Lecture 4: Who Wrote Isaiah, and Who Is the Virgin’s Son: Chapters 1 to 12

The lecture, section by section

1. One author, one book: the old consensus

   Until the Enlightenment, Jewish and Christian commentators alike held the same view: the book called Isaiah is a collection of the oracles of Isaiah, and the one who collected and wrote it in its present form was the prophet himself. One author under the direction of the Spirit meant one design, and therefore a basic literary unity across all sixty-six chapters. During the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries that consensus was blown apart, beginning within Protestantism, spreading to Catholicism and Orthodoxy, and by the twentieth century reaching Jewish scholarship as well.

2. Why the rationalist needed a second Isaiah

   Everyone agrees the tone shifts at chapter 40, with chapters 38 and 39 as the historical hinge from an Assyrian to a Babylonian background, and that from chapter 40 on the author addresses an exilic audience, while the historical Isaiah, ministering roughly 740 to 680 BC, never saw the exile. The rationalist position allowed a prophet only a deepened human intuition: he could project present trends forward, Judah's sin continuing, God raising enemies, a remnant persisting. But Isaiah 44 and 45 do not project trends; they name the future deliverer, Cyrus, by name, expressly so the reader will know it is God speaking. Essex's illustration: it is like naming the president of a century and a half from now, party and all. For one who denies predictive prophecy that is impossible, so chapters 40 to 66 were assigned to Deutero-Isaiah, an exilic disciple imbibed with the spirit of the historical prophet.

3. From two Isaiahs to three, and then to a nucleus

   But chapters 56 to 66 look past the exile to a returned yet still faithless people, so by the turn of the twentieth century a Trito-Isaiah was added for the post-exilic material; once you have a second Isaiah, what is the problem with a third? Conservative scholars pressed back at the other end: Babylon and its fall to the Medes appear already in chapters 13 and 14, so if the historical Isaiah could not write chapters 40 onward, those chapters fall under the same suspicion, and the logic cuts both ways. The newer critical position therefore holds only a nucleus of genuine Isaiah material within chapters 1 to 39, larger or smaller depending on the scholar, with no critical scholar today assigning all of the first thirty-nine chapters to the prophet, then exilic and post-exilic disciples whose work a final redactor edited into the book we have, a process spread over roughly two hundred to two hundred fifty years, titled Isaiah because it grew around Isaiah's nucleus and vision.

4. The canonical turn, and the orthodox answer

   Among the more conservative liberals, Brevard Childs being the great example in his Isaiah commentary, the final redaction is what counts: whatever the sources, synagogue and church received the final text as canonical, so the book is to be read as a literary unity, God having providentially given it, though without a single author. The in-house liberal debate is now between multiple authors with basic disunity and multiple sources with redacted unity. The orthodox and evangelical position remains that the best substantiated view, when all is said and done, is one author, and all three of the course's recommended Isaiah commentators, Motyer, Young, and Oswalt, hold it: the book before us exists because of Isaiah's literary skill directed by the Holy Spirit.

5. How a prophet's book gets written: the Moses model

   No verse states outright that Isaiah wrote every word, so the argument runs on the Bible's own pattern, and Motyer states it most strongly: God's way is to have the prophet he raised up to speak the messages also write them. The great example is Moses, prophet and spokesman, commanded at the end of his life to write the words in a book, which Deuteronomy 31 records; the book was placed beside the ark and given to the priests to read so Israel might hear, and, as Leviticus 10 had charged the priests, to teach. Nor does authorship require holding the pen: Jeremiah dictated to his secretary Baruch, as Jeremiah 36 will show, and Paul wrote through an amanuensis, taking the pen himself at the end to verify the letter. Second Peter 1 settles the responsibility: Isaiah was borne along by the Spirit, and whatever the mechanics, he is the one responsible for the book that bears his vision. Essex stays one step short of dogmatism for want of an explicit statement, while judging the one-author view the strongest position.

6. Editors, Deuteronomy 34, and feet in both camps

   Even the orthodox allow that a later hand could have been raised up by God as editor of the Isaiah material, but within a generation of the prophet's death or during his lifetime, on the model of the account of Moses' death: the usual orthodox answer assigns Deuteronomy 34 to Joshua, though some evangelicals, noting that no prophet like Moses had yet arisen requires a succession of prophets to compare, place that note later. And some evangelicals want acceptance in both camps: the Fuller Seminary textbook of LaSor, Hubbard, and Bush says of both the Torah and Isaiah that the great mass of material goes back to Moses and to Isaiah, while leaving room for a final editor generations later, adding that whoever he was, he was directed by the Spirit, so the result is authoritative Scripture.

7. Condemnation in three movements

   The lecture then turns to the first major division, Isaiah 1:2 to 35:10, the condemnation, and its three sections. Chapters 1 to 12 gather the broad oracles, not necessarily in chronological order, that introduce the reader to Jerusalem's sin, God's judgment, and Israel's ultimate restoration. Chapters 13 to 27 turn to the nations, under judgment for their own sin yet with statements of restoration woven in. And chapters 28 to 35 collect the woes, pressing the question the sinful heart cannot see: if the nations stand in the same predicament as you, why turn to them for help? Everything visible is terminal; only the eternal Yahweh can be trusted, and people in sin cannot put two and two together, which is why it takes so many chapters.

8. The courtroom of chapter 1

   Chapter 1 opens with a courtroom scene: God is the judge, heaven and earth are the jury, Judah is the defendant, and Yahweh is also the prosecuting attorney; the jury never gets a word in before the verdict of guilty. Though Israel as a whole is in view at the start, by verse 8 the focus narrows to the daughter of Zion, and Jerusalem, become like Sodom and Gomorrah, is addressed as such: rulers of Sodom, people of Gomorrah. Their problem is hypocrisy, worship with words and actions while the heart is far away, and though the call to repent stands, wash and become white as snow, the faithful city has become a harlot, and chapter 6 will confirm that they will not respond. The case against the people becomes the case against the city, judgment will purge, and the rebels will suffer for their rebellion not only in this life but beyond. Already the principle is set that will govern chapters 40 to 66: physical deliverance rests on spiritual deliverance, confession and cleansing of sin before participation in the restoration.

9. The end of the days, and living there now

   Chapters 2 to 4 begin and end looking ahead. Isaiah 2:2 reaches back to a phrase used exactly four times in the Torah, in Genesis 49, Numbers 24, Deuteronomy 4, and Deuteronomy 31: at the end of the days. In those days the mountain of the house of Yahweh will be established as chief of the mountains, and many peoples will stream to it to be taught his ways, for the law will go out from Zion; Yahweh will judge between the nations, and they will not learn war anymore. Isaiah fills in Moses' outline: not only restored Israel but the Gentiles will walk after Yahweh. Hence verse 5: come, house of Jacob, and walk in the light of Yahweh now. If the nations themselves will one day walk in his ways, how senseless to let their present evil practices pull you from ways you already have. So the day of reckoning falls on all that is proud and lofty, beginning with Judah, as chapter 3 strips Jerusalem of supply and support. Prophecy, Essex insists, is given not merely to inform but to transform: as Romans 12:2 puts it, do not be conformed to this age; live now like the people of the future you will be.

10. The branch, and the washed survivors

    Chapter 4 closes the unit with the day when the branch of Yahweh will be beautiful and glorious. The term branch is later taken up messianically in Jeremiah 23 and Zechariah 3 and 6, and though it is debated whether Isaiah already means it so, Essex answers yes on the basis of 2 Samuel 23:5, where the image belongs to the one coming from David's line. In that day the survivors left in Zion will be called holy, their filth washed away, and Yahweh will be their shelter from heat and storm: judgment culminates, and a spiritually cleansed remnant worships in Zion. The unit thus ends where it began, in the restoration, and calls Judah to live in light of that future.

11. The vineyard and the woes

    Isaiah 5 opens with the famous allegory, some say parable, of the vineyard: the owner did everything for his vineyard, then came at harvest looking for justice and found bloodshed, for righteousness and heard a cry of distress. What do you do with a vineyard that will not produce? You lay it waste. Then verses 8 to 30 pile up the woes, at verses 8, 11, 18, 20, 21, and 22, each a declaration that the people stand under the curse, with two therefores drawing the consequence: therefore my people go into exile; therefore Yahweh whistles for the nations from the ends of the earth to come and desolate the land. The exile of the Lord's people is sure. Against this backdrop chapter 6 makes sense: Isaiah is called among a people of unclean lips, cleansed, and commissioned to preach to a generation that will not respond, for judgment is already certain; yet the holy seed remains in the stump, and his ministry of restoration is for a future generation, while to his own it is a word of judgment.

12. Ahaz, Assyria, and the child of chapter 9

    Chapters 7 to 9:7 anchor the message in a specific event: around 735 to 734 BC, Rezin of Aram and Pekah of Israel allied against Ahaz, the reigning representative of the house of David, intending to dethrone him and install their own man, the son of Tabeel. Ahaz responded not with faith but with rebellion, an alliance with Assyria, and so the very empire he hired became the instrument of Yahweh's judgment upon Judah, as 7:18 and 8:4 to 7 declare. Chapter 9 then turns the geography of judgment into the geography of hope: the northern tribal lands of Zebulun and Naphtali, where the Assyrian invasion would begin, are where the light will shine; a child will be born, a son given, the government upon his shoulders, ruling on David's throne, and of the increase of his government and of peace there will be no end, upheld with justice and righteousness, the book's two key words, the zeal of Yahweh of hosts accomplishing it, all tied back to the vision of chapter 2.

13. Arrogant Assyria, the rod that gets chopped down

    From 9:8 through chapter 12 the judgment turns north: Ephraim and the inhabitants of Samaria assert themselves in pride and arrogance, and God will judge them by means of Assyria. But in 10:5 Assyria itself, the rod of his anger, is exposed: imagining its own power achieved what it did, not knowing it was an instrument in Yahweh's hand, arrogant Assyria used against arrogant Israel will itself be chopped down, a preview of what God will do to every enemy of his people. Then chapters 11 and 12 unveil the restoration as a second exodus, implying a second Moses: Yahweh will assemble the banished of Israel and gather the dispersed of Judah, Ephraim will no longer envy Judah nor Judah harass Ephraim, and together, under the king from David's line, north and south will know salvation and worship Yahweh on Zion, singing the song of chapter 12.

14. Isaiah 7:14: the three positions

    Within these chapters stands one of the great interpretive issues that splits good and godly men. Position A, held by liberals: the virgin's son is a child of Ahaz's and Isaiah's own day only, Hezekiah or some known figure now anonymous, since a sign Ahaz could not identify would be no sign to him. Position B, traditional Christian orthodoxy, held by Young and Motyer: the prophecy is exclusively messianic, the virgin historically Mary, the son Jesus. Position C, the prevailing evangelical view today: both-and, a child of Isaiah's day who typologically foreshadows Mary and Jesus. The Hebrew almah denotes a young woman of marriageable age who in that culture would be assumed a virgin; the Septuagint made it precise for Greek readers with the word virgin, and it is that rendering Matthew 1:23 quotes with the language of fulfillment, adding in 1:25 that Joseph kept Mary a virgin until Jesus' birth: virgin conceived and virgin born.

15. Why Essex reads it as exclusively messianic

    Even the Master's Seminary faculty divides between positions B and C, but Essex argues from the text for B. In 7:2 the news comes to the house of David, whose singular heart shook in Ahaz; but in verse 13 Isaiah addresses the house as such, and the you of verse 14 turns plural, in the southern idiom, y'all: the sign is given not to Ahaz alone but to every Davidic generation that might waver over whether God will keep his promise to David. And the sign must be beyond human ability, the kind Ahaz was invited to ask as deep as Sheol or high as heaven: the virgin is the subject of both verbs, as a virgin she conceives and as a virgin she bears a son, which no child of Ahaz's day fulfills. Verses 13 to the middle of 16 stand as a parenthesis looking centuries ahead, while the near-term sign for Ahaz himself is the child of 8:1 to 4, Maher-shalal-hash-baz, before whose maturity Aram and Ephraim fell. The child and son conceived and born in 7:14 is then picked up in 9:6 to 7 as the one who fulfills the promises to David; for further discussion, Essex points to Young and Motyer.

1. The liberal objection to Isaiah finally reduces to denying that God can name the future. Where are you tempted to a practical version of the same unbelief, trusting God's character in general but doubting his control of your particular future?

2. Isaiah 2 calls Judah to walk now in the light of a future the nations will one day share. If you took seriously that you will live in the kingdom, what in your present habits would look as senseless as Judah copying nations destined to stream to Zion?

3. Ahaz refused to ask for a sign and dressed his unbelief up as piety. Where might refusing what God offers, help, counsel, promises to lean on, be functioning in your life as false humility?