Greater Men and Women of the Bible by James Hastings: 404. Deutero-Isaiah

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Greater Men and Women of the Bible by James Hastings: 404. Deutero-Isaiah


Subjects in this Topic:



Isaiah



III



Deutero-Isaiah



Literature



Bennett, W. H., The Post-Exilic Prophets (1907), 51.

Delitzsch, F., The Prophecies of Isaiah (1890).

Driver, S. R., Isaiah: His Life and Times.

Driver, S. R., Introduction to the Literature of the Old Testament (1913), 204.

Findlay, G. G., The Books of the Prophets, iii. (1900).

Glazebrook, M. G., Studies in the Book of Isaiah (1910).

Kirkpatrick, A. F., The Doctrine of the Prophets (1892), 141.

McFadyen, J. E., Introduction to the Old Testament (1905), 129.

Plumptre, E. H., Biblical Studies (1870), 189.

Sanders, F. K., and Kent, C. F., The Messages of the Later Prophets (1899), 149.

Skinner, J., Isaiah, xl.-lxvi. (Cambridge Bible) (1896).

Smith, G. A., The Book of Isaiah, xxxix.-lxvi. (Expositor's Bible) (1890).

Smith, H. P., The Religion of Israel (1914), 250.

Wade, G. W., The Book of the Prophet Isaiah (1911).

Weatherell, J. H., The Books of the Old Testament (1902), 134.

Whitehouse, O. C., The Book of the Prophet Isaiah (Century Bible) (1905).

Woods, F. H., and Powell, F. E., The Hebrew Prophets, iii. (1911) 207.

Dictionary of the Bible, ii. (1899) 485 (G. A. Smith).

Dictionary of the Bible, ii. (Single-volume, 1909) 386 (G. B. Gray).

Expositor, 2nd Ser., vi. (1883) 81, 186; vii. (1884) 81, 251; viii. (1884) 250, 350, 430 (A. B. Davidson).

Realencyklopädie für protestantische Theologie und Kirche, viii. (1900) 705 (A. Klostermann).



Deutero-Isaiah



Comfort ye, comfort ye my people, saith your God.- Isa_40:1.



1. When Dean Stanley published his Lectures on the Jewish Church, it required some hardihood even to suggest a separate authorship for the later chapters of the Book of Isaiah. In the present day, however, a division of the book at the end of the thirty-ninth chapter is generally recognized, and “Deutero-Isaiah” is a familiar name. The term is applied indifferently to the later part of the book itself (40-66) and to its supposed author. It is not intended to mean that the latter actually bore the name of Isaiah. Who or what the author was we do not know. His self-effacement in his prophecies is as remarkable as it is complete. In recent times he has often been called “The great Prophet of the Exile,” and, more generally, “The Evangelical Prophet.”



2. The accumulated reasons for the division are overwhelming. It will be enough, by way of introduction, to mention three general considerations which, though quite simple and obvious, are by themselves conclusive.



(1) Had Isaiah spoken of Cyrus's career a hundred and fifty years before the event, he must inevitably have used the language of prediction, as he did about the much nearer event (as he supposed) of the Messiah's reign. But the author of chapters 40-66 takes Cyrus for granted, as a figure too well known to himself and his readers to need introduction; and his predictions about him refer only to particular acts, such as the conquest of Babylon and the restoration of the Jewish exiles. It is inconceivable that any but a contemporary of Cyrus should have written about him in this manner.



(2) To Isaiah, Jerusalem is the scene of action which is always assumed, and the centre of interest. Deutero-Isaiah does not write of Jerusalem as one to whom it is familiar. For him Zion is a distant, an ideal, figure; an object of pity, reverence, and hope, but not of everyday knowledge. Babylon is the centre of the world which he knows best. His point of view is that of an exile living, not in Babylon, but among the “nations” which are falling under the sway of Cyrus.



(3) Even more striking is the contrast between the attitudes of the two prophets towards their own countrymen. From first to last Isaiah of Jerusalem denounces the sins of Israel, and foretells the coming doom. No saying of his is more characteristic than one of the latest: “If ye be willing and obedient, ye shall eat the good of the land: but if ye refuse and rebel, ye shall be devoured with the sword.” It is like passing into a new world to read the opening words of Deutero-Isaiah, which are no less characteristic of their author: “Comfort ye, comfort ye my people, saith your God. Speak ye comfortably to Jerusalem.” The same contrast will be found to exist between whole poems. When we compare, for instance, the prophet's relentless march from threat to threat, which lends a lurid gloom to the ninth and tenth chapters, with the unqualified pity and unconditional promises of the fifty-first, it seems little short of amazing that writings so different in tone and in substance were ever attributed to the same author.1 [Note: M. G. Glazebrook.]



The reason why these later chapters came to be attached to the Book of Isaiah may be that some owner of a manuscript of Isaiah proper (and in ancient times there were generally very few copies of any book) found it convenient to fasten together other different MSS. or fragments of MSS. to prevent their getting lost. There is probably a similar instance of attached prophecies in Zec_9:1-17; Zec_10:1-12; Zec_11:1-17; Zec_12:1-14; Zec_13:1-9; Zec_14:1-21, and perhaps Malachi. Or, on the other hand, it may be that the editor of the whole book saw the appropriateness of connecting with Isaiah's prophecies concerning an Exile (Isa_5:13; Isa_6:11; Isa_39:6-7) and a Return (Isa_10:22; Isa_11:10-16; Isa_27:12-13; cf. Isa_14:1-2), concerning the Fall of Babylon (Isa_21:1-10; cf. Isa_13:1-22 - Isa_14:23) and the Gathering of the Gentiles to worship Jehovah (Isa_2:1-4; Isa_11:10; Isa_19:18-25), these later anonymous prophecies on similar subjects, which were thought to be, and indeed largely were, on the eve of actual fulfilment. Moreover, this view of the deliberate and intentional connexion of the two parts of the book might appear the more reasonable if we reflect that Isaiah, unlike Jeremiah, Ezekiel, and possibly even the Deutero-Isaiah, had probably not arranged his own prophecies in the order in which we find them.1 [Note: F. H. Woods and F. E. Powell, The Hebrew Prophets, iii. 207.]