark”) is a remarkable one. As the text stands, “salvation” and “mercy” will be the mark of the strong city in the land of Judah (for salvation on the walls, see also Isa 60:18). The targumist has here the city of Jerusalem in mind. The “just nation that keeps faith” (mt) of verse 2 that may enter the city has been interpreted, fully in line with the theology of the Targum, as “the innocent people who kept the law with a perfect heart.”

19. Singular instead of plural (pace Chilton).


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In verse 5 the Targum reads “the strong city” ()pyqt )yrq) for mt “the lofty city” (hbg#&n hyrq), an interpretation based on “high” in the sense of “strong.” The Aramaic version offers here an expression that is very similar to the one in 25:2 (Pyqt Krk, “strong fortress”). The feet that will trample it (26:6; mt “the foot tramples it”) has been made explicit as “the feet of the righteous” ()yqydc ylgr), presumably in the light of the next verse, 26:7, which begins with )yqydc txrw), “the way of the righteous.” To which city does the Targum refer in Isa 25:2 (open cities) and 26:5 (strong city)? It is clear that the city mentioned in both texts stands in contrast to the strong city of 26:1, the city of Jerusalem. In the light of a few texts elsewhere in the Targum to the Prophets, it is reasonable to assume that in our passage the contrast between Rome and Jerusalem is at stake. This is also in line with our observations about Isa 25:2b, 7. Other Targum passages testify to this contrast by explicitly adding references to Rome and Jerusalem, as in the following: Targum

mt

1 Sam 2:5a

So Jerusalem, which was like a barren woman, is to be filled with her exiled people. And Rome, which was filled with great numbers of people—her armies will cease to be; she will be desolate and destroyed.

Those who were full have hired themselves out for bread, but those who were hungry have ceased to hunger.

Isa 54:1

Sing, O Jerusalem who was as a barren woman who did not bear; shout in singing and exult, [you who were] as a woman who did not become pregnant. For the children of desolate Jerusalem will be more than the children of inhabited Rome, says the Lord.

Sing, O barren one who did not bear; burst into song and shout, you who have not been in labor! For the children of the desolate woman will be more than the children of her that is married, says the Lord.

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This all leads to the conclusion that the interpretation found in Targum Isaiah does concur, at least in its broad outlines, with the exegesis of the Jews as mentioned in the commentary of Jerome, namely, that Isa 25:2a and 26:5 are about the strong city of Rome, and Isa 26:1 about the earthly city of Jerusalem. A specific interpretation is found in Isa 25:2b, where it is said that “the temple of the Gentiles/peoples” as planned by the Roman emperor Hadrian “shall never be built in the city of Jerusalem.” As a whole, the passages in the Targum are characterized by a strong contrast between Rome and Jerusalem. Septuagint

Let us now turn to lxx Isaiah, dating to the second century b.c.e., which, as the most ancient version, testifies to the most ancient interpretation of the book. Just as with the Vulgate and the Targum, I will concentrate on the Old Greek of Isaiah both in comparison to the Hebrew text (mt [1QIsaa concurs in all instances with mt]) and as a text in its own right. lxx

mt

25:1

Lord my God, I will glorify you, I will sing to your name, for you have done wonderful things, the ancient (and) faithful counsel. So be it, O Lord.

Lord, you are my God, I will glorify you, I will sing to your name, for you have done a wonderful thing, plans from long ago, faithful and sure.

25:2

For you have made cities (po&leij) a heap, strong cities (po&leij o)xura&j) so that their foundations (au)tw~n ta_ qeme&lia) fall; the strong city of the wicked men (tw~n a)sebw~n po&lij) shall not be built forever.

For you have turned the city (ry() into a rubble heap, the fortified town (hyrq) into a ruin, the palace of aliens (Myrz Nwmr)) a city no more (ry(m); it will never be built.

25:3

Therefore, the poor people (o( lao_j o( ptwxo/j) shall bless you, and cities of injured men (po/leij a)nqrw&pwn a)dikoume/nwn) shall bless you.

Therefore strong people (z( M() will glorify you, the city of ruthless nations (Mycyr( Mywg tyrq) will fear you.


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Instead of the singular found in the Hebrew, lxx offers plural forms in verse 2a: “cities” (po&leij) and “strong cities” (po&leij o)xura&j). The singular in Hebrew has apparently been taken in a general sense. As a matter of fact, the plural “cities” turns out to be typical of Isa 24–26 in the lxx; it is also found in 24:12 and 26:5 (see below), and compare 24:10 (“each city”; mt lacks “each”). The second part of verse 2a reads “strong cities so that their foundation fall.” This rendering reflects a syntactical reading of the text different from mt. “Their foundations” (au0tw~n ta_ qeme&lia) is given as translation of Hebrew Nwmr) (“palace”), which means that, contrary to mt, this word has been interpreted as belonging to the previous clause. The rendering “foundations” for Nwmr) is also attested seven times in lxx Amos 1:4 and the verses that follow. The expression as such, the fall of the foundations, has a parallel in lxx Ezek 30:4: kai\ sumpesei=tai ta_ qeme&lia au)th~j (“and her foundations shall fall”; mt wsrhnw hytdwsy, “and her foundations are torn down”). It conveys the idea of complete destruction. In the lxx verse 2b reads “the city of the wicked (men) shall not be built forever.” The phrase “the city of the wicked” (tw~n a)sebw~n po&lij) seems to represent a rendering of the Hebrew words ry(m Myrz.20 The rendering a)sebei=j for Myrz is also found in verse 5 of the same pericope: a)po_ a)nqrw&pwn a)sebw~n (mt Myrz Nw)#$). But compare also verse 4, where the Hebrew Mrzm has been interpreted as a)po_ a)nqrw&pwn ponhrw~n (“from wicked men”). This rendering a0sebh/j (“wicked”) for Hebrew rz, “stranger,” is only attested in lxx Isaiah (see also 29:5) and nowhere else in the Septuagint. At other places in Isaiah, the Hebrew word involved has been translated as a)llo&trioj (“stranger,” 1:7; 43:12) or a)llogenh&j (“foreigner,” 61:5). The expression “the city of the wicked” does not occur elsewhere in lxx Isaiah nor in other parts of the Greek Bible. One wonders whether it is to be taken in a general sense or as referring to a particular city. The setting of the events as prophesied in lxx Isa 24–26 is “the inhabited world” (h( oi0koume/nh), and the wicked are the ungodly persons, rich and powerful, on earth (24:8; 26:10). So the city of the wicked ones must be an important city dominating the world. In lxx Isaiah as a whole this city is best understood as the city of Babylon (chs. 13 and 47). The idea that the most powerful city will never be rebuilt (25:2b) is fully in line with lxx Isa 13:20, where it is said that after its fall Babylon will never be inhabited again. For the use of a)sebh/j, see also 13:11.

20. It has been suggested that lxx here reflects the Hebrew word Mydz (see Ziegler, Untersuchungen, 82; BHS), but this is not likely for a number of reasons (1QIsaa supports the reading of mt, and the Greek word involved is never an equivalent of Hebrew dz).

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The next verse, 25:3, shows remarkable differences from the Hebrew. lxx reads, “Therefore, the poor people (o( lao_j o( ptwxo/j) shall bless you, and cities of injured men (po/leij a)nqrw&pwn a)dikoume/nwn) shall bless you,” where mt has, “For the strong people (z( M() shall glorify you, the city of ruthless nations (Mycyr( Mywg tyrq) shall fear you.” lxx is about “poor people” and “cities of injured men,” whereas the wording of mt, “strong people” and “city of ruthless nations,” offers quite a different picture. One of the reasons may have been to bring the verse in line with the beginning of verse 4, which reads, according to lxx, “For you have become a helper to every humble city” (mt: “For you have been a stronghold for the poor”). As has been argued by scholars, lxx Isa 25:1–5 represent a very free translation, reflecting the ideas of its author more than the contents of the underlying Hebrew text.21 The passage as a whole evokes the picture of poor people who suffered injustice from “wicked” and “bad” persons. It therefore makes good sense that the poor people will bless God, because he was their helper, and the city of the wicked men who did them wrong will never be rebuilt. lxx

mt

26:1

On that day they shall sing this song in the land of Judah: Behold, a strong city (Idou_ po/lij o)xura/); and he shall set our salvation (its) wall and outer wall.

In that day will be sung this song in the land of Judah: A strong city is ours (z( ry( wnl); he sets up salvation as walls and rampart (lx).

26:2

Open the gates, let the people that keeps righteousness and keeps truth enter.


26:5

who (o#j) did humble and bring down them that dwell on high; strong cities (po/leij o)xura/j) you shall throw down, and bring down to the ground;

For (yk) he has brought low the inhabitants of the height (Mwrm yb#$y); the lofty city (hbg#&n hyrq) he lays low (hnlyp#$y). He lays it low (hnlyp#$y) to the ground, casts it to the dust.

21. See Isaac L. Seeligmann, The Septuagint Version of Isaiah (Leiden: Brill, 1948), 112; J. M. Coste, “Le texte grec d’Isaïe XXV 1–5,” RB 61 (1954): 36–66.

26:6


and the feet of the gentle and humble shall tread upon them (i.e., cities).

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In verse 1b, the first words of the song are “Behold, a strong city” (Idou_ po/lij o)xura/), where mt reads, “A strong city is ours (lit., a strong city is to us)”

(wnl z( ry(). lxx adds the word “behold,” and it reflects a different syntactical reading of the Hebrew text regarding the form wnl (“to us”); in mt it belongs to the previous clause (“a strong city to us”), but the translator has taken it with what follows, hence “our salvation.” It is interesting to note that lxx offers an interpretation in line with lxx Isa 33:20a: “Behold, Zion, the city of our salvation! (Idou\ Siwn h9 po/lij to_ swth/rion h(mw~n) Your eyes shall see Jerusalem, the rich city.”22 A group of righteous people (33:15) is addressed here, and they will see Jerusalem, the city of their salvation. This related passage throws light on the addition (“behold”) and the expression “our salvation” in 26:1. The first words of the song, “Behold, a strong city,” may well be understood as being sung by a group that is approaching Jerusalem. Verse 2 then may refer to the moment of entering the city by this group of righteous people. lxx 26:5 differs in some respects from the Hebrew. The Greek text has a clause introduced by “who” (o#j), instead of yk (“for”), creating in this way a direct link with the previous verse (v. 4). Furthermore, the phrase “strong cities” (po/leij o)xura/j) figures in lxx as the object of the verbs in verse 5b, whereas in mt the expression “towering city” functions as an apposition to “the inhabitants of the height” (Mwrm yb#$y) in verse 5a. As has been observed above, verse 5 is one of the places where the plural rendering “cities” is found in lxx. lxx offers the adjective “strong” (o)xuro/j) here for mt’s “towering, high” (hbg#&n). Like the Targum, lxx presents a rendering in harmony with 25:2. Summarizing our discussion of the passages in lxx Isaiah, the following picture regarding the cities emerges: Isa 25:2a and 26:5 are about the fall and destruction of “strong cities” (plural), while the Greek of 25:2b seems to refer to a particular city, the city of Babylon. And 26:1–2 testifies to the hope and expectation that righteous people will return to the “strong city,” to Jerusalem, “the city of our salvation.” There is, however, one further point to be discussed. Both the Vulgate version (with Jerome’s commentary) and the Targum seem not only to represent a

22. mt reads: “Look upon Zion, the city of our appointed feasts; your eyes will see Jerusalem, a quiet habitation.”

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translation of the Hebrew text but also to reflect an interpretation of Isaiah as prediction of future times. Targum Isaiah clearly shows traces of an actualizing reading of the ancient prophecies, based on the idea that those prophecies were to be read and interpreted as oracles about events in the time of the translator. As has been argued by scholars, this understanding of prophecy is also typical of the Septuagint version of Isaiah.23 This need not surprise us, because it is consistent with the ideas of the Hellenistic era. Ancient prophecies were considered predictions about the present and the near future. Notable examples are to be found in Dan 9 and in the pesharim of Qumran. What does this mean for our passages in lxx Isa 25 and 26? The Old Greek of Isaiah contains indications that prophecies about Assyria and Babylon were understood as referring to the Seleucid Empire.24 It is therefore plausible to assume that the phrase “the strong cities” in lxx 25:2a and 26:5, denoting a worldwide power, actually alluded to the power and might of the Seleucids, the more so since in lxx Isa 24–26 “the inhabited world” (h( oi0koume/nh) is the setting of the coming events. Cities, strong cities all over the world, were typical of an empire like that of the Ptolemies or of the Seleucids.25 And the city of Babylon, the city referred to in lxx Isa 25:2b, was also associated in the second century b.c.e. with the Seleucid Empire. The elegy of the king of Babylon in Isa 14 has been interpreted in the lxx as an oracle predicting the death of the Seleucid ruler Antiochus IV.26 Vulgate, Targum, and lxx

Synoptically, the three versions of Isaiah display the following picture as witnesses of an early interpretation of the passages about cities in Isa 25 and 26:

23. See Seeligmann, Septuagint Version; Joaquim C. M. das Neves, A Teologia da Tradução Grega dos Setenta no Livro de Isaías (Cap. 24 de Isaías) (Lisbon: Catholic University of Portugal, 1973); van der Kooij, Textzeugen; Jean Koenig, L’herméneutique analogique du Judaisme antique d’apres les témoins textuels d’Isaïe (VTSup 33; Leiden: Brill, 1982); van der Kooij, Oracle of Tyre. 24. See, e.g., van der Kooij, Textzeugen, 34–38 (on lxx Isa 10:5–14.) 25. See texts such as 1 Macc 1:2, 19. See also Martin Hengel, Judentum und Hellenismus (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 1973), 23–25. 26. On lxx Isa 14, see Seeligmann, Septuagint Version, 84; and van der Kooij, Textzeugen, 39–43.


Vulgate

Targum

lxx

25:2a

“the strong city”: Jerusalem on earth

“open cities”; “strong city”: Rome

“strong cities”: Seleucid Empire

“city”

25:2b

“house of aliens”

“no pagan temple in Jerusalem”

“city of the wicked”: Babylon

“palace of aliens”

26:1–2

salvator: Jerusalem in heaven

“city of salvation”: Jerusalem

“city of salvation”: Jerusalem

“strong city”: Jerusalem

26:5

“the lofty city”: Jerusalem on earth

“strong city”: Rome

“strong cities”: Seleucid Empire

“lofty city”: a Moabite town?

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mt

The three translations illustrate how the passages about the “city” in Isa 25– 26 have been interpreted in different ages, in different communities, and from different theological perspectives. Each of the translations, however, testifies to the same hermeneutical stance, namely, reading the prophecies as predicting events in the recent past, the present, and the near future of the translators and their communities. The differences between the three involve the meaning of words and matters of grammar, particularly the syntactical understanding of the parent text. At least some of these differences serve actualizing interpretations of the ancient prophecies, such as the rendering salvator (“savior”) in Vulgate Isa 26:1, the expression “a temple of the peoples (Gentiles)” in Tg. Isa. 25:2, and the preference for the plural “strong cities” in lxx Isa 24–26. There is a marked difference between the Vulgate (and commentary), on the one hand, and Targum and lxx, on the other, regarding the interpretation of the city in Isa 26:1. In line with Eusebius of Caesarea, Jerome polemically stated that this city could not be considered the city of Jerusalem on earth,27 as was held by the Jews (Targum and lxx) as well as by Christians who adhered to a millenarist view.

27. Quae est ista urbs? Quae in monte sita latere non potest (“What is that city? The city seated on a mountain cannot be hidden”) (Comm., ad loc.).

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Conclusion As may be clear from the above, the ancient versions of the book of Isaiah represent interesting witnesses to its early history of interpretation, both in the sense of acculturation, as with Isa 3’s lists of women’s belongings, and of reactualizing a given passage as prophecy. The dynamic process of reading biblical texts by Jewish and Christian communities in view of their own time, situation, and interests has been part of the translation history of these texts from the beginning. In many instances, the nuances and differences involved may seem minor, but in some cases the implied interpretation marks a major theological shift, at least from our perspective, as is the case with Isa 26:1–2: unlike the Jewish interpretation seen in lxx and Targum, the Christian view as represented by Jerome is that “the city of salvation” is to be seen as Jerusalem in heaven, not on earth. In this and other cases the ancient versions reflect not only the religious ideas and convictions of particular groups, both in Judaism and Christianity, but also the way that these ideas were linked up, for the sake of legitimation, with a given biblical passage in Isaiah. Select Bibliography See also the contributions in this volume by David A. Baer, George J. Brooke, and J. David Cassel. Chilton, Bruce D. The Glory of Israel. The Theology and Provenience of the Isaiah Targum. JSOTSup 23. Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press, 1983. ———. The Isaiah Targum: Introduction, Translation, Apparatus and Notes. ArBib 11. Wilmington, Del.: Glazier, 1987. Hollerich, Michael J. Eusebius of Caesarea’s Commentary on Isaiah: Christian Exegesis in the Age of Constantine. Oxford: Clarendon, 1999. Jay, Pierre. L’exégèse de Saint Jérôme d’après son “Commentaire sur Isaïe. Paris: Études Augustiennes, 1985. Kooij, Arie van der. The Oracle of Tyre: The Septuagint of Isaiah XXIII as Version and Vision. VTSup 71. Leiden: Brill, 1998. ———. “Wie heisst der Messias? Zu Jes 9,5 in den alten griechischen Versionen.” Pages 156–69 in Vergegenwärtigung des Alten Testaments. Beiträge zur biblischen Hermeneutik. Edited by C. Bultmann, W. Dietrich, and C. Levin. Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2002. Levine, Étan. The Aramaic Version of the Bible: Contents and Context. BZAW 174. Berlin: de Gruyter, 1988.

On Isaiah at Qumran George J. Brooke

Introduction The discovery of the Dead Sea Scrolls, especially those in eleven caves at and near Qumran between 1947 and 1956, has stimulated fresh lines of research in many areas of biblical studies.1 The scrolls found in the Qumran caves are commonly divided into three groups. First, about a quarter of the manuscripts contain compositions that are considered to reflect the life of the community at Qumran and the wider movement of which it was a part; these are commonly labeled as “sectarian.” Second, about half the manuscripts contain general Jewish literature of the late Second Temple period, though the selection at Qumran is notably consistent in its outlook and was no doubt in the caves because for the most part the sectarians were sympathetic to it. Several of these compositions are in Aramaic. Some of them, like parts of the Enoch writings, were known in some form before the discovery of the scrolls, but most are previously unknown nonsectarian Jewish literature of the period. The third category, which comprises about a quarter of the extant manuscripts, consists of the so-called “biblical” scrolls, though the label “biblical” is somewhat anachronistic. These “biblical” scrolls show two characteristics that must be held in tension. On the one hand, they demonstrate that the texts of the Hebrew Scriptures found in early medieval manuscripts are remarkably continuous with manuscripts from a thousand years before them. But, on the other hand, the Qumran manuscripts contain numerous variants, both major and minor, that show that for many books there were two or more textual editions in circulation in the centuries before a particular text-type was selected for each chosen canonical book. It is this variety that has stimulated new research on the history of the

1. This essay is a modified and abbreviated form of the twentieth annual Brownlee Memorial Lecture, presented on 10 April 2003 at Claremont Graduate University.

-69-

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transmission of the biblical text, not least in a fresh consideration of the lxx and the other versions.2 Variants in those versional traditions are no longer so readily considered to be the responsibility of the translators but are more commonly recognized as belonging to the history of the transmission of the Hebrew texts from which the translators variously worked. The scrolls of the book of Isaiah from Cave 1 (1QIsaa and 1QIsab) were the first to pose challenges to text critics and others.3 John C. Trever and William H. Brownlee were both at the American School in Jerusalem when the scrolls were brought there in February 1948. Trever’s photographs of the so-called Great Isaiah Scroll (1QIsaa) have been reproduced many times and used as a reference point for the study of the scroll, while Brownlee developed a long-standing interest in Isaiah at Qumran.4 In the archive of Brownlee’s letters and papers is a personal letter that gives a fascinating glimpse of first encounters with the scrolls in 1948; it is from Brownlee in Jerusalem to his fiancée, Louise, in Abbeyville, Kansas.5 This love letter reads like the first scholarly article on the Isaiah scroll (1QIsaa), and, in terms of how editors should proceed with editions of manuscripts, it is significant that Brownlee notes the scroll’s dimensions and has already completed a preliminary paleographical analysis to assist in the dating of the manuscript.

2. See the contribution in this volume and many other writings on similar topics by Arie van der Kooij. See also Florian Wilk, “ ‘Vision wider Judäa und wider Jerusalem’ (Jes 1 LXX): Zur Eigenart der Septuaginta-Version des Jesajabuches,” in Frühjudentum und Neues Testament im Horizont Biblischer Theologie (ed. W. Kraus and K.-W. Niebuhr; WUNT 162; Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2003), 15–35. 3. See especially Millar Burrows, ed., with the assistance of John C. Trever and William H. Brownlee, The Dead Sea Scrolls of St. Mark’s Monastary, vol. 1: The Isaiah Manuscript and the Habakkuk Commentary; vol. 2, fascicle 2: Plates and Transcription of the Manual of Discipline (New Haven: ASOR, 1950–51). 4. See especially, from the 1950s, William H. Brownlee, “The Text of Isaiah VI 13 in the Light of DSIa,” VT 1 (1951): 296–98; “The Manuscripts of Isaiah from Which DSIa Was Copied,” BASOR 127 (1952): 16–21; “The Servant of the Lord in the Qumran Scrolls I,” BASOR 132 (1953): 8–15; “The Servant of the Lord in the Qumran Scrolls II,” BASOR 135 (1954): 33–38; “Messianic Motifs of Qumran and the New Testament I,” NTS 3 (1956–57): 12–30; “Messianic Motifs of Qumran and the New Testament II,” NTS 3 (1956–57): 195–210. 5. All of Brownlee’s unpublished letters and papers have been assembled in an archive in the John Rylands University Library of Manchester. An annotated catalog has been prepared by D. D. Swanson. Materials in the archive are published here with the permission of Martha BrownleeTerry, literary executor for her parents.

brooke: on isaiah at qumran Dearest Louise,

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February 23, 1948

I have exciting news for you which will yet echo round the world, but which must not become common knowledge. The oldest Biblical manuscript has probably been found. February 19 while I was on a brief visit to the American Colony, some Syrian monks called and asked for me, but saw John Trever instead. They had some very old scrolls which had been in their library for forty years which they wanted to be identified. According to their story, about forty years ago some Bedu near the Dead Sea found them in a cave high up in the hills above the sea near Ein Feshkha. They were enclosed in jars after being wrapped heavily with cloth. John got to see the manuscripts but briefly, but got the impression of genuineness. He copied out a portion of one of the scrolls and discovered that it was part of Isaiah. The next day he called at the Monastery and made arrangements for the men to bring the scrolls to the school the following day to be carefully photographed. He had supposed that we could complete the job in three hours, but with 3½ hrs work the task was not complete and we asked the bishop of the convent (Botros Salmi) and his attendants to stay for lunch. About 4 P.M. we had photographed completely the text of two scrolls [1QIsaa; 1QpHab].… The largest scroll is about twentyfour feet long and ten and a quarter inches high. It contains the entire text of Isaiah.… The material upon which they are written is parchment. The style of writing classifies them as very ancient. We have been searching various sources for samples of the oldest forms of letters. The material for dating is scanty, but from the samples we have seen the manuscripts may be safely dated between 200 b.c. and 200 a.d. They may be as old as the ministry of Christ. The scribe seems to have written in a transitional period when more than one style was being employed for writing. He was familiar with both very ancient and recent documents. Some of the letters look like those made in the third and even the fifth century b.c. Many fit the second century b.c. Still others seem to fit the Herodian period. In the same paragraph two or three variations of the same letter occur. This complicates the problem of dating. I have read twelve verses of Isaiah, sufficient to know that the text is very important for establishing the true text of the book. This is the first great Biblical manuscript find in Palestine.… A word of this must not be breathed under circumstances that would lead the press to publicize the fact of the discovery. Premature publication may make the monks of the monastery uncooperative, or it may imperil the safety of the manuscript in these chaotic times. We await the printing of the films before we can give real study to the manuscript.6

6. The letter goes on to describe briefly the state of the Rule of the Community (1QS) and the extra time needed to photograph it. There is also mention of the impossibility of opening the

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Also in the Brownlee archive was found a draft for a chapter on the scrolls containing a vivid description of the discovery of the Isaiah scroll at the American School in Jerusalem: Trever appeared at my door with the news. Two Syrians had brought the scrolls for examination and had taken them away with them in a taxi…. He told me all about the interview, how he had been shown five scrolls, and showed me two lines of text which he had copied. Now he must sit down and identify this text without delay. He rejected my offer to help him, but permitted me to copy his transcription (getting farther and farther from the original) and to work independently at the decipherment and identification. I commented to him that l elo which occurred twice was a very unusual combination…. All I had available in my room for locating the passage was a small Hebrew dictionary which gave no references, and an English concordance. It was hard to make out the words; but within a very few minutes Trever burst into my room all excited. He had identified the passage as Isaiah 65:1 by checking all the references to l elo (“to not”) in the large Hebrew dictionary which he had borrowed from the library for his use in identifying Old Testament trees. It was sometime afterward, Trever relates,7 that the irony of the passage impressed itself upon him: “I am sought of them that asked not for me; I am found of them that sought me not!” Here in the school where we could not venture out to make new discoveries, the discoveries themselves sought us out.8

When Brownlee published his major work on Isaiah in the Dead Sea Scrolls in 1964, little information about the large collection of Isaiah manuscripts from Cave 4 had been made known.9 Forty years later, the situation is very different. In what follows I will first offer some observations on what these finds might tell us about the possibility of multiple editions and of the nature of the variants found in those scrolls. In the subsequent sections I will discuss the layout of the text of the Great Isaiah Scroll (1QIsaa) and what it might reveal about the book’s form and structure; I will briefly describe the differences between the commentary literature generated at Qumran by Isaiah and the Twelve, on the one hand,

Genesis Apocryphon (1QapGen) and a few comments on the earliest Hebrew and Greek exemplars of complete biblical books known before the discovery of the scrolls. 7. Trever recounts the same incidents from his own perspective and recalls subsequent conversations with Brownlee about those days in February 1948; see his The Untold Story of Qumran (Westwood, Conn.: Revell; London: Pickering & Inglis, 1965), 21–27. 8. This is from a draft chapter entitled “The Dead Sea Scrolls and the Ferment of Biblical Scholarship,” catalogued as BRO/2/2/7/2 in the Brownlee Archive. 9. William H. Brownlee, The Meaning of the Qumrân Scrolls for the Bible with Special Attention to the Book of Isaiah (New York: Oxford University Press, 1964).

brooke: on isaiah at qumran

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and by Jeremiah and Ezekiel, on the other. In the final section I will briefly examine how the interpretation of one passage from Isaiah may have changed along with the changing shape of the Essene movement. Isaiah at Qumran Text Editions and Variants

The most significant additional information on Isaiah at Qumran undoubtedly consists of the collection of up to twenty-one separate copies of Isaiah that have survived the ravages of time in the Qumran caves. Eighteen of these were found in Cave 4.10 Not all of these manuscripts, some of which are extant in only a few small fragments, are copies of the whole book of Isaiah. However, there are now several preliminary studies of the textual status of Isaiah in the Qumran library in light of these manuscripts. The results of these have recently been summarized by James C. VanderKam and Peter W. Flint: For the book of Isaiah the scrolls and other ancient witnesses preserve apparently only one edition, with no consistent patterns of variant readings or rearrangements. Some manuscripts are especially close to the Masoretic text: 1QIsab, 4QIsaa, 4QIsab, 4QIsad, 4QIsae, 4QIsaf, and 4QIsag. Other scrolls, most notably 1QIsaa (and 4QIsac ), contain many highly instructive variants from the traditional form of the Hebrew text, which offer valuable insights on the late stages of the book’s composition and provide many improved readings.11

10. For information on 1QIsaa, see now Donald W. Parry and Elisha Qimron, The Great Isaiah Scroll (1QIsa a)–A New Edition (STDJ 32; Leiden: Brill, 1999), which includes a detailed bibliography. For 1QIsab, see Eleazar L. Sukenik, ’wsßr hmgylwt hgnwzwt šbydy h’wnybrsyt†h h’bryt (Jerusalem: Mosad Bialik and the Hebrew University, 1954). For 4Q55–4Q69b, see Patrick W. Skehan and Eugene Ulrich, “Isaiah,” in Qumran Cave 4.X: The Prophets (ed. E. Ulrich et al.; DJD 15; Oxford: Clarendon, 1997), 7–143. For 5Q3: J. T. Milik, “Isaïe,” in Les ‘Petites Grottes’ de Qumrân: Exploration de la falaise, les grottes 2Q, 3Q, 5Q, 6Q, 7Q à 10Q, le rouleau de cuivre (ed. M. Baillet et al.; DJD 3; Oxford: Clarendon, 1962), 173. For a recent list of all the passages of Isaiah still extant in these scrolls see Eugene Ulrich, “D. The Biblical Texts from the Judaean Desert: 2. Index of Passages in the ‘Biblical Texts,’ ” in The Texts from the Judaean Desert: Indices and an Introduction to the Discoveries in the Judaean Desert Series (ed. E. Tov et al.; DJD 39; Oxford: Clarendon, 2002), 192–94. For a good brief survey of Isaiah at Qumran see Eugene Ulrich, “Isaiah,” in Encyclopedia of the Dead Sea Scrolls (ed. L. H. Schiffman and J. C. VanderKam; New York: Oxford University Press, 2000), 384–88. 11. James C. VanderKam and Peter W. Flint, The Meaning of the Dead Sea Scrolls: Their Significance for Understanding the Bible, Judaism, Jesus, and Christianity (San Francisco: HarperSanFrancisco, 2002), 131–32.

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It is clear from the early study of the Great Isaiah Scroll that while scholars were initially much stirred by its variant readings, very soon it was being classified overall as a vulgar text. As one scholar has remarked, at least among manuscripts and text traditions, being labeled vulgar is no recommendation.12 It is to be hoped that the publication of all the Cave 4 Isaiah manuscripts will lead to detailed analysis of all the Isaiah scrolls and the reinstatement of the Great Isaiah Scroll as a significant exemplar of the text.13 There are already some signs of such a move being made.14 The two-volume translation and analysis by Odil H. Steck has asked a number of questions of the scroll, some of which were indeed asked by the first generation of Qumran scholars but that need to be revisited.15 His questions especially concern whether close examination of the scribal marks and layout of the text can improve scholarly comprehension of how a late Second Temple scribe understood the prophetic book. Similarly, in a recent article, Emanuel Tov has designated several biblical scrolls from Qumran as de luxe; in layout and material the Great Isaiah Scroll seems to qualify as such a scroll, though in the end, on the basis of the large number of corrections that it contains, Tov concludes that it is not.16 A second important issue concerns whether any of these manuscripts from Qumran contain sectarian variants—readings that would be peculiar to the community at Qumran or the wider movement of which it was a part, which by their very content would have been rejected by other Jewish readers. The classic example of a sectarian form of the biblical text is the Samaritan Pentateuch, which privileges Mount Gerizim in a few of its readings. Brownlee’s enthusiastic interest in the Great Isaiah Scroll was partly driven by his analysis of certain variants that he identified implicitly as sectarian, as

12. Jesper Høgenhaven, “The Isaiah Scroll and the Composition of the Book of Isaiah,” in Qumran between the Old and New Testaments (ed. F. H. Cryer and T. L. Thompson; JSOTSup 290; Copenhagen International Seminar 6; Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press, 1998), 152. 13. For some comments on the limited use made of 1QIsaa in modern English translations, see Harold Scanlin, The Dead Sea Scrolls and Modern Translations of the Old Testament (Wheaton, Ill.: Tyndale House, 1993), 126–32. 14. For example, Eugene Ulrich (“The Developmental Composition of the Book of Isaiah: Light from 1QIsaa on Additions in the MT,” DSD 8 [2001]: 288–305) has argued that 1QIsaa witnesses to the “original text” most frequently. 15. Odil H. Steck, Die erste Jesajarolle von Qumran (1QIsa): Schreibweise als Leseanteilung für ein Prophetenbuch; Textheft (SBS 173, vols. 1–2; Stuttgart: Katholisches Bibelwerk, 1998). 16. Emanuel Tov, “The Biblical Texts from the Judaean Desert—An Overview and Analysis of the Published Texts,” in The Bible as Book: The Hebrew Bible and the Judaean Desert Discoveries (ed. E. D. Herbert and E. Tov; London: British Library; New Castle, Del.: Oak Knoll, 2002), 160. Concerning biblical scrolls, Tov writes: “It seems, however, that the use of large top and bottom margins is a major criterion for establishing that a manuscript was meant as a de luxe edition, together with fine writing, the proto-rabbinic text form, and the paucity of scribal intervention” (158).


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being entirely in tune with the outlook of the Qumran community. The classic example of this is the verbal form ytix;#$amf (“I anointed”) found in Isa 52:14 of 1QIsaa. Over against the standard Masoretic reading of txaa#$;mi (“disfigurement”) commonly read since late antiquity as txf#m ;$ f (“marred”), Brownlee and others have produced translations such as “I so anointed his appearance beyond anyone else.”17 Brownlee supported his particular reading and interpretation of the text by reference to sectarian compositions such as the Rule of the Community, where he perceived a similar messianic understanding. In fact, Brownlee initially considered this reading in Isa 52:14 a scribal error; comparison with the motif of “sprinkling” in the Rule of the Community convinced him otherwise. Eugene C. Ulrich has recently revisited the issue of sectarian variants in the biblical manuscripts from Qumran.18 For 1QIsaa, which is the prime candidate among the Isaiah scrolls, he considers three possible sectarian variants. First, he considers the reading in Isa 44:25 “to render their knowledge foolish” (lksy with sāmek) in 1QIsaa, 1QIsab, 4QIsab, and the lxx, over against “to render their knowledge wise” ( lk#&y with a śîn) in the mt. This particular lexeme, lk#&, is thematic of community identity through wordplay; a leading figure in the community is frequently entitled lyk#&m, “wise teacher,” and the verb lk#& is often used in sectarian compositions.19 On such evidence it might be concluded that the apparently derogatory use of the term in Isa 44:25 was altered in the community’s copies of Isaiah to avoid its use in such a way. But Ulrich points out that what modern readers perceive as wordplay could simply be the result of the confusion of sibilants in the process of transmission. The fact that sometimes there is wordplay in Scripture itself is certainly capitalized upon in the sectarian compositions. And indeed there are instances of variants in the biblical manuscripts being used to sectarian ends.20 But that is not the same as saying

17. Brownlee, Meaning of the Qumrân Scrolls, 205. The chapter in which this translation appears revises and expands Brownlee’s two earlier articles: “The Servant of the Lord in the Qumran Scrolls I,” BASOR 132 (1953): 8–15; and “Certainly Mašah˙ti!” BASOR 135 (1954): 33–38. The first to propose this understanding was Dominique Barthélemy, in “La grand rouleau d’Isaïe trouvé près de la Mer Morte,” RB 57 (1950): 530–49. Barthélemy wanted to see whether messianic readings could be discerned that might have been altered by later Jews to inhibit Christian use of Isaiah. 18. Euegene Ulrich, “The Absence of ‘Sectarian Variants’ in the Jewish Scriptural Scrolls Found at Qumran,” in Herbert and Tov, The Bible as Book, 179–95, esp. 183–85. 19. James E. Harding, “The Wordplay between the Roots lks and lk#$ in the Literature of the Yah˙ad,” RevQ 19 (1999): 69–82. 20. For example, 1QpHab 11:8-14 (on Hab 2:16) utilizes both the mt’s “uncircumcised” (lr(h) and what may lie behind the lxx reading of “staggering” (l(rh). This is most recently discussed by Timothy H. Lim, Holy Scripture in the Qumran Commentaries and Pauline Letters (Oxford: Clarendon, 1997), 50.

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that the variants have been deliberately introduced into the scriptural text to exclude certain readers. In this instance the variant could even have arisen out of a consonantal shift under the influence of Aramaic lksy “to be wise.” A second variant that Ulrich revisits is the infamous reading in Isa 53:11 of “he will see light” (rw) h)ry) in 1QIsaa, 1QIsab, 4QIsab, and the lxx, over against the mt’s “he will see” (h)ry without any expressed object). Ulrich concludes that this should not be understood as indicative of sectarian intervention, even though light plays a significant role in the self-designation of the community as “sons of light,” because it is likely, when probable parallelism is taken into account,21 that none of the witnesses preserves the original text. Furthermore, the attestation of “he will see light” in both Qumran and lxx manuscripts undermines the opinion that this is an intervention peculiar to the Essene movement. Ulrich considers a third proposal, that 1QIsaa contains the kind of actualizing exegesis characteristic of the pesharim (the commentaries on biblical texts found at Qumran). In Isa 41:22 1QIsaa reads “the last things” (twnwrx)) over against mt’s “their end” (Ntyrx)). Is this evidence of a sectarian variant, since the Qumran community understood itself to be living in the last days? Given that similar variants occur elsewhere in the scroll (47:7) and that these variations do not seem to appear in any thoroughgoing way, it is actually safer to conclude that nothing peculiar should be read into the variant in Isa 41:22. As a result of these technical text-critical investigations, it has become increasingly apparent that there are no sectarian variants in 1QIsaa or, for that matter, in any of the Isaiah scrolls from Qumran.22 The same can confidently be said about the rest of the so-called biblical manuscripts from Qumran: they do not contain sectarian exegetical interventions.23 As a result, it is becoming increasingly important for all the variants in the Qumran scriptural scrolls to be considered on an equal footing with other extant readings. Even Tov, who had

21. The parallelism at issue here involves h)r in the first hemistich and (b#, “be satisfied,” in the second hemistich. Ulrich prefers to read the first verb as from hwr, “be filled, saturated,” along with D. Winton Thomas, the editor of BHS Isaiah, who suggested the reading in a footnote (D. Winton Thomas, ed., Librum Jesaiae, in BHS [editio major; ed. R. Kittel et al.; Stuttgart: Deutsche Bibelgesellschaft, 1984], 760). 22. Dennis Green has argued persuasively that the scribal habits concerning the divine titles attested in 4QIsac are further evidence of ideological presuppositions shared with Judaism very broadly (Dennis Green, “4QIsc: A Rabbinic Production of Isaiah Found at Qumran,” JJS 53 [2002]: 120–45). 23. As I concluded elsewhere, “there is nothing particularly distinctive or sectarian about the pluralism of the biblical texts as discernible in the Qumran caves” (George Brooke, “E pluribus unum: Textual Variety and Definitive Interpretation in the Qumran Scrolls,” in The Dead Sea Scrolls in their Historical Context (ed. T. H. Lim et al.; Edinburgh: T&T Clark, 2000), 119.


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previously insisted that each Qumran manuscript should be understood as an independent witness to the transmission of its contents, has increasingly minimized the significance of several scrolls by putting them in the category of copies of scriptural books presented according to Qumran scribal practices.24 The time has come to challenge such categorization.25 1QIsaa needs to be brought back into the debate about the transmission of Isaiah in late Second Temple times. Some of the insights of the first generation of Qumran scholars into its variant readings should be given a hearing once again, but without the assumption that such variants show sectarian ideological interventions. The Form of Isaiah Many of the first generation of scrolls scholars made ground-breaking analyses of the language of the Isaiah scrolls26 but did not pay much attention to the manuscripts’ layout of the text. To be sure, the marginal marks in 1QIsaa provoked several studies, but other observations regarding the form of Isaiah are worth making, especially in terms of the bisection of the scroll and its overall paragraphing. Most modern readers of Isaiah are educated to think of a major division in the book between chapters 39 and 40. In 1928 Charles Cutler Torrey, exceptionally among modern interpreters, proposed that Isa 34–35 belonged to Second Isaiah, though he did not try to explain the presence of Isa 36–39 in their present position.27 In 1QIsaa a distinct gap of at least three lines occurs at the bottom of column 27 at the end of a sheet of parchment, that is, between chapters 33 and 34. Paul Kahle was the first to suggest that this scroll had two parts, separated from one another between Isa 33 and 34, with the text

24. See especially Emanuel Tov, Textual Criticism of the Hebrew Bible (2nd ed.; Assen: Van Gorcum; Minneapolis: Fortress, 2001), 107–11, 114. 25. Tov’s view has been rightly criticized by Steck on the basis of the layout of the text of Isaiah in each Isaiah manuscript; there seems to be nothing out of the ordinary in the way those written in so-called “Qumran scribal practice” are laid out. See Odil H. Steck, “Bemerkungen zur Abschnittgliederung in den Jesaja-Handschriften aus der Wüste Juda: Ein Vergleich auf der Grundlage von 1QIsaa,” in Die Textfunde vom Toten Meer und der Text der Hebräischen Bibel (ed. U. Dahmen et al.; Neukirchen-Vluyn: Neukirchener, 2000), 87. 26. For Isaiah, see especially Edward Y. Kutscher, The Language and Linguistic Background of the Isaiah Scroll (1QIsa a) (STDJ 6; Leiden: Brill, 1974); and idem, The Language and Linguistic Background of the Isaiah Scroll (1QIsa a) (indices and corrections by E. Qimron; STDJ 6a; Leiden: Brill, 1979). 27. Charles Cutler Torrey, The Second Isaiah (New York: Scribner’s Sons; Edinburgh: T&T Clark, 1928).

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of each part having different characteristics.28 The most detailed early observations concerning this gap were published by Brownlee in 1962.29 According to Brownlee, “the gap between chapters 33 and 34 in the complete Isaiah Scroll, together with orthographic peculiarities of each half, point to the practice of bisecting the book of Isaiah into two scrolls: (1) chapters 1–33 and (2) chapters 34–66.”30 Brownlee proposed that the division of the book of Isaiah in two reflected an ancient understanding of the literary structure of the book. He argued that each half was made up of seven parallel sections: 1.

The Ruin and Restoration of Judah (1–5)

Paradise Lost and Regained (34–35)

2.

Biography (6–8)

Biography (36–40)

3.

Agents of Divine Blessing and Judgment (9–12)

Agents of Deliverance and Judgment (41–45)

4.

Anti-foreign Oracles (13–23)

Anti-Babylonian Oracles (46–48)

5.

Universal Judgment and the Deliverance of God’s People (24–27)

Universal Redemption through the Lord’s Servant, also the Glorification of Israel (49–54)

28. Paul Kahle, Die hebräischen Handschriften aus der Höhle (Stuttgart: Kohlhammer, 1951), 72–77. Strangely, although Brownlee (Meaning of the Qumrân Scrolls, 247) observed that with such observations Kahle proposed that 1QIsaa explicitly supported Torrey’s theory, Kahle never made that association in his 1951 work, although he does show knowledge of Torrey’s work on Second Isaiah. 29. William H. Brownlee, “The Literary Significance of the Bisection of Isaiah in the Ancient Scroll of Isaiah from Qumran,” in Trudy Dvardtsat Pyatogo Mezhdunarodnogo Kongressa Vostokokovedov (Tome 1; Moscow: Tzolatel’stvo Vostochnoi Literatary, 1962), 431–37. 30. Brownlee, Meaning of the Qumrân Scrolls, 247. As he pointed out for the Isaiah Scroll and as others have done in relation to various biblical and other classical compositions, it may be that longer works were conceived in two sections for the ease of putting them on scrolls that would not be overly bulky. Indeed, for Isaiah there seems to be other ancient evidence that the book was viewed as being made up of parts: Josephus describes Isaiah’s prophecies as “left behind in books” (Ant. 10.35).


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6.

Ethical Sermons, Indicting Israel and Judah (28–31)

Ethical Sermons, the Ethical Conditions for Israel’s Redemption (56–59)

7.

The Restoration of Judah and the Davidic Kingdom (32–33)

Paradise Regained: The Glories of the New Jerusalem and the New Heavens and the New Earth (60–66)

Brownlee maintained that it was very likely that the two halves of the scroll had been copied from different exemplars, since there were several distinct features in each half of the scroll. The debate on that issue continues.31 In a surprising way, evidence from Cave 4 manuscripts seems to lend support to Brownlee’s view of the bisection of the book. In the DJD edition of these scrolls, nothing is said about how extensive each might have been; perhaps under the influence of 1QIsaa the editors simply assumed that each was a complete scroll of the whole of Isaiah. However, it is surely remarkable that several Cave 4 copies of Isaiah contain only portions from Isa 1–33 (namely, 4QIsaa, 4QIsae, 4QIsaf, 4QIsaj, 4QIsak, 4QIsal, 4QIsao, 4QpapIsap, 4QIsar), while several others contain only portions from Isa 34–66 (4QIsad, 4QIsag, 4QIsah, 4QIsai, 4QIsam, 4QIsan, 4QIsaq, 5QIsa). Judging from the fragmentary evidence that survives, only 4QIsab and 4QIsac seem to have contained the whole book. Although one might attribute these realities to accidents of survival, they seem remarkable enough to require further investigation to see whether the extent of each manuscript can be determined.32 Furthermore, if two scribes wrote the two halves of 1QIsaa, then we must ask whether the dimensions of what remains in the fourth cave suggest that in some cases we may have discovered two fragmentary halves of the same scroll. The overall form and structure of the book of Isaiah has been reconsidered by Jesper Høgenhaven.33 Failing to take note of Brownlee’s insights, he attempted to use the Great Isaiah Scroll to justify the scholarly division of Isaiah at chapter 40. However, along the way he made two important observations that would seem to support Brownlee’s approach. First, he noted that distinct

31. See especially Johann Cook, “The Dichotomy of 1QIsaa,” in Intertestamental Essays in Honor of Józef Tadeusz Milik (ed. Z. J. Kapera; Qumranica Mogilanensia 6; Kraków: Enigma, 1992), 7–24. 32. See George J. Brooke, “The Bisection of Isaiah in the Scrolls from Qumran,” in Studia Semitica: The Journal of Semitic Studies Jubilee Volume (ed. P. S. Alexander et al.; JSSSup 16; Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005), 73–94. 33. Høgenhaven, “Isaiah Scroll,” 151–58, esp. pp. 156–57. Discussion of the form of Isaiah has also been central to the “unity of Isaiah” movement discussed in the last chapter of this book.

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marginal marks are used at the juncture between 35:10 and 36:1; 39:8 and 40:1; 41:13 and 41:14; 44:28 and 45:1; 52:6 and 52:7; 59:21 and 60:1. In all cases these signs seem to mark a theologically important text division. However, he failed to see that the spread of these signs might indicate that they mark the end of sections, several of which correspond with the Brownlee analysis cited above, even though Brownlee did not use the marginal marks to support his case. Second, Høgenhaven noted that the oracle of chapter 40 would make much better sense if there were a narrative framework for it. Precisely so: Brownlee’s analysis of the Isaiah scroll suggests that the narrative of chapters 36–39 was seen by at least one scribal tradition as integrally related to chapter 40. Though overall Høgenhaven’s argument is otherwise, some of his observations actually lend weight to Brownlee’s study nearly forty years earlier. In a recent survey of Isaiah materials, Flint briefly considers the bisection of the scroll, noting that the break occurs exactly at the end of column 27 of a fifty-four-column scroll. He asks: “Could those who copied this scroll have seen some significance in the more universal emphasis on the nations found in Isaiah 34, and thus viewed chapters 1–33 and 34–66 as two parts of the book on the basis of content?”34 He refers to Brownlee’s Moscow article on the bisection of Isaiah in his footnotes but does not seem familiar with its contents, since Brownlee had already provided a detailed and suggestive answer to the question. The smaller sections of the Great Isaiah Scroll as indicated by marginal marks and internal paragraphing have been comprehensively described by Steck.35 For him the layout of the manuscript provides significant clues for how modern critics might begin to interpret its various pericopae. In this he has anticipated not only the detailed studies of the paragraph divisions in ancient biblical manuscripts that have been provoked in part by the scrolls, but also the attention paid to such divisions, at least as far as the mt is concerned, by those who now work in the field of delimitation criticism.36 The complete set of Isaiah scrolls from Qumran may play a role in such study. Ulrich has offered some examples of contrasting sentence division in various manuscripts (Isa 19:15–16; 23:1–2; 34:9–10, 17), while wisely insisting that the evidence “is the production of the last person who copied the text, not necessarily of earlier copies; if one wishes to see in these final products the

34. Peter W. Flint, “The Book of Isaiah in the Dead Sea Scrolls,” in Herbert and Tov, The Bible as Book, 236. 35. In his German translation of 1QIsaa (Die erste Jesajarolle von Qumran), Steck indicates precisely where the various spaces and paragraph markers occur. 36. Marjo C. A. Korpel and Josef M. Oesch, eds., Delimitation Criticism: A New Tool for Biblical Scholarship (Pericope 1; Assen: Van Gorcum, 2000). See especially the contribution by Emanuel Tov, “The Background of the Sense Division in the Biblical Texts,” 312–50.


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intentions or indications of original authors, there is a weighty burden of proof required to establish a continuous link.”37 Although an English translation of 1QIsaa is now available, it is a pity that its editors do not seem to have made any attempt in their translation to represent the paragraphing of the text as it is on the manuscript.38 Isaiah, Rewritten Bible, and the Pesharim On the basis of the scrolls that come from Qumran, one of the most striking observations that has been made about the role of the prophets concerns “rewritten Bible” compositions, that is, secondary paraphrases and interpretive rankings of authoritative books.39 In one sense the designation rewritten Bible is entirely anachronistic, since in the second and first centuries b.c.e. there was no Bible as such, even though the Law and the Prophets had some kind of clear authority. Scholars are still only beginning to define both the genre of rewritten Bible and its purpose. They argue, for instance, about whether the designation should include only those compositions that follow their scriptural antecedents closely in form and content or whether a broader perspective is to be preferred. Most scholars who have examined the Qumran evidence agree that, in relation to the compositions that would eventually comprise the Latter Prophets, a sharp distinction exists. On the one hand, there seem to be no rewritten forms of Isaiah or the twelve Minor Prophets in any of the extant compositions from the Qumran library. Isaiah and the Twelve are, however, the only books among the latter prophets that receive treatment as pesher, that is, explicit running commentary formulaically introduced.40 For the books of Jeremiah and Ezekiel, on the other hand, several rewritten forms have come to light at Qumran. Such rewriting of Jeremiah and Ezekiel in antiquity was already documented before the scrolls were discovered. How is this difference in treatment between the prophets to be explained? Since Isaiah is the prophet most often quoted in the sectarian Dead Sea Scrolls

37. Eugene C. Ulrich, “Impressions and Intuition: Sense Division in Ancient Manuscripts of Isaiah,” in Unit Delimitation in Biblical Hebrew and Northwest Semitic Literature (ed. M. C. A. Korpel and J. M. Oesch; Pericope 4; Assen: Van Gorcum, 2003), 280. 38. Martin Abegg, Peter Flint, and Eugene Ulrich, The Dead Sea Scrolls Bible: The Oldest Known Bible Translated for the First Time into English (San Francisco: HarperSanFrancisco, 1999), 267–381. 39. See George J. Brooke, “Rewritten Bible,” in Schiffman and VanderKam, Encyclopedia of the Dead Sea Scrolls, 777–81. 40. On the Isaiah pesharim, see George J. Brooke, “Isaiah in the Pesharim and Other Qumran Texts,” in Writing and Reading the Scroll of Isaiah: Studies of an Interpretive Tradition (ed. C. Broyles and C. A. Evans; VTSup 70; Formation and Interpretation of Old Testament Literature 1; Leiden: Brill, 1997), 609–32.

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and is used in at least five distinct running commentaries,41 it seems as if the difference in the handling of the prophetic sources rests in some aspect of their authority and status, or at least in how that authority was recognized from generation to generation. The matter is not straightforward. The books of the Law were evidently considered at least as authoritative as Isaiah and the Twelve, but they were nevertheless subject to major rewritings in the Book of Jubilees, the Genesis Apocryphon, and the Temple Scroll. Within the Torah itself there is clear evidence of rewriting, most obviously in the way in which Deuteronomy replays various parts of Exodus. Perhaps such rewriting within the Torah was understood as authorizing an ongoing practice of rewriting. The same may be the case with Jeremiah and Ezekiel; perhaps there was an understanding that these prophetic works had been created over a period of time and that, as one Jeremiah scholar has put it, they form a rolling corpus that could be extended through the ongoing process of rewriting and reuse.42 Thus these rewritings of authoritative works reflect the nature of their parent texts. With Isaiah, for which there are no rewritings, but only explicit commentaries, something else must be at work. Study of the Cave 4 Isaiah manuscripts reveals a largely stable text tradition. Perhaps this relative stability indicates authoritative status gained at an earlier stage in the Second Temple period. Such relative textual stability seems to confirm the possibility that those who transmitted the text of Isaiah perceived it to be a literary unity. Even the division after chapter 33 in 1QIsaa, with the literary structure it suggests, can be read as supporting, rather than undermining, the overall literary unity of the work.43 Interpretation of Isaiah and the Changing Shape of the Essene Movement The availability since 1991 of all the manuscripts from the Qumran caves has created a renaissance in Dead Sea Scrolls studies. The history of the commu-

41. These commentaries are conveniently accessible in Maurya P. Horgan, Pesharim: Qumran Interpretations of Biblical Books (CBQMS 8; Washington, D.C.: Catholic Biblical Association of America, 1979), 70–138, 260–61. 42. William McKane, A Critical and Exegetical Commentary on Jeremiah (ICC; 2 vols.; Edinburgh: T&T Clark, 1986, 1996), 1:l–li. 43. It should be noted that rewritten forms of parts of Isaiah exist in works such as the Ascension of Isaiah, but these seem to be of a rather different kind from the Jeremiah Apocryphon or Pseudo-Ezekiel and perhaps are much later. In any case, these are not found in the Qumran library, despite some scholars arguing for their quasi-Essene character. For a helpful introduction, see Jonathan Knight, The Ascension of Isaiah (Guides to Apocrypha and Pseudepigrapha; Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press, 1995).


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nity and of the sectarian compositions belonging to it has increasingly occupied center stage among these studies. From the archaeological perspective, the reconsideration of Roland de Vaux’s work and the recent reinstatement by Jodi Magness of some of de Vaux’s first impressions has strongly suggested that the Qumran site was not occupied until the first quarter of the first century b.c.e.44 As a result of this archaeological redating, it has become important to rethink the way in which some of the sectarian compositions should be considered. It is widely recognized that most of the leading sectarian writings, such as the Rule of the Community, have complicated histories. Such histories consist of two parts: the history of the composition of the text,45 and the history of each composition’s recensions.46 This history is complicated for the Rule of the Community, because in addition to the Cave 1 copy, there are up to ten copies from Cave 4. While the Cave 1 copy can be dated approximately to the first quarter of the first century b.c.e., some of the Cave 4 copies, which have significantly different content and imply a much less hierarchical community, date from the second half of the first century b.c.e. This suggests that the community went through a process of reform and rejuvenation, during which it became less hierarchical and more egalitarian. What might be said about the community’s use of Isaiah in the context of this redating of the occupation of Qumran and the apparent structural changes in the community during the first century b.c.e.? The example to be considered briefly concerns the famous use of Isa 40:3, “Prepare in the wilderness the way of the Lord, make straight in the desert a path for our God.” In 1QS 8:15–16 this is interpreted as follows: “This (path) is the study of the Law which He commanded by the hand of Moses, that they may do according to all that has been revealed from age to age, and as the Prophets have revealed by his Holy Spirit.” Given that the Rule of the Community came to be compiled over several decades, it is entirely possible to envisage a period in which this text from Isa 40 functioned metaphorically, as this interpretation suggests, as motivation for the study of the law in the expectation of the imminent eschatological arrival of the Lord. All this could have taken place before there ever was a Qumran site to be occupied.47 44. Jodi Magness, Archaeology of Qumran and the Dead Sea Scrolls (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2002). 45. Jerome Murphy-O’Connor has long argued that the Rule of the Community had a four-stage composition history: “La genèse littéraire de la Règle de la Communauté,” RB 76 (1969): 528–49. 46. For the Rule of the Community, see especially Philip S. Alexander, “The Redaction-History of Serekh ha-Yah˙ad: A Proposal,” RevQ 17 (1996): 437–56, and Sarianna Metso, The Textual Development of the Qumran Community Rule (STDJ 21; Leiden: Brill, 1997). 47. 1QS 8:15–16 belongs to what Murphy-O’Connor has suggested is the earliest form of the “Manifesto,” in a pre-Qumran stage. Devorah Dimant has argued that this view of Isa 40:3 was always

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However, at a subsequent stage in the Essene movement’s development, with the occupation of Qumran by some of its members in the early first century b.c.e., the text was reused with an additional literal force. The “preparation in the wilderness” was no longer simply a metaphor for separation “from all those who have not turned aside from all injustice” (1QS 9:20) but came to have a literal referent and could be applied to the decision of some of the community to move to the actual wilderness. What was suitably taken metaphorically in one generation became significant literally in another.48 Thus, a reconsideration of the history of the movement in light of the renewed understandings of the archaeology of Qumran produces new ways of perceiving how traditions, including the uses of Isaiah in the Rule of the Community, seem to have changed as the composition shifted from one historical context to another. Conclusion In the opening paragraph of the section of his book considering the Great Isaiah Scroll from several different angles, Brownlee wrote: When the news of the discovery of the Dead Sea Scrolls was first disclosed by the American Schools of Oriental Research on April 10, 1948, it was pre-eminently the existence of a complete copy of Isaiah from the late second century b.c. which excited the scholarly world. Scholars, to be sure, were interested also in other documents, but here was an astonishing discovery of which one had scarcely dared to dream: that the history of the Hebrew text of the Old Testament should in a single leap be carried back a thousand years.

It is hoped that this essay has regenerated some of that excitement through the publication of eyewitness accounts from the early days of discovery. Since research has indicated that the Isaiah materials do not contain sectarian variants, their significance as textual witnesses has been clarified. I have also indicated the need for further research on the bisection and paragraphing of Isaiah and on the relationship between a prophetic book’s mode of interpretation and its emerging textual stability and authority. Finally, the way in which understanding of one passage in Isaiah may have changed from one generation to another provides a

the case: “Not Exile in the Desert but Exile in the Spirit: The Pesher of Isa. 40:3 in the Rule of the Community,” in Meghillot: Studies in the Dead Sea Scrolls II (ed. M. Bar-Asher and D. Dimant; Jerusalem: Bialik Institute, 2004), 21–36 [Hebrew]. 48. I have argued this point in more detail elsewhere: George J. Brooke, “Isaiah 40:3 and the Wilderness Community,” in New Qumran Texts and Studies: Proceedings of the First Meeting of the International Organization for Qumran Studies, Paris 1992 (ed. G. J. Brooke with F. García Martínez; STDJ 15; Leiden: Brill, 1994), 117–32.


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suitable backdrop for the descriptions of the use and transmission of Isaiah in the New Testament that are taken up in the next three essays. Select Bibliography Brooke, George J. “Isaiah in the Pesharim and Other Qumran Texts.” Pages 609–32 in Writing and Reading the Scroll of Isaiah: Studies of an Interpretive Tradition. Edited by C. Broyles and C. A. Evans. VTSup 70; Formation and Interpretation of Old Testament Literature 1. Leiden: Brill, 1997. Flint, Peter W. “The Book of Isaiah in the Dead Sea Scrolls.” Pages 229–51 in The Bible as Book: The Hebrew Bible and the Judaean Desert Discoveries. Edited by E. D. Herbert and E. Tov. London: British Library; New Castle, Del.: Oak Knoll, 2002. Parry, Donald W., and Elisha Qimron. The Great Isaiah Scroll (1QIsa a)–A New Edition. STDJ 32. Leiden: Brill, 1999. Skehan, Patrick, and Eugene C. Ulrich. “Isaiah.” Pages 7–143 in Qumran Cave 4.X: The Prophets. Edited by E. Ulrich et al. DJD 15. Oxford: Clarendon, 1997. Steck, Odil H. Die erste Jesajarolle von Qumran (1QIsa): Schreibweise als Leseanteilung für ein Prophetenbuch. SBS 173. Stuttgart: Katholisches Bibelwerk, 1998. Ulrich, Eugene C. “The Absence of ‘Sectarian Variants’ in the Jewish Scriptural Scrolls Found at Qumran.” Pages 179–95 in The Bible as Book: The Hebrew Bible and the Judaean Desert Discoveries. Edited by E. D. Herbert and E. Tov. London: British Library; New Castle, Del.: Oak Knoll, 2002. ———. “The Developmental Composition of the Book of Isaiah: Light from 1QIsaa on Additions in the MT.” DSD 8 (2001): 288–305. ———. “Impressions and Intuition: Sense Divisions in Ancient Manuscripts of Isaiah.” Pages 279–307 in Unit Delimitation in Biblical Hebrew and Northwest Semitic Literature. Edited by M. C. A. Korpel and J. M. Oesch. Pericope 4. Assen: Van Gorcum, 2003.

Moses and Isaiah in Concert: Paul’s Reading of Isaiah and Deuteronomy in the Letter to the Romans J. Ross Wagner

Introduction: Isaiah in Paul’s Letter to the Romans Writing to introduce himself and his message to the churches in Rome, Paul avers that the gospel he has been called to proclaim as Christ’s apostle to the Gentiles is none other than the good news “that God promised beforehand through his prophets in holy Scriptures” (Rom 1:2).1 Paul substantiates this bold assertion by weaving into the argument of Romans an intricate network of scriptural quotations and allusions. Prominent among the prophetic witnesses summoned by Paul is Isaiah, who appears as a named speaker five times2 and whose words are cited more often than those of any other scriptural book.3 And while Paul’s debt to Deutero-Isaiah is well known, it is noteworthy that two-thirds of the quotations in Romans come from elsewhere in Isaiah (see fig. 1 on p. 104 below). Paul’s reading of Isaiah, though in many respects at home in the wider context of first-century “Jewish Restoration Eschatology,”4 is decisively shaped by 1. All translations are my own. 2. Rom 9:27, 29; 10:16, 20; 15:12. 3. By my count, Paul cites Isaiah fifteen times in Romans (ten times in chs. 9–11). The only other book that comes close to this total is Psalms, with twelve citations. See Dietrich-Alex Koch, Die Schrift als Zeuge des Evangeliums: Untersuchungen zur Verwendung und zum Verständnis der Schrift bei Pauls (BHT 69; Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 1986), 21–24; Christopher D. Stanley, Paul and the Language of Scripture (SNTSMS 74; Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1992), 83–184. As Koch and Stanley have convincingly shown, Paul’s citations evince dependence on the lxx (or on Greek texts in the lxx tradition), rather than on texts in Hebrew or Aramaic. Consequently, when discussing Isaiah and Deuteronomy in this essay, I will be referring to lxx Isaiah (i.e., the critically reconstructed text: Joseph Ziegler, ed., Isaias [3rd ed.; Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1983]) and lxx Deuteronomy (John William Wevers, ed., Deuteronomium [Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1977]). 4. The term “Jewish Restoration Eschatology” was coined by E. P. Sanders to describe the widespread expectation among Second Temple era Jews that, in faithfulness to the covenant, God

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his understanding of the apocalypse of God’s righteousness in Jesus Christ for Jew and Gentile alike (Rom 1:16–17; 3:21–26) and by his missionary experiences as apostle to the Gentiles.5 I have argued at length elsewhere that, far from representing random “prooftexting,” Paul’s quotations of and allusions to Isaiah arise out of the apostle’s own sustained reflection on significant portions of the book in light of his gospel and mission.6 A close examination of Paul’s references to Isaiah and their function in the unfolding argument of Romans reveals a twofold hermeneutic: the apostle finds that Isaiah’s prophecies of the restoration of captive Israel prefigure the communities of Jews and Gentiles that God is now calling into being through Paul’s ministry;7 at the same time, Paul discovers in Isaiah’s polemics against unfaithful and obdurate Israel a key that unlocks the mystery of the present resistance of so many of his fellow Jews to the gospel.8 In figurally portraying his fellow Jews as the rebellious Israelites denounced by Isaiah, however, Paul’s purpose is not to announce their rejection by God. Rather, Isaiah’s repeated affirmation that God will redeem his unfaithful people allows Paul similarly to maintain that, despite their present rejection of the gospel, God has not forsaken his people and that “all Israel” will yet be saved—as, indeed, Isaiah himself has prophesied.9 One of the notable features of Paul’s use of Isaiah in Romans is the frequency with which he conflates or juxtaposes material from Isaiah with other would redeem Israel from foreign oppressors and establish his people in their land in peace, as the prophets had promised. See his Jesus and Judaism (Philadelphia: Fortress, 1985), 77–119. 5. Much the same could be said, mutatis mutandis, about the appropriation of Israel’s Scriptures by other early Christian writers. Although the topic is too complex to survey here, helpful introductions include D. A. Carson and H. G. M. Williamson, eds., It is Written: Scripture Citing Scripture (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1988); and Steve Moyise, The Old Testament in the New: An Introduction (New York: Continuum, 2001). 6. For a full investigation in conversation with prior scholarship, see J. Ross Wagner, Heralds of the Good News: Paul and Isaiah “In Concert” in the Letter to the Romans (NovTSup 101; Leiden: Brill, 2002). For broadly similar conclusions, see Richard Hays, Echoes of Scripture in the Letters of Paul (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1989); and Florian Wilk, Die Bedeutung des Jesajabuches für Paulus (FRLANT 179; Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1998). A different perspective is offered by Shiu-Lun Shum, Paul’s Use of Isaiah in Romans (WUNT 2/156; Tubingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2002). Due to constraints of length, interaction with secondary literature will here be kept to a minimum. 7. E.g., Isa 28:16 (Rom 9:33/10:11); Isa 52:7 (Rom 10:15); Isa 40:13 (Rom 11:34); Isa 11:10 (Rom 15:12); Isa 52:15 (Rom 15:21). 8. Oracles appropriated by Paul that threaten the rebellious with imminent judgment or that depict Israel as languishing in captivity include Isa 29:16/45:9 (Rom 9:20); Isa 10:22–23 (Rom 9:27–28); Isa 1:9 (Rom 9:29); Isa 8:14/28:16 (Rom 9:33); Isa 65:2 (Rom 10:21); Isa 29:10/6:9–10 (Rom 11:8); Isa 59:20–21/27:9 (Rom 11:26–27). 9. Rom 11:26–27, quoting Isa 59:20–21 and 27:9.

wagner: moses and isaiah in concert

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texts from Israel’s Scriptures (see fig. 2 on p. 105 below). Isaiah’s distinctive voice thus joins with a whole chorus of scriptural witnesses whose cumulative authority undergirds Paul’s argument. But Paul’s rhetorical strategy points to an underlying hermeneutical strategy as well. By conjoining Isaiah’s words with other biblical texts, Paul obtains the interpretive leverage necessary to recontextualize and reinterpret the prophet’s oracles as a witness to his gospel and mission. Consequently, Paul’s reading of Isaiah in Romans must not be isolated from his interpretation of other scriptural witnesses, for these texts significantly shape the meaning and force Isaiah’s words carry for the apostle’s argument. Particularly important for the letter to the Romans is Paul’s pattern of linking Isaianic texts to citations drawn from the final chapters of Deuteronomy: Rom 10:19–21 juxtaposes Deut 32:21 and Isa 65:1 and 2; Rom 11:8 conflates Deut 29:4 with Isa 29:10; and the catena of citations in Rom 15:9–12 links Deut 32:43 and Isa 11:10. An examination of these paired citations and their wider contexts—both their original contexts in Deuteronomy and Isaiah and their new setting in Romans—reveals the extent to which each of the texts Paul cites proves vital to his revisionary reading of the other. Deuteronomy 32:21, Isaiah 65:1, and Isaiah 65:2 in Romans 10:19–21 Before narrowing our focus to this cluster of citations, it is necessary to provide some account, however brief, of its context in Paul’s letter. Romans 9–11 is a tightly knit discourse, densely woven with scriptural citations and allusions, whose primary burden is to insist that, despite the current resistance of many Jews to the gospel, God’s gracious election of Gentiles has not come at the cost of God’s rejection of his people, Israel. As the apostle’s argument moves from heartfelt lament over his own people’s failure to welcome the good news (9:1–5), to celebration of God’s mercy poured out on “us, whom God has called not only from among the Jews but also from among the Gentiles” (9:24), to its culmination in rapturous praise of the wisdom of God who shows mercy to all, Jew and Gentile alike (11:32–36), Paul reads Scripture in such a way as to highlight the twin themes of God’s unexpected mercy to Gentile outsiders and God’s unshakeable fidelity to his covenant with Israel.10 The rhetorical question and answer in Rom 9:30–31 marks a crucial stage in the development of Paul’s argument: “What then shall we say? Gentiles, who were not pursuing righteousness, have obtained righteousness—the righteousness from faith—but Israel, though pursuing a law that leads to righteousness, 10. For a penetrating analysis of Rom 9–11 along these lines, see Hays, Echoes of Scripture, 63–83. The present exposition is based on my extended treatment of these chapters in Heralds of the Good News, 43–305.

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has not caught up with the law.”11 Paul’s explanation for this ironic turn of events proceeds in two stages. First, he boldly asserts that by pursuing the law “as if from works” (w(j e0c e1rgwn) rather than “from faith” (e0k pi/stewj) Israel has missed the mark to which the law, rightly understood, would lead them (9:32–10:3).12 This is so because “the goal to which the law leads is Christ, resulting in righteousness for everyone who believes” (10:4).13 Paul supports this construal of the law by appealing to the law itself, set on the lips of Moses14 and a personified “Righteousness-from-Faith.”15 Together, they proclaim that the law promises life to those who “do” it and, moreover, that “doing” the law consists in responding to the “word of faith that we preach,” which promises salvation to all—Jew and Gentile alike—who will call on Jesus as Lord (10:8–13). The second step in Paul’s explanation is to claim that, while God has graciously preserved a chosen “remnant” of Israel (those Jews who, like Paul, have been united to Christ), “the rest” of Israel God has rendered insensible (11:1–7), as Scripture itself attests (11:8–10).16 Romans 10:16–21 serves as a bridge between these two stages of Paul’s account. At the same time, the joint testimony of Moses and Isaiah in verses 19–21 points toward the ultimate resolution Paul finds to the tension between the present unbelief of “the rest” of Israel and God’s covenant promises to “all Israel” (11:11–32). Having identified the “word of faith” spoken by the law as none other than the “word of Christ” that Paul and his fellow missionaries (portrayed in Rom 10:15 as the heralds of Isa 52:7) have been sent to proclaim to all, Jew and Gentile alike (10:9–15; cf. 17), Paul laments: “But not all have obeyed the gospel” (v. 16a). Isaiah, appearing as a fellow herald of the good news, takes up the apostle’s complaint with the haunting question, “Lord, who has believed

11. Ti/ ou]n e0rou=men; o3ti e1qnh ta_ mh\ diw&konta dikaiosu/nhn kate/laben dikaiosu/nhn, dikaosu/nhn de\ th\n e0k pi/stewj, 0Israh\l de\ diw&kwn no/mon dikaiosu/nhj ei0j no/mon ou0k e1fqasen.

Interestingly, Paul’s description of the Gentiles inverts Isaiah’s characterization of Israel as oi9 diw&kontej to\ di/kaion “those who pursue what is right” (Isa 51:1). 12. Although the meaning of “works (of the law)” continues to be hotly debated, I understand it here in light of Paul’s charge that Israel has sought to establish “their own righteousness,” that is, a relationship to God open only to those who respond to God’s covenant with Israel by observing the commandments of the Mosaic law (Rom 10:1–4; cf. E. P. Sanders, Paul, the Law, and the Jewish People [Minneapolis: Fortress, 1983], 38). In contrast, Paul argues that “the righteousness of God/ righteousness from faith,” is available on equal terms to all who believe, whether Jew or Gentile, observant or nonobservant (see Rom 10:12; 3:21–31). 13. te/loj ga_r no/mou Xristo\j ei0j dikaiosu/nhn panti\ tw|~ pisteu/onti. 14. Rom 10:5, quoting Lev 18:5. 15. Rom 10:6–8, conflating Deut 9:4 with Deut 30:12–14 (interspersed with Paul’s interpretive comments). 16. Rom 11:8, conflating Deut 29:4 with Isa 29:10 (and possibly Ps 68:24 lxx); Rom 11:9– 10, quoting Ps 68:23–24 lxx.


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our message?” (Rom 10:16b, quoting Isa 53:1). Then, in words that echo God’s insistent challenge to unbelieving Israel in Isa 40:21 and 28, Paul asks two questions: “Haven’t they heard?” (10:18); “Hasn’t Israel known?” (10:19). In answer to his first question, Paul cites Ps 18:5 lxx, saying: “Indeed they have; for ‘their voice has gone out to all the earth’ ” To answer the second question, Paul summons Moses and Isaiah to the witness stand (10:19–21).17 Moses’ own words have already attested that the “righteousness from faith” obtained by Gentiles is precisely the righteousness to which the law has been leading all along (Rom 10:4–8, citing Lev 18:5 and Deut 30:12–14). Now, the cumulative authority of Moses and Isaiah advances Paul’s astounding claim that Israel “has known” from Scripture that the Gentiles would obtain this righteousness before them.18 It is, of course, crucial to Paul’s argument that the statements of his two witnesses agree. Indeed, a close examination of his citations of Deut 32:21 and Isa 65:1–2 suggests that Paul has interpreted these texts in light of one another as he seeks to understand the outworking of God’s plan to redeem Jew and Gentile in Christ. Moses speaks first, using the words of Deut 32:21b, an excerpt from the Song of Moses (Deut 32:1–43), which belongs to the poetic conclusion to the Pentateuch. In its original context, Moses’ Song is framed by a narrative introduction (Deut 31:1–30) and epilogue (32:44–47) that present the song as the story of what will befall Israel “at the end of days” (31:29; 32:20). The opening stanzas sound the twin themes of the song: Israel’s unfaithfulness, and the astounding faithfulness of Israel’s God, who refuses to forsake his people (32:4– 6). The poem recalls God’s saving deeds in choosing and redeeming Israel from slavery, preserving them through the wilderness, and leading them into the land (7–14). It then recounts Israel’s fall into idolatry (15–18) and describes God’s jealous response as he brings on them the curses threatened in the covenant (19–25; cf. Deut 28; Lev 26). It is from this section of the poem that Paul draws his citation. Verse 21 elegantly expresses the justice of God’s response to Israel’s infidelity:

17. Moses and Isaiah have already figured prominently as named characters in Rom 9–10 (Moses: Rom 9:15; 10:5; Isaiah: Rom 9:27, 29; 10:16). Here, for the first time, they appear together. 18. In a suggestive parallel to Paul’s presentation of Moses and Isaiah as mutually corroborating witnesses, Targum Neofiti (at Deut 32:1) builds on the similar language of Deut 32:1 and Isa 1:2 in order to highlight the role of Moses and Isaiah as witnesses against Israel: “Two prophets arose to testify against Israel, Moses the prophet and Isaiah the prophet.… And the two of them, because they feared the holy Name, arose to testify against Israel.” Cf. Targum Pseudo-Jonathan and the Fragmentary Targum (both at Deut 32:1); Sifre Deut §306 (on Deut 32:1); Mek. Pish˙a’ 12 (on Exod 12:25–28).

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“as those who are taught” They provoked me to jealousy with a no-God (e0p' ou0 qew|)~ ; They provoked me to anger with their idols. So I will provoke them to jealousy with a no-nation (e0p' ou0k e1qnei); With a nation lacking understanding I will provoke them to anger.

In Rom 10:19, Paul quotes only the second couplet of this verse. e0gw_ parazhlw&sw u9ma~j e0p' ou0k e1qnei, e0p' e1qnei a)sune/tw| parorgiw~ u9ma~j. I will provoke you to jealousy with a no-nation. With a nation lacking understanding I will provoke you to anger.

The quotation follows the lxx but alters the third-person pronouns (“provoke them”) to second person (“provoke you”). By transmuting these words into a direct address to Israel, Paul heightens their rhetorical force, driving home the point that Israel “has known.”19 The fact that Deuteronomy does not specify the identity of this “no-nation” opens the door for Paul to appropriate the phrase as a description of the (predominantly) Gentile churches he is laboring to establish.20 Paul’s basic point is clear: Israel “has known,” for God announced long ago through Moses that he would call Gentiles as his people in order to make Israel jealous. But for hearers familiar with the scriptural context of these words, Paul’s citation also evokes the larger narrative of Israel’s relationship with God that is encapsulated poetically in the Song of Moses. That Paul had a particular interest in the Song and its wider setting in Deuteronomy is evident from his frequent references to Deut 32 in Romans, 1–2 Corinthians, and Philippians,21 as well as from his citations elsewhere in Romans of Deut 29:4 (Rom 11:8) and 30:12–14 (Rom 10:6–8). 19. Paul is the most likely source of this variation from lxx Deuteronomy. The manuscript tradition of the lxx uniformly reads the third-person pronoun, as do Hebrew witnesses, the Targums, Peshitta, and Vulgate. The omission of the initial kai/ is almost certainly to be traced to Paul, for it allows the citation to fit more smoothly into its new context in Romans. 20. The phrase “not a nation” (ou0k e1qnei) recalls the appellation “not my people” (ou0 lao/j mou) from Hosea applied by Paul to Gentiles in Rom 9:25–26 (Hos 2:23; 1:10, originally referring to Israel). 21. Citations of Moses’ Song: Deut 32:21/Rom 10:19; Deut 32:35/Rom 12:19; Deut 32:43/ Rom 15:10; allusions include Deut 32:21/Rom 11:11–14; Deut 32:4/Rom 9:14; Deut 32:17/1 Cor 10:20; Deut 32:21/1 Cor 10:22; Deut 32:19/2 Cor 6:18; Deut 32:5/Phil 2:15. On the importance of Deut 32 for Paul, see further Richard Bell, Provoked to Jealousy: The Origin and Purpose of the Jealousy Motif in Romans 9–11 (WUNT 2/63; Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 1994). Hays insightfully observes that the Song of Moses “becomes in Paul’s hands a hermeneutical key of equal importance with the prophecies of Deutero-Isaiah” (Echoes of Scripture, 164; similarly, Bell, Provoked to Jealousy, 285). My argument extends Hays’s insight by showing the extent to which Paul in Romans consistently interprets Isaiah and Deuteronomy in light of one another.


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Paul’s citation of Deut 32:21b presumes the apostasy of Israel narrated in the preceding section of the Song. Through Moses, Paul figuratively identifies Israel in his own day with God’s rebellious people of old, portraying Israel apart from Christ as estranged from God, suffering under the curses pronounced by the covenant, and in dire need of deliverance. This hermeneutical move is, in fact, a characteristic feature of Paul’s interpretation of Scripture in Rom 9–11.22 Paul’s purpose in quoting Deut 32:21, however, is not simply to condemn Israel’s unbelief or to demonstrate that long ago God planned to show mercy to Gentiles. Moses’ words also foreshadow the turn Paul’s argument will take in Rom 11. For in the larger context of Moses’ Song, it is clear that by provoking Israel to jealousy through this “no-nation,” God purposes ultimately to win Israel back and to restore the covenant relationship. As the Song continues, God takes pity on his people and, for the sake of his own name, rises up to rescue them (32:26–42). The Song ends in doxology, with Israel and the nations joining together with heavenly beings to praise Israel’s faithful and righteous God (32:43). Likewise, in Rom 11:11 Paul returns to the Song of Moses to claim that not only has God transformed Israel’s unfaithfulness into a means of saving the Gentiles but that he has—precisely by embracing Gentiles as his people— vouchsafed the ultimate deliverance of Israel as well (11:25–32). Despite Paul’s revisionary interpretation of Deut 32 as a prophetic prefiguration of God’s extension of salvation to the Gentiles in Christ, the apostle maintains the foundational conviction of Moses’ Song: the unwavering faithfulness of God to the covenant he has established with Israel. Moses has hardly finished speaking when Isaiah steps forward with further scandalous testimony: “And Isaiah dares to say.…”23 More daring yet, however, is Paul’s astonishing reinterpretation of Isaiah’s words. In its original context, the whole of Isa 65:1–2 is addressed to Israel. Responding to Israel’s charge that their God has stood aloof in the face of the destruction of Jerusalem and its temple,24 the Lord insists that the problem is not divine indifference but Israel’s own intransigence. I made myself known to those not seeking me; I was found by those not asking for me. I said, “Here I am,” to a nation that did not call on my name. I have

22. The motif of Israel’s apostasy lies in the background of many of the texts Paul cites in Rom 9–11, including a number from Isaiah: Exod 33:19; Isa 29:16/45:9; Hos 2:23/1:10; Isa 10:22–23; Isa 1:9; Isa 8:14/28:16; 1 Sam 12:22; 1 Kgs 19:10, 14; Isa 29:10. 23. Other colorful introductions to Isaiah’s words are found in Rom 9:27 (“Isaiah cries out”) and 9:29 (“Isaiah has foretold”). Contrast the more prosaic “Moses says” (10:19), “Moses writes” (10:5), “David says” (4:6; 11:9), “Isaiah says” (10:16, 21; 15:12). 24. “Yet while all these things happened you stood aloof, Lord. You kept silent, and you humbled us greatly” (Isa 64:12 lxx).

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“as those who are taught” stretched out my hands all day long to a disobedient and rebellious people, who do not walk in the way of truth, but [who walk] after their sins. (Isa 65:1–2 lxx)

By inserting a second introductory phrase between Isa 65:1 and 65:2, however, Paul splits this single oracle addressed to Israel in two. In his hands, Isaiah’s words are transformed into a prophecy of Gentile salvation, on the one hand, and a censure of Israel’s resistance to God’s grace, on the other: 0Hsai5aj de\ a)potolma|~ kai\ le/gei: eu9re/qhn e0n toi=j e0me\ mh\ zhtou=sin, e0mfanh\j e0geno/mhn toi=j e0me\ mh\ e0perwtw~sin. (Rom 10:20, citing

Isa 65:1a)

pro\j de\ to\n 70Israh\l le/gei: o3lhn th\n h9me/ran e0cepe/tasa ta_j xei=ra&j mou pro\j lao\n a)peiqou=nta kai\ a0ntile/gonta. (Rom 10:21, citing Isa

65:2a)

And Isaiah dares to say, “I was found by those not seeking me; I made myself known to those not asking for me.” (Rom 10:20, citing Isa 65:1a)25 But to Israel he says, “All day long I have stretched out my hands to a disobedient and rebellious people.” (Rom 10:21, citing Isa 65:2a)26 Paul’s interpretation of Isa 65:1–2 brings sharply into focus the extent to which his reading of Isaiah is shaped by his passionate engagement in mission

25. With echoes of Moses’ reference to a “no-nation” (Rom 10:19) still in the air, Isaiah’s phrases, “those not seeking me … those not asking for me,” clearly designate Gentiles for Paul’s readers. 26. Paul’s citation, which stays fairly close to the lxx rendering of Isa 65:1a and 2a, omits the second half of 65:1: “I said, ‘Here I am,’ to a nation that did not call on my name.” The reason for this omission—if one may hazard a guess—may be that Paul has recently asserted, in the words of Joel 2:32 lxx, that “everyone who calls on the name of the Lord will be saved” (Rom 10:13). It would be rather odd now to speak of Gentiles “finding” God without “calling on [God’s] name.” Presumably, Paul would have proceeded to omit the second half of 65:2 in order to balance this part of Isaiah’s speech with the (now-truncated) citation of 65:1. It is probably also Paul, rather than his Vorlage, who is responsible for transposing “all day long” to the beginning of Isa 65:2 (in the lxx, it stands at the end of the first line of 65:2). This sentence structure, attested by no other witness to the text of Isaiah, enhances Paul’s rhetoric by emphasizing Israel’s stubborn resistance to God’s persistent overtures. For other possible Pauline modifications to the text of Isaiah, none of which is crucial for the present discussion, see Heralds of the Good News, 206–11.


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to the Gentiles, grounded in an unshakeable conviction that God is now calling Gentiles as well as Jews to become his redeemed people in Christ. Viewing Isaiah’s oracle through the lens of his “missionary theology,”27 Paul probably did not hesitate to take the phrases “those not seeking me” and “those not inquiring of me” as an exegetical warrant for finding Gentiles in Isa 65:1. Elsewhere in Romans Paul reads such negatively phrased descriptions of people (often Israelites) estranged from God as references to Gentiles. The nearest example, in fact, is the immediately preceding citation of Deut 32:21, where Moses speaks of “a no-nation … a nation without understanding” (Rom 10:19, quoting Deut 32:21).28 Paul’s identification of the “no-nation” in Deut 32:21 as Gentiles paves the way for his reading of the similarly phrased descriptions in Isa 65:1 as references to Gentiles. The actual term e1qnoj does in fact appear in Isa 65:1b (“a nation that did not call on my name”), providing a catchword connection to Deut 32:21 and perhaps further buttressing Paul’s interpretation of the previous lines. Thus split off from 65:2 and read with reference to Gentiles, Isaiah’s words in 65:1 carry a radically different meaning. An oracle of judgment has become in Paul’s hands an announcement of salvation.29 Rather than lamenting Israel’s continued rejection of God, despite God’s being “found” by them, Isaiah’s words now celebrate the remarkable reversal God has wrought by embracing former outsiders as his own people. Here again one may detect the influence of Paul’s interpretation of Deut 32:21 on his reading of Isa 65:1, for, as we have seen, this same “logic of reversal” is at work in Paul’s appropriation of Moses’ Song.30 In marked contrast to his revisionary reading of Isa 65:1, Paul interprets Isa 65:2 with the grain of the text. In Romans, as in Isaiah, the oracle emphasizes both God’s relentless pursuit of apostate Israel and the people’s stubborn resistance

27. For the term “missionary theology” applied to Paul, see the insightful essay by Nils A. Dahl, “Missionary Theology in the Epistle to the Romans,” in idem, Studies in Paul (Minneapolis: Augsburg, 1977), 70–94. 28. See also “not my people … not loved” (Rom 9:25–26; Hos 2:23/1:10); “those to whom it was not announced concerning him … those who have not heard” (Rom 15:21; Isa 52:15); “Gentiles, who were not pursuing righteousness” (Rom 9:30; cf. Isa 51:1). 29. Compare the similar move made in Wis 1:2, where the first half of Isa 65:1, taken in isolation from what follows, is transformed (under the influence of Isa 65:2?) into a general maxim about how humans find God: “[The Lord] is found by those who do not test him, he is manifested to those who are not unfaithful to him” ( o3ti eu0ri/sketai [o9 ku/rioj] toi=j mh\ pera&zousin au0to/n, e0mfani/zetai de\ toi=j mh\ a)pistou=sin au0tw|)~ . 30. Note that the logic of reversal also drives Paul’s transformation of Hos 2:23 and 1:10 (a promise of Israel’s return from exile) into an announcement of God’s election of Gentiles (Rom 9:25–26).

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to their God. Once again Paul portrays his fellow Jews who have not responded to the gospel as the rebellious Israelites addressed by Isaiah.31 Attention to the wider context of Isa 65 suggests that Paul’s appropriation of Isa 65:2 to explain contemporary events owes more to Isaiah’s story of God’s dealings with Israel than appears on the surface of his argument. Although Isa 65:1–7 sounds like a condemnation of Israel as a whole, beginning in 65:8 (and continuing through the end of the book) Isaiah draws a sharp distinction between the apostates and the remnant of faithful Israelites, designated as God’s “servants,” God’s “elect.”32 The latter will return to Jerusalem, enjoying the Edenic bliss of the “new heaven and new earth” in which “all flesh” will worship Israel’s God alone. Likewise, while Paul’s appropriation of Isa 65:2 in Rom 10:21 might sound like a blanket condemnation of all Jews, he immediately (Rom 11:1–10) reintroduces the concept of a chosen remnant of Israel—first developed in Rom 9:27–29 through two citations from Isaiah33—in order to insist that “God has not rejected his people” (Rom 11:1–2, quoting Ps 93:14 lxx). Paul’s careful distinction between the “remnant” and “the rest” of Israel in Rom 11 thus coheres substantially with the picture drawn in Isa 65–66 of an Israel divided internally over their response to God’s saving deeds.34 Having examined the citations individually, we are now in a position to consider the ways in which Paul’s quotations of Deut 32:21 and Isa 65:1 and 2 function to interpret one another in the context of the larger argument the apostle is constructing in Rom 9–11.35 Paul sets up the two citations rhetorically so that Isaiah’s testimony supports and supplements the outline of God’s plan

31. See n. 8 above. 32. See Isa 65:8–10, 13–15, 23; 66:5, 14. 33. Isa 10:22–23/28:22; Isa 1:9. For the argument that Isaiah’s remnant oracles should be heard in Rom 9 predominantly as words of salvation rather than of judgment, see Heralds of the Good News, 92–116. A similar interpretation is advanced independently by John Paul Heil, “From Remnant to Seed of Hope for Israel: Romans 9:27–29,” CBQ 64 (2002): 703–20. 34. A situation of division within Israel stands in the background of the texts from Isaiah that Paul cites in Rom 9:33 (Isa 8:14; 28:16). This is also the case with reference to Ps 93:14 lxx (Rom 11:1–2), 1 Kgs 19:10, 18 (Rom 11:2–4), and Ps 68:22–23 lxx (Rom 11:9). Cf. the appropriation of Isa 65:2 in 1QHa 7:30–31 [Sukenik 15:17–18], which understands the verse to refer to the wicked within Israel, not Israel as a whole: “But the wicked … walk in the way that is not good and reject your covenant.” 35. Another indication of Paul’s interest in the interplay between these two passages is found in 1 Cor 10:20–22. Paul echoes Deut 32:17, 21 and Isa 65:11 as he draws typological connections between ancient Israel’s idolatrous practices and the Corinthians’ eating of meat sacrificed to idols (see Heralds of the Good News, 203–4).


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sketched by Moses (“First Moses says … then Isaiah dares to say…”). 36 Isaiah 65:2, with its lament over Israel’s intransigence in the face of God’s persistent attempts at reconciliation, provides the reason for Moses’ startling announcement that God will make Israel jealous.37 Isaiah 65:1 clarifies that God will arouse his people’s jealousy by graciously revealing himself to those not seeking him. At the same time, the jealousy motif of Deut 32:21 provides Paul the leverage to open a deep fissure between Isa 65:1 and 65:2. The introduction in Rom 10:19 of the “no-nation” (Deut 32:21) facilitates Paul’s identification of “those not seeking me … those not asking for me” (Rom 10:20/Isa 65:1) as Gentiles, an interpretation that cuts against the grain of Isa 65:18 considered on its own terms. Interestingly, the wider contexts of both Deut 32:21 and Isa 65:1–2 cohere with the larger argument Paul is making about God’s faithfulness to Israel in Rom 9–11. Just as Isa 65–66 portrays an Israel divided, with a remnant remaining faithful to God, so Paul proceeds to argue in Rom 11:1–10 that there is at the present time a “remnant” of Israel chosen by grace who share with Gentiles the blessings of God’s redeemed people, while “the rest” have been rendered insensible. And just as the Song of Moses attests that God’s ultimate aim in showing favor to Gentiles is to win Israel back, so Paul returns to Deut 32 in Rom 11:11–32 to assert that, when “the fullness of the Gentiles comes in” to God’s people, “all Israel”—the “remnant” and “the rest” (as well as the Gentiles grafted into Israel)—will be saved. Deuteronomy 29:4 and Isaiah 29:10 in Romans 11:8 Paul supports his emphatic claim that “God has not forsaken his people, whom he foreknew” (Rom 11:2), with a two-stage argument. First, drawing an analogy from the story of Elijah, he insists that, although God has rendered “the rest” of Israel insensible, God has even now graciously preserved a “remnant” of his people (11:2–10).38 Then, returning to the logic of Deut 32:21, he argues that the partial insensibility of “the rest,” which provides a window of opportunity for Gentiles to be grafted into God’s people, will one day be removed by God, and “all Israel” will be saved (Rom 11:11–32).

36. Cf. Sifre Deut §306, where a statement by Moses is followed by a citation from Isaiah, introduced with the words, “Isaiah came and confirmed the matter.” 37. Although Isa 65:3 is not quoted by Paul, this verse shows a number of striking verbal links with the Song of Moses: “This people [cf. Deut 31:16], who provoke me [cf. Deut 31:20; 32:16, 19] to my face continually—they sacrifice in the gardens and offer incense on the bricks to demons, who are not [cf. Deut 32:17, 21].” 38. Cf. Rom 9:23–24: “vessels of mercy … whom he has called, not only from among the Jews, but also from among the Gentiles.”

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It is in support of his contention that God has chosen to render “the rest” of Israel insensible that Paul once again appeals to Israel’s Scriptures: “God has given them a spirit of stupor, eyes such as do not see and ears such as do not hear, to the present day” (Rom 11:8). Paul introduces this citation with the generic formula, “just as it is written,” and it is likely that many of Paul’s hearers would not have been able to identify the quotation as an amalgamation of Deuteronomy and Isaiah.39 However, given our focus on Paul as a reader of Scripture, it is surely significant to note that here, as he conflates the words of Moses and Isaiah into a single scriptural testimony, he is employing the same hermeneutical strategy as in Rom 10:19–21, where Moses and Isaiah step forward “in person” to testify together about God’s dealings with Israel.40 Deuteronomy 29:4 kai\ ou0k e1dwken ku/rioj o9 qeo\j u9mi=n kardi/an ei0de/nai

Romans 11:8 e1dwken au0toi=j o9 qeo\j pneu=ma katanu/cewj,

kai\ o0fqalmou\j ble/pein o0fqalmou\j tou= mh\ ble/pein kai\ w}ta a)kou/ein kai\ w}ta tou= mh\ a)kou/ein, e3wj th=j h9me/raj tau/thj e3wj th=j sh/meron h9me/raj

But the Lord your God God has not given you has given them a spirit of stupor, a heart to understand and eyes to see eyes such as do not see and ears to hear, to this day.

and ears such as do not hear, to the present day.

Isaiah 29:10 o3ti pepo/tiken u9ma~j ku/rioj pneu/mati katanu/cewj kai\ kammu/sei tou\j o0fqalmou\j au0tw~n

Because the Lord has made you drink a spirit of stupor, and he has closed their eyes.

39. For discussion of the level(s) on which Paul’s audiences could have appreciated his citations and allusions to Scripture, see Christopher Stanley, “ ‘Pearls Before Swine’: Did Paul’s Audiences Understand His Biblical Quotations?” NovT 41 (1999): 124–44; idem, Arguing with Scripture: The Rhetoric of Quotations in the Letters of Paul (New York: T&T Clark, 2004); Christopher Tuckett, “Paul, Scripture and Ethics. Some Reflections,” NTS 46 (2000): 403–24; and, for a somewhat different perspective, Heralds of the Good News, 33–39. 40. For detailed analysis of the quotation in Rom 11:8, see Heralds of the Good News, 240–57. A formal parallel to this sort of conflated quotation is found in 4Q266 frg. 11, lines 3–4 (= 4Q270 frg. 7 1.17–18), which under a single citation formula conflates Deut 30:4 and Lev 26:31. See further Joseph M. Baumgarten, “A ‘Scriptural’ Citation in 4QFragments of the Damascus Document,” JJS 43 (1992): 95–98.


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As was the case in Rom 10:19–21, so also here each passage plays an important role in shaping Paul’s reading of the other. By means of Isaiah’s pneu=ma katanu/xewj (“spirit of stupor”),41 Paul transmutes Moses’ lament that God has not yet granted Israel an understanding heart into the much stronger claim that God has, in fact, directly caused Israel’s spiritual insensibility.42 And it is Deuteronomy’s insistence that their blindness persists “to the present day” that gives Paul interpretive leverage to read the description of Isaiah’s opponents in Isa 29:10 as a diagnosis of his contemporaries’ failure to believe the gospel.43 The shape of Paul’s argument in Rom 11 further reveals the influence of the wider settings of these passages in Deuteronomy and Isaiah. Though the oracle of Isa 29 avows (in line with Isa 6:10) that it is God who has caused Israel’s blind stupor (29:9–12), the prophet rapidly fast-forwards to the eschatological reversal of this blindness by God. “And in that day the deaf will hear the words of a book, and the darkened and befogged eyes of the blind will see” (29:18). In similar fashion, Paul insists that the present insensibility of “the rest” is only temporary; soon he will invoke Isaiah once again, this time in testimony to God’s gracious removal of their “ungodliness” (Rom 11:25–27). Likewise, Paul’s argument in Rom 9–11 presumes the broad outlines of the story of God and Israel told in Deut 29–32. In Deut 29, as the people stand on the verge of entering the land, Moses laments their rebellious blindness, which persists “to this day.” From the perspective of Deuteronomy, exile is already a foregone conclusion, for Israel lacks the ability to keep the covenant they have just ratified. Only after “all these words have come upon you, the blessing and the curse” (Deut 30:1), will God personally intervene and supply what Israel now lacks: “The Lord will cleanse your heart and the heart of your seed so that you will love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul, so that you will live” (Deut 30:6).44 41. This phrase is unique to Isa 29:10 in the lxx. 42. The wording o0fqalmou\j tou= mh\ ble/pein … w}ta tou= mh\ a)kou/ein (“eyes such as do not see … ears such as do not hear”) may reflect Paul’s desire to connect this citation with the words of “David” that follow in Rom 11:9–10 (cf. o0fqalmoi/ … tou= mh\ ble/pein in Rom 11:10/Ps 68:24 lxx). 43. It is possible that Isa 6:10 suggested to Paul the connection between Deut 29:4 and Isa 29:10 (these two verses share only one word in common, o0fqalmoi/, “eyes”). Isa 6:10 and Deut 29:4 both speak of the failure to perceive with heart, eyes, and ears, while Isa 6:10 and 29:10 both use the rare verb kammu/w to announce God’s blinding of Israel. (Elsewhere in the lxx, kammu/w is found only in Isa 33:15 and Lam 3:45.) As has long been recognized, Isa 29:10 is the first of a series of passages in Isaiah that take up the blindness motif of 6:10 and eventually reverse it: 29:10, 18; 32:3–4; 35:5; 42:7, 16, 18–20; 43:8; 56:10; 59:10; 61:1. 44. Other Second Temple writings similarly read the latter chapters of Deuteronomy as a prophetic prefiguration of Israel’s exile and restoration. See, for example, Bar 2:27–3:8; 4QMMT C 12–16; 4Q504 frgs. 1–2 cols. 5–7.

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Paul’s version of the story includes a surprising twist, however. While Jews and Gentiles in Christ have already become sharers in the eschatological deliverance narrated in Deut 30 (see Deut 30:12–14 in Rom 10:6–13; Deut 32:43 in Rom 15:10), “the rest” of Israel are stuck back in Deut 29, still blinded and disobedient (Rom 11:8). As we have seen, Paul turns to Deut 32:21 to explain this unexpected development. In line with Deuteronomy’s vision, Paul insists that God remains faithful to Israel and, moreover, that by making “the rest” jealous through showing mercy to Gentiles God will yet graciously intervene to save “all Israel” (Rom 10:19; 11:11–15). Deuteronomy 32:43 and Isaiah 11:10 in Romans 15:9–12 The apostle draws an interpretive connection between Deuteronomy and Isaiah one last time near the end of his letter, as he brings his grand account of the righteousness of God to its rhetorical climax (Rom 15:7–13). Paul exhorts his hearers to embody the truth of the gospel—that the ministry of Christ has united Jews and Gentiles together in joyful praise of God’s faithfulness and mercy—by embracing one another, just as Christ has embraced them (15:7–13). In Rom 15:9b–12 a catena of citations drawn from Deuteronomy, Isaiah, and the Psalms grounds this appeal in the testimony of Israel’s Scriptures. Each of the texts Paul cites (Ps 17:50 lxx; Deut 32:43; Ps 116:1 lxx; Isa 11:10) depicts Gentiles joining Israel in the worship of Yhwh, underlining once again Paul’s claim that his gospel was promised beforehand “through the prophets in holy Scriptures” (Rom 1:2): …just as it is written: “For this reason I will praise you among the Gentiles, and to your name I will sing.” (Ps 17:50 lxx) 10 And again, it says: “Rejoice, O Gentiles, with his people.” (Deut 32:43) 11 And again: “Praise the Lord, all you Gentiles, and let all the peoples praise him.” (Ps 116:1 lxx) 12 And again, Isaiah says: “The shoot of Jesse will [come forth], even the one who rises to rule the Gentiles. In him the Gentiles will hope.” (Isa 11:10) 9

Although verbal and thematic links bind all four of these texts together,45

45. Compare, for example, the psalmist’s confident assertion, “You will establish me as the leader of the Gentiles” (Ps 17:44 lxx), with Isaiah’s prophecy of the “root of Jesse” who “rises to rule the Gentiles” (Isa 11:10 in Rom 15:12).


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our primary interest here is the connection between the citations from Deuteronomy and Isaiah. Deuteronomy 32:43, the doxological conclusion to the Song of Moses, celebrates God’s eschatological redemption of his people. Particularly important for Paul’s argument is the depiction of Gentiles joining together with Israel in praise of Israel’s God.46 eu0fra&nqhte, e1qnh, meta_ tou= laou= au0tou=.

Rejoice, O Gentiles, with his people. (Deut 32:43 in Rom 15:10) Paul’s appeal to this passage at the climax of his argument in Romans coheres closely with his earlier interpretation of Deut 32:21 in Rom 10–11 as a prophecy both of God’s unexpected mercy to Gentiles and also of God’s purpose thereby to effect Israel’s salvation. The role these two citations from the Song of Moses play in Paul’s unfolding argument in Romans strongly suggests that Paul has read the whole Song as the story of God’s faithfulness to redeem unfaithful Israel and, with them, the entire cosmos. Isaiah anchors the catena of citations in Rom 15:9–12, once more stepping forward “in person,” as it were (“and again Isaiah says…”), to deliver his message: e1stai h9 r9i/za tou= 0Iessai\ kai\ o9 a)nista&menoj a!rxein e0qnw~n, e0p' au0tw|~ e)/qnh e0lpiou=sin.

e shoot of Jesse will [come forth], even the one who rises to rule the Th Gentiles. In him the Gentiles will hope. (Isa 11:10 in Rom 15:12) The quotation follows the lxx, with one significant variant: Paul omits the phrase, “in that day,” precisely because he contends that this eschatological prophecy finds its realization now in the worshiping communities of Jews and Gentiles that God is calling into being in Christ. Isaiah’s words provide a fitting conclusion to Paul’s summary of the argument of his letter. In addition to reprising the twin themes sounded in Rom 15:8–9—God’s promises to Israel and God’s mercy to Gentiles—the messianic prophecy of “the root of Jesse” completes a neat inclusio with Paul’s opening précis of the gospel, which highlights Jesus’ Davidic ancestry (1:3). Moreover, the polyvalence of the ascription o9 a)nista&menoj (“the one who rises”) resonates with Paul’s emphasis throughout the letter on Jesus’ resurrection and exaltation as the anchor for the hopes of Gentiles as well as Jews (1:4; 4:25; 8:11; 10:6–13).47 46. Paul’s citation is dependent on the lxx version of Deut 32:43. In contrast, the mt calls on Gentiles to “praise his people.” On the lxx rendering of this verse, see John William Wevers, Notes on the Greek Text of Deuteronomy (SBLSCS 39; Atlanta: Scholars Press, 1995), 534. 47. A messianic reading of Isa 11 is attested in other early Jewish writings. See, for example, Pss. Sol. 17–18; 4QpIsaa (4Q161) frgs. 8–10 3.15–29 (on Isa 11:1–5); Tg. Isa. 11:1.

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The placement of Isa 11:10 at the end of a catena of Scriptures depicting redeemed Jews and Gentiles praising God together bespeaks Paul’s familiarity with the setting of this oracle in the book of Isaiah. The wider literary setting of Isa 11:10 (chs. 10–12) tells the story of God’s merciful preservation of a remnant of Israel in the midst of a time of judgment (Isa 10). It relates God’s promise to rescue his oppressed and dispersed people from their enemies by raising up a scion of David’s family, who will rule both Israel and the Gentiles (Isa 11). Isaiah’s vision culminates in a triumphant song of praise, as Israel extols God’s faithfulness and mercy in the presence of the nations (Isa 12). The broad outlines of this Isaianic story have been taken up and transformed by Paul. Read through the lens of the gospel, Isaiah now witnesses to Paul’s claim that Christ is the focal point of the hope of the Gentiles (Isa 11:10), as well as of redeemed Israel (Isa 11:11–16), and the one who enables them to glorify Israel’s God together (Isa 12:1–6).48 As Paul brings Deuteronomy and Isaiah together for the third time, we see yet again that each text shapes Paul’s interpretation of the other. In the context of Rom 15:7–13, Deut 32:43 states explicitly what is only implied in Isaiah’s vision of the Gentiles hoping in the “shoot of Jesse,” namely, that Gentiles will worship God in unity with Israel. Isaiah 11:10, in turn, clarifies that the redemption of Israel, which results in the universal praise of God (Deut 32:43), takes place through the agency of the Christ, who unites Jew and Gentile in himself, to the glory of God. Conclusion: Moses and Isaiah in Concert Three times in Romans, Paul combines Isaiah’s oracles with words drawn from Deut 29–32 in such a way that each text (and often its wider context) influences Paul’s reading of the other. In each case, it is the interplay between the two texts that proves decisive for Paul’s argument. Thus, while Isaiah serves as an indispensable source for Paul’s thought as it is developed in Romans, Paul presents Isaiah not as a solo voice but as a member of a harmonious chorus of scriptural voices singing the gospel of God’s apocalyptic invasion of the cosmos in Jesus Christ. Heard in concert, Moses and Isaiah prophesy the divine hardening of a portion of Israel for the sake of the salvation of the Gentiles, but, at the same time, their joint testimony undergirds Paul’s confidence in the unshake-

48. Of course Paul selectively appropriates Isaiah’s oracles. He studiously ignores or subverts texts that speak of the subjection of Gentiles to Israel, even though this is an important theme in many Isaianic visions of Israel’s restoration (e.g., 11:13–14). The opposite tendency may be noted in Targum Isaiah, which renders Isa 11:10 as “kingdoms shall submit to him” (whereas the mt reads “Gentiles shall seek him”).


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able fidelity of God to Israel and authorizes his hope for the ultimate salvation of “all Israel.” Under Paul’s masterful direction, Moses and Isaiah together hymn God’s creation of a people—comprising Gentiles as well Jews—who with one voice extol the mercy and faithfulness of Israel’s God. Select Bibliography Beaton, Richard. Isaiah’s Christ in Matthew’s Gospel. SNTSMS 123. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002. Bellinger, William H., and William R. Farmer, eds. Jesus and the Suffering Servant: Isaiah 53 and Christian Origins. Harrisburg, Pa.: Trinity Press International, 1998. Broyles, Craig C., and Craig A. Evans, eds. Writing and Reading the Scroll of Isaiah. 2 vols. VTSup 70. Leiden: Brill, 1997. Hays, Richard B. Echoes of Scripture in the Letters of Paul. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1989. Janowski, Bernd, and Peter Stuhlmacher, eds. The Suffering Servant: Isaiah 53 in Jewish and Christian Sources. Translated by Daniel P. Bailey. Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2004. Pao, David W. Acts and the Isaianic New Exodus. WUNT 2/130. Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2000. Repr., Grand Rapids: Baker, 2002. Shum, Shiu-Lun. Paul’s Use of Isaiah in Romans. WUNT 2/156. Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2002. Wagner, J. Ross. Heralds of the Good News: Paul and Isaiah “In Concert” in the Letter to the Romans. NovTSup 101. Leiden: Brill, 2002. Repr., Boston: Brill, 2003. Watts, Rikki. Isaiah’s New Exodus and Mark. WUNT 2/88. Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 1997. Repr., Grand Rapids: Baker, 2001. Wilk, Florian. Die Bedeutung des Jesajabuches fur Paulus. FRLANT 179. Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1998.

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Figure 1: Isaiah in Romans49 Isa 1:9 Isa 6:9–10 Isa 8:14 Isa 10:22–23 Isa 11:10 Isa 27:9 Isa 28:16 Isa 28:22 Isa 29:10 Isa 29:16 [Isa 40:7–8] Isa 40:13 Isa 40:21/28 Isa 45:9 Isa 45:23 Isa 50:8 [Isa 51:1] Isa 52:5 Isa 52:7 Isa 52:15 Isa 53:1 Isa 53:6, 11–12 [Isa 56:1] Isa 59:7–8 Isa 59:20–21 Isa 65:1 Isa 65:2

Marked Citation Rom 9:29

Allusions Rom 11:8

Rom 9:33 Rom 9:27–28 Rom 15:12 Rom 11:27 Rom 9:33; 10:11 Rom 9:28 Rom 11:8

Rom 14:11

Rom 9:20 [Rom 9:6] Rom 11:34 Rom 10:18, 19 Rom 9:20 Rom 8:33–34 [Rom 9:30–31]

Rom 2:24 Rom 10:15 Rom 15:21 Rom 10:16

Rom 4:25; [8:32] [Rom 13:11]

Rom 3:15–17 Rom 11:26–27 Rom 10:20 Rom 10:21

49. Less certain allusions are enclosed in brackets. Marked citations in other undisputed Pauline letters: Isa 25:8/1 Cor 15:54; Isa 28:11–12/1 Cor 14:21; Isa 29:14/1 Cor 1:19; Isa 49:8/2 Cor 6:2; Isa 52:11/2 Cor 6:17; Isa 54:1/Gal 4:27.


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Figure 2: Isaiah Conflated or Juxtaposed with Other Scriptural Citations in Romans50 Rom 9:15 Rom 9:17 Rom 9:20

Exod 33:19 Exod 9:16 Isa 29:16/Isa 45:9

Rom 9:25–26 Rom 9:27 Rom 9:27–28 Rom 9:29

Hos 2:23; Hos 1:10 Isa 10:22/Hos 1:10a Isa 10:22–23/Isa 28:22 Isa 1:9

Rom 9:33 Rom 10:5 Rom 10:6–8 Rom 10:11 Rom 10:13

Isa 28:16/Isa 8:14 Lev 18:5 Deut 30:12–14 Isa 28:16 Joel 2:32

Rom 10:15 Rom 10:16 Rom 10:18 Rom 10:19 Rom 10:20 Rom 10:21

Isa 52:7 Isa 53:1 Ps 18:5 lxx Deut 32:21 Isa 65:1 Isa 65:2

Rom 11:8 Rom 11:9–10

Deut 29:4/Isa 29:10 (+ Ps 68:24? lxx) Ps 68:22–24 lxx

Rom 11:27 Rom 11:34 Rom 11:35

Isa 59:21/Isa 27:9 Isa 40:13 Job 41:3

Rom 15:9 Rom 15:10 Rom 15:11 Rom 15:12

Ps 17:50 lxx Deut 32:43 Ps 116:1 lxx Isa 11:10

50. Verse numbering for the lxx is given according to the Göttingen edition.

The Testimony of Isaiah and Johannine Christology Catrin H. Williams

Statistical evidence confirms the prominence of Isaiah and his prophecies among Jews and Christians from the late Second Temple period onward. Twenty-two explicit references to this prophetic figure are recorded in the New Testament alone,1 and quotations from, or allusions to, Isaianic material are found in virtually all New Testament writings. A similar picture emerges from the Jewish evidence datable to the first centuries b.c.e. and c.e. Writing in the second century b.c.e., Ben Sira depicts Isaiah as the prophet who “saw the future, and comforted the mourners in Zion, [who] revealed what was to occur to the end of time, and the hidden things before they happened” (Sir 48:24–25). Similarly, a Qumran text describes Isaiah as “the prophet for the last days” (4Q174 frgs. 1–2 line 15). What is distinctive about the appropriation of Isaiah’s prophecies by the early Christians is their conviction that the future foreseen by Isaiah has now decisively arrived in the Christ event. Several factors suggest that Isaiah was of special interest to the author of the Fourth Gospel. There are four explicit quotations from his work (John 1:23; 6:45; 12:38; 12:40), which amount to nearly a quarter of the quotations in a Gospel that generally favors allusive references combined from more than one scriptural source. Three of these quotations frame the beginning and end of Jesus’ public ministry: the citation of Isa 40:3 by John the Baptist in the narrative immediately after the prologue (1:23) and the quotations from both Isa 53:1 and 6:10 in the concluding reflections on the unbelieving response to Jesus’ ministry (12:37–41). The inclusio established by means of these quotations is accentuated by the repeated use of the phrase “Isaiah said (ei]pen 'Hsai5aj).” The initial citation formula “as the prophet Isaiah said” (1:23) is restated as a fulfillment formula in 12:38 (“this was to fulfill the word spoken (ei]pen) by the prophet Isaiah”) and is then repeated twice to confirm what “Isaiah said” (12:39, 41). While there is a distinct possibility that the first occurrence of this

1. Matthew (6x), Mark (2x), Luke (2x), John (4x), Acts (3x), Romans (5x).

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formula stems from earlier tradition (cf. Mark 1:2–3; Matt 3:3; Luke 3:4–6), its inclusion so early in the Johannine narrative suggests it may have prompted the author to use similarly phrased statements in 12:37–41. The naming of an individual prophet in connection with an explicit quotation is more the exception than the rule in the Fourth Gospel. The unspecific introduction to the one other quotation from Isaiah (6:45: “as it is written in the prophets”), whereby Isa 54:13 lxx is cited,2 is more characteristic of Johannine practice. The unequivocal naming of Isaiah at the beginning and end of the first half of the Gospel suggests the importance of his prophetic testimony for the Johannine understanding of Jesus. The aim of this study is to explore the significance of Isaiah’s testimony in the shaping of Johannine Christology through an examination of the form, function, and location of the single (1:23) and double quotations (12:38, 40) that are accompanied by explicit references to the prophet Isaiah. John the Baptist Proclaims the Way of the Lord In the Gospel’s opening narrative scene John the Baptist takes up his appointed role as one offering testimony (marturi/a) to Jesus. For this purpose he cites the words of Isa 40:3: John 1:23

Isa 40:3 lxx

He [John the Baptist] said, “I am the voice of one crying out in the wilderness,

The voice of one crying out in the wilderness,

‘Make straight the way of the Lord (eu0qu&nate th_n o(do_n kuri/ou),’

“Prepare the way of the Lord (e9toima&sate th_n o(do\n kuri/ou), make straight (eu0qei/aj poiei=te) the paths of our God.”

as the prophet Isaiah said.”

2. It is likely that the Greek Septuagint is the underlying source of most explicit quotations in the Fourth Gospel. For the view that John, in the few cases where the wording of the lxx did not suit his aims, made use of the Hebrew text (12:40; 13:18), see Maarten J. J. Menken, Old Testament Quotations in the Fourth Gospel: Studies in Textual Form (Kampen: Kok Pharos, 1996), 205–6.

williams: isaiah and johannine christology

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The identification of John the Baptist with the nameless voice of Isa 40:3 is firmly anchored in early Christian tradition. The Synoptic Gospels make this connection, giving it the appearance of a retrospective explanatory comment (Matt 3:3; Mark 1:2–3; Luke 3:4). John, however, depicts the Baptist as overtly identifying himself with the one who communicates the divinely sanctioned message of imminent salvation (40:3–5). The Baptist may even be depicted as going a step further by integrating the formula “as the prophet Isaiah said” into his own speech, indicating his awareness that he himself is fulfilling Isaiah’s words (“I am the voice…”). Except for this addition of “I am,” the Johannine rendering of Isa 40:3 closely resembles its septuagintal counterpart. Two notable variations are the compression of the lxx’s two parallel lines into one and the substitution of the initial command to “prepare” with a call to “make straight” the way of the Lord drawn from the second parallel line. Maarten Menken ascribes both these variations to the redactional work of the author rather than to a specific textual tradition. After examining several biblical and extrabiblical occurrences of the verb e(toima&zw (“prepare”), especially its use to denote the preparation of a way, Menken concludes that this verb possesses a distinct connotation that does not agree with the Johannine presentation of the relationship between John the Baptist and Jesus. It implies that one figure (John) prepares a way for another (Jesus) and that only when the way is finished can the other figure come.3 Since the Baptist’s activity in the Fourth Gospel does not end with the baptism of Jesus but overlaps with Jesus’ ministry (1:29–42; 3:23–30), the substitution of Isa 40:3’s “make straight” for its “prepare” in the Gospel’s compressed citation was motivated by the portrayal of the Baptist as a key witness contemporaneous with Jesus rather than a precursor who had already accomplished his task. Therefore, while the majority of commentators conclude that Isa 40:3 has a limited purpose in its Johannine context, namely, to enable the Baptist to be identified with the unnamed voice, Menken seeks to demonstrate that John also attaches weight to the words assigned to that voice. In other words, since John elsewhere only retains in scriptural citations the words or clauses that are of direct relevance to the surrounding context, the command, “Make straight the way of the Lord,” would have been omitted unless it possessed some significance within the presentation of John the Baptist’s testimony. Indeed, additional intratextual support for the replacement of e(toima&sate (“prepare”) with eu)qu&nate (“make straight”) can be adduced from not only the fact that the Baptist’s ministry overlaps to a certain extent with that of Jesus but that his acknowledgement of Jesus’ preexis-

3. Ibid., 26–28.

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tence (1:30: “because he was before me”; o4ti prw~to&j mou h}n; cf. 1:15) also rules out his role as a forerunner. Nonetheless, the function attributed by Menken to John the Baptist’s call, “Make straight the way of the Lord,” requires more detailed scrutiny. The exclusive focus on Jesus in the Baptist’s testimony and activity strongly implies that Isa 40:3 is here subjected to christological interpretation: the way of the Lord proclaimed by John the Baptist is none other than the coming of Jesus. It then follows that, here in the first narrative scene after the prologue, the way of the Logos incarnate is announced and begins to be described as soon as Jesus makes his first appearance (1:29).4 A christological application of this kind, in the sense that the coming of God and his salvation is made visible in Jesus, points to Jesus being included as the referent of the title “Lord” in the scriptural quotation, 5 as well as clarifying what, according to John, actually constitutes the way of the Lord. As Menken has forcefully argued, this “way” is not what is made ready for Jesus before he comes. Nor, however, does it represent the Baptist’s testimony to Jesus upon his arrival. Rather, understood as a subjective genitive, it denotes Jesus’ own way. In Isaiah, the “way” signified the coming of God to save his people and his presence through the wilderness to Jerusalem (40:3–5, 9–11; 42:16; 49:10–11; 52:7–12); similarly, in John it is the coming of Jesus that is made straight through the Baptist’s testimony. This concentration on the single way of the Lord (rather than on his plural “paths”) even helps explain further why John has truncated the two parallel clauses of Isa 40:3 lxx into one. Other features in the Johannine portrayal of the Baptist strengthen the proposed link between his proclamation of the way of the Lord and the actual coming of Jesus. Noteworthy are the Baptist’s repeated references, based on traditional language (cf. Mark 1:7–8; Matt 3:11), to Jesus as the one who comes (o( e)rxo&menoj) after him (1:15, 27; cf. 1:30). With the exception of the first example, which is positioned outside the narrative framework of the Gospel (1:15), these references to Jesus as “the Coming One” occur only after the Baptist has announced the way of the Lord to anticipate Jesus’ first appearance. During the early stages of this way, when the Baptist sees Jesus coming toward him (1:29) and walking by (1:35), he bears witness on his behalf (1:29–34, 36), thereby prompting two of his own disciples to become followers of Jesus (1:35–37). In this respect, the presentation of the Baptist in the initial narratives confirms the statements made about him and his relationship with Jesus in the prologue

4. See Andreas Obermann, Die christologische Erfüllung der Schrift im Johannesevangelium: Eine Untersuchung zur johanneischen Hermeneutik anhand der Schriftzitate (WUNT 2/83; Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 1996), 111. 5. See further Martin Hengel, “Die Schriftauslegung des 4. Evangeliums auf dem Hintergrund der urchristlichen Exegese,” Jahrbuch für biblische Theologie 4 (1989): 266.


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(1:7): “He came as a witness to testify to the light, so that all might believe through him.” John the Baptist proclaims the way of the Lord; his own designated role is to make straight that way by pointing to Jesus, who has hitherto remained unknown (1:26, 31, 33), as the one in whom the coming of the Lord for salvation now becomes a reality. The Baptist’s role as a key witness is thus presented in this Gospel as integrally linked to the words of the prophet Isaiah. The content of his testimony to Jesus in the two subsequent pericopes (1:29–34, 35–43) also betrays Isaianic influence. When John the Baptist sees Jesus coming toward him and declares, “Behold the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world” (1:29), the most likely interpretation is that Passover lamb imagery, which plays such a prominent role later in the Gospel (cf. 19:14, 29, 36), has been combined with echoes of the description of the Servant of God in the Septuagint version of Isa 53. The Servant, “like a lamb before the shearer” (53:7), is the one who “bears our sins” (53:4) and “bore the sins of many” (53:12). The freedom with which John has applied Isaiah’s vocabulary is evident from the replacement of the verb “to bear” ([a)na]fe&rw) with the verb “to take away” (ai!rw) and from the expansion of the scope of the taking away from “our sins” and “the sins of many” to “the sin of the world.” Combining and adapting scriptural images in this way is not foreign to the Fourth Gospel, nor is the conflation of more than one scriptural passage in some of its explicit quotations.6 The pericope relating the Baptist’s testimony (1:29–34) may be influenced by Isaianic statements about the Servant in further ways. At John 1:34, “And I myself have seen and testified that this is the Chosen One of God,” the majority of manuscripts read o( ui(o\j tou= qeou= (“the Son of God”) rather than o( e)klekto\j tou= qeou=, “the Chosen One of God.” However, the latter reading is early, and scribes are more likely to have altered the original designation to the favorite Johannine title, “the Son of God,” than vice versa. If one accepts “the Chosen One of God” as the designation used by the Baptist in 1:34, then he, like the heavenly voice in the Synoptic accounts of Jesus’ baptism, is alluding to the opening lines of the first Servant Song: “Behold, my servant whom I uphold, my Chosen One (o( e)klekto/j mou; mt yryxb) in whom my soul delights” (Isa 42:1). Moreover, Isa 42:1 continues with a reference to God putting his Spirit on the Servant who will bring forth justice to the nations, whereas in the Johannine narrative the Baptist acknowledges Jesus’ identity as the Chosen One and Lamb of God as a direct result of seeing the Spirit descend and remain on him. 6. In addition to the quotation of Zech 9:9 in John 12:15 (considered below), a good example of the interpretive conflation of more than one scriptural passage occurs in John 19:36 (“none of his bones shall be broken”), which appears to combine the wording of a pentateuchal passage (Exod 12:10, 46 or Num 9:12) with a Psalms text (33:21 lxx).

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To sum up, in these first narrative sections of the Fourth Gospel, John the Baptist is depicted as one who embodies the Isaianic voice in the wilderness and who allusively takes up Isaianic prophecies about the Servant as the content of his testimony. Having maintained that his role is to act as the authoritative, even divinely ordained, witness proclaiming the way of the Lord (1:23), his direct testimony about Jesus’ identity and mission (1:29–34) stems, as expected of a witness (cf. 3:11, 32; 19:35), from what he himself has seen (1:34). Direct communication from God (1:33) enables the Baptist, with the aid of allusions to the Isaianic Servant, to testify to Jesus as “the Chosen One of God” and as “the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world.” His testimony thus already anticipates “the hour” (John 12:23, 27) and looks ahead to Jesus’ death as the supreme event of salvation. For this reason the Baptist, during the initial stages of Jesus’ ministry, can only claim to make straight, not prepare beforehand, the way of the Lord, for the earthly mission of Jesus as the realization of that way has only just begun. The Testimony of Isaiah and Johannine Reflection on Unbelief Two explicit quotations from the prophecies of Isaiah hold together John 12:37–41, a passage of strategic importance that offers reflections on unbelief as the dominant response to Jesus’ public ministry. The arrival of Jesus’ hour, already announced earlier in this chapter (12:23), accounts for the first-time introduction of the formula “in order to fulfill,” which here embraces both quotations, Isa 53:1 in verse 38 and Isa 6:10 in verse 40. Both passages were already firmly established as early Christian prooftexts regarding Jewish unbelief (Isa 53:1 in Rom 10:16; Isa 6:9–10 in Matt 13:14–15; Acts 28:26–27; cf. Mark 4:12; Luke 8:10; Rom 11:8), but their juxtaposition is unique to the Fourth Gospel.7 John 12:37–41

Isa 53:1 lxx

Although he [Jesus] had done so many signs in their presence they would not believe in him; 38 this was in order to fulfill the word said by the prophet Isaiah: 37

own.

7. The following translations of John 12:37–41; Isa 53:1 (lxx); and Isa 6:10 (mt, lxx) are my


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“Lord, who has believed our report,

“Lord, who has believed our report,

and to whom has the arm of the Lord been revealed?”

and to whom has the arm of the Lord been revealed?”

And so they could not believe, because again Isaiah said: 39

Isa 6:10 mt a “Make the heart of this people fat

Isa 6:10 lxx “For the heart of this people has become fat

b make their ears heavy

and their ears are dull of hearing

and he hardened their heart,

c and shut their eyes,

and they have closed their eyes,

lest they should see with the eyes

c' lest they see with their eyes

lest they should see with the eyes

b' and hear with their ears

and hear with the ears

and understand with the heart

a' and their heart understands

and understand with the heart

and turn,

and they turn

and turn,

and I heal them.”

and be healed.”

and I heal them.”

“He has blinded their eyes, 40

Isaiah said these things because he saw his glory and spoke about him. 41

The Johannine appropriation of Isa 53:1 in verse 38 agrees in every respect with its septuagintal rendering and belongs to the same passage (52:13–53:12) to which allusion was made in the Baptist’s testimony (1:29, 36). At least two important themes are highlighted by use of this citation. First, the unbelief outlined in John 12:37, “they would not believe in him” (ou0k e)pi/steuon ei0j au0to&n), serves as a fulfillment of Isa 53:1a, “who has believed our report?” (ti/j e)pi/steusen), which is quoted in verse 38. Second, lines a and b of Isa 53:1 together serve as a summary of the negative response to Jesus’ ministry: Jesus’ miraculous signs are part of the revelation of “the arm of the Lord” that those spoken of have refused to recognize.

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Isaiah is presented as having already predicted the unbelieving rejection of the testimony to Jesus (“our report”), which now, from the perspective of these summary reflections, is presented by John himself. Jesus is consequently not posed as the speaker of Isa 53:1 in John 12:38.8 And although it remains unclear whether John regards God or Jesus as the one addressed as “Lord” at the beginning of this quotation, it may not be necessary to choose between them; this accords with the Johannine emphasis on Jesus’ oneness with the Father (cf. 10:30, 17:11) and the christological interpretation of Isa 40:3 established in John 1:23. The second quotation in verse 40 (“He has blinded their eyes…”) is unquestionably grounded in Isa 6:10. Marked differences from all other known versions have, however, prompted critics to subject every word of its Johannine rendering to thorough scrutiny.9 Among its distinguishing features are the omission of the two lines relating to ears and hearing (lines b and b' above) and the change in line sequence, placing “eyes” before “heart.” Both of these alterations result, in all probability, from the singling out of Jesus’ signs (seen with the eyes) in the narrative comment preceding the two Isaianic quotations (v. 37) as the one aspect of his ministry that should, from the Johannine perspective, have resulted in faith (in the heart). What needs to be determined is the referent of the pronouns “he” and “I” in the first two and final lines of John’s quotation of Isaiah. The initial statements, “He has blinded their eyes, and he hardened their heart” part company with the lxx of Isa 6:10 (“For the heart of this people has become fat…”), where the emphasis on the people’s heart being fat and eyes closed are described as an existing condition. While according to the Hebrew text, the prophet Isaiah is the one instructed to “Make the heart of this people fat” and to “shut their eyes,” it is implicitly God who brings about this spiritual blindness, through Isaiah’s agency. John’s rendering makes God’s role explicit. Hence, despite attempts at identifying different initiators of this obduracy (the

8. Pace Maarten J. J. Menken, “The Use of the Septuagint in Three Quotations in John (Jn 10,34; 12,38; 19,24),” in The Scriptures in the Gospels (ed. C. M. Tuckett; BETL 131; Leuven: Leuven University Press, 1997), 383–86. Menken proposes that Jesus is understood as the one who addresses God as “Lord” in Isa 53:1 and who speaks of the lack of belief in “the report about us” (with h(mw~n understood as an objective genitive, “the report or testimony of our signs”). He does not, however, offer any firm arguments against interpreting Isaiah as the speaker whose prophetic testimony is now being fulfilled. 9. See especially Craig A. Evans, To See and Not Perceive: Isaiah 6.9–10 in Early Jewish and Christian Interpretation (JSOTSup 64; Sheffield: JSOT Press, 1989), 129–35; Menken, Old Testament Quotations, 99–122; Obermann, Die christologische Erfüllung der Schrift, 235–55.


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devil, the arm of the Lord, Jesus or his message),10 for John, as most commentators argue,11 the obduracy is God’s doing: the “he” of John 12:40 is God. Granted this, the striking shift to the first-person singular in the final line of the quotation, with wording corresponding exactly to the Septuagint (“and I heal them”; kai\ i0a&somai au)tou&j) rather than to the Hebrew text (“and be healed,” wl )prw), seems to point to Jesus as its subject. In other words, the obduracy brought about by God will mean that those who lack belief cannot turn in order for Jesus, God’s representative, to heal them. To search for additional evidence that John presents Jesus as the subject (“I”) of the last line in Isa 6:10, even as the speaker of the whole verse, John’s own assessment of the Isaianic quotations must now be considered. Isaiah Bears Witness to the Glory of Jesus In the highly condensed three-clause commentary that follows (12:41), John explains how he is able to interpret the prophet’s testimony with reference to Jesus: “Isaiah said these things because he saw his glory and spoke about him.” That the figure whose glory Isaiah is here said to have seen is Jesus is not only supported by the fact that he is consistently the referent of the pronoun auto&j in the surrounding narrative comments (12:37, 42), but it is also demanded by the emphasis found elsewhere in the Gospel on the impossibility of seeing God other than through Jesus (cf. 1:18; 6:46). Since the wording of John 12:41 points to a specific setting for its reference to Isaiah having beheld “his glory,” this must be the prophet’s temple vision (Isa 6:1-13), which forms the broader context of the immediately preceding quotation from Isa 6:10. The Hebrew text notes that Isaiah sees the Lord (ynd)) and hears the seraphim confirm that “the whole earth is full of his glory” (6:3). In the septuagintal version of Isa 6:1 God’s glory features more prominently in that 6:1 lxx specifies that it is God’s glory (do&ca) rather than the hem of his robe that fills the temple: “I saw the Lord (ku&rioj) sitting upon a throne, exalted and lifted up; and the house was full of his glory.” While John’s acquaintance with

10. The alternatives are set out fully by John Painter, “The Quotation of Scripture and Unbelief in John 12.36b–43,” in The Gospels and the Scriptures of Israel (ed. C. A. Evans and W. R. Stegner; JSNTSup 104; Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press, 1994), 432–58. 11. See especially Roman Kühschelm, Verstockung, Gericht und Heil (BBB 76; Frankfurt am Main: Hain, 1990), 188–92; Rudolf Schnackenburg, “Joh 12,39–41: Zur christologischen Schriftauslegung des vierten Evangelisten,” in Das Johannesevangelium IV (2nd ed.; Freiburg: Herder, 1990), 146–49. No new subject (such as the devil) is suggested by the immediate context of John 12:37–41, and John presents the prophet as either reporting (“Isaiah said”) the activity of another figure (“he”) or as recounting what is said about this figure by yet another speaker (“I”).

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targumic interpretations must remain a matter of conjecture, it is interesting to note that this trajectory extends to Targum Isaiah, in which God’s glory features even more prominently: what the prophet sees is “the glory of the Lord resting upon a throne” (6:1), “the glory of the Shekhinah of the eternal king, the Lord of hosts” (6:5). If the lxx of Isa 6:1–13 has influenced John’s assertion that “Isaiah saw his (Jesus’) glory,” it follows that Jesus is being identified with God’s glory, the visible manifestation of his presence; he also becomes the bearer of the name ku&rioj,12 as already testified by the Baptist at the beginning of the Gospel narrative (“Make straight the way of the Lord,” eu0qu&nate th_n o(do_n kuri/ou) and implied by the christological application of Isa 53:1 in the immediate context of John 12:41. Jewish precedents for making God’s glory the object of Isaiah’s vision would undoubtedly have paved the way for the interpretation of Jesus as the embodiment of that glory. The conciseness of John’s comment (“because he saw his glory,” o4ti ei}den th_n do/can au)tou=), however, has prompted much speculation as to which aspect of Jesus’ glory John believed the prophet to have seen. The widely accepted view that Isaiah is understood to have encountered Christ’s preexistent glory certainly accords with the preexistence Christology expressed elsewhere in the Gospel (see 1:1; 17:5, 24). John’s appeal to the temple vision would then imply that, since a direct vision of God is out of the question, the preexistent Jesus is the glorious figure whom Isaiah saw seated upon the throne,13 who appears to the prophet and converses with him. However, there are also sound arguments for explaining the remark “he saw his glory” as Isaiah’s encounter in his temple vision with the future earthly Jesus. As was mentioned earlier, Isaiah was already understood in the first-century Jewish context as a foreseer of the future. A close parallel is found also in Jesus’ claim about Abraham in John 8:56 (“Your ancestor Abraham rejoiced that he would see my day; he saw it and was glad,” kai_ ei}den kai_ e)xa&rh), understood in the context of a variety of Jewish traditions based on Gen 15 in which the patriarch is said to have been granted visions of the future and the end times.14 The overall status and interpretive function of John 12:41 also sug-

12. Isa 6 lxx uses ku/rioj to translate “the Lord” (ynd), vv. 1, 8, 11) and “the Lord of hosts” (tw)bc hwhy, vv. 3, 5). The only exception is in v. 12, where hwhy is rendered as o( qeo&j. According to Menken (Old Testament Quotations, 120), this variation may have prompted John to distinguish between “the Lord” (Jesus) who converses with the prophet and “God” of whom “the Lord” speaks in the third-person singular (v. 12). This would also accord with the distinction already established in John 12:40 between God (“he”) and Jesus (“I”). 13. For example, Schnackenburg, “Joh 12,39–41,” 151–52. 14. See 4 Ezra 3:14: “to him [Abraham] only you revealed the end of the times, secretly by night”; cf. Apoc. Ab. 9:6, 9; 2 Bar. 4:4; L.A.B. 18:5; 23:6; Tg. Isa. 43:12.


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gest that the remark “he saw his glory” refers primarily to the manifestation of God’s glory in the earthly Jesus. The verse acts as an explanatory comment in a narrative unit focusing retrospectively on the negative response to Jesus’ ministry. It is a unit clearly held together by its three references to Isaiah, which, on the third occasion (12:41a), enlarges upon the preceding two references to what “Isaiah said” (12:38, 39) by introducing John’s assessment of the prophet’s testimony. John’s christological application can then be explained as follows: the testimony presented by Isaiah (53:1; 6:10) reflects his vision of Jesus’ future glory (12:41b: “because he saw his glory”), which enables him to act as a witness to Jesus’ earthly mission and to predict the unbelief he would encounter during his incarnate life (12:41c: “and he spoke about him”). John may even be setting up an implicit contrast between Isaiah, who “saw his glory,” and those who, despite seeing the signs, failed to (12:37–38; cf. 2:11; 11:4, 40) because of the blinding of their eyes and the hardening of their hearts (12:39–40).15 In contrast to the failure of believing Jewish authorities to disclose their belief in Jesus due to their fear of the Pharisees and their preference for human glory (12:42–43), Isaiah becomes a model witness testifying to Jesus as the embodiment of God’s glory. Three factors to be considered together indicate that the glory to which Isaiah bore witness is understood by John as including the glory manifested by Jesus, as Servant, supremely in his death. First, the christological appropriation of Isa 53:1 and 6:10 must be evaluated in the light of their role at the beginning of a series of fulfillment quotations characteristic of the second half of the Gospel, all of which are bound together by their focus on the rejection and death of Jesus (12:38, 40; 13:18; 15:25; 19:24, 36, 37).16 The two Isaianic quotations occur in a transitional passage linking the account of Jesus’ public ministry to the discourses about his departure and the narratives about his passion. In this respect, John 12:37–41 already anticipates Jesus’ rejection and crucifixion as the inevitable outcome of the obduracy and unbelief already proleptically confirmed by Isaiah’s testimony. Second, the unparalleled juxtaposition of these two Isaianic quotations has prompted some to argue that it was inspired by verbal and thematic links identifiable in their wider context. In other words, their combination results from John applying the Jewish exegetical rule of gezerah shawah: different passages in which the same words occur, usually in a distinctive pattern, are used to explain

15. Cf. also Piet van Boxel, “Die präexistente Doxa Jesu im Johannesevangelium” Bijdr 34 (1973): 272–73. 16. See especially Craig A. Evans, “On the Quotation Formulas in the Fourth Gospel,” BZ 26 (1982): 79–83; Obermann, Die christologische Erfüllung der Schrift, 78–89, 348–50.

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each other.17 The application of this exegetical principle here is detected on the basis of verbal similarities between the introductory verses to Isaiah’s call-vision (6:1–13) and the fourth Servant Song (Isa 52:13–53:12), respectively: I saw the Lord sitting on a throne, exalted and lifted up ()#&f @nIw: MrF), and his train filled the temple. (Isa 6:1 mt) Behold my Servant shall prosper; he shall be exalted and lifted up ()#f&@nIw: Mw@ryF) and shall be very high. (Isa 52:13 mt)

By reading these statements as two interdependent passages, whereby the depiction of the Lord sitting on a throne is to be understood in relation to the Servant of God whom John identified with Jesus, John would have been able to interpret Isaiah’s vision as a revelation of Jesus, exalted Lord and Servant, seated on the divine throne. Even if one were to adopt the (by now minority) view that it cannot be proved that John knew Hebrew or Aramaic,18 the combination of the two passages could have been secured some time prior to its adoption in the Fourth Gospel or, alternatively, was due to the author’s knowledge of lxx Isaiah, where similar, albeit less impressive, correspondences can be identified. Third, if the explanatory comment in 12:41 (“he saw his glory”) reflects knowledge of the broader setting of Isa 6:10, it is quite possible that John also takes into account the broader setting of Isa 53:1. In support of this proposal is the fact that the clustering of references to Isaiah in John 12:38–41, of which Isa 53:1 is one, forms the culmination of a chapter in which several of its distinctive motifs resemble those found in the Deutero-Isaianic passage immediately preceding 53:1.19 The most striking correspondences are those between John 12:12–36 and Isa 52:7–15, together with the closely related passage in Isa 40:9– 11. Resonances of these Isaianic texts, which proclaim the return of God as victorious king to a restored Jerusalem, can thus be detected in John 12:12–20, the Johannine presentation of Jesus’ entry into Jerusalem.

17. This has most recently been forwarded by Richard Bauckham, God Crucified: Monotheism and Christology in the New Testament (Carlisle: Paternoster, 1998), 49–51. 18. Cf. Margaret Davies, Rhetoric and Reference in the Fourth Gospel (JSNTSup 69; Sheffield: JSOT Press, 1992), 267–75. 19. See, e.g., Hans Walter Wolff, Jesaja 53 im Urchristentum (3rd ed.; Berlin: Evangelische Verlagsanstalt, 1952), 83–85; Raymond E. Brown, The Gospel according to John (AB 29–29A; 2 vols.; Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday, 1966–70), 1:485. Craig Evans has proposed that John 12, at least in part, can be defined as a midrash on Isa 52:7–53:12; see his “Obduracy and the Lord’s Servant: Some Observations on the Use of the Old Testament in the Fourth Gospel” in Early Jewish and Christian Exegesis: Studies in Memory of William Hugh Brownlee (ed. C. A. Evans and W. F. Stinespring; Atlanta: Scholars Press, 1987), 232–36; idem, “The Voice from Heaven: A Note on John 12:28,” CBQ 43 (1981): 406–8.


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First, a good case can be made for detecting the influence of Deutero-Isaiah’s initial declaration about the coming of the Lord to Zion (40:9–11) on the wording of the citation of Zechariah in the entry account: “Do not fear, daughter of Zion. Behold, your king is coming, sitting on a donkey’s colt” (John 12:15; cf. Zech 9:9: “Rejoice greatly, O daughter Zion! Shout aloud, O daughter Jerusalem! Lo, your king comes to you; triumphant and victorious is he, humble and riding on a donkey, on a colt, the foal of a donkey”). John not only compresses this quotation (a practice already encountered in connection with the Isaianic quotations), but its initial appeal (“Rejoice greatly”) has been changed to “Do not fear.” That the phrase “do not fear” addressed to Zion in Isa 40:9 (“Get you up to a high mountain, O Zion, herald of good tidings.… do not fear; say to the cities of Judah, ‘Here is your God!’ ”) accounts for this alteration is indeed suggested by the analogous setting and shared vocabulary of Zech 9:9 and Isa 40:9–11, for both passages pronounce the visible manifestation (i0dou\) of the God/king who comes (e!rxetai) to Zion. Second, the announcement of the Lord’s triumphal procession to Zion (Isa 40:9–11; 52:7–10, especially the announcement in 52:7 lxx that “your God shall reign”) could have contributed to the distinctively Johannine appropriation in John 12:13 of Ps 118:25–26 (cf. Matt 21:9; Mark 11:9; and Luke 19:38), that is, the addition of “the King of Israel” to “Blessed is the one who comes in the name of the Lord.” The role of Jesus’ entry into Jerusalem, especially within the wider context of the Gospel’s narrative and christology, is in fact greatly elucidated if its verbal, thematic, and contextual links with the Isaianic passages are acknowledged. This applies in particular to the cry of jubilation as Jesus enters the city, “Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord, the King of Israel” (12:13), for in its context this adapted psalm quotation assumes new and deeper meaning. Although the crowd may not, at this point, display awareness of the true force of this acclamation, their initial designation for Jesus, “he who comes,” should be read in the light of John’s repeated emphasis upon Jesus as coming from God into the world (see 3:31; 7:28; 16:28). It is probably also more than coincidental that its titular usage (“the Coming One”) occurs for the first time in the testimony of the Baptist (1:15, 27), whose announcement of the way of the Lord (Isa 40:3) points to its fulfillment in the coming of Jesus. In addition, since Jesus expresses his unique relationship with God by stating that he has been given, and manifests, the name of the Father (cf. John 17:6–26, esp. vv. 6, 11, 12, 26), the crowd’s declaration that he comes “in the name of the Lord” becomes their unwitting testimony to him as the one who bears and makes known the divine name. When the Johannine context of this expression therefore intersects with an interpretation of Jesus’ entry into Jerusalem as the realization of the coming of the Lord, whereupon “my people will know my name” (Isa 52:6), Jesus is

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presented as the one who comes bearing the name of the Lord whom he reveals (cf. 1:23; 12:38). In Isa 52, the description of God’s return in solemn procession with his people is swiftly followed by the announcement of the suffering and future exaltation of the Servant and of the reaction of many nations (52:13–15). John’s account of Jesus’ entry into Jerusalem leads to a narrative about the approach of certain Greeks and to Jesus’ responding discourse (12:20–36). Similarities between these passages are again not limited to a common pattern or sequence. The distinctive Johannine motif of “seeing” is given concrete expression in the request of the Greeks to Philip, “Sir, we wish to see (i0dei=n) Jesus” (12:21). This possesses an interesting parallel in Isa 52:15 lxx,20 which, more explicitly than the Hebrew text, links the message about the Servant to the response of many nations:21 their reaction to him will be one of wonder, because they, who have never been told about the Servant, shall see (o!yontai),22 and they, who have previously not heard, shall understand. The request of the Greeks to see Jesus also becomes the trigger for his pronouncement that “the hour has come for the Son of Man to be glorified (docasqh|~)” (12:23; cf. 12:27), followed by his declaration, “And I, when I am lifted up (u(ywqw~) from the earth, will draw all people to myself ” (12:32; cf. 12:34). It is widely acknowledged that this language of exaltation (lifting up) and glorification has been inspired by Isa 52:13 lxx, where both verbs are already combined to express God’s promise, “Behold my Servant shall understand and shall be exalted and glorified greatly” (kai_ u9ywqh&setai kai_ docasqh&setai sfo/dra).23 The future (passive) forms of both verbs, in addition to the reference to the future “seeing” of the nations (52:15 lxx), meant that these statements could be interpreted by John as predictions finding their eschatological fulfillment in Jesus. Ample confirmation is also provided within the discourse that this vocabulary is applied to Jesus’ approaching death; his first declaration about glorification leads to the saying about a seed that must die to bear fruit (12:23–

20. See Johannes Beutler, “Greeks Come to See Jesus (John 12,20f ),” Bib 71 (1990): 341–46. 21. Identifying the Greeks of John 12:20–21 as Gentiles is forcefully argued by Jörg Frey, “Heiden–Griechen–Gotteskinder: Zu Gestalt und Funktion der Rede von den Heiden im 4. Evangelium,” in Die Heiden: Juden, Christen und das Problem des Fremden (ed. R. Feldmeier and U. Heckel, WUNT 1/70; Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 1994), 249–64. 22. On the function of ei]don and its related forms (cf. i0dei=n in John 12:21) as the aorist active of the verb o9ra/w (cf. o!yontai in Isa 52:15 lxx), see Friedrich Blass and Albert Debrunner, A Greek Grammar of the New Testament and Other Early Christian Literature (rev. and trans. R. W. Funk; Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1961), 54 par. 101. 23. Cf. C. H. Dodd, The Interpretation of the Fourth Gospel (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1953), 247; Bauckham, God Crucified, 63–68. The remark that “the Son of Man must be lifted up” (John 3:14) further suggests that this language is drawn from scriptural prophecy.


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24), and the ambiguity surrounding previous references to Jesus being lifted up (3:14; 8:28) is removed on this third occasion by the narrative comment, “He said this to indicate the kind of death he was to die” (12:32–33). The notion of Jesus being physically lifted up on the cross is thus combined with its theological interpretation as the moment of exaltation; it amounts, at the same time, to a new reading of the “exaltation following humiliation” pattern. In the Fourth Gospel this pattern is transformed into the paradoxical interpretation of Jesus’ exaltation and glorification as supremely evident within, rather than following, his humiliation and death. It remains to be asked: What enabled John to combine, with reference to Jesus, the events of the triumphal return of the Lord to Zion and the work of his Servant? In other words, how does the way of the Lord become the way of Jesus, and to what extent is the glorification of the Servant the manifestation of God’s kingship and glory? In addition to the christological connection between “Lord” and “Servant” that underpins John 12:38–41, a valuable clue is provided in this respect by the image of “the arm of the Lord,” which occurs in the quotation from Isa 53:1 in John 12:38. Since this verse, in its original context, forms a bridge between the divine proclamation (Isa 52:13–15) and the central part of the Song (53:2–12), the question “To whom has the arm of the Lord (o( braxi/wn kuri/ou) been revealed (a0pekalu&fqh)?” can be read in the light of the immediately preceding statements: the arm of the Lord is made manifest in the humiliation and future glorification of the Servant, which many nations and kings will see (o1yontai). The emphasis in this unit upon the Servant as the object of seeing, as the content of divine revelation, could certainly prompt a reader of lxx Isaiah to identify him as the embodiment of the arm of the Lord. But this metaphorical language also occurs earlier in Isaiah’s text, in the promise that, when the Lord shall reign over Zion, his arm will be visibly manifested before the nations: “The Lord shall reveal (a0pokalu&yei; mt: has revealed) his holy arm in the sight of all the nations, and all the ends of the earth shall see (o1yontai) the salvation that comes from God” (52:10 lxx). The presence of common vocabulary (the Lord’s arm, the nations, reveal), even the same verbal forms (o1yontai), suggests that Isa 52:10 and 52:13–53:1 lxx lent themselves to be interpreted with reference to each other: the holy arm of the Lord to be revealed to the nations can be identified with the Servant who will be exalted and glorified.24

24. For other examples in lxx Isaiah of “contextual exegesis” linking together the Servant and the arm of the Lord, see Eugene R. Ekblad, Isaiah’s Servant Poems according to the Septuagint: An Exegetical and Theological Study (CBET 23; Leuven: Peeters, 1999), 197–98.

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A third analogous text can be added, one in which the Lord’s arm is virtually personified: “The Lord comes with strength and his arm with dominion” (Isa 40:10 lxx). This is a significant declaration because it forms the centerpoint of Deutero-Isaiah’s first affirmation of the coming of the Lord to Zion (40:9– 11), a message then taken up and expanded in 52:7–10. Additional verbal and thematic links with the other descriptions of the revelation of the divine arm can be detected in its wider context, particularly as the purpose of the Lord’s return is explained in terms of the universal disclosure of his glory and salvation: “Then the glory of the Lord shall be seen (o)fqh&setai) and all flesh shall see (o!yetai) the salvation of God” (40:5 lxx). An interdependent reading of these three Isaianic passages (40:5–11; 52:7–10; 52:13–53:1), based on their shared motif of “the arm of the Lord,” leads to the following interpretation: the glorified Servant, through his humiliation and exaltation, is the one in whom God’s salvation and glory will be revealed in the sight of all the nations. This fusion of prophetic promises about the coming of the Lord and the exaltation of his Servant, further juxtaposed with Isaiah’s vision of God’s glory (6:1–13), therefore enables John to subject his depiction of the transitional events between Jesus’ public ministry and his death to profound christological interpretation. The kingship of God (Isa 6:1, 5; 52:7) is manifested in Jesus, his Servant, who enters the city of Jerusalem as king in preparation for his enthronement on the cross (cf. John 18:33–37; 19:14, 19–22). And while God’s glory fills the earth (Isa 6:3), the promise of its visible manifestation in the world (40:5) is realized in Jesus, whose death signifies his exaltation and glorification. This supreme disclosure of kingly glory cannot be separated from the message that God’s salvation will be seen by “all flesh” (40:5), by “all nations” (cf. 52:10, 15), illustrated above all by the request of the Greeks to see Jesus, in anticipation that all will be drawn to him after he is lifted up on the cross (12:32). In stark contrast, therefore, to those who, as predicted by Isaiah and highlighted by John, cannot see (Isa 53:1) because their eyes have been blinded (6:9–10), the glory and salvation achieved by Jesus through his humiliation and death is perceptible only to those who have faith. This is the glory seen by Isaiah and of which he spoke (John 12:41). Testimony and Christology in the Fourth Gospel Jesus’ earthly ministry in the Fourth Gospel opens and closes with the testimony of Isaiah. The inclusio established by means of these quotations and their accompanying formula (“Isaiah said”) is of theological as well as literary interest. The function of these quotations and their markers is not only to frame and link together the beginning and end of Jesus’ public ministry but to bring to the surface a sustained christological reflection on a series of related Isaianic


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passages. The climax of “the way of the Lord” announced by John the Baptist in the Fourth Gospel is the universal manifestation of God’s glory in the death and exaltation of his Servant, “the arm of the Lord.” Jesus, as the “Coming One,” completes his earthly way in Jerusalem, where he manifests God’s glory for all to see through his enthronement on the cross. The integral role of John the Baptist within the Johannine circle of witnesses also becomes apparent from the notable similarities between him and Isaiah. The prophet is commissioned by the Lord to communicate the divine message of obduracy (Isa 6:8), just as the Baptist is the only figure in the Fourth Gospel other than Jesus and the Paraclete (3:17; 14:26) to be described as “sent by God” (1:6; cf. 1:33; 3:28). Both Isaiah and the Baptist are recipients of visual and aural divine communication. What they have seen and heard legitimizes their spoken testimony. The Baptist can announce, “I myself have seen and testified” (1:34), and John, in an explanation of the prophet’s testimonies, can state that “Isaiah said these things because he saw his glory and spoke about him” (12:41). Even the content of their testimonies bears some remarkable resemblance. Both the Baptist and Isaiah serve as proleptic witnesses to Jesus’ earthly destiny. In language influenced by Isaianic prophecies about the Servant, the Baptist looks ahead to Jesus’ role as the Lamb of God, whose soteriological and universal significance is summed up in the claim that he “takes away the sin of the world.” In the same vein, the report of Isaiah, which finds no belief, is understood to be the prophet’s prediction of the universal manifestation of God’s glory in Jesus. Yet it is Isaiah, not John the Baptist, who is described in the Fourth Gospel as having seen “his glory” (12:41). This makes him the paradigm of a true witness to Jesus, since the prologue demonstrates that such testimony sums up the core of the Gospel: “We have beheld his glory” (1:14). It is because Isaiah is perceived as having beheld God’s glory in Jesus long beforehand that he becomes a key witness in John’s Gospel. Select Bibliography Beaton, Richard. Isaiah’s Christ in Matthew’s Gospel. SNTSMS 123. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002. Broyles, Craig C., and Craig A. Evans, eds. Writing and Reading the Scroll of Isaiah: Studies of an Interpretive Tradition. 2 vols. VTSup 70. New York: Brill, 1997. Johnson, Luke T. “Isaiah the Evangelist.” Mils 48 (2001): 88–105. Lincoln, Andrew T. Truth on Trial: The Lawsuit Motif in the Fourth Gospel. Peabody, Mass.: Hendrickson, 2000. Marcus, Joel. The Way of the Lord: Christological Exegesis of the Old Testament in the Gospel of Mark. Edinburgh: T&T Clark, 1993.

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Menken, Maarten J. J. “Observations on the Significance of the Old Testament in the Fourth Gospel.” Neot 33 (1999): 125–43. Pao, David W. Acts and the Isaianic New Exodus. WUNT 2/130.Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2000. Snodgrass, Klyne R. “Streams of Tradition Emerging from Isaiah 40:1–5 and Their Adaptation in the New Testament.” JSNT 8 (1980): 24–45. Watts, Rikki E. Isaiah’s New Exodus and Mark. WUNT 2/88. Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 1997. Young, Franklin W. “A Study of the Relation of Isaiah to the Fourth Gospel.” ZNW 46 (1955): 215–33.

Isaiah and the Book of Revelation: John the Prophet as a Fourth Isaiah? Jan Fekkes III

Introduction Recent research into the influence of Isaianic material on later authors has produced some interesting results. Whereas even the Septuagint translation of Isaiah appears to betray theological tendencies that adapt the earlier prophecies to the Jewish Diaspora,1 so also the pseudepigraphic and apocryphal literature of the postexilic period shows various parties and individual thinkers in Judaism, both in Palestine and in the Diaspora, continuing to expand the horizons of prophetic application, setting into motion a dynamic process that continues well into Christian literature.2 The prominence of Isa 40–66 in particular is evidenced by the broad scope of its assimilation, a fact that is probably to be attributed in part to its more positive message of national hope as opposed to the often doleful words of prophets such as Jeremiah or Ezekiel. The currency of the prophetic books in general and Isaiah in particular is likewise evident in the Wisdom of Sirach, which includes a eulogy to the prophet and his work (Sir 48:22b–25) and considers his oracles almost a blueprint for God’s agenda until the consummation of time (Sir 48:25). Much of the remaining literature of the Second Temple period that deals with postexilic expectations draws consistently on the book of Isaiah to address the problem of theodicy, with Isaian themes characteristically dominant in the final stages of the eschatological agenda. In the case of the Dead Sea Scrolls, the

1. See the essays in this volume by Baer and van der Kooij. See also John W. Olley, Righteousness in the Septuagint of Isaiah (SBLSCS 8; Missoula, Mont.: Scholars Press, 1979), esp. 147–51. 2. Michael Fishbane, Biblical Interpretation in Ancient Israel (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1985) 495–99; Devorah Dimant, “Use and Interpretation of Mikra in the Apocrypha and Pseudepigrapha,” in Mikra: Text, Translation, Reading and Interpretation of the Hebrew Bible in Ancient Judaism and Early Christianity (ed. M. J. Mulder; CRINT 2/1; Assen: Van Gorcum; Philadelphia: Fortress, 1988), 379–419.

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cumulative evidence of the discovery of multiple manuscripts, commentaries, and other writings relating to Isaiah provide ample testimony to the pervasive influence of the prophet within many facets of Qumran thought and theology. Beyond Qumran, Palestine under the Hasmoneans offered fertile ground for a host of other interest groups with varying degrees of national and religious aspirations. The Psalms of Solomon, a pseudepigraphical collection of hymns patterned after the Psalter, is one such example from this period. Psalms 11 and 17 in particular reveal something of current eschatological perspectives and the prophetic heritage within which they moved. Psalm 11 has been described as “a pastiche of phrases and imagery from Second Isaiah.”3 This hymn bears the title “In Expectation,” and its theme is the final pilgrimage of scattered Israel to the glorified Zion. Psalm 17 is an extended canticle concerning the anticipated messianic king, in which many attributes are drawn from Isaiah’s description of the anointed root of Jesse in Isa 11:1–10. Another characteristic Isaian theme recurring here is the status of the nations who will return in the last days to Zion to see God’s glory and to serve the Messiah (Pss. Sol. 17:29–31; Isa 60; 49:22–23; 45:14–15). Old Testament Prophecy and Early Christianity The reapplication of prophetic texts takes a new turn with the birth and growth of Christianity in the first century c.e. Yet even though the book of Revelation stands chronologically toward the end of almost two generations of christological reflection on the Old Testament, the prophet John still holds much in common, both thematically and methodologically, with earlier Jewish interpreters. Apart from the focalization of messianic hope in the person of Jesus of Nazareth, the other major development of early Jewish-Christian interpretation relates to the prophecies concerning the future of Israel as a nation and its institutions. The church’s gradually developing claim to be the locus of divine activity prompts a reinterpretation of scriptural prophecies concerning Israel’s national restoration.4 Before evaluating the specific use of prophetic material in Revelation, it is important to understand the theological development taking place within Jewish Christianity, whereby a more literal national eschatology based on the prophets was transformed into a more spiritualized form. Especially in the period follow-

3. George W. E. Nicklesburg, Jewish Literature between the Bible and the Mishnah (London: SCM, 1981), 206. 4. E. Earle Ellis, The Old Testament in Early Christianity: Canon and Interpretation in the Light of Modern Research (Grand Rapids: Baker, 1992), 101–57; Richard B. Hays, Echoes of Scripture in the Letters of Paul (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1989), 84–121.

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ing the devastation and Diaspora associated with the Jewish War of 66–73 c.e., early Christians used Jesus’ words to explain the establishment of a new community of faith as the rightful heir of the divine promises. The justification for this shift was the rejection by Israel at large of Jesus as Messiah. Two examples from this period reflecting the same fundamental attitude toward Judaism as John in Revelation are the Gospels of Matthew and John. The Gospel of Matthew appears to have been written at a time when Christianity had grown in numbers and influence especially among the Gentiles and was experiencing increasing conflict with certain facets of Judaism. The Gospel reflects a perceived point of separation between Pharisaic Judaism and the Jewish followers of Jesus as Messiah.5 Matthew emphasizes this discontinuity by recording an important encounter and saying of Jesus in Matt 9:14–17. The programmatic announcement that “new wine cannot fit into old wineskins” is understood to mean that the “new wine” of the gospel message could no longer fit into the “old wineskins” of Judaism. The form and character of the “new wineskins” are reflected in a series of replacement themes outlined by Matthew: F There is a new lawgiver and authoritative figure who supersedes

Moses: Jesus, the “new Moses” (Matt 5–7; 26:1; Deut 18:15, 18; 34:10–12). F There is a new community of God’s people, the church, in contrast to the synagogue (Matt 16:17–18; 13:54–58). F There is a new leadership base for the new community, the apostles, in contrast to the Pharisees (Matt 16:19–20; 15:12–14; 16:5–12; 23:1–32). F There is a new mission, expanded to all nations instead of Israel alone (Matt 10:5–6; 15:24; 28:16–20). Similarly, in the Gospel of John, the first “sign” miracle of Jesus turning the water of purification into new wine (John 2:1–11) appears to be the author’s symbolic equivalent of the Synoptic wineskin saying.6 Like Matthew, John follows this with a series of replacement themes in which Jesus fulfills or supersedes the “old wineskins” of Judaism (cf. John 1:17), disputing: 1. the spiritual privilege of Jewish descent (John 1:11–13; 3:5–21; 8:33–41; 10:16); 2. an emphasis on ritual purity (John 2:6; 13:1–10); 5. Richard B. Hays, The Moral Vision of the New Testament (New York: HarperCollins, 1996), 107–10. 6. Barnabas Lindars, The Gospel of John (NCB; Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1981), 123–28.

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3. worship centralized around the temple or any other “holy” building (John 2:12–22; 4:21–24); 4. the limitations of the Sabbath (John 5:9–18); 5. emphasizing the written word (Scriptures) over the Living Word, Jesus (John 5:39–40); and 6. celebration of Jewish feasts: F Passover: physical versus spiritual bread (John 6); F Tabernacles: physical versus spiritual water (John 7); F Dedication: physical versus spiritual light (John 10). In Matthew, Jesus confers on the apostles the “keys of the kingdom” (Matt 16:19), while in John, Jesus is said to be the “gate for the sheep” (John 10:7). Although each Gospel writer adopts a different metaphor, both emphasize the conviction that Jesus as the Messiah, and by extension his community, serve as the gateway to salvation and fellowship with God (see John 14:6; 13:20; 17:20–21). The church’s tension with the synagogue reaches fever pitch in the book of Revelation, where John refers to the local Jewish assemblies of Smyrna and Philadelphia as “synagogues of Satan” (Rev 2:9; 3:9). The function of this polarizing rhetoric appears to be to provide spiritual legitimation to the marginalized Christian community vis-à-vis the synagogue “across the street.” Both groups of faithful, Jewish and Christian, claim to be the true people of God. Ironically, the words of the apostle Paul might serve as the expected response of the synagogue faithful to John’s polemic, “to [us] belongs the adoption, the glory, the covenants, the giving of the law, the worship and the promises” (Rom 9:4). However, in John’s defense of the spiritual priority of the Christian community over against those “who say they are Jews and are not” (Rev 2:9; 3:9), the Messiah becomes the spiritual trump card outweighing all prior rights and privileges.7 Those who confess Jesus as the Christ, regardless of their spiritual heritage or genealogy, become the true people of God and rightful heirs of the divine promises (Rev 3:12).

7. While David Frankfurter’s warning (“Jews or Not? Reconstructing the ‘Other’ in Rev 2:9 and 3:9,” HTR 94 [2001]: 403–25) about the anachronistic use of terms such as “Christian” and “Jew” in the context of first-century faith communities is well taken, his contention that the “socalled Jews” of Rev 2:9; 3:9 are actually members of the Jesus movement in conflict with John’s circle of more stringent Jewish purists is extremely doubtful. Oddly, he never once discusses John’s use of Isa 22, which strongly suggests that the bone of contention revolves around the Messiah, not simply halakic observance.


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In this theological debate, Revelation depends on a messianic interpretation of Isa 22 to explain or defend its claims.8 Rev 3:7 Thus says … the one having the key of David who opens and no one will shut and who shuts and no one will open.

Isa 22:22 And I will place the key of the house of David … and he will open and no one will shut and he will shut and no one will open.

The original oracle in Isaiah concerned the promotion of Eliakim to the position of major-domo in the palace of King Hezekiah. The key of the house of David promised to him by Yhwh served as a symbol of his great authority, which extended not only over the royal household but to the city and nation as well (Isa 22:21). Several factors open up this passage to messianic application by Christian interpreters: (1) in Isa 22:20 Eliakim (whose name means “God raises up”) is called “my servant” by Yhwh; (2) the promise is connected with the “house of David” (cf. Rev 5:5; 22:16); (3) the relationship of authority between the king and his chosen steward offers a ready analogy to the association between God and the Messiah. That John understands the passage messianically is therefore not surprising, and its appropriateness to the circumstances of the Philadelphian church lies precisely in what it asserts about the Messiah’s authority. As the royal steward exercised complete control over the palace and governed access to the king’s presence, so Christ holds the power of admission to or exclusion from God’s kingdom. Even though the Philadelphian Christians may be shut out and rejected by the “synagogue of Satan” (cf. John 16:2–4), Christ has set before them “an open door, which no one is able to shut” (Rev 3:8). This “open door” theme probably extends also to the eschatological promise of the letter (3:12) and the entrance of the faithful into the New Jerusalem. Those who “enter the city by the gates” (22:14) can do so only by means of him who controls the key of David (3:7). To a church that is evidently experiencing the hostility of local Jews, John gives assurance that it is they who have access to the messianic

8. Many scholars see Isa 22 as also lying behind the presentation of the “keys of the kingdom” by Christ to Peter in Matt 16:19; cf. 23:13. Mark R. J. Bredin argues (“The Synagogue of Satan Accusation in Revelation 2:9,” BTB 28 [1999]: 160–64) that in 2:9 the Smyrnan synagogue is “of Satan” because it compromised with Rome over payment of the special Judean tax. This reads a lot into the passage and again does not take any account of John’s Old Testament usage in the parallel text of Rev 3:7–9.

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kingdom, while the erstwhile children of the kingdom are shut out (cf. Luke 13:27–30).9 John as a Jewish-Christian Prophet The revival of prophecy and prophets in the early Christian community predictably gave rise to questions concerning the relation of new revelations to the previous revelation of the Jewish Scriptures. In Acts 2, the pouring out of the Spirit at Pentecost opens the door to new prophecies, visions, and dreams (Acts 2:16–18). This fulfillment of the prophecy of Joel 2 becomes in the subsequent narrative of Acts the basis for visions that both supplement and overturn the previous revelations of Scripture (e.g., Acts 7:55–56; 11:2–12). Even Paul, creative exegete though he is, cannot perceive the “mystery of the gospel” hidden in Scripture apart from new revelation (Gal 1:11–12; cf. Eph 3:2–10). By the period of Revelation (probably ca. 95 c.e.), prophetic activity in the local Christian communities and among itinerant prophets, “both men and women” (Acts 2:18), appears to be an established part of church practice. What is John’s relationship to previous prophetic tradition? Although he never explicitly calls himself a prophet, his own prophetic consciousness is clearly attested throughout the book in a variety of ways. Evidence suggests that he regarded himself, and Christian prophets in general, as part of a revelatory network with God’s prior messengers. As a Jewish-Christian prophet, he appears to take for granted that the prophetic heritage of Israel has become the inheritance of the church, and he not only takes up where the prophets left off—he also takes over what they left behind. John is not only part of a prophetic circle but sees himself as part of a continuum that carries on and brings to final revelation the living word of God entrusted to the care of the prophets (Rev 10:7).10 The presupposition of continuity is supremely christological: “for the testimony of Jesus is the spirit of prophecy” (Rev 19:10). In what ways does John handle the legacy of prophetic traditions handed down to him? Before examining Revelation’s use of Isaiah in particular, it is important to have a broad understanding of John’s use of Scripture in general.

9. For more detailed discussion of this and following Isaiah allusions in Revelation see Jan Fekkes III, Isaiah and Prophetic Traditions in the Book of Revelation: Visionary Antecedents and Their Development (JSNTSup 93; Sheffield: JSOT Press, 1994), from which the rest of this essay is adapted. 10. As Richard J. Bauckham (“Revelation,” in The Oxford Bible Commentary [ed. J. Barton and J. Muddiman: Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2001], 1288) notes, Revelation “clearly understands itself to be the culmination of the whole biblical prophetic tradition.” See also J. Ramsey Michaels, Interpreting the Book of Revelation (Grand Rapids: Baker, 1992), 107–9, 126.


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Revelation’s Use of the Hebrew Bible/Old Testament

The last two decades have seen a sharp rise in scholarly attention to Revelation’s use of Scripture. Studies of John’s use of the Old Testament in general and of particular Old Testament books continue to appear regularly. In addition, the issues surrounding Revelation’s use of previous biblical traditions have been highlighted in several recent major commentaries.11 Some unresolved problems that continue to be debated include: the textual sources of John’s biblical usage (Hebrew/Aramaic/Greek); the allusive nature of the prophet’s scriptural usage and the degree of recognition he expected of his readers; and to what extent the author is sensitive to the original context and purpose of previous biblical tradition as he perceived it.12 There are approximately 150 Old Testament allusions in Revelation that are generally accepted as certain or virtually certain. Many of these are further reused from one to seven times, for a total of about seventy-two recapitulations.13 Careful examination of the context of these allusions shows the correspondence, in nearly 125 of 150 cases, between an Old Testament text and its application in Revelation consistently going beyond similarities in language and imagery to include parallels with the setting and purpose of the original biblical passage. For example, when John wants to emphasize his own prophetic status and authority or illustrate his throneroom vision, he draws on the well-known experiences and examples of earlier prophets. When he describes the New Jerusalem, he builds on a substructure of prophecies relating to the future glorified Jerusalem. Political oracles correspond to political oracles; prophecies of judgment to prophecies of judgment; and promises of salvation serve as a basis for John’s vision of future salvation. The prophet’s thematic application of Scripture suggests that his method transcends special authors and particular books. John’s strategy for employing biblical texts appears to be determined more by the issue concerned than by its canonical source. Special books do not appear to play as important a role as special themes. The following chart shows the principal themes and Old Testament sources used by John (with the main sources in bold):

11. In addition to the works listed in the select bibliography, the following should be noted: David Aune, Revelation (3 vols.; WBC 52a–c; Dallas: Word, 1997–99); Gregory K. Beale, The Book of Revelation: A Commentary on the Greek Text (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1999), and the works he cites on p. 76. 12. See Jon Paulien, “Dreading the Whirlwind: Intertextuality and the Use of the Old Testament in Revelation,” AUSS 39 (2001): 5–40. 13. Christopher Rowland (“Revelation,” NIB 12:737–43) provides an extensive chart of proposed Old Testament allusions in Revelation.

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Revelation

Theme

Source

1:10–19; 10:1–11

prophetic call narratives

Ezekiel, Isaiah, Daniel

1:13–17; 2–3; 5:5– 6; 19:11–16

christological titles/ descriptions

Isaiah, Daniel, Psalms, Genesis, Zechariah, Jeremiah, Ezekiel

4:1–5:2

throneroom visions

Ezekiel, Isaiah, Daniel

6:12–17; 14:14–20; 16:14; 19:11–21

Day of the Lord and holy war

Isaiah, Joel, Hosea

8–9; 16

serial judgments

Exodus, Joel

12–13; 17:6–16a

eschatological enemies

Daniel

14:8–10; 17:1–5, 16b–19:3

oracles against the nations (Babylon and Tyre)

Jeremiah, Isaiah, Ezekiel

7:14–17; 21:1–22:5

oracles of salvation and renewal (New Jerusalem)

Isaiah, Ezekiel, Zechariah

Isaiah in Revelation

The prophecies of Isaiah have been as formative for John as for the Gospel writers and Paul. Following is a representative sample of the use of Isaiah in Revelation, arranged according to the thematic categories given above.14 Special attention is paid to the transformation and purpose of the allusions in their new settings compared with the original settings of Isaiah.

14. Some other notable treatments of Isaiah in Revelation are A. Gangemi, “L’utilizzazione del Deutero-Isaia nell’ Apocalisse di Giovanni,” Euntes Docete 27 (1974): 109–44, 311–39; and David R. Carnegie, “Worthy Is the Lamb: The Hymns in Revelation,” in Christ the Lord: Studies in Christology presented to Donald Guthrie (ed. H. H. Rowdon; Leicester: Inter-Varsity Press, 1982): 243–56, who discusses parallels between the hymns of Revelation and Isa 40–55.


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Christological Titles and Descriptions

1. Root of David. Twice in Revelation Christ is called the Root of David, once by one of the twenty-four elders in 5:5b, and once as a self-designation of the exalted Jesus in 22:16b. The source of this messianic title is generally recognized to be Isa 11:1 and 10, which refer to a promised deliverer as the root of Jesse. The first appearance of the title in Rev 5:5 comes in response to the angelic query in 5:2: “Who is worthy to open the scroll and break its seals?” The answer comes in 5:5b: “The Lion of the tribe of Judah, the Root of David … can open the scroll and its seven seals.” What is here only indirectly attributed to a figure whom John from now on calls the Lamb is expressly claimed by Jesus himself in the last “I am” title of Rev 22:16b. In both places the Root of David title is linked with other well-known messianic testimonia and serves to identify Jesus as the fulfillment of traditional messianic expectations. Among these messianically understood scriptural passages, John appears to give a high visibility to Davidic promises. Christ is not only from the tribe of Judah and the family of David (5:5; cf. 7:4a with 14:1), but he also holds the key of David (3:7; Isa 22:22). And because Yhwh’s covenant with David (2 Sam 7:14; Ps 89:4) has found its fulfillment in Jesus, John can call him the “ruler of the kings of the earth” (Rev 1:5; Ps 89:28). Therefore, the title “Root of David” not only functions as a messianic identification but also emphasizes Christ’s royal authority as the legitimate Davidic heir. Its presence in a vision of Christ’s enthronement and reception of authority (Rev 5) provides a foundation for later statements concerning his kingship, kingdom, and rule (11:15; 17:14; 19:16; 20:4, 6; 1:5). 2. Righteous Judge/Sword-Mouth. In a variety of other passages, John ascribes to Christ qualities ascribed to the “shoot of Jesse” in Isa 11:4. In the initial commission scene of Rev 1:10–20, one of the more striking visionary attributes of Christ is the sword that proceeds from his mouth. This image, with minor variations, is found in Rev 2:12, 16 and 19:15, 21. The initial development of this idea appears to have been connected with the parousia vision in Rev 19:11–21. If so, then John has expanded the motif into the letter series (2:12, 16) and the introductory Christophany (1:16). His presentation of the messianic warrior and judge in 19:11–21 incorporates a variety of eschatologically understood texts, including Isa 11:4 in Rev 19:11, 15. Rev 19:11c, 15

Isa 11:4

in righteousness he judges and makes war … from his mouth comes a sharp sword with which to strike down the nations

with righteousness he shall judge the poor … he will strike the earth with the rod of his mouth

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The application of Isa 11:4 to the Messiah in his capacity as the eschatological judge was apparently already widespread among Jewish interpreters, for it appears in a variety of texts of differing theological backgrounds.15 The assimilation of this concept to Jesus as Messiah would have been natural, and it appears to have been taken over with little variation. John’s substitution of Isaiah’s “earth” with “nations” appears to arise from a conflation of Isa 11 with Ps 2:8–9 in Rev 19:15a, a procedure that is paralleled in Pss. Sol. 17:24. John’s use of the “sharp sword” in place of the “rod” of Isa 11 may have been influenced by Isa 49:2, where the Servant says, “He made my mouth like a sharp sword.” This preference for the sword image over the rod may have to do with a desire to represent Christ as the bearer of universal judicial authority, in contrast to earthly rulers, whose executive power is often symbolized by the sword (Rev 6:3–4; 13:10; 20:4; Rom 13:4). The first appearance of this image in the Christophany of Rev 1 sets forth Christ’s authority as judge in anticipation of its application—to the community in chapter 2, and to the rebellious nations in Rev 19. 3. The First and Last. The descriptive title “The First and the Last” occurs three times in Revelation: twice as a self-designation of the exalted Christ (1:17b; 22:13), and once as part of a messenger formula introducing Christ’s proclamation to the church at Smyrna (2:8). There is little disagreement that this title has its source in the divine self-predication found in Isa 44:6 (cf. 48:12; 41:4), which invites an application to Christ by employing two introductory divine titles, “Thus say the Lord … and his Redeemer.” More problematic is the relationship of this title to two similar double titles appearing in Revelation: “the Alpha and the Omega” (1:8; 21:6; 22:13), and “the Beginning and the End” (21:6; 22:13).16 Whereas John can use these two titles interchangeably for both God and Christ, the “First and Last” is reserved for Christ alone and seems to be related to his resurrection and enthronement. Not only is the “First and Last” title associated with the resurrection explicitly in two of its three uses, but John relates Christ’s “firstness” specifically to the resurrection when in 1:5 he calls him “firstborn from the dead.” In addition, he repeatedly gives evidence that Christ’s victory over death is the basis of his authority over the church and the world. 4. The Amen. In the messenger formula that introduces the final prophetic letter to the Laodicean church, Jesus is designated as “the Amen, the faithful and true witness” (Rev 3:14). It is somewhat surprising to find that the majority of commentators have little difficulty in accepting Isa 65:16 as the inspiration

15. 1 En. 62:2; Pss. Sol. 17:24, 35; 4QpIsaa 8–10; 1QSb 5 24–25; 2 Thess 2:8; 4 Ezra 13:9– 11, 37–38. 16. See Beale, Book of Revelation, 213–14; Fekkes, Isaiah and Prophetic Traditions, 122–27.


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behind this title, in view of its brevity and its broad currency as a liturgical response. The connection is suggested by the fact that the Isaiah passage likewise employs the Hebrew Nm) in an atypical manner as part of a divine epithet: God of Amēn (nrsv: God of faithfulness). The probability that John knew and adapted this text is enhanced by the fact that he elsewhere borrows from both the preceding and following verses of Isa 65, as well as from the last part of 65:16 itself. 17 The use of this title as an introduction to the words of Jesus to the church may be influenced by the use of amēn in the teaching of Jesus. In contrast to its conventional use as a liturgical response or concluding affirmation, Jesus “uses amēn to introduce His own words. His amēn does not corroborate what He said just before, but solemnly and authoritatively opens some new declaration of His.”18 John’s connection of “the Amen” with the introductory formula “thus says” in 3:14 produces a messenger formula similar to the introductory amēn formula of the Gospels: “thus says the amēn” (Revelation) compared to “amēn I say to you” (Gospels). The use of this formula introducing a word of Jesus to the Laodicean church would provide an extra reminder of Christ’s authority before the strong criticisms and warnings of the letter. It is also another example of a divine title transferred to Jesus, further underscoring John’s high Christology. Throneroom Visions

In Rev 4:2–7 John’s portrait of the heavenly temple and its occupants is patterned almost exclusively on the throneroom vision of Ezek 1. Beginning in 4:6b, the description of the four living creatures continues on the Ezekiel model in depicting their eyes and faces but follows Isa 6:2–3 to describe their wings (six rather than Ezekiel’s four) and worship. The transition from Ezekiel to Isaiah coincides with a shift from the physical description of the living creatures to a presentation of their function (Rev 4:8b–9). Whereas in Ezekiel the duties of the cherubim are limited to the movement and activity of the divine throne chariot and have no function of worship or praise, the seraphim of Isa 6 serve as close attendants who lead in worship. Thus, while John takes over various physical attributes of Ezekiel’s living creatures, their role as merkabah attendants is abandoned in favor of the worshiping seraphim of Isaiah who “never cease to sing, ‘Holy, holy, holy, is the Lord God Almighty’ ” (Rev 4:8b; Isa 6:3a).19 In

17. Beale (Book of Revelation, 299) even argues that all three titles of Rev 3:14 (the Amen, faithful and true) are an “expanded translation of Isaiah’s ‘Amen.’ ” 18. L. Gillet, “Amen,” ExpTim 56 (1944–45): 135. 19. See Philip B. Munoa III, “Jesus, the Merkavah, and Martyrdom in Early Christian Tradition,” JBL 121 (2002): 303–25. For John’s use of Ezekiel traditions, see Jeffrey M. Vogelgesang, “The Interpretation of Ezekiel in the Book of Revelation” (Ph.D. diss., Harvard University, 1985).

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Isa 6 this thrice-holy, also known as the trisagion, forms part of a short hymn of acclamation addressed to Yhwh, who is seated on his throne in the temple. Further analysis suggests that Isa 6 plays an important role in the movement of John’s plot and is not simply added as ornamental color or liturgical filler. In Isa 6 the trisagion serves to express a moral contrast between Yhwh and the prophet. The immediate response of Isaiah to the revelation of God’s holiness is a realization of personal unholiness, accompanied by an expectation of divine judgment: “Woe is me! For I am lost” (Isa 6:5). The outward manifestation of God’s holiness is represented by his glory and heightened by theophanic symbols such as shaking and smoke (Isa 6:3b–4). This presentation of God’s holiness and its consequence for sinful humanity is taken up by John and serves as part of a theological substructure for his own proclamation of divine judgment. But rather than woe for the prophet himself, God’s holiness brings the threat of woe and wrath to an evil society and those in the churches who “share in its sins” (Rev 18:4). More specifically, the revelation of God’s holiness in Rev 4:8 forms the justification for the revelation of his wrath in Rev 15, where John again draws on Isa 6 for the theme of the temple filled with the smoke of God’s glory (Rev 15:8; Isa 6:4). Thus, the revelation of God’s holiness in the emphatic strains of the trisagion in the throneroom vision of chapter 4 is more than simply a statement of being—it is a basis for action. The Holy One is also the Coming One (cf. Rev 4:8 with 16:5), and the action contemplated is fulfilled in the bowl judgments of Rev 15–16.20 Holy War and Day of the Lord Traditions

The opening of the sixth seal in Rev 6:12–17 sets into motion a series of cosmic catastrophes that culminates in an eschatological confrontation between God and the Lamb on one side and earthly sinners on the other. This passage anticipates the climactic encounter between the armies of heaven led by Christ and the demonically assembled earthly forces at Armageddon (Rev 16:12–16; 19:11–21). A fundamental structural and thematic relationship exists between Rev 6:12–17 and the later units of 14:14–20 and 19:11–21. Together they describe the same eschatological event—the parousia—from various perspectives and in increasing detail. In each of these sections (Rev 6; 14; 19; 20:8–9), the final encounter between a holy God and unholy people is conceived in terms of a military conflict and developed to a large extent according to biblical tradi-

20. Cf. Russell Morton, “Glory to God and to the Lamb: John’s Use of Jewish and Hellenistic/ Roman Themes in Formatting His Theology in Revelation 4–5,” JSNT 83 (2002): 89–109, esp. 98–99.


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tions of the Day of the Lord and holy war.21 Virtually every one of the prophetic passages that John adopts in these related sections derives from Day of the Lord contexts in which the concept of holy war is present, including Joel 3–4; Hos 10; Ezek 38–39; and Isa 2; 34; and 63. The influence of Isaiah is seen particularly in the following motifs: F Stars fallen from heaven: Rev 6:13 // Isa 34:4b F Heaven rolled up as a scroll: Rev 6:14a // Isa 34:4a F Attempts to hide from God’s wrath: Rev 6:15b // Isa 2:10, 19, 21 F Hiding from the face of God: Rev 6:16b // Isa 2:19 F Trampling the winepress of God: Rev 14:19b–20a; 19:15c // Isa

63:1–3; cf. Joel 4:13 F One clothed in a robe dipped in blood: Rev 19:13a // Isa 63:3

One of the earliest features of Pauline eschatology was the assimilation of the prophetic Day of the Lord to the Day of Christ. This association made it possible for early Christian teachers to develop the theme of the parousia in accordance with specific Old Testament texts that prophesied or described the Day of the Lord. Functions, characteristics, and terminology originally associated with Yhwh and the Day of the Lord could be transferred to Jesus and the parousia event. For example, in 2 Thess 1:9b Paul describes the Day of Christ with the same Isaiah text (2:19) that is prominent in Rev 6:15–16. Descriptions of cosmic upheaval such as from Isa 34:4 serve as prophetic hyperbole announcing God’s judgment. John’s own presentation of the Day of the Lord builds on the foundation of these precedents, which signal not merely the parousia (as in the Synoptics: e.g., Matt 24:29–31) but the decisive intervention of God in the final eschatological battle. Prophetic Oracles against the Nations

The worldly empire that is the focus of God’s wrath in Rev 14–19 is metaphorically designated “Babylon” and appears to represent not only Rome but the network of nations and provinces under its control or influence. John’s presentation of Babylon and its judgment comes in three stages: (1) preliminary warnings (14:8–11); (2) fall of Babylon (16:1–21); and (3) character and judgment of Babylon (17:1–19:4). In each of these sections, the development of John’s picture of Babylon is dependent on, and virtually a pastiche of, prophetic oracles against the nations, primarily those against Babylon and Tyre. Although 21. For more discussion on the implications of John’s cosmic imagery for the structure of the book and his transformation of holy-war language, see Richard J. Bauckham, The Climax of Prophecy (Edinburgh: T&T Clark, 1993), 199–237.

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the association of Rome with Babylon was already widely asserted by the end of the first century c.e., no other author develops the Babylon image to the extent that John does. John’s application of prophetic judgment oracles to Rome again appears to be thematically determined and emphasizes two factors in the current situation. The first relates to Rome’s political and religious domination, the second to its economic monopoly. To accentuate these two factors John adopts two separate prophetic models: Babylon and Tyre. Babylon is the symbol of a proud, idolatrous empire that flaunts its power at the expense of others and scoffs at the thought of its own downfall or judgment. Five Babylon oracles are found in the Old Testament: Isa 13–14; 21:1–10; 47:1– 15; Jer 25:12–38; 50–51. Together these passages prophesy God’s judgment for sins of pride, idolatry, self-sufficiency, and injustice toward God’s people. In setting forth his own “burden of Babylon,” John borrows traditions from every one of these oracles. Tyre, on the other hand, is a symbol of international trafficking, opulent wealth, and commercial hegemony. John’s addition of the merchant theme in Rev 18 is not simply a poetic way to describe Rome’s judgment. Rome’s economic control affected significantly the everyday lives and status of John’s readers, and thus Rev 18 is only a fuller development of socioeconomic issues expressed in earlier passages (Rev 2:9; 3:17; 6:6; 13:16–17; cf. 18:4, 11).22 Only two extended Tyre oracles occur in the Old Testament (Isa 23:1–18 and Ezek 26—28), and John uses them both. The image of Rome as a “harlot” in Revelation may also have been originally suggested by the Tyre prophecies, for the first mention of the harlot in Rev 17:2 corresponds to the first application of a Tyre oracle (Isa 23:17), in which the harlot image also appears. Prophecies of Salvation

With chapter 21 John’s vision of judgment retreats to make way for the final vision of salvation. The expectation of this future consummation and renewal is kept alive in earlier parts of the book by the author’s strategic placement of eschatological reminders. Thus, the manifestation of divine renewal and reward outlined in Rev 21:1–22:5 was already presupposed in the promises of chapters 2–3 to those who “overcome,” projected in the eschatological outline of 11:15– 18, and anticipated in the hymnic pericopes of 7:9–17; 15:2–4; and 19:5–10. These promises serve as a preview to the main presentation and development of salvation oracles in Rev 21–22. In all these future-oriented passages it is Isaiah’s

22. Iain Provan (“Foul Spirits, Fornication and Finance: Revelation 18 from an Old Testament Perspective,” JSNT 64 [1996]: 81–100) provides a helpful evaluation of John’s use of Old Testament lament language in Rev 18, though Provan downplays particular historical connections to Rome in favor of a more general typological application.


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prophecies of renewal and the future restoration and glory of Zion-Jerusalem that dominate the visionary landscape. 1. Salvation Oracles in Anticipation. John’s adaptation of Isa 49:10 in Rev 7:14–17 is the most developed example of this kind of intertextual application.23 Revelation 7:14–17 is a paraenetic preview of the future inheritance of those who survive the great ordeal. Nearly every facet of this pericope anticipates the eschatological conditions of John’s New Jerusalem. His choice of Isa 49:10 is particularly apposite and evokes a plurality of images. As part of Second Isaiah’s “new exodus” theme, Isa 49:10 concerns the return of God’s elect from the Babylonian captivity and their restoration to Zion. Amid the uncertainties of abandoning the known for the unknown and the difficulties that lie along the path, this verse in Isaiah promises the exiles divine provision, protection, and guidance, using imagery that recalls the earlier wilderness experience of Israel. John’s readers too have chosen to forsake the tangible comforts and security of the latest “Babylon” and have set their sights in faith on the as yet unseen glory of the New Jerusalem. But whereas in Isaiah the imagery pertains to God’s provision and protection while in transition, John gives the whole scene a future orientation, reinforced by the subtle addition of e!ti (“[no] longer”). As with the manna promise of Rev 2:17, he transforms Isaiah’s wilderness motifs of feeding, watering, and protection from the elements (7:16) into eschatological gifts reserved for those who make it to the “promised land.” John has little interest in the easy return language of Second Isaiah. For this struggling band of Christians, no mountains will be leveled and no roads smoothed. The catalogue of divine comforts is only for those who have gone through the great tribulation and have persevered.24 2. Oracles of Renewal and Divine Presence (Rev 21:1–8). The central theme of this section is summarized in the divine proclamation of 21:5, “Behold I make all things new.” John’s addition of pa/nta (“all things”) to the tradition of Isa 43:19a (“I am doing a new thing”) emphasizes the magnitude of his concept of renewal, which transcends any particular idea such as the new creation or the renewal of paradise. Rather, John subsumes under the general theme of renewal a variety of important theological traditions, each of which evokes some aspect of the relationship between God and humanity. So we encounter motifs of creation and paradise, as well as covenant, the tabernacle and temple, and ZionJerusalem. The prophet blends all these traditions together into a “theology of

23. See further Kirsten Nielsen, “Shepherd, Lamb and Blood: Imagery in the Old Testament—Use and Reuse,” ST 46 (1992): 121–32. 24. Beale believes that John’s vision of the “great multitude” in Rev 7:9–17 describes the fulfillment of “Isaiah’s and Ezekiel’s restoration prophecies concerning Israel ” (Book of Revelation, 424, 441–43).

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presence,” in which the restoration of communion between God and humanity, inaugurated by the Christ-event, reaches the final stage: when God himself “will tabernacle with them” (21:3). Of the ten clear biblical allusions in Rev 21:1–8, eight come from Isaiah, with the main influences being Isa 65 (new heavens and earth),25 Isa 25 (no more death or crying), and Isa 43 (all things made new). The desire to emphasize a sudden and decisive new beginning that originally led Third Isaiah to adopt creation language was born of a life situation and concerns similar to John’s: a prophet trying to inspire the hope of a weary and struggling community. In this circumstance the creation model offers a sense of immediacy, permanence, and divine destiny that the exodus model of Second Isaiah lacks. That model was adequate to illustrate themes of redemption but less well suited for the description of inheritance.26 3. New Jerusalem Oracles. With the announcement and events of Rev 21:1–8 all progress and movement have come to an end; all divine action is consummated, creation is renewed, paradise is reestablished, and all that remains is for God and his people to enjoy the eternal Sabbath in the Holy City. The one task remaining for John is to provide a more detailed description of the New Jerusalem that was introduced in 21:1–8. This is accomplished in a parenthetical expansion (21:9–22:5) that forms an antithetic parallel to the Babylon vision of 17:1–18:24. The prophet’s expanded description of the Holy City and its glory can be divided into two parts: the use of architectural traditions in Rev 21:9–21 and the portrait of the temple-city in Rev 21:22–22:5. In both of these sections virtually every Old Testament allusion is based on prophecies relating to eschatological Jerusalem and its future glory, sanctity, and exalted position, principally Ezek 40–48; Isa 52:1; 54:11–12; 60; and Zech 14. In outlining the structural components of the city and its measurements in Rev 21:9–21, John draws almost exclusively on motifs from Ezekiel’s temple vision (Ezek 40–48). Because he presents the entire city as the dwelling of God, John is not concerned to distinguish between city and temple descriptions and so transfers Ezekiel’s temple imagery to the Holy City itself. Only in the last section of 21:18–21, which specifies the types of building materials used, does John shift from Ezekiel to Isa 54:11–12. Such a transition is natural, since Ezekiel is completely uninterested in building materials and because Isa 54:11–12 is the only Old Testament passage that adorns the New Jerusalem with precious materials. John’s use of this tradition is part of a wider structural and thematic

25. Jacques van Ruiten, “The Intertextual Relationship between Isaiah 65,17–20 and Revelation 21,1–5b,” EstBib 51 (1993): 473–510. 26. For the issue of whether John envisions a completely new creation or a renewal of the existing creation, see Fekkes, Isaiah and Prophetic Traditions, 228–30, 256–60; Beale, Book of Revelation, 1039–41.


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development of marriage symbolism.27 Nuptial imagery lies at the heart of his evocation of the Holy City, and the visionary drama of the bride–New Jerusalem unfolds in three progressive stages. Revelation 19:7–9, which builds on Isa 61:10, shows the planning and final preparations stage: a formal wedding announcement is given; the marriage supper is arranged; the guest list finalized. The ceremony is about to begin, for the bride “has prepared herself ” and awaits her entrance. Her moment of glory arrives in 21:2 (stage 2), where she descends as the New Jerusalem “prepared as a bride adorned for her husband.” The third and final stage of the bride theme comes in 21:18–21, where the description of her adornment, anticipated in 21:2 and 9, is finally presented. John links all three units (19:7–9; 21:2; and 21:18–21) together by catchwords. To the wedding garment given the bride in Rev 19:8, John now adds the rest of her bridal adornment. The New Jerusalem prophecy of Isa 54:11–12, which serves as John’s principal model for 21:18–21, is itself part of a larger oracle employing marriage imagery and may also be taken as a symbolic representation of the personified city as a bride gloriously adorned for her husband. Even a comparison with a modern bridal panoply shows the timelessness of John’s parallel in setting and purpose. Rev 19:7–8; 3:12; 21:18–21

Modern Bridal Description

His bride has made herself ready … clothed with fine linen, bright and pure The foundations of the wall of the city are adorned with every jewel; … jasper … sapphire. [I will write on you the name of the city of my God, the new Jerusalem … and on my new name.] And the twelve gates are twelve pearls, each of the gates is a single pearl, and the street of the city is pure gold.

[The bride] wore a white satin gown that she … made herself. It featured an empire waist embellished with sequins and pearls. [On a] white satin ribbon she had embroidered her new last initial. A pearl necklace and pearl and diamond earrings, given by the groom, completed her ensemble.28

27. See David Mathewson (“A Note on the Foundation Stones in Revelation 21.14,19–20,” JSNT 25 [2003]: 487–98), who notes the spiritual symbolism of the foundation stones in relation to the Christian community but does not mention John’s use of marriage imagery. 28. Stanwood/Camano (Washington) News, Tuesday, 15 October 2002, p. 20.

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In the final part of the New Jerusalem vision (Rev 21:22–22:5), John shifts from architectural imagery to a picture of life in the city itself and of its citizens. With this change of perspective comes a corresponding change in biblical foundations. From the building oracle of Isa 54, John now turns to the Zion prophecy of Isa 60, with its emphasis on the relationship between the glorious future Jerusalem and the nations. Although allusions to Isa 60 control this final section, John blends in traditions from other New Jerusalem prophecies as well (Isa 52; Zech 14; Ezek 47). When evaluating the various allusions to Isa 60 in Rev 21:22–22:5, it is important to keep in mind the role of temple traditions in this passage. John’s statement that “its temple is the Lord God … and the Lamb” (21:22) shows that holy space is no longer defined by the presence of the temple but is now coterminous with the unrestricted presence of God. But just because John’s Holy City has no temple building does not mean he is abrogating temple functions as well. He compensates for the absence of the temple by extending temple motifs to the city as a whole. The use of Isa 60 fits well into this scenario, for it also takes up cultic images when it speaks of God’s glory resting on the city, the tribute of kings and nations for the house of God, and pilgrims streaming through the gates of the city. Finally, in light of Ben Sira’s testimony that the priestly blessing of Num 6 was recited at the conclusion of the temple service (Sir 50:19–21), a closing synthesis of Isa 60:1–2, 19 and Num 6:25, 27 in Rev 22:4–5 provides a fitting benediction to John’s vision of the temple city. Concluding Summary In spite of the fact that John’s use of Scripture is largely allusive, there is abundant evidence that he employed a variety of exegetical and literary devices in handling that material. In many cases it would be difficult to distinguish the Jewish-Christian prophet from other Jewish exegetes. Many biblical applications in Revelation could as easily be attributed to a non-Christian Jew with messianic and/or nationalistic concerns. This is especially evident in the anti-Roman propaganda of Rev 17–18 or in the use of Daniel to describe the eschatological enemies of God. This makes it important to draw a distinction between John’s christological presuppositions and his exegetical praxis. To be sure, the fulfillment of his messianic hopes in the risen Jesus had a profound effect on John’s reading of Scripture, but this does not mean he suddenly abandoned one method of interpretation in favor of another or that christological awareness was an overriding determinant in all his Old Testament allusions. It is sometimes suggested that John simply uses the Old Testament as a sort of religious thesaurus to pad his visions with conventional symbolism and rhetoric and that any real exegetical activity would be contradictory to his prophetic position and authority, for “the prophetic spirit creates; it does not quote


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in order to teach or argue.”29 While there is an element of truth in this idea, it fails to take into account that the “prophetic spirit” does not necessarily create ex nihilo. One need only look to the exilic and postexilic prophets to see that the reuse, reformulation, and actualization of previous prophetic testimony was in no way considered incompatible with a prophet’s call and inspiration. The legacy of unfulfilled oracles remained important, along with the obligation to take up the words of predecessors and to bring them to completion through inspired reinterpretation or reapplication.30 The fact that John calls earlier prophecy a “mystery” that is about to be fulfilled (Rev 10:7) witnesses to his interaction with previously revealed traditions and shows an awareness of his role as a prophetic interpreter. As Michael Fishbane has aptly stated, “the secret of the final days was inscribed in the entrails of the older exoteric prophecies.”31 Select Bibliography Bauckham, Richard J. The Climax of Prophecy: Studies on the Book of Revelation. Edinburgh: T&T Clark, 1993. Beale, Gregory K. John’s Use of the Old Testament in Revelation. JSNTSup 166. Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press, 1998. Fekkes, Jan, III. Isaiah and Prophetic Traditions in the Book of Revelation: Visionary Antecedents and Their Development. JSNTSup 93. Sheffield: JSOT Press, 1994. Mazzaferri, Frederick D. The Genre of the Book of Revelation from a Source-Critical Perspective. BZNW 54. Berlin: de Gruyter, 1989. Mealy, J. Webb. After the Thousand Years. JSNTSup 70. Sheffield: JSOT Press, 1992. Moyise, Steve. The Old Testament in the Book of Revelation. JSNTSup 115. Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press, 1995. Sawyer, John F. A. The Fifth Gospel: Isaiah in the History of Christianity. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996. ———. From Moses to Patmos: New Perspectives in Old Testament Study. London: SPCK, 1977.

29. Krister Stendahl, quoted in Elisabeth Schüssler Fiorenza, The Book of Revelation: Justice and Judgment (Philadelphia: Fortress, 1985), 136. Rowland (“Revelation,” 561) likewise believes that John simply uses Old Testament language with little concern for the original setting and that the prophet’s allusions are not “deliberate attempts to echo biblical passages.” 30. Prosper Grech, “Interprophetic Re-interpretation and Old Testament Eschatology,” Aug 9 (1969): 235–65; Fishbane, Biblical Interpretation, 463, 477, 493–98, 515. 31. Fishbane, Biblical Interpretation, 495.

Patristic Interpretation of Isaiah J. David Cassel

Introduction The early church saw Isaiah as a magnificent window through which a student of Scripture could clearly see the grace and love of God, particularly as it was manifest in Christ. In book 9 of the Confessions, Augustine (354–430) demonstrates the patristic emphasis on Isaiah as he recalls a crucial stage in his own spiritual development. Augustine describes how he sensed God calling him to resign his post as a professor of rhetoric so that he could devote his life to the service of his Lord.1 Realizing that he needed guidance as he began to walk a new path of service for God, Augustine wrote to Ambrose, his bishop and spiritual mentor, explaining his change of direction and asking what to read in order to be made “readier and fitter to receive so great a grace.”2 In his summary of Ambrose’s response, the significance of Isaiah for readers in the patristic period is quite clear: “He told me to read the prophet Isaiah, I think because more clearly than others he foretold the gospel and the calling of the Gentiles.”3 Although patristic writers devoted copious amounts of exegetical energy to most every book of the Old Testament, their favorite books were those that they believed pointed directly to Christ. Encouraged by the New Testament writers’ preoccupation with Isaiah and their belief that Isaiah’s prophecies prefigured Christ, patristic interpreters gave Isaiah’s prophecy a privileged place in their

1. Augustine, with characteristic honesty, adds that he resigned his position as rhetorician not only to serve God but also because he had experienced both difficulty in breathing and a persistent pain in his chest! See Confessions (trans. H. Chadwick; Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1991), 9.2.4 and 9.5.13. 2. Augustine, Conf. 9.5.13. 3. Ibid. Although Augustine tried to follow Ambrose’s advice, he failed to learn much from Isaiah’s words in his first attempt at studying them. He recalls the experience this way: “But I did not understand the first passage of the book, and thought the whole would be equally obscure. So I put it on one side to be resumed when I had had more practice in the Lord’s style of language” (9.5.13).

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exegesis.4 For the church fathers, Isaiah’s prophecy was a powerful prediction of the future glory of Christ and his saving acts. It was as though Isaiah joined the four Evangelists in proclaiming the good news of Jesus to the world.5 Jerome, the late fourth- and early fifth-century biblical scholar and translator, articulated the patristic perspective that Isaiah functioned as an Evangelist: I will propose that Isaiah is not only a prophet but also an evangelist and an apostle. Isaiah spoke about both himself and the other evangelists in this way: “How beautiful upon the mountains are the feet of the messenger who announces peace, who brings good news” (52:7). In fact, God addresses Isaiah as if he were an apostle, “Whom shall I send, and who will go [to this people]?” Isaiah responds, “Here am I. Send me!” (6:8).6

Jerome also sees a parallel between Isaiah and the New Testament Evangelists in that Isaiah’s preaching centers on the same themes found in the Gospels: This particular book of Scripture contains all the sacred mysteries of the Lord, and he is proclaimed as Emmanuel, as one born of a virgin, as a person who performed remarkable works and signs, and as one who died, was buried, and rose again from the underworld, and as the savior of all peoples.7

The popularity of Isaiah among patristic authors can be documented in two ways. First, Isaiah was the focus of a number of ancient commentaries from both the Greek East and the Latin West. Among others who wrote commentaries on Isaiah are Theodoret of Cyrus (ca. 393–ca. 460),8 Eusebius of Caesarea (ca. 260–

4. Among the books of the Old Testament, only the Psalms are quoted more frequently than Isaiah by the New Testament writers. 5. John F. A. Sawyer develops this theme in his book The Fifth Gospel: Isaiah in the History of Christianity (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996). 6. Jerome, Commentariorum in Esaiam libri I–XI (ed. M. Adriaen; CCSL 73; Brepols: Turnholt, 1963), prologue 18–24; all translations are mine unless otherwise specified. Jerome’s statement that Isaiah is both an evangelist and an apostle is based on the linguistic connection between Isaiah’s words and the titles “evangelist” and “apostle.” The Latin term apostolus is a transliteration of the Greek term a)po/stoloj, which means “one who has been sent.” Jerome sees the word “send” in Isa 6:8 as pivotal. As one who has been called by God and sent out by the Lord (“ ‘Whom shall I send? …’ ‘Here am I; send me!’ ”), Isaiah is, in Jerome’s opinion, an apostle. Drawing on Isa 52:7, Jerome further suggests that Isaiah, as an apostle, is sent to bring “good news” to the people. The terms Jerome uses to translate both “messenger” and “good news” in Isa 52:7 are derived from the Latin verb euangelizo (a direct transliteration of the Greek term eu)aggeli/zw) and thus suggest Isaiah is an evangelist. 7. Jerome, Commentariorum in Esaiam, prologue 26–30. 8. Théodoret of Cyrus, Commentaire sur Isaïe (trans. and ed. J.-N. Guinot; Paris: Cerf, 1980). See also Angela Christman, “Selections from Theodoret of Cyrus’s Commentary on Isaiah,” in The Theological Interpretation of Scripture (ed. S. Fowl; Cambridge: Blackwell, 1997), 173–85.

cassel: patristic interpretation of isaiah

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ca. 340),9 Cyril of Alexandria (d. 444),10 John Chrysostom (ca. 347–407),11 and Hesychius of Jerusalem (fifth century).12 Second, quotations from the book of Isaiah were frequently used by Christian apologists and theologians to support various aspects of their arguments.13 The quotations of Isaiah in theological and apologetic works, however, are often isolated and presented without any interpretive comments. For this reason, the patristic commentaries provide a much clearer and cohesive picture of the exegetical approach and conclusions of the patristic interpreters and will, therefore, be the subject of this study. The first section of this essay will review two underlying interpretive principles that govern patristic exegesis in general: (1) patristic interpreters viewed the Old Testament and the New Testament as one integrated text that must be interpreted through the lens of God’s greatest self-revelation that is embodied in Christ and described in the New Testament; and (2) patristic interpreters believed that texts from the Old Testament contained two basic levels of meaning, one that they called the historical or literal meaning and a second, deeper level that they called the spiritual meaning. The essay’s second section will focus on the exegetical approach used by patristic interpreters in their commentaries on Isaiah, an approach derived from the classical, Greco-Roman educational system. The third section of the essay demonstrates how patristic assumptions

9. Eusebius of Caesarea, Der Jesajakommentar (ed. J. Ziegler; Eusebius Werke 9; Berlin: Akademie Verlag, 1975). For a thorough analysis of Eusebius’s Commentary on Isaiah, see Michael J. Hollerich, Eusebius of Caesarea’s Commentary on Isaiah: Christian Exegesis in the Age of Constantine (New York: Oxford University Press, 1999). 10. Cyril of Alexandria, Commentary on Isaiah (PG 70; repr., Brepols: Turnholt, 1987). For further study on Cyril’s Commentary on Isaiah, see Alexander Kerrigan, St. Cyril of Alexandria: Interpreter of the Old Testament (Rome: Pontifical Biblical Institute, 1952); and J. David Cassel, “Cyril of Alexandria and the Science of the Grammarians: A Study in the Setting, Purpose, and Emphasis of Cyril’s Commentary on Isaiah” (Ph.D. diss., University of Virginia, 1992). 11. Jean Chrysosotom, Commentaire sur Isaïe (ed. J. DuMortier; trans. A. Lefooghe; Paris: Cerf, 1983). 12. Hesychii Hierosolymitani, Interpratatio Isaiae Prophetae (ed. M. Faulhaber; Freiburg: Herder, 1900). There is also a commentary on Isaiah from the patristic period that had falsely been attributed to Basil and now is recognized as the work of an unknown scholar, now called PseudoBasil: Basil [Pseudo], Commento al Profeta Isaia (ed. P. Trevisan; 2 vols.; Turin: Società Editrice Internazionale, 1939). 13. A brief review of the citations listed in the index of biblical texts cited in volume 1 of the Ante-Nicene Fathers (ed. A. Roberts and J. Donaldson; Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1956) demonstrates how frequently patristic authors quoted Isaiah in their pastoral, apologetic, and theological treatises. For example, Isaiah is quoted approximately 49 times in the apostolic fathers (as compared, for example, with 21 quotations from Romans), 126 times in Justin Martyr’s works (as compared with 45 quotations from Matthew), and 114 times in Irenaeus’s Against Heresies (as compared to 7 quotations from Romans).

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and classical reading methods are employed in the interpretation of Isaiah by Cyril of Alexandria in his Commentary on Isaiah. Principles Underlying the Patristic Interpretation of Isaiah The Bible Is a Unified and Progressive Revelation

Although modern scholars often assume that books or sections of the Bible should be studied in light of the reconstructed social and historical situation in which they were thought to have been written rather than in relation to the Bible as a whole,14 patristic interpreters believed that the Bible was a single, integrated book and that the best approach to interpreting a biblical passage was to seek illumination from other passages in the Bible.15 In their view, the end of the book, namely, the New Testament and its description of God’s full self-revelation in Christ, was the key to understanding earlier portions of the Bible. Cyril of Alexandria, the early fifth-century bishop, scholar, and exegete, articulates the patristic concept of the unity of the Scripture in this way: “The inspired Scripture is one book. All of Scripture is one because it was spoken through the one and same Holy Spirit.”16 Patristic thought also tended to see God’s self-revelation throughout history as linear and progressive. Relying on arguments that Old Testament laws and practices functioned as limited symbols or images prefiguring that which was to

14. This perspective is particularly prominent within the school of form criticism, which has traditionally called for an awareness not only of a biblical pericope’s genre or form (Gattung) but also its reconstructed context in the life of Israel (Sitz im Leben). See, e.g., Sigmund Mowinckel’s claim in The Psalms in Israel’s Worship that understanding the Psalms requires “setting each one of them in relation to the definite cultic act—or the cultic acts—to which it belonged” ([trans. D. R. Ap-Thomas; New York: Abingdon, 1962], 23). 15. This practice had it roots in classical scholarship where the ancient grammarians exhorted their students to study Homer by means of Homer ( (Omhron e)c (Omh/rou safhni/zein). Aristarchus of Samothrace, one of the great pioneers of textual analysis, is said to have developed this principle. See Rudolf Pfeiffer, History of Classical Scholarship: From the Beginnings to the End of the Hellenistic Age (Oxford: Clarendon, 1968). 16. Cyril, Commentary on Isaiah 29:11–12 (PG 70.656a). Not incidentally, this appears in Cyril’s exposition of Isa 29:11–12, a passage in which the prophet declares that the visions of God he is articulating are inaccessible to his contemporaries: “The vision of all this has become for you like the words of a sealed document. If it is given to those who can read, with the command, ‘Read this,’ they say, ‘We cannot, for it is sealed.’ ” It should be noted that Cyril, like many other patristic commentators, studied the Old Testament in Greek. Although a variety of Greek translations of the Old Testament were available, the primary text that they used was the Septuagint (lxx).


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come, as is suggested by the New Testament book of Hebrews,17 the fathers saw God gradually revealing more of the divine character and will as time progressed until the advent of Christ, who was the fullest revelation of God.18 Just as in any good mystery the clues presented early in the story do not make complete sense until the end of the book, so, too, the symbols and types of God’s self-revelation hidden in the Old Testament could not be fully understood until the coming of Christ, the dénouement of the history of God’s relationship with humanity. Patristic interpreters believed that it was necessary to temper and shape their understanding of the Old Testament by means of the revelatory fire found in the New Testament. The third-century Alexandrian scholar Origen puts it this way: “Thus, Christ revealed the light that had been present in the Law of Moses, but that had been obscured with a veil, by taking away that veil. He removed the shadow covering the letter of the Law so that the good things previously under wraps have now come to light and can be known.”19 Cyril demonstrates how these assumptions about the Bible assist Christian interpreters of the Old Testament when they encounter difficulties within the text. In his introduction to his Commentary on Isaiah, Cyril points to the problems in understanding and interpreting the message of the prophets on their own terms, saying, “The words of the prophets are always obscure and filled with hidden spiritual meanings. They are in labor, giving birth to the prediction of divine mysteries.”20 He goes on to say that this obscurity is not alarming, for the meaning of Isaiah’s words can be found through Christ, who is “the end of the Law and the Prophets.”21 This is to say that God’s self-revelation in Christ as described in the New Testament is the light that illuminates all scriptural mysteries that had previously been obscure or hidden.

17. See, e.g., Heb 9:8–10, with its reference to the pentateuchal tabernacle as a symbol for the present time: “By this the Holy Spirit indicates that the way into the sanctuary has not yet been disclosed as long as the first tent is still standing. This is a symbol of the present time, during which gifts and sacrifices are offered that cannot perfect the conscience of the worshiper, but deal only with food and drink and various baptisms, regulations for the body imposed until the time comes to set things right.” 18. The patristic writers drew this understanding from Rom 10:4, “Christ is the end (te/loj) of the law.” In this case, the Greek word te/loj (telos) might best be understood as the completion or fulfillment of that which was hinted at or prefigured in the Old Testament. 19. Origen, On First Principles (trans. G. W. Butterworth; New York: Harper & Row, 1966), 4.1.6. 20. Cyril, Commentary on Isaiah, prologue (PG 70.9a). 21. Ibid. Cyril is basing his argument on Rom 10:4, where Paul says that Christ is the end of the Law. Cyril’s addition of the Prophets to this Pauline phrase clearly indicates his understanding that the whole Bible must be interpreted in light of the revelation of Christ.

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The Old Testament Contains Two Levels of Meaning

The second principle that forms a foundation for patristic interpretation of the Old Testament is the belief that Scripture contains two primary levels of meaning: the literal or historical and the spiritual. Patristic interpreters favored the spiritual level of meaning and searched diligently for it in their examination of Old Testament texts. Origen’s writings illustrate this point of view. Although in his book On First Principles Origen suggests that there are several levels present within the biblical text, in both his explanation of the biblical text and in his own interpretation Origen appears to emphasize only two: the letter or the literal meaning and the spiritual meaning.22 And, although Origen believes that there are many situations in which the letter of the text or its literal meaning makes sense and can instruct “childish souls,”23 he also asserts that God, speaking through the prophets and the apostles, was primarily concerned with conveying unspeakable mysteries to human beings.24 Thus Origen declares that mature Christians should devote themselves to searching out the deep, spiritual meaning embedded in the biblical text so that they might partake of the doctrines of the Spirit.25 At points, argues Origen, the letter of the biblical text makes no logical sense and therefore cannot be interpreted literally. 26 In these situations, he believes, God is providing stumbling blocks that force readers to seek the spiritual meaning of the passage.27 For Origen, the spiritual meaning of the biblical text is clearly the more important of the two levels of meaning because, although some passages contain both a literal and a spiritual meaning, many others contain only a spiritual meaning. He puts it this way: “We are disposed to say that all of the Divine Scripture has a spiritual meaning, but not all of it has a literal or bodily meaning.”28 Another patristic exegete who emphasized the greater importance of the spiritual meaning of the text over its historical or literal meaning was Theodoret of Cyrus, an early fifth-century interpreter from the region of Antioch in Syria. In the prologue to his Isaiah commentary, Theodoret explains his interpretive goal: “Some of the elements of [Isaiah’s] prophecy have a clear and obvious meaning while others are expressed figuratively and require interpretation. It is my goal to speak concisely about those sections falling into the first category

22. Origen, On First Principles, 4.2.4–4.3.14. 23. Ibid., 4.2.4. 24. Ibid., 4.2.7. 25. Ibid. 26. Ibid., 4.2.5. 27. Ibid., 4.2.9. 28. Ibid., 4.3.5.


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and to go into much greater detail about the things that fall into the second category.”29 Similarly, Eusebius, a fourth-century church historian and interpreter from the Palestinian city of Caesarea, introduces his commentary on Isaiah by addressing the two types of meaning found in the prophet’s words and suggesting that the spiritual meaning of the text is the more important:30 In some cases, the Holy Spirit’s revelation to Isaiah was in straightforward language, but, in other cases, it was through the use of various symbols. When the revelation of the Spirit is straightforward, there is no need to resort to the use of various sorts of allegorical interpretations. When the Spirit’s revelation is symbolic, however, [one must recognize that] the language and visions point to a meaning quite different from a straightforward reading of the text.… In the prophet Isaiah, most of what was revealed to him, he saw through symbols, but he articulated these things by weaving together a narrative containing both a literal sense and a deeper spiritual meaning.31

While the nature of the levels within the biblical text may have been articulated in various ways, patristic authors generally concurred with the views expressed by Origen, Theodoret, and Eusebius. Patristic exegetes first examined the literal or historical meaning of the text and then moved on to interpret the deeper spiritual meaning or meanings contained in it. Clearly, the text’s spiritual implications were the more important of the two. The Exegetical Approach Used by Patristic Interpreters of Isaiah Early Christian scholars educated within the Greco-Roman educational system had learned a rigorous and clearly defined method of reading classical texts. When they began to interpret the Bible, particularly the Old Testament, they employed this classical method as their fundamental approach. Aspects of this method included both prescribed steps of grammatical analysis and the compilation of the results of this analysis into the form of an extended commentary on the text being studied. Quintilian, the first-century Roman rhetorician, in his treatise Insitutio Oratoria provides a lucid description of the three-tiered Greco-Roman educational system through which a young person developed skills to be an outstanding

29. Theodoret, Commentaire sur Isaïe, Hypothesis, 25–29. 30. For a detailed analysis of Eusebius’s exegetical approach that seeks both the literal and the spiritual meaning of the text, see Hollerich, Eusebius of Caesarea’s Commentary on Isaiah, 67–102. 31. Eusebius, Der Jesajakommentar, prologue 1.1–9.

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orator or public speaker.32 In the first stage of the process, the young person was initially taught to recognize the forms of each letter and the sound associated with each.33 Once this skill was mastered, the student proceeded to learn how to recognize and read basic words, then sentences, and eventually extended passages in both Greek and Latin.34 The second stage of the system focused on teaching students how to understand and interpret literature. This phase of the educational process was overseen by teachers called grammarians (grammatici), whose primary task according to Quintilian was to teach students two things: “the art of correct expression and the interpretation of the poets.”35 Quintilian gives a detailed description of what should be included in teaching the science of interpretation.36 Grammarians should teach students about music, astronomy, philosophy, and the metrical aspects of poetry so that students can understand the allusions to these areas within literature. Developing a broad background of knowledge in a variety of areas was particularly necessary, since there were no dictionaries or encyclopedias in the ancient world. Quintilian also argues that students must be taught about the grammatical structure and stylistic devices used in literature in order to understand the meaning of the various component parts of a literary text. In other words, in addition to a general knowledge base, students also had to acquire the grammatical skills necessary to understand the meaning of the text and its ethical and moral implications. Finally, Quintilian says that grammarians should teach students the techniques of textual criticism so that they can determine the proper reading of potentially corrupted texts.37 The students were reading inexpensive, hand-copied manuscripts that contained many obvious errors, which the rudimentary skills of textual analysis enabled them to recog-

32. Quintilian, Insitutio Oratoria (ed. Donald A. Russell; Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2001). Quintilian states that he was asked by his friends to write an extended treatise on rhetoric since there were so many divergent views on the subject (prologue, 2). For modern descriptions of the classical educational process, see Henri Marrou, A History of Education in Antiquity (trans. G. Lamb; New York: Sheed & Ward, 1956; repr., Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1982); Stanley Bonner, Education in Ancient Rome: From the Elder Cato to the Younger Pliny (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1977); and Pfeiffer, History of Classical Scholarship. 33. Quintilian, Insitutio Oratoria 1.1.26. 34. Ibid., 1.1.31. 35. Ibid., 1.4.2. 36. The grammarians referred to their task as a technē (Dionysius Thrax, Ars Grammatica [Hildesheim: Olms, 1965], 1.8). Although one might be tempted to translate this term as “art” or “craft,” the explicit rules laid out by the grammarians for this technē seem to indicate that they perceived their job to be more of a scientific endeavor than an artistic one. 37. Quintilian, Insitutio Oratoria 1.4.3–5.


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nize. The third stage of the classical education was the school of rhetoric where young people were taught the skills of public oration. It was the second stage of the classical educational system that influenced patristic interpretation the most—the stage that taught students how to read, understand, and interpret texts. Although it appears as though there was a great deal of variation among grammarians at various points in history, gradually the techniques for reading developed by these instructors became more consistent and were codified.38 The grammarians eventually developed textbooks that they used to guide their students in learning the skills of reading and interpretation. These texts took two forms. The first form was the grammatical handbook that explained the various aspects of the science of interpretation. In his first-century b.c.e. grammatical handbook, the Ars Grammatica, Dionysius Thrax articulated issues that educated people reading literary texts should address: 1) expert reading of the text with its correct accents and punctuation, 2) explication of the poetic tropes that occur in the text, 3) the appropriate interpretation of both rare and unusual words and historical aspects of the text, 4) research into etymologies, 5) reflections on analogies, and 6) the evaluation of the work, which is the most elegant of all of the parts of this science.39

The second form of textbook developed for students was the commentary, which demonstrated how these steps could and should be applied to a particular text such as Homer’s Odyssey. Among the most frequently used commentaries were those of Aelius Donatus on the plays of Terence and on Virgil’s Aeneid 40 and the commentary of Servius on the Aeneid.41 In these commentaries the grammarians started at the beginning of the text they were interpreting and pro-

38. For a thorough study of the classical grammarians and their influence and role in ancient society, see Robert Kaster, Guardians of the Language: The Grammarian and Society in Late Antiquity (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1988). 39. Dionysius Thrax, Ars Grammatica 1.4–8. 40. Terence was a comic poet born in Carthage in central Africa in 195 b.c.e. He was the author of six plays that became part of the canon of literary texts studied by Roman grammarians and their charges; see Aelius Donatus, Commentum Terenti (ed. P. Wessner; Stuttgart: Teubner, 1962). Donatus was also the author of a two-volume handbook on interpretive principles called the Ars Grammatica. The first section of this work, the Ars Minor, focused on the basics of grammar, while the second section, the Ars Maior, was for more advanced students and dealt with such topics as metrical and tonal questions, the parts of speech and their use in literature, and various other stylistic topics such as tropes and metaphors. 41. Servius, In Vergilii Carmina commentarii (ed. G. Thilo and H. Hagen; Hildesheim: Olms, 1961). Servius was a fourth-century grammarian whose commentary on Virgil’s works was broadly used in the classrooms of the ancient world.

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ceeded seriatim through the text, going word by word and line by line, applying the principles of interpretation to the text in each instance. For Christian scholars who had been educated in the secular, classical educational system of the time, it must have seemed natural to approach the Bible using the same questions and format for recording their interpretive conclusions. Although the genesis of the application of classical interpretive principles to the Bible is unknown, Origen, who had a strong classical education,42 appears to be one of the first Christians to make use of these principles in his study of the Bible. He examined various books of Scripture in a line-by-line, seriatim fashion and recorded his findings in the classical commentary form.43 This approach to biblical interpretation was adopted by other patristic exegetes, and soon commentaries became the favorite tool of Christian interpreters.44 The widespread interest in Isaiah during the patristic period coupled with the growing popularity of the commentary style led to a large number of patristic commentaries on Isaiah.45 Classical Influences and Patristic Assumptions in Cyril’s Commentary on Isaiah Cyril of Alexandria’s exhaustive Commentary on Isaiah embodies the various elements found in the classical commentary, both in its structure and in the sort of questions it addresses.46 Like a classical commentary, Cyril’s proceeds

42. Among Origen’s teachers was the classical philosopher Ammonius Saccas, who is said to have been the founder of Neoplatonism. Ammonius Saccas also taught the pagan philosophers Plotinus and Longinus. 43. For a study of Origen’s use of the tools and questions of classical grammar in his exegesis, see Bernhard Neuschäfer, Origenes als Philologe (Basel: Reinhardt, 1987). 44. I have argued elsewhere that the emphasis on commentaries that proceeded in a seriatim fashion through the text and asked the questions posed by the classical grammarians may have been stimulated by the church’s need to educate a growing cadre of lectors and preachers in the skills of literary analysis that such church leaders were unable to develop within the limits of the classical educational system. See J. David Cassel, “Cyril of Alexandria as Educator” in In Dominico Eloquio— In Lordly Eloquence (ed. P. Blowers et al.; Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2002), 348–68. 45. During the Middle Ages, students of Scripture frequently compiled notebooks in which they copied highlights from a number of different commentators that related to a specific book of the Bible. These texts, known as catenae (from the Latin catena, meaning “chain”), have helped to preserve patristic interpretations of Isaiah. One of the most important catenae on Isaiah was compiled by Nicolai Muzani and can be found in mss Pluto V. 6 at the Laurentian Library in Florence and mss gr. 14 at the Court and State Library in Munich. 46. Cyril’s Commentary on Isaiah fills an entire volume of J. P. Migne’s Patrologia graeca series—some 725 columns of Greek text.


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through the book of Isaiah in a verse-by-verse fashion.47 In Cyril’s exposition of each verse, he takes up the questions laid out by grammarians such as Dionysius Thrax, addressing a variety of grammatical points: he discusses poetic tropes (figures of speech), explains rare and unusual words, clarifies various historical, scientific, or social references, deals with etymologies, reflects on analogies, and addresses the overall meaning of the work.48 At the same time, Cyril’s Commentary on Isaiah also reflects the two basic principles governing patristic exegesis. Throughout the commentary Cyril assumes that the Bible is a unified text in which the New Testament must be used to interpret the Old Testament. Cyril also focuses his comments on the spiritual meaning of the text, and he searches for ways that Isaiah’s prophecies reveal various aspects of the divine nature, purpose, and call. The Identification and Explication of Literary Tropes

In a variety of places in his Commentary on Isaiah Cyril addresses the first of the literary grammatical issues articulated by Dionysius Thrax.49 He does this by identifying particular literary tropes that are used in Isaiah and by explaining their meaning. Among the tropes Cyril identifies are prosopopoeia, synecdoche, emphasis, and hyperbole. In his comments on Isa 21:2–4, for instance, Cyril points out Isaiah’s use of prosopopoeia, in which fictitious or dead characters are introduced into the

47. The same seriatim approach to the text being studied is evident in Donatus’s Commentum Terenti. Donatus begins with a prologue explaining the general situation and goal of each play and then proceeds through the play in a line-by-line fashion answering general grammatical questions raised by each section of the text before he moves on to the next line or section. See also James Zetzel, Latin Textual Criticism in Antiquity (Monographs in Classical Studies; Salem, N.H.: Ayer, 1984). 48. It seems probable that Cyril’s reason for approaching the text in this way related to his position as a Christian bishop who was responsible for the ordination and training of clergy who could staff the various churches within his diocese. His commentary on Isaiah both demonstrated how the text should be addressed and acted as a handbook for those clerics who did not have the advantage of a thorough classical education. For a full argument concerning Cyril’s place as an educator of clergy who used his commentaries as teaching tools, see Cassel, “Cyril of Alexandria as Educator.” 49. Although this is the second stage of Dionysius Thrax’s approach to reading texts, it is the first of his points that addresses the grammar of the text from a literary perspective. The first of Dionysius’s points, namely, “the expert reading of the text with its corrects accents and punctuation,” focuses on the oral aspects of the text. This was particularly crucial for early readers, since texts were written in scriptio continua, in which the text was copied without punctuation, accents, or separation between words. For a fuller description of scriptio continua, see Harry Gamble, Books and Readers in the Early Church (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1995), 48, 203–4.

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text in order to make a specific point.50 In these verses Isaiah creates a speech full of despair that he puts into the mouth of a future king of Assyria. The lxx text reads: The Elamites are pressing me, and the emissaries of the Persians are approaching me. I am groaning, and I will seek aid for myself. My loins are full of feebleness, and birth pangs have seized me as if I were in travail. I was wrong not to listen; I was so quick not to see. My heart goes astray, and lawlessness washes over me. My very being stands in fear.

In his comments, Cyril identifies the trope and explains how the prophet is using it to communicate his point effectively to his listeners: The speech contained in these verses had the force of prosopopoeia. The Assyrian king is introduced by Isaiah as a person being attacked. The king is well aware that he is the sole focus of the enemies’ assault and that their massed ranks are advancing against him. For he says, “The Elamites and the elite forces of the Persians have not attacked others; they are attacking me.” … It is the custom of the holy prophets to put speeches such as this in the mouths of certain characters (proswpopoei~n ta\j fwna/j) on account of the needs of their listeners.51

Cyril also points out another case of prosopopoeia in his exposition of Isa 14:9–11. In this passage, Isaiah explains that God’s people will be able to taunt the king of Babylon when the Lord comes to their aid. Isaiah adds that not only will God’s people ridicule the Babylonian king, but the very shades of hell will also rise to condemn him.52 Those mighty kings and rulers of the past whose earthly power was gained through tyranny and bloodshed, but who have been put in their place by God’s judgment, will confront the king: “And they will respond and say to you, ‘you are conquered just as we are; you are condemned to be among us.’ ”53 Here Cyril informs his audience that the use of this figure of speech is fairly common in Scripture: It is customary, now and then, in the inspired Scripture to use the trope prosopopoeia, such as when the text gives voices to certain things.… Here the 50. Alexander Kerrigan discusses Cyril’s use of prosopopoeia in St. Cyril of Alexandria, 77–81. Cyril deals with synecdoche in places such as Isa 13:9–11 (PG 70.357a), with emphasis in passages such as 43:1–2 (PG 70.884d), and with hyperbole in reference to such verses as 13:13 (PG 70.357c). 51. Cyril, Commentary on Isaiah 21:24, PG 70.485c. 52. Although the Hebrew text says sheol, Cyril was using the lxx, which translates sheol as a?4dhj (hades). 53. Isa 14:10 lxx.


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blessed prophet uses nothing less than prosopopoeia as he says that [shades of ] hell, meeting face to face with him as he is brought down, will provoke him and bitterly chastise him. To me, this use of language seems quite appropriate, for through it he shows that, since the king was murderous and bloodthirsty, his ultimate end, because of his savagery, will be hell and the company of the shades of hell.54

The Interpretation of Rare Words and Historical Aspects of the Text

Cyril’s exegesis also embodies the next stage of the grammarians’ approach to the analysis of texts, the appropriate interpretation of both rare and unusual words and historical aspects of the text. Because ancient readers did not have access to dictionaries, the process of defining rare or unusual words was exceptionally important in Cyril’s day, and commentaries that explained such words were often the reader’s only avenue to understanding words with which they were not familiar. Commentaries were similarly helpful in giving readers insight into historical aspects of the text (i(stori/a) that might have been perplexing for them. For the classical grammarians, these aspects included references to history, geography, agriculture, philosophy, and science.55 Cyril frequently gives definitions for rare or unusual words in the text. In some cases his explanation of a word’s meaning or Isaiah’s unique use of a particular word is lengthy, but in general Cyril defines words with simple synonyms. His most common procedure is simply to note the problematic word and then to present a synonym with the connecting phrase “this is” (tou~t' e)/stin), perhaps better translated as “this means.” A typical example of Cyril’s approach to obscure words appears in his comments on Isa 1:8, as he addresses the relatively obscure and apparently intimidating Greek word e)gkataleifqh/setai. Cyril thinks it is important for his audience to understand this word, since it occurs in an oracle that sets the stage for the entire book of Isaiah. The oracle asserts that, since the people have rebelled against God and refused to return, they will be punished. Cyril clarifies the term’s meaning in this way: “The prophet says that the widely esteemed and famous Zion, namely, Jerusalem, will be abandoned (e)gkataleifqh/setai). This means (tou~t' e)/stin), it will become a desert (e)/rhmoj e)/stai).”56

54. Cyril, Commentary on Isaiah 14:9–11, PG 70.372c–373a. 55. Alfons Wouters translates the Greek i(stori/a as “subject matter” (The Grammatical Papyri from Graeco-Roman Egypt: Contributions to the Study of the “Ars Grammatica” in Antiquity [Brussels: Paleis der Academiën, 1979], 35). 56. Cyril, Commentary on Isaiah 1:8, PG 70.25d.

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Cyril also frequently identifies the specific meaning of words that might be understood in various ways. For example, Cyril explains how one should understand Isaiah’s term “mighty men” (i)sxu/ontej) as it is used in Isa 1:24. Isaiah’s oracle declares, “Therefore the sovereign Lord of Hosts says this, ‘Woe to the mighty men of Israel, for my anger toward my adversaries will not come to an end, and I will pass judgment on my enemies.’ ” Cyril points out that “mighty men” in this context does not mean people who are physically powerful; it means the rulers of Israel: [Just as John the Baptist predicted], the revenge of the Lord has occurred against the mighty men, that is (tou~t' e)/stin), against the ones in their midst who possessed the most power, namely, the rulers, when their country was wasted and handed over to the Romans.57

Cyril also suggests meanings of words or phrases that he believes are being used in a metaphorical or allegorical way in Isaiah. He says, for example, that the term “baldness” in Isa 15:2 is a symbol for “dishonor”58 and argues that the phrase “God’s courts” in Isa 1:12 is an allegorical reference to “the church.”59 Following the guidelines of the grammarians, Cyril also deals with the historical aspects of the text. In the prologue he states explicitly his intention to address both the historical aspects of the text and the text’s spiritual meaning: I believe that it is necessary for those who wish to articulate clearly the subtleties and enigmatic breadth of Isaiah’s precepts to hasten to consider diligently, with the eyes of their minds, both the historical elements of the text and its spiritual meaning. In this way, their interpretation will, in every way, be useful to the readers, and the clarification of the dual sense of that which lies before us will lack nothing.60

Cyril similarly defends the importance of investigating the historical aspects of the text in commenting on Isa 7:1, a passage that reviews the history of the attack of the anti-Assyrian coalition against Judah during the reign of Ahaz: Those who avoid the historical aspects ( i(stori/a; historia) of the inspired Scripture as pointless flee, it seems, the possibility of viewing them in a manner which is fitting to that which is written in them. The spiritual meaning (qewri/a; theoria) is, on the one hand, both good and beneficial, since the

57. Ibid., 1:24, PG 70.57a. 58. Ibid., 15:2, PG 70.400c. 59. Ibid., 1:10–14, PG 70.36b. 60. Ibid., prologue, PG 70.9a.


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proper enlightening of the eye of the mind perfects people of good sense. But, on the other hand, whenever something which happened historically is introduced in the sacred text, at that time it is appropriate to look for something useful in the historical description so that at all points the Holy Scripture might clearly be both useful and lead to salvation.61

Although Cyril, with other scholars, believed in the priority of the spiritual sense of the biblical text, in his emphasis on both the historical and spiritual senses Cyril reflects the classical grammarians’ belief that it is impossible to understand and evaluate the deeper meaning of any text without first understanding the references to history, geography, agriculture, philosophy, and the sciences embedded in it. Indeed, whenever Cyril believes that the historical situation in which Isaiah spoke is relevant to understanding Isaiah’s prophecy, he includes a summary of the relevant facts. For example, when interpreting Isa 28:21, Cyril explains that the only way to make sense of the passage is to understand the historical reference that Isaiah has woven into his oracle. The lxx text reads: “A mountain of impious men will rise up, but it will be just as it was in the Valley of Gibeon. The Lord will accomplish his task with vengeance; it will be the work of bitterness.” Cyril observes: Both the definition of what is articulated and the text itself are extremely obscure. For this reason, I think that it is necessary to explain the historical situation, for in this way that which has been revealed will with difficulty be visible to diligent students.62

He then proceeds to recount the story of the destruction of the enemies of God’s people that took place in the Valley of Gibeon as it is described in Josh 10:9–12. Isaiah, says Cyril, is using this reference to the historical destruction of the alliance of the five Canaanite kings as an allusion to illustrate the utter destruction that is coming to anyone who opposes God’s will.63 The grammarians also included under the heading of history the clarification of scientific, agricultural, and geographical allusions within the text. Cyril includes explanation of such references throughout his discussion of Isaiah’s prophecies. An example of Cyril’s clarification of an agricultural allusion can

61. Ibid., 7:1, PG 70.192a. Cyril reinforces his belief in the importance of the historical sense of the Scripture in his Commentary on Hosea, where he says, “We will not be convinced by any argument to deny or condemn the historical sense of the Scripture as useless” (Sancti patris nostri Cyrilli archiepiscopi Alexandrini In XII prophetas [ed. P. Pusey; London: Macmillan, 1868; repr., Brussels: Culture et civilisation, 1965], 1.15.12). 62. Cyril, Commentary on Isaiah 28:20–21, PG 70.636b–c. 63. Ibid., 28:20–21, PG 70.636d–637b.

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be seen in his interpretive comments regarding Isa 1:8, which says, “And the daughter of Zion is abandoned like a tent in the vineyard, like a hut in the cucumber field, like a city under siege.” To be sure that his audience understands the shocking extent of Israel’s desolation, Cyril explains the agricultural practice to which the first two of these three similes refer: The guards, who are placed in the vineyards while the grapes are still bearing fruit, provide the greatest possible protection for them by attacking robbers who want to cut off the grapes. They also drive away every kind of wild animal. This, too, is the custom of the guards or even the owners of the cucumber fields. But when the clusters of grapes have been picked and crushed and the cucumbers have been removed from the fields, those who have been guarding the fields are finally sent home, and they abandon their tents. At that point, those who wish to enter the fields are free to do so.64

By explaining matters of history that include historical, geographical, agricultural, and scientific references in his Commentary on Isaiah, Cyril is completing step three of the interpretive pattern established by the ancient grammarians. Explaining Words by Means of Their Etymologies

Although Cyril is commenting on the Greek version of Isaiah rather than the Hebrew, he nonetheless carries out the next step of the classical grammarians’ approach to interpretation by commenting on various words and their etymologies. Cyril employs this approach primarily in relation to names found in the text that are merely transliterated from the Hebrew into Greek. For instance, Cyril uses the etymology of the name Jacob (“he will supplant”) to help him interpret Isa 49:25–26 (“All flesh will perceive that I am the one who saved you, and I am the strong one who came to the aid of Jacob”): There will be a most notable and righteous judgment of all flesh, that is, of all people. There will be those who, through their piety, have become imperiled, and it is to those that he says, “In every way all the aid of the one who empowers will come to you, Jacob,” that is, to you who are the seed of Jacob. I think that the prophetic word written concerning these things was speaking about the person of the holy apostles and evangelists who were the physical descendants of Jacob. It would not be at all unreasonable for Jacob to be called a supplanter, that is, one who supplants Satan and who both vigorously

64. Ibid., 1:8, PG 70.25d–28a. Cyril frequently explains references to the agricultural practices of Isaiah’s time in such sections as Isa 3:12 (PG 70.112b) and 18:4–5 (PG 70.445d).


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and ingeniously overtakes the snare of sin, for Jacob, when translated, means supplanter.65

Cyril also comments on the etymology of place names such as Edom,66 Zion and Jerusalem,67 and Bozrah, the capital city of Edom.68 Explanation of Words by Means of Reflection on Analogies

Cyril clarifies the meaning of Isaiah’s words through the use of analogies, the next step in the grammarians’ approach to the analysis of classical texts. He frequently suggests that a reader should interpret the meaning of certain words in Isaiah based on comparison or analogy with a given term’s use in other places in the Septuagint. Cyril uses analogy, for example, to suggest that the term “silver” used in Isa 1:22 means “oracle” or “words.” The text reads: “Your silver will no longer be pure, your merchants will water down your wine, and your rulers will take bribes.” Cyril argues that just as “silver” means “oracle” in Ps 11:6, so, too, it has the same meaning in this context: At one point, the sweet-sounding David sings, “The oracles of the Lord are pure oracles. They are fine silver, which has been tested by the fires of the earth.” Therefore, the adulterated or completely impure silver [of which Isaiah speaks] is that which originates with the Jews, this is, the word of the scribes and the Pharisees, who are like peddlers attempting to water down their wine.69

The use of analogy is perhaps the weakest aspect of Cyril’s use of the classical grammarians’ approach to interpreting texts. This may be because Cyril’s classical education had given him a stock set of literary analogies that he has difficulty applying to Scripture. In fact, Cyril overtly states that analogies drawn from classical texts are sometimes not at all helpful in interpreting the Bible. Such is the case when he attempts to interpret Isa 13:21, a text that in the Septuagint reads, “The wild beasts will rest there, and the houses will be full of their sounds. The sirens will rest there, and the demons will dance.” The most difficult word to understand is “sirens” (seirh~nej). Cyril recognizes that in classical texts such as the Odyssey the term refers to the nymphs whose mellifluous voices

65. Ibid., 49:25–26, PG 70.1081d. 66. Ibid., 34:5–6, PG 70.741d. 67. Ibid., 25:6–7, PG 70.561a–b. 68. Ibid., 34:7, PG 70.744b. (It should be noted here that Cyril addresses Bosor (Bozrah) as if it should be read with 34:7 rather than with 34:6.) 69. Ibid., 1:22, PG 70.52d–53a.

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seduced unwary sailors to their deaths on the rocks surrounding their island home.70 Cyril notes that this meaning obviously does not fit into the context of Isa 13:21. Being somewhat at a loss, Cyril suggests that the term “sirens” must mean something like “winged creatures,” basing his interpretation on the Hebrew: “He calls the species of winged creatures that sing, I believe, sirens, or as the Hebrew recension has it, owls (glau~ka).”71 Cyril’s View of Isaiah as Shaped by the Two Patristic Exegetical Principles

The culmination of the classical grammarians’ structured approach to the text was the evaluation of the work as a whole. They understood that the grammatical building blocks found in a text were but a means to the end and were used by the author to construct a meaningful and pleasing literary work. In other words, they were convinced that the clarification of tropes, historical aspects of the text, etymologies, and analogies was important primarily because it provided the reader with sufficient knowledge of the meaning of the literary work as a whole. It is for this reason that Dionysius Thrax calls the evaluation of the text as a whole “the most elegant of all the parts of the science” of interpretation.72 For Cyril, the evaluation of the meaning of the book of Isaiah was directly related to the deep, spiritual meaning found within the text. His exegesis of individual passages focuses on the way in which the book of Isaiah as a whole reveals the merciful nature of God, the divine plan for salvation through Jesus Christ, and God’s expectation that people will respond faithfully to divine love and commands. In Cyril’s exegesis of the meaning of the Isaiah text as a whole, the two principles of patristic exegesis mentioned earlier in this essay shape his interpretive conclusions. First, throughout his commentary Cyril depends on his concept that the Bible is a single, unified book to clarify obscure elements within Isaiah’s prophecies. When something that Isaiah says is not clear, Cyril attempts to view the text through the lens of God’s fullest self-revelation of Christ as described in the New Testament. Second, when Cyril interprets each passage of Isaiah, it is always evident that he is looking for both the literal or historical meaning and the spiritual meaning of the text. He spends a greater amount of

70. Homer, Odyssey 12.39. 71. Cyril, Commentary on Isaiah 13:21, PG 70.364d. This is one of the rare instances in which Cyril gives evidence of familiarity with Hebrew. Cyril’s translation of the Hebrew term seems to offer some evidence for the word’s rendering in the neb and the niv as “desert owls” and “owls,” respectively, instead of the more common translation “ostrich,” found in the nrsv and jb and supported by Francis Brown, S. R. Driver, and Charles A. Briggs, A Hebrew Lexicon of the Old Testament (Oxford: Clarendon, 1968; repr., Peabody, Mass.: Hendrickson, 1996), 419. 72. Ars Grammatica 1.4–8.


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time and effort on the spiritual meaning of the text because he considers it to be the more important level of meaning. It is through this level of meaning that Isaiah speaks to the believers of Cyril’s time about the grandeur of God, the revelation of Christ, and the response to God expected from humans. Vivid examples of Cyril’s emphasis on the spiritual meaning of the text can be seen in his interpretation of Isaiah’s vision of God in chapter 6. Cyril begins his interpretation by reflecting on the timing of God’s revelation to Isaiah—“in the year in which Uzziah died” (Isa 6:1)—and finds here an eternal, spiritual principle. God “knows all that is hidden and will reveal these deep and mysterious things at the proper time,” he says.73 The proper time for revelation can come only when people repent of their sin and put their unclean actions and attitudes behind them. When people are willfully sinful, Cyril observes, God will remain silent. Thus, God waited until the year in which Uzziah died to reveal the divine presence, plan, and character to Isaiah, because during Uzziah’s lifetime the people were unclean. To substantiate the sinfulness of both Uzziah and the people of Judah during the time when God was silent, Cyril refers to the introduction to the book of Amos. Amos 1:1 notes that Amos’s preaching in Israel, concurrent with Uzziah’s reign in Judah, occurred “two years before the earthquake.” Cyril understands this earthquake as a sign of God’s displeasure with the people, for “Jerusalem was shaken by an earthquake and the whole land of Judah felt its tremors.”74 It was only when Uzziah died that “the time of silence ceased and the Almighty God again began to give visions.…”75 Cyril further illustrates the connection between the sin of the people and God’s silence by referring to Ezek 3:26: “I will make your tongue cleave to the roof of your mouth so that you shall be dumb and unable to reprove them, for they are a rebellious people.” Cyril concludes: “In other words, God was silent to show his irritation with the people.”76 Since, in Cyril’s mind, the Bible is a single, unified book, the spiritual truth stated plainly in Ezek 3:26 is applicable to the situation described in Isaiah. Cyril’s exegesis of the spiritual meaning of Isa 6:1 also employs the patristic principle that God’s self-revelation in Christ as described in the New Testament is the interpretive key to the Old Testament. According to the Septuagint, the prophet “saw the Lord sitting on a high and exalted throne, and the house was full of his glory” (Isa 6:1). Cyril’s interpretation of this depends on John 12:41,

73. Cyril, Commentary on Isaiah 6:1, PG 70.169b. 74. Ibid., 6:1, PG 70.172c–d. 75. Ibid., 6:1, PG 70.172d. 76. Ibid., 6:1, PG 70.172c.

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which states that Isaiah “saw his glory and spoke about him.” Based on this clarification of Isa 6:1 by John’s Gospel, Cyril maintains that no one could rightly doubt that the vision Isaiah saw was a vision of the Son within the glory of God the Father.77 Since the New Testament declares that Isaiah’s vision reveals the glory of Christ, Cyril is at liberty to interpret various elements of Isaiah’s narrative as descriptions of Christ and as predictions of his incarnation and work. Cyril sees a number of aspects of God’s character revealed symbolically by the seraphim who appear on either side of the divine throne. He suggests, for example, that their antiphonal singing is a prophetic pronouncement of Nicene Trinitarian theology.78 He states: [The seraphim] begin their doxology with a threefold repetition of “Holy,” and they conclude with the words “Lord of Hosts.” In this way they affirm that within the one divine nature lies the Trinity. For we say in our confession that there are three persons in the Godhead: the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. There is no argument that can divide each into different natures according to their names; instead, they must be considered to be three persons yet one divine Godhead.”79

Cyril also interprets the seraphim’s declaration that the “whole earth is full of his glory” through the lens of Christ. He says that the seraphim are speaking prophetically both of Christ’s incarnation and of the fact that Christianity would expand throughout the known world: [The seraphim] are foretelling the mystery of that special providence that would occur at Christ’s coming. For up until the time when the Word became flesh, the demon (also known as the transgressor, the dragon, and the apostate) ruled all that which was beneath heaven, and the creation worshiped that which was created rather than the creator.80 But when the only begotten Son of God, the Word, became flesh, the whole earth was filled with his glory. Everything will bow before him and serve him, just as it is written.… This has indeed come to pass, since a multitude of nations now call upon him, and everyone worships him who became human like us and for us and yet remains above all.81

77. Ibid., 6:1, PG 70.172d–173a. 78. Cyril’s comments here demonstrate that he has expanded the concept of interpreting the Old Testament by means of the New, interpreting also in light of what he considers to be orthodox Christian tradition. 79. Cyril, Commentary on Isaiah 6:3, PG 70.176a. 80. Cf. Rom 1:25. 81. Cyril, Commentary on Isaiah 6:3, PG 70.176b.


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Cyril’s interpretation of the shaking foundations and smoke-filled temple in Isa 6:4 likewise accentuates the deeper, spiritual meaning of the text. Cyril recognizes that Isaiah’s repetition of the term “house” from verse 1 raises an immediate interpretive question.82 Since the prophet has already stated that “the house was full of [God’s] glory” in lxx Isa 6:1, what might it mean that subsequently the house was filled with smoke, as indicated in 6:4? While the passage must be approached with caution, Cyril observes, the best interpretation of the text is to see it as a prophecy of what happened when the earth was filled with the glory of God, both in Christ and in the history of the world after Christ.83 Cyril says: We must approach this passage with both extreme care and wisdom. Prior to the incarnation and earthly sojourn of our Savior, Israel still possessed the legal rights of citizenship without restriction or blame, and the renowned temple that Solomon erected in Jerusalem was filled with the glory of God.… But when the Son arrived from heaven and assumed human form, that which had been preached through the Law and the Prophets was no longer acceptable. Yet they killed the one from whom all life had sprung, and God left the temple and abrogated their inheritance. God then turned toward the Gentiles, and the “whole earth was filled with his glory.” The territory of Judah was then reduced to wilderness, and God set the temple on fire.84 Thus, when the prediction of the seraphim came to pass and the whole earth was filled with the glory of God, then the thresholds of the temple shook and it was filled with smoke.… The phrase, “the thresholds shook” signifies, I believe, the temple being abandoned, and since the temple was set on fire, the prophecy says it was “filled with smoke.”85

Cyril’s interpretation of Isa 6:5 illustrates his conviction that the spiritual meaning of Isaiah’s prophecies are timeless revelations of God and of the divine nature, applicable to all believers. In 6:5, Isaiah recognizes his own sinfulness when he finds himself in the presence of God, and he says: “Woe to me! My life is coming to an end, for I am a man of unclean lips … yet my eyes have seen the King, the Lord of Hosts.” Isaiah said this, Cyril observes, because he knew

82. In both Isa 6:1 and 6:4 the Septuagint employs the term oi)~koj (house). The Hebrew text has lkyh (temple or palace) in 6:1 and tyb (house) in 6:4. 83. Cyril believes that much of the suffering experienced by the Jews has come about because of their failure to accept Jesus as Lord. For a full discussion of Cyril’s attitude toward the Jews, see Robert Wilken, Judaism and the Early Christian Mind (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1971), 54–69. 84. Cyril is referring here to the burning of the temple in 70 c.e. by the Romans under the leadership of Titus. 85. Cyril, Commentary on Isaiah 6:4, PG 70.176c–177a.

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from the law that Moses transcribed that one could not mix the holy with the profane. Cyril then gives several scriptural examples of people who, when confronted with the holiness of Christ, recognized their own sinfulness. He cites Peter, who fell down at Jesus’ feet, saying, “depart from me, for I am a sinner” when Jesus demonstrated his holiness by filling the empty nets of the fishermen (Luke 5:8), and the citizens of the region of the Gergesenes, who “begged [Jesus] to leave their neighborhood” after he cast the demons out of those living among the tombs (Matt 8:34).86 Cyril argues that the people in both these cases were following the law that prohibited contact between the holy and the unclean: “Reverence was, as I have said, the normal pattern for that time, for the law that had been handed down to them forbade them from any attempt at joining the holy with that which is base and unclean.”87 Cyril then moves from the specific words of Isaiah to the general spiritual meaning by arguing that all people are tainted by sin and thus prohibited from entering God’s presence. Isaiah’s words, says Cyril, indicate the culpability of all people, for Isaiah says that he “lives in the midst of a people of unclean lips.” Cyril further supports his point by citing Ps 116:11: “Every person is a liar.”88 He concludes, “People’s minds are all infected by falsehood.”89 Despite its pointing to the sinfulness of all humanity, Isaiah’s vision also contains a message of hope for the reestablishment of a life-giving relationship between sinful humans and a holy God, Cyril declares. He finds in verses 6–7 Isaiah’s metaphorical explanation of how the relationship between God and humans can be restored. One of the seraphim takes a fiery coal in a pair of tongs, flies over to Isaiah, and touches him on the lips, saying, “Now that this has touched your lips, your iniquity has departed and you have been cleansed of your sin.” Cyril suggests that the task of the seraph here should be interpreted in light of Heb 1:14, where angels are described as ministering spirits sent from God “for the sake of those who are to inherit salvation.” Cyril notes that the seraphim in Isaiah’s vision “prefigure the mystery of Christ for Isaiah.”90 Cyril goes even further in his spiritual interpretation of this text by declaring that the coal with which Isaiah’s lips were cleansed symbolizes Jesus Christ. He says:

86. Ibid., 6:5, PG 70.177c–d. 87. Ibid., 6:5, PG 70.17180a. 88. Cyril appears to choose this verse because its reference to speech brings to mind Isaiah’s phrase “unclean lips.” 89. Cyril, Commentary on Isaiah 6:5, PG 70.180c. 90. Ibid., 6:6–7, PG 70.181a.


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This [coal] is clearly a symbol for Christ, who, on our behalf, offered himself up to God the Father as a pure and unblemished spiritual sacrifice with the most pleasing fragrance. In this way, Christ is received just as if he were being taken from an altar. One must say that he is similar to the burning coal and the sort of cause for which it is used. In fact, it is customary in the Holy Scripture for the divine nature to be likened to fire.… One might well liken the burning coal to Emmanuel, who, if he might somehow be placed on our lips, would totally remove all of our sins and cleanse us from all unrighteousness.91 Yet how could he be placed on our lips? This happens whenever we confess our faith in him. This is what Paul said when he wrote, “The word is near you, on your lips and in your heart (that is the word of faith that we preach); because, if you confess with your lips that Jesus is Lord and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved.…”92 Let God then be on our lips like a glowing coal that burns away the rubbish of our sins, purges us of our unrighteousness, and sets our spirits on fire!”93

It is clear to Cyril that when Isaiah’s vision in chapter 6 is viewed through the lens of Christ’s revelation in the New Testament, it speaks of the profound mysteries available to those who believe in Christ, are purified by him, and are thus freely allowed to enter into the realm of the holy without fear of retribution. Conclusions The book of the prophet Isaiah was a favorite topic for patristic exegetes. Although in theological and apologetic works patristic writers used disconnected portions of Isaiah in various ways, the most complete examples of patristic exegesis of Isaiah are found in commentaries on the book. Although each patristic commentary is unique, all of them seem to embody the two primary principles of biblical unity and diverse levels of meaning. The patristic interpreters saw some value in understanding the historical situation described in Isaiah, but they were far more concerned with finding what they called the deeper or spiritual meaning of the text, for it was this meaning that revealed insights about the nature of God and the Christian’s relationship with the Divine. Patristic interpreters of Isaiah viewed Isaiah through the lens of the revelation of Christ as found in the New Testament, and they attempted to see how Isaiah’s words prefigured or pointed to Christ. Because the patristic exegetes were able to find clear and insightful references to Christ when they

91. See 1 John 1:9. 92. Rom 10:8–10. 93. Cyril, Commentary on Isaiah 6:6–7, PG 70.181c–d.

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examined the spiritual meaning of the words of Isaiah, they found Isaiah to be a rich theological treasure trove. Patristic interpretation of Isaiah was also shaped by reading methods taught by the classical grammarians. Early Christian scholars applied the classical approach to reading and interpreting texts to their interpretation of the Bible. This approach emphasized the various consecutive steps that a knowledgeable reader should take in the process of interpreting texts, such as clarifying the meaning of literary tropes, rare and unusual words, historical aspects of the text, etymologies, and analogies. Such an approach led to the ultimate goal of understanding the meaning of the text as a whole. Thus, the patristic exegetes spent a good deal of time explaining exactly what the text said and meant on a grammatical or historical level and then proceeded to explain the deeper, spiritual meaning of the book of Isaiah as a whole, as this meaning was visible in various sections of the text. Cyril of Alexandria’s Commentary on Isaiah embodies both the methods developed by the classical grammarians and the generally accepted principles that patristic interpreters believed governed Christian exegesis. Cyril addresses the use of literary tropes, the meaning of words, the historical aspects of the text, and the etymologies of words and draws meaning from the text by means of analogies. He also interprets the meaning of Isaiah’s prophecies as a whole by describing their deeper spiritual meaning as pointing to God’s merciful character, God’s self-revelation in Christ as portrayed in the New Testament, and the proper Christian response to God’s love and commandments. Cyril sees many of Isaiah’s prophecies as predictions of God’s future revelations, and he is able to do so because he subscribes to the patristic principle that the Old Testament contains both a literal or historical meaning and a deeper, spiritual meaning that reveals the nature of God in Christ. Select Bibliography Cassel, J. David. “Cyril of Alexandria and the Science of the Grammarians: A Study in the Setting, Purpose, and Emphasis of Cyril’s Commentary on Isaiah.” Ph.D. diss., University of Virginia, 1992. Christman, Angela. “Selections from Theodoret of Cyrus’s Commentary on Isaiah.” Pages 173–85 in The Theological Interpretation of Scripture. Edited by S. Fowl. Cambridge: Blackwell, 1997. Cyril of Alexandria. Commentary on Isaiah. PG 70. Paris: Imprimerie Catholique, 1857. Repr., Brepols: Turnholt, 1987. Eusebius of Caesarea. Der Jesajakommentar. Edited by J. Ziegler. Eusebius Werke 9. Berlin: Akademie Verlag, 1975.


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Gamble, Harry. Books and Readers in the Early Church. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1995. Hollerich, Michael J. Eusebius of Caesarea’s Commentary on Isaiah: Christian Exegesis in the Age of Constantine. New York: Oxford University Press, 1999. Jean Chrysostom. Commentaire sur Isaïe. Edited by J. DuMortier. Translated by A. Lefooghe. Paris: Cerf, 1983. Jerome. Commentariorum in Esaiam libri I–XI. Edited by M. Adriaen. CCSL 73. Brepols: Turnholt, 1963. Kerrigan, Alexander. St. Cyril of Alexandria: Interpreter of the Old Testament. Rome: Pontifical Biblical Institute, 1952. Théodoret of Cyrus. Commentaire sur Isaïe. Translated and edited by J.-N. Guinot. Paris: Cerf, 1980.

Structure and Composition in Isaiah 1–12: A Twelfth-Century Northern French Rabbinic Perspective Robert A. Harris

Introduction Any number of modern studies of the book of Isaiah have focused on its literary structure and poetics of composition.1 Generally, scholars have expressed interest in such specific structural issues as how to understand the historical relationship of its various sections, what chapter constitutes Isaiah’s inaugural vision, and whether the overall arrangement of the book reflects chronological or other considerations.2 Moreover, even within the block of chapters called “First Isaiah,” scholars have entertained the question of what passages may represent actual autobiographical material of the eighth-century prophet and what may best be ascribed either to later prophetic circles or to the redactor of the book.3 Scholars have sought to discover literary devices at play in the book’s dis-

1. An earlier form of this essay was presented as an address to the Formation of the Book of Isaiah Group at the Society of Biblical Literature Annual Meeting in Nashville, 2000. I am grateful to my colleague Alan Cooper, who first suggested my name as a participant in the work of this group and who offered suggestions regarding the course of my study, and to my teacher Edward L. Greenstein for his patient counsel and his many contributions toward the final shape of this essay. 2. See the various formulations of questions and bibliographic references in two recent commentaries: Brevard S. Childs, Isaiah (Louisville: Westminster John Knox, 2001), 1–10; and Joseph Blenkinsopp, Isaiah 1–39: A New Translation with Introduction and Commentary (AB 19; New York: Doubleday, 2000), 73–140. 3. See Christopher R. Seitz, Isaiah 1–39 (Louisville: Westminster John Knox, 1993), 22–30 (31–113); and Rolf Rendtorff, “The Book of Isaiah: A Complex Unity: Synchronic and Diachronic Reading,” in Prophecy and Prophets: The Diversity of Contemporary Issues in Scholarship (ed. Y. Gitay; SemeiaSt 33; Atlanta: Scholars Press, 1997), 109–28.

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course and rhetorical factors in the presentation of individual prophetic oracles as well as in larger units within the book’s literary composition.4 These questions are not new. In the eleventh century, and especially during the twelfth, rabbinic exegetes explored literary and rhetorical issues in their commentaries on the Bible. This exploration took place within the context of a virtual revolution in scriptural reading and exegesis among Jewish and Christian scholars in northern France.5 While expressions of this new exegetical agenda may be found particularly in the Torah commentaries these scholars produced, this article will examine the attention they paid to literary concerns in the first twelve chapters of Isaiah.6 After a brief survey of the hermeneutical developments in this era, I will examine the exegetes’ discussions of the chronology of the prophecies and the events behind them and of the rhetorical and redactional arrangement of these chapters. Although I will include reference to the commentaries of Rashi (composed in the late eleventh to early twelfth centuries), I will concentrate primarily on the contributions of two other northern French commentators, R. Joseph Kara and R. Eliezer of Beaugency. Though these two present a high concentration of comments regarding structural and compositional aspects of Isa 1–12, there are no other extant commentaries on Isaiah produced by twelfth-century northern French rabbinic exegetes. Rabbi Samuel ben Meir (Rashbam) and R. Joseph Bekhor Shor—two of the most prominent northern French exegetes, whose other works were replete with observations of a “literary” nature—apparently did not write commentaries on Isaiah.7 Two

4. See Yehoshua Gitay, Isaiah and His Audience: The Structure and Meaning of Isaiah 1–12 (SSN; Assen: Van Gorcum, 1991); Peter D. Quinn-Miscall, Reading Isaiah: Poetry and Vision (Louisville: Westminster John Knox, 2001); Roy F. Melugin, “Figurative Speech and the Reading of Isaiah 1 as Scripture,” in New Visions of Isaiah (ed. R. Melugin and M. Sweeney; JSOTSup 214; Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press, 1996), 282–305. 5. For an examination of “contextual reading” as it was practiced by the northern French rabbinic exegetes, see my article “Medieval French Biblical Interpretation,” in Encyclopaedia of Judaism, vol. 5, supplement 2 (ed. J. Neusner et al.; Leiden: Brill, 2004), 2045–61. For a historical orientation, see Avraham Grossman, “The School of Literal Exegesis in Northern France,” in From the Beginnings to the Middle Ages (until 1300) (vol. 1 of Hebrew Bible/Old Testament: The History of Its Interpretation; ed. M. Saebø; Gottingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2000), 321–71. For a survey of recent scholarship, see Sara Japhet, “Major Trends in the Study of Medieval Jewish Exegesis in Northern France,” Trumah 9 (2000): 43–61. 6. I first learned to approach Isa 1–12 as an integrated unit from the scholarship of H. L. Ginsberg. See his “From the Diary of Isaiah Ben Amoz,” in Oz Le-David: Essays in Biblical Studies Dedicated to David Ben Gurion in Honor of His Seventy-Seventh Birthday [Hebrew] (ed. Y. Kaufmann et al.; Publications of the Society for Biblical Studies in Israel 15; Jerusalem, 1964), 335–50. This discussion is recapitulated in English in his “First Isaiah,” EncJud 9:49–60. 7. Citations of comments on Isaiah attributed to Rashbam are found in the thirteenth-century liturgical commentary Arugat Habosem; see Sara Japhet and Robert Salters, eds., The Commentary

harris: structure and composition in isaiah 1–12

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additional twelfth-century commentators from outside northern France, R. Abraham ibn Ezra (Spain) and R. David Kimchi (Radak, southern France), will be referred to in the notes. It is not my purpose to demonstrate how the medieval scholars anticipated the results of modern historical and literary critics. Rather, my primary effort will be to demonstrate how these exegetes may help modern scholars, equipped with historical-critical tools unavailable to previous generations, to read Scripture with greater acumen and sensitivity.8 We will be guided by the judgment of Moshe Greenberg in his commentary on the book of Ezekiel: “One is impressed with the modesty of advances made since their time in linguistic matters and contextual interpretations, compared to the gravity of the losses sustained by modern commentators in these areas as a result of ignoring medieval scholarship.”9 Background: Reading in Context as a New Development in Exegesis All of the medieval commentators whose works are surveyed in this essay were dedicated to the proposition that Scripture should be interpreted in its own context (+#p, peshat, or w+w#p, peshuto). The pioneer in what became a concerted effort to supplant the authoritative midrashic readings of the ancient rabbis in favor of one that was rooted in what the commentator sensed to be the contextual meaning of a text was Rabbi Solomon Yitzhaki, or Rashi (1040– 1105).10 Rashi began developing a methodology for reading on the basis of one’s

of R. Samuel Ben Meir (Rashbam) on Qoheleth (Jerusalem: Magnes; Leiden: Brill, 1985), 15 n. 33 [Hebrew and English]. For an examination of Rashbam’s attention to the “literary dimensions” of Scripture, see Martin I. Lockshin, “Rashbam as a ‘Literary’ Exegete,” in With Reverence for the Word: Medieval Scriptural Exegesis in Judaism, Christianity and Islam (ed. J. McAuliffe et al.; Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002), 83–91. While I am not aware of an equivalent article on the exegesis of R. Joseph Bekhor Shor in English, for now see Edward L. Greenstein, “Medieval Bible Commentaries,” in Back to the Sources: Reading the Classic Jewish Texts (ed. B. Holtz; New York: Summit, 1984), 212–59. 8. I have explored this topic at greater length in “Why Should Modern Bible Scholars Study Medieval Commentaries?” (The Yohanan Muffs Lecture, Jewish Theological Seminary, New York, 2001; this essay awaits publication). 9. Moshe Greenberg, Ezekiel 1–20: A New Translation, with Introduction and Commentary (AB 22; Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday, 1983), 23–24. 10. For further information on Rashi’s exegesis, see Grossman, “School of Literal Exegesis,” 332–46. See also Benjamin J. Gelles, Peshat and Derash in the Exegesis of Rashi (Études sur le judaïsme médiéval 9; Leiden: Brill, 1981).

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own intuitive sense of a given passage.11 We will have occasion to observe his approach to at least one specific issue below. Less well known in the modern world than Rashi, his younger contemporary Joseph Kara (active in the late eleventh century) helped mediate Rashi’s commentaries to subsequent generations; he was also a significant exegete in his own right.12 Kara reveals much about his approach to exegesis in his extended comment on Isa 1:18.13 Adumbrating Rashbam’s more celebrated distinction between peshat and midrashic methodologies,14 Kara writes: “[Despite the importance of midrash in Judaism] there is no greater attribute (in the reading of Scripture) than the contextual interpretation of texts, for even in the presence of midrash, our Rabbis have taught us: ‘Scripture never escapes the hold of its context’ (b. Yebam. 24a).”15 Thus Kara, while making room for midrashic considerations in his commentaries, prizes a contextual approach above all. Kara returns to this theme in his comment on Isa 3:1: You must apply this principle whenever you read: every place in which you find two words in close proximity, whose (meaning) is not made explicit; or

11. Commenting on Gen 3:8, Rashi describes his approach to interpreting Scripture: “There are many homiletical midrashim (on these verses), and the Rabbis have long ago arranged them in their proper place in Genesis Rabba and the other midrashim, whereas I have only come to explain Scripture according to its contextual [peshuto] understanding, and according to the aggadah that reconciles the words of Scripture, each word understood according to its character.” For an example from Isaiah in which Rashi expresses a preference for a contextual interpretation over rabbinic midrash, see his comment on Isa 26:11. For a study of Rashi’s methodology, specifically with regard to the methodology articulated at Gen 3:8, see Edward L. Greenstein, “Sensitivity to Language in Rashi’s Commentary on the Torah,” in The Solomon Goldman Lectures (ed. M. I. Gruber; Chicago: Spertus College of Judaica Press, 1993), 51–71. 12. For an introduction to Kara’s life and works, see Grossman, “School of Literal Exegetes,” 346–56, and the bibliography he cites on 321–22. 13. All citations of medieval rabbinic exegetical literature, unless otherwise specified, are taken from Mikraot Gedolot ‘Haketer’: A Revised and Augmented Scientific Edition of ‘Mikraot Gedolot’ Based on the Aleppo Codex and Early Medieval MSS: Isaiah [Hebrew] (ed. M. Cohen; Ramat Gan: Bar Ilan University, 1996). 14. See Rashbam’s apologia for the pursuit of peshat over derash in his commentary on Gen 37:2: “Lovers of reason should understand it well that, as our Rabbis tell us, ‘No scriptural passage ever escapes the hold of its context.’ Although it is also true that the main aim of the Torah is to teach us laws, doctrines and rules of conduct … in their piety the early scholars devoted all their time to the midrashic explanations, which contain, indeed, the main teachings of the Torah.… Furthermore, the Sages say…: ‘It is of value when one studies the Bible, but there is no greater value than when one studies Talmud’ (b. B. Mesi’a 33a).” Note that Kara’s observation is analogous to Rashbam’s, although somewhat more strongly phrased. 15. See also Kara’s comment on 1 Sam 1:17–18, where he draws the dichotomy between peshat and derash with even starker clarity.


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two brief phrases side by side and they, being brief, are opaque, do not weary yourself in search of their explanation (i.e., do not turn to a midrashic explanation16) for you will always find their explanations within their contexts. And I will explain a few of them, and these few will be instructive about the rest of them.

In determining that, in the interpretation of Scripture, one must look first to the immediate context, Kara seems drawn to the approach of the Gaonic era “Thirty-Two Rules for Aggadic Exegesis.”17 These rules, which the northern French rabbis apply with some regularity in contexts of biblical narrative, themselves echo the more ancient “Thirteen Rules for Halakhic Exegesis” found at the beginning of the Sifra, the oldest rabbinic midrash on Leviticus.18 In either case, the rule in question is wnyn(m dmlh rbd, “a matter learned from its context.”19 Indeed, often the key term indicating that the northern French exegetes are explaining a biblical text according to its context is this very word Nyn(, which, like the terms +#p and w+w#p, may be itself translated as “context.”20 A prime example of this is Kara’s comment on Isa 13:2, where the commentator makes the precise meaning of an elusive phrase (which njps translates as “upon a bare hill”) the focus of his concern: Many explanations have I seen for this word: There are those who interpret this as “on a hill which is situated high up, in (the sense of ) security”—which is the kingdom of Babylonia. And we have reviewed all of Scripture and we have not found that the kingdom of Babylonia is (ever depicted as) dwelling

16. That this explanation is Kara’s intention is made clear through reference to his commentary on 1 Sam 1:17–18: “From its context [the Bible] lacks nothing. Moreover, one does not need to bring proof from outside of its context, and (certainly) not midrash.” 17. These “rules” have been known by various names. In the twentieth century they were published by Hyman G. Enelow, together with what he thought was the “complete midrash,” in The Mishnah of Rabbi Eliezer or the Midrash of Thirty-Two Hermeneutic Rules [Hebrew] (New York: Bloch, 1933); see esp. pp. 24–25, where the thirteenth rule is presented. 18. Louis Finkelstein, ed., Sifra on Leviticus [Hebrew] (New York: Jewish Theological Seminary, 1983), 2:3–4; for the scriptural example the rabbis adduced for this particular rule, see p. 8. For a translation and an introduction in English, see Sifra: An Analytical Translation (ed. J. Neusner; Atlanta: Scholars Press, 1988), 57–63. 19. The medievals applied this rule as more of an overall methodology than the ancient rabbis ever did, and there is little question that the rule itself meant in antiquity much less than the medievals claimed for it. For an analogy with respect to the rabbinic expression w+w#p ydym )cwy )rqm Ny) (“Scripture never escapes … its context”), see Sarah Kamin, “Rashi’s Exegetical Categorization with Respect to the Distinction between Peshat and Derash,” Immanuel 11 (1980): 16–32. 20. See the chapter “Context as the Most Important Determinant in Exegesis” in Robert A. Harris, “The Literary Hermeneutic of Rabbi Eliezer of Beaugency” (Ph.D. diss., Jewish Theological Seminary, 1997), 280–300.

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on a mountain, but rather on a plain. My uncle Rabbi Menahem (Bar Helbo) interpreted (the phrase) as “on a dark hill—these are the hills of Babylonia which are dark on account of their great height.” Even according to (the principle of ) a matter learned from its context I say (the phrase means) on a high mountain; anything high is called steep, as in “the steepness of a hat” (see b. Hul. 19a), whose meaning is: “the height of a hat.…”

Thus, Kara is essentially giving the same interpretation as his uncle Menahem; both say the sense is “upon a high hill.” Kara indulges in another hortatory aside in which he expresses his preference for peshat over derash (that is, interpretation that “willfully projects contemporary categories of thought, drawn from the conceptual world of the commentator, onto the biblical text”21) in his comment on Isa 5:8–10: Incline your ear and surrender yourself to Scripture! For each and every scriptural text that the Rabbis have expounded (may their souls dwell in a good place!), inasmuch as they told a midrash about it, they themselves (also) said about it: “No scriptural passage ever escapes the hold of its context.” For we have no greater principle than contextual exegesis. … Thus did Solomon, King of Israel, say: Incline your ear … to the words of the sages, apply your heart to my wisdom (Prov 22:17). The explanation is: even though it is a commandment for you to “hear the words of the Sages,” apply your heart to knowing me—according to the body of the word, “to know them” [i.e., the Sages] Scripture does not say; rather to know me [i.e., God, through Scripture].

In espousing a contextual approach rather than a midrashic reading, Kara virtually turns an exegetical question into a religious issue: to truly know God, one should stress the primacy of Scripture itself and not pay undue attention to rabbinic midrash.22 Thus, our consideration of the degree to which northern French medieval Jewish exegetes paid attention to the literary and rhetorical dimensions in Isa 1–12 should be seen within the context of their overall exegetical program.

21. Meira Polliack, “Major Trends in Karaite Biblical Exegesis in the Tenth and Eleventh Centuries,” in Karaite Judaism: A Guide to Its History and Literary Sources (ed. M. Polliack; Leiden: Brill, 2003), 363–413 (367). 22. This type of approach seems to adumbrate the thirteenth-century Wycliffite rebellion against the authority of ecclesiastical Roman Catholic biblical interpretation. See, e.g., John Wycliffe, On the Truth of Holy Scripture (trans. with an introduction and notes by I. Levy; Kalamazoo, Mich.: Medieval Institute Publications, 2001), 66–67, 144–45. I am most grateful to Prof. Levy of Lexington Theological Seminary for this reference and for much fruitful conversation on the subject of Christian biblical exegesis.


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This program, called “peshat,” or “contextual reading,” sought to free the individual reader from the authoritative exegetical traditions of the ancient rabbis (midrash) and to enable that reader freely to engage the text. While proponents of peshat did not stake a formal claim for their approach within the realm of theology or in observance of Jewish law, they did state that reading contextually did not contradict Jewish norms and indeed might be seen as containing a certain aspect of religiosity insofar as it brought readers closer to the “actual” meaning of Holy Writ. Chronological or Thematic Arrangement in Isaiah 1–12? An issue addressed by all readers of Isaiah is the structural arrangement of the book, specifically the relationship of chapters 1–5 to chapter 6: Does the latter, with its famous prophetic vision of the heavenly temple, represent Isaiah’s inaugural call, and thus is the book composed in a nonchronological order? Or did the prophet first receive the divine word at an earlier stage in his life?23 The commentary of Rashi on Isa 1:1 addresses our specific question and reflects the understanding of ancient rabbinic midrash: … who prophesied against Judah and Jerusalem: And did he not prophecy about many nations? (E.g.) The “Egypt” Pronouncement (19:1); The “Babylon” Pronouncement (13:1); The “Moab” Pronouncement (15:1). Thus you learn that this is not the (chronological) beginning of the book, and the (entire) book is not named by this vision.24 And so we have taught in the baraita of the Mekhilta.25 In the year of the death of King Uzziah (6:1) is the beginning of

23. For reviews of the range of opinions in modern scholarship, see Childs, Isaiah, 51–54; Blenkinsopp, Isaiah 1–39, 223–24. 24. In other words, the title “Vision of Isaiah” is not of the whole book but only the name of the first oracle (or perhaps, first block of oracles) concerning Judah. A formula introducing the entire book, and not this one oracle alone, would have to mention all the peoples and nations about which Isaiah prophesied (Edward L. Greenstein, private communication, 19 December 2003). 25. Rashi cites from the Mekhilta at the beginning of Parashat Hashira 7 (H. Horowitz and I. Rabin, eds., Mekhilta De-Rabbi Yishmael [Jerusalem: Bamberger & Wahrman, 1960]): “The enemy said (Exod 15:9): This was the beginning of the passage. And why was it written here (i.e., in the middle of the poem)? Since there is no early nor late in the Torah. Similar to this is: In the year of the death of King Uzziah (Isa 6:1): This is the beginning of the passage. And why was it written here? Since there is no early nor late in the Torah.” Note that in his discussion at Isa 1:1, cited above, Rashi changes the formulation of the midrash (“there is no early nor late in the Torah”) to “there is no early nor late in the arrangement (of Scripture).” This change may be yet another instance in which Rashi paves the way for later medieval interpreters to recognize the redaction of biblical books by an “arranger” (often Nrds). See my article, “Awareness of Biblical Redaction among Rabbinic Exegetes of Northern France” [Hebrew], Shnaton: An Annual for Biblical and

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the book, only that there is no early or late in the arrangement (of the biblical text). Moreover, the language proves this, for on the day of the earthquake, i.e., the day on which Uzziah became a leper,26 it is said: then I heard the voice of my Lord saying, “Whom shall I send? Who will go for us?” And I said, “Here am I; send me” (6:8). Thus we learn that (the narrative in chapter 6) marks the beginning of his mission. And this prophecy (i.e., Isa 1)27 was said afterwards, and it is this alone about which it is said “which he prophesied concerning Judah and Jerusalem” (1:1), as he said with regard to the pronouncements concerning various nations, (viz.) “the pronouncement of such and such a nation.” So, too, here (it was as if he said): “this vision he prophesied over Judah and Jerusalem” (i.e., but not over any other nation).

Thus Rashi upholds the ancient exegetical rule stating that Scripture is not necessarily arranged in chronological order.28 Anticipating many moderns, he prefers to regard Isa 6 as a narrative reporting Isaiah’s inaugural vision and prophetic charge. At least in the context of his commentary on 6:1, Rashi does not address the question of why Scripture would be composed in an other-thanchronological arrangement, nor does he attempt to justify the canonical order of the book’s narrative and prophetic compositions. In contradistinction to Rashi, Kara found no compelling reason to apply the talmudic-era rule that “there is no early or late in Scripture” and instead held that the book of Isaiah is arranged chronologically: And it happened in the days of Ahaz (Isa 7:1): From the beginning of the book until the year of the death of King Uzziah, he prophesied in the days of Uzziah. For in the days of Uzziah he began to prophecy, and from the year of the death of King Uzziah until and it happened in the days of Ahaz (i.e., 7:1) (he prophesied) during the days of Jotham son of Uzziah. And from the death of Jotham son of Uzziah he says And it happened in the days of Ahaz son of Jotham son of Uzziah, King of Judah and he continued to prophecy all the days of Ahaz until Ahaz died and Hezekiah arose. When Ahaz died, what does Scrip-

Ancient Near Eastern Studies 8 (2000): 289–310. Alternatively, and perhaps more likely, the later commentators may have been influenced by Byzantine exegetical traditions; see Richard C. Steiner, “A Jewish Theory of Biblical Redaction from Byzantium: Its Rabbinic Roots, Its Diffusion and Its Encounter with the Muslim Doctrine of Falsification,” JSIJ 2 (2003): 123–67 (and especially the bibliographic references on 123 n. 1, 133 n. 23) [online: http://www.biu.ac.il/JS/JSIJ/2-2003/ Steiner.pdf ]. 26. For the midrashic tradition that 6:1 refers not to the day on which Uzziah died but to the year in which he became a leper, see 2 Kgs 15:5; 2 Chr 26:19 ;and Tg. Jon. on Isa 6:1 (“in the year King Uzziah was afflicted”). Joseph Kara follows Rashi in this regard; see his commentary on Isa 1:1. 27. Or perhaps Rashi is referring to the entire corpus of Isa 1–5. 28. b. Pesah˙. 6b.


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ture say? In the year of the death of King Ahaz this pronouncement was made… (14:28). When (Ahaz) died, he prophesied during the days of Hezekiah. What does Scripture say? And it happened in the fourteenth year of King Hezekiah … (36:1). You learn that he began to count from Uzziah, since he began to prophesy in his days, and he continued counting according to (chronological) order, king after king, all four kings whom he rebuked during his days. And thus you find that each and every prophet who arose in Israel began the enumeration he chose from the beginning of his career; he continued counting from the beginning of the enumeration until his prophecy was completed at the end of the enumeration.

Rashi and Kara may be basing their approaches on competing principles. For Kara, enumerating the reigns of the kings during which a prophet prophesied is a convention used at the beginning of a prophetic work. For Rashi, close reading distinguishes oracles by indicating the object of the prophecy: Isa 1 specifies Judah only. Thus, this title refers only to a certain section and not to the entire book. Moreover, Isa 6 suggests the beginning of Isaiah’s calling. For Kara, convention and formula trump close reading; for Rashi, the reverse is the case.29 On this question, we may also consider the commentary of Rabbi Eliezer of Beaugency. Eliezer wrote in the middle and late twelfth century. He was likely a student of Rashi’s grandson, R. Samuel ben Meir (Rashbam).30 Like Kara, Eliezer maintains the overall chronological arrangement of Scripture with regard to the book of Isaiah. However, Eliezer moves beyond Kara, enumerating several conventions suggesting that chapter 1 begins the book: The prophecy of Isaiah the son of Amoz who prophesied concerning Judah and Jerusalem during the days of Uzziah: From this extended language, it seems that it is the language of anprologus, i.e., “of (or concerning) the beginning.” And since he cited here these four kings, (it is because) he prophesied during their days. (This is) similar to the beginning of the prophecies of Hosea and Amos, and in the beginning of Jeremiah.… And also from the language of hear, O heavens, and give ear, O earth (1:2), which is in the same vein as give ear, O heavens, that I may speak (Deut 32:1), and so it is whenever there are

29. I am grateful to my teacher, Edward L. Greenstein, for clarifying the implications of the contrast between Rashi’s and Kara’s approaches. Greenstein further notes that the disagreement here between Rashi and Kara adumbrates the late twentieth-century tensions between form criticism and close reading (macroliterary versus microliterary) and refers to James Muilenburg’s essay, “Form Criticism and Beyond,” JBL 88 (1969): 1–18. 30. The traditional dates given for Rashbam are 1085–1174. On Eliezer as Rashbam’s disciple, see Harris, “Literary Hermeneutic of Rabbi Eliezer,” 82–111.

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two initial statements (in parallelism), that proves that this is the beginning of his prophecy. And also the order (of the oracles) will prove this: in the beginning (of the book it is written) in the days of Uzziah (1:1), whereas afterwards (it is written) in the year of the death of King Uzziah (6:1); still after that and it happened in the days of Ahaz son of Jotham the son of Uzziah (7:1); after that in the year of the death of King Ahaz (14:28); after that it happened in the fourteenth year of King Hezekiah (36:1). According to a contextual interpretation, one should not say that In the year of the death [of King Uzziah] (6:1) should be understood according to the Targum: “in the year that he became a leper.” (The opening words of the book,) The prophecy of Isaiah the son of Amoz who prophesied, refer to the entire book. For there are (prophecies that he prophesied) during the days of Jotham, and there those (that he prophesied) during the days of Ahaz, and there those (that he prophesied) during the days of Hezekiah, and each of these is made explicit in its place. And most of the prophecies from here until and it happened in the fourteenth year of King Hezekiah (36:1) were spoken with regard to the king of Assyria,31 i.e., the matter closest to him. For it is with regard to them that Isaiah elaborates in many places, more than32 he does with regard to other future events. And from (the text beginning with the verse) And it happened in the fourteenth year of King Hezekiah … when the events surrounding the king of Assyria took place,33 Scripture goes on to address the future consolations,34 which we will explain in the future, each one in its place, with the help of God who bestows understanding.

According to Eliezer, the book’s structure exhibits a chronological arrangement; in this way, his comment makes essentially the same point as Joseph Kara’s.35 However, Eliezer prefaces this observation with another argument. Rhe-

31. R. Eliezer is referring to the major crises facing Judah during the eighth century b.c.e., all of which were related in some way to the growing power of the Assyrian Empire. 32. Reading twmwqmm instead of the ms twmwqmb. 33. R. Eliezer is referring to Isa 36–39. 34. R. Eliezer is apparently referring to Isa 40–66; thus, by assigning these chapters to a date later than the eighth century b.c.e., R. Eliezer seems to exhibit an understanding of an “exilic Isaiah.” For the case of Ibn Ezra and his understanding of an exilic Isaiah, see Uriel Simon, “Ibn Ezra between Medievalism and Modernism: The Case of Isaiah XL–LXVI,” in Congress Volume: Salamanca, 1983 (VTSup 36; Leiden: Brill, 1983), 257–71. 35. See also Radak’s second opinion in his commentary on Isa 6:1, in which the “death” of King Uzziah refers to the king’s actual death. Radak writes: “According to this opinion, then, Isa 6:1 does not mark the beginning of his prophecy.” Radak takes a somewhat different tack in his introduction to the Isaiah commentary; there he writes that the narrative in chapter 6 “ought to have been” the beginning of the book, but “there is no early or late.” In other words, in his introduction Radak expresses the opinion that chapter 6 can be read both as the chronological beginning of the book and as simply a “special prophecy” set in particularly unique circumstances.


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torically and stylistically, the language employed by the prophet demonstrates that chapter 1 marks the beginning both of the book and of the prophet’s career. He supports this argument on two grounds. First, the very type of lengthy beginning found in Isaiah is analogous to that type of opening found in three other prophetic books: Hosea, Amos, and Jeremiah. Second, the rhetorical invocation in 1:2 evokes the opening of the prophetic Song of Moses in Deut 32:1—thus indicating that both prophets are employing language typical of beginnings of compositions. Subsequently, in his commentary on 6:1, Eliezer continues to maintain that the book traces Isaiah’s career in chronological order. He does not ignore the particular significance of God’s revelation to Isaiah in that chapter; in fact, Eliezer thinks it signifies the renewal of the prophet’s career following a hiatus: In the year of the death of King Uzziah: This means (that the following events took place) after his death (in the same year); and this is what is referred to as in the days … of Jotham (1:1). Furthermore, if this had been said before his death, why then would Scripture have addressed us using the expression in the year of (his) death? Rather, of course it was after his death! And Scripture instructed us that when the Holy One, Blessed be God, saw that Uzziah had died, and King Jotham (as well), and that that generation was not corrected (in its ways), then God appeared (again) to Isaiah. Moreover, it appears that since God appeared to him now by way of this strange vision, and said to him Whom shall I send, and who will go for us? (6:8), that already much time had passed in which God had not spoken with him and had not appeared to him. All of those prophecies preceding (this chapter) were said in the days of the earthquake that took place in the days of Uzziah36—but then (God) stopped (speaking with him). And now that Uzziah had died, God again began sending Isaiah to rebuke them.

The ancient exegetical rule, adopted by Rashi in the case of Isa 1–12, that stated that Scripture was not necessarily arranged in chronological order, made possible a reading that understood Isaiah’s temple vision in chapter 6 to be the prophet’s inaugural call. In distancing themselves from that view in this instance, at least, it may be said that R. Joseph Kara and R. Eliezer of Beaugency opt for a more “natural” reading that, without direct evidence to the contrary, prefers to take biblical narrative as ordered chronologically.37

36. See Amos 1:1: “The words of Amos … who prophesied concerning Israel in the days of Uzziah, King of Judah … two years before the earthquake.” 37. For Eliezer’s nuanced approach to the subject of anachrony in biblical composition, see Harris, “Literary Hermeneutic of Rabbi Eliezer,” 164–72.

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Redaction and Composition In drawing upon similarities between R. Joseph Kara and R. Eliezer of Beaugency in their understanding of the structure of Isa 1–12, it is at the same time important also to distinguish between them. That distinction is to be found in their different understanding about the party responsible for Isaiah’s arrangement and structure. Unlike Kara, Eliezer explicitly assigns the responsibility for the arrangement as well as the composition of Scripture to a redactor, not to the prophet himself. The term that Eliezer employs to describe this figure is rpws, one of the terms used by Rashbam before him.38 Let us examine one example from the chapters of Isaiah under present consideration in which Eliezer draws upon his understanding of redaction in order to call attention to a compositional feature of Scripture. Throughout his extant commentaries Eliezer observes that Scripture often makes a summary statement at the beginning of a narrative and then elaborates below. In concluding his commentary on 7:2, he writes: “but as for the redactor, his way is to relate at the beginning of his words the general content of the matter briefly … and then later make the matter explicit.” In 7:2 the narrator begins to relate a story about the Syro-Ephraimite invasion of Judah: “Now, when it was reported to the House of David that Aram had allied itself with Ephraim, their hearts and the hearts of their people trembled as trees of the forest sway before a wind.” Verses 8–10 relate the story. However, the previous verse (7:1) summarizes the entire narrative, without the details that the rest of the chapter provides: “In the reign of Ahaz son of Jotham son of Uzziah, king of Judah, King Rezin of Aram and King Pekah son of Remaliah of Israel marched upon Jerusalem to attack it, but they were not able to attack it.” This first, summary verse is related in standard prose, intended to narrate a completed action sequence. Thus, 7:2–9 narrate action that occurred prior to the completed events narrated in 7:1. In glossing the verse, Eliezer expresses his awareness of a distinctive feature in biblical composition. This type of reading seems to show the influence of the ancient rabbinic rule of interpretation, +rpw llk (“a general statement and a specific statement”).39 In assessing the importance of rabbinic antecedents in the methodology of the medievals in general and Eliezer in particular, one may especially see the influ-

38. Examples may be found in Rashbam’s commentary on Gen 19:37 and in R. Eliezer’s commentary on Isa 36:1; Ezek 1:1; and Jonah 1:10. See Harris, “Literary Hermeneutic of Rabbi Eliezer,” 208–21. 39. In legal contexts, the rabbis considered the rule restrictively, whereas Eliezer applies the rule in narrative contexts simply to illuminate that a general descriptive statement is often followed by a series of particular statements that supply narrative detail.


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ence of the thirteenth rule of the “thirty-two rules.” This rule, which seems like a modification of the “general statement, specific statement” rule particularly for narrative contexts, states: “(the narrative portions of Scripture may be interpreted according to) an overview that is followed by a story, and which (story) is itself only a detailed accounting of the first.” According to this particular rule, then, Eliezer’s comment on 7:2 is indeed apropos: “Aram had allied: ‘The kingdom of Aram has allied and joined with Ephraim, and they have made an alliance against you.’ Now they had not yet attacked him, but the redactor’s method is to relate at the beginning of his words the main topic of the matter in abbreviated form.” This is an example in which Eliezer, like some of his northern French predecessors, seems to adapt one of the “thirty-two rules” as an aid in determining the meaning and structure of biblical literature.40 Eliezer frequently employs this “summary and elaboration mode” in his analysis of biblical composition.41 At times the keen insight displayed by these exegetes goes far beyond the merely formal literary observations and moves into the overtly rhetorical. An example of this may be found in the commentary of Joseph Kara on 1:18: And so it is the way of the prophets to include themselves in the rebuke with which they rebuke Israel. For they do not say, “correct yourselves,” but rather include themselves among them and say, “let us correct ourselves.” Thus Hosea says, Come, let us return to the Lord (6:1). He does not say, “Go return to the Lord,” but rather, Come, let us return. He does not say, “Know, pursue the knowledge of the Lord” but Let us know, let us pursue the knowledge of the Lord (6:3). And so, too, do they all include themselves in the rebuke, in order to make their rebuke agreeable to their audience.

Here the lesson is rather straightforward: in order more readily to convince the people to listen to the prophetic rhetoric, to make the prophetic rhetoric ever more effective, the prophets have “included themselves” in their own addresses to the people. Thus he shows his willingness to consider not only what a prophet’s message is but how the message is to be rendered effective. In addition, Kara points to a rhetorical phenomenon that he claims to find with great frequency throughout prophetic literature. That phenomenon is, simply put, Scripture’s tendency to follow a prophetic rebuke with a prophetic consolation. Moreover, that consolation is intended to heal or bring comfort 40. Eliezer regularly interprets according to various of the “thirteen rules” or the “thirty-two rules.” See, e.g., his commentary on Isa 37:25; Ezek 39:10; 40:9. For historical precedents in using these treatises for exploring medieval attention to compositional issues, see Steiner, “Jewish Theory of Biblical Redaction,” 127. 41. See Harris, “Literary Hermeneutic of Rabbi Eliezer,” 157–64.

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to the specific wound caused by the rebuke and/or the attendant punishment. Finally, even when the rebuke is not followed immediately by a consolation, but there is interposed between them some nonrelated material, one should still see the consoling message as a response specifically to the preceding rebuke. A representative example of Kara’s observation is found in the continuation of his commentary on Isa 1:18: Let it be known to you! This attribute is followed throughout Scripture: In every place that you find rebuke in Scripture, and at the conclusion of the rebuke there is an interruption that we call in Old French prygma,42 and the context that follows it speaks of consolation, do not let your heart distract you and drive you far from the context that follows the interruption from the context of what had preceded it, (just) because you found an interruption there. For the context of what follows comes for no other reason than to bind up the wound of (the rebuke) that preceded it and to heal the bruise of the wound. I will explain this (with regard to) a few examples, and these few (must suffice) to teach about the multitude of other cases.…43 So, too, here: since Scripture related above, with regard to the context of your hands are filled with blood (1:15), and concluded the rebuke and (then) interrupted (the prophetic discourse with a new subject); and then returned to say, Be your sins like crimson, they will turn white as snow (1:18), know and understand that this matter is connected to the context above. (It’s as if to say) “they can be whitened, those hands that with blood were filled.” And the interruption that is between (the two sections)44 served to interrupt between rebuke and consolation. Juxtaposed (contexts) are forever, they are made with truth and equity45 (Psalm 111:8); let your heart turn not aside, and “no evil shall befall you.”46

42. Kara transliterates this French term into Hebrew as )mgyrp, perhaps related to modern French fragmenter via the Latin fragmentum; this yields the meaning “fragmented” (separated, held apart). If this is incorrect, my colleague Alan Cooper suggests the following alternative: “The term prygm’ in the sense of a ‘break’ or ‘hiatus’ is found in the Masora. The likely etymology [may be] Greek r9h=gma, which is a ‘break’ or ‘tear.’ … I don’t know if it occurs anywhere else as a la’az” (Alan Cooper, personal communication; 23 October 2003). The source for this judgment is to be found in Christian D. Ginsburg, Introduction to the Massoretico-Critical Edition of the Hebrew Bible (New York: Ktav, 1966), 547; see n. 4. I am most grateful to Professor Cooper both for the proposed etymology and for the reference to Ginsburg’s Introduction. 43. R. Joseph cites several texts as additional examples of the phenomenon (Isa 3:16–18; 4:1– 2; and Ezek 17:2–5, 9, 22–23). 44. I.e., the exhortations found in vv. 16–17. 45. R. Joseph’s is a highly creative, idiosyncratic reading; my translation is intended to clarify how he is applying the verse from Psalms to the rhetorical device he has illuminated in prophetic literature. 46. See Ps 91:10.


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Thus, Kara considers this chapter to contain a parade example of the phenomenon he has described: prophetic rhetoric invariably dictates that a rebuke be followed by a consolation. Indeed, within only the twelve chapters under consideration here, Kara finds several additional examples of this pattern. In his comment on Isa 4:2, Kara further refines the compositional principle that he has described in the previous examples, stating that not only is this pattern followed but that there is often (lit. “in every place”) an exact correlation between the nature of the rebuke and the nature of the consolation: The following is one of the principles by which Scripture is explicated: in every instance in which you find that the text speaks of retribution for the wicked, and within that context (lit. “close by”) you read of the reward granted to the righteous, it is always the case that the form/pattern of the infliction of the retribution that you read with regard to the wicked, you will find “close by” with regard to the granting of reward to the righteous.

As Kara makes clear in the remainder of his comment, the rebuke that precedes the consoling message that begins in 4:2 is found immediately beforehand, in 3:18; in particular, Kara is moved to make the association because of the repetition of the word tr)pt, “glory” or “beauty,” in both verses. Like Joseph Kara before him, Eliezer of Beaugency occasionally pays attention to the formal and the aesthetic. In his comment on Isa 5:1 (“Let me sing for my beloved a song of my lover about his vineyard”), Eliezer prefaces his actual commentary by addressing the implications to be derived from the form of the composition: It is the way of prophets, when they want to have their words enter the heart of the people, they attract their hearts by speaking their words by way of poetry and allegory (or “figurative language”).47 Moreover, the poem Ha’azinu (Deut 32) proves the case, in that it is nothing other than rebuke and admonishments, and yet it is called a “poem” (in 31:30). And the reason is that by way of poetry that is placed in their mouths, the words shall enter their hearts.

Thus Eliezer intuits rhetorical purpose in the form of biblical discourse: poetic form can enhance the religious message. In general, neither R. Joseph Kara nor R. Eliezer of Beaugency explicitly frames his comments on Scripture within either an ancient or contemporary religious message. However, whether attributing the final state of the text to prophetic authors or to redactors, both exegetes find a high degree of literariness in biblical composition. 47. Or, “metaphor.” See Adele Berlin, Biblical Poetry through Medieval Jewish Eyes (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1991), 34.

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Conclusion The various compositional and rhetorical dimensions discerned in Isa 1–12 by the northern French rabbinic exegetes that have been surveyed here do not by any means exhaust their observations. In particular, I have not even presented here Eliezer of Beaugency’s awareness of parallelism as the guiding structural principle of biblical poetry.48 We have concentrated on the writings of Joseph Kara and Eliezer of Beaugency, two twelfth-century northern French rabbinic exegetes whose commentaries reflect a perceptive understanding of the nature of biblical literature. We have seen that they attempted to determine the plan according to which the book of Isaiah was organized. Moreover, with regard to what may be termed “general principles of biblical poetics,” these northern French exegetes demonstrated acute awareness of compositional technique. Above all, the commentators were dedicated to the notion that Scripture ought to be interpreted according to its own norms, without regard for the authoritative interpretations that had been sanctioned by the ancient rabbis in the talmudic and midrashic literature. Although we have considered only comments relating to the first twelve chapters of Isaiah, there is no question that this material is representative of the approach of these exegetes to the book as a whole. Select Bibliography Berlin, Adele. Biblical Poetry through Medieval Jewish Eyes. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1991. ———. “On the Use of Traditional Jewish Exegesis in the Modern Literary Study of the Bible.” Pages 173–83 in Tehillah Le-Moshe: Biblical and Judaic Studies in Honor of Moshe Greenberg. Edited by Mordechai Cogan, Barry L. Eichler, and Jeffery H. Tigay. Winona Lake, Ind.: Eisenbrauns, 1997. Brin, Gershon. Studies in the Exegesis of R. Joseph Kara [Hebrew]. Tel Aviv: University of Tel Aviv, 1990.

48. I have investigated this topic in my monograph, Discerning Parallelism: A Study in Northern French Medieval Jewish Biblical Exegesis (BJS 341; Providence, R.I.: Brown University, 2004). For now, one example must suffice. In considering the rhetorical dimension of biblical parallelism in his commentary on Isa 3:8, Eliezer calls the reader’s attention to the tendency of Scripture to resort to repetition for emphasis: “It is the way of all Scripture in a multitude of places that when it wants to give emphasis to its words, it repeats them and (thus) gives them emphasis.” (See also Eliezer’s commentary on the threefold repetition of the word #wdq in Isa 6:3.) Joseph Kara exhibits no awareness of the parallelistic principle.


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Cohen, Menahem, ed. Mikraot Gedolot ‘Haketer’: A Revised and Augmented Scientific Edition of ‘Mikraot Gedolot’ Based on the Aleppo Codex and Early Medieval Mss: Isaiah [Hebrew]. Ramat Gan: Bar Ilan University, 1996. Friedländer, M., trans. and ed. The Commentary of Ibn Ezra on Isaiah. New York: Feldheim, 1964. Gelles, Benjamin J. Peshat and Derash in the Exegesis of Rashi. Études sur le judaïsme médiéval 9. Leiden: Brill, 1981. Grossman, Avraham. The Early Sages of France: Their Lives, Leadership and Works [Hebrew]. Jerusalem: Magnes, 1995. ———. “The School of Literal Exegesis in Northern France.” Pages 321–71 in The Middle Ages. Vol. 1, Part 2 of Hebrew Bible/Old Testament: The History of Its Interpretation. Edited by Magne Saebø. Gottingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2000. Harris, Robert A. “The Literary Hermeneutic of Rabbi Eliezer of Beaugency.” Ph.D. diss., Jewish Theological Seminary, 1997. ———. “Medieval French Biblical Interpretation.” Pages 2045–61 in Encyclopaedia of Judaism, vol. 5, supplement 2. Edited by Jacob Neusner, Alan Avery-Peck, and William Scott Green. Leiden: Brill, 2004. Holtz, Barry, ed. Back to the Sources: Reading the Classic Jewish Texts. New York: Summit Books, 1984. Japhet, Sara. “Major Trends in the Study of Medieval Jewish Exegesis in Northern France.” Trumah 9 (2000): 43–61. Kamin, Sarah. “Rashi’s Exegetical Categorization with Respect to the Distinction between Peshat and Derash.” Immanuel 11 (1980): 16–32. Littman, M. Josef Ben Simeon Kara als Schrifterklarer. Breslau: Schottlaender, 1887. McAuliffe, Jane Dammen, Barry D. Walfish, and Joseph W. Goering, eds. With Reverence for the Word: Medieval Scriptural Exegesis in Judaism, Christianity and Islam. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002. Simon, Uriel. “Ibn Ezra between Medievalism and Modernism: The Case of Isaiah XL–LXVI.” Pages 257–71 in Congress Volume: Salamanca, 1983. VTSup 36. Leiden: Brill, 1983. Steiner, Richard C. “A Jewish Theory of Biblical Redaction from Byzantium: Its Rabbinic Roots, Its Diffusion and Its Encounter with the Muslim Doctrine of Falsification.” JSIJ 2 (2003): 123–67. Online: http://www.biu.ac.il/JS/ JSIJ/2-2003/Steiner.pdf.

The Suffering Servant and Job: A View from the Sixteenth Century Alan Cooper

Introduction It would be presumptuous at best, foolhardy at worst, to venture a new interpretation of the Servant Song in Isa 52:13–53:12. So I propose instead to do the next best thing—to revive an old one. Although it may be found in a book that has been in print continuously, in at least six separate editions, since it was first published in 1583, it has attracted practically no scholarly interest. It is mentioned in passing in two nineteenth-century works: in a passage in Samuel David Luzzatto’s Isaiah commentary, which is then quoted in Driver and Neubauer’s compendium of interpretations of the Servant Song (although the latter misstates the name of the author). Yet despite the fact that it has attracted such scant attention, I suggest that it retains considerable interest, and not merely as an artifact of the history of interpretation. When modern scholars refer to medieval Jewish commentary, they usually draw on the “literalist” (+#p) commentary of the tenth–thirteenth centuries, beginning with Saadia Gaon in the tenth century, passing through Rashi, Rashbam, and Abraham ibn Ezra in the eleventh and twelfth, and culminating with David Kimchi and Ramban (Nahmanides) in the thirteenth. The commentaries of Rashi, Ibn Ezra, and Ramban remain at the center of traditional Jewish Bible study and are reprinted in every edition of the Hebrew Bible with commentaries (the “Rabbinic Bible,” or twlwdg tw)rqm).1

1. For comprehensive surveys of the various schools of early medieval Jewish commentary, see Magne Saebø, ed., The Middle Ages (vol. 1, part 2 of Hebrew Bible/Old Testament: The History of Its Interpretation; Göttingen: Vandenhoek & Ruprecht, 2000), 261–466. On the French literalists (including Rashi and Rashbam), see Robert A. Harris, “Biblical Interpretation, Medieval French,” in The Encyclopaedia of Judaism, vol. 5, supplement 2 (ed. J. Neusner et al.; Leiden: Brill, 2004), 2045–61.

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These early medieval commentators, of course, are hardly the end of the story. The late thirteenth century saw the rise of a new style of commentary. The emphasis on +#p was displaced by a commingling of exegesis with homily, kabbalistic speculation, philosophy, and talmudic scholarship, giving rise to eclectic and prolix works that sometimes hardly look like commentaries at all. The first great example of this eclectic style is Bahya ben Asher’s Torah commentary, written around 1300, and commentaries of that sort appear regularly thereafter. As Isadore Twersky has written, such works “are fraught with difficulties for the researcher—repetitiousness, inconsistency, allusiveness and the constraints, as well as the inducements to interpretive tours de force, implicit in textual exegesis.”2 Salonika was a lively center of biblical commentary in the sixteenth century. Once the Thessalonica of the apostle Paul’s journeys, and today Thessaloniki in northern Greece, it was from 1430 to 1912 a part of the Ottoman Empire. As twenty thousand Jewish refugees from the Inquisition flocked to the city, it became, according to one charming description, “a veritable Tower of Babel on account of the various languages that were spoken in it.”3 Undoubtedly one of the most important venues of Jewish intellectual life in Salonika was the yeshiva of Joseph Taitazak (ca. 1465–1545?), which flourished between 1525 and 1540. Taitazak, who was born in Castile and had come to Salonika by way of Portugal, was vividly (and apparently accurately) described as “a plastered cistern that lost not a drop—Joseph, sustainer of his entire people, master of all intellectual disciplines, the perfect sage.”4 While few of Taitazak’s own exegetical writings have survived, his influence is acknowledged in the works of his students and followers, including Isaac Adarbi, Solomon Alkabez, Moses Almosnino, Moses Alshekh, Isaac Arollia, Joseph Caro, Samuel de Medina, and the subject of this paper, Eliezer Ashkenazi.

2. Isadore Twersky, “Introduction,” in Jewish Thought in the Sixteenth Century (ed. B. Cooperman; Cambridge: Harvard University Center for Jewish Studies, 1983), xiii. 3. Salomon A. Rosanes, Divrei yemei Yisrael be-Togarmah (Husiatyn/Sofia/Tel-Aviv, 1907–45), 2:18–19. The general information about Salonika and Ashkenazi in this paper is adapted from my article, “An Extraordinary Sixteenth-Century Biblical Commentary: Eliezer Ashkenazi on the Song of Moses,” in The Frank Talmage Memorial Volume (ed. B. Walfish; Haifa: Haifa University Press, 1993), 1:129–50. 4. So Solomon b. Shem-Tov Attia, in the introduction to his father’s Psalms commentary, in Joseph Hacker, ed., Megorashei Sefarad ve-tse’etsa’eihem ba-imperyah ha-Uthmanit (Jerusalem: Akademon, 1966), 102 (with allusions to m. Avot 2:8 and Gen 42:6).

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Eliezer b. Elijah Ashkenazi’s Ma’asei Adonai Eliezer b. Elijah [the Physician] Ashkenazi was born in 1513. In 1539, after completing his studies in Taitazak’s academy, he emigrated to Egypt, where he served as rabbi for twenty-two years. When a political dispute forced him to leave Egypt, he began a series of travels that took him to Famagusta (Cyprus), Venice, Prague, Cremona, and several communities in Poland, where he died in 1586. Although Ashkenazi was a distinguished Talmudist whose prominence, during his lifetime, was comparable to that of Joseph Caro and Moses Isserles,5 what modicum of fame he possesses today rests on his book, Ma’asei Adonai (the title drawn from Ps 111:2), a four-part commentary on the narrative portions of the Torah that he composed for the benefit of his son Elijah. This work was completed in Gniezno (Poland) in 1580, and it was first printed in Venice in 1583.6 The gist of the work is contained in the introduction, where a fundamental tension emerges. It reflects the sixteenth-century struggle between rationalism and apologetic that is typified by Azariah de Rossi’s Me’or Einayim, a work that Ashkenazi admired.7 At the heart of the problem is the nature and purpose of biblical stories. According to Ashkenazi, the events narrated in the Torah actually occurred (l(wpb wyh), but the stories that recount those events are parables (Myl#m). The plain sense (+#p) of the text, then, abides in the significance of the parables ( l#mn), not in the events as such. The stories were composed this way “so that our intellects, which are caught in the thicket of corporeality, might acquire some instruction from the significance of those events” (4b). And thus they differ markedly from the parables of the prophets and the sages, most of which are “fabrications.”

5. In Louis Ginzberg’s judgment, “Though Ashkenazi can scarcely be said to have exercised an influence either on his own or on later times, his personality was an extraordinary one for that age. He may be called the last survivor of a most brilliant epoch in the history of the Sephardim” (“Ashkenazi, Eliezer,” JE 2:196). For an appraisal of Ashkenazi by one of his contemporaries, see the flattering description by Elijah of Pesaro in Judah D. Eisenstein, ed., Otsar Massa’ot (New York: Eisenstein, 1926), 170. 6. I have consulted the following editions: Venice, 1583; Lublin (Cracow?), 1584 (?); The Hague, 1777; Zolkiev, 1802; Lemberg (Lvov), 1858 (the second of three printings of this edition); Warsaw, 1871 (much reprinted, most recently Jerusalem: Otsar ha-sefarim, 1987). The page references in parentheses in the body of the paper refer to the Warsaw edition, which is the most easily accessible. 7. See Robert Bonfil, “Some Reflections on the Place of Azariah de Rossi’s Meor Enayim in the Cultural Milieu of Italian Renaissance Jewry,” in Cooperman, Jewish Thought in the Sixteenth Century, 23–48. On Ashkenazi’s opinion of de Rossi, see 27–28. De Rossi, for his part, called Ashkenazi “the greatest of his generation” (Meor Einayim [ed. D. Cassel; 3 vols.; Vilna: Romm, 1866], 1:124).

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After a lengthy discussion of this matter, Ashkenazi concludes with what I read as a disingenuously dogmatic statement—one that he will reiterate as a virtual leitmotif throughout Ma’asei Adonai: I have introduced all of this for you, O intelligent one, in order to flee from “the scourge of the tongue” [Job 5:21]—lest, when you find me describing some story in the Torah as a parable, you think ill of me and say, “His intention, God forbid, is to say that the event never occurred, but was told exclusively as a parable.” But it is unthinkable, God forbid, that the things that came forth from God’s mouth—that He said and Moses wrote—did not actually occur. Of course they did, but the Divine Wisdom decreed that they be construed as parables. (5a)

If, however, the parable actually manifests the plain sense of the story—which is Ashkenazi’s position—there is not much to be gained from insisting on the story’s literal truth. The best Ashkenazi can do is to claim that parables drawn from life are more effective than those that are wholly invented (4a). Ashkenazi’s greatest homiletical tour de force, in my judgement, comes in the middle of his commentary on the Song of Moses, Deut 32. He begins with an explanation of a well-known talmudic saying: An intelligent person ought to be puzzled by what the rabbis said in [b. B. Bat. 14b]—namely that “Moses wrote his book, the book of Job, and the Balaam pericope.” If “his book” means the Torah, then it would include the Balaam pericope. Even if it means some other book, how can it be said that [Moses] wrote the Balaam pericope? Is it not well known that Moses wrote out the Balaam pericope from divine dictation, just like the rest of the Torah? (86b)

Ashkenazi raises several critical issues here, of which I would single out two. In the first place, the rabbinic statement seems at first glance to contain a redundancy. Second, what is it about these three particular works that would lead the rabbis to ascribe them all to Moses? Ashkenazi settles the matter of redundancy with ease: Moses’ “book” refers not to the Torah in general but specifically to the Song of Moses; likewise, the “Balaam pericope” denotes not the whole story of Balaam but only “what [Balaam] prophesied concerning the coming of our Messiah and our exceedingly great destiny” (86b). The Balaam oracles and the concluding portion of Deut 32, then, share a common theme, and that justifies the attribution of both of them to Moses. As for Job, Ashkenazi argues that Moses wrote his Song in order to answer the great questions about divine justice and providence around which the whole book of Job revolves. To defend the rabbis’ assigning three seemingly disparate works to Mosaic authorship, Ashkenazi asserts their essential thematic unity: “Perhaps it is


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because in these few verses [of Deut 32] Moses answered and removed all of the questions that Job had asked … and wrote of the destiny of the Israelite nation of which Balaam had spoken, that the rabbis said, ‘Moses wrote his book and the book of Job and the Balaam pericope.’ ” And then he sets out in another direction, which will bring us, at last, to the Suffering Servant. He writes: Now you will also find that the rabbis said that Job was only created as a symbolic figure. In other words, he was a symbol for Israel as a consolation for them, in that first he prospered in every respect, then he was more abased than anyone who had gone before him, and finally he was raised up with his prosperity redoubled. So too the Israelite nation was once decidedly prosperous, then humiliated in this miserable exile. In the messianic age, their prosperity will be redoubled. So there you have it: the book of Job, the Balaam pericope, and the Song of Moses share a single concern, namely the coming of our Messiah. (86c)

The identification of Job as a “symbolic figure” (l#m) goes back to an assertion to that effect in b. B. Bat. 15a. This view of Job is idiosyncratic, as a perusal of the talmudic context and its parallels will demonstrate. 8 The Baba Batra version—“Job never existed and was created only as a symbolic figure”—is, however, the mildest of the rabbinic denials of Job’s existence (the parallels have either “never existed and never will exist” or simply “never existed”). Ashkenazi softens the blow even further, altering the thrust of the rabbinic statement in the process, by deleting the words “never existed”—true to his insistence on the actual occurrence of events depicted in Scripture. In the introduction to Ma’asei Adonai, in fact, Ashkenazi remarks that “even though Job was created as a symbolic figure … he really existed” (4c). In his rather novel view, “Job himself felt that he had been created as a symbolic figure, and he protested against this, saying, ‘He made me a symbolic figure for the people [Mym( l#ml yngychw] (Job 17:6a).’ ” Once Job is taken to be a symbolic figure, the question is, symbolic of what? One answer to that question, going back to the ancient midrash Lamentations Rabbati, is to identify Job with “the congregation of Israel” ( l)r#y tsnk). The midrash first identifies the anonymous “man who has seen affliction” of Lam 3:1 with Job and then equates both with the Jewish community. As the

8. Cf. y. Sotah 5, 20c–d; Gen. Rab. 57.3 (ed. J. Theodor and C. Albeck; 3 vols.; Jerusalem: Wahrmann, 1965), 2:614–18, with extensive annotation. For a survey of rabbinic and medieval interpretations of Job, see Nahum N. Glatzer, “The Book of Job and Its Interpreters,” in Biblical Motifs: Origins and Transformations (ed. A. Altmann; Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1966), 197–220; idem, “The God of Job and the God of Abraham: Some Talmudic-Midrashic Interpretations of the Book of Job,” Bulletin of the Institute of Jewish Studies 2 (1974): 41–57.

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eleventh-century Midrash Leqah Tov on Lam 3:1 puts it, “What befell Job also befell Israel, and Job was a symbol of Israel.” A more proximate source for Ashkenazi on this point is a collection of esoteric teachings by the early sixteenth-century mystic, Solomon Molcho, who was an important influence on Ashkenazi’s teacher. Molcho, like Ashkenazi, takes up the issue of Mosaic authorship of Job and concludes that the Balaam poems and the book of Job are alike in that they spell out the “punishments, torments, and trials, with which [Israel] will be tormented.” God created Job, he writes, “to be a symbol ( l#m) of what would befall Israel.”9 Job and the Suffering Servant Molcho makes no mention of Isaiah’s Suffering Servant. Yet for Ashkenazi the Servant Song in Isa 52:13–53:12 obviously shares the concern with Israel’s humiliation and redemption that he finds in the three Mosaic compositions. And it requires no special pleading on Ashkenazi’s part to take the servant to represent the community, since that interpretation is so well embedded in Jewish thought. The juxtaposition of Job with the much-controverted Isaiah passage launches Ashkenazi on a brilliant and original exegetical flight. In his words: Now I shall explain to you that the entire theme of the Isaiah passage, which Isaiah uttered as a consolation for Israel, is the messianic age. Before I begin let me remind you that from the scriptural references to “Noah, Daniel, and Job” [Ezek 14:14, 20], it clearly appears that Job lived between the destruction of the First Temple and the destruction of the Second Temple—in other words, at the very time [referred to in Isaiah’s prophecy]—because he is mentioned after Daniel. (86c)

The “historical” argument for the location of Job, based on the assumption that the names Ezekiel lists are in chronological order, is ingenious and unusual, and Ashkenazi couples it with an observation about the literary context of the Servant Song. He suggests that “careful examination” of the context in which the pericope in question occurs shows that it is preceded by a “consolatory announcement of our Messiah” (Isa 52:7–12). The passage that follows (that is, the “Servant Song” itself ) is “clearly” intended to “provide proof of the preceding announcement of redemption.” This “proof ” takes the form of a parable drawn from the life of Job, “who lived during those days” and who was “a symbol for the Israelite nation.” Thus it appears that the “servant” is to be

9. Solomon Molcho (ca. 1500–1532), Sefer ha-mefo’ar (Warsaw: Lebenzon, 1883), 32–35.


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identified with Job! To clinch the identification, Ashkenazi asserts, “Look, and you will discover that all of Isaiah’s words in this passage can be found precisely among the words of Job.” In order to confirm that last point, Ashkenazi puts on a virtuoso display of prooftexting, in which he finds a substantial intertextual relationship between Isaiah and Job. This relationship, in his view, invalidates other identifications of Isaiah’s “servant,” a few of which he cursorily reviews.10 As far as I know, Ashkenazi’s identification of the servant with Job is unique in Jewish literature.11 For that reason alone it merits close attention. Ashkenazi singles out eighteen texts for comparison; I present them in the same order as he does, and in each case I have emphasized the keyword(s) that justify the comparison: Isaiah

Job

52:13: Behold, my servant (ydb() will prosper.

1:8; 2:3; 42:7, 8: my servant (ydb() Job

52:14: Many were appalled (wmm#) at you.

21:5: Look at me and be appalled (wm#h).

52:14: His appearance was marred, unhuman.

2:12: When they saw him from a distance, they could not recognize him.

52:15: They shall look upon (wnnwbth) what they have not heard.

30:20: I wait, but you do not look upon (Nnbth) me.

53:1: Upon whom has the arm of the Lord been revealed?

[“God revealed himself to Job and told him of all His mighty acts.”]

10. Further discussion of those identifications is unnecessary in this context. See Samuel R. Driver and Adolf Neubauer, The Fifty-Third Chapter of Isaiah according to the Jewish Interpreters (2 vols.; 1877; repr. New York: Ktav, 1969), esp. the “Introduction to the English Translation” by E. B. Pusey, 2:xxix–lxv. Although there is passing reference to Ashkenazi, Driver and Neubauer do not include the relevant passage from Ma’asei Adonai in their anthology. 11. See Pusey, “Introduction,” lxi; Samuel D. Luzzatto, Peiush Shadal al Sefer Yeshaya (orig. Padua, 1845–97; corrected ed., Tel-Aviv: Dvir, 1970), 355 (English translation in Driver and Neubauer, 2:413, where Ashkenazi is referred to as Eliezer “the German”!).

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53:3: He was despised (hzbn), shunned by men.

31:34: The contempt (zwb) of families shatters me.

53:3: A man of suffering (twb)km)

2:13: His suffering (b)k) was very great.

53:6: The Lord has afflicted ((ygph) him.

7:20: Why make me the object of your affliction ((gpm)?

53:5: Crushed ()kdm) by our iniquities.

6:9: If only God wanted to crush (yn)kdy) me.

53:2: He had no beauty, that we should look upon (wh)rn) him.

7:8: The eye that looks upon (y)r) me will not see me.

53:3: As one who hid (rtsm) his face.

3:23: To the man whose way is hidden (hrtsn).

53:9: His grave (wrbq) was set among wicked.

17:1: My days have run out; the grave (Myrbq) awaits me.

53:9: Though he had done no injustice (smx )l).

16:17: For no injustice ()l smx) on my part.

53:9: And had spoken no falsehood (hmrm).

27:4: My tongue will utter no falsehood (hymr).

53:11: Out of the anguish ( lm() of his soul.

7:3: Nights of anguish ( lm() are allotted to me.

53:12: He exposed himself to death (twm).

7:15: I prefer strangulation, death (twm).

53:12: He was numbered among sinners (My(#p).

14:17: My sins (y(#p) are wrapped in a bundle.

53:10: He shall see offspring and have long life.

42:13, 16: [Job] also had seven sons and three daughters. Afterward, Job lived 140 years.

The ingenuity of these juxtapositions is considerable, although obviously some are more compelling than others (Isa 53:9//Job 16:17, for example, is often cited). I might note in passing that at least a couple of modern scholars also have noticed significant affinities between Job and Deutero-Isaiah. Édouard Dhorme takes up the issue in the introduction to his great commentary, although he emphasizes the differences between Job and Isaiah’s servant.


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Dhorme notes fewer correspondences than Ashkenazi and then remarks, “Merely by looking at the two sets of descriptions [i.e., of Job and the servant] it is impossible to conclude that there has been mutual influence”—precisely the opposite of Ashkenazi’s view.12 On a more positive note, Samuel Terrien devoted an important article to the relationship between Job and Second Isaiah, with a brief discussion of the Servant Song.13 In that discussion he notes some significant affinities, but then he comments, “the difference that separates Job from the Servant of Yahweh, however, remains very great.” Specifically, “the suffering of Job is devoid of all meaning, while that of the Servant is explained as a sin offering (Isa 53:10).” That observation leads him to conclude: Second Isaiah seems to offer a response to the questions about existence that are posed by Job. Both are acquainted with the agony of human existence, suffering, mortality, and the omnipotent God…. The verbal and thematic affinities that unite the two works are too numerous and, especially, too close to allow the hypothesis that they were formulated independently.

It goes without saying that Terrien was unaware that he had been anticipated by almost four hundred years. And it is disappointing that the most comprehensive studies of Deutero-Isaiah’s innerbiblical allusions, those of Moshe Seidel and Benjamin Sommer, respectively, neglect the relationship between Isaiah and Job altogether (although both are excellent in other respects).14 Just as interesting as Ashkenazi’s intertextual insight, in my view, is the homiletical use to which he puts that insight. The purpose of Isaiah’s servant poem, in his view, is to show that “although the Israelite nation is utterly abased, God will return them to their former heights and then some” (86c). And Isaiah’s proof, according to Ashkenazi, comes from Job: The words of Isaiah are those that the Holy One, Blessed be He, spoke to him in prophecy, and [Isaiah] repeated them verbatim: “Behold, my servant shall

12. Édouard Dhorme, Commentary on the Book of Job (trans. H. Knight; Nashville: Nelson, 1984), cliv–clvii. 13. Samuel Terrien, “Quelques remarques sur les affinités de Job avec le Deutéro-Esaïe,” in Hebraische Wortforschung: Festschrift zum 80. Geburtstag von Walter Baumgartner (VTSup 16; Leiden: Brill, 1967), 300–311. The quotations from the article are on 308–9, and the translations are mine. 14. Moshe Seidel, “Maqbilot bein sefer Yeshaya le-sefer Tehillim,” “Melitsot sefer mishlei be-fi Yeshaya,” and “Maqbilot-penim be-sefer Yeshaya u-ve-sefer Yirmiya,” all in Seidel’s Hiqrei miqra (Jerusalem: Mossad Harav Kook, 1978), 1–97, 98–108, and 109–21, respectively; Benjamin D. Sommer, A Prophet Reads Scripture: Allusion in Isaiah 40–66 (Stanford, Calif.: Stanford University Press, 1998).

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prosper” [Isa 52:13]. In other words, behold Job (already referred to as “my servant”), who was utterly abased, yet prospered and rose to the heights.… It is as if God gave the prophet a sign concerning the prosperity of the messianic age: once [Isaiah] saw Job’s prosperity redoubled, it would serve as a sign that Israel’s prosperity, too, would be redoubled. (86c–d)

Ashkenazi’s commingling of the respective fates of Job and Israel, in turn, allows him to dispatch two notorious theological problems—the apparently innocent suffering of Job and the seemingly vicarious suffering of Isaiah’s servant: “It was our sickness that he bore, our suffering that he endured” [Isa 53:4]. This means that because Job was created as a symbol of Israel, he bore all of our hardships and suffering. Then [Isaiah] says that we [mistakenly] “considered him plagued” [Isa 53:4] for his own iniquity, and not as a symbol. But that is not the way things were. Rather, “he was wounded for our sins, crushed for our iniquities” [Isa 53:5], for God had created him to be a symbol of the Israelite nation. (86d)

The suffering of Job is not innocent, then, nor is the suffering of the “servant” vicarious: both are parabolic and are intended to convey a message of hope to the Jews in their “miserable exile.” I might note, in passing, a modern parallel in the discussion of Job as the “image of an exiled people,” by Alonso Schökel and Sicre Diaz, as well as the notion of a collective Job or Job-community that has found favor among some liberation theologians.15 At this point Ashkenazi summarizes his argument and explains why he has developed it at such length: Now it should be clear to you that Isaiah uttered this whole passage in relation to Job—who was, as we said, created to be a symbol of Israel—so that what befell Job would serve as a sign of the good tidings in store for Israel. And I have explained it at such length “because I was vexed by the wantonness” [Ps 73:3] with which [the Christians] have sought to interpret it in accordance with their faith. (86d)

15. See Luis Alonso Schökel and J. L. Sicre Diaz, Job: Comentario teológico y literario (Madrid: Ediciones Cristiandad, 1983), 76, for discussion of Job as the “image of an exiled people” (“imagen del pueblo desterrado”). For an interesting corporate interpretation of Job, see Enrique Dussel, “The People of El Salvador: The Communal Sufferings of Job,” in Job and the Silence of God (ed. C. Duquoc and C. Floristán; Concilium 169; Edinburgh: T&T Clark, 1983): 61–68. In his introduction, Dussel remarks, “Job can equally be a person or a people. There can be a collective Job, a Job-community” (61).


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The polemic intent of the interpretation receives no more than that passing mention, for now Ashkenazi returns to the thematic unity of the three “Mosaic” compositions named in Baba Batra. He offers a bit of elaboration and praises the rabbis for their insight. Finally, he commends his own point of view: “By means of our method of interpretation, the difficulties in these scriptural passages have been resolved correctly. Furthermore, when you examine what those who pursue the plain sense say about them (not to mention the midrashim), assess it intelligently, and you will willingly come near to our way” (87a). Conclusion Ashkenazi’s amusing presumption does not diminish the value of his work, and I make no apology for bringing it to the attention of modern critical scholars. In my view, some of his solutions to hermeneutical and exegetical problems are still worth pondering. His comparison of Job with Isaiah’s Suffering Servant, in particular, combines a traditional exegete’s keen ear for innerbiblical intertextuality with a nascent historical-critical sensibility. He even seeks a social location for Isa 53 and Job in the exilic community’s crisis of faith. In truth, the intertextual relationship between Second Isaiah and Job does require a fresh examination. And whether such an investigation eventually reveals a relationship of mutual dependence (as Terrien proposed) or independent appropriation of common vocabulary and motifs, I do hope that the author of the study casts a nod in the direction of Eliezer Ashkenazi. Select Bibliography Cooper, Alan. “An Extraordinary Sixteenth-Century Biblical Commentary: Eliezer Ashkenazi on the Song of Moses.” Pages 129–50 in vol 1. of The Frank Talmage Memorial Volume. Edited by Barry Walfish. Haifa: Haifa University Press, 1993. Cooperman, Bernard Dov, ed. Jewish Thought in the Sixteenth Century. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1983. Driver, Samuel R., and Adolf Neubauer. The Fifty-Third Chapter of Isaiah according to the Jewish Interpreters. 2 vols. 1877. Repr., New York: Ktav, 1969. Glatzer, Nahum N. “The Book of Job and Its Interpreters.” Pages 197–220 in Biblical Motifs: Origins and Transformations. Edited by Alexander Altmann. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1966. Harris, Robert A. “Medieval French Biblical Interpretation.” Pages 2045–61 in Encyclopaedia of Judaism, vol. 5, supplement 2. Edited by Jacob Neusner, Alan Avery-Peck, and William Scott Green. Leiden: Brill, 2004.

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Saebø, Magne, ed. The Middle Ages. Vol. 1, Part 2 of Hebrew Bible/Old Testament: The History of Its Interpretation. Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2000.

“Becoming a Part of Israel”: John Calvin’s Exegesis of Isaiah Amy Plantinga Pauw

“Yet they who wish to become partakers of so great a benefit, must be a part of Israel, that is, of the Church, out of which there can be neither salvation nor truth.” — Commentary on Isaiah 49:7

Introduction The book of Isaiah has sometimes been called the fifth Gospel, because of Christian predilections for finding in it an account of the life and sufferings of Jesus Christ.1 The programmatic statements of John Calvin (1509–64), one of the most influential sixteenth-century Protestant exegetes, suggest that he too stood firmly in this christocentric exegetical tradition. “In the whole of Scripture,” Calvin insisted, Christians should seek “truly to know Jesus Christ, and the infinite riches that are comprised in him and are offered to us by him from God the Father. If one were to sift thoroughly the Law and the Prophets, he would not find a single word which would not draw and bring us to him.”2 In his commentary on John 10:39, Calvin put it even more strongly: “The Scriptures should be read with the aim of finding Christ in them. Whoever turns aside from this object, even though he wears himself out all his life in learning, will never reach the knowledge of the truth.”3

1. See John F. A. Sawyer, The Fifth Gospel: Isaiah in the History of Christianity (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996). I am grateful to Chris Elwood, Brian Gerrish, and Gene March for their helpful comments on an earlier draft of this essay. 2. John Calvin, “Preface to Olivétan’s New Testament (1535/43),” in Calvin’s Commentaries (ed. and trans. J. Haroutunian; LCC 23; Philadelphia: Westminster, 1958), 70. 3. John Calvin, The Gospel according to St. John (trans. T. H. L. Parker; 2 vols.; Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1959), 1:139.

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However, Calvin’s working hermeneutic was considerably more complex than his programmatic statements would suggest. When exegeting particular texts in Isaiah, Calvin was often wary of “finding Christ in them” too readily and found fault with Christian interpreters who did. While he argued strenuously that Isaiah did contain some christological references, by the standard of other Christian interpreters, both of the Reformation era and earlier, his approach appears restrained. Calvin’s resistance to what he regarded as inappropriate christological interpretations prompted some of his readers to label him a Judaizer. In 1593 Calvin was posthumously denounced by a member of the theological faculty of Wittenberg, Aegidius Hunnius, in a pamphlet entitled, “Calvin the Judaizer: Judaistic Glosses and Corruptions by Which John Calvin Did Not Fear to Corrupt the Clearest Passages of Sacred Scripture and Its Witness to the Glorious Trinity, the Deity of Christ and the Holy Spirit, including the Predictions of the Prophets concerning the Coming of the Messiah, His Birth, Passion, Resurrection, Ascension to Heaven, and Session at the Right Hand of God, in a Detestable Fashion.”4 Calvin’s exegeses of several passages from Isaiah were singled out for criticism.5 Even the sympathetic modern interpreter T. H. L. Parker can complain, “For page after page he can look like Calvinus Judaeus and then suddenly show that, in his voluntary exile among the men of the Old Covenant, living with them in shades and shadows, he has not forgotten the Sun of righteousness, who as he himself already knows, will in the future rise with healing in his wings.”6 This essay views Calvin’s “Judaizing” tendencies and his wariness about inappropriate christological exegesis of Isaiah more positively. In his treatment of Isaiah, Calvin did not present himself as someone “in voluntary exile” from the New Jerusalem. The “shades and shadows” of Isaiah’s time continued to linger over Calvin’s community. As Paul Wernle averred, “from Calvin’s point of view the newness of the Christian era can be only relative.”7 In his exegesis of Isaiah, Calvin made the sufferings and hopes of Israel come alive by showing how they resonated with his own community’s experience. Calvin’s candid wrestling with the tensions inherent in his approach to Isaiah remains

4. Translation following David L. Puckett, John Calvin’s Exegesis of the Old Testament (CSRT; Louisville: Westminster John Knox, 1995), 1. 5. Puckett (ibid., 21 n. 22) notes that Hunnius criticized, among other passages, Calvin’s exegeses of Isa 6:3; 40:3; 43:25; and 61:1. 6. Parker, Calvin’s Old Testament Commentaries, 7. 7. Paul Wernle, Calvin (vol. 3 of Der Evangelische Glaube nach den Hauptschriften der Reformatoren; Tübingen: Mohr, 1919), 273. My translation.

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instructive for contemporary Christian exegetes in their quest for honest and respectful relations with Jewish interpreters of Isaiah. This essay argues that Calvin’s exegesis of Isaiah was predominantly ecclesiocentric rather than christocentric.8 The church was at the center of Calvin’s exegesis of Isaiah in two distinct but related ways. First, Calvin’s exegesis was addressed to the church of his own time. In his role as interpreter of Scripture, Calvin was first of all a pastor, and there is no significant difference between his Isaiah commentaries and sermons in this regard. All his exegesis aimed to elucidate the scriptural text for the edification of the Christian community. Second, his understanding of the church was one of two pivots upon which the unity he discerned in the canon of Scripture turned, the other being the consistently gracious character of God. From Genesis to Revelation, the entire Christian canon concerns the relationship between God and God’s people. The God portrayed throughout Scripture is holy and gracious, tirelessly at work for the deliverance and spiritual transformation of believers. “The church” was Calvin’s favorite denotation for the Judeans of Isaiah’s time, reflecting his bedrock assumption that Israel stood in direct continuity with the Christian church of the New Testament and of Calvin’s sixteenth-century Geneva.9 Calvin preached two series of French sermons on Isaiah to his Genevan congregation, the first begun in 1546 and the second running from 1556 to 1559. The first set was not preserved. The second set was transcribed by Calvin’s secretary, Denis Raguenier, and after a series of misadventures is now partially available.10 Calvin also produced commentaries on Isaiah: a transcription of his Latin lectures on Isaiah published in 1551; a French translation published the following year; and his definitive Latin version, published in 1559. Calvin dedicated the last commentary to Queen Elizabeth I, claiming that he “bestowed

8. I am borrowing this distinction from Richard B. Hays, Echoes of Scripture in the Letters of Paul (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1989). Hays argues for the apostle Paul what I am arguing for Calvin: “his hermeneutical procedures do not ordinarily produce christological interpretations of particular Old Testament texts” (86). 9. Calvin’s warrant for calling Isaiah’s community “the church” was his conviction that the people of God in all times and places were linked by a single covenant of grace, mediated by Christ. This conviction was also the basis for his exhortations to “become a part of Israel.” 10. An account of the fate of the six volumes of Isaiah sermons transcribed by Raguenier is available in Bernard Gagnebin, “L’Histoire des Manuscrits des Sermons de Calvin,” in John Calvin, Sermons sur le Livre d’Esaïe: Chapitres 13–29 (vol. 2 of Supplementa Calviniana: Sermons inédits; ed. G. A. Barrois; Neukirchen-Vluyn: Neukirchener, 1961), xiv–xxviii. All English translations from the Supplementa Calviniana series are my own. In 1995 a cache of 243 sermons on Isaiah, including 87 previously unknown, was discovered in the library of the French Protestant Church in London. For an account of this discovery, see Max Engammare, “Calvin Incognito in London: The Rediscovery in London of Sermons on Isaiah,” PHS 26 (1996): 453–62.

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so much care and industry … that it ought justly to be reckoned a new work.” However, this seems to be a deferential overstatement: the differences from his previous Isaiah commentaries appear minor. The sources for this examination of Calvin’s interpretation of Isaiah will be his final commentary and his second set of sermons.11 In his preaching, as in his commentaries, Calvin worked through book after book of the Bible, a pericope at a time. One of his homiletic aims was a clear exposition of the text, which he carried out in a lively, interrogative style. His sermons contained more extended exhortation than his commentaries. As Calvin noted in his commentary on Isa 53:5, “Here we might declare many things about the fruit of the passion of Christ if we had not resolved to interpret rather than to preach.” But this contrast should not be drawn too far. Calvin’s Isaiah commentary is full of exclamations about the prophet’s “useful and highly consolatory doctrines.”12 What Calvin said in reference to his commentary on Romans applies to his Isaiah commentary as well: “I undertook it for no other purpose than to promote the common good of the church.”13 At the center of Calvin’s exegesis of Isaiah was the conviction that Isaiah’s words to the church of his day still brought consolation and challenge to Calvin’s community. His sixteenth-century church faced many of the same problems and temptations as the faithful of Isaiah’s time and trusted in the same gracious God. “We do not think,” Calvin insisted in a sermon on Isa 40:2–5, “that the prophet Isaiah only spoke for his nation and for those who lived in his time.”14 He frequently reminded his Genevan listeners that “we are not more virtuous or more excellent than our fathers”15 and so stand in need of the same assurance of God’s forgiveness and mercy. Thus Isaiah’s teachings were “as necessary or even more so” for the faithful of Calvin’s day.16 While Calvin believed that the salvation proclaimed by the prophet was accomplished in Jesus Christ,

11. English sources: John Calvin, Commentary on the Book of the Prophet Isaiah (trans. William Pringle; Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1948). Also John Calvin, Sermons on Isaiah’s Prophecy of the Death and Passion of Christ (ed. and trans. T. H. L. Parker; London: Clarke, 1956). Latin commentary: W. Baum, E. Cuniz, and E. Reuss, eds., Ioannis Calvini opera que supersunt omnia (59 vols.; Braunschweig, 1863–1900), vols. 36–37. French sermons: John Calvin, Supplementa Calviniana, vol. 2; and John Calvin, Sermons sur le Livre d’Esaïe: Chapitres 30–41 (vol. 3 of Supplementa Calviniana: Sermons inédits; ed. F. M. Higman et al.; Neukirchen-Vluyn: Neukirchener, 1995). 12. Calvin, Isaiah, 10:12. 13. Calvin, “Epistle to Simon Grynaeus on the Commentary on Romans,” in Calvin’s Commentaries (ed. and trans. J. Haroutunian; LCC 23; Philadelphia: Westminster, 1958), 75. 14. “Sermon on Isaiah 40:2–5,” in Supplementa Calviniana, 3:490–91. 15. Calvin, Isaiah, 48:13. 16. Supplementa Calviniana, 3:490–91.


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the continuing relevance of the book of Isaiah for Calvin’s community did not depend on the prophet’s direct references to Christ. In both his commentaries and sermons Calvin strongly identified himself with the prophet Isaiah. In general, as William McKane notes, Calvin “underestimates the difference between an Old Testament prophet who is claiming to speak the Word of God and so create Scripture, and a Christian minister whose teaching activity has the form of the interpretation of Scripture.”17 Parker draws attention to a sermon on Isaiah in which Calvin gave an account of how prophetic writings were produced, a description that paralleled Calvin’s own authorial process. We must note carefully what is put here, that, when the Prophets had proclaimed what had been ordained to them by God, they made, so to say, a summary, and it is from these that we have the prophecies. For Isaiah did not write down word for word everything that he had declared with his voice. It would have made it far too long to have assembled all the sermons and make books of them. But Isaiah collected the summaries. And this is how the other prophecies were made.18

Parker notes an important corollary to Calvin’s description: “the Biblical book was not necessarily written by the Prophet whose name it bears; for ‘there were scribes who collected the summaries and made from them the books now extant.’ ”19 Likewise, Calvin’s sermons and commentaries on Isaiah come down to us from scribal transcriptions of his lectures and sermons. In his crushing schedule of preaching and teaching it would have taken “far too long” for Calvin to write these all out longhand. But Calvin’s identification with Isaiah went further than modes of literary production. The book of Isaiah spoke acutely to the hopes and fears of Calvin’s small, beleaguered community of exiles. Commenting on Isa 33:20, Calvin lamented that not since the reign of Hezekiah have “the children of God … had a quiet habitation in the world.” “Even in the present day,” Calvin declared, “we lead an exceedingly wandering and uncertain life, are tossed about by various storms and tempests, are attacked by innumerable enemies, and must engage in various battles, so that there is scarcely a single moment that we are at rest.” Through the words of Isaiah, Calvin offered a message of grace and consolation to a community that knew persecution and exile. 17. William McKane, “Calvin as an Old Testament Commentator,” in Calvin and Hermeneutics (vol. 6 of Articles on Calvin and Calvinism; ed. R. C. Gamble; New York: Garland, 1992), 255. 18. Supplementa Calviniana, 3:15–16, cited in Parker, Calvin’s Old Testament Commentaries, 67–68. 19. Parker, Calvin’s Old Testament Commentaries, 68.

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The striking exception to this pattern of identification with the prophet is Calvin’s treatment of some of the prophecies of Second Isaiah. For example, since Calvin read the book of Isaiah as a historical unity, he marveled at the references to Cyrus in chapter 44: “Here ‘Cyrus’ was named long before he was born; for between the death of Manasseh, by whom Isaiah was slain, and the birth of ‘Cyrus,’ more than a century intervened.… These things ought therefore to be carefully observed, for they shew clearly that it was not by a human spirit that Isaiah spoke.”20 But despite what Calvin regarded as Isaiah’s unerring vision of future redemption, including its fulfillment in Christ, Calvin generally portrayed Isaiah as thoroughly enmeshed, as he was himself, in the historical realm, trusting God even when the promised redemption seemed nowhere in sight. Calvin and his Genevan church were, “so far as promise and fulfilment go, in the same experimental position as the Old Testament believers.”21 Calvin’s Exegetical Community A broad community of biblical interpretation framed and guided Calvin’s exegetical efforts. In the Reformation period, according to David Steinmetz, “There is no such thing as the Old Testament in itself abstracted from the religious communities in which it lives.”22 Calvin’s exegetical interlocutors can be divided into four groups, according to their allegiances to distinct religious communities: like-minded Protestant Reformers, Catholic opponents, more radical Reformers such as the Anabaptists and Michael Servetus, and Jews. The bearing of each group on Calvin’s exegesis of Isaiah will be examined in turn. Protestants

The European Reformation was a time of intensive study of the languages and texts of Scripture. By the time Calvin was writing his Isaiah commentaries, according to Parker, “the pioneering work had been done and there was a fairly solid body of material at his disposal—quite good texts of the Hebrew, Greek, and Latin Bible, some grammars and lexicons and concordances, and several ‘modern’ commentaries, besides those of the Church fathers which had

20. Calvin, Isaiah, 44:28. 21. Parker, Calvin’s Old Testament Commentaries, 46. 22. David C. Steinmetz, “John Calvin on Isaiah 6: A Problem in the History of Exegesis,” in Gamble, Calvin and Hermeneutics, 174–88 (185). This essay will follow Calvin’s use of the term “Old Testament,” since the more contemporary term “Hebrew Bible” would be anachronistic.


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been edited and printed.”23 A likely source for Calvin’s Hebrew lexicography is the 1539 Hebrew Lexicon by Sebastian Münster, a Basel Reformer, which was founded principally on the Book of Roots, a work by the medieval Jewish exegete David Kimchi. In 1534 Münster published an edition of the Hebrew Old Testament, with a Latin translation in parallel columns and with annotations largely taken from rabbinic commentaries. Parker asserts there can be little doubt that Calvin made use of this work.24 Calvin was sufficiently proficient in Hebrew to have supplied his own Latin translations of the text for his Isaiah commentaries and frequently discussed the correct translation of particular words. Calvin’s Protestant contemporaries Münster, Johannes Oecolampadius, Ulrich Zwingli, Martin Luther, Johann Brenz, and Sebastian Castellio had all published at least one edition of a commentary on Isaiah by the 1550s, with Wolfgang Musculus and Heinrich Bullinger to follow in the next decade.25 While remaining in basic continuity with earlier Reformation and medieval approaches to Isaiah, Calvin’s exegesis represents “a more textually, grammatically, and historically oriented hermeneutic.”26 Calvin did not follow the example of Protestant Reformers such as Luther and Oecolampadius, who often focused on the christological fulfillment of Isaiah’s prophecies to the virtual exclusion of their original, historical context. For example, in commenting on Isa 44:23, Sing, O Heavens, Luther exclaimed, “Having depicted Christ and having accomplished the exhortation to Christ, the prophet now begins to praise and give thanks for that gift.”27 Commenting on the same verse, Calvin made no mention of Christ, focusing instead on the original context: Isaiah “now exhorts the Jews to render thanksgiving, not only that they may testify their gratitude, but that their own expectation of deliverance may be strengthened.”28 McKane asserts that “Calvin’s christological exegesis of the Old Testament is mostly concentrated on texts which he supposes to refer to a Messianic figure of David’s line.”29 This left large portions of Isaiah in which Calvin judged it sufficient to

23. Parker, Calvin’s Old Testament Commentaries, 6. 24. Ibid., 5. 25. Steinmetz, “John Calvin on Isaiah 6,” 96. Also, T. H. L. Parker, preface to John Calvin, Sermons on Isaiah’s Prophecy of the Death and Passion of Christ (trans. T. H. L. Parker; Cambridge: Clark, 2002), 21–22. 26. Richard A. Muller, “The Hermeneutic of Promise and Fulfillment in Calvin’s Exegesis of the Old Testament Prophecies of the Kingdom,” in The Bible in the Sixteenth Century (ed. D. C. Steinmetz; Durham, N.C.: Duke University Press, 1990), 82. 27. Martin Luther, Luther’s Works: Lectures on Isaiah, Chapters 40–66 (vol. 17 of Luther’s Works; ed. H. C. Oswald; trans. H. J. Bouman; Saint Louis: Concordia, 1972), 117. 28. Calvin, Isaiah, 44:23. 29. McKane, “Calvin as an Old Testament Commentator,” 256.

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attend to the original historical context and to pursue an ecclesiocentric hermeneutic to demonstrate the passage’s relevance to his hearers. Calvin’s chosen style for writing commentaries also supported this historical orientation. As David Steinmetz notes, Calvin departed from Philip Melanchthon in commenting on each verse in a chapter and from Martin Bucer in keeping those comments relatively brief. He saved lengthy theological expositions for his Institutes of the Christian Religion, his extended theological catechism, so that they would not distract from the context and meaning of the passage under consideration. In the preface to his commentary on Romans, Calvin called his exegetical method “lucid brevity,”30 an approach Steinmetz judges to be “one of his principal contributions to the intellectual heritage of the Reformation.”31 Catholic Opponents

The decision to comment on each verse and to refrain from lengthy theological discussion in his commentaries made Calvin more attentive to context and less tempted to twist Scripture to serve particular theological ends. In both his commentaries and his sermons on Isaiah, Calvin frequently criticized Catholic opponents for this kind of exegetical license. For example, Calvin criticized the exegetical recklessness of those who read Isa 14:12–15 as an account of the fall of Lucifer rather than of the king of Babylon: “when passages of Scripture are taken up at random, and no attention is paid to the context, we need not wonder that mistakes of this kind frequently arise.”32 In a sermon on Isa 29:9–10, he condemned allegorical exegetes who treated Scripture as “a wax nose that one can turn this way and that as one wishes,” claiming that the main goal of such interpreters “is to give authority to their traditions.”33 As Brian A. Gerrish has noted, if more fanciful interpretation were allowed, “a sufficiently astute theologian could, without much difficulty, find any of the church’s beliefs hidden or symbolized in the most unlikely corners of both the Old and the New Testaments.”34

30. John Calvin, Commentaries on the Epistle of Paul the Apostle to the Romans (ed. and trans. John Owen; Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1947), xxiii. 31. Steinmetz, “John Calvin on Isaiah 6,” 176. See also Richard Gamble, “Brevitas et Facilitas: Toward an Understanding of Calvin’s Hermeneutic,” WTJ 47 (1985): 1–17. 32. Calvin, Isaiah, 14:12–15. 33. Supplementa Calviniana, 2:595. 34. Brian A. Gerrish, “The Word of God and the Words of Scripture: Luther and Calvin on Biblical Authority,” in The Old Protestantism and the New: Essays on the Reformation Heritage (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1982), 52.


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Calvin viewed this exegetical license as symptomatic of the shocking disregard for Scripture exhibited by his Catholic opponents. Commenting on Isa 48:17, the Lord thy God teaches thee profitably, Calvin launched into a tirade against “papists” who had the audacity to say that the reading of the Holy Scripture is dangerous and hurtful, in order to terrify unlearned persons from reading it. Shall they then accuse God of falsehood, who declares, by the mouth of the Prophet, that it is “profitable”? Do they wish us to believe them rather than God? Though they impudently vomit out their blasphemies, we certainly ought not to be dissuaded from the study of it; for we shall learn by actual experience with what truthfulness Isaiah spoke, if we treat the Holy Scriptures with piety and reverence.35

By their adherence to unbiblical doctrines and ceremonies, Calvin’s Catholic opponents undermined what was at the root of Calvin’s doctrine of scriptural authority: “the Bible’s absolute sufficiency as the Christian’s guide to belief and conduct.”36 By contrast, Calvin frequently appealed to Isaiah’s teaching in his sermons as a doctrinal and behavioral standard for his own congregation. Much work remains to be done on sixteenth-century Catholic commentators such as François Vatable and Laurenz Forer, who also wrote commentaries on Isaiah during the Reformation period.37 Calvin’s persistent animus against “papists” and “sophists” masks the influence humanist Catholic contemporaries such as Lefèvre and Erasmus had on his exegesis. However, his dependence on exegetes of the early church in his commentary on Isaiah was explicit. Although Calvin did not view Jerome’s Latin translation of Isaiah as definitive, he clearly had it at hand and referred to it from time to time in both agreement and puzzlement.38 Calvin also made positive appeals to the theology of early church figures such as Augustine, John Chrysostom, and Jerome in his Isaiah commentary. Hence his frequent polemical outbursts against his contemporary Catholic opponents’ exegesis and practice must be balanced by recognition of Calvin’s deep continuities with the larger Western Christian tradition.

35. Calvin, Isaiah, 48:17. 36. Gerrish, “Word of God,” 61. The focus of Gerrish’s discussion is Calvin’s doctrine of biblical authority, not his relations with Jewish and Catholic exegetes. 37. Vatablus, Biblia Sacra (Paris: Stephanus, 1539–45); Forerius, Commentarii in Esaiam (Venice, 1563). 38. See, for example, Calvin’s comments on Isa 39:5 and 41:14.

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Radical Reformers

Calvin’s continuing allegiance to this larger tradition is especially observable in his relation to Michael Servetus, a theologian executed in Geneva for heresy, and to Anabaptists. Calvin perceived in both a stiff challenge to his approach to biblical interpretation, and his enmity toward them strained his commitment to exegetical self-discipline. While his treatment of Isa 6 in his commentary is quite restrained, Calvin angrily appealed to this chapter in his Institutes of the Christian Religion in support of the doctrine of the Trinity against Servetus and other anti-Trinitarians.39 His denunciations of Servetus also occasioned the most vituperative passage in Calvin’s Isaiah sermons. Steeped in Jewish commentaries such as those by the medieval exegetes Rashi and Kimchi,40 Servetus rejected the long Christian tradition of reading Isa 53 christologically, insisting that Isaiah’s intended referent was Cyrus. Calvin stood firmly with the larger Western tradition here and demonstrated that his animus against this already-executed heretic was still very much alive: And that makes all the more accursed that devil Servetus, who was executed here. For he falsified and polluted the Bible when he said that all this was prophesied of Cyrus, a pagan and an idolator. He stripped our Lord Jesus Christ of what is peculiarly His own; and when Isaiah applied this as in a tableau, and when Jesus Christ was crucified, nothing could be more clear or patent. And that devil came along with such enormity as to strip our Lord Jesus Christ of all His worth and of His office; and he said it was a pagan who suffered for the people; when, indeed, Cyrus fought from ambition and out of avarice and bloodthirstiness and for gain. This is a terrible falsification of his beautiful prophecy; and in fact, the sense that that wretch invented had never before been thought of by a living creature. For although there were many heretics who flung themselves into perverting the teaching of Holy Scripture, they never went so far as that.41

It should be pointed out that when Calvin was not in such a vengeful mood, he himself could say quite similar things about Cyrus, finding in this “pagan” an amazing example of God’s mercy toward Israel. For example, commenting on Isa 45:1, Calvin remarked that Cyrus “discharged for a time the office of

39. Steinmetz, “John Calvin on Isaiah 6,” 177. John Calvin, Institutes of the Christian Religion (ed. J. T. McNeill; trans. F. L. Battles; Philadelphia, Westminster, 1960), 1.12.11, 1.13.23. 40. Salo Wittmayer Baron, “Calvin and the Jews,” in Ancient and Medieval Jewish History: Essays by Salo Wittmayer Baron (ed. L. A. Feldman; New Brunswick, N.J.: Rutgers University Press, 1972), 341. 41. Calvin, Sermons on Isaiah’s Prophecy, 111–12.


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Redeemer; for he both avenged the Church of God and delivered it from the Assyrians, who were its enemies.… This should lead us to observe how highly God values the salvation of the Church, because, for the sake of this single benefit, Cyrus, a heathen man, is called ‘the Messiah,’ or ‘the Anointed.’ ” In this context, Calvin was quite content to claim Cyrus as a redeemer of God’s people, one whom Isaiah properly recognized as God’s anointed. If Servetus challenged Calvin’s allegiance to traditional christological interpretations of Isaiah, the greatest challenge to Calvin’s ecclesial understanding of the unity of Scripture came from the Anabaptists. As William Klassen notes, Anabaptists were critical of the degree of ethical authority given to the Old Testament by Reformers such as Calvin and Bucer. Calvin’s refusal to break with traditional Catholic practices such as infant baptism, taking oaths, and holding public office and his recourse to Isaiah and other Hebrew writers for defending them were for the Anabaptists proof that the Old Testament was being used “as an attenuating ethical standard.” In their view, standards of the Christian life were to be drawn from the New Testament alone.42 Calvin strenuously disagreed with the Anabaptist attitude toward the Old Testament. In a sermon on Mic 1, Calvin termed it “an execrable blasphemy” to say that Christians do not need the prophets but have enough in the Gospels.43 Calvin perceived a moral parity between Christians and Old Testament believers. Christians needed to attend to the chastisements of Isaiah, Calvin insisted, because “our case is not different from that of the Israelites, and we are involved in the same blame with them.”44 In a sermon on Isa 26:14–19, following a litany of Israel’s corruptions, Calvin had this stinging advice for contemporary Christians who would claim moral purity: Here is what we should observe in the first place: not to imagine in this world a perfect Church, where there is an angelic holiness, as many fantasists would like to have, such a purity that there is neither vice nor stain; so that, when they see that there are imperfections, they leave the company of the faithful and want to make as it were a separate world. So that we are not seized by such pride, let us know that if we are in the midst of much corruption, God will protect us, as long as we proceed with caution and care.45

42. W. Klassen, “Old Testament,” in The Mennonite Encyclopedia: A Comprehensive Reference Work on the Anabaptist-Mennonite Movement (ed. C. J. Dyck and D. D. Martin; 5 vols.; Hillsboro, Kan.: Mennonite Brethren, 1955–90), 5:50–51. 43. John Calvin, Sermons sur le Livre de Michée (vol. 5 of Supplementa Calviniana: Sermons inédits; ed. J.-D. Benoît; Neukirchen-Vluyn: Neukirchener, 1964), 3. 44. Calvin, Isaiah, 9:13. 45. Supplementa Calviniana, 2:449.

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Here Calvin’s ecclesiocentric hermeneutic led him to affirm what George Lindbeck has described as “an Israel-like self-critical recognition of the possibilities of corruption and unfaithfulness of the community in which one deeply and unshakably participates.”46 Rather than seeing Christians as spiritually superior to the Israelites, Calvin affirmed an organic and moral connection between them, which meant that Christians had to take Isaiah’s chastisements for Israel’s communal sins to heart. Besides asserting the moral similarities between believers in Isaiah’s day and his own, Calvin also insisted against the Anabaptists that God’s covenant with Israel was the same one Christians trusted in. Isaiah’s community received more than God’s promises of material blessings. So he lashed out against “that rascal Servetus and certain madmen of the Anabaptist sect, who regard the Israelites as nothing but a herd of swine.” “The spiritual covenant was also common to the patriarchs,” he affirmed, “even though I know the Anabaptists will disdainfully consider it pointless and even ridiculous.”47 Calvin found again and again in Isaiah “the whole Gospel” that his community needed to hear: “an acknowledgment of our misery, poverty, and emptiness, that being sincerely humbled, we may fly to God, by whom alone we shall be perfectly restored.”48 Calvin was adamant that the people of God in Isaiah’s day “participated in the same inheritance and hoped for a common salvation with us by the grace of the same Mediator.”49 Jews

Jews are listed in the nineteenth-century index to Calvin’s Isaiah commentary as corrupters of Scripture and false interpreters.50 But this is a deceptively negative portrayal of Calvin’s attitude toward Jewish exegesis. In fact, various political and theological factors nudged Calvin toward a more positive view of Jews and their treatment of Scripture than he evidenced toward either the “papists” or more radical Reformers. Jews were considerably less of a threat to Calvin’s standing in Geneva than were these other groups. Salo Baron points out that Calvin does not seem to have advocated the use of violence against Jews as he did against Servetus and other radicals: “he seems to have been satisfied,

46. George Lindbeck, “The Gospel’s Uniqueness: Election and Untranslatability,” MT 13 (1997): 443. 47. Calvin, Institutes, 2.10.1, 7. 48. Calvin, Isaiah, 40:8. 49. Calvin, Institutes, 2.10.1. 50. See Calvin, Opera, 59:112–13, “Iudaei (cf. Israelitae).”


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on the whole, with keeping the Jews out of Geneva and with echoing the longaccepted anti-Jewish polemics.”51 In Calvin, traditional supersessionist theology stood in some tension with his views on God’s covenant with the Jews, and contradictions arose. For instance, he occasionally lapsed into traditional anti-Jewish construals, such as that the advent of Christ brought the displacement of the Jewish people by Gentile Christians. His comment on Isa 49:6 is an example of this supersessionism: “when the preaching of the Gospel produced hardly any good effect on the Jews, and when Christ was obstinately rejected by them, the Gentiles were substituted in their room.” Likewise, in commenting on Isa 65:1, Calvin insisted, God has good reason for rejecting and casting off the Jews. It is because they have profited nothing by either warnings or threatenings to be brought back from their errors into the right way. But that they might not think that the Lord’s covenant would on that account be made void, he adds that he will have another people which formerly was no people.

In these passages, the fullness of God’s promises to Gentiles in Christ implies the rejection of God’s people, the Jews. This displacement theology contradicts the ecclesiocentric hermeneutic that I have argued is central to Calvin’s exegesis of Isaiah. Within the framework of displacement, the “church” of Isaiah’s day is not continuous with the church of sixteenth-century Geneva. Christians are not grafted in to “be a part of Israel.”52 Instead, Israel is uprooted and cast off, and the Christian church is planted in its stead. More fundamentally, Calvin’s forays into supersessionism contradicted his overarching theology of grace. According to the logic of displacement, God is capable of “casting off unbelievers whom he formerly called to himself,” if they render themselves “unworthy of his grace.”53 But in Calvin’s more considered reflections, he recognized that no one is worthy of God’s grace: it comes as pure gift. As Calvin himself noted in his comment on Isa 37:35, God “will be their [the Jews’] defender, not because he finds any cause in them, but rather because he looks to himself, … that he may adhere firmly to his purpose not to cast away the posterity of Abraham which he adopted.”54 The source of stability and hope in Israel’s covenant relationship is divine steadfastness, not human merit. For Calvin, as Edmond Grin has insisted, 51. Baron, “Calvin and the Jews,” 349. Calvin’s anti-Jewish polemic is evidenced in his small treatise Ad quaestiones et obiecta Judaei cuiusdam Responsio (Calvin, Opera, 9:653–74). 52. Calvin, Isaiah, 49:7. 53. Ibid., 66:18. The original Latin for “render yourselves unworthy of his grace” is “indignos reddideritis eius gratia” (Calvin, Opera, 37:449). 54. Calvin, Isaiah, 37:35.

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all the good that the Lord has done for his people has always come from his sheer mercy. It is not for their merits that this people was chosen, elected. Their election, and all the bounty that accompanied and followed it, were acts of pure love. The Old as much as the New Testament, from their first to their last page, put us in the presence of grace, which alone can save us.55

Calvin generally respected Jewish exegesis more than that of his other opponents. Calvin’s venomous tirade against Servetus has already been cited, and McKane rightly asserts that Calvin’s “animus against Catholic exegesis is more powerful than that which operates against Jewish exegesis.”56 According to David Puckett, Calvin called David Kimchi “the most correct interpreter among the rabbis” and frequently relied on Jewish exegetical judgment “on details, especially the meaning or derivation of words.”57 Baron notes appreciatively Calvin’s exaltation of the law and his strong reaffirmation of the Jewish prohibition of imagery, adding, It is small wonder, then, that the disciples of Calvin in many lands so eagerly turned for enlightenment to the Old Testament. With the newly awakened humanist recognition of the relevance of the original language for the understanding of any text, Calvinist divines and scholars in many lands became some of the foremost Christian Hebraists of the following two centuries. Calvin’s own commentaries on the Old Testament, with occasional asides concerning certain Hebrew words, and his admission that the rabbinical interpreters of Scripture were strong in grammar if not in theology, could not help but stimulate among his disciples interest in the Hebrew Bible and its rabbinic exegesis.58

While the Jews were sometimes guilty, in Calvin’s view, of “unnatural readings” of the Old Testament, he shared their recognition of its preeminent role in guiding religious belief and practice. Calvin’s ecclesiocentric hermeneutic also provided a significant common ground with Jewish interpreters of Isaiah. Calvin’s references to “Jews” in his Isaiah commentaries and sermons are seldom negative. In the great majority of cases he used this term as a neutral description of the people of God in Isaiah’s time. Even when he was exegeting passages from Isaiah that harshly condemned the people of Judah, Calvin could almost always find a counterpart to their sins in the church of his day. In a sermon on Isa 29:9–10 Calvin found

55. Edmond Grin, “L’Unité des deux Testaments selon Calvin,” TZ 17 (1961): 175–86. My translation. 56. McKane, “Calvin as an Old Testament Commentator,” 251. 57. Puckett, John Calvin’s Exegesis, 23. 58. Baron, “Calvin and the Jews,” 350.


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this counterpart in the Catholic church. Just as “the Jews thought that they could never err because God had instituted the sacrifices and had promised to always be and abide there, … the papists now glory that their Church cannot err.” Calvin concluded that they were both guilty of “foolish arrogance.” 59 But more often, Calvin found Christian sins closer to home. In commenting on Isaiah’s denunciations of Judean blindness in 42:20, Calvin asserted, “We, therefore, who have so many and so illustrious examples set before us at the present day, ought to dread this judgment; for in many persons there will now be found not less blindness or obduracy than formerly existed among the Jews, and not more excusable.”60 Because of the continuity Calvin sought to establish between the Jews and the Christian community of his day, he very rarely used Isaiah’s reproaches of Israel as the basis for invidious comparisons between Jews and Christians. Negotiating Diverse Exegetical Loyalties Calvin thought it “highly desirable” that Christians “should constantly agree in [their] understanding of Scripture passages.” But he recognized that “there is no hope for such a thing in this life.” The best recourse is to aim “to make progress” in understanding the text, “disagreeing only for reasons which are honorable.”61 This dialectical relationship with the larger interpretive tradition was a source of tension in Calvin’s Isaiah commentary, especially concerning his approach to christological readings of the text. David Puckett aptly describes Calvin as “charting a middle course” between Jewish and traditional Christian exegesis—“one which betrays neither his historical sensitivities nor his theological commitments.”62 The exegetical tradition Calvin inherited, reaching back to the letters of Paul and the Gospel of Matthew, was strongly christological. This inheritance is reflected in Calvin’s programmatic statements about the interpreter’s task of “finding Christ” in Scripture. But Calvin had another, potentially conflicting, hermeneutical principle: “the only business” of the commentator “is to lay open the mind of the writer he has set out to explain.”63 This overarching rule proscribed fanciful exegesis that “finds” Christ when the mind of Isaiah was directed elsewhere. There were many texts in Isaiah for which Calvin declined to give a

59. Supplementa Calviniana, 3:595. 60. Calvin, Isaiah, 42:20. 61. Haroutunian, Calvin’s Commentaries, 76. 62. Puckett, John Calvin’s Exegesis, 18. 63. Haroutunian, Calvin’s Commentaries, 73.

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christological interpretation, even when he found himself in disagreement with the mainstream of Christian biblical interpretation. For example, in commenting on Isa 48:16, Not from the beginning have I spoken in secret, Calvin notes, “Commentators explain this passage in various ways. Many apply it to Christ, though the Prophet meant no such thing; but we ought to guard against violent and forced interpretations.” Calvin’s concern to interpret Isaiah for the common good of the Christian church did not legitimate torturing a text to extract a christological reading.64 He worried about a lack of “discernment and sobriety” among some Christian exegetes, both ancient and contemporary, who “turn Scripture this way and that” and “fool with it as though it were a game.”65 Responsible Christian exegesis for Calvin did not involve finding Christ in every text of the Old Testament. In the case of Isa 48:16, Calvin insisted “that Isaiah introduces God as speaking, in order to reproach the people with ingratitude.” Here was a reading that exhibited both the “lucid brevity” and the adherence to the plain sense of the text that Calvin thought characterized sound exegesis. At times Calvin had to be quite insistent in rejecting christological interpretations of Isaiah. Commenting on Isa 42:19, Who is blind, but my servant, Calvin noted some exegetes who identified this servant with Christ but concluded that “this has nothing to do with the Prophet’s meaning.” Isaiah was here criticizing the blindness of Israel’s religious leaders, and Calvin was quick to apply this to his own community: “Let us therefore learn, that the nearer we approach to God, and the higher the rank to which we are elevated, we shall be the less excusable.” Two verses later, commenting on Isa 42:21, Calvin noted that some commentators “mistake the meaning of the Hebrew word for righteousness,” mistranslating it as “the righteous one” and predictably referring it to Christ. Isaiah’s point, according to Calvin, was that God “was inclined to do good to his people … on account of his righteousness,” not on the basis of any human merit or worth. Christians should cull from this passage “the reason why the Lord bestows so many favours on his Church,” despite their obstinate sinning. Calvin’s reading of texts in Isaiah was not infrequently in line with Jewish interpretations, and here and there in his Isaiah commentary Calvin reflected a sensitivity to Jewish criticisms of far-fetched Christian exegesis. When Christians wrest christological allusions or invidious comparisons between the synagogue and the Christian church from Old Testament texts that do not support such readings, they “only succeed in increasing the obstinacy of the Jews,

64. See Calvin, Isaiah, 43:24, where Calvin argues that “they who explain this passage as referring to Christ torture the Prophet’s meaning.” 65. Haroutunian, Calvin’s Commentaries, 76.


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who perceive that the Prophet’s meaning is tortured.”66 Such Christian exegetical strategies were transparent attempts to stamp the book of Isaiah as belonging to the church and speaking to the Christian faith’s most cherished beliefs and hopes. But, in Calvin’s view, exegesis that tortured Isaiah’s meaning failed to edify the church and only confirmed Jewish convictions about the illegitimacy of Christian exegesis of the Old Testament. Calvin gave far more exegetical latitude to New Testament writers than to his contemporaries. Though he admitted that they could seem careless in their use of the Old Testament and sometimes twisted the meaning of texts to their own ends (faults for which Calvin chastised ordinary Christian exegetes) he bent over backwards to legitimate New Testament readings.67 For example, in commenting on Isa 64:4, Eye hath not seen a God besides thee, Calvin asserted, “The Prophet’s design unquestionably is, to celebrate God’s immense goodness, by relating the numerous benefits which he bestowed upon his people in ancient times.” Yet he noted that in 1 Cor 2:9 “it seems as though Paul had perverted the Prophet’s declaration to a purpose quite foreign to his design.”68 Paul even dares to add something to the text “of his own accord … for the purpose of explanation.” But Calvin rushed to Paul’s defense, insisting that “Paul applies this passage admirably to his reasoning and does not make an improper use of the statement made by the Prophet when he elevates above the world that peculiar grace which God bestows on his Church.”69 After all, “where shall we find a surer or more faithful interpreter than the Spirit of God of this authoritative declaration, which He himself dictated to Isaiah—in the exposition which He has furnished by the mouth of Paul.”70 Isaiah 6:9–10 is another good place to examine the pull of the New Testament tradition on Calvin’s exegesis. John F. A. Sawyer claims that “in almost every period of Church history this passage is repeatedly applied to the Jewish rejection of Christ.”71 Calvin begins by giving a characteristically ecclesiocentric, nonchristological reading of the text. God’s warning to Isaiah that “he will have to do with obstinate men, on whom he will produce little effect,” is “of perpetual use in the Church of God; for all who shall labour faithfully in the ministry of the word will be laid under the necessity of meeting with the same result. We too have experienced it more than we could have wished; but it has been shared

66. Calvin, Isaiah, 54:2. 67. See discussion in Puckett, John Calvin’s Exegesis, 98–100. 68. John Calvin, Commentary on the Epistles of Paul the Apostle to the Corinthians (trans. W. Pringle; Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1948), 107. 69. Calvin, Isaiah, 64:4. 70. Calvin, Corinthians, 108. 71. Sawyer, The Fifth Gospel, 121.

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by all the servants of Christ, and therefore we ought to endure it with greater patience.” Isaiah’s discouraging ministerial experience clearly struck a chord with Calvin, for his commentary continues this theme at uncharacteristic length: “Hence arises a most excellent and altogether invaluable consolation to godly teachers, for supporting their minds against those grievous offences which daily spring from the obstinacy of men, that, instead of being retarded by it, they may persevere in their duty with unshaken firmness.” Up to this point Calvin’s treatment of the text followed his usual practice of applying the sins of Isaiah’s people to the church of his own day and identifying with Isaiah as the beleaguered pastor of an ungrateful people of God. But Calvin could not pass by New Testament appeals to Isa 6:9–10 that approached the passage very differently. Calvin noted that “John quotes this passage as a clear demonstration of the stubbornness of the Jews.” Likewise, Paul’s appeals to this passage in Rom 11:8 and in the speech ascribed to him in Acts 28:25 also criticized “the wicked disposition” of the Jews. Calvin further noted that John read this passage christologically: “John says that Isaiah spake thus of Christ, when he had beheld his glory” (John 12:41). However, in the Acts speech, “Paul introduces the Spirit as speaking.” Calvin rectified this theological inconsistency by asserting that “Christ is not separate from his Spirit, and therefore Paul had good reason for applying this passage to the Holy Spirit.” Thus Calvin’s accommodation of New Testament readings of Isa 6:9–10 pushed his exegesis in more christological and anti-Jewish directions. His rule of interpreting Scripture in the light of other Scripture required that instances of intracanonical exegesis be approved, even when they conflicted with his ordinary exegetical inclinations. But it should be noted that Calvin presented himself, rather than John or Paul, as an appropriate exegetical model for his contemporaries to follow. Sometimes Calvin perceived exegetical bias among Jewish and Christian interpreters and felt compelled to take them both on. Commenting on Isa 45:15, Truly thou art a God that hidest thyself, Calvin rejected what “the Jewish writers commonly interpret it to mean, that the Lord will hide himself from the Gentiles, but will reveal himself to his people.” But he also labeled as “too farfetched” the christological approach of Christian interpreters, “that Christ is a hidden God, because his divinity lies concealed under the infirmity of the flesh.” Neither approach “agrees with the Prophet’s meaning.” Instead, Calvin averred, “[God] calls himself ‘a hidden God,’ because he appears to withdraw, and, in some measure, to conceal himself, when he permits his people to be afflicted and oppressed by various calamities; and, therefore, our hearts ought to be encouraged by hope.”72 Calvin’s preferred reading provided both a contextualized account of

72. Calvin, Isaiah, 45:15.


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Isaiah’s message and a word of hope to believers in his own day. According to Calvin’s ecclesiocentric hermeneutic, faithfully explaining God’s ways with the church in ancient times would at the same time promote the good of sixteenthcentury Reformed churches. Calvin rarely found that passages in Isaiah “related directly to Christ.” He characteristically posited a double fulfillment, one contemporaneous with Isaiah’s time and one pointing forward to Christ. A paradigmatic example of Calvin’s exegetical strategy is found in his comment on Isa 52:10, Jehovah hath made bare the arm of his holiness before the eyes of all nations: “This prophecy is maliciously restricted by the Jews to the deliverance from Babylon, and is improperly restricted by Christians to the spiritual redemption which we obtain through Christ; for we must begin with the deliverance which was wrought under Cyrus, and bring it down to our own time.” Similarly, when explaining the “new redemption” promised in Isa 43:19, Calvin noted that “almost all Christian commentators” have interpreted this text “as referring absolutely to the coming of Christ, in which they are undoubtedly mistaken.” But he also found Jewish exegetes to be “in the wrong, when they limit it to the redemption from Babylon.” Calvin was convinced that many passages in Isaiah “related to the kingdom of Christ, and that they were at length fulfilled as soon as the Gospel began to be preached; but it does not therefore follow that the Prophet did not, at the same time, keep his eye upon that period which preceded the coming of Christ.”73 Proper exegesis of prophetic texts, in Calvin’s view, had to trace the whole trajectory of God’s gracious deliverance of believers. Any truncation of this trajectory would fail to discern the depth of God’s grace and so fail to render God due praise.74 When Calvin thought a christological reading was warranted, he was eager to distinguish his method from the whims of the allegorists. Convinced that Isa 33:17 presents Hezekiah as “a figure of Christ,” Calvin warned, “Let no man imagine that I am here pursuing allegories, to which I am averse, and that this is the reason why I do not interpret the passage as relating directly to Christ; but, because in Christ alone is found the stability of that frail kingdom, the likeness which Hezekiah bore leads us to Christ, as it were, by the hand.”75

73. Ibid., 54:2. 74. Randall C. Zachman (“Gathering Meaning from the Context: Calvin’s Exegetical Method,” JR [2002]: 9) points to an elucidation of this exegetical procedure in Calvin’s commentary on Jer 17:9–10: “We ought first to see what the prophets had in view, and by what necessity they were led to speak, what was their condition, and then a general doctrine may be gathered from their words” (emphasis original). 75. Calvin, Isaiah, 33:17.

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Unlike the “forced and violent interpretations” of the allegorists, some passages led the interpreter “by the hand” to the natural and intended fulfillment of Isaiah’s promises in the coming Messiah. In the case of Isa 49:1, Calvin averred that even Jewish exegetes, “at least, such of them as have any soundness of understanding,” admitted as much.76 When Jewish interpreters failed to “admit as much,” Calvin faulted their reluctance to affirm legitimate christological readings. For example, in commenting on Isa 7:14, Behold, a virgin shall conceive, Calvin acknowledged that “this passage is obscure.” But he goes on to charge that the blame lies partly on the Jews, who, by much cavilling, have laboured, as far as lay in their power, to pervert the true exposition. They are hard pressed by this passage; for it contains an illustrious prediction concerning the Messiah who is here called Immanuel; and therefore they have laboured, by all possible means, to torture the Prophet’s meaning to another sense.

Still, Calvin did not merely dismiss Jewish exegesis. He felt compelled to defend his own exegetical conclusions, however irritably. In the case of Isa 7:14, he examined Jewish suggestions that the passage refers to Hezekiah or to a son of Isaiah. And he responded to Jewish criticisms that a christological interpretation of the text is unnatural, representing “an unseasonable transition to a very remote subject,” thus providing little comfort to a people in dire distress. In Calvin’s view, christological readings of the Old Testament had to be argued for. Christian exegetes do not achieve a “successful elucidation” of a text when “they merely assert that it belongs to the kingdom of Christ, but do not assign a reason, or show how it accords with [the] passage.”77 This kind of weak exegesis failed to edify the church. For Calvin, the question was not whether christological readings of Isaiah were in every instance justified. They clearly were not. The pertinent question was whether a particular text in Isaiah “naturally” required such a reading. And so he showed himself ready to criticize both Christian interpreters who rashly jumped to unwarranted christological readings and Jewish interpreters who, in his view, obstinately rejected legitimate christological readings. Conclusion Calvin’s actual exegetical practice was considerably more complex than reading the Scriptures “with the aim of finding Christ in them.” His example warns 76. Ibid., 49:1, where Calvin notes the Jews’ agreement that “this passage cannot be understood as relating to any other person than Christ.” 77. Ibid., 9:2, The people walking in darkness hath seen a great light.


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us against deducing someone’s exegetical principles from their programmatic statements rather than from their approach to specific texts. Calvin’s goal of building up the Christian church required a disciplined and discerning attention to the mind of the prophet, and this attention brought with it a grudging appreciation of Jewish exegetes, particularly their knowledge of Hebrew grammar and syntax, even though they did not share his goal of edifying the Christian community. Edifying exegesis for Calvin did not have to center around finding overt references to Christ in the Hebrew prophets. In the particular stories of Israel’s faith and sufferings, in affirmations of God’s unfailing concern for the marginalized and promises of irrevocable faithfulness to the “posterity of Abraham,” Calvin found the good news his community needed to hear. Calvin’s exegesis of Isaiah reflects the tensions, still alive today, between allegiance to particular communities of interpretation and the demands of honest exegetical practice. Select Bibliography Gamble, Richard C., ed. Calvin and Hermeneutics. Vol. 6 of Calvin and Calvinism: A Fourteen-Volume Anthology of Scholarly Articles. New York: Garland, 1992. Ganoczy, Alexandre, and Stefan Scheld. Die Hermeneutik Calvins: Geistesgeschichtliche Voraussetzungen und Grundzüge. Wiesbaden: Steiner, 1983. Kraus, Hans-Joachim. “Calvin’s Exegetical Principles.” Translated by Keith Crim. Int 31 (1977): 8–18. Parker, T. H. L. Calvin’s Old Testament Commentaries. Louisville: Westminster John Knox, 1993. Puckett, David L. John Calvin’s Exegesis of the Old Testament. CSRT. Louisville: Westminster John Knox, 1995. Steinmetz, David C., ed. The Bible in the Sixteenth Century. Durham, N.C.: Duke University Press, 1990. Vischer, Wilhelm. “Calvin exégète de l’Ancien Testament.” La Revue Reformée 18 (1967): 1–20.

The Poet’s Prophet: Bishop Robert Lowth’s Eighteenth-Century Commentary on Isaiah* Gary Stansell

Introduction Robert Lowth, born in the cathedral close, Winchester (1710; died 1787), is best known to modern biblical scholars as the eighteenth-century critic who developed the theory of parallelismus membrorum (“parallelism of members”) in Hebrew poetry. A poet himself, Lowth was appointed to the Professorship of Poetry at Oxford (1741–50), later becoming Bishop of St. Davids and of Oxford in the same year (1776), and then of London (1777). During his tenure as Professor at Oxford, he presented his well-known and highly acclaimed De Sacra poesi Hebraeorum praelectiones academia Oxonii habitae a Robert Lowth, a series of thirty-four lectures given from 1741 to 1750, which were published in English in 1787 as Lectures on the Sacred Poetry of the Hebrews.1 The enduring significance of Lowth’s Lectures is made abundantly clear in recent discussions and especially refinements of Lowth’s poetics by both literary and biblical scholars. Considerably less well known to twentieth-century biblical scholars is Bishop Lowth’s Isaiah: A New Translation; with a Preliminary Dissertation, and Notes, Critical, Philological, and Explanatory (2 vols., 1778).2 The importance of Lowth’s Isaiah in its time, however, is hard to overestimate. His rendering of the

* This essay is dedicated to Prof. John H. Elliott, mentor and friend, who first introduced me to Bishop Lowth’s work. The author expresses his gratitude for critique of an earlier version of the essay by members of the SBL Seminar on the Formation of the Book of Isaiah, especially Prof. John H. Hayes, the respondent; thanks also to my colleague at St. Olaf College, Prof. Karl Fink, for his advice on the thought of Johann Gottfried Herder. 1. Hereafter cited as Lectures. The book used in this essay is the third edition, translated by G. Gregory (London: Chadwick, 1847). 2. For this essay, the edition used is the revised and corrected fifteenth edition in one volume (London: Tegg, 1857).

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Hebrew text was “at once acclaimed as a landmark in biblical translation,”3 and the book was “widely distributed and reprinted in various editions for almost a century.”4 Some judge his clarification of the Masoretic Text to be his most significant contribution.5 Although contemporary literary critics interested in the eighteenth century still make reference to Lowth’s Isaiah,6 it is all but forgotten by biblical scholars. It appears that this work, once broadly influential, has been so long assimilated into our understandings of prophecy that its important contributions have been forgotten. Contemporary Isaian scholarship, I hope to suggest, may profit by revisiting Lowth and his Isaiah, since its larger place in eighteenth-century biblical studies has not been fully appreciated or evaluated, not the least as an important precursor for modern understandings of prophecy as literature. The succeeding paragraphs have as their goal, on the basis of a necessarily selective analysis, an appreciative look at Lowth’s work and its various influences on biblical interpretation. We will examine Lowth’s Isaiah under four categories: Isaiah as prophet and poet; Lowth’s Dissertation, Translation, and Notes; the sublime in Isaiah’s prophecy; and the influence of Lowth’s Isaiah in Germany. Isaiah as Prophet and Poet Prophets and Poets

Before Lowth’s time, the prophetic books were not generally understood to consist of poetry. James Kugel has called attention to the ambiguity of the relationship between poets and prophets in the Bible itself, noting especially the distinction made in Ezek 33:30–33 between “one who sings love songs with a beautiful voice” and a prophet.7 Medieval Masoretic manuscripts of the Bible

3. Murray Roston, Prophet and Poet: The Bible and the Growth of Romanticism (London: Faber & Faber, 1965), 135. 4. Rick R. Marrs, “Lowth, Robert,” in Dictionary of Biblical Interpretation (ed. J. Hayes; 2 vols.; Nashville: Abingdon, 1999), 2:89. See also David A. Reibel, “Introduction,” in Robert Lowth, Isaiah: A New Translation; with a Preliminary Dissertation, and Notes, Critical, Philological, and Explanatory (repr., London: Routledge/Thoemmes, 1995), vi–vii. 5. R. S. Cripps, “Two British Interpreters of the Old Testament: Robert Lowth (1710–1787) and Samuel Lee (1783–1852),” BJRL 35 (1952/53): 390. 6. Roston, Prophet and Poet, 134–37; Stephen Prickett, “Poetry and Prophecy: Bishop Lowth and the Hebrew Scriptures in Eighteenth-Century England,” in Images of Belief in Literature (ed. D. Jasper; New York: St. Martin’s, 1984), 81–103; idem, Words and The Word: Language, Poetics, and Biblical Interpretation (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1986), especially ch. 3. 7. James L. Kugel, “Poets and Prophets: An Overview,” in Poetry and Prophecy: The Beginnings of a Literary Tradition (ed. J. Kugel; Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 1990), 7–8.

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traditionally represented in poetic lines only Psalms, Proverbs, and the dialogues of Job, along with four isolated poems (Exod 15:1–18; Deut 32; Judg 5; 2 Sam 22) and two lists (Josh 12:9–24; Esth 9:7–9). Prophetic books and narrative books alike were, on the other hand, presented in blocked columns.8 As Judaism developed, it was considered offensive to identify prophets with mere poets. According to Don Isaac Abravanel in the fifteenth century, “Prophecy is the effluence that flows into the intellect and imagination of the prophets; at the time of his prophecy the prophet’s faculties are asleep and his senses lost, and his soul is occupied with providence, and he tells people what he saw or heard without its being within his control.”9 However, “when it comes to poetry, the prophet writes and arranges it through that Holy Spirit that is in him; it is not a vision that appears to him through prophecy.”10 Ancient translations of the Bible departed from the conventions of the Masoretic manuscript tradition. The great Septuagint manuscripts of the fourth and fifth centuries arranged several books poetically, following the tradition of Greek verse in Psalms, Job, and Proverbs, as the mt did. But this poetic arrangement extended also to the Song of Solomon, Lamentations, Wisdom, Ben Sirach, Psalms of Solomon, and Ecclesiastes.11 In his Latin translation from the Hebrew, Jerome represented the prophetic books in stichometric lines according to classical treatments of rhetoric but cautioned readers in his preface to Isaiah, “not to mistake it for metre, as if it were anything like the Psalms, or the writings of Solomon; for it was nothing more than what was usual in the copies of the prose works of Demosthenes and Cicero.”12 Through the centuries, Vulgate Bibles adopted a wide variety of layout methods, some using a form of stichometric line and others saving space by using block text. Earliest English translations numbered the chapters and subdivided them into blocked paragraphs designated as “A,” “B,” “C,” and so forth. But the Geneva Bible of 1560, the first complete English Bible translated from Hebrew, incorporated the Masoretic verse divisions, breaking passages into oneverse, numbered paragraphs. This practice was adopted half a century later by

8. As a glance at The Leningrad Codex: A Facsimile Edition (ed. D. N. Freedman et al.; Leiden: Brill, 1998) makes clear, the prose-poetry distinctions in the page layouts of the BHS are modern additions having little to do with the medieval manuscript’s actual appearance. 9. Don Isaac Abravanel, Commentary on the Pentateuch (Jerusalem, 1963), quoted in Adele Berlin, Biblical Poetry through Medieval Jewish Eyes (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1991), 126. 10. Ibid., 127. 11. Thomas S. Pattie, “The Creation of the Great Codices,” in The Bible as Book: The Manuscript Tradition (ed. J. Sharpe and K. van Kampen; London: British Library, 1998), 63. 12. Jerome, as cited in Lowth, Isaiah, ii. This passage is often quoted in discussions of biblical poetry and may be found in PL 28:825.

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the Authorized (King James) Version, which by Lowth’s time was long established as the standard translation. Thus, although the prophetic books had long been viewed as prose, distinct from the poetry of the Psalms, by Lowth’s time no differentiation between the genres could be seen in English Bibles.13 In contrast to traditional understandings, Lowth saw it as a general and demonstrable principle that Hebrew poetry received its preeminent expression in the prophetic books. While for prior generations there were “prophets and poets,” for Lowth they were “prophets as poets.” Lowth introduced his notion of prophetic poetry early in his Lectures on the Sacred Poetry of the Hebrews, observing that sacred poetry is at its best and noblest in the prophets’ expression of the divine will in a style that “infinitely surpass[es] all human conception.”14 In lecture 19 he emphasized the similarity in poetic style between the Psalms and prophetic books, claiming that prophecy as poetry “consists chiefly in a certain equality, resemblance, or parallelism, between the members of each period, so that in two lines (or members of the same period) things for the most part shall answer to things, and words to words, as if fitted to each other by a kind of rule or measure.”15 Prophecy and poetry “had one common origin, one common author, the Holy Spirit.”16 Lowth’s lectures underscored this point repeatedly, illustrating each subcategory of parallelism with both psalmic and prophetic texts. Although the prophets and the Psalms “obey the same prosodic rules,” 17 he considered the poetry of the prophets to outrank other poetic writings in the Bible. Indeed, prophetic poetry is “more ornamented, more splendid, and more florid than any other. It abounds more in imagery … [and] abounds most in metaphors, allegories, comparisons, and even in copious and diffuse descriptions.”18 Isaiah the Poet

Lowth identified Isaiah as the prophetic poet par excellence: “Isaiah, the first of the prophets, both in order and dignity, abound in such transcendent excellences, that he may be said properly to afford the most perfect model of prophetic poetry.”19 Indeed, Lowth added with almost breathless admiration: 13. Information in this paragraph is based in part on Patricia K. Tull, “What’s New in Lowth? Synchronic Reading in the Eighteenth and Twenty-First Centuries,” Society of Biblical Literature 2000 Seminar Papers (SBLSP 39; Atlanta: Society of Biblical Literature, 2000), 192–94. 14. Lowth, Lectures, 35. 15. Ibid., 210. 16. Ibid., 201. 17. Kugel, “Poets and Prophets,” 24. 18. Lowth, Lectures, 225–26. 19. Ibid., 233.


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[Isaiah] is at once elegant and sublime, forcible and ornamented; he unites energy and copiousness, and dignity with variety. In his sentiments there is uncommon elevation and majesty; in his imagery, the utmost propriety, elegance, diversity; in his language, uncommon beauty and energy; and, notwithstanding the obscurity of his subjects, a surprising degree of clearness and simplicity.20

Lowth’s profound appreciation of Isaiah’s poetry, evident throughout the thirty-four Lectures, resulted in a second work, his Isaiah: A New Translation, appearing in 1778, twenty-eight years after his final lecture at Oxford. As Lowth’s biographer Brian Hepworth suggests, this work was “not an afterthought but a return to central issues regarding the nature of Oriental poetry.”21 The scholarly world was prepared and expectant, and the book “rapidly became a standard work.”22 German scholars welcomed a first volume the next year,23 translated by the Göttingen Universitätsprediger G. H. Richerz. Just as Professor Johann David Michaelis had added critical notes to Lowth’s Lectures, another Göttingen theologian, Johann Benjamin Koppe, did the same for Isaiah. Koppe’s notes soon took on an importance of their own (see below). Lowth’s Preliminary Dissertation, Translation, and Notes The Preliminary Dissertation

The Isaiah volume commences with a “Preliminary Dissertation” presenting Lowth’s most succinct definition of parallelism: The correspondence of one verse or line to another, I call parallelism. When a proposition is delivered, and a second is subjoined to it, or drawn under it, equivalent, or contrasted with it in sense, or similar to it in the form of grammatical construction, these I call parallel lines; and the words or phrases, answering one to another in the corresponding lines, parallel terms.24

Although the Dissertation presents few new insights on prophetic poetry, it does offer a unified presentation of comments that were scattered throughout the

20. Ibid., 233. 21. Brian Hepworth, Robert Lowth (Boston: Twayne, 1978), 142. 22. Prickett, Words and The Word, 103. 23. Robert Lowth, D. R. Lowths … Jesaias, neu übersetzt nebst einer Einleitung und critischen philologischen und erläuternden Anmerkungen aus dem Englishen: Mit Zusätzen und Anmerkungen von J. B. Koppe (trans. G. H. Richerz; 4 vols.; Leipzig: Weidmanns Erben und Reich, 1779–81). 24. Lowth, Isaiah, viii.

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Lectures, with considerable development, detail, and analysis of parallelism in various key passages in Isaiah. In comparison with his Lectures, this volume gives almost twice as many examples of synonymous parallelism, as well as a more detailed discussion. To his elaboration on the kinds of parallelism is added a discussion of “the distinction of Hebrew verses into longer and shorter.”25 The volume also introduces the sixteenth-century Jewish scholar “Rabbi Azarias” (Azariah de Rossi), who had treated the Hebrew versification in a very similar manner. Lowth “agree[d] with Azarias in the general principle of the rhythmus of things” but rejected Azarias’s notion that a whole poem “must consist of trimeters, hexameters,” and so forth.26 Lowth cited extensively from the scholarship that had developed in the quarter century since the Lectures, taking into account the manuscript work of Charles Godfrey Woide (1725–90) and especially Benjamin Kennicott (1718–83), whom Lowth had encouraged and inspired. The Translation

In the English-speaking world of Lowth’s day, two translation traditions had developed side by side. The av’s literal prose form, so familiar today, was only one possibility. Assumptions that biblical psalms ought to be rendered as poetry (i.e., in English metered rhyme) were shared by Protestant congregations and neoclassical poets alike, with the result that many Bibles included a metrical paraphrase of the Psalms as well as the av translation.27 Lowth’s theory of translation drew upon both of these divergent traditions. On the one hand, his description of translation almost, according to Stephen Prickett, “could have been the Preface of the Good News Bible.”28 The first and principal business of a translator, is to give the plain literal and grammatical sense of his author; the obvious meaning of his words, phrases, and sentences; and to express them in the language into which he translates, as far as may be, in equivalent words, phrases, and sentences.… For whatever senses are

25. Ibid., xix–xx. 26. Ibid., xxxv. 27. In fact, the first book published in English-speaking America was The Bay Psalm Book, produced in 1640 by the Massachusetts Bay Colony, which explains in the preface that “as it can be no just offense to any good conscience to sing David’s Hebrew songs in English words, so neither to sing his poetical verses in English poetical meter” (The Bay Psalm Book: A Facsimile Reprint of the First Edition of 1640 [Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1956], pages unnumbered). For examples of metrical renderings of biblical texts by Samuel Johnson, John Milton, and others, see Roston, Prophet and Poet, 126–32. 28. Prickett, Words and The Word, 111.


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supposed to be included in the Prophet’s words, spiritual, mystical, allegorical, analogical, or the like, they must all entirely depend on the literal sense.29

The translator, he insisted, “must study the manner of his author, to mark the peculiarities of his style, to imitate his features, his air, his gesture, and, as far as the difference in language will permit, to give a just and expressive resemblance of the original.”30 Lowth’s aim to present as literal a translation as possible, without attempting to produce any sense of regular meter, permitted a word order in English that was usually quite in keeping with the Hebrew. On the other hand, if Isaiah was a poet, then in Lowth’s view his prophecies must be presented visually to the reader in verse form, with each line or stichos of a verse printed in parallel. The result was a poetic appearance without either rhyme or meter, a common sight today in both ancient and modern poetry, but highly unusual in the eighteenth century. A comparison of Lowth’s Isaiah with the Authorized Version suggests the visual impact of this breakthrough upon Lowth’s original readership. For instance, in Isaiah 3:16 the av reads: Moreover the Lord saith, Because the daughters of Zion are haughty, and walk with stretched forth necks and wanton eyes, walking and mincing as they go, and making a tinkling with their feet.…

Lowth translated: Moreover JEHOVAH hath said: Because the daughters of Sion are haughty; And walk displaying the neck, And falsely setting off their eyes with paint; Mincing their steps as they go, And with their feet lightly tripping along.…

Further, Lowth’s translation made genre distinctions unseen before. In order to distinguish for his readers the prose, introductory, and “historical” character of superscriptions, Lowth had them printed in capital letters and not versified. For instance, his Isa 2:1 reads: THE WORD, WHICH WAS REVEALED TO ISAIAH, THE SON OF AMOTS, CONCERNING JUDAH AND JERUSALEM.

29. Lowth, Isaiah, xxxvii. 30. Ibid., xxiv.

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The revolutionary significance of distinguishing between the prophet’s words and the book’s editorial superscriptions was not missed by some of Lowth’s contemporaries, and it provoked their criticism. For example, Thomas Howes (“Doubts concerning the Translation and Notes of the Bishop of London to Isaiah, Vindicating Ezechiel, Isaiah, and other Jewish Prophets from Disorder in Arrangement,” 1783), an admirer of Lowth who wanted to extend Lowth’s work even further, castigated him for failing to see the coherence and artistry in the arrangement of the various genres and prophecies in the book of Isaiah. According to Lowth, the parts of the book were “often improperly connected, without any marks of discrimination; which injudicious arrangement, on some occasions, creates almost insuperable difficulties.”31 Such a view anticipates modern redaction-critical views. But to Howes, a work that lacked internal coherence had lost authenticity and aesthetic integrity.32 Lowth’s setting off prose superscriptions by capital letters amounted to asserting the presence of editorial, and therefore inartistic, intrusions. According to Lowth there were also prose verses in Isaiah that were not titles. Narrative material framing dialogue was set as prose. For example, in Isa 6:1–3, Lowth presented Isaiah’s description of the divine throneroom as prose and the words of the seraphim (“Holy, holy, holy…”) as poetry. Most modern translations do the same. However, the njps translation illustrates the difficulty of determining such prose-poetry distinctions when it sets the beginning of verse 3 (“And one would call to the other”) as poetry as well.33 For the most part, Lowth’s translation appears to follow the wording of the av fairly closely. Occasionally, however, his verbal changes are more radical. For example, in Isa 1:7 the av reads, “Your country is desolate, your cities are burned with fire: your land, strangers devour it in your presence, and it is desolate, as overthrown by strangers.” But Lowth, recognizing the textual difficulties at the end of the verse, translates “as if destroyed by an inundation,” reading Mrz (“flood”) instead of Myrz (“strangers”), following several Jewish authorities. His emendation, though noteworthy, is generally rejected by more recent critics, who typically follow Ewald and read Mds for Myrz (“like Sodom overthrown”; cf. Duhm and BHS ). Broadly speaking, Lowth’s entire translation conveyed a “sense of exclusive exotic appeal to the senses.”34 His interest in ancient customs is reflected in his translation of 3:16, mentioned above, in which he replaced the av’s “walk

31. Lowth, Lectures, 234. 32. Prickett, Words and The Word, 113–14. 33. On the history of visual representation of genres and the problems involved in making prose-poetry distinctions, see especially Tull, “What’s New in Lowth,” 203–16. 34. Hepworth, Robert Lowth, 148.


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with stretched forth necks and wanton eyes” with the striking expansion, “walk displaying the neck,/And falsely setting off their eyes with paint.” Having read widely about Oriental beauty practices, especially about methods of applying eye cosmetics in Baghdad and Turkey, Lowth rejected the mt’s hapax legomenon rq#& and instead read rq#$, translating it “falsely.” But he expanded upon this word with a phrase based not on textual but anthropological considerations.35 For Lowth, parallelism and the interdependence of form and meaning aided the translator in better understanding obscurities in the text and in making emendations. R. S. Cripps thinks Lowth’s emendations were based largely on two elements, poetic form (parallelism) and “Hebrew Rhythm.”36 His conception of parallelistic rhythm could allow for rather bold readings of the mt. For instance, his emendation of Isa 48:16 provides a clear example of his use of the principle of parallelism. The av of Isa 48:16 reads, supplying the verb “am” in the second phrase, “from the time that it was, there am I” (yn) M#$). In order to restore the parallelism, Lowth took the word M#$ not as an adverb but as a verb, translating, “before the time when it began to exist, I had decreed it.” Nevertheless, as Cripps has observed, many of his emendations gained acceptance and have been incorporated into critical commentaries and modern translations. One example is particularly instructive. In Isa 21:8 the mt reads, “and a lion called” (hyr) )rqyw). Lowth responded: “The mistake is so obvious that I make no doubt that the true reading is h)rh,”37 that is, “the one watching.” Indeed, although earlier translations such as the av rendered the text “And he cried, A lion,” nearly all major modern translations, having verified Lowth’s reading in the Qumran manuscript of Isaiah, make the same decision Lowth did.38 Lowth’s translation enjoyed much scholarly appreciation, as well as critique, in the century following the publication of his Isaiah. Wilhelm Gesenius’s Isaiah commentary depended on much in Lowth but often disagreed with him on textual matters. Though he described him as an “audacious … conjectural critic,” he went on to praise the aesthetic and poetic merits of the translation.39 In fact,

35. Lowth’s theory of translation allowed him to assume what the Hebrew word rq#$ implies: the painting of the eyes. His translation created a paraphrase that he justified by over two pages on Oriental customs of eye makeup (Isaiah, 157–59). 36. Cripps, “Two British Interpreters,” 391–92. 37. Lowth, Isaiah, 245. 38. Cripps, “Two British Interpreters,” 393–94. Cripps offers a list of significant textual emendations found in Lowth’s Isaiah. See also Aelred Baker, “Parallelism: England’s Contribution to Biblical Studies,” CBQ 35 (1973): 429–40. 39. Cripps, “Two British Interpreters,” 397.

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as Cripps notes, “when he disagrees with Lowth it can be said generally that the merits of the case and the subsequent verdict of time both favor Lowth.”40 The Notes

Lowth’s Isaiah included a second volume of “Notes” that was longer than the first volume of translated text and the introductory Dissertation combined. The purpose of these was “to give the reasons and authorities on which the Translation is founded,” as well as to explain words in the text and to illustrate ideas, images, notions and customs which belong to biblical times.41 Citing numerous natural histories and travelers’ diaries, the notes are, in Hepworth’s judgment, “an indispensable guide to the nature of the English sense of ‘the Oriental’ in the last half of the eighteenth century.”42 Lowth had a passionate interest in the culture and customs of the ancient Near East. According to his biographer, “ ‘Daily Life in the East’ is the scarcely submerged theme of these four hundred pages or so of Notes; and the topics include not only medicine, horticulture, dyes, cosmetics, and poetic theory, but agriculture, architecture, anthropology, military strategy, town planning, and viniculture.”43 Lowth’s vision of and approach to the book of Isaiah was profoundly shaped by the knowledge of the East being made available during his time. It is difficult for modern readers who take the conventions of twentiethcentury translations for granted to see just how radically Lowth’s new translation of Isaiah affected subsequent translation practices. The av had made no distinction between poetry and prose in the Psalms or the prophets. But early in the nineteenth century, in response to Lowth’s work, new editions of the av began to appear. James Nourse’s 1827 “Paragraph Bible,” for instance, typographically distinguished superscriptions, prose, poetry, and what he called “poetic prose.” The explosion of new Bible translations beginning in the early twentieth century featured similar distinctions. Following the lead set by Lowth, they nearly always represented Isaiah and other prophetic books as poetry, often making fine distinctions between poetry and prose sections. Many introductions to these new versions included discussions of poetic parallelism, without mentioning Robert Lowth by name.44

40. Ibid.,” 393. 41. Lowth, Isaiah, lii. 42. Hepworth, Robert Lowth, 151. 43. Ibid., 153. 44. See, for instance, James Muilenburg’s essay, “The Poetry of the Old Testament,” in An Introduction to the Revised Standard Version of the Old Testament (ed. Members of the Revision Committee; New York: Nelson, 1952), 62–63.


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The Sublime in Isaiah’s Prophecy Lowth on the Sublime

In the first of his Lectures, Lowth had clearly announced “the Sublime” as a dominant concern in his study of the language and style of Hebrew poetry. Speaking in an age that measured all aesthetic beauty against the standards of classical literature, he instead praised Hebrew poetry, than which the human mind can conceive nothing more elevated, more beautiful, or more elegant; in which the almost ineffable sublimity of the subject is fully equaled by the energy of the language, and the dignity of the style. And it is worthy of observation, that as some of these writings exceed in antiquity the fabulous ages of Greece, in sublimity they are superior to the most finished productions of that polished people.45

Later, in lectures 14–17 he resumed this theme in detail and with considerable energy, announcing at the beginning of this section, “I proceed to treat the Sublimity of the sacred poets.” The sublime, he argued, is implied in the word l#$m, for in its sense of “to take or lift up a parable,” it conveys “a great or lofty sentiment.” Indeed, a mashal expresses “power, or supreme authority, and when applied to style, seems particularly to intimate something eminent or energetic, excellent or important.”46 Balaam’s “parable” (Num 23:7–10) served as Lowth’s first example of the sublime in prophetic poetry, drawing attention to its “force of composition … which strikes and overpowers the mind, which excites the passions, and which expresses ideas at once with perspicuity and elevation; not solicitous whether the language be plain or ornamented, refined or familiar.”47 Prickett emphasizes that for Lowth the sublime is about “naturalness as against artificiality, the irregular as against the regular, the mysterious as against the comprehensible.”48 The Sublime in Isaiah

In his lecture 21 on “The Peculiar Character of Each of the Prophets,” Lowth singled out Isaiah as the best example of Hebrew poetry’s “native grace and harmony.”49 Isaiah is the model of what is “elegant and sublime,” his sen-

45. Lowth, Lectures, 30. 46. Ibid., 154. 47. Ibid., 155. 48. Prickett, Words and The Word, 108. 49. Lowth, Lectures, 233.

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timents possessing “uncommon elevation and majesty.”50 To illustrate Lowth’s appreciation of the sublime in Isaiah, we will briefly examine two examples of his exposition, Isa 1:24 and 14:1–27. In lecture 16 Lowth had discussed the biblical poets’ use of human and natural images to express aspects of the divine. Such images are not to be taken literally; they are “remote from their object, and most unworthy of the Divine Majesty.”51 But, argued Lowth, in that they are metaphorical, and thus force a comparison, they are “by far the most sublime” of all imagery, especially when borrowed from the world of nature. In his Isaiah, Lowth devoted particular attention to Isa 1:24: Wherefore saith the Lord Jehovah God of Hosts, the mighty One of Israel: Aha! I will be eased of mine adversaries; I will be avenged of mine enemies.

The commentary in his Notes is an extensive, psychologically astute explanation of scriptural anthropomorphism. Among humans, he says, anger arises from a sense of injury and affront, but revenge removes the uneasiness of the painful sensation and one senses release and relief, which is “pleasing and quieting, at least for the present.”52 Does God calm himself down by venting his wrath and vengeance as humans do? This is a strong instance of the metaphor called Anthropopathia; by which, throughout the Scriptures, as well as the historical as the poetical parts, the sentiments, sensations, and affections, the bodily faculties, qualities, and members of men, and even of brute animals, are attributed to God. It arises from necessity: we have no idea of the natural attributes of God; … when therefore we would treat on these subjects, we find ourselves forced to express them by sensible images.53

“But necessity leads to beauty,” since, as Lowth paradoxically observed, “when the idea is gross and offensive, as in this passage of Isaiah … we are immediately shocked at the application.”54 Reaching in vain to comprehend, the mind is “lost in immensity and astonishment.”55

50. Ibid., 181. 51. Ibid. 52. Lowth, Isaiah, 140. 53. Ibid. 54. Ibid, 141. 55. Ibid.


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Lowth considered Isa 13:1–14:27 to be a parade example of the sublime in Isaiah’s prophecy. His exposition categorized 13:1–22 as a prophecy and 14:1– 27 as an “ode.”56 The unit consists of a variety of scenes and speakers, including God, the prophet, a chorus of Jews, the shades of departed monarchs, and certain taunters. Of particular poetic significance, he thought, was the scene portrayed in 14:9–11: “The regions of the dead are laid open, and Hades is represented as rousing up the shades of the departed monarchs: they rise from their thrones to meet the king of Babylon at his coming, and insult him on his being reduced to the same low estate of impotence and dissolution with themselves.”57 Lowth supplemented this section with a discussion of what he considered the source of this image, the custom of burying high-ranking persons in large sepulchral vaults hewn in the rock, such as are still extant in Jerusalem. He concluded his exposition of these chapters with multiple superlatives on the ultimate sublimity of the entire poem: There is no poem of its kind extant in any language, in which the subject is so well laid out and so happily conducted, with such richness of invention, with such a variety of images, persons, and distinct actions, with such rapidity and ease of transition, in so small a compass as in this ode of Isaiah. For beauty of disposition, strength of colouring, greatness of sentiment, brevity, perspicuity, and force of expression, it stands among all the monuments of antiquity unrivalled.58

Later biblical exegetes, raised principally on historical criticism, may find Lowth’s aesthetic appraisal of Hebrew poetry foreign. But his redefinitions of sublimity, tailored to biblical literature, initiated an admiration for the biblical prophets and their speech cadences that revolutionized English poetry at the beginning of the Romantic period. His lectures “[did] more than any other single work to make the biblical tradition, rather than the neo-classical one, the central poetic tradition of the Romantics.”59 While Lowth argued that the biblical prophets were poets, the Romantic tradition capitalized on this equation, reversing its terms, viewing poets as proclaimers of the great hidden truths of human existence.60 His influence can be seen most directly in the scripturally inspired poetry of Christopher Smart, who after reading Lowth’s lectures began modeling his own verses after biblical paral-

56. Lowth took up the ode (ry#$) as a major theme in lectures 15–28. 57. Lowth, Isaiah, 214–15. 58. Ibid., 216. 59. Prickett, Words and The Word, 105. 60. See Prickett, “Poetry and Prophecy,” 83; Roston, Prophet and Poet, 106 and passim.

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lelism, producing work “pulsating with adoration and fervour.”61 William Blake similarly derived from Lowth his connections between poetic genius and prophecy as they are elaborated in The Marriage of Heaven and Hell 62 and viewed himself as the prophet-bard.63 In his poems denouncing social injustice, he adopted not only the thoughts and metaphors but also the cadences and parallelistic forms of biblical prophecy. Lowth also attracted the attention of William Temple and James Boswell, who said that Samuel Johnson had not yet read Lowth’s Isaiah, although he had heard “it was a great work.”64 Later Romantic figures such as Coleridge and Wordsworth likewise inherited a deep admiration for the Old Testament forms and themes that infused their poetry.65 But as we shall see below, while the eighteenth- and nineteenth-century German reception of Lowth’s work was positive and far-reaching in its consequences, what interested them was less his aesthetic appreciation of Isaiah and the prophets and his revolutionary effect on Bible translation. Rather, they were interested in his breakthroughs in the critical examination of the text itself and its cultural context. The Influence of Lowth’s Isaiah in Germany The significance and influence of Lowth’s Lectures, especially his understanding of Hebrew parallelism, is well established. Beyond this, Lowth influenced eighteenth-century notions of “Orientalism”66 and its concern for primitivism and originality, which “lay at the heart of the Romantic movement.”67 Indeed, he was an expert on these matters and very much a part of the “profound cultural shift from the certainty that the perspectives of Greece and Rome stretch back to a moment in historical time, to an awareness of the mythologizing processes of original man that are ever-present in all men.”68 In Prickett’s judgment, Lowth’s Lectures “inaugurated a critical revolution” in several ways: in his theories of parallelism, his understanding of the relationship between the prophets

61. Roston, Prophet and Poet, 148. 62. Prickett, Words and The Word, 117. 63. Roston, Prophet and Poet, 160. 64. Hepworth, Robert Lowth, 163. 65. Prickett mentions that Coleridge even “used Lowth’s translation of Isaiah for some of his 1795 Lectures” (“Poetry and Prophecy,” 98). 66. The term “Orientalism” was introduced by Joseph Spence, friend of Lowth and the third Professor of Poetry at Oxford, and came to connote timelessness, primitivism, the poet as prophet, and an interest in the cultural exotica characteristic of the eighteenth century (Hepworth, Robert Lowth, 58–59). 67. Hepworth, Robert Lowth, preface, no page number. 68. Ibid., 181.


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and biblical poetry, his highlighting of the sophisticated beauty of biblical literature, his historical approach that helped develop higher criticism, and even his contributions to the “later development of the hermeneutical tradition from Schleiermacher to Gadamer.”69 This section will trace the impact of his work on nineteenth- and early twentieth-century German biblical scholarship. Johann David Michaelis, an orientalist and philologist in Göttingen, had attended the second of Lowth’s thirty-four lectures in Oxford in 1741.70 After his return to Germany, he helped publish them in Latin, together with his own learned notes. Though the Lectures were never translated into German in their entirety, they drew so much attention in Germany that his Isaiah began to be published in translation in 1779, a year after its original publication in England, and quickly gained importance as a biblical commentary. The critical notes by J. B. Koppe became especially significant for higher criticism of the book of Isaiah.71 Lowth had not subdivided chapters into smaller units in either his Translation or his Notes, but Koppe did so. For example, while Lowth had treated Isa 1:1–21 as a unit, Koppe broke the chapter into three parts (vv. 1–9, 10–20, 21–31), a critical move that made conservative scholars nervous.72 Further, Koppe’s notes hinted that Isa 40–66 ought to be dated during the Babylonian exile, an insight later enlarged upon by Johann Christoph Döderlein and Johann Gottfried Eichhorn. Koppe’s notes were highly regarded. While Gesenius and E. F. C. Rosenmüller praised Lowth’s text-critical insights, Johann Gottfried Herder wrote in a letter that he desired a copy of Lowth’s translation but was more interested in Koppe’s notes than in the original.73 Despite this assertion, there is no question that Herder’s intellectual debt to Lowth was considerable. For German intellectual history—indeed, for the history of biblical interpretation—the widely recognized connection of Lowth and Herder cannot, in my judgment, be overestimated. M. H. Abrams, whose comment is representative, says that there is a direct “line from Lowth … to [a] theologian who was to alter profoundly the

69. Prickett, Words and The Word, 110. 70. Most of the material in this paragraph is indebted to Rudolf Smend’s significant discussion, “Lowth in Deutschland,” in Epochen der Bibelkritik (vol. 3 of Gesammelte Studien; BEvT 109; Munich: Kaiser, 1991), 43–62, especially 58–61. 71. Ibid., 59. 72. Wilhelm Gesenius made fun of this, for now the book of Isaiah appeared, he said, “to be nothing more than a pack of cards made up of a pile of fragments ripped from the pages of various poets who lived in different historical periods” (Wilhelm Gesenius, Philologisch-kritischer und historischer Kommentar über den Jesaia I/1 [1821], 136, quoted in Smend, “Lowth in Deutschland,” 59). 73. Ibid., 58.

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standard doctrines of the nature of poetry—Johann Gottfried Herder.”74 Even a quick perusal of the index of Schriften zum Alten Testament 75 indicates Herder’s numerous references and allusions to Lowth. Moreover, Herder’s famous 1782–83 work Vom Geist der Ebräischen Poesi (The Spirit of Hebrew Poetry)76 deliberately evokes Lowth’s title, The Sacred Poetry of the Hebrews, and begins in its first sentence with praise for Lowth’s work. Indeed, Smend calls Lowth’s Sacred Poetry one of the two godfathers of Herder’s best received theological work.77 Although Herder adapted Lowth’s work to his own viewpoint (substituting, for instance, “spirit,” for Lowth’s “sacred”), much of Lowth’s program entered Germany through Herder and was absorbed in various ways into German Old Testament studies. Lowth’s conception of the nature of poetry was especially significant for Herder and through him greatly influenced German Romantic philosophy.78 On the other hand, Lowth’s historical approach, especially as exemplified in his textual criticism in Isaiah, “was to prove seminal for the German historians and biblical scholars of the second half of the eighteenth century, and to play a key part in the development of the Higher Criticism.”79 Few nineteenth-century German scholars interested in the prophets or Isaiah admitted direct influence from Lowth’s Isaiah. Heinrich Ewald, in his Commentary on the Prophets of the Old Testament, made no mention of Lowth, although occasional formulations are reminiscent of him. Echoing Lowth’s aesthetic vocabulary, Ewald distinguished between prose and poetry, praising Isaiah’s “true poetic conciseness and beauty”80 and his “elevated and sublime style.”81 In his Isaiah commentary, Wilhelm Gesenius adopted Lowth’s concept of parallelism without employing his terminology. As mentioned earlier, he used Lowth considerably in his notes and only occasionally acknowledged his debt to him— most often when he disagreed. In a review of other scholars’ interpretations of

74. M. H. Abrams, The Mirror and the Lamp (New York: Oxford University Press, 1953), 78. Similarly Smend (“Lowth in Deutschland,” 54) notes: “Throughout Herder’s writings, beginning with the very earliest, one finds echoes of Lowth.” 75. Johann G. Herder, Schriften zum Alten Testament (vol. 5 of Johann Gottfried Herder Werke; ed. R. Smend; Frankfurt: Deutscher Klassiker Verlag, 1993). 76. Herder, Schriften zum Alten Testament, 661–1301. 77. Smend, “Vom Geist der Ebräischen Poesie,” in Herder, Schriften zum Alten Testament, 1427. 78. Hepworth, Robert Lowth, 182–83. 79. Prickett, Words and The Word, 110. 80. Heinrich G. A. Ewald, Commentary on the Prophets of the Old Testament (trans. J. Smith; 5 vols.; London: William & Norgate, 1875), 1:1. 81. Ibid., 2:9. Despite Ewald’s move away from the romantic-aesthethic understanding of the prophets toward an idealistic one, he could not free himself from the former; see Hans-Joachim Kraus, Geschichte der historisch-kritischen Erforschung des Alten Testaments (2nd ed.; NeukirchenVluyn: Neukirchener, 1969), 207.


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Isaiah in his introduction, he said that Lowth’s “work on Isaiah has, in aesthetic and poetic insight, outstanding merit.”82 Although Bernhard Duhm’s Das Buch Jesaia makes no direct reference to Lowth or his Isaiah, it may be the most significant heir to Lowth’s project among all nineteenth-century students of the prophets.83 Walter Baumgartner comments that for Duhm, it was “a novum to recognize that the prophets were poets,”84 but he immediately acknowledges that Duhm was taking up an insight from Lowth that had become lost. Duhm also recognized and capitalized on Lowth’s prose-poetry distinction.85 Moreover, Duhm’s well-known differentiation between “authentic” and “inauthentic” prophecies and his tripartite division of the book are rooted in insights developed over the course of the eighteenth century from the German edition of Lowth’s Isaiah with Koppe’s critical notes. The literary-aesthetic side of Lowth as interpreted by Herder seems to have had a recognizable influence on modern critical German Old Testament scholarship as well. It has long been established that Herder’s Romanticism influenced Hermann Gunkel.86 Indeed, Gunkel referred directly to Herder when he proposed his project of a “history of Israelite literature.”87 Smend, as editor of Herder’s writings on the Old Testament, sees Gunkel’s form and genre-historical work as a direct descendent of Herder’s aesthetic sensibilities, combined with de Wette’s and Wellhausen’s historical insights.88 Given the close connections of Gunkel to Herder and Herder to Lowth, it becomes undeniable that Gunkel was a significant heir to Lowth even though, to my knowledge, Gunkel never referred to Lowth by name. Indeed, the literary aesthetic that ran from Lowth to Herder achieved an unequalled receptivity in Gunkel. It follows that any analysis of Gunkel’s reliance on Herder must consider the degree to which his work is ultimately rooted in Lowth, a connection that begs for detailed inves-

82. Cited in Cripps, “Two British Interpreters,” 397. 83. Bernhard Duhm, Das Buch Jesaia (5th ed.; Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1968). 84. Walter Baumgartner, “Bernhard Duhm,” in Duhm, Das Buch Jesaia, vii. 85. Ronald E. Clements, in his One Hundred Years of Old Testament Interpretation (Philadelphia: Westminster, 1976), 54, speaks of a rediscovery of this distinction by Duhm. 86. Bernhard Anderson, “Introduction: Martin Noth’s Traditio-Historical Approach in the Context of Twentieth-Century Biblical Research,” in Martin Noth, A History of Pentateuchal Traditions, (trans. B. Anderson; Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: Prentice-Hall, 1972), xxx. 87. Gunkel, Die israelitische Literatur (1906; repr., Darmstadt: Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft, 1963), 101. Four years later, in the preface to the third edition of his Genesis (6th ed.; repr., Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1964), vi, Gunkel lamented that there was still no complete history of Israelite literature, asking, “and when might there be an executor for the great Herder’s testament?” 88. Smend, “Herder und die Bibel,” in Herder, Schriften zum Alten Testament, 1321.

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tigation.89 Here we may briefly refer to several elements in Gunkel’s work that recall Lowth. Like Lowth, Gunkel placed great significance both on the prosepoetry distinction and on “parallelism of members.”90 Gunkel also presented a clear understanding of the prophet as an inspired and passionate poet, a paramount theme for Lowth.91 In Gunkel’s words: Of its nature, enthusiastic inspiration speaks in poetic form, and rational reflection in the form of prose. Consequently, in form, the prophetic “speech” was originally a poem. People like the prophets, who received their ideas in times of exalted inspiration and uttered them under the impulse of an overflowing emotion, could only speak in poetic rhythms.… From the aesthetic point of view, these poetic compositions of the prophets reach extraordinarily high standards and represent the most sublime element in the Old Testament, which is full of the sublime.92

Such a statement does not reflect Herder, who had downplayed “the sublime” as a significant poetic and aesthetic characteristic.93 Instead, phrase for phrase it is a rather precise echo of Lowth. Further, Gunkel’s well-known aesthetic sense of Hebrew literature is clearly a re-presentation and an updating of Lowth’s interests. Gunkel championed the notion that a proper history of Israelite literature must closely link aesthetic-literary factors with historical ones; one without the other is inadequate.94 Behind this stands Lowth, who “insisted that there could be no break between historical and aesthetic scholarship.”95 Finally, Gunkel’s interest in Gattungen and their Sitz im Leben recalls Lowth’s delineations of types of prophecy96 as well as his concern with the psychological

89. On possible indirect connections between Gunkel and Lowth, see Werner Klatt, Herman Gunkel: Zu seiner Theologie der Religionsgeschichte und zur Entstehung der formgeschichtlichen Methode (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1969), 112–16. He discusses, but ultimately dismisses, a link from Gunkel to Ernst Meier to Lowth. 90. E.g., Gunkel, Die israelitische Literatur, 2–3. 91. Kugel (The Idea of Biblical Poetry, 282) asserts that it is not Lowth’s parallelism but his argument that prophecy is a form of poetry that is new and important in Lowth’s Lectures. 92. Gunkel, “The Israelite Prophecy from the Time of Amos,” in Twentieth Century Theology in the Making (ed. J. Pelikan; New York: Harper & Row, 1969), 66. 93. Isaiah Berlin, Three Critics of the Enlightenment: Vico, Hamann, Herder (ed. H. Hardy; Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2000), 211. 94. Gunkel, Die israelitische Literatur, 101. 95. Prickett, Words and The Word, 107, commenting on Lowth’s “Preliminary Dissertation” in Isaiah. 96. Lowth was making form-critical distinctions when he spoke of prophecies of calamities, reproof of wickedness, threats, visions, promises (of salvation) as well as discerning comments about style in his “Notes,” passim.


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and anthropological aspects of the “Oriental” poetry presented in his Notes. In short, Lowth and his larger pre-Romantic context provided much of the intellectual and cultural background for Gunkel’s whole project, especially for his study of the prophets. Conclusion Modern biblical scholarship knows itself to be indebted to Bishop Robert Lowth, but by and large that debt has been perceived to be most closely connected with his insights into the nature of Hebrew poetry. His Isaiah translation and commentary were one part of that project; in this later work, as he himself noted, he brought to bear in detail what he had conceived in his Lectures many years before. Today’s reader of Lowth’s Isaiah cannot help but be impressed by his ability to re-enter the poetic world of the ancients, to help the reader see, or rather feel, the ancient world of homely, crude, but utterly powerful, “sublime” imagery. Lowth’s aesthetic-literary method, mostly ignored in the nineteenth century although resumed by Gunkel and his followers, may have little to teach us that is new today. Nevertheless, his particular approach to the text and its language—he called it “reading Hebrew the way the Hebrews read”—surely makes ancient words come alive; in this regard, we do well to practice his art and assume his habitus. Lowth’s translation of Isaiah still conveys an uncommon sharpness and sense of the book’s original passion; the poetic imagery is paradoxically earthy, even ugly, but brilliant in its effect. His greatest abiding significance, I believe, is that he utterly persuades us that Isaiah is a great poet. An aesthetic reading of the text is in no way inimical to the more intensely rational aspects of historical method. In his time, Lowth managed to keep these two rivals in proper tension, a tension that contemporary scholarship still rightly struggles to maintain. Select Bibliography Cripps, R. S. “Two British Interpreters of the Old Testament: Robert Lowth (1710–1787) and Samuel Lee (1783–1862).” BJLR 35 (1952/53): 385–404. Hepworth, Brian. Robert Lowth. Boston: Twayne, 1978. Kugel, James L. “Poetry and Prophecy: An Overview.” Pages 1–25 in Poetry and Prophecy: The Beginnings of a Literary Tradition. Edited by James L. Kugel. Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 1990. Lowth, Robert. D. R. Lowths … Jesaias, neu übersetzt nebst einer Einleitung und critischen philologischen und erläuternden Anmerkungen aus dem Englishen: Mit Zusätzen und Anmerkungen von J. B. Koppe. Translated by G. H. Richerz. 4 vols. Leipzig: Weidmanns Erben und Reich, 1779–81.

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———. Isaiah: A New Translation; with a Preliminary Dissertation, and Notes, Critical, Philological, and Explanatory. 15th ed. London: Tegg, 1857. ———. Lectures on the Sacred Poetry of the Hebrews. Translated by G. Gregory. 3rd ed. London: Chadwick, 1847. Marrs, Rick R. “Lowth, Robert.” Pages 89–90 in vol. 2 of Dictionary of Biblical Interpretation. Edited by John H. Hayes. Nashville: Abingdon, 1999. Prickett, Stephen. Words and The Word: Language, Poetics and Biblical Interpretation. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1986. Reibel, David A. “Introduction.” Pages v–xxxiv in Isaiah: A New Translation, by Robert Lowth. Repr., London: Routledge/Thoemmes, 1995. Smend, Rudolf. “Lowth in Deutschland.” Pages 43–62 in Epochen der Bibelkritik. Vol. 3 of Gesammelte Studien. BEvT 109. Munich: Kaiser, 1991. Tull, Patricia K. “What’s New in Lowth? Synchronic Reading in the Eighteenth and Twenty-First Centuries.” Pages 183–217 in Society of Biblical Literature 2000 Seminar Papers. SBLSP 39. Atlanta: Society of Biblical Literature, 2000.

On the Road to Duhm: Isaiah in Nineteenth-Century Critical Scholarship Marvin A. Sweeney

Introduction Bernhard Duhm’s commentary on the book of Isaiah, initially published in 1892 as part of the Göttingener Handkommentar zum Alten Testament, clearly constitutes the foundation of modern critical Isaiah research.1 In keeping with the historical-critical perspectives that dominated the field in the late nineteenth century, Duhm held that Isaiah contained three discrete prophetic collections, each based in the work of an individual prophet who wrote in relation to a distinct historical setting.2 Thus, according to Duhm, the work of the eighth-century prophet to whom the book is attributed, Isaiah ben Amoz (Proto-Isaiah), appears in Isa 1–39. Although these chapters contain a great deal of later material, particularly the Babylonian oracles of Isa 13:1–14:23 and 21:1–10 and the so-called Isaiah apocalypses of Isa 24–27 and 34–35, they generally presuppose the historical setting of the late eighth century b.c.e., when the Assyrian Empire advanced into the Syro-Israelite region, destroying the northern kingdom of Israel and subjugating the southern kingdom of Judah. The work of an anonymous sixth-century prophet, Deutero-Isaiah,

1. Bernhard Duhm, Das Buch Jesaia (5th ed.; Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1968). For discussion of Duhm (1847–1928), see Walter Baumgartner’s comments on pp. v–xiii of this edition of Duhm’s commentary. See also Hans-Joachim Kraus, Geschichte der Historisch-Kritischen Erforschung des Alten Testaments von der Reformation bis zur Gegenwart (Neukirchen-Vluyn: Neukirchener, 1956), 250–57; and Rudolf Smend, “Duhm, Bernhard,” EncJud 6:264. This paper was presented at the 2002 meeting of the Society of Biblical Literature Formation of the Book of Isaiah Group, 26 November 2002, Atlanta. A preliminary version appears in Society of Biblical Literature 2002 Seminar Papers (SBLSP 41; Atlanta: Society of Biblical Literature, 2002), 191–211. 2. For an assessment of Duhm’s commentary, see the unpublished version of my dissertation, “Isaiah 1–4 and the Post-exilic Understanding of the Isaianic Tradition” (Ph.D. diss.; Claremont Graduate School, 1983), 6–10.

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appears in Isa 40–55. According to Duhm, Deutero-Isaiah wrote in Phoenicia but observed the rise of the Persian Empire under the Achaemenid monarch, Cyrus the Great, and portrayed the impending downfall of Babylon as an act of Yhwh. The work of an even later anonymous prophet, Trito-Isaiah, appears in Isa 56–66. Duhm contended that this prophet wrote in Judah during the mid-fifth century b.c.e. shortly before the time of Nehemiah. These collections originated as independent works that were expanded and brought together into the present form of the book over the course of several centuries by a redactional process that concluded in the Hasmonean period. Although Duhm’s three-part division of the book is facing serious challenges in contemporary scholarship, it has defined discussion of Isaiah throughout the twentieth century.3 Duhm’s work continues to provide the starting point for scholars exploring the diachronic questions of Isaiah’s compositional history. It also continues to influence those who are concerned primarily with synchronic literary analysis of the book in its present form. Nevertheless, it is clear that Duhm’s hypothesis is not entirely original, insofar as it draws upon a longstanding recognition that the book of Isaiah could not have been composed by a single author. Although most modern histories of critical study of Isaiah begin with Duhm, a number point to earlier works that argue that the present form of the book of Isaiah is the product of multiple authors.4 The identification of the sixth-century b.c.e. Persian monarch Cyrus as Yhwh’s messiah and temple builder in Isa 44:28 and 45:1, as well as other features of the book, had already prompted many interpreters to argue that Isaiah ben Amoz could not have composed the entire book, particularly chapters 40–66. Indeed, this recognition had already appeared in the Babylonian Talmud (B. Bat. 14b–15a), which identified “the assembly of Hezekiah and his colleagues” as the authors of the book and employed thematic grounds for placing it in the third position among the prophetic books, following Jeremiah and Ezekiel, despite the recognition that Isaiah ben Amoz lived prior to his two colleagues. Similarly, in his twelfth-century commentary, Abraham ibn Ezra remarked: About the last section of the book there is no doubt that it refers to a period yet to come, as I shall explain.—It must be borne in mind, that the opinion of the orthodox, that the book of Samuel was written by Samuel, is correct as regards the first part, till the words “And Samuel died” (1 Sam. xxv. 1); this remark is confirmed by the fact that the book of Chronicles contains the names [of the

3. See my discussion in Isaiah 1–39, with an Introduction to Prophetic Literature (FOTL 16; Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1996), 39–62. 4. See especially Christopher R. Seitz, “Isaiah, Book of,” ABD 3:472–88, 501–7.

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descendants of David] in genealogical order down to Zerubbabel.—The words “Kings shall see and arise, princes shall worship” (xlix. 7) support this view, though they might also be explained as follows: “Kings and princes will arise, etc., when they hear the name of the prophet even after his death.” The reader will adopt the opinion which recommends itself most to his judgment.5

Brevard Childs’s survey of Isaiah scholarship identifies the late eighteenthcentury scholars J. C. Döderlein and J. G. Eichhorn as the first to argue that the book of Isaiah could not have been written entirely by Isaiah ben Amoz himself but must instead presuppose an exilic author in chapters 40–66.6 Indeed, several other influential works sharing this view appeared immediately before and after Duhm’s commentary, including the 1891 introduction to the Old Testament by Samuel Rolles Driver, the fourth edition of Franz Delitzsch’s commentary on Isaiah published in 1889, and the 1895 expositional commentary on Isaiah by George Adam Smith.7 In order to clarify the scholarly and historical context of Duhm’s contribution to Isaiah scholarship, the balance of this essay will examine several influential works originally published between 1780 and 1890, including the introduction by Johann Gottfried Eichhorn (1752–1827), the commentaries by Wilhelm Gesenius (1786–1842) and Ferdinand Hitzig (1807–75), the study of prophetic literature by Heinrich Georg August Ewald (1803–75), and the commentary by August Dillmann (1823–94). Such a survey is hardly comprehensive, as it is limited to works published in German that are readily available to the present author. Nevertheless, one may note a chain of scholarly tradition insofar as Ewald was a student of Eichhorn, Dillmann and Duhm were students of Ewald, and Hitzig was a student of both Gesenius and Ewald. This chapter will demonstrate that Duhm’s work largely represents the emerging consensus of nineteenth-century critical scholarship concerning the composition of the book of Isaiah. Many had already argued that Isa 40–66 was composed in exilic or later times. Duhm’s unique contributions were the isolation of the so-called “servant songs” and the identification of a “Trito-Isaiah” as the author of Isa 56–66.

5. See Michael Friedländer, ed., Translation of the Commentary (vol. 1 of The Commentary of Ibn Ezra on Isaiah; New York: Feldheim, undated reprint of the 1873 edition), 170–71. 6. Brevard Childs, Introduction to the Old Testament as Scripture (Philadelphia: Fortress, 1979), 316–18. 7. Samuel Rolles Driver, An Introduction to the Literature of the Old Testament (1891; repr., Cleveland: World, 1965), 236–46; Franz Delitzsch, Biblische Commentar über das Buch Jesaja (4th ed.; Leipzig: Dörffling & Franke, 1889); George Adam Smith, The Book of Isaiah (2 vols.; Expositer’s Bible; New York: Armstrong, 1905), 2:3–25.

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Johann Gottfried Eichhorn Interpreters identify J. C. Döderlein’s 1775 Latin translation of Isaiah with notes, as well as J. B. Koppe’s notes to the 1780 German edition of Lowth’s commentary on Isaiah, as the beginnings of critical assertions that portions of Isaiah were written by someone later than the prophet.8 Döderlein claimed that Isaiah could not be the author of chapters 40–66 but suggested that perhaps they were the work of an exilic poet who was also named Isaiah ben Amoz.9 Koppe’s claim was limited to chapter 50, which he attributed to Ezekiel or another prophet living in Babylon.10 The first full discussions of the criteria for distinguishing genuine from nongenuine portions of the book, however, appeared in E. F. C. Rosenmüller’s 1791–93/1811–20 notes on Isaiah and especially in J. G. Eichhorn’s widely influential 1780–83 introduction to the Old Testament.11 Eichhorn was a student of J. D. Michaelis. Volume 4 of the 1824 fourth edition of his introduction contains his discussion of Isaiah.12 An overview of his discussion demonstrates that he is fundamentally concerned with the historical setting of the Babylonian exile and its implications for reconstructing the authentic oracles of Isaiah ben Amoz. In addition, he presupposes that the authentic oracles of the book, arranged in roughly chronological order, constitute the cores of the various collections that he postulates. Later, anonymous oracles from the exilic and postexilic periods tended to accumulate within the core oracular collections, especially as appendices.

8. Theodore Friedman, “Isaiah,” EncJud 9:45; Seitz, “Isaiah, Book of,” 3:473. 9. Esaias ex recensione textus hebraei ad fidem codd. manusciptorum et versionum antiquarum latine vertit notasque varii argumenti subiecit Jo. Christoph. Doederlein D. (Altdorf, 1775; 2nd ed., 1780; 3rd ed., 1789). This volume was not available to me. It is cited from Wilhelm Gesenius, Philologisch-kritischer und historischer Commentar über den Jesaia (2 vols.; Leipzig: Vogel, 1821), 1/1:140 n. 21; see also p. 17. For a thorough history of research through the early nineteenth century, see pp. 107–42. I am indebted to Prof. John T. Fitzgerald Jr., who provided a photocopy of this work from the University of Miami library. 10. Seitz, “Isaiah, Book of,” 3:473, citing Robert Lowth, D. R. Lowths … Jesaias, neu übersetzt nebst einer Einleitung und critischen philologischen und erläuternden Anmerkungen aus dem Englishen: Mit Zusätzen und Anmerkungen von J. B. Koppe (trans. G. H. Richerz; 4 vols.; Leipzig: Weidmanns Erben und Reich, 1779–81), 2:43. Not available to me; cited from Gesenius, Jesaia, 1/1:135–36 n. 2. 11. So Friedman, “Isaiah,” 9:46. See E. F. C. Rosenmüller, Scholia in Vetus Testamentum. T. III. Jesaiae vaticinia complectens, 3 sections (Leipzig, 1791–93). Not available to me; cited from Gesenius, Jesaia, 1/1:137 n. 6, who cites Rosenmüller’s 1811–20 edition. 12. Johann Gottfried Eichhorn, Einleitung in das Alte Testament (5 vols.; 4th ed.; Göttingen: Rosenbusch, 1820–24; first edition in three volumes published 1780–83), 76–146. For discussion of Eichhorn, see Kraus, Geschichte, 120–40; and M. Z. Segal, “Eichhorn, Johann Gottfried,” EncJud 6:517.


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Eichhorn’s first section provides an overview of Isaiah’s life, in which he states that inauthentic materials from the period of the Babylonian exile are mixed in with the prophet’s own authentic speeches.13 He begins by noting third-person chronological notices and narrative accounts concerning the prophet. The superscription to the book in Isa 1:1, which dates Isaiah to the reigns of Uzziah, Jotham, Ahaz, and Hezekiah, stems, Eichhorn says, from an unknown hand from the exilic period. The reference to the death of Uzziah at the beginning of Isa 6 must also be the work of an unknown exilic hand, although the first-person narrative is the work of the prophet himself. Isaiah 7, which narrates Ahaz’s actions during the Syro-Ephraimitic war, is clearly written by a later hand, although the truth of its contents is not to be doubted. Isaiah 36–39, which relates Sennacherib’s siege of Jerusalem during the reign of Hezekiah, is likewise the work of another hand, although it too is historically certain. Eichhorn clearly recognizes the third-person literary form and the concern with chronology as evidence of a later hand, but he shows little inclination to read the contents of the narratives critically, not even the account of the slaying of 185,000 Assyrian troops by the angel of death. He does question whether any material may be dated to Jotham’s reign but concludes that Isa 2 must stem from this period. He offers an interesting twist on an old debate appearing several centuries before in R. David Kimchi’s commentary: Is the book arranged chronologically, or is Isa 6 the prophet’s call narrative?14 Eichhorn accepts Isa 6 as the prophet’s call narrative but holds that Isa 2 must stem from an early period in the prophet’s career. Eichhorn defines the criteria by which oracles are to be judged authentic to the prophet. He states that oracles from various times and various prophets appear throughout the book under the name of Isaiah. His first criterion is the extent to which portrayed events are consistent with the time of Isaiah. The oracle concerning the impending downfall of Moab in Isa 15–16, which concludes in 16:14 with a statement that it will take place in three years, comes from a later prophet, since it is not realized until the time of the Babylonians (see also Isa 21:16 concerning the impending downfall of Babylon in one year). Inconsistencies in the use of language also play a major role in identifying the work of later prophets, such as Isa 24–27, which displays “unmanly” wordplays and other forms of expression that contrast with Isaiah’s authentic oracles in chapters 1–8, and such as Isa 58:5–7 and 59:4 and 13, which pile up infinitives

13. Eichhorn, Einleitung, 76–81. 14. See Louis Finkelstein, ed., The Commentary of David Kimchi on Isaiah (Columbia University Oriental Studies 19; New York: Columbia University Press, 1926), vii–viii (introduction to Kimchi’s commentary, Hebrew section). See also the discussion of this issue by Rashi, R. Joseph Kara, and R. Eliezer of Beaugency, as described in Robert A. Harris’s essay in this volume.

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not characteristic of Isaiah’s authentic style.15 Finally, conformity to the circumstances known to exist in Isaiah’s time points to the authenticity of oracles, particularly those that explicitly mention the Assyrians or other events relevant to the Assyrian period. Most important is Eichhorn’s observation that chapters 40–52 do presuppose not the circumstances of the Assyrian period but those of the Babylonian exile instead. References to Babylon’s downfall and Cyrus’s rise, as well as calls for a return to the homeland, all provide support for the exilic dating of these oracles. Eichhorn also notes Isa 21:1–10, with its reference to Babylon, as another example of exilic prophecies, though it stands in the midst of Isa 1–39. Overall, Eichhorn postulates that the process of the book’s formation takes place as small collections of Isaian oracles, particularly those with moral themes, are supplemented with later oracles and glosses during the Babylonian period to form prophetic anthologies. Whereas Isaiah’s authentic prophetic oracles focus on moral themes, the oracles against the nations express a nationalistic concern with the punishment of foreigners. The oracles in chapters 40–52 form a prophetic collection that attracted its own supplements, as this material in turn supplemented the Isaian collections that appear in the first part of the book.16 Wilhelm Gesenius Based upon the work of Eichhorn and others who had pointed the way, Wilhelm Gesenius’s 1821 commentary on Isaiah is the first full-scale treatment positing an exilic author for the second half of the book. Like Eichhorn, Gesenius begins with a treatment of Isaiah’s life circumstances, which extend from 759 b.c.e., the year of King Uzziah’s death according to Gesenius,17 through the reigns of Jotham (759–743), Ahaz (745–728), and Hezekiah (728–699). Although Gesenius’s chronology differs from that employed by modern scholarship, the basic events pertaining to the Assyrian advances into Israel and Judah remain much the same. He notes that Isaiah has suffered the unhappy fate typical of prophetic works in that a considerable number of oracles that, due to differences in language and historical circumstance, could not have come from the times of Ahaz and Hezekiah have been worked into the prophet’s collection. These additions include not only chapters 40–66 but also chapters 13, 14, 21, 24–27, 34, and 35, as well as many smaller passages discussed in the commentary.18 He indicates that this “anthology” or book of Isaiah presupposes 15. Eichhorn, Einleitung, 4:86. 16. Ibid., 4:88–108, esp. 4:89. 17. See Isa 6:1; Gesenius, Jesaia, 1/1:4. 18. He does have reservations about Isa 21; see ibid., 1/2:648–50.


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the work of two authors and refers to the second author as “Pseudo-Jesaia,” placing him in Babylon at the end of the exilic period. He rehearses several earlier explanations for the inclusion of this material in the book of Isaiah ben Amoz: perhaps it was added to fill out the original Isaiah scroll (Eichhorn); perhaps the exilic prophet was also named Isaiah ben Amoz (Döderlein); perhaps the Isaiah collection constitutes an analogy to the Zechariah collection (Bertholdt); or perhaps the collector observed similarities of viewpoint or style between the two collections (Augusti). In the end, Gesenius attributes the inclusion of the work of Pseudo-Isaiah to uncritical and limited intellectual perspectives in the exilic period. His discussion of the organization of the book is crucial for understanding his hermeneutical perspectives.19 Whereas earlier scholars had argued that the book is organized according to chronological principles (Jerome; Michaelis; Rosenmüller) or according to similarities in content (Jahn; Bauer; Vitringa), Gesenius maintains that the present form of the book displays both of these concerns. Because no historical viewpoint follows through the entire work, it resembles works, such as Psalms and Proverbs, that comprise various subcollections of somewhat disparate material. Consequently, Gesenius argues that the book of Isaiah contains four primary parts or books, each of which includes smaller subcollections of oracles. The first book, chapters 1–12, contains a variety of materials from Isaiah’s earliest periods, organized largely on chronological grounds. Chapter 1, however, is an assemblage composed of material from the times of both Ahaz (vv. 1–9, 21–31) and Hezekiah (vv. 10–20).20 The majority of the remaining material originates from the time of Ahaz, although Isa 10:5–34 stems from the time of Hezekiah. Chapters 11 and 12 are not Isaian. Isaiah 11 employs later vocabulary influenced by Aramaic and foresees a messianic time of peace beyond that envisioned for the reign of Hezekiah in Isa 9:1–6.21 Isaiah 12 employs hymnic forms like those of the Psalms and Isa 40–66.22 The superscriptions in 1:1 and 2:1 are the work of collectors. According to Gesenius, the second book (chapters 13–23) mostly consists of oracles against foreign nations. Analogies with the oracles against the nations in Jer 46–51 and Ezek 25–32, and the formulaic superscriptions found throughout this collection, point to the work of a later editor. The collection clearly mixes authentic with inauthentic oracles. While the fragment concerning Assyria in Isa 14:24–27 is authentic and likely belongs to Isa 10:5–34, Gesenius’s discussion 19. Ibid., 1/1:18–24. 20. See his discussion of the setting of this chapter, ibid., 1/1:146. 21. Ibid., 1/1:415–20. 22. Ibid., 1/1:444–45.

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of Isa 13:1–14:23 emphasizes its interest in Babylon, its worldwide perspective, and its lexical links with Isa 40–66 and the book of Job.23 His dating of the oracle against Babylon in Isa 21:1–10 is heavily influenced by the references he sees to the Persians and Medes in verses 1–2, but he admits the possibility of prophecy prior to the event.24 Interestingly, he defends the Isaian authorship of much of the oracle concerning Moab (Isa 15–16), though he concedes that the oracle has been updated to account for the Babylonian period.25 The collection displays no order that he can discern. It was formed by an exilic collector, who attributed it to Isaiah. According to Gesenius, the third book, chapters 24–35, is based upon a core of authentic oracles from the time of Hezekiah. Nevertheless, the editor included two major exilic collections in chapters 24–27 and 34–35. Gesenius’s dating of Isa 24–27 to the exilic period depends heavily upon its contents and hymnic forms.26 These chapters depict a wasted Jerusalem and Judah as well as the imminent freeing of the people from the oppression of an enemy, which must be Babylon, although it is not explicitly named. In addition, the reference to the resurrection of the dead corresponds to Ezek 37:1–14, which stems from the exilic period. Gesenius’s dating of the anti-Edom oracle in Isa 34 is heavily influenced by the condemnation of Edom in exilic-oriented texts, such as Ps 137, Obadiah, Jer 49, Ezek 25, and Isa 63:1–6. Isaiah 35 is closely tied to Isa 34 and relates the impending restoration of the people following the defeat of the Edomite enemy. Therefore, according to Gesenius, it dates to the late exilic period.27 The collector appended a historical segment in chapters 36–39 based upon the analogy of Jer 52. The fourth book, chapters 40–66, contains the exultant writings of PseudoIsaiah at the end of the exilic period. Gesenius claims that the Talmud places Isaiah after Jeremiah and Ezekiel because chapters 40–66 appear to postdate the work of the other two prophets. He notes that the subdivision of oracles in these chapters is heavily disputed and that they may be attributed to various times. Gesenius’s commentary on Isa 40–66 appears in a separate volume with its own introduction. He states at the outset that chapters 40–66 form a unit that must be dated to the exilic period.28 He provides an overview of the characteristic themes of these chapters, which include comfort, return to the homeland, the defeat of Israel’s enemies, Yhwh’s sovereignty, the uselessness of idols, the

23. Ibid., 1/2:447–51. 24. Ibid., 1/2:648–50. 25. Ibid., 1/2:500–514. 26. See his discussion in ibid., 1/2:756–61. 27. Ibid., 1/2:904–9. 28. Ibid., 2:3.


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coming of Cyrus, and Yhwh’s servant(s). Gesenius also discusses characteristic linguistic features of chapters 40–66 that support their identification as a unified segment from the exilic period. The language and phraseology employed is distinct from that found in the work of Isaiah ben Amoz. Gesenius notes the following grounds for dating Isa 40–66 to the exilic period. (1) All historical references point to this period rather than to the time of Isaiah: Jerusalem lies in ruins, the land is wasted, and the city and temple are now destroyed but will be rebuilt. The same applies to references to other peoples, such as the Babylonian Empire being about to fall to Cyrus. (2) The prophet refers back to earlier prophecies to announce the return of the people from exile. (3) The prophet is able to employ a historical basis for his announcements concerning the truth of the future restoration of the people. (4) These chapters employ characteristic language that Isaiah ben Amoz does not know and that conforms to the language employed in later books, such as Jeremiah and Psalms. Much of the language employed in Isa 40–66 corresponds to late (rabbinic) Hebrew and to Aramaic. Finally, (5) these oracles were attributed to Isaiah so that the great prophet could be seen as one who would anticipate the future misfortunes of his people. Gesenius concludes his introduction with the assertion that these chapters presuppose the victory of Cyrus over Babylon. He notes that the rebukes and warnings of the final chapters of the work, with their precise descriptions of idol worship, their ideal depictions of the New Jerusalem, and their portrayal of the downfall of Edom (not Babylon), presuppose a nation that has not yet realized its hope of deliverance and the emergence of its wise national teacher. He assumes that the author of these oracles ordered and arranged the material himself but that a later redactor joined it to the work of Isaiah ben Amoz. When one considers Gesenius’s overall model for the layout and composition of the book of Isaiah, it appears that, apart from the hypothesis of a Trito-Isaiah collection, he has already established the basic parameters of Duhm’s later commentary, particularly with his assertions of the late dating of Isa 13–14, 24–27, and 34–35, the appended character of the historical narrative in Isa 36–39, the organization of the book into collections, and of course the exilic dating of Isa 40–66. Ferdinand Hitzig Although Gesenius’s work has been noted recently in treatments of scholarship on Isaiah, the 1833 commentary on Isaiah by Ferdinand Hitzig is less well known.29 Hitzig was the great-great-grandson of Isaac ben Daniel Itzig 29. Ferdinand Hitzig, Der Prophet Jesaja (Heidelberg: Winter, 1833).

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(1723–99), the banker and leader of the Berlin Jewish community, who envisioned the Jüdische Freischule of Berlin founded by his son Isaac Daniel (1750–1806) for the education of poor children. Ferdinand Hitzig’s grandfather, Elias Daniel (1756–1818), changed the family name to Hitzig because Itzig was employed as a pejorative name for Jews. Ferdinand’s father, Julius Edward Hitzig (1780–1849), converted to Christianity.30 Hitzig was a student of both Gesenius in Halle and Ewald in Göttingen. Writing some twelve years after the publication of his teacher Gesenius’s commentary, Hitzig states that his goals in publishing such a work are to place a convenient, inexpensive, and less-detailed tool into the hands of students and to take account of the latest advances in the study of Hebrew grammar for the interpretation of Isaiah.31 Hitzig begins his introduction to the commentary with a statement that a full understanding of Isaiah can be achieved only by placing him in the context of Hebrew prophecy, including consideration of the viewpoint of the prophets, the upper social echelons that the prophets addressed, and the value of their message. Consequently, his introduction includes three major sections: Hebraism (Hebraismus), intended to identify the “essence” of “the Hebrew spirit/ intellect” that the prophets in general and Isaiah in particular expressed; “Prophecy”; and “Isaiah.” Hitzig employs an evolutionary framework, typical for his time, to trace the development of Hebraism’s consciousness of a world soul or creator, which is identified as Israel’s national deity. He maintains that the Hebrew spirit includes two sides, the higher notions of the oriental spirit, expressed in the Hebrew people, and the higher substance in the history of the Spirit in human history in general. The Hebrew spirit grows out of an oriental spirit that is focused upon the immediate experience of the objective world. But this Hebrew spirit attempts to develop abstract thinking on the basis of its concrete experience. Such development may be observed, for example, in the Hebrew language, in which the concrete Nw#l “tongue” comes to mean “language,” and Myyx “living” comes to mean “life.” Due to its this-worldly, pragmatic focus, the Hebrew spirit lacks a sense of art or aesthetics. Mosaic law therefore lacks a sense of the ideal or any measure of beauty. Lacking true discernment of an inner principle, ideal, or spirit, Hebraism is able to produce annals or chronicles, but it is not able to produce true history. The highest physical existence is the highest good to the Hebrew, who cannot know higher spiritual peace. Nevertheless, the desire for tranquility and peace and the focus on the natural

30. See editor, “Hitzig, Ferdinand,” EncJud 8:790–91; S. Liptzin, “Hitzig, Julius Eduard,” EncJud 8:791; editor, “Itzig, Daniel,” EncJud 9:1150–52. 31. Hitzig, Der Prophet Jesaja, v.


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world motivates the development of such ideals as a life force or soul, derived initially from blood, within the body. The recognition of the principle of causality points to the necessity of a world soul or creator that must be identified as Israel’s national deity. Whereas Hebraism understood its national deity to be the world’s creator, prophecy was able to develop this notion into the concept of the universal deity. Such a development entailed the inner recognition of the divine by the individual, not the externally recognized particular or corporate deity. Such a development took place, according to Hitzig, in three stages. The first is expressed in the early experience of ecstatic prophecy, a form of inspiration in which the divine spirit takes complete control of the body and suppresses the self-consciousness of the prophet (see, e.g., Num 24:4, 16 and 1 Sam 19:24). A second stage is speaking in tongues, a moderate form of inspiration in which the self-consciousness of the prophet is not absorbed but is identified with the divine self-consciousness. Here the divine spirit of enlightenment and holiness brings about a wholly new inner human being, forms its intelligence and will, and instills a new heart and new spirit to produce an entirely new human being. Such a person, instilled with divine inspiration, truth, morality, and justice, then emerges as a true prophet, who responds to the divine call to speak inspired oracles. A third stage takes up the recording and reading of past prophecy, with a concomitant dogmatic self-consciousness and loss of inspiration, as the prophet becomes less of a prophet and more of a writer. The foundational principle of prophecy is that Yhwh requites deeds, so that the righteous are rewarded and the wicked punished. Ultimately, such a conceptualization raises questions concerning the limitation of an infinite world spirit to a specific people and points instead to the possibility of eternal life. Having explained his hermeneutical framework, Hitzig proceeds to his discussion of Isaiah. He focuses especially on the reconstruction of the historical Isaiah and his authentic oracles along lines similar to those of his teacher Gesenius, although he sometimes takes some rather idiosyncratic positions (see, e.g., Isa 15–16 and 24–27 below). He begins with the year of Uzziah’s death in 759 b.c.e. and lays out the historical background of Assyria’s successive campaigns during Hezekiah’s reign, campaigns that ultimately placed all of Israel and Judah under Assyrian control. Isaiah 1 serves as an introduction to Isa 6, but chapters 2–5 contain the oldest oracles of the book. The oracles follow in general chronological order in Isa 7:1–9:6 and 9:7–10:4. Isaiah 17 was moved to its present position by Isaiah. Isaiah 10:5–12:6 is from the time of Hezekiah, but Isa 13:1– 14:23 presupposes the downfall of Babylon to the Medes.32 Isaiah 14:24–27

32. Ibid.,153–55.

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and 28–32 are Hezekian; Isa 19:16–25 and 21:1–10 are inauthentic; Isa 22 is from the time of Sennacherib. Chapters 15–16 are originally an oracle of Jonah delivered during a campaign of Jeroboam II;33 Isa 18 presupposes a campaign by Sargon;34 Isa 19 is an authentic Isaian oracle from the time of Sargon, but it points to the later downfall of the Ethiopians to the Saites;35 and Isa 20 presupposes Sargon’s campaigns.36 Isaiah 23 presupposes Nebuchadrezzar’s siege against Tyre,37 and chapters 24–27 show sufficient analogies to Nahum to indicate that they presuppose the downfall of Nineveh.38 Isaiah 28–33 is an original part of Isaiah’s canon from the time of Sennacherib, although some verses of chapter 33 are later. Isaiah 34 and 35 stem from the later phases of the exile,39 and chapters 36–39 are a historical appendix ultimately drawn from Kings, although both the Kings and Isaian versions have suffered from the interference of later redactors.40 Isaiah 40–66 is the product of an author heavily influenced by psalmic poetry writing at the conclusion of the exile.41 The exilic chapters are organized into three parts or books—Isa 40–48; 49–57; and 58–66—distinguished by the concluding formulas in Isa 48:22 and 57:21, “there is no peace, says Yhwh/my G-d, for the wicked.” The first section looks forward to the fall of Babylon and its idols; the second anticipates a happy future of restoration; and the third takes up problems of continuing sin that impedes full restoration. Although later editing is evident, all three books are written by the same author shortly before the fall of the Babylonian Empire. Hitzig portrays the authentic Isaiah as a speaker with a spirit like no other, whose feelings and thoughts are permeated by the basic idea of Hebraism, which lives within him and prompts him to become a theocratic individual.42 He sees himself in both divine and human thought as he sees the greatness and power of Yhwh in opposition to idols and attempts to express the divine essence through his visions. Citing purported messianic and eschatological passages (e.g., Isa 4:2–6; 9:1–6; 10:33, 34; 11:1–16; 30:19–33; 32:15–19), Hitzig maintains that the loftiness of Isaiah’s ideas and the power of truth that he has seen kindle new inspiration within him that guides him to their highest flight and looks forward

33. Ibid., 178–84; Hitzig cites his earlier study, Des Propheten Jonas Orakel über Moab, kritisch vindicirt u.s.w. (Heidelberg: Mohr, 1831). This work was not available to me. 34. Hitzig, Der Prophet Jesaja, 209–10. 35. Ibid., 217–23. 36. Ibid., 236–37. 37. Ibid., 269–79. 38. Ibid., 291–99. 39. Ibid., 394–96; cf. 403–4. 40. Ibid., 409–13. 41. Ibid., 454–75, esp. 469, 472. 42. Ibid., xxxix–xl.


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to their true time of realization. The literary Isaiah therefore points to something beyond his own time and being, and Hitzig’s frequent references to citations of the “true” Isaiah in the exilic portion of the book indicate that he thought this would be achieved in the second part of the book.43 Although Hitzig makes it clear that the exilic chapters frequently contradict the religious and moral ideas of the “authentic” Isaiah, his attempts to draw out the relationships between the first and second parts of the book, especially with regard to the downfall of Babylon and the restoration of Israel following punishment, both recollects precritical readings of a unified Isaiah and anticipates current critical attempts to read Isaiah as a whole. Heinrich Georg August Ewald Heinrich Ewald published a very influential study of the prophets, initially in 1840, that followed his teacher Eichhorn in postulating that significant portions of the book of Isaiah were not authentic. He followed Hitzig in reading the components of Isaiah in relation to a Hegelian hermeneutical framework.44 Kraus states that Ewald, together with Herder, remains the “definitive” interpreter of prophecy in nineteenth-century scholarship.45 Indeed, Kraus illustrates Ewald’s viewpoint by quoting his statement concerning the universal nature of prophetic truth: “the universal truths which govern the world, or (to say the same with other words) the ideas of G-d, always exist invariably and inviolably, fully independent from the changeability of that which is base as well as from human will and deed.”46 For Ewald, the task of human life is to take up this eternal truth of the divine spirit and to express it in thought and in deed so as to enable the divine spirit and history to achieve their fullest expression.47 Of course, true prophecy finds its purest expression in the spoken word of the original prophet, and later writers who transmitted those words often limited their impact by the very act of writing. In order to express his notions of historical progress in the manifestation of the truth of the divine spirit, Ewald’s work differs from that of his predecessors. He does not treat Isaiah as a book. Rather, separate chapters are devoted to the authentic Isaiah and to the various

43. E.g., ibid., 469–70. 44. For discussion of Ewald, see Kraus, Geschichte, 182–90, esp. 188–90; and S. E. Loewenstamm, “Ewald, Heinrich Georg August,” EncJud 6:1006. 45. Kraus, Geschichte, 190. 46. Translation mine, from Kraus (Geschichte, 188), who quotes a stylistically updated statement by Ewald in Die Propheten des Alten Bundes (2nd ed.; 2 vols.; Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1867–68), 1:2. 47. For Ewald’s discussion of prophecy in general, see ibid., 1:1–86.

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unknown Isaian authors, whose work Ewald finds in Isa 21:1–10; 13:2–14:23; 40–66; 34–35; and 24–27. In Isaiah, Ewald maintains, prophetic literature reaches its highest peaks of power and beauty of expression. Indeed, Isaiah’s ideas, the circumstances of his speeches, and the forms of his expression reveal him as the prophet par excellence.48 From the time of his call, Isaiah portrays Yhwh as the sovereign and holy deity, who calls for recognition in the past, present, and future, who brings the threat of the Assyrian Empire that will leave the people and the house of David with only a remnant, and who shows the light of a better future under the righteous king. Ewald presents Isaiah’s oracles in their chronological order as he reconstructs it. First, Isa 2:2–5:25; 9:7–10:4; and 5:26–30 were composed during the reign of Ahaz when Assyria first began to move into the Syro-Israelite region. The second stage of Isaiah’s oracles appears in Isa 6:1–9:6 and 17:1– 11, when the Assyrians destroyed Samaria and northern Israel. The third stage includes the great accusation of Isa 1 and the oracles against the foreign nations in Isa 14:28–32, 15–16; 21:11–12; and 21:13–17. The fourth stage includes oracles from Isa 22:1–14 (against Jerusalem) and Isa 23 (against Tyre). The fifth stage includes Isa 28–32, and the sixth stage includes oracles from the time of Sennacherib’s invasion (i.e., Isa 10:5–12:6; 14:24–27; 17:12–18:7; 20). Additional oracles concerning the Assyrians appear in Isa 33 and 37:22–35, and Isaiah’s final writings discuss the Egyptians and all nations in chapter 19. According to Ewald, a series of later, anonymous oracles from the time of the downfall of the Babylonian Empire have been included together with Isaiah’s writings. Isaiah 21:1–10 is the earliest and looks forward to the Persian assault against Babylon. A second anonymous oracle concerning the impending fall of Babylon appears in Isa 13:2–14:23, and the large anonymous series concerning the fall of Babylon to Cyrus and the impending restoration of Israel appears in Isa 40–66. These chapters include three books: Isa 40–48 (concerning the old and the new); Isa 49–60 (concerning Israel as model and caricature); and a conclusion to the two books in Isa 61:1–63:6, with later supplements in Isa 63:7–66:24. Additional anonymous oracles from a later time appear in chapters 34–35, which presuppose judgment against Edom, and chapters 24–27, which envision the New Jerusalem and the punishment of Babylon at the time of Darius. Although Ewald represents Isaiah as a powerful theological voice, his focus on the individual oracles clearly points to the importance of the man over that of the book. He portrays the later writers as far less talented and important

48. For Ewald’s treatment of the authentic Isaiah, see ibid., 1:271–489. His treatment of the “inauthentic” sections of Isaiah appears in 3:7–140, 159–76.


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imitators who never quite attained the greatness of the original prophet. In contrast to Hitzig, Ewald presents a very fragmented reading of the book that does little to explore its interrelationships. He fosters the notion of accidental or mechanical combination of sources into a present whole, a whole that impedes interpretation of the true prophetic message. Such work prepares the way for his student, Duhm, to emphasize collections of individual oracles that seemingly have only limited thematic or chronological relationships. August Dillmann The last work to be treated is the 1890 commentary on Isaiah by August Dillmann, which appeared two years prior to the first edition of Duhm’s celebrated work.49 Like Duhm, Dillmann was a student of Ewald. Although he is far better known for his work in Ethiopic studies than in Bible,50 Dillmann nevertheless published major commentaries on the hexateuchal books as well as a posthumous handbook to Old Testament theology. His Isaiah volume replaced the commentary by Knobel, which had appeared in four editions in the Kurzgefaßtes exegetisches Handbuch zum Alten Testament (KHAT) series. In keeping with the interests of his time, Dillmann takes special care to identify the historical background of the prophet Isaiah in the events of the late eighth century b.c.e., from the death of Uzziah in 758 through the conclusion of Hezekiah’s twenty-nine-year reign in 696. Major events during this time include the Syro-Ephraimitic War and Tiglath-Pileser’s punishment of Damascus and Samaria in 740, the downfall of Samaria in Hezekiah’s sixth year (721), and Sennacherib’s campaign in Hezekiah’s fourteenth year (712–711).51 Thus, Isaiah’s career spans the years 758–711. Dillmann portrays Isaiah as a “hero of religion”52 who envisioned Yhwh’s otherworldly highness and holiness as the basis for the ruling power that guided his life. Isaiah emerges as a figure who proclaimed Yhwh’s divine majesty as “the Holy One of Israel” and Yhwh’s battle from Jerusalem against all impurity and idolatry. The great sin of the people was, of course, the rejection of Yhwh’s holiness and teaching, which required the manifestation of divine power to humble their arrogance by using the Assyrian Empire as a tool of punishment. Such punishment would demonstrate Yhwh’s power to Israel and to the world at large and call for the proper

49. August Dillmann, Der Prophet Jesaia (5th ed.; KHAT 5; Leipzig: Hirzel, 1890). 50. See Zev Garber, “Dillmann, August,” EncJud 6:47–48. 51. Dillmann, Jesaia, viii–ix. The discrepancy with dating more conventionally accepted in modern scholarship is due to Dillmann’s acceptance of the authenticity of 2 Kgs 18:10, which states that Samaria fell in the sixth year of Hezekiah and the ninth year of Hoshea of Israel. 52. Ibid., xv.

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response of human faith. Dillmann maintains that Isaiah envisioned an era of paradisaic peace in which an ideal Davidic king would rule in Jerusalem, and the nations of the world, beginning with Egypt and Assyria, would recognize Yhwh’s sovereignty in Zion. Like Duhm, Dillmann maintains that the book of Isaiah comprises a collection of collections of prophetic oracles in which inauthentic material from other prophets or writers is mixed with Isaiah’s authentic oracles. Some elements (such Isa 2:2–4; 15–16; and 21:11–17) are older prophetic writings that have been introduced into the book, since the prophet was often dependent upon the perspectives of earlier prophets, such as Amos, Hosea, and even Joel. According to Dillmann, the first major collection, Isa 1–12, includes a series of smaller speech groups. Isaiah 2–4 constitutes a closed collection of the prophet’s speeches, to which Isa 5 is attached as an appendix.53 The oracles deal largely with the period of security prior to the Syro-Ephraimitic War, although Dillmann’s analysis frequently breaks them down into very small subunits that have been collected, supplemented, and assembled into their present form. Because Isa 2:2–4 also appears in Mic 4:1–5, Dillmann understands it to be an earlier oracle incorporated into both books. A second subcollection appears in Isa 6:1–9:6, which reflects the Syro-Ephraimitic War and Tiglath-Pileser’s invasion. Isaiah’s vision of Yhwh in Isa 6 introduces the whole by emphasizing the people’s obstinacy as the cause for divine judgment. A third collection (Isa 9:7– 11:16/12:6) dates from Sargon’s rule in the late eighth century and anticipates Assyria’s final defeat and the triumph of the messianic kingdom. Whereas the first three subcollections were chronologically arranged, the fourth collection in Isa 1 is a repentance speech with affinities to Amos and Hosea, assembled from various oracles to function as an introduction to the whole. The second collection, according to Dillmann, consists of the oracles against the nations in Isa 13–23, many of which are the work of Isaiah. The oracle against Moab in Isa 15–16, however, is an earlier composition by an unknown author that also finds its way into Jer 48. The oracles against the Idumeans and Arabs in Isa 21:11–17 are likewise older material. The oracle against Egypt in Isa 19 is from a later period. Although the oracle against Tyre in Isa 23 presupposes Shalmaneser’s reign, it includes a postexilic addition in verses 15–18. The oracles concerning Jerusalem and the house of Shebna in Isa 22 presuppose Sennacherib’s campaign, although the reason for their presence among the oracles against the nations is uncertain. Dillmann posits that the third collection, Isa 28–33, is based upon a subcollection of Isaiah’s political speeches condemning Judah’s participation in the

53. Ibid., xxi–xxii, 17–19, 42–43.


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coalition that was forming against Shalmaneser in 726/5 b.c.e. As in the SyroEphraimitic War, Isaiah’s understanding of divine sovereignty calls for a rejection of foreign alliances, particularly with the Egyptians. Later material in Isa 32–33 that presupposes Sennacherib’s campaign, partly from Isaiah and partly from other writers, is appended. In addition to defining the oracles of Isaiah ben Amoz, Dillmann turns his attention to the formation of the book as a whole. He maintains that there are two major parts to Isaiah: Isa 1–35, which contains all of the prophet’s oracles; and Isa 40–66, a composition written several centuries after the lifetime of Isaiah that forms a separate book. These two major portions are linked by the historical narrative concerning Sennacherib’s campaign and associated events in Isa 36–39, which originates from 2 Kgs 18–20, although both versions have undergone considerable editing. Dillmann views the exilic period as the impetus for the present form of the book. Although both Isa 1–12 and 28–33 contain Isaian oracles, the collections were formed by later hands after the exile. Isaiah 13–23 comprises a self-contained collection to which exilic prophecies concerning the downfall of Babylon (Isa 13:1–14:23 and 21:1–10) have been added. Isaiah 24–27 and 34– 35 are eschatologically oriented and originate in the postexilic period. Dillmann sees the resulting order in Isa 1–39 as a prophetic collection structured much like Ezekiel and the Septuagint form of Jeremiah. The material concerning the downfall of Babylon in Isa 13–14, 24–27, and 34–35 anticipates Isa 40–66. A variety of factors demonstrate that these latter chapters were composed by an anonymous prophet immediately prior to the fall of Babylon to Cyrus. These factors include the historical background that presupposes the rise of Cyrus, the theme of messianic restoration rather than judgment, and the work’s very different literary characteristics, which Dillmann cites in detail. Although chapters 40–66 were written by an exilic author, lexical relationships between the two parts of the book indicate to Dillmann the dependence of these chapters on the earlier material from the first part of the book. Dillmann further says that Isa 40–66 comprises two major portions, chronologically arranged. Isaiah 40–48 represents the first fresh outburst of enthusiasm by the author at the rise of Cyrus, the nearness of redemption, and the fall of Babylon.54 Dillmann dates this section to approximately 545 b.c.e., during Cyrus’s approach to Babylon. Because of the parallels between Isa 48:20–21 and 62:10–12 and the common theme of the servants of Yhwh, Dillmann maintains that the second major section of chapters 40–66 appears in Isa 49–62, which anticipates the spiritual elevation of the entire people following their redemp-

54. Ibid., 362.

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tion from exile. This section coincides with Cyrus’s taking control of Babylon in 539. Chapters 63–66 constitute, he says, a series of appendices concerning the circumstances of the return to the land of Israel, dealing particularly with the role of the Edomites, the building of the temple, and the future of Jerusalem. Perhaps because his work was overshadowed by Duhm’s, Dillmann’s commentary is not cited as often as one might expect.55 Nevertheless, in many respects, his overall understanding of the formation of the book’s collections and his dating of major components to the Babylonian exile resembles that offered by Duhm. Conclusion When viewed in relation to the works surveyed here, it would appear that Duhm’s work represents the emerging consensus of nineteenth-century critical scholarship on the formation of the book of Isaiah, particularly once the hypothesis of an exilic author for Isa 40–66 was accepted by scholars such as Driver and Delitzsch.56 Several features loom rather large: (1) the attribution of Isa 40–66 to an anonymous prophet of the late exilic period; (2) the identification of Isaiah ben Amoz’s oracles in the first part of the book only; (3) the general organization of the work into two major parts demarcated by the historical narrative in Isa 36–39; (4) the division of the first part of the book into subcollections; and (5) the dating of major components of this material to the exilic or postexilic periods. Indeed, Duhm’s primary original contributions appear to be the identification and isolation of the so-called servant songs in Isa 42, 49, 50, and 52–53 and the identification of Isa 56–66 as the work of “TritoIsaiah” in the time of Nehemiah.57 Duhm’s isolation of the servant songs and identification of Trito-Isaiah as an individual have been questioned increasingly in the past twenty years.58 Recent studies point, however, to the importance of chapters 56–66 in the form and formation of the book as a whole.59 Although most scholars have focused on

55. It is not cited in the commentary list, for example, by Hans Wildberger, Jesaja 28–39 (BKAT 10/3; Neukirchen-Vluyn: Neukirchener, 1982), 1714. 56. See Smith, Isaiah, 2:3–25; Driver, Introduction, 236–46; and Delitzsch, Jesaja (4th ed., not available to me). 57. For discussion, see Duhm, Jesaia, 14–15. 58. See, e.g., T. N. D. Mettinger, A Farewell to the Servant Songs: A Critical Examination of a Theological Axiom (Lund: Gleerup, 1983); Seizo Sekine, Die Tritojesajanische Sammlung (Jes 56–66) Redaktionsgeschichtlich Untersucht (BZAW 175; Berlin: de Gruyter, 1989); Odil Hannes Steck, Studien zu Tritojesaja (BZAW 203; Berlin: de Gruyter, 1991), esp. 3–45. 59. See especially my discussions in Isaiah 1–39, 39–62; as well as my “Prophetic Exegesis in Isaiah 65–66,” in Writing and Reading the Scroll of Isaiah: Studies of an Interpretive Tradition (ed. C.


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the problems presented by the so-called “First” and “Second” Isaiah, it seems evident that scholars must turn their attention to Trito-Isaiah in order to gain a fuller understanding of the book of Isaiah as a whole. Select Bibliography Dillmann, August. Der Prophet Jesaia. 5th ed. KHAT 5. Leipzig: Hirzel, 1890. Duhm, Bernhard. Das Buch Jesaia. 5th ed. Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1968. Eichhorn, Johann Gottfried. Einleitung in das Alte Testament. 4th ed. 5 vols. Göttingen: Rosenbusch, 1820–24. Ewald, Heinrich Georg August. Die Propheten des Alten Bundes. 2nd ed. 2 vols. Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1867–68. Gesenius, Wilhelm. Philologisch-kritischer und historischer Commentar über den Jesaia. 2 parts. Leipzig: Vogel, 1820–21. Hitzig, Ferdinand. Der Prophet Jesaja. Heidelberg: Winter, 1833. Kraus, Hans-Joachim. Geschichte der Historisch-Kritischen Erforschung des Alten Testaments von der Reformation bis zur Gegenwart. Neukirchen: Kreis Moers, 1956. Sweeney, Marvin A. Isaiah 1–39, with an Introduction to Prophetic Literature. FOTL 16. Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1996.

Broyles and C. Evans; 2 vols.; VTSup 70/1–2; Leiden: Brill, 1997), 1:455–74; and “The Reconceptualization of the Davidic Covenant in Isaiah,” in Studies in the Book of Isaiah: Festschrift Willem A. M. Beuken (ed. J. van Ruiten and M. Vervenne; BETL 132; Leuven: Leuven University Press; Peeters, 1997), 41–61. See also Rolf Rendtorff, “Zur Komposition des Buches Jesajas,” VT 34 (1984): 295–320; and Steck, Studien zu Tritojesaja, 3–45.

Form Criticism, Rhetorical Criticism, and Beyond in Isaiah Roy F. Melugin

The purpose of my essay is to examine, in the context of twentieth-century developments in the critical study of Isaiah, the interactions between form criticism, on the one hand, and rhetorical criticism, on the other. Nineteenthcentury concentration on the historical origins of parts of the book of Isaiah resulted in the textual atomization characteristic of the work of Bernhard Duhm and other turn-of-the-century commentators. Many twentieth-century scholars have contributed to the fragmentation of the book as well. Yet in the last half of the twentieth century, a number of scholars have sought a critical means to find in the book an integrated, though complex, whole. Work that was carried out initially in relation to Deutero-Isaiah has helped lead to an emerging contemporary movement seeking what might be called the “unity” of the book of Isaiah as a whole.1 Early European Form Criticism: Gressmann, Köhler, Begrich, and von Waldow By the beginning of the twentieth century it was commonly argued that prophetic books were composite literary works consisting of different sources that have been combined through redactional activity. 2 Relatively early in the century a movement spawned by Hermann Gunkel called “form criticism” began to amend this understanding. Form critics argued that many of the diverse sources in prophetic books were rooted not in written text but in

1. For an impressive bibliography of nineteenth- and twentieth-century research on Isaiah, see Marvin A. Sweeney, Isaiah 1–39, with an Introduction to Prophetic Literature (FOTL 16; Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1996), 31–39. 2. For an in-depth discussion of Duhm’s work and its precursors in nineteenth-century German scholarship, see Marvin Sweeney’s essay in the previous chapter.

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short units of orally based prophetic speech, joined together editorially to create longer prophetic texts. These speeches reflected various forms alive in Israelite communication and were understood to be best studied as variations on traditional Gattungen, or genres. Although form criticism differed in fundamental ways from the methodology of Duhm and many others of his day, it typically continued the nineteenth century’s emphasis upon dividing books such as Isaiah into the smallest units possible. Indeed, it was not until the last half of the twentieth century, after rhetorical criticism had become influential, that a group of form critics specializing in Isaiah began to show interest first in the “unity” of Isa 40–55 and then in the unity of the book of Isaiah as a whole. The story of form-critical study of Isaiah can appropriately begin with Hugo Gressmann’s work on Isa 40–55.3 Gressmann understood this portion of Isaiah to consist of many separate speeches reflecting different prophetic genres, such as promises, threats, exhortations, as well as other nonprophetic genres, such as hymns.4 Yet the Deutero-Isaianic corpus does not use these forms in traditional ways. Rather, according to Gressmann, the texts used in Deutero-Isaiah actually originated in a time in which many conventional genres were no longer tied to their original contexts of usage, with the result that the producer of the texts in Deutero-Isaiah was free to transform them significantly.5 In 1923 Ludwig Köhler produced a new form-critical study of DeuteroIsaiah.6 He too considered Deutero-Isaiah to be a body of originally independent and self-contained speech units. But they were literary imitations of oral Gattungen, indeed so far removed from what they imitated that the oral patterns borrowed by Deutero-Isaiah were but the primitive folk language used and transformed by the literary artistry of the prophet. Joachim Begrich’s studies of Isa 40–55 have turned out to be the works that have most influenced subsequent form-critical studies of these sixteen chapters. He began by focusing on a speech form that he considered to be a literary imitation of a genre that he called “the priestly salvation oracle.”7 He considered these texts in Isa 40–55, as well as certain passages in Jeremiah, to be

3. Hugo Gressmann, “Die literarische Analyse Deuterojesajas,” ZAW 34 (1914): 254–97. 4. Ibid., 264. 5. Ibid, 295–96. 6. Ludwig Köhler, Deuterojesaja stilkritisch untersucht (BZAW 37; Giessen: Töpelmann, 1923). See also Sigmund Mowinckel, “Die Komposition des deuterojesajanischen Buches,” ZAW 49 (1931): 87–112, 242–60; Paul Volz, Jesaia II (Leipzig: Deichert, 1932); and Karl Elliger, Deuterojesaja in seinem Verhältnis zu Tritojesaja (BWANT 63; Stuttgart: Kohlhammer, 1933). 7. See his article, “Das priesterliche Heilsorakel,” ZAW 52 (1934): 81–92. He considered the following texts to represent this particular genre: Isa 41:8–13; 41:14–16; 43:1–3a, 5; (44:2–5); 48:17–19; 49:7, 14–15; 51:7–8; 54:4–8; Jer 30:10 = 46:27; 30:11 = 46:28.

melugin: form criticism, rhetorical criticism

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prophetic imitations of an oracular genre conventionally spoken in a cultic setting by priests to answer the complaint psalm of the individual, which Begrich also understood as a traditional cultic speech form. According to Begrich, the priestly salvation oracle in Deutero-Isaiah was typically expressed as direct address (i.e., to “Israel,” “Jacob,” etc.) and included the exhortation, “fear not,” as well as substantiating nominal sentences indicating the nearness of God’s help (e.g., “I am with you,” “I am your God”). Also typically included was an assurance that God had heard, employing perfect verbs (e.g., “I have heard,” “I have helped”), followed by an announcement of the future, normally in imperfect tense. In a later study Begrich expanded his focus, adding a number of other texts that he thought manifested the genre of the salvation oracle.8 In these additional texts, “fear not” is missing, the direct address is often not present, and the nominal-sentence substantiating clauses are normally not to be found.9 Moreover, five of the texts Begrich added to the category of salvation oracles seemed to him to be imitations of the communal complaint psalm, in contrast with the “priestly salvation oracles” named in the 1934 essay, which were said to be answers to the complaint psalm of the individual.10 A number of years later, Hans-Eberhard von Waldow presented a form-critical study on Isa 40–55 that for the most part followed the work of Begrich.11 Yet von Waldow considered the salvation oracles in Deutero-Isaiah to be speeches actually made in worship by a cultic prophet rather than imitations of priestly speech forms, as Begrich had understood them.12 Begrich and von Waldow differed in other ways as well, most notably concerning the nature of DeuteroIsaiah’s trial speeches. Begrich had argued that these speeches imitated generic language whose Sitz im Leben was the legal proceeding commonly employed in the town gate.13 But von Waldow contended that prophetic trial speeches were rooted in a different setting, namely, the genre of cultic lawsuit whose setting was the covenant-renewal festival.14

8. Joachim Begrich, Studien zu Deuterojesaja (BWANT 4/25; Stuttgart: Kohlhammer, 1938; repr., Munich: Kaiser, 1963). The additional texts were Isa 41:17–20; 42:14–17; 43:16–21; 45:1–7, 14–17; 46:3–4, 12–13; 49:8–12 (13), 14–21, 22–23, 24–26; 51:12–16; 54:11–12+13b, 14a+13b– 17; 55:8–13. See Begrich, Studien zu Deuterojesaja, 6. 9. Ibid., 7. 10. Isa 41:17–20; 42:14–17; 43:16–21; 51:6–8; 55:8–13. Isa 51:7–8 was listed in the 1934 essay but was presented as 51:6–8 in the 1938 monograph. 11. Hans-Eberhard von Waldow, “Anlass und Hintergrund der Verkündigung des Deuterojesaja” (diss., Bonn, 1953). 12. Ibid., 83ff. 13. Begrich, Studien zu Deuterojesaja, 19. 14. See von Waldow, “Anlass und Hintergrund,” 37–46.

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Form Criticism in North America: James Muilenburg Until the 1950s, form criticism was primarily a European phenomenon, especially in studies of the Hebrew Bible. As far as I am aware, no major North American Ph.D. program in Hebrew Bible had a full-time faculty member who was primarily a form critic before Brevard Childs came to Yale in the last half of the 1950s and Rolf Knierim arrived at Claremont in the mid-1960s. Yet there was certainly interest in form criticism among a number of scholars in North America in the 1940s and 1950s. James Muilenburg’s interest in and critique of the method is particularly important. These are seen first in his Interpreter’s Bible commentary on Isa 40–66 and later in his SBL presidential address, entitled “Form Criticism and Beyond.”15 Muilenburg began his literary study of Isa 40–66 with brief references to nineteenth-century scholarship16 but turned quickly to a discussion of twentiethcentury form-critical approaches.17 He noted that form critics had understood Deutero-Isaiah to consist of many originally independent short units of speech that had later been collected together. Yet Muilenburg did not accept the form critics’ conclusions. Even though he conceded that Hermann Gunkel and his fellow form critics had shown that ancient Israelite writers did employ “literary types and forms” (by which he apparently meant conventional genres of speech, i.e., Gattungen), he thought that the classification of genres had been carried entirely too far. He argued that a “literary revolution” that took place in Israel (and possibly the ancient Near East as a whole) toward the end of the seventh century b.c.e. involved a fusion of genres so that, in the literature from this period, precise demarcations of genre usually cannot be made.18 This literary revolution is evident, he thought, in Deuteronomy, Jeremiah, Ezekiel, and Second Isaiah. In these works, the fusion of genres is so pervasive that we often cannot identify particular units of text as reflecting a single genre. Traditional speech genres must nonetheless not be ignored, according to Muilenburg. In Isa 40–55, he argued, typicalities of trial language are abundantly present.19 Moreover, what Begrich called the “the priestly salvation oracle” profoundly influenced the language of Isa 40–55. Yet Muilenburg did not believe that this language from traditional genres, abundant as it is in Deutero-Isaiah, could all be conceived as independent units. Rather, Deutero-Isaiah consists of

15. James Muilenburg, “Isaiah 40–66,” IB 5:381–773; idem, “Form Criticism and Beyond,” JBL 88 (1969): 1–18. 16. Muilenburg, “Isaiah 40–66,” 384. 17. Ibid., 384–85. 18. Ibid., 385. 19. See, e.g., Isa 41:1–42:4; 43:8–13; 45:20–24; 48:15–16; 50:8–9.


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relatively lengthy poems, often employing traditional generic language. But this language served as raw material that the poet freely reshaped, often combining diverse traditional speech forms, so that the resulting text reflects immense creativity on the part of the prophet.20 Most of the poems, according to Muilenburg, are “developed compositions” of greater length than prophetic oracles from the preexilic period. Moreover, they are constituted by “strophes” rather than by units determined by a single genre. These strophes are segments of longer, freely formed poems. Isaiah 41:1–42:4, for example, is a fairly lengthy poem made up of an introductory “summons to trial” (41:1) followed by nine strophes.21 Strophes, as Muilenburg understood them, are generally begun and ended by various literary devices. Often “emphatic personal pronouns” (e.g., “I,” “thou”), exclamations such as “behold,” imperatives (e.g., “hear”), transitions such as “but now,” rhetorical questions, and vocatives such as “O afflicted one” demarcate strophes.22 For example, Isa 41:1–42:4 presents itself as a text whose setting is the court of law. It is characterized by verbal repetition, such as “strengthen”; “fear not”; “I will help you”; “behold.” Israel and the nations are directly addressed. A legal verdict is announced. All this and more ties the various parts of the poem together into a dramatic, literary unity.23 The poem’s introduction in 41:1 depicts a trial with a summons of the nations to judgment, a summons that sets the stage for the trial.24 Then follows the trial itself. In strophe 1 (vv. 2–4) Yhwh challenges the nations, asking who is responsible for the events in history: “Who stirred up one from the east, whom victory meets at every step?” If this “one” is Cyrus, the Persian king, the purpose of the trial is to determine who “stirred up” this powerful conqueror. The trial continues with another question, also begun by “who”: “Who has performed and done this, calling the generations from the beginning?” The poet uses these two questions, both of which begin with “who,” to connect the question of who aroused Cyrus with the question of who is in charge of human history. The strophe closes with the claim, “I, Yhwh, am the first, and with the last, I am he.”25 How do the nations respond to the questions of the trial? In strophe 2 (vv. 5–7) the nations react with “fear,” and they “tremble.” “Every one helps his neighbor” in the activity of idol-making; every one tells his brother, “Have courage”; the craftsman encourages the goldsmith. Their response is to trust in the

20. Muilenburg, “Isaiah 40–66,” 389–90. 21. Ibid., 447–66. 22. Ibid., 391. 23. Ibid., 447. 24. Ibid., 448–49. 25. Ibid., 449–51.

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making of idols, yet such activity will not prevail. For, as we saw in strophe 1, it is Yhwh who “calls the generations.”26 In strophe 3 (vv. 8–10) the trial continues. In verses 8–10 the Judge turns to Israel and speaks to them with powerful covenant terminology: “Israel my servant, Jacob whom I have chosen, offspring of Abraham, my friend.” This election language showcases the contrast between the nations and Israel. Israel need not fear (“fear not, for I am with you.… I am your God”),27 because while the nations frantically help one another, Yhwh helps Israel. The nations strengthen one another in the making of idols, but it is Yhwh who strengthens Israel.28 In strophe 4 (vv. 11–13) we find judgment against the nations: “Behold, they shall be ashamed and confounded, all who are incensed against you.” Why will this judgment take place? It is “because I, Yhwh your God, hold your right hand; it is I who say to you, ‘Fear not, I will help you.’ ”29 In the fifth strophe (vv. 14–16), Jacob-Israel is once again addressed and exhorted not to fear because Yhwh is their helper. The sixth strophe (vv. 17– 20), following the three strophes of comfort that perhaps reflect the genre of the oracle of salvation (vv. 8–10, 11–13, 14–16),30 Muilenburg calls a “lyrical interlude” (see also 42:10–13; 44:23; 45:8).31 In strophe 7 (vv. 21–24), the trial resumes.32 “Present your case” represents the language of the law court, as does also “bring your proofs.” The threefold repetition of “tell us” is a common stylistic device of this prophet. Indeed, such ability to tell “that we may know their outcome” is what the trial is testing. The inability to do this means that the gods are “nothing” and that their work is “nought.” Strophe 8 (vv. 25–29) continues the trial.33 Once again, as at the beginning of the chapter, there are questions: “Who declared it from the beginning?” And once again there is the issue of who “stirred up” one who is victorious. No one but Yhwh “declared it from the beginning.” Therefore, once more, the gods are said to be nothing.

26. Ibid., 451–52. 27. Ibid., 453–55. 28. Ibid., 452. 29. Ibid., 456. I have reworded the rsv translation of the text for the sake of greater clarity. 30. An astute observer will notice that Muilenburg said only that these three strophes of comfort “may correspond” (emphasis added) to the genre of the oracle of salvation. See p. 458. 31. Muilenburg, “Isaiah 40–66,” 458–59. While its imagery, particularly that of water and trees, is typical of Second Isaiah’s poetry, the grounds for calling it a “lyrical interlude” instead of a speech of salvation is not made abundantly clear. 32. Ibid., 460–61. 33. Muilenburg called this strophe “Renewed Judgment on the Nations” (ibid., 462).


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Both verses 24 and 29 open with “behold.”34 The ninth strophe (42:1–4) likewise opens with “behold”: “Behold my servant, whom I uphold, my chosen, in which my soul delights.” Once more language from the judicial sphere appears: “he will bring forth ‘justice’ to the nations … he will faithfully bring forth ‘justice’ … he will not fail (or ‘burn dimly’) or be discouraged (or ‘be bruised’) till he has established ‘justice’ in the earth.”35 Indeed, just as the poem began with the language of justice, so justice appears in the final strophe as a part of its climactic role in the poem. At the beginning of the poem (strophe 1), Cyrus was presented as conqueror, but at the end (strophe 9), it is not Cyrus, but the servant, who “occupies the center at the bar of history.”36 Muilenburg’s study of Isa 41:1–42:4 shows clearly why he believed this relatively lengthy section represents a literary unity. The repetition of words and phrases appeared to him to be the work of a poet artfully creating a complex poem, a poetic rendering of a trial with Yhwh as one party and the nations and their gods as the other. Thus, from his perspective, a synchronic reading best accounts for the text in its original form. Indeed, he saw no need to consider the text as a collection of separate genre units. Muilenburg’s approach significantly influenced at least two form critics who specialized in these Isaianic texts. At least in part through these two, some of the ongoing form-critical work on Deutero-Isaiah today continues to reflect concerns articulated by Muilenburg. These two, Claus Westermann and myself, drew a number of similar conclusions from our reading of Muilenburg. In other ways our work was quite different.37 Heirs of Muilenburg: Westermann Though well known for his commitment to form-critical methods, Westermann was significantly influenced by Muilenburg. In an essay on Deutero-Isaiah published in 1964, he displayed considerable interest in Muilenburg’s work. 38 He discussed at some length Muilenburg’s claims that the poems in Isa 40–66

34. See also the threefold “behold” in Isa 49:9–10 (ibid., 463). 35. Ibid., 463–66. 36. Ibid., 466. 37. An excellent form-critical study by Antoon Schoors must be omitted from this essay because it was not significantly influenced by the “rhetorical-critical” work of Muilenburg. It is entitled I Am God Your Saviour: A Form-Critical Study of the Main Genres in Is. XL–LV (VTSup 24; Leiden: Brill, 1973). 38. Westermann, “Sprache und Struktur der Prophetie Deuterojesajas,” in his Forschung am Alten Testament: Gesammelte Studien (Munich: Kaiser, 1964), 92–170, esp. 106–10. See also his commentary, Das Buch Jesaja Kapitel 40–66 (ATD 19; Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1966) = Isaiah 40–66: A Commentary (trans. D. M. G. Stalker; Philadelphia: Westminster, 1969).

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are “developed literary compositions,”39 as well as Muilenburg’s contention that there is literary unity in these chapters manifested by continuity in the prophet’s thought.40 And he readily agreed that Isa 40–55 exhibits the unity and wholeness characteristic of a relatively large literary work.41 Westermann nevertheless questioned whether Muilenburg had paid sufficient attention to the character of Isa 40–55 as a prophetic work. Although Muilenburg had described the text as a literary work with continuity of thought, Westermann contended that he focused insufficiently on its function as a word understood as given by God to Israel through a divinely commissioned prophet. Is it really continuity of a prophet’s thought that is decisive regarding the whole of what the prophet has to say? Westermann thought not. For those who were in exile, Westermann argued, Deutero-Isaiah’s message would have had meaning if it were recognizable to them as an authorized message from their God. Only if it were understood to be the word of a commissioned prophet could we expect it to have been accepted as authoritative by the exiles, preserved in the faith community, and finally included within a larger collection of prophetic words.42 For Westermann, therefore, the Deutero-Isaianic language itself, however lengthy the units may be and however literary their composition, would have to have some connection with earlier preliterary forms of oral speech. Indeed, these forms had grown out of particular processes of the community’s life with God, and it was in these settings in the community’s life that particular forms of language took shape. Although these oral forms lived on and evolved in Israel’s history, they originated, and were first traditioned, in the concreteness of the community’s life. For this reason, the use of these forms continued to carry with them a part of the life of the community. Thus, for Westermann, DeuteroIsaiah’s language could never be simply a literary product of a poet. Rather, it must be recognized that in using these forms the prophet placed himself in the context of the history that these traditional speech forms carried. DeuteroIsaiah’s language had weight because the exiles could hear in these communally rooted genres what they had long heard and, furthermore, could recognize in these familiar forms a divine word addressed to them.43 Westermann also considered it important to ask about the setting of the particular poetic wording in Deutero-Isaiah’s language. Why, he asked, is the language in Deutero-Isaiah so different from that of Ezekiel, for instance? The

39. Muilenburg, “Isaiah 40–66,” 391. 40. Ibid., 385. See Westermann, “Sprache und Struktur,” 106–7. 41. In “Sprache und Struktur,” Westermann focused only on the literary unity of Isa 40–55. The relationship of 56–66 to 40–55 was not a part of his concern in this particular essay. 42. Westermann, “Sprache und Struktur,” 108. 43. Ibid., 109.


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difference, he argued, is not based simply on distinctions in the planes of literary thought used by each of these two. The linguistic difference is indeed deeper. For Ezekiel, the language comes from the setting of priestly Torah and its conventions of speech, whereas for Deutero-Isaiah the language is rooted in the speech conventions of worship, that is, the speech of the Psalms. The meaning of Deutero-Isaiah for its exilic readers was undoubtedly connected with the traditional generic speech of Israel’s worship. Thus for Westermann it was important to ask certain questions: What does Deutero-Isaiah’s use of speech forms connected to the individual complaint psalm and to the communal complaint psalm mean? In what ways and for what purposes did Deutero-Isaiah take up the language of the praise of God from the worship life of the preexilic community? Where and how did the prophet change it? How did the language of praise relate to Deutero-Isaiah’s message as a prophet? Westermann saw such questions as decisive for understanding Deutero-Isaiah precisely because they are related to the ways in which the prophet’s use of language could function with authority in the midst of his audience.44 We should therefore not be surprised to find Westermann continuing to focus intently on form-critical analysis. For example, he examined once again Begrich’s work on priestly salvation oracles.45 In Westermann’s estimation, only the “fear not” oracles that Begrich originally studied, and not the additional speeches of salvation that Begrich later included in this genre category, were used in response to the complaint of the individual. These “assurance of salvation” oracles have five parts: (1) address (e.g., “You, Israel my servant”); (2) assurance of salvation (e.g., “fear not”); (3) substantiation, containing nominal sentences (e.g., “I am with you,” “I am your God”) and clauses with verbs in perfect tense (e.g., “I have strengthened you,” “I have helped you”); (4) consequences, also called “proclamation of salvation” or “announcement of salvation,” which spells out concretely and in some detail the consequences of the more generally expressed assurance and substantiation; and finally (5) goal (e.g., “and you shall rejoice in Yhwh,” 41:16), which appears only occasionally.46 The “proclamation of salvation,” according to Westermann, appears in Deutero-Isaiah not only as part of the salvation-assurance oracle with its exhortation “fear not” but also as a genre of its own, such as in Isa 41:17–20; 42:14–17; 43:16–21; 45:14–17; and 49:7–12.47 The passages lack “fear not” and the “assurance” elements of the salvation oracles. They generally verbalize only

44. Ibid., 110. 45. Westermann, “Das Heilswort bei Deuterojesaja,” EvT 24 (1964): 355–73; idem, “Sprache und Struktur,” 117–24. 46. Ibid., 117–20. 47. Ibid., 120–22.

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the concrete particulars connected with the proclamation of salvation. Indeed, as we can see in Isa 41:17–20, these pure “proclamation of salvation” speeches sometimes refer to complaints, such as “the poor and needy seek water and there is none” (Isa 41:17a), then proceed to the proclamation of salvation proper: an announcement of Yhwh’s intent (“I Yhwh will answer them; I the God of Israel will not forsake them,” v. 17b), followed by a proclamation of the saving consequences (“I will open rivers on the bare heights and fountains in the midst of valleys,” vv. 18–19), and concluded by a statement of the “goal” of the divine action (“that they may see and know,” v. 20). It is important to note that Westermann hypothesized the existence of two different genres: (1) the “assurance of salvation” oracle, which has as only one of its parts the “proclamation of salvation,” and (2) the “proclamation of salvation” oracle, in which the proclamation makes up almost the whole of the speech unit. The “assurance of salvation” oracle, he argued, was the genre traditionally used to answer the complaint of the individual, whereas the “proclamation of salvation” oracle was used to answer the communal complaint psalm. The former was a priestly genre, while the latter was a genre used by prophets.48 These two genres, along with independent, self-standing trial speeches and disputation speeches,49 appear primarily in chapters 41–44. If it is the case that “assurance of salvation” oracles, “proclamation of salvation” oracles, trial speeches, and disputation speeches each appear independently in Isa 41–44 as pure speeches and not as mixtures of genres within each unit, how does Westermann make good on his claim to be in agreement with Muilenburg that Isa 40–55 exhibits the unity and wholeness of a relatively large literary work? First, he indicates that, outside chapters 41–44, there are lengthy compositions. Isaiah 40:12–31, for example, is a large disputational composition, “mixed” in the sense that the genre of the complaint is woven so tightly into the disputational character of the text that they hang inextricably together: “Why do you say, O Jacob, and say, O Israel [disputational language], ‘My way is hid from Yhwh and my justice passed over by my God’ [language of complaint]? Have you not known, have you not heard…? [disputational language once again].”50 To cite another example, in Isa 49:14–26 the “proclamation of salvation” is mixed with complaint and disputation to form a unified composition.51

48. Ibid., 123. 49. See Westermann’s discussion of trial speeches and disputation speeches in “Sprache und Struktur,” 24–44. 50. Ibid., 127–32. 51. Ibid., 120–21, 132–33.


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As envisioned by Westermann, Isa 40–55 is indeed a unified whole.52 (1) The first part of this unified composition is Isa 40–44. It opens with a multigeneric prologue (Isa 40:1–11). Next follows a generically mixed disputation responding to Jacob-Israel’s complaint as presented in verse 27 (Isa 40:12–31). Then follows a composition consisting mostly of pure, self-standing “assurance of salvation” oracles, “proclamation of salvation” oracles, and trial speeches (Isa 41–44), closing with a brief hymn (Isa 44:23). (2) A second part (Isa 45–48) begins with a composition revolving around the commissioning of Cyrus (Isa 44:24–45:7), with a closing hymn (Isa 45:8) and certain attachments (Isa 45:9– 13, 14–17). There follows another composition (Isa 45:18–46:13) depicting the fate of the Babylonian gods (Isa 46:1–2) and describing the future of the survivors of the peoples (Isa 45:20–25) and of the remnant of Israel (Isa 46:3– 13). Then in Isa 47–48 comes a mocking song about the fate of Babylon (Isa 47) and a depiction of salvation for Israel (Isa 48). These chapters close with a hymn (Isa 48:20–21). (3) Isaiah 49–53 begins with a complex composition (Isa 49:14–26) that, in its “proclamation of salvation,” disputes the complaint of Israel. Isaiah 51:9–52:6 has to do with complaints related to the “proclamation of salvation.” (4) Finally, Isa 54–55 represents a relatively lengthy composition concerning covenant and a new time of salvation for Israel. This composition closes with an epilogue (Isa 55:6–11) and a proclamation of homecoming (Isa 55:12–13). Clearly, Westermann construed most of Isa 40–55 as a literary whole whose unity is evident in the synchronic relationships among its various parts. Yet, far more than Muilenburg, Westermann viewed certain passages as having been added only after the bulk of Isa 40–55 had been formed into a literary unity. These additions included the four “servant songs” with their attached sequels; the polemics against the gods in chapters 40, 41, and 44; and various other parts of chapters 46 and 48. Heirs of Muilenburg: Melugin A monograph of my own, influenced both by Muilenburg and Westermann, appeared in 1976.53 I was attracted to Muilenburg’s emphasis on the interrelationships of both the typical (e.g., form-critical features) and the unique (e.g., unique poetic features) in a given text.54 Moreover, I found myself increasingly attracted to synchronic approaches to interpretation. While I was by no means

52. Ibid., 164–65. 53. Roy F. Melugin, The Formation of Isaiah 40–55 (BZAW 141; Berlin: de Gruyter, 1976). 54. See especially Muilenburg’s “Form Criticism and Beyond.”

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ready to reject historical criticism, I was becoming more distrustful of the high degree of speculation involved in reconstructing the historical circumstances in which biblical texts arose. In addition, I was becoming increasingly aware of the contributions of New Criticism to the study of literature. At the same time, I doubted the objectivity of the criteria Muilenburg used for identifying strophes,55 since according to Muilenburg they did not display regularity in lines or meter. Thus I could not help but wonder whether Muilenburg’s strophes were objective literary entities that Muilenburg had discovered—as objective as sonnets, for instance—or whether they were simply useful constructs invented by Muilenburg to aid his impressively insightful reading of the text. Furthermore, despite his claims about the influence of traditional genres, Muilenburg paid attention to them in only the most limited way, both in his study of Isa 40–55 and in his later address, “Form Criticism and Beyond.” Therefore, like Westermann, I became convinced that form criticism should play a larger role than Muilenburg allowed, although I also argued that unique features in particular texts should be given as much attention as typicalities. Despite the influences of Muilenburg and New Criticism, my continuing appreciation of the value of form criticism led me into dialogue with Westermann. I agreed with his claim that the “fear not” oracles represent a genre distinct from the remaining salvation speeches in Isa 40–55. Furthermore, I concurred with him that at least two passages among texts that he called “proclamation of salvation” speeches56 appeared to be tied to communal complaint psalms (Isa 41:17–20; 42:14–17). These two passages seemed to contain references to a communal complaint: “when the poor and needy seek water” (41:17a); “for a long time I have held my peace” (42:14a).57 I did not agree with Westermann, however, that the “fear not” oracle form clearly represents a priestly genre whereas the “proclamation/announcement of salvation” oracles originated as a prophetic genre.58 It appeared to me that there was insufficient evidence to reconstruct so precisely the Sitze im Leben for this generic material.59

55. Melugin, Formation of Isaiah 40–55, 8. 56. In the translation of Westermann’s commentary into English (Isaiah 40–66 ), Westermann’s term “Heilsankündigung” was rendered by the English word “proclamation,” whereas in my Formation of Isaiah 40–55 I translated the same German word as “announcement.” 57. See Westermann, Jesaja Kapitel 40–66, 67, 87–88 = Isaiah 40–66, 79–80, 105–6; and Melugin, Formation of Isaiah 40–55, 23. 58. Melugin, Formation of Isaiah 40–55, 21. 59. Neither Westermann nor I sought precise reconstruction of the Sitz im Leben of DeuteroIsaianic trial speeches between Yhwh and the nations or their gods. We followed neither Begrich in seeing these Deutero-Isaianic trial speeches as rooted in the trial genres used in the town gate nor von Waldow in setting them in the cultic lawsuit of the covenant-renewal festival. Both Westermann and I saw them as forms of speech rooted in the creativity of the prophet rather than


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I was also significantly influenced by Westermann, as well as by Eva Hessler, in my understanding of the structure of Isa 40–55 as a whole.60 With them, I saw Isa 40–55 as opened by prologue (Isa 40:1–11) and closed by epilogue (Isa 55:6–13). Isaiah 40–55 consists primarily of texts addressed first to Jacob-Israel (Isa 40–48) and then to Zion-Jerusalem (Isa 49:14–55:13). These two major sections are separated by a summons to leave Babylon (48:20–21). Isaiah 40–48 is further divided into two parts by a hymn (44:23), and Isa 49:14–55:13 is likewise divided by a hymn (52:9–10) and a summons to exiles to depart from their place of captivity (52:11–12). In short, the structure of Isa 40–55, viewed synchronically, appears to be a meaningful whole. In addition, I argued, the disputational text in Isa 40:12–31 introduces the Jacob-Israel section of Isa 40–55,61 while the disputational text in Isa 49:14–26 introduces the Zion-Jerusalem part of Isa 40–55.62 The disputational text in Isa 40:12–31, especially its argument against Israel’s complaint that its “way” and its “just cause” are “hidden” from Yhwh (v. 27), leads up to the servant’s own reported recognition (Isa 49:1–6) that his complaint of having “labored in vain” (49:4a) is to be transcended by the realization that his “just cause” and his “recompense” are with Yhwh (49:4b).63 It indeed appeared to me that, if Isa 40–55 is interpreted holistically and synchronically, Isa 40:27–31 and 49:1–6 (13) form an inclusio within the first half of Isaiah 40–55. Westermann had argued that several major sections of text were secondary expansions upon the original literary unity of Isa 40–55. How Westermann could claim to know that these texts were added later was not fully clear to me.64 I did not argue that these claims were incorrect, only that there did not seem to be sufficient evidence to support them. Indeed, I considered it quite likely that Isa 40–55 is a collection of texts that may have had their original provenance elsewhere. But I did not believe it possible to reconstruct their settings prior to their present literary context. Instead, I argued for reading Isa 40–55 synchronically in its present form, with the assumption that the arranger/collector of Isa 40–55 juxtaposed these texts in a deliberate artistic fashion.65

as Gattungen firmly rooted in either town gate or in covenant-renewal liturgies. See Westermann, “Sprache und Struktur,” 134–41; Melugin, Formation of Isaiah 40–55, 53–63. 60. Eva Hessler, “Gott der Schöpfer: Ein Beitrag zur Komposition and Theologie Deuterojesajas” (diss., Greifswald, 1961); Westermann, “Sprache und Struktur, 114–17; Melugin, Formation of Isaiah 40–55, 78–87. 61. Melugin, Formation of Isaiah 40–55, 92. 62. Ibid., 148. 63. Ibid., 92–93, 146. See also the metaphor of “hiddenness” in both 40:27–31 and 49:1–6. 64. Ibid., 81–82. 65. Ibid., 89.

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In short, I attended to the relationships between the typical and the unique in the shaping of texts and interpreted holistically and synchronically the juxtaposition of genre units. Like Westermann and unlike Muilenburg, I considered genres central to the interpretive process. But, unlike Westermann and like Muilenburg, I found the artistry of poetic imagination and linguistic expression to be of utmost importance. Let me illustrate from my analysis of Isa 41:1–42:13. I understood Isa 41:1–7 as a single unit, rather than Muilenburg’s introduction and two strophes,66 a unit reflecting the basic structure of other Deutero-Isaianic trial speeches,67 a structure unique to Isa 40–55 but genre-like nonetheless in reflecting typicalities.68 Yet this particular trial speech, despite its similarities to other Deutero-Isaianic trial speeches, is also unique, especially in its depiction of the nations’ frantic activity of god-making in response to the summons to trial (vv. 5–7).69 The trial speech is followed immediately by a “salvationassurance oracle” (41:8–13) employing the following typicalities of expression: “fear not”; “Israel my servant, Jacob whom I have chosen”; “I am with you”; “I am your God”; “I have strengthened you”; “I have helped you.” This oracle begins with an emphatic “but you” (v. 8) and a larger-than-usual direct address: “Israel my servant, Jacob my chosen, offspring of Abraham my friend, whom I took from the ends of the earth, and called from its farthest corners” (vv. 8–9). Indeed, here Israel seems to be especially singled out to be contrasted with the frightened nations in verses 5–7. Furthermore, the “fear not” oracle in 41:14–16 is a complete “salvation-assurance oracle” that has its own theme of Yhwh as “helper” who transforms the impotent “worm Jacob” into a powerful threshing sledge.70 And the genre unit that follows (Isa 41:17–20) is a proclamation of salvation, incorporating a reference to an implied complaint and a proclamation that Yhwh will answer this complaint. Although in Isa 41:1–20 the trial-speech genre unit and the three salvation speech units may be distinguished from one another form critically, they nevertheless manifest poetic unity. This happens through the repetition of several words, such as “holy one of Israel,” “fear” and “fear not,” “help,” “strengthen,” and “seek”; through a juxtaposition of statements regarding Yhwh’s power to “call the generations” and to “call Israel”; through a typical Deutero-Isaianic juxtaposition of trial speeches and salvation speeches;71 and through the theme of

66. Ibid., 93–94; Muilenburg, “Isaiah 40–66,” 447–52. 67. See Isa 41:21–29; 43:8–13; 44:6–8; 45:18–21; and 48:12–15. 68. Melugin, Formation of Isaiah 40–55, 57–63. 69. Ibid., 93–94; Muilenburg, “Isaiah 40–66,” 447–52. 70. Melugin, Formation of Isaiah 40–55, 95. 71. See also Isa 43:1–7 + 8–13; 44:1–5 + 6–8.


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Yhwh as one who saves by creating, a theme that binds the passage together at both beginning (v. 4) and end (vv. 17–20).72 Conclusion We have observed how form criticism and rhetorical criticism were applied to Deutero-Isaiah in distinct but related ways by three form critics of the latter half of the twentieth century. While Muilenburg moved beyond the form criticism of his day, both of his heirs in form-critical study of Deutero-Isaiah moved in distinct ways beyond both the kind of form criticism they inherited and Muilenburg’s rhetorical-critical program. What “beyonds” lie in the future? A subsequent movement that both includes and goes beyond the work discussed here can be seen, especially in the English-speaking world, in what has been called the “unity of Isaiah” movement—a movement whose aim has been holistic reading of the entire book of Isaiah.73 Methodologies, interests, and lines of influence differ among individuals in this movement. For instance, Rolf Rendtorff claims to have been influenced by Peter Ackroyd and myself to read the entire book holistically.74 Marvin Sweeney has also been influenced by this discussion.75 Yet Rendtorff’s methods tend to be more synchronic, and Sweeney’s more redaction-historical. Recent commentaries by Brevard Childs and Christopher Seitz seem to have been influenced as well by the dialogue described in this chapter.76 At the same time, not all who lean toward reading Isaiah holistically have developed their views in relation to this dialogue. Edgar Conrad, Katheryn Pfisterer Darr, and Peter Miscall, for instance, find their home much more in synchronic literary methods unrelated to form criticism.77 No one knows what will be the major trends in the study of Isaiah in the next half-century. My 72. Melugin, Formation of Isaiah 40–55, 95–97. 73. Although none of us produced a holistic reading of the entire book of Isaiah, at the very end of my work there are a few brief, tentative suggestions as to how one might go about reading the entire book of Isaiah in synchronic fashion. 74. Rolf Rendtorff, “The Composition of the Book of Isaiah,” in his Canon and Theology: Overtures to an Old Testament Theology (trans. and ed. M. Kohl; Minneapolis: Fortress, 1993), 146– 69; idem, “The Book of Isaiah: A Complex Unity, Synchronic and Diachronic,” in New Visions of Isaiah (ed. R. F. Melugin and M. A. Sweeney; JSOTSup 214; Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press, 1996), 32–49. 75. See especially Marvin A. Sweeney’s Isaiah 1–4 and the Post-exilic Understanding of the Isaiah Tradition (BZAW 171; Berlin: de Gruyter, 1988), 1–9, 65–95. 76. Brevard Childs, Isaiah (OTL; Westminster John Knox, 2001), 290; Christopher Seitz, “The Book of Isaiah 40–66,” NIB 6:322–23. 77. Edgar Conrad, Reading Isaiah (Minneapolis: Fortress, 1991); Katheryn Pfisterer Darr, Isaiah’s Vision and the Family of God (Louisville: Westminster John Knox, 1994); Peter Miscall, Isaiah (Sheffield: JSOT Press, 1993).

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hunch is that holistic, synchronic approaches will grow in importance, although historical study will continue to thrive. Whether form criticism will remain primarily a historical discipline, or whether it will also play a major role in synchronic interpretation, remains an open question indeed.78 Select Bibliography Begrich, Joachim, “Das priesterliche Heilsorakel.” ZAW 52 (1934): 81–92. ———. Studien zu Deuterojesaja. BWANT 4/25. Stuttgart: Kohlhammer, 1938. Hessler, Eva. “Gott der Schöpfer: Ein Beitrag zur Komposition und Theologie Deuterojesajas.” Diss., Greifswald, 1961. Melugin, Roy F. The Formation of Isaiah 40–55. BZAW 141. Berlin: de Gruyter, 1976. Muilenburg, James. “Form Criticism and Beyond.” JBL 88 (1969): 1–18. ———. “Isaiah 40–66.” IB 5:381–773. Waldow, Hans-Eberhard von. “Anlass und Hintergrund der Verkündigung des Deuterojesaja.” Diss., Bonn, 1953. Westermann, Claus. Das Buch Jesaja Kapitel 40–66. Gottingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1966 = Isaiah 40–66: A Commentary. Translated by D. M. G. Stalker. Philadelphia: Westminster, 1969. ———. “Das Heilswort bei Deuterojesaja.” EvT 24 (1964): 355–73. ———. “Sprache und Struktur des Deuterojesajas.” Pages 92–170 in Forschung am Alten Testament: Gesammelte Studien. Munich: Kaiser, 1964.

78. See my discussion of this issue in Roy F. Melugin, “Recent Form Criticism Revisited in an Age of Reader Response,” in The Changing Face of Form Criticism (ed. M. A. Sweeney and E. Ben Zvi; Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2003), 46–64.

One Book, Many Voices: Conceiving of Isaiah’s Polyphonic Message Patricia K. Tull

Introduction Almost without exception, the interpreters discussed in the first eleven essays of this volume knew Isaiah, the eighth-century son of Amoz, as the originator of the book known by his name. Apart from the hints of Ibn Ezra in the twelfth century, not until the late 1700s were interpreters in a historical and philosophical position critically to examine the assumption of Isaiah’s authorship. Yet, as Sweeney has shown, after the question was raised the issue of Isaiah’s multiple sources of origin was vigorously studied, culminating in Bernhard Duhm’s 1892 theory of a First, Second, and Third Isaiah representing discrete parts of the book. Almost at the same time, attempts were being made to account for the perplexing phenomenon of multiple prophets from differing time periods having been recorded on the same scroll. W. R. Smith explained this problem in terms of practical necessity: “In ancient books the most various treatises are often comprised in one volume; the scribe had a certain number of skins, and he wished to fill them.”1 Robert Pfeiffer elaborated in 1941 that Isa 40–66 was copied in about 200 b.c.e. onto a scroll following Isa 1–39 “only because sufficient space remained on the scroll.”2 Yet difficulties with this solution kept emerging. The diverse prophets who had been joined in the Book of the Twelve each retained at least a rudimentary personal identity in their books’ superscriptions even if, as for the majority, their names never recurred in their books. But “Second Isaiah” and “Third

1. W. Robertson Smith, The Prophets of Israel and Their Place in History (2nd ed.; London: Black, 1885), 212. 2. Robert H. Pfeiffer, Introduction to the Old Testament (New York: Harper & Brothers, 1941), 447–48.

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Isaiah” were so designated because they bore no name or superscription of their own. Moreover, scholars continued to note that themes and even wording recurred in parts of the book that were not supposed to be linked: Isa 51:11 repeated 35:10; Isa 60–62 recalled language of Second Isaiah; and Isa 65–66 appeared to return to ideas from the first chapter. Certain designations, such as “Holy One of Israel,” certain prevailing themes and key words, such as “blindness and deafness” and “righteousness,” certain imaginative structures, such as those found in chapters 6 and 40, while not unheard of in other biblical books, seemed to suggest some measure of special relationship among the parts of Isaiah and therefore some measure of intentionality in the composition of the whole. Yet what kind of redactional history was to be reconstructed for Isaiah was perplexing at best. It had been clear to most interpreters, including Duhm, that even the portion of the book most closely associated with the prophet, chapters 1–39, was in no sense an authorial or even temporal unity. Rather, it incorporated portions extending at least to the time of the Persian era. How much of Isa 1–39 to associate with the prophet was a debate eliciting a wide range of opinions, from the maximalism of John Hayes and Stuart Irvine, who saw the first thirty-three chapters as having been composed by Isaiah himself and delivered in nearly the order in which they now appear,3 to the minimalism of Otto Kaiser, who viewed Isaiah as a legendary character around whom a basically postexilic book grew.4 Given the uncertainty regarding the extent of Isaiah’s own words, it was difficult to say what had turned his legacy into one of the longest, most farranging, and most redactionally and ideologically complex books of the Bible. Questions about Isaiah’s nature were not only diachronic. By the late 1970s, concurrent with developing interest in the final form of other scriptural books, the question that had virtually disappeared among critical scholars for over a century reemerged in a new form: In view not only of Isaiah’s long historical scope but also of its many internal congruences, how does one read Isaiah? Whereas premodern interpreters understood the book in relation to the unity not only of divine intent but also of individual eighth-century prophetic consciousness, recent interpreters began inquiring into the intentions, or at least the effects, to be seen in the book itself as it emerged from a much later time and very different social setting. In what sense, it was asked, and with what hermeneutical presuppositions is a redacted, largely postexilic Isaiah readable as a “whole” book? On the one hand, respect for the theological purposes of anony3. John H. Hayes and Stuart A. Irvine, Isaiah: The Eighth-Century Prophet (Nashville: Abingdon, 1987). 4. Otto Kaiser, Isaiah 1–12: A Commentary (2nd ed.; OTL; Philadelphia: Westminster, 1983; originally published in German in 1981).

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mous redactors and for the shape of the book in its final form seemed to invite or even demand such questions. On the other hand, challenges to the interpretive imagination were many, not least of which was modern lack of information regarding the reading practices of the community surrounding Isaiah’s redactors, whenever they might have lived. Compounding this problem was the fact that reference points for understanding the book’s development and theological perspectives were not confined to either the life and times of Isaiah or to those of the final redactors but emanated from several time periods along the way, periods often difficult to pinpoint. Moreover, any coherence appeared to be a “difficult coherence,”5 any unity a “complex unity.”6 Though Isaiah was replete with overarching visions, themes, and messages, no central message emerged univocally from the “disciplined chaos”7 of the book’s contents. In short, while Isaiah appeared both to invite and to resist diachronic reconstruction, it also appeared both to invite and to resist synchronic reading. Three Precursors Only in hindsight can scholars trace the precursors of emerging paradigms. D. R. Jones, Leon J. Liebreich, and J. H. Eaton came to be identified as heralds of this particular discussion. Jones examined the first five chapters of Isaiah in light of an understanding that exilic tradents reactualized the oracles of Isaiah for their own time by means of careful arrangement and strategic expansion.8 He suggested, for instance, that in the critique of Jerusalem’s women that begins at Isa 3:16, a sudden change from third-person feminine plural subjects to second- and then third-person feminine singular in verses 25–26 could best be explained as an expansion that places Isaiah’s eighth-century prophecy into a new context, reinterpreting the entire oracle: what once addressed the women of the prosperous city was turned into a description of the fallen image of per-

5. Borrowing the phrase from Paul Dinter’s description of the Bible itself in “The Once and Future Text,” in The Quest for Context and Meaning: Studies in Biblical Intertextuality in Honor of James A. Sanders (ed. C. Evans and S. Talmon; BibInt 28; Leiden: Brill, 1997), 390. 6. Borrowing the phrase from Rolf Rendtorff in “The Book of Isaiah: A Complex Unity. Synchronic and Diachronic Reading,” in Society of Biblical Literature 1991 Seminar Papers (SBLSP 30; Atlanta: Scholars Press, 1991), 8–20. A slightly revised version was republished under the same title in New Visions of Isaiah (ed. R. F. Melugin and M. A. Sweeney; JSOTSup 214; Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press, 1996), 32–49. 7. Gerald T. Sheppard, “The Book of Isaiah as a Human Witness to Revelation within the Religions of Judaism and Christianity,” Society of Biblical Literature 1993 Seminar Papers (SBLSP 32; Atlanta: Scholars Press, 1993), 276. 8. Douglas R. Jones, “The Traditio of the Oracles of Isaiah of Jerusalem,” ZAW 67 (1955): 226–46.

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sonified Jerusalem herself. Far from viewing the scribal treatment of Isaiah as accidental or careless, Jones described the work of redactors, with their “electric sense of the livingness of that word,” as having “delivered the precious word to their contemporaries in the careful, meaningful form and structure in which, subtantially, we now have it.”9 In two articles published in the mid-1950s,10 Liebreich proposed to “discover the guiding principles with which both authors and subsequent editors, including the final editor, must have operated.”11 Exploring section divisions and connections among chapters by means of catchwords and phrases, Liebreich demonstrated intentionality of arrangement that included, perhaps most strikingly, a series of verbal linkages between chapter 1 and chapters 65 and 66 that he said “presupposes the unmistakable intention and fixed determination to make the Book end in the same vein with which it begins.”12 Eaton’s 1959 article13 began with a summary of the difficulty of relating Isaianic oracles to historical and literary settings but asserted a “striking affinity which reaches across the main divisions,” an affinity that had “enabled a stout defense of the book’s unity to be maintained in conservative circles.”14 Eaton explained the seeming tension between Isaiah’s temporal and authorial diversity and its trans-temporal affinity by means of Sigmund Mowinckel’s suggestion of a continuous school of prophetic disciples founded by Isaiah. Although this notion has since been abandoned, Eaton’s insights regarding the writers’ “brilliant reapplication of tradition to a new situation” became part and parcel of emerging discussions.15 The Late 1970s Two important works in the late 1970s set the more recent discussion vigorously into motion. The first was a 1978 article by Peter Ackroyd that began by questioning the assumption reflected in nearly every commentary that Isa 1–39 could be considered separately from the rest of the book of Isaiah.16 Reflecting on Hermann Barth’s observation that redaction of Isa 1–35 continued into the 9. Ibid., 245–46. 10. Leon J. Liebreich, “The Compilation of the Book of Isaiah,” JQR 46 (1955–56): 259–77; 47 (1956–57): 114–38. 11. Ibid., 260. 12. Ibid., 276. 13. John Eaton, “The Origin of the Book of Isaiah,” VT 9 (1959): 138–57. 14. Ibid., 139–40. 15. Ibid., 152. 16. Peter R. Ackroyd, “Isaiah 1–12: Presentation of a Prophet,” in Studies in the Religious Tradition of the Old Testament (London: SCM, 1987; orig. 1978), 79–104.


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postexilic period17—past the time assigned to major parts of Isa 40–66—Ackroyd asked the less-than-obvious but crucial question, “Why is there so substantial a book associated with the prophet Isaiah?”18 Given the brevity of prophecies traceable to him, why did Isaiah’s legacy grow, rather than that of Micah, for instance? Ackroyd sought the answer in the structure of chapters 1–12, which “provides a presentation of a prophetic figure and validates his authority in a particular manner.”19 Genuine oracles of Isaiah “have been ordered and amplified to bring them into relationship with subsequent situations,” in which Isaiah’s prophecies of doom, having already been validated by the sixth-century destruction of Jerusalem, now appear interspersed with affirmations of salvation, suggesting hope that the recently vindicated prophet of a deferred doom will also prove an accurate prophet of deferred salvation.20 In another article that has inspired much discussion, Ackroyd observed that chapters 36–39 function to create a context for the response to the exile beginning in chapter 40.21 In his Introduction to the Old Testament as Scripture, Brevard Childs reviewed the various successes and impasses in historical-critical discussion and posed the question: How does a reckoning with canon affect interpretation of Isaiah? Pointing out the difference between what he deemed to be the import of chapters 40–55 in their original context, as words to exiles during the sixth century, and in their new setting in Isaiah, where they functioned as a “prophetic word of promise offered to Israel by the eighth-century prophet, Isaiah of Jerusalem,” Childs asserted that the effect of this recontextualization was that the prophecies of salvation from Babylon were no longer tied to a specific historical referent but were directed to the future, “fully eschatological” in nature, related to the “redemptive plan of God for all of history.”22 In its present form, the only context in which Second Isaiah could be understood was that of First Isaiah, whose words had come to constitute the “former things,” the previous prophecies that Second Isaiah announced were now fulfilled. This observation inspired a further speculation: although Childs had first asserted that more specific historical referents in a previously independent Second Isaiah were removed when it was joined

17. Hermann Barth, Die Jesaja-Worte in der Josiazeit: Israel und Assur als Thema einer produktiven Neuinterpretation der Jesajaüberlieferung (WMANT 48; Neukirchen-Vluyn: Neukirchener, 1977). 18. Ackroyd, “Isaiah 1–12,” 83. 19. Ibid., 90. 20. Ibid., 101, 103. 21. Peter R. Ackroyd, “Isaiah 36–39: Structure and Function,” in Studies in the Religious Tradition of the Old Testament, 105–20. Originally published in Von Kanaan Bis Kerala (ed. W. Delsman et al.; AOAT 211; Kevelaer: Butzon & Bercker, 1982), 3–21. 22. Brevard S. Childs, Introduction to the Old Testament as Scripture (Philadelphia: Fortress, 1979), 325–26.

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to First Isaiah, his new position caused him to wonder aloud “if the material of Second Isaiah in fact ever circulated in Israel apart from its being connected to an earlier form of First Isaiah.”23 In this statement Childs offered a synchronic appraisal of the reading effects of the final form of Isaiah as a springboard for a redactional hypothesis. Although he continued throughout this study to stress the “new canonical shape” of the final form as his arena of interest, it proved difficult to discuss this final form without inserting implicit redactional assumptions about Second Isaiah’s editorial role (“Second Isaiah begins in ch. 1 with a theological summary”24). Once the idea had taken hold that in one way or another Isaiah should be approached as a book displaying redactional coherence rather than either authorial unity or editorial fragmentation, the way was opened for a new kind of conversation—or, in fact, several new kinds of conversation, with some scholars using these insights to continue trying to unravel the book’s redactional development, while others set out to describe the ties that bound Isaiah’s final form into a meaningful whole, and many others, like Childs, pursuing either implicitly or explicitly a mixture of these two ends. The gathering of powerful minds around these issues in the 1980s eventuated in the decision to form the SBL Isaiah Seminar to discuss these matters face to face. So many works contributed to the developing discussion about Isaiah’s coherence that it is impossible to rehearse them all fully.25 What follows is a synopsis of some of the major works leading up to the Isaiah Seminar. The 1980s In a 1980 article, Ronald Clements explored the relevance for interpreters during the Babylonian crisis of Isaiah’s prophecies of doom, delivered during the Assyrian crisis over a century before.26 He pointed out a number of additions

23. Ibid., 329. For puzzlement regarding the relationship of this statement to Childs’s other discussion, see Rendtorff, “Book of Isaiah,” 10 n. 3. 24. Childs, Introduction to the Old Testament, 331. Benjamin Sommer (“Allusions and Illusions: The Unity of the Book of Isaiah in Light of Deutero-Isaiah’s Use of Prophetic Tradition,” in Melugin and Sweeney, New Visions of Isaiah, 186) described Childs’s mixing of synchronic observations with redactional theories as “sowing mingled seed based on reasoning of diverse kind.” 25. For helpful reviews of this work, see Jacques Vermeylen, “L’unité du livre d’Isaïe,” in The Book of Isaiah/Le Livre d’Isaïe (ed. J. Vermeylen; Leuven: Leuven University Press; Peeters, 1989), 11–53; Rendtorff, “Book of Isaiah,” 8–20; Roy Melugin, “Introduction,” in Melugin and Sweeney, New Visions of Isaiah, 13–29; and two works by Marvin Sweeney: “The Book of Isaiah in Recent Research,” Currents in Research 1 (1993): 141–62; and “Reevaluating Isaiah 1–39 in Recent Critical Research,” Currents in Research 4 (1996): 79–113. 26. Ronald Clements, “The Prophecies of Isaiah and the Fall of Jerusalem in 587 B.C.,” VT 30 (1980): 421–36.


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to First Isaiah that seemed designed to reinterpret prophecies in light of Jerusalem’s destruction in 587. In his 1982 article entitled “The Unity of the Book of Isaiah,” Clements summarized and reviewed theories of Isaiah’s composition and argued in a fuller way for the centrality of the connection points between Isa 1– 35 and 40–55 to the growth of the book as a whole. He noted particularly the theme of Israel’s blindness and deafness in Isa 42:18–20 and 43:8 and suggested that these passages showed “conscious allusion to the commissioning speech” in chapter 6.27 He concluded that Isaiah’s prophecies, as they stood redacted by Josiah’s time, were set alongside Jeremiah and Ezekiel as a guide for understanding the catastrophe of Jerusalem’s destruction. Clements was not prepared in this essay to rule on whether this message was attached to First Isaiah by the author of Isa 40–55 himself or by a later circle of editors. In his 1985 treatment of the subject, however, under the influence of Childs, Clements returned to the redactional question once again.28 He laid out three possibilities for the relationship between First and Second Isaiah: (1) they were originally independent works linked secondarily by a scribe for unknown reasons and only subsequently interpreted in relation to each other; (2) they were linked by a scribe who recognized Second Isaiah’s suitability as a sequel to Isaiah’s prophecies; or (3) “From the time of their origin, the prophetic sayings of Isa 40–55 were intended as a supplement and sequel to the collection of the earlier sayings of the eighth-century Isaiah of Jerusalem.”29 He pursued this third option in the hope of showing that “the evidence that the prophecies of ‘Second Isaiah’ reveal a conscious dependence on earlier sayings of Isaiah of Jerusalem is firm and reliable.”30 Walter Brueggemann agreed provisionally with Childs and Clements but wanted to include a dimension he saw as missing from the discussion.31 On the basis of Norman Gottwald’s emphasis on social dynamics in relation to textual production, which he viewed as complementary to Childs’s position, he proposed “that each of the Isaiahs articulates a specific practice of social transformation.”32 While he did not enter into tensions existing within the various parts of the book, he did recharacterize the general content of the messages in a way that emphasized the constructive social power of various prophetic words.

27. Ronald Clements, “The Unity of the Book of Isaiah,” Int 36 (1982): 125. 28. Ronald Clements, “Beyond Tradition-History: Deutero-Isaianic Development of First Isaiah’s Themes,” JSOT (1985): 95–113. 29. Ibid., 101. 30. Ibid., 109. 31. Walter Brueggemann, “Unity and Dynamic in the Isaiah Tradition,” JSOT (1984): 89–107. 32. Ibid., 91.

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Differing dramatically from the above discussions, the massive efforts of Odil Hannes Steck were directed toward a detailed reconstruction of redactional layering. He sought to demonstrate that Isa 35 had been composed in the fourth century to create a connection between two hitherto independent collections, consisting of parts of First and Second/Third Isaiah.33 This study led into several years of work on Third Isaiah, culminating in a volume of fourteen essays.34 In his view, the chapters now known as Third Isaiah came into being not as prophetic but exegetical work—as a series of amplifications first of Isa 40–55 and later of the larger book as it was coming into being. These amplifications built outward from a core consisting of most of Isa 60–62, which was later expanded in conjunction with Isa 35’s binding the larger textual complexes together. Still later, 56:9–59:21 with 63:1–6 and finally 56:1–8 with 63:7–66:24 were added. Second Isaiah also underwent considerable amplification, according to Steck, who detected in chapters 47–55 nine stages of redactional development over the course of three centuries.35 While others disagreed with Steck’s confidence in redactional reconstruction and in assigning historical contexts to several successive redactional layers, his work has offered many helpful insights especially into Third Isaiah, a portion that had received relatively little attention but is emerging as an important key to understanding the present form and theological tensions of the book. Rolf Rendtorff’s discussion of Isaiah in his 1983 introduction to the Old Testament and his more detailed treatment in an essay from the same time period both trace thematic and verbal relationships among the three major sections of Isaiah.36 Because he viewed Third Isaiah as binding together themes found in the other two parts (especially seen in the dual treatment in 56:1 of the keyword “righteousness”37), he, like Steck, saw its origin as inextricable from the redactional development of the whole book. He also viewed First Isaiah as having developed to echo many themes of Second Isaiah, which he speculated was the book’s originally independent nucleus. Beyond these generalizations that

33. Odil H. Steck, Bereitete Heimkehr: Jesaja 35 als Redaktionelle Brücke zwischen dem Ersten und dem Zweiten Jesaja (SBS 121; Stuttgart: Katholisches Bibelwerk, 1985). 34. Odil H. Steck, Studien zu Tritojesaja (BZAW 203; Berlin: de Gruyter, 1991). 35. Odil H. Steck, Gottesknecht und Zion: Gesammelte Aufsätze zu Deuterojesaja (FAT 4; Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 1992). 36. Rolf Rendtorff, The Old Testament: An Introduction (trans. J. Bowden; Philadelphia: Fortress, 1986; orig. published in German in 1983), 190–200; “Zur Komposition Des Buches Jesaja,” VT 34 (1984): 295–320. 37. For a more elaborated treatment of this issue, see Rendtorff ’s essay “Isaiah 56:1 as a Key to the Formation of the Book of Isaiah,” first delivered at the 1989 SBL Annual Meeting and subsequently included in his volume Canon and Theology: Overtures to an Old Testament Theology (ed. M. Kohl; Minneapolis: Fortress, 1993), 181–89.


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structured his examination of such important topics as “Zion/Jerusalem,” “Holy One of Israel,” “comfort,” and “glory,” Rendtorff was unwilling to enter into the more detailed redactional reconstruction that contemporaries in Germany were proposing. In his more recent work, Rendtorff became even more cautious, stating the desirability to “keep one’s gaze free for observations on the synchronic level of the present text, without simultaneously making the attempt in each case to answer to questions that arise on the diachronic level.”38 Wim Beuken’s several works, like many of Steck’s and Rendtorff’s, have concentrated on Isa 56–66 to try to establish more clearly its relationship to the rest of Isaiah. In a 1986 piece Beuken studied the intratextual relationships of Isa 56:9–57:13, finding behind this passage “a literary and theological personality in his own right” who “selectively, purposefully and subtly … has used the prophecies of FI and SI for his particular message” and “uses intensively the heritage of his two predecessors” to shape a new word. 39 Subsequently he demonstrated the value of attending both to scriptural intertexts and to the history of interpretation in his study of Isa 66:1–640 and used the interpretation in Isa 61 of two separate but related images in Second Isaiah as an early witness to the fluidity of the servant figure.41 He followed this with a study of “servants” in Third Isaiah, showing its key reflections on this primary theme of Second Isaiah.42 These studies contributed toward a much more redactionally explicit work pointing to successive conclusions to Third Isaiah, Second Isaiah + Third Isaiah, and the entire book of Isaiah, as Beuken perceived them in chapter 66.43 Like Rendtorff and to some extent Steck, Beuken depicted Second Isaiah as the core around which the entire book came into being and Third Isaiah as the editorial glue connecting this core to the earlier traditions of Isaiah of Jerusalem. In his 1988 monograph, Isaiah 1–4 and the Post-exilic Understanding of the Isaiah Tradition, Marvin Sweeney analyzed the first four chapters of Isaiah in

38. Rolf Rendtorff, “Isaiah 6 in the Framework of the Composition of the Book” (orig. published in German, 1989), in Canon and Theology, 179. 39. W. A. M. Beuken, “Isa 56:9–57:13—An Example of the Isaianic Legacy of Trito-Isaiah,” in Tradition and Re-interpretation in Jewish and Early Christian Literature (ed. J. van Henten; StPB 36; Leiden: Brill, 1986), 64. 40. W. A. M. Beuken, “Does Trito-Isaiah Reject the Temple? An Intertextual Inquiry into Isa 66.1–6,” in Intertextuality in Biblical Writings (ed. S. Draisma; Kampen: Kok, 1989), 53–66. 41. W. A. M. Beuken, “Servant and Herald of Good Tidings: Isaiah 61 as an Interpretation of Isaiah 40–55,” in Vermeylen, The Book of Isaiah/Le Livre d’Isaïe, 411–42. 42. W. A. M. Beuken, “The Main Theme of Trito-Isaiah, ‘The Servants of Yhwh,’ ” JSOT 47 (1990): 67–87. 43. W. A. M. Beuken, “Isaiah Chapters 65–66: Trito-Isaiah and the Closure of the Book of Isaiah,” in Congress Volume: Leuven, 1989 (ed. J. Emerton; VTSup 43; Leiden: Brill, 1991), 204–21.

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relation to the book’s latter parts.44 He understood that “not only do chapters 40ff. build upon the themes, language, and historical presentation of chapters 1–39, but that chapters 1–39 are presented in such a manner that anticipates the concerns of chapters 40–66,” concerns that “dictated the final redaction of the first part.”45 He concluded that Isa 1, with its affinities with Isa 65–66, was a final fifth-century introduction of the whole book, while chapters 2–4, with affinities to Isa 40–55, 60–62, Haggai, and Zech 1–8, comprised a sixth-century introduction. These chapters employ words of the prophet, reinterpreting them to meet the needs of postexilic audiences. When Christopher Seitz broached the subject of Isaiah’s composition in his 1988 volume Reading and Preaching the Book of Isaiah, he called his approach “canonical” in terms of the role of Isaiah as Scripture and in terms of its final shape as greater than the sum of all previous intentions.46 He asked: “(1) What is the source of the book’s unity? and (2) How are we as readers to make sense of the book as a sixty-six chapter whole?”47 By way of analogy, Seitz described an old farmhouse that appears unified on the outside but is filled with signs of expansions and modifications that both reveal and obscure the house’s prior forms. Because this treatment remained descriptive rather than reconstructive, Seitz’s farmhouse analogy has been cited by many Isaiah scholars who would not necessarily all reconstruct the evidence in the same way. Seitz’s book Zion’s Final Destiny bore two subtitles suggesting the dual focus of the book: The Development of the Book of Isaiah and A Reassessment of Isaiah 36–39.48 His purpose was “an assessment of the theory that Second Isaiah has taken shape in conscious relationship to a Proto-Isaiah collection, with an evaluation of the exegetical implications such a relationship would have for chapters 40–55.”49 The actual scope needed for such an assessment was much broader than that of the book, and Seitz freely admitted that he would not examine the redactional growth of either First or Second Isaiah overall. Rather, his attention focused on the narratives of chapters 36–39 as they bridge between the averted Assyrian threat in the late eighth century and the defeat of Jerusalem by Babylon in the early sixth century. Seitz saw these chapters, especially after chapter 39

44. Marvin A. Sweeney, Isaiah 1–4 and the Post-exilic Understanding of the Isaianic Tradition (BZAW 171; Berlin: de Gruyter, 1988). 45. Ibid., 185. 46. Christopher R. Seitz, “Isaiah 1–66: Making Sense of the Whole,” in Reading and Preaching the Book of Isaiah (ed. C. Seitz; Philadelphia: Fortress, 1988), 105–26. 47. Ibid., 105. 48. Christopher R. Seitz, Zion’s Final Destiny: The Development of the Book of Isaiah: A Reassessment of Isaiah 36–39 (Minneapolis: Fortress, 1991). 49. Ibid., 37.


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was added to foreshadow the exile, as the key to the book’s redactional growth beyond the lives of the prophet and his initial audience. Seitz offered a broad but helpful classification of recent redactional theories: Type A: theories that, in some agreement with Duhm, profess original independent growth for both Isa 1–39 and Isa 40–66 (or at least 40–55) before their having been secondarily joined together late in the postexilic period. Steck was prominent in this category, which also included Barth, Kaiser, and Vermeylen and Bogaert.50 Type B: theories that do not assert independence of First from Second Isaiah. These approaches tend to view First Isaiah’s tradition as having remained fluid enough that it was enriched in order to bring its themes more into line with Second and/or Third Isaiah. Proponents included Ackroyd, Becker, Brueggemann, Childs, Clements, Meade, Melugin, Rendtorff, and Sweeney. 51 Seitz pointed out that, while most of these viewed Second Isaiah as basically independent of First Isaiah, both Childs and Melugin hinted that Second Isaiah was never meant to stand alone. This hint was extrapolated in Clements’s work, which Seitz explored in detail. Type C: based on Clements’s suggestions, this theory, to which Seitz subscribed, agrees with “Type B” that First Isaiah underwent extensive redaction intended to shape it toward Isa 40–55 but in addition posits that “Second Isaiah, from its inception, was composed in relationship to First Isaiah.”52 Since the vast majority of Seitz’s discussion pertained to Isa 36–39, he was able to show how this section, along with the arrangement of the rest of Isa 1–39, sets the stage for the exilic message of Isa 40–55. In the final few pages he returned to a discussion of Second Isaiah and its primary themes.53 While he offered large hypotheses concerning the origin of Second Isaiah, a full treatment of this topic lay beyond the purview of his book.

50. In addition to bibliography cited above for Steck, Barth, and Vermeylen, see also Otto Kaiser, Einleitung in das Alte Testament (5th ed.; Gütersloh: Mohn, 1984); Jacques Vermeylen, Du prophéte Isaïe á l’apocalyptic (2 vols.; Paris: Gabalda, 1977–78); and P.-M. Bogaert, “L’organisation des grands receuils prophétiques,” in Vermeylen, The Book of Isaiah/Le Livre d’Isaïe, 147–53. 51. In addition to bibliography cited above for Ackroyd, Brueggemann, Childs, Clements, Rendtorff, and Sweeney, see Joachim Becker, Isaias—der Prophet und sein Buch (SBS 30; Stuttgart: Katholisches Bibelwerk, 1968); David G. Meade, Pseudonymity and Canon: An Investigation into the Relationship of Authorship and Authority in Jewish and Earliest Christian Tradition (WUNT 39; Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 1986); and Roy F. Melugin, The Formation of Isaiah 40–55 (BZAW 141; Berlin: de Gruyter, 1976). 52. Seitz, Zion’s Final Destiny, 32. 53. For further discussion of the divine council, see also Christopher R. Seitz, “The Divine Council: Temporal Transition and New Prophecy in the Book of Isaiah,” JBL 109 (1990): 229–47.

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Works in and surrounding the Isaiah Seminar, 1992–1996 The topic of interpreting the whole book of Isaiah was broached in seven papers in a session devoted to Isaiah in the Israelite Prophetic Literature section of 1989. For the next two years, papers were shared in consultations before the five-year Isaiah Seminar began. In all, twenty-five scholars presented their work in eighteen orally delivered papers, fifteen published seminar papers, and sixteen responses.54 Revisions of twelve papers were published in 1996 in the volume New Visions of Isaiah. The seminar’s co-chairs, Roy Melugin and Marvin Sweeney, along with the steering committee, made a special effort to gather distinguished scholars with diverse methodological backgrounds. Although there continue to be many more male than female scholars working in prophetic literature, great effort was made to open the doors for all interested in participation and leadership. Although it is not possible adequately to review the work of so many, I will discuss recurring themes that emerged in the course of the Isaiah Seminar and particular studies in which they emerged most fully. Broad agreement was expressed on fundamental points that had been clarified previously. It was agreed, naturally, that the book of Isaiah represents Judean efforts to describe God’s dealings with Jerusalem over the course of several centuries, beginning with the eighth century and extending at least to the fifth century. There was also broad agreement that Isaiah and the process by which it took shape are characterized by certain features. 1. On the negative side, the book of Isaiah is not: (a) a prediction of the specifics of exile and return foreseen by the eighth-century prophet; (b) an accidental combination of three prophetic works from separate prophets; or (c) an anthology of three separate, clearly distinguished prophetic works from three different authors at three different time periods. 2. Rather, as Duhm and others maintained, the book grew not only through the appending of material at the end but by extensions and additions within already existing parts of the book. As the book progresses from the first chapter toward the last, a temporal shift can be perceived, moving from Assyrian to Babylonian to Persian times. Yet this shift is softened by the intermixing of material, such as oracles about Babylon during Assyrian times.

54. These were Mark Biddle, David Carr, Ronald Clements, Edgar Conrad, Katheryn Pfisterer Darr, Chris Franke, Yehoshua Gitay, John M. Gutierrez, Claire Mathews McGinnis, John L. McLaughlin, Roy Melugin, John Oswalt, Rolf Rendtorff, Christopher Seitz, Richard Schultz, Gerald Sheppard, Benjamin Sommer, Gary Stansell, Marvin Sweeney, John D. W. Watts, Paul Wegner, Roy Wells, Patricia Tull Willey, H. G. M. Williamson, and John Willis.


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3. Far from being “scribal accretions,” the activity of redaction out of which the book of Isaiah grew is significant historically, literarily, and theologically. Reinterpretation and recontextualization of the prophet’s words for generations beyond his horizon are fundamental to the book’s growth and final shape. 4. Certain large structural features are evident. For instance, the first chapter functions as an introduction to the whole book, while chapters 65 and 66 in some sense echo the first chapter. In the middle, chapters 34–35 and 36–39 prepare the way for the changed temporal viewpoint manifest in chapter 40. Given the assumptions of previous generations, these are significant points of agreement. Some of the major questions that emerged were: (1) What kinds of diachronic and synchronic methods of study are applicable to this book? In what ways are diachronic and synchronic methods compatible? (2) What does “unity” mean as it pertains to Isaiah, and in what sense is the term applicable? Does Isaiah communicate one message or a plurality of messages? In what follows I will discuss the last two points of agreement as well as the two sets of questions as they were explored in the Seminar. Scribal Reinterpretation of Prior Words In the 1991 consultation, Rolf Rendtorff summarized the state of the discussion surrounding Isaiah’s composition, saying: The common starting point among scholars interested in the formation of the Book of Isaiah is the conviction, or at least the assumption, that the present shape of the book is not the result of more or less accidental or arbitrary developments but rather that of deliberate and intentional literary and theological work.55

He noted that, while many scholars continue to pursue “a mainly diachronic reading of the texts led by the question at which stage of the redactional history a specific text had been formulated, reformulated, inserted, and the like,” others are now pursuing a different kind of question: The first and main question is no longer, what was the “original” meaning of this text, and also not, When and how had this text been incorporated into its present context? But, What is the meaning of the text in its given context? This does not exclude the first two questions to be asked for additional information and clarification. But the priority is now clearly given to the interpretation of the text in its given context.56

55. Rendtorff, “Book of Isaiah,” 9. 56. Ibid., 13.

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Rendtorff thereby summed up the sea change in understanding of the prophetic books that had begun in the 1950s with insights such as Eaton’s regarding the “brilliant reapplication of tradition to a new situation.”57 The exegetical supplementation that Michael Fishbane had pointed out in the growth of pentateuchal law was also operative in the growth of prophecy.58 This meant that, in any given redacted passage, a reciprocal relationship between the old and the new was present. While the prophets’ own dual relationship with tradition, both appealing to the past for their legitimation and at the same time filling it with new meanings, had already been pointed out in previous generations by von Rad and others,59 it was becoming evident in the new discussion that redactors showed a similar dual relationship with their received tradition: inspired by prophetic words from the past, their additions reactualized and shifted the import of these words in their new contexts. This called for a bifocal attentiveness on the part of contemporary exegetes. As Marvin Sweeney pointed out in describing the “multiple settings” through which texts were transmitted through time: The interpreter must ask not only about the social setting of the composition of texts within the book, but also about the role that earlier texts play in defining the social realities that result in the composition of later editions and texts within the book. Furthermore, the interpreter must ask whether or how these later literary contexts influence texts that were composed at an earlier time.60

The adaptability of old texts to new settings witnesses to the typological relationships that ancient interpreters detected between their past and present. Recognition of the ongoing relevance of past crises, questions, insights, and revelations that prompted early postbiblical interpreters to search the Scriptures for direction in their own times was already operative in the development of Isaiah itself. As Claire Mathews said in discussing the proximity of oracles concerning Assyria and Babylon especially in Isa 10–11; 13–14: “What unfolds in the present, while new in terms of the historical particulars, may be in important respects analogous to the past—that when one gets to the heart of the matter,

57. Eaton, “Origin of the Book of Isaiah,” 152. 58. Michael Fishbane, Biblical Interpretation in Ancient Israel (Oxford: Clarendon, 1985). 59. “When the prophets spoke of coming events, they did not do so directly, out of the blue, as it were; instead, they showed themselves bound to certain definite inherited traditions.… At the same time, they go beyond tradition—they fill it even to bursting-point with new content” (Gerhard von Rad, The Theology of Israel’s Prophetic Traditions [vol. 2 of Old Testament Theology; trans. D. M. G. Stalker; New York: Harper & Row, 1965; orig. published in German in 1960], 239). 60. Marvin Sweeney, “Multiple Settings in the Book of Isaiah,” Society of Biblical Literature 1993 Seminar Papers, 270.


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history repeats itself, or at least, there are certain fundamental consistencies.”61 The words of David Baer describing the Septuagint translators’ evident assumptions (“It’s All About Us!”) apply just as well to the tradition leading up to the final form of Isaiah: “These later readers and authors believed that Isaiah ben Amoz addressed their own situations, and they produced successive editions of the book that presented the fulfillment of Isaiah’s oracles in their own times.”62 Such observations led some to the question of “what our hypothesized redactors thought of themselves as doing. In editing, interpreting, extending original bodies of prophecy, did they think of themselves as prophets?”63 In Roy Melugin’s opinion, the interpreters surely had a historical understanding but were not thereby compelled to an incipient historical-critical distancing from the “original context” of prophetic words: Although the redactors of Isaiah undoubtedly realized that the words which they preserved had earlier been used in historical settings different from their own, they understood those words as living speech which could speak to them. Words from the past could be combined and added to … without any explicit concern to locate each pericope in a clearly-identified historical setting. Various pericopes could be juxtaposed and read together dynamically as sacred word.64

Edgar Conrad went so far as to define these redactors as authors rather than compilers.65 Invoking the difference between what has been called “quotation theory” (in which the final text was formed through verbatim incorporation of original documents) and “resource theory” (in which the author freely drew from sources ideas for plot, character, themes without being tied to their prior treatment), he asserted, “To be sure the ‘author’ of Isaiah used sources, but they

61. Claire R. Mathews, “Apportioning Desolation: Contexts for Interpreting Edom’s Fate and Function in Isaiah,” Society of Biblical Literature 1995 Seminar Papers (SBLSP 34; Atlanta: Scholars Press, 1995): 251. This paper presented portions of her book Defending Zion: Edom’s Desolation and Jacob’s Restoration (Isaiah 34–35) in Context (BZAW 236; Berlin: de Gruyter, 1995). 62. Sweeney, “Multiple Settings,” 273. 63. Mathews, “Apportioning Desolation,” 265. Similar questions were asked by Fishbane: “What would revelation have meant to the tradents, redrafters, or reformulators of older laws—that is, those who adjusted legal revelations to new ends? Is the projection of an incipient belief in the plenitude of meanings of a revelation, or the fluidity of context of diverse revelations, valid for this early stage of biblical exegesis? If so, then the exegete would have understood his task as one which merely unpacks that which is latent, or recombines that which is manifest, in ‘Scripture’ ” (“Revelation and Tradition: Aspects of Inner-Biblical Exegesis,” JBL 99 [1980]: 360). 64. Roy Melugin, “Figurative Speech and the Reading of Isaiah 1 as Scripture,” in Melugin and Sweeney, New Visions of Isaiah, 284. 65. Edgar Conrad, “Prophet, Redactor and Audience: Reforming the Notion of Isaiah’s Formation,” in Melugin and Sweeney, New Visions of Isaiah, 308–9.

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were creatively used to construct something new, making their recovery not only improbable but also the accomplishment of that goal increasingly unimportant.”66 Reflecting on the increasingly scribal and exegetical nature of the successive redactions of Isaiah over time, Ronald Clements observed, in partial agreement with Conrad, that to a significant degree, the redactors may be “more truly be regarded as the ‘authors’ of the books of prophecy than even the prophet himself.”67 While Conrad, for different reasons from Childs, called for primary attention to the final form of the text, Clements maintained that it is hard to find convincing evidence that this final form “is anything more than the last of these levels of redactional attempts at unifying the preserved deposit and making it usable in some ongoing, and presumably liturgical, form.”68 If this form represents simply a moment of “ultimate closing off of a prophetic scroll,” then “this still left ample room for fresh prophecies in other collections and new creative interpretations in new writings” based on Isaiah’s words and themes.69 The complexity of Isaiah’s redactional growth, still quite visible even after its successive reworkings, suggests a fundamental continuity in the enterprise of interpretation. Rabbinic Bibles presenting the Scriptures in the center of the page surrounded by commentary declare visually this expansion around the text that began with Isaiah’s transmitters. While differentiated by changes over time from oral to written communication, from prophets whose names were known to exegetes who suppressed their own names, from biblical to postbiblical expansion, the insight that revelatory words spoken in the past continue, like the heavens, to “pour forth speech” and “declare knowledge” has been a common thread throughout the unfolding of the prophetic tradition. The frustrating historical enterprise of a century ago, of searching out the prescriptural oracles of Isaiah and reconstructing the elusive contexts of his speeches, has a hundred years later given way to attentiveness to the individual and collective theological reconstructions built upon his prophecies. Major Structural Features Persistent perceptions of themes and structures running across the Isaiah corpus led to the abandonment of the vision of First, Second, and Third Isaiah as three unrelated prophetic books. The abandonment of this vision, in turn,

66. Ibid., 310. 67. Ronald Clements, “‘Who Is Blind but My Servant?’ (Isaiah 42:19): How Then Shall We Read Isaiah?” in God in the Fray: A Tribute to Walter Brueggemann (ed. T. Linafelt and T. Beal; Minneapolis: Fortress, 1998), 151. 68. Ibid., 154. 69. Ibid., 149.


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led to renewed pursuit of themes and structures. While many suggestions have been offered, two that have most repeatedly and consistently emerged have concerned, first, relationships between the beginning and ending of Isaiah (primarily chs. 1 and 65–66), and, second, structures perceived in the redacted layers of the book’s middle section (primarily chs. 34–35, 36–39, and 40), structures that evidently function to bridge the chasm between the eighth century, when Isaiah warned of Jerusalem’s destruction, and the sixth century, when its destruction actually occurred. Other suggestions of recurring themes and motifs have also been prevalent throughout this time, each contributing what Claire Mathews called “one piece in the puzzle of Isaiah’s composition and unity.”70 Drawing upon the field of hermeneutics, Gerald Sheppard sounded a cautionary note about the structures interpreters go about perceiving—or creating—in their enthusiasm to find coherence in Isaiah’s message. Liebreich, Lack, Steck, Beuken, Sweeney, and Conrad devoted attention to the redactional relationships between chapters 1 and 65–66, several of them seeing a reciprocal relationship that creates an inclusio around the rest of Isaiah.71 As Conrad argued, “The book … is framed by a section of poetry concerned with the present situation of the implied community,” poetry that displays symmetry of concern and theme: “Both the beginning and the end of the book present the situation of the implied audience, a community of survivors, thus framing the book.”72 As Sweeney summarized, “Isa 1 and Isa 65–66 form a redactional ‘envelope’ around the entire book of Isaiah which suggests that these chapters were composed or placed in their present positions as part of the final redaction of the book.”73 David Carr agreed with these observations of correspondence between the opening and closing of Isaiah but saw more tension than unity among the passages. He noted, first, “the failure of Isa 1 and 65–66 to anticipate or summarize (respectively) much of the intervening material.”74 More pressing to him was the conflict he perceived between the exhortatory focus of 1:2–31 and the rhetorical presuppositions of chapters 65–66. While the book’s opening rhetoric invited

70. Mathews, Defending Zion, 178. 71. In addition to Liebreich, cited above, see also R. Lack, La symbolique du livre d’Isaïe: Essai sur l’image littéraire comme élément de structuration (AnBib 59; Rome: Biblical Institute Press, 1973), 139–41; Steck, “Beobachtungen zur Anlage von Jes 65-66,” BN (1987): 103–16; Beuken, “Isaiah Chapters 65–66,” 204–21; Sweeney, Isaiah 1–4, 21–25, 96–99; Conrad, Reading Isaiah (OBT 27; Minneapolis: Fortress, 1991), 91–116. 72. Conrad, Reading Isaiah, 102, 116. 73. Sweeney, Isaiah 1–4, 196. 74. David M. Carr, “Reaching for Unity in Isaiah,” JSOT (1993): 73. An earlier version of this article was read as “Where Does the Unity of Isaiah Lie?” at the 1990 Formation of the Book of Isaiah Consultation.

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repentance, the book’s closing suggested that the time of repentance had passed and the fates of sinners were sealed. He viewed this as a conflict in rhetorical aim, two different messages making it difficult for the two sections to function cohesively.75 There is agreement dating at least from medieval times that a change in perspective becomes apparent at chapter 40 of Isaiah. More recently, because chapter 35’s language and motifs are closely tied to those of Second Isaiah, and because the narrative about Hezekiah in chapter 39 portrays Isaiah as foretelling the day when the king’s descendants will be carried to Babylon, these and their related chapters have been in various ways envisioned as preparing the way for the exile and the restoration beyond it.76 As was noted above, Steck and Seitz have made contrasting suggestions about the redactional history behind these relationships. For Steck, chapter 35 was the joining link between hitherto independent prophetic collections, while for Seitz 38–39, when appended to the earlier composition of 36–37, became the springboard for the book’s growth in exilic and postexilic times.77 Ironically, Clements, who was one of Seitz’s precursors in the idea of Second Isaiah’s dependence upon the tradition of First Isaiah, has subsequently reversed himself, suggesting recently that chapter 35, summarizing an already known Second Isaiah, was composed as a conclusion to Isa 5–34, and only subsequently were chapters 36–39 and 40–55 added to this growing corpus.78 In a panel discussion with Marvin Sweeney and Gerald Sheppard at the 1993 meeting, Seitz noted, following up on his own prior work on the Hezekiah narratives, that the effect achieved by placing chapters 34–35 before the narratives is to loosen the close connection between prior traditions of First Isaiah and the account of Jerusalem’s dramatic deliverance from Assyria in 701, “in order that this dramatic deliverance might serve as a ‘type’ which, in the final form of the book, now foreshadows God’s final vindication of Zion.”79 In a similar vein, Claire Mathews offered an interpretation of the redactional 75. In a later paper Carr expanded this discussion: “Reading Isaiah from Beginning (Isaiah 1) to End (Isaiah 65–66): Multiple Modern Possibilities,” in Melugin and Sweeney, New Visions of Isaiah, 215. 76. See especially in this regard Sweeney’s survey of recent work in “Reevaluating Isaiah 1–39,” 103–5. 77. Seitz’s book in which this discussion is detailed, Zion’s Final Destiny, was reviewed by David Carr, with particular attention to his claim that the Hezekiah narratives found their home originally in Isaiah rather than Kings, in the 1992 Seminar (“What Can We Say about the Tradition History of Isaiah? A Response to Christopher Seitz’s Zion’s Final Destiny,” Society of Biblical Literature 1992 Seminar Papers [SBLSP 31; Atlanta: Scholars Press, 1992], 583–97). 78. Ronald Clements, “Isaiah: A Book without an Ending?” JSOT (2002): 109–26. 79. Christopher R. Seitz, “On the Question of Divisions Internal to the Book of Isaiah,” Society of Biblical Literature 1993 Seminar Papers, 260–66.


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history and significance of Isa 34–35 with special attention to the symbolic function of Edom in prophetic literature.80 Surmising that the appearance of these two chapters side by side so singularly out of context (34 outside of the oracles against the nations and 35 outside of Second Isaiah) was not accidental but rather a clear indication “that something significant is being communicated,”81 she set out to discern what they meant. She discovered that in one prophetic book after another Edom serves as the symbolic “typical or representative enemy.”82 Moreover, judgments decreed on Edom are coupled frequently with announcements of the restoration of Israel and Zion. After analyzing the similarities of this passage to the discussion of Edom in Isa 63, and drawing attention to a parallel passage in Ezek 35–36, Mathews concluded concerning Isa 34–35, “The two poems, as a pair, were inserted in the book of Isaiah in the very latest stages of its formation on analogy to the diptych in Ezek 35–36.”83 The close structural and thematic relationship to both Ezekiel and Third Isaiah suggested to Mathews that “Isa 34–35 enable the prophetic narratives to point even beyond the return of the exiles, to express that same hope—and assurance—found in Trito-Isaiah: that in the future, Yhwh will deliver Zion from all of her enemies, whether they be those who threaten her as foreigners, from the outside, or those who threaten her from within.”84 Even if the weaving in of segments anticipating the future imposes some structuring devices—or at least reveals the intent to do so—they do not necessarily control the meaning of the rest of the book, as Carr noted: Whatever the intentions of the author/editors of Isa 35, 36–39, and 40:1–8, it is clear that not all of the overall book of Isaiah agrees with the macrostructural conceptions implicit in these transitional texts. Instead these texts represent related attempts to construe the quite varied textual materials that surround them, materials not amenable to being encompassed by any redactor or set of redactors’ conception of the whole.85

The ferment over these chapters leading up to the book’s most significant transition will no doubt continue far into the future. As with the debate over the introduction and conclusion of Isaiah, while a number of different specific interpretations have been offered, both redactional and synchronic, overwhelming consensus reigns that a major key to the dynamic structure of the book of 80. Mathews, “Apportioning Desolation,” 250–66; see also her Defending Zion. 81. Mathews, “Apportioning Desolation,” 253. 82. Ibid., 256. 83. Ibid., 261–62. 84. Ibid., 263. 85. Carr, “Reaching for Unity” 71.

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Isaiah is to be found in these chapters whose reach extends both backward and forward through the book.86 While much discussion has revolved around the key sections at the beginning, middle, and end of Isaiah, great attention has also been paid to the thick web of intratextual connections in the rest of the book. John McLaughlin analyzed the prevalent motif of divine hardening of the heart emanating from Isa 6:9–10.87 Gary Stansell examined the ways in which chapters 28–33 reinterpret themes such as deafness/blindness and the humbling of proud enemies from previous chapters and anticipate the recurrence of the same themes in subsequent chapters.88 Rolf Rendtorff, John Oswalt, and Roy Wells all focused attention on Isa 56 as a passage joining portions of the book together.89 Mark Biddle and Chris Franke paid particular attention to the passages in which Zion and Babylon appear personified as women; Roy Melugin studied the function of Second Isaiah’s Servant; and I studied the Zion and the Servant in relation to each other.90 Enthusiasm for perceiving the structural ties binding Isaiah into a 86. In addition to the discussions noted above, see Katheryn Pfisterer Darr’s discussion of the significance for the book of the Hezekiah narrative: “No Strength to Deliver: A Contextual Analysis of Hezekiah’s Proverb in Isaiah 37:3b,” in Melugin and Sweeney, New Visions of Isaiah, 219–56; as well as in Isaiah’s Vision and the Family of God (Louisville: Westminster John Knox, 1994), 205–24; and Conrad’s discussion of the close relationships between the Ahaz and Hezekiah narratives (Reading Isaiah, 34–51.) 87. John L. McLaughlin, “Their Hearts Were Hardened: The Use of Isaiah 6,9–10 in the Book of Isaiah,” Bib 75 (1994): 1–25, a revised version of his paper of the same name presented in 1989. 88. Gary Stansell, “Isaiah 28–33: Blest Be the Tie That Binds (Isaiah Together),” in Melugin and Sweeney, New Visions of Isaiah, 68–103. 89. Rendtorff, “Isaiah 56:1 as a Key”; John Oswalt, “One of the Functions of Isaiah 56–66: Synthesis of Conflicting Ideologies,” delivered in 1991; see his “Righteousness in Isaiah: A Study of the Function of Chapters 56–66 in the Present Structure of the Book,” in Writing and Reading the Scroll of Isaiah (ed. C. Broyles and C. Evans; 2 vols.; SupVT 70; Leiden: Brill, 1997), 1:177–91; Roy Wells, “ ‘Isaiah’ as an Exponent of Torah: Isaiah 56–66,” Society of Biblical Literature 1994 Seminar Papers (SBLSP 33; Atlanta: Scholars Press, 1994): 883–96, revised as “ ‘Isaiah’ as an Exponent of Torah: Isaiah 56:1–8,” in Melugin and Sweeney, New Visions of Isaiah, 140–55. 90. Mark Biddle, “Lady Zion’s Alter Egos: Isaiah 47:1–15 and 57:6–13 as Structural Counterparts,” delivered at the 1991 meeting and published in Melugin and Sweeney, New Visions of Isaiah, 124–39; Chris Franke, “The Function of the Oracles against Babylon in Isaiah 14 and 47,” Society of Biblical Literature 1993 Seminar Papers, 250–59, revised as “Reversals of Fortune in the Ancient Near East: A Study of the Babylon Oracles in the Book of Isaiah,” in Melugin and Sweeney, New Visions of Isaiah, 104–23 (see also her Isaiah 46, 47, and 48: A New Literary-Critical Reading [Biblical and Judaic Studies 3; Winona Lake, Ind.: Eisenbrauns, 1994]); Roy Melugin, “The Servant, God’s Call, and the Structure of Isaiah 40–48,” Society of Biblical Literature 1991 Seminar Papers, 20–30; Patricia Tull Willey, “The Servant of Yhwh and Daughter Zion: Alternating Visions of Yhwh’s Community,” Society of Biblical Literature 1995 Seminar Papers, 267–303, summarizing portions of Remember the Former Things: The Recollection of Previous Texts in Second Isaiah (SBLDS 161; Atlanta: Scholars Press, 1997).


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whole, as well as the growing importance of Third Isaiah in the evolving discussion, can be seen in the title of Gregory J. Polan’s 1997 seminar paper, “Still More Signs of Unity in the Book of Isaiah: The Significance of Third Isaiah.”91 As Gerald Sheppard said of the embarrassment of riches the study of Isaiah’s coherence was unearthing, “What we find is a surprisingly complex inner-resonance among a great variety of themes throughout the book.… These studies show that our problem is no longer that there are so few obvious connections between the parts of the book, but that there are so many and that they may seem so independent and disparately related.”92 While exciting, this abundance clearly presented some methodological problems, which Sheppard pointed out by noting the distinctively different visions of Isaiah, based on different formulations of its structure around central texts, that were emerging in the work of several scholars, resulting in a tendency to “talk past one another as though they are competing to illuminate the same thing.”93 He warned against naiveté in the pursuit of Isaiah’s structural features. Noting that many have sought to avoid the subjectivism in historical criticism by giving greater priority to the “literary structure” of a biblical text or prebiblical tradition, he commented: Any such approach in pursuit of a more objective strategy, as though one can view a text with an innocent eye and a pristine desire, confronts Jacques Derrida’s most telling cricitism. For each effort at such a structuralist description, Derrida relentlessly exposes the various moments of “aporia” or “gaps” that require decisions between two equally valid possibilities. A reader overcomes the gaps … by invoking some conception of a “center” which, in turn, depends on some “subjective” phenomenological conception of presence, intention, intrinsic bond between reality and language, historical reference, symbolic system or whatever.94

“We should not be surprised,” he concluded, “that quite different structures can be ‘found’ and rationalized for the same text.”95 It was not that either Sheppard or Derrida thought scholars could get along without such centers and structures

91. Gregory J. Polan, “Still More Signs of Unity in the Book of Isaiah: The Significance of Third Isaiah,” Society of Biblical Literature 1997 Seminar Papers (SBLSP 36; Atlanta: Scholars Press, 1997), 224–33. 92. Gerald Sheppard, “The Book of Isaiah: Competing Structures according to a Late Modern Description of Its Shape and Scope,” in Society of Biblical Literature 1992 Seminar Papers, 575. This paper, along with his 1993 paper (“Book of Isaiah as a Human Witness”) were incorporated into “The ‘Scope’ of Isaiah as a Book of Jewish and Christian Scriptures,” in Melugin and Sweeney, New Visions of Isaiah, 257–81. 93. Sheppard, “ ‘Scope’ of Isaiah,” 257. 94. Ibid., 259. 95. Ibid., 260.

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but rather that the subjective presuppositions out of which these discoveries grew must be acknowledged. After surveying the quite varied structural suggestions of Sweeney, Conrad, H. G. M. Williamson, and Seitz, he offered two proposals of his own.96 Concerning fundamental agreements, discussions of Isaiah through the 1990s made progress, spurred on not only by stimulating studies that preceded them but also by responding and reacting to one another’s work. One of the advantages of the seminar format was that many were able to receive immediate, well-informed feedback to work in progress. One of the disadvantages was the limited time and resources for in-depth engagement of the very distinct hermeneutical and exegetical presuppositions that characterized the group overall. Discussion of Sheppard’s paper leads directly into one of the most interesting areas of difference, the question of exegetical method. Diachronic and Synchronic Methods of Interpretation When interpreting Isaiah meant uncovering its prescriptural layers, exegetical method that was primarily diachronic made obvious sense. When the fundamental goal becomes understanding the book in its scriptural form, a book that both portrays and results from an extended history, the question of the relationship of excavative and literary methods becomes more critical. Ackroyd described this dual focus as a sensitive appraisal of both the final stages of the according of authority to the biblical writings, and the awareness of the different levels at which this has operated in the eventual determining of the texts which have come down to us, stamped with the hallmark of experiential testing in the life of the community to which they belonged.97

Rendtorff schematized the distinction between diachronic and synchronic questions in this way: “The main difference between these two approaches might be expressed by the following two questions: 1) (Synchronic) What does the text (in all its complexity) mean in its given final shape? 2) (Diachronic) In what stages did the text reach its final form?”98 In his view, while the distinctions between their ends should be kept clear, there is enough commonality in their

96. Sweeney, Isaiah 1–4; Conrad, Reading Isaiah; H. G. M. Williamson, The Book Called Isaiah: Deutero-Isaiah’s Role in Composition and Redaction (Oxford: Clarendon, 1994); Seitz, “Isaiah 1–66,” Zion’s Final Destiny; and “Isaiah 1–39,” HBC, 558–89. 97. Ackroyd, “Isaiah 1–12,” 104. 98. Rendtorff, “Book of Isaiah,” 17.


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pursuits for productive cooperation between scholars whose interests and methods differ. In response to Rendtorff’s call for methodological cooperation, Conrad agreed that diverse questions were being asked, which he understood to be: “(1) How do we speak about textual meaning? (2) How do we speak about history? And (3) To what communities of interpretation do we belong?”99 He expressed far more pessimism about the usefulness of diachronic questions for study of Isaiah’s final form, saying that “we have downplayed these differences as if the two approaches can be easily melded and as if there is little at stake in choosing one or the other.”100 The fact that in his own study Conrad made use of historicalcritical scholarship and developed his own redactional theory, distinguishing for instance between “the vision of Isaiah (chaps. 6–39) and the address to the present community, the implied audience in 40–66,”101 suggests that there is more to be said about the relationships of diverse methods than their incommensurability. Historical studies must continue to make use of literary analysis—and it is to be hoped that growing sophistication in literary theory and method will only strengthen this work—and literary studies and other synchronic methods depend upon some understanding of the society, languages, and literary practices of the communities in which Scripture originated. Isaiah seems to present one of many cases in which both sides of the exegetical aisle need the other to complete their work. As Seitz observed: Moves toward synchronic readings, especially in Isaiah, still require enormous attention to a whole nest of difficult historical-critical and diachronic issues.… The chief question facing modern interpreters is not if but how diachronic analysis should be properly utilized so as to illuminate and make comprehensible the final canonical shape of the Book of Isaiah, which … has never lost its high degree of historical referentiality.102

Perhaps it is precisely because of Isaiah’s half-submerged redactional complexity and high degree of historical referentiality that those schooled in traditional diachronic methods—whether or not, as with Melugin, Rendtorff, and Sweeney the present climate has shifted their field of vision—continue to constitute the majority of Isaiah scholars, while the pentateuchal and Deuteronomistic narratives, Psalms, wisdom literature, and other parts of Scripture in which historical issues at least appear to be easier to ignore have attracted more than their share

99. Conrad, “Prophet, Redactor and Audience,” 306. 100. Ibid. 101. Conrad, Reading Isaiah, 136. 102. Seitz, “On the Question of Divisions,” 266.

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of scholars trained in theory and synchronic method. Although different scholars have distinct preferences and areas of expertise, in the study of Isaiah some facility with a range of methodological tools seems necessary. It seemed evident in the Isaiah Seminar, in work across the board, that those who tended to deny either the validity or the complexity of nonpreferred methods would expose their naiveté when they found they must resort to them. Conversely, the range of methodological tools needed for working with Isaiah created the necessity and opportunity by means of consultation to strengthen our own and one another’s awareness of methodological presuppositions and the strengths and weakness of various lines of inquiry. Perhaps as much because of the particular individuals interested in Isaiah in the past twenty years as for any other reasons, the methodological issues that came to the fore most often were in three areas: redaction criticism, canonical criticism, and reader-response criticism. A fourth area, which may be defined as rhetorical/literary criticism (depending on who is defining it) with light touches of structuralism and broad use of intertextual theory, was not discussed in depth, but scholars across the spectrum used it freely, most often without clarifying their methodological assumptions. As Gerald Sheppard pointed out, using a method without coming clean on presuppositions can lead to a false sense of objectivity that a more in-depth methodological discussion may help avoid. Redaction Criticism

Though the goal of inquiry had shifted from “how did the earliest form look” to “how did the final form come about,” redaction questions still figured prominently in the discussion of Isaiah’s composition. As several studies demonstrate, it is very difficult to discuss the meaning of Isaiah as a coherent book without being grounded in some form of “creation myth”—without having at least in the back of one’s mind a history of the book’s origins and growth, even when its redactional development is viewed as a secondary consideration. Yet, as Melugin noted, there may be severe limits to the extent to which Isaiah’s redactional history can be clarified, especially in its earlier stages. Using Isa 1 as a case in point, he challenged Marvin Sweeney’s redactional analysis, showing the ambiguity of figurative language that renders certainty difficult, concluding: I am not arging that historical inquiry has no value. Indeed … the prophet exhibits an intense concern with what was happening in the history which lies behind the text’s figurative language. But I am profoundly skeptical of our ability to recover with much precision the history which lies behind the text. Furthermore, the form of the text itself suggests that our preoccupation with reconstructing a setting for each pericope and with recovering the history of


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redaction of the text flies in the face of the concerns which the text’s redactors seem to have had.103

Such disagreements as these are natural to a book in which those editing left traces of prior layers and yet did not make these traces explicit—who partially, but only partially, obscured their work. Even if the recovery of the history behind individual phrases in Isaiah’s opening chapter may be more daunting than its usefulness warrants, still in terms of the larger scale of the overall history of the book’s growth, debate may still be useful, or at least interesting to many. The relationship of Second Isaiah to First Isaiah continued to stimulate debate throughout the course of the Isaiah Seminar. Seitz’s typology of redactional theories pertained to the extent of independent growth perceived in chapters 1–39 and/or chapters 40–55 or 40–66 before their having been joined into one book. Type A represented theories of independence on both sides; Type B theories of a more independent Second Isaiah; and his favored Type C, on the basis of perceived allusions to First Isaiah in Isa 40–55, posited that “Second Isaiah, from its inception, was composed in relationship to First Isaiah.”104 This line of thinking has been followed also by Rainer Albertz and H. G. M. Williamson, who both referred to several of the thematic correspondences noted by Childs.105 In the midst of the discussion at the end of the 1980s, Graham Davies highlighted passages in First Isaiah that may be deliberately echoed in Second Isaiah, such as the “sign to the nations” (Isa 5:26; 11:10–12; see 49:22), the “arousing” of foreigners (13:17; see 41:25), the downfall of imperial power (10:6–7; see 47:6–7), and the motif of world government (9:1–6; 11:1–9; see 55:3–5).106 Yet, he cautioned, two conditions must be met to prove that the later section was composed to supplement the earlier one: First, the alleged sources of Deutero-Isaiah’s ideas and expressions must either be the only passages from which he could have derived them or at least they must in some way be more likely to have been his inspiration than other possible passages. Secondly, it must be plausible, when the whole of DeuteroIsaiah’s thought and language is considered, to envisage Isaiah 1–39 as being to

103. Melugin, “Figurative Speech,” 284. 104. Seitz, Zion’s Final Destiny, 32. 105. Rainer Albertz, “Das Deuterojesaja-Buch als Fortschreibung der Jesaja-Prophetie,” in Die Hebraische Bibel und ihre Zweifache Nachgeschichte (ed. E. Blum et al.; Neukirchen-Vluyn: Neukirchener, 1990), 241–56; Williamson, The Book Called Isaiah. 106. Graham I. Davies, “The Destiny of the Nations in the Book of Isaiah,” in Vermeylen, The Book of Isaiah/Le Livre d’Isaïe, 93–120.

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a special degree presupposed by the later prophet, more than any other known prophetic collection or collections.107

He noted the close parallels presented by the book of Jeremiah, showing that the “blind and deaf ” passages in Second Isaiah to which Clements had appealed are as closely matched in Jer 5:21 as in Isa 6:9–10. He opted to remain open to the possibility that “Deutero-Isaiah was dependent, not exclusively on the Isaiah tradition, but on a more extensive prophetic corpus that was already being brought together, perhaps in Deuteronomistic circles.”108 Benjamin Sommer was arriving at a similar conclusion, which he presented in 1991, following up with a revised paper in 1996.109 Expressing agreement with Clements and Seitz “that Deutero-Isaiah was written as a reaction to or, in some sense, a continuation of, First Isaiah, and that Deutero-Isaiah utilized written oracles attributed to First Isaiah to compose his own prophecies,” he expressed two points of disagreement: First, the study of Deutero-Isaiah’s inner-biblical allusions shows that the same point can be made regarding Deutero-Isaiah’s relationship to Jeremiah: Deutero-Isaiah is based on, reacts to, continues and utilizes written oracles of Jeremiah—in precisely the same manner. Second (and following from the first), I believe that Isaiah 40–66 were not written to be a part of the book of Isaiah or to be included in the Isaiah traditions but were added to it secondarily.110

In such a view, Second Isaiah’s “former things” become not simply Isaiah’s prophecies but all prophetic warnings of destruction that had subsequently been validated. Independently of Sommer and using very different methodology, I came to a similar conclusion, at least in regard to Isa 49–55, where engagement with the tradition not only of Jeremiah but of Lamentations, Nahum, and several Zion psalms suggested a prophet partaking so broadly of Jerusalem’s sacred texts that it would have been surprising had Isaiah of Jerusalem not been visible on his horizon, though the signs of sustained engagement with First Isaiah were not

107. Ibid., 116. 108. Ibid. 109. Benjamin D. Sommer, “Deutero-Isaiah’s Borrowings from Isaiah ben Amosß in the Context of His Inner-Biblical Exegesis,” presented at the 1991 SBL meeting; “Allusions and Illusions: The Unity of the Book of Isaiah in Light of Deutero-Isaiah’s Use of Prophetic Tradition,” in Melugin and Sweeney, New Visions of Isaiah, 156–86. See also his subsequent book, A Prophet Reads Scripture: Allusions in Isaiah 40–66 (Stanford, Calif.: Stanford University Press, 1998). 110. Sommer, “Allusions and Illusions,” 173.


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nearly as clear as with other books.111 A “Type D” was emerging: those who saw Second and/or Third Isaiah reflecting upon texts and traditions not only of First Isaiah but others as well and, because of perceived continuities, having been secondarily joined to a growing First Isaiah corpus. Whether this puzzle of Isaiah’s growth will be satisfactorily solved in the historical or the eschatological future is, at least at this point, beyond knowing. For the time being, for many it may be sufficient, as well as wise, to hold somewhat loosely to our own redactional visions, whether rudimentary or elaborate. Canonical Criticism

In differing ways, both Ackroyd and Childs described their pursuits that opened up the question of Isaiah’s unity as “canonical.” Subsequently, much of the discussion of method has focused on the meaning and nature of this approach. Does canonical criticism presuppose the existence of a religious canon (or canons) and therefore a canonical setting, or does it primarily describe a scriptural book such as Isaiah in its final—canonical—form? Childs’s approach was ambiguous or perhaps both/and, since he described the contents of the final form of Isaiah “as Scripture.” Clements drew attention to this ambiguity even as he expressed his debt to Childs’s insight about Isaiah: It seems highly improbable that the process of “canonization” had anything at all to do with the reasons why the book of Isaiah acquired its present shape.… It is virtually certain that those who ultimately adopted the book of Isaiah, along with the other prophetic books of the Old Testament, into the canon already found them in their present form and that their intentions in establishing the shape of the canon cannot, and should not, be assumed to have been identical with the intentions of those who shaped the present book of Isaiah. Our problem is a literary and theological one of redaction-criticism, not the larger and more problematic one of canon criticism.112

Rendtorff pointed out, referring to both Childs and Clements, that two issues intermingled in this discussion: first, the understanding of the term “canonical”: “The term is mainly applied to the final shape of the respective book in which it eventually became part of the canon as a whole,”113 and in that usage the term may not be needed. Second and more fundamental was the question “why scholars try to understand the final form of a biblical book, in particular

111. Willey, “Servant of Yhwh and Daughter Zion,” 277–78. 112. Clements, “Beyond Tradition History,” 97. 113. Rendtorff, “Book of Isaiah,” 9.

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of such a central one as the Book of Isaiah which at the same time is such a complicated one to be understood as a whole.”114 Since the canonical question was what prompted the interest of many in Isaiah’s coherence in the first place, he suggested that the question could not easily be set aside. And indeed, it reappeared in subsequent discussions of Isaiah as Jewish and Christian Scripture. The question debated in wider circles concerning canonical study made its way into the Isaiah Seminar as well: Does canonical inquiry result in a synchronic privileging of the final form—however it is conceived—or are the hermeutical and theological, as well as redactional, paths by which Isaiah developed of interest, assuming that they can in some way be traced? For Seitz the former preference was evident as he described “The Drama of God and Zion” in the context of the Christian canon, a drama whose divine intention was revealed in 2:1–5 but whose final chapter has not yet been written, though its trajectory of the Messiah found its culmination in Jesus Christ.115 For Sommer, however, the latter was of greater interest, since distinguishing among the various viewpoints that can be clarified in diachronic study of Isaiah sharpens its dialogic qualities and “highlights our perception of the Bible—and even of an individual biblical book—as an anthology.… The book of Isaiah (like the Tanakh as a whole) thus becomes not a source of dogma but a record of debate, of conversation, of revision within tradition”—a tradition that he said suited the postbiblical practices of Judaism very well.116 Echoing him, Clements said that to seek only the meaning of the final form to the neglect of other meanings detectable from different stages during its formation “is a needless limitation of expectation. To a very real extent, all the meanings have significance and relevance” and contribute to the book’s three-dimensional character.117 Perhaps as via media between both ends of this debate, or at least as a third alternative, Gerald Sheppard proposed a canonical approach that he said sought a “descriptive, hence, pre-theological and premidrashic, level of discourse about the book … a perspective on the book of Isaiah as an effective historical text, partly defined by its intertext among other books within a larger Jewish or Christian Scripture.”118 To him a canonical approach was not necessarily pious but “ought to help us empathetically understand the genius of religious interpretation.”119 Such an approach would acknowledge the revelatory authority conferred on Isaiah by Christians and Jews and yet remain descriptive, in the

114. Ibid., 9–10. 115. Seitz, “Isaiah 1–66,” 122–23. 116. Sommer, “Scroll of Isaiah as Jewish Scripture,” 238. 117. Clements, “Who Is Blind but My Servant,” 154–55. 118. Sheppard, “Book of Isaiah as a Human Witness,” 274. 119. Ibid., 275.


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hope of understanding better how theological interpreters of the past and present arrive at insights that are distinct from those of scholars and yet life-giving to religious communities. It is well known that what is meant by canonical criticism varies according to the critic. In the context of the Isaiah Seminar, the range of proposals and reactions to them, as well as the range of spoken and unspoken assumptions about the nature of Isaiah as a biblical book, presented a microcosm of the debate as it has proceeded in wider circles, especially in theological schools and in deliberation over interfaith dialogue. While a distinction between “canonical form” and “canonical setting,” along with a recognition of multiple canons in the context of which Isaiah speaks differently, can help clarify the terms of the debate, even the smaller-scale discussion of the meaning of the final form of Isaiah reveals its multivalence to different readers and reading communities. Perhaps that is one reason that reader-response issues also became prominent in the course of the discussion of Isaiah. Reader-Response Criticism

New Visions of Isaiah, in which a dozen of the papers from the Isaiah Seminar were published, was organized around a reader-response question. Part 1 was entitled, “Is Meaning Located in the ‘Author’ or Text?” and included seven essays more or less positing Isaiah as a stable though complex text, or at least not calling its determinacy by readers seriously into question. Whereas in previous generations part 1 or the “Old Testament” of a collection organized around methodology would have been historical criticism, these essays were primarily rhetorical, literary, structural (not structuralist), or New Critical in nature, even if drawing upon diachronic methods. Part 2 was entitled, “Is Meaning Located in the Reader?” and included five essays that in various ways raised the issue of the participation of readers and their contexts in the production of textual meaning. In the introduction Roy Melugin announced his own sympathies—and thus the structure of the book—when he described the differences among methodologies as “the result of different reading strategies” and went on to describe a basic presupposition of reader-response criticism: “What we call ‘meaning’ is in no way independent of the strategies which we bring to the reading of a text. We decide what questions to ask; we decide which methods of analysis to employ; we determine what is appropriate to consider or leave out of consideration.”120 He went on to describe

120. Melugin, “Introduction,” 14.

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various scholars’ visions of Isaiah, asking in each case whether the interpreter had discovered a past reality or created a new one. In her 1994 seminar paper, Darr outlined her reader-oriented approach, which was an adaptation of that of her husband, New Testament scholar John Darr. Although her approach required using the results of some historical analysis, it also required setting aside diachronic matters and attending instead to these premises: (1) literature functions rhetorically; that is, by rhetorical strategies it seeks to achieve certain effects in the reader; (2) meaning results from the “dynamic interaction of both the rhetorical strategies of the text and the interpretive structures … of its reader”; and (3) “numerous text-specific elements—historical, social, linguistic, literary—are crucial to contemporary interpretation of ancient texts.”121 She posited an “implied reader” in fourthcentury b.c.e. Jerusalem who possessed the cultural and literary knowledge to construe Isaiah competently, a scribe or religious leader. “Though this is his first reading of Isaiah, he is familiar with other of Israel’s existing religious texts, including the Torah of Moses, certain prophetic collections, psalms, and so on,” as well as the literary classics of his larger culture.122 After describing further methodological presuppositions, Darr set out to interpret what a very first reading of Isaiah as a scroll from start to finish, with special attention to Isaiah’s important theme of “rebellious children,” might reveal to a fourth-century religious leader. Such a method as Darr set out seeks to pay heed to the specificity of readers, the temporality of the reading process, the historical distance between ancient and contemporary audiences, and the rhetorical force of the literary trope of rebellious children in Isaiah. The complex way in which a theory about reading may be related to a method of interpreting texts surely presented daunting obstacles. At the same time, Darr’s reading of the theme of rebellion in Isaiah, through all the temporal and ideological disjunctures present in the complex book, brought to the forefront the value of sustained attention to the rhetorical aspects of such tropes. Those who disagreed with Darr’s reading had to admit that the only reason they could was that meaning is at least partly a production of the reader. In this age of methodological diversity there is a tendency—perhaps already on the wane as ecclecticism inspires more methodological generosity—for more traditional scholars to distrust synchronic methods such as reader-response criticism that seem to them both theoretically abstruse and irredeemably subjective.

121. Darr, “Isaiah’s Vision and the Rhetoric of Rebellion,” Society of Biblical Literature 1994 Seminar Papers, 848–49, citing John A. Darr, “ ‘Glorified in the Presence of Kings’: A LiteraryCritical Study of Herod the Tetrarch in Luke-Acts” (Ph.D. diss., Vanderbilt University), 15. This seminar paper drew from her book Isaiah’s Vision and the Family of God. 122. Darr, “Isaiah’s Vision and the Rhetoric of Rebellion,” 852.


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This is only fair, since there is also a tendency among scholars who revel in literary theory to look askance at redaction criticism and other more traditional methods for seeming theoretically naive and likewise irredeemably subjective. Perhaps both sides of this coin share more than an agreement that the other is operating out of an unnecessarily subjective framework. What seems apparent even among methods as diverse as reader-response criticism and more traditional readings of Isaiah is a sustained attention to what Isaiah means, whether this attention is expressed as what the redactors intended it to mean, what the text presents, what the meaning-effect on readers is, or even what theological, ethical, or pedagogical message Isaiah mediates from the ancient world (or from the divine) to us. We all want to understand Isaiah. It seems worthwhile to ponder what bridging methodologies might be available. Form critics such as Martin Buss and Marvin Sweeney have been responding to the call for greater attention to Sitz im Literatur as opposed to Sitz im Leben. Newer methods such as rhetorical criticism, cultural critique, and new historicism have taken a decided diachronic turn. Fifteen years after the discussion opened about a cooperation between diachronic and synchronic methods, it seems that perhaps the lines of distinction have shifted somewhat, so that many exegetes are conscious of characteristics in their work that reach out in each direction. In the Isaiah Seminar, the dichotomy shifted between 1991 and 1996, or at least between Rendtorff’s diachronic/synchronic distinction and Melugin’s author and text-centered/reader-centered distinction. As in politics, the ends of the spectrum received great attention, but the moderating views went largely unexamined, perhaps because it was assumed there was little to be said about matters that seemed to lack controversy. On one end of the spectrum of methods we discussed redaction criticism, and on the other reader-response criticism, but the many literary-rhetorical readings—readings that made use of such categories as structure, repetition, metaphor, form, parallelism, chiasm, theme, allusion, motif, addressee, personification, and the ubiquitous “final form”—were quietly carried out without much methodological fanfare or reflection, perhaps with the result, as Gerald Sheppard suggested, of more “talking past one another” than was necessary. For the most part, except for Sheppard’s warnings about finding structure, the many scholarly works employing these notions flew under the radar of methodological discussion. Methodological diversity gathered around a biblical book and a central set of questions about it proved to be one of the sources of both great challenge and great ferment. Few participants, if any, expected a new hegemony to prevail, and if it had its scope and believability would have rivaled the miracle of the seventy translators of the Septuagint. However, some valuable cross-fertilization did occur, and as in the study of the history of interpretation, scholars often sharpened their own views in relation to the questions being asked by others, whether

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satisfied with others’ answers or not. In the end, faithfulness to a posited methodology was perhaps less crucial than whether interpretations were produced that “rang true” in the ears of others and thus stimulated further reflection and at least the illusion of greater understanding. Meaning and Scope of the Term “Unity” in Relation to Isaiah In his 1959 article John Eaton noted the “remarkable evidence of unity” in the book of Isaiah and called for “an approach which will do equal justice to both sides of the question, accounting both for such unity and for such complexity as the book may possess.”123 In his historical-critical context the term “unity” signified a little-noticed and puzzling coherence in a book that was well known to be historically, redactionally, and compositionally diverse. The term “unity” means something very different today in biblical studies, or perhaps several diverse things. When applied to biblical narratives that were once, but are no longer, considered redactional composites, it can mean “authorial unity.” When applied to compositions that may actually be redacted texts but that nevertheless display overarching macrostructures, such as the books of Matthew and Luke, it can mean that one redactor controlled the use of resource material in such a way as to create a virtual “authorial unity.” But when it is applied to Isaiah, it is often modified by a qualifier such as “complex.” Early on, Clements expressed the hope of finding something more: Given that the extant work is a unity, if only in the sense that it is a unified “collection,” we shall be asking whether it does not also possess a unity of theme and content. After all, even an anthology of texts such as we may produce in the modern world may usually be expected to display some overarching unity of background and theme.124

Though many interpreters have been satisfied to leave the question on the level of “collection,” others have proffered overall themes to describe the whole. Several have sought a dramatic, rather than thematic, unity to the book.125 In his two-volume commentary, John D. W. Watts presented Isaiah as a tragic drama in twelve acts, entitled “The Vision of Isaiah,” speculating that perhaps it was “actually presented by a group of speakers, representing the characters in the

123. Eaton, “Origin of the Book of Isaiah,” 140. 124. Clements, “Beyond Tradition History,” 99. 125. In his Hermeneia commentary Klaus Baltzer similarly portrayed chapters 40–55 as a liturgical drama (Deutero-Isaiah: A Commentary on Isaiah 40–55 [ed. P. Machinist; trans. M. Kohl; Hermeneia; Minneapolis: Fortress, 2001]).


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drama.”126 This drama “portrays the continuing tension throughout these generations between Yahweh’s strategy and Israel/Jerusalem’s plans for themselves.”127 In the end this drama is a tragedy, “for there is no happy ending for the people. They stand rejected because of their own unyielding rebellion.”128 Watts gazed backward into the book to find a way in which the Vision “moves beyond tragedy to portray God’s plan.”129 Seitz called the book “The Drama of God and Zion” and outlined the unfolding relations between these two characters as the plot of this drama, concluding with, “Through the suffering and the commissioning of the exiled servant, Zion is restored again (chapters 40–55). Zion sings out thanksgiving. The drama of God and Zion unfolds as we walk through the chapters, all sixtysix, of the Book of Isaiah.”130 While Watts turned backward from chapter 66 to find a satisfying ending, Seitz ended his description of the plot with chapter 55. Sweeney did not posit a drama but did see an unfolding plot. Entitling the book “Exhortation to the People of Jerusalem/Judah to Return to Yhwh as their God,” he said that “the entire book emphasizes Yhwh’s control of human events to bring about His own rule of the world, even if this means disaster for His own people. As such, the book is an argument that Yhwh is all-powerful, that He controls the entire world as well as His own people.” 131 According to his plot, “Isaiah 1 is an exhortation which intends to provoke a change in the people’s behavior so that they will return to Yhwh. Likewise, Isa 2–66 leads to the eventual redemption of Jerusalem, the restoration of those who return to Yhwh, and the destruction of those who do not.”132 Others have seen in Isaiah a more polyvalent book. While Seitz described the process through which the book received its present form as “a set of complex literary arrangements, whose purpose was to make the present book intelligible as a whole product to future generations, who would seek therein a coherent Word of God,”133 Carr took the idea of “purpose” in a somewhat different direction, saying, “It is clear that not just one but several redactors have introduced their macrostructural conceptions into the book of Isaiah.”134 While in his view early redactors systematically rearranged material in less than successful attempts

126. John D. W. Watts, Isaiah 1–33 (WBC; Waco, Tex.: Word, 1985), xlv. 127. Ibid., li. 128. Ibid. 129. Ibid., lii. 130. Seitz, “Isaiah 1–66,” 122. 131. Sweeney, Isaiah 1–4, 98. 132. Ibid., 97–98. 133. Seitz, “Introduction,” in Reading and Preaching the Book of Isaiah, 19. 134. Carr, “Reaching for Unity,” 77.

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to unify the book around their own theme, Carr observed that later redactors “did not completely integrate their materials … but merely added their texts to the margins of earlier units, allowing the diverse perspectives of the different materials to clash and complement each other.”135 He described Isaiah’s unity as a “fractured thematic and inter-textual unity,” concluding, “Not only does it seem that no editor intervened deeply enough into the book to make it all conform to an overall conception, but the materials are diverse enough that the Isaianic tradition did not end up unintentionally coalescing into a coherent literary statement.”136 Seeking for a metaphor, Carr found “essay” too cohesive and “journal” too disjointed and settled on “collection.”137 Likewise examining metaphors, Sheppard said, “the alternative to ‘unity’ or even ‘shape’ … is not mere disunity or a random collection of tradition.”138 He suggested “territory of land” or “the anatomy of a human body”: “A territory of land still has scope, compass directions, and presents us with a boundaried set of limitations and possibilities for whatever we may try to do with it. A body has a head … as a sign of its intentionality.”139 Sommer portrayed Isaiah as “a record of debate, of conversation, of revision within tradition,” in which “many voices,” even a “cacophany,” can be heard, on the analogy of the midrashic collections that “string together alternate interpretations of a verse and often record (or create) exegetical debates among rabbis.”140 For Mathews, the present text of Isaiah is “the product of a multiplicity of voices adding, generation by generation, to an original body of ‘authentic’ Isaianic prophecy, as that prophecy was reactualized, supplemented, and reinterpreted … a kind of prophetic chorus—and sometimes cacophony.” 141 She continued: “To speak of the book as a fugue would be to attribute too much structure to it; it is much more polyphonic.”142 Perhaps in the future a convincing suggestion will emerge of an overarching macrostructure for the book of Isaiah that unifies its variety of times and voices into one purpose, effect, or theme. Many do not find it likely. Isaiah seems to show no more single intention—or effect—than the composite accretion of laws written by different legislators at different times, but all included in the federal

135. Ibid., 77–78. 136. Ibid., 78. 137. Ibid., 78–79. 138. Sheppard “Book of Isaiah as Human Witness,” 276. 139. Ibid. 140. Sommer, “Scroll of Isaiah,” 238–39. 141. Mathews, Defending Zion, 156. 142. Ibid., 178.


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law code. So to the above metaphors describing Isaiah’s “unresolved, rich plurality,” its “varied materials not amenable to final closure,”143 I will add my own: Isaiah as a symposium, or a seminar. Like scholars who seek to convince one another of the verity of our vision, the writers and redactors in themselves may have intended a more monologic meaning. But the distinctiveness of their voices within the whole argues against monologue. Different intentions intersect in the book; as Sweeney pointed out, differing intentions have even taken hold of the same words over time. What gives Isaiah its dynamic, three-dimensional quality for interpreters may well be its refusal to privilege either the final redaction, or the originating prophet, or any one intention in between, as the book’s overriding voice. Isaiah’s message consists of the interaction of all these voices inscribed over the course of time. Thus meaning is to be found not in the separate truth of an overarching theme but in the ongoing event of deliberation over the meaning of the unfolding story of God, Jerusalem, and the world around. The Formation of Isaiah Seminar at times devolved into a cacophany of competing strongly held opinions, but in the main, like the book around which its participants were gathered, it remained a plurality of perspectives united by a common field of interest. The “symposium” style of the Isaiah Seminar reproduced by means of bodies and minds in time and place the symposium of interpreters over time, both inscribed in the book of Isaiah itself and through more than the two thousand years of interpretation. An ongoing enterprise can be detected through these three communities of interpretation—the symposium of the Isaiah Seminar, interpreters gathered to discuss Isaiah face to face at the end of the twentieth century in particular rooms and particular cities, displaying both common interest and diverse particular understandings; the symposium of interpreters across time “gathered” by a common interest but also displaying diverse particular understandings; and the symposium of interpreters across a band of time broader than the first but narrower than the second, represented by the common interests and diverse particular understandings of writers and redactors whose only remaining trace is the book of Isaiah itself. Because the multiple voices of Isaiah are not finally brought under the control of the last editor, the book’s polyphonic nature stands. Voices of inclusion of the nations, voices supporting Israel’s domination, and voices supporting Israel’s missional calling before the nations all fight for control. Voices asserting communal and individual responsibility, collective and individual identity, each speak their piece. Finally a very negative word wins the “last word” status on the scroll, at least technically. But it seems that as soon as the scroll was closed

143. Carr, “Reaching for Unity, 80.

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it was reopened: tradition overturned even the last word, making it hardly ever the last word read or remembered. As long as interpretive history continues, the scroll will remain open to speak yet again. From earliest times until now, Isaiah’s interpreters have exemplified the ongoing rhythm described by the prophet, of hearing and teaching, of listening in order to speak a word in season: The Lord God has given me the tongue of a teacher, that I may know how to sustain the weary with a word. Morning by morning God wakens— wakens my ear to listen as those who are taught. (Isa 50:4) Select Bibliography Carr, David McLain. “Reaching for Unity in Isaiah.” JSOT (1993): 61–80. Clements, Ronald E. “The Unity of the Book of Isaiah.” Int 36 (1982): 117– 29. Darr, Katheryn Pfisterer. Isaiah’s Vision and the Family of God. Literary Currents in Biblical Interpretation. Louisville: Westminster John Knox, 1994. Rendtorff, Rolf. “The Book of Isaiah: A Complex Unity: Synchronic and Diachronic Reading.” Pages 32–49 in New Visions of Isaiah. Edited by Roy F. Melugin and Marvin A. Sweeney. JSOTSup 214. Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press, 1996. Seitz, Christopher R. Reading and Preaching the Book of Isaiah. Philadelphia: Fortress, 1988. Sheppard, Gerald T. “The ‘Scope’ of Isaiah as a Book of Jewish and Christian Scriptures.” Pages 257–81 in New Visions of Isaiah. Edited by Roy F. Melugin and Marvin A. Sweeney. JSOTSup 214. Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press, 1996. Sommer, Benjamin. “Allusions and Illusions: The Unity of the Book of Isaiah in Light of Deutero-Isaiah’s Use of Prophetic Tradition.” Pages 156–86 in New Visions of Isaiah. Edited by R. F. Melugin and M. A. Sweeney. JSOTSup 214. Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press, 1996. Sweeney, Marvin A. “Multiple Settings in the Book of Isaiah.” Pages 267–73 in Society of Biblical Literature 1993 Seminar Papers. SBLSP 32. Atlanta: Society of Biblical Literature, 1993. ———. “The Book of Isaiah in Recent Research.” Currents in Research 1 (1993): 141–62. Williamson, H. G. M. The Book Called Isaiah: Deutero-Isaiah’s Role in Composition and Redaction. Oxford: Clarendon, 1994.

Contributors David A. Baer lives in Indianapolis, Indiana, and is President and CEO of Overseas Council International, providing educational resources for nonWestern seminaries. He formerly served as President of Seminario ESEPA, San Jose, Costa Rica. George J. Brooke is the Rylands Professor of Biblical Criticism and Exegesis at the University of Manchester, Manchester, England. J. David Cassel is Professor of Theological Studies at Hanover College in Hanover, Indiana. Alan Cooper is Elaine Ravich Professor of Jewish Studies at Jewish Theological Seminary and also teaches at Union Theological Seminary in New York. Jan Fekkes III is Assistant Professor of Theology at Seattle Pacific University, in Seattle, Washington. Email: [email protected] Robert A. Harris is Associate Professor of Bible at the Jewish Theological Seminary in New York. Arie van der Kooij is Professor of Old Testament in the Faculty of Theology at Leiden University, Leiden, The Netherlands. Claire Mathews McGinnis is Associate Professor of Theology at Loyola College, Baltimore, Maryland. Email: [email protected] Roy F. Melugin is Research Professor of Hebrew Bible at Brite Divinity School, Texas Christian University, Fort Worth, Texas. Amy Plantinga Pauw is Henry P. Mobley Professor of Doctrinal Theology at Louisville Presbyterian Theological Seminary, Louisville, Kentucky.

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contributors

Gary Stansell is Professor of Religion at St. Olaf College, Northfield, Minnesota. Marvin A. Sweeney is Professor of Hebrew Bible at Claremont School of Theology and Professor of Religion at Claremont Graduate University in Claremont, California. Patricia K. Tull is Arnold Black Rhodes Professor of Old Testament at Louisville Presbyterian Theological Seminary, Louisville, Kentucky. J. Ross Wagner is Associate Professor of New Testament at Princeton Theological Seminary in Princeton, New Jersey. Catrin H. Williams is University Lecturer in New Testament and Fellow in Theology at Keble College, Oxford University, Oxford, England.

Index of Ancient Sources Pseudepigrapha 1 Enoch 134 2 Baruch 116 4 Ezra 116, 134 Apocalypse of Abraham 116 Psalms of Solomon 101 n. 47, 126, 134 n. 15 Pseudo-Philo (L. A. B.) 116

Dead Sea Scrolls and Related Texts 1QapGen 72 1QHa 96 1QIsa 74, 85 1QIsaa 15, 37, 42, 62, 63, 70–82, 85 1QIsab 70, 73, 75, 76 1QpHab 71, 75 1QS 71, 83, 84 1QSb5 134 4Q55 73 4Q69b 73 4Q161 101 4Q174 107 4Q266 98 4Q270 98 4Q504 99 4QIsaa 73, 79 4QIsab 73, 75, 76, 79 4QIsac 73, 76, 79 4QIsad 73, 79 e 4QIsa 73, 79 4QIsaf 73, 79 4QIsag 73, 79

4QIsaj 4QIsak 4QIsal 4QIsam 4QIsan 4QIsao 4QIsaq 4QIsar 4QMMT 4QpIsaa 4QpapIsap 5Q 5Q3 5QIsa 6Q 7Q 10Q Jeremiah Apocryphon Pseudo-Ezekiel

79 79 79 79 79 79 79 79 99 101, 134 79 73 73 79 73 73 73 82 82

Mishnah and Talmud b. Baba Batra b. Hullin b. Metzi’a b. Pesahim b. Yevamot m. Avot y. Sotah

192, 193, 244 176 174 178 174 190 193

Targumic Texts Targum Isaiah 20, 32–33, 35, 38–41, 49, 50, 58–62, 65–68, 102, 116, 180

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318

index of ancient sources

Targum Jonathan 20, 32, 33, 38–41, 54, 58, 59, 61 Targum Neofiti 91 Targum Pseudo-Jonathan 91

Sifre Deuteronomy Mekilta Pisha

Other Rabbinic Works

P.Mich II 121 r II ii P.Mich V 343 P.Ryl. II 125 and 154

Genesis Rabbah

193

91, 97 91

Papyri 53 53 53

Index of Scriptural Citations Hebrew Bible Genesis 1–11 3:8 15 16:1–16 19:37 21:9–21 22:2 37:2 38 42:6 49:21 Exodus 9:16 12:10 12:25–28 12:46 15:1–18 15:9 20:6 33:19 35:22 35:22–28 Leviticus 18:5 26 26:31 Numbers 6 6:25 6:27

4, 5, 43, 132, 203, 239 5 174 116 8 182 8 43, 44, 46 174 5 190 45 6, 82, 132 105 111 91 111 225 177 46 93, 105 52 52 175 90, 91, 105 91 98 142 142 142

9:12 23:7–10 24:4 24:16 31:50

111 233 253 253 52

Deuteronomy 16, 82, 87, 89, 92, 98–102, 266 9:4 90 18:15 127 18:18 127 28 91 29 99, 100 29–32 16, 99, 102 29:4 89, 90, 92, 97–100, 105 29–32 16, 99, 102 30 100 99 30:1 30:4 98 30:6 99 30:12–14 90–92, 100, 105 31: 1 – 30 91 31:16 97 31:20 97 31:29 91 31:30 185 32 92–93, 97, 185, 192, 193, 225 32:1 91, 179, 181 32:1–43 91 32:4 92 32:4–6 91 92 32:5 32:7–14 91 32:15–18 91 32:16 97 32:17 92, 96, 97

-319-

320

index of scriptural citations

Deuteronomy (cont.) 32:19 92, 97 32:19–25 91 32:20 91 32:21 89–97, 100, 101, 105 32:35 92 32:43 89, 92, 100–102, 105 32:44–47 91 33:17 45 33:19 34 34:10–12 127 Joshua 10:9–12 12:9–24

159 225

Judges 5 10:4 11:29–40 19:1–3

5 225 52 8 8

1–2 Samuel

244

1 Samuel 1:17–18 2:5a 12:22 16:12 17:42 19:24 25:1 2 Samuel 7:14 22

174, 175 61 93 45 45 253 244 133 225

1 Kings 19:10 19:14 19:18

5 93, 96 93 96

2 Kings 15:5 18–20

254, 296 178 259

18:10

257

Isaiah 1 32, 33, 172, 178, 179, 181, 249, 253, 256, 258, 282, 284, 288, 293, 295, 296, 302, 311 1–4 34, 243, 277, 287, 288, 295, 300, 311 1–5 22, 78, 177, 178 1–8 247 1–11 23, 146 1–12 14, 21, 22, 29–47, 171–87, 249, 257, 258, 259, 280, 282, 283, 300 1–33 78–80, 311 1–35 259, 282, 285 1–39 6, 18, 24, 38, 171, 177, 243, 244, 248, 259, 260, 261, 263, 279, 280, 282, 284, 288, 289, 296, 300, 303 1–66 288, 300, 306, 311 1:1 177, 178, 180, 181, 247, 249 1:1–9 237, 249 1:1–21 237 1:2 91, 179, 181 1:2–31 295 1:7 63, 230 1:8 157, 160 1:9 30, 32, 88, 93, 96, 104, 105 1:10–14 158 1:10–20 237, 249 1:11 47 1:12 158 1:15 184 1:18 183, 184 1:21–31 237, 249 1:22 161 1:22–24 33 1:24 158, 234 1:24–25 40 33 1:25 1:26 37, 41 1:26–27 40–42 41, 42 1:27 1:28 33

index of scriptural citations 2 2–4 2–5 2–66 2:1 2:1–5 2:2–4 2:2–5:25 2:10 2:19 2:21 3 3:1 3:2 3:3 3:4 3:5 3:8 3:12 3:13 3:13–14 3:14 3:16 3:16–18 3:16–4:1 3:17 3:18 3:18a 3:18–23 3:18b–20 3:19 3:20 3:21 3:21–23 3:22 3:23 3:25 3:25–26 4:1–2 4:2 4:2–6 5 5–34 5:1 5:1–7

137, 247 258, 288 253 311 229, 249 306 258 256 137 137 137 33–36, 68 174 34 34 34 34 186 160 34, 35, 36 34, 36 33, 35 229, 230, 281 184 42, 46, 50 38 51 52, 53 15, 49, 50–53 52 51 51 51 52 51 52 42, 43, 44, 45, 46 42, 281 184 185 254 258 296 185 17

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5:8–10 176 44 5:13 5:16 41 303 5:26 5:26–30 47, 256 6 22, 36–38, 136, 163, 167, 177–81, 206, 207, 208, 210, 247, 253, 258, 280, 285, 287 6–8 78 6–39 301 6:1 115, 116, 118, 122, 163, 164, 165, 177–78, 180–81, 183, 248 6:1–3 230 6:1–13 115, 116, 118, 122 6:1–9:6 256, 258 6:2–3 135 6:3 115, 116, 122, 164, 183, 186, 202 135 6:3a 6:3b–4 136 6:4 136, 165 6:5 116, 122, 136, 165, 166 6:6–7 166, 167 6:8 116, 123, 146, 178, 181 6:9–10 88, 104, 112, 122, 217, 218, 298, 304 6:10 99, 107, 112, 113, 114, 115, 117, 118 116 6:11 6:12 36, 37, 38 7 247 158, 159, 178, 180, 182 7:1 7:1–9:6 253 182–83 7:2 7:2–9 182 7:8–10 182 7:14 220 88, 93, 96, 104, 105 8:14 9–12 78 9:1–6 249, 254, 303 9:2 220 9:5 68 9:7–10:4 253, 256 9:7–11:16 258 211 9:13

322


Isaiah (cont.) 10 102 10–11 292 10–12 102 10:5–14 66 10:5–34 249 10:5–12:6 253, 256 10:6–7 303 10:12 204 10:20–22 39 10:22 39, 105 10:22–23 88, 93, 96, 104, 105 10:33 254 10:34 254 11 101, 102, 134, 249 11:1 133 11:1–5 101 11:1–9 303 11:1–10 126 11:1–16 254 11:4 133, 134 11:10 88–89, 100–102, 104–5, 133 11:10–12 303 11:11–16 102 11:13–14 102 12 102, 249 12:1–6 102 12:6 258 13 63, 248 13–14 138, 251, 259, 292 13–23 78, 249, 258, 259 13–29 203 13:1 177 13:1–22 235 13:1–14:23 243, 250, 253, 259 13:1–14:27 235 13:2 175 13:2–14:23 256 13:9–11 156 13:11 63 13:13 156 13:17 303 13:20 63 13:21 161, 162 14 66, 248, 298

14:1–27 234, 235 14:9–11 156, 157, 235 14:10 156 14:12–15 208 14:24–27 249, 253, 256 14:28 179, 180 14:28–32 256 15–16 247, 250, 253, 256, 258 15:1 177 15:2 158 16:14 247 17 253 17:1–11 256 17:12–18:7 256 18 254 18:4–5 160 19 254, 256, 258 19:15–16 80 19:16–25 29, 254 20 254, 256 21 248 21:1–2 250 21:1–10 138, 243, 248, 250, 254, 256, 259 21:2–4 155 21:8 231 21:11–12 256 21:11–17 258 21:13–17 256 21:16 247 21:24 156 22 128, 129, 254, 258 22:1–14 256 22:20 129 22:21 129 22:22 129, 133 23 14, 47, 51, 68, 254, 256, 258 23:1–2 80 23:1–18 138 23:15–18 258 23:17 138 24 66 24–26 63, 66, 67 24–27 15, 49, 54–68, 78, 243, 247, 248, 250–51, 253–54, 256, 259

index of scriptural citations 24–35 250 24:8 63 24:10 63 24:10–12 54 24:12 63 24:23 35, 54 25 58, 66, 140 25–26 55, 67 25:1 55, 58, 62 25:1b 56 25:1–3 54 25:1–5 56, 64 25:1–6 54 25:2 54, 55, 56, 58, 59, 61, 62, 65 25:2a 54, 62, 65, 66, 67 25:2b 61, 62, 63, 65, 66, 67 25:3 55, 56, 59, 62, 64 25:4 63, 64 63 25:5 25:6 61 25:6–7 161 25:7 61 25:8 104 25:12 54 26 58, 66 26:1 54, 56, 57, 58, 60, 61, 62, 64, 65, 67 26:1–2 54, 65, 67, 68 26:1–6 54 56, 57, 60, 64 26:2 26:5 54, 57, 58, 60, 61, 62, 63, 64, 65, 66, 67 26:5–6 54 58, 60, 65 26:6 26:10 63 26:11 174 26:14–19 211 88, 104, 105 27:9 27:10 54 27:13 54 28–31 79 28–32 254, 256 28–33 254, 258, 259, 298 28–39 260 28:11–12 104

323

28:16 88, 93, 96, 104, 105 28:20–21 159 28:21 159 28:22 96, 104, 105 99 29 63 29:5 29:9–10 208, 214 29:9–12 99 29:10 88, 89, 90, 93, 97–100, 104, 105 29:11–12 148 29:14 104 29:16 88, 93, 104, 105 29:18 99 30:19–33 254 32–33 79, 259 32:3–4 99 53 32:8 32:15–19 254 33 77, 254, 256 33:15 99 33:17 219 33:20 205 33:20a 65 34 77, 78, 80, 137, 248, 250, 254 34–35 77, 78, 243, 250, 251, 256, 259, 291, 293, 295, 296, 297 34–66 78, 79, 80 137 34:4 34:5–6 161 161 34:7 34:9–10 80 34:17 80 35 248, 250, 254, 286, 296, 297 99 35:5 35:10 80, 280 36–37 296 36–39 77, 80, 180, 247, 250, 251, 254, 259, 260, 283, 288, 289, 291, 295, 296, 297 36–40 78 80, 180, 182 36:1 37:3b 298 37:22–35 256 37:25 183

324


Isaiah (cont.) 37:35 213 38–39 296 39 77, 288, 296 39:5 209 80 39:8 40 77, 70, 273, 280, 283, 291, 296, 283, 295, 296 40–44 273 40–48 254, 256, 259, 275, 298 40–52 248 40–55 2, 132, 244, 264, 265, 266, 270–78, 283, 285, 286, 288, 289, 296, 303, 310, 311 40–66 21, 24, 125, 180, 187, 197, 207, 237, 244, 245, 246, 248, 249, 250, 251, 254, 256, 259, 260, 266, 267, 268, 269, 270, 274, 276, 277, 278, 279, 283, 288, 289, 301, 303, 304 40:1 80 40:1–5 124 40:1–8 297 40:1–11 273, 275 40:2–5 204 40:3 15, 83, 85, 107, 108, 109, 114, 119, 202 40:3–5 109, 110, 114 40:5 122 40:5–11 122 40:7–8 104 212 40:8 40:9 119, 183 40:9–11 110, 118, 119, 122 40:10 122 40:12–31 272, 273, 275 40:13 88, 104, 105 40:21 91, 104 40:27 273, 275 40:27–31 275 40:28 91, 104 41 44, 273 41–44 272, 273 41–45 78 41:1 267

41:1–7 276 41:1–20 276 41:1–42:4 266, 267, 269 41:1–42:13 276 41:2–4 267 41:4 136 41:5–7 267, 276 45, 46, 276 41:8 41:8–9 276 41:8–10 268 41:8–13 264, 276 41:11–13 268 41:13 80 41:14 44, 80, 209 41:14–16 264, 268, 276 41:16 271 41:17a 271 41:17b 271 41:17–20 265, 271, 272, 274, 276, 277 41:18–19 272 41:20 272 41:21–24 268 41:21–29 276 41:22 76 41:24 269 41:25 303 41:25–29 268 41:29 262 42 260 111 42:1 42:1–4 17, 269 99 42:7 42:10–13 268 42:14a 274 42:14–17 265, 271, 274 42:16 99, 110 42:18–20 99, 285 42:19 216, 294 42:20 215 42:21 216 43 140 43:1–2 150, 156 43:1–3a, 5 264 43:1–7 276

index of scriptural citations 43:8 43:8–13 43:12 43:16–21 43:19 43:19a 43:24 43:25 44 44:1–5 44:2–5 44:6 44:6–8 44:23 44:24–45:7 44:25 44:28 45–48 45:1 45:1–7 45:8 45:9 45:9–13 45:14–15 45:14–17 45:15 45:18–21 45:18–46:13 45:20–24 45:20–25 45:23 46 45:20–25 46:1–2 46:3–4 46:3–13 46:12–13 46–48 47 47–48 47–55 47:1–15 47:6–7 47:7 48

99, 285 266, 276 63 265, 271 219 139 216 202 206, 273 276 264 37, 134 276 207, 268, 273, 275 273 75 80, 206, 244 273 80, 210, 244 265 57, 263, 268, 273 88, 93, 104, 105 273 126 265, 271, 273 218 276 273 266 273 104 273, 298 273 273 265 273 265 78 63, 273, 298 273 286 138, 298 303 76 273, 298

48:12 48:12–15 48:13 48:15–16 48:16 48:17 48:17–19 48:20–21 48:22 49 49–53 49–54 49–55 49–57 49–60 49–62 49:1 49:1–6 49:2 49:4a 49:4b 49:6 49:7 49:7–12 49:8 49:8–13 49:9–10 49:10 49:10–11 49:14–15 49:14–21 49:14–26 49:14–55:13 49:22 49:22–23 49:24–26 49:25–26 49:14–26 49:14–55:13 49:25–26 50 50:4 50:8 50:8–9 51:1

325 134 276 204 266 216, 231 17, 209, 213 264 259, 260, 273, 275 254 260 273 78 304 254 256 259 220 30, 275 134 275 275 31, 213 201, 213, 264 261, 271 104 265 269 110, 139 110 264 265 273, 275 275 303 126, 265 265 160, 162 272 275 160, 161 246, 260 314 104 266 90, 95, 104

326


Isaiah (cont.) 314 50:4 57 51:5 51:6–8 265 51:7–8 264, 265 57 51:8 51:6–8 265 51:7–8 264, 265 51:9–52:6 273 51:11 280 51:12–16 265 120, 142 52 52–53 260 140 52:1 104 52:5 80, 119 52:6 80, 88, 90, 104, 105, 122, 52:7 146 52:7–10 119, 122 52:7–12 110, 194 52:7–15 118 52:7–53:12 118 52:9–10 275 52:10 121, 122, 219 52:11 104 52:11–12 275 52:13 118, 120, 195, 198 52:13–15 119, 120, 121 52:13–53:1 121, 122 52:13–53:12 113, 118, 189, 194, 198 52:14 75, 195 52:15 88, 95, 104, 120, 122, 195 53 17, 22, 103, 111, 118, 195, 199, 210 45, 91, 104, 105, 107, 53:1 112, 113, 114, 116, 117, 118, 121, 122, 195 53:1a 113 53:2 196 53:2–12 121 196 53:3 17, 60, 111, 198 53:4 196, 198, 204 53:5 104, 196 53:6

111 53:7 53:7–8 17 196 53:9 53:10 196, 197 53:11 76, 196 53:11–12 104 53:12 111, 196 142 54 54–55 273 61, 104 54:1 217, 219 54:2 54:4–8 264 32 54:6 32 54:7 54:11–12 140, 141, 246 54:11–13b 265 54:13 108 54:13b–17 265 54:14a 265 311 55 55:3–5 303 55:6–11 273 55:6–13 275 55:8–13 265 55:12–13 273 56 2, 298 56–59 79 56–66 2, 14, 30, 244, 245, 260, 270, 287, 298 56:1 104, 286, 298 56:1–8 286, 298 56:9–57:13 287 56:9–59:21 286 56:10 99 57:6–13 298 57:21 254 58–66 254 58:5–7 247 59:4 247 59:7–8 104 59:10 99 59:13 247 59:20–21 88, 104 59:21 80, 105 60 126, 140, 142, 126

index of scriptural citations 60–62 280, 286, 288 60–66 79 80 60:1 60:1–2 142 60:18 60 60:19 142 17, 287 61 61:1 99, 104, 202 61:1–63:6 256 63 61:5 61:10 141 57 62:1 62:3 45 38 62:4 62:11 57 62:10–12 259 63 137, 297 63–66 260 63:1–3 137 63:1–6 250, 286 137 63:3 63:7–66:24 256, 286 217 64:4 64:12 93 96, 135, 140, 282, 291 65 65–66 96, 97, 260, 280, 287, 288, 295, 296 72, 89–97, 104, 105, 213 65:1 65:1a 94 65:1b 95 65:1–2 89, 91, 93, 94, 95, 97, 105 65:1–7 96 88, 89–97, 104, 105 65:2 65:2a 94 96, 97 65:3 96 65:8 65:8–10 96 65:11 96 65: 13–15 96 65:16 134, 135 65:17–20 140 65:23 96 66 282, 287, 291, 311 66:1–6 287 96 66:5

66:14 66:18

327 96 213

Jeremiah 5, 15, 73, 81, 82, 125, 132, 179, 181, 244, 250, 251, 259, 264, 266, 285, 304 5:21 304 17:9–10 219 25:12–38 138 30:10 264 30:11 264 48 258 49 250 46:27 264 46:28 264 46–51 249 49 250 50–51 138 52 250 Ezekiel 15, 73, 81, 82, 125, 132, 135, 140, 173, 194, 244, 246, 250 259, 266, 270, 271, 285, 297 1 135 1:1 182 163 3:26 14:14 194 14:20 194 16:10–13 52 17:2–5 184 17:9 184 17:22–23 184 25 250 25–32 249 26–28 138 30:4 63 33:30–33 224 35–36 297 37:1–14 250 38–39 137 39:10 183 40:9 183 40–48 140 47 142

328


Hosea 92, 132, 159, 179, 181, 183, 258 1:10 92, 93, 95, 105 92, 93, 95, 105 2:23 10 137 Joel 2 2:32 3–4 4:13

132, 258 130 94, 105 137 137

Amos 5, 6, 163, 179, 181, 240, 258 163, 181 1:1 1:4 63 45 6:8 8:7 45 9:4 5 5 9:11 Obadiah

250

Jonah 1:10

5 182

Micah 1 4:1–5

283 211 258

Nahum 2:2

254, 304 45

Habakkuk 2:16

70 75

Haggai Zechariah 1–8 9:9 14

288 132, 249 288 111, 119 140, 142

Psalms 4, 5, 21, 24, 26, 57, 87, 100, 132, 146, 148, 184, 190, 225, 226, 228, 232, 249, 251, 271, 301 2:8–9 134

11:6 17:44 lxx 17:50 lxx 18:5 lxx 33:21 lxx 38:12 45:3 46:5 lxx 46:5 47 47:5 68:22–23 lxx 68:22–24 lxx 68:23–24 lxx 68:24 lxx 73:3 87:3 88:4 89:28 91 93:14 lxx 94:17 110 111:2 111:8 116:1 lxx 116:11 118:25–26 137 Job 1:8 2:3 2:12 2:13 3:23 5:21 6:9 7:3 7:8 7:15 7:20 14:17 16:17 17:1

161 100 100, 105 91, 105 111 46 45 45, 46 57 44 44, 45, 46 96 105 90, 105 90, 99, 105 198 57 133 133 184 96 31 4 191 184 100, 105 166 119 250 22, 192–99, 225, 250 195 195 195 196 196 192 196 196 196 196 196 196 196 196

index of scriptural citations 17:6a 21:5 27:4 30:20 31:34 41:3 42:7 42:8 42:13 42:16

193 195 196 195 196 105 195 195 196 196

Proverbs 22:17

37, 225, 249 176

Ruth

5

Song of Solomon

5, 225

Ecclesiastes

225

Lamentations 3:1 3:45

225, 304 193, 194 99

Esther 9:7–9 15:5 Daniel 9

5, 9 225 45 37, 132, 142, 194 66

Ezra

31

1–2 Chronicles

244

2 Chronicles 26:19

178

Deuterocanonical Books Judith 10:7 10:14 10:19 10:23

45 45 45 45

16:6 16:10 Wisdom of Solomon 1:2 5:16

329 45 45 95 45

Sirach 48:22–25 50:19–21

107, 125, 142, 225 50, 125 142

Baruch 2:27–3:8

99

1 Maccabees 1:2 1:19 2:12

66 66 45

New Testament Matthew 5, 16, 17, 103, 107, 123, 127, 128, 147, 215, 310 17 1:23 3:3 108, 109 3:11 110 4:15–16 17 5–7 127 8:17 17 8:34 166 9:14–17 127 10:5–6 127 12:18–21 17 13:14–15 112 13:54–58 127 15:12–14 127 15:24 127 16–17 127 16:5–12 127 16:17–18 127 16:19 128, 129 16:19–20 127 119 21:9 21:33–46 17

330 Matthew (cont.) 23:13 23:1–32 24:29–31 25:31–46 26:1 28:16–20

index of scriptural citations 129 127 137 5 127 127

Mark 5, 6, 11, 17, 70, 103, 107, 123, 124 1:2–3 108, 109 1:7–8 110 112 4:12 119 11:9 12:1–2 17 Luke 3:4 3:4–6 4:14–30 4:16–30 5:8 8:10 13:27–30 19:38 Luke-Acts

6, 17, 107, 310 109 108 17 17 166 112 130 119 17, 308

John 6, 17, 107–24, 127–28, 164 1:1 116 1:6 123 1:7 111 1:11–13 127 17, 123 1:14 110, 119 1:15 127 1:17 115 1:18 107, 108, 112, 114, 120 1:23 111 1:26 110, 119 1:27 110, 111, 113 1:29 1:29–34 110, 111, 112 1:29–42 109 110 1:30 111 1:31

1:33 1:34 1:35 1:35–37 1:35–43 1:36 2:1–11 2:6 2:11 2:12–22 3:5–21 3:11 3:14 3:17 3:23–30 3:28 3:31 3:32 4:1–42 4:21–24 5:9–18 5:39–40 6 6:45 6:46 7 7:28 8:28 8:33–41 8:56 10 10:7 10:16 10:30 10:34 10:39 11:4 11:40 12 12:12–20 12:12–36 12:13 12:15 12:20–21 12:20–36

111, 112, 123 111, 112, 123 110 110 111 110, 113 127 127 117 128 127 112 120, 121 123 109 123 119 112 6 128 128 128 128 107, 108 115 128 119 121 127 116 128 128 127 114 114 201 117 117 118 118 118 119 111, 119 120 120

index of scriptural citations 12:21 120 12:23 112, 120 12:23–24 121 12:27 112, 120 12:28 118 12:32 120, 122 12:32–33 121 12:34 120 12:36b–43 115 12:37 113, 114, 115 12:37–41 107, 108, 112, 115, 117 12:38 107, 108, 112, 113, 114, 117, 118, 120, 121 12:38–41 118, 121 12:39 107, 113, 117 12:39–40 117 12:39–41 116 12:40 107, 108, 113, 114, 115, 116, 117 12:41 107, 113, 115, 116, 117, 118, 122, 123, 163, 218 12:42 115 12:42–43 117 13:1–10 127 13:18 108, 117 13:20 128 14:6 128 14:26 123 15:25 117 16:2–4 129 16:28 119 17:5 116 17:6 119 17:6–26 119 17:11 114, 119 17:12 119 17:20–21 128 17:24 116 17:26 119 18:33–37 122 19:14 111, 122 19:19–22 122 19:24 114, 117 19:29 111 19:35 112

19:36 19:37

331 111, 117 117

Acts 6, 103, 107, 124, 130, 218; see also Luke-Acts 2 130 2:16–18 130 2:18 130 7:55–56 130 8:32–33 17 11:2–12 130 28:25 218 28:26–27 112 Romans 6, 16, 87–105, 107, 147, 204, 208, 209 1:2 87, 100 1:3 101 1:4 101 1:16–17 88 164 1:25 104 2:24 3:15–17 104 3:21–26 88 3:21–31 90 93 4:6 101, 104 4:25 101 8:11 104 8:32 8:33–34 104 9–10 91 9–11 87, 89, 92, 93, 97, 99 9:1–5 89 128 9:4 104 9:6 92 9:14 91, 105 9:15 105 9:17 88, 104, 105 9:20 9:23–24 97 89 9:24 9:25–26 92, 95, 105 87, 91, 93, 105 9:27 9:27–28 88, 104, 105 9:27–29 96

332


Romans (cont.) 9:28 104 87, 88, 91, 93, 104, 105 9:29 95 9:30 9:30–31 89, 104 9:32–10:3 90 88, 96, 104, 105 9:33 10–11 101 10:1–4 90 90, 149 10:4 10:4–8 91 90, 91, 93, 105 10:5 10:6–8 90, 92, 105 10:6–13 100, 101, 102 10:8–10 167 10:8–13 90 10:9–15 90 10:11 88, 104, 105 10:12 90 10:13 94, 105 10:15 88, 90, 104, 105 10:16 20, 87, 91, 93, 104, 105, 112 10:16b 91 10:16–21 90 10:17 90 10:18 91, 104, 105 10:19 91, 92, 93, 94, 95, 97, 100, 105 10:19–21 89–97, 98, 99 10:20 87, 92, 94, 97, 104, 105 10:21 88, 93, 94, 96, 104, 105 11 93, 96, 99 11:1–2 96 11:1–7 90 11:1–10 96, 97 97 11:2 11:2–4 96 11:2–10 97 11:8 88, 89, 90, 92, 97–100, 104, 105, 112, 218 11:8–10 90 11:9 93, 96 11:9–10 90, 99, 105 11:10 99 11:11 93

11:11–14 92 11:11–15 100 11:11–32 90, 97 11:25–27 99 11:25–32 93 11:26–27 88, 104 11:27 104, 105 11:32–36 89 11:34 88, 104, 105 11:35 105 12:19 92 13:4 134 13:11 104 14:11 104 15:7–13 100, 102 15:8–9 101 105 15:9 15:9b-12 100 15:9–12 89, 100–102 15:10 92, 100, 101, 105 15:11 105 15:12 87, 88, 93, 100, 101, 104, 105 15:21 88, 95, 104 1–2 Corinthians 1 Corinthians 1:19 2:9 10:20 10:20–22 10:22 14:21 15:54 2 Corinthians 6:2 6:17 6:18 Galatians 1:11–12 4:27

92, 217 104 217 92, 96 96 92 104 104 104 104 92 130 104


Ephesians 3:2–10

130

Philippians 2:15

92 92

2 Thessalonians 1:9b 2:8

137 134

Hebrews 1:14 9:8–10

149 166 149

1 John 1:9

167

Revelation 1 1:5 1:8 1:10–19 1:10–20 1:13–17 1:16 1:17b 2–3 132 2:8 2:9 2:12 2:16 2:17 3:7 3:8 3:7–9 3:9 3:12 3:14 3:17 4–5 4:1–5:2 4:2–7 4:6b 4:8 4:8b

18, 37, 125–43, 203 134 133, 134 134 132 133 132 133 134 138 134 128, 129, 138 133 133 139 129, 133 129 129 128 128, 129, 141 134, 135 138 136 132 135 135 136 135

4:8b-9 5 5:2 5:5 5:5b 5:5–6 6 6:3–4 6:6 6:12–17 6:13 6:14a 6:15b 6:15–16 6:16b 7:4a 7:9–17 7:14–17 7:16 8–9 10:7 10:1–11 11:15 11:15–18 12–13 13:10 13:16–17 14 14–19 14:1 14:8–10 14:8–11 14:14–20 14:19b-20a 15–16 15:2–4 15:8 16 16:1–21 16:5 16:12–16 16:12–17 16:14 17–18 17:1–18:24

333 135 133 133 129, 133 133 132 136 134 138 132, 136 137 137 137 137 137 133 138, 139 132, 139 139 132 130, 143 132 133 138 132 134 138 136 137 133 132 137 132, 136 137 136 138 136 132 137 136 136 136 132 142 140

334 Revelation (cont.) 17:1–19:4 17:1–5 17:2 17:6–16 17:14 17:16b–19:3 18 18:4 18:11 19 19:5–10 19:7–9 19:8 19:10 19:11 19:11–16 19:11–21 19:13a 19:15 19:15a 19:15c 19:16 19:21

index of scriptural citations 137 132 138 132 133 132 138 136, 138 138 134, 136 138 141 141 130 133 132 132, 133, 136 137 133 134 137 133 133

20:4 20:6 20:8–9 21–22 21:1–8 21:1–22:5 21:2 21:3 21:5 21:6 21:9 21:9–21 21:9–22:5 21:14 21:18–21 21: 19–20 21:22 21:22–22:5 22:4–5 22:13 22:14 22:16 22:16b

133, 134 133 136 138 139, 140 132, 138 141 140 139 134 141 140 140 141 140, 141 141 142 140, 142 142 134 129 129 133

Index of Authors and Historical Persons Abegg, M. 81 Abrams, M. H. 237, 238 Abravanel, Don Isaac 225 Ackroyd, Peter R. 6, 277, 282, 283, 289, 300, 305 Adarbi, Isaac 190 Albeck, C. 193 Albertz, Rainer 303 Alexander, P. S. 79, 83 Alkabez, Solomon 190 Almond, Philip 4 Almosnino, Moses 190 Alonso Schökel, L. 198 Alshekh, Moses 190 Altman, Alexander 193, 199 Ammonius Saccas 154 Anderson, Bernhard 239 Anderson, Gary 4 Andrew of St. Victor 13, 22 Aquinas, Thomas 13, 23 Aristarchus of Samothrace 148 Arollia, Isaac 190 Ashkenazi, Eliezer b. Elijah 22, 190–99 Astell, Ann W. 5 Attridge, Harold 4 Augusti, J. C. W. 249 Augustine of Hippo 6, 23, 145, 209 Auld, A. Graeme 47 Aune, David 131 Azariah (Azarias) de Rossi 191, 228 Backus, Irena Dorota 6 Bacon, Roger 23 Baer, David A. 14, 29, 30, 37, 47, 68, 125, 293 Baillet, M. 73 Bakhtin, Mikhail 7, 10

Baltzer, Klaus 310 Bar-Asher, M. 84 Baron, Salo Wittmayer 210, 212–14 Barrois, Georges A. 203 Barth, Hermann 282, 283, 289 Barthélemy, D. 34, 75 Barton, J. 130 Bauckham, Richard J. 118, 120, 130, 137, 143 Bauer, Friedrich Ernst 249 Baum, W. 204 Baumgarten, Joseph M. 98 Baumgartner, Walter 197, 239, 243 Beale, Greg K. 37, 131, 134, 135, 139, 140, 143 Beaton, Richard 16, 17, 103, 123 Becker, Joachim 289 Begrich, Joachim 26, 263–66, 271, 274, 278 Bell, Richard 92 Bellinger, William H. 17, 103 Ben Asher, Bahya 190 Ben Helbo, Menahem 21, 176 Ben Isaac, Solomon. See Rashi Ben Kallir, Eleazar 20 Ben Meir, Samuel. See Rashbam Ben Nahman, Moshe. See Nahmanides Benoît, J.-D. 211 Berlin, Adele 185, 186, 225 Berlin, Isaiah 240 Bertholdt, Leonhard 249 Beuken, Willem A. M. 261, 287, 295 Beutler, J. 120 Biddle, Mark 290, 298 Blake, William 236 Blass, F. 120

-335-

336

index of authors and historical persons

Blenkinsopp, Joseph 171, 177 Blowers, P. 19, 154 Boak, A. E. R. 53 Bogaert, P.-M. 289 Bonfil, Robert 191 Bonner, Stanley 152 Bosman, H. J. 49 Bouthillier, Denise 23 Boxel, P. van 117 Bream, H. 24 Bredin, Mark R. J. 129 Brenz, Johannes 24, 207 Briggs, C. A. 162 Brin, Gershon 186 Brocke, Edna 17 Brooke, George J. 15, 50, 68, 69, 76, 79, 81, 84, 85 Brown, F. 162 Brown, R. E. 118 Brownlee, William H. 15, 69, 70, 72, 74, 75, 78–80, 84, 118 Broyles, Craig C. 14, 20, 30, 81, 85, 103, 123, 261, 298 Brueggemann, Walter 285, 289, 294 Bucer, Martin 208, 211 Bullinger, Heinrich 24, 207 Bultmann, C. 68 Burrows, M. 12, 70 Buss, Martin 309 Calov, Abraham 25 Calvin, John 8, 24, 25, 201–21 Carnegie, David R. 132 Caro, Joseph 190, 191 Carr, David M. 5, 290, 295–97, 311–14 Carson, D. A. 88 Cassel, David 191 Cassel, J. David 19, 50, 68, 145, 147, 154, 155, 168 Castellio, Sebastian 207 Childs, Brevard S. 6, 18, 23–25, 38, 171, 177, 245, 266, 277, 283–85, 289, 294, 303, 305 Chilton, Bruce D. 20, 33, 35, 40, 58– 60, 68 Christman, Angela 18, 146, 168

Clement of Alexandria 18 Clements, Ronald E. 25, 239, 284, 285, 289, 290, 294, 296, 304–6, 310, 314 Cocceius, Johannes 25 Cogan, Mordechai 186 Coggins, J. L. 6 Cohen, Jeremy 4 Cohen, Menahem 174, 187 Cohn, Norman 4 Coleridge, Samuel Taylor 236 Conrad, Edgar 277, 290, 293–95, 298, 300, 301 Cook, J. 37, 79 Cooper, Alan 22, 171, 184, 189, 199 Cooperman, Bernard Dov 190, 191, 199 Coste, J. M. 64 Cox, C. E. 29 Cripps, R. S. 224, 231, 232, 239, 241 Croatto, J. Severino 17 Cross, F. M. 73 Cryer, F. H. 15, 74 Cuniz, E. 204 Cyril of Alexandria 18, 19, 147–49, 154–69 Dahl, Nils A. 95 Dahmen, U. 77 Daley, B. 56 Darr, John A. 308 Darr, Katheryn Pfisterer 277, 290, 298, 308, 314 Davies, Graham I. 303 Davies, M. 118 Day, Janeth Norfleete 6 Debrunner, A. 120 DeCock, Paul B. 17 Delitzsch, Franz 245, 260 Delobel, J. 17 Derrida, Jacques 299 Deusen, Nancy van 4 Dhorme, Édouard 196, 197 Dietrich, W. F. 16, 68, 87 Dillmann, August 26, 245, 257–61 Dimant, Deborah 83, 84, 125 Dinter, Paul 281


Dionysius Thrax 152, 153, 155, 162 Dodd, C. H. 120 Döderlein, Johann Christoff 237, 245, 246, 249 Donaldson, J. 147 Donatus, Aelius 153, 155 Dowd, Sharyn 17 Draisma, S. 287 Driver, G. R. 38 Driver, Samuel Rolles 162, 189, 195, 199, 245, 260 Duhm, Bernard 1, 2, 26, 230, 239, 243–45, 251, 257, 258, 260, 261, 263, 264, 279, 280, 289, 290 Du Plessis, I. 17 DuMortier, J. 168 Duquoc, C. 198 Dussel, Enrique 198 Dyck, C. J. 211 Eaton, John H. 281, 282, 292, 310 Edgerton, W. F. 53 Eichhorn, Johann Gottfried 26, 237, 245–49, 255, 261 Eichler, Barry L. 186 Eisenstein, J. D. 191 Ekblad, Eugene R., Jr. 14, 121 Eliezer of Beaugency 21, 22, 172, 175, 179–87, 247 Elijah of Pesaro 191 Elliger, Karl 264 Elliott, Mark W. 5, 223 Ellis, E. Earle 126 Emerson, C. 7 Emerton, J. 287 Enelow, H. G. 175 Engammare, Max 203 Erasmus, Desiderius 209 Eusebius of Caesarea 10, 18, 19, 50, 57, 67, 68, 146, 147, 151, 169 Evans, C. F. 6 Evans, Craig A. 14, 20, 30, 81, 85, 103, 114, 115, 117, 118, 123, 261, 281, 298 Ewald, Heinrich 26, 230, 238, 245, 252, 255–57, 261

337

Farmer, William R. 17, 103 Fassler, Margot 4 Faulhaber, M. 147 Fekkes, Jan 18, 125, 130, 134, 140, 143 Feldman, Louis A. 20, 210 Feldmeier, R. 120 Finkelstein, Louis 21, 175, 247 Fishbane, Michael 6, 29, 125, 143, 292, 293 Flint, Peter W. 73, 80, 81, 85 Floristán, C. 198 Forer, Laurenz 209 Fowl, Stephen E. 7, 11, 146, 168 Franke, Chris 290, 298 Frankfurter, D. 128 Frey, J. 120 Friedländer, Michael 21, 187, 245 Friedman, Theodore 246 Froehlich, Karlfried 12, 23, 27 Gadamer, Hans-Georg 237 Gagnebin, Bernard 203 Gamble, Harry 155, 169 Gamble, Richard C. 205, 208, 221 Gangemi, A. 132 Ganoczy, Alexandre 221 Garber, Zev 257 García Martínez, Florentino 4, 84 Gelles, Benjamin J. 173, 187 Gellman, Jerome 5 Gerleman, G. 37 Gerrish, Brian A. 201, 208, 209 Gesenius, Wilhelm 26, 231, 237, 238, 245, 246, 248–53, 261 Gillet, L. 135 Ginsberg, H. L. 172 Ginsburg, C. D. 184 Ginzberg, Louis 191 Gitay, Yehoshua 171, 172, 290 Glatzer, Nahum N. 193, 199 Goering, Joseph W. 20, 187 Goldenberg, David M. 4 Gordon, R. P. 37 Goshen-Gottstein, M. H. 52 Gray, G. B. 34 Gray, Sherman W. 5

338


Grech, P. 143 Green, D. 76 Green, William Scott 187, 199 Greenberg, Moshe 173, 186 Greenstein, Edward L. 20, 171, 173, 174, 177, 179 Gregory, Andrew 6 Gregory, G. 223, 242 Gressmann, Hugo 26, 263, 264 Grin, Edmond 213, 214 Grossman, Avraham 21, 172–74, 187 Grotius, Hugo 25 Gruber, M. I. 174 Guinot, J.-N. 169 Gunkel, Hermann 26, 239–41, 263, 266 Gutierrez, John M. 290 Hacker, Joseph 190 Hagen, H. 153 Harding, J. E. 75 Hardy, H. 240 Haroutunian, J. 201, 204, 215, 216 Harris, Robert 21, 22, 171, 175, 179, 181–83, 187, 189, 199, 247 Hay, David 4 Hayes, John H. 2, 6, 23, 223, 224, 242, 280 Haynes, Stephen 4, 10 Hays, Richard B. 16, 88, 89, 92, 103, 126, 127, 203 Heckel, U. 120 Heil, John Paul 96 Hengel, M. 66, 110 Henten, J. van 287 Hepworth, Brian 227, 230, 232, 236, 238, 241 Herbert, E. D. 74, 85 Herder, Johann Gottfried 223, 237–40, 255 Herron, Robert W., Jr. 5, 11 Hessler, Eva 275, 278 Hesychius of Jerusalem 147 Higman, F.M. 204 Hill, Charles E. 6 Hitzig, Ferdinand 26, 245, 251–55, 257, 261

Høgenhaven, Jesper 15, 74, 79, 80 Holladay, William 4 Hollerich, Michael J. 10, 19, 68, 147, 151, 169 Holquist, M. 7 Holtz, Barry W. 20, 173, 187 Homer 148, 153, 162 Horgan, M. P. 82 Horowitz, H. 177 Houlden, R. J. 6 Howes, Thomas 230 Hugh of St. Cher 23 Hummel, H. D. 34 Hunnius, Aegidius 202 Hunt, A. S. 53 Husselman, E. M. 53 Ibn Ezra, Abraham 4, 21, 26, 173, 180, 187, 189, 244, 245, 279 Irenaeus 6, 18, 56, 147 Irvine, Stuart A. 280 Isserles, Moses 191 Jahn, A. 249 Janowski, Bernd 103 Japhet, Sara 172, 187 Jasper, D. 224 Jay, P. 68 Jerome 9, 13, 15, 18, 49, 50, 55–58, 62, 65, 67, 68, 146, 169, 209, 225, 249 Jobes, Karen 47 John Chrysostom 18, 147, 168, 209 Johnson, J. de M. 53 Johnson, Luke T. 123 Johnson, Samuel 228, 236 Jones, Douglas R. 281, 282 Josephus, Flavius 20, 78 Jowett, Benjamin 7 Justin Martyr 18, 147 Kahle, Paul 77, 78 Kaiser, Otto 41, 280, 289 Kamin, Sarah 175, 187 Kampen, K. van 225 Kapera, Z. J. 79 Kara, Joseph 21, 22, 172, 174–76, 178–87, 247 Kaster, Robert 153


Kaufmann, Y. 172 Kealy, Sean 6 Kelly, J. N. D. 55 Kennicott, Benjamin 228 Kerrigan, Alexander 147, 156, 169 Kimchi, David (Radak) 21, 31, 173, 180, 189, 207, 210, 214, 247 Kittel, R. 76 Klassen, William 211 Klatt, Werner 240 Klein, M. L. 37 Knibb, Michael A. 20 Knight, J. 82 Koch, Dietrich-Alex 16, 87 Koenig, J. 66 Köhler, Ludwig 26, 263, 264 Kooij, Arie van der 14, 15, 20, 29, 47, 49, 51, 59, 66, 68, 70, 125 Koppe, Johann Benjamin 26, 227, 237, 239, 241, 246 Korpel, M. C. A. 80, 81, 85 Kraus, Hans-Joachim 221, 238, 243, 246, 255, 261 Kraus, W. 70 Krey, Philip D. W. 23 Kugel, James L. 5, 224, 226, 240, 241 Kühschelm, R. 115 Kutscher, E. Y. 77 Kvam, Kristen K. 4 Lack, R. 295 Langton, Stephen 13, 23 Lefèvre d’Etaples, Jacques 209 Leske, A. M. 17 Levin, C. 68 Levine, E. 68 Levy, Ian 176 Lewis, C. S. 10, 11 Liebreich, Leon J. 281, 282, 295 Lim, Timothy H. 16, 75, 76 Lincoln, Andrew T. 123 Lindars, Barnabas 127 Lindbeck, George 212 Littman, M. 187 Loader, J. A. 5 Lockshin, Martin A. 173

339

Loewenstamm, S. E. 255 Longenecker, Richard N. 29 Lowth, Robert 9, 10, 25, 26, 223–42, 246 Lubac, Henri de 12 Lumsden, Douglas W. 6 Luther, Martin 23, 24, 207, 208 Luttikhuizen, Gerard P. 4 Luz, Ulrich 5 Luzzatto, Samuel David 189, 195 Maarsen, J. 21 Machinist, Peter 310 Magness, Jodi 83 Marcus, David 5 Marcus, Joel 123 Marrou, Henri 152 Marrs, Rick R. 224, 242 Martin, D. D. 211 Martin, V. 53 Mathews McGinnis, Claire 1, 290, 292, 293, 295–97, 312 Mathewson, David 141 Matter, E. Ann 5 Mazzaferri, Frederick D. 143 McAuliffe, Jane D. 20, 173, 187 McGaha, Michael 5 McGinnis, Claire Mathews. See Mathews McGinnis, Claire McGuckin, Terence 23 McKane, William 13, 22, 82, 205, 207, 214 McKim, Donald 6, 24 McKinion, Steven A. 6, 18 McLaughlin, John L. 290, 298 McNeill, J. T. 210 Meade, David G. 289 Mealy, J. W. 143 Meier, Ernst 240 Melanchthon, Philip 208 Melugin, Roy F. 1, 2, 26, 27, 172, 263, 273–78, 281, 284, 289, 290, 293, 296, 298, 299, 301–4, 307, 309, 314 Menken, Maarten J. J. 17, 108–10, 114, 116, 124 Menn, Esther Marie 5

340


Merrill, Eugene H. 21, 23 Meshorer, Y. 59 Metso, S. 83 Mettinger, T. N. D. 260 Michaelis, Johann David 227, 237, 246, 249 Michaels, J. Ramsey 130 Migne, J. P. 154 Milik, Józef Tadeusz 73 Milton, John 228 Miscall, Peter. See Quinn-Miscall, Peter Moberly, R. W. L. 41 Molcho, Solomon 194 Moore, Thomas S. 17 Morson, G. 7 Morton, R. 136 Mowinckel, Sigmund 148, 264, 282 Moyise, Steve 88, 143 Muddiman, J. 130 Muilenburg, James 26, 27, 179, 232, 266–70, 272–74, 276–78 Mulder, M. J. 125 Muller, Richard A. 24, 207 Munoa, Philip B. 135 Münster, Sebastian 207 Murphy-O’Connor, J. 83 Musculus, Wolfgang 24, 207 Muzani, Nicolai 154 Nahmanides (Moshe ben Nahman, Ramban) 189 Nägele, Sabine 5 Neirynck, Frans 17 Nellen, H. 25 Neubauer, Adolf 189, 195, 199 Neuschäfer, Bernhard 154 Neusner, Jacob 11, 20, 172, 175, 187, 189, 199 Neves, J. C. M. das 66 Nicklesburg, George W. E. 126 Niebuhr, K. W. 70 Nielsen, Kirsten 139 Nicholas of Lyra 13, 21, 23 Nourse, James 232 Obermann, A. 110, 114, 117 Oden, Thomas 6

Oecolampadius, Johannes 207 Oesch, J. M. 80, 81, 85 Oliveira, C. 23 Olley, John W. 125 Origen 6, 18, 149–51, 154 Oswald, H. C. 24, 207 Oswalt, John 290, 298 Pagels, Elaine 4 Painter, J. 115 Pao, David W. 103, 124 Parker, T. H. L. 201, 202, 204–7, 221 Parry, Donald W. 73, 85 Patte, Daniel 6 Pattie, Thomas S. 225 Paulien, Jon 131 Pauw, Amy Plantinga 8, 25, 201 Pelikan, J. 24, 240 Pellican, Conrad 24 Pestman, P. W. 53 Pfeiffer, Rudolf 148, 152 Pfeiffer, Robert H. 279 Polan, Gregory J. 299 Polliack, Meira 176 Porton, Gary G. 20 Preus, James S. 23, 24 Prickett, Stephen 10, 224, 227, 228, 230, 233, 235–38, 240, 242 Provan, Iain 138 Puckett, David L. 202, 214, 215, 217, 221 Pusey, E. B. 195 Pusey, P. 159 Qimron, Elisha 73, 77, 85 Quinn-Miscall, Peter D. 172, 277 Quintilian 151, 152 Rabbie, E. 25 Rabin, I. 177 Rad, Gerhard von 292 Raguenier, Denis 203 Ramban. See Nahmanides Rashi (Solomon ben Isaac) 9, 13, 21–23, 31, 34, 35, 172–75, 177–79, 181, 187, 189, 210, 247 Rashbam (Samuel ben Meir) 172–74, 179, 182, 189


Reibel, David A. 224, 242 Rendtorff, Rolf 171, 261, 277, 281, 284, 286, 287, 289–92, 298, 300, 301, 305, 309, 314 Renninger, Jesse B. 24 Reuchlin, Johannes 23 Reuss, E. 204 Reventlow, Henning 6 Richerz, G. H. 227, 241, 246 Ritter, Christine 5 Roberts, A. 147 Rorem, P. 12 Rosanes, Salomon 190 Rosenmüller, E. F. C. 237, 246, 249 Rosenthal, Erwin I. J. 23 Roston, Murray 224, 228, 235, 236 Rowdon, H. H. 132 Rowland, Christopher 131, 143 Ruiten, van Jacques 5, 17, 30, 140, 261 Russo, Simona 52 Saebø, Magne 6, 21, 172, 187, 189, 200 Salters, Robert 172 Samuel de Medina 190 Sanders, E. P. 87, 90 Sanders, James A. 17, 281 Sawyer, John F. A. 2, 4, 6, 143, 146, 201, 217 Scanlin, H. 74 Schäfer, P. 59 Schearing, Linda S. 4 Scheld, Stefan 221 Schiffman, L. H. 73 Schlarb, Robert 6 Schleiermacher, Friedrich 237 Schlüssler Fiorenza, Elizabeth 143 Schnackenburg, R. 115, 116 Schneck, Richard 17 Schoors, Antoon 269 Schultz, Richard 290 Schürer, E. 59 Sebanc, M. 12 Secombe, David 17 Seeligmann, Isaac L. 29, 37, 38, 42, 47, 64, 66 Segal, M. Z. 246

341

Seidel, Moshe 197 Seim, J. 17 Seitz, Christopher R. 171, 244, 246, 277, 288–90, 296, 300, 301, 303, 304, 306, 311, 314 Sekine, Seizo 260 Servetus, Michael 206, 210–12, 214 Servius 153 Sharpe, J. 225 Sheppard, Gerald T. 2, 3, 281, 290, 295, 296, 299, 300, 302, 306, 309, 312, 314 Sherwood, Yvonne 5 Shor, Joseph Bekhor 173 Shum, Shiu-Lun 88, 103 Sicre Diaz, J. L. 198 Signer, Michael A. 20, 22 Silva, Moisés 36, 47 Simon, Richard 25 Simon, Uriel 4, 21, 180, 187 Skehan, Patrick W. 73, 85 Smalley, Beryl 12, 13, 22 Smart, Christopher 235 Smend, Rudolf 237–39, 242, 243 Smith, George Adam 245, 260 Smith, Lesley 5, 23 Smith, W. Robertson 279 Snodgrass, K. R. 124 Solomon b. Shem-Tov Attia 190 Sommer, Benjamin D. 2, 3, 197, 284, 290, 304, 306, 312, 314 Southern, R. W. 13 Spence, Joseph 236 Stanley, Christopher D. 16, 87, 98 Stansell, Gary 25, 26, 223, 290, 298 Steck, Odil Hannes 74, 77, 80, 85, 260, 261, 286, 287, 289, 295, 296 Steffen, Uwe 5 Stegner, W. R. 115 Steiner, Richard C. 178, 183, 187 Steinmetz, David C. 206–8, 210, 221 Stendahl, Krister 143 Stern, Elsie 20 Stinespring, W. F. 118 Stuhlmacher, Peter 103

342


Sukenik, E. L. 73, 96 Swanson, D. D. 70 Sweeney, Marvin A. 1, 2, 26, 34, 172, 243, 261, 263, 277, 278, 281, 284, 287–90, 292, 293, 295, 296, 298–302, 304, 309, 311, 313, 314 Taitazak, Joseph 190, 191 Terence (Publius Terentius Afer) 153 Terrien, Samuel 197, 199 TeSelle, Eugene 6 Theodor, J. 193 Theodoret of Cyrus 18, 146, 150, 151, 168 Thilo, G. 153 Thomas, D. Winton 36, 76 Thompson, John Lee 5, 8, 12 Thompson, T. L. 15, 74 Tigay, Jeffrey H. 186 Torall, Jean-Pierre 23 Torrey, C. C. 77, 78 Tov, Emanuel 73, 74, 76, 77, 80, 85 Trever, John C. 70–72 Trevisan, P. 147 Troxel, Ronald L. 47 Tuckett, Christopher M. 17, 98, 114 Tull, Patricia K. (Willey) 1, 27, 226, 230, 242, 279, 290, 298, 305 Twersky, Isadore 190 Ulrich, Eugene C. 73–76, 80, 81, 85 VanderKam, James C. 73 Vatable, François 209 Vaux, Roland de 83 Vermeylen, Jacques 284, 287, 289, 303 Vervenne, M. 17, 30, 261 Virgil (Publius Vergilius Maro) 153 Vischer, Wilhelm 221 Vitringa, Campegius 25, 249 Vogelgesang, Jeffrey M. 135 Volz, Paul 264 Wagner, J. Ross 16, 87, 88, 103

Waldow, Hans-Eberhard von 26, 263, 265, 274, 278 Walfish, Barry Dov 5, 9, 20, 22, 187, 190, 199 Wall, Ernestine van der 25 Walsh, Katherine 13 Watts, John D. W. 290, 310, 311 Watts, Rikki E. 17, 103, 124 Wegner, Paul 290 Wellhausen, Julius 26, 239 Wells, Roy 290, 298 Weren, W. J. C. 17 Wernle, Paul 202 Wessner, P. 153 Westermann, Claus 27, 269–76, 278 Wette, Wilhelm de 239 Wevers, John William 87, 101 Wildberger, Hans 54, 260 Wilk, Florian 70, 88, 103 Wilken, Robert L. 6, 18, 19, 165 Willey, Patricia K. See Patricia Tull Williams, Catrin 17, 107 Williamson, H. G. M. 30, 47, 88, 290, 300, 303, 314 Willis, John 290 Woide, Charles Godfrey 228 Wolff, H. W. 118 Wood, Diana 13 Wordsworth, William 236 Wouters, Alfons 157 Wycliffe, John 13, 176 Young, F. W. 124 Zachman, Randall C. 219 Zenger, Erich 4 Zetzel, James 155 Ziegler, Joseph 19, 37, 40, 42, 44, 47, 50, 52, 63, 87, 147, 169 Ziegler, Valarie 4 Zwingli, Ulrich 24, 207

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