Dr. Keith Essex · The Master's Seminary · 100 minutes
Lecture by Dr. Keith Essex, from The Master's Seminary's public channel. Study notes below from Medina Community Church.
This session covers more of Isaiah than any other in the course: the oracles against the nations, the collection of woes, and the sweep of the vision's last twenty-seven chapters. Dr. Essex opens his favorite illustration, the view of Mount Whitney from Lone Pine, to explain why the prophets are so hard to time, and closes with the interpretive key to chapters 40 to 66: two servants, a nation that failed and an individual who cannot. Listen for the astonishing words of Isaiah 19, where Egypt is called my people and Assyria the work of my hands.
The first twelve chapters gave Isaiah's message in miniature, a collection of oracles undated except for chapters 6 and 7, so exact chronology beyond those chapters cannot be pressed. Chapter 8 gave Ahaz's generation its near sign in Isaiah's second child, and chapter 9 promised that where Assyria's desolation would begin, in Zebulun and Naphtali, God's light would first shine, a word Matthew 4 picks up to explain why Jesus opened his great public ministry in Galilee, light that will extend until the Davidic king reigns from Jerusalem over the nations. Then chapters 13 to 27 turn from Judah to the nations: oracles of the nations' judgment and restoration.
Chapters 13 to 23 hold the oracles against the nations of Isaiah's own horizon. Babylon opens the collection in chapters 13 and 14 and is the one nation addressed twice, returning in chapter 21's oracle of the wilderness of the sea with its cry, fallen, fallen is Babylon. Assyria receives no separate oracle here, having had one already in chapter 10; instead an oracle against Assyria is appended to Babylon's in 14:24 to 27. For working through the details verse by verse, Essex commends the notes on Isaiah in the MacArthur Study Bible.
The hermeneutical dilemma of the prophets: Isaiah looks out on the future as on a range of mountain peaks, events of his own day, the immediate future, the first coming of Christ, and the second, all in one field of vision. Essex's illustration is the view from Lone Pine toward Mount Whitney: the highest peak in the lower forty-eight is nearly impossible to pick out, because nearer and farther peaks blend together and some closer summits look taller. All conservative interpreters, dispensational and covenantal alike, agree the prophets blend near and far; the work of the exegete is telling the peaks apart.
Chapter 13 pronounces the burden against Babylon, and its day-of-the-Lord language in verses 6, 9, and 10, sun darkened, moon withholding light, stars not flashing forth, reaches beyond any merely historical event toward the judgment of the world anticipated in chapters 24 to 27. The near referent is debated: Motyer takes the destruction of Assyria, whose kings were also kings of Babylon; the Bible Knowledge Commentary takes Sennacherib's obliteration of the city in 689 BC, noting that the Medes in 539 BC captured Babylon but did not destroy it, the city declining only over later centuries; the more common view takes 539 BC, when verse 17 says Yahweh stirs up the Medes. All three readings agree that the historical fall in some way foreshadows the eschatological fall of Babylon.
Essex holds the single meaning of Scripture, so he declines the double-meaning solution in which one sentence speaks of 539 BC and the end times at once. His answer, with the MacArthur Study Bible's note, is blending yet distinct: Isaiah moves between referents sentence by sentence, chapter 13 opening in the far future, landing on the Medes of 539 in verses 17 and 18, then leaping again to the ultimate desolation, Babylon like Sodom and Gomorrah, never again inhabited. Isaiah is the prophet who most scrambles prophecy like an egg, and the interpreter's task is to unscramble it, reading each statement against earlier and later prophecy. Whether a literal Babylon will be rebuilt for the judgment of Revelation 17 and 18 is debated on the Master's Seminary faculty itself; Essex leans toward a future literal Babylon.
Asked for a basic hermeneutics text for the Old Testament prophets, Essex could name none, and neither could Dr. Barrick, whose best suggestion was the opening hundred-plus pages of J. Barton Payne's Encyclopedia of Biblical Prophecy, the work of a covenantal, posttribulational premillennialist, to be read with discernment. The chapters on the prophets in Cracking Old Testament Codes are the book's weakest, more useful for Jeremiah and Ezekiel, whose judgment and salvation oracles are more clear-cut than Isaiah's. A sound work on the hermeneutics of the prophets remains to be written; Essex offers the gap to any future doctoral student.
Isaiah 14:3 and 4 give Israel, in the day of her final rest, a taunt to raise against the king of Babylon, which Essex reads as the ultimate, eschatological king. Verses 4 to 11 and 15 to 21 are agreed to describe a human king; the debate concerns verses 12 to 14, how you are fallen from heaven, shining one, son of the dawn, I will make myself like the Most High, which the church fathers read of Satan, so that the Latin rendering Lucifer became a name for the devil. Essex, with the major commentators, takes the whole taunt of a human king only: the language was the well-known royal religious idiom of the day, kings claiming ascent to the mountain of the gods. If the king anticipates anyone future, it is not Satan but the one Satan empowers, the Antichrist; and Dorsey's literary analysis sets the proud king of chapter 14 in deliberate contrast with the humble suffering servant of chapters 49 to 57.
The nations' sins are pride, arrogance, brutality, treachery, lying tongues, boasting, and fury, and the oracles pronounce devastating judgment; yet astonishing promises of blessing stand inside them. In Moab's oracle, 16:5 sets a throne established in lovingkindness in the tent of David, a judge seeking justice and prompt in righteousness, with Moabites somehow participating. In Damascus's oracle, 17:7 promises a day when man will have regard for his Maker and look to the Holy One of Israel. In Cush's, 18:7 sees a gift of homage brought from the feared, smooth-skinned people to the place of the name of Yahweh of hosts, Mount Zion.
Nothing compares with Isaiah 19. In that day five cities in Egypt will speak the language of Canaan, which is Hebrew, and swear allegiance to Yahweh; an altar to Yahweh will stand in Egypt's midst and a pillar at its border; Yahweh will strike Egypt, the verb of the plagues, but now striking to heal, and Egypt will return to him. A highway will run from Egypt to Assyria, through Israel, and Egyptians and Assyrians will worship together, and Israel will be the third with them, a blessing in the midst of the earth: blessed is Egypt my people, Assyria the work of my hands, Israel my inheritance. The very titles that all through the Old Testament belonged to Israel are extended to her two great oppressors, while Israel remains the nation of inheritance, blessed to be a conduit of blessing, which is why God chose her in the first place.
The amillennial reading takes Israel here as the church and Egypt and Assyria as symbols of the nearby Gentile world, a great commission passage. Essex objects: the text keeps Egypt and Assyria in their own identities, worshiping as Egyptians and Assyrians alongside Israel, whereas if the church were the new Israel, Gentiles would lose that separate identity by being joined to the church. Once the interpreter opens the box of symbolism, symbols multiply to fit any scheme. As for where Moabites or Arameans are today, Essex answers by analogy: contemporary Jews no longer know their tribes, yet God does, and will reconstruct them; the same God knows the heritage of the Gentile nations and can speak of a future for Moab, Cush, and Damascus. Where are they now? We wait to see how God works it out, but ignorance on our side is not ignorance on his.
Chapter 23 closes the oracles with Tyre, whose harlotry is an image of her commerce, selling herself to the nations for gain. After seventy years she will return to her trade, but with a difference: her harlot's wages will be set apart to Yahweh, her profits becoming food and fine clothing for those who dwell in his presence. When and how, Isaiah leaves to the future. Then chapters 24 to 27 culminate the section: chapter 24 the judgment of the whole earth, chapters 25 and 26 the two songs Israel will sing under God's protection, chapter 27 Israel delivered into blessing; and 27:12 and 13 gather the exiles one by one from the Euphrates to the Brook of Egypt, a great trumpet blown, the perishing of Assyria and the scattered of Egypt come to worship Yahweh on the holy mountain in Jerusalem, the very lands whose own blessing chapter 19 had promised.
The third section of the condemnation opens with a collection of woes, given without chronological anchors. Chapter 28: woe against what Dr. MacArthur calls the drunken politicians, the proud crown of the drunkards of Ephraim, broadening at verse 14 to the scoffers who rule in Jerusalem. Chapter 29:1 to 14: woe, Ariel, lion of God, Jerusalem confronted for religious formalism, a spirit of deep sleep poured over prophets and seers. Chapter 29:15 to 24: woe to those who hide their plans from Yahweh, and chapter 30 exposes the secret plan, an alliance with Egypt made without consulting him; chapter 31 renews it, woe to those who rely on horses and chariots and do not look to the Holy One of Israel. Chapter 32 answers with the righteous king God will establish, and chapter 33 turns the last woe on the destroyer, Assyria, God's instrument that will itself be judged.
Chapters 34 and 35 end the division by summoning the nations to hear: God will judge Edom as the foundation for his Spirit's gathering of Israel back to a land of bounty. The detail matters historically, for when Judah went into captivity, Edom moved into the mountains of Judah, so Edom must be removed for Israel to be reestablished, a thread Ezekiel will pick up and fill in. And the summons goes to the nations because what God does with Israel is the nations' own hope of deliverance, which presses the section's question one last time: why would the rulers of Ephraim and Judah seek alliances with nations when Yahweh alone is to be trusted? Chapters 36 to 39 then move the background from Assyria to Babylon, and Isaiah speaks the last twenty-seven chapters as though standing among the exiles.
The vision's final division falls into three sections of nine chapters, the first two each ending with the refrain, there is no peace for the wicked, says Yahweh, at the end of chapters 48 and 57; only in chapters 65 and 66 is there finally peace, the rebels purged, Jerusalem created for rejoicing. Chapters 40 to 48 promise physical deliverance: at their heart, 44:26 through 45:4 names Cyrus, my shepherd, his anointed, raised up for the sake of Jacob to subdue kings, dry the rivers, release the captives, and see Jerusalem rebuilt and the temple's foundation laid, God declaring it beforehand to wean Israel from her speechless idols to trust in Yahweh alone. Babylon falls in chapters 46 and 47, and chapter 48 calls Israel to go forth; but physical deliverance is not enough, for the wicked remain. So chapters 49 to 57 provide the greater deliverance, from sin, cresting at 52:13 to 53:12, where the servant is the guilt offering; yet 56 and 57 show the salvation refused, the redeemer despised and rejected. Then in 58 to 66 the same servant returns as what Motyer calls the anointed conquering general, victorious first in Israel, then over the nations, until Jerusalem knows peace.
The major interpretive issue of the last twenty-seven chapters is the servant's identity, and the commentators agree there are two, because Isaiah speaks of two. Predominantly through chapters 41 to 48 the servant is the nation: Israel my servant, Jacob whom I have chosen, taken from the ends of the earth, corporate seed of Abraham (41:8 and 9), yet a blind and deaf servant (42:18 and 19), the very blindness of chapter 6, chosen as witnesses that Yahweh alone is God (43:10). But in chapter 49 a servant appears who is distinct from the nation, for he is the means of the nation's redemption: called from the womb, a sharp sword concealed in Yahweh's hand, named my servant Israel, yet commissioned to bring Jacob back and gather Israel, lamenting that he has toiled in vain, and answered that raising up Jacob is too small a thing, he will be a light of the nations, salvation to the ends of the earth; despised and abhorred by the nation, yet kings and princes of the Gentiles will bow. With chapter 49 in hand, 42:1 to 4 is seen to have introduced this individual already. The plural servants of chapters 54 to 66 are the righteous remnant, but the singular is always nation or individual; the liberal candidate, the prophet Isaiah himself, collapses at chapter 53, for the prophet was no guilt offering. The individual is the Messiah, the new Moses, or as Motyer covers every base, the ideal Israel, the ultimate Moses, the ultimate David.
Essex answers the charge that this reading merely retrojects the New Testament: guilty, but unnecessary. Taking Isaiah as Isaiah, spoken to Israel in exile, the movement runs in three steps: release from Babylon through Cyrus, which the majority refuse, proving the sin beneath; the coming servant who dies for his people's sin and is rejected by them, so that salvation extends to the Gentiles; and at last Israel's repentance, the servant's return as conquering general, and the new Jerusalem where the wicked are cast out and righteousness dwells. Next session takes these chapters more precisely, including the sticky question of the new heavens and new earth in Isaiah.
Each opens the chapter in your ESV app or on esv.org.
Tap an answer. A wrong guess points you back to the outline; when all seventeen are right, the lecture is marked complete on this device.
1. Why does Matthew 4 cite Isaiah 9's word about Zebulun and Naphtali?
2. Which nation is addressed twice in the oracles of Isaiah 13 to 23?
3. What does Essex's Mount Whitney illustration teach about the prophets?
4. In Isaiah 13:17, what event does the stirring up of the Medes most naturally indicate?
5. How does Essex resolve the near and far horizons of Isaiah 13 without double meaning?
6. What did Essex and Dr. Barrick conclude about hermeneutics texts for the Old Testament prophets?
7. How does Essex read the shining one, son of the dawn in Isaiah 14:12 to 14?
8. With whom does Dorsey's literary analysis contrast the proud king of Babylon?
9. What future does Isaiah 16:5 promise within the oracle against Moab?
10. What makes the titles of Isaiah 19:25 so astonishing?
11. Why does Essex reject reading Isaiah 19's Egypt and Assyria as symbols of the church's Gentile neighbors?
12. What becomes of Tyre's harlot's wages in Isaiah 23?
13. What secret plan do the woes of Isaiah 29 and 30 expose?
14. Why must Edom be judged in Isaiah 34 before Israel's replanting in chapter 35?
15. What refrain closes both Isaiah 48 and Isaiah 57, and what does it signal?
16. How does Isaiah 49 show the servant to be distinct from the nation Israel?
17. Why does the liberal identification of the servant as the prophet Isaiah himself fail?
All seventeen correct. Lecture 5 is complete.
Isaiah 19 gives Israel's proudest titles to Israel's worst enemies while keeping Israel as the conduit of blessing. What does it do to your view of the people you find hardest to love, that God may intend to call them by his own name?
The woes of chapters 30 and 31 fall on plans executed without consulting Yahweh and on trust in visible strength. What plan are you executing right now that you have never seriously prayed over, and what would consulting God first actually look like?
Chapters 40 to 66 insist that physical rescue without cleansing from sin leaves the wicked still wicked. Where are you tempted to treat a changed circumstance as though it were a changed heart, in yourself or in someone you love?
The blessing spoken over the nations, Isaiah 19:24 to 25 as the lecture unfolds it: in that day Israel will be the third with Egypt and Assyria, a blessing in the midst of the earth; blessed is Egypt my people, Assyria the work of my hands, and Israel my inheritance.
For the oracles verse by verse, the lecture commends the Isaiah notes in the MacArthur Study Bible; for the prophetic hermeneutics question, the opening chapters of J. Barton Payne's Encyclopedia of Biblical Prophecy, read with discernment; and Dorsey's literary structure for the contrast between Babylon's king and the servant. Next session: chapters 40 to 66 more precisely, and the question of the new heavens and new earth in Isaiah.