Isaiah 40-66-OTL

A Commentary

Claus Westermann

• Publisher: Westminster John Knox Press
• Year: 1969
• ISBN:
  9781611645903
• Topic: Theology & Religion
• Subtopic: Biblical Commentary

This book, a volume in the Old Testament Library series, explores chapters 40-66 of the book of Isaiah.

The Old Testament Library provides fresh and authoritative treatments of important aspects of Old Testament study through commentaries and general surveys. The contributors are scholars of international standing.

PART ONE

DEUTERO-ISAIAH

Chapters 40–55

INTRODUCTION

THE PERIOD

THE TIME OF Deutero-Isaiah’s activity lay for certain between the destruction of Jerusalem in 587 and the downfall of the Babylonian empire in 539. All the evidence points to a date towards the end of this period, probably some time after 550, the year which saw the beginning of the victorious campaign of Cyrus. An attempt has been made to mark off different stages in the prophet’s work (Begrich), but this remains very doubtful. The content of chs. 40–55, does, however, show that Deutero-Isaiah was active for some considerable length of time, perhaps several years. The general outline of the political events of the period is known.^a

1. The Babylonian empire remained at the height of its power under Nebuchadnezzar (604–562), the greatest ruler it ever had. After destroying Jerusalem, he undertook a further series of campaigns in the west. In 585 he began the siege of Tyre, but, in spite of a thirteen years’ investment of the city, failed to take it. According to Jer. 52.30, he made a further campaign against Judah, leading to yet another deportation; this, however, is all we know of it. In 586 he marched against Egypt.

Nebuchadnezzar’s death was followed by the first signs of the decline of Babylon. Within the seven years leading up to the accession of Nabonidus, the last king of Babylon (556–539), there were three changes in the throne; Nabonidus, who was of priestly descent, was particularly devoted to the moon-god Sin, and restored her temple in Haran, thereby antagonizing the powerful priesthood of Marduk in Babylon, a factor which played no small part in the fall of Babylon. Nabonidus made Tema, in the Arabian desert, his new capital, remaining there for eight years, during which he left the government in Babylon in the hands of his son Sheshbazzar.

2. By now the kingdom of Media had become Babylon’s chief rival. Cyaxares of Media had been her ally in the overthrow of Assyria. Thereafter he enlarged the scope of his sway, and made Ecbatana his capital. In the west his kingdom extended as far as the Halys, the frontier of Lydia. His successor was his son Astyages (585–550), whose vassal Cyrus, king of Anshan in southern Iran (formerly Elam), rose against him. In this, Cyrus had the support of Nabonidus, who hoped that the power of Media would thereby be diminished. However, by 550 Cyrus had captured Ecbatana and made himself master of the kingdom. At this point the Lydian king Croesus, feeling that he himself was now in danger, took the field against Cyrus, but there was no decisive engagement. Once Croesus disbanded his forces, Cyrus made forced marches during the winter on Sardis, and the city fell in 546. (Deutero-Isaiah appears to allude to this in 41.2–3 and 45.1–3.) Some time before this, Babylon had entered into a defensive pact with Egypt and Lydia, but after the latter’s fall, she found that she herself was face to face with the menace of Cyrus, who, in the three years following 546, still further extended the limits of his territory, although the details are not known. This at last brought Nabonidus back to Babylon. But it was too late. The forces arrayed against him there, in his own country, in particular the priesthood of Marduk, were too strong, and put any marshalling of the empire’s total resources out of the question. Not a few of the Babylonians actually hailed the coming of Cyrus, for they looked on him as their liberator (the Cyrus cylinder). The northern parts of the empire broke away. One of Nabonidus’ generals, Gobryas (Gubaru), deserted to Cyrus and, appearing at the Tigris, inflicted a crushing defeat on his fellow-countrymen at Opis. Nabonidus fled to Borsippa. Led by Gobryas, Cyrus’ troops entered the city of Babylon without striking a blow (539). The mighty world-empire had fallen, as Deutero-Isaiah (particularly Isa. 47) and other prophets (particularly Jer. 50–51) had proclaimed it would. Babylon’s entire empire came under the sovereignty of Cyrus.

Surveying the course of world-history from the height of the Babylonian empire’s power down to the time when the swift rise to greatness of the Persian empire in turn spelt its downfall, one can only stand back in amazement at the closeness with which Deutero-Isaiah’s utterances on the subject are answered by the mighty sweep of events themselves, with their strongly marked rhythm of rise and fall. The very fact that the prophet neither expected nor proclaimed that his own people had any active role to play in the events allowed him to discern God’s hand in history on the grandiose scale that matched the events of his day:

Behold, nations are like a drop in the bucket . . .

Who brings the princes to naught . . .

Scarcely are they planted, scarcely sown . . .

Then he blows upon them, and they wither,

The tempest carries them off like stubble.

3. Israel during the exile. While the large-scale world events of Deutero-Isaiah’s time are well-known and attested, our knowledge of Judah during the period of the exile, and of the fortunes of those taken to Babylon, is both scanty and uncertain. Among the uncertainties are the numbers of those deported in 597, 587 and 582. Jer. 52.28–30 puts the sum-total at 4,600: we do not, however, know whether this includes women and children. If it does not, the figure comes to between 12,000 and 15,000. We do know that a considerable part of the population was not, in fact, deported; and this also implies the persistence of no small measure of intellectual and religious life. Our main source of information here is the collection called ‘Lamentations’, which originated in Judah after the fall of Jerusalem. Probably the Deuteronomic histories, too, originated in the homeland during the exile. Even prophecy did not completely cease in Judah with the exile; witness, among other evidence, the oracles against Babylon collected in Jer. 50–51, which in all likelihood were composed there at the same time as Deutero-Isaiah, and which display some striking parallels to him.

Nevertheless, the most important written evidence of continuance of Israel’s traditions after the fall of Jerusalem came into being outside Judah, among the exiles in Babylon: it consists in the prophecies of Ezekiel and Deutero-Isaiah. Those taken to Babylon were the leading sections of the community. As we know, even after the first deportation in 597 it was possible for the Israelites to build houses, engage in farming and other means of livelihood, and continue to live in families (Jer. 29.5f.), while notices in the Book of Ezekiel leave no doubt that they were settled in communties of their own, and could therefore continue to enjoy some measure of communal life (Ezek. 3.15; 8.1; 14.1; 33.30f.). This also implies the possibility of coming together for worship. Thus, the national traditions of worship were not completely broken off even among the exiles. Neither in Ezekiel nor in Deutero-Isaiah is there the slightest evidence that they were forced to worship the gods of Babylon. Rather—as has been made clear, particularly by von Waldow in his Anlass und Hintergrund der Verkündigung Deuterojesajas—the very close affinities between the preaching of Deutero-Isaiah and the communal lamentation as made in public worship prove in themselves that worship persisted in one form or another. Since there could be no sacrifices, the main emphasis was necessarily put on the oral element in worship: we have every reason for believing that one, at least, of the roots of the synagogue service is to be found in the exile. At the same time, however, several of Deutero-Isaiah’s utterances suggest, as was only to be expected, that the downfall of the state, the destruction of the temple, and the end of the Davidic dynasty also meant, in many people’s eyes, the end of Yahweh’s action on behalf of his people. Victory had gone to the gods of Babylon, and the pomp of the worship offered to them must have made a tremendous impression. For many, therefore, the old faith lost its fervour, and not a few turned to the gods who now had the mastery.

This situation finds its echo in Deutero-Isaiah, in a special feature of his diction. His language is from first to last evocative, arousing, even insistent—witness the way in which he piles imperative on imperative. This accords well with the situation just outlined. It was the way he adopted to speak to men whose faith was flagging, and who were at the point of letting themselves drift. At the same time, he used it to address men who kept clinging to the past, even when their observance of traditional usage had no power to lead them to expect any new thing from their God.

THE PROPHET HIMSELF

We know practically nothing about Deutero-Isaiah himself, not even his name. Only once, and even then only for a moment, does he let himself be seen. This is in the prologue, in 40.6–7, which gives his call. The prophet hears a voice summoning him to preach, and counters it with the question ‘What shall I cry?’, lamenting, as his reason for asking it, that all things are transient: ‘All flesh is grass.’ Although the answer he receives begins by endorsing his plaintive description of the situation, it nevertheless goes on to add, ‘but the word of our God stands for ever’. No intimation of a call could be briefer: yet it does supply us with some reliable information about the prophet.

1. Deutero-Isaiah regarded himself as the lineal descendant of the pre-exilic prophets. This is shown, first, by the fact that, in substantiation of his message he adduces a call, and, second, that like Isaiah and Jeremiah, his first reaction is to shrink from it. The thesis just stated is frequently confirmed throughout the book, particularly in 43.22–28, where the way in which Deutero-Isaiah ranks himself alongside the pre-exilic prophets of doom is left in no doubt whatsoever.

2. Deutero-Isaiah completely identified himself with his fellow-countrymen. For when he demurred at the summons to preach, his reluctance was not the expression of his own personal lament, but of that of his fellow-exiles (as the gloss, ‘surely the people is grass’, rightly understood it). He was at one with them in believing that the downfall of the nation was the result of divine judgment (‘for the breath of Yahweh blows upon it’), and that all that remained for the survivors was to acknowledge the justice of the sentence, the line also taken by the psalms of lamentation composed during the period. Deutero-Isaiah’s insistence on his solidarity with his people is supremely important for our understanding of him. One of its implications is that he had not been made a prophet because he had some clearer insight into the existing situation than they, or because he kept hoping and trusting that this situation would change, or because of the strength of his faith. The thoughts of his fellow-exiles were his thoughts, too, and he had been every bit as flagging and weary as they. It was a word from outside himself, a command, that made him a prophet, as it had done his predecessors. This was the source of all that he was to say, as well as its substantiation. It was ‘the word of our God’, and it alone, as God guaranteed, would not become void (Isa. 55.6–11). Since God still spoke it, Deutero-Isaiah was able to preach.

3. This is why Deutero-Isaiah’s preaching is throughout simply the putting forth of this word that was now being spoken. It is also the reason for his complete concealment of himself in its shadow. It was essential that there should be a spokesman for the new word which God was now speaking. But he is merely the voice. And the word itself has one theme: ‘Cry to her that her time of service is ended’ (40.2). This is the one motif on which all the forms used by Deutero-Isaiah turn; hence the situation to which he addressed himself was also uniform and unchanging. No special occasions were required to move him to speech, nor had he any need, like the pre-exilic prophets, to adopt special modes of address for different sets of people or for representatives of different interests. Deutero-Isaiah’s whole proclamation is summed up in its opening and closing statements (40.8 and 56.6–11), concerning the word of God.

4. The cry, ‘the grass withers, the flower fades’, in 40.7 is taken from the Psalter (e.g., Ps. 90). A leading characteristic of Deutero-Isaiah’s prophecy lies in its affinities with the diction of this book. The prophet’s familiarity with the psalms must have been quite exceptional. It is, of course, true that they played a leading part in the exiles’ services of worship, and that everyone, therefore, who joined in these might have been as well versed as he. Remarkably enough, however, there is absolutely no trace of this in Ezekiel; instead, what runs through his proclamation is a wide range of forms taken from the usage of the priesthood (Zimmerli). Perhaps, then, Deutero-Isaiah was in some way connected with the temple singers, who were the people principally in charge of the Psalter and its transmission. If so, his writing would yield excellent support to...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half title
• Title
• Copyright
• Dedication
• Contents
• Abbreviations
• Bibliography
• Part One Deutero-Isaiah Chapters 40–55
• Part Two Trito-Isaiah Chapters 56–66