Essays on Prophecy and Canon: The Rise of a New Model for Interpretation 3161608437, 9783161608438, 9783161608445

Table of contents :
Cover
Title
Acknowledgements
Table of Contents
List of Abbreviations
Introduction: The Rise of a New Model for Biblical Interpretation
The Book of Isaiah: Beyond the Three-Isaiah Model for Interpretation
1.. Account A and the Annals of Sennacherib: A Reassessment
2.. On the Question of Divisions Internal to the Book of Isaiah
3.. The Divine Council: Temporal Transition and New Prophecy in the Book of Isaiah
4.. How is the Prophet Isaiah Present in the Latter Half of the Book? The Logic of Chapters 40–66 within the Book of Isaiah
5.. “You are my Servant, You are the Israel in whom I will be glorified” The Servant Songs and the Effect of Literary Context in Isaiah
6.. Isaiah and the Search for a New Paradigm: Authorship and Inspiration
The Prophets: Beyond the Chronological Model for Interpretation
7.. Prophecy and Tradition-History: The Achievement of Gerhard von Rad
8.. What Lesson Will History Teach?: The Book of the Twelve as History
9.. The Book of the Twelve: New Horizons for Canonical Readings, with Hermeneutical Reflections
10.. The Unique Achievement of the Book of the Twelve: Neither Redactional Unity Nor Anthology
11.. The Prophetic Division of the Scriptures of Israel: An Overview
Canonical Interpretation: Rethinking Author, Setting, Audience
12.. The Prophet Moses and the Canonical Shape of Jeremiah
13.. Of Mortal Appearance: The Earthly Jesus and Isaiah as a Type of Christian Scripture
14.. The Place of the Reader in the Book of Jeremiah: Reflections for Bible Study
15.. Fixity and Potential in Isaiah
16.. Prophetic Associations
17.. Scriptural Author and Canonical Prophet: The Theological Implications of Literary Association in the Canon
18.. Provenance as a Factor in Interpretation
Prophecy in the History of Interpretation
19.. Prophecy in the Nineteenth Century Reception
20.. The Presentation of History in the Book of Isaiah
Bibliography
List of First Publications
Index of Sources
Index of Names
Index of Subjects

Citation preview

Forschungen zum Alten Testament Herausgegeben von

Konrad Schmid (Zürich) ∙ Mark S. Smith (Princeton) Hermann Spieckermann (Göttingen) ∙ Andrew Teeter (Harvard)

149

Christopher R. Seitz

Essays on Prophecy and Canon The Rise of a New Model for Interpretation

Mohr Siebeck

Christopher R. Seitz, born 1954; 1986 PhD from Yale; 1984-87 Professor at the Lutheran Seminary in Philadelphia; 1987–1997 Professor at Yale; 1998–2007 Professor at St Andrews; since 2007 Professor at Wycliffe College in the University of Toronto.

ISBN 978-3-16-160843-8 / eISBN 978-3-16-160844-5 DOI 10.1628/978-3-16-160844-5 ISSN 0940-4155 / eISSN 2568-8359 (Forschungen zum Alten Testament) The Deutsche Nationalbibliothek lists this publication in the Deutsche Nationalbibliographie; detailed bibliographic data are available at http://dnb.dnb.de. © 2021 Mohr Siebeck Tübingen. www.mohrsiebeck.com This book may not be reproduced, in whole or in part, in any form (beyond that permitted by copyright law) without the publisher’s written permission. This applies particularly to reproductions, translations and storage and processing in electronic systems. The book was typeset by epline in Böblingen using Minion typeface, printed on non-aging ­paper by Gulde Druck in Tübingen, and bound by Buchbinderei Spinner in Ottersweier. Printed in Germany.

To Leander Keck Dean, Colleague, Friend

Acknowledgements I am grateful to the team at Mohr Siebeck for their excellent editorial work. Special thanks go to my research assistant at Wycliffe College in the University of Toronto, Mr. Andrew Dyck. He did the difficult editorial work of moving previously published essays into formats unanticipated, and proofread with care and patience. Mr. Patrick Mentzer has prepared the indexes. This volume is dedicated to Leander Earl Keck, former Dean of Yale Divinity School, and Winckley Professor of Biblical Theology Emeritus. Lee has been a close friend on the journey during which these essays appeared, and a model of theological acumen and Menschlichkeit. Toronto, July 2021 

Christopher R. Seitz

Table of Contents Acknowledgements . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . VII List of Abbreviations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .   XI Introduction: The Rise of a New Model for Biblical Interpretation . . . . . . .  1

The Book of Isaiah: Beyond the Three-Isaiah Model for Interpretation 1.. Account A and the Annals of Sennacherib: A Reassessment . . . . . . . . .  35 2.. On the Question of Divisions Internal to the Book of Isaiah . . . . . . . . .  44 3.. The Divine Council: Temporal Transition and New Prophecy in the Book of Isaiah . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  51 4.. How is the Prophet Isaiah Present in the Latter Half of the Book? The Logic of Chapters 40–66 within the Book of Isaiah . . . . . . . . . . . . .  71 5.. “You are my Servant, You are the Israel in whom I will be glorified” The Servant Songs and the Effect of Literary Context in Isaiah . . . . . .  94 6.. Isaiah and the Search for a New Paradigm: Authorship and Inspiration . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 113

The Prophets: Beyond the Chronological Model for Interpretation 7.. Prophecy and Tradition-History: The Achievement of Gerhard von Rad . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 131 8.. What Lesson Will History Teach?: The Book of the Twelve as History . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 153

X

Table of Contents

9.. The Book of the Twelve: New Horizons for Canonical Readings, with Hermeneutical Reflections . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 179 10.. The Unique Achievement of the Book of the Twelve: Neither Redactional Unity Nor Anthology . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 199 11.. The Prophetic Division of the Scriptures of Israel: An Overview . . . . . 211

Canonical Interpretation: Rethinking Author, Setting, Audience 12.. The Prophet Moses and the Canonical Shape of Jeremiah . . . . . . . . . . . 231 13.. Of Mortal Appearance: The Earthly Jesus and Isaiah as a Type of Christian Scripture . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 256 14.. The Place of the Reader in the Book of Jeremiah: Reflections for Bible Study . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 274 15.. Fixity and Potential in Isaiah . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 282 16.. Prophetic Associations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 291 17.. Scriptural Author and Canonical Prophet: The Theological ­Implications of Literary Association in the Canon . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 302 18.. Provenance as a Factor in Interpretation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 315

Prophecy in the History of Interpretation 19.. Prophecy in the Nineteenth Century Reception . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 329 20.. The Presentation of History in the Book of Isaiah . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 358 Bibliography . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 371 List of First Publications . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 387 Index of Sources . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 389 Index of Names . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 401 Index of Subjects . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 408

List of Abbreviations AB ABD

Anchor Bible Anchor Bible Dictionary. Edited by David Noel Freedman. 6 vols. New York: Doubleday, 1992 ad loc ad locum, at the place discussed AIL Ancient Israel and Its Literature ANF Ante-Nicene Fathers AOAT Alter Orient und Altes Testament AS Annals of Sennacherib ATANT Abhandlungen zur Theologie des Alten und Neuen Testaments ATD Das Alte Testament Deutsch ATM Altes Testament und Moderne AV Authorized Version BELT Bibliotheca Ephemeridum Theologicarum Lovaniensium BBET Beitrage zur biblischen Exegese und Theologie BibSem The Biblical Seminar BJS Brown Judaic Studies BKAT Biblischer Kommentar, Altes Testament BTCB Brazos Theological Commentary on the Bible BZ Biblische Zeitschrift BZAW Beihefte zur Zeitschrift für die alttestamentliche Wissenschaft CBQ Catholic Bible Quarterly CBSC Cambridge Bible for Schools and Colleges ch(s). chapter(s) CTR Calvin Theological Review EgT Eglise et Théologie e. g. exempli gratia, for example esp. especially et al. et alii, and others ETL Ephemerides Theologicae Lovanienses ExAud Ex Auditu FAT Forschungen zum Alten Testament FC Fathers of the Church fem. feminine FOTL Forms of the Old Testament Literature FRLANT Forschungen zur Religion und Literatur des Alten und Neuen ­Testaments HBM Hebrew Bible Monographs HCOT Historical Commentary on the Old Testament Hermeneia Hermeneia: A Critical and Historical Commentary on the Bible

XII HKAT HSM HSS IB

List of Abbreviations

Handkommentar zum Alten Testament Harvard Semitic Monographs Harvard Semitic Studies Interpreter’s Bible. Edited by George A. Buttrick et al. 12 vols. New York, 1951–1957 IBC Interpretation: A Bible Commentary for Teaching and Preaching ICC International Critical Commentary idem the same ibid. ibidem, in the same place i. e. id est, that is IJST Interpretation Journal of Systematic Theology Int Interpretation IRT Issues in Religion and Theology ITL The International Theological Commentary JBL Journal of Biblical Literature JBT Jahrbuch für biblische Theologie JNES Journal of Near Eastern Studies JR Journal of Religion JSOT Journal for the Study of the Old Testament JSOTSup Journal for the Study of the Old Testament: Supplement Series JTS Journal of Theological Studies JQR Jewish Quarterly Review KEHAT Kurzgefasstes exegetisches Handbuch zum Alten Testament KHC Kurzer Hand-Commentar zum Alten Testament LHBOTS The Library of Hebrew Bible/Old Testament Studies LXX Septuagint masc. masculine MT Masoretic Text n(n). note(s) NCBC New Century Bible Commentary n. d. no date NIB The New Interpreter’s Bible. Edited by Leander E. Keck. 12 vols. ­Nashville: Abingdon, 1994–2004 NICOT New International Commentary on the Old Testament NT New Testament NTT Norsk Teologisk Tidsskrift OAN Oracles against the nations OBT Overtures to Biblical Theology OT Old Testament OTE Old Testament Studies OTL Old Testament Library OtSt Oudtestamentische Studiën PR Presbyterian Review ProEccl Pro Ecclesia repr. reprint RSV Revised Standard Version SBL Society of Biblical Literature SBLDS Society of Biblical Literature Dissertation Series



List of AbbreviationsXIII

SBET Scottish Bulletin of Evangelical Theology SBS Stuttgarter Bibelstudien SBT Studies in Biblical Theology SEA Svensk Exegetisk Arsbok sg. singular SH Scripture and Hermeneutics Series SJOT Scandinavian Journal of Old Testament SJT Scottish Journal of Theology SOTSMS Society for Old Testament Monograph Series STDJ Studies on the Texts of the Desert of Judah STI Studies in Theological Interpretation SymS Symposium Series ThTo Theology Today TRev Theologische Revue TTFL Theological Translation Fund Library TBS Tools for Biblical Study TynBul Tyndale Bulletin viz. videlicet, namely VT Vetus Testamentum VTSup Supplements to Vetus Testamentum UUA Uppsala Universitetsårskrift VF Verkündigung und Forschung v(v). verse(s) WMANT Wissenschaftliche Monographien zum Alten und Neuen Testament WTJ Westminster Theological Journal WUNT Wissenschaftliche Untersuchungen zum Neuen Testament WW Word and World XII The Book of the Twelve ZAW Zeitschrift für die alttestamentliche Wissenschaft

Introduction: The Rise of a New Model for Biblical Interpretation Background Seventies Prior to North American university courses in biblical interpretation, my exposure to Old and New Testaments came through the lectionary of the 1928 Book of Common Prayer. Through that medium (unless one used it daily) scripture was tied to the liturgical year, and so did not give one much sense of the serial movement of the text, or the Bible as a whole work. The Old Testament, furthermore, was virtually absent, except through psalmody or a servant song from Isaiah at Lent and a prophetic text in Advent. The Bible was what one heard in the context of Sunday morning worship, rather than a book of its own to be read and to be edified by. University introduction to Old and New Testament was exhilarating simply at the level of learning who Amos was, or thinking more carefully about the unfolding of Paul’s thought, via a serial account of his letters as one held them to have been composed.1 Specificity and clarity were provided about subjects I  had known only at a distance. Mild forms of “historical critical” analysis were at the service of bringing the material into sharper focus. Differentiation and particularity were the goals, more so than creating an external scaffolding that would replace or obscure the canonical text in the form of a history-ofreligion to which it referred. If there were three Isaiahs, this was less a matter of eliminating a single author (an idea that was foreign to me) than a desire for clarification and the provision of a plausible historical context. I was asked to be a teaching assistant and very much enjoyed the challenge. This was the age of John Bright and congenial map aids. My Masters level work in Biblical Interpretation was an extension of this model, augmented by language study and close reading of texts in Hebrew and Greek. Having already completed basic introductory courses meant I had 1  By comparison, see my commentary on Colossians four decades later and the model for interpretation it presumes (Colossians, BTCB [Grand Rapids: Brazos, 2014]).

2

Introduction

room in my schedule for electives in Hebrew exegesis. The teacher had been a student of James Muilenburg and had written his doctoral dissertation on sources in the Pentateuch. This brought me into contact with the Exodus commentary of Brevard S. Childs (1974) as well as a sense of German biblical studies with which that commentary was conversant. My teacher, as was apparently true of all of Muilenburg’s students, had been encouraged to go abroad and so he had spent time at the University of Heidelberg. That Union Theological Seminary Professor was known for his commentary on Isaiah 40–66 in the best-selling Interpreters Bible series, as well as for his form-critical version of a method he called called rhetorical criticism.2 My first Hebrew Poetry exposure was “Second Isaiah” and the commentaries of Muilenburg and Claus Westermann. I was expected to memorize long portions of the Hebrew text, which is a special gift that remains resident in my mind to this day. I was encouraged to pursue doctoral studies and Yale was an obvious choice, due to the influence of Childs (he had done his doctoral work in Basel). As Muilenburg had insisted of his PhD students, I was encouraged to study in Germany. I have relatives outside of Heidelberg and this was an opportunity not to be missed. Having enrolled at Goethe Institute in Munich, it did not take long for me to discover the Theological faculty but a few blocks away. The Chair of the Old Testament department was Klaus Baltzer. A kinder and more encouraging Professor, especially open to foreign students, one cannot find. He encouraged me to postpone my studies at Yale and enroll at the University of Munich. For this I had to intensify my German studies in order to pass the exam necessary for matriculation. I recall working my way through the works of Martin Noth and Gerhard von Rad in German to help improve my German and because the contents were familiar to me from previous study of them in English language. I passed the exam and began attending lectures and seminars. Baltzer was already at work on what would be his lifetime project, a commentary on Isaiah 40–55 for the prestigious Hermeneia Commentary.3 So I went from Second Isaiah studies in the United States to graduate seminars with Baltzer in Munich, as well as a range of other courses. It was a rich experience I will never forget, even as in subsequent years I would visit Heidelberg, Marburg, Göttingen and Tübingen, for advanced study and research. 2 

Festschriften for Muilenburg (1896–1974) appearing in 1962 and 1974 included contributions from Walther Eichrodt, G. Earnest Wright, Martin Noth, Bernhard Anderson, Walter Brueggemann and Norman Gottwald. It was a time of international exchange. Anderson’s Understanding the Old Testament textbook was widely used. It remains in print, now in its 5th edition and edited by Judith Newman. Her father Murray L. Newman was my Old Testament professor at Virginia Theological Seminary. On rhetorical criticism, see his essay “Form Criticism and Beyond,” JBL 88 (1969): 1–18. 3  I would later be invited to join Baltzer on the Hermeneia Board; I  was offered the commentary on Isaiah 56–66, which I declined to undertake.



The Rise of a New Model for Biblical Interpretation3

In correspondence with Professor Childs, I  was encouraged not to stay in Germany but to begin doctoral studies at Yale. Baltzer was a compelling and gracious host and it was indeed tempting to stay and become a research assistant in Munich. Childs, having studied in Basel, knew how critical a network of recommendation and endorsement from within the North American context would be for entering the job market. He had spent his first years after returning from Basel at a small seminary in Wisconsin, prior to accepting a post at Yale in 1958. Persuaded and anxious to begin further study at Yale, I enrolled and began coursework. For the purposes of the following account, I believe it is important to note several converging realities. Historical-critical work was at a high-water mark. International exchange brought German and Anglophone scholarship into close proximity and collaboration. The post war consensus around the work of Gerhard von Rad, Walther Zimmerli, Martin Noth, Walther Eichrodt and others is evident in the appearance of all their works in English translation, and their wide dissemination.4 The Biblical Theology Movement was an Anglophone phenomenon that derived from this efflorescence and that attempted to bring the theological and historical conclusions into more popular public form. Childs bridged much of this and had his own distinctive take on it, which at the time was shared by his colleague James Barr.5 The Exodus commentary of Childs, published four years later, demonstrated that he was not sundering the work of historical-criticism but bending it to a different purpose, and the reviews were uniformly strong.6 The model of Three Isaiahs was at its heyday at this period, and especially chs. 40–55 would appear to have benefitted from this recasting of the unwieldy 66-chapter book. “Second Isaiah” was one of the findings of historical-criticism that seemed best suited to endorse this new repackaging.7 Critical excavation of sources and traditions in the Pentateuch/ Hexateuch was given a positive and constructive theological presentation in the work of von Rad or in congenial textbook presentations like that of the aforementioned Understanding the Old Testament. No one asked why a text4  A striking account of how the “assured results” of this period did not withstand the test of time can be seen in J. Jeremias, “Vier Jahrzehnte Forschung am Alten Testament: Ein Rückblick,” VF 50 (2005): 10–25. I agree with Jeremias but have a different take on the legacy of Noth and von Rad in Convergences: Canon and Catholicity (Waco, TX: Baylor University Press, 2020). 5  Brevard S. Childs, Biblical Theology in Crisis (Philadelphia: Westminster, 1970). 6  Built upon the form-critical foundation in evidence in Brevard S. Childs, Myth and Reality in the Old Testament, SBT 27 (London: SCM, 1960); idem, Memory and Tradition in Israel, SBT 37 (London: SCM, 1962); idem, Isaiah and the Assyrian Crisis, SBT 2/3 (London: SCM, 1974). 7  On this, see the insightful comments of Ulrich Berges, Jesaja 40–48, HKAT (Freiburg im Breisgau: Herder, 2008), 34–36.

4

Introduction

book began with Exodus and not Genesis because the “Mighty Acts of God” ran attractive interference for the canonical form. Bernard Anderson and von Rad were singing off the same song-sheet, assuredly and well. Eighties I entered Yale just after the publication of Introduction to the Old Testament as Scripture, for which Childs was shortly to be well known – for better and for worse. Naturally, the preparatory work for this publication preceded my arrival, taking the form of regular lectures to students at Yale and also public lectures at Union Seminary in Richmond and other trial runs. For me and fellow students at the time it was the prior publications that were better known. My interests were in the kind of approach adopted in the Exodus commentary, with its rich engagement with source, form and tradition history.8 I had begun a project on chs. 40–55 of Isaiah in Munich as part of my research there, emerging from Baltzer’s seminars. It argued for a meaningful placement of the servant songs in their context.9 I wrote it up for a Masters level thesis at Yale and shared it with Baltzer the following summer. Doctoral students did a series of graduate level seminars at Yale, typically on individual biblical books and the present state of the research, as well as comparative Semitic languages. I was at the time intrigued with the impasse in studies on Jeremiah, underscored by the commentaries which were appearing and which came to such radically different conclusions about the character of the book.10 My dissertation was completed in the same period, with the title Theology in Conflict: Reactions to the Exile in the Book of Jeremiah.11 I believe it is important to note that during my years as a student at Yale I was largely unaware of the project that would become associated with Childs. He taught seminars whose purpose was to acquaint us with the reigning approaches of the day, in classical historical-critical dress. I recall seminars on 8  A

very useful study is Daniel R. Driver, Brevard Childs, Biblical Theologian: For the Church’s One Bible (Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2010). 9  Childs’s student Roy Melugin produced a volume close to the same topic, The Formation of Isaiah 40–55, BZAW 141 (Berlin: de Gruyter, 1976). 10  William McKane, A Critical and Exegetical Commentary on Jeremiah, 2 vols., ICC (Edinburgh: T&T Clark, 1986–1987); Robert P. Carroll,  Jeremiah: A  Commentary, OTL (Philadelphia: Westminster, 1986); William Lee Holladay, Jeremiah: A Commentary on the Book of the Prophet Jeremiah, 2 vols., Hermeneia (Philadelphia: Fortress, 1986–1989). 11  Christopher R. Seitz, Theology in Conflict: Reactions to the Exile in the Book of Jeremiah, BZAW 189 (Berlin: de Gruyter, 1989.) The PhD thesis was submitted to Yale in 1986. A journal article based upon the research and writing appeared a year earlier (“The Crisis of Interpretation over the Meaning and Purpose of the Exile: A Redactional Study of Jer xxi–xliii,” VT 35 [1985]: 78–97).



The Rise of a New Model for Biblical Interpretation5

Chronicles, Numbers, Isaiah, Jeremiah and Ezekiel. I suspect that having said what he wanted to say in print, he was more concerned that we learn classical Old Testament methods.12 Robert Wilson offered alongside Childs his own Old Testament seminars, and my dissertation came out of one where we saw how fractured the state of Jeremiah research was, especially over issues of authorship, the influence of deuteronomism, and sources in the book. I was trying to come at the problem from a different angle, by evaluating the way the book took form given the fact of two deportations and a division of the community of Israel, for a ten year period, that is, between an Israel in exile in Babylon and a continuing presence around the prophet Jeremiah in the land. I would now say the project fell somewhere between classical redactioncriticism and the concerns of Childs for a proper accounting of the final form of the text. A longer range view emerged in time which accommodated the level of traditions concerned with the affairs of 597/6 into a merged and unified portrayal in chs. 21–45, shortly after the denouement associated with the Fall of Jerusalem in 586/7. Ezekiel came alongside the former traditions, but it too spanned the same period in the presentation of its final form. We had read the commentaries of Zimmerli and Greenberg with Childs, and I suspect that is where the ground between them was being sought in my work on Jeremiah. To be sure, it was a productive time in the generating of commentary treatments of both books, and also of theories related to the final editing of the Deuteronomistic History, and the influence of deuteronomism on the Book of Jeremiah. The third major prophetic witness, Isaiah, was soon to be the beneficiary of an entirely new approach. It is at this juncture that the essays to follow begin to give evidence of the rise of a new model for biblical interpretation. Shifting Landscapes I had prepared the status questionis portion of a Yale PhD dissertation and was into the writing of opening chapters when I was offered a teaching post as Assistant Professor of Old Testament at the Lutheran Theological Seminary in Philadelphia. I would teach there for three years before returning to join the Yale faculty in 1989. I had some strong colleagues in Bible, Church History and Theology. The production of inaugural lectures for Introductory courses is a challenge as any young faculty person knows. At that period, a two-semester course was meant to cover all of the contents of the Old (and 12  Unbeknownst to us, it was also at this period that Childs was researching and writing The New Testament as Canon: An Introduction (Philadelphia: Fortress, 1984), which would soon appear. His conceptual mind was on that project during our coursework with him.

6

Introduction

New) Testament for seminarians mostly headed to pastoral ministry posts. I felt a keen responsibility to provide an overview of the scriptures of Israel as students would in time be called upon to preach and teach in Lutheran (and other) congregational settings. It was at this point in my career that I first paid serious attention to – indeed read through, page-by-page – the contents of Childs’s 1979 Introduction. I had been a teaching assistant at Yale, but Childs had not assigned his own textbook. In my new post, I needed one. I realized I could relay in lectures what I knew of historical-critical findings (such had been my training for a decade), but at the same time harness them to the content of biblical books in their final form. It did not seem fair, as I reflected on it at the time, to swap out the basic content and structure of the biblical literature for either a reconstruction of how the books came to be or a history of Israel to which they were making reference as this could be plausibly recreated. That is, the practical matter of holding myself accountable to the biblical canon, in its wide Old Testament form, guided how I  brokered the findings of historical-critical methods – which I knew well and which I appreciated for what they were able to explain. The Book of Isaiah represented a classic challenge. It is a very big and very complicated book. It is not easy to read from beginning to end without some kind of external paring down. It seems to start in the middle, it covers at least three centuries of Israel’s reflective account of her history under God, it appears to correlate key figures and events but not in any tidy one-to-one way. The general “three Isaiah” idea provides a rough-and-ready model to help bring the project down to scale, but it also appears to leave a good deal out – especially in respect of the contents of Isaiah 1–39, which seems to breathe the age and spirit of later sub-sections in chs. 40–66. The seminary held annual alumni events on scripture and theology. One year we did Isaiah. I edited the speakers’ contributions in a small book called Reading and Preaching the Book of Isaiah.13 The lecture I gave on Isaiah as a whole 66-chapter work appears in that volume as well as an editor’s introductory chapter. I was trying to find my way to an accounting of the parts and the sum of them as greater as a whole. In my view the authorship question was getting in the way of an accounting of the main concerns of the book itself. I held that to be the destiny of Zion, a theme uniting all sub-divisions. Isaiah was an obvious choice for a public lecture series because former students, now alumni, were already aware of the classical model and so were in a good position to listen in on a changing landscape. All major commentary 13  Christopher R. Seitz, ed., Reading and Preaching the Book of Isaiah (Philadelphia: Fortress, 1988).



The Rise of a New Model for Biblical Interpretation7

series of the period were still dividing the book in half or in three and underscored the divisions by assigning sub-sections to different authors. Publishing houses accepted as a given this model for commentaries and monographs. The sole exception was the Word Biblical commentary, which divided the book in half, at ch. 33. Yet it was regarded as a very unusual production: neither singleauthor oriented in the manner of conservative hold‑outs, nor resembling the classical model either.14 It should be acknowledged, at the same time, that newer approaches were being tested during this same period. I  have in mind the publications of Joachim Becker, in German, and Jacques Vermeylen, in French.15 There was nothing quite like these full-scale projects in English language form. More on this at the appropriate place below. Coming out of that teaching experience and the efforts to relate historical-critical findings to an accounting of the final form of books, I began to contemplate new approaches to reading the biblical literature. The lecture I gave at Yale during my interview process tackled the complicated question of the structure and design of the Book of Job. To be sure, one could identify constituent parts in the manner of traditional critical readings (older folktale book-ends; dialogues in three rounds; Elihu speeches; wisdom poem [ch. 28]; and divine speeches). Accounting for their diachronic development through speculative theories was one way of thinking about interpreting the Book of Job. But could one see in the design of the final form a different way of appreciating their role in the book, one in which the reader and the characters in the drama of Job are intentionally differentiated? The book poses a question about disinterested loyalty to God the readers are privy to but which Job must walk through fire to answer. This particular way of approaching the “canonical shape” of the Book of Job had its roots in the model Childs had developed in his 1979 publication, but it was also moving into new territory.16 A similar impulse lay behind an essay published in this same period.17 In this article, I  was seeking to move beyond the conceptual framework of Theology in Conflict (1989) with its redaction-critical evaluation of chs. 21–45 of Jeremiah, in order to address the canonical shape of the book as a whole. 14  J. Alec Motyer, The Prophecy of Isaiah: An Introduction and Commentary (Downers Grove: Inter Varsity Press, 1993); John D. W. Watts, Isaiah 1–33, 2 vols., rev. ed., WBC 24–25 (Nashville: Thomas Nelson, 2005). 15  Citations in n. 19 below. 16  Christopher R. Seitz, “Job: Full Structure, Movement, and Interpretation,” Int 43 (1989): 5–17. 17  Christopher R. Seitz, “The Prophet Moses and the Canonical Shape of Jeremiah,” ZAW 101 (1989): 3–27. The essay appears with permission. A pre-publication version of this essay was prepared for a lecture at the University of Marburg, and published as “Mose als Prophet: Redaktionsthemen und Gesamtstruktur des Jeremiabuch,” BZ 34 (1990): 234–45.

8

Introduction

I noted the analogies between the portrayal of Moses and Jeremiah and argued that this entailed an effort to interpret the career of the latter based upon the traditions circulating in respect of the former. It is in this more limited, less diachronically complex, sense that one might properly speak of the influence of deuteronomistic thought on the Book of Jeremiah – a still neuralgic point in the commentary treatments mentioned above. The burning of the scroll was a motif associated with the breaking of the tablets; the role of foreign faithfulness in the figure of Caleb had its counterpart in the depiction of EbedMelech; the refusal of the intercessory role known to have been decisive in Moses’s day led in Jeremiah’s case to an extended lamentation series; the new generation represented by Joshua had its counterpart in the role of Baruch the scribe. Neither Moses nor Jeremiah would accompany the new generation into the “promised land” though both were granted a vision of its promised fulfillment. A topic not addressed in the published thesis  – the divergent LXX and MT presentations – also needed address, given my concern to interpret the canonical shape of the book. This would involve a detailed treatment of the role and placement of ch. 45. Canonical reading does not try to put the literary deposit in “correct” chronological order – a problem particularly acute in the case of ch. 45 – but instead seeks to understand its present placement, linking backwards to the scribal role identified in ch. 36 and forward to the Oracles Against the Nations.18 They remain “planted” in their role as agents of judgments, and only then “torn down,” ending with Babylon. The different arrangement in the LXX is not so much a hard alternative whose “originality” is to be evaluated vis-a-vis the MT, but simply represents its own effort to place the OAN in a position already familiar from Isaiah and Ezekiel. I think it is fair to say that a general consensus about how to interpret the final form of Jeremiah, and to prepare a commentary treatment with a clear method, remains elusive to this day. Here, work on Isaiah stands in some contrast. There was a rough consensus in place, in the form of Isaiah of Jerusalem 18  A very similar set of concerns accompanies interpretation of chs. 36–39 in Isaiah. They are not in correct chronological order. They represent different, discrete episodes. They have a different counterpart in Kings. They sit on a very important transition point in the larger book of Isaiah, moving us from the Assyrian to the Babylonian era. Zion’s and Hezekiah’s deliverance are figures of a coming age, in which as well the nations will play a new role vis-à-vis Zion/Israel. Early, insightful essays discussing the arrangement of chs. 36–39 in the larger book are Peter R. Ackroyd, “An Interpretation of the Babylonian Exile: A  Study of 2 Kings 20, Isaiah 38–39,” SJT 27 (1974): 329–59; idem, “Isaiah 36–39: Structure and Function,” in Von Kanaan bis Kerala: Festschrift für Prof. Mag. Dr. Dr. J. P. M. van der Ploeg O. P. zur Vollendung des siebzigsten Lebensjahres am 4. Juli 1979, ed. W. C. Delsman, AOAT 211 (Neukirchen-Vluyn: Neukirchener Verlag, 1982), 3–21. More on this below.



The Rise of a New Model for Biblical Interpretation9

(chs.1–39), Second Isaiah, the Great Prophet of the Exile (40–55), and TritoIsaiah oracles, delivered back in the land (56–66). To be sure, chs. 34–35 were regarded as anticipatory of 40–55, and the final sixteen chapters did not break so sharply from what preceded in the same way one could observe at the border between Isaiah 39 and 40. But the general approach and distribution of commentary assignments fell along these lines, in a way without analogy for Jeremiah or Ezekiel.

The Book of Isaiah: Beyond the Three-Isaiah Model for Interpretation It is in this spirit of the age that I was offered and accepted an invitation to write on Isaiah 1–39 for the Interpretation series. There was simply no alternative model. Isaiah 40–66 had already been completed, and other series likewise broke the book into three (or two) sub-sections. Yet at the same time, it was a period of Isaiah research in which this very model was being interrogated and new alternatives were set forth in monograph studies and individual articles.19 Annual Society of Biblical Literature sessions were given over to the theme “The Unity of the Book of Isaiah” and contributors included Rolf Rendtorff, Walter Brueggemann, Gerald Sheppard, Edgar Conrad, David Carr, Ron Clements, Hugh Williamson, and others. The point is that even as work was being done on sub-sections of Isaiah, no longer was the assumption in place that these treatments had nothing to do with each other. At issue was the proper model for assessing the 66 chapter “unity.” One stressed redactional overlays that created a “Greater Isaiah” book out of separate blocks of tradition. The “unity” was therefore one imposed externally, as over time new historical and sociological pressures led to supplementation. The job was to spot disjunction and assign texts to levels of redaction. The other saw an organic development that led to further supplementation, with an eye toward a meaningful final literary creation. Clements would speak of a deutero-Isaianic development of first-Isaiah material. Williamson’s model was 19 So, for example, Joachim Becker, Isaias  – der Prophet und sein Buch, SBS 30 (Stuttgart: Katholisches Bibelwerk, 1968); Jacques Vermeylen, Du prophète Isaïe à l’apocalyptic (Paris: Gabalda, 1977–78); R. Lack, La symbolique du livre d’Isaïe: Essai sur l’image littéraire comme element de structuration, AnBib 59 (Rome: Pontifical Biblical Institute, 1973); the works of Ackroyd in the previous note. Ronald E. Clements, “The Prophecies of Isaiah and the Fall of Jerusalem in 587 B. C.,” VT 30 (1980): 421–36; idem, Isaiah and the Deliverance of Jerusalem: A Study of the Interpretation of Prophecy in the Old Testament, JSOTSup 13 (Sheffield: JSOT Press, 1980); idem, “Beyond Tradition-History: Deutero-Isaianic Development of First Isaiah’s Themes,” JSOT 31 (1985): 95–113; Rolf Rendtorff, “Zur Komposition des Buches Jesaja,” VT 34 (1984): 295–320.

10

Introduction

similar.20 Ulrich Berges shuttled carefully, and conscientiously, between both levels of concern.21 In order to prepare for the Isaiah 1–39 commentary treatment it would be necessary, therefore, to have some kind of working conceptual model in place in respect of those chapters but also the larger book as a whole. Typical of the transitional period, I was given Anchor Bible Dictionary articles to prepare but only First and Third Isaiah were available; Second Isaiah had already been assigned.22 Yet in my entries it is obvious I am no longer working with the idea of discrete sections. This is truly a transitional period in Isaiah studies. A careful reader will note above that while one could speak of chs. 34–35 as anticipatory of “Second Isaiah” chapters, that put a sort of spotlight on the role and placement of chs. 36–39. This came with some struggle, however. The longstanding view, going back to Gesenius (1821), was that the original location of these chapters, concerning the siege of Jerusalem and King Hezekiah, was in Kings (2 Kings 18–20). They were not integral to Isaiah nor its dramatic unfolding at this key narrative juncture but were secondarily added. That they resembled closely the other key narrative section in Isaiah itself (chs. 7–8) was ignored. Kings was also judged to have told the true story of Hezekiah, eliminated in Isaiah’s rendering, concerning his paying tribute to Sennacherib (2 Kgs 18:14–16). In time, these “historical verses” were judged to be corroborated by the Annals of Sennacherib. There are multiple problems associated with this rather simple view of the matter that do not need review here. For our purposes, what was required was a suitable account of the function of these chapters, including ch. 39, in the Book of Isaiah itself. A focus on originalism and history was blocking an eval20  H. G. M. Williamson, The Book Called Isaiah: Deutero-Isaiah’s Role in Composition and Redaction (Oxford; Clarendon; New York: Oxford University Press, 1994). 21  Ulrich Berges, Das Buch Jesaja: Komposition und Endgestalt (Freiburg: Herder, 1998); English translation, see idem, The Book of Isaiah: Its Composition and Final Form, trans. Millard C. Lind, HBM 46 (Sheffield: Sheffield Phoenix, 2012). Allow me to note in passing a difficulty in this period of Isaiah reconceptualization. Often there are gaps in cross-reference due to publication dates, different series and their format handling of “three Isaiahs,” and just the general ferment in Isaiah studies. Berges is conversant with my works on Isaiah appearing from 1988 to 1996 but neither my 2001 commentary on Isaiah 40–66 nor Childs’s OTL commentary on the whole book, in his several publications prior to this date. My commentary on 1–39 appeared earlier than his 2008 contribution to HKAT. The volumes on 1–39 in HKAT were prepared by Willem Beuken. The preponderance of references to Beuken in Childs’s commentary are from Beuken’s published essays concerning 40–66, not the commentary on 1–39. The same is true of my own treatments. Finally, as Childs’s commentary and my own on Isaiah 40–66 appeared in the same year, there is not any exchange between them. On this, see ch. 5 in the present volume, for example. 22  Appearing in 1993, Christopher R. Seitz, “Isaiah, Book of (First Isaiah),” in ABD 3:472–88; idem, “Isaiah, Book of (Third Isaiah),” in ABD 3:500–10.



The Rise of a New Model for Biblical Interpretation11

uation of chapters, prefaced as they were by material anticipatory of chs. 40–66, within the narrative flow of the Book of Isaiah. The logic of both contexts – that of Kings and that of Isaiah – required attention and explanation. Moreover, key elements concerning Hezekiah’s deportment in chs. 36–37 mirrored those concerning Ahaz in chs. 7–8 and offered a stunning contrast. Hezekiah believed and was established. His prayer saved a city. The salvation of Zion and the King’s faithfulness offered a figure of redemption, when after Assyria a new agent of judgment would arise in the outstretched arm of Babylon. We are prepared for this development already in the way chs. 13–14 have correlated discrete historical eras (Assyrian, Babylonian, Persian). Any proper estimate of the canonical shape of Isaiah would have to come to terms with the role played by these key chapters. This in turn would require a fresh evaluation of the model inherited from the 19th century for interpreting chs. 36–38 in relation to their counterpart in Kings. The discussion can be seen in the essay below on “Account A  and the Annals of Sennacherib” (1993).23 Also relevant, given the above, is how we are to understand the material found in chs. 36–39 as now prefaced by “Second Isaiah” type material in chs. 34–35. This question is taken up in the essay from the same period, “On the Question of Divisions Internal to the Book of Isaiah” (1993).24 The whole idea of three independent sections needed interrogation in the light of fresh work on Isaiah 36–39, given impetus in the essays of Peter R. Ackroyd in particular, undertaken in the 70s and early 80s. Clarity on the interpretation of these chapters as a whole (34–39) would be all the more crucial given a call for evaluating the Book of Isaiah as a whole, on either model vying for consent.25 What about the influence of these chapters on how we are to understand the dramatic courtroom-like presentation of Isaiah 40–48, where the nations are summoned for trial? Is Cyrus bringing an end to the “rod of fury” agency such as we have known it previously? Because I was working on a commentary within the constraints of the inherited model, but wanted to address the interpretation of the Book of Isaiah as a whole, it would be critical to provide a way of understanding the role of “First Isaiah’s” finale-become-transition chs. (34–39). Perhaps the division of the book into two sections, now located at ch. 33, had more going for it 23  Christopher R. Seitz, “Account A and the Annals of Sennacherib,” JSOT 58 (1993): 1–11. The essay appears in the present volume with kind permission. 24  Christopher R. Seitz, “On the Question of Divisions Internal to the Book of Isaiah,” in Society of Biblical Literature 1993 Seminar Papers, ed. Eugene H. Lovering (Atlanta: Scholars Press, 1993), 260–66. The essay appears with permission. 25  On the redactional overlay model, see especially Odil H. Steck, Bereitete Heimkehr: Jesaja 35 als redaktionelle Brücke zwischen dem Ersten und dem Zweiten Jesaja, SBS 121 (Stuttgart: Katholisches Bibelwerk, 1985).

12

Introduction

than had been contemplated in the three-Isaiah consensus.26 In order to clear the way for due consideration of chs. 36–39, prior to writing the commentary, I  produced a monograph in which the central role of Zion in the Book of Isaiah was foregrounded, as described in the preceding paragraphs.27 A good recent review of the wider discussion, and that book, can be seen in the exhaustive survey of Berges.28 Equally critical was the interpretation of Isa 40:1–11 for obvious reasons: this is the introduction to latter Isaiah chapters, and so must surely offer clues as to how what follows is to be read. Indeed, for many interpreters, it represented a “call narrative” of the Great Prophet of the Exile, in spite of there being no clear profile of this individual given in what we read. In the 1990 essay, my concern was in establishing the character of the opening verses. I accepted the view that the multiple voices in evidence were the divine plenipotentiary.29 (I have not been persuaded that latter Isaiah’s strong insistence on the exclusive nature of YHWH as sole deity precludes his speaking from the divine council; Isaiah 6 has this scenario and no one would call the prophet an entertainer of rival deities; equally Zechariah.) The opening section of latter Isaiah returns us to the divine council of Isaiah 6, upon which its depiction is dependent, as the means by which to authorize and extend that inspired divine voice, now speaking again for a new day. On this view, latter Isaiah chapters are cognizant of and speak as an extension of the literary deposit in chs. 1–39. Here I side with Ackroyd, Clements, Williamson and others. Determining the extent of that deposit at the time 26  Christopher R. Seitz, “The Unique Achievement of the Book of the Twelve: Neither Redactional Unity nor Anthology,” in The Book of the Twelve: An Anthology of Prophetic Book or the Result of Complex Redaction Processes, ed. Heiko Wenzel (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2018), 37–48. 27  Christopher R. Seitz, Zion’s Final Destiny: The Development of the Book of Isaiah: A Reassessment of Isaiah 36–39 (Minneapolis: Fortress, 1991). 28  See n. 21 above for citation. His is a very fair evaluation of my 1991 work with an exhaustive bibliography, providing a good view of the various positions (Ackroyd, Childs, Gonçalves, Smelik, Hardmeier, Williamson, Konkel, Liwak, Mayer, Conrad, Leene, and others). I  note that in respect of my work on Isa 40:1–11, he believes I  have altered the position I took in 1990 in a later essay (1996) concerning the divine council background. Actually, I was simply looking at two different issues (Isaiah 40’s dependence on Isaiah 6 in the former, and the way the chapters handle the prophetic agency in the second essay). In neither does my concern for Zion’s role in the larger book diminish. My commentary on Isaiah 40–66 had not appeared at the time he was writing (Christopher R. Seitz, “The Book of Isaiah 40–66,” in The New Interpreter’s Bible, ed. L. E. Keck [Nashville: Abingdon, 2001], 6:309–559). The convergence of these three concerns can be seen there. 29  Christopher R. Seitz, “The Divine Council: Temporal Transition and New Prophecy in the Book of Isaiah,” JBL 109 (1990): 229–47; idem, “How is the Prophet Isaiah Present in the Latter Half of the Book? The Logic of Chapters 40–66 within the Book of Isaiah,” JBL 115 (1996): 219–40. Both essays reproduced by permission.



The Rise of a New Model for Biblical Interpretation13

of latter Isaiah’s composition cannot be easily done, though Williamson has sought to pursue this task. I reckon with a mutual influencing (chs. 13–14 and 34–35 are obvious examples) while assuming a reasonably broad Isaianic base. A rival view holds that the two major sections of the book are independent and have been brought together by an external redactional effort. Steck and Kratz are good examples of this position, with Berges negotiating synchrony and diachrony in conjunction with each other.30 The 1996 essay was written after the commentary on Isaiah 1–39 had been completed and also anticipating the commentary project on Isaiah 40–66, which I had accepted at the time. The irony is obvious that, as I was working on interpreting the Book of Isaiah as a whole work, I could only do so in two different commentaries, for two different series, which would appear about a decade apart. My goal in the second essay was broader than an accounting of the opening section of latter Isaiah, and it was built upon the first one’s conclusions. There I described Isaiah’s word as a word consciously understood to be in the past, insofar as God’s judgment was concerned, and insofar as he was seen to be the announcer of that in his day and for his generation.31 But equally presupposed was that his former word was a word for the generations to come, and it was a word of future redemption. The salvation in Hezekiah’s day was a portent for the future. In my commentary treatment and in this same essay, I took the view that the divine word from the heavenly courtroom was an extension of Isaiah’s proclamation. It was a former thing to be remembered and encouraged/emboldened by, with the power to defeat the nations called for trial. As a former word, it constituted a testimony and Israel was to bear witness to it, all the more potent because delivered long ago. Chapters 40–48 are dedicated to this dramatic trial presentation. No first-person prophetic agency is in view, because the agency is in the form of appeal to past testimony already in the public record, based upon Isaiah’s proclamation and other privileged sacred history. At 48:16, as this presentation is approaching its denouement and beginning to open onto “new things … created now, not long ago” (48:6–7), for the first time, an individual steps into view, saying “and now the LORD God has sent me and his spirit.” In my view, the prophetic agent is depicted realistically and is intended to be understood as an historical figure. His “call” is recorded in the immediately following chapter, traditionally understood to be the second of the so-called “servant songs” (49:1–6/7). Childs views the call against the backdrop of 30  See his cautions on the view of Kratz in Berges, The Book of Isaiah, 34–37. He acknowledges as well the “tower of Babel” like proliferation of redactional theories in 40–55 (see reference at p. 302). 31 Compare the commentary remarks of Childs in Brevard S. Childs, Isaiah, OTL (Louisville: Westminster John Knox, 2001), 294–96.

14

Introduction

rebuke, which he understands to be the main theme of ch. 48. I take a different view as I do not see the main burden of ch. 48 along these lines. The emphasis is not on the failure of exilic Israel to do something but rather on the stepping forward of a faithful servant – because sent and empowered by God’s spirit (48:16) – as the embodiment of faithful Israel (as 49:3 will state it).32 The servant’s first-person declaration of frustration (v. 4), odd if arising in the context of an inaugural commissioning, requires a broader context for interpretation than a recalcitrant exilic generation. On my reading, the servant is reflecting on the frustration associated with the prophetic office grosso modo as this has taken form in the entire history of its existence in relation to Israel and furthermore with a vocation to the nations. Jeremiah, and his call to be prophet to the nations, is likely in the foreground here. God therefore reiterates the vocation and commits to its fulfillment in the servant (v. 6). As many agree, v. 7 is an intertextual anticipation of the final servant poem (52:15), where that vocation unfolds in line with God’s purposes. I develop the lines of this argument in the 2001 commentary treatment and include here a 2004 essay which is focused on this dramatic portrayal in chs. 49–53. The servant who steps forward in 48:16; who is commissioned against a background of frustration regarding the history of the prophetic vocation; who suffers at the hands of his own people and also likely the nations (50:4–11), is the embodiment of faithful Israel and of Israel in its missional/prophetic role vis-à-vis the nations, going back to the charge/promise given to Abram. The faithful servant dies, in something of the manner of the faithful intercessory Moses, but on the horizon of this sacrificial offering are the nations, who are envisioned as shutting their mouths in the light of awakened comprehension (52:15). The servants pay tribute and acknowledge the intercessory vocation and final victory of the servant, via his sacrifice, and its redemptive purpose in God’s designs. The “we” and “us” plural voices are the 32  Christopher

R. Seitz, “‘You are my Servant, You are the Israel in whom I  will be glorified’ – The Servant Songs and the Effect of Literary Context in Isaiah,” CTJ 39 (2004): 117–34. This essay is included by kind permission of the Calvin Theological Journal. Berges has his own strong alternative reading. The first servant song originally referred to Cyrus before being adapted. In the second and third texts, the returned Golah is the servant. The final servant song has Zion as its referent. This is derived from his view of chs. 40–48 and 49–55 as representing two different provenances: the first in Babylon and the second as back in Zion (Berges, Jesaja 40–48). The masculine references in the final servant poem are explained with reference to Lamentations 3:1. The returned Golah becomes the servant in 42:1–4. The opening unit (40:1–11*) is addressed to Zion’s sentinels and was outfitted to function in reference to 1–39. It was supplied redactionally as a bookend to 52:7–10 by these same returned Golah editors. I do not discuss the specifics of his view as my commentary on 40–66 was completed prior to the HKAT publication (2008) as well as his earlier monograph (1998). He has also modified his view on the authorship of chs. 40–48 over this ten-year period.

The Rise of a New Model for Biblical Interpretation15



faithful servants of the servant (54:17) and are in that sense his “seed” (53:10), the righteous offspring he will be given to “see,” much like a Moses looking over into a promised land he has secured but will not enter. This keyword (“seed/offspring”) anticipates the unfolding drama of chs. 55–66, as Beuken has so helpfully demonstrated.33 There the themes associated with the effect of the servant’s work vis-à-vis the nations are played out. The frustrations of the past are addressed and reconciled (49:1–9) in the context of promises being kept, at least proleptically, because of the servant and the faithful offspring God has raised up in the light of his sacrifice. The final essay for this section provides a nice summary of the shifting landscape in Isaiah studies, as represented in the foregoing discussion.34 It was prepared in the context of a grant I received for a research leave, during which time I  wrote the commentary on latter Isaiah chapters for the New Interpreter’s Bible Series. The subtitle, “Authorship and Inspiration,” indicates the direction of my concern. The proper interpretation of the Book of Isaiah in the modern period has been heavily influenced by an account of inspiration linked to individual prophetic “authorship.” The priority of the literal sense is a well-known signature of the Reformation and, alongside it, a concern for an intention rooted in the biblical author. Uncomplicatedly at the time, the author was identified with the books bearing the name of the agent of inspiration (Moses, David, Solomon, Isaiah, Daniel, Mark, Paul, Peter, and so forth). The literal sense was grounded in history and derivative of this agent in time. It would not take very long for this simple set of parameters to come apart once an “author” intending something was no longer a simple cohesion of book and agent of inspiration. To the degree this older paradigm held sway there seemed to be no other way to guard single authorial inspiration and literary coherence at the level of the final form of a text. As we have seen, the problem was particularly acute in the 66-chapter Book of Isaiah. The book was asked to bear the burden of a single authorial standpoint crossing all chapters and some account of “prediction” whereby Isaiah of Jerusalem could speak of events centuries away. The problem was amplified, however, because this referring-to-something-later speech did not take the form of prediction but of contemporaneous speech to an audience likewise far out in the future.35 33 

W. A. M. Beuken, “The Main Theme of Trito-Isaiah: The ‘Servants of YHWH,’” JSOT 47 (1990): 67–87. 34  Christopher R. Seitz, “Isaiah and the Search for a New Paradigm: Authorship and Inspiration,” Papers of the Henry Luce III Fellows in Theology, ed. Gary Gilbert (Atlanta: Scholars Press, 1999), 3:97–114. 35  The ch. 20 of this volume looks at two mediaeval interpreters who sensed this challenge and addressed it in ingenious ways, neither “modern” but equally not “traditional.”

16

Introduction

Taking a lead from Jon Levenson’s fine inquiry into what was meant traditionally by “Mosaic authorship,” we ask whether or not a more flexible, and certainly very different, account of what was meant by an “author” was at work in previous era. The claim for a single Mosaic author was more concerned for pointing toward a single coherent literary presentation (across five books of the Pentateuch) and an expectation placed upon readers to be guided by this idea than it was some claim for authorship as the term would come to be used in the modern period. The essay teases out the implications of this when it comes to proper interpretation of the Book of Isaiah.36 I return to the idea of interrogating earlier pre-critical commentaries for guidance in reading Isaiah in the final chapter of this work. I review the 12thcentury commentary of Abraham Ibn Ezra (1089–1164) and within it, his own critical references to the work of his revered predecessor R. Moses ibn Chiquitilla, whose 11th-century commentary on Isaiah is known only through Ibn Ezra’s exchanges. Their close readings, at a period equally concerned for attention to the literal sense, is surprisingly fresh – not least because they too are well aware of a “traditional view” they are contesting but one they view with great respect. Their respective treatments are also very different than Christian readings of the same period with which they are doubtlessly familiar. They feel constrained to follow the trail of the literal sense and where it leads them for reasons of theological conviction and not because of a modern notion of single authorial intention.

The Prophets: Beyond the Chronological Model for Interpretation In my teaching career, I generally opted for the second-semester lectures in a basic Introduction course. At the time, these typically took the form of Pentateuch and Deuteronomistic History (Former Prophets) in the first term and Prophets (Latter Prophets and Daniel) and Wisdom (and Ezra-Nehemiah, Chronicles, if time allowed) in term two. I had been trained as a student and was familiar with textbooks like von Rad’s Old Testament Theology. A handy knock-off was available in the form of The Message of the Prophets, which could come alongside this introductory model reasonably well. Von Rad’s 36  In preparing this volume, I ran across the translation of a work by Berges in which he makes similar comments. He speaks of a “discourse founder” conception in relation to Moses and Isaiah. Ulrich Berges, “The Book of Isaiah as Isaiah’s Book: The Latest Developments in the Research of the Prophets,” OTE 23 (2010): 549–73 (appears originally as “Das Jesajabuch als Jesajas Buch. Zu neusten Entwicklungen in der Prophetenforschung,” TRev 104 [2008]: 3–14).



The Rise of a New Model for Biblical Interpretation17

magisterial presentation in two volumes was the kind of thing you really needed to read in its entirety for the conception to stick and hopefully make sense. That was a lot to ask of first-year Masters students. The smaller volume on the prophets, however, was serviceable. In this model, the prophets were introduced by placing them in their correct historical order and dealing in harder or softer forms of theories of editorial editions, secondary expansions and redactions, and so forth. Von Rad’s was somewhere in the middle of such approaches. In time I would move to Blenkinsopp’s version of this kind of sequential treatment.37 It was sufficiently clear, not overly burdened with complex theories, and readable. Both models adopted roughly the same “Amos to Jonah” chronological grid. In this kind of approach, of the Major Prophets, Jeremiah and Ezekiel fared reasonably well and could be handled intact in the form we have them.38 Not so Isaiah. The Three Isaiahs needed extrication and redistribution on the timeline governing the approach. “First Isaiah” (to greater of lesser extent comprised of chs. 1–12, 28–33) could be ranged alongside Micah and after Amos and Hosea, “Second Isaiah” after Jeremiah, and “Third Isaiah” alongside EzraNehemiah or thereabouts in the postexilic period. From this brief summary, it will be clear that the project of dividing Isaiah and the more general sequential model were joined at the hip. They could not be easily separated if one was concerned to account for the Book of Isaiah in its present form. There are not three easily extricated prophetic individuals, for all of the reasons intimated above, and the sections of the book are mutually influencing each other in the final form of the 66-chapter book. It was at this juncture, and facing this methodological quandary, that I  began working with an alternative model. It would be possible to give a standard reckoning of the prophetic books in the light of their undoubted historical contexts but then move, as with Isaiah, to an account of them in their present form. What had been regarded as disruptive additions to individual witnesses (Hos 14:9; Joel 3:16; Amos 9:8b–15; Mic 7:8–20, etc.) would turn out to be significant editorial markers whose purpose was to help correlate the different voices and make for a clear historical profile on the one hand, and also a cumulative account of Israel’s history on the other, from the days of Hosea to the final (intentionally so designed) Book of Malachi. Specialized scholarship continued (and continues) to work on the Book of Isaiah, but I believe it is fair to say that a great amount of attention was shifting 37  Joseph Blenkinsopp, A History of Prophecy in Israel, rev. ed. (Louisville: Westminster John Knox, 1996). 38  One dealt with the questions of sources in the case of Jeremiah, and perhaps specialized treatments of the laments and the book’s relationship to deuteronomism. With Ezekiel the final chapters (40–48) received special evaluation.

18

Introduction

to the Book of the Twelve. Both works, moreover, undertook something like the same grand historical sweep (from Assyrian to Babylonian to Persian period proclamation), but in the case of the Twelve, one had help in the form of individualized (and dated) sub-sections. Nevertheless, and as is typical of large-scale reconstructions, the theories that claimed to account for the work as a whole multiplied. Some stressed stitching at the beginning and endings of books while others saw a supplemental growth. I review the alternatives in the various essays in this section of the book. There were even efforts to relate the complex editorial growth of both witnesses (Isaiah and the Twelve) to each other and to describe this in detail.39 I was invited to attend an event in Heidelberg honoring the centennial of von Rad’s birth (1901–1971). The first essay is the published form of that address.40 I seek to identify the enduring insights of that great interpreter and also sketch out, provisionally, an alternative model. This would be one which moved beyond tradition-history toward an accounting of the literature in its final form. Intertextual association is an equally decisive feature in the growth of Israel’s sacred literature. I should mention in passing that interest in the presentation of the Minor Prophets as a whole did not animate the account provided by Childs in his own 1979 Introduction. One did not see a chronological account in that work, similar to the reigning models of the day; the books were dealt with in the present MT order, starting with Hosea and ending with Malachi. Childs does not dispute this (chronological) feature and, indeed, one comes away aware of it just as if he were handling the individual witnesses in this sequential manner. Rather, his concern is the canonical shape of the individual witnesses as individual books. I  once asked about his demurral on this score and he replied that he had a student who wanted to work on the Twelve as a whole. He confessed he was not persuaded that the project was viable in the form the doctoral student had presented it to his teacher. But further, he had enough to do just tackling the individual witnesses and accounting for the final canonical form of each one. So, one can see the significance of supplemental additions noted above, like Hos 14:9, but typically these function within the context of the witnesses as individual works (so especially his treatment of Amos 9:8b– 15). Twelve research would, in coming years, extend that level of inquiry to the larger collection itself. 39 

See ch. 10 in the present volume for a discussion. Christopher R. Seitz, “Prophecy and Tradition-History: The Achievement of Gerhard von Rad and Beyond,” in Prophetie in Israel: Beiträge des Symposiums “Das Alte Testament und die Kultur der Moderne” anlässlich des 100. Geburtstags Gerhard von Rads (1901–1971) Heidelberg, 18.–21. Oktober 2001, ed. I. Fischer, K. Schmid and H. G. M. Williamson (Munster: Lit-Verlag, 2003), 30–51. 40 

The Rise of a New Model for Biblical Interpretation19



The von Rad anniversary lecture moves quite directly into the chapter that follows it, where it is referenced in the prefatory comments.41 Von Rad had seen the potential in reading his Yahwist contribution through the lens of the Priestly writer as this now confronts us in the first three chapters of Genesis. The first in a series of mitigated “fall stories” is prefaced by the “very good” of God’s designs. This increases the seriousness of the portrayal and reveals a level of intention not typically valued (or noticed) given the model he is using. Von Rad refers to Franz Rosenzweig’s comment that the redactor (R) responsible for this convergence is in fact “our teacher” (rabbenu). But von Rad appears troubled by this further extension of his own thought. In the essay in Heidelberg, and in this essay, I go over that ground again. The convergences in the final form do indeed represent a datum worthy of our attention, out beyond the critical separation of sources, prophets, Gospels, and so forth. The essay summarizes the usual procedure of Introductions to the Prophets, as I have briefly referred to above. It then sets out a reading of the Book of the Twelve which does not ignore or repudiate the usual critical findings but works with them to evaluate the combination of dated and undated books in the Minor Prophets collection. Questions related to alternative sequences (in Greek translation; at Qumran, provisionally) are addressed. A new model for reading the Book of the Twelve in the context of the provision of an “Introduction” is commended. The main point throughout is that “history” is not point-by-point recitation of things past. Maturation, subsequent reflection, the passage of time are all necessary to “speak historically.” Canonical shaping is the means by which Israel came to understand its historical identity and its future in God’s hands; The Book of the Twelve, in its final form, accomplishes this.42 The essay which follows emerges from a slightly different angle of vision.43 Its running theme is “experiential-expressive” reading.44 George Adam Smith is taken to be representative of the great potential of this kind of approach 41 

Christopher R. Seitz, “What Lesson Will History Teach? The Book of the Twelve as History,” in ‘Behind’ the Text: History and Biblical Interpretation, ed. Craig Bartholomew et al., SHS 4 (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 2003), 443–69. 42  See especially my work on the Book of Joel, where this dimension is at the fore. Joel is composed as a compendium for interpreting the history that ensues in books to follow. Christopher R. Seitz, Joel, ITC (London: Bloomsbury T&T Clark, 2016). 43  Christopher R. Seitz, “The Book of the Twelve: New Horizons for Canonical Reading, with Hermeneutical Reflections,” SBET 22 (2004): 151–72. This is an edited version of the original essay appearing as ch. 8 in Prophecy and Hermeneutics (full citation in n. 45 below). 44  For the use of this term, see George A. Lindbeck, The Nature of Doctrine: Religion and Theology in a Postliberal Age (Philadelphia: Westminster, 1984). I discuss its meaning in the context of reading the prophets in the essay.

20

Introduction

and the popularizations that followed his as a sort of homiletical topping on the historical-critical cake. The individual Minor Prophets were brought to life through their retrieval from the canonical books associated with them. We become like Amos, one with the shepherds, breathing the clear desert air, from which arises the divine word of address. The problems associated with gaining this sharp profile through critical methods are rehearsed. Yet the question is also raised whether the canonical shaping has not left this matter of access to the side but has handled it in its own way through the provision of hermeneutical models built into the Book of the Twelve in its final form. Habakkuk is taken to be a good example of just this kind of provision. In the years following the publication of these essays, I turned to longer monograph and commentary treatments of the Prophets.45 In addition, I  produced a commentary on Paul’s letter to the Colossians that likewise sought to interpret the letter within the context of the Pauline Letter Collection as a whole.46 I consciously drew on work on the Book of the Twelve and attempted to demonstrate areas of fruitful comparison. Why are the prison letters grouped together, when to do so interrupts the from-big-to-small organizational structure of the Letter Collection (Galatians and Ephesians are the notable exceptions)? Is Colossians composed in conscious relationship with a growing corpus of letters? One can speak of occasional letters where the “live character” of Paul’s discourse and the specific setting and audience are important to grasp, as with dated books in the Twelve. But Colossians has a different feel at this juncture, and we are told that it is to be exchanged and read in a new and different setting (Col 4:16). Features like this enabled one to consider the effect of placing individual witnesses inside a fixed collection. Research on the Book of the Twelve was continuing unabated during this period with fresh monographs appearing in rapid succession.47 This was proving to be a very stimulating context for methodological reflection. Even what verbs to employ participated in the discussion; do we have books or a Book in nominal place? The question was reflected in some ways in the mediaeval Masoretic practice of counting verses. In the Book of the Twelve, each witness receives a count, but equally, so does the collection as a whole. After the publication of the Joel commentary, I was invited to participate in a conference on 45 

Christopher R. Seitz, Prophecy and Hermeneutics: Toward a New Introduction to the Prophets, STI (Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2007); idem, The Goodly Fellowship of the Prophets: The Achievement of Association in Canon Formation (Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2009); idem, Joel. 46 Seitz, Colossians. 47 See my opening comments on this phenomenon in the 2016 Joel commentary. “Surveying the recent spate – deluge, glut, avalanche – of monographs on the redaction of the Book of the Twelve and especially of Joel’s specific role in that, one is tempted to speak of a ‘Book of the Twelve Gold Rush’” (Seitz, Joel, 1).



The Rise of a New Model for Biblical Interpretation21

the Book of the Twelve. The title of the volume of papers that would appear in 2018 helpfully pointed to the neuralgic area in Twelve research.48 Is the collection to be conceived of as an “anthology of individual books” or is it a unified collection, “the result of a complex redactional process?” My answer was: Neither. But the question posed was a good one, and it pointed to the place where scholars were divided. I begin the essay with a review of what the word “redaction” might be taken to mean. For some, the word points to a model of interpretation which emphasizes differentiation, supplementation, argumentation, and the literary business of identifying this activity and assigning it to successive layers. But others use the word and have in view ongoing reflection that intends to exist in a coherent final literary presentation. Final editors are, and mean to be, first readers.49 In the case of the Twelve, as well, there are simply an array of options for how one might conceive of their origin, supplementation, editorial linkages, books with a primarily hermeneutical purpose inside the collection, and so forth. Enough time had passed in Twelve research to be able organize the options in a clear way. The conference gave me an opportunity to pursue an issue that had long intrigued me and which has a point of contact with earlier work on the canonical form of the Book of Isaiah. There have been studies that attend to the two works in relationship to each other, in view of editorial work said to be affecting them both in their final form. But my interest has been at a different level. The mid-point by verse of the Twelve is a manifestly significant marker. “Zion will be plowed as a field/Jerusalem will become a heap of ruins,” so the Lord’s somber death sentence issued through the prophet Micah (3:12). Jerusalem and Judah will meet the same fate as befell the Northern Kingdom, if not more severely and thoroughly. And precisely at this same mid-point (Good Friday in character, in Christian language), Isaiah’s refrain has been borrowed (or shared) to point to the ultimate promise: the streaming of the nations to Zion to learn God’s Torah alongside his own, restored people (Isa  2:2–5; Mic  4:1–5). The idea that this mid-point could become this weighty theologumenon by happenstance just seemed too far-fetched. At the same time, conceptualizing how this was achieved, given twelve books, full of redactional supplementation and cross-reference, boggles the mind. 48  Christopher R. Seitz, “The Unique Achievement of the Book of the Twelve: Neither Redactional Unity nor Anthology,” in The Book of the Twelve: An Anthology of Prophetic Book or the Result of Complex Redaction Processes, ed. Heiko Wenzel (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2018), 37–48. The essay appears by permission of the editor. 49  One might compare the insightful contributions to pentateuchal studies – an equally fraught domain – by Jean-Pierre Sonnet.

22

Introduction

At the same time, one has been made aware of similar mid-point significance, most notably in the Book of Ecclesiastes. In that context, though smaller in size, the same kind of daunting conceptualization remains. Add verses here, subtract there – what kind of scribal endeavor were we tracking? Given that Isaiah and the Twelve are wide-range similar undertakings, with differences noted above, what about the mid-point of that larger 66-chapter prophetic work? The essay examines this question. In conclusion, cautions are registered about thinking of canonical shaping along too-linear lines. Even the three-Isaiah idea wittingly or unwittingly heads in this direction: from Assyrian Isaiah, to Babylonian Isaiah, to Persian period Isaiah/s. Narrativity and sequentiality are key registers for historically-oriented minds. Yet the very fact that correlations across these eras are being registered already in chs. 1–39 ought to caution us against a strictly linear model for interpretation. The alternative is one in which types and figures have been constructed and are being shown in their deeper, trans-historical significance. Against the backdrop of a search for the meaning of a mid-point now marked in the final form of the Book of Isaiah as a whole – a feature with significance in the Twelve and Ecclesiastes – what if the very idea of three one-after-the-other sections is being subverted? We have already made note of the placement of chs. 34–35 prior to the transitional section at 36–39, and the effort to coordinate Assyrian and Babylonian period proclamation this achieves. So the focus of the chapter falls on the pivotal ch. 33 and an evaluation of its role in the larger Book of Isaiah. The essay also brings us back around to work on Isaiah under discussion in the previous section. The final chapter of this section is the one most recently appearing in print. Insofar as it is an overview of my sense of the Prophetic section of the MT, it serves as a fitting summary and conclusion to this section of the present volume. Additionally, it probes the effect of placing two different kinds of prophetic record (Former Prophets/DtrH and Latter Prophets/Three and Twelve) side by side. For obvious reasons, this discussion also touches on an alternative arrangement better known in English translation, in which these two sections have been separated, the former supplemented with other “historical books” and the latter including Daniel and moved to the final position. Where did this arrangement come from? To say, Greek version/LXX ignores the fact that Malachi in final position (and before Matthew) appears in no Greek or Latin version until the Reformation period.



The Rise of a New Model for Biblical Interpretation23

Canonical Interpretation: Rethinking Author, Setting, Audience The essay that opens this section has been discussed above in the context of canonical reading of Jeremiah.50 The remainder are for the most part recent contributions. They can be organized around the classical touchstones for modern historical critical reading: locating an author and his/her intentions; determining the historical setting in which the author is functioning; and recreating the audience the author is addressing via the discourse under investigation. The hermeneutical goal that follows from all this is the provision of the means by which we identify with the audience as reconstructed. In Christian Scripture, due to its two-testament form, there is the further challenge of assessing the significance of the New Testament, insofar as it brokers Israel’s sacred scriptures in its own literal sense deliverances. Can we overhear the intentions of Jesus? Is the theological significance of Christian Scripture (and the Old Testament within it) primarily to be sought at the level of an evangelist’s or Paul’s reading of the first witness? The idea of a “Great Prophet of the Exile” (in Isaiah) has brought in its wake efforts to understand the mission of Jesus Christ as oriented quite specifically around this (modern) conceptuality. A  Great Prophet in Babylonian Exile directs the vocation of Jesus Christ. Yet, does the Book of Isaiah itself actually deliver such a conceptuality, or is it birthed in basic introductory courses from the late 19th century on? As we have seen above, the prophetic books, and especially Isaiah, are now being read in a very different way. Canonical interpretation appreciates the questions of author, setting, and audience but handles them in distinctive ways. This includes a degree of constraint in respect of their hermeneutical significance, deferring instead to the productive character of the final form of the text. It also departs from a very popular account of the significance of Israel’s scriptures as Christian witness, seen through the lens of a second testament’s use of it. My recent publications have paid particular attention to this latter issue.51 The essay that turns quite specifically to the New Testament’s use of the Old Testament is the next one in this section. It argues that the emphasis on the exile in recent NT treatments misunderstands the way that theme functions in the canonical presentation of Isaiah. This misunderstanding derives from a conceptuality in which the “author” of chs. 40–55 is situated in Babylonian exile. Newer treatments have 50  Christopher R. Seitz, “The Prophet Moses and the Canonical Shape of Jeremiah,” ZAW 101 (1989): 3–27. Reproduced with permission. 51  Christopher R. Seitz, The Character of Christian Scripture: The Significance of a Two Testament Bible, STI (Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2011); idem, Elder Testament: Canon, Theology, Trinity (Waco, TX: Baylor University Press, 2018); idem, Convergences.

24

Introduction

challenged this view, even those that may hold to a traditional account of three Isaiahs. One consequence of this is a depiction of the earthly Jesus as concerned to bring about the true conclusion to Israel’s exile.52 Attention is paid to an effort to reconstruct his thinking as a sort of sub-narrative driving the evangelists’, and Paul’s, larger canonical portrayal. The essay questions (1) the way in which this might be viewed as Biblical Theology properly speaking; (2) whether it does justice to the canonical shape of Isaiah (in which the theme is integrated into a larger one concerning Israel’s role vis-à-vis the nations), a shape which is more likely to be operative than the historical-critical one, at the time of the formation of the NT; (3) and, finally, whether Biblical Theology requires a different account of the way in Old and New Testaments make their distinctive contributions. As noted just now, the essay’s main thrust has been picked up and developed in more recent monograph treatments. The next essay looks at the third pillar of modern historical reading – audience – and asks whether audiences and settings must be excavated in order for the Book of Jeremiah to function for proper interpretation.53 It notes the existence of a level of tradition in the opening chapters of the book that points to a readership as fully anticipated by the canonical presentation. A  thirdperson plural reality sees the fact of judgment as exercised by God over the Northern Kingdom and confesses its appropriateness. A readership is given to participate in the historical realities of Jeremiah’s day and to acknowledge the fittingness of God’s justice. We can see similar evidence of this kind of canonical shaping at the end of Hosea. The fittingness of the prophet’s word and the ways of God with his people are a “wisdom” next generations are bidden to strive for. God’s ways are his character as compassionate and merciful but also just and righteous. The wise walk in them. The Book of Joel in-scripts the words Hosea proclaims are to be taken by the wise to God (Hos 14:1–9).54 The canonical form of Jeremiah and Deuteronomy both make use of this hermeneutical “access” for the reader observing God’s ways in the past as the means for being instructed and forgiven, and shown a future in his ways. I was preparing the second installment of commentary on Isaiah, following on monograph treatments, several published essays, and a 1993 commentary 52 

Christopher R. Seitz, “Of Mortal Appearance: Earthly Jesus and Isaiah as a Type of Christian Scripture,” ExAud 14 (1998): 31–41. This is an edited version of ch. 8 in idem, Figured Out: Typology and Providence in Christian Scripture (Louisville: Westminster John Knox, 2001). 53  Christopher R. Seitz, “The Place of the Reader in Jeremiah,” Reading the Book of Jeremiah: A Search for Coherence, ed. M. Kessler (Winona Lake: Eisenbrauns, 2004), 67–75. The essay originated as ch. 14 in idem, Word Without End: The Old Testament as Abiding Theological Witness (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1998). 54  See Seitz, Joel.



The Rise of a New Model for Biblical Interpretation25

on Isaiah 1–39, during which time my colleague Brevard Childs was working on his own treatment of the entire book. My Isaiah 40–66 and his commentary for the Old Testament Library both appeared in 2001. So it was intriguing for me to see where our work overlapped and where it diverged. He had access to this prior work and engaged with it in his running commentary from time to time. A volume was proposed to discuss “multivalence” in biblical texts. Against the backdrop of historical-critical excavation, where texts of Isaiah were assigned to different eras and contexts, I decided to look at the royal material found in chs. 7–11 of Isaiah.55 In this instance, then, multivalence would refer to the potential for historical reading to find a variety of candidates referred to in Isaiah 7 (who is Immanuel?), Isaiah 9 (sounds like a contemporary king, but who … Hezekiah, Josiah?) and Isaiah 11 (seems to presuppose a cessation of kingship, after which a future “shoot” will rise up). Could one, in turn, find a reading that was capable of coordinating these texts as a whole with Isaiah 1–12 and indeed in the like of the larger book (recall comparisons made between Isaiah 6–8 and 36–38 above, and the contrast of unbelieving Ahaz and faithful Hezekiah). What intrigued me were the places where Childs and I, both appealing to a canonical interpretation, markedly diverged in this particular section of Isaiah. He held that the mystery surrounding the Immanuel birth was intentional (the name finds symbolic recycling already in the core tradition). More than that, the oracle in 9:2–7 (Eng.), which appeared to refer to an actual Davidid with contemporary relevance, was equally mysterious at that level of disclosure and so pointed to an eschatological figure. In both cases, one supposed, failure to give a name meant intentional obscurity. But the texts are very different in that no symbolic recycling akin to Immanuel is in evidence in ch. 9. “To us a child is born,” moreover, does not sound symbolic, generic (so Alt), or eschatological. Here, the contrast with ch. 11 is clear. The essay here follows closely the arguments I had laid out in my commentary. I will leave it to the reader to study the treatments of Childs and myself. I do believe it is important to note that canonical reading is an art, and the biblical text encourages us to dig in and work hard at interpretation. It does not operate with the expectation of univocal results but of reasoned probabilities, grounded in the canonical presentation as a “fixed” reality. My reading turns on assumptions related to the centrality of Hezekiah and the similarity of the narratives under discussion with those in which Hezekiah plays a major 55  Christopher R. Seitz, “Fixity and Potential in Isaiah,” in The Multivalence of Biblical Texts and Theological Meanings, ed. Christine Helmer (Atlanta: Scholars Press, 2006), 37–45. Reproduced with permission.

26

Introduction

role in the transition to latter Isaiah material. Canonical context is a form of “fixity” but one must still carefully evaluate how proper context – not in historical terms, but in canonical terms – is to be determined. The essay to follow was prepared for a volume in honor of my former Yale colleague Robert R. Wilson.56 Wilson was known for his book on the prophets in which he moved away from individualized portraits and took seriously their anchorage in societal relationships and norms. In the case of Isaiah, he had been persuaded that the plural imperatives in ch. 40 meant that a group of Isaianic disciples was being addressed, and they were responsible for the ensuing chapters. It was not a hard argument being made but a suggestive one (and it finds representatives in some modern treatments). Wilson was seeking “associations” presumably at work in the socio-cultural milieu which gave rise to the literature now before us. Another example of “association” could be seen in the work of Gerhard von Rad, as traditions were handed on across the generations, supplemented, and bent to new purposes as the Old Testament took form. Here, von Rad was interested chiefly in what one might call “medial” or developing associations. Toward the end of his life he began to consider associations at the level of the canonical form. The priestly writer had previously, in his hands, been viewed as a latecomer and somewhat of an outlier, associatively speaking.57 He viewed, equally, wisdom as being an international and external phenomenon. Toward the end of his life he would modify his view of the priestly writer and wisdom both, seeing in the conjunction of sources something productive and worthy of exegetical reflection. But it must be said that he also worried about the implications of such an approach. I have discussed the matter above and will not give a further rehearsal here. I use von Rad as a transitional figure so as to move to a discussion of the Book of the Twelve. In my most recent work, I have discovered very similar, and more surprising, reflections on the final form of the Pentateuch and its associative potential in the work of von Rad’s contemporary Martin Noth. In my discussion of the Minor Prophets, I point out that it is not just historical-critical interpreters that operated with a non-associative understanding of the individual prophetic figures but equally those who reacted against them from a conservative standpoint. They just judged the extent of the material in the books associated with the individual prophet in more maximal terms. I make reference to the work of John Barton in connection with the former. He had become familiar with the newer Twelve research and wondered about 56  Christopher R. Seitz, “Prophetic Association,” in Thus Says the Lord: Essays on the Former and Latter Prophets in Honor of Robert R. Wilson, ed. John J. Ahn et al., LHBOTS 502 (London: T&T Clark, 2009), 156–66. Reproduced with permission. 57  See my discussions in Elder Testament and Convergences.

The Rise of a New Model for Biblical Interpretation27



its impact on “Biblical Research” in the traditional historical-critical mode. Knowing that the appearance of the “Day of the LORD” ran across prophetic witnesses, sometimes separated by considerable stretches of time (Amos, early; Joel, late), he questioned whether something of the historical particularity of the ages would be lost if one considered them as meaningfully related in the canonical form of the Twelve. In my view, the answer is No. Canonical associations do not domesticate the historical dimension but instead help us see it in its temporal ambition and range. I pursue the matter in greater detail in the next essay, which is in fact a contribution to a volume honoring Professor Barton.58 At the start of the essay, I provide now familiar reflections on intertextual associations and apparent cross-referencing, especially in evidence in the Book of the Twelve. But the essay focuses on a very particular case of association and one that underscores the problems with a focus on the prophet as individual inspired agent. The challenge confronts conservative guardian of said agent and liberal deployer of historical critical excavation of the same. Isa 2:1–4 and Mic 4:1–4 are texts that come from the books associated with the respective individual prophets said to be inspiring them. So, how are we to understand the fact that the texts are essentially the same, word-for-word, with just a minor plus in the latter (Mic 4:4)? An example from a conserving voice is provided from Bruce Waltke’s Micah commentary treatment. Micah is the author of the texts in question. The fact of such a close correspondence does not call for very much comment because his main concern is to preserve as much of the book of Micah as possible for the historical prophet. We then contrast this reserve with the treatments available from the long history of interpretation prior to the rise of historical-critical reading, all of which display a foregrounded concern for explaining an obvious point of literary correlation. The individuality of the prophet, or the intention of an author, highly prized in modern interpretation, do not block out the main concern for making sense of the canonical witness at its length and breadth. The final essay of the section comes alongside the first one discussed above.59 What happens when an alleged provenance and an individual prophetic agent within it become dominant integers in interpretation of the Book of Isaiah? 58  Christopher

R. Seitz, “Scriptural Author and Canonical Prophet: The Effect of Literary Association in the Canon,” in Biblical Methods and Interpretation: Essays in Honour of John Barton, ed. Katharine J. Dell et al. (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2013), 176–88. Permission granted by the editors and press for reproduction here. 59  See n. 45 above. Christopher R. Seitz, “Provenance as a Factor in Interpretation,” in The Prophets Speak on Forced Migrations, ed. Mark J. Boda et al. (Atlanta: SBL, 2015), 19–32.

28

Introduction

The most stable section of the book, after the application of historical-critical theory, emerged as chs. 40–55. This involved a relatively agreed literary core (remove servant-songs and leave the rest alone), a clear prophetic profile (proclamation boldly directed to despondent Israel in Babylonian Exile from “the prophet Deutero-Isaiah”) and an audience there alongside him needing consolation and encouragement. Chapters 40–55 appeared to offer the best terrain for historical-criticism’s tried and true priorities (authorial intention, provenance, re-created audience), especially given the complexity of such evaluation elsewhere in the book. The essay rehearses problems with the Babylonian Exile provenance as popularized in the 20th century and, alongside it, the motif of a Second Exodus on analogy with the Exodus from Egypt. Chapters 40–55 envision a return from a dispersion to all compass points, directly to Zion. The material never envisages a Babylonian orientation and when read properly in this sense, it comes alongside the other major portions of the book (chs. 1–39 and 56–66).

Prophecy in the History of Interpretation The final contributions to this volume look at Prophets and Canon from the perspective of earlier periods of interpretation. The first examines the emergence of critical interpretation such as we know it in the classical 20thcentury form.60 Of most importance is the 19th-century dismantling of the Law-Prophets linkage so fundamental in previous era. No longer were the prophets regarded as the successors to Moses, and the Law was in larger measure relegated to the postexilic period. Though now taken for granted, it was in its day an extremely radical re-casting. The conceptual framework by which the prophets were to be understood would come under major revision. Alongside this would emerge chronological grids of interpretation. Joel had once been viewed as the next prophet’s (Amos) benefactor. Jonah belonged to the period in which his neighbor was active (Micah). Interpreters recognized the kinds of cross-referencing now influencing studies of the Twelve, but the direction of dependence was far more simple, reliant as it was on the present order of the Twelve. But this would also lead, in the earliest 19th-century readjustments, to odd orders like Joel-Jonah-Amos-Hosea. One senses a level of excitement as the historical-contextualization project gave interpreters a challenge, even contest, for the provision of a convincing chronological account. 60 Christopher R. Seitz, “Prophecy in the Nineteenth Century Reception,” in From Modernism to Post-Modernism (The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries), vol. 3 of Hebrew Bible/Old Testament: The History of Its Interpretation, ed. Magnus Saebo (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2015), 443–69.



The Rise of a New Model for Biblical Interpretation29

The essay accounts for all the varieties of interpretation as these emerged at the period. The changing scholarly landscape for evaluating the Three (Isaiah, Jeremiah, and Ezekiel) as well as Daniel, is also the subject of review. The 19th century was a period of trial-and-error that, at its conclusion, bequeathed scholarship the working models which remain with us today. One irony is that, in viewing the dismantling of the canonical form, one can revisit the variety of accounts of literary dependency that, in the present period, become relevant again for newer redactional or canonical interpretation. The final essay is also the most recent.61 I was asked to address (what I took to be) the very broad theme of “The Presentation of History” in the Book of Isaiah. The volume presupposes an era in which Isaiah studies have been subject to review and to a considerable modification of the older Three Isaiah model. I decided to re-examine the idea of Isaiah as prophet/predictor, an idea that sought to keep Assyrian period prophetic intelligibility aligned with material in the book clearly addressed to later audiences centuries in the future. The “presentation of history” such as we find it in the other largescale prophetic books (Jeremiah, Ezekiel) is not burdened with this kind of temporal ambition in the final literary form. Daniel, however, does operate within something of the same ambitious “presentation of history.” The Babylonian Daniel sees into a distant future. Yet, unlike Isaiah, the problems associated with this kind of transportation through time are explicitly addressed. In his distress and confusion, the prophet is told the visions he receives are not for his day (7:15–16, 28; 8:15–17). The Book of Isaiah does not adopt this manner of explicit temporal displacement accompanied by clarification for prophetic agent and reader.62 At this point, in order to get better perspective on the issue under discussion, I  turn to the example of two pre-modern interpreters to see how the challenge is framed for them and how they address it. I have in mind the 12thcentury commentary of Abraham Ibn Ezra (1089–1164) and within it, his own critical references to the work of his revered predecessor R. Moses ibn Chiquitilla, whose 11th-century commentary on Isaiah is known only through Ibn Ezra’s exchanges. Both commentaries deal with the ambitious “presentation of history” in Isaiah, but come to different results. Chiquitilla pushes against the traditional understanding of Isaiah as endowed with “messianic” visions, that is, having to do with the end of time and the arrival of the Messiah. The prophecies of the book traditionally understood in this way put the reader before their temporal fulfillment. Isaiah is enabled to see into a far, far distant time. 61  Christopher R. Seitz, “The Presentation of History in the Book of Isaiah,” in The History of Isaiah: The Making of the Book and Its Presentation of the Past, ed. Todd Hibbard and Jake Stromberg, FAT I (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2021). 62  I discuss the example of Isa 21:3–4 to show the character of the problem.

30

Introduction

Chiquitilla reduces this dimension considerably. Isaiah is speaking about his day: Hezekiah, Sennacherib’s invasion, restoration in the days of Hezekiah (11:11–12). The servant in chs. 40–55 is this same king. On rare occasion, however, he can see into a far more distant future, mostly in the last chapters of the book. On his account, intelligibility to contemporaries is maximal, yet at the same time the more “wondrous” endowment can co-exist without much tension as it is vastly reduced. Ibn Ezra, as noted, knows the treatment of his predecessor. He increases the nearer and longer range future predictions in Isaiah 1–39. Uriel Simon notes great medieval tolerance for the idea of intelligibility for contemporaries and proclamations that “have no real meaning for the prophet’s audience” issuing forth from one and the same prophet – an idea Chiquitilla sought to re-adjust. The fascinating discovery in Ibn Ezra’s work comes in the chs. 40–66. In 1–39, contemporaneous address and highly particularized future revelations (details from the Persian period) sit side by side. But close attention to the literal sense by Ibn Ezra, will not allow this same understanding in Latter Isaiah. The prophet Isaiah cannot be speaking in the form of address to himself, explaining his death and tribute being paid to him. For Ibn Ezra this is too convoluted; it differs from the presentation in 1–39 and requires a different interpretation. We are not reading long-range predictions but contemporaneous address to a distinctive individual. This brief summary is sufficient to indicate the general direction of the essay. There is a certain courage in Ibn Ezra’s dedication to the peshat in these chapters. The suffering of the servant had been taken as directly predictive of the suffering of Jews in his own period, and the fit was obvious enough, if also tragic. He did not want to rule out that understanding but saw in the past history something more akin to a figure of Judaism’s mediaeval tribulations than a prediction of them in some one-to-one sense. For the purposes of the essay, these two mediaeval commentators provide superb illustration of how a commitment to “the literal sense” entails facing the challenge of the “presentation of history” as the book of Isaiah now sets this forth in its final canonical form. The challenge is a perennial one, shared by Jews and Christians both.63

63  For an account of the latter, arguably more difficult and not less, in the light of the New Testament, see Brevard S. Childs, The Struggle to Understand Isaiah as Christian Scripture (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2004). Compare Seitz, Word Without End, 194–228.

The Rise of a New Model for Biblical Interpretation31



Conclusion The present volume consists of essays I  have published in the area of the Prophets and more specifically, the canonical division of Latter Prophets or prophecy in its classical expression. The Rise of a New Model for Interpretation extends equally to the Pentateuch, Former Prophets (Deuteronomistic History), and Writings. I have more recent treatments that discuss these portions of the canon of Israel’s Scriptures and how a canonical hermeneutics offers a way forward for renewed interpretation.64 A popular approach to “Wisdom Literature” is now under reconstruction.65 Debates over models for interpreting the Pentateuch/Hexateuch continue apace.66 I hold the view that the models assumed by Gerhard von Rad and Martin Noth were headed, in their latest renditions, toward a canonical exegesis, that is, one in which the various sources and traditions were valued as they now consist in a stable final form.67 But newer Pentateuchal criticism has returned to supplemental theories earlier in vogue, and now in the form of late, competing, discordant and opposing forces in postexilic Israel.68 Rendtorff bent a supplemental model in the direction of appreciation of the final form.69 But his students and the next generation have gone in a different direction. One assumes that this form of reading will remain in vibrant discussion, precisely to the degree that it is capable of generating one theory after another.70 We view the approach 64 Seitz,

Elder Testament, and idem, Convergences. Mark Sneed, ed., Was There a Wisdom Tradition? New Prospects in Israelite Wisdom Studies, AIL 23 (Atlanta: SBL Press, 2015). Katharine Dell, Will Kynes, Stuart Weeks and others have offered critiques of “wisdom literature” as a category. 66  Thomas B. Dozeman, Konrad Schmid, and Baruch Schwartz, eds., The Pentateuch: International Perspectives on Current Research (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2011). The volume is representative of the challenges and problems. 67 Seitz, Convergences, 17–41. 68  Konrad Schmid, Genesis and the Moses Story: Israel’s Dual Origins in the Hebrew Bible (Winona Lake: Eisenbrauns, 2010). 69  Rolf Rendtorff, The Canonical Hebrew Bible: A Theology of the Old Testament, trans. David E. Orton, TBS 7 (Leiden: Deo Publishing, 2005). 70  On the problems of ongoing instability in method, see the remarks of Rainer Albertz in “Open-Mindedness for Understanding the Formation of the Pentateuch,” in Open-Mindedness in the Bible and Beyond: A Volume of Studies in Honour of Bob Becking, ed. Marjo C. A. Korpel and Lester L. Grabbe, LHBOTS 616 (London: Bloomsbury T&T Clark, 2015), 1–9. Obviously concerned, he writes, “Because of the paucity of external evidence and the high number and complexity of internal exegetical and historical data the discussions seem to be influenced by unconscious prejudices and ideological limits, which are difficult to clarify. Observed from the outside, this kind of dispute appears to be strange and may even damage the academic reputation of the discipline” (p. 1). Coming at the problem from a different angle, Thomas Römer introduces a recent essay with these comments, “Teachers 65 

32

Introduction

represented in von Rad and Noth’s final expression, or in the work of Childs and Rendtorff, better attuned to reading the legacy of Israel’s scriptures. A fuller discussion of this topic lies outside the bounds of the present volume.

convinced of the importance of introducing their students to the question of the formation of the Torah in a historical-critical perspective today find themselves confronted with a very uncomfortable situation. The current debate makes it almost impossible to present a consensus on the question without coming across as somewhat demagogic.” He then proceeds to give a (hopefully non-demagogic) resolution to the diachronic puzzle (“The Exodus Narrative According to the Priestly Document,” in The Strata of the Priestly Writings: Contemporary Debate and Future Directions, ed. Sharon Shectman and Joel S. Baden, ATANT 95 [Zürich: Theologischer Verlag, 2009], 157–74). It is hard not to conclude the problems are resident in the method and its expectations for resolution. A more promising approach is that of Jean-Pierre Sonnet, “Does the Pentateuch Tell of Its Redactional Genesis? The Characters of YHWH and Moses as Agents of Fortschreibung in the Pentateuch’s Narrative World,” in The Formation of the Pentateuch: Bridging the Academic Cultures of Europe, Israel, and North America, ed. Jan C. Gertz et al. (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2016), 269–82.

The Book of Isaiah: Beyond the Three-Isaiah Model for Interpretation

1. Account A and the Annals of Sennacherib A Reassessment Scholars working on the 701 invasion of Sennacherib, the reconstruction of the reign of Hezekiah, the redactional history of the Books of Kings, or the tradition-historical development of the Book of Isaiah have tended to agree that the brief notice of 2 Kgs 18:14–16, missing in Isaiah 36–37, constitutes both the earliest and the most historically reliable bit of tradition concerning these several topics. These scholars refer to the brief Kings’ notice as “Account A.” With respect to the book of Isaiah, this notice is said to confirm a negative view of Hezekiah found in Isaiah 28–31, chapters in which Hezekiah’s alleged foreign treaties stand under sharp prophetic denunciation. In this essay, I wish to challenge this popular view by focusing on one facet of the reconstruction: the supposed confirmation of Account A’s historical reliability by the Annals of Sennacherib.1 It is possible to argue that the notice of Hezekiah’s tribute at 2  Kgs  18:(13)14– 16 is historically reliable apart from the evidence of the Annals of Sennacherib (AS).2 Francolino J. Gonçalves’s recent analysis of “Account A” (vv. 13–16) posits a high degree of reliability for the notice primarily on internal evidence, because it appears to be “un document officiel contemporain.”3 Before the 1 

A fuller treatment of the problem, especially within the Book of Isaiah, can be found in my Zion’s Final Destiny: The Development of the Book of Isaiah: A Reassessment of Isaiah 36–39 (Minneapolis: Augsburg Fortress, 1991). Here, I wish only to look at the matter of correlation with the Assyrian annals material. 2  A significant literary problem is associated with the question of the extent of the unit. See Christoff Hardmeier, Prophetie im Streit vor dem Untergang Judas: Erzählkommunikative Studien zur Entstehungssituation der Jesaja- und Jeremiaerzählungen in II Reg 18–20 und Jer 37–40, BZAW 187 (Berlin: de Gruyter, 1990), 154–56; a thorough analysis is provided by Hans Wildberger from within the context of the Isaiah traditions (Jesaja, BKAT 10 [Neukirchen-Vluyn: Neukirchener Verlag, 1981], 1384–1386); interpreters who treat 2 Kgs 18:14–16 may do so on the basis of a higher regard for the Isaiah traditions (Isaiah 36–37), where this notice is lacking; conversely, those who treat 2 Kgs 18:13–16 are frequently inclined to talk of an “Account A” in Kings, historically reliable and to be distinguished from Accounts B1 and B2. The broader literature on this question will be cited in the course of our treatment. 3  Francolino J. Gonçalves, L’expédition de Sennachérib en Palestine dans la littérature hébraïque ancienne (Paris: Gabalda, 1986), 371.

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evidence of the Annals of Sennacherib (AS) was brought to bear on the issue, Wilhelm Gesenius speculated that in its “Streben nach Kürze” the Isaiah text had eliminated material he characterized as “kleine, meistens unerhebliche, aber sicher echthistorische oder echttraditionelle, Nebenzüge.”4 Presumably, vv. 14–16 belonged in the category “echthistorisch.” In terms of content, the negative – and, therefore, most assume accurate – thrust of the notice, that Hezekiah confessed wrongdoing and stripped the temple, has been construed as evidence of the historicity of the account, on the theory that that which is pernicious in one’s own records must be true. Antti Laato puts it succinctly: Tradition A (2 Kgs 18:14–16) is generally acknowledged as the most reliable OT source about Sennacherib’s campaign in Judah. This is incontestable, since account A tells the dark side from Judah’s point of view concerning the year 701.5

The rule of “more difficult reading” is here transferred to the realm of historiography.6 Quite apart from form-critical hunches or internal arguments for the official, archival or annalistic character of vv. (13)14–16, most have argued that the Kings plus is historically reliable because it finds confirmation in an external source, the Annals of Sennacherib (AS). Already Bernhard Stade is of this mind, although AS is used by him for a more restricted problem: to defend the curious placement of the narrower unit vv. 14–16 after v. 13.7 For two-campaign theorists, AS and vv. 14–16 agree about an invasion in 701 while the remainder of Kings reports a second campaign in the 680s, thus enabling the seeming anachronisms regarding Tirhakah (19:9a) and Sennacherib’s death (v. 37) to stand.8 In respect of the use of AS to corroborate “Account A,” even single and two-campaign proponents are in basic agreement, and the same can be said of those who agree with or debate Stade’s classic division of Account Β into two narratives.9 4  Wilhelm Gesenius, Commentar über den Jesaia, 3 vols. (Leipzig: Friedr. Christ Wilh. Vogel, 1821), 2:933. 5  Antti Laato, “Hezekiah and the Assyrian Crisis in 701 B. C.,” SJOT 2 (1987): 56. 6 P.‑E. Dion has questioned the wider assumption that such an account was found in annalistic records (further enhancing its claim to reliability) because “it is difficult to imagine what kind of official records may have preserved the memory of military defeats and other humiliations suffered by the Hebrew kingdoms” (“Sennacherib’s Expedition to Palestine,” EgT 20 [1989]: 10n26). 7  Bernhard Stade, “Miscellen, Anmerkungen zu 2 Kö. 15–21,” ZAW 6 (1886): 180. 8  John Bright, A History of Israel, 3rd ed. (Philadelphia: Westminster, 1981): 298–309; William H. Shea, “Sennacherib’s Second Palestinian Campaign,” JBL 104 (1985): 401–18. For an assessment of recent attempts to defend the two-campaign theory, see Dion, “Sennacherib’s Expedition.” 9  Bright, who otherwise disagrees with Stade, says of Account A: “What is important is



1. Account A and the Annals of Sennacherib37

The basic conformity of the two accounts is, then, defended by a variety of modern scholars. Ronald E. Clements states: “In all essentials the report (AS)  … can be reconciled with that given in 2 Kgs 18:13–16.”10 Though he acknowledges that a “full-scale siege” is not reported in AS, the point is not significant; the same is true about Account A: “Similarly the lack of any explicit mention of a siege in 2 Kgs 18:13–16 may be taken to give an adequate perspective.”11 Finally, regarding the historical reliability of Assyrian records – about which there has been surprisingly little doubt compared with biblical reporting – Clements is equally confident: “The arrogant tone of the Assyrian account should not mislead us into supposing that it is in serious factual error.”12 In the most recent treatment of the problem from a historical perspective, Dion similarly concludes, All in all, 2 Kgs 18:13–16, a terse report which makes no bones about the Assyrian conquest of all the fortified cities of Judah and the heavy payment exacted by the conqueror, agrees well with Sennacherib’s account of the invasion.13

Brevard S. Childs, whose method of literary analysis of Account A has been picked up in Gonçalves’s study, reaches the cautious conclusion that “the essential accuracy of the facts reported seems assured by the essential agreement of the two accounts.”14 Nevertheless, Childs also notes important divergences: Other problems are raised, however, by the failure of the annal to mention Lachish, the apparent chronological schematization of the annal which mentions the restoration of Padi before Hezekiah’s capitulation, and by the inordinately high number of captives reported.15 that II Kgs 18:14–16 (not in Isaiah), and it alone, is remarkably corroborated and supplemented by Sennacherib’s own account of the campaign of 701” (A History of Israel, 299). Klass A. D. Smelik argues for the literary unity of “Account B” within the context of Isaiah (rather than Kings) even as he retains the notion of greater historicity for vv. 14–16 (“Distortion of Old Testament Prophecy: The Purpose of Isaiah xxxvi and xxxvii,” OtSt 24 [1986]: 70–93). In a recent study, Christoff Hardmeier contests the use of historical categories to evaluate so-called Account A, which in turn led to its literary isolation from the larger account (essentially B1). The main narrative, together with vv. 14–16, was composed during the later years of Jeremiah. One lesson it teaches is that paying tribute will only lead to siege; this lesson is directed against the prophetic counsel of Jeremiah (i. e., “serve the king of Babylon and live”). There is no space to evaluate the details of Hardmeier’s very provocative treatment, except to say that his criticisms of historical analysis are trenchant and compelling. See my “Review of Prophetie im Streit,” JBL 110 (1991): 511–13. 10  Ronald E. Clements, Isaiah and the Deliverance of Jerusalem: A Study of the Interpretation of Prophecy in the Old Testament, JSOTSup 13 (Sheffield: JSOT Press, 1980), 13. 11 Ibid. 12 Ibid. 13  Dion, “Sennacherib’s Expedition,” 10. 14  Brevard S. Childs, Isaiah and the Assyrian Crisis, SBT 2/3 (Naperville: Allenson, 1967), 73. 15  Ibid., 72.

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In 1971 John B. Geyer devoted a short note to dislodging John Bright’s summary statement that Account A “parallels perfectly” the AS, and that “no mentionable conflict exists between the two.”16 Geyer merely pointed out the obvious, namely, that while AS speaks of a siege, Account A speaks of tribute. Conversely, Account A  speaks of Hezekiah “suing for terms at Lachish,”17 while AS mentions nothing about this. Account B, on the other hand, does speak of a siege – one that failed dramatically. As many have pointed out, AS does not speak of a siege that ended successfully, even as it arrogantly boasts of assaults on Judah and later tribute from Hezekiah. In fact, many have noted the rather lenient treatment Hezekiah received in comparison to other defeated monarchs.18 But even a subtle agreement between Account Β and AS over the non-capture of Jerusalem has not been the point at issue. What Account A and AS agree about is that Hezekiah paid tribute, though they are in considerable disagreement about the timing, circumstances and actual amount of that tribute. For the purpose of comparison, the relevant lines of AS are reproduced here from ANET (3rd ed.). Discussion of more technical aspects of the record will be left to the side except where pertinent.19 Those sections of the text that treat of Jerusalem only are indented. As to Hezekiah, the Jew, he did not submit to my yoke, I laid siege to 46 of his strong cities, walled forts and to countless small villages in their vicinity, and conquered (them) by means of well-stamped (earth-)ramps, and battering-rams brought (thus) near (to the walls) combined with the attack by foot soldiers, using mines, breeches as well as sapper work, I  drove out (of them) 200,150 people, young and old, male and female, horses, mules, donkeys, camels, big and small cattle beyond counting, and considered (them) booty. Himself I made a prisoner in Jerusalem, his royal residence, like a bird in a cage. I surrounded him with earthwork in order to molest those who were leaving the city’s gate.20 16 Bright, History, 299; John B. Geyer, “2 Kings xviii 14–16 and the Annals of Sennacherib,” VT 21 (1971): 604–6. 17  Geyer, “2 Kings xviii 14–16,” 606. 18  Especially Sidqa, king of Ashkelon, who was deposed, taken captive and replaced by Sharuludari; Luli, king of Tyre, fled for his life to Cyprus and was replaced by a puppet Ethbaal. See Christopher R. Seitz, Theology in Conflict: Reactions to the Exile in the Book of Jeremiah, BZAW 176 (Berlin: de Gruyter, 1989), 31–33. 19  For example, the high count of deportation from Judahite cities and villages (200,150) has been the subject of much discussion. For an illuminating proposal, see Stephen Stohlmann, “The Judaean Exile after 701 B. C. E.,” in More Essays on the Comparative Method, ed. William W. Hallo et al., vol. 2 of Scripture in Context, ed. William W. Hallo et al. (Winona Lake: Eisenbrauns, 1983), 147–75. Also Seitz, Theology in Conflict, 31–33. 20  Geyer notes that taken by itself, the language “like a bird in a cage” (kima iṣṣur kuppi esiršu) need not imply a full-scale siege (so J. Gray, I & II Kings, OTL [Philadelphia: Westminster, 1964], 611); he argues, however, that taken together with the following expression, “surrounded him with earthwork” (URU ḫalṣu MEŠ elišu urakkisma), the 701 siege of



1. Account A and the Annals of Sennacherib39

His towns which I had plundered, I took away from his country and gave them (over) to Mitinti, king of Ashdod, Padi, king of Ekron, and Sillibel, king of Gaza. Thus I reduced his country, but I still increased the tribute and the katru-presents (due) to me as his overlord which I imposed (later) upon him beyond the former tribute, to be delivered annually. Hezekiah himself, who the terror-inspiring splendour of my lordship had overwhelmed, and whose irregular and elite troops which he had brought into Jerusalem, his royal residence, in order to strengthen (it), had deserted him, did send me, later, to Nineveh, my lordly city, together with 30 talents of gold, 800 talents of silver, precious stones, antimony, large cuts of red stone, couches (inlaid) with ivory, nimedu-chairs (inlaid) with ivory, elephant-hides, ebony wood, boxwood (and) all kinds of valuable treasures, his (own) daughters, concubines, male and female musicians. In order to deliver the tribute and do obeisance as a slave, he sent his (personal) messenger.

Account A  speaks of a pre-siege capitulation and offer of tribute (18:14), presumably as a means of suing for peace (which, when read with Account B, fails!). Conversely, AS states explicitly that “Hezekiah, the Jew, did not submit to my yoke.” In its present narrative form, the clear implication is that this obdurance on Hezekiah’s part – not capitulation, as Account A has it – was the reason for Sennacherib’s siege of “46 of his strong cities,” the “driving out and counting as booty” of 200,150 citizenry and large quantities of their property, and the eventual (unsuccessful) siege of Jerusalem. In fact, the only success that AS mentions, personally related to Hezekiah and the capital, is a subsequent sending of tribute to Sennacherib at Nineveh – in further disagreement with the biblical notice. The general thrust of AS is that Hezekiah, who did not submit, nevertheless lost a massive portion of Judahite territory and some special troops through desertion, and was suitably awed by Sennacherib’s show of force. Tribute payments were increased, according to Sennacherib, and this tribute – again in considerable disagreement with the silver and gold payments of Account A – was sent by personal messenger to Nineveh. One gets the sense that Sennacherib wants to memorialize the fact that the cities of Hezekiah the Jew received rough treatment, in contrast to his own “lordly city” Nineveh, the final recipient of transferred goods and personnel from Hezekiah. But nowhere does the report indicate that the siege of Jerusalem, “his royal residence,” was successful in the obvious military sense. For this, the near contrast with the siege of 46 walled cities and the plundering of the Judahite countryside is striking. Jerusalem is meant (“2 Kings xviii 14–16 and the Annals of Sennacherib,” 606). In this he is probably correct, but it says nothing about the success of the siege – AS itself suggests that the effect of the earthworks, intended or not, was “to molest those who were leaving the city.”

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Whatever else one makes of his reported victories over Judah, it cannot be forgotten that this was at best a grand consolation prize for the Assyrian king. This may explain in part the exaggerated tone of success in AS (though this is not unusual for this type of annal record), as against the (pregnant) silence regarding Hezekiah’s retention of the throne, and Jerusalem’s exemption from final assault and plundering. One must wonder if the concluding claim to have taken Hezekiah’s daughters as tribute is not in “serious factual error” after all (contra Clements). The point is that AS is shot through with an arrogant and exaggerated character that might be explained in this instance on the basis of Sennacherib’s offended pride at not having captured Jerusalem and meted out to Hezekiah, king of Judah, the same treatment he reserved for Sidqa, king of Ashkelon, and Luli, king of Tyre. Such an interpretation at least merits equal consideration along with other speculations. The granting of objective, historical status to AS runs against the obvious subjective nature of this and other reports in the Assyrian records and stems from a curious reflex among biblical interpreters. In this case, that reflex was assisted by the all too eager desire to designate the Kings plus at 18:14–16, different in tone from its surrounding narrative and lacking in Isaiah, as a frank and therefore historically accurate notice of Sennacherib’s 701 successes. But the lack of agreement between the two accounts would be immediately noted were they both found in the biblical record, and were a formal analysis to be as rigorously applied to AS as to Account A.21 A more fruitful approach would be to try and account for the subjective character of both AS and the biblical record, in order to determine if there are actual points of agreement, as well as disagreement. The quest to determine “how it really happened” has traditionally meant privileging one account over another, rather than examining the subjective and functional nature of all reports. This has also frequently meant that the broader literary structure in which such reports function has frequently been ignored.22 Both AS and Account A agree that Hezekiah made payments to Sennacherib. They also both agree in their assessment of Sennacherib’s devastation of Judahite cities, and in the non-mention of Jerusalem’s defeat (esp. Account B). The bulk of the Kings report has not surprisingly highlighted this latter reality (Account B), while it appears to be a frustrating silence in the report of AS. Account Β also fills in the silence with remarkable detail concerning a massive Assyrian defeat, approaching legendary quality. 21 

See esp. A. R. Millard, “Sennacherib’s Attack on Hezekiah,” TynBul 36 (1985): 61–77. least Gonçalves compares Account A with other notices of capitulation in Kings (L’expédition, 368–670), following T. Vuk, Wiedererkaufte Freiheit: Der Feldzug Sanheribs gegen Juda nach dem Invasionsbericht 2 Kö 18:13–16 (PhD Thesis, Pontificium Athenaeum Antonianum, Facultas Hierosolymitana Theologiae Biblicae, 1979 – not available to me). 22  At



1. Account A and the Annals of Sennacherib41

The question is, why did the apparent fact of Hezekiah’s payment, made at some point during his 29-year reign (Account A) or annually (AS), finally make its way into the biblical record, now as a notice of capitulation prior to any assault? Many assume that Isaiah omits the notice because of an interest in idealizing Hezekiah;23 yet it is Kings that regards Hezekiah as without peer, a second David (18:5). The question the historian must pursue at this point is essentially a literary one: why does an account of capitulation precede the siege proper? And related to this: is the summarizing notice of v. 7b, that Hezekiah “rebelled against the King of Assyria, and would not serve him” in unrelieved tension with Account A, which tells of a pre-siege payment to Sennacherib? Or, can the two notices be reconciled? In a recent monograph Christoff Hardmeier provides a controversial solution to this problem. He is willing to regard vv. 14–16 as having a basis in history, meriting the title Account A in the sense of Gonçalves’s “document officiel contemporain.” But the account now forms an integral – Hardmeier would say indispensable – part in the larger narrative, including the preceding vv. 9–12 as well as the following Account B. The narrative seeks to show that tribute payment only leads to further Assyrian assault – a message with particular relevance for Zedekiah and those who counselled submission to Babylon on the eve of 587. Hardmeier judges these narratives as propaganda pieces meant to challenge and defy the political position of Jeremiah and Ezekiel. It is impossible to do justice to the detailed argumentation of Hardmeier in this context. What is of greater interest is the way Hardmeier reaches the conclusion that Account A indeed belongs in its present literary context. He compares the 701 narrative with that found in 2 Kgs 16:5–9. There we hear of a siege as well, and of tribute paid to an Assyrian king. But there the result is positive, from Ahaz’s standpoint. The contrast is most clear in v. 9: “And the king of Assyria hearkened to him.” Hardmeier argues that we are prepared, after hearing Account A, for similar results – but instead the king of Assyria dispatches a hostile delegation. The sense of Account A in its literary context, then, depends upon a proper appreciation of the larger literary framework of Kings, and especially the contrast with vv. 5–9. So too, Hardmeier argues, the immediately preceding notice in 18:9–12, which tells of Assyria’s siege and defeat of Samaria (matters already reported in ch. 17), serves to heighten the sense of drama when our attention is turned to Jerusalem and another Assyrian siege. 23  See esp. Peter R. Ackroyd, “Isaiah 36–39: Structure and Function,” in Von Kanaan bis Kerala: Festschrift fir Prof. Mag. Dr. Dr. J. P. M. van der Ploeg, O. P. zur Vollendung des siebzigsten Lebensjahres am 4. Juli 1979, ed. W. C. Delsman et al., AOAT 211 (Neukirchen-Vluyn: Neukirchener Verlag, 1982), 3–21.

42

The Book of Isaiah

The question that remains, however, involves the proper evaluation of Hezekiah, given his depiction in 18:14–16. Most have assumed that this historical notice gives an objective picture of the real Hezekiah, and they coordinate it with Isaiah’s denunciations of Egyptian coalitions.24 Yet there are several problems with such an interpretation. (1) Hezekiah is never condemned in Isaiah for rebellion; treaties with Egypt are condemned, but never is a denunciation of Hezekiah as such uttered.25 (2) Kings speaks of Hezekiah’s rebellion in v. 7, but regards it as an altogether good thing and a sign of the LORD’S presence with him; rebellion against Assyria is not interpreted by the Deuteronomistic Historian as requiring treaties with Egypt. (3) Iain W. Provan (following Julius Wellhausen) regards Account A  as a secondary insert into Kings that seeks to tone down the wholly positive picture of Hezekiah found there;26 this is a plausible reading, but it reverses the traditional developmental picture on which the theory of Account A  depends, whereby the movement was from rebellious Hezekiah toward idealized king. It seems, then, that a number of factors play a role in the proper interpretation of Account A. We may therefore reach the following conclusions: (1) whatever its basis in historical fact, Account A must be interpreted within the larger context of Kings (so Hardmeier and Provan); (2) unilateral patterns of idealization, assuming a movement from the real facts to the theological idealization, can obscure the task of interpretation; (3) Provan may well be right when he sees Account A as a secondary attempt to tone down an originally positive account; this toning down would involve the coordination of the incomparable Hezekiah with the later, somehow equally incomparable, Josiah. But other factors must be entertained as well. Has the emphasis been wrongly placed on the person of Hezekiah in Account A? Account Β is concerned above all with demonstrating that the blasphemy of the Assyrian king can never go unpunished – as Smelik has put it, “a blasphemer is nowhere safe from the power of the omnipotent God.”27 Is the point of Account A, then, to be explained in part as involving a depiction not so much of Hezekiah, but of the king of Assyria? Hardmeier rightly stresses the studied contrast with 16:5–9 at this point. We expect the Assyrian king to respond positively to the tribute payment of the Judahite king, just as he had earlier with Ahaz. But instead he moves with arrogance and disregard, bent upon further military 24 

See Clements, Deliverance, 28–36. See my further remarks in Zion’s Final Destiny (esp. 72–81) and in idem, Isaiah 1–39, IBC (Louisville: Westminster John Knox, 1993). 26  Iain W. Provan, Hezekiah and the Books of Kings: A Contribution to the Debate about the Composition of the Deuteronomistic History, BZAW 172 (Berlin: de Gruyter, 1988), 122n82. 27  Smelik, “Distortion,” 84. 25 

1. Account A and the Annals of Sennacherib43



assault following a long blasphemous peroration. In sum, Account A serves to underscore the thoroughly untrustworthy character of the king of Assyria, who receives tribute from Hezekiah and proceeds to press the attack further. As such, it forms an integral part of the larger Kings narrative in its present form. Hezekiah’s payment may be viewed as based upon historical fact, but not in such a way as to drive a literary and theological wedge between discrete “sources” (A and B), forcing one to entertain developmental schemes concerning objectivity and idealization.28 The fact that Isaiah lacks these two verses from Kings can also be explained by appeal to different literary contexts. Second Kings 18:14–16 functions now in Kings in a meaningful way because of certain important themes in the larger Dtr History. These themes play no directly analogous role in the book of Isaiah. Consequently, “Account A” is missing. But this has nothing to do with Hezekiah’s “idealization” in Isaiah as traditionally argued, any more than Kings has a greater claim to “historical objectivity.” Verse 7 states that Hezekiah rebelled against the King of Assyria and would not serve him. Verses 14–16 make it clear that when he considered even a one-time payment to the Assyrian king, in order to avoid a military assault, the result was negative. The emphasis is not on the disobedience of Hezekiah specifically, but on the fruitlessness of foreign rapprochement generally. This theme is of considerable interest to the authors and editors of Kings. Concern with the proper relationship to Assyria and foreign nations in general is handled differently and in other literary contexts in the Book of Isaiah.29

28 

See Hardmeier’s criticisms in Prophetie im Streit, 8–19. among others Hermann Barth, Die Jesaja-Worte in der Josiazeit: Israel und Assur als Thema einer produktiven Neuinterpretation der Jesajaüberlieferung, WMANT 48 (Neukirchen-Vluyn: Neukirchener Verlag, 1977). 29 See

2. On the Question of Divisions Internal to the Book of Isaiah The division of Isaiah into “thirds” has become a commonplace, reinforced by many commentary series (including the new ones) that perpetuate, even if for neutral or simply practical reasons, this increasingly time-honored convention.1 Different sorts of considerations go into the division of other larger prophetic books (Jeremiah and Ezekiel) while in the case of Isaiah, critical adherence to an old notion of separate Isaianic personalities (Isaiah, DeuteroIsaiah, Trito-Isaiah), even if now giving way to a more strictly literary conception, has led to the convenient partitioning of the book into three blocks (chs. 1–39; 40–55; 56–66).2 We are, of course, becoming much more aware of the internal relationships across these standard divisions. By this I do not mean the older conception of prophetic disciples carrying on the work of their Isaianic forebears.3 Rather, in the Book of Isaiah, we meet with clear efforts at editorial coordination, however rough or intermittent, running across three sections once deemed relatively independent, the inspired efforts of individuals, schools, or prophets working at three specific, independent moments in time and space. It is true that on this reckoning, Isaiah 1–39 was always a different block to understand in terms that were too strictly independent since it appeared to be comprised of material from very different ages, some of these contemporaneous with or post-dating Isaiah 40–55, if not also 56–66. Actually, what now seems striking in retrospect is how little effort it took to view portions of text in First Isaiah acknowledged to be late as totally unrelated to texts in chs. 40–66. Such was the force of the independence model, especially in respect of First and Second 1  This makes the decision of the Word Biblical Commentary series to divide at chs. 33/34 appear idiosyncratic, bold, or prophetic. On divisions in prophetic books, see my remarks in the introduction to Reading and Preaching the Book of Isaiah, ed. Christopher R. Seitz (Philadelphia: Fortress, 1988), 13–22. 2  On the critical distinctions reflected in the various terminologies (First Isaiah, Deutero-Isaiah, Pseudo-Isaiah, etc.), see Christopher R. Seitz, “Isaiah, Book of (First Isaiah),” ABD 3:472–88. 3  D. R. Jones, “The Traditio of the Oracles of Isaiah of Jerusalem,” ZAW 67 (1955): 226–46. See the criticisms of Ronald E. Clements, “Beyond Tradition-History: DeuteroIsaianic Development of First Isaiah’s Themes,” JSOT 31 (1985): 95–113.

2. On the Question of Divisions Internal to the Book of Isaiah 45



Isaiah. I have remarked on this curiosity in more detail in another context.4 But for our purposes I trust that the history of the discussion of critical work on Isaiah, including its more recent phases, is familiar enough and that my brief summary up to this point is relatively uncontroversial. The point I  wish to emphasize is that a sensitivity to  – and indeed an emphasis on  – the relationship between texts across sections traditionally partitioned may have little or no effect on the divisions themselves, whether they ought to be retained, re-thought, adjusted, and so forth. I found myself arguing for a wide variety of associations between chs. 1–39 and the other two sections of the book when writing a commentary on First Isaiah, for a series which has adopted the standard division without further ado (Interpretation). I  anticipate doing the same when writing on chs. 40–66 for the New Interpreters Bible series, and the same general tack would commend itself to me were I to write a commentary on 56–66 for Hermeneia. But in each of these cases the convention of three divisions would be retained within the framework of the commentary series in question, regardless how compelling the evidence relative to each section for its intended affiliation with the other two. In short, in my experience what we now have is an odd set of circumstances in which the older tripartite convention is retained in order to identify its points of overstatement. On this score, Isaiah work at present has something of the hands of Esau and the voice of Jacob. Still, working within the conventional model of division, in a commentary on “First Isaiah,” I was able to point out both in the front matter and in the commentary proper why the term still had a certain legitimacy but also why on occasion it ought to be placed in scare quotes. My argument in favor of a continued division at chs. 39 and 40 is not the traditional one (meaning here “historical-critical”), but neither is it uncontroversial, even given recent trends towards “unitary” readings of Isaiah. Dependent on conclusions reached in an earlier essay, I argued that chs. 40–66 belong to a different – self-consciously different – temporal perspective, one that understands itself within the presentation of the larger Book of Isaiah as looking back on the “former things” as truly former.5 These include not only the person of Isaiah6 but also especially his word regarding the divine destiny of Assyria, Babylonia, and the nations – a message now located in chs. 1–39, referred to within chs. 40–49 as the 4  See

Christopher R. Seitz, “Two Independent Isaiahs,” in Zion’s Final Destiny: The Development of the Book of Isaiah: A Reassessment of Isaiah 36–39 (Minneapolis: Fortress, 1991), 1–35. 5  Christopher R. Seitz, “The Divine Council: Temporal Transition and New Prophecy in the Book of Isaiah,” JBL 109 (1990): 229–47. 6  In my view, Isaiah’s is a voice of the past in Second Isaiah chapters, symbolized in the opening divine council scene by the unknown voice who says “all flesh is grass.”

46

The Book of Isaiah

“former things.”7 To state the issue negatively: when we confront a first-person voice in chs. 40–66, we confront neither the voice of Isaiah nor a persona constructed to fictively represent that voice. In other words, Isaiah 40–55 does not represent an early reflex toward pseudepigraphy, as this will later emerge in mature form. Yet precisely what is characteristic of chs. 1–39, “First Isaiah,” is that the Isaiah persona – however withdrawn in comparison with Jeremiah or Ezekiel – is nevertheless maintained throughout.8 This reinforces the sense that one is meant to see a dividing point at ch. 40 between a former period of real Assyrian assault and a prophetically foreseen Babylonian world-judgment (for the latter see esp. chs. 13–14, 21, 24–27, 39), and the actual fulfillment of that same world-judgment, on whose other side chs. 40–66 stand, looking back on both the proclamation and the person of Isaiah of Jerusalem. But then there are also scare quotes to be reckoned with, which imply that any undue emphasis on the separatedness of Isaiah 1–39 as “First Isaiah” would be misleading. Here, one should also reckon with the possibility that Isaiah’s final shape is only penultimately concerned with the presentation of Isaiah the prophet, his extension or non-extension into chs. 40–66, as a key index in understanding the book’s final form or divisions relevant within that form. Perhaps a better way to put it is that interest in the prophetic voice of Isaiah is only one index operating in the book, capable of coordination with the former-latter things distinction, represented by chs. 1–39 and 40–66 respectively. Yet my own work on “First Isaiah,” precisely at the juncture between these two major sections of the larger book (chs. 33–39) revealed that efforts have also been made to bring the two halves into clear coordination, thus blurring the sharpness of the literary division between them while at the same time ruling out any possible conception of two independent “books,” unrelated to one another and to be read as such (I will turn to the question of a Third Isaiah shortly). I will simply summarize my findings here and direct the reader to a fuller treatment in the Interpretation volume, especially in the section on chs. 33–35, a portion of which is reproduced below. Scholars have long seen the connection between chs. 34–35 and so-called Second Isaiah, and one recent interpreter has gone so far as to call ch. 35 a redactional bridge linking the two halves of the book. But why would such a bridge be constructed before chs. 36–39?9 Odil H. Steck has his own answer to this question, which I regard as diachronically possible, but extraordinary überspitzt and unnecessarily complex (though probably necessitated by his 7 

See my final chapter in Zion’s Final Destiny. See my remarks in “Isaiah 1–66: Making Sense of the Whole,” in Reading and Preaching the Book of Isaiah, esp. 116–22. 9  Odil H. Steck, Bereitete Heimkehr: Jesaja 35 als redactionelle Brücke zwischen dem Ersten und dem Zweiten Jesaja, SBS 121 (Stuttgart: Katholisches Bibelwerk, 1985). 8 



2. On the Question of Divisions Internal to the Book of Isaiah 47

dense redaction-critical argumentation and logic which involves the whole Isaiah book). My own position bears some slight resemblance to an earlier theory of C. C. Torrey.10 On this view, chs. 34–35 both anticipate themes in Second Isaiah, as numerous commentators note, but they also change our interpretation of intervening chapters (36–39). What once stood, in my judgment, as the culmination of First Isaiah traditions (chs. 36–38), the narrative vindication of Isaiah’s earlier Zion proclamation and Immanuel preaching,11 has now been incorporated within traditions concerning Zion’s imminent exaltation following the judgment of Babylon, the return of exiles, and the restoration of the same Zion (chs. 34–35, 40–55). The effect achieved in the present shape of Isaiah is that the very close connection between the account of Zion’s dramatic deliverance and prior “First Isaiah” literary traditions has been “loosened,” as it were, in order that the book might now foreshadow God’s final vindication of Zion after Babylonian assaults.12 Moving beyond the depiction of chs. 36–39, these assaults reached even “beyond the neck,” to use the earlier idiom describing the onslaughts of “the mighty flood waters of the River, the king of Assyria and all his glory” (8:7–8), which are themselves “types” anticipating later assaults by the great Sea, Babylon (see 21:1–10). This “sea,” like the Assyrian waters before it, will also be rendered impotent (43:2), dried up as once the Red Sea was dried up (v. 16), slain as a “dragon in the sea” (27:1), replaced by divine waters (55:1), as once water was given in the wilderness (43:20). These rich themes are now sounded – before the account of Zion’s deliverance – in chs. 34–35, thus making the dramatic deliverance which follows a historical example of God’s final intentions, a surety or pledge, as it were (cf. 7:11 and 38:7). In these chapters it is Edom that stands as the destroyed “No Kingdom,” anticipating the fates both of Assyria in chs. 36–38, and Babylonia in chs. 39 and following.13 Above all it is ch. 35 that resounds with the message of chs. 40–55, promising sight and hearing where once these were forfeited (6:10), a rejuvenated creation, and a highway of safe passage to Zion. The deliverance of Zion and the faithful 10  C. C. Torrey, The Second Isaiah: A New Interpretation (New York: Scribner, 1928), esp. 98–104. On the significance of a gap between chs. 33 and 34 in 1Q Isaa, see also Paul Kahle, Die Hebräischen Handschriften aus der Hoehle (Stuttgart: Kohlhammer, 1951), 72 f.; also William Hugh Brownlee, The Meaning of the Qumran Scrolls for the Bible With Special Attention to the Book of Isaiah (New York: Oxford University Press, 1964), 247–59. 11  This is essentially the thesis of Zion’s Final Destiny. 12  De-historicizing would be too strong a term for this redactional move, since the link­ age to 701 events remains. I therefore would prefer the term “typologizing,” as this respects both the type’s original locus in history and tradition, but also its capacity to engender later associations beyond those first intended. 13  The destruction of Babylon, revealed in a “stern vision” to Isaiah in ch. 21, is there also associated with Edom (21:11–12).

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The Book of Isaiah

king in the chapters immediately following offers a foretaste of the promised weal: a sign unrefused, provided for the reader, bearing witness to the faithfulness of the One who promises and the promises themselves. As this brief summary is fairly compressed, let me quote at some length from my earlier treatment in Isaiah 1–39. This will also allow aspects of my larger conception of Isaiah, especially including chs. 13–27, to come into view. In a very general sense, one can see that by prefacing the narratives that tell of Zion’s deliverance in 701 BCE with chapters 34–35, the specific historical instance of Zion’s protection in the days of Sennacherib has been placed within a much broader framework of God’s ongoing attention and care for his vineyard amidst the nations at large. The wonderous deliverance of 701 BCE foreshadows Zion’s final triumph as God’s chosen place of exaltation and return. The Assyrian destroyer about to be destroyed (ch. 33) becomes a type of the nations at large (34:1–4); God’s gracious sparing of the old vineyard, after Assyrian waters reached to the very neck, becomes a type of God’s total protection of the new vineyard from any and all violation, as promised in 27:2–6. Still, such typology might have been executed equally well with chapters 34–35 following the account of Zion’s deliverance in chapters 36–39 rather than preceding it.   We would seek the primary explanation for the present location of chapters 34–35 in a slightly different realm, as having to do with the merger of First Isaiah and Second Isaiah chapters into one synthetic presentation, whose combined portrayal is greater than the sum of its parts. I have argued in another context for a First Isaiah collection that once ended dramatically with the account of Zion’s deliverance in 701 BCE, as the culmination and vindication of the prophet’s complex Zion and royal theology. The presentation of chapters 28–33 would have led logically into chapters 36–39…. The effect of the placement of chapters 34–35 has been to “enclose” this dramatic finale with material from Second Isaiah on either side. Zion’s deliverance is no longer an act of historical significance validating Isaiah’s preaching; it is that, and more. The Hezekiah narratives in chapters 36–39 point ahead to God’s final defense of his new vineyard [which] will come to the same end as the Assyrian destroyer in Isaiah’s day.   One other major effect is achieved. The sharpness of the distinction between “First” and “Second” Isaiah is blurred by the placement of chapters 34–35. It is impossible to link these two “halves” of the book neatly with fixed historical periods, one fluctuating around the key date of 701 BCE and the other around the key date of 587 BCE. Already “First” Isaiah has a major level of tradition under the influence of the events of 587, namely, the nations section (chs. 13–37). Now those “First” Isaiah chapters most closely connected to historical events in the period of Isaiah’s preaching, concerning the deliverance of Jerusalem in “the fourteenth year of King Hezekiah” (36:1), have been enclosed within “Second” Isaiah chapters. To be sure, the final chapter (ch. 39) eases the transition to the “Babylonian” half of the book, with its reference to coming Babylonian assault. But that transition is effected not just by means of prophecyfulfillment schemes (39:5–7) but also by the present arrangement of chapters 34–39 as such….   One other factor is to be considered in this context, regarding the “merger” of two Isaiahs. In chapters 1–33, texts abound that point to or presuppose the destruction of Jerusalem in 587 BCE. But as was noted above, we have no formal record of that desolation, such as we find in the Books of Jeremiah or Ezekiel. What remains of



2. On the Question of Divisions Internal to the Book of Isaiah 49

paramount concern to those who have shaped the present tradition is not Zion’s defeat but rather God’s fundamental, abiding concern for Zion’s final triumph and permanent fortification against the nations. Chapters 34–35 speak of that triumph; chapters 36–39 give a concrete example of God’s care at one moment in Zion’s history; and chapters 40–66 pursue the same line of interest. We do not move from “first” to “second” Isaiah by way of a record of Zion’s defeat, but more mysteriously, from the promise of victory amidst the nations (chs. 34–35), to one miraculous victory in the past (chs. 36–38), to foreseen exile (ch. 39), and finally to bold words of comfort and forgiveness (ch. 40). First and Second Isaiah are not distinguished merely as preexilic and postexilic blocks of tradition but rather as promised and revealed phases of Zion’s ongoing destiny, as God’s place of exaltation and Israel’s place of return.14

One final aspect of the question of internal divisions in Isaiah yet to be discussed is revealed in this lengthy quote. On occasion I have referred above to the second half of Isaiah as comprising chs. 40–55, traditionally called Second Isaiah, or more broadly as 40–66 (in the context of analyzing the functions of chs. 34–39). Here too we touch on the question of the propriety of a further division internal to Isaiah, namely that which marks off Second from Third Isaiah. There is not space to treat the questions in detail, so I offer only these few remarks. (1) I remain convinced that the major scholarly reason for separating the material in these chapters was neither temporal nor literary, but geographical. So it was argued: chs. 40–55 were written in Babylonian exile; 56–66 reflect prophecies back at home, concerning the cult and community membership. What if this distinction is faulty and chs. 40–55 were to be better understood as Jerusalemite both in orientation (as many have admitted) and in origin (as most have not). The consequence would be that one of the strongest planks in the argument for a distinct “Trito-Isaiah” corpus would be removed.15   (2) There seems little evidence to me that the material in 40–66 can be separated temporally on the basis of the temple being rebuilt in 56–66, but not in 40–55. This might mean that material in 40–55 is later than some have thought, but also that 56–66 is earlier.   (3) Even if arguments for the tight structure and literary organization of 40–55 be granted (with further division between 40–48 and 49–55), this says nothing, in my view, about subsequent shaping, which may have the explicit intention of merging these two sections into one roughly continuous whole. The rubrics provided at 48:22, 57:21, and 66:24, if indeed that is what they are, have divided the entire 27 chapter collection into even thirds (40–48; 49–57; 58–66), obliterating any (possibly original) division at 55/56. And, as suggested above, even this “second” Isaiah (40–66) has been shaped in the final presentation of the book into a yet more obvious second half, marked now by a division at ch. 33, with 34–35 enclosing 36–39 in the manner described above.

14  Christopher R. Seitz, Isaiah 1–39, IBC (Louisville: Westminster John Knox, 1993), 240–42. 15  See Christopher R. Seitz, “Isaiah, Book of (Third Isaiah),” ABD 3:500–10.

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The Book of Isaiah

In the foregoing my attention has been most closely focused on Zion as key to the interpretation of the book as a whole and the divisions that give the book structure and dramatic movement. The one major question that cannot be treated here, but which is also affected by one’s notion of both divisions and the role of typological editing (and thinking) in the book, involves royal messianic material in the larger shape of the book as a whole. Are earlier royal promises made by Isaiah transferred to Cyrus in later chapters or to the people as a whole, as many have contended? Or would this represent perhaps a too straightforwardly linear conception of Isaiah’s final form, understood even on purely synchronic terms.16 That is, are earlier promises in the final form of the book (esp. those in chs. 9 and 11), whether understood on diachronic or synchronic terms, eclipsed or rendered otiose in later sections of the book, or do they retain their force simply by dint of remaining as yet unfulfilled?17 Here is a place where one must acknowledge that moves toward synchronic readings, especially in Isaiah, still require enormous attention to a whole nest of difficult historical-critical and diachronic issues. For the resolution of (especially these) difficult theological issues, synchronic readings will find themselves not avoiding diachronic analysis, but returning to it when all is said and done. There is nothing obvious about the intended redactional structure of a book like Isaiah, taken synchronically, or the way it was meant to be read as it moved from the hand of the “last editor” to that of the “first reader.” It is for this reason that 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 can be read synchronically to be sure, but which has never lost its high degree of historical referentiality. This referentiality has been recast and reconceived in the highly complex final presentation, but in the movement toward textualization and final canonical stabilization it has by no means vanished or become somehow “internalized.” The Book of Isaiah is not modern literature, and the fact that it bears the marks of a distinct culture, history, and social matrix cannot be ignored even in (or one might say, especially in) a climate concerned to understand the book’s final canonical shape. 16  The problem is a major one. To what degree are portions of the text “left behind” as one moves ahead in a more synchronic orientation? See for example David G. Meade’s treatment of the royal theme in his analysis of the final form of the entire Isaiah collection, trading on the work of others (Pseudonymity and Canon: An Investigation into the Relationship of Authorship and Authority in Jewish and Earliest Christian Tradition, WUNT 39 [Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 1986]). His reading strikes me as too linear, and insufficiently atuned to the effects of typological editing in the Book of Isaiah. The problem of correct understanding of principles of organization in Isaiah (thematic, chronological, etc.) is a very old one (see the ABD essay on First Isaiah cited above). 17  See my discussion in Isaiah 1–39, 95–105.

3. The Divine Council Temporal Transition and New Prophecy in the Book of Isaiah This essay is a contribution to two separate but related problems in Isaiah research. The first is exegetical in nature and involves the correct interpretation of Isa 40:1–8. The second is also exegetical, but it involves the proper model for understanding the book of Isaiah as a whole.1 40:1–8 is particularly important in this regard since it is widely considered to be the introduction to a new section of the book, termed by scholars “Second Isaiah” (Isaiah 40–55). Given its pivotal position, does it provide clues for interpreting not just material to follow (Second and Third Isaiah) but also material preceding?2 In order to answer this question, we will begin with a fresh examination of 40:1–8 from a form-critical standpoint, sensitive to the language of the divine council in the OT. Then we will examine a dimension of the text more appropriately handled by redaction-critical analysis and inner-biblical exegesis, in order to understand the text’s function in relationship to the larger book.

I Isaiah 40:1–8 has proven resilient in the hands of interpreters ancient and modern?3 A continual stream of fresh interpretations has sought to clarify the meaning of this difficult text. The opening verse presents the first problem: 1 There

is a growing literature which looks at the book of Isaiah as a redactional whole. See my essays in Reading and Preaching the Book of Isaiah (Philadelphia: Fortress, 1988), 13–22, 105–26. Also Ronald E. Clements, “The Prophecies of Isaiah and the Fall of Jerusalem in 587 B. C.,” VT 30 (1980): 421–36; idem, “The Unity of the Book of Isaiah,” Int 36 (1982): 117–29; idem, “Beyond Tradition-Criticism: Deutero-Isaianic Development of First-Isaiah’s Themes,” JSOT 31 (1985): 95–113; Peter R. Ackroyd, “An Interpretation of the Babylonian Exile: A Study of 2 Kings 20, Isaiah 38–39,” SJT 27 (1974): 329–52. See now the recent monograph of Marvin A. Sweeney, Isaiah 1–4 and the Post-Exilic Understanding of the Isaianic Tradition, BZAW 171 (Berlin: de Gruyter, 1988). 2  Rolf Rendtorff raises similar questions about the entire Second Isaiah section as foundational for understanding the book as a whole (“Zur Komposition des Buches Jesajas,” VT 34 [1984]: 295–320). 3 Many treat the unit 40:1–8 in form-critical analysis; others prefer the wider unit

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The Book of Isaiah

Comfort, comfort my people, says your God

‫ֹלה ֶיכם׃‬ ֵ ‫ֹאמר ֱא‬ ַ ‫נַ ֲחמּו נַ ֲחמּו ַﬠ ִּמי י‬

Speak tenderly to Jerusalem and cry to her

‫יה‬ ָ ‫רּוׁש ַליִ ם ְו ִק ְראּו ֵא ֶל‬ ָ ְ‫ַּד ְּברּו ַﬠל ֵלב י‬

Plural imperatives (nahămŭ; dabbĕrŭ; qirʾû) and plural possessive suffix (ʾĕlōhêkem) beg the question: Who is being addressed here, by whose God? The targums offer “O ye prophets” (nebiyayaʾ ) prefacing the verb (ʾitnabbiʾu). Proving that translations can move freely into the realm of exegesis, the LXX supplies the vocative “O priests” (hiereis). A vocative – the collective ʿammî, “O my people” – appears to be ruled out by the parallel Jerusalem, clearly the intended object and not the addressee of the speaking of v. lb. The situation is not helped, however, by the fact that imperatives, frequently followed by a clear vocative, are found throughout chs. 40–66 (41:1, 21, 22; 42:10, 18; 44:1, 23; 45:8, 20, 22; 46:8, 12; 47:1, 5, 8, 12; 48:1, 12, 16, 20; 49:1; 51:1, 2, 4, 7, 9, 17; 52:1, 2, 11; 54:1, 4; 55:1, 2, 3, 6; 56:1; 57:14; 58:1; 60:1, 4; 62:10; 66:10).4 An aspect of the quandary of interpretation is form-critical in nature, and distinctly modern. It is a challenge to assign genre and conjecture about provenance concerning individual pericopes in the main body of Isaiah 40–55, but in one regard 40:1–8 has its own special problems. Since the late 18th century, scholars have argued for a distinct prophetic figure behind chs. 40–55: an anonymous prophet in Babylon addressing exiles?5 The now widely accepted theory of an individual prophet (Second Isaiah) has certainly influenced form-critical decisions to assign this first pericope to the genre “call narrative,” apart from the merits of such a decision on formal grounds alone.6 In short, vv. 1–11. For our purposes, the distinction is not of major importance, and we prefer to leave the matter open so as to involve all critical opinions. Ultimately, correct interpretation of vv. 1–8 demands clarity regarding vv. 9–11 as well. For a sample discussion, see Klaus Kiesow, Exodustexte im Jesajabuch, OBO 24 (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1979), 23–66. 4  The vocative “O my people” was proposed early by Jerome and recently by Norman H. Snaith, “Isaiah 40–66: A Study of the Second Isaiah and Its Consequences,” in Studies on the Second Part of the Book of Isaiah, ed. Harry M. Orlinsky and Norman H. Snaith, VTSup 14 (Leiden: Brill, 1967), 177. 5  The Babylonian provenance of Second Isaiah seems like one of the assured results of critical investigation, requiring little discussion in most modern treatments. Early proponents of Second Isaiah were not so sure, preferring Palestine, Syria, or Egypt for the correct setting for the poet/prophet. Among the most prominent: Bunsen, Ewald, Marti (Egypt); Duhm (Syria); Mowinckel and Torrey (Palestine). See more recently, Hans M. Barstad, “Lebte Deuterojesaja in Judäa?” NTT 83 (1982): 77–86; idem, “On the So-Called Babylonian Literary Influence in Second Isaiah,” SJOT 2 (1987): 90–110. The relationship between Isaiah 40–66, Lamentations, Zechariah 1–8, and numerous of the Psalms suggests for this writer that Judah is the most likely provenance. 6  Karl Elliger, Deuterojesaja 40,1–45,7, BKAT 11/1 (Neukirchen-Vluyn: Neukirchener



3. The Divine Council53

the genre designation “call narrative” is all but required by the theory of a new prophetic voice, Second Isaiah. It has seemed reasonable to assume that as one left sections of the book depicting Isaiah of Jerusalem (e. g., chs. 36–39), one would encounter at the opening of chs. 40–55 a call narrative introducing the new prophet. This is the theory defended by a majority of modern scholars, especially in Anglo-Saxon circles.7 To be sure, there are elements in 40:1–8 reminiscent of other call narratives in the OT.8 But how does the notion of Second Isaiah’s call square with the plural imperatives of v. 1 and other oddities in vv. 1–8, like the unidentified voices of v. 3 and v. 6? In 1953, Frank Moore Cross set forth a proposal that appeared satisfactorily to account for the peculiarities of the chapter.9 Cross argued that vv. 1–8 represented the Gattung “divine directives to angelic heralds”  – that is, the unit has in its background the symbolism of the council of Yahweh.10 The Verlag, 1978). Elliger speaks of the “Berufungserlebnis” of the Prophet Deuterojesaja (p. 29). Claus Westermann is more subtle: “40:1–11 seem so much like a beginning, an overture, a prologue, as to suggest that they come from the prophet himself, and were intended by him as the introduction to his message” (Isaiah 40–66, trans. D. M. G. Stalker, OTL [Philadelphia: Westminster, 1969], 32; see also idem, Sprache und Struktur der Prophetie Deuterojesajas [Stuttgart: Calwer, 1981], 82–84). Sigmund Mowinckel spoke of a “Berufungsaudition” in “Die Komposition des deuterojesajanischen Buches,” ZAW 8 (1931), 88. See also Hugo Gressmann, “Die literarische Analyse Deuterojesajas,” ZAW 34 (1914): 254–97. He prefers “visionäires Erlebnis” (p. 266). Finally, see also the recent criticism of Oswald Loretz, “Die Gattung des Prologs zum Buche Deuterojesaja (Jes 40,1–11),” ZAW 96 (1984): 210–20. 7  For the consensus view in a popular format, see Richard J. Clifford’s Fair Spoken and Persuading: An Interpretation of Second Isaiah (New York: Paulist, 1984), 71–76; also John L. McKenzie, Second Isaiah: Introduction, Translation, and Notes, AB 20 (Garden City, NY: Doubleday, 1968), 16–18; Westermann, Isaiah 40–66, 32. Those less optimistic about recovering an actual prophetic individual behind chs. 40–55 are not as inclined to search for a call narrative. See, for example, the recent survey and remarks of Jean M. Vincent, “Jesaja 40,1–8: Berufungsbericht des Propheten Deuterojesajas?” in Studien zur literarischen Eigenart und zur Heimat von Jesaja, Kap. 40–55, BBET 5 (Frankfurt: Peter Lang, 1977), 197–250. Vincent rejects a call narrative (and any form of prophetic individual) in favor of a dialogue between cultic officials during a putative new year’s festival (“Liturgie des Neujahrsfestes”). “Alle drei Abschnitte liessen sich als Ritualisierung einer Vision im himmlischen Jahwerat (?) verstehen” (p. 251). His observations about problems with the traditional method (which speaks of oral speech from an individual prophet) are on target, though his own substitute model needs refinement. See my remarks below. 8  N. Habel, “The Form and Significance of the Call Narrative,” ZAW 77 (1965): 297–323 (esp. 314–16). 9  Frank Moore Cross, “The Council of Yahweh in Second Isaiah,” JNES 12 (1953): 274–77. Cross acknowledges his debt to Harold H. Rowley’s own study on the same topic: “The Council of Yahweh,” JTS 45 (1944): 151–57. 10  Cross, “Council,” 276. See also Bernhard Duhm, who recognizes the voices as belonging to Yahweh’s host (Das Buch Jesaia, HAT 3 [Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1892], 265). Oswald Loretz sees behind the unit (40:2a, 9–11) the “Gattung der Heroldsin-

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The Book of Isaiah

plural imperatives are directed to a plural audience of divine attendants, called at other points in the OT “holy ones” (qĕdôšîm), “seraphim,” “angels/messengers” (malʾākîm), or divine beings (literally, “sons of the gods,” bĕnê ʾēlîm). The voices in vv. 3 and 6 are voices of these same attendants, who respond to the command given by their God (so “your God” in v. 1) to speak comfort to Zion.11 Anticipating a bit, Cross does not interpret vv. 6b–7 as the objection of “Second Isaiah,” thus keeping the genre closely tied to the divine imagery.12 A similar phenomenon can be seen at other points in the OT. In 1 Kgs 22:20, Micaiah the prophet overhears in the heavenly colloquy an exchange between unidentified voices, “and one said one thing and another said another” (wayyōʾmer zeh bĕkōh wĕzeh ʾōmēr bĕkōh). One specific voice, called simply hārûaḥ, “the spirit” (20:21), then comes forward and speaks specifically. In the Psalms there is frequent reference to divine attendants and their verbal and nonverbal discourse with God. Both Job and Zechariah know of a figure within the heavenly assembly called haśśāṭān (see Job 1:6–12; 2:1–6; Zech 3:1–5). This “District Attorney” in the divine realm seems to have the function of spotting earthly infraction and reporting it to God.13 Though not so named, there seems to be a link here with “the spirit” figure of 1 Kings 22. struktion” (“Prolog,” 220). Cf. Kiesow, who rejects heavenly figures in favor of an anonymous circle of prophets (Exodustexte, 54), following J. H. Eaton: “a prophet seems to be commissioning his fellow-prophets with the tidings they are to bear in Yahweh’s name” (“The Origin of the Book of Isaiah,” VT 9 [1959], 152). Robert R. Wilson’s view is somewhat similar: “God is speaking only to a part of Israel, and it makes sense to assume that God is addressing the disciples of Second Isaiah” (“The Community of the Second Isaiah,” in Reading and Preaching the Book of Isaiah, ed. Christopher R. Seitz [Philadelphia: Fortress, 1988], 54). The wider context of the divine council in the OT militates against such a reading, as will be shown. 11  Wilson objects to Cross’s divine council on these grounds: “The idea that the group is the divine council, God’s advisory committee made up of lesser deities that do God’s will, is unlikely, since Second Isaiah devotes several oracles to arguing that these other deities are not deities at all and in any case are totally ineffective and unable to do anything in the cosmos” (“Community,” 54). It should be made clear that (1) Cross does not speak of “lesser deities” in the divine council in the manner implied by Wilson; (2) Second Isaiah’s polemic against other gods is a polemic against real deities (46:1), not lesser ones, for which real idols are constructed (44:1–20; 46:1–2); Second Isaiah, of course, considers these real deities ineffective (41:21–24) and therefore nonexistent (not lesser or greater), as Wilson rightly notes; (3) a distinction should be made between divine council language and imagery  – fairly prevalent in the OT  – and the equally prevalent attack on rival gods and the construction of idols in the OT. Both divine council language and the attack on rival deities can coexist within OT books (as they do in Isaiah, Kings, and the Psalter, for example). 12  The genre is mixed with call narrative features, but Cross takes vv. 6–8 as an address to the prophet from “an anonymous herald” (“Council,” 276). 13  See the fine discussion of Marvin H. Pope, Job: Introduction, Translation, and Notes, AB 15 (Garden City, NY: Doubleday, 1965), 9–11.

3. The Divine Council55



Finally, in Zech 1:7–17, we see another instance of the divine council in a prophetic text. The prophet Zechariah has a vision in which appear (1) a man on a horse, (2) symbolic horses that patrol the earth (cf. Job 1:7; 2:2), (3) an angel of the Lord, and (4) God.14 Words go from God – they are comforting words (dĕbārîm niḥūmîm) like the opening charge of Isa 40:1 (naḥămû)  – to angel, and from angel to prophet: “So the angel who talked with me said to me, ‘Cry out!’” (qĕrāʾ). Formal similarity with our unit, vv. 1–8, is also clear. (1) God speaks (vv. 1–2; Zech 1:13). (2) A voice responds (Isa 40:3–4). (3) A voice that once cried (qôl qôrēʾ), now issues a charge to another to cry: “A voice says, ‘Cry!’ (qĕrāʾ)” (v. 6; Zech 1:14–17). The content differences between Isaiah 40 and Zechariah 1 are subtle. In Isaiah one heavenly voice faithfully takes up the charge to comfort (Isa 40:3– 4), imitating the plural imperative (pannû; yaššĕrû) employed in v. 1 by God. In Zechariah, the angel asks a question “How long?” (ʿad-mātay), similar to the question of the prophet Isaiah at his commissioning (Zech 6:11). In Zechariah, the angel’s questioning serves to drive home God’s overriding response. God speaks in the first person, through the agency of the same objecting angel (1:14–17): So the angel who talked with me said to me, “Cry out, Thus says the Lord of hosts: I am exceedingly jealous for Jerusalem and for Zion.”

The similarity of themes between Zechariah 1–8 and Second Isaiah, here and at other points, has been noted by commentators.15 Another feature should be noted in Zechariah, since it involves a possible shift in our understanding of prophecy. The prophetic voice of Zechariah serves a different function in the genesis of the tradition and in its growth to literary form than what we see in typical preexilic prophecy (Amos, Hosea, Micah, Jeremiah). As has been emphasized in critical studies since the 19th century, such prophetic activity originates in the oral speaking of a prophetic individual. Only subsequently is the oral speech put into literary form and given final shape, by later hands (prophetic disciples, redactors).16 14 

David L. Petersen argues that the vision is of “a well-watered, flora-filled place near the divine dwelling” (Haggai and Zechariah 1–8: A  Commentary, OTL [Philadelphia: Westminster, 1984], 143). Hence, although we are in the world of the prophet’s vision, that vision participates in the same broader environment of the heavenly realm. 15  See more recently Petersen’s treatment, Zechariah 1–8, 136–60. 16  The literature on this topic is vast, involving a shift from literary to form-critical analysis. One recalls Hermann Gunkel’s attack on Heinrich Ewald. Though Gunkel’s own work was best seen in narrative literature (Genesis, HKAT 1/1 [Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1901]), he also made important contributions to the study of prophets and prophetic texts. See, for example, in English, idem, “The Israelite Prophecy from the Time of Amos,” in Themes of Biblical Theology, ed. Jaroslav Pelikan, trans. R. A. Wilson, vol. 1 of

56

The Book of Isaiah

In the book of Zechariah, a different process appears to be at work. The prophet is told to cry (1:14, 17), but the angel does the crying (vv. 15–16). God speaks through his angel, in a vision which is presented privately to the prophet (v. 7). The divine message is heard not by Zechariah’s speaking to an alleged historical audience, as was the case in the preexilic model. Rather, the prophetic word is addressed in the first instance to readers, who encounter the prophet’s proclamation in textualized form. Zechariah never “speaks” at all, except to a readership who confronts the prophet, not as direct divine speaker (“Thus says the Lord”), but as one spoken to in the text.17 In sum, the model which explained peculiarities in the prophetic literature of the preexilic period by seeking its origin in oral speech and secondary redaction must be set aside at this juncture in Israel’s history, given new developments in prophecy and the prophetic literature. Now the prophet plays a role in the depiction of the literature, rather than giving rise to that literature as original oral speaker. It is the word of God, as such, that seeks a hearing, through whatever narrative features assist in this goal (vision; angelic voices; prophetic response; divine speech to prophet and other figures in the divine realm).18

II Similar rhetorical features can be spotted in Isaiah 40, though they are handled differently. Before we can discuss their significance for the interpretation of Second Isaiah, a small but crucial text-critical problem must be addressed in v. 6. If one reads with the LXX (kai eipa), a prophetic figure seems to appear in the divine realm, much as in Zech 1:13. A voice says, “Cry!” And I said (kai eipa, ‫“ ) ָוא ַֹמר‬What shall I cry?”

Qumran (‫ )ואומרה‬may support such a reading, though others have construed these consonants as a fem. sg. participle (“and she said”) because it is argued Twentieth Century Theology in the Making, ed. Jaroslav Pelikan, trans. R. A. Wilson (New York: Harper & Row, 1969), 48–75. 17  The beginning of this shift can be seen in the prose material of the book of Jeremiah. In the famous Temple Sermon, the prophet never speaks at all. Rather, God indicates the content of a sermon he is to deliver, but which we simply “overhear” through God’s instructions (Jer 7:2–15). It is a word which “came to Jeremiah from the Lord,” as the rubric states (v. 1), and which we hear only as readers of the text, viz., through textuality. See my remarks in “Mose als Prophet: Redaktionsthemen und Gesamtstruktur des Jeremiabuch,” BZ 34 (1990): 234–45. 18  See the discussion of textuality and prophecy in a new mode in Ellen F. Davis’s, Swallowing the Scroll: Textuality and the Dynamics of Discourse in Ezekiel’s Prophecy, JSOTSup 78 (Sheffield: Almond Press, 1989).



3. The Divine Council57

that a cohortative would be unusual in this context. The referent would be Zion, who is directly commissioned in vv. 9–11.19 It should be noted that there is no debate about the first-person question “What shall I cry?,” but only about the opening wĕʾāmar, pointed as a waw-conjunctive qal third masc. sg., “and X said” (MT). The objection, whoever is raising it, is familiar from other prophetic call accounts (viz., Isa 6:5 and Jer 1:5) and runs through v. 7. With a majority of commentators, we read v. 8 as a rejoinder from the voice which gave the initial charge in v. 6.20 He takes up the previous word of objection and rejoins: “The grass withers, the flower fades – but the word of our God (ʾĕlōhênû) will stand forever.” Reference to “our God” closes the first angelic strophe as well (Isa 40:3), thereby maintaining continuity in speaker within the context of the original dialogue (vv. 1–5). This rejoinder overrides the objection, and the text continues with a charge to the “messenger of good tidings” (v. 9). To summarize: God speaks to his divine court, from which various voices respond, in a manner similar to what is depicted in 1 Kings 22 (“and one said one thing, and another said another”). Plural imperatives are used, directed to a plural audience (vv. 1–2). A  divine attendant takes up the commission and delivers his own charge, again in the plural (vv. 3–5). The rest of the heavenly entourage appears to be addressed. Then the heavenly voice addresses someone individually (v. 6a). The single imperative is employed: “Cry!” There is an objection (vv. 6b–7). The objection is overridden (v. 8). A new charge is delivered to the mĕbaśśeret (vv. 9–11). 19 So David L. Petersen, Late Israelite Prophecy: Studies in Deutero-Prophetic Literature and in Chronicles, SBLDS 23 (Missoula, MT: Scholars Press, 1977), 20. Petersen attributes the original proposal to Dean McBride. The suggestion is intriguing, but it is not clear what it means to have Zion charged to comfort Jerusalem (Isa 40:1) and the cities of Judah (v. 9). An appositional “herald of good tidings, Zion” is also required in v. 9. The feminine participle form mĕaśśeret is admittedly curious in this context and may suggest the appositional reading proposed by Petersen and others (Cross, Westermann). But in 52:7 a herald of good tidings (this time masculine form, mĕbaśśēr) is clearly understood to have a mission to Zion (lĕṣîyyôn); also 41:27. And the plural feminine form (mĕbaśśĕrôt) occurs in Ps 68:12, where the feminine form is not taken as exceptional or exegetically significant. The existence of feminine participle forms without strict ontological force is seen most notably in the form qōhelet (preacher, convener), clearly a reference to Solomon the king “the son of David, King in Jerusalem” (Eccl 1:1). In short, the reading “herald of good tidings to Zion” (appositional genitive) cannot be ruled out and may make better sense exegetically (Isa 41:27; 52:7). This would not preclude the possibility that the objecting feminine voice of 40:6 referred to the mĕbaśśeret alone, but I find this unlikely and it is not the proposal of Petersen. The merits of his proposal will be looked at again below. 20 Westermann, Isaiah 40–66, 41. Others (Duhm) have preferred seeing the prophet responding to his own despair. However, the “our God” of v. 8 picks up the phraseology of v. 3, speech of the divine attendant. The plural suffixes (also “says your God” in v. 1) refer to those within the heavenly court (God and his attendants).

58

The Book of Isaiah

The main question confronting the interpreter involves the speaker of vv. 6b–7. The text-critical divergence is a good indication that earlier tradents also wrestled with proper interpretation. The first-person reading of the LXX (and possibly Qumran)21 leads in two directions. We will discuss the first one in some detail. Most modern scholars see the prophet Second Isaiah responding here, in a divine council scene which also serves as a call narrative.22 Such a mixed genre (call narrative/divine council scene) is also found in Isaiah 6, Zechariah 1, and 1 Kings 22. But there are form-critical problems with such a reading. If Second Isaiah’s objection is overridden in v. 8, why is there not a clearer statement of his acceptance of the divine charge? A comparison with Isaiah 6, Zechariah 1, and the Kings text is revealing. The prophet Isaiah clearly accepts the commission: “Then I said, Here am I, send me” (Isa 6:8). Then follows the content of the commission from God (vv. 9–10), and further exchange from the prophet back to God (vv. 11–13). The same formal pattern can be seen in 1 Kgs 22:21 (“Then a spirit came forward and stood before the Lord, saying ‘I will entice him’”), following what might be reasonably interpreted as an objection or at least a deliberation in the divine realm (v. 20). Zechariah 1 is closer to our text, in that the prophet never explicitly accepts a commission, as in Isaiah 6 and 1 Kgs 22:21, but neither does he explicitly object, as in both Isa 6:5 and 40:6 (cf. 1 Kgs 22:20). The content of Zechariah’s charge is made known to the reader through the exchange between prophet and angel (Zech 1:13–17), similar to Isa 6:8–13. The implication is that Zechariah is fit for service. He never objects; he is charged in the heavenly council; and he receives his commission directly. For those arguing for a prophetic call for Second Isaiah in 40:1–8, the content of the commission would have to be located in the opening exchange of vv. 1–5, even though this is generally admitted to involve God and the heavenly entourage, strictly speaking. It is to the subsequent charge from the heavenly court to cry (v. 6a) that the prophet objects (vv. 6b–7). Verse 8 21  The existence of so-called “false cohortatives” at Qumran is well attested, thus supporting a clear first-person “and I said” in both LXX and Qumran. See E. Y. Kutscher, The Language and Linguistic Background of the Isaiah Scroll (1 Q Isaa), STDJ 6 (Leiden: Brill, 1974), 39, 326, 357. “The lengthened form of the imperfect 1st person is very common in the Scroll…. This is of course the cohortative form properly used to express endeavour, determination, or personal interest. In the Scroll, however, these forms are used where no such connotation could possibly have been intended – e. g. with the waw consecutive: ‫”ואומרה‬ (p. 39). Also: Elisha Qimron, The Hebrew of the Dead Sea Scrolls, HSS 29 (Atlanta: Scholars Press, 1986), 44. [Pointed out by my colleague Saul Olyan.] 22  “Only once, and even then only for a moment, does he (Deutero-Isaiah) let himself be seen. This is in the prologue, in 40:6–7, which gives his call” (Westermann, Isaiah 40–66, 6).



3. The Divine Council59

must then be taken as a rejoinder that overrides Second Isaiah’s objection. So Richard J. Clifford interprets it: “The prophet hears his own lament turned into a word of divine assurance in his colloquy with the heavenly being.”23 Yet it is the heavenly being who issues this statement of trust, not the prophet, and in that sense it is a rejoinder as well as an assurance, given the content of the prophet’s prior objection. Can such a rejoinder bear the weight of a full commissioning and acceptance on the prophet’s part? The careful form-critic Claus Westermann must admit: “No intimation of a call could be briefer.”24 Why is there not more elaboration regarding the prophet’s response following the objection (vv. 6–7), such as we find in Isaiah 6? There the prophet (1) is cleansed as a response to his objection, (2) called forth; (3) he responds, (4) and is given a charge to which he makes further response. There is also the matter of unclear transition from v. 8 to v. 9. The roughness of this movement is the chief reason for disagreement among form critics over the precise limits of the opening unit (viz., vv. 1–8 or vv. 1–11). Clifford argues that v. 9 signals the prophet’s charge to Zion: “The heavenly courtier has commissioned the prophet Zion.”25 This is surely possible, but it is a departure from scenes of divine commissioning. The prophet has not been formally inaugurated following his objection, except by intimation (so Westermann) in the vague movement from v. 8 to v. 9. Is the rejoinder of v. 8 itself a sufficient inauguration? Or, as in Isaiah 6, Zechariah 1, and 1 Kings 22, does there need to be further, explicit exchange between prophet and God/ attendants? The chief advantage of the fem. sg. participle reading is the form-critical consistency it achieves.26 Isaiah 40:1–11 can be taken as a coherent unit, with vv. 9–11 providing the (1) “reassurance” and (2) “commissioning” elements following the objection, which are missing in readings which seek to designate vv. 6b–7 as Second Isaiah’s objection. Thus, Zion is charged within the heavenly council (vv. 1–6a); she objects (vv. 6b–7); her objection is rebutted (v. 8); and she is commissioned: “Get you up to a high mountain, herald of good tidings … lift up your voice with strength … lift it up, fear not; say the cities of Judah, ‘Behold, your God reigns!’” The reassurance (ʿal-tîrāʾi) and commission (ʿālî-lāk) elements make for a complete call of Zion on the pattern of prophetic calls in the divine council. As its proponent, David L. Petersen 23 Clifford, Fair Spoken, 75. It is not clear to this reader whether Clifford is interpreting

v. 8 along the lines of Duhm or Westermann (see n. 19 above). That is, does the prophet essentially effect his own assurance (Duhm) or does the heavenly being speak these words to the prophet? 24 Westermann, Isaiah 40–66, 7. 25 Clifford, Fair Spoken, 76. 26  Rightly noted by its proponent (Petersen, Late Prophecy, 20).

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recognizes that this reading is a significant variation from the critical view which interprets vv. 1–11 as a call narrative for the unknown prophet “Second Isaiah” (Westermann, Clifford). Unfortunately his reading, while form-critically satisfying, stands or falls with the Qumran variant ‫“( ואומרה‬and she said”), since the MT’s third masc. sg. form would destroy the link he seeks to establish between the objection of feminine Zion in vv. 6b–7 and her reassurance in vv. 9–10. Moreover, the fact that a first-person reading cannot be ruled out (Qumran in clear agreement with LXX), and indeed is likely, puts significant strain on an otherwise compelling interpretation.27 Finally, why is the fem. messenger addressed with an appropriate fem. imperative in 40:9 “get you up” (ʿălî-lāk), but with the masculine imperative in v. 6a (qĕrāʾ)? Again, this last matter points in the direction of seeing Qumran as employing a first sg. form, rather than a third fem. sg. participle form as argued by Petersen. The first-person reading in the LXX (and Qumran) is capable of simple explanation as a secondary divergence from the reading on which the MT is based. The LXX /Qumran introduced the objection of v. 6 with the customary “but I said,” in order to bring it in line with other prophetic objections introduced with first-person wāʾōmar (Isa 6:5; Jer 1:6) and produce a consistency with the following first-person question: “But I said, ‘What shall I cry?’” In the modern critical climate, the unintended effect of this shift was to encourage an interpretation of 40:1–11 as the call narrative of the anonymous prophet in Babylon, “Second Isaiah,” who here objects to his call. We mentioned above the possibility of a second interpretation of the objecting voice in v. 6. This interpretation has not been advanced in the modern period because of widespread commitment to the Second Isaiah hypothesis, quite apart from one’s narrower views regarding the correct reading of 40:1– 11. A second interpretation is that the objecting voice of vv. 6b–7 belongs to Isaiah of Jerusalem, the prophetic voice of chs. 1–39. A sharp divide at chs. 39 and 40 has not made this an attractive view, since it flies in the face of critical understandings of the independence of Second from First Isaiah – especially when that independence is seen as a function of the literature’s necessary derivation from discrete, historically unrelated prophetic figures, that is, First and Second Isaiah. This second reading would be possible for critics who accept the 6th-century background of chs. 40–66 but who do not, however, 27  See n. 21 above regarding long forms of the imperfect at Qumran. Qumran’s divergence from the MT may be on grammatical or exegetical grounds (or both). Unvocalized wʾmr could be construed as simple waw plus third masc. sg. perfect (“and he said”), or waw consecutive first common sg. (“and I said”), because the verb is I-aleph. Qumran characteristically supplies “false cohortatives” in waw + imperfect consecution. For the exegetical logic of Qumran and the LXX, see below.

3. The Divine Council61



stress the rigid independence of these chapters from what precedes. Such a reading would see Isaiah’s place in 40:6b–7 as primarily of redactional – not historical – significance. But this reading also requires a different conceptual framework for the interpretation of Isaiah 40–55 within the larger Isaiah corpus, viz., one that allows for the possibility of complex, inner-exegetical relationships between critically separated sections of Isaiah.

III Previous scholars have noted the formal similarity between Isaiah 6 and Isaiah 40. In the midst of his remarks about the divine council, Cross made the observation concerning 40:1–8: “The parallel to Isaiah 6:1–8 is remarkable.”28 Kiesow also speaks of 6:1–13 as “nächstliegenden Vergleichstext” to 40:1–11.29 Roy F. Melugin, in a 1976 study, states: “In both 1 Kings 22 and Isaiah 6 the prophet is transported by vision into the realm of the heavenly council…. Although Isaiah 40,1–8 is not a narrative like Isaiah 6, it is based upon the imagery of the commissioning of a prophet by means of a vision in the heavenly council.” Melugin goes on to argue that the “I” in 40:6 is intentionally equivocal, representing both prophet (Second Isaiah) and people.30 More recently, Peter R. Ackroyd has called attention to the relationship between Isaiah 6 and Isaiah 40 along different lines. The latter he suggestively terms “a renewal of the Isaianic commission.”31 Unfortunately, Ackroyd does not stipulate whether the objecting voice is redactionally intended to represent Isaiah of Jerusalem or some other figure. But his remarks do imply a shift in how one conceptualizes the relationship between chs. 40–55 and so-called First Isaiah. N. Habel had simply argued that there was a common form of commission lying behind both Isaiah 6 and Isaiah 40, an opinion shared by most advocates of a Second Isaiah call narrative in vv. 1–11.32 The model Ackroyd is pursuing envisions the relationship between these two texts differently, with far greater redactional purpose and inner-exegetical significance. Moreover, this significance has a specific force which cuts against the standard critical view of Second Isaiah’s independence from First Isaiah. 28 

Cross, “Council,” 276.

29 Kiesow, Exodustexte, 66. Also, Vincent, Heimat, 245–46; Habel, “Call Narrative,” 314;

Loretz, “Prolog,” 220. 30  Roy F. Melugin, The Formation of Isaiah 40–55, BZAW 141 (Berlin: de Gruyter, 1976), 84, 86. 31  Peter R. Ackroyd, “Isaiah 36–39: Structure and Function,” in Von Kanaan bis Kerala: Festschrift für Prof. Mag. Dr. Dr. J. P. M. van der Ploeg O. P. zur Vollendung des seibzigsten Lebensjahres am 4. Juli 1979, ed. W. C. Delsman, AOAT 211 (Neukirchen-Vluyn: Neukirchener Verlag, 1982), 6. 32  Habel, “Call Narrative,” 314–16; Melugin, Formation, 83.

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In the standard call narrative model, the objection of vv. 6b–7 is usually taken as a reflection of turmoil within the prophetic consciousness, given certain historical and psychological factors relevant for Second Isaiah. Westermann’s remarks are typical: … (T)he exiles’ greatest temptation – and the prophet speaks as one of their number – was precisely to be resigned to thinking of themselves as caught up in the general transience of all things, to believing that nothing could be done to halt the extinction of their national existence, and to saying … all flesh is grass!33

Vincent, on the other hand, rejects this view as derived from inappropriate psychologizing tendencies inherent in the biographical “prophetic individual” model for interpretation. But his alternative is not particularly illuminating. He interprets the language of despondency as typical of the new year festival into which he places these chapters, with its “kontrastierenden Gegenüberstellung der Grössen Null und Unendlich.”34 If one rejects the provenancerestricted approach of Vincent, and the biographical/psychological approach of Westermann and a majority of scholars, are there other possibilities for interpreting vv. 1–11 and the objection of vv. 6b–7? One answer may be found in a further comparison of Isaiah 40 and Isaiah 6. In Isaiah 6 the scene of the heavenly court is explicit, rather than implicit or presupposed (as in Isaiah 40).35 The attendants are clearly identified as “seraphim.” Their physical nature is described (v. 2). In language similar to 40:1–11, they are identified as speakers one to another (wĕqārāʾ zeh ʾel-zeh wĕʾāmar, cf. 1 Kgs 22:20). Moreover, reference to God’s glory in the whole earth (Isa  6:3) finds a parallel at 40:5: “The glory of the Lord shall be revealed, and all flesh shall see it together.” With language we have discussed in v. 6, the prophet Isaiah responds in objection, introduced by wāʾōmar (6:5). But here the objection involves his penetration into the realm of the holy, dangerous because of his unclean state (“Woe is me! For I am lost; for I am a man of unclean lips”). Upon being cleansed, the prophet takes up the commission without pause, although it involves a vast judgment (vv. 9–10). God’s reference to himself together with the divine court is also in striking parallel to the use in Isaiah 40 of plural imperatives and possessive suffixes: 33 Westermann,

Isaiah 40–66, 41. Heimat, 248. 35  The literature on this foundational passage is vast. For a sampling, see George Adam Smith, “Isaiah’s Call and Consecration,” in The Book of Isaiah, 2 vols. (London: Hobber & Stoughton, 1927), 1:56–88; Rolf Knierim, “The Vocation of Isaiah,” VT 18 (1968): 47–68; Ivan Engnell, The Call of Isaiah: An Exegetical and Comparative Study, UUA 4 (Leipzig: Harrassowitz; Uppsala: A.‑B. Lundequistska, 1949); Odil H. Steck, “Bemerkungen zu Jesaja 6,” BZ 16 (1972): 188–206; A. Schoors, “Isaiah, The Minister of Royal Anointment?” OtSt 20 (1977): 85–107. 34 Vincent,

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“And I heard the voice of the Lord saying, ‘Whom shall I send, and who will go for us?’” (6:8).36 The linguistic links between Isaiah 6 and Isaiah 40 are clear. Both participate in a broader environment of language of the heavenly court. But to find two “call narratives” utilizing the language of the divine council within a single prophetic book is logical only if one is prepared to accept the view that an individual prophet should be sought behind Isaiah 40–55, on analogy with First Isaiah. If one views 40:1–11 as exegetically composed on the basis of, and literarily coordinated with, 6:1–13, another interpretation is possible. A methodological problem should be acknowledged at this juncture. How does one determine the date of levels of tradition in First Isaiah and their redactional relationship vis-à-vis Second Isaiah chapters, which most see as uniformly reflecting the same basic diachronic location (6th century)? The question becomes important given the type of redactional activity we wish to argue is at work in the book of Isaiah. It lies beyond the scope of our study to address this problem fully. However, the observations we wish to make regarding inner-exegetical efforts within the book of Isaiah will be of a more general nature, so the larger topic of precise redactional dating can be set aside without undue strain on the thesis here proposed. Moreover, plotting the direction of literary influence is not always an either/or matter, since the possibility of mutual enrichment and cross fertilization between Second Isaiah and First Isaiah sections cannot be ruled out. The dating problem is somewhat relativized as one comes to recognize the existence of complex reciprocal relationships among the various subsections of Isaiah. In many cases, one can see efforts at redactional coordination in First Isaiah that are directed exclusively towards chs. 40–55.37 By the same token, efforts at coordination also run in the opposite direction, as themes and language found in chs. 40–66 are generated in clear response to First Isaiah traditions.38 This means that sorting out questions of diachronic development from a redactional perspective remains a significant undertaking, involving precision and text-by-text analysis. But in many instances the broad 36 

Noted by Rowley, “Council of Yahweh,” 154; Cross, “Council,” 275. esp. Clements, “The Prophecies of Isaiah”; Rendtorff, “Zur Komposition des Buches Jesajas.” 38  On the “Former/Latter Things” motif, see Douglas R. Jones, “The Traditio of the Oracles of Isaiah of Jerusalem,” ZAW 67 (1955): 226–45; Brevard S. Childs, Introduction to the Old Testament as Scripture (Philadelphia: Fortress, 1979), 328–30; more broadly, Ronald E. Clements, “Beyond Tradition History: Deutero-Isaianic Development of FirstIsaiah’s Themes,” JSOT 31 (1985): 95–113; David G. Meade, “Authorship, Revelation and Canon in the Prophetic Tradition,” in Pseudonymity and Canon, WUNT 39 (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 1986), 15–41. 37  See

64

The Book of Isaiah

consensus concerning major diachronic levels within Isaiah should suffice for the kind of analysis we wish to pursue here. The reason for the lack of explicit clarification of the heavenly court scene and the obscure voices in 40:1–11 is that the backdrop of Isaiah 6 has been presupposed, from an editorial perspective, for the reader of this key passage. Following the redactionally pivotal ch. 39,39 we reenter the divine council where Isaiah was first commissioned. Viewed in this light, the objection of vv. 6b–7 takes on specific import. This is not prophetic despondency or a piece of sententious wisdom,40 but a précis of one important dimension of Isaiah’s proclamation, viewed from the perspective of a 6th-century interpreter. The précis has been generated as an exegetical reflection on certain broad themes found throughout chs. 1–39. But it is also specifically related to several key texts. Not surprisingly, one of these is 6:1–13. In the commissioning scene in ch. 6, Isaiah questioned how long (ʿad mātay) he would be called to make the heart of the people fat. This was his reaction to the commission from God in vv. 9–10. God’s response was: Until cities lie waste without inhabitant   and houses without men And the land is utterly desolate   and the Lord removes men far away   and the forsaken places are many    in the midst of the land. (vv. 11b–12)

This response confirmed the time span for Isaiah’s work as prophet of judgment. Here is an instance where it cannot be ruled out that this clarification has been redactionally supplied to work in coordination with themes of judgment spanning First and Second Isaiah. This is Clements’s opinion regarding vv. 12–13.41 With this text in view, it is possible to see the objection of 40:6b–7 in more specific terms. The likening of the people’s constancy/strength (ḥasdô)42 to the “flower of the field” (sîṣ haśśādeh) in v. 6b, and the reference to the “fading flower” (nābēl ṣîṣ) in v. 7 are not just exclamations of despondency from a prophet in Babylon. Rather, these terms crop up within chs. 1–39 as descriptions of Israel’s impending or present situation of judgment. In the pericope 28:1–4, 39  See Peter R. Ackroyd, “An Interpretation of Babylonian Exile: A Study of 2 Kings 20, Isaiah 38–39,” SJT 27 (1974): 329–52. 40 McKenzie, Second Isaiah, 18. 41  Clements, “The Prophecies of Isaiah,” 426. 42  In view of its usage in contexts of fidelity to mutual relationships, the force of the expression ḥasdô indicates the opposite of the ephemeral. McKenzie’s “constancy” is therefore adopted here (Second Isaiah, 16). See also L. J. Kuyper, “The Meaning of ḥasdô in Isa. 40.6,” VT 13 (1963): 489–92.



3. The Divine Council65

we find expressions that match those in 40:7–8: the prophet reflects on Israel and “the fading flower (sîṣ nōbēl) of its glorious beauty” (28:1). Like a storm of mighty, overflowing waters, the lord will cast to   the earth with violence. The proud crown of the drunkards of Ephraim will be trodden   under foot and the fading flower (sîs nōbēl) of its    glorious beauty … Will be like a first-ripe fig before the summer; when a man sees it,   he eats it up as soon as it is in his hand. (vv. 2b–4)

From a redactional perspective, references to the “flower of the field” and the “fading flower” at 40:6–7 are coordinated with language typical of the judgment proclamation Isaiah was commissioned to deliver in 6:9–13 and which finds expression at 28:1–4. Moreover, the verses immediately preceding ch. 40 speak of the culmination of God’s word to Isaiah from the call narrative (39:5–8).43 Nothing was to be left (6:11 – so 39:6). Men were to be carried off (6:12 – so 39:7). This will not take place during Hezekiah’s lifetime (39:8), but in the “days to come” (v. 6). The answer to Isaiah’s “How long?” (6:11) is to find its concrete fulfillment in these events. It is therefore not unusual that in Isaiah’s response to Hezekiah’s prayer (37:22–29), the vision of judgment that God has planned of old (v. 26) is described thus: … fortified cities crash into heaps of ruins, while their inhabitants, shorn of strength, are dismayed and  confounded, and have become like plants of the field (ʿēśeb śādeh) and like the tender grass, like grass on the housetops (ḥăṣîr gaggôt)

What God had planned to do “from days of old” (v. 26) he postpones in Hezekiah’s day “for my own sake and for the sake of my servant David” (v. 35). The description of judgment postponed matches that of the objection of 40:7–8. The voice of vv. 6b–7 acknowledges that the plan of old has come to pass, not in 701 but in 587: “all flesh is grass, and all its constancy like the flower of the field” – for the breath of the Lord has blown upon it. The Assyrian has been replaced by the Babylonian instrument of judgment (so 23:13), and the voice speaks of the destruction experienced in 587  – a return to the chaos depicted in chs. 24–27.44 The world has become the wilderness (40:3) spoken 43  For a treatment of chs. 36–39, see the contributions of Ackroyd cited in n. 2, 32; see also Klass A. D. Smelik, “Distortion of Old Testament Prophecy: The Purpose of Isaiah xxxvi and xxxvii,” OtSt 24 (1986): 70–93. 44  On the clear relationship between 587 and the description of judgment in chs. 24–27,

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The Book of Isaiah

of long ago (13:5), about which the Babylonian had boasted (14:17); for this he will be punished (vv. 3–21) – like the arrogant Assyrian before him (vv. 24– 27) – at the hands of Persians (13:17–22), the “birds of prey” (18:6) who do God’s bidding. This complex temporal scheme in the Oracles of Nations, redactionally filled out in light of subsequent events, is compactly referred to in Isaiah 40–48 as “the former and latter things,” known only by the God of Israel and those to whom he chooses to reveal them (41:21–29). The “new things” are about to take place, including above all the calling of Cyrus, “the bird of prey from the east” (46:11). God has declared it first to Zion (41:27) and has given to Jerusalem a “herald of good tidings” (mĕbaśśēr).45 The prologue of 40:1–11 signals that the old age is passing away and a new day is dawning. The objecting voice is the last gasp from “the former day,” although others like him must be addressed and strengthened in chs. 40–55. It is time for the herald of good tidings to replace the voices of past guilt and former judgment.

IV We are in a position to return to the form-critical problem regarding Isa 40:1– 11 and reach some conclusions. The scene is, as Cross first argued, a divine commissioning in the heavenly council. The unit is not, however, a “call narrative” of the anonymous prophet Second Isaiah. The objecting voice of vv. 6b–7 speaks as though he were Isaiah himself. A first-person reading, “but I said,” may have functioned in Qumran/LXX in support of such an interpretation, though this is impossible to determine. The same formal considerations that weigh against Second Isaiah “call narrative” interpretations also weigh against an Isaiah of Jerusalem interpretation, with one major caveat. The formal elements “reassurance” and “charge” would not be required if the voice were construed as belonging to Isaiah of Jerusalem. These elements could be missing because Isaiah’s is a voice of the past (the former things), and not one of the present (the new things); therefore, a reassurance and charge would be misplaced. But precisely on these grounds Isaiah cannot be the voice of vv. 6b–7, even fictively depicted. For vv. 1–11 stands at a conscious historical distance from events of Isaiah’s days – see Dan G. Johnson, From Chaos to Restoration: An Integrative Reading of Isaiah 24–27, JSOTSup 61 (Sheffield: JSOT Press, 1988). On 13:1–16 as an oracle not against Babylon, but concerning Babylon as destructive agent, see Ronald E. Clements, Isaiah 1–39, NCBC (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1980), 132–36. Babylon is then judged by the “Persians” in 13:17–22. 45  Note the masc. form and the clear statement that the herald’s mission is to Zion (see 40:9–11).

3. The Divine Council67



a fact argued for from the dawn of modern critical analysis, but only for the interpreter working with the proper historical-critical tools, from an enlightened perspective outside of the text itself. Here we touch on an irony in recent treatments of Isaiah as a redactional unity. The recent canonical observation of a key redactional theme in Second Isaiah regarding the former/latter things undercuts both the “traditional view” of single Isaianic authorship and the “traditional critical view,” against which it is directed.46 Since chs. 40–48, in which the theme appears, look at the former things as things of the past, so too the prophet Isaiah is a “voice of the past.” Put in another way, if one takes seriously recent redactional arguments for unity and coherence, the 66-chapters of the book of Isaiah do not become a single vision of an 8th-century prophet. Rather, the redactional perspective is one of former vision (chs. 1–39) and its fulfillment (chs. 40–48), which in turn gives rise to “new things” (chs. 49–66). We are clearly instructed in 1:1 that Isaiah’s vision emerged in the days of four 8th-century kings, from Uzziah to Hezekiah. Since the latter’s death is referred to in ch. 39, and is taken as a matter of theological and temporal significance, the reader should also be aware that the historical Isaiah will pass from the scene. Isaiah’s full vision of judgment has been postponed solely by the obedience of Hezekiah and the grace of God (37:14–20, 35). This is clearly illustrated in ch. 38, where the original word of the Lord from Isaiah (v. 1) is altered by the prayer of Hezekiah (vv. 2–3), giving rise to a new word (v. 5) which postpones Hezekiah’s death, and the “death” of the city (v. 6). The word of judgment therefore concerns “days to come” (39:6). There will be “peace and security” (v. 8) in the days of both Hezekiah and Isaiah, as the final words of ch. 39 indicate. Second Isaiah chs. 40–55, however, look back on the judgment as an accomplished fact. The vision of First Isaiah is fulfilled in the events of 587, which Isaiah saw in the days of Hezekiah. But the perspective of Isaiah 40–66 sees these events in the past: they are “former things.” In sum, arguments for redactional coherence and unity in the full book of Isaiah are not arguments for single authorship by the prophet Isaiah, even in a post-critical guise.47 On the other hand, the objection of vv. 6b–7 has been constructed as a reflection on Isaiah’s vision of judgment fulfilled. To whom does the voice 46 

Childs has argued persuasively that the “Former Things” in Second Isaiah refer not to obscure matters in the historical consciousness of the Babylonian prophet, but rather to the preaching of Isaiah, as this is redactionally presented in chs. 1–39. Compare the strict referential reading of C. R. North, “The ‘Former Things’ and the ‘New Things’ in DeuteroIsaiah,” in Studies in Old Testament Prophecy, ed. Harold H. Robinson (Edinburgh: T&T Clark, 1950), 111–26. 47 The Talmud reference frequently appealed to for “traditional views” of authorship (“Moses wrote the Pentateuch”) attributes the writing of Isaiah to “the assembly of Hezekiah” (B. Bat. 15a).

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The Book of Isaiah

belong? The voice belongs to an anonymous member of the heavenly council: “And one said, ‘What shall I cry?’” The third masc. sg. qal perfect of the MT points to any individual member of the heavenly council.48 The remark is a reflection on 587 events made from the perspective of one member of the divine council.49 Ackroyd is finally correct that 40:1–11 is a “renewal of the Isaianic commission,” not because Isaiah is recommissioned, but because God speaks again from the divine council as he had done formerly in Isaiah’s day. The book of Isaiah is not expanded on the basis of the prophetic individual Isaiah (the “traditional view”), but solely on the basis of the enduring word of God, which has broken down (“the flower fades when the spirit of Lord blows upon it”) and will now rise up (“but the word of our God endures forever”). Use of the divine council perspective at this critical juncture in the movement of the book of Isaiah has permitted a flexibility in temporal point of view. In vv. 1–11, periods of time centuries removed are brought together before a single divine horizon. The Former Things meet the New Things. Following this rejoinder in the heavenly council, the word of God goes forth directly, commissioning the herald of good tidings. If one was to speak of a “call narrative,” it would have to refer to the content of vv. 9–11, which contains the crucial elements of charge and reassurance. This would, however, oversimplify matters considerably. For the mĕbaśśeret does not become the prophetic messenger who is the presumed speaker of all that follows, on analogy with the function of call narratives in preexilic prophetic literature. The herald becomes one of many directly addressed by God in Second Isaiah, including most especially the servant (chs. 40–48) and Zion herself (chs. 49–54). There is no first-person speech of prophet to be differentiated from direct speech of God until 48:16b. The full-length speech of a prophetic figure follows not surprisingly in 49:1–6, one of the so-called Servant Songs.50 Although it lies beyond the scope of this study, we would argue that in many respects chs. 40–48, in their entirety, never put aside the concerns of a traditional “call narrative.” Throughout these chapters, the question is, “Who 48 Ackroyd even translates the following first-person question impersonally, “What should one say?” (“Structure and Function,” 6). Meade makes a good observation regarding the anonymity of “Second Isaiah” that touches on our interpretation of 40:1–11: “… could the suppression of the ‘prophet’s’ identity be due to an awareness of his part in a larger Isaiah tradition? If this were so, the ‘call narrative’ of 40:1–11 would serve the dual purpose of authorizing the message while making it clear that it was not independent of the larger whole” (“Authorship,” 35). Meade rightly recognizes the necessity of taking the broader Isaiah book into consideration when interpreting a passage from any individual section. 49  Does this objecting individual foreshadow the more directly prosecutorial śātān of Job and Zechariah? Is he like the individualized “spirit” of 1 Kings 22? 50  On the structural significance of the Servant motif in Second Isaiah, see Peter Wilcox and David Paton-Williams, “The Servant Songs in Deutero-Isaiah,” JSOT 42 (1988): 79–102.

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will accept the call God has issued in 40:1–11?” Will Israel be the servant God commissions her to be (41:8; 42:1; 43:1; 44:1, 2; 45:4; 48:20)? Not until 48:16 does an individual step forward, employing in 49:1–6 the language of the call narrative. The individual is called by God “servant Israel” (v. 3).51 This time the objection (v. 4) is directly addressed by God, the prophet is reassured and recommissioned (vv. 5–6), and he speaks directly with the messenger formula (v. 7). It is as if the original “call” of 40:1–11 has finally been accepted. In 50:4–9 the same individual speaks of God’s support and strengthening, as one who has clearly accepted God’s call to be servant. It is the contention of this study that Second Isaiah witnesses to a major shift in prophetic literature. In chs. 40–48 God speaks directly from the divine council without need of prophetic agency. Now the prophet is a figure addressed, in a manner we spoke of earlier with regard to Zechariah, along with other figures (Jacob/Israel, herald, Zion).52 Correct interpretation of the opening pericope is crucial for understanding the logic of the material that follows. Our study has shown that the traditional call narrative has been modified here in favor of a commissioning from the divine council. But acceptance of the commission is itself a major theme and question running throughout chs. 40–48, and explains much of the rhetorical questioning that goes on there. Because the prophet exists as an independent figure, addressed by the literature in chs. 40–48, we would argue that the search for the “authors” of chs. 40–66 must move away from the oral speech model popular with preexilic prophecy. We do not have oral speech from prophet subsequently put in written form by disciples. Instead, we have written “oracles” which themselves raise the question of ongoing prophetic activity. There is not sufficient space to speculate about the authors of this form of “prophecy.” But it would not be surprising to find that the scribal prophecy of Isaiah 40–66, if we might call it that, has a literary style and a sociological location not far removed from that which is assumed for the Psalms (with which Second Isaiah is frequently compared) and the book of Lamentations. The technique at work in Zechariah also suggests similar background and provenance. This study of Isa 40:1–11 and the divine council will, it is hoped, raise new questions about the propriety of current positions regarding the anonymous Babylonian prophet “Deutero-Isaiah” and stimulate alternative proposals. Finally, the notion that chs. 40–48 raise a question about prophetic agency, which is then addressed in the literature itself, is one that could function quite well within the standard approach to Second Isaiah, whereby chs. 40–55 are seen as independent of what precedes, and to be interpreted as such. Our 51 

52 

See the fine study of 49:1–6 by Wilcox and Paton-Williams (“Servant Songs,” 88–93). See the brief comments of Petersen (Late Israelite Prophecy, 19–23).

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study points to a different method of approach. We have argued that problems raised in the interpretation of 40:1–11 were partly due to the refusal to read vv. 1–11 as an integral part of the wider book of Isaiah, especially in light of 6:1–13.53 Once one acknowledges the possibility of reciprocal redactional relationships among sections of Isaiah, a whole new range of interpretive possibilities emerge. But the sky is not the limit. Controls must be refined in order to develop a responsible hermeneutic for interpreting Isaiah 1–66 as a whole book. Our study suggests that the question of prophetic agency is possible as a legitimate interpretation of 40:1–11 and chs. 40–48 when one recognizes the exegetical context of the full shape of the book of Isaiah, which is itself an aid in the interpretation of individual passages. The question does not just surface in a hypothetical 6th-century setting in Babylon, or in the consciousness of an anonymous prophet; rather, it surfaces in a prophetic book where the prophet Isaiah is depicted as passing away from the scene in ch. 39. Failure to take the canonical form of the material seriously, in favor of strict referential readings, will inevitably mean confusion over the interpretation of isolated passages, read as such. In the pursuit of a satisfactory interpretation of 40:1–11, our study has, it is hoped, raised questions about the propriety of reading the book of Isaiah as three independent collections.54

53 

See the remarks of David Meade in n. 48 above. A version of this paper was read at the January 1989 meeting of the Oriental Club of New Haven. 54 

4.  How is the Prophet Isaiah Present in the Latter Half of the Book? The Logic of Chapters 40–66 within the Book of Isaiah It is an exciting time in the study of the book of Isaiah. In an effort to comprehend the significance of the book as a whole – if such there be – readers are having to go to school again and ask very fundamental questions.1 Some older students insist from time to time that a shift of focus is wrong-headed and only indicates a failure to follow through more rigorously with the original methods of form and redaction criticism. Others proceed apace as though the shift toward reading Isaiah as a full collection was not taking place at all, or at most involved a final adjustment or two once work on independent sections had been satisfactorily completed. In this case, one might ask if the reflection that results is still largely determined by the persistence of an approach tied to investigating Isaiah as three discrete, evolving sections, even ones that now might potentially have something to do with one another.2 In any event, for all readers of Isaiah, it is a time of constant course adjustment, as one master theory is proposed here,3 while there several alternative and more modest essays are set forth.4 A shift toward “unified” readings has produced more, not less, in terms of exegetical proposals for comprehending that unity. 1  Christopher R. Seitz, “The Divine Council: Temporal Transition and New Prophecy in the Book of Isaiah,” JBL 109 (1990): 229–47. 2  See my remarks in “On the Question of Divisions Internal to the Book of Isaiah,” in Society of Biblical Literature 1993 Seminar Papers, ed. Eugene H. Lovering (Atlanta: Scholars Press, 1993), 260–66. 3  Among others, Edgar W. Conrad, Reading Isaiah, OBT 27 (Minneapolis: Fortress, 1991); Christopher R. Seitz, Zion’s Final Destiny: The Development of the Book of Isaiah: A  Reassessment of Isaiah 36–39 (Minneapolis: Fortress, 1991); Marvin A. Sweeney, Isaiah 1–4 and the Post-Exilic Understanding of the Isaianic Tradition, BZAW 171 (Berlin: de Gruyter, 1988); H. G. M. Williamson, The Book Called Isaiah: Deutero-Isaiah’s Role in Composition and Redaction (Oxford: Clarendon; New York: Oxford University Press, 1994). 4  Peter R. Ackroyd, “An Interpretation of the Babylonian Exile: A Study of 2 Kings 20, Isaiah 38–39,” SJT 27 (1974): 329–52; idem, “Isaiah 36–39: Structure and Function,” in Von Kanaan bis Kerala: Festschrift für Prof. Mag. Dr. Dr. J. P. M. van der Ploeg O. P. zur Vollendung des siebzigsten Lebensjahres am 4. Juli 1979, ed. W. C. Delsman et al., AOAT 211 (Neukirch-

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Modern hermeneutical theory has reminded us of the common-sense warning that our exegetical findings are likely to be determined by the questions we are asking of the text. One reading the Pentateuch in search of longitudinal sources will be inclined to read the statement in Exod 6:3b not as a circumstantial clause in a larger unit concerned with how God intends to make himself known in the events of the exodus (vv. 5–7) but instead as confirmation that one source disagreed with another over how God had theretofore made use of his proper name. To ask, How is Isaiah present in Isaiah 40–66? could be to raise a question extraneous to the book’s own presentation and one that only proceeds from the modern critical preoccupation with what is or is not authentic in this book, so far as Isaianic authorship is concerned. However, two warrants for asking the question can be put forward. First, the question is by no means a modern one only but formed part of the deliberations of so-called pre-critical exegesis, even when in a muted or more occasional guise.5 Second, the question need not involve anything like a concern for what is “authentic” in Isaiah (What did such a term ever really mean?) but instead only seeks to understand how or if the figure of Isaiah is maintained in these twenty-seven chapters. For purposes of illustration and to anticipate the discussion that follows, Isaiah could be regarded as a figure of the past, therefore to be treated as such in chs. 40–66 in ways we can identify exegetically; or Isaiah’s voice could be regarded as lying behind or above the material that follows chs. 1–39, where he had played a more visible role. In this latter case, the precise way the Isaianic voice is resident in chs. 40–66 might well be very nuanced, akin to pseudepigraphic models or with a more general sense of Isaianic “aegis.” But what is significant is the degree to which these models can be differentiated, even as they both seek to understand Isaiah as a meaningfully organized 66-chapter totality. It would be helpful at this point to consider briefly three earlier efforts to deal with this same issue of Isaiah’s presence in chs. 40–66. This will give us a sample of the range of premodern attitudes toward this matter, which in turn en-Vluyn: Neukirchener Verlag, 1982), 3–21; David Carr, “Reaching for Unity in Isaiah,” JSOT 57 (1993): 61–80; Ronald E. Clements, “Beyond Tradition-History: Deutero-Isaianic Development of First Isaiah’s Themes,” JSOT 31 (1985): 95–113; Richard J. Clifford, “The Unity of the Book of Isaiah and Its Cosmogonic Language,” CBQ 55 (1993): 1–17; Rolf Rendtorff, “Zur Komposition des Buches Jesaja,” VT 34 (1984): 295–320; idem, “Jesaja 6 im Rahmen der Komposition des Jesajabuches,” in The Book of Isaiah, ed. J. Vermeylen, BETL 81 (Leuven: Leuven University Press, 1989), 73–82; Gerald T. 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, ed. Eugene H. Lovering (Atlanta: Scholars Press, 1992), 549–82. 5  See ch. 20 of the present volume.



4.  How is the Prophet Isaiah Present in the Latter Half of the Book? 73

provides a context in which to assess modern efforts to describe Isaiah’s unity as this involves the persona of the prophet Isaiah in the latter chapters of the book associated with him.

I In Isa 41:25–29, the prophetic voice states that the calling of one from the north was declared “from the beginning … and from beforetime” such that now those privy to that declaration can point to it to establish the authority of God. The nations cannot do this. Their gods are not gods but the product of human imagination and highly skilled but vain labor. Anticipating the objections of C. R. North to an identification of the one called as Abraham,6 Calvin argues that the one called from the north is Babylon while the one called from the east is Cyrus (v. 25).7 Calvin knows that the Babylonians were not yet Israel’s enemies and that the captivity from which Cyrus would liberate the exiles lay on the distant horizon, so far as Isaiah’s own historical context was concerned. One brief section from his remarks will give suitable illustration of the problem he is aware of: When he says that he calls him “from the north,” as I  suggested a little before, he predicts the future captivity of which at that time there was no expectation, because the Jews were friends and allies of the Chaldeans…. Who would have thought, when matters were in that state, that such things could be believed?… [F]or they happened two hundred years after having been predicted by the prophet…. This is a remarkable passage for establishing the full and perfect certainty of the oracles of God; for the Jews did not forge these predictions while they were captive in Babylon; but long after the predictions had been delivered to their fathers, they at length recognized the righteous judgment of God, by whom they had been warned in due time.8

Calvin concludes by noting that the remarkable character of this sort of declaration is an indication that Isaiah “did not speak at his own suggestion, but that his tongue was moved and guided by the Spirit of God.”9 Several significant things are to be observed. First, here and elsewhere in Calvin’s commentary we are made aware that rival theories concerning the provenance and form (“predictions”) of these chapters existed (viz., they 6  C. R. North, “The ‘Former Things’ and the ‘New Things’ in Deutero-Isaiah,” in Studies in Old Testament Prophecy, ed. Harold H. Rowley (Edinburgh: T&T Clark, 1950), 111–26. 7  Against most modern interpreters, however, Calvin regarded the figure stirred up earlier in the chapter (41:2) as Abraham (Calvin’s Commentaries: Isaiah [Grand Rapids: Associated Publishers and Authors, n. d.], 3:544–64). 8  Ibid., 562. Compare the perspectives of R. Moses ibn Chiquitilla and Abraham Ibn Ezra, discussed in ch. 20 below. 9 Ibid.

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came from the period of Babylonian captivity). Second, Calvin fully recognizes the problem of historicality and temporal distance: when Isaiah spoke, the Babylonians were not Israel’s enemies and the Persians were not on the scene at all. Third, the speech of Isaiah would not have made any real sense to his contemporaries, and in fact the intended audience is “posterity, who had actual experience of their accomplishment” and who also would understand that they had been warned for some time. This understanding of Isaiah’s speech is familiar from the presentation of the latter chapters of Daniel, with the exception that there the element of unrecognizability to contemporaries and Daniel himself is specifically noted in the portrayal (Dan 8:17, 27; also 7:15, 28; 10:14), while for Calvin it need play no role in the case of Isaiah for his own interpretation to gain conviction. But there is another problem. Although Isa 41:25 might, with some effort, be understood as a prediction, fully veiled for Isaiah’s contemporaries, the force of the passage turns on Israel’s future capacity to declare that something spoken beforehand has now come about. To make another loose comparison with Daniel, this is a little like both producing the dream and interpreting it (Daniel 2), since not only is the prediction made but its future force in establishing God’s authority vis-à-vis the nations is also foreseen; a force that demands the prophecy’s prior utterance.10 Calvin is prepared to accept such a reading as proof of the extraordinary character of Isaiah as a conduit for the Holy Spirit. This is, however, stretching the plain sense of the material in a way that has no Daniel-like explanation. The declaration in 41:26 about the long-standing character of the prophecy concerning Babylon and Persia would be difficult to square with Isaianic address to contemporaries on any reading and on any account of the inspired character of Israel’s prophetic witness. For a prediction to be valid, it must have been uttered meaningfully to contemporaries; yet it cannot at the same time carry weight as having been uttered long ago to special witnesses, whose posterity can claim to know something no one else knows. One might be prepared to entertain Calvin’s proposal under slightly different conditions, but then the gap between Isaiah and Daniel would have to be fully closed. That is, the effort could have been made to depict Isaiah as the authorizer of this passage in vv. 25–29, in something of the same sense that Daniel is the authorizer of speech directed to another day in the presentation of that book. It seems to me, however, that here we have identified the exact difference between these two presentations. The passage in question does not appear directed to a future audience, as is the case in Daniel; nor is its incomprehensibility to Isaiah or his contemporaries mentioned, as in Daniel; 10 

On the Daniel/Isaiah comparison, see ch. 20 below.

4.  How is the Prophet Isaiah Present in the Latter Half of the Book? 75



and finally, its very success at persuasion demands a contemporary audience for whom the appearance of Cyrus has some probative force, as such, but primarily as having been announced from long ago. The lack of consistency in Calvin’s method and the influence of other factors, especially the NT’s plain sense, can also be detected when at 49:1–7 the first-person voice ceases to be that of Isaiah and becomes that of Christ, again in a passage with no actual “predictive” character. I would be grossly misunderstood if these remarks were taken as criticisms of Calvin’s failure to engage an objective, historical-critical approach, such as would emerge beyond his own day. My concern here is with understanding how Calvin answers the question we have posed, How is the prophet Isaiah present in chs. 40–66? Neither should his lack of consistency be taken as a fatal flaw, for that would beg the question of what is meant by consistency as a good unto itself, or imply that every reading can bracket out every other theological context as an equal good unto itself. In answer to the question we are posing here, the prophet Isaiah, for Calvin, remains resident in chs. 40–66 in a fairly direct sense, though he must also share the stage with Christ as well as with audiences beyond his own day. Isaiah does not just hover around in some indistinct sense, nor is Calvin appealing to an Isaianic aegis under which the prophecies of chs. 40–66 circulate or derive their claim to be taken seriously as God’s word. An alternative to this picture of Isaiah’s role in chs. 40–66 seems to appear in the Targums through the effort to explicate the extremely terse opening command to a plural audience (40:1).11 The question of who is being addressed by this double charge to comfort may in fact impinge on the question of Isaianic voice in the chapters that follow. The Targums gloss the verse with “O ye prophets” and therewith supply the object of the charging. While it remains unclear who actually speaks this initial charge on behalf of God, what may be suggested by the supplying of an object for the command is that the voices which then speak up (v. 3 and v. 6) are these same prophets who have been addressed. If this reading of the targumic gloss is correct, we may be witnessing a transition from the voice of Isaiah, strictly speaking, as the voice behind the literature, to other new voices, those of unnamed prophets. Yet this remains unclear. Interestingly, Calvin also speaks of “the Prophet” (Isaiah) commissioning “new prophets” in v. 1, “whom he enjoins to soothe the sorrows of the people by friendly consolation.”12 But that that is the end of it is made clear almost immediately in his interpretation of the first-person voice (see LXX) in 11 

See my brief discussion in “Divine Council,” 230. Calvin’s Commentaries, 3:523.

12 Calvin,

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v. 6. Here God’s voice charges the prophets in general, and Isaiah is the one who responds, “What shall I cry?” And we have seen from Calvin’s exegesis at other points that Isaiah’s is the voice that continues to speak throughout these chapters: addressing contemporaries, posterity, and pointing ahead to Christ’s mission. Another earlier interpreter, Ibn Ezra, may give us a sense of what the Targums were driving at and how they likely represent a different approach from that of Calvin concerning the Isaianic voice  – quite apart from his christological readings.13 Ibn Ezra is aware of the Babylonian context of the material, yet he cautions the reader against drawing wrong conclusions from this. He frequently refers to “the prophet,” but it is not entirely clear who is meant – that is, an independent and new voice behind the material or someone referred to within the oracles themselves. In neither case is Isaiah the prophet the obvious referent. It would appear that Ibn Ezra is aware of the problem of Isaianic voice in chs. 40–66, because of the historical distance and the character of the material in these chapters, but unlike Calvin he does not resolve the problem by an appeal to prediction. Instead he changes the subject. These chapters are also as much about Ibn Ezra’s own day as they are about matters in the Babylonian period.

II Before turning to modern interpreters to inquire how the prophet Isaiah is viewed as present in chs. 40–66, it is important to register that for about a century such a question would have made no sense at all. Bernhard Duhm, for example, was prepared to argue that at one time chs. 40–55 never even circulated in connection with Isaiah at all, and that when they were first combined with an extant prophetic collection, Jeremiah and not Isaiah was chosen.14 Such was the fully artificial and external nature of the connection of this material to Isaiah, when that eventually occurred. The first part of his theory, viz., that chs. 40–55 (and chs. 55-56) once had no connection at all to Isaiah, has dominated the discussion until the recent period, and it remains a very popular conception. It should also be noted that for many interested in comprehending the unity of the book of Isaiah, the place of the prophet Isaiah himself plays only a minor or thematic role.15 The answer to the question 13  M. Friedlander, ed., The Commentary of Ibn Ezra on Isaiah (New York: Philipp Feldheim, n. d.; 1st ed., London, 1873). 14  Bernard Duhm, Das Buch Jesaia, HKAT 3/1 (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1892). See my discussion in Zion’s Final Destiny, 1–29. 15  Rolf Rendtorff, “The Composition of the Book of Isaiah,” in Canon and Theology:



4.  How is the Prophet Isaiah Present in the Latter Half of the Book? 77

posed would be self-evident: he is not present but belongs to the presentation of chs. 1–39 only. The book does not grow toward “unity” or “disunity” in relationship to the figure of the prophet. On this view, it is taken for granted that chs. 40–66 are at too great a temporal distance from chs. 1–39 to be conjoined under a single Isaianic perspective, even one fictively constructed (as such a perspective is achieved in the book of Daniel, though for different purposes). A somewhat related question, however, still remains to be taken up. How, if Isaiah’s voice is regarded as a thing of the past, does the material of chs. 40–66 claim prophetic authority? Is such a thing unnecessary? Or was such a concern addressed in the material’s original presentation but removed when the material was placed in this larger Isaianic context? Brevard S. Childs has spoken about historical traces once embedded in this material (“concrete features”) that were then erased (by “canonical editors”) so the chapters could serve their present function in the book, which he describes as eschatological. If the material once made clear under whose name it was spoken, this has been reduced or eliminated precisely so that the chapters could become “a prophetic word of promise offered to Israel by the 8th-century prophet, Isaiah of Jerusalem.”16 Older interpreters confident about divisions at chs. 40–55 and 56–66 sought to discover the traditional marker of prophetic authority, the call narrative, within each of these respective sections. It was in this way that the opening unit (40:1–11) took on such prominence in Second Isaiah, though a similar narrative was harder to locate in the case of chs. 56–66. In an earlier essay for this journal I questioned whether an interpretation of the opening unit as a call narrative for Second Isaiah could be sustained, either on its own terms or in consideration of the larger shape of the book as a whole, where the prophet Isaiah had already been introduced. But I  did not suggest that concrete features had been eliminated. They were never there to begin with.17 My view then was that a call narrative for Second Isaiah needed to rely on several factors. First, the MT’s reading at 40:6 (“and one said;” “and he said”) needed to be rejected in favor of the LXX and Qumran’s “and I said” (though on its own, I suspect this third-person reading could somehow be tolerated as consistent with a call of Second Isaiah). Still, on text-critical grounds I remain unpersuaded that there is any logical explanation for why a shift from Overtures to an Old Testament Theology, OBT, trans. and ed. Margaret Kohl (Minneapolis: Fortress, 1993), 164; Peter R. Ackroyd, “Isaiah I–XII: Presentation of a Prophet,” in Congress Volume: Göttingen 1977, ed. J. A. Emerton et al., VTSup 29 (Leiden: Brill, 1978), 38. 16  Brevard S. Childs, Introduction to the Old Testament as Scripture (Philadelphia: Fortress, 1979), 325. 17  Seitz, “Divine Council,” 229–47.

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an original first person to a third person could have occurred.18 The obverse is patient of explanation, since it brings our text into proximity with other call narratives where “but I said” captures the objection in the prophet’s firstperson reaction. Following the lead of Peter R. Ackroyd, my second point was that an interpretation of this key unit had to contend with the existence of a “call narrative” for Isaiah in ch. 6 – for its own sake but especially in the light of the features they held in common.19 Rolf Rendtorff also made some important observations here. Both accounts involve commissioning voices commingling with the voice of God.20 Both are concerned with YHWH’s glory. Yet at the same time, the period of iniquity and sin has given way to a new era of forgiveness and reconstitution. Isaiah’s “How long?” has received an answer in real, and not just in anticipated, terms (vv. 11–13). In addition, I was concerned with the question of the role of the prophet Isaiah that this opening unit might well address. This requires some clarification. Ackroyd had spoken suggestively of a “renewal of the Isaianic commission” in 40:1–11.21 But did he mean that Isaiah’s voice was being extended into this material, in an obviously editorial and less direct sense than Calvin had envisioned; or that the first commission was being renewed for another persona? Roy F. Melugin had also seen the relationship between Isaiah 40 and Isaiah 6, but he regarded the first-person voice of 40:6 as intentionally equivocal, representing Second Isaiah as prophet as well as the people.22 Finally, David G. Meade reckoned with a composition of vv. 1–11 calibrated to the larger Isaiah tradition and spoke of a “suppression of the prophet’s identity” (that is, the voice behind chs. 40–55) because of an awareness of this larger context in which “he” was to be heard, where Isaiah’s voice remained in play. He went on to conclude that 40:1–11 served “the dual purpose of authorizing the message while making it clear that it was not independent of the larger whole.”23 It is clear from these several examples that one can argue for the composition of vv. 1–11 as undertaken mindful of a larger context in Isaiah, and 18 

Cf. Carr, “Reaching for Unity,” 67n11. Ackroyd, “Structure and Function.” 20  Rolf Rendtorff, “Isaiah 6 in the Framework of the Composition of the Book,” in Canon and Theology: Overtures to an Old Testament Theology, trans. and ed. Margaret Kohl, OBT (Minneapolis: Fortress, 1993), 178. 21  Ackroyd, “Structure and Function,” 6. 22  Roy F. Melugin, The Formation of Isaiah 40–55, BZAW 141 (Berlin: de Gruyter, 1976), 84, 86. 23  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), 35. 19 



4.  How is the Prophet Isaiah Present in the Latter Half of the Book? 79

still mean slightly different things. Rendtorff does not take up the question of who is speaking in chs. 40–55, Isaiah or another, but instead seeks to understand various theological issues that are raised, addressed, modified, or redirected in the larger corpus, based on some obscure process of growth and development not entirely open to explanation and re-description. Ackroyd’s essays are somewhat similar in their concern, though he does not sit so loose to redactional description. Melugin would appear to reckon with a new voice being introduced in chs. 40–55, though one modeled on Isaiah’s. Meade is interested in the question of authorization and authority, as a first-order concern, and claims that the text in question authorizes the message to follow. But it remains unclear to me just how it accomplishes that. In passing it should be noted that Gerald T. Sheppard has formulated his own view on this matter, attempting to extend what he regards as Childs’s pivotal tenet mentioned above  – viz., that chs. 40–66 are to be understood as a prophetic word of promise from Isaiah of Jerusalem – by appeal to what he calls Isaiah’s “persona.”24 He quotes with sympathy Delitzsch’s earlier reflections on how “Isaiah in 40–66 lacks Ezekiel’s ‘tangible reality’ and ‘is more like a spirit without visible form.’” He cites as suggestive Delitzsch’s depiction of Isaiah as one who “floats along through the exile like a being of a higher order, like an angel of God.”25 But equally compelling for Sheppard are Delitzsch’s acknowledgments that further prophets have emerged in the book (Delitzsch does refer to a Deutero-Isaiah), and that “these later prophets are really Isaiah’s second self.” It is not clear to me that Sheppard’s citing of Delitzsch is to his best advantage, since he [Sheppard] emphasizes the voice of Isaiah’s “persona” throughout.26 Several additional questions could be raised at this point, but one thing seems clear. A shift toward understanding Isaiah as a work with its own integrity has not produced a consistent understanding of how the prophetic voice extends throughout, or if it does. Chapter 40 has emerged as important 24  Sheppard,

“Competing Structures,” 561–69. He does not refer to my specific treatment of this subject in “Divine Council.” 25  Ibid., 568. 26  “The prophetic persona, in this sense, is far more related to an internal realism integral to the syntax that parses the human voice(s) of the canonical text itself than it is to any capacity of this representation or lack of it to refer to some unknown person(s) outside the text, available according to ordinary norms of history. The prophetic ‘voice’ in these chapters follows immediately after a description of Isaiah speaking a word from God about Babylon to Hezekiah in chapter 39:5–6. In contrast to Seitz, a canonical approach may regard the ‘voice’ of the persona of Isaiah as one of the most significant devices in the presentation of the whole prophetic book as a singular, human witness to God’s Word. It offers, among other things, a corrective to the tendency, both left and right, to harmonize literarily and structurally the disparate human traditions in the book …” (ibid., 569).

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in this regard, not only because it stands on an important temporal and literary boundary but also because it introduces new, anonymous voices who are charged by God to comfort Zion. Moreover, if it is indeed a composition calibrated in some sense with what precedes in the larger Isaiah tradition, then we are confronting not some abstract or external principle of prophetic authority or persona but one that the literature has taken up of its own accord, self-consciously, and, we might also conjecture, of theological necessity. The question to be raised is the degree to which chs. 40–66 take up within their own presentation the matter before us, namely, the voice of Isaiah and the possibility of new voices appearing. It may well be the case that “Isaiah” is a spirit that inhabits all sections of the book and that indeed one might call him its “author” in a very basic sense. But that need not preclude, as Delitzsch himself recognized, other prophets appearing in these latter chapters, who reckoned themselves as “second selves” of Isaiah as well as proclaimers of a new thing, never before heard (42:9; 44:19; 48:6–8). Under such conditions, the “persona” of Isaiah would have to be very differently conceived: not as a “voice” unifying the entire collection but as the one whose original vision was intended for contemporaries, but also for generations beyond his own (so 8:16–22; 29:11–12; 30:8). As we shall hope to show, these generations include new prophetic voices that appear in the course of the book’s own unfolding, so that the former things might at last be attached to their intended referent and that new things might also be proclaimed, filling to fullness and overflowing the legacy of Isaiah. If this is what is meant by the “persona” of Isaiah extending across all 66 chapters, that may indeed capture what the book intends. Yet this should not mislead us into looking for a presentation keyed to a single prophetic voice, since the very character of prophecy in this book demands deafness before hearing, prediction before fulfillment, former things uttered before their latter end transpires. For all of these the passage of time and the emergence of new generations are required. Isaiah, prophet or persona, is not exempt from this passage, even as the word spoken by God through him will not return empty but will accomplish that for which it was purposed (55:11), not in spite of but necessitated by time’s inexorable march, which leaves no human voice untouched. Moreover, if it fails to register a distinction between the prophet Isaiah and a word bequeathed to posterity – a distinction registered at several points in chs. 1–39 – then the term “persona” should be avoided altogether. Isaiah’s “persona” is not extended into chs. 40–66 except as his word finds vindication and extension through new voices, perhaps even Isaiah’s “second selves,” to use Delitzsch’s phrase. It is the word of God that stands forever, not Isaiah or his “persona” abstracted from that word.



4.  How is the Prophet Isaiah Present in the Latter Half of the Book? 81

III Bind up the testimony, seal the teaching among my disciples.   I will wait for the LORD who is hiding his face … To the teaching and to the testimony!   Surely for this word … there is no dawn. (8:16–17, 20 RSV ) And now, go, write it before them on a tablet,   and inscribe it in a book, That it may be for the time to come. (30:8 RSV )

In an essay published in 1955, Douglas R. Jones underscored the significance of these two passages for understanding the growth of what he termed “the traditio of the oracles of Isaiah of Jerusalem.”27 More recently, Edgar W. Conrad has called attention to these two texts (as well as to 29:11–12) as pointing to the process by which the book of Isaiah has developed, not just as “tradition” reworked for a new day but as an actual fixed text opened for a new generation, described in 43:8 as “the people who are blind, yet have eyes, who are deaf, yet have ears.” The earlier circumstances of 6:9–11 are annulled. Conrad even suggests that the references to crying aloud in the opening unit (40:1–11) may shade off into the realm of “calling forth,” as in reading, in this case, the “vision of Isaiah” bequeathed to posterity. Again the circumstances of 29:11–12 are reversed.28 Following the lead of Frank Moore Cross and others, I argued for an interpretation of 40:1–11 as a commissioning from the heavenly council.29 The various voices were modeled on the entourage familiar from Isaiah 6 (and other such scenes), and in fact the text would prove too obscure if one did not understand that the earlier commissioning scene was being presupposed by the author. Rather than being about the “call” of Deutero-Isaiah, the text served the purpose of moving us from the authorized word of Isaiah into a new dispensation, with prophecy itself in a new mode. As such, the text betrays its “agony of influence,” as Isaiah’s word of judgment is recalled, by an anonymous voice, in 40:6–7; but it also moves us forward, as the decree from the divine council is for comfort, forgiveness, an end to a period of service, and the appearance of God’s glory. That too is part of what Isaiah has bequeathed to posterity (comfort, 12:1; sin, 1:4; 5:18; 22:14; 30:13, and forgiveness, 27:9; 33:24; YHWH’s glory, 6:3).30 27 Douglas R. Jones, “The Traditio of the Oracles of Isaiah of Jerusalem,” ZAW 67 (1955): 226–46. 28 Conrad, Reading Isaiah, 117–68. 29  Frank Moore Cross, “The Council of Yahweh in Second Isaiah,” JNES 12 (1953): 274–77. 30  See Rendtorff, “Composition.”

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While the scene utilizes elements from the commissioning of Isaiah in ch. 6  – and Rendtorff, Ackroyd, and Melugin had identified their own linkages – it is not clear how we are to interpret this borrowing in terms of the detail in 40:1–11. I argued before that the voices were heavenly and that the third-person voice in v. 6 (“and one said”) “belongs to any individual member of the heavenly council.”31 We could infer this on the basis of Isaiah 6, where the seraphs speak to one another, and on the basis of other such scenes (in Zechariah, Job, 1 Kings 22). At the same time, however, I  argued that the voice was closely attached to the mundane realm as well, specifically to Isaiah the prophet and his prior prophecy; it served as “a précis of one important dimension of Isaiah’s prophecy” viewed from a later perspective.32 I remain persuaded that the text must be interpreted in the light of other texts now found in chs. 1–39. To bracket out this context in the name of traditional form-critical analysis would be to forfeit the proper interpretive clues without which the text cannot make its intended sense. I am less persuaded that the form of a heavenly council commissioning, such as we find it in ch. 6, has been borrowed without modification of its details. Once the linkage has been made, the form begins to go its own way. It was my thesis that the chief concern of the text involves extending Isaiah’s word into a new day, and that also means – at least potentially – raising a question of human agency. Is Isaiah present and speaking, or another? Typically in prophetic books a call narrative answers such questions by having the prophet autobiographically describe God’s address to him, his response, and God’s further instruction, cleansing, preparation, and commission. Such was the position of those who held that here Deutero-Isaiah was being called within his own “prophetic book” (chs. 40–55). Yet in this text virtually all autobiographical perspective is lacking. It is in part for this reason that one could assume, in an earlier day, that the Isaiah already called in ch. 6 remained at work here – such was Calvin’s reading, if not also Sheppard’s, in a more sophisticated form.33 Yet, instead of this autobiographical perspective we have God’s voice, anonymous voices, and a final charge involving Zion. Even that remains somewhat unfocused temporally, since it involves a reaction to God’s own activity, not yet undertaken (40:9b–11). One striking feature of the unit, again not notable in call narratives, is the way the unit breaks into subsections, with the second two closed by reference to God’s speech or word (“for the mouth of the LORD has spoken it” [v. 5]; “the word of our God will stand forever” [v. 8]). I would argue that this is not 31 

Seitz, “Divine Council,” 245. Ibid., 241. 33  See n. 26 above. 32 



4.  How is the Prophet Isaiah Present in the Latter Half of the Book? 83

rhetorical flourish or a reference to God’s present speaking within a heavenly – or earthly – council, with which the voices top off their own proffered speech. The text does not say this as it is presently arranged: divine address appears in vv. 1–2, and then other voices speak up, in seeming response, with no further return to God’s address as such. Rather, with these closing refrains reference is being made to known, previously uttered words of God, matters already spoken. This is why in the case of the second, seemingly despondent voice, no specific divine rebuttal or correction appears in explicit form. In response to this divine charge, human speech is indeed ephemeral, such that if “one said, what shall I cry?” the answer would have to be, “inadequate – all flesh is grass and its best effort like the flower of the field.” And not just the proclaimers but also the recipients of divine speech are like grass of the field, as we know from chs. 1–39. No new speech is inaugurated by God in this unit. The word of our God as already spoken is what will stand forever, as the note in 30:8 had announced in the days of Isaiah. In the case of the first voice, where no hesitation occurs, the proclaiming voice draws for the content of the proclamation not on inspired utterances from his or her own breast. The command to comfort does not come with a requirement of proper psychological state or creative endowment, but rather the citing of what “the mouth of the LORD has spoken.” In this case, search for Deutero-Isaiah’s “call” has created a misleading environment, since “call” is concerned with origination, the beginning of a content, from God to freshly authorized prophet. But that is not called for here. The first voice, in responding to the charge to comfort, quotes what the mouth of the LORD had already spoken, in the vision of Isaiah. Chapter 35 contains most of the relevant content, a summation of the prophet’s scattered, previously uttered language of hope and restitution (1:26; 6:13; 8:18; 11:16; 12:1–6). Incidentally, this may also explain the placement of this chapter prior to the narratives of chs. 36–39: to make it clear that the promise of the LORD’s return to Zion, such as that referenced in 40:3, was prophecy from Isaiah, and of old, uttered prior to the events of Zion’s deliverance and not just in an editorially motivated “bridge” linking discrete and fully independent sections of the book.34 The final unit (vv. 9–11) consists of new charges, now to a herald of good tidings. Reference to God in the third person would suggest that another anonymous voice is again speaking here. But in some respects the effect of the opening exchange has been to relativize such a distinction. In what follows, God will speak directly, with no evidence of human agency. But there is a reason for this, unrelated to whether the “persona” (Sheppard) or concrete 34  Cf. Odil H. Steck, Bereitete Heimkehr: Jesaja 35 als redaktionelle Brücke zwischen dem Ersten und dem Zweiten Jesaja, SBS 121 (Stuttgart: Katholisches Bibelwerk, 1985).

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person (Calvin) of Isaiah is resident here. Throughout appeal is made by God to what has already been revealed to Israel (v. 21, 28; 41:27; 43:10; 44:8), and it is on this basis that YHWH, Israel’s named God, is God alone, since the capacity to establish providence over history is something God’s rivals cannot do. Israel is in a position to state something about her own history as well as extramural affairs, like the calling of Cyrus, while others have no such recourse; in this consists the demonstration of her own unique status and destiny. Again and again God insists that the “former things” are not just a sufficient but also a particularly compelling testimony to Israel’s election. All this turns on there having been “former things” to begin with, and among these is the prophetic word of Isaiah concerning the call of Cyrus (41:25 and 13:17; 21:2). The reason no new prophet appears, nor Isaiah, is that God is here referring Israel to what Isaiah had spoken beforehand and, alongside that, to what Israel’s past history was intended to reveal, for its own sake and in conjunction with God’s word to Isaiah, at this particular juncture in time and then for all posterity. There could be no better example of emergent “canon consciousness” than what these opening chapters of “Second Isaiah” portray, that is, a sense that the prophetic word, and the word of God, is now constituted and freshly communicated through a past record to which public reference can be made, by Israel, for Israel’s own sake and for the sake of God’s effective rule over all creation. This is truly prophecy in a new mode, and something like this is suggested in the opening chapter of Zechariah as well: And the prophets, do they live forever? But my words and my statutes, which I commanded my servants   the prophets, did they not overtake your fathers? (1:5–6 RSV )

What is central to the opening unit of Isaiah 40–66  – the appeal to God’s word once spoken – is maintained in the same manner in the chapters that follow, especially chs. 40–48. This constitutes their governing force and gives explanation for why no new prophet, or Isaiah, is depicted as speaking. Isaiah the prophet does speak, of course, but not as a “persona.” He speaks through the word he had spoken in a former time, a word that God reminds Israel it did not then heed. But now because forgiven, Israel can with opened ears and eyes comprehend matters whose “latter end” even the prophet Isaiah could not previously understand (see esp. 21:1–4).35 I pointed out in my earlier essay that these opening chapters (40–48) are not entirely devoid of autobiographical reference. There is, of course, the voice that speaks in 40:6; it is not clear if this is a celestial voice or a representative 35  On the significance of this passage, see my treatment in Isaiah 1–39, IBC (Louisville: Westminster John Knox, 1993), ad loc.



4.  How is the Prophet Isaiah Present in the Latter Half of the Book? 85

voice more generally.36 This voice states that no new human word can effect the change God calls for in the opening unit (vv. 1–2). The second voice is, however, equipped to speak a word, by citing God’s word spoken through Isaiah (vv. 3–5). As discussed above, the material that follows is essentially divine speech from a trial setting, where God defends himself on the basis of testimony to which Israel alone has recourse. This involves Israel’s record in respect of the creation (40:12–31), the call of Abraham (41:1–13), succor in the wilderness (vv. 14–20), the prophetic prediction of Cyrus as defeater of Babylon (vv. 21–29). In ch. 42, reference to the blind and deaf servant (42:18–20) recalls an Israel familiar from chs. 1–39 (esp. 6:9–10). Yet this servant has now been punished, as Isaiah had foreseen, burned and burned again by YHWH’s wrath (42:25), imagery again reminiscent of ch. 6 (v. 13). In the midst of this passage (42:18–25) we have a brief first-person reference in the penultimate verse, and it stands out for its singular character amidst lengthy divine speech. Who gave up Jacob to the spoiler,   and Israel to the robbers? Was it not the LORD, against whom we have sinned? (v. 24 RSV )

This constitutes a corporate confession, similar in form (and possibly function) to Jer 3:24–25.37 The shift to the third person in the second half of the verse makes it clear that the objects of God’s actual historical judgment lie in the past, and the final verse depicts that judgment in succinct terms. This brief glimpse at a confession might explain the shift that occurs in the next chapter, where the people are blind yet have eyes and are deaf yet have ears (Isa 43:8). As many have noted, this amounts to a clear reversal of the circumstances of Isaiah’s addressees. A new day is breaking forth on the other side of Isaiah’s “How long?” In the chapters that follow it is the call of Cyrus and the defeat of Babylon that take center stage. Reference is frequently made to Israel’s own special counsel in these matters. In these events God is confirming the word of his servants (44:26), declared of old (45:21), accomplishing his counsel in Cyrus (46:11), and performing his purpose on Babylon (47:14). Israel alone can bear witness that they knew about these things long ago, even when they have failed to make proper acknowledgment, then or now.

36  I wish to thank an STM student at Yale Divinity School, Naota Kamano, for sharing his very insightful paper with me, “New Prophecy is not Actually New: Canonical Function of Isaiah 40:1–11 Reconsidered.” Kamano makes several good observations in this response to my JBL (1990) essay. 37  For a fuller discussion, see ch. 14 in the present volume.

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At the same time, God also mentions new things, which have no history of prediction. “Before they spring forth, I tell you of them” (42:9); “Behold, I am doing a new thing; now it springs forth” (43:19); and “From this time forth I make you hear new things, hidden things which you have not known … before today you have never heard of them” (48:6–7). Since this kind of prophecy cannot be related to the authorized word of Isaiah, or any other chapter of Israel’s sacred history, already on record, the previous explanation for why no prophetic figure is being depicted in these chapters begins to fall to the side. This would present a problem were it not for the fact that at precisely this moment, a first-person voice emerges in 48:16. And then in ch. 49, what could in fact be classified a “call narrative” appears (vv. 1–6). Could it be that we are seeing a new speaker for new things, “created now, not long ago” (48:7)? That is at least one possible explanation for the convergence of these several factors in the text at this juncture.38 The unit in which this initial first person singular voice speaks runs from v. 14 through v. 16. The opening call to assemble is a familiar one. Also familiar is the way the exact referent is unclear, here and throughout the unit. The references to calling and prospering in v. 15 would be consistent with God’s commissioning of Cyrus, and the references to victory over Babylon in v. 14b likewise commend this interpretation, as does the final unit of the chapter (vv. 20–22), where servant Jacob is liberated from Chaldean exile. That this was announced of old, and not in secret (v. 16), is also consistent with the calling of Cyrus as prophesied by Isaiah – something that cannot be revealed by “them” (v. 14a). In the final line, the introductory ‫ ְו ַﬠ ָּתה‬would appear to distinguish between something that had obtained – the calling of Cyrus by Isaiah – and something now in force: God’s sending “me and his spirit.” It is also consistent with the sort of transition to “new things” underscored so effectively in 48:6–8. What remains unclear is whether the spirit mentioned here in connection with an individual is related to the spirit with which God endows the servant in 42:1 (‫רּוחי ָﬠ ָליו‬ ִ ‫)נָ ַת ִּתי‬.39 As mentioned, a nearly classic call narrative appears in 49:1–6, even allowing for the curious reference to “Israel” in v. 3. There is no dearth of autobiographical detail here. Certain language is distinctly reminiscent of the call of Jeremiah, for example, being called from the womb. Moreover, the reference to a career involved with “the nations” (v. 6) was one that figured prominently in Jeremiah’s call, and its peculiarity in light of the book’s content has long bothered commentators.

38  39 

See “Divine Council,” 245–46. For a fuller discussion, see ch. 5 in this volume.



4.  How is the Prophet Isaiah Present in the Latter Half of the Book? 87

Yet there is one feature that seems inconsistent with a call narrative, whether it be that of Jeremiah, Isaiah, Ezekiel, or another. That is the lack of a serious, present encounter with the divine. Instead, the prophet – if we are entitled to call him that – provides as it were a reminiscence. What was said to Jeremiah in direct speech (Jer 1:5) is recollected by this figure using indirect speech (49:1). The objection lodged by the prophet in v. 4 involves not his unfit ness for the task, as with Jeremiah or Moses, or his uncleanness, as with Isaiah. It appears to involve a perception that labor already spent has been for nought. The actual charge from God, which again is reported through the prophet’s own brokering, comes in v. 6, where we learn that the prophet has an additional, not an initial, vocation, over and above what he has already been about, namely, a mission to Jacob/Israel. This is fully consistent with the perspective of v. 4. So the unit is not so much the account of a call as a report of one who had been called, and who is here commissioned for a new task. We are now beginning to circle a constellation of related issues whose gravity is difficult to escape. Is there to be found in these chapters a series of discrete “servant poems”? Does this series end at ch. 53? Are the poems in meaningful relationship to one another, such that one could speak of movement, development, and a culmination? If there is meaningful development across all the poems or a part of them, does this disturb the possibility of organization and development in the chapters as a whole, since their positioning as a cycle is curious? What is the scope of each individual poem and why in all but the last does it appear that further remarks are made in extenso (42:5–9; 49:7; 50:10–11)? To raise the question of the servant’s identity before these questions are addressed only leads to confusion, as the history of interpretation bears witness.40 I am here arguing that yet a further consideration needs to come into play that may shed light on these other questions, if not on the servant’s identity. This involves the matter under discussion, namely, how Isaiah is present in chs. 40–66. In the opening chapters (40–48) Isaiah is present through his word once spoken, which is cited along with further testimony of old (“former things”) to establish God’s sovereignty and Israel’s election. The prophetic “voice” behind these chapters remains hidden, of necessity, so that a word already spoken might bear witness to God’s prophetic purpose, a purpose frustrated by deafness and blindness, delayed, but inexorably accomplishing that for which it was sent. The prophet’s “persona” is replaced by the testimony of God’s word already sent forth. 40 See most recently Reinhard G. Kratz, Kyros im Deuterojesaja-Buch: redaktions­ geschichtliche Untersuchungen zu Entstehung und Theologie von Jes 40–55, FAT 1 (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 1991); and Odil H. Steck, Gottesknecht und Zion: gesammelte Aufsätze zu Deuterojesaja, FAT 4 (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 1992).

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Nevertheless, the references to “new things” never before spoken increase in frequency once the blind and deaf Israel begins to hear and see the significance of the “former things.” In 48:16 we see what may be the signature of the voice at work in these chapters. Then in the second and third “servant poems” (49:1–6, 7; 50:4–9, 10–11) we find clear and uninterrupted first-person speech. A similar speech form is attested in 61:1–4, 10–11. It appears that a first-person voice is in fact being identified, and clearly. The first-person poem that lies closest to the signature of 48:16, namely, 49:1–6, 7, also picks up the theme of something new now to be announced. The voice in the poem reflects on a career that has a distinct history (v. 4). The fresh charge from God in v. 6 likewise speaks of a career involving Jacob and Israel. Yet in addition to that the servant will have a task vis-à-vis the nations: “it is too light a thing that you should be my servant to raise up the tribes of Jacob…. I will give you as a light to the nations, that my salvation may reach to the ends of the earth” (v. 6). The final extension (v. 7) also makes this clear. If this is a correct interpretation of the temporal perspective of vv. 1–7, what are we to make of it? References to frustration and futility do not neatly comport with the presentation of chs. 40–48; it is not as though the speaker of that material is reflecting in 49:1–6 on a difficult career, evidence of which can be seen in what precedes.41 There we have eyes opened where once they were blind. As we have seen, the unit assumes many of the features of a call narrative, but then it goes its own way. The individual announces to the nations (“you coastlands” and “peoples from afar”) that he was called by God in the womb (v. 1). This claim had a different effect in the opening chapter of the book of Jeremiah. There God himself tells a young Jeremiah, in direct speech, that he has a present task as prophet to the nations for which he had been consecrated at birth (Jer 1:5). The book does not open with Jeremiah announcing that he had been called at birth for a task (that God must reveal to him) and that it had required great fortitude (we learn that only as the book unfolds). Our passage sounds more like an interim report, with a fresh charge being delivered, than the initial call of a prophet. To the degree that the opening chapters (Isaiah 40–48) bring into prominence God’s prior word, the “author” of this material remains hidden. No “I” appears until 48:16. Yet when what looks like a prophetic figure does emerge, there is the same measure of dependence on past testimony, not only in form but also in substance. A record of prophecy as Israel has known it appears to lie behind this unit, in the same way as Isaiah’s word and Israel’s history in 41  See my remarks in the introductory chapter of the present volume. Here there is a divergence with the position that Childs would take in his 2001 commentary, as against my own view of the matter (set out in greater detail in the NIB treatment of the same year).



4.  How is the Prophet Isaiah Present in the Latter Half of the Book? 89

creation, wilderness, and exodus were former things to which the author of chs. 40–48 made reference. This servant understands his own mission in a larger context of prophetic witness, which has been difficult and seemingly futile, though trust in God has not been destroyed (49:4b). In my judgment, this servant comprehends his own vocation in reference to past prophets, such as Jeremiah – but not Jeremiah at the moment of call, with a vocation, a charge, and a career still ahead. This servant’s mission picks up where Jeremiah left off, at the end of his career. That is, it is a mission based on all prior prophecy at its own potential end point and dissolution. The servant takes his bearings from the history of God’s dealings with Israel through his servants the prophets, including a history of seeming non-fulfillment, delay, even failure. This servant carries Israel’s history with prophecy in him and, in so doing, is “Israel” in a very specific sense. So it is stated in that curious phrase in v. 3: “You are my servant; (you are) Israel in whom I will be glorified.”42 Moreover, it would be possible for those examining the record, including this servant, to conjecture that Jeremiah’s specific vocation as a prophet to the nations (Jer 1:5, 10) was not fully accomplished  – even bracketing out a discussion as to what such a mission entailed in the first place. Jeremiah not only pours out lament to God for a seemingly frustrated vocation to Israel (chs. 12–20); he finds himself at the end of his career in a defeated and overrun capital (chs. 37–39), then to be hauled off to Egypt against his will (chs. 42–44) with no final chapter providing resolution, either in respect of Israel or the nations. The mantle of painful witness is simply handed over to another (ch. 45). Prophecy has returned from whence it came, to the place God had said Israel could not return without curse (Deut 17:16). Prophecy’s future is by no means clear.43 Furthermore, to the degree to which the wider history of prophecy had a vocation involving the nations (within this corpus see Isa 2:1–5; 11:9; 13–27; 34–35), one could conjecture that that similar vocation still lacked sufficient, obvious fulfillment. Indeed, the content of the vocation may require for clarification Israel’s coming into conjunction with the nations in a particularly direct way in the first place. For that the events of 587 represented a painful possibility. At this moment Israel stands in a position with the potential to contemplate what was meant by God’s calling Jeremiah to be a prophet to the nations, or by Isaiah’s speech concerning the destinies of kingdoms beyond Israel’s compass. 42  Peter Wilcox and David Paton-Williams, “The Servant Songs in Second Isaiah,” JSOT 42 (1988): 79–102. 43  Christopher R. Seitz, “The Prophet Moses and the Canonical Shape of Jeremiah,” ZAW 101 (1989): 3–27.

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The first section of this material (chs. 40–48) is chiefly concerned with how God’s word spoken through Isaiah and elsewhere is coming to fulfillment within Israel’s circle of comprehension. The period of blindness and deafness is over. God’s past word can now be heard to new effect. From ch. 49 on another aspect of past prophecy emerges alongside this always central concern, namely, how that word was to realize its intended effect on the nations of the world. This does not involve a resolution of the problem of chs. 40–48, which is a specifically intramural one (viz., word grounded in past testimony over against Israel’s reception of it). The focus shifts now to the servant, Israel, with a vocation to the nations. In this role the servant is not just one more individual prophet in a long line of prophets stretching back to Moses; the servant is that history of prophecy individualized, especially in respect of that history as still awaiting fulfillment. The fulfillment of the former things has been pointed to, but for the final consummation of these a new thing is required. This servant will bring to fruition God’s destiny for Israel and for the nations, about which questions persist (49:4) and press for a resolution different in kind from anything at work in chs. 40–48. To the question, How is the prophet Isaiah present in chs. 40–66? we would respond thus: in word, in chs. 40–48, and in person in chs. 49 and following – but not by himself. Isaiah, together with his fellow “servants the prophets” running all the way back to Moses, is represented by the servant who speaks up in ch. 49, reflecting on hard labor, futility, yet trust in the one who called from the womb. Ironically, Delitzsch’s suggestion that Isaiah “is more like a spirit without visible form” in chs. 40–66 is not far off the mark, though for reasons he was not contemplating. The servant is here commissioned for a new task involving an old but unfulfilled vocation to the nations. We learn that the fulfillment of this vocation will transform Israel itself and will finally ask that Israel put on the mantle of prophecy as has the servant in these chapters (“this is the heritage of the servants of the LORD,” 55:17). We had a foreshadowing of this in the book of Jeremiah, where the transmission to a new generation, in the figure of Baruch, is an integral part of the book’s presentation (esp. chs. 36 and 45). Likewise in the book of Isaiah, the reference in the next first-person poem to the servant being given the tongue of a ‫ ִלּמּוד‬has long been associated with Isaiah’s “taught ones” in 8:16.44 So within this book’s presentation there is also a furtherance of the office through a new generation, represented by the servant, and, beyond him, “the servants” (54:17; 63:17; 65:8, 9, 13, 14, 15; 66:14).45 “Canon consciousness” would then involve not just a shift from 44 

Jones, “Traditio,” 233. W. A. M. Beuken, “The Main Theme of Trito-Isaiah: The ‘Servants of YHWH,’” JSOT 47 (1990): 67–87. 45 



4.  How is the Prophet Isaiah Present in the Latter Half of the Book? 91

historical prophet to a written testimony through which he can continue to speak. It would involve as well a transformation of generations newly addressed by that testimony, until they take on the likeness of those who went before and finally in their own person, through God’s grace, bring to completion the work begun in others. The question of this servant’s specific identity may also find an answer in our proposal. The obscurity is not an intentional “device” or a function of our historical distance from the first audience or author’s circumstances. The reason we cannot identify the servant in these poems is that he has taken on the mantle of prophets who have gone before, and in that role he is no one who could be particularized without reference to that prior history. He is not another individual prophet in a long chain of prophets. He is God’s servant, and in that role he sees himself and his vocation as bringing to completion God’s word spoken to the prophets of old. He gets out of the way in a manner different from that conjectured for chs. 40–48: he is the culmination of prophetic Israel, whose testimony he takes up and whose suffering he willingly embraces, in order that that testimony and that suffering might effect what God wills for Israel and the nations. Alongside the transition from prophet (Isaiah) to prophetic word in chs. 40–48, one sees in chs. 49 and following a transition from prophets to servant and then servants. We are in a new dispensation, because of the emergence and authoritative force of a written prophetic record, from which God’s word still presses for fulfillment. In my judgment, the servant who is described in 49:1–7 and 50:4–9 was an actual historical figure as well as the prophetic voice at work in these chapters (40–55). That is, more is at work in these passages than literary representation for the purpose of resolving prophecy’s complex legacy. Furthermore, in my view a genetic relationship exists between this voice and the servant who speaks in the first person in 61:1–7, and for this and other reasons a new description of the relationship between chs. 40–55 and 56–66 is called for.46 In the first-person account of 50:4–9, an individual describes a vocation of suffering and affliction not unlike that of Jeremiah or of many other figures in Israel’s experience. Prophecy is being described in a way that comports with what we know from Israel’s record of it, including its unclear completion according to God’s designs for it. A real figure, who is the speaker of God’s word in the sections surrounding these descriptions, here understands his suffering as consistent with and the culmination of prophecy as it has taken form in Israel’s past. What is less clear is whether this same figure is being described, now in a lengthy and detailed third-person report, in the dramatic fourth 46  See my remarks in “On the Question of Divisions,” 265–66. I have been persuaded by the work of Beuken on this transition from servant to servants (see n. 45).

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poem (52:13–53:12). My view at this juncture is that the same figure is being described, now by other servants (54:17), who reflect on the significance of the servant’s death. The narrator of 52:13–53:12 is one of the servants who joins in the plural confession found at 53:1–6. Failure to identify the stricken servant, whose mission is confessed to have such enormous consequences, gives one pause; it is anonymity of a nature different from what has obtained for the first-person voice we have been focusing on thus far. In constructing the record of past figures, to what is reckoned banal go no names; not to the consequential. Yet within this account the central concern, arguably, is for consequentiality (52:15; 53:4–6) as well as for the posterity who will encounter and acknowledge this servant’s accomplishment (v. 11). In the light of these factors, one must ask if the refusal to identify is in this case deliberate47 and somehow part of the accomplishment of the servant, as the narrator has interpreted it. That narrator has himself rejected identification, consistent with the servant’s own deference to a prophetic record still in force and still pressing for fulfillment. In the case of the stricken servant about whom he is bearing poignant testimony, his ignominy in life (vv. 2–3) is corroborated by the faceless character of his sacrifice, the effects of his service obliterating his particularity as a named individual, along lines traditionally conceived for Israel’s prophets and great figures. Moses’s grave is unmarked because his legacy lies elsewhere (the written Torah), and this constitutes his true and most enduring memorial. This servant’s identity remains hidden that his chief accomplishment, the removal of sin, might emerge as his fundamental legacy. The anonymous first-person voice here joins with others to testify to an anonymity even more purposeful, more eschatologically final, than his own. As the narrator records it, the sacrifice of the servant is complete. It extends to his very identification for posterity. His exaltation consists of his complete self-surrender, literally, on behalf of the servants and in obedience to God’s will. Whatever else the servant’s mission accomplishes, it begins with the awareness that this servant’s identification is not the key to his activity and its consequences for posterity. Such identification has been deliberately withheld from the record. This is a retraction of the prophetic persona different in kind and effect from what we have been tracing thus far. But it is similar in that the record of the servant’s achievement has been aggrandized precisely through the deci47  For other reasons, several modern interpreters (David J. A. Clines, Claus Westermann) have also regarded the failure to identify as deliberate, or at least a caution to exegetes not to press for details the text has not chosen to supply (David J. A. Clines, I, He, We, They – A Literary Approach to Isa 53, JSOTSup 1 [Sheffield: JSOT Press, 1979]; Claus Westermann, Isaiah 40–66, trans. D. M. G. Stalker, OTL [Philadelphia: Westminster, 1969], ad loc.).

4.  How is the Prophet Isaiah Present in the Latter Half of the Book? 93



sion – we are arguing it was deliberate – not to attach the record to a specific person in history, and not to include as part of his legacy his name.48 Precisely in its commitment to silence, within the fabric of this moving scene of obedience and sacrifice, is constituted the eschatological power of the servant’s accomplishment. The rich history of this text’s interpretation bears this out, even when pursued for reasons extraneous to the account’s own compelling form and content.

IV Many specific issues of exegesis have been passed over in an effort to reflect on this and other key passages in the book of Isaiah from the standpoint of the prophet’s presence in the collection to which his name has been attached. Nowhere is this more true than in the poem now under discussion, whose specific details and presentation have given rise to a variety of reconstructions and further questions for consideration. (Did the servant actually die? To what does a “grave with the wicked” refer? Does the servant “sprinkle” the nations in 52:15, and, if so, is this a cultic notion? What of the references in 53:2 to his growing up like a young plant? What is the servant’s accomplishment vis-à-vis the nations?)49 Furthermore, it has been difficult to identify the servant with Israel because of the peculiar details of the account. So too an eschatological figure would appear to be ruled out because the report is retrospective, not prospective, in character.50 But this is not the place to pursue these matters in detail; for that a commentary treatment is required.51 My concern in this essay has been to understand the way chs. 40–66 consciously take up the matter of prophetic agency, as central to their presentation and dramatic movement. This involves in the first instance the prophet Isaiah, but also prophecy more broadly conceived, as we have seen in the case of the servant and servants in chs. 49–66. If the contribution of the present essay is to shift the way we have thought about this issue in the book of Isaiah, that will be enough. Greater precision and further clarification will then come in due course.

48 

Note the resemblance to the depiction of the mysterious voice with which this material begins, “and one said, ‘What shall I cry?’” (40:6). 49  For a typical treatment, see either Clines, I, He, We, They, or R. N. Whybray, Thanksgiving for a Liberated Prophet, JSOTSup 4 (Sheffield: JSOT Press, 1978). 50  The eschatological force we are identifying is of a different nature altogether. 51  See Christopher R. Seitz, “The Book of Isaiah 40–66,” The New Interpreter’s Bible, vol. 6, ed. L. E. Keck (Nashville: Abingdon, 2001), 309–552.

5. “You are my Servant, You are the Israel in whom I will be glorified” The Servant Songs and the Effect of Literary Context in Isaiah Introduction As a seminary student fourty-five years ago, I embarked on my first formal exegetical journey. It was a journey into that region of the Bible we had come to call, through the Odyssey of historical-critical reading, “Second Isaiah.” I was an advanced student and had the privilege of a private tutorial from the senior Old Testament professor. To this day, the opening lines of Isaiah 40 remain part of my Hebrew memory. In the midst of a specific assignment having to do with the servant songs and Isaiah 49, this conference gives me the occasion to reflect more generally on Isaiah studies – fourty-five years after. I do this not for reasons of nostalgia but rather because biblical studies of a formal sort appear to have become severed from the energy of church life and mission. Yet, what I recall as the thrill of reading Isaiah in Hebrew was precisely an expectation of what I will now call “the catholicity of objective excellence.” This was an excellence I hoped would transform the church. I could not then have formulated what I am here calling the catholicity of objective excellence, but what I sensed in my study of Hebrew exegesis was the possibility of some larger transcending reality that might captivate and renew the life of the church. In the land of Calvin, I shall need to define my terms carefully, especially my use here of the word catholic. By this I mean, I suspect, something close to Calvin’s own understanding: that is, “the capacity of the Bible to commend itself in a universal, clear, and saving way.” In the midst of denominationalism, failed (or wrong-headed) efforts at ecumenism, the tiredness of post-1960s Christianity, or the simple banality of much seminary education, the catholicity of objective excellence gave me hope for a better day. The idea was that a love of learning languages, reading the Bible, and applying excellently objective methods might unite the churches and lift them out of a flagging or

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confused existence. Where the catholicity of actual church unity had failed, the catholicity of objective biblical reading offered a ray of hope.1 Just to speak of a Hebrew exegesis course on something called Second Isaiah is to describe what counted then for “objective excellence.” The language of Second Isaiah is precisely language tied to a critical decision to extract a portion of the canonical book and attach to it a personality and an independence of thought – even one judged to be exhilarating in its appeal and power to convict. Precisely with its concern to discover objective excellence as a way forward for the church, critical methodology had begun to give us an Isaiah nowhere to be seen in the church’s actual catholic life as constituted by over eighteen centuries of reading and hearing God’s word spoken by the majestic prophet Isaiah. In that rich catholic life, we already had an Isaiah. Why would we need a second or a third one? Two things at least counted for objective excellence: (1) recourse to a kind of history into which could be inserted, it was hoped, the prophetic mind and voice; and (2) defense of this procedure, either on the grounds that the biblical text demanded it or because there was no other way to account for an inspired word conveyed by a text than by appeal to the person responsible for it in his or her time and circumstance under God’s providence.2 Unlike the book of Daniel, where application of these methods produced something akin to an “anonymous fraud” in the case of the second half of the book,3 in Isaiah, a powerful and exciting dimension in prophetic discourse was uncovered. Yet, by insisting that these sixteen chapters of Isaiah be read against the historical backdrop of Babylonian exile, a problem was raised for inner-biblical coherence. Did not the Bible give us a warrant for thinking that the entire 66-chapter book was authored  – in whatever way we might mean that  – by one prophet? Or, aside from the question of Isaiah authorship, did these chapters not comprise a single, sustained, and coherent vision? Still, objections along this line fell generally to the side in the hopeful days of objective excellence, and in the specific case of Isaiah, they were surely offset by the provision of exciting new readings of these sixteen chapters. Here was a place, it could have been argued, where the entire apparatus of objective biblical analysis was vindicating itself, and richly so. 1 See

now Christopher R. Seitz, Convergences: Canon and Catholicity (Waco, TX: Baylor University Press, 2020). 2  See the essays in Section Three of the present volume for further discussion. 3  See my discussion in “Scripture Becomes Religion(s),” in Figured Out: Typology and Providence in Christian Scripture (Louisville: Westminster John Knox, 2001), 13–33; also, Brevard S. Childs, Introduction to the Old Testament as Scripture (Philadelphia: Fortress, 1979), 612.

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What we can now see, I believe, is that exhilaration in one area may produce confusion and inconsistency in another. Objective excellence is not easily come by, and indeed, in the case of biblical reading, it is hard to know exactly what we mean. Is this a quality of the method; of the text itself; of the reader; of a strange endowment, that is, the provision of a way of seeing and knowing the truth of a thing; or perhaps some complex admixture of all of these?4 There is a further biblical-theological side to this question. To what degree can Isaiah be read as a witness apart from the New Testament’s word about it? To what degree was this dimension ever successfully delimited by a claim to objective excellence? How exactly is the plain sense of Isaiah to be guarded, appropriately, as a word delivered by God to Israel and, at the same time, as a word given toward an end beyond its own literary scope now seen to be influencing the New Testament, which in turn influences our reading of the prophet Isaiah? These questions crowd in on us once we reckon with different understandings of objective excellence in our day.

Two Phases of Excellently Objective Reading Let me describe two phases of objective excellence as a way of moving into our topic. The Temporal-Literary Challenge Phase The book of Isaiah, more than any other book of the Bible, has a huge depth dimension, temporally speaking. A single mind, working in the days of 8thcentury kings of Israel, foresees and participates in the life of exiles and the homebound Israel three hundred years later. The very fact of this temporal depth and range would appear to be what Sirach, writing not much later, views as the single defining characteristic of our man Isaiah. “By his dauntless spirit he foresaw the future, and comforted the mourners in Zion. He revealed what was to occur to the end of time, and the hidden things before they happened” (Sir 48:24–25). Alongside what one might, from an objective standpoint, view as the challenge of temporal range in the book of Isaiah, we have the challenge of literary complexity. Just how the complexity of the literary presentation lines up with the ambition of the temporal range, is by no means straightforward.5 Anyone writing a commentary on Isaiah senses this from the moment of entry. 4  For a recent discussion, see Kevin J. Vanhoozer, Is There a Meaning in This Text? The Bible, the Reader, and the Morality of Literary Knowledge (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 1998). 5  See my discussion in “Isaiah, Book of (First Isaiah),” ABD 3:472–88.

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In chs. 1–4, we appear already to be well into a drama; the precise beginning and final resolution the reader will have to search for through the jumble of literary unfolding a full 66-chapters in length.6 In phase one, this literary and temporal complexity was handled in a very direct, if somewhat hermeneutically leaden way. I  have in mind the commentary of Bernard Duhm as a magisterial example from this period.7 One tries to determine literary disjunction through excellent close reading and then assigns portions of the text to Isaiah, Second Isaiah, Third Isaiah, or a vast array of anonymous editors and glossators working at random periods and for random reasons (none of these pursued with any aim at providing of an overarching theological rationale). The book is not capable of rational description in terms of its own final form or presentation. It does, however, offer the possibility of use for the reconstruction of such, by appeal to a theory of history, into which the book is then retrofitted. In this phase, strikingly coherent (and singular for being so) are the chapters associated with Deutero-Isaiah once the theory has been allowed to run its temporal-literary course. Where a measure of disarray and complexity overlays so-called First and Third Isaiah portions of the book, chs. 40–55 of Isaiah emerge as a kind of heroic survivor from the ordeal of critical analysis. There is one (chief ) exception to this: the decision to isolate four units of text, declare them to belong to a cycle, and set them off quite strictly from the presentation of Israel as servant on theological grounds. It is for this reason that our attention in this article is focused on the servant songs of Deutero-Isaiah within the logic of the book as a whole. The Formal Analysis Phase By lucky happenstance, Isaiah’s discourse in chs. 40–55 seemed tailor-made for the next phase of development in objectively excellent reading – so much so, that one might wonder if the form-critical method could have emerged with force and clarity were it not for the speeches of our Second Isaiah. Yet ironically, these same speeches were argued to be creative adaptations of original forms: Those pure seams of ore that, according to the form-critical theory, predated Deutero-Isaiah and justified mining its alloys in the first place.8 This 6 

For a typical modern treatment of these chapters, see Marvin A. Sweeney, Isaiah 1–4 and the Post-Exilic Understanding of the Isaianic Tradition, BZAW 171 (Berlin: de Gruyter, 1988). 7  Bernard Duhm, Das Buch Jesaia, HKAT 3/1 (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1892). 8  The best treatment of form criticism and its limitations in Isaiah remains Roy F. Melugin, The Formation of Isaiah 40–55, BZAW 141 (Berlin: de Gruyter, 1976).

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problem notwithstanding, the chief thing to be noted is that formal analysis did not seriously undermine but in fact strengthened the notion of four servant songs in a cycle. This might strike one as odd. Let us consider the basic evidence. Songs 1 (42:1–4) and 4 (52:13–53:12) are the two third-person accounts. One is long, the other short. One is quite detailed and focuses on an individual; the other is grandly theological and focuses on Israel (or so it would seem). Song 4 stands alone in terms of theological audacity, confessional form, and detail of presentation. Song 3 (50:4–9) alone has a clean formal category to belong to (psalm of thanksgiving); it is a first-person account, but it diverges greatly in form from song 2 (49:1–6, 7), which likewise has this first-person form. None of these poems are actually songs (German “Lieder”), but retention of the term over the years signals that a proper substitute has not been found. Indeed, this is because of the formal inconsistency of the four units of speech, which makes them resist a single classification, even an imprecise one such as “songs.” So, now the term is a kind of fossil, pressed in the rock of critical phases of analysis. The theory of servant songs is a holdover from the first phase of analysis, which could not be bolstered by formal analysis but somehow also could not be dismantled.9 The best effort to produce a form-critical explanation for the songs did not seek to tackle the problem so much at the level of individual poems but as a cycle of four. This was the theory of Klaus Baltzer drawn up for the Gerhard von Rad festschrift, where it was argued that the four songs belong to an antique classification, “ideal-biography,” applied in this case to Moses.10 According to Baltzer and von Rad,11 the songs recall with poignancy the career of Moses. Baltzer has now gone further by describing not just the songs’ referent (Moses) but also by making an extended case for why the author of Isaiah 40–55 might have been concerned with this figure from the distant past. 9  It is one of those phases, arguably not unlike the uneasy alliance of source and formcritical or tradition-historical analysis of the Pentateuch for a season in critical reading. On this, for example, see Rolf Rendtorff, Das überlieferungsgeschichtliche Problem des Pentateuch, BZAW 147 (Berlin: de Gruyter, 1977); idem, The Problem of the Process of Transmission in the Pentateuch, trans. John J. Scullion, JSOTSup 89 (Sheffield: JSOT Press, 1990). One gets a sense that the commitment to objective excellence means the retention of aspects of a theory, even when their sell-by date is past, and this should not be surprising because the claim to objectivity is in part a claim to perennial, ageless truth; claiming such does not, however, make the demonstration any easier. 10  Klaus Baltzer, “Zur formgeschichtlichen Bestimmung der Texte vom Gottes-Knecht in Deuterojesaja-Buch,” in Probleme biblischer Theologie; Gerhard von Rad zum 70. Geburtstag, ed. H. W. Wolff (Munich: Kaiser, 1971), 27–43. 11 Gerhard von Rad’s treatment is found in Old Testament Theology, trans. D. M. G. Stalker, 2 vols. (New York: Harper and Row, 1965), 2:238–62.



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In addition, Baltzer has moved beyond his teacher by insisting that an objectively excellent account of the songs would also have to deal with something virtually ignored in phases one and two, that is, the matter of placement and context. Why do the songs appear where they do? To his credit, Baltzer has allowed this question to enter a field of play once circumscribed in older formcritical analysis.12 To conclude, it stood to reason that formal analysis should never have restricted itself to accounting for isolated units of text, being satisfied with locating them in a situation in life through attention to their genre. This kind of historicist interest was bequeathed it by the age, as a holdover from an earlier phase of analysis. Nothing should ever have prevented form criticism from taking up an investigation of final form or the aggregation and studied arrangement of forms that make up the final form of the text as it sits before us. This would then oblige the interpreter to ask, in the end, not just about the final form of Isaiah 40–55 but also about the final form of Isaiah within which these chapters now function; that is, Isaiah is a book worthy of our sustained attention and is not just a container for three or more prophetic personalities and their deposits from a former day. At this point, we have returned to the kinds of questions objectively excellent historical analysis thought it was answering with its theories of inspiration behind the text. We confront the possibility of a different model of inspiration, riveted to the final form of the presentation and to those who have shaped it and bequeathed it to posterity as a faithful legacy of Isaiah the prophet. We confront a different historical model of God’s word active in Israel and, with it, a different concept of how analysis of individual passages should proceed. After examining the servant cycle, and especially poem 2, we will return to the question of objective excellence and see if a new concept could help us reattach critical biblical studies to plain-sense reading of Scripture for the church.

The Cycle Broken Why was a cycle argued for by Duhm and his argument accepted by several generations of readers? According to the description given above, it should have been for reasons of literary and temporal disjunction. Yet, in respect to the servant cycle, these factors were never all that decisive. Interpreters sat loosely in speculation about a cycle’s original setting, its break-up into 12  Klaus Baltzer, Deutero-Isaiah: A Commentary on Isaiah 40–55, ed. Peter Machinist, trans. Margaret Kohl, Hermeneia (Minneapolis: Augsburg-Fortress, 2001).

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individual songs, and the distribution of these at random points in the present sixteen-chapter context. Indeed, the matter of present literary placement was all along a mystery for the theory, and only by refusing to regard the literary context as decisive for exegesis could the theory remain intact and compelling. In point of fact, what drove the theory of a cycle of songs belonged far more to the realm of a prior content decision. There needed to be two servants in Isaiah: one individual and ideal; one messier, disobedient, reluctant, and halting in service. This latter could easily be Israel, the nation, and so it was: in a majority of cases where the term ʿebed appears, it refers to Israel in a straightforward way.13 The individual servant, on the other hand, was allowed to remain hidden from view. This became the figure more easily limited to a cycle of four songs, in chs. 42, 49, 50, and 52–53. Now, there is little doubt that such a notion can be argued for from the literary witness of the text, but the idea of a cleavage between two very different kinds of servants – one disobedient Israel and one ideal and individual – also suited the purposes of a certain kind of Christian understanding. It helped one to localize all the problematical aspects of servanthood in the historical people of Israel, whilst allowing the ideal to be projected into the realm of eschatology or into the realm of ideal, contemporaneous obscurity. This is the kind of obscurity upon which the investigative impulse of historical criticism thrives, as Jeremiah, Zedekiah, Jehoiachin, Ezekiel, Zion, and others stepped forward to claim the servant mantle. The problem with the eschatological reading is that, according to the text, the “ideal servant” remains fully a man of his day and is not easily a figure projected into the distant (or even near) future; this is especially true for songs 3 and 4 but it is also arguable for the first two poems. The problem with the contemporaneous reading is that it held exegesis captive to a realm of historical speculation that absolved it from dealing with what we actually do have before us in the text, that is, a fairly direct portrayal. In both cases, the fact was downplayed that the fate of the one servant and the fate of the other are intimately related and cannot be detached and set at odds. This is precisely the burden of the text before us for examination, “you are my servant, [you are] Israel” (49:3). Not surprisingly, then, it was always vv. 3–6 that frustrated the theory and called for radical surgeries nowhere indicated by any reliable diagnosis of the text there before us.14 As we shall see, the final form of Isaiah does properly distinguish two servants. The first is Israel and the second is an individual. Duhm, however, wrongly overplayed and misconstrued the character of the relationship be13 

Cf. Isa 41:8, 9; 44:1, 21; 45:4; and 48:20. See the helpful essay of Peter Wilcox and David Paton-Williams, “The Servant Songs in Second Isaiah,” JSOT 42 (1988): 79–102. 14 

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tween the two. The influence of German idealism is likely a culprit here, especially with its ideal distinctions and its resistance to the messy particularism of Israel’s election. For all that, there is indeed a distinction to be identified and respected in the text, and here is the second point. It is not a distinction that falls along the lines of four servant songs over against all other texts where mention is made of the servant. Rather, the main axis of differentiation falls along the line of the two major sections of the material, that is, at the transition from chs. 40–48 to 49 and following. The servant Israel is prominent in the first section; the individual servant in the second. That is, attention to the final presentation in all its parts allows us to identity and interpret the servant. However, this clarity will fall to the side if one handles the material piecemeal or according to a theory of historical origins and development. Third, recognition of the significance of the final form, and the literary contexts of the servant songs, actually increases our sense of the relationship amongst them and thereby strengthens certain aspects of the original theory. This relationship has been enhanced editorially through the arrangement of the material in the final form of the text. That is, it never belonged within the logic of an original, discrete cycle to be set off against the other material. Indeed, what we uncover by attention to the context within which the poems occur, and only by attention to that, is the dramatic relationship between servant Israel and the servant who stands as an individual in relationship to Israel. The final shapers of the songs sought to relate them to each other based on their location within the literary unfolding of the context. This fact enhances the way the four poems now anticipate and underscore the climax that is seen in the death of the servant in the final song. In the end, a tidy cycle of discrete servant songs has been broken by attention to the literary context. In its place is a more dramatic and integrated reading of the servant theme, in relationship both to servant Israel and to the nations. Indeed, this is the main dramatic joist upon which the structure of the argument of this important section of Isaiah now securely rests.

Isaiah 49:1–6, 7 Background I published a commentary on Isaiah 1–39 in the mid-1990s, and given my interest in the larger book of Isaiah, it was disappointing that chs. 40–66 were already assigned to another author.15 I was, however, pleased when The New Interpreter’s Bible asked me to do this section for a new series they were 15 

Christopher R. Seitz, Isaiah 1–39, IBC (Louisville: Westminster John Knox, 1993).

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launching.16 Incidentally, it was at a conference similar to this one, in the mid-1980s at the Lutheran Theological Seminary in Philadelphia, where I first tried to account for the unity of the book along the lines of its final canonical shape, which followed only loosely the parameters of a three-prophet concept and instead molded the traditions into a single organic portrayal.17 You will appreciate how intrigued I was to learn that my colleague Brevard S. Childs was also hard at work on his own single commentary on Isaiah during this same period. As is his practice, he was working stealthily away and produced a fine commentary on the whole book with his customary learning and creativity.18 I was intrigued to see where areas of agreement and divergence would occur, as my own work on Second Isaiah was taking place at the same time as his but in isolation. Striking is our overlap in the case of the servant songs, especially on the signal role of Isa 49:1–6 for the interpretation of these latter Isaiah chapters if not the proper conceptuality of the entire book. I will begin with his treatment, therefore, as a way to focus the interpretative issues raised by this important passage. It is only necessary to summarize Child’s conclusions, and his work and others can be brought into focus by attending to four questions: (1) Who is the servant? (2) What is the source of the frustration referred to in v. 4? (3) What is the relationship between this poem and the other songs? (4) In what way do the answers to these questions turn on the proper role given to the immediate literary context and chiefly the preceding chapter and its final unit (48:14–22)? It cannot be emphasized enough: Isaianic interpretation is changing precisely to the degree that the role of literary context is regarded as a crucial integer in the interpretation of individual passages. Early literary analysis ruled this dimension out or looked the other way, and form-critical preoccupation with original forms and units, in their so-called pristine state and location in history, likewise failed to press on to an evaluation of the form of the material in its final presentation. So, let us begin there, in the immediate literary context of ch. 48, and then we will go back into the questions of the servant’s identity and frustration, which are the specific subject of ch. 49. Chapter 48 is unique. Israel is roundly rebuked and in such away that many interpreters, hoping to find a uniformly optimistic message from Second Isaiah, resorted to theories of secondary glossing.19 Childs and others have rightly 16  Christopher

R. Seitz, “The Book of Isaiah 40–66,” in The New Interpreter’s Bible, vol. 6, ed. L. E. Keck (Nashville: Abingdon, 2001). 17  Christopher R. Seitz, ed., Reading and Preaching the Book of Isaiah (Philadelphia: Fortress, 1988). 18  Brevard S. Childs, Isaiah, OTL (Louisville: Westminster John Knox, 2001). 19  Claus Westermann, Isaiah 40–66: A Commentary, trans. David. M. G. Stalker, OTL (Philadelphia: Westminster, 1969).

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rejected this as theory driving exegesis, instead of the reverse.20 Second, the chapter speaks clearly of something new happening, and indeed it emphasizes this in as forceful a way as possible (“From this time forward I will make you hear new things…. They are created now, not long ago …” vv. 6–7). Third, the work of Cyrus, which lay at the heart of the message of preceding chapters, is here brought to a close (see vv. 14–15). This is further reinforced by the absence of attention to him in chs. 49 and following and with new attention to Zion and the work of an individual servant. In a 1996 Journal of Biblical Literature essay,21 I focused on a further idiosyncrasy in the chapter, and Childs has picked up on this in his own way.22 At the end of 48:16, we have the sole first-person singular I  of the entire presentation thus far (with the exception of 40:6 if that reading is followed). Because of the difficulty of interpretation of the phrase within the context of vv. 14–16 many have excised the verse as corrupt or deemed it a misplaced fragment. Claus Westermann saw a possible link with the first-person voice of 49:1–6 but did not know what to make of this, given the limitations imposed by the form-critical approach he was using, which rules out literary context as decisive. Indeed, the link is unmistakable. The collocation “LORD God” is a favorite of the third servant poem (see 50:4, 5, 7, 9) and the “but now” of v. 16 nicely anticipates a similar word usage in 49:4. The chief points are these, and they come to the fore when one attends to the literary context and flow of the well-crafted argument of the material: (1) we have no stepping forward of an individual I-voice in the major section 40–48; (2) this voice is prominent in chs. 49–53, and especially in the two servant poems that are central to the presentation; (3) Cyrus disappears in the second major section; (4) the individualization of the servant is prominent in the final poem where the theme of suffering and death, anticipated by poem three, is at the center. It cannot be accidental that, at the juncture where final tribute is paid to Cyrus, a first-person voice appears in such proximity to ch. 49 where a similar voice will dominate the following presentation. Related to this is the insistence on newness “created now, not long ago” in the chapter. So far, this is the major agreement between Childs and me (and several others). I argue that the confusion over interpretation of the I-voice across the entirety of v. 16 flows from the difficulty of the presentation at this particular juncture in the argument.23 The first-person voice of the first part of the verse 20 

See his discussion in ibid., 367–79. R. Seitz, “How is the Prophet Isaiah Present in the Latter Half of the Book? The Logic of Chapters 40–66 within the Book of Isaiah,” JBL 115 (1996): 219–40. 22 Childs, Isaiah, 376–78. 23  Seitz, “Isaiah 40–66,” 418–20. 21  Christopher

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appears to be a continuation of the divine voice of v. 15. The first-person voice of the last line cannot be this because it says, “now the LORD God has sent me and his spirit” (a theme rooted in the first servant song but there tied to Israel as servant). The difficulty the text is seeking to negotiate, I argue, is in allowing the individual prophetic voice to step forward when up to this time it has remained hidden behind the divine voice, out of whose way it has receded. The prophetic voice has spoken about the calling of Cyrus, for example, consistent with the logic of vv. 14–15, but, where this took place in earlier chapters, the individual voice never stepped forward. It remained hidden, allowing the thundering voice of the Almighty to predominate from the divine council. In this divine council, the servant Israel was presented in ch. 42, and the dispatching of Cyrus was likewise proclaimed. “But now the LORD God has sent me and his spirit” refers to a new stepping forward, and confirmation of this can be seen in the second servant poem. This takes us, then, into the area of frustration as this is referred to in 49:4. The theme of laboring in vain is important because it helps us secure an interpretation of the servant poem within the context of time (the servant’s temporal career) as this has been set forth in Isaiah, and, therefore, this is an appeal to the significance of literary context. The objection is not a typical one, known from call narratives, having to do with an impending mission (one thinks here of Moses and Jeremiah, for example). It is an objection about past frustration, about a laboring that has already taken place but has not borne fruit.24 This frustration is quickly resolved as the poem moves on, but it is not likely a mere vestige of the received form, taken up and then ignored in route to a different purpose. Already the form of a call narrative has been severely altered, and nothing would have prevented simple removal of the theme. Instead the theme is emphasized, now having to do with past failure, and it is not the vestige of a form sitting uneasily alongside the chief point. To what does it refer, then? Childs takes the preceding chapter as holding the key. The final unit (48:17–22), following on the crucial first-person revelation (vv. 14–16), is the first proper speech of the obscure individual, as Childs sees it. Here the frustration of God, as uttered by the voice, is a clear theme. As to 49:4, Childs concludes, the exact cause of his despondency is not explicitly mentioned, yet the context provided by chapter 48 points to the nature of the problem. The servant had just delivered the divine summons to depart from Babylon and for Israel to begin a new exodus. However, he confesses he had not been successful in the deliverance of the people from captivity.25 24 

Seitz, “How is the Prophet Isaiah Present,” 235–38. Isaiah, 384.

25 Childs,

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Here one sees the clear role that literary context plays for Childs’s interpretation. Earlier he says this about the interpretation of ch. 48, consistent with this approach to the problem of 49:4, “chapter 48 draws the implications growing out of a refusal by the nation to assume its divinely appointed task as God’s true witness to the redemptive events occurring in public view (43:12). Babylon has fallen, Israel freed, but God’s people still do not grasp their true deliverance.”26 If I understand him rightly, Childs lets the final speech of ch. 48 bear the weight of his interpretation of the frustration because (1) it follows directly upon the first-person voice revelation of v. 16, and (2) it immediately precedes our servant poem.27 However, for him, the frustration motif can also extend back further into the speeches of 40–47 as well. At the same time, Childs is cautious about pursuing one theory that might follow from this that has to do with the servant’s identity. “I am not suggesting that collective Israel has been replaced by an individual prophetic figure, say, by Second Isaiah himself. Such historical speculation misses the point of the text.”28 Still, it is in the speeches of the first part of the book where the theme of frustration emerges and can be properly nailed down, as Childs sees it, having to do with failure “in the deliverance of the people from captivity.”29 He continues, “The servant had just delivered the divine summons to depart from Babylon and for Israel to begin the new exodus” – this from the end of ch. 48. “However, he confesses he had not been successful in the deliverance of the people from captivity” – this presumably being Childs’s interpretation of the despondency of 49:4. Then Childs moves further back into the first part of the material to give context to the interpretation he is pursuing: Earlier, when captive Israel complained that its right (mišpāṭ) had been disregarded (40:27), God had promised that his appointed servant would not fail or grow weary until he had established mišpāṭ on the earth (42:4). Now the servant has grown weary; he has labored in vain. Nevertheless, he retracts his complaint and comforts himself that his mišpāṭ and reward are still assured by God.30

Where Childs appeals to the preceding chapter, but then goes further to find the warrant for the complaint of the individual servant in the course of the presentation of chs. 40–47 in their entirety, he has made a link I describe as involving the stepping forth of the prophetic voice that once was hidden be26 

Ibid., 375.

27  “Chapter 48

gives no immediate description of his mission. Rather, the reader is forced to wait until chapter 49 in order to understand the identity of the one sent” (ibid., 377). 28  Ibid., 285. 29  Ibid., 384. 30 Ibid.

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hind the speeches. The task given to Israel is here given to the individual. On this point, and especially in seeing a deliberate extension and transition from the first to the second servant poem, as a transferal of the work of the servant Israel to the individual servant, we are in agreement (and join others such as H. G. M. Williamson31 and Peter Wilcox/David Paton-Williams). The crucial verse, which resists tampering with through excision of “Israel,” is v. 3, and we concur with a predicative reading, “You are my servant, (you are the) Israel in whom I am glorified.” Jan Leunis Koole rightly interprets this final phrase as one that “harks back to 44:23, where Yahweh will glorify himself with Israel.”32 What was true of the servant Israel is here true of the individual who takes up this commission – that he will be the location of God’s glorification, with Israel and with the nations. Wilcox and Paton-Williams put the matter forcefully in their exposition, What has been Israel’s mission is now given to the prophet. These verses describe the re-commissioning of the prophet, to do what Israel was called to do. Up to this point, it is Israel who has been called “servant of the LORD”; after this point that identification is not made. Up to this point it is Israel who has had a mission to the nations; after this point that responsibility is given to the prophet.33

As for the source of frustration, “Throughout the course of chs. 40–48, the prophet’s purpose has been to encourage Israel to take up the task to which he has been called by Yahweh. But the prophet’s message has fallen on deaf ears, and in 49:4 he pours out his lament.”34 There is a measure of overlap between the conclusions of this insightful essay and of Childs’s commentary in the area of the grounds for frustration. Childs, however, is more cautious about use of the language of replacement whereby an individual servant replaces a disobedient Israel. I concur with this view in my commentary, even as I find the source of the frustration elsewhere, to which in a moment. Childs puts it this way, “what is crucial to observe is that one, bearing all the marks of an individual historical figure, has been named servant, not to replace corporate Israel – the servant in Second Isaiah remains inseparable from Israel – but as a faithful embodiment of the nation Israel who has not performed its chosen role (48:1–2).”35 The differences are subtle here, but I believe they are important. They are, moreover, of theological significance for a figural reading of Isaiah by the 31 

H. G. M. Williamson, The Book Called Isaiah: Deutero-Isaiah’s Role in Composition and Redaction (Oxford: Clarendon, 1994). 32  Jan Leunis Koole, Isaiah, Part 3, Volume 2: Isaiah 49–55, trans. Anthony P. Runia, HCOT (Leuven: Peeters, 1998), 13. 33  Wilcox and Paton-Williams, “The Servant Songs,” 92. 34 Ibid. 35 Childs, Isaiah, 385.



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church.36 The frustration stems from the individual’s failure to accomplish a purpose in respect of Israel (so Childs and Wilcox/Paton-Williams). This reading comes by taking seriously the message of chs. 40–48 and relating this to ch. 49 because, in the former, something has not happened with Israel that should have happened. For Wilcox/Paton-Williams, Israel has been commissioned to be servant and yet has not been such. Here, we find the explanation for frustration (as the same individual servant was the one charging Israel to have this role) as well as for the decision suddenly to appoint an individual along the same lines as, and now in replacement of, the recalcitrant Israel of chs. 40–48. Childs is more cautious. The frustration is not so much to do with failing to get Israel to be servant, which failing leads to a replacement concept, but simply with Israel’s not heeding the divine charge to give public testimony of God’s sovereign work and thereby to thrive and return home and be the faithful Israel according to God’s designs. I differ from both readings in this way. I take chs. 40–48 to be speech of the individual prophet, who in 48:16 is disclosed and who in 49:1–6 is given the role of being servant, not in replacement of but in unexpected, startling fulfillment of the promises delivered to Israel along these same lines in 42:1–4 and elsewhere. The frustration referred to in 49:4 is more strictly tied to the interior logic of the unit 49:1–6, even as it works in positive relationship to, and in enlargement of, 42:1–4 and chs. 40–48. Jacob-Israel has long had a charge to be a light to the nations, a charge going back in time to (fellow) patriarch Abraham. The coastlands and nations are addressed in the opening verse by the servant. In this ages-long role of Israel as servant in relationship to the nations, the individual speaker of 49:4 gives vent to frustration. The servant has heard the divine word that he is “Israel” according to the long-held tradition of having a specific role in bringing the nations to knowledge of God. In that role, the individual servant Israel, like Israel, is frustrated. The glorification of Israel is precisely an act intended to have influence on the nations and their acknowledgement of the one and only LORD.37 This frustration is expressed only because it is quickly to be set aside, within the positive logic the individual is giving utterance to in the scope of the entire unit. The frustration is a past frustration, just as the commissioning to a dual activity for Israel and for the nations is the commissioning within which frustrations are being set aside  – on both fronts. As servant, the individual has a vocation to the people of God, but – and here the frustration is dismantled – he is also to be a powerful light to the nations. The final gloss of v. 7 has 36  Christopher R. Seitz, “‘Of Mortal Appearance’ – Earthly Jesus and Isaiah as a Type of Christian Scripture,” in Figured Out, 103–16. The essay appears in ch. 13 of the present volume. 37  See my treatment in “Isaiah 40–66.”

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been provided as an editorial anticipation of the final servant poem. It tells what the true import of that final poem is: that the one who is despised and abhorred by the nations, who is their servant, is ironically the same servant by whose anguish and dying they will come to the knowledge of the servant’s true mission and the Holy One who chose and sent him on just this mission (see 52:13–15).38 The frustration is not to do chiefly with the servant’s despondency with respect to Israel. This is made clear by two matters. First, when the frustration is set aside, we learn that the servant has a dual mission both to the nations as well as to Israel. His frustration is not just with Israel, and this is why the divine response that overcomes the objection relates the mission to Israel with the work among the nations. It would be too light a thing to focus on the servant’s problem in respect to Israel because this is a servanthood calibrated to the coastlands at the earth’s farthest reaches. Second, the opening of the poem speaks of the long-term mission of the servant in such a way that would call into question any overemphasis on the preceding unit of vv. 17–22 as the chief place to locate the source of the frustration. The servant was called in the womb. Prophecy has been in labor for some time. I also believe that the relationship to Jeremiah’s call is intentional.39 Jeremiah was to be a prophet to the nations. That task was unfulfilled along the lines of God’s ultimate plan of having Israel be the means by which he is acknowledged as the only LORD – the major repeated theme of Isaiah thus far. When, then, the poem is concluded with the anticipatory gloss of v. 7, we are prepared to see the chief obstacle to the servant’s task interpreted as completed, and that is the mission to kings and nations. Who is the servant? The servant is the individual voice that steps forward in 48:16, and on this several interpreters are in agreement. This is the contribution of an exegesis that attends to literary context. Childs is reluctant to specify the individual as “Second Isaiah,” but it seems clear that he does mean for the individual to be interpreted realistically in relationship to the preaching of chs. 40–48. For this and other reasons, I am prepared to see the anonymous voice behind chs. 40–48 here step forward and receive from God confirmation that in his activity as God’s spokesman he is the Israel whom God called and continues to call to be his servant. This service will entail suffering over and above the initial reference to past frustration. The third servant song relates this suffering in a manner well known from the psalms but also firmly places it within the context of deep trust in the LORD God (50:4–9). Another final gloss 38  “The verse appears to be a careful paraphrase of 52:13 and following, the so-called ‘fourth’ servant song” (Childs, Isaiah, 386). Cf. Odil H. Steck, “Aspekte des Gottensknechts in Deuterojesajas ‘Ebed-Jahwe Lieber,’” ZAW 96 (1984): 372–90. 39  Seitz, “How is the Prophet Isaiah Present,” 233–35.

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appears to describe the affliction as stemming in this instance from within the circle of Israel. It may well have been supplied by the same righteous servants responsible for the final servant poem wherein the servant is himself silent, even to death. The servants, the “we” who speak forth from within Israel, pass on a singular report of the profound insight granted them into the life, the mission, the final mistreatment and death, and the vindication of the servant. This suffering and death, they insist, is the means whereby Israel’s servant destiny was most in evidence, most startlingly efficacious in the removal of their sins, and most dramatically the means whereby the nations would come to the light of God’s truth in witnessing the servant’s work and the confession of that work by the servants.40 Space does indeed open up between the servant Israel and the individual servant of the final three poems, but it is a space that opens up and allows to emerge a life-giving and expiatory death, which in turns opens on to the testimony of servants now bequeathed to the ages in the final poem. Space is opened up, but in the final poem it is also closed as the servant’s work is comprehended and confessed by the servants. In the final chapters of the book, it is these same servants who imitate the suffering servant and take up his cross of suffering and sacrificial witness before the unrighteous Israel and the nations. Israel is called to be servant and to bring God’s mišpāṭ to the nations. The individual prophet is given this role. He succeeds in my mission but only in a way perceived by the servants who confess the divine vindication of his work. Within this report, it is given to them to announce the recognition of the nations. Following this report, the servants become the faithful seed of the prophet and carry on where he had led the way. From Israel to servant to servants: This is the way the dramatic message of latter Isaiah unfolds.

Implications for Isaiah Interpretation I began these remarks with reference to excellently objective method as a hopeful way to connect biblical studies to the renewal of church life and of the failure of this to transpire. What counted for excellence involved a reconstruction of the event of inspiration said to generate the text before us. Such a historical extraction of inspired speech failed to produce objective and stable reading. The granting of significance to the final form of the text, and especially the role of literary context for interpreting individual texts, has shifted the meaning of “objective excellence” away from retrieved inspiration toward the 40 

Seitz, “Isaiah 40–66,” 457–70.

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objective fact of the text’s present form. With this comes a different understanding of inspiration. Inspiration is not chiefly to do with uncovering the historical prophet Deutero-Isaiah, and less still is it an effort to defend single Isaiah authorship on similar historical grounds in the manner of J. Alec Motyer. The notion that Isaiah’s historical word spoken could admit of no extension, and therefore that no ongoing, inspired, generation of meaning beyond the confines of Isaiah’s own historical context was possible, suffers from the same kind of limitations of historicist readings as a one-, two-, three-Isaiah model.41 When we consider the dynamic of Israel-servant, servant-Israel, and servantservants, we see precisely the dynamic of inspiration at work that issues into the final form presentation of the present book of Isaiah. That is, God’s word is actively addressing generations, making its way from an Israel referent, to a prophetic individual, and to the servant followers of the servant. There is neither strict separation, nor replacement, nor discontinuity but a sovereignly guarded continuity in the trail that leads from Israel-servant, to prophet-servant, to servant-disciples. These latter report an insight and inspiration that can come only by patient listening and obedience. The final form of the text is not only inherently dynamic in its concept of inspiration but also inherently stable in the literary presentation of the message of God’s word. This word was spoken by Isaiah and continued to address Israel and the reader because it is a word pressing for fulfillment though time. At the same time, this word is objectively presented in an excellent and public way through the testimony of the canonical form of Isaiah. There is not time to explore all the implications of this understanding of Isaiah for a coherent biblical theology of Old and New Testament. Several things do stand out. (1) The first part of the book contains the theme of a 41 

J. Alec Motyer, The Prophecy of Isaiah: An Introduction and Commentary (Downers Grover: Inter Varsity Press, 1993). Note the tendency toward historical psychology in his effort to deal with the development of the book along a single author and inspiration model. He must work beyond the plain sense witness when he states, “Our duty, however, at this point is not to enquire whether Isaiah was right or wrong in thinking himself to be verbally inspired but to ask what a man who had this conviction would be likely to do with the resultant material.” He then develops these psychological hunches further. “Would he leave it, partly written and mostly oral, to the changes and chances of history? Or would he be more likely – indeed certain – to ‘bind’ it up and ‘seal’ it among his disciples, leaving them ‘this word’ as ‘law’ and ‘testimony’ for their future instruction and guidance (8:16–20)? As the commentary shows, the significance of vv. 9–22 is the self-conscious recognition of a people within the people, the church within the church, the believing remnant whose central principle is their attachment and obedience to the sealed, attested word they possess” (p. 31). This is rhetorically exciting, but it is difficult to know whether the psychological weight the text is being asked to bear can be supported, and then linked to a theory of Isaiah’s compositional history. Surely if the point was this decisive for our exegetical-theological instruction, the book would have dwelt on it in more detail in its plain sense witness.



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word spoken that is not heeded but is preserved for a later day. (2) It contains the theme of royal promise, beyond the obedience of Hezekiah, foil to Ahaz, and it pushes this in an eschatological direction in Isa 11:1–9.42 (3) The latter Isaiah joins to this theme of royal exultation, obedience, and new creation, the theme of the suffering servant; the servant is the culmination of hopes associated with the prophet like Moses. (4) The servant embodies the hopes associated with Israel, and in particular with Israel vis-à-vis the nations. (5) The servant disciples take up this hope, and in the final chapters of Isaiah, suffer as the righteous servants at the hands of others within Israel who reject or dispute the “light to the nations” role as executed by the servants and the servant followers.43 If these five themes are critical to a reading of Isaiah that considers the book a coherent single vision, the implications for biblical theology are considerable. In essence, Isaiah emerges as the fifth gospel. It is a figural presentation of the entire drama of Old and New Testaments together. New Testament readings that understand the mission of Jesus as enacting the return of Israel from exile can benefit from this understanding of Isaiah’s final form. At the same time, the final section of the book, which does not limit itself to this historical theme, should be allowed to exert proper pressure on New Testament interpretation. It helps resist an understanding of Isaiah as limited by what 42  I have discussed this movement in Isaiah 1–39, and Childs has his own fresh treatment in Isaiah. The following quote shows the fine interplay between literary potential and theological fixing in the book of Isaiah as a whole: “the prediction of the Immanuel child in 7:13–17 appears to be fulfilled initially in ch. 8 with the birth of the prophet’s son (note the repetition of vocabulary and concepts in 8:3–10, 18). However, 9:1–7 reveals that this one, who is to deliver Jerusalem from the Assyrians, is to be a royal child (cf. 11:1 ff.; 16:5; 32:1–9), so the reader must set aside Maher-Shalal-Hash-Baz as an option. This person remains nameless apparently until chs. 36–39, as Hezekiah seems to fulfill this hope (again through a series of echoes of ch. 7; note, e. g., the place, 36:1–2; a sign, 37:30; 38:7, 22; the need to trust in Yahweh’s help, 37:1–20). Yet, his failure in ch. 39 disqualifies him as well. Isaiah 40–66 presents the servant, one of whose tasks is to establish justice in Israel and among the nations. This and other characteristics (e. g., the Spirit, light) link him to the royal hope of chs. 1–39. The person that the people of God must wait for, then, is a composite figure, whose ultimate identity keeps pushing the reader forward through a series of historical eras yet without final closure. In addition, the many lexical and thematic connections between the servant and the people in chs. 40 ff. yield an even more complex picture, which is full of theological and ethical implications. Of course, a Christian reader would identify Jesus as the final fulfillment of this literary movement. Nevertheless, our concern at this juncture is to demonstrate the flow and power of the eschatological hopes within the Old Testament itself.” (M. Daniel Carroll R., “The Power of the Future in the Present: Eschatology and Ethics in O’Donovan and Beyond,” in A Dialogue with Oliver O’Donovan, ed. Craig Bartholomew et al., vol. 3 of A Royal Priesthood? The Use of the Bible Ethically and Politically, ed. Craig Bartholomew et al. [Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 2002], 132n57.) 43  See the very illuminating essay of W. A. M. Beuken, “The Main Theme of Trito-Isaiah: ‘The Servants of YHWH,’” JSOT 47 (1990): 67–87.

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one can say historically about Jesus’s intentions and purposes in the manner of N. T. Wright and others.44 The book of Isaiah sees the return from exile as decisive but only in a derivative way. What is crucial is the work of the servant and the extension of that work to the disciples of the servant. Return from exile remains a theme subsidiary to the exaltation of Zion. By this exaltation, the nations will be drawn into the light of God’s promises and made fellow-partakers in Israel’s life. This latter theme, Zion’s humiliation and restoration, would have to be carefully coordinated with the witness of the New Testament. Just as Jesus suffered and died, so, too, the disciples take up a cross for the sake of the world (nations) and for the sake of Israel. A proper use of Isaiah as a type of Christian Scripture demands care in hearing the breadth of its report, but that will have to be pursued on another day.

44 See

my discussion in “Reconciliation and the Plain Sense Witness of Scripture,” in The Redemption: An Interdisciplinary Symposium on Christ as Redeemer, ed. Stephen T. David et al. (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004). Wright makes this point insistently, as he seeks to reconstruct the aims of Jesus, “Forgiveness of sins is another way of saying, ‘return from exile’” (N. T. Wright, Christian Origins and the Question of God, vol. 2 of Jesus and the Victory of God [Minneapolis: Fortress, 1996], 268). For a full treatment, see pp. 268–74. Compare as well ch. 13 in the present volume.

6. Isaiah and the Search for a New Paradigm Authorship and Inspiration Introduction This chapter poses a basic question. How and why did interest develop in the man Isaiah as a biographical figure and, alongside him, the prophets Second and Third Isaiah? This will involve a brief survey of historical, literary, and theological factors. Because one cannot fully understand the search for a new paradigm unless one recalls what motivated the older one, such a survey should help put things in perspective. One of the arguments I wish to put forward is that theological, and not just literary or historical, questions were what stimulated a search for the person of Isaiah and his counterparts – a fact at times forgotten in the present period of biblical studies. These theological questions revolved most fundamentally around the doctrine of inspiration. The prophet Isaiah and other anonymous individuals, under divine compulsion, at various historical moments in the book’s development, were inspired to write or speak what God had spoken to them. Yet, the book of Isaiah did not come to us in a form that made the connection between these inspired individuals and their inspired speech clear. So historical criticism received its mandate: to uncover the connection and thus show us how theology had been generated, inspiration lying at the heart of the process. Now, with an interest in unitary readings or canonical approaches, questions of a theological character have once again resurfaced. But we should stop and ask: why a focus on the book as a unitary whole? For theological reasons or for aesthetic reasons? Because older fragmentation has tired us out? Or because meaning is regarded as the imposition of a reader’s concerns on a text, and we now have readers interested in unity? This is clearly problematic. If readers are the ones finding unity, how would this shift be any more theological than what was obtained in an older model? Questions such as these point to a considerable degree of confusion among Isaiah interpreters at present. My larger thesis will be that while theological meaning was once sought by clarifying the subjects of inspiration in the book – Isaiah and other anony-

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mous authors – the emphasis has now shifted to the book itself and to readers it anticipates in its given form. One might call this a shift from subject to object, from Isaiah as inspired subject to the book as an objective, inspired record addressing particular objects: readers to be addressed by the book’s final form, instead of the historical contemporaries of the originally inspired subjects within the book. This shift has been taking place slowly over the last 100 years (and in some respects it marks a return to pre-19th-century readings, though in a different guise). The remaining question, in my view, is just what sort of reader is ideally being addressed? My very broad answer will be: a specific reader within the religious life and hope of Israel, addressed by Isaiah and other explicitly ordered religious literature.1 Isaiah does not exist in isolation as an ancient unitary witness, brilliantly constructed and hermetically sealed. Rather, Isaiah belongs within the specific hopes of a specific people with a specific interpreting literature. All of these together form what could be called a “canonical context.” Let me digress for a minute because one of the ways in which changes are occurring in the reading of Isaiah or any other book is to stress the literary or classical character of these books as literature. Yet, to speak of specific readers intended by the book of Isaiah is actually to imply that this book is the furthest thing from a “classic” – a work that from the beginning has no one restricted audience in view and that over the course of time reaches out for the widest possible readership because of the eternal relevance of its discourse as such.2 By contrast, what makes the Old Testament literature what it most essentially is, is the claim of a restricted election, encompassing its authors and audience. This means that no matter how lofty or how timeless its themes, these find their inner logic and most essential purpose always through the constraints of that election. Seen from this perspective  – which the literature itself asserts – the Old Testament is not a classic (Ps 147:19–20). The material did not take shape and become scripture because of profound themes or an inherent capacity to transcend time and space with a message for all. The characteristic mark of this literature is the claim made within it to God’s special election and inspiration and its proprietary attachment to God’s people Israel.3 1  See Christopher R. Seitz, “Isaiah in Parish Bible Study: The Questions of the Place of the Reader in Biblical Texts,” in Word Without End: The Old Testament as Abiding Theological Witness (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1998), 194–212. 2  See David Tracy’s discussion in The Analogical Imagination: Christian Theology and the Culture of Pluralism (London: SCM, 1981). 3  Compare the discussion in Christopher R. Seitz, “God as Other, God as Holy: Election and Disclosure in Christian Scripture,” in Word Without End, 13–27, and idem, “Human Sexuality Viewed from the Bible’s Understanding of the Human Condition,” in Word Without End, 263–75, where election is discussed, especially in respect to hermeneutics. See more recently ch. 4, “‘Can we read this book?’ Reader Response-ability,” in Christopher



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That over time Isaiah became a book with very wide readership is in some measure an accident, even when new readers wish to confess a beneficial divine intent. For Christian readers – who were first among the outsiders – the importance of Isaiah had to do with the promise made within the book that God’s ways with Israel would also involve those outside the commonwealth of Israel, and that the promise of a Messiah from Isaiah had been fulfilled in Jesus of Nazareth. And Isaiah remained scripture for the church because it spoke of promises from God still straining toward their final fulfillment, most especially, the return of Christ when at last the wolf lies down with the lamb (Isa 11:6) and the dwelling of God is with all humanity (Rev 21:3).4 By focusing on the question of intended readers, I  want to redirect the older question about the particular historical circumstances that gave rise to the book toward a concern with the book’s final form and its reception by a particular community of faith. By this I do not mean determining when the book reached its final form and what sort of readers first encountered it in this form, under what historical and sociological conditions they lived and so forth. This would amount to nothing more than shifting the place of historical interest to a later moment on the timeline of the book’s development (something many believe a canonical approach is up to, and then criticize it for giving undue emphasis to what is only the last of many stages of growth). Instead, I want to keep the focus on a theology of reception: what does it mean that Isaiah was intended for a particular readership (Israel) but that its message had non-Israelite implications (for “the nations”) and that any modern reader who approaches the book also begins not as some disinterested individual (the “ideal reader”) but as a member of some specific religious (or even non-religious) community with specific conditioning and expectations? For the Christian reader in the broadest sense, this means being clear how it is that this book of Israelite prophetic witness has become part of our Old Testament and even a witness to Christ: in past incarnation, but also as witness to Christ in future eschatological hope. To speak of general readers encountering a unitary and aesthetically challenging “classic” is to misunderstand what the Old Testament is at its most basic level. Questions of genre apply not just, as the older theory held, to small units, but also to these scriptures in their fullest scope. That Israel’s religious literature eventually circulates beyond her circle has firstly to do with theological factors: the emergence of a community who confessed, in faith and worship, insight into Isaiah’s fullest frame of reference R. Seitz, Elder Testament: Canon, Theology, Trinity (Waco, TX: Baylor University Press, 2018), 51–68. 4  See the discussion in Christopher R. Seitz, “Royal Promises in the Canonical Books of Isaiah and the Psalms,” in Word Without End, 150–67, and idem, “Isaiah in New Testament, Lectionary, Pulpit,” in Word Without End, 213–28.

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and larger purpose now filled fullness in Christ. It bears remembering that the notions of “classic” texts or even freely accessible literature are relatively modern ones. There were no “bestsellers” in the sense we mean it today prior to the 18th century.5 At this particular phase of Isaiah interpretation, it is important to bear in mind that saving the book from historical or literary fragmentation will not occur by granting it the honorific “unified literature.” Rather, it will occur as we come to appreciate what, in the very basic sense of the term, this book means to be, as one book within the sacred books of Israel’s canon, intended for a certain specific sort of readership, and then to develop more dexterity in interpreting books with attention to scope and context. I want now to take a look at the older paradigm as a way of re-examining the early theological concerns in what is now a very different climate.

A Look at the Old Paradigm It is a time of fervent change in Isaiah studies. An older emphasis on the historical figure of the prophet – at least three in the case of Isaiah – has shifted toward an assessment of the book’s unity. But how is that unity to be conceived? In order to get the proper perspective, we need to ask some prior questions. Why was there an interest in the historical figures of Isaiah – and his counterparts Second and Third Isaiah – to begin with? How and why are such figures instrumental to interpreting the book? I ask these questions because an interest in Isaiah’s unity need not be viewed as the latest scholarly fad. It might well be a return to modes of reading quite time-honored and uncontroversial, obliging us to view the concern with “historical figures” as itself the oddity in Isaiah’s history of interpretation. So why an interest in Isaiah as an individual, biographical figure and the author6 of the book associated with him – or at least parts of it? The first reason usually given is historical. The prophet Isaiah lived during the reigns of Ahaz and Hezekiah, in the 8th century. Yet images and figures from a later period appear in chs. 40–66 of the book: Cyrus the Persian, a destroyed temple, Babylonian exile, a dispersion to all compass points. 5 Seitz,

Elder Testament, 51–62. For the purposes of this chapter, by “author” I mean either speaker or writer. I am not trying to make subtle distinctions between oral speech, tradition, Überlieferung, rhetorical forms, and the like. I simply mean by “author” the prophet (and his colleagues in the book) as individual composer of the material associated with him, now in written form. 6 



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The only way to hold the man Isaiah and the presentation of the book together was by recourse to a theory of prediction or supernatural prophetic foresight. The prophet saw in advance and announced to his people events that lay far in the future. So, to the oddly “traditional-but-becoming-critical” mind of the 18th century, chs. 40–66 must have been composed “in the latter part of the reign of Hezekiah,” the last king mentioned in the book’s superscription and therefore the last occasion for the man Isaiah to write what followed.7 But mention of Cyrus, a destroyed temple, and Babylonian exile do not appear in the book as predictions, strictly speaking, made by Isaiah to his contemporaries. Rather, they are what critics have held them to be: references from a later period without relevance for Isaiah’s contemporaries.8 Moreover, when distant predictions do appear in the Old Testament, which is relatively rare, these are usually vague or sufficiently general in tone (“now it shall come to pass in the latter days that the mountain of the house of the LORD shall become the highest of the mountains …”). Precise predictions of future events occur in the book of Daniel – but they confuse the wise Daniel (Dan 7:15, 28) and even make him sick (8:27). That is because, as God tells him, they are not for him or for his contemporaries but for others (v. 17). This complicated mode of discourse is nowhere employed in Isaiah (Isa 21:1–10 may be an intriguing exception). In sum, the references to later events unrelated to the life and times of Isaiah gave rise to a picture of the prophet as an author separable from the material associated with him. Questions of a historical nature drove a wedge between the book itself, with its presentation of the prophet and biographical figure of Isaiah now to be understood as author. It is another question altogether whether this account of the book’s origins is the proper way to understand either the book of Isaiah or the prophetic office; it bears consideration that early rabbinic sources attributed actual authorship of Isaiah to “the men of Hezekiah,” whoever they were (Babylonian Talmud B. Bat. 14b). This forces us to ask just what we mean by “authorship” in the first place. We are used to a modern concept: the spine of a book carries both the title and the author’s name. Does the book of Isaiah mean to make this claim about Isaiah, a claim that simultaneously brought with it debates about how much of the book Isaiah, as author, actually wrote or spoke, and which parts belonged to others? A second reason for a shift toward interest in Isaiah and other authorial voices in the book was the book’s problematic literary character. Isaiah, more than any other prophetic book, is a difficult read. Luther spoke of the prophets 7  J. G. Eichhorn, Einleitung in das Alte Testament, vol. 3, 3rd ed. (Leipzig: Weidmann, 1803). 8  Compare the treatment in ch. 20 of the present volume.

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as moving strangely from topic to topic, so that one could not make head or tail of them or see what they were getting at. Literary problems, simple problems of reading, are therefore not just modern. At the same time, they were handled differently in an earlier age. It was not that Isaiah’s haphazardness led Luther to posit numerous authors alongside him – Isaiah simply had a “queer way of talking,” as he put it, that made it difficult to tell what he was getting at.9 One even has the sense – and this is often overlooked – that precisely this haphazardness, this curious mode of presentation, belonged to what it meant to be a prophet in the first place. In their peculiar manner of presentation, the prophets showed themselves to be God’s special people, and not of like nature with ourselves. However, when joined with the historical problems just mentioned, this literary haphazardness was seen to be, not the hallmark of prophecy, but rather a matter of critical resolution. So it was that the original Isaiah was joined by other anonymous authors, responsible for the other sections of the book, whose aggregation to the original had, unfortunately, created literary chaos. Reasons for the additions in the first place were never satisfactorily adduced. What looked like an effort at resolving literary complexity became a monster of yet greater and even more complex making. It reminds one of the verb at the end of a long German sentence: the speaker was determined to keep the verbal resolution forestalled until all sufficient predication had taken place, with the result that the listeners became exhausted and began to forget what the point of beginning had been. Isaiah was joined by two others. Their literary contributions were the subject of yet further analysis. These were sifted and recast, on the lookout for yet further authorial and editorial intrusion, in an effort to find literary coherence somewhere in the text’s dark prehistory. The original Isaiah, trimmed back to the first thirty-nine chapters, thoroughly resisted efforts at unitary reading and turned out to contain other-authored sections that in fact postdated even the hybrid contributions of Second and Third Isaiah. The quest for the artefact of literary coherence was on. But its target kept being pushed further and further back into the text’s prehistory, requiring an explanation for the present form of the book so abstruse as to numb the senses. That this is no exaggeration demands only a quick look at the work of Vermeylen or Steck, each in his own way marking the outer limit of what is possible for Isaiah as a literary product in terms of editorial complexity – now in route to unity!10 9 

Compare the discussion of Luther in Seitz, “Isaiah in Parish Bible Study.” Odil H. Steck, Bereitete Heimkehr: Jesaja 35 als redaktionelle Brücke zwischen dem Ersten und den Zweiten Jesaja, SBS 121 (Stuttgard: Katholisches Bibelwerk, 1985); idem, Studien zu Tritojesaja, BZAW 203 (Berlin: de Gruyter, 1991); Jacques Vermeylen, Du prophète Isaïe à l’apocalyptic (Paris: Gabalda, 1977–1978). 10 



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Up to this point my remarks could be fairly taken as negative in tone and substance. But when we move to the third reason for an interest in Isaiah as prophetic individual, bios and author, we begin to touch on matters for which I have considerable sympathy. Indeed, this third factor – it could be called theological – could be regarded as the engine driving both the historical and the literary analyses in the first instance. The fact that we could talk about literary or historical matters in isolation from theological matters – something Barton attempts in a recent survey of Old Testament method – is itself revealing of the present state of biblical studies, where theology must define itself against historical analysis, but not the reverse.11 That Isaiah and his counterparts became authors and individualized speakers set within specific time frames was not only the consequence of literary incoherence or a fascination with history for its own sake, even when this may at first blush appear to be the case. The first true critical commentator on Isaiah, J. G. Eichhorn, regarded ch. 21 as late because the single reference to “riders on camels” in v. 7 was suggestive for him of Persian warfare techniques, known through Xenophon’s reports, and therefore were clearly later than Isaiah’s own time.12 What at one time looked like shrewd historiography now appears somewhat remedial, and isolated from larger interpretive issues. Yet set against even this backdrop the isolation of Isaiah and other anonymous “authors” did have a theological purpose. So long as theological coherence turned on the capacity to regard the entire book as unified by a single authorial point of view when Isaiah’s individual authorship was called into question on literary and historical grounds, the theological task simply became more complicated. It did not go away. The search for the historical Isaiah and his anonymous counterparts was fueled by the desire to understand what they said as individuals within their respective time and space. Understanding what they said meant coming to terms with the character and substance of their inspiration, as men speaking under divine compulsion. A more theological purpose is hard to conceive of. But this came at the cost of separating these inspired speakers from the literary work of Isaiah itself, which had in the meantime become a set of clues from which to reconstruct inspired speech residing somewhere behind the book in its present form. In sum, Isaiah interpretation in the modern period has labored under three assumptions, none of which may be true. The first is that theological coherence involves a single point of view, which is understood to go back to an 11  John Barton, Reading the Old Testament: Method in Biblical Study (Philadelphia: Westminster, 1984). 12 Eichhorn, Einleitung, 101–4.

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author, in this case Isaiah. The second is that inspiration is what is vouchsafed to individuals as individuals, in time and space: Isaiah, Second Isaiah, Third Isaiah, and a myriad of redactors, traditionists, editors, and glossators, all to be ranged on a complex grid of primary and secondary inspiration. The third is that the present literary presentation of Isaiah is incoherent, if for no other reason than that too many authors and editors with too many different inspired messages were responsible for expanding the book of Isaiah into its curious shape and scope. The most important of these three assumptions is the first, from which the other two are in large measured derived, namely, that overarching point of view in a book demands a single inspired author. Under a postmodern guise, it seems to me that this is what more recent interpreters, anxious to move beyond fragmentation and literary complexity, mean by the “unity” of the book of Isaiah. The problem has been that what one reader sees as “unity” in Isaiah is not the same as what another sees, and this is more than a matter of “reader incompetence” or not having worked hard enough at it. Still, variety in unitary readings is not itself sufficient to call the whole thing off and retreat to the glories of “disunity.” The very fact that an older method would not have been content with the label “disunity” should put us on guard that what we are concerned with is its theoretical opposite.13 What does the term “unity” actually mean? Does it have a constructive sense, or is it more a term of opposition or correction, over against something else? Beyond this, a more telling objection is the theological one, even if this objection is not frequently voiced. For all its complexity, the beauty of the older multiple author and editor model was that it understood its theological justification. To know the mind of an author or redactor was to be privy to a distinct point of view, though the more of these one accumulated and detected in the first place on the basis of inconsistency or tension, the less theological and more ideological or tendentious they began to appear. Perhaps one’s definition of theology was what was uncovered as inconsistent or less than perspicuous when the model was free to run its logical course. That being said, the older model believed that by uncovering authorial point of view, even through inordinately complex reconstruction, one still had some handle on theology, however removed from “Isaiah wrote it under divine inspiration” such an understanding was. The question now is: how is one to understand from a theological point of view a conception of the book of Isaiah as “unified” and at the same time as divorced from the older authorial or editorial understanding of inspiration? Does such a conception proceed from the general weariness of readers, tired of endless reconstruction, or is 13 

David Carr, “Reaching for Unity in Isaiah,” JSOT 57 (1993): 61–80.



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there something more to it? If theology knew its place in a model that stressed multiple inspired voices behind the literature, what place does theology have in a climate anxious to read the book on its own terms and in its own present shape, where the buzzword “unity” may well obscure more than its illumines?

What is Theological in the New Paradigm? In much of what I have said thus far I am treading on parts of the same terrain covered by Brevard S. Childs under the rubric of “a canonical approach.” Canonical readings are not interested in a reconstructed, earlier level of intentionality on which to build theological reflection. This rules out concern for a “life and times of Isaiah” retrieved for its own sake. It also means that the final form of the material has priority over earlier stages of development. And it follows from this that the final literary form of a book, however haphazard (to return to our earlier phrase), nevertheless forms the starting point for theological reflection and application. In all three of these ways Childs has moved away from the traditional concerns of critical method. But has the approach met with wide acceptance? Not entirely. Objections are varied and numerous. Why should the final form of the material be something different than any other earlier phase in the book’s development; and if not, then why should one privilege it theologically? How does a view of individual inspiration shift when the book, not figures responsible for it, takes center stage? Is not a concern with literary shape, as a formal discipline, just a strictly literary preoccupation, owing much of New Criticism and general trends in departments of literature, but certainly lacking the capacity to make any theological claim? Barton and Walter Brueggemann have, each in his own way, asked this last question.14 So it seems that we are back to our fundamental concern. What is theological about the new paradigm or a shift away from interest in authors, editors, tradition history, and the like, toward a concern with the literature itself in its present form and shape? As Brueggemann himself puts it, “It is not yet clear how one moves from literary shape to theological claim.”15 And where does a concept like “unity” fit into theological inquiry and application? 14 Barton, Reading the Old Testament, 100: “we may take up the suggestion … that canon

criticism may be best seen as a literary rather than as a theological approach to reading the Old Testament.” Walter Brueggemann, “Bounded by Obedience and Praise: The Psalms and Canon,” JSOT 51 (1991): 63–92. 15  The full quotation reads: “While Childs has indeed changed the discussion, it is not clear what outcomes will result from his work. It is not yet clear how one moves from literary shape to theological claim, and that connection is the crucial one for canonical study.

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In an essay on Maimonides and Mosaic authorship of the Pentateuch, Jon D. Levenson has, I  believe, pointed to a set of concerns that might help us answer these questions.16 The concern to defend Mosaic authorship of the Torah, which Levenson seeks to understand in this essay, may offer us an angle of vision on questions of inspiration and unity useful for the book of Isaiah as well. Levenson points out that premodern readers were well aware that passages appeared in the Pentateuch that could not have been authored by Moses, for they betrayed a narrative perspective from a later period. Genesis 12:6 was the parade example: “Now at that time the Canaanite was in the land.” By saying, quite in passing, that “at that time,” during the period of Abraham, the Canaanite was in the land, the author of the verse reveals that “at his time” the Canaanite was no longer in the land, and the distance from the time period of the narrative itself is made explicit. (Wellhausen saw the honesty of this narrator, whom he regarded as the Yahwist, as evidence of his good will and trustworthiness, to be contrasted with the deceit of the Priestly writer who was always trying to dupe his readers into believing he was writing at the time of Moses, when he was not.)17 An older explanation for this apparent problem appeared in the comments of the 14th-century rabbi Joseph Bonfils: It stands to reason that the word ʾaz was written in a time when the Canaanite was not in the land, and we know that the Canaanite did not leave until after Moses’ death, when Joshua conquered it. Accordingly, it appears Moses did not write this word here; rather, Joshua or another of the prophets wrote it.18

Examples such as this could be compounded, and Levenson and other interpreters have catalogued many of them. An interesting problem not discussed by Levenson is the bulk of the Pentateuchal material earlier than Moses, including the verse under present discussion as well as all the stories of Genesis. To say that Moses collected traditions passed down to him is an explanation of similar standing and alike in its logic to arguing Joshua inserted the verse at v. 6, but it still leaves If that connection is not made, canonical study becomes, as John Barton has seen, merely literary analysis” (Brueggemann, “Bounded by Obedience,” 64). 16  Jon D. Levenson, “The Eighth Principle of Judaism and the Literary Simultaneity of Scripture,” in The Hebrew Bible, the Old Testament, and Historical Criticism: Jews and Christians in Biblical Studies (Louisville: Westminster John Knox, 1993), 62–81. 17  “… the Priestly Code … tries hard to imitate the costume of the Mosaic period, and, with whatever success, to disguise its own,” while, as for the Yahwist, “the distance between the present and the past spoken of is not concealed in the very least” (Julius Wellhausen, Prolegomena to the History of Ancient Israel: With a Reprint of the Article, Israel from the Encyclopedia Britannica [New York: Meridian Books, 1957], 9). 18  Quoted in Levenson, The Hebrew Bible, 67.



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open the question of both inspiration and unity in the Pentateuch.19 Who was inspired to write the stories of the patriarchs, or pass them on, such that they might become available to Moses at a later time? Is the Pentateuch still a unity if Moses wrote down the bulk of it firsthand, based upon his own experience with God’s people before and after Sinai, while the first-fifth (Genesis) he merely re-dictated or committed to writing as a prelude to his own contribution? Of course, to ask questions such as these is to begin to see how flat a concept like authorship could become if pressed to its limit. For this reason, Levenson is at pains to show that Mosaic authorship served another purpose in the interpretation of Torah. “What is essential is not the authorship of the Torah but its divinity and unity,” he claims.20 At another point he suggests that what is crucial in Mosaic authorship is the decision of the Jewish community to accept that what is found in Torah comes from God, not humans; ironically, then, as he points out, an overemphasis on Mosaic authorship could lead in a wrong direction, away from the necessary community acceptance of “Torah from heaven” over and above – so to speak – “Torah from Sinai” alone.21 At least three factors surface in Levenson’s discussion of the significance of a claim for Mosaic authorship: (1) the claim to divine authorship, (2) the decisions of the community in acknowledging that authority, and (3) unity within the Torah. Yet he stresses the first two because he is seeking to understand Maimonides’s so-called eighth principle, which involves the divine origins of Torah. This means that his discussion tends to give emphasis to the community’s assent to the divine authority implied by Mosaic authorship, because for Maimonides in 12th-century Spain other distinct options for interpretation were available and unacceptable: the Christian tendency to see Torah as provisional in character and especially the tendency of Islam to view the Torah possessed by Judaism as a forgery and thus not truly from heaven. Yet before turning to decisions made by the community concerning authority, there is another way to examine the divine origin of Torah associated with the figure of Moses not highlighted in Levenson’s thought-provoking analysis. This involves looking at two key texts in the book of Exodus where the singular role of Moses is set forth. 19  See now the fascinating discussion of Michael Legaspi, The Death of Scripture and the Rise of Biblical Studies (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2010). Some credited Moses with using sources so as to exonerate him from charges of inconsistency or poor authorial skills; he inherited the problems. 20  Ibid., 212. 21 Gregory of Nyssa voiced similar objections to a narrow account of Solomon as “author of Ecclesiastes” such that its content would become too autobiographical and insufficiently open to Christological extension.

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Because Moses is the central figure of the Pentateuch, and more than that, the essential source of Israel’s knowledge of God, without whom such knowledge would have been unavailable, it stood to reason that a claim to authorship, now more broadly understood, arose. Note how even the terms authority and authorship are ultimately related. Texts of the Pentateuch make clear that it was Moses who communicated what God revealed of his will, and that otherwise Israel would have known nothing. Even in illustrating to Moses how Aaron will work with him and speak to the people, we see the underlying principle of God’s singular speech to Moses reveals: And you shall speak to him and put the words in his mouth; and I will be with your mouth and with his mouth, and will teach you what you shall do. He shall speak for you to the people; and he shall be a mouth for you, and you shall be to him as God. (Exod 4:15–16, RSV )

“In the specific way in which you know what I have said,” God tells Moses, “Aaron will know what you have said, and in no other way but that.” In a later scene the possibility of some other more democratic or direct form of communication is vetoed by the people themselves: You speak to us, and we will hear; but let not God speak to us, lest we die…. And the people stood afar off, while Moses drew near to the thick darkness where God was. (Exod 20:19, 21, RSV )

This story is clearly intended to highlight the singularity of God’s speech to Moses when that does occur, on Mount Sinai, in the next verse. The point I  am trying to make here is that a concept of inspiration and revelation was what led to a claim for authorship, and not the other way around. But equally important is that this concept of inspiration was flexible enough to be extended beyond its strictly logical scope to cover texts unrelated to the revelation of God to Moses at Sinai. Now Levenson’s larger point is something like this: the overriding concern of a claim for Mosaic authorship was to establish the divine origin of the material in question, here, in the central authoritative texts of Judaism, the Torah. That is good so far as it goes, but we need to know just how it did that. The answer is that authorship was so closely associated with a claim to divine inspiration that the two concepts were simply collapsed into one, Moses becoming the author of Genesis as well as those books more obviously associated with his own life, because he was the only means by which Israel knew anything about God to begin with, as those later books would make clear. A  confession of singular inspiration involved divine authority involved Mosaic authorship – roughly in that order. Mosaic authorship – like Isaianic authorship – as a fact unto itself leads only in convoluted, rationalist directions.



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Only at this juncture do we see what role a concept like unity in Torah means – a notion Levenson defends but fails to explain fully. We are in a position to understand what unity in Isaiah might mean as well. At some points in discussing Torah’s unity, Levenson prefers the terms totality, simultaneity, or synchronicity. Clearly, he does not mean that all events are happening at the same time in Torah. Rather, when all is said and done, “simultaneity” implies something about constraining a reader’s interpretive decisions, and here we again bump into the broader claims involving Mosaic authorship. The material, coming as it does from one singular, individual perspective, is open only to the sorts of contradictions and tensions understandable on direct human analogy. To say that the Torah is “authored” in its entirety by one inspired figure is to place the reader under the obligation of seeking the same comprehensive and synthetic sense of the whole that one seeks when encountering, over time, any individual person. One may hear many different things, but if understanding is desired and the person speaking is healthy and trustworthy, insuring the trustworthiness and coherence of what is communicated, one will seek to make connections and efforts at synthesis rather than render a pre-emptive judgment of self-contradiction or schizophrenia. And Moses is of course not just trustworthy, but is the one singularly loved by God, the one who has, unlike any other, seen God “face to face.” Simultaneity, therefore, has less to do with the synchronic referent in time of what is said across the length and breadth of Torah, from Genesis to Deuteronomy, from creation to the death of Moses, and more with the expectation of intelligibility and coherence from a single perspective, even a very complex one.22 To call the 66-chapter prophetic book “the vision of Isaiah” is to expect a coherent and unitary perspective, even one spanning centuries or more. It is also to insist that the divine authority breathed through the historical prophet has left its mark on the work associated with him in such a way as to obligate the reader to seek the same intelligibility through respectful attention to detail and final purpose, matters of scope and context, that one was obliged to seek in the face of the prophet himself, the man of God before whose words kings and nations shook.

Conclusions: The Unity of Isaiah What we have seen is that three factors lie at the heart of a text’s authority prior to the sort of community assent to authority emphasized in Levenson’s 22  Compare Barton’s remarks on the notion of simultaneity in scriptural interpretation in his most recent work (John Barton, The Spirit and the Letter: Studies in the Biblical Canon [London: SPCK, 1997]).

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reading. These factors are so intimately related it would be a mistake to isolate them too cleanly or set them in strict chronological order. The singular revelation from God, the act of communication beginning in speech and ending in written form, and the assent to the agent and that speech as divinely inspired – all three of these factors, the text insists, were there from the beginning. All three turn on distinct but at times overlapping orbits and all three conspire to create authority culminating in written texts with a given form and scope, regarded as authored by the original agent of revelation. What lies at the heart of the process – Moses, Aaron, God’s word, the community’s assent in fear – will eventually be seen to persist to the end: God’s word, inspiring Moses, whose authority and authorship extend over the Pentateuch in its entirety, Moses being the singular means by which God’s word was made known to Israel in the first place. What is theological about an appeal to unity in Isaiah is in the first instance negative: a rejection of a theory of inspiration too narrowly tied to an historical search for the original inspired subject, his speech, and that of his successors. More positively, concern with the book of Isaiah in its entirety involves the expectation that a single perspective – that of God or that of Isaiah as God’s spokesman – pervades all 66 chapters. This does not mean that everything that appears in the book must be constrained to fit one uniform temporal perspective, traceable to an Isaiah mechanically predicting from his 8th-century vantage point events into the distant future.23 Neither was Moses’s authoring the Pentateuch meant to imply an extension back retrospectively of his vision to include the book of Genesis, in some clever or more contrived manner. Rather, single authorship is linked to an expectation of larger coherence despite a complex and varied range of texts and perspectives. What is theological about an emphasis on Isaiah’s unity is this expectation of larger coherence, which will be differently evaluated by interpreters, as it has always been.24 Along with this comes a refusal to grant primary and secondary status to levels of a text through recourse to literary analysis, ultimately derived from a theory of original inspiration, and instead to seek to see inspiration across the length and breadth of a work because it has been authored – in this more general sense – by the inspired agent Isaiah. This even rules out a more-or-less congenial emphasis on variety or multiple perspectives in the book, perspectives popularized as the point of entry to a modern interpretation of Isaiah under the rubrics First Isaiah, Second Isaiah, and Third Isaiah. That this insistence on single authorship should not be viewed too narrowly is underscored by the 23  See Christopher R. Seitz, “How Is the Prophet Isaiah Present in the Latter Half of the Book? The Logic of Chapters 40–66 within the Book of Isaiah,” in Word Without End, 168–93. 24  Against Carr’s objections, made for other purposes (see n. 13 above).



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fact that some later readers attributed the book not to Isaiah but to “the men of Hezekiah,” whoever they were. But this was not a foreshadowing of modern critical thinking, any more than premodern awareness of the lateness of material in ch. 40 and following signaled stress cracks in a bulletproof conception of Isaianic authorship.25 In both cases the same expectation of coherence and the possibility of larger synthesis remained. It seems to me that two mistakes have followed from an emphasis on reading the book of Isaiah as a unity. The first is that a unified book must mean a single reading and just one as the goal of modern interpretation. The second is that unity is only something imposed by readers. As we have seen, “unity” is not a literary claim for single, tightly constructed uniformity of perspective. Rather, it is a concept meant to constrain emphasis on multiplicity of perspectives in a single work. This constraining has not been artificially imposed by later readers armed with a theory of Isaiah’s authorship. Rather, it flowed from the historical process that stretched back through time, ultimately to bump into the prophet Isaiah himself, regarded by the community as coherent and trustworthy and above all as God’s man – even when what he had to say was fearsome and condemnatory. The book grew and developed only with loose attention to that original perspective in a strictly literary sense, and was content to break out into fresh historical and theological territory under the freedom of God’s word of address. Nevertheless, the book did not jettison its original form but worked with reference to it, making the final 66 chapters more than just the sum of discrete parts. In chapters to follow we look at the messianic hope within Isaiah, which figures more prominently in the first part of the book than in later chapters. Does that mean that messianic hopes associated with Isaiah of Jerusalem were surrendered or transformed as the book grew? Or does precisely such a way of considering the matter betray a reading that overemphasizes multiple perspectives in the book? Here we can see clearly how a concern with unity in Isaiah is not some reader-imposed or strictly literary preoccupation but rather lies at the very heart of what it means to try to interpret this book of prophecy in a consistent and faithful way, attentive to those forces which made it scripture in the first place, the inspired “vision of Isaiah” (Isa 1:1).

25  See the discussion at the end of section I of Seitz, “How is the Prophet Isaiah Present,” in Word Without End.

The Prophets: Beyond the Chronological Model for Interpretation

7. Prophecy and Tradition-History The Achievement of Gerhard von Rad I recall sitting in my rented room in Munich over twenty years ago, laboring on the German language so as to matriculate at the university.1 Every afternoon, after language classes, I slowly worked my way through von Rad’s Theologie des Alten Testaments.2 I had read it before in English,3 and this, together with von Rad’s clear and engaging style, helped ease my entry into the German language. I have fond memories of that experience, and von Rad’s handling of the prophets became foundational for me in two languages. Twenty years on, I again returned to that same volume and rediscovered something of my original enthusiasm. I have taught the prophets to different groups of students over the years and am acquainted with most standard introductions and commentaries. It was refreshing to read von Rad again and reencounter his particular writing style and his own signature presentation. My aim in this chapter is to set forth what I regard as von Rad’s particular contribution with an eye toward highlighting several enduring achievements. I  want then to analyze his particular method and approach and point out what I regard as limitations or weaknesses in his presentation of the prophets. And finally, I want to look at the horizon that now reaches out beyond this important interpreter of the 20th century.4 In this way, I hope to reacquaint my readers with the special character of this man’s achievement while locating him and his work on the prophets within a larger history of ideas.

1 

That is now more than 40 years ago as of the date of the present volume. von Rad, Die Theologie der prophetischen Überlieferungen Israels, vol. 2 of Theologie des Alten Testaments (Munich: Kaiser, 1960). 3  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). 4  I take up this task in greater detail in both Elder Testament: Canon, Theology, Trinity (Waco, TX: Baylor University Press, 2018) and Convergences: Canon and Catholicity (Waco, TX: Baylor University Press, 2020). 2  Gerhard

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Von Rad’s Achievement With the likelihood of some overlap, I will highlight five areas in which von Rad’s treatment of the prophets was significant and constituted his own special achievement. The Existential One possibility for presenting Israel’s prophets successfully is to focus on reconstructing their personalities and inner religious states. This makes the prophets like figures of our own day, whose lives are displayed before us in rich and compelling detail. The problem is that the prophetic books do not give us this sort of portrait of the prophets, and von Rad is careful not to transgress the limits of the literary record in the name of an engaging and winsome presentation. Working within the constraints of the form-critical method, von Rad nevertheless sets before us flesh-and-blood figures. Here he relies in part on a distinction made popular in early form-critical analysis of prophetic speech.5 There is the word of God, on the one hand, but there is also the prophet’s own personal manner of persuasion on the other hand. Von Rad never, however, schematizes this distinction, and the portrait we are given of the prophet tends to be based upon an overarching set of deductions. These deductions involve (a) the limited glimpses we do get in the realm of biography (so, for example, he highlights the biographical narratives in Jeremiah and the call of Isaiah in Isaiah 6), and (b) von Rad’s well-known theory of traditions, in which the prophets stand in particular theological streams whose rivulets and eddies mark off the contours in which the prophet’s words and life are played out. One of the best examples of this (not least because it is provocative) is found in the treatment of Isaiah. Utilizing the Zion tradition in a particularly ironic way, Isaiah saw judgment in terms of cleansing and final restoration. Von Rad pays particular attention to this in the text of Isaiah and to the attendant traditions of David, whereby final promises are made over and above individual judgments rendered. But in the end, this means Isaiah was effectively wrong. As von Rad says, “the total result of Isaiah’s work appears overwhelmingly negative. Not one of all his great sayings about Zion came true.”6 This particular theory about the handling of traditions by the prophets releases for von Rad an especially personal and existential dimension, and 5  See the discussion of Hermann Gunkel’s work on the prophets in Claus Westermann, Basic Forms of Prophetic Speech, trans. Hugh Clayton White (Louisville: Westminster John Knox, 1991), 23–25. 6  Von Rad, Old Testament Theology, 2:167.

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this can be said even if one contests the actual conclusions that von Rad is prepared to draw in the case of Isaiah’s preaching to Zion, king, and people. Von Rad uses the tradition-historical approach, as an extension of the formcritical literary method, in such a way as to render accessible a look into the personal life of the prophet – something that on the face of it might seem ruled out by form-critical approaches alone. So it is that von Rad closes this section on Isaiah with ruminations about “whether he [Isaiah] himself regarded his work as a failure, or whether he found comfort.”7 And von Rad’s being able to offer this existential reading in the case of the book of Isaiah, which unlike Jeremiah or Hosea really holds back from biographical detail, shows the degree to which he maintained the literary-critical standards of his day but not at the expense of a genuinely personal portrayal. Not content with the theological ideas or grand principles, von Rad gives us a portrait of the sublime Isaiah that is existentially real (see below for a critical analysis of this aspect of von Rad’s achievement). Comprehensiveness without Uniformity Surely part of the success of a method is its capacity to account for much if not all of the evidence. Von Rad is able to deploy his particular tradition-critical approach and still treat each of the prophets of the canon in an individual way. Only Obadiah fails to find integration in von Rad’s approach. After having set forth his presentations of Amos, Hosea, Isaiah, and Micah, he emphasizes the degree to which they are different if not divergent and incompatible messages. So, for example, he concludes: “There is absolutely no bridge between Micah and the hopes cherished concerning Zion by Isaiah, his fellow-countryman and contemporary.”8 Each prophet is given a measure of individuality, and this is in line with von Rad’s understanding of the humanity of these figures. Still, it is possible to bring a form of comprehensiveness into place, using a theory of history, which finds a place for all the prophets just named. So, von Rad urges: “In spite of all these great differences, there is a great deal of common matter which links the 8th-century prophets to one another; for their religious ideas led them to an absolutely common conviction”9 – which von Rad then sets about to describe. It is this belief in comprehensiveness that allows von Rad to give specificity and detail to the individual prophetic figures without turning them, and the one who inspired them, into contradictory and confusing voices. In a similar way, Jeremiah forms the central figure of one of von Rad’s longer treatments, 7 Ibid. 8  9 

Ibid., 2:176. Ibid., 2:177.

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but room is found to enclose Nahum, Habakkuk, and Zephaniah as well. The tradition-historical method never becomes such a dominating force that von Rad is obliged to make artificial or schematic efforts at comprehensiveness, but instead lets the material go something of its own, if unruly and messy, way. Primary and Secondary It is well known that in the 19th century much of what went under the name of a critical reading of the Old Testament focused on questions of (what was called) “authenticity.” That is, using some tool of literary analysis, combined with historical judgments, the interpreter sought to pare away what was secondary and tertiary and get at what could be traced to the individual prophetic agent himself.10 This was done in the name of a high doctrine of inspiration, it could be argued, or at least one whose theological warrant was reasonably clear: get to the man and you will get to the divine word and you will get to the divine. That is, you cut away all that stands in the way of some pure nugget of inspiration and truth, and then do what you can with what is left; alternatively, you demand that the literary science make more persuasive its minimal conclusions and fight for your own maximal view. Both of these options, however, sit fairly close to the same understanding of inspiration. (I will have more to say about this below.) Von Rad lives close enough to this climate of critical inquiry to display many of its findings without need of urgent defense or offense. There is a DeuteroIsaiah and Trito-Isaiah. Some decision has already been made by him as to what constitutes the literary foundation for this portrait of Isaiah from within the narrower limits of Isaiah 1–39, and there is no sustained defense of this. In a classic case, the oracle calling for the restoration of the booth of David at the close of Amos appears, without further ado, to be regarded as secondary. Jonah is late, Trito-Isaiah is treated before Haggai, and there is no easy access to the real life of Hosea. All this is accepted with an air of calm, self-evidence, and reserve. What marks off von Rad’s achievement in this regard is precisely this reserve and calm. We are not asked to engage in primary literary-critical investigations as we move our way along in his presentation. But in order to understand why this is consistent with his method and is not merely a function of an irenic personality, it is necessary to dig deeper. Again, the answer is to be found in von Rad’s understanding of tradition-history. An earlier literary-critical method simply sought out what it identified as “major contradictions” in the literary record, and in the case of 10 

On this, see ch. 6 in the present volume.

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Amos 9:11–12, to return to that example, “grave doubts [were] raised as to its genuineness, and this was, of course, inevitable.”11 Von Rad believes that this picture depended upon a view of prophecy in which “Amos’s prophecy was regarded as the deposit of some king of ‘prophetic religion,’ the outcome of spiritual struggle and personal conviction.”12 Instead, von Rad views Amos as engaging live traditions, and since he was a Judean “would it not surprise us if there had been no mention of the traditions in which he was most at home?”13 It is not entirely clear if von Rad is arguing for Amos as author of these verses, and that in part is a function of the tradition-historical method as he deploys it. Because the prophets are themselves in a context of exchange with sacred tradition, it should not surprise us that in time they receive the same treatment. Such is the nature of tradition. For now it is enough to note that the movement from primary to secondary analysis in von Rad’s treatment contained little of the pejorative character it manifested a generation or two earlier. We are witnessing a broadening of the concept of inspiration to include tradents and disciples, and it is for this reason that early on we get hints that some of the major figures in the prophetic corpus are not just the Jeremiahs, but also the Baruchs, further along the tradition-building line. Still undeveloped are the full literary implications of this view, but more on that below. History Subservient to Prophecy as a Theological Reality No one would doubt that von Rad’s is a historical reading of the prophets. At the most simple level, von Rad follows the usual practice of his day and treats the prophets, not in their canonical order, but in an order all assumed was roughly chronological. At a more complex level, history applies the specific pressure upon the prophet’s formulation of God’s word. Choosing but one sentence from among many kindred others, von Rad remarks on the message of Amos: “It is important not to read this message as if it consisted of timeless ideas, but to understand it as the particular word relevant to a particular hour in history, which therefore cannot be replaced by any other word.”14 In the chapter labeled “Israel’s Idea about Time and History, and the Prophetic Eschatology,”15 von Rad labors to describe what is unique about Israel’s grasp of history. In this sense, whether he is or is not successful, we learn right away that he is trying to move out beyond any simple view of history 11 

Ibid., 2:138.

12 Ibid. 13 Ibid. 14  15 

Ibid., 2:129. Ibid., 2:99–125.

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as (what Hans Frei calls) “ostensive reference.”16 That is, the prophetic books do not simply report a thin sort of history in which the words on the page refer directly and univocally to single unrepeatable actions and events in time and space, such as could be, or must be, grasped by any neutral observer. There is something unique about an endowment that Israel’s God (von Rad’s “Jahweh”) has given to Israel and to no other people, and especially within Israel to his servants the prophets. The prophets see time and events from a standpoint that cannot be universalized, but that belongs to the essence of their experience as prophet called by God, who stands in his divine council. This emphasis frees von Rad from an analysis of the prophet’s message that must treat all the prophet’s words at the same level and then correlate these evenly and without gap or interruption with single events in time and space: that is, an analysis in which the prophet’s interpretation of events is overshadowed by reconstructions of ancient Near Eastern history, as one might seek that in the genre of modern historiography. Instead, it is enough that we get the general sweep of history as vouchsafed to the prophet in his day, and only that portion of his message that displays a certain density of interest in an interpretation of God’s actions in time with Israel and the nations fortifies the presentation that von Rad seeks to give. History organizes the presentation that von Rad seeks to give. History organizes his presentation, but it is a history unique to the prophetic perception, and therefore von Rad allows this aspect of the message of the prophets to come to the fore. The result is an economical, selective, sustained, and compelling account, running from Elijah to Jonah. Even the questions that must arise about why such a history-telling ever began and then ended (or did it?), von Rad takes up and treats with sensitivity and intelligence. Old and New Testament and Israelite Prophecy As is well known, von Rad was not content to restrict his analysis of Israel’s prophets to the Old Testament’s per se word. Alongside this per se word there is vetus testamentum in novo receptum, and von Rad never loses sight of this even as he labors to highlight the Old Testament’s literal-historical sense.17 It is completely natural and by no means unexpected that volume 2 of von Rad’s theology ends with an accounting of the relationship between Old and New Testaments. Indeed, one could argue that it is his treatment of the prophets, 16  See e. g., Hans W. Frei, The Eclipse of Biblical Narrative: A Study in Eighteenth and Nineteenth Century Hermeneutics (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1974), 12. 17  For these terms, see Hans Hübner, “Vetus Testamentum und Vetus Testamentum in Novo Receptum: Die Frage nach dem Kanon des Alten Testaments aus neutestamentlicher Sicht,” JBT 3 (1988): 147–62.



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as over against the law and wisdom, that constitutes the anticipatory proving ground of his more wide-scale and ambitious thoughts about Old and New Testaments as one Christian Scripture. And this is arguably a function of his theory of tradition-history itself. I argued in another place that the tradition-historical approach was probably allied with typology in von Rad’s thinking in such an intimate way that it would be difficult to sort out which came first in priority for him.18 In terms of presentation, the tradition-history comes first, of course, but it must be said that the alliance with typology, when we come to that final section, had already been worked out in his thinking. By typology, von Rad has in mind the way traditions get altered in the course of transmission, under the pressure of eschatological factors. The New Testament’s hearing of the Old is but the final, dramatic assessment of the Old Testament’s typologically driven inner nerve, thus bringing release to the urgent pressure of traditions to speak about what they know of Yahweh’s history with Israel and to speak over that history to a day beyond at the same time as well.19 I will have more to say about this below. What is required to say here is how subtly von Rad argued for this understanding of the relationship between Old and New Testaments. Just as there is no one-to-one correspondence between natural events and their interpretation in Israelite prophetic consciousness, so too there is no one-to-one correspondence between the word spoken to and by the prophet and its subsequent hearing and addressing. All of this traditionhistory stands under the sovereignty of God himself, who accomplishes what he wills with the words he had himself spoken.

Limitations of von Rad’s Presentation In what follows I examine certain limitations in von Rad’s presentation of the prophets. I do this for its own sake, but also especially to open up the final section where I locate von Rad’s achievement within a broader history of ideas up to and including modernity in its present postmodern or late-modern form. Selectivity and the Complete Literary Record It is arguable that a tradition-historical approach emerged for negative as well as for positive reasons. The older view, bequeathed to academic study 18  Christopher R. Seitz, Word Without End: The Old Testament as Abiding Theological Witness (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1998), 28–40. 19  I deal with this dimension in further detail in both Elder Testament and Convergences.

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in the history-of-religions approach of Wellhausen, was so anxious to divide the older Elohist source into minimal early and maximal late (what would be called Priestly) sources that it was hard to see the prophets as other than religious loners. This was because they lacked anything other than rather meager J and E source material to work with (and it was hard to see how they did even that),20 and the sheer bulk of their witness dwarfed anything antecedent to such a degree that they had to have been virtual progenitors of Israel’s religion. It is well known with what high regard the prophets were held in this period. Over against this magisterial portrait, von Rad offered a serious alternative. As seen above, von Rad rejected as romantic the notion of the prophets as religious geniuses, standing along and sharing with us their, as it were, lofty hermetic religious insights. The theory of traditions located the prophets once more within the social and religious world of Israel without robbing them of a measure of creativity and independence. In that sense, the tradition-historical approach was a negative judgment on a strict literary-critical account, while at the same time it sought positively to be an exhaustive and truer account of prophecy as an Israelite phenomenon. There remained a major difficulty, however. How much of the actual literary corpus of the prophet Isaiah, for example, is really to be accounted for by reference to Zion and David? Does the theory of traditions succeed in securing for the prophets a place in evolving theological reflection at the cost of severing this reflection from the literature associated with them in its entirety and in its present form? While one can defend von Rad as not seeking to write a commentary or give a full examination of the literature of the prophets, it at the same time remains the case that he has invented a genre of interpretation that stands aloof in a great many ways from the prophetic literature in the form in which we actually receive it. This new genre is something like “the historical-theological development of Israel’s traditions, as these move toward the New Testament.” But in what way is this selection from the canonical prophetic corpus an accurate reflection of what Israel came to regard as the Nebiʾim, that is, the second major collection of prophetic literature running from Isaiah to Ezekiel and concluding with the book of the Twelve? It has frankly been difficult for me to use this genre of von Rad’s as represented in volume 2 of his Old Testament Theology (and reprinted as The Message of the Prophets)21 because in a great many places, due to the focus on traditions, we simply do not receive an adequate depiction of the scope of the canonical 20  For a discussion of the issue at stake, see Dwight Roger Daniels, Hosea and Salvation History: The Early Traditions of Israel in the Prophecy of Hosea, BZAW 191 (Berlin: de Gruyter, 1990). See the treatment in ch. 19 of the present volume. 21  Gerhard von Rad, The Message of the Prophets, trans. D. M. G. Stalker (London: SCM, 1968).

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literature. The case of Micah stands out, but so too of Isaiah (who otherwise received a proportionately lengthy treatment). The same is true for several other prophets in the context of developing sacral traditions, as von Rad saw this, but only really on those terms and not much more. Tradition and Geography In much of von Rad’s treatment, one gets the sense that to live in the northern or southern kingdom, to remain there or to move, has some essential connection with what will be said by the prophet. Amos is a Judean, and so he knows tradition X or Y. Isaiah lives in Jerusalem and knows Zion and David traditions. Hosea lives in the north and does not share the same perspective as either of these, but rather works with his own indigenous traditions. The question here is related to the one above. Just how totalizing a frame of reference does this theory of traditions become in interpreting the prophets? Are the prophets obliged to speak within such a narrow frame of reference, simply due to geographical location? The further problem is to account for what they do not say but perhaps should have, given the notion of rooted theological traditions. This problem accounts in no small measure for the lacunas in von Rad’s treatment mentioned above. Much of what the prophets have to say is omitted if it does not fill out the genre of tradition-historical developmental theology – a problem that is exacerbated by insisting there is some essential link between geography, traditions, and theological presentation of the prophetic books. Tradition-History and Change Tradition-history demands that we be able to spot changes in theological perspective in the literature, and because change is what is of interest, change is what the method finds and focuses on. The result is often a selective and artificial picture. In my judgment, many students of von Rad and several of the recent redactional approaches are less effective than was von Rad in handling this aspect of tradition-historical investigation. Nevertheless, it was von Rad himself who made this a hallmark of his presentation. The methodological grounding for this understanding of tradition-history is laid out in von Rad’s 1958 magisterial study Gesammelt Studien zum Alten Testament,22 published in English as The Problem of the Hexateuch and Other Essays.23 In reflecting on the relationship between the various sources 22 

Gerhard von Rad, Gesammelte Studien zum Alten Testament (Munich: Kaiser, 1958). Gerhard von Rad, The Problem of the Hexateuch and Other Essays, trans. E. W. Trueman Dicken (Edinburgh: Oliver & Boyd, 1965). 23 

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of the Pentateuch (which he retained in somewhat altered form in his fresh approach) von Rad is at pains to describe the creative achievement of the Yahwist, on the one hand, but also the constraints under which subsequent tradents had to operate. How do both of these aspects of tradition-history – creativity and ingenuity, constraint and limitation – logically coordinate? The final picture we are given is of a measure of freedom in respect of the oral traditions, as these are extracted from the literary presentation, but then of a resistance to alteration and modification of what has been inherited at the literary level. So, for example, von Rad considers the effect of a combined P and J account of creation in the final form of the text, but prefers to measure theological value in terms of a separated J and P treatment. P is stuck with an older J account he cannot modify, even as he goes his own way. Change and difference are fundamental to the way a theological reading is achieved, and there is resistance to seeing any theologically relevant combination of literary sources. As von Rad concludes: “None of the stages of the age-long development of this work has been wholly superseded; something has been preserved of each phase, and its influence has persisted right down to the final form of the Hexateuch.”24 Von Rad insists upon a similar view of the prophetic literature. “Like the historical tradition,” he writes with conscious allusion to his Hexateuch analysis, “the prophetic corpus lies before us in what are, to some extent, very shapeless collections of traditional material, arranged with almost no regard for content or chronological order.”25 Gone, to be sure, is any polemic about spuriousness applying to secondary levels of traditions, but remaining as an urgency in spotting and untangling the secondary from the earlier and in making sure we have a clear picture of what was the original situation in life. He sums it up this way: The way in which tradition mounts and grows can be closely followed in the prophetic writings. Exegesis must be less ready than at present to look on this infusion of new blood into the prophetic tradition as “spurious” or an unhappy distortion of the original. The process is in reality a sign of the living force with which the old message was handed on and adapted to new situations.26

Still, at other points von Rad registers clear caution about paying attention to a final (possibly synthetic) literary portrayal. So, commenting on Isaiah’s “series of oracles beginning with the words ‘Woe to,’” he concludes about the final literary form, “the connexion is editorial”; the oracles, he cautions, “were no more delivered consecutively than were those in Matthew xxiii.13 ff.”27 24 

Ibid., 78 (emphasis original). Von Rad, Old Testament Theology, 2:33. 26  Ibid., 2:46. 27  Ibid., 2:40. 25 

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In sum, von Rad struggles to stand aloof from valorizing “original words” and earlier traditions, and yet his method demands a measure of final literary unruliness for the sake of the tradition-historical approach and its insistence on being concerned to highlight the “living force” within Israel. How this theological commitment functions alongside an appraisal of the final form, as itself amenable to an extension of the form-critical analysis, von Rad does not say. This is clearly because he does not regard the final form as theologically significant. It is the more-or-less accidental literary stopping point in a changing history of traditions. I will have more to say about this key judgment in the final section, for his remarks concerning the tradition-process in Genesis are crucial for understanding why von Rad resists any final-form analysis. Typology and Tradition-History As I  have argued elsewhere,28 the effort to conjoin tradition-history and typology, as a way to understand the relationship between the two Testaments of Christian Scripture, made difficult the theology of history upon which it depended in the first place. The history had to be misread and projected into the realm of eschatology or the ideal in order to accommodate a notion of constant forward movement, eventually leading into the New Testament. In order to get the Old Testament to lean into the New, its sensus literalis had to be viewed as not only historically referential but also as essentially eschatological: the projection into a spiritual realm of quite explicit historical credenda. Moreover, typology linked to tradition-history left us with a conception of the Old Testament (traditions rather than a final canonical deposit) not actually in evidence in the New Testament’s hearing of the Scriptures of Israel. When the New Testament speaks of “the law and the prophets,” it refers to a stable literary corpus, within which all sorts of interconnections and theological associations are made that have nothing whatsoever to do with the tradition-historical description of von Rad. In another context, commenting on how Old Testament scholars read the Suffering Servant poems within the parameters of a Deutero-Isaiah tradition-historical approach, N. T. Wright asks a simple question of his Old Testament co-interpreters of Isaiah 53: was the picture they drew with tradition-historical brushes not alien to the way the New Testament actually heard the text of Isaiah four hundred years later, and is that not also a legitimate point of inquiry?29 28 Seitz,

Word Without End, 28–40. asks why his Old Testament colleagues did not ask “how Isaiah might have been read by Jesus’s own contemporaries” (“The Servant and Jesus: The Relevance of the Colloquy for the Current Quest for Jesus,” in Jesus and the Suffering Servant: Isaiah 53 29  N. T. Wright

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Finally, as has been pointed out recently, typology may be the wrong word to draft into service, if by that is meant some unique reliance on a theory of history such as operated in tradition-history. Traditionally understood, typology and allegory are related instincts of figural reading, and neither rely on a theory of history of the tradition-historical sort.30 Rather, both operate on a much less complicated view of chronology and providence than the sophisticated diachronic analysis of von Rad and higher-critical readings of the 19th and 20th-centuries. It would be more accurate to say that von Rad’s typological method is his own modern effort to make tradition-history forward moving in its very essence. Any comparison with premodern use of figural reading is accidental, as this latter relied on a very different view of providence, enclosing the church’s present, providentially ordered, location in time. Von Rad’s spiritualization of typology into the realm of history and ideas is something else altogether. Ostensive Reference and Intratextuality I pointed out above how von Rad’s handling of historical referentiality was an impressive advance on 19th-century approaches. The prophets present a “history” that is supplied to them, not by the naked eye, but by agency of an endowed characteristic of the prophetic calling as such. It is this view of history that informs von Rad’s selective presentation of Old Testament prophecy. Yet does attention to this admittedly central facet of Israelite prophecy not also foreshorten considerably the range of what is to be treated? Von Rad warns against discounting secondary and tertiary levels in the tradition-historical process he lays bare, since these too belong to the living force of the dynamic prophetic development. But his attention is not here, in specific exegetical term. One can see this most clearly in the case of the book of Isaiah, but it is not restricted to that 66-chapter book. Von Rad considers – only summarily to reject – any final consolation or genuine theological-literary linkages across section of Isaiah.31 Or again, for all the talk of the centrality of Baruch and other Jeremiah traditionists, von Rad remains essentially committed to the realm of his version of subjective ostensive reference, and we never have any theological insights into the final form of the book. This means that in a great many cases, especially in the Minor Prophets, we get an extraordinarily and Christian Origins, ed. William H. Bellinger and William R. Farmer [Harrisburg: Trinity Press International, 1998], 282). 30  Christopher R. Seitz, Figured Out: Typology and Providence in Christian Scripture (Louisville: Westminster John Knox, 2001). 31  Von Rad, Old Testament Theology, 2:117–18. See the discussion of the divergences between Isaiah and Deutero-Isaiah.

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minimal portrayal of the scope of the literature actually associated with these figures. This is not a matter of chiding an author for what he has not chosen to do. Rather, the method that von Rad deploys betrays no awareness that a tradition-historical presentation of the prophets leaves vast stretches of the literature associated with them without comment. There is one final aspect to this limitation. What we now see in looking at the final collections of the prophets is that other forms of referentiality emerge alongside the historical. Indeed, in some cases these take priority over historical reference. What if, for example, it could be shown that the primary context of interpretation for the book of Jonah is the book of the Twelve, wherein it operates as its own book, but also as a commentary on the dense theological confession that YHWH is compassionate and merciful, yet will by no means clear the guilty.32 This theme cuts with special force when one considers Israel’s relationship to the nations and God’s forbearance and justice vis-à-vis them and vis-à-vis his chosen people Israel, not just in general terms (as in the case of Jonah), but also in terms of the final-form arrangement of the book of the Twelve. Other cases could be considered: the role of Malachi as the final prophetic book; the prologue to Zechariah with its reference to the Former Prophets; the theme of the servant and the servants, highlighted in recent final-form analysis of latter Isaiah (40–66); Obadiah and Joel as redactionally placed in the Twelve; and so forth. Von Rad introduces a sophisticated form of inquiry into historical reference, and he defends later tradition-historical development as theologically important, but he does not actually pursue at the exegetical level any analysis of this dimension of prophecy. Before moving to the final section, I want to mention in passing one place where von Rad’s resistance to analyzing the final form was salutary.33 In the approach of Hartmut Gese and Peter Stuhlmacher, one sees an extension of many of the insights of von Rad’s tradition-historical method. Both scholars emphasize a dimension, however, that did not figure prominently in von Rad’s work. Both seek to foreground the Septuagint as theologically important for any account of biblical theology. This is for two reasons, at least: (1) wisdom traditions found in Sirach belong to an important tradition stream that feeds into the New Testament; (2) more decisively, to speak of a Hebrew canon might imply a closed and stable literary collection (whose internal ordering might actually be different from the later Masoretic Text and Septuagint).34 The tradition-historical process, as a means of comprehending the relationship between the Testaments and doing biblical theology, requires for Gese 32 

We treat the matter in greater detail in chapters to follow. I have written on this at length in Figured Out, 35–47. 34  See a fuller discussion in ch. 11 of the present volume. 33 

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and Stuhlmacher a continuing resistance to literary stabilization. Traditionbuilding cannot stop until Jesus and the New Testament stop it, and the Septuagint serves better to make this point, in the judgment of Gese and Stuhlmacher. I want to note only in passing that von Rad never moved to this level of canonical judgment. His caution was salutary.

Theological Constraints on the Tradition-Historical Method I hope that my analysis thus far has been fair, proportional, and not too schematic. There is virtue in working through numbered facets of an author’s work, but in von Rad’s case this may threaten to place within artificial constraints what was arguably the most creative and theologically lively reading of the prophets produced in the last century. Von Rad never propositionalized his method, and many of his best readings of the Old Testament worked fully outside his own methodological horizons (we can see this most clearly in individual readings in the Genesis commentary).35 In this final section on von Rad’s work, I intend to focus on one issue. My task is made easier by virtue of my working with just one section of a text from von Rad’s Genesis commentary. This section is not from his treatment of the prophets, but I am convinced that it is of great importance for an inquiry into the tradition-historical approach in general. Part of the success of this section will have to do with whether agreement can be secured about the centrality of the text under discussion for von Rad’s larger literary and theological judgments, as these took form in the traditionhistorical method. I have long believed that von Rad’s theological presuppositions are identified in this passage and that the method of traditional-historical analysis stopped short of an account of the final form of the literature for reasons that lay largely to the side of any strictly literary analysis. For different reasons John Barton makes similar points when he shows that, from a literary standpoint, various forms of new critical, final-form, and structuralist analyses were the natural heirs to form and redactional analysis.36 What Barton failed to note is the theological dimension in form and tradition-historical analysis that led to a resistance to that might otherwise have been a neutral literary decision to focus on the final form. As I have focused on this attenuation, if such it is, in von Rad’s work in the section above, it is important, I believe, to try to account for this. 35 Gerhard von Rad, Genesis: A  Commentary, trans. John H. Marks, rev. ed., OTL (London: SCM, 1972). 36  John Barton, Reading the Old Testament: Method in Biblical Study (London: Darton, Longman & Todd, 1984).



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In The Problem of the Hexateuch, von Rad concludes his essay entitled “The Form-Critical Problem of the Hexateuch” with these remarks: No doubt the Hexateuch in its complete and final form makes great demands upon the understanding of its readers. Many ages, many men, many traditions, and many theologians have contributed to this stupendous work. The Hexateuch will be rightly understood, therefore, not by those who read it superficially [flächenhaft], but only by those who study it with knowledge of its profundities [Tiefendimension], recognizing that its pages speak of the revelations and religious experiences of many different periods. None of the stages of the age-long development of this work has been wholly superseded; something has been preserved of each phase, and its influence has persisted right down to the final form of the Hexateuch. Only a recognition of this fact can prepare one to hear the plentitude of the witness which this work encompasses.37

Here the emphasis is on a profundity that turns on multiple voices not being superficially misperceived. Such in von Rad’s caution and, one might say, defense of his particular tradition-historical approach. Without seeking to do a final-form or even tradition-historical analysis of von Rad’s own canon of published work, here is what we read in the introduction to the Genesis commentary, which he began earlier, but whose introduction, the publisher notes, was “very extensively rewritten” before von Rad’s death in the autumn of 1971.38 This passage, I have long felt, manifested the theological warrant for von Rad’s constraining of the tradition-historical method in the way he chose to do. He notes, in a mood that may have come upon him in this mature period of “very extensive” rewriting, regarding the combined P and J creation accounts, that “the story of the Fall can no longer be expounded without reference to the ‘very good’ in ch. 1:31.”39 And then he continues, cautiously upholding his tradition-historical emphasis noted above, but also giving new ground: And for the patriarchal stories it must at least be kept in mind that the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob is also the Yahweh who grants forgiveness in the cultic sacrifice to the Tabernacle. True, in Genesis, the redactor has in many instances given precedence to the Yahwistic-Elohist tradition over the Priestly document. But in the book of Exodus the situation is reversed, and since Genesis and Exodus are not two separate “books,” that must be considered in the exegesis.40

The passage I wish to highlight comes immediately after this one. It shows that as von Rad considers the likelihood that exegesis must come to terms with the 37 Von Rad, Problem of the Hexateuch, 77–78 (emphasis original). Convergences examines this topic in greater detail, and brings into the discussion the later work of Martin Noth as well. 38  Von Rad, Genesis, 9. 39  Ibid., 42. 40 Ibid.

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final literary product, he also worries about the justification for this, and the limits of it for exegesis: Franz Rosenzweig once remarked wittily that the sign “R” (for the redactor of the Hexateuch documents, so lowly esteemed [geringgeachtet] in our Protestant research) should be interpreted as Rabbenu, “our master,” because basically we are dependent only on him, on his great work of compilation and his theology, and we receive the Hexateuch at all only from his hands.41

Two things are worthy of note here. First, von Rad betrays his wariness that a certain confessional stance has tended to disparage the collecting and finalizing phrases of the biblical record in favor of excavating original authors and intentions, that is, “Protestant research” (to use his term for the scientific endeavor connected with Lutheran university departments of theology). Second, we see von Rad’s own resistance to taking the redactor as anything more than an archivist bound by the material he has received and therefore not genuinely “our master” in the sense of being a theological creator to be reckoned with. This is consistent with his view of the nature of the sources and the relative intractability of tradition in its final phase of development – and hence our capacity and our charge to highlight and maintain a proper sense of the Bible’s multiple and diverse voices. He continues: From the standpoint of Judaism [here von Rad is speaking of the redactor as “our master”], that is consistent. But for us, in respect to hermeneutics, even the redactor is not “our master.” We receive the Old Testament from the hands of Jesus Christ, and therefore all exegesis of the Old Testament depends on whom one thinks Jesus Christ to be.42

Here the distinction between Protestant research of a Lutheran university variety, over against all Christian exegesis in the history of interpretation, premodern and modern, is not the salient issue for von Rad. Such a distinction falls to the side in the face of what von Rad takes to be the proper distinguishing of a Jewish understanding of the canonical Scriptures from one that confesses that it receives these writing, not from the bosom of Israel, but by direct delivery of Israel’s Messiah, Jesus Christ. But why is this distinction – received from Jesus Christ or received as a final product from the unknown hand of editors – relevant? The question becomes more acute as one reads on, for in what follows, von Rad makes very clear that he will have nothing to do with the notion of Jesus as the bringer of some “new religion.” Indeed it is an idea he recoils from and seeks to set in contrast to his own critical reading. In other words, what begins as concern for improper highlighting of the theological significance of the final, composite form 41 Ibid. 42 

Ibid., 42–43.

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of the biblical text, as a Jewish and not a truly Christian approach, becomes something very different: namely, a concern to rule out some sort of experiential analogy drawn from the Old Testament based upon what Christians claim to know of their new religion. I will return below to the distinction with which von Rad has begun. The quotation continues: If one sees in him [Jesus Christ] the bringer of a new religion, then one will consistently examine the chief figures of the patriarchal narratives for their inward religious disposition and by, say, drawing religious “pictures from life” will bring into the foreground what comes close to Christianity or even corresponds with it. But this “pious” view is unsatisfactory because the principal subject of the account in the Genesis stories is not the religious characteristics of the patriarchs at all…. The real subject of the account is everywhere a quite definite act of Yahweh.43

One should be able to see that the direction of von Rad’s argument has moved from worry about the final form as theologically relevant to an internal Christian discussion about who Jesus Christ is and what counts for a proper assessment – not of the viability of the text’s final form, but – of what counts for the text’s subject matter. The subject matter is God, not religion. With this one can signal agreement without passing any judgment about the viability of the final, composite form of the text, out beyond the last decisions von Rad will allow the tradition-historical method to make. The quotation ends with a quite satisfactory attempt to commend typologial reading as appropriate to Christian handling of the Old Testament. What is unclear is why such a reading cannot proceed on the basis of the final form of the text, and this was the point of departure for his remarks in exchange with Rosenzweig to begin with. Von Rad concludes: Can we not recognize a common link even between the revelation of God in the old covenant and that in the new, a “type”? The patriarchal narratives include experiences which Israel had of a God who revealed himself and at the same time on occasions hid himself more deeply…. What we are told here of the trails of a God who hides himself and whose promise is delayed, and yet of his comfort and support, can readily be read into God’s revelation of himself in Jesus Christ.44

Von Rad has moved from (a) a consideration of the final, composite form of the Hexateuch in Genesis and Exodus to (b) a Jewish understanding of that final form set forth by Rosenzweig, to (c) a commendation of Jesus Christ as the Christian’s “master,” to (d) worry about who he is and what sort of typology might appropriately count for sober Christian reading of Old and New Testament Scriptures. In my judgment, at some point cautious consideration of the final form of the text was set off against something Jewish, having to do 43 

Ibid., 43.

44 Ibid.

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with honoring the text’s canonical shape, against which is then set off something properly Christian, having to do with Jesus Christ and the God of Israel. To be sure, von Rad’s preference for the Old Testament’s multiple voices occurred, as he saw it, because he wished to respect the text’s complete history within the people for whom it was occasioned. Ironically, however, for Rosenzweig respect needed to be paid to the text as it had been handed on and received, that is, in its final form, where a combination of P and J sources is a sum greater than two parts. So the disagreement did not turn on respecting the text’s history in Israel, but on evaluating the theological significance of the final textualization of traditions. It was unnecessary, and indeed somewhat confusing, for von Rad to speak about Jesus Christ in contrast to some other sort of “master.” Indeed, one could just as easily say that the access Jesus Christ gives those outside Israel, in the Christian church, is an access to “our master” as reflected in the final form of the text, seen now from the perspective of the post-Easter faith. There need be no theological distinguishing of Jesus Christ as the bringer of the Old Testament to the Gentile Christian church and the Old Testament in its final literary form. Indeed, this form preserves a composite character constrained within the final literary shape. The New Testament’s hearing of the Old occurs with reference, therefore, not to a critically delineated tradition-history, but to the Old Testament’s final form, a form that Rosenzweig sought to honor when he spoke of the final form of Genesis as bequeathed to us – Jew and Gentile – by Rabbenu (“our master”). It could well be a natural next step for biblical theology to inquire (as von Rad did) how the God of Israel, in his ways with an elected people, is a type of Jesus Christ (and vice versa), consistent with the confession of the New Testament and early church that the work of Christ was “in accordance with the Scriptures” (1 Corinthians 15).45 This accordance could well be obscured, however, if, following von Rad, tradition-historical development takes precedence over consideration of the text’s final form, for it is this final form, passed on by Israel, received and opened expectantly, in Luther’s image, like a final will and testimony that discloses the Old Testament’s according force.46 Von Rad needed to have pressed on, as he sensed in Genesis, toward an accounting of the final form of the text – and this, not for reasons of literary completeness, but because “our master” is language that means to underscore the theological integrity of the Old Testament in its final form. At the end of the day, typological or figural reading of the Old Testament, as a form of biblical theology, is better deployed when released from the 45  See my Word Without End and Figured Out. More recently, see the discussion in Elder Testament. 46  For a reference and discussion, see Word Without End, 74.

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responsibility of giving theological significance to the prehistory and developmental growth of traditions, as these must be excavated from the final form of the text and, in turn, given theological priority. Von Rad knew there must be a reverse channel linking the New Testament to the Old, but he was, to my mind, “trying to find his way backward with an altogether different torch than the [tradition-historical] one that had previously lighted his way.”47

Prospect: Tradition-History and Beyond When one now looks at the changes in interpretation of the prophets from the days of von Rad’s tradition-history approach, what stands out? I can focus on only one issue. The most dramatic change to be seen is in what counts for context. For von Rad, the primary context of interpretation was the prophet in relationship to traditions, on the one hand, and the individual prophet in relationship to events of his day, on the other, as God inspired his (the prophet’s) particular take on these. Whatever else one might make of connections between the individual prophets as historical figures or the books now associated with them, these could be assessed only within the limits of a careful historical reconstruction of Israel’s restless and forward-moving tradition-history. The prophets are discrete and distinct voices. The following quotation from von Rad exists within this cautious climate of tradition-historical investigation: Careful consideration of the distinctive features in the prophecies of Amos, Hosea, Isaiah, and Micah might well lead us to the conclusion that all comparisons are dangerous, because once we have discovered the radical differences between them it is difficult to avoid the temptation of going on and smoothing these out. What, in actual fact, do Hosea and Isaiah have in common?… Much the same can be said of Amos and Micah. Amos was apparently quite unmoved by Hosea’s main topic…. Finally, there is absolutely no bridge between Micah and the hopes cherished concerning Zion by Isaiah.48

To catch the sense of change in approach, consider now the fresh use of the term traditionist by J. Jeremias, made thirty years later. This quotation shows a radically different view of what counts for context in interpreting the prophets, built even as this is upon the older foundations of tradition-historical analysis. Context is now context within the literary shape of the final form of the canon. Jeremias is representative of a much wider circle of interpretation, now working on the book of Isaiah and the book of the Twelve. 47  48 

Ibid., 40. Von Rad, Message of the Prophets, 145.

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I can understand these literary connections (between Hosea and Amos) … only if the pupils of Amos and the pupils of Hosea who handed down the message of the prophets wanted to teach their readers that they could not grasp the central ideas of these prophets by reading their books in complete isolation from one another. By contrast, the readers of the written words of the prophets were supposed to notice the similarity of Amos’s and Hosea’s message from God. The pupils were not interested in stressing the differences between the two prophets. The literary structure of both prophetic books – from the initial level shows that these books were meant as associated entities and should not be read as isolated pericopes. The literary connections between these books show that they should be read in relation to each other…. I want to show that these traditionists are on their way to discovering something like a common prophetic theology, not by denying that each prophet lived in singular historical circumstances, but by denying that this fact is decisive for their message.49

The older term tradition has given way to a new sense implied by the word traditionist, which has in turn opened up a context that, as we have seen, was resisted by von Rad in his lapidary exchange with Rosenzweig. This context is a “canonical context.” It is no less deserving of the term historical than that which von Rad had isolated in his day in a search for the historical individuals Amos and Hosea and the traditions with which they labored. Jeremias concurs. Jeremias is decidedly not giving up on a search for the distinctive features of each prophet in the book of the Twelve. These prophets circulated from early on as one book, but also each with its own superscription, separated in rabbinic tradition by three empty lines of text to distinguish this. The hermeneutical significance of this ancient practice is not lost on Jeremias or others presently pursuing a fresh approach to the book of the Twelve. But these interpreters are indeed pressing tradition-history to account for the final form of the traditions as they exist in (even different) canonical presentation. And what we learn from this work in the Old Testament, where twelve books provide a canonical context for each individual book, may also translate into fresh analysis of the fourfold gospel collection, as Jeremias hints above. It may not be enough to inquire whether John was aware o the traditions of Mark, as this is customarily pursued in traditional New Testament analysis.50 What if one context assumed by John for his readers is the actual book of Mark as this exists in final form? Richard Bauckham raises just such a question in his intriguing 1998 essay “John for Readers of Mark”: In one of the few Markan narratives that John also tells, John, like Mark, has Jesus say, “It is I” (i. e., “I am” [ἐγώ εἰμι]; Mark 6:50; John 6:20). In John this becomes the second 49  J. Jeremias, “The Interrelationship Between Amos and Hosea,” in Forming Prophetic Literature: Essays in Isaiah and the Twelve in Honor of John D. W. Watts, ed. James W. Watts and Paul R House, JSOTSup 235 (Sheffield: Sheffield Academic, 1996), 171–86. 50  D. Moody Smith, John Among the Gospels (Minneapolis: Fortress, 1992).

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of the Gospel’s theologically potent series of seven absolute “I am” sayings (4:26; 6:20; 8:24, 28, 58; 13:19; 18:5, 6, 8). For readers/hearers of Mark, this series would not only develop the christological significance of the “I am” sayings they already knew in Mark 6:50 but also inform their understanding of the “I am” saying in Mark 14:62. In ways such as this, it would be possible to argue that John provides readers/hearers who already know Mark with a much fuller and more developed christological and soteriological interpretation of the Gospel story, but one which had clear continuity with the Markan christology and soteriology they already know. They would not perceive John’s interpretation of Jesus as correcting or invalidating Mark’s, but as extending and deepening it…. With the benefit of John’s explicit interpretation of the few “signs” of Jesus which he has carefully chosen for this highly selective Gospel narrative, they could also read with fresh perception the “many other signs” (John 20:30) that Mark records. While the fourth evangelist surely meant to lead his readers further and deeper into the significance of Jesus and his story than Mark’s Gospel had done, he need not have intended them henceforth to leave Mark aside and to read only his own Gospel. He did not aim to replace Mark, but to write a different kind of Gospel: one which, by selecting far fewer traditions, left space for the reflective interpretation that is the distinctive characteristic of the Fourth Gospel.51

With these brief observations I bring my assessment of von Rad, prophecy, and tradition-history to a close. In any informal survey of recent introductions to the prophets, it is striking how the general historical approach of von Rad and others remains unaltered, and this even given the deployment of newer methods in the case of the individual prophetic books, especially the book of Isaiah. Following the same basic historical/developmental model of von Rad are Heschel, Newsome, Prévost, Eaton, Blenkinsopp, and Koch.52 It matters not what the theological persuasion of the interpreter is, or if the interpreter be a maximalist or a minimalist historical reader. In spite of the interest in laying bare the canonical context of the individual books of the Twelve as decisive for exegesis, von Rad’s tradition-historical model lives on. What we shall surely witness in days to come is the end of that restriction. Marvin A. Sweeney’s recent commentary on the Twelve suggests a possible way forward, if in format only.53 Work on the final form of the canonical Isaiah 51  Richard

Bauckham, “John for Readers of Mark,” in The Gospels for All Christians: Rethinking the Gospel Audiences, ed. Richard Bauckham (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1995), 169–70. 52  This is a random sample only: Abraham Heschel, The Prophets (New York: Harper & Row, 1962); James D. Newsome, The Hebrew Prophets (Atlanta: John Knox, 1984); J.‑P. Prévost, How to Read the Prophets (New York: Continuum, 1977); John H. Eaton, Mysterious Messengers: A Course on Hebrew Prophecy from Amos Onwards (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1997); Joseph Blenkinsopp, A History of Prophecy in Israel, rev. ed. (Louisville: Westminster John Knox, 1996); Klaus Koch, The Prophets, 2 vols. (Philadelphia: Fortress, 1983–1984). 53  Marvin A. Sweeney et al., eds., The Twelve Prophets, 2 vols., Berit Olam (Collegeville, MN: Liturgical Press, 2000).

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has likewise been undertaken, not as an adventure in proving tradition-historical reading false, but as an extension of some of its basic insights, now turned toward the final 66-chapter book as a whole. The citations that follow in the appendix to this chapter are a sample of how tradition-history is moving forward to account for the context that books supply for one another in the final presentation of the book of the Twelve. In this way, the older restriction of tradition-history by von Rad, in his exchange with Rosenzweig, is falling to the side.

8. What Lesson Will History Teach? The Book of the Twelve as History “The appeal to the significance of the canon for Biblical Theology is not to defend an ecclesiastical harmonization of scripture into a monolithic block, but rather to retain the full range of prophetic and apostolic witnesses, even when large areas of the biblical text appear to lie dormant for the moment in anticipation of some unexpected new and surprisingly fresh role for a future moment.”1

Context Appropriate to our topic, let me begin on an historical note. Twenty years ago I  started researching a specific historical problem.2 What happened on the date 597/596  – a date we can only assign retrospectively, and inexactly, with reference to another set of historical events, and then gloss with BC or BCE? The facts are reasonably clear. The Babylonians overran Jerusalem, exiled her young king, deported a large number of her citizens, including the prophet Ezekiel, placed their own king (Jehoiachin’s uncle Zedekiah) in charge, and essentially brought an end to her nationhood. For at least a decade prior to this, the prophet Jeremiah had announced that the God of Israel had lost patience with his people due to their apostasy and would therefore be the agent of their judgment, executed at the hands of the Babylonians. This judgment had been announced by prophets before Jeremiah, and God’s patience was finally tested beyond limit. He would come as judge. These facts of historical reference and prophetic word are reasonably clear. They are not under dispute. But what have we got when we call this “history”? For we are still left with the question of how these historical events fit into a larger history of God’s ways with his people. 1  Brevard S. Childs, Biblical Theology of the Old and New Testaments: Theological Reflection on the Christian Bible (Minneapolis: Fortress, 1993), 522–23 (emphasis mine). 2  From the standpoint of the present volume, that is now more than 35 years ago (1984).

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For one prophetic figure of the day, the events marked the true judgment of God and the final judgment of God. God had come as judge in the events of 597, had exiled a people in his wrath, and had brought Jerusalem and Judah under a punishing display of submission. Now it was time to break the yoke for those in the land and return to a state of peace and calm (Jer 28:10–11). For another prophet, judgment was a true state of affairs, but it was as true of the exiled Israel as of the citizens in Judah, and therefore the judgment of God had yet to be finalized. There was persistent apostasy in Jerusalem, even after 597, and the prophet saw it and condemned it and announced that the God of Israel was effectively exiling himself and withdrawing into a punishing absence of glory (Ezek 11:22–25). For another prophet, the prophet Jeremiah in Jerusalem, the situation was closer and more personal, and yet proximity to the historical events did not lessen the need for historical assessment and interpretation; it heightened the burden upon him. He stood face to face with the first mentioned figure, the prophet Hananiah, and he was confronted by the twin burden of assessing his word and office, and offering his own endangering, truthful word. We cannot know whether Jeremiah was familiar in any direct sense with the second prophet’s (Ezekiel’s) word. We do know that he wrote the letter to the exiles in Babylon and did not, like Hananiah, set his eyes on the people of Judah as a kind of “good figs” over against “bad figs,” to use the image later adopted by the prophet (Jer 24:1–10). Indeed, according to Jeremiah 24, the exiles were those who could expect, as a consequence of their receipt of God’s judgment, favourable assessment; they were the “good figs.” And Jeremiah accepted the yoke of wood for a season but then called for the yoke of iron, stating in no uncertain terms to Hananiah that the period of submission to Babylon was not over but would continue (28:12–15). What I tried to show in my research was the (somewhat messy and erratic) way the Jeremiah traditions that were passed on to us found their way to a coherent (if rough-edged) historical portrayal of what happened between 597 and the fall of Jerusalem in 587, and thereafter.3 It would take time before one could speak of what was happening in an organic and integrated way. Even as Ezekiel and Jeremiah offered distinctive  – geographical, temporal, tradition-historical  – perspectives, in the end they were prophets speaking a consistent word and offering complementary portrayals of what happened historically in the last years of Judah’s existence. For this reason, it is indeed meaningful to speak of history as something out in front of us as well as something behind us, capable of being given words 3  Christopher R. Seitz, Theology in Conflict: Reactions to the Exile in the Book of Jeremiah, BZAW 176 (Berlin: de Gruyter, 1989).

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and a narrative description. History writing is reporting past events to be sure but from a perspective the future alone can grant. This is especially true of Israel’s history, which over time sought an organic comprehensiveness which could not be gained until the future had given a proper sense of organization and sequence. As a question posed to the future, “What lesson will history teach?” is a fully rational way to describe something of the burden of waiting and humbly standing before God’s judgments in time in order to say what they mean as historical facts. In the end, “when all was said and done,” the disaster of 597 was not the judgment of God but a type or figure of it, one which anticipated a later anti-type in the Babylonian defeat of 587/6 – full-orbed, though, it decidedly was for a people who lived at the time and who indeed found themselves exiled away to Babylon. The final form of Jeremiah, with its array of traditions on this matter, presented in the end a coherent historical word about “what really happened” in the events of 597 and 587/6.

Gerhard von Rad In a work which was recently completed, I was asked to evaluate the contribution of Gerhard von Rad for an event in Heidelberg honoring the hundredth anniversary of his birth.4 I  must make reference to that essay briefly here, so as to explain the historical context in which my present reflections have occurred.5 I will focus solely on the matter of history in von Rad’s traditionhistorical method. Von Rad was able to move beyond a 19th-century concern with factuality and diachronic reference (especially focused on an original author and secondary tradents, usually regarded as successive waves of modification or alteration) by granting a positive theological value to the entire history of tradition. The original historical event, shorn of interpretation, was a deeply ambiguous thing. In a brilliant turn of phrase, said to be aimed at W. F. Albright, von Rad said he (Albright) and his school had been seeking to penetrate to a place which was “theologically speechless.” Gilkey made something of the same criticism of “Mighty Acts of God” imaginatively given concrete historical dress by the so-called Biblical Theology Movement.6 4 

See ch. 9 in the present volume. Christopher R. Seitz, “Prophecy and Tradition-History: The Achievement of Gerhard von Rad and Beyond,” in Prophecy and Hermeneutics: Toward a New Introduction to the Prophets, STI (Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2007), 155–88. 6  Langdon B. Gilkey, “Cosmology, Ontology, and the Travail of Biblical Language,” JT 41 (1961): 194–205. 5 

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But did von Rad go far enough in giving room for a theologically rich tradition-history, even one which reached into and included NT credenda? My view was that von Rad saw the potential in crediting the final form of the text with a certain sort of historical reporting, but then worried about it. In his latest work, the commentary on Genesis, we all know the high value he placed on the Yahwist.7 What a brilliant treatment he gave us! The Yahwist emerges as something like the inventor of history writing. Still, we learn as well of the enormous theological insight of the Priestly writer, even though von Rad never gives him the same sort of “historical” high praise. Von Rad did not regard the Priestly writer, given his dynamic view of tradition-history, as producing something avowedly non-historical. That would be to say too much, once the clutch on the mechanism of tradition-history is released. New insights emerge through subsequent reflection on the original credenda, and these retain positive interpretative value for von Rad. Indeed they are the ways in which von Rad sees positive theological and historical linkage from one covenantal witness to a second, culminating one.8 What I endeavoured to discover in my essay was the precise reason for the uneasiness von Rad reported when it came to an assessment of the final form of the text. What prevented von Rad from taking, not just the Yahwist or the Priestly writer or any other tradent as essential to Israel’s witness to YHWH, but also the combination of them in the final form of the text? I pointed to two examples in his introduction to Genesis where von Rad saw quite clearly that it was in the combination of the sources that real theological interpretation of history came into sharpest profile.9 The reasons for von Rad’s hesitancy in letting his commentary focus here, then, needed to be sought out and found. And von Rad obliged. Oddly, to my mind, he credited an interest in this dimension of Old Testament theological history to an alien, non-Christian, stance. According to von Rad, it is Jesus Christ who provides “collation” of the witness, or an explicit key to its significance theologically understood, as this is received from Israel in the church. It was the insight of Franz Rosenzweig which brought to von Rad’s attention a focus on the witness itself as collated, as historically and theologically formed into just that witness and none other. The final form of the text had a specific theological voice. Rosenzweig called the “redactor” (R) 7 Gerhard

von Rad, Genesis: A  Commentary, trans. John H. Marks, rev. ed., OTL (Philadelphia: Westminster, 1972). 8 See my discussion in Christopher R. Seitz, “The Historical-Critical Endeavor as Theology: The Legacy of Gerhard von Rad,” in Word Without End: The Old Testament as Abiding Theological Witness (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1998), 28–40. 9  Von Rad, Genesis, 42. See now my further commentary on this development in Convergences: Canon and Catholicity (Waco, TX: Baylor University Press, 2020).



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of the sources and traditions “our teacher” (R for “Rabbenu”) since “we receive the rich diachronic legacy at all only from his hand” (my paraphrase).10 That von Rad took Rosenzweig in Brevard S. Childs’s sense of final form, and not that of tradition-history, is evident in the way he spoke specifically about the combination of the sources producing a yet different, final, privileged theological presentation of Israel’s prior witness. The final form is “the lesson that history teaches us,” when “it has had its say” and “when all is said and done.” We only know the extent of the fall for the Yahwist when we hear the “very good” of P’s creation account.11 So it was my conclusion that von Rad was wrong when he stopped short of crediting theological significance to the final form of the text. Rosenzweig’s concern was not in conflict with von Rad’s “christological” appeal and indeed could be meaningfully coordinated with it. The final form of Genesis was its own special kind of “history writing.”12

The Twelve In the remarks to follow I apply this general heuristic notion – that is, involving the possible integrity of the final form of the presentation as a piece of history writing – to a specific instance of interpretation: the prophets. I can only do this in a suggestive way, given the constraints of our format; to establish the thesis in detail would require an in-depth investigation of the redaction history of the Book of the Twelve.13 A certain sort of historical sense has demanded, for more than 150 years now, that we establish the proper sequentiality of the 10  Von Rad states, “Franz Rosenzweig once remarked that the sign ‘R’ (for the redactor of the Hexateuch documents, so lowly esteemed in our Protestant research) should be interpreted as Rabbenu, ‘our master,’ because basically we are dependent only on him, on his great work of compilation and his theology, and we receive the Hexateuch at all only from his hands” (ibid.). 11 Ibid. 12  “If God is thought of as revealing himself to his people in increasing measure over time, it the course of a teleological process of salvation worked out within history, then there is a prima facie case for privileging the witness of the later communities who were witnesses to the greatest extent of that revelation…. A reading of the Old Testament which assumes this view of revelation will naturally give theological privilege to the later compilers’ of the final form of the canonical texts. It is their historical location, rather than some special moral quality of trustworthiness which they supposedly lacked, that gives their text theological priority” (Timothy Ward, Word and Supplement: Speech Acts, Biblical Texts, and the Sufficiency of Scripture [Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002], 249 [emphasis mine]). 13  For a good recent survey of the issues affecting reading the Book of the Twelve as a unity, see James D. Nogalski and Marvin A. Sweeney, eds., Reading and Hearing the Book of the Twelve, SymS 15 (Atlanta: SBL Press, 2000). See also, subsequent to this essay, Prophecy and Hermeneutics: Toward a New Introduction to the Prophets (Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2007).

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prophets in order to do justice to their teaching and on-going witness (and not only their sequentiality as individual books, but also in respect of parts and sub-parts of books and later editorialising and so forth). It is important that we keep in mind that whatever theological justification for this procedure once existed, it is now the case that the primary justification is that to do otherwise would not be “historical.” No one will contest that in terms of simple intelligibility, the prophets’ message and the form of that message will be misunderstood without a sense of historical referentiality. No one will contest that the material itself assumes knowledge on the part of readers of events and figures to which it refers (e. g., Babylon, wilderness, the fall of Samaria, the year that king Uzziah died, Edom, Tyre, Rechabites, the former prophets, Zedekiah, Cyrus, Sennacherib, Nisroch, etc. – these historical details need explanation). But what has counted for history, generally speaking, is an etic description14 of how these various referential indicators cohere in a universe of sequentiality and cross reference and tradition-history, the construction of which is the task – the true theological task as well as the historical challenge – of biblical interpretation for our day. Almost without considering it, or indeed in an effort to correct and displace it, the material form of the witness recedes in importance as the quest for historical reference or religion or tradition history or an interpreter’s presentation of “the intentions of Isaiah or Jesus or redactor X” become the critical projects of academic biblical interpretation. What I will try to show is that a balancing act is now required. The interpreter must indeed do justice to historical reference and must inquire about the individual prophetic witness of the Twelve, their possible historical sequence, their reporting of historical events, and so forth. At the same time, building on the work of J. Jeremias15 and others, it is clear that a larger historical project must also be respected in the Twelve. It appears that the earliest tradents were themselves concerned, not with individual historical prophets and their message in this or that period, but with the correlation of these prophets and these messages, in the name of a large-scale account of YHWH’s dispensation of history, under his providential care and sovereignty. Already in Amos and Hosea, 14  “Etic” and “emic” are anthropological terms, widely used in critical analysis. The first is something called “talk about natives” as opposed to “native talk.” An etic description of Israel’s history judges the self-presentation of Israel’s literary witness to be confused, neutral, biased, in need of sorting out according to a theory of development, and so forth. Classically, histories of Israel have judged the literary presentation reliable but in need of a properly described chronology, or unreliable and incapable of use for wide scale historiographic purposes. Either judgment is largely an etic judgment. 15  J. Jeremias, “The Interrelationship Between Amos and Hosea,” in Forming Prophetic Literature: Essays on Isaiah and the Twelve in Honor of John D. W. Watts, ed. James W. Watts and Paul R. House, JSOTSup 235 (Sheffield: Sheffield Academic, 1996), 171–86.

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the concern of the prophet’s tradents or pupils is with relating the work of these two very different prophets (see the discussion of Jeremias below). Whatever else may be said of the success of such an approach, it is clear that its historical assumptions are quite different from what has held sway. Tradition-history saw relatedness as something the interpreter would have to construct and supply by means of an external scaffolding: namely, the way these (twelve) individual prophets (as well as the Three, or “major prophets,” further broken down in the case of Isaiah) used traditions available to them all, in response to historical events unfolding before them, and on occasion (though actually quite rarely) with explicit reference to one another (e. g., Jeremiah mentioning Micah; see Jer 26:18). This construction project worked completely without regard for the final material arrangement of the Twelve and the Three, as itself a potential framework from which to comprehend a “history” stretching from Hosea’s message of election and grace in the days of the early Assyrian period right down to the eschatological finale of Malachi. The older method was content to date, on internal and external grounds, books like Jonah and Obadiah and Joel quite late in Israel’s religious history. It never inquired if these books were placed in their present order so as to offer a mature, seasoned perspective on Israel’s history that only time could teach, and that the earlier witnesses could only adumbrate  – an achievement that is by no means called into question but endorsed and seconded in the final arrangement of the Twelve. Apart from the specific details of the presentation of the Book of Twelve which follows, I  am interested more generally in what view of history and historiography we have been working with in recent biblical interpretation. Specifically, I have a question about whether the material form of the canon has often been ignored as a broker of history. I raised a very modest question about this in Figured Out in respect of John and the fourfold Gospel witness.16 I am persuaded that similar sorts of questions reside within the composition of the Twelve. My modest plea is that, for purposes of introduction and interpretation, we not simply assume that inherited views of sequentiality (and this includes the thorny problem of Q) not be left to control the field, in the name of “history.”17 16 

Christopher R. Seitz, Figured Out: Typology and Providence in Christian Scripture (Louisville: Westminster John Knox, 2001). Other studies on the final form of the Gospel witness have been done by Brevard S. Childs, Richard Bauckham, David Trobisch. See Richard Bauckham, ed., The Gospels for All Christians: Rethinking the Gospel Audiences (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1998) and David Trobisch, The First Edition of the New Testament (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000). 17  I turn my attention to the possible hermeneutical significance of the Pauline Letter collection in a commentary on Colossians (Christopher R. Seitz, Colossians, BTCB [Grand Rapids: Brazos, 2014]).

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I think we can all credit historical-critical method for much hard work in constructing a plausible, if at times extremely complicated, grid of development and progression when it comes to the biblical witness, whether from Amos to Jonah or from Paul’s earliest letters and Q to John. Can we now return to the final form of the witness and see if an interpretation of that history is being offered as well, one that should at least be included in our introductions and interpretations? My own view is that such a move is mandated, because of the canonical process itself.18 But even where disagreement over this issue exists, there ought at least be an openness to considering whether more thinly referential views of history have not driven out a perspective the canon seeks to describe as well. Whether this involves the “intrusion” of Joel between Hosea and Amos or John between Luke and Acts, can our view of “history” learn anything of importance in the material from the presentation?19

Transition I began with a quote from Childs about the way each generation must learn again to heed aspects of the canon’s full presentation that have dropped out, given this or that blindness, preference, abiding concern, or amnesia, due to the passing of time. There may be a kindred concern in the canonical process itself, wherein earlier prophetic words require the march of time to display their full authority under God’s inspiring and providential governance. 18 

On this, see n. 12 above. Briefly, in connection with Karl Möller’s essay in vol. 1 (“Renewing Historical Criticism,” in Renewing Biblical Interpretation, ed. Craig Bartholomew et al., vol. 1 of Scripture and Hermeneutics, ed. Craig Bartholomew [Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 2000], 145–71), I  would be inclined to put Aaron Schart’s diachronic work (which Möller discusses) on the Twelve under the constraints here commended, and in that sense his view of historicalcritical analysis as “preface” and mine are actually not too far apart (see esp. Schart’s essay “Reconstructing the Redaction History of the Twelve Prophets: Problems and Models,” in Reading and Hearing the Book of the Twelve, 34–48; his indebtedness to Jeremias is quite clear there). Moreover, when I spoke of “spotting repugnance” as analogous to historicalcriticism, it was in the strict context of the language of the 39 Articles. I was trading on a certain conceptuality I believed the authors had in mind there. In a development of that conceptuality at a later period, historical analysis seeks to locate difference (contradiction or “repugnance”) and then develop a history of religions or tradition-history grid which ultimately absorbs the material form of the witness. Apart from that context, I would not use the language (“repugnance”), but would press further to discover what conceptuality was at work in historical-critical labor. In this essay I am setting forth a different conceptuality, built on the general historiographic assumptions inherited from the historical-critical method, and moving beyond them in a way I believe von Rad saw, but hesitated to follow. Newer studies in the unity of the Twelve have pressed ahead. 19 

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In prefatory marks for volume 1 of a new series, Childs spoke of the hope that the working seminar would not become adrift in methodological struggles over the philosophy of language.20 I suspect the same concern pertains to preoccupation with historiography and biblical interpretation. So, in what follows, I try to remain engaged with biblical texts (if only in an introductory way) and let that engagement generate methodological reflection. Childs made another observation in the same preface which his critics often miss. Childs saw much positive contribution in the rise of historical criticism. Debates that degenerated into inerrancy squabbles or preoccupations with dogmatic frameworks and propositions he regarded as unfortunate  – every bit as much as present methodology debates which simply never get around to reading texts closely. The beauty of the historical-critical method was that it opened up the text in an imaginative way, and read the text with care and close attention. Childs saw this in 19th-century biblical studies and he regarded it as the recovery or discovery of some essential elements in the canon’s witness. My plea in what follows is for a different model of history and historiographical concern. Not a repudiation of 150 years of work in academic contexts, but a request that we examine texts mindful that other views of history and reading have animated previous generations of Jewish and Christian readers. While we are valuing historical approaches, might we do well to let a past before the rise of historical-critical method also teach us a lesson about how to read? I confess I learn a lot about history hearing Diodore and Theodore spar with the School of Alexandria over literal sense, history, theoria, allegoria, and the material form of the witness. I am not interested in imitating their methods or their debates. But I believe that the sorts of problems that beset biblical interpretation in our present period are not resolvable with reference only to Ricoeur, Kant, Gadamer, and other leading figures in the history of ideas from our most recent period of hermeneutical reflection. Debates from a prior period most frequently emerge over a specific exegetical problem (one thinks of Prov 8:22–23 in the writings of Athanasius). The exegesis urges and gives rise to the method discussion. Multiple examples from Origen and others would confirm this.21 So, in what follows I am trying to engage a practical problem: how to read the prophetic collection of the Twelve? and from the context of this practical problem a wide range of hermeneutical and historiographical issues will emerge. 20 

Brevard S. Childs, “Forward,” in Renewing Biblical Interpretation, xv–xvii. Ludlow, “Theology and Allegory: Origen and Gregory of Nyssa on the Unity and Diversity of Scripture,” IJST 4 (2002): 45–66. On Proverbs 8 in the history of interpretation, see now Elder Testament (201–19). 21  Morwenna

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How to Introduce the Prophets? The standard modern procedure for interpreting the prophets is familiar.22 On the basis of a close reading of the material, with attention to the ancient near eastern context, the prophets are lined up in historical order. Amos is operating in the early 8th century and Hosea a bit later. We then move to those parts of Isaiah from a slightly later period, then to Micah, and Zephaniah and Jeremiah. The rise and fall of the northern and southern kingdom, through the Assyrian, neo-Babylonian, and Persian period, is the backdrop against which the prophets’ message, as this can be extracted from the canonical books, comes to expression. Of course the linkages are imperfect, because Israel’s prophets do not simply pick up where the last one left off. We only know about the relationship of them to one another on the basis of scholarly speculation. Indeed, there is surprisingly little information in the plain sense record of Kings, Chronicles and the Prophets themselves where the prophets – in the manner of something like Elijah and Elisha – are shown in explicit connection to one another. We know more about Jeremiah and Hananiah than Jeremiah and a supposed contemporary Zephaniah or Habakkuk. Indeed, this distinguishing characteristic  – the isolation of the prophetic office  – has been given theological significance, alongside efforts to spot tradition-historical affiliations.23 Such a depiction should be familiar to New Testament interpreters as well. How one tracks Paul’s views on justification may require a meandering trail from Galatians, to 1st to 2nd Corinthians before halting at Romans – no matter that Romans is placed canonically at the beginning of the epistles associated with the apostle.24 In order rightly to comprehend the message of Paul, it is argued, we must have as clear a picture as we can of how his thought emerged, changed and reached final expression, such an accounting derived by putting the varieties of his views as they appear in the New Testament in their proper chronological order. The final arrangement of the letters is not thought to be a commentary on how to interpret different nuances in Paul’s thinking on this or other matters. Comparisons from Q, to Mark, to special Luke, to special Matthew, to John are ready to hand.25 22  For one example among many, see Joseph Blenkinsopp, A  History of Prophecy in Israel, rev. ed. (Louisville: Westminster John Knox, 1996). Theologically “conservative” and “liberal” interpreters both adopt this approach. 23  Von Rad’s portrayal of Jeremiah and Isaiah registers this dimension; see my discussion in “Prophecy and Tradition-History,” 30–31. 24  See now, Brevard S. Childs, The Church’s Guide for Reading Paul: The Canonical Shaping of the Pauline Corpus (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2008) and the bibliography cited there within. 25  Though compare now the intriguing work in The Gospels for all Christians (see n. 16 above).

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Now in the case of the prophetic books the rough chronological development of prophecy against its historical backdrop is not entirely lost on the canonical arrangement (and indeed here a strict comparison with Paul’s epistles would require adjustment). One can see a rough movement from SyroEphraimitic to Assyrian to Babylonian to Persian periods of international upheaval reflected in the final form of the prophetic collection. Stated negatively, the prophets are not random sections of an otherwise synchronic single statement about God and Israel (whatever such a thing might look like literarily). Prophecy exists in time and space and reports God’s sovereignty precisely over this. The canon allows this dimension to come to the fore by presenting fifteen individual books, with a temporal range far outstripping anything in the NT and marked explicitly (with superscriptions) in the case of a majority of the witnesses. Three things must, however, be noted. First, in no collection of the Book of the Twelve known to us does Amos (argued to be the first prophet using a diachronic approach) take the signal position. Instead Hosea, and usually Hosea and Joel, precede Amos. The superscription to the book of Hosea resembles closely that of Isaiah, and its signal position may owe something to that, alongside the fact that the book of Hosea is a longer and more comprehensive treatment than Amos.26 So, the earliest prophet, Amos, is not first, but third; or in the case of one known order of the LXX, second.27 Second, we do not have a single linear collection with fifteen books. Isaiah, Jeremiah, and Ezekiel do not find their place after Micah, Habakkuk, or Zephaniah, respectively (if that is where, according to the modern approach, they belong). These three large collections exist independently of the Twelve, and Isaiah is an anthology whose chronological scope mirrors that of the Twelve itself: stretching from 8th-century reflections of the Syro-Ephraimitic war (Isaiah 7–8), through the Assyrian, to Babylonian, to Persian periods, with references to Cyrus (Isaiah 40–48) and conflicts over temple and nations in the final chapters (Isaiah 56–66). In most orders that have come down to us, 26 

See the intriguing remarks of Julio Trebolle-Barrera, “Qumran Evidence for a Biblical Standard Text and for Non-Standard and Parabiblical Texts,” in The Dead Sea Scrolls in Their Historical Context, ed. Timothy H. Lim et al. (Edinburgh: T&T Clark, 2000), 89–106. 27  “Why does Hosea precede Amos? Perhaps length and unwillingness to interrupt the clear connections of Joel, Amos, and Obadiah explain the priority of Hosea” (James L. Crenshaw, Joel: A  New Translation with Introduction and Commentary, AB 24C [New York: Doubleday, 1995], 22); “The writing of Hosea was deliberately placed in the first position, although the historical prophet Amos probably delivered his oracles earlier than Hosea. The redactors wanted the reader to perceive the warning of Amos in the light of Hosea” (Aaron Schart, “Reconstructing the Redaction History of the Twelve Prophets: Problems and Models,” in Reading and Hearing, 34–48).

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Isaiah is first, Jeremiah second, and Ezekiel third. A Talmudic citation (B. Bat. 14b) knows of an order in which prophecies of all judgment, half-judgment and half-promise, and all salvation is the explanation given for an order it knows as Jeremiah, Ezekiel, and Isaiah. But this is an isolated finding.28 It should also be said that the Three usually precede the Twelve, but not always.29 Finally, while clearly dated books in the Twelve (that is, those with chronological superscriptions) are in proper order (so Hosea/Amos, Micah, Zephaniah, Haggai, Zechariah), and whilst some which are undated are arguably in proper order on internal grounds (Nahum, Habakkuk, Malachi), the location of other books (both in the LXX and MT) cannot be explained with such a criterion. These books are frequently dated to the latest period of Israel’s history, on grounds of language, theology, and other history-of-religions considerations (so Joel, Obadiah, and Jonah). Jonah’s position in the MT (in proximity to Amos) may be due to knowledge of him from 2 Kgs 14:25–27 where he is a prophet of salvation just prior to the fall of the Northern Kingdom; but this cannot be the whole explanation. Obadiah’s oracle against Edom, most believe, fits the context of the Fall of Jerusalem in 587/6 BCE, and Joel is frequently dated to the exilic period because it appears to be replete with citations from a known prophetic corpus including much of the Twelve, as well as Isaiah and Ezekiel.30 Why Joel is located where it is – if not completely accidental – requires some sort of explanation. Because certain principles of arrangement are in evidence (chronological sequence) it would be strange to find superimposed on that a completely random splicing-in of additional prophetic witnesses, bringing thereby the total number to twelve, on analogy with the twelve patriarchs. In this context it should be mentioned that reference to a twelve-book collection, and not twelve or fifteen discrete messages, is ancient and well attested. The 2nd-century BCE Sirach speaks of such a twelve-book collection (Sir 49:10: “May the bones of the twelve prophets send forth new life from where they life …”). Ancient Hebrew (Wadi Murabbaʾat) and Greek (Nahal Hever) texts have been discovered in which many if not all of the Twelve appear together on one scroll. Rabbinic tradition indicates that twelve books were written on one scroll so that smaller books should not get lost (B. Bat. 13b). The Babylonian Talmud mentions a scribal requirement that four lines of text be left between biblical books, but in the case of the Twelve, three 28  See, however, Trebolle-Barrera, “Evidence,” 95. Isaiah and the Twelve seem to be paired in some lists, following the pairing Jeremiah-Ezekiel. 29  See also the discussion in ch. 11 of the present volume. 30  See among others, John Barton, Joel and Obadiah: A Commentary, OTL (Louisville: Westminster John Knox, 2001). More recently, Christopher R. Seitz, Joel, ITC (New York: Bloomsbury T&T Clark, 2016).

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lines sufficed. As to size comparability, “when written together the Twelve filled a scroll of a length similar to the major prophets” (Isaiah, Jeremiah, Ezekiel).31

The Shape of the Twelve Our goal here is to offer an interpretation of the shape of the Twelve which seeks to explain the positioning of the books. Our attention will be to the order which is found in the MT precursors and in other ancient witnesses, to which an alternative can be seen in later LXX orders. Once this is in place, it is easier to see which is the proper direction of change, as we assume the rule of lectio difficilior applies roughly to the logic arrangements of books as well. That is, it is our view that the LXX is best seen as an effort to recast a strange MT order, along the lines of its classification intuitions know elsewhere. A  movement from LXX to MT admits of no obvious explanation.32 In tackling a question like this it is easiest to work with clusters of books. While containing its own internal complexities, the final three-book collection of Haggai, Zechariah and Malachi seems relatively straightforward. Haggai and Zechariah (esp. chs. 1–8) are frequently read together (compare the superscriptions), and Malachi forms the final “massa” for a series with this heading beginning in Zechariah 9 and 12.33 As we shall see, moreover, Malachi is a logical conclusion to the twelve-book collection, on internal and external grounds, by virtue of its epilogue and the issues that it raises in ch. 3.34 These three books all come from the Persian period and later. Chronologically they belong at the end. 31 

David L. Petersen, “A Book of the Twelve?” in Reading and Hearing, 5. main problem with [an original LXX order] is that it does not explain how the Masoretic order came into being. Much more convincing is that the Septuagint placed Amos and Micah immediately after Hosea and left all other writings in the Masoretic order. The reason probably was the historical setting given by the superscriptions; since Hosea, Amos, and Micah prophesied partly under the same king, they form a closed group to which Joel, Obadiah, and Jonah do not belong” (Schart, “Reconstructing the Redaction History of the Twelve Prophets,” 37–38). See also the very perceptive reading of Raymond C. Van Leeuwen, “Scribal Wisdom and Theodicy in the Book of the Twelve,” in In Search of Wisdom: Essays in Memory of John G. Gammie, ed. Leo G. Perdue et al. (Louisville: Westminster John Knox, 1993), 31–49. His attention to the first six books shows that the wisdom editing functions in the dominant order of the MT. 33  For a discussion of the hermeneutical issues at stake in Malachi vis-à-vis Zechariah 9–14, see the discussion of Childs in Introduction to the Old Testament as Scripture (Philadelphia: Fortress, 1979), 480 ff. 34  John D. W. Watts, “A Frame for the Book of the Twelve: Hosea 1–3 and Malachi,” in Reading and Hearing, 209–17. 32  “The

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The biggest challenge to final-form reading is represented by the placement of Joel, Obadiah and Jonah, as we shall see. It is not hard to understand Obadiah as a “virtual commentary on Amos 9:12” as Leslie C. Allen and many others have seen, and so its position after Amos makes sense.35 Amos calls for the House of David in latter days to possess the remnat of Edom. Obadiah recounts the destruction of Edom. At its end, we hear of rule over Zion and Edom “and the kingdom will be the LORD’s” (v. 21). What is less than clear is what sort of chronological perspective the transition from Amos to Obadiah intends to inculcate. Is Obadiah meant to be a prediction of events associated with 587 BCE and thereafter? To conclude, while the linkage of Amos and Obadiah finds explanation in the key word “Edom,” we must still inquire about matters of proper interpretation of this linkage in the overall temporal depiction of the Twelve.36 The question of the placement of Joel belongs together with larger considerations of the placement of Hosea in first position and especially its relationship to its chronological counterpart Amos.37 If we can understand the logic of the order Hosea, Joel and Amos, we might find clues for other confusing stretches in the Book of the Twelve, including those which include Obadiah, Jonah and Micah. Here the ground-breaking work has been undertaken by Jeremias, Utzschneider, Schart and others. Though Amos would appear to be the younger prophet, it is argued that his book was never without a distinct influence from Hosea. So Hosea belongs in first position by virtue of its strong influence on the formation of Amos. But Hosea, too, has been edited in such a way that its specific address to the cultic abuses of the northern kingdom is not capable of simple historicising. As we will later see, specifically in the early chapters of Jeremiah, the northern kingdom is to be a severe example for Judah. Many have argued for a “Judah redaction” in Hosea, but Jeremias has gone further in describing the exegetical and theological issues at stake in 35 “… the book (Obadiah) may be viewed as a virtual commentary on Amos 9:12” (Leslie C. Allen, The Books of Joel, Obadiah, Jonah, and Micah, NICOT [Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1976], 129). 36  Concerning “the Day of the LORD”: “This topic is mentioned once in Amos (5:18– 20), where the reader gets the impression that such a day is well-known to Amos’s audience. But from what source do they know? The present reader of the Book of the Twelve knows from the writing that precedes Amos, from Joel, where the Day of the LORD is the central topic. It is again the central topic in the writing that follows Amos: Obadiah. That means that these three, Joel, Amos, and Obadiah from a group … Joel and Obadiah are undated; they could have been placed for other than chronological reasons” (Rolf Rendtorff, “How to Read the Book of the Twelve as a Theological Unity,” in Reading and Hearing, 77). 37  “Why does Hosea precede Amos? Perhaps length and unwillingness to interrupt the clear connections of Joel, Amos, and Obadiah explain the priority of Hosea” (Crenshaw, Joel, 22).

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this redaction. He provides two examples. First, a typical condemnation of the northern cultic harlotry (4:11–14) concludes with reference to Judah in v. 15. The final verse draws on language familiar from Amos (4:4), flattening its irony through direct imperative prohibitions (and see also Amos 5:5). The point is that Judah too might be tempted to participate in such pilgrimages: “the intention of verses like Hos. 4.15 was to actualize the prophetic words for a people living later than the prophet and under new circumstances.”38 The second example Jeremias gives is 8:14; here again it is a matter of drawing on language from the book of Amos in order to make a point concerning Judah in the book of Hosea. The oracle of judgment against Ephraim in 8:11–13 clearly culminates in the punishment of return to Egypt (for Deuteronomy, this brings down the curses of the covenant). “No further intensification of Hosea’s accusation is possible.”39 Drawing upon the familiar language of Amos (“Fire upon” in 1:4, 7, 10, 12, 14; 2:2, 5) in 8:14 “a typical subject of Amos, luxury inside the palaces of the capital … is cited to prevent Judean readers from escaping the accusations of Hosea.”40 As for the Hosean influences on Amos, it is indeed to be felt in nearly every chapter. For this reason Jeremias believes there “was never a book of Amos without a clearly discernible effect from Hoseanic texts.”41 We have space for only one example here, involving the famous series of visions in chs. 7–8. Amos receives two pairs of visions (locusts and fire in 7:1–3 and vv. 4–6; plumb-line and summer fruit in vv. 7–8 and 8:1–2) and then a final fifth, which for our purposes can be set aside. That this was an original series is noted by many, because of the symmetry and overall logic. The first two visions end in God’s relenting at the prophet’s bidding, whilst the second pair shows, tragically for Israel, a limit to God’s patience: “I will no longer spare.” The final form of the material seeks, however, to explain just why it is that God finally changed his view. The priest Amaziah forbade Amos to prophecy. He silenced him and in so doing brought to an end his intercessory petitioning of God’s favor. The first vision of the second pair links up with the narrative explanation by means of 7:9, wherein it is the high places and sanctuaries (Hoseanic terms) which occasion a decision of judgment against the House of Jeroboam, whose representative we see in the state cult official Amaziah. “God’s patience ends where the state represented by the priest tries to decide when and where God may speak through the prophet.”42 “The condemnation of guilt in worship and guilt by the state is especially characteristic of Hosea 38 

Jeremias, “Interrelationship,” 175. Ibid., 176. 40 Ibid. 41  Ibid., 177. 42  Ibid., 179. 39 

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from ch. 1 through 14. Amos 7:9 sounds like a precise condensation of Hosea’s general message.”43 Because the final form of the text demands it as essential to its logic, it cannot be judged a late addition but an integral moment in the original development of the Amos tradition. That is, the reader is urged “not to perceive Amos as an isolated prophet but to relate his message to the message of Hosea.”44 We need both Amos and Hosea to know where it was that God’s patience came to an end. He provides a second example of a programmatic text from Hosea finding its way into Amos at 3:2. “To know” (ydʿ), “to punish” (pqd), and “guilt” (ʿawon) occur only here in the book of Amos, but they are familiar terms in Hosea. Further examples of this mutual influencing can be and have been adduced. It should also be noted that Schart sees as possibly significant the fact that in the letters from Mari a prophetic oracle is judged to have more authority if independently uttered by a different speaker. The fact that both Hosea and after him Amos spoke judgment on the northern kingdom, sealed its fate, as it were.45 I mention this because we must now turn to the question: why are Hosea and Amos not side by side in the order of the MT? It is understandable why the LXX has a series Hosea, Amos, and Micah, because these are the three books with superscriptions locating them in chronological order, while Obadiah, Jonah, and Nahum are three short, undated books. The sequence Hosea, Joel, Amos, requires interpretation. It is not enough to note that Joel refers to the LORD roaring from Zion, a theme which prominently opens the book of Amos (1:2). True enough, but what does that mean?46 Several explanations have been given. The threat of natural infertility is a clear one in Hosea (“Ephraim is blighted, their root is withered, they yield no fruit,” 9:16) and this is an obvious, indeed relentless theme in Joel. Instead of explicit national destruction, such as we see in Hosea and Amos, and especially in the major prophets and later in the Twelve, Joel speaks of locusts, a “large and mighty army” (2:2) “with a noise like that of chariots” (v. 5). “The 43 

Ibid., 180. Ibid., 181. 45  Schart, “Reconstructing the Redaction History of the Twelve Prophets,” 34–38. 46  “The ending of Joel confirms that Amos and subsequent books are to be read in the light of Joel.” Concerning the final verse (Joel 4:21 [Eng 3:21]), “Its status as final redaction in the Twelve is clear because it has no real function other than to link Joel and Amos in a manner that contrasts Judah (4:16–20) and Israel, the primary topic of Amos. It does this by alluding to the punishment formula of Ex 34:7: ‘He will by no means hold innocent [the guilty].’ By these links Joel 4:21 reinforces and focuses the anticipation of Amos 1:2 found in Joel 4:16 (Eng 3:16).” Raymond C. Van Leeuwen, “Scribal Wisdom and Theodicy in the Book of the Twelve,” in In Search of Wisdom: Essays in Memory of John G. Gammie, ed. Leo G. Perdue et al. (Louisville: Westminster John Knox, 1993), 41–42. 44 



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LORD thunders” at this, “the head of his army” (v. 11). The threat of natural

destruction and infertility in Hosea takes a concrete form in Joel.47 Related to this, the book of Joel describes this natural assault, not with martial metaphors only, but also as “the day of the LORD” (v. 11). The phoneme yom, “day,” in the context of judgment rings across the opening sections (1:2, 15; 2:1, 2, 11), that is, until we come to the call for repentance in 2:12. Not only is the day of the LORD a concept presupposed in Amos 5:18 (“woe to you who long for the day of the LORD”), Amos also uses the image of a locust plague in the first vision of the series referred to above (7:1). In Amos, we know that the prophet’s entreaty meant that the LORD actually relented (v. 2). Amos personally cries out in address to God: “sovereign LORD, forgive! How can Jacob survive? He is so small!” Joel urges the people to “return,” to “rend your hearts,” to “return to the LORD … for he is gracious and compassionate” thus bringing to expression the formula uttered by God himself in the context of Mosaic intercession in Exodus 34. Joel urges this action in the spirit of Amos, “Who knows but that he might have pity?” (2:14). Joel separates Hosea and Amos in order to signal that God is always in a position to relent, if the people turn back. Just as God relents before he utters his sentence of judgment through the speech of Amos reporting what he sees (“fruit,” yes, “end”), so it belongs to God’s character to be “slow to anger.” Amos seconds the word of judgment from Hosea, but God is also “slow to anger.” Joel reinforces the point which is otherwise made in Amos alone and in the sequence Hosea, Joel, and Amos. Obadiah is a 21-verse description of judgment on Edom. The original accusation against Edom, found in Amos 1 (“because he pursued his brother with a sword”) is repeated in v. 10 of Obadiah. As the final chapters of Joel and Amos look ahead to a time of restoration after cleansing judgment, so too does the ending of Obadiah (19–21). The time frame for this appears to be set by Joel. The destruction potentially forestalled by repentance will indeed come about in time, as Joel 2:25 makes clear. God speaks of repaying for the years eaten by locusts. Edom will be destroyed in that day (3:19). This oracle of judgment is seconded in Amos 9:12 and confirmed in the vision of destruction of the one-chapter presentation of Obadiah. Most regard Jonah as a unique book, a late book, and a strange book. Unique, due to genre (a book about a prophet, not a prophetic book); late, due to Aramaicisms, peculiar Hebrew idioms, and history-of-religions issues (problems in unfulfilled prophecy; Israel and the nations); strange, because of its ironic character and final openness to rival interpretations (see the history 47  James D. Nogalski, “Joel as ‘Literary Anchor’ for the Book of the Twelve,” in Reading and Hearing, 91–109.

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of interpretation). Barry A. Jones, appealing to a very fragmentary collection of verses found at Cave 4 at Qumran which appear to consist of Malachi and Jonah portions, also argues that Jonah was once the final book of the Twelve Book collection, thus bolstering the “strange book” perception. Jonah is a commentary on prophecy, according to Jones, and its “original” position shows this. It is not one of the Twelve but an evaluation of the eleven from a late perspective.48 We agree that the book is patient of dating in Israel’s later period. But what Jones’s appeal to Qumran demonstrates is the widespread attestation of sequences which confirm the MT’s order, and especially the location of Jonah after Obadiah (which concerns a foreign nation) and before Micah and Nahum (which, like Obadiah, is an oracle against a foreign nation, this time the major ancient near eastern power, Assyria). That is, we should view with great care an appeal to “original” idiosyncratic order in the face of such a preponderance of standardized orders (in all the known LXX, ancient Greek and Hebrew, and MT orders). If true, then obviously Jonah was intentionally and thoroughly repositioned, and this without loss of its remaining a singular witness to prophecy. The reason for this massive, wide-scale uniformity in all other orders is probably the existence of reference to a Jonah in 2 Kings 14. But it also belongs to the logic of the larger shape of the Twelve that Jonah appear after Obadiah and one book away from Nahum, as we shall briefly argue here. Read in isolation, Jonah admits of a variety of interpretations. A  quick glimpse at the history of ancient and more recent interpretation, both Jewish, Christian, and modern, bears this out (Elias Bickerman’s Four Strange Books of the Bible provides an excellent summary).49 Jonah is said to be about God’s universal care for all nations. Jonah is about the problem of unfulfilled prophecy. Jonah is about Israel’s hardheartedness and xenophobia. Jonah is a commentary on the unreliability of prophecy and the dissolution of the prophetic office. Notable, too, is that all these interpretations rely fairly heavily on an assessment of the proper context for interpretation being “Israel’s late history”  – whether due to universalism as found in Israelite Wisdom, or prophecy’s coming to an end, or as a tract over against the “narrow parochialism and exclusivism,” as it is often termed, of Ezra-Nehemiah’s vision of restoration. To date a book “late” is to require the book to be fitted into an authorial intention congruent with the period, as this is inferred by hypothesis.50 48  Barry A. Jones, The Formation of the Book of the Twelve: A Study in Text and Canon, SBLDS 149 (Atlanta: Scholars Press, 1995), 65–74. 49  Elias Bickerman, Four Strange Books of the Bible: Jonah, Daniel, Koheleth, Esther (New York: Schocken Books, 1967). 50  Blenkinsopp treats Jonah in the very last chapter of his A History of Prophecy in Is-



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An alternative is to view the matter of context as given by the work itself, and not by authorial location (whether late or not is irrelevant). That the book of Jonah has seized precisely on the figure of Jonah in 2 Kings 14 is strongly to be asserted (and here a later midrashic type utilization is quite possible). That Jonah was a prophet remembered because associated with God’s mercy toward the northern kingdom, during the reign of Jeroboam, is likely the context of association assumed by the author for his readers: “and since the LORD said he would not blot out the name of Israel from under heaven, he saved them” (v. 27). Jonah was, moreover, a prophet of success: a true prophet, whose word had come true (v. 25). With these interpretative parameters in place, we begin to rub up against the same sorts of concerns already spotted at work in the Hosea, Joel, Amos, Obadiah sequence. Not surprisingly, we run into the same divine formula used in Joel in a similar context of possible divine relenting (Joel 2:13–14 and Jonah 4:2). When Jonah complains that he knew about the character of God, that God could relent if the nation repented (thus making his prophets look silly), whatever it means for Jonah to say “he knew” that God was thus and so (v. 2), the readers also have a context for knowing about this as well: the context provided by the sequence Hosea, Joel, and Amos.51 That this perspective is intentionally drawn upon by the author of Jonah would be further strengthened if we had evidence of it to follow, and indeed we do, at Micah’s close (7:18–19). Micah also names for the first time the national destroyer of Israel (Samaria-Jerusalem). Following the first explicit mention of Zion’s death sentence in the Book of the Twelve (Mic 3:12; a prophecy seconded in Jeremiah 26, where Micah’s prophecy is explicitly brought into testimony on Jeremiah’s behalf ), we learn in ch. 5 that the Assyrians are that nation mustered for invasion (v. 5 ff.). But Micah also immediately delimits the Assyrian punishment, promising Assyrian defeat. God will not be angry forever, Micah consoles his people in the final chapter. He pardons sin and forgives the transgression of a remnant people (7:18).52 rael, terming it “a kind of sapiential critique of prophecy” (242) which emphasises God’s freedom over against prophecy and the prophetic word. See now my discussion in Prophecy and Hermeneutics: Toward a New Introduction to the Prophets, STI (Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2007), 140–51. 51  Compare the remarks of Terence Collins: “The description of the fasting and repentance of the Ninevites is of course reminiscent of Joel 1:13–14; 2:15–16, which calls for fasting and sackcloth in Jerusalem. Even the animals are involved in both cases (Jon. 3:7–8 and Joel 1:20)…. Its contribution comes both from the ideas it embodies and from its position after Obadiah to which it acts as a counterfoil in its attitude to the nations” (Terence Collins, The Mantle of Elijah: The Redaction Criticism of the Prophetic Books, BibSem 20 [Sheffield: JSOT Press, 1993], 72). 52  “… nothing in Jon. 1:1–17 shows traces of revision in the light of Obadiah. Perhaps

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Jonah shows that God has no mechanical attitude toward the nations. Edom’s judgment is a function of her breaking laws that God has written into creation itself, just as Israel will be punished for knowing God’s will as a people chosen. God can forgive, yes, even a Ninevite people – the negative associations of which are better known from Nahum or Kings or Isaiah than from a single act of repentance in Jonah. God insists he has a right to be concerned about a people who don’t know their right hand from their left, even when it embarrasses his servants the prophets. But when Nahum opens with the same formula (“The LORD slow to anger,” see Nah 1:2–3) we have tracked in Joel, Jonah, and Micah, it is clear that Assyria’s day of judgment has come. God will by no means clear the guilty, the formula here emphasizes. For “who has not felt your [Assyria’s] endless cruelty?” (3:19). After Nahum, the movement from Habakkuk to Malachi is straightforward. I will offer here just a brief summary. Assyria’s destruction is assumed by Habakkuk, but the prophet is bothered by a new reality (1:12–17). The judgment of Assyria is not to be prosecuted by angels, but by a more ferocious and more violent nation, whose deployment causes the prophet anguish. How can this be a just decision on God’s part? Habakkuk takes his watch (2:1–5). The righteous shall live by faith, he is told. The book ends with the prophet modeling the proper behavior required in the face of God’s sovereign justice: with a prayer of confidence and firm resolve (3:1–17). Zephaniah shows what is in store for Jerusalem at the hands of the Babylonians. The great day of the LORD is “near and coming quickly” (1:14). But the book ends with a vision of a Zion cleansed by judgment, her exile removed and placed upon those agents who had done God’s bidding. The patient resolve of Habakkuk is to see fruit in the restoration of Zion, which is the subject of Haggai-Zechariah. Temple and nature together are restored, in the spirit of Hosea’s promises: “From this day on, from this twenty-fourth day of the ninth month, give careful thought to the day when the foundation of the LORD’s temple was laid…. Until now, the vine and the fig-tree, the pomegranate and the olive tree have not borne fruit. ‘From this day on I will bless that is because with Jonah a new subject is introduced, namely, the fate of Assyria and its capital city Nineveh in particular. To be sure, Hosea had referred to Assyria … but neither Joel, Amos, nor Obadiah mentioned it. In Jonah, Micah, and Nahum, Assyria is first pardoned, then threatened with subjugation by Judah’s shepherds (Mic. 5:5–6), and finally condemned to undergo God’s retributive vengeance (Nah. 1:2 and frequently). The clear contrast between the perspective of the book of Jonah … and the book of Nahum is, thus, ameliorated by the presence of the book of Micah. The redactor’s reading of history would seem to be something like this: repent though Nineveh might have done at the urging of Jonah, she apostatized by the time of Micah and deserved all the punishment Nahum envisioned” (Paul L. Redditt, “Zechariah 9–14, Malachi, and the Redaction of the Book of the Twelve,” in Forming Prophetic Literature, 364–65).

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you’” (Hag 2:18–19). The temporal gap separating Zephaniah and Haggai is more than amply filled by the three major prophetic scrolls, and especially by Jeremiah and Ezekiel. Isaiah’s panoramic view forms a parallel portrayal co-ordinated with that of the Book of the Twelve as a whole.53 This point that has been established on two fronts. First, the similarity of themes in Malachi and Hosea (marriage and divorce; love and election; false worship) matches a pattern of similar themes in Isaiah 1 and 65–66, whose linkages have been noted by many recent interpreters interested in Isaiah’s unity.54 And like Isaiah’s final chapters, Malachi envisions a further division within Israel itself, between the righteous and the wicked (3:18; Isa 65:13 ff.). Those who question God’s justice and unchangeable character are separated, in like manner to what we see in Isaiah 55–66. Those “who fear the Lord and esteem his name” (Mal 3:16) have the counterpart in “him who is humble and contrite of spirit, and who trembles at my word” (Isa 66:2). The issues are similar to what we find in Habakkuk, viz., patient obedience before God’s sovereign timing. Here the negative example of those who lack patience and resolve is set out. Their names are not to be recorded in a “book of remembrance” (Mal 3:16).

Conclusion In conclusion, what lessons does a Book of the Twelve teach as a whole which are only sketched out – partially, in snapshots – in the case of individual books or individual prophetic figures? (1) God’s history is a providentially ordered whole. The various ingredients which lie at the base of Israel’s historical experience from the 8th to the 5th century are brought into relationship with one another. Seen from the perspective of individual prophetic snapshots, history could appear episodic and disconnected. Israel’s grasp of and presentation of history in the Twelve is, however, an organic whole. The fate of northern and southern kingdoms, of Zion-Jerusalem, of national entities in the region, of the Assyrian, the Babylonia, then Persian kingdoms, and beyond to a final eschatological tableau: 53 

“The final composition of the Twelve Prophets has surprising structural and thematic parallels with the final form of the book of Isaiah, such as a common perspective centered in Zion and the vision of a universalistic future” (Trebolle-Barrera, “Evidence,” 95). See also his further comments on p. 98. The editorial relationship between Isaiah and the Twelve has been explored in detail by Odil H. Steck, Der Abschluss der Prophetie im Alten Testament: Ein Versuch zur Frage der Vorgeschichte des Kanons, Biblisch-theologische Studien 17 (Neukirchen-Vluyn: Neukirchener Verlag, 1991). 54  See the discussion in Christopher R. Seitz, “The Book of Isaiah 40–66,” in The New Interpreter’s Bible, vol. 6, ed. L. E. Keck (Nashville: Abingdon, 2001), 538–50.

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these various ingredients are not sitting there demanding ancient near eastern reconstruction for them to make sense out of fifteen or more individual witnesses. The Twelve and the Three have linked these ingredients through the simple reality of their sequential presentation. (2) Israel and the nations. We learn than the nations have a different, but parallel and by no means neglected, place in God’s economy. Whether they know their right hand from their left, as in Amos, or whether, as in Jonah, they do not, they are not outside God’s larger plan or purpose. Repentance can be taken seriously. Hardness of heart as well. As with Israel, so too with the nations. The message of Jonah regarding Assyria is partial if kept apart from that of Nahum, and of them both if kept apart from Amos, Micah and Zephaniah. The sequencing of the Twelve makes a coherent total picture available. (3) Models of obedience: Jonah, Habakkuk, Joel. Readers of the Twelve do not just hear prophetic words. They are also shown men of prayer. Jonah’s prayer comes in the context of personal judgment and personal thanksgiving for deliverance. Habakkuk’s prayer presents us with a model of patient obedience, as he confronts the mystery of divine justice. In this, he is the man after Malachi’s heart. And Joel’s plea for returning to God is as much directed to the reader confronting a history unfolding in Israel, as to specific figures in that history itself.55 Hosea’s final refrain is a motto for the whole collection, functioning as does Psalm 1 from the Psalter. “Who is wise? He will realize these things. Who is discerning? He will understand them. The ways of the LORD are right; the righteous walk in them, but the rebellious stumble in them” (Hos 14:9; Isaiah 1 ends similarly). The fact that Habakkuk’s prayer is presented with the identical rubrics (“on Shigionoth”; “for the director of music”), as in the Psalms, means to direct the reader to that 150-prayer book. This book seeks to inculcate, through prayer, the attitude of discernment necessary for comprehending the lessons of history, as God and no journalistic technique can reveal. The link beyond the Twelve to the Psalter is a form of canonical shaping as well. (4) Tradition-history. The presentation of tradition-history is of necessity a partial historical portrait. The distinctive messages of the prophets must be related externally, as it were, one to another, through conjecture about traditionhistorical affiliation (where it exists). How is Jeremiah related to Zephaniah, both as 7th-century prophets? It is incumbent upon this sort of investigation to pursue such questions, and the answers provided are both speculative and partial. The inherent (literary and historical) gapping has no counterpart in the final form of the Twelve. However we may seek to relate the historical 55  On the particular hermeneutical purpose of the Book of Joel in the Twelve, see my 2016 commentary treatment.

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context of Joel to the historical context of Amos, it remains the case that for the canonical presentation, this is not at issue. As Ferdinand Deist puts it, “I hope to show that the book [of Joel] was not intended to ‘refer’ to any concrete event in history, but was rather compiled to serve as a ‘literary theology’ of the concept of ‘The Day of the Lord.’”56 Joel’s connection to Amos is historical in the context of the canon’s final presentation, and that sort of “historical reference” must be carefully handled as well by exegesis.57 (5) The character of God: just but patient; patient, but not without limit. The use of the self-designation formula from Exodus 34 across the disparate witness of Joel, Jonah, Micah and Nahum is one of the strongest signs of a comprehensive editing of the Twelve. Even though the formula does not appear in full form, the call to return to God is strongest in Hosea, and most compellingly illustrated under the narrative of human infidelity and God’s abiding love. God is patient with his people and with the nations. But he will by no means clear the guilty. The path from Jonah to Nahum is clear on this. Malachi worries about those who question God’s fidelity and unchanging character,58 in the light of His capacity to forgive and alter a sentence of judgment, such as we see in Jonah. But this worry also becomes exhortation and stern instruction: “So you will distinguish between the righteous and the wicked, between the one who serves God and one who does not serve him” (3:18). The steadfastness of Habakkuk is required, and it is a gift of God given to those who wait and trust in him. To forfeit this is to turn blessing on its head. It is to lose a place in the book of remembrance, in the depiction of the Twelve’s final witness. 56  Ferdinand

Deist, “Parallels and Reinterpretation in Joel,” in Text and Context: Old Testament and Semitic Studies for F. C. Fensham, ed. W. Claassen, JSOTSup 48 (Sheffield: Sheffield Academic, 1988), 63. 57  Compare the remarks of Jeremias on Amos 9:12–13: “… Verse 12.13 (haben) … nicht nur das gesamte Amosbuch … im Blick, sondern das Zwölfprophetenbuch … V. 12 grieft das Thema des Büchleins Obadja auf und bildet zu ihm eine Brücke, während V. 13 rückwärtsgewandt den Bogen zu Joel 4,18 schlägt und damit zugleich eine Inklusion zum Buchanfang Amos 1,2 bildet, wo auf Joel 4,16 angespielt wird. Ohne dass hier auf das schwierige Problem per Priorität der Berührungen eingegangen werden muss, ist doch deutlich, dass die Bezüge den Leser des Amosbuches daran hindern wollen, das Buch in Isolation zur Kenntnis zu nehmen. Vielmehr wird ihm der lange Atem zugemutet, das Amosbuch zusammen mit den anderen Prophetenbüchern des Zwölfprophetenbüches zu betrachten. Er soll das Amosbuch mit dem Ernst der Verse 9,9 f. lesen, die von der Lektüre des Buches Rettung oder aber Untergang des einzelnen abhängig machen, zugleich aber wissen, dass die Zeugenstimme des Amos mit den anderen Zeugenstimmen im Zwölfprophetenbuch zusammengehört” (J. Jeremias, Der Prophet Amos, ADT 24/2 [Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1995], 136–37). 58  “You have said, ‘It is vain to serve God, and what profit is it that we have kept his charge?’” (3:14).

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Final Remarks The rationale and conceptuality within which my argument for the Twelve functions entails a combination of historical, literary, and theological factors. All have their place. We know that as a historical datum, very soon after the final prophetic book took shape (probably Malachi), the Twelve are regarded as a collection (Sirach; Qumran). Indeed, in Sirach the existence of the Twelve is something of a cliché: it is referred to as a given, without argument or assertion. The literary evidence for internal editorial affiliation, linkages and international juxtapositions is becoming increasingly clear as scholars turn to this sort of inquiry. And I have tried to probe into the theological coherence of the twelve-book collection which may be the intended consequence, or indeed, the originating engine, driving the historical and literary dimensions of canonical shaping. But I should be very clear. There is also a practical consideration of exegetical treatment, and modest though it is, it cannot be set aside. A presentation of the prophets requires some sort of sequence. One has to start somewhere, move somewhere next, and so forth, until the entire corpus is handled. We know how the matter of sequence has been handled in the genre of commentary and introduction and theology, since at least the middle of the 19th century. One makes an historical decision about chronology, and works from Amos through to “First Isaiah,” Micah through to Jeremiah, Ezekiel and “Deutero-Isaiah,” and from “Trito-Isaiah” to a speculative end-point, whether that be Jonah, or Malachi or Joel. There was a day when the theological justification for this was clearer: a genetic description of origins (and development) was required because that is where the inspiration was said to reside.59 And also, though this was rarely stated polemically, it was simply judged to be an empty observation that the canon presented the prophetic books in this or that arrangement. History, and theological interpretation derived from a historical reading, pushed the discipline away from any such consideration. Whatever theological rationale continues to animate the diachronic approach, the approach no longer requires it, strictly speaking. The developmental approach operates pretty much on “auto-pilot.” The challenge for an alternative conception is not so much the dated books as the undated ones. The dated books are in clear chronological order (Hosea/ Amos is a special problem), and the obvious intention of the superscriptions is to relate these to the narrative world of 1 and 2 Kings. In the case of Hosea, the superscription means to situate the book as late as the Hezekiah period, and as such, it anticipates of the fall of the Northern Kingdom. Hosea’s signal position 59 

See ch. 7 in the present volume.



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is tied up with an understanding of the range of its historical reference, as seen by the editors. It is easy enough simply to date Joel, Obadiah, Jonah as late witnesses and treat them in the history-of-Israelite-religion. My concern has been to understand why the Twelve does not place them at the end of the collection where, strictly speaking, they “belong” on a developmental model. These are the books which do not have the superscriptions linking them to Israel’s history in Kings. That fact is also significant for interpretation. It should be emphasised that an effort to read the Twelve as a whole is not aimed at flattening the notion of independent prophetic witnesses, or distinctiveness within individual books. Far from it. Rather, it is aimed at the notion of a historical-developmental approach being the only way to make sense of sequencing. That is, insofar as historical approaches assume the canon’s final arrangement is without significance, and theirs is the only way to make sense out of sequential prophetic testimony, these approaches remain limited. In seeking a way to understand sequentiality differently, attention is paid to the final shape of the Twelve in the MT orders (and for that matter, also in a modified LXX ordering). There is nothing anti-historical in this approach, but it does assume that historicality is more than just pulling prophetic witnesses apart, determining what is authentic and secondary, and placing this all within a reconstructed history of traditions, or history of religion. In that sense, while the earlier history of interpretation did not always seek significance in the final shape of the Book of the Twelve, it is also true this was not required. They were not seeking to read books in the manner of modern historical approaches. Commentaries on individual books of the Twelve is a modern invention. They may have asked questions of historical reference, but rearranging books in the order of their presentation belongs to the climate of modern historical reading, not pre-modern reading. One may assume that the approach adopted here could well be open to insights from a former day, lost once the predominant model for reading became the developmental-historical one. I suspect this approach to the Twelve and the Three ought to be called canonical-historical, to differentiate it from a strict diachronic analysis presently in vogue and tied to tradition-history or history-of-religions frames of reference. However, to the degree the approach assumes a diachronic dimension not spotted in an earlier history of interpretation, it is also a reading which belongs to its own day. There is a coherence and logic to the final arrangement of the Book of the Twelve, the character of which deserves to be called both intentional and theologically significant. It has been my concern to demonstrate this, as a strong modification of the developmental approach now in vogue. That approach has not, to my mind, gone far enough in asking about historical matters. A  canonical-historical reading will allow the dis-

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tinctive message of each prophet to be heard. Yet, these also form organic parts of a twelve-book presentation. This canonical presentation seeks to give a coherent, large-scale account of the history of the prophetic word in Israel and the world, under God’s providential care and final purposes.

9. The Book of the Twelve New Horizons for Canonical Readings, with Hermeneutical Reflections The true use of interpretation is to get rid of interpretation, and leave us alone in the company of the author.1 If contemporary readers wish to understand the prophets, they must entirely forget that the writings were collected in a sacred book centuries after the prophets wrote. The contemporary reader must not read their words as portions of the Bible but must attempt to place them in the context of the life of the people of Israel in which they were first spoken.2

G. A. Smith and Experiential-Expressive Reading Some years back, Klaus Baltzer, then Professor of Old Testament at the University of Munich, gave a public lecture at Yale on the Bible-Babel debate and its correlate, as he saw it, in the United States, in the famous Snopes Trial in Arkansas. The context was so familiar and so unique to us culturally as Americans, that it was difficult to think that a German professor from a different context might shed any light on things. I want to begin my remarks on the Minor Prophets with reference to George Adam Smith and do so with caution, for the same reasons Baltzer might well have paused as he looked in on an American culture not his own.3 For biblical students of a previous generation, I imagine G. A. Smith’s name stirs up various kinds of memories and evokes larger vistas than a simple citation from his work will convey. Yet in a way, his work on the Minor Prophets, for all its cultural impact in this country, 1  Benjamin Jowett, “On the Interpretation of Scripture,” in Essays and Reviews (London: John W. Parker & Son, 1860), 384. 2  Hermann Gunkel, “The Prophets as Writers and Poets,” in Prophecy in Israel: Search for Identity, ed. David L. Petersen, trans. Jams L. Schaaf, IRT 10 (Philadelphia: Fortress, 1987), 24. 3  The first version of this essay was delivered at Rutherford House in Edinburgh, where I had been invited to give the 21st annual lecture (2004). An American speaking to Scots about George Adam Smith seemed to require an acknowledgment of the context.

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was also representative of a kind of reading of the Bible which held sway throughout the beginning and middle parts of the 20th century.4 He put his own distinctive signature on this, of course, and one can catch in the printed version what sitting in the classroom and listening to him must have been like. For all that, I have my own version of this same kind of experience and can recall it as though it were yesterday: lectures on Amos and Hosea and Micah and the prophets of Israel from my undergraduate university days. I can see the lecturer mount the stage and begin an indictment of the nations, depicting at the same time the joy of the Israelites as their enemies were condemned, “for three transgressions, yea for four.” And then the hammer came down, first on Judah and then, with real crescendo, on Israel. Dr. Bernhard Boyd, who gave those lectures, was also a sought-after preacher in the Presbyterian Church, and in fact, he died in the pulpit, in Charlotte, NC, having just completed a sermon worthy of Amos and of his university lectures on the prophets. (It is hard to match that for crescendo effect.) The point is that this kind of approach to the prophets had a natural extension into the preaching life of the church that would be hard to fault. Listen to just a few lines from G. A. Smith, and you will sense that an alliance had been struck between rhetorical exposure of the force of the prophet’s word and the deployment of a similar manner of speaking on behalf of the Christian gospel: Amos was not a citizen of the Northern Kingdom, to which he almost exclusively refers; but it was because he went up and down in it, using those eyes which the desert air had sharpened, that he so thoroughly learned the wickedness of the people, the corruption of Israel’s life in every rank and class of society.5

or We read of no formal process of consecration for this first of the prophets. Through his clear desert air, the word of God breaks upon him without medium or sacrament.6

Two things stand out here. First is the sense of discovering the very beginnings of a thing, the taproot of the majestic tree of prophecy. For all the necessary preliminary attention to the “pre-literary prophets,” the power of Amos is the power of laying bare the ground floor of a phenomenon, that is, prophecy as it will unfold in the canonical presentation of the Three and the Twelve, the Major and Minor Prophets, the Nebiʾim. Amos is in signal position, “this first of the prophets.”7 4  George Adam Smith, The Book of the Twelve Prophets: Commonly Called the Minor: With an Introduction and a Sketch of Prophecy in Early Israel, 2 vols., rev. ed. (New York: Harper, 1928). 5  Ibid., 78. 6  Ibid., 79. 7 Ibid.



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And the second feature of G. A. Smith’s treatment is his simple capacity to identify with the world in which Amos lived. This would in time prove a fragile thing. In Joseph Blenkinsopp’s recent treatment,8 the rural shepherd and his clean desert air become something on the order of Ben Cartwright and agribusiness in the TV series “Bonanza.”9 This is what happens when the social world of the prophets is brought into ever greater – so it is hoped – precision. But we can set even this cavil to the side when we hear the rhetorical potential come rushing at us when one gets alongside the man Amos. For all the problems of historical-critical reading, it provided a fresh look at a corpus of minor prophets which, especially in the case of Amos, made them indeed major – especially the newly freed Amos, who had languished under characterizations like that of Jerome: imperitus sermone.10 “For the English-speaking world,” writes Brevard S. Childs, “G. A. Smith’s eloquent Victorian commentary on Amos played no small role in the new assessment of the prophet’s true significance.”11 Not third in a canonical series (thought somehow to be an important measure of things) but the first prophet: signal, rhetorically charged, his eyes sharpened, and so too in some measure our own by looking in on such a portrayal, breathing that “clear desert air.” George Lindbeck has classified this kind of reading of Scripture “experiential-expressive,” as over against two other types, “cognitive-propositional” and “cultural-linguistic.”12 The theological lineage of such a stance can be traced to Schleiermacher and Herder and Bishop Lowth.13 It understands the Bible to be a deposit of religious feelings and dispositions, which its narrative line, properly reconfigured, will surrender up under the tools of historical retrieval. On such an account, doctrines are not cognitive statements, “in8  Joseph Blenkinsopp, A History of Prophecy in Israel, rev. ed. (Louisville: Westminster John Knox, 1996). 9  “An official of some kind in the kingdom of Samaria … which does not warrant the image of an uneducated rustic visionary” (G. A. Smith, The Book of the Twelve, 79). 10  Vulgate translation of “rude in speech” in 2 Cor 11:6 (AV ). 11  Brevard S. Childs, Introduction to the Old Testament as Scripture (Philadelphia: Fortress, 1979), 397. 12  George A. Lindbeck, The Nature of Doctrine: Religion and Theology in a Postliberal Age (Philadelphia, Westminster, 1984). 13  See the treatment of Hans W. Frei, “Herder on the Bible: The Realistic Spirit in History,” in The Eclipse of Biblical Narrative: A  Study in Eighteenth and Nineteenth Century Hermeneutics (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1974), 183–201. He helpfully distinguishes Herder’s and Lowth’s treatments. A  single quote from Herder shows the lineage of G. A. Smith, “Become with shepherds a shepherd, with a people of the sod a man of the land, with the ancients of the Orient an Easterner, if you wish to relish these writings in the atmosphere of their origin” – no wonder Amos, shepherd and man of the sod, got such special treatment (from Frei’s translation of Herder’s Briefe, das Studium der Theologie betreffend, in Eclipse, 185).

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formative propositions or truth claims about objective realities,” to paraphrase Lindbeck’s language, but are “noninformative and nondiscursive symbols of inner feelings, attitudes or existential orientations.”14 In the case of G. A.  Smith, the discursive dimension has not gone away entirely: he works with the prophet’s own words in a fairly direct way. It is just that these now exist within an existential framework which drives the selection of texts to be discussed, the order in which they are discussed, and the strong “feelings, attitudes or existential orientations” G. A. Smith is able to focus on, which mark the treatment he gives. This is not the place to give a full account of Lindbeck’s theory.15 If we had time, it would be easy to show how G. A. Smith’s assumptions contrast with cognitive and cultural-linguistic approaches. To a certain extent, the experiential-expressive approach, shorn of its scientific claims for accuracy and historical facts and now attached to reader-response, is what one sees in the many works of Walter Brueggemann. So its legacy lives on.

Problems Those who adopted an experiential-expressive mode of reading did not all share the same historiographic confidence  – or scepticism. But in some measure it is right to argue that they all share, as difficult as it may be for them to accept this, the same basic philosophical orientation. I have indicated that this kind of approach had, in its day, considerable positive potential in connection with the life of the church and the preaching office, and that potential lives on and is a reality to be accepted and affirmed. But there was also a price to be paid. First, such an approach ultimately had to face questions of authenticity. How much of the present book of Amos – its discursive reality – gave us access to the “clear air of the desert” and the man Amos? It matters little that one can give minimal or maximal answers to this question, or that the kind of inquiry unleashed will have yet more dramatic effect in other parts of the canon, in Isaiah, for example. G. A. Smith had to wrestle with a text like Amos 9:8b. Did it breathe the same desert air as v. 8a?16 This was not a technical question only, 14  These paraphrases are supplied in a trenchant analysis by Brevard S. Childs, in The New Testament as Canon: An Introduction (Philadelphia: Fortress, 1985), 542. 15  See a compact analysis in Childs’s excursus (Introduction to the Old Testament as Scripture, 397). 16  In the section “Voices of Another Dawn,” he asks, “Can we believe the same prophet to have uttered at the same time these two statements? And is it possible to see in that prophet the hitherto unwavering, unqualifying Amos?” to which he replies, “I confess I cannot so readily get over the rest of the book and its gloom; and I am less inclined to be



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turning on consistent deployment of a critical method; one sees this more readily in G. A. Smith than in later treatments, which cover up the experiential dimension because it is now not so easy to come by, as it was in G. A. Smith’s mildly critical treatment. What was at stake was an accurate depiction, based upon an experiential account of the man Amos, of his views on Israel’s restoration and the kind of theology – yes, doctrine – which must treat of the finality of God’s sentences of judgment, both here and throughout the canon. A serious theological matter, and not just a literary-critical issue in the area of “authenticity,” was at stake. Second, it belongs to this kind of approach that the real Amos never stands still for long. G. A. Smith must make continuous revisions, up to his 1928 version.17 It belongs to the nature of the project that it be speculative, because the final literary presentation cannot be judged final, but only an entry into a different and more decisive world of the man Amos himself. The inherent instability is a negative, seen from one side, but also a positive: it assures that “scholars” will have something to do, permanently, be they strong positivists or sceptics who judge the Bible’s capacity to render history questionable, short of some very minimal claims. Third, such an approach severed the material witness, in its given form, from the subject matter, and made the canonical shape and order a land of potentiality only but not of final permanence.18 And it did this not just in the case of individual prophetic books, but of the Bible as an entirety. I  have a book on the shelf in my office which I keep just within eye’s view above my computer screen. The Bible in Order is its title.19 It would be nice to be able to sure about these verses being Amos’ own that it seems to have been not unusual for later generations, for whom the day-star was beginning to rise, to add their own inspired hopes to the unrelieved threats of their predecessors of the midnight” (G. A. Smith, The Book of the Twelve Prophets, 201–2). 17  He writes, “In the light of our clearer knowledge of Hebrew Metre I have thoroughly revised and recast my translations of the Prophets’ own words and of the additions to them from later pious hands. I trust that such changes, bringing the results of Biblical Criticism down to this date, may continue the usefulness of a work, which during the last thirty-two years has maintained a wide circulation” (ibid., xv). Little could he have known about the inherent instability of the project upon which he had embarked. 18  This point is made nicely in the quote at the heading of this essay: “[I]f contemporary readers wish to understand the prophets, they must entirely forget that the writings were collected in a sacred book centuries after the prophets wrote. The contemporary reader must not read their words as portions of the Bible but must attempt to place them in the context of the life of the people of Israel in which they were first spoken” (Gunkel, “The Prophets as Writers and Poets,” 24). 19  Joseph Rhymer, ed., The Bible in Order (Garden City, NY: Doubleday, 1975). The subtitle is especially instructive: “All the writings which make up the Bible, arranged in their chronological order according to the dates at which they were written, or edited into the form in which we know them, seen against the history of the times, as the Bible provides it.”

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open that book and just have the Bible! But the title makes the point, and the point is not a local one only (in Amos). We will not all understand the same thing when we seek for and posit order, of course. But we will be saying that such an inquiry is important and valid. That there is nothing simple about this kind of inquiry – a flight to premodern fundamentalism – needs to be underscored as well. The long history of interpretation is different from historical-criticism precisely because the larger question of order was taken seriously, and because tota scriptura meant that matters of interdependence and association were of necessity to be worked out. David C. Steinmetz speaks of “an endless deferral of truth” which gets at the theological problematic,20 but there is a low-flying and messy historical correlate: the endless generation of separate prophets and truths and myths and authorial intentions and historical contexts and issues discretely handled without the need to bring them into a meaningful, inner-relationship.21 And lastly (one could go on at length) there is the price to be paid for attending to one basic level of intention: that said to attach itself to the prophet under scrutiny. This has sharp repercussions for our ability to treat an entire book – and not just parts of it – as an intentional speech-act. But it also means that one cannot adequately grasp how the Bible relates to itself in its own system of cross-reference. The technical language for this is intertextuality (or intra-textuality) but the simple observation to be made is that, ultimately, it has to do with the way parts of the Bible and finally the Two Testaments themselves relate to one another. Failure to see this dimension at work within the Old Testament means that the way the New hears the Old and relates to it, cannot be properly assessed either – if one bothers at all in a treatment of the Book of Amos. By focusing on historical retrieval of an author and his intentions,22 it is possible to lay bare a dimension of the Old Testament, which, in spite of its rhetorical potential, is difficult to reattach to the way the New hears the Old.23 One will be forced to conclude that the New simply invents the stance By 1975 this kind of project was admitting more complexity, as a distinction between the date of writing and editing was beginning to be registered as salient. 20 David C. Steinmetz, “The Superiority of Pre-Critical Exegesis,” ThTo 37 (1980): 27–38. 21 Frei, Eclipse of Biblical Narrative. 22  “Scripture has one meaning  – the meaning it had in the mind of the Prophet or Evangelist who first uttered or wrote, to the hearers or readers who first received it” (Jowett, “On the Interpretation,” 378). 23  This was the modest point being made by Childs as far back as Biblical Theology in Crisis (Philadelphia: Westminster, 1970). Whatever its limitations when extended to the level of Biblical Theology, it is a dimension that cannot be shut out – and most certainly not because historical-critical findings have obscured the intentionality heard by the New Tes-



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it wants to take, given its theological concerns, over against the Old; or one will tortuously seek to show that the Old is making its way to the New by means other than direct intertextual reference, say, by tradition-historical movement.24 The alternative, to say the New is reading the Old according to intentions exposed by historical-critical method, is simply too far to climb out on a limb already stressed and threatening to break from the sheer weight of historicism.25

Historical Perspective: The Near Example of E. B. Pusey It is fascinating to look at E. B. Pusey’s commentary on the Minor Prophets in the light of today’s interpretative struggles. Pusey treats the Twelve in order.26 Where there is one prophet using language from another (“the LORD roars from Zion and utters his voice from Jerusalem” in Amos and Joel), he believes the earlier book must be in circulation and therefore available for reference. He defends the inspired character in these instances of dependence as well as in the case of individual books as such. The Twelve are in historical order. This is as true for undated books and books now treated as late (Joel, Obadiah, Jonah) as well as for books which are in (critically) undisputed chronological order, so Haggai, Zechariah, Malachi. This also means that Amos has to surrender what would become his place of privilege and give way to Hosea and Joel. Amos is literally dependent upon Joel. Books that are undated should seek their proper historical location by reference to their neighbors, a principle Pusey derives from Jerome, and he calls upon him for support in tament. The fresh challenge raised in Childs’s later works is, How does the Old Testament speak as Christian Scripture and as a vehicle of divine revelation? This cannot be exhausted by looking only at what the NT says about its plain sense, critical though this dimension is for theological reflection of its own kind. See now Brevard S. Childs, Biblical Theology of the Old and New Testaments: Theological Reflections on the Christian Bible (Minneapolis: Fortress, 1993). I have also commented on this matter in “Christological Interpretation of Texts and Trinitarian Claims to Truth: An Engagement with Francis Watson’s Text and Truth,” SJT 52 (1999): 209–26. 24  Christopher R. Seitz, “Two Testaments and the Failure of One Tradition-History,” in Figured Out: Typology and Providence in Christian Scripture (Louisville: Westminster John Knox, 2001), 35–47, and idem, “The Historical-Critical Endeavor as Theology: The Legacy of Gerhard von Rad,” in Word Without End: Old Testament as Abiding Theological Witness (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1998), 28–40. 25  See the very illuminating exchange stimulated by John H. Sailhamer in “Hosea 11:1 and Matthew 2:15,” WTJ 63 (2001): 87–96. The response by Dan McCartney and Peter Enns is: Dan McCartney and Peter Enns, “Matthew and Hosea: A Response to John Sailhamer,” WTJ 63 (2001): 97–105. 26  E. B. Pusey, The Minor Prophets, with a Commentary Explanatory and Practical and Introductions to Several Books (Oxford: J. Parker & Co., 1860).

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a way which will soon become an embarrassment as the mechanisms of historical objectivity are released.27 Pusey does not engage in the kind of lengthy historical defence of the Twelve individual prophets which marks, say, his treatment of Daniel. We get a realistic portrayal of the prophets, tuned to their assumed historical location. The matter of order is accepted for what it is, and assessed when there are difficulties, on the grounds that what we have before us is as it should be. There is no “real Amos” other than the one brokered by the text’s discursive unfolding. The matter of authorial intention does not raise its head, because Pusey does not focus on the “real Amos” but on the intentionality he assumes the book itself executes as it unfolds in its literary given-ness. Where his approach is different to what preceded in much of the history of exegesis is in his need to relate the individual parts under discussion to the whole story of the Bible. But this observation risks being far too simple, given the diversity in the history of interpretation itself, and given the constraints and format of the commentary as he undertook it.

A Fresh Look at the Minor Prophets At this point the selection of my area of focus could be causing you to wonder, “Why a talk on issues facing Old Testament study using the example of the Minor Prophets?” Four brief answers before we look at the Book of the Twelve as an example of recent trends in exegesis and hermeneutics. My hope in so doing is to show that the turn from man to text, from recovered individual personality to the collective witness of the final-form presentation of the Twelve as a whole, need not rob the exposition of its rhetorical power nor its existential engagement with new generations of readers. (1) I have learned in our post-modern context not to assume anything in the classroom. My new pedagogical insight is make your best case first and bring the students along. The books of the Minor Prophets are small and more easily treated. My new rule is take the parts of the Bible which best illustrate the smallest number of problems and challenges, and build on that to more difficult cases. Try to get students to consider contexts other than historically reconstructed ones. Much of my own published work has been in Isaiah, and it is too ambitious a book to begin with. The students are like Augustine who, having been given Isaiah, returned and asked Ambrose for something simpler. (2) The Twelve are getting a lot of attention today. Or, I  should say, the Twelve is getting a good deal of attention. The comparison with Isaiah is 27 

For more on this see ch. 19 in the present volume.

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helpful. That book was pulled apart and made into three or more separate collections. The sense that something was lost in reading the book as a whole in time returned and captured the attention of the field. Renewed interest in the larger book meant a spate of publications and fresh approaches?28 The Twelve is now a similar case.29 Why does it circulate as one book? How does one honor individual prophetic books but also a given organization and sequence? The rabbis counted the words of the whole collection, and the earliest reference in Sirach speaks of the Twelve as a whole, and not as isolated men in a more accurate chronological order. How should we assess this? Interest in Isaiah has shifted to the Twelve, and indeed to the relationship between these two books as books, and the way the final form editing of one matches kindred moves in the other.30 (3) To speak of honoring a given sequence and organization is also to question standard ways of operating. I was asked to write a textbook on the prophets. If reconstructing the history of prophecy was riddled with problems, why perpetuate these in the name of putting my own theory forward? Could it not be possible to treat the Twelve in their given order, without losing the better aspects of historical-critical insight into their individuality and historical setting? It simply seemed inconceivable to me that a perpetuation of the “Amos to Hosea to Micah to First Isaiah to authentic Jeremiah to Zephaniah and on through the Three and the Twelve model” was justified.31 (4) At a seminar at the University of St. Andrews we have been looking at the main principles and exegetical concerns which animate the work with Scripture in the Early Church and in the history of interpretation before the rise of historical-critical questions.32 The way in which matters like sequence 28  Isaiah

has been the focus of more monographs and new commentary treatments than any other book of the Old Testament. This has to do with the breakdown in an older “Three Isaiahs” model of interpretation. For example, see my essays on Isaiah in Word Without End. 29  A very helpful sample of new work can be found in James D. Nogalski and Marvin A. Sweeney, eds., Reading and Hearing the Book of the Twelve, SymS 15 (Atlanta: SBL Press, 2000). I have my own treatment in Irmtraud Fischer et al., eds., Prophetie in Israel: Beiträge des Symposium “Das Alte Testament und die Kultur der Moderne” anlässlich des 100. Geburts­ tags Gerhard von Rads (1901–1971), Heidelberg, 18.–21. Oktober, ATM 11 (Münster: Lit, 2003) in an essay entitled “Prophecy and Tradition-History: The Achievement of Gerhard von Rad and Beyond,” in Word Without End, 29–52. See also now Paul L. Redditt and Aaron Schart, eds., Thematic Threads in the Book of the Twelve, BZAW 325 (Berlin: de Gruyter, 2003). 30  Odil H. Steck, Der Abschluss der Prophetie im Alten Testament: Ein Versuch zur Frage der Vorgeschichte des Kanons, Biblisch-theologische Studien 17 (Neukirchen-Vluyn: Neukirchener Verlag, 1991). 31  See now Christopher R. Seitz, Prophecy and Hermeneutics: Toward a New Introduction to the Prophets, STI (Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2007). 32  A provocative and engaging overview can be found in Frances M. Young, Biblical

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(akolouthia), larger organizational coherence (skopos, hypothesis), and governing theological significance and constraint (dianoia, theoria, regula fidei) function to order and guide exegesis remain as relevant today as ever. Once one frees the material from having to make sense only against a backdrop of historical reconstruction and contextualization, new challenges emerge, having to do with what kind of associations are to be sought out, identified and theologically organized. The Twelve is a good place to test these particular issues, because its “constituence,” that is, the fact of its being constituted as twelve separate sections does not release one from the challenge of making sense of its present arrangement and its presentation as a theological statement of God’s work in Israel and the nations.

Examples from the Masoretic Text of Hosea–Nahum Here I am only summarizing work that has gone on for a decade and more, so as to assess the hermeneutical significance in a movement from “man” to “text.” Much of what you read here may sound new, as the twelve Minor Prophets – or a selection from them – are allowed to provide literary and historical context, one for another. This is a departure from standard operating procedure. I will assume that the links I am pointing to have been argued for, relatively successfully, even though it may appear that I am the one proposing them. This makes my task a bit tricky. But to repeat, my interest is not in defending the linkages spotted by others, but in understanding what is at stake in taking an ancient witness and hearing it through the lens of a more recent witness, as in the case of Joel providing a concrete occasion for hearing the call to repentance at the end of Hosea. To ignore this kind of context in the name of historical context is, I would hold, wrongly to foreshorten what we mean by history and a properly historical approach.33 My more contentious point is that those who claim that their reading is more historically appropriate – a reading in which the individual prophets are isolated from one another, recast according to date, and placed in a reconstructed temporal context – are actually the ones who are not reading the prophets sufficiently historically. For final canonical form is also a piece of history, belonging to decisions made in the past about how an ancient prophetic witness is finally to be heard. We begin at the beginning: Hosea’s signal position and larger implications. That Hosea is the first prophet in the Twelve is not so hard to account for as Exegesis and the Formation of Christian Culture (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997). I have a brief discussion of this in Figured Out. 33  See ch. 8 in the present volume

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the fact of a late book like Joel being in second place, with Amos third and following it (a “problem” an LXX order appears to have “resolved”).34 Hosea is a near contemporary of Amos so who might come first is a close-run matter. The rabbis thought the reference to God speaking at first to Hosea (1:2) could be translated into an answer to the question about his initial position in the Twelve. Formally more interesting is the matching of the superscription of Hosea with that of Isaiah, which could imply a desire to correlate the Twelve with Isaiah, as has been argued: both have a long history of composition and historical range.35 I will not go into that discussion here.36 If we leave Joel to the side for the moment, it is possible to account for the narrower question as to why the tradents of Israel’s two early “writing prophets” wanted Hosea to be the lens through which Amos was heard, as well as the lens through which the entire Twelve might be best seen. Jeremias has persuasively argued that the two books have been edited in such a way as to avoid any (1) historicizing of their message (the message is for someone in the past), (2) localizing of their indictments (the message is for the northern kingdom only), or (3) interest in keeping their messages specified and isolated one from the other. Here is a sample from his very illuminating essay: I can understand these literary connections (between Hosea and Amos) … only if the pupils of Amos and the pupils of Hosea who handed down the message of the prophets wanted to teach their readers that they could not grasp the central ideas of these prophets by reading their books in complete isolation from one another. By contrast, the readers of the written words of the prophets were supposed to notice the similarity of Amos’s and Hosea’s message from God. The pupils were not interested in stressing the differences between the two prophets. The literary structure of both prophetic books – from the initial level shows that these books were meant as associated entities and should not be read as isolated pericopes. The literary connections between these books show that they should be read in relation to each other…. I want to show that these traditionists are on their way to discovering something like a common prophetic theology, not by denying that each prophet lived in singular historical circumstances, but by denying that this fact is decisive for their message.37

But why Hosea first, even in an intentionally affiliated relationship such as Jeremias has argued for? The answer has several interrelated features. Hosea introduces the theme of YHWH’s patience, and urges its centrality by clear 34 

See the discussion in ch. 11 of the present volume. See Steck, Der Abschluss der Prophetie. 36  Cf. Julio Trebolle-Barrera, “Qumran Evidence for a Biblical Standard Text and for Non-Standard and Parabiblical Texts,” in The Dead Sea Scrolls in Their Historical Context, ed. Timothy H. Lim et al. (Edinburgh: T&T Clark, 2000), 95. 37  J. Jeremias, “The Interrelationship Between Amos and Hosea,” in Forming Prophetic Literature: Essays in Isaiah and the Twelve in Honor of John D. W. Watts, ed. James W. Watts and Paul R House, JSOTSup 235 (Sheffield: Sheffield Academic, 1996), 171–86. 35 

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intertextual links to the foundational account of Moses and God’s forbearance at Sinai following the golden calf incident (the names of Hosea’s children, “not my people” and “no compassion” play on the dialogues between God and Moses in Exodus about whose people the murmuring Israelites are, and on the compassionate and merciful formula from Exodus 33–34).38 This theme, God’s patience, is crucial in assessing what follows in God’s history with Israel and the nations in the Twelve’s unfolding.39 In addition, the formal links are much clearer in the Twelve than in the Pentateuch due to the repeated appearance of the formula, “YHWH compassionate and merciful,” at several key points (Joel 2:13; Jonah 4:2; Mic 7:18; Nah 1:2). Second, Hosea ends with an exhortation to the reader, and in this sense it is similar to other reader-directed shaping such as we find at another beginning: Psalm 1 of the Psalter Collection. Raymond C. Van Leeuwen, in a brilliant essay, has tracked the editorial function of this appeal to the wise reader, and especially the way in which it is reinforced in the sequential unfolding of the first six books – to my mind, a good indication of the sense of the Masoretic order, which is no longer sustained in the LXX.40 Third, this bit of canonical shaping is preceded by a lengthy call to repentance (Hos 14:1–7) whose force does not take hold within the compass of Hosea as an individual book.41 It is a bit of final instruction from Hosea which sits now over the journey one is about to embark on in the unfolding of the Minor Prophets as a whole. That this is more than a piece of neutral observation is underscored by two further features. The book of Joel makes the call to repentance central to its presentation, where the theme of the compassionate YHWH is explicitly invoked (Joel 2:13; anticipating a latter scene of repentance and its aftermath in Jonah, now not for Israel but for Nineveh; “mourning beasts” 38 See

the interesting analysis of Raymond C. Van Leeuwen, “Scribal Wisdom and Theodicy in the Book of the Twelve,” in In Search of Wisdom: Essays in Memory of John G. Gammie, ed. Leo G. Perdue et al. (Louisville, Westminster John Knox, 1993), 31–49. 39  “The writing of Hosea was deliberately placed in the first position, although the historical prophet Amos probably delivered his oracles earlier than Hosea. The redactors wanted the reader to perceive the warning of Amos in the light of Hosea” (Aaron Schart, “Reconstructing the Redaction History of the Twelve Prophets: Problems and Methods,” in Reading and Hearing, 34–48). “Why does Hosea precede Amos? Perhaps length and unwillingness to interrupt the clear connections of Joel, Amos, and Obadiah explain the priority of Hosea” (James L. Crenshaw, Joel: A New Translation with Introduction and Commentary, AB 24C [New York: Doubleday, 1995], 22). The categorical denunciation of Judah/Israel in Amos 1–2 is best heard against the Lord’s roaring from Zion at the end of Joel, where he is a “refuge for his people” (Joel 3:16; cf. Amos 1:2). See the discussion below. 40  Van Leeuwen, “Scribal Wisdom and Theodicy.” Van Leeuwen sheds particular light on the link from Hos 14:9 to Mic 4:5. 41  Terence Collins, The Mantle of Elijah: The Redaction Criticism of the Prophetic Books, BibSem 20 (Sheffield: JSOT Press, 1993).

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is also a theme they share, see Joel 1:20 and Jonah 3:8).42 In other words, Joel provides an instance of quasi-liturgical enactment of the call for repentance (see 1:13 ff.), such as is initiated in Hosea (14:1–7), and demonstrates as well YHWH’s willingness to respond and restore precisely those aspects of fertility and bounty withheld in Hosea’s day (Joel 2:19). More subtle is the present location of Amos, following Joel, in the light of the theme of repentance. The lapidary refrain, “for three transgressions and for four I will not revoke,” which is literally, “will not cause it to return” is not lapidary when one reckons with Hosea’s introduction of the theme (“return, O Israel”), and Joel’s enactment of it. “I will not cause it to return” means “I will not be a welcome agent of repentance, a la Hosea 14:1–7.” Furthermore, when the crescendo indictment of first Judah, and then Israel, is made clear, this is an indictment to be heard within the context of YHWH’s longstanding care and commitment to his people. The LORD does “roar from Zion,” as Joel states (EVV 3:16) and Amos immediately seconds (1:2), but primarily at the effrontery of the nations. The conclusion of Joel and the opening litany against the nations in Amos 1:3–2:3 makes this clear. Seen from this perspective, the indictment by YHWH of his own people occurs in the context provided by Joel and Hosea before him, where repentance is called for and enacted. As Joel puts it after his reference to YHWH’s roaring from Zion (3:16): “but the LORD is a refuge for his people, a stronghold for the people of Israel.” It is precisely this horizon of great theological depth through which we can now see the mitigation of Amos 9:8b: not “roses and lavender instead of blood and iron” (in the telling phrase of Julius Wellhausen), but a judgment whose intent was always to cleanse and purify, not extinguish. In short, the final form of Amos, by the fact of its location and juxtaposition, takes its larger theological bearings from the witness of Hosea and Exodus, and Joel’s position helps make those bearings even clearer – indeed unmistakable. There is not time to extend this reading of the Twelve beyond making a few further observations and discussing their hermeneutical significance for a fresh approach to the prophets. The fact that manifestly later books (Joel, but also Obadiah and Jonah) have found their place beside earlier and explicitly dated ones is not just a datum awaiting scholarly discovery and reassignment according to a theory of the history or development of Israelite prophecy. Joel’s anthological character and indebtedness to earlier prophetic works has long been noted.43 Obadiah’s indictment of Edom would appear to best fit an historical period close to the fall of Jerusalem (though that is contested 42 

Ibid., 72. Joel is a particularly important book in the redaction of the Twelve. See among many other works, James D. Nogalski, “Joel as ‘Literary Anchor’ for the Book of the Twelve,” in Reading and Hearing, 91–109. 43 

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and is not required). Jonah contains several features which argue for a late date  – some of them only noticed by an historical-critical mentality tuned to look for such things in the past 150 years. But it is one thing to make this diachronic observation and quite another to let the fact of the present location of these books stand and to inquire as to their significance. This too is a piece of serious historical inquiry.44 When one adds to this observations about beginnings and endings of books; repeated themes, like the compassionate-formula, or drought and famine and their opposites; or reader-oriented appeals to learn from the past and re-orient oneself towards God’s ways and self, it becomes clear that the placements of later books next to earlier ones is an intentional move, arising from the canonical process itself, and is not a reader-response imposition by readers tired of older approaches and looking for new ones.45 Just as the LORD’s roaring from Zion ends Joel and begins Amos, Amos ends with a promise of Edom’s demise (9:12), and Obadiah unhesitatingly describes it. Jonah provides an occasion of, not Israelite but Ninevite, repentance, which makes the prophet sore but which reminds the reader that God is not above relenting over evil powers like Edom (whom he has punished in Obadiah already) or even the powerful nation of Assyria. He can treat them with the same patience and kindness he has lavished on his own people, in different ways and dispensations, in Hosea, Joel, Amos, or in the context of Edom’s destruction in Obadiah (17–21). Micah establishes the limits of God’s patience, now toward the preserved remnant of Judah, strikingly at the exact middle point of the twelve as a whole (3:12) – a prophecy which bore repeating in a later conflict over Jeremiah’s similar preaching against the temple and king (see Jer 26:18). Joel helps us to hear the indictments of Amos in their proper long-range context. So also the uplifting oracle of Isa 2:1–4 (itself a response to judgment in Isaiah 1) finds another placement in Micah 4, now following the death sentence, not over the northern kingdom as previously in the Twelve but over Zion. The refrain noted by Van Leeuwen at Mic 4:5, which differs from its Isaiah counterpart at 2:5, functions, in its difference, to orient the reader along the lines established at the close of Hosea (“each one walks in the name of his god, but we will walk …,” similar to Hos 11:9, “for the ways of the LORD are right and the upright walk in them”). The final lines of Micah underscore this link: “who is a God like you, pardoning iniquity and passing over transgression,” now, “over the remnant of your possession” – that is, those who have walked 44  This is the point of my essay, “What Lesson Will History Teach?” (see ch. 8 in the present volume). 45  Edgar W. Conrad sees the force of the issue in his new book, Reading the Latter Prophets: Towards a New Canonical Criticism, JSOTSup 376 (London: T&T Clark, 2003).

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upright, in God’s ways. The compassionate formula from Exodus is drawn upon to remind the reader of God’s long-suffering and final heart to save. Sins are even cast into a sea as deep as Jonah’s contrite praying! (Mic 7:19). And from that depth comes hopefulness and new life on another shore. This hope is established in part, as in Isaiah, by God’s removal of Assyria as agent of his just judgment (Isa 10:5 ff.). So in spite of his mercy toward Assyria in Jonah’s day, Nahum reasserts the other dimension of his character, “The LORD is slow to anger but great in power, and the LORD will by no means clear the guilty,” for, in the case of Nineveh, “who has ever escaped your endless cruelty?” (Nah 3:19). Thus far we are only demonstrating ways to read the Twelve as an integrated and intentional final composition, as has been argued recently by scholars. Nothing has been said which would diminish the need to honor the individuality of the witness, nor attention to a book’s historical context. Far from it. Three spaces (though not the usual four) separate each of these prophetic works in manuscripts, and we have noted the strength of arguments which locate the undated books in a later period of composition.46 But to say this is only to stand at the start of the interpretative task. Alongside these editorial and compositional factors, moreover, are important hermeneutical signals which must be studied and assessed for their proper proportionality and significance. The juxtaposing of late and early is not just a matter of the clever matching of kindred themes or catchwords, or the tidying up of historical gaps and inconsistencies after the fact. Here we approach the heart of canonical reading, that is, that aspect of God’s word to Israel which continues to press for a hearing and which addresses new generations with an old word, borne of a specific time and specific application, and without shedding that, moving forward through time to enclose new readers and new situations. Deuteronomy makes this point with urgency and passion in respect of the Decalogue: “not with our ancestors did the LORD make this covenant today, but with us, all of us, here today” (5:3). Of course the covenant was made with the old fathers, but the rhetorical point is what Deuteronomy is insisting on. Early and late may be particular indexes prized by readers seeking a handle on the interpretation of Israel’s prophets, and sorting out the generations may help one gain a better sense of the precision and context of the prophet’s word of address. But this should not hinder pressing ahead to ask the hermeneutical question posed by the juxtaposing of early and later witnesses – especially in a place like the Book of the Twelve where the evidence for this is supplied by virtue of the decision to retain clear boundaries for one prophet and his neighbors on either side. 46 

David L. Petersen, “A Book of the Twelve?” in Reading and Hearing, 3–10.

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And here we move at last to the place where I  began, with G. A. Smith’s provocative displaying of the world of Amos, such that, in his hands, past and present merged and we could almost smell the desert air of the rural shepherd. The problem with this approach is that it had to let fall to the side all that did not suit the reconstruction, and so the material form of the witness  – first tentatively and then more aggressively  – receded before the reconstruction said to be generating it. It was up to the interpreter to give us the precise profile of the man, so that we could get in his boots, and be “left alone in the company of the author.” But were there no guidelines being set by the text itself which anticipated this hermeneutical “ditch,” separating our air from the air of the desert of Amos, and helping us take our proper place? Could not a text, to use a modern expression, “act like a man”? G. A. Smith was surely right to sense in the material before him some distinct urgency, a call for hearing, a pressure for reception if not imitation and obedience, some compelling ingredient which made Amos come alive, which tradition has strained to describe as “the word of God, living and active.” But we were left, in his treatment and more so in those which followed his, at the mercy of the interpreter to know how to bridge the past and come alongside God’s word, ever pressing for a hearing. Instead of leaving us alone in the company of the author, we pretty much found ourselves in the company of an Amos that G. A. Smith had asked the text to give up, and not display on the terms of its own literary presentation. The author we were left alone with was G. A. Smith! In his case, that was not a bad place to be. But the clutch released on the mechanisms of experiential-expressive reading took us on a journey which, in the course of time, would lead to extremes of historicist minimalism or reader-response scepticism, a scepticism now supplying linkages in front of and not behind the material form of the witness.

Conclusion Serious discussion about whether or not this or that text is “authentic” does not play out against the backdrop of moral urgency it once did, in part because we have come to see the key role tradents and the community have in shaping the prophetic word.47 The very notion of a canonical process assumes a doctrine of inspiration that spills out from the prophetic word once delivered, as God superintends that word toward his own accomplishing end. This being 47  Surely much of the credit for this goes to the canonical approach of Childs. For a discussion of this issue in a broader context, see now Timothy Ward, Word and Supplement: Speech Acts, Biblical Texts, and the Sufficiency of Scripture (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002).



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the case, “authenticity” loses its power to dominate in the realm of “copyright protection or infringement,” as interpretation now assesses a wider range of what might count for inspired prophetic discourse. The community does not add its own corrections and supplements: that is too reductionistic a view of God’s word spoken.48 Rather, it sees the original word pressing forward towards a horizon God alone means to illumine, with recourse to that original word of his own, divulged by the work of the Holy Spirit in a new day.49 This being so, decisions about secondary levels of textual history no longer come with automatic aspersions and a sense of some inferior species of inspiration and cogency being thrust at us, as we move from man to text in the crude manner of much 19th-century reflection. What we have endeavoured to describe is the hermeneutical character of a text’s secondary transmission and reshaping. My final remarks all have to do with the subtle matter of how the reader is to identify with the prophetic witness. In some ways, experientialist reading (wittingly or unwittingly) sought to get us alongside the prophet, and may even have suggested thereby that we were to identity with the prophet as prophet, without a lot of reflection on just how or why this might be an appropriate point of standing for those of us manifestly outside the circle of “prophets and apostles.” This is not an altogether tidy affair, I admit, and identification need not have meant, “I too am an Amos in my day and this kind of reading is good at showing why that is so.” Still, in what sense is the prophetic word a privileged word, delivered up by the power of the Holy Spirit to elected agents (for this is how both OT and NT understand the office)? We are speaking of a word addressing us, overtaking us, and in some sense directing us and asking of us obedience and deference. That is, we are not thereby identifying with the prophet except as he too understands that same word given to him to deliver as a word of address and a word “over his own head” as it were. Attention to the canonical shaping helps us see that even the individual prophets belong to a larger history and sweep than they as individuals were able to recognize at the time (and this pains Habakkuk when he does recog48  An early work which tried to deal with this issue sensitively – no small feat – was 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). It was not in my judgment an altogether successful effort, because it struggled to describe the pressure of previous inspired speech on secondary interpretation and elaboration. I believe one of the most intriguing exegetical efforts to work this out is Childs’s treatment of Daniel in Introduction to the Old Testament as Scripture, 608–23. 49  This is the position taken by canonical interpretation. Obviously another form of redaction criticism views supplementation in precisely the following ways: correction, contestation, conflict-driven supplementation.

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nize it, in the transition from one age of violence, the Assyrian, to the next, the Babylonian). And what is true of these prophets as men within Israel’s history – and this is a history with Israel and the nations and the created order itself, and is no private affair, as the Twelve as a whole shows us – will become a fact in respect of a history including Israel and the nations and creation in Jesus Christ. Israel’s history as depicted in the Twelve is a type or figure of a larger history, and a story which takes two testaments to tell. Amos is a man among Twelve and the NT’s Twelve show us men related to one Man: Jesus Christ. We are trying to show that identification with the world of the prophet is available on terms other than the usual experiential access, in romantic “behind the text” or post-modern “in front of the text” modes. Joel brings the world of Hosea and Amos into the framework of his later context of exhortation, repentance, and restoration, at a time of severe natural disruption (the judgment of a locust plague as an example of Hosea’s want of bounty and fertility); and at the same time, the audience of Joel, however we understand that, is transported back in time to re-live the testimony of two prophets of the 8th century, and to learn the lessons requisite of that period, now with the potential for change of heart and mind. And with that unclear “Joel audience” (precisely because so unclear) we modern men and women go too, in whatever way God means that to be a journey for us to take in our day, in his new deliverances of judgment and mercy. The idea that a word from the past outlives original audiences and the one who delivered it both, is explicitly detailed at a pivotal moment of the Twelve’s transition, at the beginning of Zechariah (1:1–6). The preface to the book tells us that former prophets spoke, and their words overtook the generations to whom they were proclaimed, and lived on, bringing about a confession, “The LORD of hosts has dealt with us according to our ways and our deeds, just as he planned to do” (v. 6). And with that confession and recognition registered, prophecy goes forth again, even in the strange and somewhat novel form – a form which “seer” Amos might barely recognize – of visions, now visions of the night. New generations are addressed by a former word, and the former word gives rise to new prophetic discourse of a different but yet continuous character. Still, within that past period of “former prophets,” as we have seen in the case of Joel, the reader is not simply placed down to look around neutrally and conclude, “how dreadful it all was, abandoned to false choices and the wages of disobedience.” There is a point of identification with the prophet that is neither inoculation nor a walk of innocence and later calm amidst past sin and sorrow. Recognition of the integrated – and carefully so – character of secondary levels of tradition opens up a fresh hermeneutical option not seen

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in the days of G. A. Smith, even though he might well have grasped at it with good intuition and godly exegetical instinct. Both Jonah and Habakkuk contain a kind of speech-form unusual in the prophetic books and in the mouths of the prophets especially. This form is the psalm, and we know well that psalms resist historicization. Both of these psalms tell of audacious hope in the midst of death, in the belly of a whale and in the belly of history’s dark unfolding. Jonah’s tribute to the Almighty is so unanticipated – prior to his disgorgement on safe shores – that the Gordian knot of interpretation is regularly cut and the psalm excised or moved to a “more suitable place.” In its present place, however, it is both a powerful reminder that praise is a lesson best learned when all is dark, and praise even so hard-won can tragically be short-lived. Jonah goes from praise to obedience to success to sulk. But not to condemnation I think, for God remains solicitous to our struggling hero right to the end (4:6–11). Habakkuk also suffers the indignity – though that is too weak a word – of being set before a divine revelation which seems unjust and unpalatable: the odd divine justice that defeats injustice by using a violent judge (Hab 1:13– 14). The last word of this book is not a divine question, as in Jonah, but a remarkable psalm (3:1–17) in a similar place of great darkness, in the belly of God’s strange superintendence of time, to extend the image from above. This psalm is not a secondary intrusion, even as it manifestly belongs to other contexts than prophetic ones. Habakkuk the prophet here gives us access to a world in which we are to make identification, and in this way, his final word is the best way to see a path not finally taken by Jonah, our pained antagonist wrestling with God’s justice and forbearance. Jonah is not condemned, for the lesson he is meant to learn is not an easy one to learn. The book properly ends with a question mark.50 Habakkuk shows us a better way, a way of identification that is proper for the reader. Habakkuk awaits a day of great darkness, as God goes about the business of judgment and cleansing. God is for our man Habakkuk unveiled in dark and powerful form, a form which brought deliverance in its day for Israel, but which is now uncloaked to a different and far more difficult end. In spite of this and in the midst of this, Habakkuk is able to give utterance to hope, when there is no earthly reason for it. “Though the fig tree does not blossom, and no fruit is on the vines” – though Hosea’s and Amos’s most dismal prophecies come to pass – “yet I will rejoice in the LORD; I will exalt in the God of my salvation. God, the LORD, is my strength; he makes my feet like the feet of a deer, and makes me tread upon the heights” (3:17–19). 50 

Compare Jonah’s ending with Luke 15:28–32.

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A canonical reading of the Twelve, far from shutting off the experiential world of Amos and his colleagues, situates us properly, and him, and them, so that we might gaze on the history of God’s word with Israel, and nations, and creation, and in the fullness of time, with his own son. Such a reading teaches us where to stand and where to identify our proper place in that history, which providentially reaches out to enclose us even now in God’s judgment and mercy. G. A. Smith could move from the world of the prophets to the pulpit, and bring alive the man Amos for his audience. A canonical reading of Amos among the Twelve gives us a world of reference and identification no less bold and no less enclosing of us and our world than that, and it does it on the terms of its own deliverance. We are made to stand before the Twelve and see the word go forth, address generations, enclose the prophets in a history larger than themselves, and then reach out and locate us in its grand sweep  – in judgment and in mercy – before that same holy God. Perhaps our confession can mirror that of Habakkuk uttered in his day. Attention to the canonical form lets the text “act like a man” by observing where and when and on what terms the prophetic figure is being given to us, as the messenger of God’s word, and also as a participant in a drama larger than himself. Such attention also gives us a place to stand within the drama, which we are privileged not only to observe but also be drawn into, by virtue of Christ’s inhabiting of Israel’s former story (the force of Luke 24:27). Christ it is who gives us a place to stand, while the text of the now “old” Testament shows us where to stand. Experiential-expressive reading is not foreclosed by canonical reading. Rather, it is given proper focus and direction.51

51  See more recent work on OT and NT in one Christian Scripture in Christopher R. Seitz, Elder Testament: Canon, Theology, Trinity (Waco, TX: Baylor University Press, 2018); and in idem, Convergences: Canon and Catholicity (Waco, TX: Baylor University Press, 2020).

10. The Unique Achievement of the Book of the Twelve Neither Redactional Unity Nor Anthology In this essay, I want to take up the larger question being posed of the Twelve – Anthology or Redactional Unity? – by starting with a conceptual framework for considering the matter more generally. I will then use Joel as an illustration of the challenge of answering the question and indicate why I think the two options as indicated are not the right ones, based upon the opening conceptual framework which sets out the moving target that the Book of the Twelve actually is on this score. The second part of the paper will then turn to the Book of Isaiah and the comparisons that may be thought to show them kindred editorial projects, indeed influencing each other as well in bringing each of the respective works to final form. While this view of the relationship between Isaiah and the Twelve is in my judgment flawed, I will endeavor to show there is another way to think about a feature they do hold in common which opens up a more convincing means by which to compare them and understand their achievements as largescale literary works. I have in view what I call the “effect of a middle” or, so to say, the fact that both works have sought to identify and give significance to a stable, theologically weighted fulcrum point at the precise middle of the book. That this is true of a collection of twelve individual works as well as the single Book of Isaiah is significant. It will be my position that this feature is intended to encourage a typological one-to-one figural correspondence between God’s action in time and not a strictly chronological, one-after-another episode and sequential, one as the reader moves from the beginning to the end of the 66 chapters of Isaiah and across the landscape of the individual witnesses of a single Book of the Twelve, both impressive literary achievements.

The Book of the Twelve: A Unique Literary Achievement Let us begin by considering the conceptual possibilities for understanding the relationship between individual works which exist now in a larger collection (several not applicable to the Book of the Twelve but provided rather to establish the range).

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(1) One author plans a series and has already worked out the plot of ensuing books in relationship to the book presently being written. Of course, alterations in the master plan can happen as the entire collection emerges over time. Karl Barth’s volumes in Church Dogmatics or the serial productions of N. T. Wright on the New Testament come to mind as examples.1 (2) One author writes a book. It is successful. A decision is made by the same author to write a prequel(s) or sequel(s) and so create a set of collected works. One thinks of J. K. Rowling’s successful series, Harry Potter, for example. (3) A decision is made by a different author to take advantage of an original work’s success, and a sequel or prequel is composed by that different hand. I mention this possibility primarily to ease toward the example under discussion (The Book of the Twelve). (4) A book emerges from an author on theme X. Subsequently, a publisher decides to produce an omnibus of different works and chooses this work for the collection, intentionally placing the book in position 3 of 12. A reader can spot the obviousness of the sequence and the logic of its placement by virtue of the collection’s larger sense as a collection with this or that governing theme or common topic. (5) Twelve different works by different authors with no strong relationship to one another  – beyond genre similarity  – are preserved in a collection because as individual works they are significant but they are too small to be preserved independently. In theory, their order could be rearranged with no serious effect. This is akin to the anthology idea. See the rabbinic musings in respect of Hosea, for example.2 (6) Twelve different works (as in the fourth example above) are placed in a specific order and then outfitted with an editorial overlay that relates them successfully, in so doing dampening their once independent status and message. The alert reader can recognize this former independence in vestigial form and can also speculate successfully on the development of the whole and the point it now seeks to make as a twelve-fold but single whole achievement. This is akin to the redactional unity idea. (7) One work comes into existence. A second work seeks to preserve that work and also introduce a new work, and to guard the original and itself while also relating them.3 Variations of the same thing occur as new inspired works arise, affecting positioning and editorial associations according to the same pattern of integrity and integration. New works then come into play primarily in association with the developing collection. (8) In the example of the Book of Joel in the Twelve collection, it is one of the final works and so, its field of association is high as part of the character of its literary 1 

N. T. Wright, The New Testament and the People of God (Minneapolis: Fortress, 1992) is followed by three further published volumes and two are planned but not completed to round out a series of six total volumes. 2  B. Bat. 14b–15b. Reference is made to fearing Hosea would get lost because it is too short, and of the need to include it with a larger collection of smaller prophetic books. 3  On the beginning of the process, see J. Jeremias, “The Interrelationship between Amos and Hosea,” in Forming Prophetic Literature: Essays on Isaiah and the Twelve in Honor of John D. W. Watts, ed. James W. Watts and Paul R. House, JSOTSup 235 (Sheffield: Sheffield Academic, 1996), 171–86.

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composition as an individual work from its inception. It is aware of the others’ work and understands the collection and sequence as critical to how it makes its point. This makes it a special individual witness and a special associated witness both.4

Drawing on the last two examples then, the Twelve takes form differently depending on whether at early, medial or later stages. This is evidenced by the way the twelve works remain individual contributions, marked as such by clear beginnings and endings, and by the way they are different and distinctive in content and form and in the manner by which their associations with other works is manifested. This would mean, in turn, that any effort to understand the Twelve as a collective achievement, with associations and editorial linkages, will do so by attending to the integrity of each of the twelve individual works and will from that vantage point seek to understand editorial efforts to relate them more proximately and more globally. This will differ in character depending on the book in question. And in the case of the later works, they likely understand their individual achievement always to be in relationship to a nearing-completion larger collection. In my judgment this is true of Joel, Obadiah, Jonah and Malachi. It is anticipated by Habakkuk, Haggai and Zechariah (its own complex special case as an individual witness). By contrast Amos and Hosea are special cases of mutual influencing at the earliest development of a collection concept, as J. Jeremias has shown.5 This effort at the coordination of two different prophetic legacies indicates the direction the larger collection will in time take, through medial and later stages. Micah has a special relationship to Isaiah and to a growing collection both. Nahum’s compact present message is to be heard in relation to Jonah which precedes it. The same can be said of Zephaniah and a developing preexilic collection, with its crescendo of judgment language based upon the highly developed theme of the Day of the LORD which marks that work. In the case of the last eight examples we can think of the original works themselves and their subsequent editing in relationship to the evolving collection. But at no point is the individual character marking the twelve individual works ever eclipsed by editorial associations, made by others or indigenous to the works themselves (as in the case of the latest books mentioned above). The twelveness of the Twelve (XII) is crucial to its proper estimate as a collection. In this we have to hand a brilliant counter-example in the Book of Isaiah, with which 4 

See Christopher R. Seitz, Joel, ITL (New York: Bloomsbury T&T Clark, 2016). Jeremias, see n. 3, and for the larger discussion of the Twelve see Christopher R. Seitz, Prophecy and Hermeneutics: Toward a New Introduction to the Prophets, STI (Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2007). Previous chapters in the present volume also discuss his important observations. 5  On

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it is customarily paired in the many lists that have come down to us in Jewish and Christian circles, and whose length as a single book corresponds to the XII as a collection of twelve individual works. Before we turn to a reflection on how these two achievements might profitably be compared, the Book of Joel will be briefly considered in order to give fuller illustration of this opening section.

The Example of Joel I have lately finished a commentary on Joel for the International Theological Commentary series. I  want here to provide a brief summary of my conclusions. The book of Joel is a coherent literary achievement intended to anticipate the scenes of divine judgment (especially with the language “the Day of the LORD”) in the ensuing books of the Twelve. It picks up from the final refrain of Hosea and choreographs how the wise who walk in God’s ways endure this judgment and receive his mercy (Hos 14:9). The center of the book (Joel 2:12–16) scripts God’s enactment of mercy in the face of repentance and acknowledgement of his ways (these are the ways revealed to Moses in Exod 34:6). The locust plague is a realistic feature of Joel’s presentation but also a metaphorical device intended to point to the totality of national assault as this unfolds in the Book of the Twelve. To ask “Do the four Hebrew words point to locust-savvy Israel?” is at once sensible but also may miss the tetrad’s significance as a marker of totality and national comprehensiveness (so the history of interpretation).6 Joel and other later witnesses help demonstrate that the Book of the Twelve is not an anthology of works whose sequence is a matter of indifference. Several of the books likely had an independent life, but equally the pressure was always there to affiliate books, as Jeremias has argued with the pupils of Hosea and Amos and the way they have editorially linked the two books. This has allowed the message of social justice and cultic purity to serve as two sides of one coin. Later books in particular – Jonah, Obadiah, Joel, Malachi – have a clear literary structure and integrity, even as they deliver their message in the context of Twelve books the reader will be aware of. Intermediate books – Micah, Habakkuk, Nahum, Zephaniah – are more difficult to evaluate on this understanding and so must be treated as particular medial witnesses. The Twelve is equally not a collection in which the lateral linkages and redactional history are more critical to interpretation than the twelve-book 6  See Josef Lössl, “When is a Locust Just a Locust? Patristic Exegesis of Joel 1:4 in the Light of Ancient Literary Theory,” JTS 55 (2004): 575–99, and my discussion in Joel, 120–28.

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form itself. The XII is not Isaiah. The beginnings and endings of books are clearly marked and they mean us to take the books as having their own literary significance. In the example of Joel, the opening verses belong inextricably to the logic of Joel as a single work and serve to provide the lens on what follows in that work. James D. Nogalski’s idea that Joel’s unprecedented theme “Has this ever happened?” means, “Has the repentance called for at the end of the Book of Hosea ever happened?” makes Joel too reliant on an exterior theme and unable to function as an individual work without requiring a context supplied by something fully outside its frame.7 The introduction is perfectly comprehensible as an appeal to tell a thing across ensuing generations; that reference declares its sense as we read on into the unfolding witness of Joel. This is why the entire history of interpretation, including virtually all modern commentary, takes the reference to mean the fourfold locust plague and the response to it, scripting the repentance of the wise (Joel 2:12–16) Hosea had called for but seen unenacted as his book closed. Indeed, this is the most decisive theme hermeneutically in Joel. Joel is a book intended to locate every generation to come before the horizon of God’s judgment in history as this will unfold in the XII. That Joel is read on Ash Wednesday, before God’s judgment of the world enacted in his Son at the Cross, is perfectly attuned to the hermeneutical achievement that Joel represents, attested to by virtue of its location in the XII and long noted in the history of interpretation.8 So, Joel’s relationship to Hosea on the one hand, and to the works that follow on the other, is a critical index for how we are to read it as a single work. This stands in contrast, however, to the idea that its own internal deployment of the unprecedented theme borrows the root idea from a different book and demands that we see the reference focused on non-repentance, as Hosea had otherwise exhorted the wise. In fact, the opposite point is being registered in the Book of Joel. An unprecedented locust plague is both a realistic fact and a metaphorical sign of dramatic fourfold divine judgment in its full totality. This judgment is played out in Joel’s own realistic context for its own sake and also so as to anticipate the appearance of the prominent Day of the LORD theme in the books to follow. Inside of its own carefully constructed individual presentation, it scripts the occasion of proper repentance so as to serve as a model for the community of Joel’s imagined audience and the reader of the Twelve both, whose journey through the Twelve with its long historical range of God’s ways of justice and mercy with Israel and the nations is just beginning. This is indeed the majestic achievement of the Book of Joel. This achievement is calibrated to the wider context of the Twelve’s coming-to-be but not at the cost 7 

Ibid., 115–17. On Jewish use of Joel see my discussion (ibid., 91–92). The haftaroth places the reading of Joel 2:15–27 after Hosea 14:2–10 for the Sabbath before Yom Kippur. 8 

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of evacuating the individuality of the individual witness in the literary form and final canonical shape we now have it, as book two following book one and opening on to Amos, Obadiah and the books that will follow. It is hoped that this single example of the Book of Joel serves to blunt the sharp distinction between anthology and redactional unity, even as it is but one significant if later contribution to the question of the proper estimate of the Twelve in its final form. In the commentary on Joel one can see that other later works make their own contributions in distinctive ways (Obadiah, Jonah, Malachi). This is in contrast to medial and early works. To evaluate the Book of the Twelve as a whole requires a proper estimate of the way each individual work has its own character as such and in relation to the proximate and more global collective whole.

Isaiah and the “Effect of a Middle” A serious reflection on the redactional and intertextual connections between the Book of the Twelve and Isaiah cannot be pursued here in detail, but the more general theme will allow us to make some remarks pertinent to the character of the Book of the Twelve. The topic could imply there is a relationship between these two, long works – Isaiah and the XII – but just what is it? An apple and a basketball are both round, but we can be very sure they are not so due to cross fertilization. Yet for some the discussion is predicated on just this notion.9 That is, the Book of Isaiah and the Book of the Twelve are held to manifest editorial cross-pollination. It is necessary to press this a bit further in the light of recent XII research. That is, a view of the mutual compositional history of Isaiah and the XII will presuppose that the XII itself be thought of as manifesting a high degree of redactional over-working that is comprehensive in character, extending over all the individual writings, and in so doing displaying a consistent overlay that can be isolated and assigned to layers of editors. This in turn leads to the possibility of redactional comparisons with Isaiah. What is happening in the XII itself is happening then in relation to Isaiah, in spite of them originating in very different ways. 9 Erich Bosshard-Nepustil, Rezeptionen von Jesaia 1–39 im Zwölfprophetenbuch. Unter­suchungen zur literarischen Verbindung von Prophetenbücher in babylonischer und persischer Zeit, OBO 154 (Freiburg: Universitätsverlag; Göttingen: Vandenhoeck and Ruprecht, 1997), 35–36, 119–25. An English-language translation treatment of this topic by Odil H. Steck can be found in The Prophetic Books and Their Theological Witness, trans. James D. Nogalski (St. Louis: Chalice, 2000). The original German, Die Prophetenbücher und ihr theologisches Zeugnis: Wege der Nachfrage und Fährten zur Antwort (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 1996) influenced the treatment of Bosshard-Nepustil.



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This is not a view of the XII I subscribe to, as noted in the previous sections. Rather, I hold the twelve-ness of the XII to be a marked, deliberate, and distinctive feature. The editorial work associating them in a collection is therefore best considered on a case-by-case, book by book, basis. This also includes works among the XII whose origins and situations in life are best understood in relation to a larger, slowly evolving, XII logic – so, in my view, Joel, Obadiah, and Jonah. So any effort to understand the Book of Isaiah and the Book of the Twelve – on this view – will come at it with an eye toward how they are very different works, in origins and compositional history, and only then see if we can comprehend any proper grid of comparison. If Isaiah as a whole is greater than the sum of its parts, the parts dimension of the XII remains critical to its interpretation. Parenthetically, I would register the same caution about the Book of Isaiah and the Psalter, where a similar conception in them both exits concerning Davidic kingship and the kingship of YHWH (Isaiah 40–55 in fruitful comparison with Book 4 of the Psalter). But a book with 150 individual compositions and the Book of Isaiah exhibit this similarity not at the level of a redactional history pollinating them both, that we are intended to identify and work out the details of.10 Rather, both are concerned, within the compass of their own specific canonical shaping, with a similar theology of kingship, differently manifested given the shape peculiar to them respectively: The one is a prophetic witness originating in the oral proclamation of an 8th-century prophet, and extensions of that original message as God’s own inspirational accomplishment over serval centuries; the other, a book of prayers, somehow related to David and later choral guilds, now organized into five books with complex economic and ontological dimensions. David never goes away, but the psalms of David, son of Jesse, are also ended, Book Two’s conclusion declares (Ps 72:12). No strictly serial, sequential reading will do proper justice to the final shape of the Psalter and its own unique achievement. David, the Davidic line, the righteous Israel suffering as did David and the monarchy, and the ascents of Book Five which return us to the David of Book One – this is a sequentiality built on the conception of figural significance, which never loses the historical past but sees in it the future’s coming reality.11 In working on Isaiah over many years, and more recently on the Book of the Twelve, I have been struck at how certain provisional observations about 10 Christopher R. Seitz, “Royal Promises in the Canonical Books of Isaiah and the Psalter,” in Word Without End: The Old Testament as Abiding Theological Witness (Waco, TX: Baylor University Press, 2005), 150–67. 11  See Christopher R. Seitz, “Psalm 2 in the Entry Hall of the Psalter,” in Church, Society, and the Christian Common Good: Essays in Conversation with Philip Turner, ed. Ephraim Radner (Eugene: Cascade, 2017), 95–106.

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the logic of them as whole works  – three Isaiahs, or twelve prophets to be re-organized so as to get at their real (“historical”) sequence – while starting out as assured results of higher criticism, proved in the end to be useful provisional observations and that is all. More is needed to be said about the actual shaping of the literature when the dust settled on them as total works. I want to mention two things specifically at this point. Though the Masoretic activity that led to preserving these works and seeing to the stable transmission of them is much later than the period we are presently discussing, it nevertheless exposes features that we now know go well back into their own compositional history and final editorial form. Hence the remarkably stable order of the XII at Qumran and Nahal Hever. So for example, I hold it to be implausibly accidental that the exact middle point of the XII, itself deeply imbedded in the compositional history and final logic of the Book of Micah itself, reads: “Zion will be plowed as a field, and Jerusalem become a heap of ruins” (Mic 3:12). The Masoretic marking of this as the half-way point by verse uncovers a reality already imbedded in the final form of the XII. To adopt Christian language, this is the “Good Friday” of the Book of the XII, followed by the “Easter” refrain shared by Micah and Isaiah both: “In the latter days, the mountain of the house of the Lord will be the highest of all the mountains.”12 Brevard S. Childs had argued that Isaiah and Micah have been mutually reinforced, and there is much to that suggestion.13 It stands on ground similar to what Jeremias has argued for Amos and Hosea. Here however, we are talking about works in different canonical locations (The Book of Isaiah and the Book of the XII). What Childs did not pursue, within the compass of his 1979 Introduction, was the significance of these Micah verses in light of the final form of the XII itself. (And, of course, he would not have agreed with the global redaction models of the XII that have suggested for some a fruitful redactional comparison of the XII and Isaiah in the manner of cross-pollination). 12 

See the fuller discussion in Prophecy and Hermeneutics, 127–29. present shaping of Micah’s prophecy has interpreted the book by placing it within a larger context shared by the prophet Isaiah. The common moulding has the effect that Isaiah serves a commentary on Micah and vice versa. The use of a verbatim passage in such a central position consciously directs the reader to the other collection of prophecy. The two messages are not to be fused since each has been preserved with a distinct shape as a discrete entity. Yet the two are heard together for mutual enrichment within the larger corpus of prophecy” (Brevard S. Childs, Introduction to the Old Testament as Scripture [Philadelphia: Fortress, 1979], 438). I discuss the matter in more detail in “Scriptural Author and Canonical Prophet: The Theological Implications of Literary Association in the Canon,” in Biblical Method and Interpretation: Essays in Honour of John Barton, ed. Katharine J. Dell and Paul M. Joyce (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2013), 176–88. 13  “The



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How was this middle point achieved? Of course, we will never know the details. But given the arguments for a meaningful shaping of the XII as a whole, it obviously would have required figuring out how to weight both sides of the middle so that this center point eventuated and stabilized. This is not unlike loading the respective pans of a balance scale, an Obadiah over here and a subsection of Zechariah over there, and multiply that according to your own factorial in the light of 775 verses on either side of Mic 3:12 to be negotiated, all the while preserving the integrity of what would be twelve works, each with the character of its individual final form maintained. This is an extraordinary achievement whose details in execution we will never track properly, no matter how many legions of dissertation-writers are unleashed. The situation in Isaiah is different, though the outcome begs comparison. In an SBL seminar paper written twenty years ago,14 I gave some sustained reflection on the Isaiah corpus in its final form, in the light of a published monograph and a commentary on Isaiah then in press, and as I began to turn to Isaiah 40–66.15 My observations were these: (1)  Isaiah 34–35 anticipate chs. 40–55, as had long been noted. (2)  Isaiah 36–39 have an exact, if shorter, correlate in 2 Kings 18–20. (3) Peter R. Ackroyd had in 197416 persuasively shown that the nonchronological order of the three sections comprising (i) Isaiah 36–37, (ii) Hezekiah’s healing in Isaiah 38, and (iii) the Babylonian emissaries in Isaiah 39 had their own order and logic after all, especially as assisting a transition to Second Isaiah chapters, hence their elaborated form vis-à-vis what we find in Kings. (4)  So, what of the inquiry of Ackroyd extended to the present assemblage represented by Isaiah 34–39 in their entirety? Why separate the material with obvious kinship to Isaiah 40–55 with the narrative texts of Isaiah 36–39? My answer was that the same chronological concerns of interest to historical criticism were again here taking a back-seat to a different canonical shaping process which had priority. The effect of this was to make the deliverance of Zion, and the reversal of health for Hezekiah, types which presage the comforting and deliverance proclaimed forcefully in Isaiah 40–55 and beyond. “Zion’s Final Destiny” was of ultimate concern. The work of the servant and servants in the 14  “On the Question of Divisions Internal to the Book of Isaiah,” in Society of Biblical Literature 1993 Seminar Papers, ed. Eugene H. Lovering (Atlanta: Scholars Press, 1993), 260–66. Also as ch. 2 in the present volume. 15  Christopher R. Seitz, Zion’s Final Destiny: The Development of the Book of Isaiah: A  Reassessment of Isaiah 36–39 (Minneapolis: Fortress, 1991); idem, Isaiah 1–39, IBC (Louisville: Westminster John Knox, 1993; Japanese trans., 1996; 2nd ed., 2003). 16  Peter R. Ackroyd, “An Interpretation of the Babylonian Exile: A Study of 2 Kings 20, Isaiah 36–39,” SJT 27 (1974): 329–59.

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chapters that followed this ordered block had in view the redemption of Israel so that Zion might become the place of light for the nations. This is a very compressed and rough-and-ready summary of my thinking then, and now.17 So, the border marked by historical criticism at Isaiah 40 remained intact, but needed a fuller evaluation in the light of these preceding six chapter. The trial of the nations in Isaiah 40–48 would be better comprehended when seen in the light of the Assyrian challenge – and defeat – reported in Isaiah 36–37, where a plan of old was also referred to, much as in Isaiah 40–48’s former and latter things. The Babylonian emissary that sees everything in Isaiah’s day, will ultimately meet the same fate as Assyria in Isaiah 36–37, all this already promised in the final form of Isaiah 13–23.18 This leaves us then with a clear pointer to our topic with respect to the XII. For Isaiah 33 occupies the same place in Isaiah that Mic 3:12 and 4:1 ff. does in the XII. The Masoretic notation of the half-point by verses falls at Isa 33:21 and is marked by the final colophon as kiʿim sham ʿadir YHWH lanu (“for there the LORD is majestic for us”). The most penetrating work on this chapter has been undertaken by W. A. M. Beuken19 and evaluated and adjusted by Childs.20 All agree this is a hermeneutically singular chapter, as well as a chapter significant for the interpretation of the larger Isaiah witness. Please note that it too is finally concerned with the ultimate destiny of the restored Zion, thus anticipating chs. 34 ff. and also mirroring the same interest manifested in Micah in the XII. The LORD is exalted (Isa 33:10; so 6:1 and the servant in 52:13); he will fill Zion with justice and righteousness (so Deuteroand Trito-Isaiah); Zion is a peaceful habitation and an immovable tent (so 54:2). Look upon Zion, for there the LORD is majestic for us – so the middle point of Isaiah proclaims (33:20–21). One challenge of the chapter is the theme of kingship. In a famous study of 1922, Sigmund Mowinckel classified the chapter as a unified prophetic liturgy composed in the cult.21 Its purpose was to extol the vindication of Israel, the restoration of Zion, and the LORD as king. In the words of v. 22: The LORD is our judge, our prince, our King. But what then of the reference in v. 16 to seeing a king in his beauty as one looks upon Zion the immovable tent? Hermann Gunkel argued this was 17 

See chs. 4 and 5 in the present volume. is the argument developed in greater detail in “The Book of Isaiah 40–66,” in The New Interpreter’s Bible, ed. L. E. Keck (Nashville: Abingdon, 2001), 6:309–559. 19  W. A. M. Beuken, “Jesaja 33 als Spiegeltext im Jesajabuch,” ETL 67 (1991): 5–35. 20  Brevard S. Childs, Isaiah, OTL (Louisville: Westminster John Knox, 2001), 242–49. 21  Sigmund Mowinckel, Psalmenstudien 2: Das Thronbesteigungsfest Jahwäs und der Ursprung der Eschatologie (Kristiania, 1922), 235–38. 18  This

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the same LORD king.22 Others held it was David. But what then would that mean? Childs, in my view, rightly resists the instinct to choose one over the other. “There will be the anticipated messianic king, but his function remains as always to serve as an earthly representative of Israel’s true heavenly king.”23 I agree with this interpretation of Isaiah 33 and believe further confirmation of it can be found in the present canonical shape of this pivotal Isaiah chapter in relation to the chapters that now follow. So, Hezekiah is the type of that just and righteous king. One sees in him a foreshadowing of this king we shall look on him in beauty. The final messianic hope is aligned not just with YHWH’s ultimate kingship, but also with earthly examples of that in Hezekiah. Time does not permit further support for this reading, but we can see an example of it immediately preceding in Isaiah 32. There is far less controversy in declaring this chapter to center on a Davidic king, and not the LORD as king. The only question is the character of its messianism, eschatological or more immediately proximate. In my view this ambiguity lies at the heart of the text’s intention. We shall see the king in his glory in Hezekiah in the chapters that follow. Hezekiah is, however, always a type of the eschatological messiah king under YHWH’s kingship. Chapters 7, 9, and 11 maintain the same careful balance earlier in the book.24 The existence of a significant center text in Isaiah and in the XII, then, serves to prevent a reading of both larger works as though half one is primarily to be viewed as chronologically prior to, and so updated or corrected by half two. Instead of a beginning, middle and ending form of narrativity as the chief lens by which to view Isaiah or the Twelve, we are introduced instead to the theological achievement of typology. The “former and the latter” logic of Isaiah 40–48 insists that what is latterly fulfilled was formerly hidden away and always “part of the plan,” when seen from God’s accomplishing perspective. Only when the threat of idolatry arises in the form of laying claim to fulfillment by one’s own insight, does the prophet say, “created now, not long ago” (48:7). Because you were treacherous and were tempted to say “I knew of them already” I create now (vv. 6–8). But the arch counterpart remains: I also told you long ago so you could not attribute your present knowledge to your idols (v. 5). When in 55:3 the eternal mercies to David embrace as well those the prophet addresses – the servants of the servant, perhaps even the nations – the center-text principle keeps us from loosening the earthly messianism of half 22 

Hermann Gunkel, “Jesaja 33, ein prophetische Liturgie,” ZAW 42 (1924): 177–208. Isaiah, 248. 24  Christopher R. Seitz, “Fixity and Potential in Isaiah,” in The Multivalence of Biblical Texts and Theological Meanings, ed. Christine Helmer (Atlanta: Scholars Press, 2006), 37–45. Also as ch. 15 in the present volume. 23 Childs,

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one from its extensions both eschatological and more broadly covenantal in half two.25 The brilliant achievement of both the XII and Isaiah, in their respective final canonical shape, resists any one-after-the-other sequential account in which the former is defined in relation to the latter as eclipsed or released from ongoing duty and accomplishment. Here the former-latter linkage referred to in the series found in Isaiah 40–48 finds corroboration in the final structure of Isaiah 32–39 and Isaiah 33 as the pivotal center-text of Isaiah. The same can be said of Mic 3:12 and 4:1 ff. within the logic of the XII. The XII also makes clear by its very form that later witnesses diachronically understood have been placed in former position prior to 3:12 in order precisely to correlate typologically events whose significance cannot be understood by plotting them on the one-after-the-other model of secular historiography. Joel’s locusts are locusts and the serial assault of the nations both, such as will unfold in the witnesses following his own. The lateness of his witness is precisely what enables the outfitting of a providential scheme: now rooted within the former witnesses of Hosea and Amos in the canonical shape of the Minor Prophets as a total witness. In the lengthy textual transmission-history of Isaiah and the XII, we see them positioned next to each other in the lists preserved. The XII precedes Isaiah in the order of the Major prophets familiar in English printed texts; or we have the B. Bat. order of Jeremiah, Ezekiel, Isaiah, followed by the XII.26 Obviously, the similarity of their long temporal ranges encourages this. But the logic of their middle point and larger canonical shape may also be a contributing factor. This is not due to cross pollination but rather to kindred concerns respectively registered in both impressive works. Both contain a decisive center-text that serves to encourage a typological association of God’s works in former and latter conjunction across the largescale presentations of Isaiah and the Book of the Twelve.

25 Christopher R. Seitz, “Royal Promises in the Canonical Books of Isaiah and the Psalms,” in Word Without End, 150–67. 26  See the fuller discussion in ch. 11.

11. The Prophetic Division of the Scriptures of Israel An Overview This chapter undertakes a basic survey of those books which comprise the middle section of the canon of Israel’s scriptures. It represents the fruit of a season of work, especially on Isaiah, Jeremiah and the Book of the Twelve. We know this major division of the Old Testament or Hebrew Bible by the way in which the New Testament refers to it when it speaks of the “Law and Prophets” or “Moses and the Prophets,” that is, the books which follow the Pentateuch or Torah as given to Moses. A third section of books, “the Writings,” completes the traditional Hebrew collection, called with reference to these three subsections, the Tanak (Torah, Nebʾim, Ketuvim). In what follows, we will discuss the contents of this division and also the logic of its arrangement. English printed Bibles, with a now familiar order ending with Malachi, is not represented in any list prior to the Reformation. This order, furthermore, has not preserved the tripartite arrangement but has re-cast it. So our discussion will seek to understand what the Hebrew order seeks to communicate in that form. If one observes the wide variety of orders in translated form in the Christian reception of the Old Testament, the fact of a stable tripartite form stands out by contrast. Vestiges of the form are still very widespread, with the Torah of Moses always standing first and in the five-book form we know well (the Pentateuch) and with books from the Writings bringing up the rear (Daniel, Esther, or Chronicles, for example). But the Writings migrate in a variety of ways. The Minor Prophets may move, but they do so as a collection, not as individual books, and their internal order is fairly consistent. We do know of a different order in Greek dress, though it does not come through in that form in any significant ways in the commentaries and wider reception history in the early Eastern Church. It has been commented that some differences in the Greek ordering of the Hebrew canon may reflect a desire to place “like with like” – this could explain an order of Hosea, Amos, Micah, followed by Joel, Obadiah, Jonah. The first three books all share a superscription which locates them in the reigns of Kings of Israel and Judah, with the remaining books lacking these. They

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are also in order of descending length, though that may be an accident; this happens to be their order in the Hebrew sequence. Of the church fathers in the West, we have Jerome’s explanation for a book’s date if lacking a chronological notice: date them in relation to their neighbors. No such commentary can be found corresponding to the Greek order being referred to here, and as just noted, it is not obvious that a Greek commentary tradition worked with this order as such or saw any significance in it as an order. One possibility is that the very fact of an arrangement as having significance, such as is held for the order familiar to us, was not held to be the case by these early translators/ arrangers. Rather, they saw the books as individual works and that was all. Hence the decision simply to re-order them according to “like with like.”

The Prophets as a Canonical Section in the Scriptures of Israel: Overview The Prophetic section of the Hebrew canon comprises what may appear to be an odd combination of substantive narrative chronicle and poetic/oracular material, the latter more instinctively thought of as prophecy: Isaiah, Jeremiah, Ezekiel and the smaller Twelve prophetic books beginning with Hosea and ending with Malachi. The tradition would in time refer to these two corpuses as “Former Prophets” (the books of Joshua, Judges, Samuel and Kings) and “Latter Prophets,” not highlighting a difference between them  – narratives here, poetic oracles there – but collectively referring to them as Nebiʾim (Prophets).1 In time, the “former” section would find a fresh affiliation with kindred chronicle/narrative material, whose books exist otherwise in the Writings: Ezra-Nehemiah, Chronicles, Esther. This created something like a “historical” category of books. On my view, this occurred due to an instinct to associate “like with like” in early translational versions of an earlier tradition in an emerging Greek language version of the Hebrew Bible.2 The result was to split “former” from “latter prophets,” create a fresh category of historical writings, and allowing the “prophets” to more clearly refer to the Three Major Prophets, 1  There are some fascinating portions of overlap, as with Isaiah 36–39 and 2 Kings 18– 20. See my discussion in Zion’s Final Destiny: The Development of the Book of Isaiah: A Reassessment of Isaiah 36–39 (Minneapolis: Fortress, 1991); and, more recently, Prophecy and Hermeneutics: Toward a New Introduction to the Prophets, STI (Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2007). Previous chapters in the present volume reproduce the main findings. 2  The argument is defended in Christopher R. Seitz, The Goodly Fellowship of the Prophets: The Achievement of Association in Canon Formation, Acadia Studies in Bible and Theology (Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2009).

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the Twelve, and also a relocated Book of Daniel, not now a wisdom writing (Dan 1:4) but one of the Prophets. The consequence of this, further, was the collecting of the remaining titles under a rubric of “lyrical books” and with it a dismantling of the tripartite arrangement Torah, Prophets, Writings. That said, the lists we have in Christian circles do not have a single fourfold alternative form and frequently give evidence of the Law, Prophets and Writings conception (that is, with prophetical writings remaining in the center of the list). As noted above, the books that most frequently conclude the Elder Scripture in Christian circles are Daniel, and Esther. We will discuss the variations that appear in Jewish lists briefly here and in the chapter to follow. They are more minor in character. Former and Latter Prophets: Prophets in History The scriptures of Israel in Hebrew dress move from the final book of the Pentateuch (Deuteronomy) into a new, second section, called simply Prophets (Nebiʾim). English printed Bibles replicate this movement partially but include Ruth between Judges and Samuel and then continue on a more historical timeline with Chronicles, Ezra-Nehemiah and Esther. Prophets is organized otherwise into a Joshua-Kings portion (called in historical-critical parlance “the Deuteronomistic History”) and an Isaiah-Malachi portion. In time the first bloc could be called “Former” and the second “Latter” divisions of Prophets. The present MT presents the familiar Isaiah, Jeremiah, Ezekiel order followed by a twelve-book collection. As noted above, the XII and Isaiah are most often paired in subsequent lists in Christian circles, usually in that order. They are approximately the same length.3 The Prophets as former and latter represent narrative and classically prophetic material, respectively. That is, the Three Major and Twelve Minor prophetic books consist of proclamation in largely poetic form, going back to the oral speech of the prophets in live time, delivered to Israel by major prophetic figures. Sometimes, this is called “writing prophecy” to distinguish it from prophetic activity that was not preserved in the same form of literary presentation.4 So, Elijah and Elisha find a prominent place in 1 and 2 Kings but their oral speech has not been put in the literary form that we see, for example, in a Hosea or Micah, or any of the other prophetic books. To call these 3  On

the appearance in lists next to each other of Isaiah and the XII, Julio TrebolleBarrera, “Qumran Evidence for a Biblical Standard Text and for Non-Standard and Parabiblical Texts,” in The Dead Sea Scrolls in Their Historical Context, ed. Timothy H. Lim et al. (Edinburgh: T&T Clark, 2000), 89–106, esp. 94–95, 98. 4  A standard classification such as we find in textbooks introducing the prophets. Joseph Blenkinsopp’s is a good recent example, A History of Prophecy in Israel, rev. ed. (Louisville: Westminster John Knox, 1996).

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“writing prophets” introduces a possible confusion, however, since none of them produced their own written books. That activity was taken up by others in a manner we will discuss below. The point of the nomenclature was to make a distinction between the prophetic activity recorded in the Deuteronomistic History and what we see in prophetic speech preserved in book form. The distinction is also more keenly felt when Joshua-Kings no longer is followed directly by Isaiah-Malachi, but separated and assigned to new locations such as are found in modern English Bibles, for example. To place the narrative material of Joshua-Kings next to that of the classical prophetic literature creates some important effects. (1) It picks up on the notion of a succession of prophetic activity to follow after Moses, thus insisting that the entire period represented by Joshua-Kings is governed by divine prophetic oversight, via the torah of Moses or by specific prophetic figures so called. (2) It serves the purpose of showing us the scope of the historical season during which the prophets to follow can be located. The loose analogy of Acts and the Pauline Letter collection comes to mind, though by distinction, the Major and Minor Prophets and the Deuteronomistic History provide very little overlap when it comes to locating the former at specific moments on the timeline of the latter.5 Only Isaiah and Jonah make an appearance in the history. The superscriptions of the prophetic books function to make clearer from that side of the ledger just when and where the prophets were active. The undated and unlocated books within the XII are a special case that needs discussion below.6 The final three books of the XII pick up the timeline after the Exile and so move out beyond the ending of 2 Kings in important ways, leaving us with a sense both of continuity and of horizons to come. The introduction to Zechariah does this quite explicitly, for example (1:1–6). In taking its bearings from the words spoken by prophets previously (see also the references to former prophets in 7:7, 12). The final book Malachi is a special case that requires additional comment, as it appears to introduce a name (“my messenger”) that carries the book forward into the future beyond that of prophecy in classical form. The two-part Prophets section of the canon, then, serves to bridge the giving of the law to Moses forward to generations to come, and assisted by specific agents like Moses for their generations, called prophets. Part One is content to focus on the first dimension while not failing to mention specific prophets as such, while Part Two concentrates on prophetic speech in its classical guise. 5  See my discussion in Colossians, BTCB (Grand Rapids: Brazos, 2014), 193–96; idem, The Character of Christian Scripture: The Significance of a Two-Testament Bible, STI (Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2011), 157–67; idem, The Goodly Fellowship of the Prophets, 102–3. 6  See my discussion in Seitz, Prophecy and Hermeneutics, 113–220.



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It can be possible to theorize that within Part Two the term “torah” has a less formal meaning than is suggested in the present deuteronomic depiction. Indeed this aspect had been taken in the source-critical heyday as Exhibit #1, establishing that the prophets really knew nothing of law except in more ad hoc senses of “instruction” appropriate to their inspired genius and insight. In classic Wellhausian terms, the law is later than the prophets and by no means its foundation.7 Yet whatever we may reconstruct in respect of the term torah, the simple fact of juxtaposition of these two major sections under one rubric Prophets implies that the mature torah of Genesis-Deuteronomy is consistent with law as the prophets refer to this on the occasions when they do. The Deuteronomic History returns the favor by simply crediting the proclamation of God’s law to every generation under a rubric “by all my servants the prophets” without then stipulating which figure now appearing in Part Two they have in mind more specifically. The effect of the almost word-by-word appearance of Isaiah 36–39 at a critical juncture in 2 Kings 18–20, whatever else it may mean, leaves no doubt that the DtrH and the classical prophets are seen to be complementary and working in tandem. Similar moves within the second part itself (the appearance of Isaiah 2 in Micah 4) reinforces the “all the prophets” theme as one of consistency to the point of overlap. Jeremiah’s reference to Micah and Hezekiah may also be mentioned here (Jer 26:18).8 In sum, introductory courses may be useful in speculating about how something like “law” functioned in more occasional uses in the prophets and only later culminated in the monumental Pentateuchal expression of the same, but the later development deserves to be acknowledged for what it is and its effect considered and appreciated on the terms of the present canonical portrayal. This phase of development deserves the label “historical” every bit as much as reconstructed, earlier, theoretical ones. Our concern in general is with modern approaches, the character of canonical shaping and association, and the sorts of issues that may arise in one’s first critical look at the Old Testament. So it will not be my purpose here to engage in detailed, individual treatment of the three Major and twelve Minor Prophets. I have published previous commentaries and monographs on the Prophets of Israel, and the DtrH. In one of the (nearly playful) musings of the rabbinic material, the order of the major prophets is declared to be Jeremiah, Ezekiel, and Isaiah, and an explanation for this is given.9 We are watching 7  See the Preface to the Prolegomena where he speaks quite personally about having a bad conscience in not seeing evidence of the Law in the Former Prophets and wondering what this might mean. 8  On this point, see Seitz, Prophecy and Hermeneutics, 128, 197, 212. 9  B. Bat., 14b.

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an upward curve, from all judgment, to half-judgment and half-salvation, to all salvation. One might say that this is roughly accurate: Jeremiah predominates with judgment oracles at the end of the period of Judah’s existence, and provides a sober account of the destruction of Jerusalem and termination of the monarchy (another place of substantial overlap with the last chapters of Kings and the DtrH). Ezekiel’s grim pronouncements focus on the same period, in exile, and conclude with hopeful declarations of a new heart, a new spirit, a new rejoined Israel and a new temple. Isaiah soars with the language of salvation, contrapuntally in the first chapters and in sustained notes in the latter. We can also see this order in certain Christian lists, with the Twelve preceding Isaiah. The Three: Isaiah, Jeremiah, Ezekiel The order with which we are familiar has Isaiah in first position. His is the most historically comprehensive portrayal; if critical theory is correct, stretching over several centuries from 7th to 5th and later. In its present form, traditional exegesis also credited the book with an extraordinary range of coverage, and put this down to the marvelous prophetic powers of Isaiah of Jerusalem, who saw into and through the exile and comforted the mourners in Zion (so ben Sira). Isaiah’s 66-chapter shape moves from denunciations in the reign of Ahaz; a figural linking of the outstretched arm of YHWH to include Assyria and Babylonian agents of judgment both; to their eventual demise, within the larger national landscape; with a deliverance of Jerusalem which contrasts Hezekiah favorably with Ahaz previously and serves as a sign of Jerusalem’s eventual recovery and pilgrimage center for all the nations previously brought under God’s sovereign rule. King and servant combine in the larger movement and bring about, through suffering and death, a means of expiation for Israel that in turn awakens the hearts and wills of all peoples.10 The signal position of Isaiah serves to guide us as we make our way forward, much in the same way the Letter to the Romans stands in first position and gives us a comprehensive portrayal of creation, justification, sanctification, election and adoption as the lens through which to view the twelve letters to follow. Jeremiah’s presentation is far more chronologically narrowed in coverage. This focus also creates a somber portrayal. Hopeful notes that sound in the opening chapters are directed to a northern kingdom and then held up as an object lesson to Judah for not having learned the lesson of her fate in the 10  I have written in detail on these matters in Isaiah 1–39, IBC (Louisville: Westminster John Knox, 1993); idem, Zion’s Final Destiny; idem, “The Book of Isaiah 40–66,” in The New Interpreter’s Bible, vol. 6, ed. L. E. Keck (Nashville: Abingdon, 2001); and several journal articles.

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previous century. Penitential notes also arise, but these appear to be representative of a later audience who watch the disobedience and register their acknowledgements of the righteousness of God’s actions with their forefathers and mothers.11 Jeremiah’s own role in the book is crafted to track alongside that of Moses, now as lawgiver of curse and not blessing, given the refusal to heed. I  have elsewhere argued that the question of historical Jeremiah’s awareness of ‘D’ ought better to be considered from the angle of his depiction in the book itself, as a prophet like Moses.12 Instead of broken tablets we have a burned and reconstituted scroll. Instead of Caleb and Joshua as exempt from death in the wilderness, we have Baruch and Ebed-Melech carrying forward beyond the wholesale judgment over Judah and into a new but uncertain future. Jeremiah must share the fate of Moses and is not exempted, though he sees from afar a new day in the same manner Moses is permitted to look over into the Promised Land before death. The theme of the death of one generation and the birth of a new one, which we see in Numbers, is calibrated so as to be completed within the span of seventy years.13 The influence of Deuteronomy on Jeremiah is obvious and penetrating. The book is a combination of oracles such as we find them in Isaiah; deuteronomic sermons of a “choose this day” and “do this or this will befall you,” with the latter frequently presupposing a negative response and so preceding with judgment; and biographical episodes and personal lamentations. Much of the material is specifically dated, also in the manner of the DtrH. The book marches inexorably toward its conclusion, first with exile of king and population in 597 and then with more dramatic results in 587. Ezekiel opens with an even sharper historical focus.14 He is a prophet who accompanied the exiles of the first deportation. He is able to address them and the concrete situation unfolding back in Jerusalem at one and the same time. He is given a terrible scroll to swallow, but unlike Jeremiah offers no lamentation after being given an antacid of divine comfort. And so declare the terrible judgment he does. Biographical material also pervades his book, including a series of sign acts whereby in his own flesh he enacts the awful 11  Christopher

R. Seitz, “The Place of the Reader in Jeremiah,” in Reading the Book of Jeremiah: A Search for Coherence, ed. Martin Kessler (Winona Lake, IN: Eisenbrauns, 2004), 67–75. 12  Christopher R. Seitz, “The Prophet Moses and the Canonical Shape of Jeremiah,” ZAW 101 (1989): 3–27. 13  Dennis T. Olson, The Death of the Old and the Birth of the New: The Framework of the Book of Numbers and the Pentateuch, BJS 71 (Chico, CA: Scholars Press, 1985). 14  Christopher R. Seitz, Theology in Conflict: Reactions to the Exile in the Book of Jeremiah, BZAW 176 (Berlin: de Gruyter, 1986). See esp. idem, “The 597 Perspective of Ezekiel Traditions,” in Theology in Conflict, 121–63. Also, idem, “The Crisis of Interpretation over the Meaning and Purpose of the Exile,” VT 35 (1985): 78–97.

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fate in store for God’s people. Israel has become like Pharaoh or a foreign nation, and even worse. So the “then you will know that I  am the LORD” refrains we recall from Exodus in the confrontation between Moses and Egypt here appear in the form of knowing YHWH God in his judgments and not his deliverances. Then the judgment over city, temple, priesthood, king and false prophet is finally prosecuted, and our prophet can then begin to see a new day. Out of the corpse of a people in a valley of dry bones Ezekiel is given to see the Spirit of God breathe new life. Israel and Judah are rejoined after centuries of division. Good shepherds rule. Prophecy begins to regather strength. A new temple is to be built and the principalities and powers emptied of their awful might, having evacuated themselves in the role of agents of national judgment over God’s people. The three Major Prophets span the horizon of God’s work with Israel and Judah and then see into a new future. Comprehensively, they confront all the institutions and manifestations of authority inside God’s purposes with his people and expose the dry rot down to the nails and mortar. Isaiah is bold to say that this act of judgment has an expiatory effect that will cleanse the future generations. It will also be the means by which Israel, brought in contact with the nations of the world, will suffer a fate that enables these same peoples to see God at work, in judgment and in salvation, and so come to the knowledge of him via their fate. The diaspora of God’s people will remain a fact into the New Testament and provide the synagogue reality into which the prophet Paul will stride centuries later, opening anew the book of Isaiah and declaring that his plan and his secret mystery are being shown forth onto a new day of God’s action. The former things are giving way to new things, and did I not say it long ago, says the Lord. The Twelve The Twelve smaller prophetic books which follow Ezekiel existed on a single scroll of similar length to that of an individual Major Prophet. The order of the books is as we find it in English Bibles, with some minor exceptions in the history of lists. Some Greek manuscripts place superscripted books together in the first half of the XII and create an order Hosea, Amos, Micah, and then Joel, Obadiah, and Jonah. This tracks with the tendency of the Greek texts to organize like with like, unaware of the significance – if such there is such for them – in the Hebrew tradition they have inherited. Upon inspection it is clear that the movement across the Twelve, if one examines the superscriptions, is roughly chronological. That is, Hosea and Amos are the earliest books and Zechariah and Malachi the latest, with Micah in the middle. Yet half of the books give us no dating reference (Joel, Obadiah,

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Jonah, Nahum, Habakkuk, and Malachi). The church father Jerome conjectured that undated books were in chronological order due to association with dated neighbors, but the theory is speculative and does not find universal acceptance in the history of interpretation. More recently an alternative notion has found stronger persuasiveness, namely, that undated books are placed where they are for thematic or theological reasons, as they are now found in association with books surrounding them.15 There is certainly a strong argument to be made for seeing Joel, Obadiah, Jonah and Malachi as late witnesses and as serving this function. Nahum and Habakkuk certainly fit well within the places we now find them, as we will explain shortly. The superscription of Hosea closely approximates that of Isaiah, and may be one reason the two collections are often placed next to each other. Though standard textbooks incline to treat Amos as the first prophet historically speaking, the two prophets are clearly contemporaries and there is good evidence that their respective works were mutually influencing in editorial development.16 Hosea’s superscription, moreover, gives him a more comprehensive feel, by speaking of his activity during the reigns of four Judahite kings and two Israelite rulers. Amos by contrast delivers his strong message into the specific context of the northern kingdom during the reign of Jeroboam. But the stronger argument in favor of Hosea’s signal position is the message he delivers. The passionate YHWH must judge his people but cannot give them up. The marriage of the prophet to Gomer mirrors this theological truth in personal and deeply moving terms as the book opens. And at its close it issues an appeal. Return to the LORD and he will heal and your fruitfulness will again be resplendent (14:1–8). The book ends on this note and in so doing opens onto the history that will follow. Through every prophetic word to be uttered, this divine appeal stands ready to be heeded and acted upon in Israel’s favor and blessing.17 To reinforce this point the book that follows is effectively the words that Hosea said were to be taken so as to approach God in penitence and confession (Hos 14:2–4), now scripted in the undated book of Joel which follows. A great locust plague serves as the occasion for lamentation and morning, and a concrete worship context for approaching the Holy Lord. The locusts are a 15  See

most recently my discussion in Joel, ITL (New York: Bloomsbury T&T Clark, 2016). 16  See the very insightful essay of J. Jeremias, “The Interrelationship between Amos and Hosea,” in Forming Prophetic Literature: Essays on Isaiah and the Twelve in Honor of John D. W. Watts, ed. James W. Watts and Paul R. House, JSOTS 235 (Sheffield: Sheffield Academic, 1996), 171–86. 17 Raymond C. Van Leeuwen, “Scribal Wisdom and Theodicy in the Book of the Twelve,” in In Search of Wisdom: Essays in Memory of John G. Gammie, ed. Leo G. Perdue et al. (Louisville: Westminster John Knox, 1993), 31–49.

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natural disaster on the one hand, and figures of the national assaults which we will read about as YHWH’s justice descends upon his people. Joel serves to script the penitential words that, if uttered in full voice, will provide for a remnant through any and all judgment to come. The bounty that will again be Israel’s is held out as God’s promised response. The nation/locusts will be but for a season and then will be gone. God’s word of love and devotion, as we heard it ring forth from Hosea, will be the final word through the changes and chances of the history to follow. Amos repeats word for word the refrain of Joel right at the start of his work so as to alert us to the serial character of the presentation to follow (Joel 3:16 and Amos 1:2). The opening tableau of nations (Amos 1:3–2:16) serves to establish the LORD of Israel as the God over all nations and over all creation. The sins of Edom mentioned at Joel’s close (3:19) are here classified more broadly (1:11– 12). But now the judgment of the nations serves as a prelude. It is Israel, “the whole family that I brought up out of Egypt” that the prophet means finally to address. The main theme of Hosea (knowledge of YHWH) is here referred to (3:1), with the intention of making sure we read Hosea’s critique of cultic abuses and Amos’s focus on social crimes as two sides of one coin.18 Though both prophets address the sins of the northern kingdom, one can also see clear evidence that the books wish to warn Judah in no less urgent terms (we see the same movement later in Jeremiah, from the standpoint of Judah itself ). Though Amos is viewed as the stern and unmoving prophet of doom that so entranced Wellhausen and early 20th-century interpreters – the first great prophet, without antecedent, a shepherd called against his will – the center of the book also shows us a man of great compassion and concern (7:2–3, 5–6). Though he receives visions of utter devastation, he begs for mercy. Mercy is then forthcoming. But unaware of his saving action of intercession, the authorities can only hear haranguing and interference from a professional “hired gun” from Judah. By silencing him, they cut off the only lifeline being held out to save them.19 18  “I can understand these literary connections … only if the pupils of Amos and the pupils of Hosea who handed down the message of the prophets wanted to teach the readers that they could not grasp the central ideas of these prophets by reading their books in complete isolation from one another. By contrast, the readers of the written words of the prophets were supposed to notice the similarity of Amos’s and Hosea’s message from God…. The literary connections between these books show that they should be read in relation to each other. I want to show that the traditionists are on their way to discovering something like a common prophetic theology, not by denying that each prophet lived in singular historical circumstances, but by denying that this fact is decisive for their message” (Jeremias, “Interrelationship,” 171–72). 19  Jeremias’s close reading of the central panel at 7:1–8:3 is brilliant on this point. See my summary in Prophecy and Hermeneutics, 206–7. Jeremias writes, “God’s patience ends



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The final visions of the prophet confirm that “the end has come upon my people Israel” and so it has. Amos ends however in a way that reinforces the message of Joel. God will purge his people as with fire. He will not destroy them utterly. Those who say “evil will not overtake us” will be doomed. Hosea and Joel and now Amos agree on this fundamental point. The wise are those who walk in the ways of the LORD (Hos 14:9), in every generation. As Psalm 25 clarifies, the ways of the LORD consist of his character as revealed at Sinai, merciful and gracious, but by no means clearing the wicked. To walk in the ways of the LORD is to understand his character and to come to him with confession and penitence. Those who do not know these ways ignore their sin and so also avoid coming to learn of his great mercy as well. We see this very drama play itself out with Amos, Amaziah, and Jeroboam. Edom plays a specific role in the XII, as we have seen thus far. On the one hand this role is familiar from Psalm 137 and elsewhere.20 Edom stood aloof when Jerusalem fell and even aided Israel’s enemies (Obad 10–14). Special retribution therefore awaits her. But Obadiah makes clear that this specific crime has its focal point in one major flaw: Edom rejected her role as twin brother of Jacob and so with a specific vocation in God’s plans. She wanted to be a nation (1–4). She thought to raise herself up above her station, and so God will reduce her and leave her fate in their rapacious hands. So as Jonah opens we are aware of the “nations” as a major agent in wrecking God’s judgment and of overreaching and so punished in the end. Yet this is not this all that can be said about the nations. They are not simply pawns on a great chessboard of God’s ways with his own people. The Book of Jonah rejects that view and resoundingly so – to the point of satire and a humiliating portrait of his own people and the prophetic agent Jonah. Jonah wants to flee from the God who made the heavens and the earth, the seas and dry ground. He rejects his role as prophet of judgment. But he becomes a prophet in spite of himself, when by deduction the sailors know the one hiding must be the one with the True God (1:6–10). They offer sacrifices and become true worshippers in calling on the name of YHWH, as they throw the disobedient one overboard (vv. 15–16). Yet Jonah is rescued by a great fish. and he takes up his distasteful role (v. 17, 2:10–3:3). He announces judgment and effects a great wave of penitence (3:4–10). We who have been reading the XII know this theme and where it will go, and apparently so does Jonah. He tells God this is why he stayed away from his job. God has ways of mercy and justice both (4:1–2). Having marched but a day into a city three days’ where the state represented by the priest tries to decide when and where God may speak through the prophet” (“Interrelationship,” 32). 20  Lam 4:21–22.

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journey wide (3:3–4), he then will sulk under a booth he has constructed for the purpose of waiting (4:5). The question hovers in the air as to whether the sackcloth repentance of man and beast will hold. Is it a hungover oath sworn in haste to quit drinking for good? While waiting for his answer, God turns to Jonah instead. He makes the shade cease that he had given him by a great plant. God points out that it is a bit odd to care more for a dead plant than for a dead people, and so Jonah suggests its time then for him to die. Like the parable of the prodigal son when the older brother complains of God’s grace, we are left with a question. God reserves the right to have pity and to make merry. So get used to it. Ninevites and prodigals he has come to save.21 The ultimate fate of Nineveh – if indeed we are right in how we take the scene outside the city  – is not actually given in Jonah. But we know God’s mind on the matter. The book of Micah returns us to the landscape of Judah and the history of God’s people amongst the nations. He promises a day when nation will not lift up sword against nation but instead will flock to God’s holy mountain, asking that they may be taught God’s torah (Mic 4:1–4). In this day, God’s judgment will cleanse the nations and bring their hostility to an end. As it is now, they walk in the ways of their own gods, but Israel knows the God YHWH is their God, and wills to be Lord over all as well. The book ends with the refrain we are beginning to see functioning like a red thread through the books of the XII (7:18–20). In doxology God is praised for the mercy that can throw the sins of a people as deep as the sea that held Jonah in its grip. The appearance of the book of Nahum tells us that the ceaseless iniquity of Assyria won out in the end, leaving a poignant reminder in our mind of a scene of great heartfelt repentance on their part in the days of Jonah. The book opens with the refrain that closed Micah, but now God is great not in mercy but might (1:3). He will by no means clear the guilt. Where Jonah ended with a question, so does Nahum, about which he asks “for upon whom has not come your unceasing evil?” Habakkuk picks up the question and turns in toward God. The one who raised up Assyria as agent of judgment has in turn raised up a more ruthless nation to bring that role to an end. Yet it is unclear how this can be a good plan of action. So the prophet takes his stand on the watchtower to see God’s answer to his Jeremiah-like lament. The book of Habakkuk is itself to be a vision of justice that others may read to learn the answer God gives. “He who runs” is the one God has given swift feet, and has raised up and strengthened (Isa 40:31).22 This strengthening comes from reading the vision of Habakkuk, where we learn that God’s justice may be slow but it will 21  The resemblance of the older brother in Luke 15 and Jonah is unmistakable. Both stories end with a question as well about the character of God’s mercy. 22  See within the larger argument of Francis Watson for the signal role of Habakkuk in the XII, and especially his important insights on the watchtower scene, in Paul and the



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not delay long. The woes that follow in the present book show God assuredly judging the nations. The final psalm prayer pays tribute to this God of old, and gives the reader the language needed to stand strong through a time of waiting (3:1–19).23 What Joel did following Hosea, Habakkuk does following Nahum and anticipating the great and terrible day of the Lord of Zephaniah. With the ninth book of the XII we reach a crescendo. The prior references to a Day of YHWH from Joel forward here coalesce and create a dramatic picture of the entire cosmos wracked in judgment (Zeph 1:1–6). The prayer of Habakkuk is indeed a necessary support as the movement from Assyria to Babylon reaches a fever pitch. One may suppose that the events of 597 and 587 are being anticipated on the historical plane, but that this entails something yet more penetrating in its cleansing power on the heavenly plane. The final chapter depicts a patient and humble remnant, protected and sustained, and Zion herself rejoicing as all the prior judgments are exhausting their hold. The LORD is in her midst through it all. Her children will be brought home from the places they have been dispersed. Her fortunes will be restored before her very eyes (3:8–20). This is a waiting (“Therefore wait for me, says the LORD”, v. 8) that will bear fruit, as Habakkuk has sought to assure us. Haggai then picks up the thread on the other side of judgment and exile as he begins the concrete business of starting anew. The Book of Haggai is short and entirely in narrative form. Its dating structure is carried over into Zechariah, at least in some measure. Dates seem to be important, and they are provided with a fresh kind of precision (1:1; 2:1, 10, 18, 20). The book poses the central question as to whether Israel’s life as before is something that can be re-started, and if so, when, exactly. The oracles Haggai receives say with urgency Yes, but this cannot be a simple thing, given the din and drama of such a total judgment by YHWH. How the house of God be made clean again, after the assaults of the nations, surely haunted the day. If the reestablishment of house of God is what assures fertility and spiritual renewal then surely its place must be restored. But how is this to be done properly, as there is no template for its execution. Temple, priesthood, kingship, wisdom – all lie in ruins. Indeed, Haggai and the ensuing books must themselves be questioned when considered from the perspective of whether prophecy is possible or has its vital force been spent. Who is this Haggai and how is God’s word in his mouth to be trusted? These would seem to be the challenges his oracles in the form we have them are addressing. Something is Hermeneutics of Faith (Edinburgh: T&T Clark, 2004). My engagement thereto can be seen in Prophecy and Hermeneutics, 118. 23  The “feet like hinds’ feet” (3:19) show a faithful running a la 2:2, that is, energized by the vision which is the Book of Habakkuk (1:1 and 2:2–3). Watson’s interpretation of the vision scene (2:1–4) in relation to 1:1 and 3:19 is insightful.

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about to happen. It will be a dramatic restoration on the order, even, of the preceding judgment, as Zerubbabel picks up where the destroyed monarchy lay before him in tatters. Zechariah seconds the word of Haggai, and one may wonder whether a “seconding” is now absolutely critical if Israel is to find its way. The book is highly unusual, consisting of a series of eight (the prefect seven plus yet another) night visions. It is as though the fate of Israel is in middle air, and seen not in day but in the shadow land of night. Israel’s destiny is “up in the air,” moving, but unstable.24 The visions the prophet is given amount to divine reestablishment of Israel’s condition: in the face of national forces unleashed by God but now at rest, concerning her religious center, her dispersed peoples, her priesthood and civil authority, her spiritual health and removal of past toxins, and the crowning of king and priest for fresh duty. The words of the prophets preceding are now a kind of category, known to be such: they are former prophets, for now we are in a new age (1:4–6; 7:7, 12). Their words live on and direct the present life of the community. In some ways, they are also the warrant answering the last question to be resolved: can there be prophecy and can there be prophets again? The final chapters of the book are replete with quotation and citation from previous prophetic works. The words that Zechariah said outlived the ones who spoke them and have an overtaking power continue to seek resolution and final fulfillment. Even a reestablished Israel in the aftermath of national destruction and violent upheaval looks to a final day of the Lord, when a final and permanent cult, priesthood, ruler, and prophet are the lasting standard of God’s ways with Israel and the world (14:1–21). The one crucial thing to note about the strange final book is that its agent of delivery is also at the same time a protagonist active in the work itself (3:1). “My messenger” is sent by God for a great work of preparation, to ready the people with one final prophetic action, so they may stand before the coming final Day of YHWH. Whoever “the prophet Malachi” is within the timeframe and religious context assumed in the opening chapters, he is in that role a figure or type of the messenger to come. His exhortations serve the purpose of modeling what the great messenger to come will be about, yet more dramatically and finally. The final book of the XII is then a book in the XII and a standard bearer for a future and final encounter with God, unlike anything Israel has experienced and for which there must be a warning bell and a final moment to stop and be ready. Those who heed in Malachi’s day are models for the conduct necessary for the future Day (3:16–18). In the time before 24  Baruch Halpern, “The Ritual Background of Zechariah’s Temple Song,” CBQ 40 (1978): 167–90.

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that day, the law of Moses will serve as guide. Also referred to is a book of remembrance (v. 16). A popular interpretation is that this a book into which are registered the names of the faithful who fear the LORD in Malachi’s day. This appears to be the meaning given in most translations. But it has also been argued that the book is a memorial established before the LORD which serves on behalf of those who fear him, and that what is being referred to is the prophetic collection of the XII as such.25 Malachi self-consciously closes that collection and points to a future Malachi and a part memorial at one and the same time. Whether such a reading is to be preferred there can be little doubt that in its present form the book of the XII serves to guide and direct the faithful remnant of Israel until the great and terrible day spoken of from Joel to Malachi.

Prophetic Inspiration One of the hallmarks of modern biblical study is attention to an author’s intention.26 Even at the reformation a general concern to mine the historical author and the location and specifics of his writing was thought to be critical, and a way to avoid a sense that seemed to float about the human author and which obscured what the Bible wanted to say more efficiently. Yet in this same period appeal to the human author was a far less complicated piece of hermeneutical guidance. Moses and Isaiah and Jeremiah and Solomon and Zechariah were authors whose books were quite directly before us in the canonical form we find them. It might be necessary to think about how Moses wrote Genesis, but this did not amount to positing four sources in the Pentateuch.27 The rabbis might credit Isaiah’s authorship to the men of Hezekiah (B. Bat. 14b), but whatever this might mean, it never prevented the history of interpretation of thinking of him as endowed with a tremendous charism that enabled him to see into the future of exile and return. The author Isaiah’s intentions were registered in the book that bore his name. This appeal to a stable intentionality in the literal sense would soon be asked to bear an additional burden. A history that sat alongside the text and to which it was making reference would soon seem far more realistic in character than the world of Isaiah, book and author both. John Calvin had no book on his shelf called “the history of the world” with which he then correlated the Bible in some way. I choose him because of the early modern readers he more than anyone was sensitive to what we would now call “ostensive reference” and 25 

This is the position of James D. Nogalski. See the discussion in ch. 6 of the present volume. 27  On Moses as author, see the discussion in ch. 6 of the present volume. 26 

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the historicality of the Old and New Testaments. But very soon it would no longer be possible to keep the referentiality of the Bible coordinated with the canonical presentation of its literary givenness. Even the term “literal” would soon come to mean “factual” or “historical.” A theory of inspiration that works very hard to determine a human author’s intentions will struggle within battles lines set up by the discipline of biblical studies as this would evolve in the 18th century and gather force in the 20th. Under debate was the prophet Isaiah as the author of the book with which he is associated, and if not, then how much of it and in what concrete setting are we to understand him at work, intending to communicate this or that to this or that audience. In the case of Isaiah  – though any biblical work could be chosen as an example – chs. 40–55 seemed to address a different time and context, and actually did not appear to present themselves as prediction from afar but rather contemporaneous address to an audience other than that of Isaiah of Jerusalem.28 It is difficult to understand what intention of communication there would be for Isaiah’s audience at the time of Ahaz and Hezekiah. It seems more likely they would scratch their heads and, like Daniel being given a vision not for his day, need some special reassurance that all would be well (Dan 8:17, 27; 10:8–12). How do we move from Zechariah 1–8 into 9–14 and not sense a shift of author and context? Or from Galatians to Colossians? Or from Genesis to Exodus? Or from sections of one book to others within the same book? Who as the human author intended Isa 2:1–5 and Mic 4:1–4 and why are they so similar? Did Jonah borrow from Joel or the other way around? But there is an additional problem that arises apart from the matter of historical reference and the way the biblical material gives us quite a challenge when it comes to extracting a human author and his intentions in historical context. It is also belied by some of the examples given thus far. For inspiration can also be that act of provision of speech and vision which the prophet is given to declare whose final purpose and intention is greater than he or she understands or intends. If this is what divine inspiration really means, then a prophet or inspired author can communicate meaningfully to an audience in time and space and say more than he or they can line up with what God intends to do and say with that selfsame speech as time marches on under his providence.29 The biblical text can tell us this with clarity, as when Isaiah is told to bind up his speaking and preserve it, so it can be opened and then 28  Seitz, “How is Isaiah Present in the Latter Half of the Book? The Logic of Chapters 40–55 within the Book of Isaiah,” JBL 115 (1996): 219–40. 29 See my final comments on intentionality in the Psalter in Christopher R. Seitz, “Psalm 2 in the Entry Hall of the Psalter: Extended Sense in the History of Interpretation,” in Church, Society, and the Christian Common Good: Essays in Conversation with Philip Turner, ed. Ephraim Radner (Eugene: Cascade, 2017), 95–106.

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address a new day (8:16–20; cf. 29:11–12; 30:8). God will superintend the way a former thing will become a new thing. Inspiration entails obedience in speaking what one is given as chosen agent, not crafting an intentional word according to the canons of ordinary communication (themselves not straightforward when it comes to intention and reception!). The word of God accomplishes things (55:11). It doesn’t stay put under a single intention – though that intention is divinely time-given  – and so whoever we say “intended” Isaiah 2 and Micah 4 it is perhaps better to stand before the challenge of God’s accomplishing speech as a fact to be considered as such.30 So when it comes to the Book of the Twelve, the standard procedure of determining human authors in time and space gave us a timeline running from Amos to Hosea to Micah, splicing in Isaiah and Jeremiah when able to do so, and moving forward to the latest books as conjectured according to this grid of intentionality (Joel or Jonah or Malachi). The alternative is to deal with intentionality through close reading of the canonical form and seeing if there is another way to understand the communication of God’s word. This would be one in which time – accepting there are late works and early works – can double back on itself, seek associations by closer and subsequent reading, offer juxtaposed and inspired speech, as in Joel or Obadiah or Jonah, so as to draw out a meaning that God intends but which becomes available only as he accomplishes things in time with a chosen people. The only way to establish the character of divine intentionality seen through associations is by familiarizing ourselves with the variety of ways the canon invites us to appreciate its specific form. The Book of the Twelve may convey an intention that arises from the individual witnesses themselves on the one hand, that is, there are twelve books and their beginnings and endings are carefully marked and the idea of an individual realistically confronting an historical audience is firmly in place. Yet one can also appreciate that alongside this there is another level of intentionality equally deserving to be called historical. It arises when one carefully attends to associations that are now there to be seen and argued for, when one takes the canonical form seriously. Yet the case of the three Major Prophets equally establishes that order and sequence may mean not very much at all  – witness the ability of different orders to emerge without much serious effect. 30 Christopher

R. Seitz, “Prophetic Associations,” in Thus Says the Lord: Essays on the Former and Latter Prophets in Honor of Robert R. Wilson, ed. John J. Ahn and Stephen L. Cook, LHBOTS 502 (London: T&T Clark, 2009), 156–66; idem, “Scriptural Author and Canonical Prophet: The Theological Implications of Literary Association in the Canon,” in Biblical Method and Interpretation: Essays in Honour of John Barton, ed. Katharine J. Dell and Paul M. Joyce (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2013), 176–88. These essays are included below in the present volume.

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Conclusion It is important to keep this general observation in place as one moves to the third division of the Hebrew Bible. This division is also preserved in Jewish and Christian lists in different arrangements, and as we have seen in some places, dissolved altogether so as to give rise to different global arrangements. The Prophets are an amalgam of Deuteronomic History (Joshua-Kings or Former Prophets) plus Three, plus the Book of the Twelve. The major connection of Part One (Former) and Part Two (Latter) keeps prophecy within a field of association that is historical but also figural and affiliated in character. Shifting Part One into a single historical time line, as we find in English printed Bibles, is a move that one can easily understand  – put like with like  – but which ought not run interference for our thinking carefully about the canonical presentation of Prophets such as we find it in the major Hebrew attestation.

Canonical Interpretation: Rethinking Author, Setting, Audience

12. The Prophet Moses and the Canonical Shape of Jeremiah To Brevard S. Childs on his 65th birthday

Long recognized are the links between the Book of Jeremiah and the traditions of Deuteronomy (including the Deuteronomistic History). Rabbinic tradition traced the authorship of Kings to Jeremiah (B. Bat. 14b); post-Enlightenment scholarship finds the same authors of Kings at work within major sections of Jeremiah. In the modern period, debate persists over how one should view in more precise terms the relationship between Jeremiah and Deuteronomy. Here, the book and the man are to be differentiated. Especially thorny is the problem of defining Jeremiah’s relationship to the reform of Josiah reported in 2 Kings 22– 24, on which occasion deuteronomic traditions were allegedly first discovered and promulgated – or more modestly, were recovered and rehearsed anew to a pious generation headed by King Josiah.1 Chief among modern exegetes, William Lee Holladay has argued that the historical Jeremiah self-consciously modeled his prophetic activity after Moses, the main character set forth in septennial readings of Deuteronomy, which he claims were foundational for the career of Jeremiah.2 Redactional approaches, on the other hand, see the influence of Deuteronomy effected from the outside, as it were, on the Book of Jeremiah.3 Editors and shapers of the present book depicted the man Jeremiah 1 See the older studies of Harold H. Rowley, “The Prophet Jeremiah and the Book of Deuteronomy,” in Studies in Old Testament Prophecy: Presented to Professor Theodore H. Robinson by the Society of Old Testament Study on His Sixty-Fifth Birthday, August 9th, 1946, ed. Harold H. Rowley (Edinburgh: T&T Clark, 1950), 157–74; John Skinner, “Jeremiah and Deuteronomy,” in Prophecy and Religion: Studies in the Life of Jeremiah (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1950), 89–107. 2  William Lee Holladay, “The Background of Jeremiah’s Self-Understanding: Moses, Samuel, and Psalm 22,” JBL 83 (1964): 153–64; idem, “Jeremiah and Moses: Further Observations,” JBL 85 (1966): 17–27; idem, “A Coherent Chronology of Jeremiah’s Early Career,” in Le Livre de Jérémie: Le Prophète et Son Milieu, ed. Pierre Bogaert, BETL 54 (Leuven: Uitgeverij Peeters, 1981), 58–73; idem, “The Years of Jeremiah’s Preaching,” Int 37 (1983): 146–59; idem, Jeremiah: A Commentary on the Book of the Prophet Jeremiah, 2 vols., Hermeneia (Philadelphia: Fortress, 1986–1989), 1:1–10. 3 Winfried Thiel, Die deuteronomistische Redaktion von Jeremia 1–25, WMANT 41

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along lines consistent with the broader theological views of deuteronomism. The degree to which they distorted the historical Jeremiah in the process is a matter of debate. Some argue it makes little difference; the historical prophet is lost behind secondary interpretation (Carroll). A medial position splits the difference and sees both factors (the man in history; the book in redaction) at work in complementary fashion.4 This summary oversimplifies the present debate, but it does allow a general perspective on Jeremiah interpretation to emerge. In this essay, the second major interpretive approach is adopted, namely, that the prophet Jeremiah was shaped from the outside by those who held views on prophecy we might call deuteronomistic. Within their larger perspective, the figure of Moses looms large. The question to be pursued in this essay is: How did familiar descriptions of the prophet Moses inform the view of Jeremiah and his generation presented in the final form of the book? Questions regarding the historical Jeremiah will be set to the side – particularly those which involve his relationship to the reform of Josiah. We are interested instead in seeing how Moses was viewed in biblical traditions which conceive of him as a prophet, and how this presentation has affected the Book of Jeremiah. Observations about the quality and distribution of correspondences may themselves offer the strongest argument in favor of the redactional approach.

I The Book of Deuteronomy sets forth its own particular view of the prophetic office. Central among texts is Deut 18:15–22. Its opening section reads: “The Lord your God will raise up for you a prophet like me from among your brethren – him you shall heed – just as you desired of the Lord your God at Horeb on the day of the assembly, when you said, ‘Let me not hear again the voice of the Lord my God, or see this great fire anymore, lest I die.’ And the Lord said to me, ‘They have rightly said all that they have spoken. I will raise up for them a prophet like you among their brethren; and he shall speak to them all that I commanded him.’” (vv. 15–18) (Neukirchen-Vluyn: Neukirchener Verlag, 1973); idem, Die deuteronomistische Redaktion von Jeremia 26–45, WMANT 52 (Neukirchen-Vluyn: Neukirchener Verlag, 1981); KarlFriedrich Pohlmann, Studien zum Jeremiabuch: Ein Beitrag zu Frage nach der Entstehung des Jeremiabuches, FRLANT 118 (Göttingen: Vanderhoeck & Ruprecht, 1978); Christopher R. Seitz, Theology in Conflict: Reactions to the Exile in the Book of Jeremiah, BZAW 176 (Berlin: de Gruyter, 1989); William McKane, A  Critical and Exegetical Commentary on Jeremiah, 2 vols., ICC (Edinburgh: T&T Clark, 1986–1987); Robert P. Carroll, Jeremiah: A Commentary, OTL (Philadelphia: Westminster, 1986). 4  Robert R. Wilson, Prophecy and Society in Ancient Israel (Philadelphia: Fortress, 1980), 233. Jeremiah is an Ephraimite prophet shaped by Ephraimite editors at work on the Jeremiah traditions.



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The passage makes clear that, whatever its diverse roots (cf. Genesis 20), prophecy has its essential beginning in the figure of Moses. While other biblical traditions emphasize other roles for Moses (lawgiver, priest, judicial leader), prophet is Deuteronomy’s governing conception. Moses is the first prophet, the type against which others are measured. This passage also makes clear that Deuteronomy views prophecy in succession. There will be a lineage of prophets, though specifics in the process are not stipulated (total number, number per generation, means of selection, transfer across generations). What is clear is that prophecy has a beginning and a future. Deuteronomy says nothing, however, about the end of prophecy. This is probably not too surprising, for a number of reasons: (1) our author did not conceive of prophecy coming to an “end,” (2) reference to the “end” of prophecy is irrelevant in this narrower literary context, and (3) the “end” of prophecy lies beyond the author’s historical vantage point, in the fictive world of Moses on the plains of Moab. While (1) and (2) have a certain force, (3) is less convincing. Chapters 29–30 of Deuteronomy look far ahead into the future, beyond the occupation to the fall of the state and the collapse of the deuteronomistic ideal involving obedience to Torah. The result is exile and the loss of the Promised Land. But nothing is mentioned about the end of prophecy in this glimpse into the future. (1) and (2) may also here account for the silence regarding prophecy. In conclusion, no mention is made in Deuteronomy of an end to prophecy, though the end of the state – and therefore its institutions (priesthood, cult, king)  – is brought within the scope of Deuteronomy’s vision of the future. How did the Fall of Jerusalem affect Deuteronomy’s theory of a succession of prophets? The answer to this question, not explicitly given in Deuteronomy, may however be found at other points in the biblical record. We will return to this matter below. There is a third distinctive feature of prophecy set forth in Deuteronomy. It is not mentioned in the passage cited above, but it can be extrapolated from the broader literary environment in which Moses, the prophet, plays a role. Moses is, as prophet, an intercessor.5 He takes up this role for the reasons given in Deuteronomy 18: the people are frightened of the divine voice and the great fire (see Deut 5:22–31; Exod 19:16–20).6 God responds by setting up Moses to speak to him. Intercession, however, involves bi-directional communication. We see elsewhere Moses taking up the role of prophetic intercession on behalf of the people. In Deuteronomy’s conception, spokesman and 5  See the discussion of Wilson on Moses the prophet within Deuteronomic tradition in ibid., 156–66. 6  See the good discussion of Murray L. Newman, The People of the Covenant: A Study of Israel from Moses to the Monarchy (New York: Abingdon, 1962), 40–42, 46–51.

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intercessor are yoked functions; the prophet speaks for God to the people and for the people to God. A classic text in this regard is Exodus 32, in which Moses intercedes for the people in the affair of the golden calf and succeeds in winning divine favor (v. 14). Deuteronomy’s version of the story of the “molten image” is presented in ch. 9, with a lengthy peroration on the intercession of Moses, which involved fasting and forty-day prostration (vv. 13–21). Traversing broad stretches of the earlier Pentateuchal narrative, Deuteronomy recapitulates the chief episodes of Moses’s intercession by moving to the story of the people’s rebellion at Kadesh (Numbers 13–14). Deuteronomy presents the gist of this long narrative (Deut 9:22–29), in which the report of the spies is taken as an ill omen by all the people except Joshua and Caleb. In Numbers, Moses reminds God that his own reputation as mighty deliverer is in the balance; if he slays all the people, the report will go forth that he was unable to deliver Israel from Egypt (Num 14:11–16). Then the intercession proper is taken up by Moses: “And now, I pray thee, let the power of the Lord be great as thou hast promised, saying, ‘The Lord is slow to anger, and abounding in steadfast love, forgiving iniquity and transgression, but he will by no means clear the guilty, visiting the iniquity of fathers upon children, upon the third and upon the fourth generation. Pardon the iniquity of this people, I pray thee, according to the greatness of thy steadfast love, and according as thou hast forgiven this people, from Egypt until now.’” (vv. 17–19)

Moses’s intercession is successful, but only in a restricted sense. Immediate doom is averted, but God indicates that the entire generation (those above twenty) who saw the mighty deeds in Egypt will spend the remainder of their lives (forty years) in the wilderness (vv. 20–35).7 They will not enter the Promised Land. A new generation will emerge (those under twenty) who will take occupation of the land. The exceptions are the faithful Caleb and Joshua, who alone among the spies were willing to trust God’s word.8 With less detail, such is the gist of Deut 9:22–29. Moses lays prostrate for forty days and prays to God. He reminds God of the promises to the Patriarchs (a new motif ). But now it is the new generation that is being addressed, so the event is held up to them as an example from the past. Moses alone is left, but he too must die in the wilderness, with the allowance that he can view the promised land atop Mt. Pisgah. The verdict of God is not repeated at this point in the deuteronomistic summary. Rather, it is given earlier, in the opening recapitulation of Deuter7 

The summary of Deuteronomy is found at 2:14–15. I am especially indebted to the formulation of Dennis T. Olson in his stimulating work, The Death of the Old and the Birth of the New: The Framework of the Book of Numbers and the Pentateuch, BJS 71 (Chico, CA: Scholars Press, 1985). I will use his helpful expression (“death of an old generation, birth of a new”) at various points in this essay. 8 



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onomy (1:26–40). Here the verdict of God over the wilderness generation is given. In Deuteronomy there is no mention of Moses’s striking the rock, the ostensible reason for his exclusion given in the earlier Pentateuchal narrative (Num 20:10–13). Rather, he is excluded because of the sins of the people: “The Lord was angry with me also on your account, and said, ‘You shall not go in there.’” (1:37; see also 3:23–39)

It can be concluded that Deuteronomy saw Moses as the first of the prophets. Intercession was an integral part of his prophetic vocation. Moses was a successful intercessor only insofar as he averted Israel’s immediate punishment. An entire generation would die in the wilderness, including himself and Aaron. The only exceptions were the faithful spies Joshua and Caleb, who “wholly followed the Lord” (Deut 1:36).

II The twin notions of prophetic succession and prophetic intercession are also linked in the Jeremiah traditions. Notable in this regard is Jer 15:1: The Lord said to me, “Though Moses and Samuel stood before me, yet my heart would not turn toward this people.”

Here the language characteristic of Deuteronomy’s intercession motif appears (Deut 1:38; 5:23–31). The notion of prophetic succession is not underscored in explicit terms. At most it lies loosely behind the mention of Moses and Samuel. The reference to Samuel is itself intriguing. First Samuel 12, the farewell address of Samuel, offers a good glimpse of Samuel in the prophetic mode. As Martin Noth pointed out, the passage is a key one in the larger movement of the Deuteronomistic History. As he argued, the history is propelled forward by the speeches of seminal figures, including the prophets Moses, Joshua, and Samuel.9 So it is telling that much of this passage involves the prophet Samuel in an intercessory role (vv. 19–25). Particularly striking in this regard is v. 23: “Far be it from me that I should sin against the Lord by ceasing to pray for you.” For the shapers of the Samuel traditions at this juncture, prophetic intercession is viewed not merely as the prerogative but also the responsibility of the “prophet like Moses.” Samuel acknowledges this responsibility on a difficult occasion: the request for a king, badly motivated. Yet he is not free to refuse their request. Intercession is an inextricable part of the prophetic role. 9 Martin Noth. The Deuteronomistic History, JSOTSup 15 (Sheffield: JSOT Press, 1981), 5.

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But in Jeremiah, something goes awry. The prophet is forbidden to intercede (7:16; 11:14; 14:11; 15:1).10 “As for you, do not pray for this people, or lift up cry or prayer for them, and do not intercede with me, for I do not hear you.” (7:16)

It is worth noting that the several passages reflecting this same theme are fathered together in one restricted section of the book, and that they occupy roughly the same location as the laments of the prophet (chs. 11–20). The first lament (11:18–12:6) directly abuts the preceding command not to intercede. The significance of this juxtaposition will be pursued further below. The initial command not to intercede falls in a long passage whose primary context is a temple sermon (ch. 7). The reason for this theologically difficult command is therefore related to the broader context of the temple sermon and its condemnation of false worship and the false trust of an unjust and idolatrous people. Its placement is also significant in the broader movement of the book. In chs. 1–6 Jeremiah has preached abundantly on the theme of God’s approaching judgment through the foe from the north (4:5–8, 13–17; 6:1–8). This preaching has been a warning (2:1–3:5). Israel has been offered the chance to repent (3:12–14; 4:1–2), but Israel has ignored the warning. Chapter 6 therefore concludes: “Refused silver they are called, for the Lord has rejected them” (6:30). The period of warning is then closed off forever. A later chapter summarizes this temporal perspective succinctly: “For twenty-three years, from the thirteenth year of Josiah, the son of Amon, king of Judah, to this day, the word of the Lord has come to me, and I have spoken persistently to you, but you have not listened.” (25:3)11

Chapter 25 is of course specifically dated to the fourth year of Jehoiakim, while the temple sermon is undated (though the similar ch. 26 is dated at the beginning of the reign of Jehoiakim). These are details. The same general effect is registered in the first six chapters of the book. In the broader editorial perspective of the book, the period of warning was adequate if not prolonged. It is this fact that leads to the theologically difficult charge of 7:16. The prophet is finally forbidden to intercede. Passages at v. 16 and 11:14 also tie the 10  See the study of Luis Alonso Schökel, “Jeremias como anti-Moisés,” in De la Tôrah au Messie: Études d’exégèse et d’herméneutique bibliques offertes à Henri Cazelles pour ses 25 années d’enseignement à l’Institut Catholique de Paris, octobre 1979 (Paris: Desclée, 1981), 245–55. Schökel makes many good observations about the Moses/Jeremiah correspondences, especially regarding the return to Egypt and the vocabulary of intercession found in Deuteronomy and Jeremiah. 11  Attempts to adjust the call-date to Jeremiah’s birth-date, in their zeal for historical accuracy, run rough-shod over this important theological construal: Jeremiah preached warning to Judah for 23 full years, not just during the reign of Jehoiakim. See, for example, Holladay’s work (cited in n. 2 above).

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injunction against intercession to specific acts of idolatry on Israel’s part, so a number of factors may be at work in the command not to intercede. The concept of there being a limit to divine patience and a final terminus to the period of warning is also to be found in the wilderness narratives. God works numerous wonders. He responds to Moses as intercessor in the affair of the golden calf. He provides manna to a recalcitrant people not once but twice (Exodus 16 and Numbers 11). But in the circumstances of the spy narrative (Numbers 13–14), things have gone too far: Then the glory of the Lord appeared at the tent of meeting to all the people of Israel. And the Lord said to Moses, “How long will this people despise me? And how long will they not believe in me, in spite of all the signs which I have wrought among them. I will strike them with the pestilence and disinherit them, and I will make of you a nation greater and mightier than they.” (14:10–12)12

As noted about, Moses’s intercession at this time saves the wilderness generation from immediate extinction, but they are denied entry to the Promised Land. This motif is picked up and developed in the Book of Jeremiah. In early poetic sections of Jeremiah, the prophet makes explicit the links between the wilderness generation and the ensuing occupation generations (2:1–8). The new generation allowed to enter the Promised Land defiles the land and makes God’s heritage an abomination (v. 7). Like the old generation, they forget God’s graciousness (v. 6). But now, by comparison, the old generation can be depicted as devoted (vv. 2–3) and the new as idolatrous, forgetful, ungrateful. Such is the relative turn of events centuries removed from Moses and the new generation on the Plains of Moab. As a consequence, Jeremiah must refrain from intercession. This “prophet like Moses” cannot be like Moses in one important way. God forbids his responding to the people, not once but four times. The fourfold command not to intercede is matched by the fourfold lament of the prophet (11:18–12:6; 15:10–20; 18:18–23; 20:7–18).13 The lament of the prophet has the last word. The final lament is the strongest, and apparently the most unresolved of the group. Much critical work has been done on the laments, and it lies beyond the scope of this study to do more than make general observations based upon 12 

Jeremiah’s generation is often threatened with pestilence (deber) even when historical circumstances do not comply. In the triad sword, famine, and pestilence (24:10), the first two make sense, but there is no reference in this period to Judah/Jerusalem being felled by pestilence. 13  The specific number and location of the laments is a matter of debate. The specific number four is not so critical to this thesis as broader observations regarding the interweaving of lament and command not to intercede.

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our inquiry into the Mosaic prophet.14 What is clear is that an avenue of discourse is cut off for the prophet. He can no longer intercede on behalf of the people. This fact, and the restriction of the prophetic word of judgment (20:8), gives rise to persecution and challenge on the horizontal plane. The loss of the intercessory role, in its social dimension gives rise to the intercessions of the prophet as individual, on his own behalf. The result is lament of his personal fate, a form of prophetic discourse not developed in other preexilic prophetic collections to this same degree. We do not see extensive lament in the Moses traditions either, because the intercessory role is never withdrawn from the first prophet as it is with Jeremiah. These two dimensions, the personal and the social, must be kept distinct in theoretical terms if one is to understand the laments. This is particularly true of the last lament (20:7–18). Many question the integrity of the lament as a whole work, subdividing it and spotting secondary elaboration. They argue for a mitigating gloss (oddly positioned) at v. 13 and/or a new formal unit beginning with the curse of vv. 14–18.15 But the movement to response and resolution occurs before v. 13 at vv. 11–12; these verses are a positive response to the prophet and should be taken together with v. 13. Their burden is that the prophet will not be done in by challenge and persecution on the human plane: But the Lord is with me as a dread warrior; Therefore my persecutors will stumble, They will not overcome me. They will be greatly shamed, for they will not succeed. Their eternal dishonor will never be forgotten. (v. 11)

Following this statement of trust, the prophet commits the fate of his persecutors to God (v. 12) and then praises God “for he has delivered the life of the needy from the hand of evildoers” (v. 13). Verses 11–13 speak in a continuous fashion to the dilemma of the prophet vis-à-vis his persecutors. God responds to support his prophet in this crisis. The sharpest disjunction follows in vv. 14–18, where Jeremiah curses his birth-day, and therefore by extension, his prophetic vocation (see 1:5). Here the prophetic “I” comes to the fore, not in the context of horizontal challenge, but in the narrower context of God and prophet. Jeremiah can praise God for delivery from enemies and in the same breath curse his day/vocation. They 14  Norbert Ittmann, Die Konfessionen Jeremias: Ihre Bedeutung für die Verkündigung des Propheten, WMANT 54 (Neukirchen-Vluyn: Neukirchener Verlag, 1981); Timothy Polk, The Prophetic Persona: Jeremiah and the Language of Self, JSOTSup 32 (Sheffield: JSOT Press, 1984). 15  See the full discussion of critical moves in McKane, Jeremiah, 2:467–90.

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are two distinguishable concerns, especially in light of the command not to intercede. What we see is the prophetic office breaking down in the man Jeremiah. In a sense, it implodes because Jeremiah is forbidden to exercise his intercessory responsibility. Not only must he turn his back on the people, and face the persecution which will follow from this; but more to the point, the consequence of non-intercession will be the inability of the prophet to stay or modify the divine verdict, as had Moses in his day. The inevitable result will be doom and destruction, and Jeremiah must share this fate. The office of Mosaic prophet is breaking down for a divine purpose: that Israel might be judged, wholly and completely, and a new beginning set in motion. Between God and Jeremiah there is no rider of personal exemption. He must die in the wilderness like Moses before him. And in the logic of Deuteronomy, he is judged not for his own disobedience, but because of his generation – in the idiom of Deuteronomy “on your account” (Deut 1:17; 3:26). In the movement of the canonical book, the prophet has as yet been granted no clear view of the future from the top of Mt. Pisgah, but only a single glimpse beyond the judgment, involving a new day and a new generation (vv. 15–18). All he can be assured of at this juncture of the book is that his persecutors will not overwhelm him (20:7–13). They stand as profound testimony to the unique circumstances confronting this Mosaic prophet.16 Immediately following in ch. 21 a delegation is sent to ask for intercession from Jeremiah (vv. 1–2) and the prophet is not overwhelmed by them, as God had promised. Intercession remains forbidden for the prophet Jeremiah, as it will also later, in the days before the Fall (37:3). But the prophet is resolved in his task: God himself will smite the city (21:5–6). Jeremiah’s entire generation will be punished: those already exiled in 597, those yet to be exiled in 587, eventual survivors (v. 7), all. Jeremiah will survive ongoing personal assault (so 20:11–13) to see the vision of a new day and a new generation with far more clarity than had been vouchsafed earlier in this tradition block (3:15–18). The vision of a new generation is a prominent theme in the next major section of the book (chs. 21–36) and it is a consolation granted him which offsets the disintegration of the prophetic vocation (see 23:5–8; 24:4–7; 29:10–14; 30–31; 32:36–44; 33). This section resounds with themes of a good future, after a period of 70 years (29:10–14) and the emergence of a new generation: the restoring of fortunes (v. 14; 31:23; 32:44; 33:16), the new ruler (23:5), the new exodus (vv. 7–8), the new generation (29:10–14), the new heart (24:7), the new thing (31:22), and the new covenant (v. 31). But like Moses, Jeremiah will not personally enter 16 

See the comments of McKane (ibid., 2:490).

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the Promised Land of the future. Like Moses, he will see it from afar; to use the metaphor of Jeremiah, as though in a dream: Thereupon I awoke and looked, and my sleep was pleasant to me (v. 26).

In the end, Jeremiah will be taken back down into Egypt against his will (43:1–7). With this action the book signals that prophecy has come full circle. The succession of prophets following Moses comes to an end in Jeremiah, with the return to Egypt. With the loss of the state – king, priest, temple, vessels, population – comes also the end of prophecy, as conceived by Deuteronomy. In its last days, prophecy is wracked by conflict and internal dispute (see Jeremiah 27–29). Those who shaped the Book of Jeremiah saw him as the last Mosaic prophet. The laments testify to the unique anguish of a prophet who was forbidden to intercede that God might judge all Israel and begin anew.

III The final blocks of tradition in the Book of Jeremiah (chs. 21–36; 37–45; 46–52) reflect a logical working out of this thesis regarding the death of an old generation and the birth of a new. We have spoken of themes regarding the new generation above. Chapters 21–36 also demonstrate the degree to which prophecy is wracked internally, especially with the rise of false prophets in both Judah and Babylon (see chs. 27–29). Chapters 21–36 also serve the purpose of stressing that there are to be no refinements or modifications in the sentence of judgment over Jeremiah’s generation.17 The potential for this exists due to the exigencies of history – most notably in the two-stage destruction of the state (in 597 and 587 BCE). In 597 BCE a major section of the population is deported to Babylon, including King Jehoiachin and royal entourage, as well as Ezekiel. Is this group along the recipient of divine judgment? Has the divine judgment passed with the events of 597 and with the punishment of a portion of Jeremiah’s generation? The canonical book answers this question quickly and decisively, “No.” Chapter 21/24 early on register the verdict over the Judahite remnant which survived 597 deportations: they are bad figs (24:8–10) to be contrasted with the already-punished good figs of exile (vv. 4–7), from whom a new generation will ultimately emerge (29:10–14). The seventy-year term of punishment insures that an old generation will die and a wholly new one emerge, in a manner similar to the tally of the pentateuchal narratives (those over twenty 17  On this see Seitz, Theology in Conflict, 223–24; also, idem, “The Crisis of Interpretation Over the Meaning and Purpose of the Exile: A  Redactional Study of Jeremiah xxi–xliii,” VT 35 (1985): 78–97.

12. The Prophet Moses and the Canonical Shape of Jeremiah 241



doomed to forty-year wandering). Jeremiah states this in a less-numerical fashion in v. 6; addressing the exilic community he says: “Take wives and have sons and daughters; take wives for your sons and give your daughters in marriage, that they may bear sons and daughters.”

The seventy-year tally ensures that a completely new generation will emerge, in the same way that the period of forty-year wandering ensures that those over twenty will die in the wilderness. By contrast, the present shape of the book stresses the impending judgment over the generation who remained with Jeremiah in Judah. In this middle section (chs. 21–36), the peculiar interweaving of tradition dated to the reigns of Jehoiakim (chs. 22*, 25, 26, 35, 36) and Zedekiah (chs. 21, 24, 27–29, 32–34) serves the purpose of demonstrating that the pre-597 judgment proclamation of the prophet (found in chs. 1–20) has application without modification to pre- and post-597 communities. There are no sub-groups within Jeremiah’s generation to be given special treatment – at least until they are exiled. For only then can talk of a new generation begin. The land must be wholly evacuated before ta new beginning (a second exodus) can ensue. In the final chapter of this section (ch. 36), the story is told of the burning of a scroll and its reconstitution by the prophet and Baruch. It is fair to say that this chapter has received greater critical scrutiny than any other in Jeremiah on the grounds that it gives concrete clues as to the growth and present arrangement of the canonical Jeremiah.18 Together with 2 Kings 22–24, with which it shares many formal features and beguiling details, it is among the most analyzed of all OT passages.19 What is the point of the passage viewed in the context of Jeremiah as Mosaic prophet? In very general terms, the chapter tells of the victory of the Word of God. The king can kill prophets who speak God’s word (see 26:23); he can debar God’s spokesman from the temple (36:5); he can callously burn God’s word in a brazier until the entire thing is consumed (v. 23). But the prophet lives to speak the word anew, and the scroll is recomposed (v. 32). And more to the point: the new scroll will outlive the divine spokesman and the evil generation headed by Jehoiakim. In the end, God’s word cannot be thwarted. This is the burden of the chapter.20 18 

There is an entire school of interpretation that searches for the “Urrolle” of Jeremiah based upon the information given in ch. 36. See among many other, William Lee Holladay, “The Identification of the Two Scrolls of Jeremiah,” VT 30 (1980): 452–67. 19 Charles D. Isbell, “2 Kings 22:3–23:24 and Jeremiah 36: A  Stylistic Comparison,” JSOT 8 (1978): 33–45. 20  Martin Kessler, “Form-Critical Suggestions on Jeremiah 36,” CBQ 28 (1966): 389– 401.

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The Book of Deuteronomy reports a similar set of circumstances for Moses and the wilderness generation (Deut 9:9 ff.). Tables of the covenant, written with the finger of God (cf. mouth of Jeremiah, Jer 36:17–18), express God’s will for the wilderness generation. They are not burned in a brazier, but broken by a Moses reacting to the idolatry of the people (Deut 9:17). But this is not the end of the story, any more than Jehoiakim’s burning permanently extinguishes the Word of God. God commands Moses: “Hew two tables of stone like the first, and come up to me on the mountain, and make an ark of wood. And I will write on the tables the words that were on the first tables which you broke, and you shall put them in the ark.” (10:1–2)21

The ark will continue on beyond the wilderness into the Promised Land. The Word of God on the tables of stone will not remain permanently broken nor die with a generation in the wilderness. Neither will the Word of God spoken through the Mosaic prophet Jeremiah perish in a royal brazier or with an idolatrous generation sentenced to judgment. It will survive to speak a new word in a new day. In the final section of the book (chs. 37–45) prior to the Oracles Against Nations (chs. 46–51), the Word of God is not extinguished in the prophet. It does, however, begin to take on a certain independence vis-à-vis Jeremiah.22 The prophet Jeremiah fades in and out of view – a state of affairs prepared for by the events of ch. 36. We watch as the verdict of judgment is carried out and the last of Jeremiah’s generation go forth from the land. In the final chapters after the Fall of the city and the “tearing down” for which the prophet was commissioned (1:10), it appears briefly as though the time of “building up” has begun – not with the exiles and a new generation, but with the remnant of Judah under Gedaliah’s leadership (ch. 40).23 It is noteworthy that in these circumstances the people come to Jeremiah with a request for intercession: 21  The similarity between language here (Deut 10:1–2) and Jeremiah (36:28) cannot be accidental. Deut 10:1–2: pesāl-lekā šenê-lûhōt ʾ abānîm kāriʾšōnîm … w eʾektōb ʿal-halluḥōt ʾet-haddebārîm ʾ ašer hāyû ʿal-halluḥôt hāriʾšōmm ʾ ašer šibbartā. Jeremiah 36:28: šûb qaḥlekā megillāh ʾaḥere ûketōb ʿālêhā ʾēt kol-haddebārîm hāri’sōnîm ʾ ašer hāyû ʿal-hamegillāh hāri’sōnāh ʾ ašer śārap yehôyāqîm. The different agent of destruction (Moses; Jehoiakim) is explained by the details which are distinctive to each story. In both cases, the problem is ultimately the same: idolatry of people in wilderness; idolatry of Jehoiakim and his generation. Moreover, unlike Moses, Jeremiah cannot come into the presence of the king for fear of his life. This fact, and the personal burning of the scroll by a Jehoiakim capable of murdering prophets, heightens the enormity of the deed of destruction when compared with that of Moses’s generation. No wonder intercession is withheld in Jeremiah’s day. 22  See the remarks of Carroll on the expression at 37:2: beyad Yirmeyāhû (Jeremiah, 669). Also Peter R. Ackroyd, “Historians and Prophets,” SEA 33 (1968), 52. 23 Seitz, The Crisis of Interpretation, 92–95; idem, Theology in Conflict, 273–75.

12. The Prophet Moses and the Canonical Shape of Jeremiah 243



“Let our supplication come before you, and pray to the Lord your God for us, for all this remnant (for we are left but a few of many, as your eyes see).” (42:2)

In the tradition of Moses and Samuel before him, the prophet responds favorably: “I have heard you; behold, I will pray to the Lord your God according to your request, and whatever the Lord answers you I will tell you.” (v. 4)

Presumably, intercession is again possible because the tearing down called for in ch. 1 is well underway. But the Word of God there involved building and planting as well as plucking up and breaking down. The question is therefore raised whether a new generation can emerge at this time, under these circumstances – particularly in view of the vision of restoration in chs. 21–36 focused specifically on the exiles in Babylon.24 The answer is positive from the divine perspective (42:10). But the people reject this response and bring upon themselves the sword, famine, and pestilence (43:17) promised back in 24:10. Reversing the first prophet’s ascent out of Egypt, Jeremiah is taken back down into Egypt (43:1–7) against his will and in disobedience to the command of Deut 18:16: “… for the Lord has said to you, ‘You shall not return that way again.’”25 With this action the curses of Deuteronomy are invoked and prophecy is brought to an end. It appears as though the whole generation, without exception, will perish as the plucking up and breaking down continue. In Moses’s day, Joshua and Caleb, who had remained obedient to the Lord, alone were allowed to enter the Promised Land. They were exempted from the judgment of God over a disobedient generation. Through them, the planting of Israel – to use the idiom of Jer 1:10 – in the Promised Land was to be accomplished. The responsibility of Joshua was to be a new Moses for a new generation. He was to go with the ark and the tables of God, in order that the Word of God might guide a new generation of faith. Two examples of obedience are also presented in this section of the Book of Jeremiah. The first is an Ethiopian officer who rescues Jeremiah from the pit (38:7–13). After the fall of the city, Jeremiah delivers this oracle to EbedMelech: “Thus says the Lord of hosts, the God of Israel: Behold, I will fulfill my words against this city for evil and not for good, and they shall be accomplished before you on that day. But I will deliver you on that day, says the Lord, and you shall not be given into the hand of the men of whom you are afraid. For I will surely save you, and you shall not 24 

There are exiles of a different order within the remnant of Judah (40:11–12). See Schökel, “Jeremias como anti-Moisés,” 245–50. On the people’s demand to return to Egypt in the wilderness period, see George W. Coats, Rebellion in the Wilderness: The Murmuring Motif in the Wilderness Traditions of the Old Testament (Nashville: Abingdon, 1968), 146. 25 

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fall by the sword; but you shall have your life as a prize of war, because you have put your trust in me, says the Lord.”

Though the concrete fate of Ebed-Melech is left rather vague, it is clear that his obedience, like that of Caleb and Joshua before him, has earned him special treatment within the generation doomed for judgment.26 The sword that will consume others whatever they go (21:7) will not consume Ebed-Melech; while the generation doomed for judgment will be given into the “hand of those who seek their life” (v. 7), this faithful servant will “not be given into the hand of the men of whom you are afraid” (39:17). The contrast could not be clearer.27 In very similar language, a final oracle is delivered to Baruch (45:1–5), the scribal figure who committed the prophet’s words to writing in ch. 36. As a matter of fact, the oracle is dated to that circumstance (“when he wrote these words in a book at the dictation of Jeremiah, in the fourth year of Jehoiakim”) even though such dating is peculiar at this juncture in the book. What is the purpose of the reference to the scroll here? The answer lies in the context of ch. 36. Chapter 36 was concerned throughout to indicate the location of the scroll after it was first composed and its relationship to Baruch. Baruch reads it “in the house of the Lord, in the chamber of Gemariah the son of Shaphan the secretary, which was in the upper court, at the entry of the New Gate of the Lord’s house” (v. 10). Baruch then reads it again to assembled officials and scribes (v. 15) in “the secretary’s chamber” (v. 12). The officials, when they hear the words of Jeremiah on the scroll, tell Baruch to hide together with Jeremiah (v. 19). The scroll is put into the “chamber of Elishama the secretary” (v. 20), before they reported its contents to the king. The king sends for it and burns it (vv. 21–26). In sum, much attention is given to the whereabouts of the scroll; it is finally burned by a king who must have it brought to him.28 About the fate of the newly constituted scroll we hear nothing, because the chapter comes to an abrupt close (v. 32). Without working at the level of his26  Those who regard the expression “have your life as a prize of war” as a scant if not punitive reward, here and at other junctures (45:5; 21:9), fail to appreciate the real contrast set up between utter desolation and survival (e. g., Carroll, Jeremiah, 745). 27  Wilhelm Rudolph points out the significance of the literary location of the oracle (39:15–18), which is said (v. 15) to have been delivered at an earlier time when Jeremiah was in the court of the guard (38:13): it is placed not at the point of delivery, but at the point of fulfillment, after the fall of the city when the Babylonian officials are administering the affairs of the community, taking prisoners, and setting up a provincial government (Jeremia [Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 1947], 212–13). The same displacement occurs in ch. 45, and a similar explanation may be helpful there. More on this in the following section. 28  See Georg Fohrer, “Prophetie and Magie,” ZAW 78 (1966): 25–47; Martin Kessler, “The Significance of Jer 36,” ZAW 81 (1969): 381–83.



12. The Prophet Moses and the Canonical Shape of Jeremiah 245

torical inquiry, it seems clear that the chapter intends for us to take the scroll seriously as the word of God, recalled by the prophet, and publicly proclaimed by the assistant Baruch. In chs. 37–45 we hear nothing more of the whereabouts of this scroll. Reference in ch. 45 to the episode of ch. 36 is therefore striking. It reminds us of the close relationship between Jeremiah and Baruch underscored in ch. 36, and of the instrumental role played by Baruch – not just as scribal assistant, but also as proclaimer of the prophetic word from Jeremiah. What is also striking is the specific language used in the oracle spoken by Jeremiah. Note that Jeremiah speaks divine language to Baruch which was first addressed by God to him: “Behold, what I have built I am breaking down, and what I have planted I am plucking up” (cf. 1:10). More striking, Baruch is quoted as having spoken language very reminiscent of Jeremiah’s laments: “Woe is me! for the Lord has added sorrow to my pain; I am weary with groaning and I find no rest” (cf. 15:17–18).29 Baruch is rebuked by God through Jeremiah in the same way Jeremiah was rebuked by God directly (vv. 19–21). Yet the final words are the same words spoken to the faithful Ebed-Melech: “But I will give you your life as a prize of war in all the places to which you may go.” The conclusion to be reached on the basis of these observations is that Ebed-Melech and Baruch are types modeled on Caleb and Joshua in the canonical movement of the Book of Jeremiah. All four figures are contrasted with the generations of which they were a part. Caleb and Joshua are exempted from the punishment in part to provide leadership in the Promised Land and to maintain continuity between the Word of God delivered at Sinai and the Word destined to a new life with a new generation of faith. Chapter 45 serves to commission Baruch as Jeremiah fades from view. Already in ch. 36, Baruch was forced to pick up where the prophet left off because he was debarred from public address. The scribe who speaks the word of a prophet and spokesman of God – this is the function of Baruch set forth in ch. 36. Chapter 45 brings this picture of Baruch to the fore at the conclusion of narratives depicting the final days of the prophet Jeremiah and the community in Egypt.30 29  See J. Philip Hyatt, Jeremiah: Prophet of Courage and Hope (New York: Abingdon, 1958), 1101–2. Hyatt remarks: “It comprises a ‘confession of Baruch’ similar to the confessions of Jeremiah.” 30  Kessler remarks, “… the placing of a šālôm oracle at the conclusion of the book would seem quite fitting. Having done so the traditionist seems to suggest by this that Baruch became the next link in the Jeremiah-tradition, the more so because he has allowed the prophet himself to disappear from the scene” (“Jeremiah 26–45 Reconsidered,” JNES 27 [1968], 86). Kessler’s hunch is validated by our thesis regarding the broader correspondence between Baruch and Joshua. More will be said about Kessler’s understanding of ch. 45 below. He is certainly correct to stress the role of “traditionists” at work on the Jeremiah material, rather

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In ch. 45 we see a foreshadowing of the movement of prophecy into a new mode, as clarified in a later rabbinic dictum: “Since the day when the Temple was destroyed, prophecy has been taken from the prophets and given to the wise” (B. Bat. 12a).31 With the descent of prophecy back into Egypt, the line of Mosaic prophets is brought full circle. But just as Joshua brought new tables of the tôrāh to a new generation in a new day, so too the scribe Baruch symbolizes the survival of a new scroll from the prophet Jeremiah which will address a new generation of faith “in all the places to which (it) may go” (v. 5).

IV In order to stress the significance of Ebed-Melech and Baruch as obedient figures on analogy with Caleb and Joshua, we have moved quickly over several important exegetical problems in ch. 45. These problems are internal to ch. 45 and involve several distinct options for interpretation, about which there is considerable critical debate. But there is another significant dimension to the problems confronting the there is another significant dimension to the problems confronting the reader in ch. 45. With the descent into Egypt accomplished in chs. 43–44, it would appear that prophecy has come to an end and the tearing down of God has been accomplished. The building up of a new generation has been spoken of elsewhere (chs. 21–36) as part of Jeremiah’s vision of the future. But what, then, is to be made of chs. 46–52? Certainly they represent the fulfillment of the charge of God in 1:10 that Jeremiah be commissioned to preach judgment over not just Judah, but “over nations and kingdoms” (1:10) in the wider sense (v. 5). But virtually without exception, modern interpreters prefer the arrangement of the LXX in which the oracles against the nations (OAN) are located in the context of ch. 25. Robert P. Carroll speaks of the OAN as Part Two of a four-part work.32 In the LXX, the Book of Jeremiah comes to a close in ch. 45, with this close oracle to Baruch. In view of our concern to understand the impact of the prophet Moses on the final canonical structure of the Book of Jeremiah, which collection (MT or LXX) is to have priority? Which canonical structure is to be preferred: one which ends with ch. 45 and the oracle to Baruch (admittedly poignant, and than seeing a major role for either Jeremiah or Baruch in the actual composition of the book (see idem, “Form-Critical Suggestions,” 389n3). 31  I am grateful to Prof. Ellen Davis for this citation. She develops the notion of prophecy in a new mode in her dissertation of Ezekiel (Yale, 1987). 32  Though he treats them in the last section of his commentary (Carroll, “Part Two: 46:1–51:64,” in Jeremiah, 751–874).



12. The Prophet Moses and the Canonical Shape of Jeremiah 247

consistent with the interpretation given above in which the prophetic mantle is passed on to the scribe); or one which continues on into the OAN? The answer to this question lies in the correct reading of ch. 45. The main problem with ch. 45 is its odd location in the book. It is dated to the fourth year of Jehoiakim and tied to the circumstances reported in ch. 36: the writing down of Jeremiah’s words by Baruch (45:1). Many therefore wish to re-locate it following that chapter, or at least interpret it within that context.33 The woe of the prophet (v. 3) would refer to the experience of transcribing predominantly judgment oracles.34 Others strike the date and the reference to dictation, or interpret this information as redactionally imposed.35 The reference to pain is then interpreted as relevant to the circumstances of ch. 44.36 The difficulty with the first position lies in explaining the motivation for ch. 45’s present location and especially the reference to “these words” in the superscription. In this location, the expression would appear to work in conjunction with the surrounding literary context; this would oblige us to interpret “these words” not as the words dictated in 605, but as the preceding chapter(s).37 A nuanced version of the approach views ch. 45 as an oracle personally delivered to Baruch in 605, but placed here by the same Baruch as a testimony to God’s support of him over against the disobedient remnant in Egypt. This theory assumes that the historical Baruch took an active role in the composition of the Book of Jeremiah, including the preceding chapters. Here, then, is Baruch’s signature.38 It also assumes that ch. 45 is the end of the Jeremiah collection, and is thus a vote in favor of the LXX arrangement.39 33 John Bright relocates (Jeremiah: A  New Translation with Introduction and Commentary, AB 21, 2nd ed. [New York: Doubleday, 1986], 184–86). Because of his commitment to re-arrange the chapters according to his view of their approximate historical unfolding, Bright is disinterested in the final literary shape of the book. Presumably, the present arrangement is accidental. 34  Rudolph puts it this way, “je länger er nach Jer’s Diktat an den Unheilsweissagungen schrieb, um so unheimlicher wurde ihm” (Jeremia, 227). 35  Bernhard Duhm, Das Buch Jeremia, KHC 11 (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 1901), 334; D. Friedrich Giesebrecht, Das Buch Jeremia: Übersetzt und erklärt, HKAT 3/2 (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1894), 226; Thiel, Die deuteronomistische Redaktion, 84; Hyatt, Jeremia, 1102. 36 Duhm, Jeremia, 335. 37  Or: the words of a fuller Baruchschrift begun in 605 but encompassing the preceding chapters: Artur Weiser, “Das Gotteswort für Baruch Jer. 45 und die sogenannte Baruch­ biographie Aus: Festschrift für Karl Heim ‘Theologie also Glaubenswagnis,’” in Glaube und Geschichte im Alten Testament und andere ausgewählte Schriften (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1961), 326–29. 38  Ibid., 329. 39  Weiser open his remarks with a reference to the LXX, “die wahrscheinlich die ältere literarische Anordnung des Jeremiabuches bewahrt hat” (ibid., 321n1).

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The problem with Weiser’s proposal (and others like it) is that it depends too heavily upon psychological factors and theories regarding Baruch’s role in the composition of the book, of which we know very little.40 Conversely, those who reject the date and circumstance of v. 1 are forced to arbitrarily repair the text so that it fits better in its present literary environment. Repair work must extend to v. 4 and the reference to future breaking down and past building.41 This is done so that the situation of woe (v. 3) might be understood in the context of ch. 44. Psychological factors may enter in to this line of approach as well.42 It also remains unclear why a redactor would have added a date and circumstance to the passage in v. 1 that so complicates its present location and interpretation.43 The blame is simply shifted to another hand, but the problem remains. Finally, there are those who simply assume that ch. 45 was moved to this location, difficult date and all, in order to assure the reader that Baruch was to be exempted from the punishment directed to the community in Egypt.44 In the end, all solutions have to deal with the tension between the concrete date and circumstance implied in v. 1 and the present location of the chapter at a later period in time. Internal (psychological) and external (redactional) attempts at solving the problem must but the Gordian knot represented by v. 1. The answer to the problem is to be sought from a different angle. The reference to breaking down and plucking up in v. 4 clearly picks up the imagery of 1:10. What is curious is the older: building and planting lie in the past while the tearing down is about to take place. Moreover, there is a twin reference in vv. 4–5 to the scope of the tearing down: it involves the “whole land” and “all flesh.” These references are critical for interpreting the passage. Tearing down has already occurred in Judah, with the Fall of Jerusalem and deportations of 597 and 587. The disobedient community in Egypt stands under God’s fiercest judgment. 40 See

Gunther Wanke, Untersuchungen zur Sogenannten Baruchschrift, BZAW 122 (Berlin: de Gruyter, 1971). 41 Thiel remarks: “Der v. 4 eröffnende Prophetenbefehl ist ein irrigr Zusatz” (Die deuteronomistische Redaktion, 85) which he attributes to a later redaction than D. See also the objections of Weiser to Duhm (Weiser, Glaube und Geschichte, 322). 42  Wilhelm Erbt argued that there were the final words of the prophet to his companion and scribe before he sent Baruch off to exile in Babylon to serve as his witness there (Jeremia und seine Zeit: Die Geschichte der letzten fünfzig Jahre des vorexilischen Juda [Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1902], 83–86). 43  Both Thiel and Duhm are exposed on this flank. 44  So Otto Eissfeldt, The Old Testament: An Introduction, Including the Apocrypha and Pseudepigrapha, and also the Works of Similar Type from Qumran: The History of the Formation of the Old Testament, trans. Peter R. Ackroyd (New York: Harper & Row, 1976), 399. This would be a redactional move, not one attributed to Baruch (cf., Weiser, Glaube und Geschichte).



12. The Prophet Moses and the Canonical Shape of Jeremiah 249

Critics since Bernard Duhm have noted the singular phrase in the opening chapter, where Jeremiah is commissioned to be “prophet to the nations” (1:10).45 Not just to Judah is Jeremiah sent – in the womb, the initial appointment is to be “prophet to the nations.” So too in v. 10: See, I have set you this day over nations and kingdoms, to pluck up and to break down, to destroy and to overthrow, to build and to plant.

It is viewed from this context that the language of 45:4–5 is so striking.46 The reference to the whole land (kol hāʾāreṣ) and all flesh (kol bāśār) signal that prophecies of judgment – breaking down and plucking up – regarding the kingdoms beyond Judah are about to follow.47 In the MT, the first oracle against the nations is directed to Egypt (ch. 45), which represents a logical movement from 43:8–44:30 and the community in Egypt.48 The question is however raised: must Baruch endure yet another round of tearing down? The answer given settles this: “I will give you your life as a prize of war in all the places to which you may god.” A special dispensation is given for Baruch in the tearing down yet to be accomplished. With this reading we have a very clear reference for the phrase “these words” in 45:1. This redactionally composed and placed chapter links the “these words” of v. 1 with the OAN which follow. With Thiel and others, we assume that the OAN had their own discrete tradition-history and developed independently of the main Jeremiah tradition. This development took place with reference to the OAN collections in Isaiah and Ezekiel. We assume that the OAN material was only brought secondarily into coordination with the main block of stabilizing Jeremiah tradition. At this juncture, ch. 45 was added to link the OAN to the main corpus, and ch. 1 was placed at the front of the 45 Duhm, Jeremia, 6. Of moderns, see the remarks of Carroll (Jeremiah, 95–97) and McKane (Jeremiah, 2:6–14). 46  Even Carroll, an advocate for the LXX arrangement, concedes of the MT that “the beginning and the ending of the tradition are direct statements about the nations (1:5, 10; 51:59–64)” (Jeremiah, 96). He continues: “This symmetry is spoiled to some extend by the additions of 1.1–3; 52 and because it is lacking in G, but it remains a significant feature of the second edition and should be read as an important perspective on the tradition” (emphasis mine). 47  The first is not given in the LXX and is usually treated as an MT gloss. Thiel eliminates “all flesh” as well. In a project like Thiel’s, then, we must conceive of text-critical glosses alongside several levels of Deuteronomistic editing. But if the entire chapter glosses alongside several levels of deuteronomistic editing. But if the entire chapter is redactional, as we are proposing, there is no need for such refined analysis. The phrases are editorially supplied, as is the entire oracle to Baruch, in order to achieve a reading effect in the tradition at this juncture in the Book of Jeremiah (MT). 48  Compare the confusing LXX order: Elam, Egypt, Babylon, Philistia, Edom, Ammon, Kedar, Damascus, Moab. This order is also not followed in the cup-of-wrath periscope in ch. 25 (vv. 17–26) where advocates of the LXX prefer to locate the OAN.

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collection in order to introduce Jeremiah as “prophet to the nations.” In other words, the question has been in part: where were the OAN added – in the middle or at the end of the collect? Talk of an “original” position is misleading in a book which has passed through many complex tradition building phases, one of the last of which was the addition of the OAN. In this reading, the primary purpose of ch. 45 was to link the OAN with the preceding material. This was accomplished first of all by literary juxtapositioning. Egypt is the final location of prophetic activity in chs. 43–44; the first country listed in the OAN in Egypt (ch. 45).49 But in order to claim a Jeremiah origin for the tradition, faithful to the conception of Jeremiah as “prophet to the nations” (1:5, 10), it was necessary to make reference to ch. 36. Working at this redactional stage, those who welded the OAN to the primary tradition recognized that the fundamental account of the origins of the Jeremiah tradition existed in ch. 36. Chapter 36 reports the movement of oral tradition into a written format, as the prophet recalls all the words God had spoken to him and dictates them to Baruch. These words consisted primarily of oracles against Judah, as a cursory reading of the present canonical book confirms. But v. 2 also specifically mentions Jeremiah’s words against the nations: “Take a scroll and write on it all the words that I have spoken to you against Israel and Judah and all the nations, from the day I spoke to you, from the days of Josiah until today.” (v. 2)

The reference to the nations is striking. Here is the critical link between the OAN and 45:1, on the one hand, and the foundational account of the growth of Jeremiah tradition on the other. Verse 1 reads: The word that Jeremiah the prophet spoke to Baruch the son of Neriah, when he wrote all these words in a book at the dictation of Jeremiah, in the fourth year of Jehoiakim.

From the standpoint of the authors of ch. 45, it was important to tie the OAN to the larger book by making reference to the famous episode of dictation recorded in ch. 36.50 By moving in this direction, however, an unusual date and 49 

LXX preserves a different arrangement. opening verse at 45:1 does not function in a pure sense as a “superscription” to the following OAN. If this was the only purpose of the verse, one would have expected a more direct redactional citation (e. g., “these are the words which Jeremiah dictated to Baruch in the fourth year of Jehoiakim”). Verses 2–5 would then have been intrusive and indeed distracting. Rather, ch. 45 functions as a type of midrash on ch. 36: the phraseology of 45:1 (“when he wrote these words in a book at the dictation of Jeremiah”) directs us back to the text of ch. 36 where the reference to the oracles against the nations is directly made (“Take a scroll and write on it all the words which I spoke to you against Israel and Judah and all the nations”). This phrase in ch. 36 acts as a bridge linking the episode of ch. 36 to the literary collection of OAN in chs. 46 ff. Chapter 45 also develops the theme of Baruch’s exclusion from the new stage of tearing down (vv. 2–5). 50  The



12. The Prophet Moses and the Canonical Shape of Jeremiah 251

circumstance were introduced at this juncture of the book, with the prophet and community in Egypt years removed from the 605 dictation. The tension in ch. 45 is between diachronic (when did the OAN originate?) and synchronic (where are oracles against Egypt and other nations to be placed in the present book?) considerations in the redaction of the present book. On this proposal, the tension between present literary location (between ch. 44 and the OAN) and date (when Jeremiah dictated to Baruch all God had spoken to him against the nations) is not so much resolved as clarified. The second purpose of the chapter has been noted above: the mantle is passed from Jeremiah to Baruch. Baruch is exempted from the tearing down already taking place in Egypt (ch. 44) and about to intensify (ch. 46). Jeremiah is by now an old man  – a fact which could be argued on purely historical grounds. But on canonical grounds, the matter is beyond debate. The superscription of the opening chapter (1:1–3) traces Jeremiah’s call back to the year 627 and its completion to the year 587, thus making his career a neat 40 years. Just as Moses was to wander 40 years and die with the wilderness generation, so too Jeremiah’s 40-year career brings him to old age and the birth of a new generation. Baruch symbolizes this generation – though in a very distinct way, since he does not enter into a Promised Land. He is given his life as a prize of war wherever he goes, but his ultimate fate remains a mystery.51 Hopes rest with a future generation which will emerge in a later day, seventy-years hence, as seen by Jeremiah from afar, as though in a dream (31:26). The OAN represent, however, in the view of the final redactors, the prophecies of a man in full vigor, dictated to Baruch in the fourth year of King Jehoiakim. They were an integral part of the preaching of the “prophet to the nations.”

V This view of the purpose of ch. 45 can be further substantiated by looking at the larger structure of the Book of Jeremiah. Thiel has raised the question as to how ch. 45 could have closed the LXX collection (he views as original, prior to MT) if so necessary a connection existed between “these words” and the following OAN – a proposal he grants is a “sehr verlockende Möglichkeit” (85).52 The problem is his devotion to the “originality” of the LXX. An alterna51  The image cannot be pressed for historical data, nor does it operate on strict analogy with Joshua, except in one important way: Baruch is exempted from the punishment over the disobedient generation. 52  Suggested by Arnold B. Ehrlich (Randglossen zur Hebräischen Bibel: Texkritisches, Sprachliches und Sachliches, 4 vols [Leipzig: Hinrichs, 1912], 4:352) without detailed explanation.

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tive explanation is set forth about: the MT arrangement represents the initial effort at bringing the OAN within the orbit of Jeremiah traditions. It is impossible to recover what the LXX understood by the connection established at ch. 45. It looks as though they served it in order to bring the Book of Jeremiah into rough conformity with the other major prophetic books, where the OAN are located in central sections (Isaiah 13–23; Ezekiel 25–32). The pattern often argued for in support for the LXX arrangement of the OAN in Jeremiah is: Oracles Against Israel/Judah; Oracles Against Nations; Oracles of Salvation.53 But the pattern never functioned well in Jeremiah (LXX), by any reckoning.54 In Jeremiah (LXX), oracles of salvation do not follow OAN in any sustained fashion (cf. Isaiah 40–55; Ezekiel 33–48). And what would the purpose be of bringing judgment upon Babylon (and the nations) in the central section of the book, before the tearing down in Judah is accomplished? The cup-of-wrath passage, by itself (25:15–26 MT), does not overtake the future in any radical fashion, since a clear timetable of judgment is set forth in vv. 8–14. But the lengthy intrusion at this point of OAN (oddly enumerated in LXX) would produce an unwanted effect. The canonical movement of the book emphasizes Judah’s gradual deterioration and eventual punishment at the hands of Babylon and the nations. This conception can be spotted within the Deuteronomistic History as well: And the LORD sent against (Jehoiakim) bands of Chaldeans, and bands of Syrians, and bands of Moabites, and bands of Ammonites, and sent them against Judah to destroy it, according to the word of the LORD which he spoke through his servants the prophets. (2 Kgs 24:2)

Jeremiah was the culmination of the prophets referred to in this conception. As ch. 45 (MT) makes clear, the period of tearing down for the nations is to follow Judah’s destruction. Before this time the nations are to remain planted (v. 4) in order to effect Judah’s destruction (25:8–9). As MT rightly understands (25:12–14, 26), Babylon is to come at the end of the collection (50:1–51:58), not in third position as LXX maintains. In sum, it is far easier to argue for disturbance in a sensible MT canonical shape than the reverse. The pattern of judgment set forth in both chs. 25 and 45 is consistent with 53  The

view of Otto Kaiser is representative: “The Septuagint accordingly attests the original structure of a three-element eschatological pattern, in which oracles of disaster against the author’s own nation are followed by oracles of disaster against foreign nations and by prophecies of salvation” (Introduction to the Old Testament: A  Presentation of Its Results and Problems, trans. John Sturdy [Oxford: Blackwell, 1975], 239). 54  The same could be said of Isaiah. As the rabbis noted in a different context, a pattern like this works only slightly with Ezekiel (see Moshe Greenberg, Ezekiel 1–20: A New Translation with Introduction and Commentary, AB 22 [Garden City, NY: Doubleday, 1983], 3), with a bipartite division into dooms and consolations.



12. The Prophet Moses and the Canonical Shape of Jeremiah 253

the larger movement of the MT. If LXX simply adjusted the MT on analogy with Isaiah and Ezekiel, sensible internal movements within the MT may have been of secondary importance. If we area correct in these conclusions, another explanation for the alleged gloss at 45:5 (“that is, the whole land”) is forthcoming: this original (MT) phrase was removed by LXX editors when the OAN were re-located within ch. 25, in order to loosen the connection between ch. 45 and the OAN.55 In conclusion earlier than the re-arrangement of the LXX.56 When this line of approach is adopted, other important literary features can be identified in this final section of the book (chs. 45–52). Chapter 45 links 46–49 with the primary Jeremiah tradition on the front end in the same manner that 51:59–64 ties the oracle against Babylon (50:1–51:58) to the person of Jeremiah on the rear end. Gunther Wanke has pointed out the structural similarities between the passages (45 + 51:59–64) in a convincing fashion.57 In 51:60 we are told that a special book is composed by Jeremiah himself for oracles against Babylon, in the fourth year of Zedekiah. Just as in ch. 45, the proclamation is kept firmly within the lifetime of the prophet Jeremiah, dated at a later period. The book is entrusted not to Baruch, but to his brother, Seraih ben Neriah (51:59). As Baruch went to Egypt with the oracles from the first scroll, so his brother goes north to Babylon with a special scroll. Babylon clearly occupies the most important position in God’s plan of judgment against Judah. In fulfillment of 25:13, Seraiah first utters a judgment oracle (51:62), and then reads from the book prepared by Jeremiah. It is then cast in the Euphrates (v. 64), to seal the deed. In this way, the oracle against Babylon is personally executed. With this final enactment of the tearing down of the last nation, Jeremiah’s work is concluded. The rubric is then introduced: “Thus far the words of Jeremiah” (v. 64). It is to be noted that the MT movement – beginning in Egypt and culminating in Babylon – is differently represented in the LXX. Babylon is the third 55  This is pure speculation. Also, why the internal order in the LXX has been disturbed is not clear. The answer may lie in a comparison with other OAN collections. 56  Text-critical arguments that favor Greek readings over Hebrew – on the basis of theories regarding 4QJerb or strictly on internal grounds – may prove of enormous help in the translation undertaking (at a micro level). But they overstep their limits when they reach dogmatic conclusions, on text-critical grounds, about the “original” scope and arrangement of the Book of Jeremiah (at the macro level). It is impossible to penetrate to the period of the text history of the LXX Vorlage where one has access to Jeremiah in its full textual scope and organization. Appeals to Qumran for the purpose of determining the placement of the OAN will only be fruitful when we have the OAN themselves, in their literary environment – and not just a handful of verses – for comparison with MT. Until such discoveries are made, text-critical work on Jeremiah should wrestle with the many difficult translation problems, and not with questions regarding the larger shape of the book. 57 Wanke, Untersuchungen zur Sogenannten Baruchschrift, 133–43.

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nation listed in the OAN, and the oracle to Seraiah falls in the middle of the collection. LXX preserves none of the sense of logical movement and culmination set forth in the MT. Using text-critical logic, one interpreter has called the LXX organization lectio-difficilior and sought thereby to ground the LXX as the prior collection.58 But this is a confusion of categories (text-critical) redaction-critical. The redaction history of the Book of Jeremiah is too multilayered to argue for lectio-difficilior at the level of larger structure. Instead, one must weigh the inherent probability that one structure shows better evidence of recasting than the other. In this instance, the evidence favors an earlier movement in the redactional development of the MT, in the direction plotted above. Jeremiah, the Mosaic prophet, was called to be prophet to Judah and the nations (1:5; 25; 36:2; 46–51). The message involved tearing down and building up (1:10). The nations are to be agents in God’s judgment of Judah before they themselves are punished (25:28–29). In the course of the book, Babylon emerges as a terrifying foe from the north (1:14; 6:22). The longest of the OAN is also the final word on Babylon (50:1–51:58). This movement in the MT is only relatively coherent and relatively earlier than that of the LXX. The Book of Jeremiah is not an autograph from the prophet, fully amenable to the text-critical search for “originality.” It represents a complex development of tradition from various periods and various hands; claims for larger structural coherence must keep this fact in view. The present MT structure, however, has a better claim for priority than the LXX, as the argument has traditionally been set forth. Consequently, we adopt the minority opinion in favor of the larger structure of the canonical MT, over against the LXX. A correct reading of ch. 45 is critical in this regard. At the conclusion of the MT, ch. 52 gives a glimpse at the future through the inclusion of vv. 31–34, which speaks of the favorable treatment of exiled King Jehoiachin. But it is only the thirty-seventh year of his captivity (v. 31). A signal is given to the reader that the exiled community has served just over half its requisite seventy-year term. Here, a glimmer of hope is allowed to flicker. But it flickers within the specific context of Jeremiah’s visions of restoration found in chs. 21–36. The king eventually dies in exile (52:34), as required of the old generation. Now God can bring a new generation “out of the north country and out of all the countries where he had driven them” (23:8). Such was the vision of his servant Jeremiah, the “prophet to the nations.” Only in this sense does 52:31–34 represent a hopeful look into the future.59 Like its companion 58  J. Gerald Janzen, Studies in the Text of Jeremiah, HSM 6 (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1973), 115–16. 59  On Jehoiakim’s pardon in the context of the theology of the Deuteronomistic History, see Hans W. Wolff, “The Kerygma of the Deuteronomic Historical Work,” in The Vitality of Old Testament Traditions, ed. Hans W. Wolff and Walter Brueggemann (Atlanta: John Knox,



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passage at the end of the Deuteronomistic History (2 Kgs 25:27–30), it is to be measured against fuller views of restoration developed earlier in the Book of Jeremiah (chs. 21–36), the Book of Deuteronomy (30:1–10), and the Deuteronomistic History (1 Kgs 8:46–53).60

1978), 83–86; Gerhard von Rad, Old Testament Theology, trans. D. M. G. Stalker, 2 vols. (New York: Harper & Row, 1965), 1:343–47. 60  This article is dedicated to Professor Brevard S. Childs, in gratitude for his nearly forty years of teaching and service to the church and academy.

13. Of Mortal Appearance The Earthly Jesus and Isaiah as a Type of Christian Scripture “Of these and such like words written by the prophets, O Trypho,” said I, “some have reference to the first Advent of Christ, in which he appeared as inglorious, obscure, and of mortal appearance: but others had reference to His second advent, when He shall appear in glory and above the clouds.” (Justin Martyr, Dialogue with Trypho 14.8.5; see ANF 1, 202.)

This paper comes in two parts. In the first part, a distinction is drawn between the earthly and risen Jesus,1 on the one hand, and the “Jesus of History” and the “Christ of Faith,” on the other. Only the former pairing was intelligible to the early Church. This was a consequence of an assumed “collapse of the earthly Jesus with apostolic witness about him” (see below). This discussion is meant to set the groundwork for the second part, where I focus on the figure or type “former and latter things” and its significance within the Book of Isaiah. Ambrose sent Augustine to Isaiah to hear the gospel of Jesus Christ. In so doing, he witnessed to the capacity of “the earthly and risen Jesus” to be fully communicated by a book of prophecy from within Israel’s bosom. This is consistent with the perspective of the Church Fathers. They likewise operated 1  In an earlier essay the popular term “the historical Jesus” was replaced by “historical Jesus” to signal that we were dealing with a scholarly construct. The awkwardness of the term “historical Jesus” (without the article) was meant to underscore the relative novelty of this sort of inquiry. See my “In Accordance with the Scriptures – Creed, Scripture and ‘Historical Jesus,’” in Word Without End: The Old Testament as Abiding Theological Witness (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1998), 51–60. To my mind search for the historical Jesus is but a sophisticated and time-consuming way to work at the same “problem” felt by those seeking to construct a gospel harmony. That is, it is a sort of revenge on the fourfold character of the Gospel record as we have it. Any search for “single Jesus” behind, above, or in front of the Gospel in its fourfold presentation is a dismissal of this form of presentation, and as such a failure to honor its actual given form. Whether “the earthly Jesus” as a term seeks to avoid such a quest is an open question. I assume so, at least as part of a self-evident historicist project whose goals and methods are above dispute. As such, here it should not be necessary to signal dis-ease with “the earthly Jesus project” or the “quest for the earthly Jesus” through adoption of a term “earthly Jesus” (without the article). It does, however, remain a serious question just what the movement from “historical” to “earthly” Jesus portends, apart from signalling problems with the usual scholarly term.



13. Of Mortal Appearance257

from the scriptures of Israel prior to the formation of the NT. They argued that the perspective of two Advents, one glorious, one in suffering, found in Israel’s witness, was the key to comprehending the earthly Jesus and Jesus to come and to the confession that the earthly Jesus had theological significance: not for who he was or what he thought as a figure of the past, as “historical Jesus,” but as one and the same promised, incarnate, and returning one. The second part of the paper shows how Isaiah, within the OT witness, can itself reveal what in time becomes the mature two-testament witness to Jesus Christ of Christian scripture. This serves to illustrate that the perspective of Justin, Eusebius, Tertullian, and Ambrose, but to name a few, is built on a solid foundation and does not involve simply working from the NT back into the Old and finding things there that simply were not there. It was important that Jesus was who God said he was and would be and that reference to some inherited, public witness could validate this. The same concern is voiced in Isaiah 40–48: namely that what has occurred in Israel and in the world at large has already been shared with God’s people. The gospel of the earthly Jesus and risen Lord is found in Isaiah in nuce. Isaiah saw a horizon of salvation in which the former things are providentially instituted in biblical Israel. Something goes wrong within Israel, and a new providential design is set forth: complete judgment of Israel brings forth something new. A remnant of survivors becomes the focus of hope and promise, and then in a dramatic extension – built on the foundation of former things but incapable of being fully seen on the basis of them  – an individual prophet becomes Israel, in suffering and in death. In this way, nations are brought into the compass of the One Lord’s dealings with his creation, as had been promised in former Isaiah chapters and reasserted in Isaiah 40–48. The new does not eclipse the old, but serves as a validation of its word, even as new things are set into motion. Part of the new thing is the raising up of servant followers of the servant, Israel, and their portion with him in suffering and righteous obedience. Israel and the nations are riven, as the work of God is brought to its dramatic conclusion. The thrust of the second part is to show that already in Isaiah it was crucial that the work of the servant finds its relationship to what had gone before (“the former things”) and to what God had in store for all creation, even to the end of time. In its temporal, literary, and theological organization, the Book of Isaiah is a type of Christian scripture, Old and New Testaments. The theological significance of the earthly Jesus is not to be sought in Jesus’s thinking or teaching or his sense of who he was as this can be reconstructed historically (a “latter thing” perspective), but in who he was given the record of God’s ways with Israel (a “former thing” perspective). He was both promised Lord,

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Suffering Servant, and the one who would return in judgment.2 This is precisely what it means to use the language of “accordance” to speak of Jesus’s death and rising in 1 Corinthians 15 and in creedal confession in the Body of Christ, the Church. Accordance with the scriptures is the means by which the earthly Jesus is comprehended and located within the plans of God for all time, formerly and latterly.3 The theological significance of the earthly Jesus is a topic that interests me enormously. About ten years ago I was researching a small book on preaching in Advent.4 As you may know, in some parts of early Christendom Advent was not the first but the last season of the Church year. This is still reflected in the lectionary readings that have come over into present systems. Lessons from the OT and NT speak of messianic exaltation of a sort not experienced in the gospel record of Jesus’s earthly life, death, resurrection, and ascension. Lessons from Isaiah are not read to point ahead to the earthly Jesus, but to the Messiah of Israel and the nations, coming in glory to bring down the curtain of time. Only when the liturgical year became more cyclically oriented did these eschatological passages serve to introduce the Christmas and incarnational aspects of Christian faith. Christian messianism involved an adjustment of the eschatological scenario, so “the full number of the Gentiles” might come in (Rom 11:25) – an adjustment obscured when Advent is too closely connected with Christmas. Cyril of Jerusalem is representative of many early Christian thinkers when he enjoined the Church not to look back to the Jesus of the Gospels, who in his earthly pilgrimage was mistreated and crucified, not revered and worshipped. For Cyril, the Gospel record showed humanity where it had failed to honor Jesus, and this debit could not be cancelled on account of what the record might also reveal about a “historical Jesus.” This bears only slight resemblance to the late-modern verdict of scholars who see in Mark the birth of the antihero genre par excellence.5 That is, what we are meant to see in Mark is the refusal to believe and failure to accept even a risen Lord. This serves to warn against self-justification, against belief that proximity to the earthly Jesus was an advantage, against idolatry of past heroes, and against conflating the mighty Savior with commensurate belief and conviction in his Way. 2  I should like to thank Professor Gary Anderson for his comments, and for his sensitive eye for ellipsis or error. Whatever remains in that regard is the consequence of bad judgment solely my own. 3  See my essay, “In Accordance with the Scriptures.” 4  Christopher R. Seitz, Proclamation IV: Advent–Christmas, Series C (Philadelphia: Fortress, 1988). 5  Frank Kermode, The Genesis of Secrecy: On the Interpretation of the Narrative, Charles Eliot Norton Lectures 1977–1978 (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1979).



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Now on the face of it, this need not mean that the earthly Jesus presented in the Gospels serves no ongoing purpose in the life of Christian faith and living. But it does serve as a warning that reflection on the earthly Jesus uncoordinated with reflection on the Jesus of Hebrews, at the Father’s right hand, or apart from the exalted Messiah of Israel, for which we have only first-fruit verification in the earthly Jesus, or apart from scriptural – what we call OT – clues given in 1 Corinthians 15 as to how submission to Christ was taking place in the present time of waiting. Such reflection on the earthly Jesus apart from such realities would have been viewed by Cyril and the early Church as truncated, a torso Jesus only. My own sense of things is that the earthly Jesus emerged as a narrated figure in the Gospels under two pressures, both of which should be borne in mind. First, it is clear in the Fathers up to and including Irenaeus, that Jesus’s teaching and teaching about Jesus is what the Church recalls. That is, before the NT takes written scriptural form, the Fathers have access through apostolic memory and testimony to a Jesus who taught them and continues to teach through the apostolic recollection and transmission.6 The earthly Jesus is not a figure to whom pilgrimage is made by collapsing the then and the now, imaginatively or really. He is not a character to be disclosed by what we would now call historical labor. “No one to this day knows where Moses was buried,” Deuteronomy insists. This is meant to ward off reverence of the man Moses as past figure. Moses lives on all the same in what he has left, Torah. This did not decrease but transformed interest in Moses as bios for successive generations in assessing the prophetic office and him as the abiding template for it.7 In Deuteronomy Moses speaks to a new generation and to every generation to come, poised on the banks of the promised land of God’s life with faithful Israel and ecclesia. He is the beginning of a line of servant successors like him. A fortiori, the earthly Jesus is teacher, his words live on; he is himself instruction, in an abiding way. But an assessment of who he was as implied by the phrase “the historical Jesus” is nowhere so paramount a concern in the early Church. Figuring out who Jesus thought he was (so N. T. Wright, see 6  See Hans von Campenhausen, The Formation of the Christian Bible, trans. J. A. Baker (Philadelphia: Fortress, 1972). 7 Gerhard von Rad, Old Testament Theology, trans. D. M. G. Stalker, 2 vols. (New York: Harper & Row, 1965), 2:261–62; Christopher R. Seitz, “The Prophet Moses and the Canonical Shape of Jeremiah,” ZAW 10 (1989): 3–27; Ronald E. Clements, “Isaiah 53 and the Retrospection of Israel,” in Jesus and the Suffering Servant, ed. William H. Bellinger, Jr., and Williams R. Farmer (Harrisburg: Trinity Press International, 1998), 39–54; Gordon P. Hugenberger, “Servant of the Lord in the ‘Servant Songs’ of Isaiah: A  Second Moses Figure,” in The Lord’s Anointed: Interpretation of Old Testament Messianic Texts, ed. Philip E. Satterthwaite et al. (Carlisle: Paternoster; Grand Rapids: Baker, 1995), 105–40.

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below), or what sort of classification he should be given (sage, cynic, charismatic) suitable to the times in which he lived could only sever the earthly Jesus from the testimony of Israel’s scriptures to him on one hand, and who he was at present and would be, based on the record of those same scriptures, on the other. What Jesus taught is consistent with what the Church confesses him to be, then and now. Here we see the tightest possible connection – unseverable – of the earthly Jesus and apostolic witness, not unlike Joshua’s recitation of Mosaic testimony, and his own “burning bush encounter” (5:13–15) on the other side of the Jordan. What changes things is the disappearance of the apostolic circle, already fraught with meaning in the writing of Irenaeus (who is usually classified with the Apostolic Fathers of the 2nd century because of his association with Polycarp).8 With no living testimony, with no ongoing, providential collapse of the earthly Jesus and apostolic word, the genre Gospel as written bios emerges. Through this medium Jesus will be available to future generations, empowered by God the Holy Spirit (John 14:15–30). The implications of this for interest in the earthly Jesus, as we mean it here, are relatively unchanged, however. Cyril has the written record, but it is a tragic record. And the eyes of faith seek coordination of this Jesus so presented with eschatological hope, this itself to be found in the record of first Advent promise. This is an obvious deduction to be drawn, based upon the plain sense of much of the Gospels and Epistles, since they also emphasize this dimension, and so it is not a theological pressure without exegetical warrant. But now we come to the second and much more far reaching factor and the one that will be the focus of my paper. The second pressure upon the development of the Gospel genre, with its presentation of the earthly Jesus, involves the formation of the Christian canon in larger terms. Both in the ante-Nicene Fathers and in Paul, the earthly Jesus is the one promised in the scriptures of Israel. It is not enough to say that the scriptures of Israel looked for a Messiah; they patently did and do. It is not enough to say that the Messiah they looked for is the Messiah who will come in glory, for a glorified Messiah is how the scriptures of Israel depict him. To speak of accordance with the scriptures meant that the earthly Jesus was who the scriptures of Israel pointed to, and this in a dual and seemingly incompatible role. The scriptures show him to be both executed and glorified. The earthly Jesus was and is the glorified Jesus, exalted Messiah of Israel according to Isaiah and the prophets. Justin puts it this way to his interlocutor, “therefore Scripture compels you to admit that two advents of Christ were predicted to take place, – one in which he would appear suffering, and dishonored, and without comeliness; but the other in 8 

A. C. Coxe, ed., The Apostolic Fathers with Justin Martyr and Irenaeus, ANF, 1:vii.

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which He would come glorious and the Judge of all.”9 Without the witness of the scriptures, the two Advents of Christ would of necessity come apart, producing a historical Jesus whose failure to bring down the curtain of time meant simply that such was not what he was ever meant to do. This means the earthly Jesus as presented by the Gospel accounts was misguided, wrongly presented, or some combination of the two. Here one sees the logic of early NT confession and its necessity. Twice 1 Cor 15:3–4 relates that events happened “in accordance with the scriptures.” The associations are made with death and burial, on the one hand, and raised by the Lord of Israel, on the other. This raising of the earthly Jesus caused a mystery for which the scriptures provided Paul an answer. Where did the earthly Jesus go, what is he now doing, and how is his death and raising related to anyone else? Scripture said to Paul that he went to the Father, is bringing all things into submission to the Father, and in Adam all died, but in Christ all are made alive and are a part of this great time of submission.10 Justin makes it abundantly clear in his Dialogue with Trypho that the earthly Jesus is sufficiently and fully available from Israel’s scriptures. He needs no NT, which lies still on the horizon, but is satisfied that the prophets said all we need to know.11 The earthly Jesus is Messiah en route to final exaltation to the degree to which what is remembered about him in the witness of the apostles is consistent with the Word of God as spoken beforehand to Israel in the scriptures. Trypho is happy to say that Jesus is a superior prophet, even the best of all, but he is a creation of the One God, Blessed be He.12 Justin argues that Jesus is Messiah and God, and he does this on the basis of the selfsame record, Israel’s holy “oracles of God.” Still, in the 3rd century, Eusebius maintains the same stance, using only the OT scripture to ground the Church’s christological confession, prompting the editor to explain what he calls this “strange use of the Old Testament” for such an “essential Christian doctrine.”13 When the New Testament emerged in the form we know it now, the Gospels in genre are essentially about what Justin was about in his Dialogue with Trypho. They provide a sustained argument with the larger purpose of showing that Jesus is who the scriptures of Israel had in mind. He is who the One God 9 

“Dialogue of Justine, Philosopher and Martyr, with Trypho,” ANF, 1:219. Seitz, “In Accordance with Scripture,” 51–60. 11  Christopher R. Seitz, “‘A nd Without God in the World’: A Hermeneutic of Estrangement Overcome,” Word Without End, 41–50. 12  See the discussion in Francis Watson, Text and Truth: Redefining Biblical Theology (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1997). 13  G. A. Williamson, ed., trans., Eusebius, The History of the Church from Christ to Constantine (Baltimore: Penguin Books, 1965), 38n1. 10 

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promised. At God’s name, at Jesus’s name, every knee shall bow, an exegetical move which reveals later homousia logic.14 It will not do to conjecture about the genre of Gospel apart from an assessment of this argument for accordance with scripture and its centrality to the Gospel form. Sadly, however, the emergence of the NT caused a problem for subsequent reflection on Jesus. That is my thesis for this symposium. The creation of a twofold scriptural canon was and is a distinctly Christian development with far reaching consequences for how we think about Jesus.15 So long as there was one scripture and an apostolic witness – obviously still the case for Justin, who speaks of the Church hearing on the sabbath readings from “the memoirs of the apostles or the writings of the prophets”16 – then Jesus was a figure of the past who lived on in apostolic testimony and through the in-scripted Word of God. In Rom 3:2 Paul refers to this scripture as “the oracles of God entrusted to the Jews.” This is the more decisive testimony for Justin in the 2nd and Eusebius in the 3rd century, because these oracles contained the solution to the great mystery of how Jesus was both an earthly figure, whose execution was providentially ordered before all time, but also how this earthly Jesus was in his execution the fully exalted Messiah, who would return to demonstrate that he was the promised, glorified Lord, as the prophets had said. The ultimate mystery and its resolution were fully resident in the scriptures. The executed one was the One to come in Glory as Israel’s promised Lord and Savior, at whose name all creation would bow down, with no allowable space between Isaiah’s first word and Philippians’ accorded word. The Holy Name, adonail/ kurios and the name of Jesus are conflated in mature Christian confession. In formal terms, this is the same situation for the way two testaments achieve scriptural stature. Consequently, 2 Timothy’s remark that all scripture is inspired by God (3:16)  – even when the quote means only the scriptures of Israel – can only with difficulty be heard in such a way.17 I have argued elsewhere that the emergence of a “New Testament” – both the term itself and the fact of a second written scriptural deposit – is comprehensible only when we come to terms with how the scriptures of Israel came into being, functioned as the living word of God, and finally described Jesus and anticipated the mature confession about him, as seen in Justin’s brilliant 14 

David S. Yeago, “The New Testament and the Nicene Dogma: A Contribution to the Recovery of Theological Exegesis,” ProEccl 3 (1994): 152–64. 15  Brevard S. Childs, Biblical Theology of the Old and New Testaments: Theological Reflection on the Christian Bible (Minneapolis: Fortress, 1993). This is Childs’s central contribution to the biblical theology discussion in late modernity. 16  “The First Apology of Justin” 87, ANF, 1:186. 17  See Christopher R. Seitz, “Dispirited: Scripture as Rule of Faith and Recent Misuse of the Council of Jerusalem: Text, Spirit and Word to Culture,” in Figured Out: Typology and Providence in Christian Scripture (London: Westminster John Knox, 2001), 128.

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defense.18 But the existence of a twofold canon, OT and NT, potentially blurs the role of Israel’s scriptures in christological work, and this is all the more true under the pressures of historicism. It looks like the NT is about Jesus, and so it is. Before long, we talk about a “historical Jesus,” a figure behind the record about him, a substance or res toward which each gospel and NT witness incompletely points. Seeing the theological problem with historicism, especially of the virulent late modern variety, we may now wish to speak instead of “the earthly Jesus.” At least this provides room to maneuver, and one can understand heuristically how “the earthly Jesus” and “the historical Jesus” are not the same conceptual reality. “The earthly Jesus” need not be a product of historical reconstruction, only derivatively and historically compatible, if at all, with risen Jesus, bringing into submission Jesus, High Priest in heavenly intercession Jesus, exalted Judge come again Jesus. To speak of “the earthly Jesus” at least holds open the possibility of some coordination of Jesus in the various presentations of him from promise to final eschatological revelation, without introducing language on the other side of Lessing’s ugly ditch: Jesus of history, Christ of faith. But does this go far enough? My concern is that “the earthly Jesus” and promised, in-scripted Jesus, or exalted and returned Jesus will be artificially circumscribed within sections of the canon where that is unnecessary and misleading. Most will assume that “the earthly Jesus” is a more theological version of historical Jesus, but gone in both cases will be reflection on how the OT remains an abiding theological witness, with a horizon that leads into, but also leads beyond, NT reflection.19 The OT provides the clue as to how christology can and must relate the earthly son of a carpenter with the One through whom all things (including wood) were made and who will return in glory to judge the world. Put another way, the existence of a twofold canon sets before the Christian reader, now at considerable temporal distance from Jesus’s mortal appearance, the live option of understanding the canon’s constitutively twofold character as developmental. Consequently, the NT becomes more instrumental, instead of differently instrumental, in comprehending the theological significance of the earthly Jesus. The subject matter of the NT is God in Jesus Christ, at the level of plain sense presentation, but the temptation is to consider Jesus in an earthly mode divorced from a larger welter of theological convictions concerning his Advents. For these, the OT is essential in establishing christological claims that are coherent against a backdrop of all time and in establishing God’s sovereign purposes in Israel and in the world 18 

Seitz, “And Without God in the World,” 41–50. is the sustained point of my several essays in Word Without End and is why a turn to the patristic period of christological reflection is so illuminating. There one sees the centrality of the scriptures of Israel for doing christology in the first instance. 19  This

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at large. This paper is dedicated to showing why a consideration of the earthly Jesus apart from the OT is fragmentary and a category error. Thus far I have been slightly disobedient to my assignment, as it was set out for me. I am supposed to speak about this topic from the standpoint of the OT. Instead, I am trying to complicate matters by reintroducing a perspective in which we do not yet have a twofold canon, but a single scripture used adequately to present the earthly Jesus to Christian faith, when properly set in accordance with what the Church was coming to know of its Lord from the apostolic memory of Jesus and his teaching. I am purposely placing my discussion within the constraints imposed by Hans von Campenhausen’s helpful reminder. It was not the OT that required coordination with Jesus, but Jesus demanded an appraisal that could find full assent only in accordance with the scriptural witness, everywhere judged to be the inspired word of God.20 Luke captures this perspective well at two key moments: “If they do not listen to Moses and the prophets, neither will they be convinced even if someone rises from the dead” (16:31) and “[t]hen beginning with Moses and all the prophets, Jesus interpreted to them the things about himself in all the scriptures” (24:27). In a recent work dedicated to an assessment of the effect of Isaiah 53 on the earthly Jesus, Ν. T. Wright complains that most of the essays did not ask how Jesus’s contemporaries might have heard Isaiah 53 and the Book of Isaiah.21 Instead they proceeded backwards from NT to OT, isolating individual Isaiah texts, in Hebrew or daughter translations, which seemed to have influenced NT formulation, as we can detect that through close reading of NT texts.22 Or, equally wrongly, a heavily theological discussion has been rekindled, especially by Germans, which is doctrinally conditioned, anachronistic, and has introduced a sort of category error into what should be an essentially historical question, which the colloquium narrowed down to: Did Jesus interpret God’s will for Israel, and therefore for himself and his disciples, in terms of the Suffering Servant of Isa 52:13–53:12?23 Finally, to complicate this last point, 20  Childs puts it this way in his paraphrase of Campenhausen’s observations: “… the problem of the early church was not what to do with the Old Testament in light of the gospel, which was Luther’s concern, but rather the reverse. In light of the Jewish scriptures which were acknowledged to be the true oracles of God, how were Christians to understand the good news of Jesus Christ?” (Biblical Theology of the Old and New Testaments, 226. Cf. von Campenhausen, Formation of the Christian Bible, 64 f.). 21  N. T. Wright, “The Servant and Jesus: The Relevance of the Colloquy for the current Quest for Jesus,” in Jesus and the Suffering Servant, 283–99. 22  “I think, in fact, that we have been too shortsighted in focusing on the fourth Servant Song and on the precise meaning of various phrases within it” (ibid., 291–92). 23  “I suggest, then, that the categories of the sixth or fifth or fourth centuries BCE, and those of the sixteenth of subsequent centuries CE, are not necessarily good guides for our understanding Jesus. Listening to the debate between substitution and representation, in however sophisticated and nuanced fashion it may be carried on, leaves me as a historian



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Wright complains that Isaiah is frequently read through a historical-critical lens – the same lens judged appropriate and essential to NT theological work – which is wrongly preoccupied with questions of no essential connection to NT refraction of Isaiah’s plain sense.24 (I actually agree with the larger point!) A reconstruction is offered by Isaiah scholars of great historical ingenuity and careful labor which could not have been on the horizon for readers of Isaiah searching for insight into the man from Nazareth. In the remainder of this paper I want to take Wright’s first and last points seriously and attempt a reconstruction of how Isaiah may have been heard in the period of the earthly Jesus. I wish to show that Ambrose was correct and representative when he sent Augustine to Isaiah to hear the Gospel of Jesus Christ.25 Finally, I  wish to show that the distinction between doctrine and historical reconstruction is apt, but that the former is far more closely tied to the sort of close reading model of exegesis Wright seems to be implying for the Old Testament’s hearing in the New. Why does this not extend to the New’s hearing in the light of the Old or in subsequent theological reflection is far from clear, especially in what he worries is an anachronistic, doctrinally imposing formulation of the problem and when what is being held up as critical for theological construction is a strictly historical frame of reference, namely, what did historical Jesus think he was doing? Christian theology grounded in the mind of Jesus or our reconstruction of what he thought he was doing is surely a truncating of the larger theological task, which is to provide a description of how God was in Christ and how God is in Christ and how God will be in Christ.26 These are interconnected dimensions of Christian theology that cannot be pulled apart in the name of imagining who Jesus thought he was and how he thought that, however significant such questions may be in an otherwise curious enterprise called “Historical Jesus Research.” In sources as temporally, culturally, and religiously diverse as Qumran, the NT, Justin, Clement and Eusebius – to give but a sample from the Fathers, it is clear that Isaiah was interpreted as a canonical whole, passages from very diverse sections compared and used to illuminate others, across all 66-chapters. with the same feeling I have when I meet people … for whom the key question in the New Testament is whether the Rapture comes before or after the Tribulation. The critical nest of meaning in the second-temple Jewish world did not focus on substitution and representation, but on exile and how it would be undone … not simply on isolated bits and pieces of text” (ibid., 297). 24  See the quotation in ibid., 284n22: “It is clear to me that if there is a lacuna in this conference it is at the point of discussing how Isaiah might have been read by Jesus’ own contemporaries.” 25  See my brief treatment “Isaiah, Book of (First Isaiah),” ABD 3:472–88. 26  On this see now the brilliant contribution of Robert W. Jenson, The Triune God, vol. 1 of Systematic Theology (New York: Oxford University Press, 1998).

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At the same time, in the ensuing history of interpretation, long before the Enlightenment, a key index in the book as a whole was the distinction between two epochs: a former and a latter time. It was not necessary to work out how one individual prophet was responsible for such an epochal portrayal, spanning centuries. If forced to give an accounting, theories of prophetic clairvoyance or other such rationalizations could be and were adduced. Still, it should be noted that concern with the subjectivism inherent in the notion of authorial voice is largely to the side in the history of interpretation. What was determinative was the belief that the Book as a whole was inspired by God and that his word did not return empty, but accomplished what God intended over a wide compass of time. This bundle of convictions was far more central to the constraints of proper interpretation of Isaiah than the modern question “Who wrote this or that portion of Isaiah, when and where?”27 The refrain, “former and latter things,” appears in a variety of forms in Isaiah 40–48. Not until the final refrain at 48:6 is the emphasis on radical novelty, of a sort that cannot be even typologically present in a former time (“created now, not long ago, before today you have never heard of them”). The intelligibility of the final refrain depends upon its being in a series in which, previously, Israel was enjoined to pay attention to things established long ago by God. The problem addressed by this series is amnesia and doubt about God’s sovereignty, called into question by Israel’s judgment and Zion’s destruction. The appeal to the former things is intended to show that God was not caught off guard by, but planned what has happened. Moreover, the nations are challenged to bring forth similar ancient testimony and evidence from their gods, but cannot. The former-latter motif serves the dual purpose of comforting and exhorting God’s people and of rebuking the gods and nations who have asserted YHWH’s impotence and no-godness. So, when the final refrains insist that God is about to do a new thing, such a notion is comprehensible only after God has established his supreme and unique control over time. From this vantage point he can then speak of things yet to come and expect a hearing from a people once without ears that now has been revived. In other words, “remember the former things” and “remember not the former things” are not incompatible notions, but depend upon each other and a certain sequencing for their intelligibility. Here the caution about attention to larger context is fully on target, as against proof-texting or passage isolation.28 27  See my article “Isaiah and the Search for a New Paradigm: Authority and Inspiration,” in Word Without End, 113–29, or ch. 6 of the present volume. 28  I was struck by J. L. Martyn’s selective use of only one form of the former-latter refrain in order to ground his biblical theological reflections. See his “Listening to John and Paul on the Subject of Gospel and Scripture,” WW 12 (1992): 68–81.



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It has been argued that the notion of two distant epochs being coordinated by the mysterious will of one Holy God is not an invention of the mind at work in chs. 40–48.29 A  former time of judgment and a surviving remnant, followed by a latter time of glorious and international salvation, belongs to the explicit statement of 9:1 and the larger shape and logic of 6:1–9:7. The mind at work in ch. 40 and the following chapters understands Israel to be in the latter time, and the nations too. From this operating perspective, new things or latter things can be contrasted with former things, with an insistence that the Holy One of Israel has coordinated this, and no one else. Indeed, “I, I am the LORD” can virtually be glossed “Who declared it of old? Was it not I, I the LORD?” (45:21) in these nine chapters (40–48). Debate continues to swirl over the precise referent for “former things.” An older climate in which chs. 40–55 was strictly separate from chs. 1–39 was forced to posit prophecies now lost to us that had been issued by DeuteroIsaiah to contemporary challengers, likely concerning the call of Cyrus by YHWH.30 Moving chs. 40–66 into editorial coordination with chs. 1–39 has meant a rejection of this sort of argument from (historical!) silence, but there is still disagreement over whether “former things” refers to prophecies within the Book of Isaiah narrowly considered or any longstanding, indigenous Israelite confession appropriate to thwart the challenges of no-gods. In my recent commentary I tend toward the latter view, but it should be emphasized that both choices only came into play once a narrowly historicist view of chs. 40–55 and its independence was rejected.31 The conclusion to be drawn from this is that while the Book of Isaiah was read as a unified witness at the time of the earthly Jesus, it also spoke of a distinction between two eras: one past and gone, which contained the seeds of promise and plan, and one coordinated with it, but only after a period of judgment had passed, by divinely given insight. In this sense, chs. 40–48 could be taken by any plain sense reading as displaying the transition from a time of former things, including judgment but also promise, to a time of new things, 29  H. G. M. Williamson, The Book Called Isaiah: Deutero-Isaiah’s Role in Composition and Redaction (Oxford: Clarendon; New York: Oxford University Press, 1994). 30  For a typical treatment from this working perspective, see C. R. North, “‘The Former Things’ and the ‘New Things’ in Deutero-Isaiah,” in Studies in Old Testament Prophecy, ed. Harold H. Rowley (Edinburgh: T&T Clark, 1950), 111 f. A minority view from the same period has frequently been overlooked; see Douglas R. Jones, “The Traditio of the Oracles of Isaiah of Jerusalem,” ZAW 67 (1955): 226–46. See the discussion of Brevard S. Childs, Introduction to the Old Testament as Scripture (Philadelphia: Fortress, 1979), 328–30. 31 In preparation for NIB, see Benjamin D. Sommer’s remarks in “Allusions and Illusions: The Unity of the Book of Isaiah in Light of Deutero-Isaiah’s Use of Prophetic Tradition,” in New Vision of Isaiah, ed. Roy F. Melugin and Marvin A. Sweeney (Sheffield: Sheffield Academic, 1996), 156–86.

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calibrated beforehand, but also giving rise to something truly new. It is this dialectic that reveals the Book of Isaiah to be a type of Christian scripture. The New is dependent upon the Old for its logic, its sense of fulfillment, its vis-à-vis authority, and its radicality. The Old requires the New’s authority of Newness and finality to complete its own picture of God’s final ways with creation – this is precisely the burden of Justin’s argument with Trypho – and yet it is in the Old that the promises and the hope and the judgment become ingredients in a much larger plan of former-latter sovereignty. Chapters 40–48 also give witness, not just to the dawning of a new day, but to the substance of that newness. Israel is presented as God’s servant before the heavenly council and sent out on a mission involving God’s work among the nations (42:1–9).32 Israel’s vindication and release from deafness within and national rebuke without are not ends unto themselves, but entail God’s plan for the whole cosmos. Still, even this plan one could argue was not all that new, uncreated until now. Chapters 40–48 know that Israel has a role and has had a role among the nations. Isaiah 1–39 knows this as well, as 2:1–5 makes abundantly clear. So it could not be said, strictly speaking, that God’s use of Israel as light to the nations has no history of former utterance, such as is implied at 48:6–7. The truly new thing is suggested at vv. 12–16 and made the clear burden of 49:1–6. This is established beyond doubt when one attends to the structure of the next section of text, chs. 49–53. The notion of radical newness stated so clearly in ch. 48 finds its counterpart in the frame of this section, in 49:1–7 and 53:1–12. One of the most trying interpretive cruxes in this section of Isaiah is found at 49:3. There is no good textual evidence for a gloss, “Israel,” in the verse, though such a move is urged by commentators who seek two results: (1) conformity of author and perspective across a series of “servant songs”; and (2) a reading referring to a specific servant over against a more generic reference to Israel as servant. Recently, Hugh Williamson and his students have suggested a subtle solution to the problem of v. 3. This solution emerged once one paid attention, not to a series of servant songs as such, but to the flow of the chapters as they are presently set forth. The argument is that the Israel commissioned to be servant in chs. 40–48 fails in this capacity; God commissions the individual prophetic figure responsible for the proclamation of this material to be what he had commissioned Israel to be. On this reading, one might paraphrase 49:3: “You are my servant, you are the Israel in whom I will be glorified.” The individual becomes Israel as God had formerly intended in chs. 40–48.33 32  For a good survey of form-critical work of this passage, see Roy F. Melugin, The Formation of Isaiah 40–55, BZAW 141 (Berlin: de Gruyter, 1976). 33  See Peter Wilcox and David Paton-Williams, “The Servant Songs in Second Isaiah,” JSOT 42 (1998): 79–102.



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I have argued for a variation of this reading, which stresses a shift from Israel to individual servant without an evaluation of whether or not Israel was a failure in chs. 40–48.34 In addition, I have argued a critical piece of the reconstruction offered involves ch. 48, where the radical new thing motif is introduced. The first occurrence of individual “I” speech thus far (where God and “I” have always been the same) is found at v. 16, “and now the LORD God has sent me and his spirit.” This intimate use of the divine name, the tetragrammaton combined with the gloss for it (adny YHWH), appears in prominent form four times in the third servant poem, where the “I” describes his individual affliction at the hands of enemies (50:4–11). In ch. 48 the “I” of the prophet emerges from the secret council of God and announces his presence. The new thing is that this “I” is to be Israel (49:1–7) and as such will be light to the nations. In this way Israel will find vindication before the nations, and the nations will come to the light of knowledge of YHWH. I confess to coming late to the work of Tom Wright on this topic, working as he does with the “latter things” record of the NT.35 I was pleased to see areas of convergence, though it strikes me that he has historicized the mental state of Jesus, in a particularly provocative and not unappealing way, through an enormous act of imaginative speculation that deserves to be called a tour de force. It is Jeremias versus Bultmann, but with Jesus’s mental and existential state standing in where once we had concern for the facticity and ongoing theological importance of the pre-Easter Jesus for the post-Easter Church. Jesus thinks he is bringing the Exile to a close. He is himself righteous Israel. The OT tells him so. (Does it go on speaking a word to the Church beyond Jesus’s use of it? Does it say who Jesus is and will be, beyond Calvary, and speak as such to the Church, brought into the fellowship with Israel and the oracles of God entrusted to them?) What we see in chs. 49–53 of Isaiah is the servant as Israel (49:1–7) suffering at the hands of his own people and likely the nations. He also sees God’s vindication and God’s real presence in his affliction (50:4–11) and dies an ignominious death. The climax of this section is the final, unique servant tribute (52:13–53:12). I can only summarize my conclusions here. I believe the servant dies. Against Whybray, his suffering is more than shared, innocent affliction, alike in kind and in significance to any general Israelite suffering. Rather, his suffering and death, however typical, come to signify an offering for sin for those making confession in the tribute.36 Moreover, these servants of the servant believe the nations will come to enlightenment and confession 34  See Christopher R. Seitz, “How is the Prophet Isaiah Present in the Latter Half of the Book? The Logic of Chapters 40–66 within the Book of Isaiah,” JBL 115 (1996): 219–40. 35  A convenient précis of his thesis can be seen in the essay cited above. 36  R. N. Whybray, Thanksgiving for a Liberated Prophet, JSOTSup 4 (Sheffield: JSOT

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because of the work of the servant, so that their own confession stands as surety for what nations and kings will come to understand. Insofar as the servant is Israel, his death is a sign of Israel’s own bearing of judgment unto death in exile. Insofar as the servant is himself, his death is an offering for Israel. Insofar as the servant is Israel, light to the nations, his suffering and death are not forlorn episodes, but belong to the way the nations come to the light of truth. The final chapters of Isaiah (54–66) form a fitting conclusion and again provide the profile which allows us to see in the Book of Isaiah a type of Christian scripture, Old and New Testaments, former and latter testimonies, providentially linked, yet different. From chs. 54–66 the servant is replaced by servants. They share in the servant’s affliction, for the sake of God’s righteousness.37 They are the seed of the servant, which was to prosper (ch. 53). God’s judgment in the latter days involves a cleaving of Israel into righteous servants and wicked, idolatrous, falsely religious, oppressive counterparts within the household of Israel (ch. 65). At the same time, the righteous servants of the servant are joined by the nations, and together, as Zion is restored, they take part in God’s intended bounty (ch. 66). The joining of the nations to Israel entails their witnessing God’s judgment on his own people and over all creation. A new creation awaits unfolding, where the curses of Eden are gone, and where old age is nothing but the start of life, and where no labor pains afflict God’s people (ch. 65). Zion’s painless birthing of new citizens is emblematic of the new life promised for all God’s servants, offspring of Zion. Zion sees seed, and in this way the promises associated with the servant’s vindication are made good. Yet he, the servant, must witness these from afar, as did Moses the promised land (ch. 53). Here, perhaps, one can see the character of type/anti-type come into play, which differentiates Isaiah and Christian scripture, strictly speaking. We have noted the important parallels: former, latter things; Israel, servant, an individual servant as Israel; suffering and death as the means of extension, bringing atonement for Israel and recognition and illumination for the nations; the servants carry on in the manner of the servant, as the nations come to witness God’s final judgment together with citizens of Zion. Note too, as have so many recent scholars, how closely the final chapters of latter Isaiah resemble those of former Isaiah.38 So too, the closing of the Christian canon offers, not so much Press, 1978); D. P. Bailey, “Concepts of Stellvertretung in the Interpretation of Isaiah 53,” in Jesus and the Suffering Servant, 223–50. 37  See above all the fine essays of W. A. M. Beuken, “The Main Theme of Trito-Isaiah: The ‘Servants of YHWH,’” JSOT 47 (1990): 67–87; and idem, “Isa. 56:9–57:13 – An Example of the Isaianic Legacy of Trito-Isaiah,” in Tradition and Reinterpretation in Jewish and Early Christian Literature, ed. J. W. Van Henton et al. (Leiden: Brill, 1986), 204–21. 38  Leon J. Liebreich, “The Compilation of the Book of Isaiah,” JQR 46 (1955–1956):



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a fresh vision, but a recycling of Isaiah’s older vision under a new set of constraints and hopes, as first Advent and second Advent merge on the horizon of YHWH’s final intention and former-latter sovereignty over his world. Where there is space between the type and anti-type the role of the servant and his final vindication is especially involved. Unmistakeably we see vindication promised in the final suffering servant tribute, indeed to the degree that some wonder about resurrection or assumption of the servant, and rightly so. This is especially the case if, as has been argued, Daniel 12 offers the first exegesis of Isa 52:13, taking the yaskil “he will prosper” to mean, give wisdom, even new life after martyrdom.39 But within the compass of Isaiah, no individual servant returns to “see seed.” Zion and Israel see seed, but here a transfer has occurred that has unlocked the original connection between an individual atoning servant and God’s promises specifically to him – not Israel, or Zion.40 In the NT, that gap is closed. The earthly Jesus steps into a void every bit as courageously and confidently as the servant of Isaiah, for the servant was sure of his vindication by God. But we must accept the servants’ confession in Isaiah 53 that in the death of the servant an eschatological promise has opened up and been fulfilled. The servant does not tell us that, nor is it clear that he experiences the vindication personally. Obviously, he does not promise a return in glory, as does the earthly Jesus. Rather, others see that this is the reality God intends, while the servant never himself appears in fulfillment of the promises made about him. Moreover, in Isaiah it is not clear that the servant’s atoning work takes the same character for Israel as for the nations. One could say that this is true as well in the NT confession, but not to the same degree, and certainly not as a developed theological credendum. (See Romans 9–11 for the different work of Israel and the Gentiles in God’s one act of salvation in Jesus Christ). Neither is it clear within the Book of Isaiah as a type of Christian scripture that the nations become Israelites or the Israelites generic worshippers. Both retain their identity in God’s judgment and in the division of them into the 259–77; and JQR 47 (1956–1957): 114–38; Marvin A. Sweeney, Isaiah 1–4 and the PostExilic Understanding of the Isaianic Tradition, BZAW 171 (Berlin: de Gruyter, 1988); W. A. M. Beuken, “Isaiah Chapters LXV–LXVI: Trito-Isaiah and the Closure of the Book of Isaiah,” in Congress Volume, Leuven 1989, ed. J. A. Emerton, VTSup 43 (Leiden: Brill, 1991), 204–21; Anthony J. Tomasino, “Isaiah 1.1–2.4 and 63–66, and the Composition of the Isaianic Corpus,” JSOT 57 (1993): 81–98. 39  See the essay by H. L. Ginsburg, “The Oldest Interpretation of the Suffering Servant,” VT 3 (1953): 400–4. 40  Odil H. Steck tries to explain the transfer, but the solution is lost in the redactional history of Isaiah. See Odil H. Steck, Gottesknecht und Zion: Gesammelte Aufsätze ze Deuterojesaja, FAT 4 (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 1992).

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righteous and the wicked. One can, however, read Acts 15 in the same way, for the type and anti-type are compatible there. That is, whatever else might be said of the ruling of the Jerusalem council, it does not argue for an erasing of the distinction between the household of Israel and gentile Christians, but rather finds providentially provided an answer to their fellowship in Christ, available from and in accordance with Israel’s scriptural witness.41

Conclusion Did the NT read Isaiah as do modern historical-critical readers? No. Is this decisive for understanding the theological significance of the earthly Jesus? Yes. Is this significance a matter of Jesus’s perception of his mission, as this is revealed in the scriptures of Israel? Yes. Does Jesus’s comprehension of his mission – as stated explicitly in the NT or as reconstructed using sophisticated historical analysis such as has been recently deployed by N. T. Wright – provide the essential clue and starting point for theological reflection? No. To say this is to confuse the authority of God’s word held in trust in Israel with the New Testament’s according confirmation of it, whether in the reconstructed thought and world of Jesus or in its plain sense statement of the gospel of Jesus Christ. The latter does not exhaust the former, but confirms and elaborates it, forcing its historical sense to enclose a horizon prepared for, but as yet not fully brought into focus, resident in the sensus literalis of the oracles entrusted to the Jews. Even here, the clue as to the relationship of Old and New Testament scripture, as God’s word, is provided for within the Book of Isaiah, a type of Christian scripture. The earthly Jesus is the subject of NT proclamation, but not as a locus which destroys what had been promised, nor as the accidents of a substance to be reconstructed through historical labor. The earthly Jesus is comprehensible, as the Church’s Lord and Savior, on the basis of what has been promised, adumbrated, and literally described in the witness of the former things. The earthly Jesus of the Gospels, for example, lives and teaches and admonishes, not as a figure of the past, available as the Church reads herself back into a pre-Calvary encounter with him, as the NT provides this. Rather, the earthly Jesus lives and teaches and admonishes and heals within the framework of fulfillment, of bringing to full form the sensus literalis of the OT scriptures whose according 41  See Richard Bauckham, “James and the Jerusalem Church,” in The Book of Acts in Its Palestinian Setting, ed. Richard Bauckham, vol. 4 of The Books of Acts in Its First Century Setting (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1995), 415–80; and my “Dispirited: Scripture as Rule of Faith and Recent Misuse of the Council of Jerusalem,” in Figured Out.



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potential must be realized if the earthly Jesus is to be recognized, worshipped, and located now at the right hand of God, to return again in glory. Talk about the earthly Jesus apart from this former-latter orientation leads to theological confusion, for it cannot find a home within the rule of faith operative from the inception of the Church, to whom was “entrusted the oracles of God,” i. e. Christian scripture, Old and New. At the moment one makes the earthly Jesus a man constrained by reconstructions of his thoughts, or assessments of his place in society, it is impossible to reintroduce the context of accordance that interpreted him to the Church and which also served to guide his mission and self-understanding. It is wrong to think that sensitive, sympathetic, and hard-won retrievals of Jesus’s mind and his world of hope will serve as the starting point for Christian theological reflection. Such reflection requires attention to what God said he was doing in his Christ. Only with the events of Easter and Pentecost can one return with the first disciples and have all the things in Moses and the Prophets shown for what they are, and for what they will be for the ascended and glorified Lord. The former things take on new meaning when read in the light of latter things; but the former things also set forth how the latter things fit within a plan revealed from all time, and shared with Israel, and through Christ, with the Church and the world. The teacher who will return again, who was promised of old, is also the earthly Jesus, whose life is Word and Truth.

14. The Place of the Reader in the Book of Jeremiah Reflections for Bible Study I The biblical prophetic books should first be read for their own sake  – we might call this a per se reading – and then we should move forward to ask just how a book of Hebrew Scripture becomes Old Testament when interpreted in relationship with the New.1 The two tasks confronting Christian readers are: interpreting the Old Testament per se and the Old in novo receptum, as received in the New. My remarks in this essay deal with Jeremiah’s own per se witness without considering the relationship of this witness with the New Testament. We need to focus on the question: Does this book have a particular reader orientation that we are meant to identify and then orient ourselves around? Our goal shall be to determine how consciously we as readers and hearers of this work of scriptural witness are actually anticipated by the literature itself so that we might align ourselves with the natural expectations the literature has of us. The issue may be illustrated in the following way. One of the domain assumptions of older critical approaches to reading the Bible was that we as readers of the finished products of biblical texts were only accidentally, or as latecomers or overhearers, anticipated by the literature itself. It is as though we had found ourselves “reading someone else’s mail,” as Paul van Buren2 put it. The point of historical-critical labor was therefore to recreate the situation in life in which the portion of the text under discussion was originally 1 For a discussion of the challenge and good illustrations from OT and NT, see B. S. Childs, Biblical Theology in Crisis (Philadelphia: Westminster, 1970). I have my own examples in Character of Christian Scripture: The Significance of a Two-Testament Bible, STI (Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2011), Elder Testament: Canon, Theology, Trinity (Waco, TX: Baylor University Press, 2018), and Convergences: Canon and Catholicity (Waco, TX: Baylor University Press, 2020). 2 Paul van Buren, “On Reading Someone Else’s Mail: The Church and Israel’s Scriptures,” in Die Hebräische Bibel und ihre zweifache Nachgeschichte: Festschrift für Rolf Rendtorff zum 65. Geburtstag, ed. Erhard Blum et al. (Neukirchen-Vluyn: Neukirchener Verlag, 1990), 595–696.

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uttered and delivered. This task was not pursued for its own sake or because the task was challenging or because one could make a career doing it, but because it was never assumed that the material had been shaped to function as scripture for just any audience who happened to show up and ask: What does this material have to say to me? Once the various situations-in-life that together constitute the book’s complete history were imaginatively recreated, then the task would be to reapply the word once delivered to a changed but analogous modern context. Now, the strengths of such an approach are immediately apparent, especially in a book like Isaiah (but in Jeremiah as well), which Luther probably had in mind when he said, “[the prophets] have a queer way of talking, like people who, instead of proceeding in an orderly manner, ramble off from one thing to the next, so that you cannot make head or tail of them or see what they are getting at.”3 The notion that biblical books were not shaped in coherent ways so as to address later readers and hearers is not just a modern one; and the prophets are particularly challenging as Luther’s statement implies. Critical method could make sense of a complex and confused text by assigning the material to its original setting and as an added bonus could show us our proper point of standing as readers and interpreters. Incidentally, this sort of approach, which might be called “subject oriented” (as against an approach focused on readers as objects of address), struggled to know if we were to relate to the prophet Jeremiah as prophetic subject or to the people Israel as subject and at what particular point on the journey from 6th-century oral speech, to Nebuchadnezzar’s capture of Jerusalem, to exile in Babylon, to the prospect of return to the land. To adapt this to a popular critical model, do we read with source A, B, or C? With exilic editors or with those who remained in Judah after 594 and 587?4 But even this sort of concern was relatively minor measured against the strengths of an approach that could both make sense of an apparently randomly-organized text and also show us where to stand as readers and hearers of the word of God, spoken through a prophet and those who followed him.5 3 

Quoted in Gerhard von Rad, The Message of the Prophets (New York: Harper & Row, 1967), 15. 4  See my Theology in Conflict: Reactions to the Exile in the Book of Jeremiah, BZAW 176 (Berlin: de Gruyter, 1989). I regard the redactional critical labor as properly preliminary in character and provisional. It helps us to gain a purchase on how the final canonical shaping took up the matter of previous audience  – as a historical datum  – and then recast it in the form of sacred literature. The process of textualization is at once a process of scripturalization, in the pregnant theological sense. 5  On what George A. Lindbeck has called an “experiential-expressive” hermeneutic, see ch. 9 in the present volume. George A. Lindbeck, The Nature of Doctrine: Religion and Theology in a Postliberal Age (Philadelphia: Westminster, 1984).

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Of course there was a practical question immediately felt in most Bible study. Just how did one go about assigning with confidence portions of text to original situations in life, granting even that such a goal was desirable? This would require very specialized skills and training, of a sort either intimidating or overly academic for many readers, threatening to create a false dichotomy between “expert readings” (surely the Bible is not just for experts) and overly personalized or psychological ones? How was one to know for sure whether a text belonged to a specific period of history? In the case of the book of Jeremiah, to say that this book could be divided into a number of segments with perspicuous social-historical settings was grossly to oversimplify the problem of assigning texts, especially in this book, to points in time. And of course it was also to insist that the key to proper interpretation had to be inferred through critical reconstruction and was not an obvious part of the book’s own final literary presentation. To say that such a task was difficult is not to say that the approach was wrongheaded from the start or that it had ignored quite obvious indices structured into the literature whose express purpose was to help us, here in the 21st century, know how to read and interpret a prophetic book like Jeremiah. The critical theory was itself an effort to respond to the very sorts of problems noted by Luther. But, in addition, the theory maximized the potential latent in a certain understanding of prophecy – namely, the prophets as individual, inspired speakers. Early historical-critical work operated under a distinctive set of theological and practical concerns, so that if such work is now to be set aside, new theological and practical parameters will have to be worked out. On the old model, traditional theories of inspiration that had insured a book’s claim to faithfully report matters in time and space – even predicting the distant future – had been translated into a more diffuse understanding. But the same basic notion of inspiration applied: Word of God to inspired individuals, to receiving communities. On such a model, what was of utmost importance was not the actual book itself or its larger shape, since these could no longer with confidence be assigned to the traditional author, but rather a critical reconstruction of a variety of inspired individuals and the communities addressed by them. The focus had shifted from inspired book to inspired individuals.6 To shift the focus back to the book itself is not to ignore this significant, substituted theory of inspired individuals, but it is to pay attention to the possibility that the final shaping has itself crafted these various inspired voices into an organic whole, capable of speaking with one voice. But the chief point to be made here is that “capacity to speak with one voice” is not the same thing 6 

See my remarks on Isaiah in ch. 6 of the present volume.

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as either an obliteration of historical depth or the production of a static text with only one possible meaning. The process I am referring to, what Brevard S. Childs has called “canonical shaping,” was not executed in the book of Jeremiah in this sort of manner. Efforts to anticipate and speak coherently to a readership explicitly outside the book’s own historical frame of reference are not registered in such a way as to oppose participation in the book’s coming-to-be. At the same time, however, it is Jeremiah’s concrete, historical coming-to-be that also points in the direction of greater respect for the fact that the final organization and shaping – far from being random – has its own logic: a sum greater than the parts. That this logic is in Jeremiah neither chronological nor thematic should give one pause. In order to make sense of the book of Jeremiah’s final form, we are inevitably drawn into a world of real historical reference, where distinctions between the Egyptians and the Babylonians, between Zedekiah and Nebuchadnezzar, between an intact temple and one destroyed, are cleanly registered. But then the book does a surprising thing. Having made such distinctions, it begins to construct its own analogies and linkages, long before we get there as readers of this ancient witness, concerned with recasting the text chronologically, and then moving from ancient historical context to a modern, 20th-century application. In Jeremiah’s case, its logic is not chronological (anymore than in Isaiah), but we can come close to discerning a thematic logic.7

II I have been speaking in theoretical terms up to this point. It is now time to read texts and illustrate exegetically what has been described hermeneutically. The concern is to comprehend the final shape of the book of Jeremiah without ignoring the fact of its complex prehistory, with the hope that by understanding this shaping, clues might be given about how readers might appropriate the message of the book. It is assumed here that the book was not just stumbled upon, like someone else’s mail that must be decoded. Rather, a basic question is asked: How does the book function as a whole, directed toward potential readers? The answer that is given will involve regular, prayerful, chapter-bychapter reading and reflection. I will make my own proposal here, and it is nothing more than the consequence of my own regular, prayerful, chapter-bychapter reading. I am modeling my conclusions, but more important to me is the approach by which I reached them, which is what I wish to commend for parish Bible study. 7 

A number of essays in Word Without End try to illustrate this point.

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I will be looking at Jeremiah to illustrate a perspective on reading the final form of a prophetic book. Moreover, Jeremiah’s canonical shape intrigues me, and I find it relatively easy to comprehend, easier for example than the more complex shape of Isaiah.8 The first six chapters of Jeremiah, in addition to speaking judgment on Northern and Southern Kingdoms, also hold out the possibility of repentance and a removal of the sentence of judgment. Return, faithless Israel, says the Lord. I will not look on you in anger, for I am merciful,   says the Lord; I will not be angry forever. Only acknowledge your guilt, that you have rebelled   against the Lord…. And I will take you, one from a city,   two from a family,   and I will bring you to Zion. (3:12–14)

Whether such calls for repentance were originally addressed only to Israel, the Northern Kingdom, is not so crucial as noting that such calls are in fact noticeably rare in the book. This is made clear as we leave the first six chapters and enter a new section in ch. 7, where the possibility of intercession on Jeremiah’s part on behalf of Israel is withdrawn: “As for you, do not pray for this people … and do not intercede with me, for I will not hear you.” This leads to awesome pictures of coming doom with no possibility of repentance and a Jeremiah wracked with anguish and dark foreboding. Now what could the reader discern here but sad testimony to the iniquity of prior generations, so vast as to demand a sentence of judgment virtually without rider. The lesson would be a chilling one, demanding repentance and a confession of guilt. And in fact, acknowledgments of just sentencing and personal confessions are woven into the text, both in this part of the book (9:12–16) and in the first section. Let us lie down in our shame, and let our dishonor cover us; for we have sinned against the Lord our God, we and our ancestors, from our youth even to this day; and we have not obeyed the voice of the Lord our God. (3:25)

The book has been shaped to allow the reader to participate in the refusal of an earlier generation to heed God’s calls to repentance and to experience the judgment they eventually experienced, though now with a clear confession of wrongdoing and an acknowledgment that Jeremiah was a true prophet sent 8  See my “The Prophet Moses and the Canonical Shape of the Book of Jeremiah,” ZAW 101 (1989): 3–27.



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by God – something for which he was persecuted rather than honored and heeded. To take another brief example from this section of the book, note how in ch. 16 eventual readers are addressed almost explicitly: And when you tell this people all these words, and they say to you, “Why has the Lord pronounced all this great evil against us? What is our iniquity? What is the sin that we have committed against the Lord our God?” then you shall say to them: “It is because your ancestors have forsaken me,” says the Lord.  (16:10–11)

The indictment continues for another three verses. A response then appears in the form of a brief psalm toward the chapter’s conclusion. The response is not Jeremiah’s, but it is a model for the reader who confesses: “Our ancestors have inherited nothing but lies, worthless things in which there is no profit” (v. 19). A very similar anticipation of readers who are recipients of the punishment of their ancestors can be seen in the closing chapters of Deuteronomy: “When all of these things have happened to you … and you call them to mind among all the nations where I have driven you, and you return and obey, then the Lord God will have compassion …” (30:1 ff.). Not for nothing have scholars insisted on close links between Jeremiah’s editing and the shaping of the Deuteronomic traditions. Both are concerned that lessons from the past continue to address future readers. In chs. 21–45, the next major section of Jeremiah, the situation of unmitigated judgment changes; at the same time a steady reader orientation is maintained. We still find clear sentences of judgment, though now with special emphasis on those exempted from the first exile of 597 who remained in the land with Jeremiah, in contrast to those already carried off to Babylon (esp. 24:1–10). And now a timetable for judgment is also introduced: 70 years, after which time God will do a new thing with his people, all of them, whenever they were exiled from the land. But the reader will also note a change from chs. 7–20. Where before we had clear sentences of judgment, now we find a subjunctive note: “perhaps the Lord will change his mind,” we now hear. Two key chapters in this section (chs. 26 and 36) register this note up front. “It may be that they will turn and listen, all of them, and will turn from their evil way” (26:3); “It may be that when the house of Judah hears of all the disaster that I intend to do to them, all of them may turn from their evil ways, so that I may forgive their iniquity and their sin” (36:3). That these are not just rhetorical flourishes meant to underscore the heinous nature of Israel’s disobedience when that eventually occurs is made clear by the fact that specific individuals do heed God’s word spoken through

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the prophet. Not all heed the word, as God has held out for, but instead only a few, whose names are obscure but whose actions clearly show forth exemplary behavior at a time of great hardship: the elders who stepped forth to defend Jeremiah when he was brought before the prophet-killer Jehoiakim; the lone Ahikam, son of Shaphan, who rescued Jeremiah from danger in that same trial scene; Jeremiah’s loyal assistant, Baruch; and the obscure assembly of scribes and officials (Elishama, Delaiah ben Shemaiah, Elnathan ben Achbor, Gemariah ben Shaphan, Zedekiah ben Hananiah, Micaiah ben Gemariah) who in stark contrast to Jehoiakim and his servants shuddered when the king burned God’s word in a brazier used to heat his winter house. Earlier, when they heard the scroll read, they knew that what they heard was the word of God, meant to bring about repentance and divine forgiveness. Here in this section of Jeremiah, the reader sees the emergence of a small but courageous remnant, who in the midst of hardship and a sentence of divine judgment are still able to trust in God’s infinite mercy at great risk to themselves but confident in exercising the choice that will give them the right to stand together with Jeremiah against those who refuse God’s mercies as recipients of God’s forgiveness. Their potential function as paradigms for a remnant in need of hope and forgiveness  – a remnant confronted not by Jeremiah himself but by the book of Jeremiah as a word of scripture – seems clear. In the final section (chs. 37–45) only two such figures stand out in the chiaroscuro of fear and equivocation on the eve of Judah’s collapse. The foreigner Ebed-melech and the loyal Baruch were given their lives as a prize of war because of the trust they had shown in God. Now the final shaping of Jeremiah has not forced all the material into a tidy scheme whose chief purpose is to confront readers approaching the material as a scriptural word of address. But it has made allowance for a word once addressed by the prophet to past generations to sound forth beyond its own temporal horizon, to address readers of Jeremiah as scripture in an intentional and not just a fortuitous manner. Moreover, the search for coherence in the final form, and even a direct reader orientation, has not just been artificially imposed, as though the choice were between the text as Rorschach, capable of an unlimited set of reader-imposed meanings, or a text with only one level of distinct intentionality. Rather, loose guidelines are set up to help the reader move through a very complex presentation, with a variety of past intentions whose force has not been obliterated in the final shaping process. I have argued in another context for a similar sort of organizing lens, focused not so much on readers but on the figure of Jeremiah as a second Moses; an intercessor like Moses but forbidden to intercede; a prophet who like Moses shared in the judgment on a disobedient generation; the prophet who refashioned a burned scroll, as once-broken tablets were reconstituted at

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the foot of Sinai; one who singled out two special individuals exempt from the judgment on a generation, Ebed-melech and Baruch, just as once Joshua and Caleb were given their lives as a prize of war; and one who brought to a tragic conclusion a prophetic succession whose origins began with Moses in Egypt, now to be brought to conclusion there as well.9 Again, this larger organizing lens does not suppress the particularity of the individual chapters, nor is it the whim of readers looking for unity and larger shape that are not in fact intended. It is what it is: a larger interpretive lens meant to provide loose organization and structure that will guide in interpreting the individual parts of the whole.

III It seems to me there are several clear implications for biblical study in this sort of approach. First, original authorial intention, difficult to reconstruct on an older, historical-critical model, is but one level of intentionality and it may well have been recast and reshaped in the final organization of a biblical book. Therefore, one needs to develop other sorts of instincts when reading biblical texts than instincts chiefly concerned with what was early or original. As you can see, in this reading of Jeremiah I have shifted the focus from author as subject to reader as intended object of address. I have not rejected intentionality but asked about it from the standpoint of anticipated readers. Second and related to this, it is important to try to find larger structure and coherence beyond the scope of an individual passage. This is especially difficult, since in the church’s liturgical use of the Bible very rarely if ever do we read through a book chapter by chapter. But such a possibility is open to Bible study, even if it means paraphrasing and skipping over passages from time to time. Even then nothing prohibits one from at least raising the question of what the present organization of the material seems to be intending. And finally, it is always important to ask whether the material as it presently confronts us speaks a word to readers rather directly, and not just obliquely or through special critical reconstruction. What I have in mind here is not lifting the plain sense of the text immediately into a higher spiritual or personal realm but, rather, asking how and why this text has, within the context of other texts, addressed previous generations of hearers. Their ranks have now swollen to include us, in the 21st century, in our particular corner of Christ’s church. 9 

Ibid. The essay appears as ch. 12 in the present volume.

15. Fixity and Potential in Isaiah I In the original formulation of the conference that has given rise to these essays, a distinction was made between “literal potential” and “theological fixing.” For the purposes of the present volume, I accept the distinction but will adjust it for heuristic purposes. In so doing, a question about literary fixing must first be addressed because, from the side of biblical studies, this is where the challenge lies. How are we to understand the character of the witness before us and what kind of fixity it may be said to set forth? I also want to approach the matter of potentiality by beginning with fixity, as this sounds like a term that might give us reason to expect something fixed or stable. Readers of Isaiah have approached texts as fixed objects of scrutiny throughout the history of interpretation. The decision of Albrecht Alt, famously, to read Isa 9:1–7 as referring to Hezekiah operates with a fixed text. I suspect what a term like “literary fixity” might hope to convey is the sense that vv. 1–7 is a fixed text within a broader literary context.1 Its fixity, therefore, would have to do with its rootedness within a stable literary presentation. Recent appeals to canonical shaping and intentionality operate, then, with a higher view of “literary fixity” than approaches that either (1) seek to isolate texts from their context for the purpose of discovering their original historical settings or references (as with Alt) or that (2) focus on the genetics of texts, that is, how texts came to birth and were altered, refocused, and so forth, before settling down into a fixed home in a literary context (which is only an accidental stopping point of literary development).2 I have chosen to look at those texts in the first part of Isaiah that have been classified as royal or messianic texts. These texts are found in chs. 9 and 11 and also involve the mysterious reference to the ‫ ﬠלמה‬and her child Immanuel at 7:14. Here is a classic problem of literary fixity in the manner I am now 1  Albrecht Alt, “Jesaja 8,23–9,6: Befreiungsnacht und Krönungstag,” in Kleine Schriften zur Geschichte des Volkes Israel, 3 vols. (München: Beck, 1959), 2:206–25. 2 On this, see my “Two Testaments and the Failure of One Tradition-History,” in Figured Out: Typology and Providence in Christian Scripture (Louisville: Westminster John Knox, 2001), 35–47.

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defining it. One procedure, followed assiduously although not exclusively in the modern period, sought to locate the texts in the history of Isaiah and, by probing their details, to relate them to kings of Israel, or the progeny of the prophet and the like. Candidates for this have been Hezekiah and Josiah, for example. In the case of Immanuel, it has been argued that the text refers to the child of the prophet or Hezekiah or a limited number of other contemporaneous figures. The fact that the texts are obscure or that their details are in need of fleshing out is, ironically, the occasion for encouragement in the quest. This quest entails a decision to learn as much as one can about the history of the period and the history of the text in referring to it. The obscurity, on the one hand, is a function of historical distance. It is, on the other hand, a function of the conviction that there is sufficient historical vestige to warrant a search for a meaning that is not ours directly but was that of someone else more contemporaneous with the original composition, delivery, or editorial finalization. Here, we might speak of a historical fixity to be recovered through the dark, albeit fixed, lens of the literary witness. I have chosen these texts as well because interpreters have sensed they have some relationship to one another; the notion of “literary fixity” lies closer to hand than with other examples that might have been chosen. To the degree that they have a relationship with one another, it is difficult merely to isolate them and to focus on only one kind of referentiality. Commentators have long seen the literary shaping in what was first called the Isaiah Denkschrift, or memoir (consisting of chs. 6–8), and such a theory reckons with both high or low forms of literary editing and what has come to be called, in its most recent phase, intertextuality. Intertextuality of an intentional sort assumes a commitment to something like fixity for the historical references of the text. These references, which once existed in pristine form, have come to line up within a literary context at a remove from original historical fixity and relationship. Finally, I  have chosen these texts because they are familiar to readers. Because this familiarity is the function of another context of interpretation and another level of literary fixing (enclosing the New Testament’s hearing of the prophet Isaiah), we also can see how literary fixity of different kinds will produce different readings of individual texts. These readings do not necessarily have much to do with prior commitments to a high degree of historicity for such texts. Moreover, two of the more thorough and creative efforts to deal with Isaiah in its final form are represented by Brevard S. Childs and Marvin A. Sweeney, Christian and Jewish interpreters respectively, whose post-Old Testament context of literary fixity is different.3 Childs has written a commending tribute to Sweeney on the back of his recent FOTL volume 3 

Brevard S. Childs, Isaiah, OTL (Louisville: Westminster John Knox, 2001); Marvin

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(Isaiah 1–39), so while they may reach different conclusions, it is clear they are reading kindred secondary materials and plying forms of interpretation reasonably familiar to one another.

II Sweeney’s conclusion about Immanuel can be isolated from his very detailed analysis: “Because the identity of the ʿalma is never made clear, it is impossible to identify Immanuel with any certainty.”4 Childs’s conclusion sounds similar: One of the most significant features of this verse is the mysterious, even vague and indeterminate, tone that pervades the entire passage. The reader is simply not given information regarding the identity of the maiden…. It is therefore idle to speculate on these matters; rather, the reader can determine if there are other avenues of understanding opened up by the larger context. Specifically, what is the significance of learning how the sign of Immanuel was interpreted from within the subsequent tradition in chapter 8?5

Childs goes beyond Sweeney in appealing to the editorial reuse of “Immanuel” in ch. 8 to help one know how, or how not, to proceed with the interpretation of 7:14. But they are also not in agreement about the nature of the obscurity in v. 14. Childs seems to believe it is a built-in feature of the text, at least as this has been passed on to us by editors. Hence, Childs’s appeals to their alleged work in ch. 8 as a good guide to interpretation.6 Sweeney engages in a very painstaking evaluation of the efforts to declare a reference for Immanuel and simply admits that, while Hezekiah looks like the best candidate, chronological problems stand in the way of an identification with him. In my Isaiah commentary, I concluded that the chronological problems were a challenge of their own making in the context of rival Old Testament reports and so held to a Hezekiah identification in the face of apparent, and greater, confusion on the chronological front.7 My appeal, furthermore, was in a context of literary fixity made famous by Ronald E. Clements and Peter R. Ackroyd and well-known to Sweeney, that is, the editorially contrasting accounts of Hezekiah and Ahaz A. Sweeney, Isaiah 1–39: With an Introduction to Prophetic Literature, FOTL 16 (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1996). 4 Sweeney, Isaiah 1–39, 162. 5 Childs, Isaiah, 66. 6  “[T]he addition of the name Immanuel to a prophetic threat is striking evidence that the transmitters of the tradition of chapter 7 have continued to reflect on the theological significance of the mysterious child of promise. The reference in 8:4 also shows that Immanuel has remained not just a sign name, but now receives a definite profile and is addressed as the Lord of the land of Judah” (ibid., 73). 7  Christopher R. Seitz, Isaiah 1–39, IBC (Louisville: Westminster John Knox, 1993).

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found in chs. 6–9 and 36–39 in the final form of Isaiah.8 Childs resists seeing anything much of importance in this form of literary fixity, perhaps because it is so far afield (literarily) from the serial reading of a chapter-by-chapter character, such as he is pursuing. In such a reading, proximate literary context may be more important (though even that judgment is belied by his handling of Isaiah 9’s royal text which I discuss below). Was there any historical referent for the Immanuel figure? This question cannot be answered by Sweeney. It is not the right question, according to Childs. It is Hezekiah on the basis of Isaiah 9 and 36–39 for both Christopher R. Seitz and Clements. Clements, however, argues for this referent on the basis of the juxtaposition of ch. 9 with chs. 7–8. It created such a reading where once there was another: Immanuel was originally the prophet’s son. I also see the linkage to Immanuel as an editorially intended matter, from 7:14 to 8:5 and v. 10, but view the link as focusing on Hezekiah, who is referred to in similar terms in 9:5 and also 2 Kgs 18:17. Herewith my appeal to a form of literary fixing: Whatever one may think of the Immanuel child in chapters 7–9 … one’s reading of the Immanuel passages is now affected by the larger context, specifically the royal oracle in 9:2–7. Isaiah 7:14 spoke of a child to be born; 9:6 states, as if in response: “For to us a child is born.” Isaiah 7:16 speaks of the Syro-Ephraimite threat coming to an end; 9:5 tells of the broken rod of the oppressor. The child would be called “God with us”; and he is named “Wonderful Counselor, Mighty God.” (9:6) It is virtually impossible to read the Immanuel passages in the light of 9:2–7 and not catch the clear connections that exist as a consequence of the present organization of the material.9

Here is a place where I might view a higher degree of linkage in the “literary fixity” than does Childs, who focuses instead on the obscurity of the Immanuel reference across chs. 7 and 8 only. When it comes to Sweeney’s interpretation of the royal oracle of ch. 9, we read first, “There is no indication, however, that this psalm was written for any specific king, much less Hezekiah.”10 But the reader needs to be alert, as Sweeney is distinguishing between original composition and original application. So, in a sentence or two he follows up: “it (the royal oracle) now appears in the context of literature that was written in conjunction with the 8 

Ronald E. Clements, Isaiah 1–39, NCBE (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1980); idem, “The Immanuel Prophecy of Isaiah 7:10–17 and Messianic Interpretation,” in Old Testament Prophecy: From Oracles to Canon (Louisville: Westminster John Knox, 1996), 65–77; Peter R. Ackroyd, “Isaiah 36–39: Structure and Function,” in Von Kanaan bis Kerala: Festschrift für Prof. Mag. Dr. Dr. J. P. M. van der Ploeg O. P. zur Vollendung des seibzigsten Lebensjahres am 4. Juli 1979, ed. W. C. Delsman, AOAT 211 (Neukirchen-Vluyn: Neukirchener Verlag, 1982), 3–21. 9 Seitz, Isaiah 1–39, 74. 10 Sweeney, Isaiah 1–39, 182.

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Syro-Ephraimite War and the years that followed. Consequently, the new king presupposed in the present context must be Hezekiah.”11 The royal psalm was not composed for Hezekiah but has been applied to him, as Sweeney sees it, and clearly so. Childs rehearses the famous theory associated with Alt, whereby stock ancient Near Eastern language of hyperbolic accession has been associated with Hezekiah. Alt argues that the form and style revealed an authentic Isaianic succession oracle for the crowning of Hezekiah as king…. Yet at this juncture it is crucial to distinguish between the conventional language of the oracle and its biblical function within the book of Isaiah. To suggest that this oracle is simply hyperbolic, oriental language used to celebrate the accession of a new Israelite king is to historicize the biblical text and to overlook its role within the larger literary context.12

Childs objects to a kind of historical fixing (achieved via form-criticism) that cannot tolerate secondary fixing (in consequence of canonical shaping) within a literary form, which for him is the mature wine of preferred tasting. Childs concludes by asserting a messianic referent as clearly presented in the fixed literary form. The description of his reign makes it absolutely clear that his role is messianic. There is no end to his rule upon the throne of David, and he will reign with justice and righteousness forever. Moreover, it is the ardor of the Lord of hosts who will bring this eschatological purpose to fulfillment. The language is not just of a wishful thinking for a better time, but the confession of Israel’s belief in a divine ruler who will replace once and for all the unfaithful reign of kings like Ahaz.13

What Alt sought to secure in the realm of historical fixity, Childs interprets as eschatological and an intentional outstripping of contemporaneous exemplars. Finally, we come to the royal oracle of ch. 11. Here Sweeney manifests his commitment to what is the clearest form of literary fixing for him: the Josianic editing of ch. 11 within the stable literary form of chs. 1–12. The referent to ch. 11, unlike 7:14, is as clear as clear can be. The match between historical fixing and literary fixing is almost perfect. After stating that “a number of factors indicate the Josianic background of 11:1–12:6,”14 Sweeney goes on to describe five of these: (1) the shoot from a stump imagery indicates “a tree that has nearly been destroyed but is still capable of rejuvenating itself,” that is, commensurate with the Josianic recovery in the 7th century; (2) the small 11 Ibid.

12 Childs,

Isaiah, 80. Ibid., 81. 14 Sweeney, Isaiah 1–39, 204. 13 

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boy leading them “suggests an allusion to the boy-king Josiah, one of the youngest ruling monarchs of the Davidic dynasty”; (3) “the new king’s justice and mercy” is linked to his view that “one should note that one of the major features of Josiah’s reform was the establishment of a newly found book of the law as its basis”; (4) “Isaiah 11:11–16 emphasizes the cessation of enmity between Ephraim and Judah,” and “this scenario corresponds precisely to Josiah’s attempt to rebuild the Davidic empire”; and (5) “the interest in exodus traditions apparent in both 11:11–16 and 12:1–6 is particularly noteworthy” because “the celebration of Passover served as the festival basis for Josiah’s reform.”15 In contrast, Childs sees the same level of eschatological fixing – if that is the proper term – in ch. 11’s royal oracle as in ch. 9. We are speaking here of a messianic depiction. Let us move slowly to his conclusion through a quote that shows the importance of taking literary context seriously. On this latter point, he and Sweeney and my own Isaiah commentary are in agreement, yet the fixity at this level of final shaping is of such a character, apparently, that it admits of a variety of interpretations. This has to do with the degree of intended historical roots detected, the character of the editing, and the kinds of literary contexts called upon to bear significance for our final-form reading. Now we can see where fixing has given way, instead, to potential. First, Childs on ch. 11 within the stable literary form: Chapter 11 has been editorially positioned to form the culmination of a theological direction that commenced at chapter 6, moved through the promise of a coming messianic ruler in chapter 7, and emerged in chapter 9 with the portrayal of a righteous messianic king upon the throne of David. Chapter 11 offers both a correction and an exposition of the coming reign. Lest one suppose an unbroken continuity between the house of David and the coming king – the encounter with Ahaz in chapter 7 has destroyed this possibility – chapter 11 begins with the end of the old.16

Then Childs on the character of the process of editing: by careful attention to the function of intertextuality through its lengthy editorial process, one can discern a very strong force emerging that sought to unify the prophetic proclamations into a coherent composition. Quite clearly, different literary restraints were at work in this canonical process from those in the modern world. Certainly no heavy-handed systematization of the prophetic oracles was attempted, but guidelines were carefully established that signalled points of resonance for the whole.17

My commentary agrees with the narrower conclusion regarding ch. 11’s royal oracle, that is, that it speaks of an eschatological figure. In that sense, as well, 15 

Ibid., 204–5. Isaiah, 102. 17  Ibid., 106. 16 Childs,

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I also hold to a notion of what Childs calls “the culmination of a theological direction” at work within the final literary form. Sweeney can also speak of a culmination, but it would be of a different historical order. For him, Josiah is the referent of ch. 11, and thus the entire collection of chs. 1–12 comes to be what it is as a consequence of his reform and his exalted status. The text’s final horizon, its theological direction, points to a figure in past history – even as this figure is never once named in the text. The direction that my commentary plots begins with the historical counterpart to Ahaz, that is, Hezekiah. My claim is reinforced by the proximity of chs. 7–8 to 9, on the one hand, and the contrast between Ahaz and Hezekiah, on the other hand. The latter is reinforced by the two narrative sequences of chs. 36–39, where Hezekiah establishes what Ahaz disestablished, and chs. 7–8, where the Immanuel child is promised as a sign of weal and woe (on this, see n. 19 below). Hezekiah remains but a type of the kind of exalted ruler ch. 11 speaks of, and here the trajectory moves in an eschatological direction, as suggested by Childs. Childs presents himself with a special kind of challenge by arguing for two messianic oracles in close literary proximity. Both are fairly exalted, indeed theologically emphatic, announcements of coming messianic rule. Why two, then? Sweeney does not have this challenge because the first refers to Hezekiah and the second to Josiah – the two kings given exalted status in the evaluation of the Deuteronomistic Historian. Childs must entertain, therefore, the notion of correction. In order to avoid the notion of simple repetition, Isaiah 11 must, on Childs’s reading, be doing something over and above the plain sense of ch. 9. So, he concludes, it emphasizes that the old order is over. It remains unclear to me why, by his reading, ch. 9 cannot already be doing that on its own. Regarding final literary fixity, I conclude in my commentary: “The larger context of Isaiah 1–12 has affected our interpretation of the core material in 7:1–9:6. Just as it is impossible to read the Immanuel texts in isolation from the royal oracle at 9:2–7, so too the royal oracle at 11:1–9 tends to affect our comprehensive vision of kingship as found in chs. 1–12.”18 With this quote one can see that there is no disagreement among the three interpreters regarding the significance of final literary fixing. Where there is disagreement is over how to assess the final literary form, not just of chs. 1–12, but of 1–12 over against 36–39, and within the context of both Isaiah the former and Isaiah the latter, that is, the final literary presentation of Isaiah as a whole. We do not have time here to speak of the effect of ch. 32 on the theological direction of former Isaiah. More significantly, the absence of royal oracles in latter Isaiah, and the “sure promises to David” enclosing the servants in ch. 55 18 Seitz,

Isaiah 1–39, 75.



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will likewise affect our interpretation of what it means to speak of Isaiah’s final messianic horizon.19 I conclude my treatment of the royal oracles of former Isaiah with a suggestion about their potential and subsequent theological fixing, taken from my 1993 commentary. My concern there was to honor the plain-sense witness of Isaiah, as a sovereign word spoken by God to his elect people, and yet to appreciate the potential such a word had for later theological confession. It is this dialectic – historical word and theological reapplication – that Childs has sought to underscore, and it belongs decisively to the heart of careful historical-theological exegesis. [T]he messianic role that Jesus fulfils is not an eternal “type” with no earthly referent. The church confesses that out of the messiness of earthly government, specifically rooted in the house of David, God prepares a place for his son to rule as King. That Jesus explodes all mundane aspects of kingship is itself not unprecedented. Israel’s own vision of kingship, and from time to time its own historical kings, prepared the church to see in Jesus a king like no other, yet like what Israel longed for and at times experienced a foretaste of in kings like Hezekiah.20

There is a literary potential in Isaiah’s presentation of hopes for David and his line. But this potential is fixed within a reasonable limit, as close exegesis shows, and it never cuts itself loose from concrete historical realities within 19  The following quote shows the fine interplay between literary potential and theological fixing in the book of Isaiah as a whole: “the prediction of the Immanuel child in 7:13– 17 appears to be fulfilled initially in chapter 8 with the birth of the prophet’s son (note the repetition of vocabulary and concepts in 8:3–10, 18). However, 9:1–7 reveals that this one, who is to deliver Jerusalem from the Assyrians, is to be a royal child (cf. 11:1 ff.; 16:5; 32:1–9), so the reader must set aside Maher-Shalal-Hash-Baz as an option. This person remains nameless apparently until chapter 36–39, as Hezekiah seems to fulfill this hope (again through a series of echoes of chapter 7; note, e. g., the place, 36:1–2; a sign, 37:30; 38:7, 22; the need to trust in Yahweh’s help, 37:1–20). Yet, his failure in chapter 39 disqualifies him as well. Isaiah 40–66 presents the Servant, one of whose tasks is to establish justice in Israel and among the nations. This and other characteristics (e. g., the Spirit, light) link him to the royal hope of chapters 1–39. The person that the people of God must wait for, then, is a composite figure, whose ultimate identity keeps pushing the reader forward through a series of historical eras yet without final closure. In addition, the many lexical and thematic connections between the Servant and the people in chapters 40 ff. yield an even more complex picture, which is full of theological and ethical implications. Of course, a Christian reader would identify Jesus as the final fulfillment of this literary movement. Nevertheless, our concern at this juncture is to demonstrate the flow and power of the eschatological hopes within the Old Testament itself ” (M. Daniel Carroll R., “The Power of the Future in the Present: Eschatology and Ethics in O’Donovan and Beyond,” in A Dialogue with Oliver O’Donovan, ed. Craig Bartholomew et al., vol. 3 of A Royal Priesthood? The Use of the Bible Ethically and Politically, ed. Craig Bartholomew et al. [Grand Rapid: Zondervan, 2002], 132n57). See also the discussion in chs. 4 and 10 in the present volume. 20 Seitz, Isaiah 1–39, 75.

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God’s ways with Israel. By the same token, a clear horizon of potentiality arises from theological reflection on those given historical realities, and the result is, within Israel and within a particular line of the reception history of Isaiah, theological agreement and a degree of subsequent fixity. It belongs to the task of exegesis to handle this relationship with care and close reading, for the sake of Israel and the church’s confession of Jesus as Christ. What would require further treatment is the church’s coordination of first- and second-advent perspectives in the light of a single Isaiah witness. I  have tried to explore this tentatively in other contexts and can only refer to that in passing here.21

21  Christopher R. Seitz, “Isaiah in New Testament, Lectionary, Pulpit,” in Word without End: The Old Testament as Abiding Theological Witness (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1998), 213–28; idem, “‘Of Mortal Appearance’  – Earthly Jesus and Isaiah as a Type of Christian Scripture,” in Figured Out, 103–16. An edited version of that latter essay appears as chapter 13 in the present volume.

16. Prophetic Associations Associations Literary and Prophetic: Isaiah and the Twelve as Examples It has been customary to see in the oracles of Isaiah 40–55 signs of association that are critical to proper interpretation of this section of Isaiah, as well as the oracles with which the book concludes (chs. 56–66). W. A. M. Beuken has successfully argued for and exegetically established the notion that the movement of so-called Second to Third Isaiah is best understood as a movement from a concern with the Servant of God to the servants of God, a transition that is accomplished at the end of ch. 54 (where for the first time the plural term appears at v. 17).1 The significance of this transition is underscored as well by references to a plural confession in the “Suffering Servant Song” that precedes this transitional chapter contextually and gives rise to its celebratory tenor (52:13–53:12). That is, the servants who constitute a sustained theme in Isaiah 55–66 are those who have seen in the work of the Suffering Servant an insight, which is communicated to future generations by them in that tribute, and carried out by them in their own vocation to suffer and bear witness in the chapters that conclude the book of Isaiah. They are the “seed” of the Servant, his disciples, and his spiritual progeny.2 But this association has a significant precursor in a movement within the drama of chs. 40–53 itself. Along with Brevard S. Childs, Peter Wilcox and David Paton-Williams, and others, I  have argued that the servant Israel of chs. 40–48 is part of a corporate vocation that, in ch. 49, is taken up by one individual figure, the one of whom God in effect says, “you are my servant,” that is, “you are the servant previously referred to as corporate Israel,” and “in you, and you specifically, that vocation will be fulfilled.”3 So, in these critical 1  W. A.

M. Beuken, “The Main Theme of Trito-Isaiah: The ‘Servant of YHWH,’” JSOT 47 (1990): 67–87. 2 Christopher R. Seitz, “The Book of Isaiah 40–66,” in The New Interpreter’s Bible, vol. 6, ed. L. E. Keck (Nashville: Abingdon, 2001), 459–73. 3 Peter Wilcox and David Paton-Williams, “The Servant Songs in Deutero-Isaiah,” JSOT 42 (1988): 79–102; Christopher R. Seitz, “How is the Prophet Isaiah Present in the Latter Half of the Book? The Logic of Chapters 40–66 within the Book of Isaiah,” JBL 115

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chapters, there is a movement from the nation Israel as servant to an individual Suffering Servant, whose suffering will accomplish what had been said to be the vocation of Israel servant; and finally, from this accomplishment, to a circle of servants who further the work of the Servant by virtue of the insight granted to them regarding his success: the lifting high of one who bore the sins of many (52:13). One could add to this a further aspect as well: the eventual recognition by those outside of these circles within Israel of the true accomplishment of the Servant, that is, the nations, for whom the servant Israel, the individual Servant, and the servants of YHWH are to be the bringers of light and life (v. 15). In an essay on the oracles of Isaiah 40–55, Robert R. Wilson saw signs of a character of prophetic association, though his focus was on the idea of a community of disciples more generally.4 Indeed, the interpretation he offered paid very little attention to the prophetic voice or personality of “Second Isaiah” himself because Wilson felt it was just such a collective interpretation of the community of disciples that brought the actual message at the literary level to light. That is, Wilson was not arguing as above that the literary unfolding and dramatic movement of the oracles in what might be called the text’s plain, or canonical sense, was the means of our proper understanding. Neither did he try to explain the nature of the association between prophet and disciples, but instead he focused on the existence of this anonymous plural group, hidden behind the literary presentation, but offering enough clues of their existence that one could, with the application of certain historical and sociological speculations, give some lineament and contour to them. This was a classical kind of interpretative move, involving recourse to careful excavation of details glimpsed only in this or that aspect of the literary presentation. Intriguingly, one place where Wilson argued for signs of this association with a community of disciples was at the very opening verses (40:1–2). Indeed, one might conclude that this is why Wilson saw the significance of the reality he was trying to describe, because it was for him there at the beginning of the discourse and so critical for this reason. The plural imperative (“comfort ye”) and plural pronominal suffixes (“says your God”) indicated to him “that it makes sense to assume that God is addressing the disciples of Second Isaiah, the group that treasured these oracles and saw itself playing an important role (1996): 219–40. Brevard S. Childs, Isaiah, OTL (Louisville: Westminster John Knox, 2001), 384–85; Christopher R. Seitz, “‘You are my Servant, You are the Israel in whom I will be glorified’ – The Servant Songs and the Effect of Literary Context in Isaiah,” CTJ 39 (2004): 117–34. Childs does not think this individualized servant is an historical figure in the same manner as I hold. 4  Robert R. Wilson, “The Community of the Second Isaiah,” in Reading and Preaching the Book of Isaiah, ed. Christopher R. Seitz (Philadelphia, Fortress, 1988), 53–70.

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in realizing the prophecies that the book contains.”5 This view has been held before, and in some measure one can see it in commentary accounts to this day. The plurality addressed was not, as Frank Moore Cross and others had argued, a “heavenly entourage” or “divine council.”6 This also meant that a move now popularly undertaken to associate this text with the call or commissioning account of Isaiah 6 (where similar features are less controversially on display) was also foreclosed.7 On this view, a literary association (established for Cross on form-critical grounds and for others on the basis of a form-criticism aligned with a new view of the association of parts of Isaiah once held to be discrete) combined with an understanding of association at the level of prophetic activity to underscore the way new prophecy at a later period was seen to be the continuation of, in association with, that of Isaiah of Jerusalem. On this view, we would then need to widen the circle of association described above in respect to Isaiah 40–66 to include as well Isaiah of Jerusalem, the only named prophetic figure in the book, and on the view of many, its “author,” now in an enlarged, canonical sense.8 The point to be observed is that different kinds of association can be argued for by interpreters, but only certain kinds of conjunctions of association together create the sort of picture of Isaiah’s interpretation argued for in recent days. This conjunction of associations produces a view of Isaiah that understands the final literary product, its canonical shape and movement, as critical to a proper appraisal of those forms of association meant to be highlighted for interpretation, and it is these associations, as they are witnessed to in the literary form of the received text (in complex diachronic conjunction, requiring no excavation, as it were), that are argued to be what the legacy of “the community of disciples” genuinely is (cf. Wilson’s view, quoted above).9 Canonical association and prophetical association are therefore kindred affairs when it comes to the 66-chapter book of Isaiah, and they are related in the very nature of what prophecy is about as a total cross-generational phenomenon (more on this below).10 5 

Ibid., 54. Moore Cross, “The Council of Yahweh in Second Isaiah,” JNES 12 (1953): 274–77; Christopher R. Seitz, “The Divine Council: Temporal Transition and New Prophecy in the Book of Isaiah,” JBL 109 (1990): 229–47. 7  Seitz, “The Book of Isaiah 40–66,” 327–37; Childs, Isaiah, 294–303. 8  See also H. G. M. Williamson, The Book Called Isaiah: Deutero-Isaiah’s Role in Composition and Redaction (Oxford: Clarendon; New York: Oxford University Press, 1994). 9  If I understand him correctly, it is the disciples who give form to the present chapters. Unclear to me is how one identifies a Second Isaiah proclamation as such, and how the opening unit in ch. 40 is meant to coordinate disciples and their editing with it. 10  See my discussion of the limitations of the commentary on Isaiah by Joseph Blenkinsopp. Blenkinsopp rejects as bookish a nevertheless altogether historical question about the 6  Frank

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Wilson’s understanding of association was honed in some measure by instincts developed in his earlier textbook treatment, Prophecy and Society in Ancient Israel.11 In that book, Wilson is interested in moving beyond individualized understandings of the prophet, made popular under romantic or idealistic philosophical assumptions from the 19th century, toward a better assessment of prophecy as a social phenomenon. So, he endeavored to establish wider ancient Near Eastern parallels whereby we might understand a prophet’s place within culture (support groups, disciples, and such). The Bible of course speaks clearly of such associations in many places (Elijah, Elisha, and “sons of the prophet”; Jeremiah and Baruch; Isaiah and “students”; even Haggai-Zechariah) and eventually includes even the grand consolidations suggested by the phrase of the Deuteronomistic History, “all my servants the prophets,” understood in part to be a kind of lineage of association stretching back to Moses (even if artificially described in a post hoc manner). The references in Zechariah to the legacy of “former prophets” also probably belong to this same broad context of understanding.12 At some places this sort of association within the prophetic canon was connected to descriptions of how the present literary presentation was intended to make sense in its canonical form (loosely understood as the present form of a book). The role of Baruch in providing a “signature” over his editorial work in Jeremiah 45 is such an example, but the explanatory power at the level of interpreting the entire book of Jeremiah is fairly restricted.13 It is in part for this reason that canonical interpretation did not seek to ground its logic in associations of the kind Wilson was interested in identifying, in the social and religious history of Israel and the wider Near East. There are builtin limitations of this kind of approach, within the very nature of the undertaking, for coming to terms with the complex literary presentations now lying before us in prophetic books. Where arguably such associations might have existed and shown us a way forward, as in the example of Isaiah, Wilson’s brief comments in the context of a public lecture indicate that he was prioritizing a kind of associating that only really ever existed (hypothetically) in the social ability of history-of-religion forces to produce something like a meaningful account of that history in the form of canonical literature in a given and intended final shape (Christopher R. Seitz, “Review of Blenkinsopp, Joseph, Isaiah 56–66: The Anchor Bible,” SJT 60 [2007]: 476–78). 11  Robert R. Wilson, Prophecy and Society in Ancient Israel (Philadelphia: Fortress, 1980). 12  Christopher R. Seitz, Prophecy and Hermeneutics: Toward a New Introduction to the Prophets, STI (Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2007). 13  I discuss ch. 45 and theories pertaining to Baruch in “The Prophet Moses and the Canonical Shape of Jeremiah,” ZAW 101 (1989): 3–27 (also appears in ch. 12 of the present volume).



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and religious realm. Tracing this form of association in such a way that it might illumine the canonical form of Isaiah was not of particular interest, and one might well ask oneself whether this was because Wilson never thought the canonical form was capable of, or intended to deliver, something like a coherent literary, much less theological, sense. The literary form is simply a starting point for socio-historical inquiries and nothing more significant in its literary presentation as such. It remains unclear to me whether many who preferred a history-of-religions approach, eschewing a search for significance at the final literary level, do so because they object to the notion or because they have never considered that such a reality might actually be on offer, and so is not within the horizon of hermeneutical consideration. I have used the example of Gerhard von Rad14 as one who seemed caught between these considerations, because on the one hand he could sense that the combination of sources in the final form of the Pentateuch seemed theologically significant and an intentional feature of book’s compositional history, while on the other hand some Lutheran critical instinct sensed the material form of Genesis required a kind of unevenness and erratic character, else one would be following some form of Jewish reading or one that dispensed with an interpretative key ad extra, supplied by Jesus Christ (in whatever way he meant that).15 I mention von Rad as a more theologically concerned interpreter to show that this kind of hesitancy to see the final form of the text as intentionally crafted and significant on those terms is shared for different reasons. In some cases, the idea of a biblical book exhibiting coherence in the final form might mean a repudiation of the business of historical-critical labor, and so a warning of impending “out of work” signs. The worry is that a canonical reading erases important historical dimensions in the presentation.16 For others, the ad extra brought to the biblical text in order for it to make theological sense or encourage virtues or habits of various kinds (including the sober estimation of past religious history as such), is supplied by confessions, liturgical presentation, creeds, or a wider set of religious or ethical considerations. These range as widely (in theory) as decisions of a curial church, general habits of the religious life, or convictions about what counts for any religious or ethical thinking in the present day (see the concerns, for example, of Stanley Hauerwas). But in no case should it simply be concluded up front that the canonical form and shape of a biblical text is off limits for investigation, including in my judgment the possibility that it is doing its own specific and highly significant 14  Christopher R. Seitz, “Prophecy and Tradition-History: The Achievement of Gerhard von Rad,” in Prophecy and Hermeneutics, 172–78. 15  See the discussion in ch. 7 of the present volume. 16  See n. 19 and the discussion below.

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form of “historical reporting.” This is precisely because the final canonical form is a mature and seasoned commentary on a series of historical moments, now taken up and crafted in service of the project of setting forth a divine word which speaks of the past in order to address the future.17

Associations in the Twelve A fascinating new development not considered in Wilson’s sociological treatment is the association of the twelve so-called “Minor Prophets” in one collection. This is hardly surprising, for the sequential, historically reconstructed order was regarded as an axiomatic way to think about the prophets. Wilson’s work on the prophets does not depart from this given. Association of the Prophets to Torah had been rendered problematical by literary-critical theories from the 19th century (the late date of the Priestly source and Julius Wellhausen’s enthusiasm in finding “torah-free” prophetic inspiration).18 Von Rad substituted a conception in which the prophets were associated by virtue of their recourse to traditions lying at the base of a pre-P “Hexateuch.” Wilson sought associations within the cultural-societal milieu, using the wider ancient Near Eastern context to fill out, it was hoped, this biblical portrayal of associations. The idea of clear association within the Twelve was obvious to earlier commentators because of the phenomenon of literary cross-reference and repeated themes of various kinds.19 These included citations in Joel that appear elsewhere in the prophetic canon and the appearance of language from the last chapter in Joel in Amos, his Book-of-the-Twelve neighbor. Examples of associations at the level of themes would include the concerns with fertility and natural bounty; the Day of the Lord; the so-called compassionate formula, appearing in Joel, Jonah, and Nahum, and in allusions in Hosea and Micah. These literary associations were thought to entail relationships between the prophets as individuals, in their historical existence, however one then went on to explain this. This feature of literary association fell out for two chief reasons and gave way to the different understanding of association within von Rad’s traditionhistorical or in Wilson’s sociological model. The first turned on the practical reality that, if one ceased to read the Twelve one-after-the-other and re17 

See ch. 8 in the present volume. For a fuller discussion, see ch. 19 in the present volume. 19  I discuss 19th-century models for reading the Minor Prophets in the first part of Prophecy and Hermeneutics. Chapter 5 in the present volume gives a full illustration of the associations and how they were handled prior to the historical-critical consensus regarding sequence. 18 

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placed this with a different sequence, the associations were not so keenly felt. Secondly, because it was the business of a model like that of von Rad and the other standard treatments to question whether all the literature in a given collection went back to the individual with which the book was associated, it became the usual practice to assign material that reappeared elsewhere in the Twelve to a theory of dependence and secondary editorial maneuver. Standard annotations of translations of the Bible into English recorded that verses were secondary or not likely to come from the prophet in question, but over time the matter of association and an explanation for that fell out. It was enough to register that the verses were “inauthentic” or secondary. The fact of the verses appearing in another context within the Twelve was not a matter for comment or even acknowledgment. This was the consequence of a model focused on individuality within the prophetic canon. I mention this in part because conservative reactions to such a model, stressing a maximal relationship between prophetic “author” and book, might also be disinterested in literary associations of various kinds. These would be accounted for, if at all, as signs that two prophets had been inspired by God to speak the same thing (e. g., Micah and Isaiah both spoke of Jerusalem becoming higher than all the mountains, and of nations streaming to it). More important than assessing the reality of duplication at the level of association was riveting the book to an inspired individual witness said to have generated the literary account. Ironically, this model also traded on a view of the prophets being best understood by rearranging the presentation of the Twelve to fit a chronological (historical) sequence.20 These features of interpretation do not figure very prominently in Wilson’s account because the literary phenomenon of prophetic books does not interest him very much. The prophetic books are used as resources to get back to the matter of prophecy as a cultural phenomenon and to prophets in society. The books are a kind of “accident” of that proper “substance.” This brings us back to the question of conjunctions of associations as proper to the interpretative task (societal, religious, literary, intra-canonical, hermeneutical). The literary associations required comment because some other sort of association seemed to be the reason for them (tradition-history; dependence of one individual on another; a theory of discrete inspiration giving rise to reiterations in the literary record). In a recent treatment by J. Jeremias, the conclusion is reached that pupils or disciples are the reason we see literary and theological associations in the case of Amos and Hosea.21 Given the interest in discrete features and also due 20 

21 

I discuss in greater detail an example of this conservative reaction in ch. 17. J. Jeremias, “The Interrelationship Between Amos and Hosea,” in Forming Prophetic

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to a close reading of the prophetic books themselves, Amos and Hosea were not thought to have much in the way of contact. Amos was concerned with social justice, and spoke as an outsider to a problem not indigenous to his own native context. Hosea spoke of cultic confusion, idolatry, lack of knowledge of the character of YHWH, and especially his relationship to the land and fertility. Childs has taken the general notion of a Judean redaction in Hosea and sought to understand it on a more organic view of editorial association, and also to credit it with a form of theological extension.22 Editors wished to show Hosea’s message (even at points concerned with Hosea’s own Judah apostrophes) as taking a realistic critique of the cultic crimes indigenous to the northern kingdom and extending them metaphorically to Judah. This prevented a historicizing reading of the prophet and associated the prophet’s realistic analysis of Israel’s sins with the failure of Judah to heed as well on terms relevant to its own context. In Jeremias’s model, this same dimension is highlighted, but the associations go further. They are not metaphorical extensions in their own right only, but are associations made with the help of a contemporaneous witness, as he sees it, that is, the book of Amos as such. That said, the weight of the editorial work in his understanding goes in the opposite direction, from Hosea to Amos. Amos is the earlier prophet, but the book of Hosea received its final form earlier. The Amos material received a thorough shaping process from the pupils of Hosea and the present form of Amos never existed in any comprehensive, material sense without this influence. The additions of Hosea, by contrast, are made to a more finished literary product, and can be so identified in the light of the association theory held by Jeremias. Jeremias makes a serious conceptual alteration when he indicates that the tradents of prophetic books operate with an understanding of prophecy often at odds with critical theory. For them, the discrete and the different are there in the historical record, and the concern is not erasing this. Rather, the tradents are concerned to achieve associations that allow both the historical particularity and the common elements to be grasped. Childs in his treatment had emphasized the same thing, and the final verses of Hosea sought to extend the lessons of the historical prophet beyond a secondary metaphorical application within Israel in the generations in Judah, before Judah’s collapse, to subsequent readers. In Jeremias in explicit form, and in Childs in a more general conceptual model, the literary association and the prophetic association in cultural-religious terms have come together to produce an account that makes sense of the Literature: Essays on Isaiah and the Twelve in Honor of John D. W. Watts, ed. James W. Watts and Paul R. House, JSOTSup 235 (Sheffield: Sheffield Academic, 1996), 171–86. 22  Brevard S. Childs, “Hosea,” in Introduction to the Old Testament as Scripture (Philadelphia: Fortress, 1979), 373–84.



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final form of the prophetic literature. Jeremias is not interested in prophetic association in religious terms except to the degree that it illumines the final form of Amos and of Hosea and can be said to cohere with an argument about specific passages in their respective books and how they are best to be accounted for. Canonical, literary, historical, and theological associations must be coordinated on a larger grid for the individual assessments of passages in Amos and Hosea to gain conviction. The challenge for our present period is to keep the model of association capable of accounting for more than one thing at once, and especially for judging the assessment of the final form as far more than a kind of redactional accounting for seams and disjunctures – of lesser importance even if properly identified because “secondary” and products of later distorting filters. The subtlety of Jeremias’s model needs to be grasped, even if one wishes to contest individual exegetical decisions and priorities. Book and man are related, intimately, and an explanation for them must be given. Ironically, a decision to work hard at eliminating secondary and later editorial activity in a prophetic book on a different view of “authorship” could cut one off from the dimension of association highlighted by Jeremias, Childs, and others, and especially from the kind of illuminating theological account they give of prophecy and history both.

Will Canonical Association Rob us of Historical Particularity? In a recent analysis, John Barton assesses the associative treatments of Amos and other witnesses of the Twelve when it comes to the Day of the Lord.23 He raises questions about whether one can determine what the theme means in Amos armed only with historical-sociological terms, and rightly indicates the difficulty of the matter. He then turns to ask if subsequent associations in the Twelve, like the placement of Joel before Amos and between the two earliest witnesses, means that the Day of the Lord has been properly heard by the prophet Joel and properly “framed” by the present location of the book of Joel – a question pursued by Rolf Rendtorff, but handled in a way in which the intentionality of historical Amos was left unclear, in my view. Barton answers in a surprising way that it might well be said that Joel’s later view is consistent with that of historical Amos. But he goes on to worry that the effect underscored by Rendtorff will mean a loss of “the historical Amos.”24 It is 23  John Barton, “The Day of Yahweh in the Minor Prophets,” in The Old Testament: Canon, Literature and Theology, SOTSMS (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2007), 279–88. 24  This could be a justified view in the light of Rendtorff ’s serial reading. Rendtorff speaks of the reader finding an answer to the lapidary Day of the Lord references in Amos

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the valuable contribution of something he calls “Biblical Research” to have discovered Amos. It is here that one sees how carefully the canonical method of Childs, in its way, and the associative analysis of Jeremias, in its way, have guarded and by no means erased the historical Amos. In my view, this is because the conjunction of associations in the Twelve has been properly grasped and carefully pursued. Far from removing Amos from view and placing him under the shadow of a confusing later witness; and far from introducing mitigations of various kinds so as to blunt the sharp edge of the historical witnesses,25 what is seen by Childs and Jeremias, and in my own work, is a merging of generations before an acknowledged, coordinated voice of God.26 The older (called “historical Amos” in the fashion of our day) is enabled to retain its sharp edge, and the subsequent (“canonical shaping”) seeks to bring later generations into confrontation with the word of God from the past. Indeed, the canonical and associative processes make sure that prophetic witnesses are prophecy and not an archiving of past records, whose force is now hostage to an optimistic account of what may be called the findings of “Biblical Research.”27 If we have any reason to be optimistic about “Biblical Research,” it is only to the degree that its multiple accounts of “what happened in the days in the book of Joel which follows, and this appears to mean that Amos now means what Joel says. What the prophet Amos may have meant is unclear on this reading. Barton sees continuity where Rendtorff is unclear (even as he prefers his and Rendtorff ’s view of Joel, as against Wolff, as consisting of divergent views of the Day of the Lord). He concludes, however, that such a view still participates too much in “canonical reading” (without distinguishing Childs from Rendtorff here, in respect of the Twelve or in more general terms; there is no reference to Jeremias’s work). He concludes by registering a generic judgment: “Canonical readings are smooth readings, and sometimes roughness may be a virtue” (ibid., 286), and “Canonical reading risks domesticating a figure such as Amos” (ibid.). Well, it might, one could suppose, but the effect could be the opposite. Editing can sharpen the access to historicality. Rendtorff ’s essay is “How to Read the Book of the Twelve as a Theological Unity,” in Reading and Hearing the Book of the Twelve, ed. James Nogalski and Marvin A. Sweeney, SymS 15 (Atlanta: SBL Press, 2000), 75–87. 25  See Terence Collins’s history-of-religions-and-redactions account in The Mantle of Elijah: The Redaction Criticism of the Prophecy Books, BibSem 20 (Sheffield: JSOT Press, 1993). The danger of his reading is that the early historical dimension falls out in favor of historical speculation at a later moment: alleged concerns in the postexilic period with bolstering morale, on the one hand, and then encouraging torah observance, on the other. 26 Seitz, Prophecy and Hermeneutics, 125–51. See also the careful presentation on this point by Raymond C. Van Leeuwen, “Scribal Wisdom and Theodicy in the Book of the Twelve,” in In Search of Wisdom: Essays in Memory of John G. Gammie, ed. Leo Perdue et al. (Louisville: Westminster John Knox, 1993), 31–49. 27  “Secondly, there is a loss of the idea that biblical research is an act of discovery, whose results may be ‘surprising and unpalatable’” (Barton, The Old Testament, 286). To which one response might be, “well, maybe, or maybe not. It will depend upon the theory and the researcher.” On whether the hermeneutical position is stipulated in some manner by the



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of Amos” may be said to be a potpourri without an additional historical-theological dimension, open for discussion and scholarly adjudication. That is, history is the maturing account of what God said through the prophet Amos, and continues to say, as the matured form of the witness hands that over to the ages. A canonical reading does not domesticate history, but brings it into proper focus and proportion. It is a pleasure to contribute this essay to a volume honoring the work of Robert Wilson, who has probed the historical dimension of prophecy and also the way in which the prophets are best comprehended, not as isolated figures, but in association with one another. I enjoyed very much my years at Yale with Bob and offer this essay in gratitude for his life and work.

canonical process itself, see Christopher R. Seitz, “Prophecy and Hermeneutics: Canonical Reading and Hermeneutical Reflection,” in Prophecy and Hermeneutics, 221–46.

17. Scriptural Author and Canonical Prophet The Theological Implications of Literary Association in the Canon Prophetic Associations The concern of this chapter is with the reality of cross-reference in the prophetic literature. Even a vague term like “cross-reference” may begin to say too much, but what I have in view is the simple fact that passages found in one prophetic book appear in more than one place. What does that mean as a material reality on literary terms? What does it say about the office of prophet as the situating of God’s word in the form of an individual human witness to Israel? And what does it say about the word of God and the reality of God’s providential care of his inspired word? That is, of course, the theological question, but it exists both as a question about the literary form of the Old Testament canon and the way we think about the prophets as real and distinctive men in time and space. If distinctive, then why shared speech? Examples for illustration are readily available. Amos begins with the exact same language as Joel ends. Amos also ends with the same words found at Joel’s conclusion. Obadiah has a long section – long by its one-chapter standards – that can also be found in Jeremiah 49. Joel has been called a compendium of earlier prophetic speech and so classified as a new kind of prophecy – late, postexilic, literary prophecy; Schriftprophetie – so dense is the character of its literary indebtedness. Here we encroach on the domain of dating and schemes for understanding the evolution of prophecy, the mature business of modern critical study, which exists in no small measure as a system for accounting for just this phenomenon of literary relationship. Joel being a witness particularly marked by cross-reference and so dated late because of that was a feature that in the 19th century was said to argue for its earliness – these other witnesses being indebted to Joel and not the other way around.1 I am getting only slightly ahead of myself by pointing to the way the phenomenon of literary overlap was accounted for, in time, by theories of 1  Christopher R. Seitz, Prophecy and Hermeneutics: Toward a New Introduction to the Prophets, STI (Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2007), 113–51. Also see chs. 8 and 9 of the present volume.



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dependence and grids whereby the proper succession of the prophets was organized. The examples above give indication that much of the focus of the issue is tied up with the canonical form of the Minor Prophets. That is, the twelve are in fixed literary order, and so how is that order to be understood? (The existence of a different Greek language order is a related question.) So long as the Twelve were being read as a single presentation of twelve successive witnesses, the phenomenon we are addressing was handled one way, and I am going to explore that in a moment. Once the Twelve’s present order was a matter for recasting, as a piece of serious business, it would be the reality of cross-citation that would move to the centre, because one needed to get the direction of dependence right. Did Amos borrow from Joel? Or was this not possible because Joel had so much citation within its three chapters that it was wiser to conclude it had, before its composition, a mature assembly of prophetic material to draw on? Did Jeremiah borrow from Obadiah, given Obadiah’s position next to Amos, or was his order in the Twelve irrelevant and a sign that dependence needed to run the other way? What about Isaiah and Micah? To speak in this way is to begin to view the order of the Twelve as not finally significant in itself but only as an entry point to proper orderings of the prophetic corpus in its entirety – orderings which in time would settle into popular introductory forms for publishers of “Introductions to the Prophets” and religious studies courses based upon this understanding. What started in the 19th century on this road of proper ordering, as a means of understanding dependence in literary citation, from one prophet to another, changed once the basic conception was viewed as more or less correct. The phenomenon we are addressing could then be accounted for as more to do with editorial additions, rather than as borrowing. The effect of this was to pull the books apart from one another, and indeed this was just what was thought imperative. It would be rare for a commentary writer on the individual witness of Amos to feel he or she needed to account for why “The LORD roars from Zion and utters his voice from Jerusalem” appeared in Joel. That would be for the author of the treatment of Joel to be concerned about. So, too, “the mountains will drip with sweet wine.” This passage was in a section of Amos’s conclusion that had already, since Julius Wellhausen, been viewed as “inauthentic” (in the language of the day).2 The main point was to separate what belonged to the scriptural author from later additions declared not by Amos but rather bits of postexilic piety, “emoticons” for a depressed readership inserted by editors. If one went to the effort in the context of an individual Amos commentary, one could then ask how the language of later 2  Julius Wellhausen, Die Kleinen Propheten, übers. und erklärt von J. Wellhausen, 3rd ed (Berlin: G. Reimer, 1898), 96.

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editorial addition in Amos was to be correlated with Joel, but the climate had changed by this time and that question was usually immaterial. That is, once the individuality of the witnesses came to the fore, as it did in the 20th century, the system of dependence which had served to provide the information about how to relate the prophets to one another in a proper order to begin with, based upon borrowing, fell out. It would be enough, within the compass of an individual treatment, to deal with what was truly speech of the prophet, and what was editorial. What was editorial was explained within a new system; that is, the history of religion and the way the individual work gave indication of that, such that additions could be accounted for. Oddly enough, the cross-referencing aspect which gave rise to theories of proper sequence, fell out once the prophets were thought of chiefly as individual witnesses, and publication houses refrained for the most part from presenting the Minor Prophets as a single witness or in volumes preserving their order, much less as demanding a single author to deal with them as a totality. This had long been the practice of the history of interpretation, in the manner of Calvin and the tradition before him, including Theodore and Theodoret, a framework assumed at Qumran and Ben Sira within the biblical period itself.3 A move that began as an effort to plot the dependence of one prophet on another, with the aim of establishing the proper sequence of the prophets, ended with an account that emphasized the individuality of the prophet in a reconstructed historical setting, divorced from his fellows. Indeed, what was crucial in such an account, theologically, was often precisely the distinctive character of the prophet. It was on these grounds, for example, that George Adam Smith gave prominence to the moral authority of the individual witness, as God’s discrete agent in time and space, and also safeguarded that agent from the hands of later editors, who however piously and sensitively they went about their work (G. A. Smith was more sensitive to this dimension than Robertson Smith) nevertheless threatened to obscure the distinctive moral agent under God’s hand.4 Gerhard von Rad would seek to modify this account of the prophets by stressing that they themselves were dependent on earlier traditions.5 This served to ground the prophets in some kind of prior tradition, and not separate them as severely from the Law as had 19th-century appraisals. But understood on these terms, what united the prophets was a hypothetical construct 3 

Francis Watson, Paul and the Hermeneutics of Faith (Edinburgh: T&T Clark, 2004). George Adam Smith, The Book of the Twelve Prophets: Commonly Called the Minor: With an Introduction and a Sketch of Prophecy in Early Israel, 2 vols., rev. ed. (New York: Harper, 1928). 5  Gerhard von Rad, Old Testament Theology, trans. D. M. G. Stalker, 2 vols. (New York: Harper & Row, 1965). See as well ch. 7 above. 4 



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where they were dependent on earlier traditions, each in their own way. This was fine for restoring some sense of commonality at the level of the theory, but it did not deal with the actual literary phenomenon of citation and overlap. In their use of common traditions the prophets still remained individual authorial agents and not a goodly fellowship in a meaningful canonical presentation.6 I want to conclude this section with reference to a recent work on Micah by Bruce K. Waltke to illustrate that the emerging view of the prophets as distinctive individuals also functioned with high seriousness on the so-called conservative side of the theological spectrum. In that sense, the problems of literary association, of the prophetic personality as tied to this, and of divine inspiration – individual and collective – sat over various species of interpretation across the theological spectrum. Waltke contrasts his approach with others on at least two counts. He wants to avoid the problems of naturalism, whereby anything predictive of restoration is dismissed as a prophecy-after-the-fact by critical theory. So, Micah’s oracle concerning a remnant at the end of ch. 2 is not a postexilic adjustment intended to correlate Micah’s Assyrian and later Babylonian realities.7 Micah was speaking of the remnant in Hezekiah’s day, given God’s thwarting of the Assyrians as recorded in Isaiah 36–37 (2 Kings 18–20). The fact that the literary transition is rough (from stark judgment to promise) belongs, on Waltke’s account, within a schema whereby disciples collect oracles delivered at various points in the prophet’s career (he speaks of a sermon file) and place them next to each other in ways that are not always perspicuous. Here he adverts to Luther’s famous dictum about the prophets having an odd way of talking, though the comparison is obviously strained (Luther had no access to a theory of disciples setting things down in haphazard ways). This allows the second, related feature to come into focus. Waltke wants a maximal account of the relationship between book and historical figure, even if the price to be paid for that is a strange literary unfolding. When we come to ch. 4, a special challenge therefore awaits Waltke. Not only is the transition from 3:12 to 4:1–5 rough – stark judgment and exuberant restoration – in Micah we encounter a virtual reproduction of Isa 2:2–4, with the single main exception of a plus at v. 4 (itself very close in language to Zech 3:10). How does a maximalizing instinct work in the case of Micah, where the focus of the prophet is also on future restoration, without having to declare a “Micah victory” and an “Isaiah loss”? It is one thing to argue for 6  Christopher R. Seitz, The Goodly Fellowship of the Prophets: The Achievement of Association in Canon Formation, Acadia Studies in Bible and Theology (Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2009). 7  Bruce K. Waltke, A Commentary on Micah (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2007), 131–43.

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predictive prophecy being fully the domain of the preexilic prophets, and another thing to explain the literary reality that two prophets are saying the same thing. Here Delbert R. Hillers in the Hermeneia commentary series is concerned simply to rule out various hard conclusions that solve the problem too resolutely, and he concludes therefore that various options are possible. Either a common tradition lies below them both (the tradition-historical approach); or the oracle is Micah’s, “part of his vision of the new age”; or the oracle is Isaiah’s and has been added as consistent with this vision.8 In Waltke’s individualized treatment, his effort ends up assuring us that the oracle is Micah’s. Without rehearsing the details of his argument – they take up some thirty pages – Waltke concludes in this way: “it is unlikely that the piece, with a more advanced theology of the songs of Zion, is older than Micah. No sound reasons establish that a later writer authored a piece to dovetail with Mic 3:9–12.”9 So what then of the association with Isaiah? What is striking to my mind is the degree to which the question has now been annexed. Waltke is a conservative interpreter concerned with giving the book back to the historical Micah, as he sees it. But in so doing, the wider associative questions are almost ruled out in the nature of the case, because the interpreter is working with a single witness and is constrained by that frame of reference. Isaiah is someone else’s concern. So he concludes his lengthy analysis with the judgment, “It may be that Isaiah adopted and adapted the oracle to make it his own … but in any case, Isa 2:2–5 is best treated as its own final text.”10 The question to be faced here is whether the individuality of the treatment – in maximalist or minimalist hands – has sidestepped the important question of just what this dimension means theologically. The appeal to Isaiah’s “own final text” would not amount to a canonical reading unless the wider canonical question were handled as theologically serious as well. Canonical reading does focus on the final form, but because it accepts that the final form is precisely that which shows clear evidence of literary association, it cannot simply leave that to another interpreter working with Isaiah as an individual witness. When Brevard S. Childs treats Micah in his “Introduction,” central to his exposition is the dimension of association with Isaiah and the significance of that association for prophecy.11 It is here that a turn to the earlier history of interpretation is needed for perspective. The literary, the religious, and the theological questions are not 8  Delbert R. Hillers, Micah: A  Commentary on the Book of the Prophet Micah, Hermeneia (Philadelphia: Fortress, 1984), 51–53. 9 Waltke, A Commentary on Micah, 220. 10 Ibid. 11  Brevard S. Childs, Introduction to the Old Testament as Scripture (Philadelphia: Fortress, 1979), 434–36.



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capable of examination separately, and so these earlier treatments are often more illuminating. We will also see that the dimension of predictive prophecy is central as a result. Waltke’s defence of Micah 2 as dealing with a real episode in the days of Hezekiah may look to him like defence of the supernatural, but it is hard to see how Micah is any longer engaged in predictive prophecy as a result. Instead, Micah is a “forth-teller” and speaker to contemporaries, while by contrast the prior tradition saw these oracles as reaching far into the future to enclose the work of Christ and the Church’s life. Ironically, it may well be that those readings of Micah which assign such oracles to the postexilic period have better potential for attaching themselves to subsequent New Testament declarations, as well as the readings in an earlier history of interpretation, where they were allowed genuinely to speak to the future beyond a Hezekiah or a genuine Micah rooted in his own days.

History of Interpretation The practice of an earlier period was to treat interpretation of the prophets as something that went on book after book. Calvin could sit easily to questions of dating, and so was not bothered that Obadiah followed Amos (even as he assumed it was best understood in the context of Jerusalem’s fall). The Minor Prophets were a collection and were treated as such. Already at Qumran we see evidence of a fixed sequence, and the size of the books of the Twelve encouraged placing them on a single scroll. The great Antiochene interpreter Theodore of Mopsuestia dealt with the Twelve as a single collection, as did his successor Theodoret, so too the Alexandrian Didymus; and this was the practice in the ensuing history of interpretation without exception.12 In the nature of the case, such a practice inclined towards seeing prophecy as a matter of collective inspiration, of a “goodly fellowship of prophets.” It also meant that the dimension of literary repetition, borrowing, cross-reference – whatever one wants to call this – was more reflexively on view. If one is moving from Joel to Amos, the match of Joel’s final lines with the beginning and ending of Amos is going to be noted. The reference at the close of Amos to Edom moves us naturally to Obadiah. Jonah’s concern with Assyria’s wickedness and God’s justice is answered in Nahum. The violence of Nahum is a cause for concern in Habakkuk. The signal position of Hosea matches his reputation as evangelist as well as prophet, and indeed gives rise to this view. What an interpreter makes of this dimension, at the literary level, and how 12  Compare the modern example of George Adam Smith and his commentary on all 12 books, discussed in ch. 9 of the present volume.

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much of it informs the commentary of individual books, varies. Undoubted is the idea of prophecy as a collegial affair. At issue is that the potential for theological significance is in place as a function of the canonical form, and that it is to be noted more obliquely, or disappears altogether, once the prophets are subject to individualized examinations. Let us consider some prominent examples. E. B. Pusey’s Commentary on the Minor Prophets was a landmark, though the boundary lines were about to be radically shifted and he could see the horizon darkening.13 He blamed this on “modem German commentaries” and continental scholarship, meaning of course the individual universities where such scholarship was moving apace (urged on by the English deism of a previous century).14 After commending Hengstenberg, Keil, Delitzsch, Hävernick, and Tholuck, in a memorable line he would conclude: “Even Luther said of his adherents, that they were like Solomon’s fleet; some brought back gold and silver; but the younger, apes and peacocks.”15 Pusey sees Hosea’s first position as a proper acknowledgement of his prominence as setting forth all manner of evangelical truth concerning Christ, grounded in his profound grasp of the character of God. The Twelve are not accidently twelve but are a type of the apostles. Commenting on the repetition of lines from Joel in Amos, he conjectures that this helps assure us that the one untimely called, who had not been to the school for prophets and said as much to Amaziah (this was noted with concern by Calvin as well), was a prophet all the same. In the quotes to follow, the concern of the present chapter is not defence of Pusey’s view, but rather attention to how reading the prophets in this way forces certain issues to the forefront: “Amos takes as the key note of his prophecy, words with which Joel almost closes his … Amos inserts at the end of his own prophecy some of Joel’s closing words of promise. Amos thus identified his own prophecy with that of Joel.” Pusey then goes on to show how Amos’s use of Joel is distinctive and appropriate to the flow of his own book and argument. His explanation for the use of Joel is significant and needs emphasis: “It may have been that, being called to the Prophetic office, he would in this way identify himself with the rest of those whom God called to it. A prophet, out of Judah but for Israel, Amos identified himself with the one prophet of Judah, whose prophecy was committed to writing.” Or again, “Amos joins on his prophecy to the end of Joel’s, in order at once in its very opening to attest to the oneness of their mis13  E. B. Pusey, The Minor Prophets, with a Commentary Explanatory and Practical and Introductions to the Several Books (New York: Funk & Wagnalls, 1888). 14  See Henning Graf Reventlow, The Authority of the Bible and the Rise of the Modern World (Philadelphia: Fortress, 1985). 15  Ibid., vi.

17. Scriptural Author and Canonical Prophet309



sion.”16 One will attend to details like this if one is moving through the Twelve as a collection, with significance attending that form. Individualized accounts of Joel and Amos will not bother with this dimension, even, it is to be stressed, if the confident 7th-century dating of Joel by Pusey is rejected. The literary overlap will likely receive no comment, if it is noted at all. Pusey would box himself in a bit with a strict understanding of the present form of the Twelve as predicated on historical/chronological grounds. He will labor to defend the position of Habakkuk before Zephaniah within a much larger theological concern for prophecy as supernatural: this being more naturally to be observed if Habakkuk speaks of the Chaldeans before their appearance on the world stage – a stricture Calvin would not place upon his own analysis of the Minor Prophets. Calvin moves from book to book and can note the kind of details that Pusey does, but is not as tied to notions of chronological unfolding and psychological explanations for borrowing. That is due to his grid of priority, one suspects, as he tries to keep the proportion of his comments focused on the moral edification of his listeners. He views speculation as the kind of thing the Reformation was seeking to eliminate. He and Luther both shared a concern for clarity and secure foundation, with Calvin likely more confident about perspicuity in the letters of Holy Writ. But as we know, Luther is a moving target on these matters and not easily characterized.17 One place that requires further comment is the overlap between Isaiah and Micah, already noted in the case of Waltke. It is a significant repetition of some four verses and has a character of its own that is difficult to ignore without explanation.18 Pusey studies the problem with his customary zeal and concludes that Micah has the oracle in its original form. He sees the very sharp transition from 3:12 as properly intended by God and prophet, and so secures the oracle for Micah on the grounds that this is the prophetic book where the unit makes the best inherent sense. Isaiah has used the oracle for his own ends, much as Amos used Joel, and he even intends for us to see this by virtue of the syntax and positioning of the unit following ch. 1. In another place, Micah appears to borrow from Isaiah, to return the favour, and to show the measure of the cooperation under one God’s superintendence. That Micah and Isaiah are contemporaries is clear from the superscriptions, with most assuming that Isaiah had a longer career and started sooner. This would not stand in the way of his using a text from Micah, just as did the elders of the land in defence of Jeremiah a century later (Jer 26:18). 16 

Ibid., 233. James S. Preus, From Shadow to Promise: Old Testament Interpretation from Augustine to the Young Luther (Cambridge: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 1969). 18  William McKane, Micah: Introduction and Commentary (Edinburgh: T&T Clark, 2000). 17 

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Canonical Interpretation

Calvin’s view is more intriguing. My suspicion is that Calvin is struggling with several commitments, and in that struggle we see something of his concern to honor the letter of the Old Testament, the individuality of the prophets, and also God’s superintending of their work, in their generation and for the generations to come. The struggle, in other words, is more revealing than his customary ability to produce consistent results as an exegete and theologian. For Calvin, the fact that God has two prophets operating at the same time is explained by the difficulty of the task, “That God might thus break down the stubbornness of the people.” He acknowledges that one prophet is sufficient, “but it pleased God that a testimony should be borne by the mouth of two, and that holy Isaiah should be assisted by this friend and, as it were, his colleague.”19 In this context Calvin continues by saying that the prophets heard the testimony of one another and were gratified in discovering that they were saying the same thing, as delivered by one and the same God. He is quite explicit about this when he writes, “Nothing was more gratifying to each of them than to receive a testimony from his colleague; and what was committed to them by God they declared not only in the same sense and same meaning, but also in the same words, and, as it were, with one mouth.”20 One is not borrowing if the text indicates, as it does, that a vision was granted (“committed to them by God”), and the minor differences between Micah and Isaiah confirm this view. In the introduction to Isaiah and the prophets in general, Calvin develops an interesting extension of this, given that the prophets rarely mention one another. Similarly, they rarely quote the commandments of Moses when they condemn idolatry and such like, speaking instead in general terms of the law. But it can also go the other way. “In threatenings and promises, the Prophets have something peculiar; for what Moses has stated in general terms they minutely describe.”21 For Calvin, this underscores their independent authority, as of like nature as that of Moses (Calvin is not Wellhausen or Reuss as regards the absence of cross-reference!). Presumably, the same thought framed his treatment of Isaiah and Micah. It is all the more striking, then, that at another point Calvin speaks quite clearly of Micah being a disciple of Isaiah’s. “Micah was not ashamed to follow Isaiah and to borrow his words … he designedly adopted the expressions of Isaiah, and related verbally what he had said, to show that there was perfect agreement between him and the illustrious minister of God, that his doc19  John Calvin, Joel, Amos, Obadiah, Jonah, Micah, Nahum, vol. 14 of Calvin’s Commentaries, trans. John Owen (Grand Rapids: Baker, 2009), 152. 20  Ibid., 152. 21 John Calvin, Isaiah 1–32, vol. 7 of Calvin’s Commentaries, trans. William Pringle (Grand Rapids: Baker, 2009), xxviii–xxix.

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trine might obtain more credit.”22 Calvin concludes by declaring that such deference by Micah was noble, because it opened one to the cheap rebuke, “What! He only repeats the words of another.”23 Now, what is going on here in these two different interpretations from an otherwise sober and consistent Calvin? I think it must be concluded that the challenge presented by the overlap between Micah and Isaiah is not of such a nature that a clear account of it can be given. Calvin wishes to honor the plain sense of the text that says nothing explicitly of borrowing or of citing by name one’s colleague. At the same time, he is aware that the plain sense equally states that Micah and Isaiah were contemporaries, and borrowing is one way of accounting for such a verbal parallel. Then the point would be made that such borrowing could open one to ridicule, but that such is the office of the prophet as obedient to God’s calling. It does not seem consistent with Calvin’s usual manner to conclude he is just making rhetorical or homiletical points. Rather, it appears he is concerned to guard several things at the same time: God’s specific address to individual agents, but also their common labors as his servants. Nothing in the latter understanding would make borrowing words any less salutary, as their source is the selfsame God. Calvin does not insist on a single view of the matter because both of these aspects of the prophetic office are crucial to any account of what it means to be a prophet according to God’s sovereign purposes, which includes the reality of their common labor in a goodly fellowship. Calvin knows that Holy Writ speaks of such fellowship elsewhere and that the canonical presentation emphasizes this: Elijah and Elisha, Moses and Joshua, Haggai and Zechariah, and so Micah and Isaiah as well. Equally, it is the very existence of a book of the Twelve that encourages an account of prophecy that makes inner relationship and association as important as the individuality of the prophet. In the context of Calvin or Pusey, the dimension of overlap exists at the level of prophet to prophet. But this also includes the idea of master and disciple, as is true of the examples just given. One thinks as well of the relationship between the servant and the servants underscored by W. A. M. Beuken in the later chapters of Isaiah, if not as well between them and Isaiah himself in the fuller 66-chapter unfolding.24 At this point, it is necessary to move to our conclusion and think through the implications of this brief look at the prophets’ shared language in the book of the Twelve and elsewhere. 22 Calvin, 23 Ibid.

Joel, Amos, Obadiah, Jonah, Micah, Nahum, 266.

24  W. A. M. Beuken, “The Main Theme of Trito-Isaiah: The ‘Servants of YHWH,’” JSOT 47 (1990): 67–87; Christopher R. Seitz, “How is the Prophet Isaiah Present in the Latter Half of the Book? The Logic of Chapters 40–66 within the Book of Isaiah,” JBL 115 (1996): 219–40 (this essay appears in ch. 4 of the present volume).

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Prospects What Calvin or Pusey sought to understand at the level of prophetic dependence, much of modern scholarship either disregards or deals with under the rubric of secondary editing. What has been lacking has been an account of such editing that seeks a more comprehensive understanding, from book to book. Equally absent has been a theological evaluation of just what editing was seeking to do, and how it might be thought of as an organic extension of the original inspired speech, based upon a kindred view of inspiration. Without such a grounding, like the individualized treatments of the prophets themselves (maximal or minimal in their conclusions), the recourse to editing and secondary additions as an explanation has often seemed unsatisfactory: bits added to make the story turn out all right. Alleviations after harsh judgments had come and gone. Reversals meant to mitigate or abstract us from the specifics of what the prophets said and the circumstances of their so saying.25 By attending carefully to the final form of the book of the Twelve, new insights are now available for assessing this important dimension of prophetic discourse. Moreover, in a brilliant essay prepared in the context of his commentary writing on Amos and Hosea, within the book of the Twelve as a whole, J. Jeremias has argued that the urge to complement and associate was at work from the very beginning of the assembly line, as the disciples of Hosea and Amos sought to transmit these works as distinctive but also complementary witnesses.26 Social injustice (Amos) and false worship (Hosea) are two sides of one coin. As finished works, these two early witnesses never existed without reference to one another. Even the so-called motto of Amos, “you only have I known out of all the families on the earth, therefore I will punish you for your iniquities” (Amos 3:2), has been drawn up on the basis both of the distinctive message of Amos, but also in the light of Hosea, where the precise Hebrew terms are used (ydʿ; pqd; ʿawon). By seeing evidence for this kind of mutual influencing early in the composition of the prophetic books, it has become much easier to account for it in medial and final stages as well, and to understand it as an effort, not to modify or correct, but to bring about a comprehensive view of prophecy as always consisting of interrelationship and association, a goodly fellowship, because one God was superintending and overseeing the work of “all my servants the prophets.” 25  Terence Collins, The Mantle of Elijah: The Redaction Criticism of the Prophetic Books, BibSem 20 (Sheffield: JSOT Press, 1993). 26  J. Jeremias, “The Interrelationship Between Amos and Hosea,” in Forming Prophetic Literature: Essays on Isaiah and the Twelve in Honor of John D. W. Watts, ed. James W. Watts and Paul R. House, JSOTSup 235 (Sheffield: Sheffield Academic, 1996), 171–86.

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It would be an irony if in seeking to defend the authorship of an individual book the dimension of association was sacrificed. At issue here is just what a superscription seeks to convey. Is it a hard marker of authorship, guarded in much the same way that copyrighting seeks to do for a modern work? Clearly the idea of association is inherent in the office of prophet itself, and such an understanding is reflexively provided in various ways in the biblical presentation: Moses and Joshua; Elijah and Elisha; Isaiah and his limmudim; Jeremiah and Baruch; Haggai and Zechariah; Zechariah and “the former prophets” (Zech 1:4; 7:12). It is unclear whether the idea of secondary inspiration at work in the canonical shaping creates anxiety because it must only take the form of correction or manipulation of some kind. There is another alternative: the pupils of Micah and Isaiah are seeking to be sure that we have a coordinated word from one God, the true source of inspiration. A second irony is that in some cases, it is precisely the decision to argue fiercely for authorship by the prophet that leads to a single historical sense, as in the last verses of Micah 2. Now those verses are taken in their “historical/ literal sense” to be about deliverance in the days of Hezekiah, in the crisis of 701. No longer does the prophecy direct our eyes to a future restoration in days to come. Waltke will conclude by referring to the Shepherd-King as the second person of the Trinity, but the move is obviously his own and not that of Micah, seen retrospectively from the standpoint of a later fulfilment and a New Testament fuller sense. One might ask if this is not its own species of vaticinia ex eventu, the matter he was most concerned to eliminate from the text but which has emerged in the interpretation all the same because of the difficulty of having a single historical sense point beyond itself. Those who see the verses as supplied by a later editor at least sense that what Micah was saying in the days of his own preaching, and in the circumstances of his own oracles of judgment, could apply to a future judgment and a more farreaching deliverance: return from exile. It would not be a difficult move to see this future application as having yet a greater one still, in the coming of the Shepherd-King himself, confessed to be Jesus Christ “in accordance with the scriptures.” The idea of vaticinia ex eventu was tied up with notions of fraud and deception: passing off as Micah’s something that was not his; in Wellhausen’s phrase concerning Amos 9: 8b: “Roses and lavender instead of blood and iron.”27 But surely that is a very limited view. Once one sees the associations as having to do with hearing the fuller divine witness in the light of the “goodly fellowship of the prophets” as a whole, then what is secondary is not secondary at all. It is amplification and clarification derived from a sensitive handling of the wider 27 Wellhausen,

Die Kleinen Propheten, 96.

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prophetic word. By the time of Zechariah, this influence will be consciously referred to as the overtaking word of the “former prophets” (Zech 1:2–6; 7:7) functioning in conjunction and confirmation with the prophet’s own individual contribution. Which points to a final irony: that in attending too closely to a single human author, one might cease to understand what is intended by the comprehensive claim of divine authorship. That, we might argue, is what the canonical process prioritized; in so doing, it was not manipulating the human author, but showing him to be God’s man under his own providential care and sustaining, in canonical association. It saw in the word given to his prophets that which God was overseeing and bringing to its final purpose, as its own intended accomplishment. This chapter is dedicated to Professor John Barton in thanksgiving for his stimulating work on prophecy and scripture. In a recent essay he has evaluated newer trends in canonical reading and argued that, in some ways, secondary editing merely brought full circle that which Amos may well have meant by reference to a Day of the Lord to begin with.28 He nevertheless worries that the scriptural portrayal of Amos might be obscured by a canonical focus. In this chapter my point in part is that the language of “scripture” and “canon” cannot be tidily distinguished, and that far from being an external valorization, the prophetic legacy was from its inception about canonical association, and the reasons for this are theological. The prophetic word was properly a divine word, and so could be heard in association, and indeed pressed for just that hearing. It will be crucial to retain the insights of the last centuries of biblical scholarship, for they provided sharp definition to the prophetic witness. The task, however, is to move that inquiry to the next level. This amounts not to a diminution of prophetic individuality, but an assessment of its larger significance as a matter demanding equally sharp definition.

28  John Barton, “The Day of Yahweh in the Minor Prophets,” in The Old Testament: Canon, Literature and Theology, SOTSMS (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2007), 279–88. See my discussion in ch. 16 of the present volume.

18. Provenance as a Factor in Interpretation Introductory Remarks The provision of a setting – for an author and audience – significantly affects the way a biblical book is read and interpreted. To be more precise, one would also have to distinguish between the interpretive effect of a book’s own provision of a setting or audience (e. g., Paul’s letter to the Galatians) as against the critical recovery of a setting (e. g., the Johannine community; the exilic audience). In the case of a work providing a setting, even here things are not that clear. Linus of Charlie Brown famously said he disapproved of Paul because reading his letters was like reading someone else’s mail.1 This, of course, makes the point nicely that we read Paul’s letters in the context of a canon, on the one hand, and also that the setting (the Galatians) is not so determinative that knowing it (whatever that might mean) is the same as interpreting the letter itself. Paul is writing an epistle, and the notices at the conclusion of some of his letters indicate they are to be passed on to other communities without concern for Linus’s remonstrance.2 Peter commends them and suggests for them a status not unlike the inherited public mail, “the scriptures.”3 So, the issue requires further consideration, precisely because the unusual character of biblical writings makes matters like “author” and “setting” far less straightforward. In the case of a critical recovery of an audience, we have the further burden of assessing the success or likelihood of the reconstruction. We must then evaluate the relationship between the reconstruction and the claims the work makes for itself. We may find the precision of dates in the Behistun Inscription remarkable for the way they explain the Persian context of Zechariah, but 1 See the clever use of this illustration in David Trobisch, Paul’s Letter Collection: Tracing the Origins (Minneapolis: Fortress, 1994). 2  E. g., Col 4:16. See the discussion in Brevard S. Childs, New Testament as Canon: An Introduction (Philadelphia: Fortress, 1984), 48–53, 348; and idem, The Church’s Guide for Reading Paul: The Canonical Shaping of the Pauline Corpus (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2008), 1–27 (esp. 6), 161. See now Christopher R. Seitz, Colossians, BTCB (Grand Rapids: Brazos, 2014), 19–38. 3  See the reference in 2 Pet 3:16.

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whether the prophet Zechariah knew anything like this state of affairs in his own context makes the provision of such a setting a matter requiring assessment.4 Certainly the Zechariah of the night visions appears as anything but a confident historiographer; often, he confesses bafflement at what is vouchsafed to him. One could even say that the book must work at securing for Zechariah something like the very status of a prophet, such that he can by ch. 7 stand on his feet and say, “Thus says the Lord,” and align himself with agents from the past – the former prophets, who are dead but whose words live on and provide the solid ground upon which his own message stands (not unlike the temple itself and the old foundation stone).5 So, authorship and agency are questions the book foregrounds in the very nature of its presentation. As for Zechariah, if one wishes to speak of setting and provenance, “postexilic Judah” is a simple answer that works well. The audience can be stipulated more precisely as those attending a rededication ceremony, as the critical reconstruction of the Meyers has it.6 But such a critical conjecture must work from silence (no mention of the rededication means Haggai and Zechariah 1–8 were completed before this event); it must blur the canonical distinction of two prophetic works by arguing for a consistent dating scheme covering them both (which is doubtful) and a common concern with the temple (which is a partial view of chs. 1–8); and it must separate the night visions from the oracles in chs. 9–14 if not also from the concerns of chs. 7–8.7 Is this the audience of Zechariah or only a conjecture about a single setting, difficult to prove in the light of the canonical presentation of Zechariah, with the independent works of Haggai on the one side and Malachi on the other8 4  See

the insightful analysis of Al Wolters, “‘The Whole World Remains at Rest’ (Zechariah 1:11): The Problem and an Intertextual Clue,” in Tradition in Transition: Haggai and Zechariah 1–8 in the Trajectory of Hebrew Theology, ed. Mark J. Boda and Michael H. Floyd, LHBOTS 475 (New York: T&T Clark, 2008), 128–43. 5  This would be my own view of the logic of Zechariah 1–8. We witness the gradual reestablishment and recalibration of Israel’s offices of king, prophet, and priest, given the sense of a genuine “past” and a new era unfolding. The prophet must, as it were, witness his own divine relegitimization via genuine revelation – an idea fraught with inner tension. 6  Carol L. Meyers and Eric M. Meyers, Haggai, Zechariah 1–8: A New Translation with Introduction and Commentary, AB 25B (Garden City, NY: Doubleday, 1987), xliv–xlv. 7  Mark J. Boda, “From Fasts to Feasts: The Literary Function of Zechariah 7–8,” CBQ 65 (2003): 390–407; Michael R. Stead, The Intertextuality of Zechariah 1–8, LHBOTS 506 (New York: T&T Clark, 2009), 219–47. 8  Here is just a sample of works that read the final three books together: Paul L. Redditt, “Zechariah 9–14, Malachi, and the Redaction of the Book of the Twelve,” in Forming Prophetic Literature: Essays in Honor of John D. W. Watts, ed. James W. Watts and Paul R. House, JSOTSup 235 (Sheffield: Sheffield Academic, 1996), 245–68; Ronald W. Pierce, “A Thematic Development of the Haggai/Zechariah/Malachi Corpus,” JETS 27 (1984): 401–11; Mark J. Boda, “Messengers of Hope in Haggai–Malachi,” JSOT 32 (2007): 113–31;



18. Provenance as a Factor in Interpretation317

(and all three in the Book of the Twelve9)? Here one sees again how critical it is to make sure the question of provenance is taken up into larger concerns of interpretation, without, at the same time, losing the historical particularity the book seeks and yet on its own terms of presentation.

Exile Provenance in the Book of Isaiah In the 19th-century work of J. G. Eichhorn, Wilhelm Gesenius, Heinrich Ewald, and Bernhard Duhm, what was being negotiated was the temporal ambition the book of Isaiah undertakes.10 This was not a matter affecting the latter chapters only, but belonged to Isaiah 1–39 as well. The “First Isaiah” was also a properly a “Last Isaiah,” in that the Jerusalem Isaiah was joined in the literary presentation of chs. 1–39 by supplementations contemporaneous with or later than chs. 40–66, though the way that was reconstructed by these four interpreters varied.11 One spoke of an anthology. One likened chs. 36–39 to Jeremiah 52 and called what followed a pseudepigraph, maybe even originally attached to Jeremiah but brought over to function under the Isaiah aegis.12 One likened the entire book to the Book of the Twelve, noting, as did Eichhorn, how often it appears in lists as its neighbor.13 In pre-critical interpretation, chs. 40–66 of Isaiah were taken to be a spiritual transportation of the prophet Isaiah, who, with his feet planted on the firm historical ground of Jerusalem in chs. 36–39, spoke into a distant future, Aaron Schart, “Putting the Eschatological Visions of Zechariah in Their Place: Malachi as a Hermeneutical Guide for the Last Section of the Book of the Twelve,” in Bringing out the Treasure: Inner Biblical Allusion in Zechariah 9–13, ed. Mark J. Boda and Michael H. Floyd, JSOTSup 370 (London: Sheffield Academic, 2003), 333–43. 9  E. g., James D. Nogalski and Marvin A. Sweeney, eds., Reading and Hearing the Book of the Twelve, SymS 15 (Atlanta: SBL Press, 2000); Terence Collins, “The Scroll of the Twelve,” in The Mantle of Elijah: The Redaction Criticism of the Prophetic Books, ed. Terence Collins, BibSem 20 (Sheffield: JSOT Press, 1993), 59–84; James D. Nogalski, Literary Precursors to the Book of the Twelve, BZAW 217 (Berlin: de Gruyter, 1993); idem, Redactional Processes in the Book of the Twelve, BZAW 218 (Berlin: de Gruyter, 1993); Donald K. Berry, “Malachi’s Dual Design: The Close of the Canon and What Comes Afterward,” in Forming Prophetic Literature: Essays on Isaiah and the Twelve in Honor of John D. W. Watts, ed. James W. Watts and Paul R. House, JSOTSup 235 (Sheffield: Sheffield Academic, 1996), 269–302. 10 Wilhelm Gesenius, Philologisch-kritischer und historischer Commentar über den Jesaia (Leipzig: Vogel, 1821); Bernhard Duhm, Das Buch Jesaja, HKAT 3/1 (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1892). 11  See a fuller discussion in Christopher R. Seitz, “Isaiah, Book of (First Isaiah),” ABD 3:472–88. 12 Duhm, Buch Jesaja, vii–xiv. 13  J. G. Eichhorn, Einleitung in das Alte Testament, 3rd ed., 5 vols. (Leipzig: Weidmann, 1803), 3:101–4.

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where he comforted the mourners of Zion.14 Because the future speech was not speech from prophet to contemporaries in an 8th-century historical context, where he spoke of matters centuries later with the language “now in the latter days,” but was rather speech to contemporaries in that distant time itself, this was a spiritual transportation all the more wondrous for being so unusual and so ambitious. Only God could bring that about, and so, in the end, the questions of human agency and historical contextualization in chs. 40–66, which would be foregrounded with the rise of the 19th-century species of history, were deferred under a view of inspiration centered more on the divine initiative than human agency particularized in time. In the famous fourth edition of Franz Delitzsch’s commentary on Isaiah,15 one can still see, on the other side of the 19th-century shift, a creative adaptation of the earlier account. Those prophecies originating in post-Isaian times are, in thought and in the expression of thought, more nearly akin to Isaiah than to any other prophet; they are really the homogeneous and simultaneous continuation of Isaian prophecy, the primary stream of which ramifies in them as in branches of a river, and throughout retains its fertilizing power. These later prophets so closely resembled Isaiah in prophetic vision, that posterity might on that account well identify them with him. They belong more or less nearly to those pupils of his to whom he refers, when, in chap. viii. 16, he entreats the Lord, “Seal instruction among my disciples.” We know of no other prophet belonging to the kingdom of Judah, like Isaiah, who was surrounded by a band of younger prophets, and, so to speak, formed a school. Viewed in this light, the Book of Isaiah is the work of his creative spirit and the band of followers. These later prophets are Isaian – they are Isaiah’s disciples; it is his spirit that continues to operate in them, like the spirit of Elijah in Elisha – nay, we may say, like the spirit of Jesus in the apostles; for the words of Isaiah (viii. 18), “Behold, I and the children whom God hath given me,” are employed in the Epistle to the Hebrews (ii. 13) as typical of Jesus Christ.16

The point to be stressed is that the temporal particularization of chs. 40–66 did not sever the link with the prophet Isaiah or the chapters of the book of Isaiah that preceded in 1–39, however one in turn dealt with these chapters’ diachronic challenge. Efforts to read Isaiah in the modern period bear some resemblance to this concern, even as they have their own history of research intervening in strong fashion in the period between Delitzsch and today. In that intervening period not just the temporal but also the spatial and geographical dimensions of the exilic provenance rose to prominence. The Great 14  See John Calvin, Commentary on the Book of the Prophet Isaiah, trans. William Pringle, 4 vols. (Edinburgh: Constable, 1850). Compare the discussion found below in ch. 20. 15  Franz Delitzsch, Biblical Commentary on the Prophecies of Isaiah, trans. J. S. Bach et al., 4th ed., 2 vols., Clark’s Foreign Theological Library 42, 44 (Edinburgh: T&T Clark, 1884). 16  Ibid., 1:38.

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Prophet of the Exile was birthed. By this was meant more than the temporal context of Cyrus and the end of the Babylonian exile. The great prophet joined Ezekiel in an exile to a Babylonian setting, popularized in textbook accounts, with muted notes from the harps of Psalm 137 in the background and with the prose sermons of Jeremiah being preached to exiles, as some accounts had it.17 When Lamentations speak of no comforter or Zechariah describes a heavenly council in which the question of comfort is raised, the link to Isaiah 40 is not proximate because of the geographical setting argued for the Prophet of the Exile, and so must be explained as influential in some other way. The Pseudo-Isaiah of the 19th century was transformed into a flesh-and-blood Deutero-Isaiah.18 It was then a small step to the necessity of Trito-Isaiah, as the Jerusalemite background of chs. 56–66 required a further shift in setting (back to Jerusalem and Judah). One can see in Duhm that the older literary criticism was moving closer to what would be the concerns of form criticism and the prominence this would give to oral speech, original setting, and “situation in life.” Rhetorical criticism in the hands of James Muilenburg offered an alternative to the atomizing tendencies of form criticism. If anything, however, his reading enhanced the idea of exilic prominence, as the powerful speeches of the exilic Isaiah soared to their best rhetorical effect in that imagined context.19 Thus far, two matters are under consideration: first, the relationship between temporal ambition and historical provenance and the way they are related in the canonical form; second, the effect of chs. 40–55 of Isaiah, existing within the literary presentation of the larger canonical book and a proper assessment of authorship, temporal movement, and literary coherence in light of that. That there was an exile and deportations to Babylon is not in doubt, and the canonical portrayal makes that abundantly clear, with Jeremiah, Ezekiel, Haggai, Zechariah, Ezra, and Nehemiah all providing their respective versions of particularized historical record and theological assessment (we can leave the complexities of Daniel to the side). It appears equally clear in the canonical record that a setting for Lamentations, Haggai, and Zechariah in Judah is part of the canonical presentation and does not require historical speculation for corroboration (arguments for preexilic oracles or recycling in Zechariah 9–14 notwithstanding).20 17 

Ernest W. Nicholson, Preaching to the Exiles: A Study of the Prose Tradition in the Book of Jeremiah (New York: Schocken, 1971). 18  See, e. g., Seitz, ABD 3:473. Compare ch. 19 to follow. 19  James Muilenburg, “The Book of Isaiah: Chapters 40–66,” IB 5:381–773. See the more cautious account of Roy F. Melugin, The Formation of Isaiah 40–55, BZAW 141 (Berlin: de Gruyter, 1976), 6–10. 20  E. g., Schart, “Putting the Eschatological Visions.”

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I should note in passing that objections to a historical setting in Babylon, on literary and historical-critical grounds, were raised right along. On the basis of descriptions of exilic life provided by the prophet Deutero-Isaiah, Duhm conjectured that conditions were not consistent with what we know of the Babylonian exile.21 Others noted that the orientation of the prophet’s proclamation, especially when he speaks of the scattered diaspora of God’s judgment, entails all compass points and takes its bearings in relationship to Jerusalem.22 Others countered that while active in exile, the prophet’s imagination continued to center itself on Jerusalem (this begins to reveal the delicate way in which setting and message influence one another in interpretation). Still others saw references to new creation and the upheaval in nature, not as a sign of close links to a single Babylonian return from exile, a la Egypt, but an adaptation of first-exodus typology to reflect a changed situation: exiles north, south, east, west; the return of YHWH to Zion, and his way, connected with his sovereign character  – not the way back from Babylon – being made straight; and a new creation reflecting the centrality of Zion and the judgment of God being reversed, such that the nations might be brought into mind of God’s sovereign purposes.23 Seeing these factors, and also noting a distinction between chs. 40–48 and 49–55, now widely accepted for other reasons, Jurgen van Oorschot spoke of a movement within Deutero-Isaiah from Babylon to Zion.24 Klaus Baltzer’s highly original Hermeneia commentary, which speaks of a dramatic unity of chs. 40–55, moves the rhetorical setting popularized by Muilenburg and others into Judah and the context of Persian period political and theological challenge.25 Joseph 21 Duhm, Jesaja, xviii: “Gelebt hat er gewiss nicht in Babylonien, wahrscheinlich auch nicht in Palästina, vielleicht im nördlichen Phonizien.” See Hans M. Barstad, “Lebte Deuterojesaja in Judäa?” NTT 83 (1982): 77–87. 22  James D. Smart, History and Theology in Second Isaiah: A Commentary on Isaiah 35, 40–66 (Philadelphia: Westminster, 1965), 20. He writes, “When we search for evidence of the prophet’s residence in Babylon, we are perhaps surprised how hard it is to find any that is convincing. The fact that he addresses himself to exiles does not signify that he was among the Babylonian exiles. His exiles are scattered to the four corners of the earth, north, south, east, and west (chs. 41:9; 42:10–11; 43:5–6; 49:12; 60:9). We have the impression almost everywhere in chs. 40–55 that the prophet is writing to a widely dispersed people rather than speaking to a local community.” 23  Klaus Kiesow, Exodustexte im Jesajabuch: Literarkritische und motivgeschichtliche Analysen, OBO 24 (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1979); Hans M. Barstad, A Way in the Wilderness: The “Second Exodus” in the Message of Second Isaiah (Manchester: University of Manchester Press, 1989). Kiesow and Barstad emphasize the metaphorical character of the “way of the Lord” as over against the frequently posited extrapolation, “return from exile” (cf. Isa 35:6–7). See Christopher R. Seitz, “The Book of Isaiah 40–66,” NIB 6:335–36. 24  Jürgen van Oorschot, Von Babel zum Zion, BZAW 206 (Berlin: de Gruyter, 1993). 25  Klaus Baltzer, Deutero-Isaiah: A Commentary on Isaiah 40–50, ed. Peter Machinist, trans. Margaret Kohl, Hermeneia (Minneapolis: Augsburg-Fortress, 2001), 23–25.



18. Provenance as a Factor in Interpretation321

Blenkinsopp also notes that the idea of an empty land overstates both the biblical and the ancient Near Eastern historical evidence and so places a question mark against an obvious exilic setting.26 Hans Barstad had long reiterated that the evidence for a Babylonian setting for Second Isaiah was weak, and he spoke of a tendency to overstate the idea of an empty land as derived from an ideological tendency in the period, unwittingly influencing critical readings of Isaiah 40–55.27 A version of this was posited earlier by C. C. Torrey,28 and a more congenial form of it was popularized in the commentary treatment of James D. Smart.29 What is significant for the purpose of our present inquiry is that this questioning of the Babylonian setting of chs. 40–55 was undertaken on the same terms and from the same starting point of commonly accepted critical methods. The literary, historical, and form-critical evidence did not support such a setting, according to the dissenters. That is, considerations of the form of the book of Isaiah and the place and relationship of chs. 40–55 within it did not figure prominently, if at all. This is also a place where Brevard S. Childs struggled to understand the canonical form in his Introduction to the Old Testament as Scripture. The view of an exilic provenance for Second Isaiah was so prominent in his conceptual framework that, in order to speak of the placement of these chapters in the canonical book of Isaiah, he was forced to speak of removal of historical traces, so as to allow the material to function in a new literary presentation.30 The ideas that chs. 40–55 were either not composed in Babylon or that the authorship and presentation of the material sensed the burden from the outset of enlarging and continuing a previous Isaiah legacy and so of maintaining a Jerusalem orientation were not obvious ones. His later Old Testament Library commentary does not labor under this older conceptual consensus.31 It is possible, then, to deal with the historical and literary question of the chapters’ most likely provenance as a topic unto itself. But one should also 26  Joseph Blenkinsopp, Isaiah 40–55: A New Translation with Introduction and Commentary, AB 19A (New York: Doubleday, 2002), 102–4. 27 Barstad, A  Way in the Wilderness; idem, The Babylonian Captivity of the Book of Isaiah: “Exilic” Judah and the Provenance of Isaiah 40–55 (Novus: Instituttet for sammenlignende kulturforskning, 1997). 28  C. C. Torrey, The Second Isaiah: A New Interpretation (Edinburgh: T&T Clark, 1928). 29 Smart, History and Theology in Second Isaiah. 30  “Even though the message was once addressed to real people in a particular historical situation – whether according to the model of Begrich or Muilenburg is indecisive – the canonical editors of this tradition employed the material in such a way as to eliminate almost entirely those concrete features and to subordinate the original message to a new role within the canon” (Brevard S. Childs, Introduction to the Old Testament as Scripture [Philadelphia: Fortress, 1979], 325). 31  Brevard S. Childs, Isaiah, OTL (Louisville: Westminster John Knox, 2001).

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acknowledge that the question can be constrained by a different context of consideration. That is, the interest in provenance may have emerged as decisive because of the methods being employed, without proper attention to the way the material presents itself. The objections to the exilic provenance were lodged on the grounds that the evidence did not support such a view. But one can also ask: What if the canonical form of Isaiah 40–55 and its literary presentation both deflect us away from a provenance-driven interpretation and suggest that the wider Isaiah context was decisive for the presentation of the material from the outset?

The Second Exodus and Exile At this juncture, it is important to focus our remarks on the prominence of the “second exodus” motif in chs. 40–55. At one level, “second exodus” is an obvious theme in Deutero-Isaiah, especially in chs. 40–48. At issue is whether one version of its interpretation in these chapters has flattened the creativity of the presentation, leading to a one-to-one correspondence between the former and latter things not warranted by a close reading. On this account, Egypt, wilderness, and conquest provide the types (“former things”) for a secondary correspondence of Babylon, physical translation from Babylon, and return to the Promised Land (“latter things”). Because this movement leads into chs. 56–66 and a less than ebullient prosecution of its end notes, an explanation is offered for distinguishing the two prophets from one another but leaves us with an unsatisfactory correspondence between former and latter things, to use the language of the prophet. Third Isaiah looks more like the Book of Judges than Joshua. On the front end of the analogy, moreover, the type “Egypt” has resulted in an undue focus on a single “Babylonian exile” antitype. In chs. 40–55, it would be more appropriate to speak of a diaspora to all compass points and not just Babylon (43:5–7; 49:12).32 With this observation come two important correlates. Such a depiction is fully consistent with the presentation of judgment in former Isaiah chapters. “The nations” given prominence in the presentation of Deutero-Isaiah, as with First Isaiah, give pride of place to Babylon (the centrality of which is anticipated in ch. 39), but the tableau of chs. 13–23 makes clear that Israel will be dispersed far and wide. The nations who are a drop in the bucket in Deutero-Isaiah (40:15) can without difficulty be correlated with the broader international depiction we see previously in 32 Seitz, NIB 6:376; Blenkinsopp, Isaiah 40–55, 104; Baltzer, Deutero-Isaiah, 24; Barstad, Way in the Wilderness, 19–20. See Smart’s comment in n. 22 above.



18. Provenance as a Factor in Interpretation323

Isaiah, in chs. 13–23, and in the section immediately preceding Deutero-Isaiah (chs. 36–39).33 The second correlate points to the problematic nature of the proposed “second exodus” typology at its end point. Second Isaiah’s dispersion north, south, east, west – even as the emphasis, here and elsewhere, is on the northland and that particular foe – locates the center of this scattering as emanating from Jerusalem. So it is that the return is not on analogy with the first exodus – from Egypt to wilderness to conquest to promised land – but rather the movement is straight to Zion (so chs. 54–55) upon the completion of the work of the servant in ch. 53. Indeed, the Zion of ch. 40 was never all that far from view as we come to chs. 49–55, and its central role is obvious in these chapters. We also have no disruption of generations, as in the first exodus. The servants of the Servant pick up seamlessly at the juncture represented by chs. 53 and 54.34 In the first exodus, a disobedient generation in an act of contrition brings offerings to build the sanctuary, the bank deposit of which was the plunder of the Egyptians. The nations in the land must be defeated. In Isaiah 40–55 the nations are in a different place. They bring offerings to build up Zion, and the promised land is a Zion populated with children, betrothed and not cast off, with barely room for all the newcomers (54:1–17; cf. 49:14–23). The return to Zion is a reversal of the chaos imagery seen in the psalms of Zion, and that is also the source for the language of blooming and fertility that accompanies “the way of the Lord” now being made straight in the desert. It is YHWH returning to love his bride Zion, bringing to her children lost, children she did not know she had, and new children yet to be born. The judgment and restoration of God’s own people is a spectacle that dethrones the claims of haughty Babylon (chs. 46–47) and sheds a specific kind of light on the nations, who witness in the Suffering Servant and Israel a transformation of Israel, a release from sin and the logic of a former thing and into a new creation out of chaos and death (42:1–9; 49:1–13; 52:13–53:12). If the idea of a spatial displacement to an exilic provenance is in the foreground, it is difficult to keep such a conceptuality from overwhelming the presentation of the chapters themselves and the “behold I do a new thing” use of the former exodus typos (48:6–21). The typology that is constructed involves transformation of the former thing, such that the latter is there to point to it, but, also, it is new and different – ”created now, not long before” (v. 7). That difference also keeps the chapters functioning much more efficiently within the larger Isaiah presentation, where Zion, the nations, a plan, and hope for a 33 Seitz, NIB 6:327–32. See also idem, Zion’s Final Destiny: The Development of the Book of Isaiah: A Reassessment of Isaiah 36–39 (Minneapolis: Fortress, 1991). 34 Seitz, NIB 6:471–74; W. A. M. Beuken, “The Main Theme of Trito-Isaiah, ‘The Servants of YHWH,’” JSOT 47 (1990): 67–87.

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new generation of sighted and hearing Israel, only a remnant in Isaiah’s own day, belong now to an extended temporal presentation.35 What could not have been seen before, but which was capable of coordination in God’s own sovereign design as analogous to a first exodus, is now grasped in its continuity and newness both.36 The new thing represented by the return to Zion, the work of the Servant and the servants to follow, is focused on Israel as a light to the nations. As in Zechariah, the return entails, of course, a focus on the temple and its reestablishment, but this is to a larger purpose involving the nations: both their conformity to plans established in respect of their overreach as God’s agents, as well as their enclosure in God’s plans (see Zech 8:20–23). Even the movement of Jonah conforms to this same pattern, with the prophet descending into the ‫ מצולה‬of judgment and watery exile and vomited out in prophetic vocation to the nations – which happens, as we see with the sailors in chapter 1, as effectively in disobedience as in obedience, whether Jonah likes it or not, sleeping below deck or marching through Nineveh. The problem presented by an exilic-provenance reading of Isaiah is in reproportioning this amalgam of carefully combined themes, such that physical return from a single Babylonian context ends up overwhelming the portrayal of the book itself. It also leads to a kind of disappointing finale in Isaiah 56–66 or in a Zechariah now principally linked to rededication as an explanation of its original form.37 Restoring the canonical Isaiah might also help us distinguish between the influence of Isaiah on New Testament formulations as against Second Temple history-of-religion reconstructions, where return from exile is said to weigh heavily in the formation of the New Testament narrative world.38 The canonical Isaiah can “speak over” the more proximate history of religion and should not be confused or conflated with it. Canonical Isaiah has, in the scholarly consensus, both former and latter Isaiah sections. Historical research of the past two hundred years has properly called attention to this dimension. What it has not always been handled with subtlety is the relationship between the canonical form and ostensive reference, that is, the historical context said to 35  See

the helpful essay of Ronald E. Clements, “Beyond Tradition-History: DeuteroIsaianic Development of First Isaiah’s Themes,” JSOT 31 (1985): 95–113. 36  See the fuller discussion of the treatment of the movement of chs. 40–48 in Seitz, NIB 6:327–422. 37  See n. 6. 38  I have in mind here the centrality of “exile” in the published work of N. T. Wright. See my response, in the light of Isaiah 1–66, “Reconciliation and the Plain Sense Witness of Scripture,” in The Redemption: An Interdisciplinary Symposium on Christ as Redeemer, ed. Stephen T. Davis et al. (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004), 25–42.



18. Provenance as a Factor in Interpretation325

be generating the text or the events to which the text refers as the primary location of significance. In my view, the canonical form assesses the temporal dimension without foregrounding any spatial movement to Babylon (in Calvin’s pre-critical reading, the prophet still comforts “the mourners of Zion”; cf. Sir 48:24). In consequence, the Zion orientation of former Isaiah is maintained throughout the length of the book, with the latter Isaiah bringing forward a new emphasis on the servant and Israel as light to the nations, in the context of God’s comfort of Zion, on the far side of judgment. Exile and return are subsidiary features of this more central concern and serve to give it prominence. Isaiah’s former and latter word focuses on Zion and the way in which the nations will witness the work of the one God, through the judgment and restoration of his people, through the furnace of affliction and dispersion to every compass point. Indeed, Zion itself descends into a chaos depth like the former waters of Noah (54:9–17). But the Lord makes a way through the desert of sin and chaos and remains true to his promises to Abraham, bringing to fruition the new thing of redemption of the nations by the work of the Servant. One kind of overemphasis on an authorial provenance in Babylon  – itself far from obvious – split the book into thirds in too precise a fashion and, in so doing, frustrated our ability to hear former and latter things as emanating from a single divine council of authorial inspiration, grounded in the one overtaking and accomplishing word of God (Isa 55:11). The book of Isaiah has taken up the various provenances of its compositional life and put them to the service of this accomplishing word as we now undertake to receive it in the canonical form of the 66-chapter vision.

Prophecy in the History of Interpretation

19. Prophecy in the Nineteenth Century Reception Introduction Three distinct challenges require noting at the outset, as these will help explain the parameters within which the chapter must proceed. The reception of prophecy in the 19th century will be focused for the purpose of this volume on what will in time be called “classical prophecy,” that is, the prophetic literature associated with Isaiah, Jeremiah, Ezekiel and the Minor Prophets (The Book of the Twelve). On the one hand this is a restriction, as the Former Prophets (Deuteronomistic History) and Daniel will not be given sustained attention. On the other hand, this may seem like a traditional category that takes its bearing from the canonical presentation, as against a history-of-religion lens. That is not the intention of the essay, but simply belongs to the necessity of setting some practical limits. Yet even this practical necessity could mask a much larger and more interesting phenomenon, with which over time the discipline would adjust to and accept reflexively, but which in the 19th century was a matter of enormous significance and controversy. Mention of this must introduce any serious discussion of the topic at hand. Prior to the 19th century, it had of course been taken for granted that the canonical presentation mirrored the history of religion, and in that conception, prophecy was inextricably tied to law. The prophets were the successors of Moses. They taught what he was vouchsafed to receive. Deuteronomy in its canonical position demonstrated the pivotal character of “seconding” the law, and so indicated the providential nature of a transition from Moses as Lawgiver and Prophet, to a succession of prophets following in his train and teaching for their generations the revealed moral, civil, and cultic will of God received by him at Sinai and identified in natural ways with the Pentateuch as his book. Such a presentation was reinforced in the canonical order and sequencing and this was so even when Bibles in translation would provide a different order, with the classical prophets (as defined above) in final position, and including Daniel.1 The New Testament’s reference to the contents of the Old Testament as “Moses and the Prophets” or 1 

Christopher R. Seitz, The Goodly Fellowship of the Prophets: The Achievement of As-

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“the Law and the Prophets,” in other words, was left undisturbed by canonical orders that in fact separated the Pentateuch from the “Latter Prophets” (with Daniel). It was not this separation that led to the conception of prophecy as a category worthy of its own treatment such as we shall now undertake. Rather, prophecy would come into its own in the reception history of the 19th century for other reasons, having to do with a massive adjustment in the canonical portrayal in all its parts.2 Chief in this regard was the emergence of the source-critical understanding of the Pentateuch, associated with the work of Vater, de Wette, Vatke, Graf, Reuss, Kuenen and Wellhausen, itself a development of suggestions from Spinoza, Simon, Eichhorn and others.3 This model, whereby the Law of Moses was reduced to a small collection of legal material and narrative reports associated with the Yahwist source, would conspire to alter forever the portrayal of prophecy, such as we now instinctively approach it in the present period. It cannot, however, be our task in this essay to dwell on the new Pentateuchal model in its details, however much it is true that prophecy in the 19th century is intimately tied up with it and cannot be understood without sustained reference to the controversial and epoch-making character of the new conception. To remove Moses and the Law from a position of priority would forever change the way prophecy was understood. The prophets would emerge as the ground floor in a new history-of-religion conceptuality, and the task would be both to accurately account for their life and work and also to place them in proper order.4 The first task entailed stripping back the book presentation afforded by the canon so that the prophet as historical individual would emerge in sharp focus, and the second was a natural extension of this. Once the canonical portrayal of Moses and the prophets was subject to adjustment, the prophetic literature would likewise be in need of proper restatement according to the sequential development of the prophets within Israel’s sociation in Canon Formation, Acadia Studies in Bible and Theology (Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2009). 2  Christopher R. Seitz, Prophecy and Hermeneutics: Toward a New Introduction to the Prophets, STI (Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2007). 3  Good English-language accounts of this important juncture in Old Testament studies can be found in J. W. Rogerson, Old Testament Criticism in Nineteenth-Century England and Germany (London: SPCK, 1984), and John H. Hayes and Frederick C. Prussner, Old Testament Theology: Its History and Development (Atlanta: John Knox, 1985). 4  An outstanding example of this can be seen in the lectures of W. Robertson Smith, delivered in Edinburgh and Glasgow in 1882, and published in W. Robertson Smith, The Prophets of Israel and Their Place in History to the Close of the Eighth Century, B. C.: Eight Lectures (Edinburgh: Black, 1882). The work of Bernhard Duhm, Die Theologie der Propheten als Grundlage für die innere Entwicklungsgeschichte der israelitischen Religion (Bonn: Marcus, 1875), might also be cited, a discussion of which follows below.

19. Prophecy in the Nineteenth Century Reception331



religious life. It would not merely be that failure of the prophets to refer in sustained ways to the Mosaic ordinances meant the Priestly and Deuteronomic codes were later than them, if not a stifling of their spirit and vocation.5 It would require as well a proper understanding of how the editing of books like Jeremiah and Ezekiel, as later prophetic witnesses, had themselves received editorial additions influenced by these later legal and cultic developments (Jeremiah and D; Ezekiel and P). And although Daniel was not considered one of the Prophets according to the Hebrew tradition, and will not be so treated here, at the period in question both his book and that of Isaiah formed the virtual proving ground of the new critical model with its fresh understanding of the prophetic office, now no longer identified in straightforward ways with the literature associated with them.6 In sum, while it will be outside our remit to set forth the details of the pentateuchal theory, its impact on the interpretation of the prophets in the 19th century is everywhere to be acknowledged. An account of the prophets must be given which understands that impact and accepts its massive influence on what will emerge as an independent account of the prophets as such. It is not to be forgotten that the earliest statements of the way the books of Moses came to form usually spoke of a “Hexateuch,” and again one sees how the canonical portrayal, including the first book of the Former Prophets, was being adjusted according to a very different conception.7 A third challenge involves giving proper proportion to the topic in the light of a full appreciation of what one might understand as reception history. Our discussion will focus on scholarly (university and theological faculty) accounts of the prophets. The prodigious character of this scholarship is in large part to do with the turmoil associated with it. The 19th century saw a massive redrawing of conceptual lines, and this did not happen without resistance. In some places on the map of reception history, the new conceptions were rejected out of hand.8 But for the most part, engagement with the topic was 5 

A representative quote from Wellhausen is included below, cited by n. 16. an example of the conservative resistance, see E. B. Pusey, Daniel the Prophet: Nine Lectures Delivered in the Divinity School of the University of Oxford, with Copious Notes (Oxford: J. Henry and J. Parker, 1864); William Henry Green, Moses and the Prophets: The Old Testament in the Jewish Church (New York: Carter, 1883). 7  W. M. L. de Wette speaks of the “theocratical-historical books,” by which he means the books that “contain the history of the theocracy,” especially the “books of Moses and Joshua” which “contain the history of its establishment” (W. M. L. de Wette, A Critical and Historical Introduction to the Canonical Scriptures of the Old Testament, 2 vols., trans. Theodore Parker (Boston: C. C. Little and J. Brown, 1843), 2:18. Early source-criticism of course included Joshua with the Books of Moses and found sources (or fragments) across these six books (Hexateuch). 8  I have in mind here the preaching of the Church; Church School curricula; hymnody; lectionary practices; seminary lecturing; general publications. John Rogerson does a fine 6  For

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unavoidable, and even the most conservative defenders of an older approach nevertheless had to enter the field of battle. One could write an essay on reception history in the 19th century and do nothing more than tell the story of the founding of Princeton Seminary and the efforts in the long century to work through these debates, as faculty members read widely and then travelled to France, Britain, the Netherlands, and especially Germany, finding occasional allies, but always accepting that the new theories had to be engaged.9 It is probably only partly accidental that the Old Princeton School, for all practical purposes, came to an end as the century itself ended, with the death of William Henry Green. After that, the models for understanding the Law and the Prophets had becomes facts on the ground in America, Britain and the Continent, and what was left for the 20th century to undertake was synthesis and further refinement. The 19th-century’s controversies were such that a genuinely international discipline emerged.

Prophet and Law Prior to the 19th century, it was axiomatic that the prophets were later than, and were the teaching successors of, Moses. This view was based upon a combination of the canonical portrayal itself (e. g., Joshua as Moses’s successor), the statement of Deut 18:15 concerning the raising up of prophets, infrequent references within the prophetic material to a succession (Jer 15:1), the idea of prophets in schools or guilds (e. g., Elijah and Elisha; the “sons of the prophets”; Isaiah and his disciples), and the New Testament’s subsequent perspective. But foremost was the basic notion of Israel’s religious foundation at Sinai with Moses as its center. Who could the prophets be if not the successors of Moses, dependent upon his written legacy? On rare occasion the fact that the prophets cited actual Mosaic injunctions infrequently was thought to be significant. Calvin, commenting on the appearance in Micah and Isaiah of similar language from God (Isa 2:2–4; Mic 4:1–4), called attention to the fact that neither named the other explicitly. Calvin, in commenting on Mic 1:1, acknowledges that one prophet is sufficient, still “it pleased God that a testimony should be borne by the mouth of two, and that job explaining how the Anglican world accommodated itself to the new theories in the life of the Church, including preaching and popular lecturing contexts (Rogerson, Old Testament Criticism, 274–89). 9  See the excellent, detailed account of Marion Ann Taylor, The Old Testament in the Old Princeton School (1812–1929) (San Francisco: Mellen Research University Press, 1992). William Henry Green died in 1900, and the brief period to follow Taylor categorizes as “The Erosion of the School.”



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holy Isaiah should be assisted by this friend and, as it were colleague.”10 In this context Calvin continues by seeming to say that the prophets heard the testimony of one another and were gratified in discovering that they were saying the same thing, as delivered by one and the same God. In commenting on Mic 4:3, he speaks of direct borrowing, “Micah was not ashamed to borrow his words … he designedly adopted the expressions of Isaiah, and related verbally what he had said, to show that there was perfect agreement between him and the illustrious minister of God, that his doctrine might obtain more credit.”11 Somewhat in the spirit of Calvin, the eventual editor of his translated works will point to an issue that had been crying out for comment in this context where cross reference is being evaluated, that is, why the prophets do not explicitly cite Moses and his legislation. At most, Isaiah and others might say, “to the law and the testimony” (Isa 8:20). The conclusion is drawn that God intends that we view the prophets as divinely inspired and authoritative, and that this is underscored by their lack of need constantly to invoke Moses by name.12 Similarly, Luther speaks of the prophets as focused in their preaching on the First Commandment, but makes no reference to the fact that this happens without explicit appeal to the Decalogue’s letter.13 Early in the 19th century, with a new account of the law emerging, the prophets would take on a correspondingly new character. Whether holding to a source-critical or fragmentary hypothesis concerning the origins of the Pentateuch (Hexateuch), either model entails a loosening of the idea of Mosaic authorship or an early, pre-prophetic dating for the bulk of the material (even when some linkage to Moses was theorized, as with Eichhorn or de Wette). Pivotal for dating the maturing materials (in Elohist and Yahwistic renditions) was the account of the discovery of the Book of the Law in the eighteenth year 10  John Calvin, Commentaries on the Twelve Minor Prophets, 5 vols., trans. John Owen (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1950), 3:152. 11 Ibid. 12  And so the editor, in his preface on Jonah, Micah, Nahum, concludes, sensing the issue: “Their communications proceeded from the same Author; and there was no necessity to confirm what they said by referring to what the Law sanctioned. The same God, who gave the Law by Moses, sent his messages to the people by his Prophets. And hence arises a strong, though, as it were, an incidental, proof of the Divine character of what they have written.” I searched in vain for Calvin’s own explicit referencing of the issue. I suspect the apparatus for reshuffling the canonical presentation was so far removed, conceptually, from his own day that the matter was left without comment. 13  Siegfried Raeder, “The Exegetical and Hermeneutical Work of Martin Luther,” in From the Renaissance to the Enlightenment, vol. 2 of Hebrew Bible/Old Testament: The History of Its Interpretation, ed. Magne Sæbø (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2008), 363–406, esp. 388; Heinrich Bornkamm, ed., Luthers Vorreden zur Bibel (Hamburg: Furche, 1967), 67.

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of King Josiah (meaning either Deuteronomy itself or Deuteronomy as the final book of a virtually complete, combined law book, including Genesis). Since the time frame for considering pre-classical and classical prophecy extended much earlier in Israel’s history, the prophets emerged as figures with their own integrity as speakers of the divine will. De Wette stressed their preaching as tied up with God’s justice, and especially divine retribution, both inside and outside the nation of Israel.14 This would not prevent him from referring to levitical and deuteronomic statements where such a principle was given (he speaks of Leviticus 26 and Deuteronomy 28), but one has a sense that the prophets know this by inference, and by virtue of their prophetic vocation under God, rather than as successors of Moses, persuaded by his literary record. The gradual character of the law’s development into a written form, such as we now have it, would not be used to separate the prophets from the law in a strict sense. In time the situation would change within those circles where the business of dating sources of the Pentateuch was a priority. The division of the elohistic source into an early, modest narrative form (‘E’ proper) and a large-scale legal document, to be called the Priestly source proper, would alter the picture as it had existed in the early 19th century. The energy released by this transposition of the dominant strand of the Pentateuch to the postexilic period was felt most keenly in the interpretation of the prophetic literature. For now one could glimpse the prophets as the real progenitors of Israelite religion, unencumbered by legal codes or understandings of sacrifice, cultic obedience, and centralization of worship. How one accounted for the inspired character of the prophets would become the central fascination, and the model chosen would turn on the theological and philosophical predilections of the interpreter and his setting independently of a consideration of the intention of the canonical form (neology and rationalism adopting a natural law framework; mediating theology seeking to understand the revelatory impetus and noetic content or prophetic activity as grounded in the character of God, objectively given to the prophet; pietism and romanticism, where the insights of the prophet in religious impulses vouchsafed to him as God’s agent of higher sensibility were critical, and so forth).15 But ingredient in all of these accounts was the 14 

De Wette’s introductory statement is: “The predictions of the future were occasioned by, and founded upon, the idea of retribution – as we see in Levit. xxvi. and Deut. xxviii. – and on the unshaken confidence in the love of Jehovah toward his people” (De Wette, Introduction to the Canonical Scriptures, 354). 15  For an account of the various species of theological interpretation (rationalism, neologism, pietism, mediating) see Hans W. Frei, The Eclipse of Biblical Narrative: A Study in Eighteenth and Nineteenth Century Hermeneutics (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1974).



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annexing of the prophetic literature and the Prophets as inspired figures from the canonical foundation in Law. Wellhausen’s prefatory comments in the Prolegomena make the point well, even as it would be his concern to plot the evolution of the legal material and leave to others the generation of exciting reconstructions of the prophetic materials proper. He writes: In my early student days I was attracted to the stories of Saul and David, Ahab and Elijah; the discourses of Amos and Isaiah laid strong hold on me, and I read myself well into the prophetic and historical books of the Old Testament … at the same time [I] was troubled with a bad conscience, as if I were beginning with the roof instead of the foundations; for I had no thorough acquaintance with the Law, of which I was accustomed to be told that it was the basis and postulate of the whole literature…. But it was in vain that I looked for the light which was to be shed from this source on the historical and prophetical books. On the contrary, my enjoyment of the latter was marred by the Law; it did not bring them any nearer me, but intruded itself uneasily, like a ghost that makes a noise indeed, but is not visible and really effects nothing…. At last, in the course of a casual visit in Göttingen in the summer of 1867, I learned through Ritschel that Karl Heinrich Graf placed the Law later than the Prophets, and, almost without knowing his reasons for the hypothesis, I was prepared to accept it.16

Similar statements would be made by W. Robertson Smith in Scotland, Charles Briggs in the United States, and S. R. Driver and others in England, the protestations of the Old Princeton School notwithstanding.17 The new model for understanding the prophets of Israel would be animated by just this spirit of discovery and enthusiasm. If the prophets were uninfluenced by Moses and his legislation, it would also be the case that they were individuals of the highest order, encumbered by fellowship even within their own ranks. What was characteristic of classical prophecy (as against earlier forms of prophetism, with their guilds and charismatic associations) was the solitude of the individual. This was underscored by recourse to a new form of historical contextualization, whereby the specifics of the audience and setting were fore-grounded. This was not a novelty itself, for earlier treatments (throughout the history of interpretation, and inclusive of the 18th-century depictions of Robert Lowth) also stressed the prophetic personality and sen16  Julius Wellhausen, Prolegomena to the History of Israel, trans. J. Sutherland Black and Allan Menzies (Berlin: G. Reimer, 1878; repr. Cleveland: World Publishing Company, 1957), 3. 17  W. Robertson Smith, The Old Testament in the Jewish Church: Twelve Lectures on Biblical Criticism (New York: D. Appleton and Company, 1881), and from his lectures delivered in Edinburgh and Glasgow in 1882, idem, The Prophets of Israel; C. A. Briggs, “Critical Theories of Sacred Scripture in Relation to Their Inspiration: The Right, Duty and Limits of Biblical Criticism,” PR 2 (1881): 550–79 (and see the insightful evaluation of Taylor, Old Princeton School, 233–38); S. R. Driver, Introduction to the Literature of the Old Testament (New York: C. Scribner, 1891).

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sibility.18 But historical specification of the kind that would emerge in force in the 19th century also sought to divorce the prophet from the book associated with him. The search for the authentic words of the prophet took on a kind of moral urgency, both in the Victorian rhetoric of George Adam Smith, or in the appeal to reformation principles of freedom and sola scriptura in W. Robertson Smith’s writing and public addresses.19 Once the books no longer pointed reflexively to their authors, in the innocent manner of previous centuries, nor to Moses as their spiritual foundation, the prophets were birthed as distinct individuals into a new dispensation. The literature, which had indicated associations of various kinds by means of cross reference and repeated language (Isaiah material found in Kings; Micah quoted in Jeremiah; Joel and Amos sharing language; Joel, Jonah, Micah and Nahum quoting or alluding to the compassionate formula now found in Exodos 32–34; Isaiah and Micah using the same language; Obadiah and Jeremiah 49, and so forth), would cease carrying the burden of literary and religious interconnection in either the lived life of these prophetic figures or in the theological cohesion of their message as providentially determined in the counsels of the one God inspiring them as a totality. If such integration was to be sought, it would not be brokered by the canonical presentation – which was being reorganized – but by a theory supplied by the interpreter, having to do with history of religion, salvation history, tradition history, or a model of spiritual illumination (or decline). Throughout much of the 19th century, attention would be paid to this dimension, but equally, the technical matters of determining authenticity and the reorganization of a “correct” historical presentation were of necessity in the foreground. It would take time before a single dominant sequence of prophetic activity would find wide assent,20 but the succession and association features of previous centuries of interpretation were being replaced, and even conservative reactions would find themselves thrust onto a new playing field. In the early 20th century, Isaiah and Daniel would continue to concentrate the energies of conservative apologetics, even while the idea of historical contextualization and the provision of a new sequence were accepted on all sides. At issue was a maximal or minimal account of that. 18 

Robert Lowth, De sacra poësi Hebraeorum (Oxford: Clarendoniano, 1753). George Adam Smith’s enormously popular account of the Minor Prophets served to ease the British public into the new model, especially because of his sensitive theological handling. See Christopher R. Seitz, “The Book of the Twelve: New Horizons for Canonical Reading, with Hermeneutical Reflections,” SBET 22 (2004): 151–72. Rogerson, Old Testament Criticism, 275–81, rightly notes the impact of W. Robertson Smith in his treatment. 20  See below the evaluation of Duhm and his late dating of Joel and Jonah, division of Isaiah, and other standard sequential assumptions. 19 

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Prophets in Order Although the order of the Major Prophets (Isaiah, Jeremiah, Ezekiel) is not the only one attested, it is the dominant one and has been reproduced in most printed Bibles.21 In the history of interpretation, the Minor Prophets, whose length is equivalent to that of the single scrolls of the Major Prophets, was usually treated in commentary formats as a single work, comprised of individual voices. The final position of The Twelve in modern Bibles is not nearly so widely attested in earlier lists, as this collection frequently appears before Isaiah. Daniel may therefore conclude the Old Testament (in orders that depart from the tripartite).22 The size and ambition of the Major Prophets as literary works, and their lack of obvious cross reference, meant that they were the subject of discrete interpretation, worthy of the name “Major.” Their order was of no special moment, beyond the appropriateness of their historical activity in the sequence.23 In time, of course, Isaiah would be divided into smaller sections, but even this might warrant an initial position due to the scale of the prophetic address, from the days of Uzziah well into the Persian period (however one might account for that). Jeremiah’s and Ezekiel’s historical specification is of a different order. Early 19th-century accounts, influenced by newer pentateuchal considerations or not, maintained a loose commitment to the order presented in printed Bibles of the day. De Wette speaks of “theocratic-historical” as distinct from “theocratic-inspired” so as to keep the order of popular printing practices in view.24 To the first category belong the Pentateuch and Former Prophets (historical books), including those writings with an historical character (Ezra-Nehemiah, Ruth, Chronicles, Esther). To the second belong the Latter Prophets (Isaiah, Jeremiah, Ezekiel, and The Twelve) and a later prophetical production with a completely different character (Daniel).25 The language of “theocratic” is probably a holdover from models which retained the idea of phases of religion coordinated with the canonical presentation, as in Gustav F. Oehler’s more traditional Mosaism, Prophetism, Scribalism.26 21 

B. Bat. 14b has the order Jeremiah, Ezekiel, Isaiah. Extended discussion of lists/order can be seen in Seitz, The Goodly Fellowship. 23  Eichhorn does note the significance of Isaiah’s anthological character and the appropriateness of locating the book next to The Twelve for this reason (see the discussion below). 24  De Wette, Introduction to the Canonical Scriptures, 2:18, 350. 25  “This later shoot of prophecy belongs to a time long after them” (ibid., 491). 26  Gustav F. Oehler, Theology of the Old Testament, trans. George E. Day (New York: Funk & Wagnalls, 1883). 22 

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De Wette inaugurates a practice that will gain wide currency in the 19th century for dealing with the Major and Minor Prophets, even as the canonical order is maintained in his treatment. He therefore begins with Isaiah and separates “genuine” from “later,” “miscellaneous” (from the Men of Hezekiah, with reference to Bertholdt’s appeal to Baba Batra), or “spurious” passages – describing chs. 40–66 of Isaiah all the same as “deserv[ing] great praise on account of their lively and flowing style.”27 Jeremiah and Ezekiel are treated in like manner. The Book of the Twelve presents something of a format challenge, and the persistence of this challenge will span the century. De Wette notes the long tradition of reading the Minor Prophets as one book, glossing this with a conjecture about its time of final composition and consolidation. He then examines the collection in its present canonical order, beginning with Hosea and concluding with Malachi. The tradition that the books are in chronological order, and that undated books take their temporal location from their dated neighbors, goes back to a suggestion of Jerome. But as we shall see, this suggestion is treated with indifference by some pre-critical commentators, and de Wette does not mention it at all. What he does provide by way of intimation is a chart which shows a divergent order in certain Septuagintlists, the traditional list which he follows (in first position), and a list under the rubric “According to Chronology.”28 So his treatment is a hybrid, in that he treats the Minor Prophets in canonical order, but also provides minimal glosses about their historical setting in the course of the treatment.29 The most intriguing thing about the list is the way it demonstrates two different systems at work for deducing the historical sequence. One involves the awareness of literary citation within the canon, and requires a sense of the order of dependence; the other is based upon historical references found within the books. In the tradition, it had been long noted that Amos begins and ends (Amos 1:2; 9:13) with language which appears in Joel (3:16, 18). The earliest 19th-century provision of lists “according to chronology” saw this as evidence that Amos drew upon Joel. Joel is therefore usually listed as the earliest prophet. But because Jonah’s date can be secured unproblematically by recourse of 2 Kings 14 (this was an earlier tradition), he is therefore placed before Amos, who has by the time of de Wette found his historical position in front of Hosea. This leads to a strange order of Joel-Jonah-AmosHosea. The first two books here will in time become the last two in most modern lists, because the system of literary dependence will get altered, as 27 

De Wette, Introduction to the Canonical Scriptures, 2:390–93. Ibid., 2:436. 29  Ibid., 2:434–80. 28 

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the individuality of the prophets increases and the sense of robust attachment to the works associated with them decreases.30 What the early 19th century saw as significant in terms of literary association, probably because of the persistence of canonical orders in the format presentation, as one moved from book to book, would in time recede in importance or be accounted for within a new sequence of individualized treatments as the consequence of editing. The other adjustment in the chronological list is the placement of Zephaniah before Habakkuk, in light of conjectures regarding the implications of the superscription and also Zephaniah’s reference to Assyrians (2:13), and Habakkuk’s to Chaldeans (1:6). The issue will surface with force in some subsequent treatments, as it entails the character of the prophet as supernaturally endowed to speak of things beyond his own day.31 Apart from these few adjustments, the canonical order is maintained in the treatment, and the historical order is not far from it. It will be useful briefly to contrast this early 19th-century treatment with that of Eduard Reuss in 1881 (the Alsatian many regard as having dated the law later than the prophets, as early as 1834).32 The genre that would emerge and begin to dominate bore a title unlike de Wette’s traditional sounding “Contributions to an Introduction,” that is, we now have a ‘History of the Sacred Scriptures of the Old Testament’ proper. The canonical literature was now to be enclosed in a scaffolding entirely historical in character, based upon a reconstruction of when the various sections of the Old Testament might be located according to their time of composition. So, alongside a (still early) Joel and Jonah, we find the Yahwist and other compositions. One sees clearly in Reuss’s historical, sequential presentation a collapsing of various genres as well as a complete redistribution of the canonical order. One can also sense that earlier critical views, which had kept intact the canonical order of the Minor Prophets in general terms, is now coming under dispute. So, while he retains Joel in first position, one sees that various new evaluations are being brought to bear, including those which would make Joel the latest prophetic witness. From a distance it is intriguing to see Joel and Jonah followed by “the Yahwist,” “the Blessing of Moses,” and “the Primeval History,” before moving to Hosea, Zechariah 9–11, “the Song of Moses,” Isaiah, Job, 30 

See also the discussion in chs. 9 and 17. E. B. Pusey, The Minor Prophets, with a Commentary Explanatory and Practical and Introductions to the Several Books, 2 vols. (Oxford: J. Parker & Co., 1860). 32  “The prophets are older than the law and the Psalms are later than both” is the way he would come to phrase it when he finally published his views in Eduard Reuss, Die Ge­ schichte der Heiligen Schriften Alten Testaments (Braunschweig: Schwetschke, 1881), vii. In the preface, he refers to his lectures in the summer term of 1834 when this view came to him. 31 

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Ruth, and the Book of Samuel.33 Deuteronomy is a central episode. Joshua is treated after Jeremiah and “additions to Deuteronomy.” The larger book of Isaiah, especially sections 24–27, 34–35, and 40–66, is slowly being dismantled, as now the primary lens for seeing these prophetic and other works is a chronological one.34 All this appears in a conception whereby the historical era are cast into four large “books”: The Period of the Heroes (including the Judges, Early Prophets, Samuel, David); The Period of the Prophets; The Period of the Priests; the Period of the Scribes.35 As the century draws to a close perhaps the most popular and representative account of the Prophets is that associated with Bernhard Duhm, who would also produce the commentary on Isaiah that set a market down on the critical interpretation of that work.36 Duhm’s Die Theologie der Propheten (1875) bore the subtitle, “as basis for the internal, developmental history of Israelite Religion.” At least three things should be said about the presentation of this work. First, the order of the prophets as given by Duhm reflects what will become a standard account in time; that is, the critical method was beginning to settle into something like its own ‘canonical’ order. Amos is in his now famous signal position. Joel and Malachi are the latest prophetic works. Isaiah is divided into two main divisions, with certain chapters later still. Secondly, the prophets are now fitted into a schema which reflects the historical realities of serial Ancient Near East powers, providing us with Assyrian period prophecy, Babylonian period prophecy, and Persian period prophecy. This is glossed in various ways so that the development of Israelite religion might be grasped. The beginning is marked by strong religious personalities who speak words of judgment to contemporaries, calling for the judgment of first Israel and then Judah. DeuteroIsaiah marks a sublime turning point, with a focus on the Servant of Yahweh, and promises of a more universal character. This is followed by a period of disillusionment, taking the form of eschatological and other-worldly speculation, on the one side, and a turn to Jewish theocracy on the other. Roughly in this form, the history-of-religion framework of Duhm will persist well into the 20th century. Finally, it should not be forgotten that an independent treatment of the prophets is itself an accomplishment that inaugurates a genre in publication. The older connective tissue to Mosaism, in whatever form that was allowed, is dispensed with as the prophetic introduction comes into its own. Duhm 33 

Ibid., 243–304. Ibid., 403–5, 422–25, 426–37. 35  Ibid., xiii–xv (Table of Contents). 36  Bernhard Duhm, Das Buch Jesaia, HKAT 3/1 (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1892). 34 

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would follow with his own expanded enlargement in the following century, with the simpler title, reflecting the new consensus about textbook presentations, Israel’s Prophets (1922).37 Here we see greater refinement, as TritoIsaiah now takes a place alongside Deutero-Zechariah. Joel and Habakkuk are the final witnesses, along with Jonah and Ruth. The genre of “The Prophets” as an independent treatment was born. The effect of this was also registered in commentary series. No longer would Isaiah be treated as a single volume in a major series, and if a single book publication format was retained, then the subsections would be treated as independent prophetic accomplishments of Deutero-Isaiah, Trito-Isaiah, and a host of later editorial additions. The Book of the Twelve, or Minor Prophets, would continue to be treated as a single volume in several significant publications (G. A. Smith or E. B. Pusey).38 This was of course a longstanding tradition, going back to Theodore of Mopsuestia and maintained in the history of interpretation up to the period of Calvin and kindred Reformation treatments.39 The emphasis on the individuality of the prophetic figure would challenge this tradition. Moreover, given that the new sequence was itself predicated on a proper determination of the historical order and development of the prophetic vocation in Israel, the sequence given in the present order of the Twelve would become only a starting point for reconstruction and nothing more. This would be true as well for series that handled the Minor Prophets as a totality, for the job of the commentator was still to treat the books as independent affairs, dating them, indicating which portions were secondary or “inauthentic,” and leaving matters of association to the side.40 Reuss had placed Joel before Amos (if somewhat reluctantly) because this criterion of literary association was still in 37 

Bernhard Duhm, Israels Propheten (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 1916). Adam Smith’s lectures were first published in 1896, The Book of the Twelve Prophets: Commonly Called the Minor, 2 vols. (New York: A. C. Armstrong, 1896–1898); Pusey, The Minor Prophets. 39  See now the English translation and annotation of Robert C. Hill (Theodore of Mopsuestia, Commentary on the Twelve Prophets, trans. Robert C. Hill, FC 108 [Washington, DC: Catholic University of America Press, 2004]). 40  One of the last treatments of the 19th century to deal with matters of literary association and the present order as historically appropriate (with some exceptions; Amos started his career before Hosea) is Karl Friedrich Keil and Franz Delitzsch, The Twelve Minor Prophets, trans. James Martin (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, repr. 1951). They write, e. g., of Obadiah: “That Obadiah does not belong to the prophets of the captivity, or to those after the captivity, may be generally inferred from the position of his book in the collection of the twelve minor prophets…. More precise information may be obtained from the contents of his prophecy, most especially from the relation in which it stands on the one hand to the prophecy of Jeremiah (xliv.7–22) concerning Edom, and on the other hand to the prophecy of Joel” (ibid., 339–40). See my extended discussion of Keil’s 19th-century evaluation of the Minor Prophets in Christopher R. Seitz, Prophecy and Hermeneutics, 106–9. 38  George

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play.41 A focus on the prophets as independent figures, warranting their own individual commentary treatment, would either tend to bypass this aspect, or would account for it as something editorially supplied and so not indigenous to the “authentic” oracles of the historical prophet. In sum, the new model at its starting point was now Amos-Hosea-Micah (and only those oracles which could be confidently ascribed to them), and the MT sequence of Hosea-JoelAmos was judged without interpretative significance. Moreover, Joel had once been viewed as the earliest prophet, joined by Jonah, and now they were the latest prophetic voices. Jonah became a sort of “fairy-tale” (märchenliebende) story (Duhm), commenting on Israelite prophecy through the vehicle of a humorous parabolic protagonist.42 The alternative to the developmental model was hard to come by in the case of the Minor Prophets. The present order and arrangement of the Twelve (that a divergent order existed in a Greek translation was not of great moment here) was itself not transparently chronological. The tradition (from Jerome) that undated books should be treated as contemporary with their dated neighbors was on occasion cited as a warrant for doing so, and the generally chronological order of the dated books might lend some support to this notion. But this was insufficiently bolstered in the final editorial form of the Twelve as a whole to be accepted without challenge. Undated books did not necessitate a treatment that associated them with their canonical neighbors, even as this probably factored into the hesitancy in earlier 19th-century treatments to move Joel and Jonah from the beginning of the historical sequence.43 Calvin had been content to see Obadiah as a prophet from the Babylonian period, and the literary associations with Jeremiah 49 were influential in his understanding of the setting.44 So, too, Calvin interpreted Habakkuk in a way that suggested the work may follow that of Zephaniah.45 But the wrong conclusion would be that Calvin worked hard to discover the original setting in a manner that would become a requirement in 19th-century accounts. Rather, he sits easy to historical setting because he is interested in religious edification and only 41 Reuss,

Die Geschichte, 243–48. Israels Propheten, 406.

42 Duhm, 43 Ibid. 44 

“Now at what time Obadiah prophesied, it does not appear, except that it is probable that this prophecy was announced, when the Idumeans rose up against the Israelites and distressed them by many annoyances: for they seem to be mistaken who think that Obadiah lived before the time of Isaiah. It appears that Jeremiah (ch. xlix.) and this Prophet made use of the same thoughts and nearly the same words, as we hereafter shall see” (Calvin, Commentaries on the Twelve Minor Prophets, 2:418). 45  “But as he denounces an approaching judgment on the Chaldeans, he seems to have prophesied either under Manasseh or under the other kings before the time of Zedekiah; but we cannot fix the exact time” (ibid., 4:xiii).



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sees history as a realistic stage on which this more dominant subject matter is being played out. In the 19th century, however, the reshuffling of the canonical sequence and the logic of determining what was authentic and inauthentic was carried out with such high seriousness that it was difficult to know what the alternative model might look like. Pusey was vitally concerned that the zeal for proper historical contextualization was threatening the traditional understanding of the prophetic office itself, as surely having to do with speaking over and above the historical circumstances in which the prophet found himself placed down by God. The foreteller became, in these historically reordered accounts, forthteller only (to use a phrase that would become common). So Pusey found himself arguing for the position of Habakkuk prior to Zephaniah as critical to the proper theological interpretation of his activity as spokesman for God.46 Habakkuk needed to see something in the activity of the Chaldeans that was not capable of being seen by reading the times accurately, or having a higher sensitivity, or deducing from general principles the necessity of Assyria to be followed by another power in the Levant. At stake was the supernatural endowment held to be part and parcel of the prophetic office itself, and Habakkuk’s position in the Twelve, before the book of Zephaniah, was thought by Pusey to reinforce that and show it to be so. Calvin in an earlier day could sit easy to exact chronological sequencing, even as he would have agreed in large measure with the account of prophecy held by Pusey in the mid-19th century. But the climate was such, and the alternatives Pusey was seeing put before the public in the new accounts of prophets as inspired individual forthtellers so impoverishing, as he saw it, that the order to the Minor Prophets was called on to do duty for a theological account of prophecy it was likely never meant to do.47 So, it would be the case that the new historical sequence would eventually be adopted by conservative interpreters as the 20th century opened and ran its course. The issue to be fought over was the extent of the books to be attributed to the historical figures said to have “authored” them. While Daniel and Isaiah might well be defended as traceable to single authors, the sequence and order that emerged in the 19th century in respect of other prophetic witnesses was generally accepted. The new order, and the individuality of the prophetic author, became facts on the ground as the 19th century drew to a close. Conservative and more progressive interpreters both found themselves 46  “The investigation into the age of Habakkuk could be easily and briefly settled, if we would start from the prejudice, which is the soul of modern criticism, that a prediction of the future, which rested, not on human inferences or on a natural gift of divination, but on supernatural illumination, is impossible” (Pusey, The Minor Prophets, 2:169–70). 47 Seitz, Prophecy and Hermeneutics, 106–9.

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attracted to the ideal of the morally charged prophetic individual, and the canonical form of that presentation became less of concern than the question of historical specification, in either maximal or minimal form. The element of literary association, which had played a major role in determining the proper sequence to begin with, was now something that failed to garner sufficient attention, as the individuality of the twelve prophets and their colleagues became the major lens through which to understand prophecy as such. The Book of the Twelve would become a collection of individual prophetic figures, whose works would be subject to an assessment that tied them to the individual in history, splicing in the other Major Prophets, or parts of their books, into a single, sequential history of religion. This was the main accomplishment of 19th-century research. It remains now to look at the Major Prophets and how they fared in the course of this important century.

Isaiah As the century opened, it was a widely held view that the book of Isaiah went back to a single individual author. Stating it in this way might well give the wrong impression, however, as it would require the new orientation of history-of -religion, as this gained momentum in the course of the century, to raise the status of questions concerning prophetic authorship in a new and unprecedented way. Robert Lowth’s influential work, De sacra poësi Hebraeorum (1753),48 set forth an account of prophetic inspiration that focused on the human agent. But in his hands the high moral and aesthetic character of the prophet did not conflict with the predictive charism, which in the case of Isaiah would require the inspired human author to speak to his own day and also see events centuries later, at one and the same time. This is to say, in chs. 40–66 the prophet Isaiah did not straightforwardly set before his own contemporaneous audience a message that they would have understood to be associated for a later day and not themselves. Instead, it appeared that rather than speaking to a distant future (“now it shall be in the latter days”) the prophet was himself transported there, because the addresses of these later chapters is also contemporaneous speech and not prediction in the strict sense.49 Nevertheless, it did not so stretch the bounds of what the pre-19th century understood to be prophetic inspiration to hold that one book contained the speech of a single individual in two different modes of address, spanning a time frame of several centuries. Lowth could therefore conclude 48  49 

The 10th edition appeared in 1834. On this, see ch. 20 in the present volume.

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that Isaiah delivered the prophecies of chs. 40–66 “in the latter part of the reign of Hezekiah.”50 It is interesting to note the direction of influence as the 18th century ended. Lowth’s work was translated into German in 1780 by Göttingen professor J. B. Koppe, and this included marginal notes and amplifications of various kinds.51 In the context of ch. 50, Koppe suggested that perhaps Ezekiel or “another prophet living in Babylon”52 was the author of the material. At this point the baton will be passed to German scholars for the emergence of a very new model for understanding Isaiah. It has been noted that the German translation of Lowth was far more influential in Germany than the Latin original had been in Britain, and an English translation of the works (complete with notes supplied by J. D. Michaelis) was undertaken only in 1787.53 Eichhorn’s 1803 edition of Einleitung in das Alte Testament contained a treatment of Isaiah that would foreshadow critical studies for the next century. Eichhorn introduces the language of “authentic” and “primary” as well as the focus on the biographical career of the individual (Jesaias Leben). The Book of Isaiah is a complex anthology from many diverse periods. A secondary and sustained level of later interpretation he locates in chs. 40–52, but equally he finds evidence of such additions and glossing in chs. 1–39 as well (the oracles against Moab in ch. 17; chs. 24–27; and ch. 21, where he notes the Persianperiod origin of “riders of camels”). Noteworthy is also his observation that, in various lists, Isaiah is frequently next to the Book of the Twelve. He believes that we are meant to know that Isaiah is, like The Twelve, an anthology, by virtue of this presentation (so B. Bat. 14a, where the order is Jeremiah, Ezekiel, Isaiah, The Twelve).54 Wilhelm Gesenius is the first to refer to an individual author in chs. 40–66, and the term he uses for this is “Pseudo-Isaiah.” The implication here is of an effort to extend the authorial logic of an early collection into a later frame of reference. But above all, the decision to publish a distinct volume for chs. 40–66, complete with an introduction, would make the prominence of this editorial level harder to ignore against the more general anthological backdrop of Eichhorn. Soon a literary distinctiveness would become a biographical and sociological one as well, and “Deutero-Isaiah” will become 50 Lowth,

De sacra poësi Hebraeorum (1834), 309. J. B. Koppe, Robert Lowth’s Jesaias: Neu übersetzt nebst einer Einleitung und critischen philologischen und erläuternden Anmerkungen, 2 vols. (Leipzig: Weidmanns Erben und Reich, 1779–1781). 52  Ibid., 43. 53  Hayes and Prussner, Old Testament Theology, 51. 54  J. G. Eichhorn, Einleitung in das Alte Testament, 3rd ed., 5 vols. (Leipzig: Weidmann, 1803), 3:101–4. See also the discussion in ch. 6. 51 

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the term of fashion. Gesenius argued for book-like divisions comprised of chs. 1–12, 13–23, 24–35, and 40–66, thus anticipating modern critical units in the larger book. Chapters 36–39 were brought over from Kings to serve as a conclusion to the first major section (chs. 1–39) on analogy with Jeremiah 52 as a conclusion to that work.55 The influence of this new approach would be widely felt in Isaiah commentary writing of the century. The popular series of Heinrich Ewald (1840–1841) enclosed this new understanding of Isaiah within a treatment of the prophets as a whole. Isaiah is included with his contemporaries (Joel, Amos, Hosea), and Ewald has frequent recourse to what he calls “anonymous prophets” in order to deal with what are now being classified as “secondary” additions (so Micah 6–7). The prophet Isaiah is the author of several small “booklets” and a complex table must be provided to indicate which of these belong to which historical period indicated by Isaiah’s superscription (the works of Ewald, Gesenius, Knobel, Kuenen, Cheyne and Reuss are also collated by the editor in order to show where disagreements in an otherwise general method of procedure are to be noted). As for the material in chs. 40–66, Ewald does not discuss this major block until after his treatment of Ezekiel. The main impetus for a new series of “anonymous prophets” is the emergence of Cyrus and the fall of Babylon. The first anonymous prophet is the author of Isa 21:1–10, followed by a second responsible for 13:2–14:23. Only then do we have the commentary associated with “The Great Anonymous Prophet,” that is, the author of chs. 40–66.56 In a great many ways the commentary of Bernhard Duhm on Isaiah holds something of the place of Wellhausen’s work on the Pentateuch, in that it offered a consolidation of theories that had slowly evolved and taken hold in the course of the century.57 That said, Duhm did put a signature on Isaiah commentary. The idea of a separate prophet behind chs. 56–66 (“Trito-Isaiah”), and a distinction between 40–55 and 56–66 on sociological, religious, and historical grounds, is his. The idea of four Servant songs, different in origin and reference than other texts in 40–55 which spoke of Israel as servant, comes into mature form in his hands. The commentary is remarkably free of complex exchanges with critical opinion, and there is an air of imperial confidence about it, measured against 20th-century research and publication. Duhm did not believe that the literal sense of Second Isaiah chapters pointed to a prophetic figure at work in Babylon, but rather to an obscure poet active 55  Wilhelm Gesenius, Commentar über des Jesaia, 3 vols. (Leipzig: Friedr. Christ Wilh. Vogel, 1821). 56 Heinrich Ewald, Commentary on the Prophets, 5 vols., trans. J. Frederick Smith, TTFL 9, 12, 18, 21, 26 (London: Williams and Norgate, 1876–1881), 4:244. 57 Duhm, Das Buch Jesaia.

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perhaps in Lebanon. But soon the temporal and geographical horizons would merge and the Exile would become the center of attention in newer historyof-religion accounts. Not as well remembered is Duhm’s view of so-called “First Isaiah” chapters. Much of this material he held to be later in origin than chs. 40–66, including chs. 24–27, which he dated to the 2nd century BCE Duhm held the unusual view that chs. 40–66 had once been related to the Book of Jeremiah. The chapters were severed from that association in order to fill out the anthropological Isaiah complex. The original Isaiah material was subject to constant revision and secondary adaptation, and this is reflected in the very complex accounts that had to be given for why the book’s literary form is as it is. The canonical Book of Isaiah is, as it were, swallowed whole by theories seeking to account for its development and present form, even ones as free of convolution and excess as Duhm’s. Naturally the “3-Isaiahs with numerous editorial supplementations” conception was not without its opposition. In Germany, most notable in this regard, as over against the work of Gesenius or even Ewald, was the fourvolume Die Christologie des Alten Testaments (1829–1835) by Berlin professor Ernst W. Hengstenberg.58 Hengstenberg would remain allied with a view of Isaiah that united it under a single prophetic viewpoint. The prophet’s ability to see far into the future also protected an account of prophecy and fulfillment necessary to ground the New Testament’s convictions regarding the messiah, as Hengstenberg understood that. He would therefore write: The Prophet does not confine himself to the events immediately at hand, but in his ecstatic state, the state of an elevated, and as it were, armed consciousness, in which he was during the whole period, his eye looks into the farthest distances. He sees, especially, that, at some future period, the Babylonian power, which began, even in his time, to germinate, would take the place of the Assyrian, – that, for this oppressor of the world, destruction is prepared by Koresh (Cyrus), the conqueror from the East, and that he will liberate the people from their exile; and at the close of the development, he beholds the Saviour of the world, whose image he depicts in the most glowing colours.59

As Brevard S. Childs correctly observes, “the conservative position continued to find support for several more decades in the Old Princeton School, but it represented increasingly an isolated, minority opinion.”60 The replacement of 58 

Ernst W. Hengstenberg, Christologie des Alten Testaments und Commentar über die Messianischen Weissagungen der Propheten, 3 vols. (Berlin: Oehmigke, 1829–1835); idem, Christology of the Old Testament and a Commentary on the Messianic Predictions, 4 vols., trans. Meyer and James Martin (Grand Rapids: Kregel, 1956). 59  Ibid., 2:3. 60  Brevard S. Childs, Introduction to the Old Testament as Scripture (Philadelphia: Fortress, 1979), 317.

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Hengstenberg by Dillman in the Chair at Berlin, and the popular accounts of Isaiah by A. B. Davidson, G. A. Smith and S. R. Driver indicated the general acceptance of the new critical view in Britain, where great care was expended to show the general religious value of the historical approach.61 Much was made of Delitzsch’s fourth edition of his Isaiah commentary, where he changed his view and made room for secondary students of Isaiah in chs. 40 ff.62 Driver wrote an appreciative introduction to the English translation of 1894, commending the fourth edition and Delitzsch’s acceptance of newer critical methods, though Childs is correct to wonder whether the late professor would have recognized himself fully in Driver’s commendation.63 Delitzsch had himself soft-pedaled the changes, and sought to underscore the organic continuity between all parts of the larger Isaiah book, in a manner which would soon find little support in the critical theories of the 20th century. Those prophecies originating in post-Isaian times are, in thought and in expression of thought, more nearly akin to Isaiah than to any other prophet; they are really the homogeneous and simultaneous continuation of Isaian prophecy, the primary stream of which ramifies in them as in branches of a river, and throughout retains its fertilizing power. These later prophets so closely resembled Isaiah in prophetic vision, that posterity might on that account well identify them with him. They belong more or less nearly to those pupils of his to whom he refers, when, in chap. viii. 16, he entreats the Lord, “Seal instruction among my disciples.” We know of no other prophet belonging to the kingdom of Judah, like Isaiah, who was surrounded by a band of younger prophets, and, so to speak, formed a school. Viewed in this light, the Book of Isaiah is the work of his creative spirit and the band of followers. These later prophets are Isaian, – they are Isaiah’s disciples; it is his spirit that continues to operate in them, like the spirit of Elijah in Elisha, – nay, we may say, like the spirit of Jesus in the apostles; for the words of Isaiah (viii. 18), “Behold, I and the children whom God hath given me,” are employed in the Epistles of the Hebrews (ii. 13) as typical of Jesus Christ.64

In this manner, via a typological association, the linkage of Isaiah to later perspectives, including the final theological horizon of the New Testament, is maintained by Delitzsch, now in a new model of prophetic inspiration different in kind than that proposed by Hengstenberg. The fate of this new understanding would shift in the 20th century and remain in this form only in the most general terms. Newer appreciation of Isaiah as a unified collection 61 

A. B. Davidson, “The Book of Isaiah ch XLff,” The Expository Times 2 (1883): 81 ff.; George Adam Smith, “Isaiah,” in The Expositor’s Bible, 2 vols. (New York: Armstrong, 1903); Driver, Introduction, 194–231. 62  Franz Delitzsch, Biblical Commentary on the Prophecies of Isaiah, trans. J. S. Bach et al., 4th ed., 2 vols., Clark’s Foreign Theological Library 42, 44 (Edinburgh: T&T Clark, 1894). 63  Brevard S. Childs, The Struggle to Understand Isaiah as Christian Scripture (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2004), 274–75. 64 Delitzsch, Prophecies of Isaiah, 1:38.

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operates with something of the instinct of Delitzsch, it could be argued, even when unaware of his formulations in the late 19th century.65

Jeremiah and Ezekiel The challenges related to interpretation of these two Major Prophets are not nearly as epoch-making in the 19th century as with Isaiah and Daniel. The reasons for this are not difficult to perceive. Both books are less temporally ambitious; they are more focused on contemporary speech in the context of a governing historical moment (the Fall of Judah and Jerusalem; the Exile and its aftermath). Secondly, and related to this, far less controversy was generated in respect of the prophetic office on theological grounds, because the conception of prophetic prediction was less central to the presentation of the works. Thirdly, while critical problems were identified in terms of textcriticism and literary presentation, both witnesses provided greater chronological superstructure and organization than the sublime presentation of Isaiah. It might also be argued that Daniel and Isaiah preoccupied the labors of 19th-century research, thus leaving Jeremiah and Ezekiel as more straightforward alternatives for interpretation. The 20th century would, by contrast, demonstrate the complexity of these major prophetic works and the challenge for critical theory to defend their unity. Striking in this regard, for example, is that the literary theory of sources in Jeremiah (so-called “A poetry”; “B biography”; “C Deuteronomistic prose sermons”) was a product of the early 20th century, not the 19th, even as its proponent was Bernhard Duhm.66 Many modern introductions and commentary surveys have little to say about the 19th-century roots of critical theories when it comes to these two witnesses, and the contrast with Isaiah and Daniel is striking in this regard. Early (late-18th century) challenges to the unity of Ezekiel focused on the authenticity of chs. 40–48 and 38–39.67 Challenges to the unity of chs. 1–24 and 25–32 were sometimes made on the basis of style, and this aspect was the subject of a famous 20th-century evaluation by Gustav Hölscher.68 From a dif65 

See also the discussion in ch. 6. Duhm, Das Buch Jeremia, KHC 11 (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 1901). Duhm speaks of Jeremiah’s poetry, the biography of Baruch, and supplements under the influence of “nomism”  – this latter category overshadowing in total length the first two categories combined. 67  George Ludwig Oeder, Freye Untersuchungen über einige Bücher des Alten Testaments, vom Verfasser der Christlich freyen Untersuchung über die so genannte Offenbarung Johannis (Halle: bey Johann Christian Hendel, 1771); Heinrich Corrodi, Versuch einer Beleuchtung der Geschichte des Jüdischen und Christlichen Bibelkanons (Halle: Curt, 1792). 68 Gustav Hölscher, Hesekiel, der Dichter und das Buch, eine literarkritische Unter­ suchung von Gustav Hölscher (Giessen: A. Töpelmann, 1924). 66 Bernhard

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ferent tack, Kraetzschmar’s HKAT commentary investigated the doublets and parallel texts that appeared in the present work, and argued for two recensions of Ezekiel: one going back to a first-person perspective, and the other developed from it in the third-person.69 De Wette’s handling of Ezekiel is remarkably confident in attributing the entire book to him and in rejecting (in company with Eichhorn, Jahn, and Bertholdt) the theories of George Ludwig Oeder and Heinrich Corrodi concerning chs. 38–39 and 40–48. He notes the “Levitical spirit” of the prophet, his sometimes tedious style, but also his extravagance in allegory and figure. His treatment of Ezekiel turns in large measure on judgments about his style and unusual manner, which he commends and finds degenerate by turns.70 The treatment of Jeremiah is much lengthier and more ambitious in critical theory. Passages which breathe a hopeful and comforting air (chs. 30–31, 33) “have been wrought over by the pseudo Isaiah”71 and this for reasons chiefly of style. The problems of the Septuagint and MT text are handled in an even-handed way, with de Wette sometimes arguing for the antiquity of the Septuagint reading. His main focus is however on the MT presentation, with the Oracles against Foreign Nations (and a discussion of the relation of Jeremiah 49 to Obadiah) at the close. Jeremiah’s prophecies, he concludes, reflect “the spirit of his time and the condition of his people. His humour is sad, melancholy, and depressed.”72 One thing to note in the early 19th century is Jeremiah’s relationship to the shifting picture of the Pentateuch. In the 20th century, the so-called ‘C’ material of Jeremiah (prose sermons) will be understood in terms of the deuteronomic movement, about which much attention will be given. Jeremiah’s proximity to King Josiah and so also to the discovery of the “Book of the Law” would require treatments of his book to sort through the relationship between this prose material and the larger work of the Deuteronomists. De Wette had concluded, bis Josia keine Spur von dem Daseyn des Pentateuchs, nachher, besonders nach dem Exil, die häufigsten und deutlichsten.73 Jeremiah, however, was sitting right on the period between Josiah and the Exile. De Wette cites Jer 7:25 in favor of the view that no cult sacrifice or offering had obtained in the wilderness period, and so Jeremiah is without influence from traditions (in D and P) which speak rather differently of the matter. Above all it would be 69  See

Robert H. Pfeiffer’s brief summary in: Introduction to the Old Testament (New York: Harper & Brothers, 1941), 525–26. 70  De Wette, Introduction to the Canonical Scriptures, 2:425–34. 71  Ibid., 2:401. 72  Ibid., 2:419. 73 W. M. L. de Wette, Beiträge zur Einleitung in das Alte Testament, 2 vols. (Halle: Schimmelpfennig, 1806–1807), 2:182.

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the extraction of ‘P’ from the Grundschrift and the distinguishing of ‘P’ from ‘D’ and ‘E’ both, that would require a more complicated assessment of the book of Jeremiah, and especially the prose sermons it contains, in relationship to Deuteronomy. In the treatment of Jeremiah by Ewald we begin to move toward a more complex account of the development of book, but it is still without the sustained concern of the 20th century in respect of ‘D.’ Ewald is concerned to distinguish the style of prophecy in Jeremiah from that of Isaiah, and to credit Jeremiah with the final burst of a specific kind of prophetic endowment, which after him would go a new way. This is tied up with the difficulty of the period in which Jeremiah is active. Jeremiah therefore represents “the great turning point of the entire phenomenon of Old Testament prophecy, when just as it has become clearly and firmly conscious of its nature and limitations, it still begins at the moment of forfeit some of its inward power and its outward influence, and therefore advances irretrievably toward its dissolution.”74 And this is because “his age has already become an entirely unprophetic age, which, educated by this long-standing institution of prophecy and exalted by it, now deems itself to have entirely outgrown it, and is henceforth very unwilling to listen seriously to its voice: this by its reaction cripples the power of prophecy.”75 Of course this particular understanding finds its strongest theological articulation in what one will call the deuteronomic strand in Jeremiah, and even as much of this could be the result of Jeremiah’s knowledge of that movement and contribution to it, for Ewald it is still traceable fully to the personality and time of Jeremiah himself. The remainder of his treatment is a complex account of the way that Jeremiah’s book came to be, going back to the first scroll he is said to have prepared, in the account provided in ch. 36. This particular way of constructing the development of the book (using ch. 36 as a reliable indication of a gradual development of the book, helped by Baruch) will gather momentum in certain quarters in 20th-century scholarship, and Ewald is a pioneer and progenitor of this approach. What will comprise the heart of so-called ‘B’ material (chs. 37–44), Ewald had Jeremiah compose as a refugee in Egypt. Subsequent additions are few, and the Oracles against the Nations, which had originally found their place in the context of ch. 25, are moved to their present location, and a final historical note is added from 2 Kings 24. The Greek translator had before him more than one text tradition, and so at times he preserves what for Ewald are significant divergences. It cannot be our task here to describe the detailed way Ewald uses the information of ch. 36 74 Ewald, 75 

Commentary on the Prophets, 3:72. Ibid., 3:72–73.

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to offer a reconstruction of the book’s development, but rather to note that this is now a daunting assignment many Jeremiah commentators will feel likewise compelled to follow. It will take the notion of sources, as developed by Duhm, and a fresh understanding of the role of ‘D’ material in Jeremiah, to further complicate matters of interpretation, leading to the situation we find ourselves largely in to this day  – compare the divergent commentaries of William Lee Holladay, William McKane, and Robert P. Carroll in the English-language context.76 Ewald’s account of Ezekiel is engaging and spirited. His understanding of prophecy as evolving, reaching high moments (Isaiah), and then deteriorating, finds expression most clearly in Ezekiel, whom he otherwise labors to comprehend sympathetically.77 He works with a distinction familiar to later scholarship in respect of Ezekiel (prophet versus author/writer) but puts his own signature on this in the area of psychology and personal evaluation. It is because Ezekiel is forced to work in private, in large measure, that he becomes an author and not a prophet in the true sense, which on his understanding entails public reproof. But this also means Ezekiel has the opportunity to contemplate the mystery of God and then to construct artistic and expansive accounts of this, using his imagination. Ewald has a keen appreciation for the literary character and idiosyncrasy of this work. The literature is a direct conduit onto the psychology and intellectual life of the man Ezekiel.78 Ewald believes that the book of Ezekiel evolved in stages, which are revealed by layers in the final form of the presentation. The chronological exac76  William McKane, A Critical and Exegetical Commentary on Jeremiah, 2 vols., ICC (Edinburgh: T&T Clark, 1986–1987); Robert P. Carroll, Jeremiah: A  Commentary, OTL (Philadelphia: Westminster, 1986); William Lee Holladay, Jeremiah: A Commentary on the Book of the Prophet Jeremiah, 2 vols., Hermeneia (Philadelphia: Fortress, 1986–1989). 77  “At the same time, the complete dissolution of the older prophetism appears in this lengthy book in a still more decided and undoubted form than in the writings of Yeremya” (Ewald, Commentary on the Prophets, 4:1). 78  Only a sample can be provided here. “Though banished from public life, it is true it does not on that account immediately cease, it can be continued in the private house of solitary prophetic meditation and thought … and also by literary effort” (ibid., 9). “If the prophet as a writer is confined very much to his own house and the narrow limits of household life, his imagination will take another direction: in the case of any prophet of this kind whose fancy is rich, it is likely that the imagination will get the upper-hand, and the just proportion which it holds to the other mental powers in the older prophets will be disturbed. For in the retirement of a life removed from public affairs the prophet will be unable to give form to material that has already passed through his own experience of real life, and be purified by its stern realities … the man that commands an abundant flow of prophetic pictures, simply meditates and thinks how he would speak and act under the leading of Yahve’s spirit, in case he could really act” (ibid., 12). “This important remodeling of prophetic thought and style which becomes in later times more popular and more fully developed, giving rise to a new species of literature, meets us for the first time in Hezeqiel” (ibid., 13).



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titude – Ewald calls the prophet punctilious about this and other matters – is a final editorial touch and does not obscure this staging. Intriguing is the way he understands the literary association of prophecy. The book of Jeremiah (in scroll number one) is available to the prophet Ezekiel, and in the early stages of the literature Ewald believes he sees signs that Ezekiel has read the first version of Jeremiah and is dependent on it, as well as other prophetic literature.79 Ezekiel also has studied the Pentateuch, and drawn on Kings, Job, Psalms and other earlier prophetic material.80 The prophet himself constructs his book, and Ewald meticulously accounts for this. There is virtually no secondary supplementation, and the book remains a direct lens on the character and peculiarity of this impressive if transitional figure in the history of prophecy. This straightforward and imaginative evaluation of prophet and book will have to give way to a far more complicated account of the book’s development, and so also its access to the man Ezekiel, in the ensuing century. Ewald’s portrayal is a calm before the storm.81 The situation is altogether different for the Book of Daniel, for the controversy surrounding its interpretation goes back to the earliest centuries of the Common Era. The 19th century represents a revisiting of these battles now within the mainstream of interpretation.

Daniel Daniel’s assessment requires some explanation, as he is not called a prophet; his book is a genre achievement unlike any prophetic book in the canon; he is placed in the Ketubim in Hebrew tradition; and is frequently isolated in 79  “[Ezekiel] follows Yeremya as closely as possible, the writings of that prophet as far as they were then known being, according to all appearances, at his command” (ibid., 6). 80  “That he used the Pentateuch just as a learned man might do and without the genuine prophetic originality and independence of earlier prophets, is shown by such passages as iv. 4–8; xliv. 10 (xlviii. 11); in his description of the temple, ch. xl–xliii., he evidently follows such historical works of former times as 1 Kings ch. vi., vii.” (ibid., 10). Ezekiel, in Ewald’s view, appeals to earlier prophets, Job, Psalms, and especially Jeremiah. 81  Rudolf Smend’s treatment was very close to that of Ewald, though he does not refer to earlier stages in the work, Der Prophet Ezechiel, KEHAT 8 (Leipzig: Hirzel, 1880). Textcritical problems would soon become the focus, leading to a fragmentation of the Book of Ezekiel; see especially, Carl Heinrich Cornill, Das Buch des Propheten Ezechiel (Leipzig: J. C. Hinrichs, 1886), and the challenge of Alfred Bertholet, Das Buch Hesekiel: Erklärt, KHC 12 (Freiburg: Mohr Siebeck, 1897). The tradition of Cornill reaches something of its culmination in 1914, with the publication of Gustav Hölscher, Die Profeten: Unter­suchungen zur Religionsgeschichte Israels (Leipzig: J. C. Hinrichs, 1914) and especially idem, Hesekiel, der Dichter und das Buch. Gone is the view of Ezekiel as bookish and private, as the true Ezekiel is retrieved by literary criticism and set before us as a prophet like the others (but with only 144 out of 1273 verses genuinely representing his preaching).

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Christian lists, often appearing in final position; only the modern printing conventions roster him clearly and consistently alongside the major prophets. Yet, the issues dominating the interpretation of this book are so clearly focused on the phenomenon of prophetic prediction, especially in 19th-century discussion, that it would be curious not to include some evaluation of the Book of Daniel in a chapter on prophecy in 19th-century reception history. Already de Wette is instinctively predisposed to judge Daniel a work composed in its entirety in the period of Antiochus Epiphanes. He is fully aware of a long history of interpretation, going back to Porphyry and preserved in remarks by Jerome, of disputing the authenticity of Daniel, a view which brought forth response from Eusebius, Apollinaris, and Methodius in the Early Church. The genuineness of Daniel was undisputed until the time of Spinoza, by his reckoning, and though it continued to find curious support in Isaac Newton (based upon the words of Christ), questioning all or part of the final book as going back to Daniel would become the majority view in academic circles (Bertholdt, Hobbes, Collins, Semler, Michaelis, Eichhorn, Corrodi et al.). De Wette reviews the defense of Daniel’s authenticity and explains his position in rebuttal. As for the reference to Daniel in the New Testament, de Wette merely concludes, “But if all this were admitted, still, from the nature of things, Christ neither would nor could be a critical authority.”82 Lack of reference to Daniel in Sirach’s list of famous men “deserves to be taken into consideration.”83 Even early chapters, which many would regard as the original folktales of the book, are for de Wette only narratives after the fact, in which Antiochus appears in the form of Nebuchadnezzar and Belshazzar. Taking his stand in the time of Daniel, [the author] introduces into his work enough that is historical and local to give the appearance of a real historical statement, and yet composes it so skilfully that none could fail to see the application to his own times. He showed how his countrymen, even under heathen kings, like Nebuchadnezzar and Belshazzar, had been faithful to Jehovah, who had rewarded them for their fidelity; that these kings had violated the law of God, and were punished, the one with madness, the other with a violent death. The inference to be drawn was obvious; the application to the Jews and their persecutors was plain. If the former were faithful, they should be blessed, while the latter would be soon destroyed.84

What we witness in de Wette’s interpretation is a genuine curiosity in Daniel studies in 19th-century reception. Earlier question of Daniel’s authorship (Newton, Spinoza) thought the first chapters, because of confused chronology, were written by others (Ezra) or drawn from records, but the latter 82 

De Wette, Introduction to the Canonical Scriptures, 2:496. Ibid., 2:494. 84  Ibid., 502. 83 



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(chs. 7–12 or 8–12) were reliably Daniel’s.85 Eichhorn retained something of this view, though changed his mind in the fourth edition of his Introduction and held to a Maccabean date for chs. 7–12.86 Arguments for the unity of the book could therefore go one of two ways: as with de Wette, the entire book of Daniel was the work of a single author, but one working long after the fact, and constructing (poorly enough for us to recognize it) a set of stories whose true referent was Antiochus;87 or, the conservative position that the Book of Daniel was composed by him in the Babylonian period. This view was held by Hengstenberg, Heinrich A. C. Hävernick, Karl Friedrich Keil, Pusey and others.88 Multiple versions and a variety of authors from various times was also a serious option in interpretation, though such theories tend toward overspecification and so fail to win wide assent.89 Methodological Auseinandersetzung is not a special feature of Daniel interpretation, but one should not fail to note the theological implications that were seen to run alongside this wrestling for proper method. For many, Daniel stood right next to Isaiah as constituting a fault line in correct interpretation. The ability to see the future in ways not open to general reflection was so critical to the appraisal of prophecy, in some quarters, that the literal sense of Daniel could admit of only one conclusion. Either Daniel saw future events in a period long after the Babylonian Exile in which he found himself, including not just the Maccabean but also the Roman period and beyond (hence the concern for the New Testament perspective), or someone sought to introduce this perspective on the basis of known historical events, presently unfolding, and so to claim for Daniel something that was not so. Issues of how properly to interpret NT references to Daniel as “author of the book” found common ground with similar concern regarding the “author” Isaiah. Here as elsewhere, the 19th century witnessed enormous sea change in basic historiographic conceptuality and how one might properly assess the genre of the literature 85 Benedictus de Spinoza, Tractatus Theologico-Politicus (1674; Hamburg: Meiner, 1955). 86  J. G. Eichhorn, Einleitung in das Alte Testament, 4th ed., 5 vols. (Göttingen: Rosenbusch, 1823–1824). 87  The unity position need not have a pejorative character in evaluating the first chapters; see example S. R. Driver, The Book of Daniel, with Introduction and Notes, CBSC 23 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1900). 88  Heinrich A. C. Hävernick, Commentar über das Buch Daniel (Hamburg: Perthes, 1832); Karl Friedrich Keil, The Book of the Prophet Daniel, trans. M. G. Easton (Edinburgh: T&T Clark, 1872); Pusey, Daniel the Prophet. 89 Leonhard Bertholdt, Daniel aus dem Hebräisch-Aramäischen neu übersetzt und erklärt mit einer vollständigen Einleitung und einigen historischen und kritischen Exkursen (Erlangen: Palm, 1808); Reuss, Die Geschichte, 574; George A. Barton, “The Composition of the Book of Daniel,” JBL 17 (1898): 62–86.

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before us.90 If the latter chapters were written in the period of the Maccabean persecution, at issue was both the character of the portrayal of Daniel, but also how the book might continue to speak given that the specification of the Maccabean setting is not shared by the interpreter. The first of these issues was where the pressure was most keenly felt, however, in most conservative circles in the 19th century. Childs would characterize the public lectures of Pusey as containing both “impressive erudition and savage apologetic,” and he summarized the position of the Oxford Professor in this manner: Pusey was willing to rest the validity of the whole Christian faith upon the 6th-century dating of Daniel, and rejoiced that this issue established a clear battle line between faith and unbelief.91

Pusey stated it this way: It admits of no half-measures. It is either Divine or an imposture…. The writer, were he not Daniel, must have lied on a most frightful scale.92

But as with Isaiah and the new model for understanding the Pentateuch, so Daniel would in time find a new conceptual framework for interpretation, which would of necessity also have to address the serious theological issues raised by Pusey.93

Conclusion Our survey of the 19th-century reception of prophecy ends properly with Daniel, as an example of the way this century above all was forced to consider, create, adjust, and finally adopt an entirely new conceptual model for interpreting the prophets, against the backdrop of a massive recasting of the canonical presentation in its entirety as this had been largely presupposed at the end of the 18th century. The century witnessed a true internalization of the discipline, the consequence of precisely the turmoil, challenge, and excitement of the day. One need read only a small sample from the public lectures of W. Robertson Smith to see that the new model, while upturning many basic 90 Frei,

Eclipse. Introduction, 612. 92 Pusey, Daniel the Prophet, 75. See also the treatment of Christopher R. Seitz, Figured Out: Typology and Providence in Christian Scripture (Louisville: Westminster John Knox, 2001). 93  Childs mentions F. W. Farrar’s popularization of the German critical position in The Expositor’s Bible (1895) and also S. R. Driver’s religiously sensitive commentary, The Book of Daniel. 91 Childs,

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assumptions, also sought valiantly to describe itself as theologically credible, morally improved, and a genuine heir of principles associated with a return to the Bible as sole source of authority for Christian living.94 In a telling phrase, however, George Adam Smith would also speak of “fixing the indemnity” as the vocation of the next generation of scholarship.95 That vocation would turn out to have its own horizon, however, and one much longer than the hopeful Victorian interpreter would have imagined.

94 

W. Robertson Smith, The Old Testament in the Jewish Church; idem, The Prophets of Israel. 95  See the study of Iain D. Campbell, Fixing the Indemnity: The Life and Work of Sir George Adam Smith (1856–1942), Paternoster Theological Monographs (Carlisle: Paternoster, 2004). *Mr. Robert Kashow helped with the preparation of this manuscript and I  mention his name here with gratitude.

20. The Presentation of History in the Book of Isaiah Isaiah Amongst the Prophets and the Wise A quick survey of other essays prepared for a fresh volume on Isaiah shows the topic at hand, and its title, to be far less precisely defined.1 Potentially, this could mean a treatment so broad as to leave unclear what one is actually seeking to show. Related to this is the simple question: does the Book of Isaiah, in its present form, actually have a “presentation of history”? From at least the time of the 19th century, the Book of Isaiah has been considered a container of once-upon-a-time oral proclamation whose “presentation of history” would have to be derived from a reconstruction of the original situation in which such speech took form. That is, the literary form was a presentation of nothing  – history, ostensive reference, narrative unfolding – taken as a whole, in its 66-chapter form. A coherent account of history was nothing the book was undertaking in the form of a “presentation.” This ground is well-known but the point needs to be registered at the start. In Bernard Duhm’s 1892 appraisal, we had original oral speech in the first part of the book (needing to be excavated and re-presented in proper chronological order), a Second Isaiah section (itself not all at one level of authorial conception), Third Isaiah material from a different provenance and time, and multiple redactional overlays in the first part of the book. The legacy of this model exists today even as one may seek to return to questions of the proper appraisal of the final form as a whole or in its parts.2 Given the latitude implied in the title, several provisional aims may be usefully put forward to guide the direction of the chapter. (1) The Book of Isaiah will be considered primarily as a whole work, though certain sections may be shown to reveal its stance toward historical events more clearly than others; (2) to raise the question about whether Isaiah has a “presentation” we 1  Christopher R. Seitz, “The Presentation of History in the Book of Isaiah,” in The History of Isaiah: The Making of the Book and Its Presentation of the Past, ed. Todd Hibbard and Jake Stromberg, FAT I (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2021). 2  Bernard Duhm, Das Buch Jesaja, HKAT 3/1 (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1892). For the earlier critical commentary, see Christopher R. Seitz, “Isaiah, Book of (First Isaiah),” ABD 3:472–88.



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can identify is, in principle, no less challenging than to ask what it is we might mean by “history” as such; (3) for prophetic books, history is a dimension impossible to comprehend without some sense of the agent relating it; (4) in the Book of Isaiah, agency is not rendered by a single authorial voice, and the presentation of the book will not be grasped by apologetically seeking to find a single Isaiah author – in either a thin historical sense or a post-modern literary sense; and (5) history as presented in Isaiah is derivative of a proper grasp of how the book handles prophetic agency. The approach to be adopted here will begin by considering the book of Isaiah in relation to other largescale prophetic works (Jeremiah, Ezekiel, the Twelve, and Daniel), so that what we may describe as “a presentation of history” does not become an artificial construct, set up to vie against a previous model where such a quest would have been considered foreign to the book’s own character and form. It is important to compare like with like. These other prophetic witnesses, in their present literary form, may be said to have a presentation of history broadly speaking. In Ezekiel and Jeremiah, for example, we have two witnesses where historical reference is thickly registered in the literary record itself, and in both we have a relatively compressed time-frame.3 This makes it possible with these two books to think in fairly straightforward terms about the agent generating the proclamation – however we understand its final coming to literary form  – and history broadly speaking. Jeremiah and Ezekiel focus their historical referencing to the period leading up to the deportations to Babylon and shortly thereafter, the first from a Judean and the second from a Babylonian perspective. Agent and historical reference are closely related.4 The Book of the Twelve has a much broader field of historical reference, beginning in the 8th century and extending into the Persian and later period. One can say this even if one does not regard the Book of the Twelve as a book, strictly speaking, but rather as an anthology or loose collection of fully independent writings. The opening verses of Hosea match those of Isaiah, and the latest historical witnesses in the Twelve can be generally compared in time of composition to the latest sections of Isaiah.5 Yet there can be a 3  See Christopher R. Seitz, Theology in Conflict: Reactions to the Exile in the Book of Jeremiah, BZAW 176 (Berlin: de Gruyter, 1989). 4  In my view the response to Jeremiah from an ensuing generation can be seen in the book, but this still remains in close proximity to what we can see as the historical period referenced in the superscription. See Christopher R. Seitz, “The Place of the Reader in Jeremiah,” in Reading the Book of Jeremiah: A Search for Coherence, ed. Martin Kessler (Winona Lake, IN: Eisenbrauns, 2004), 67–75. Also, on the “exilic redaction” identifiable in chs. 21–45 see idem, Theology in Conflict, 222–92. 5  The two “books” are always next to each other in lists, either as Isaiah-Twelve or TwelveIsaiah. See Julio Trebolle-Barrera, “Qumran Evidence for a Biblical Standard Text and for

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“presentation of history” in the Twelve only if one judges the term appropriate because the Twelve is functioning as a whole literary achievement and not as an accidental one due to a decision, for some reason, to put these shorter prophetic works in some larger form. On the older view of Isaiah referred to above, the book as a whole was something akin to “twelve independent books” yet lacking defined beginnings and ending and clear attribution to individual prophet witnesses. The multiple prophetic agencies imbedded within the 66-chapter form were not set forth in such a manner as to lead to an appraisal of the final literary form and a presentation of history or anything else it may be said to be attempting in that form. Since there are twelve identified prophetic agencies in the Book of the Twelve, any account of its presentation of history must keep that dimension to the fore. If there is a coherent presentation of history, it is nevertheless tied up with the character of the book as consisting of twelve literarily defined agents of revelation. I have my own proposal about the character of history in the Twelve.6 Daniel is of course its own special case. It does not describe itself as a prophetic work, but uses instead the language of wisdom. Daniel and his companions are wise. The mode of revelation vouchsafed to them is not the “word of the Lord” but wisdom, dreams, and (important to note) explicit reference to known prophetic witness (Jeremiah). Daniel is not prophetic in the same way the term applies to Isaiah, Jeremiah, Ezekiel and the Twelve except in relationship to prophets already authoritative in some sense. This does not prevent the book of Daniel from having a presentation of history; far from it. Daniel’s historical range, its presentation of history, is wide-ranging and more akin to Isaiah and The Twelve than Jeremiah and Ezekiel. It begins in the Babylonian period and extends well into the Greek period, as the second half of Daniel records it. One can say this if one means the agent generating the first and second halves of the book is one and the same, or if as is more likely, the second half understands itself as a differentiated extension of Part One. That the second half is an awkward and artificial appendix to “the real Daniel” of the court-tales is an alternative view not held by this treatment, any more than the second half of Isaiah might be thought of along similar lines. We view Non-Standard and Parabiblical Texts,” in The Dead Sea Scrolls in Their Historical Context, ed. Timothy H. Lim et al. (Edinburgh: T&T Clark, 2000), 89–106, and esp. 94–95, 98. 6  See Christopher R. Seitz, Prophecy and Hermeneutics: Toward a New Introduction to the Prophets (Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2007) 155–253; idem, Joel, ITL (New York: Bloomsbury T&T Clark, 2016), 1–24. Also idem, “The Unique Achievement of the Book of the Twelve: Neither Redactional Unity nor Anthology,” in The Book of the Twelve: An Anthology of Prophetic Books or the Result of Complex Redactional Processes, ed. Heiko Wenzel (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck and Ruprecht, 2018), 37–48. The latter essay appears above in ch. 10.



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redactional extension as purposefully integrative and dependent upon and deferential to previous material.7 Yet it is important to note a different handling of agent and history in Daniel, apart from comments about the difference between prophecy and wisdom made just now. I believe noting this difference is crucial for appreciating the “presentation of history” we may say inhabits the Book of Isaiah singularly. Here is also a place where the difference between the two main literary sections of Daniel and Isaiah, respectively, can best be felt. The literary presentation of the Book of Daniel gives the protagonist the capacity to speak directly into contemporaneous settings  – forcefully, uncomplicatedly, triumphantly – in a series of encounters. Daniel’s skill is to be able to interpret things placed before him in time and space, and to speak directly and convincingly to those about whom this information is given, during the reigns of what the book presents as three successive kings. His contemporaneous activity matches what the book holds to be a demarcated historical range. The second part of the book stays in this same contemporaneous setting but now the protagonist receives dreams and visions that are unrelated to his own historical setting. Most importantly for appreciating Isaiah’s presentation of history is how this is explicitly registered by the literary form of the Book of Daniel. Daniel himself confesses perplexity as to what he sees and how it can be relevant to his period. And he is told directly that it is unrelated to his contemporary situation and that of his colleagues and kings. History as presented is out beyond the situation of the agent’s own historical context. It does not pertain to his days but to those who are his subsequent readers. A hermeneutical gap is in place in the present literary presentation of the book, and that gap is self-consciously registered and it in turn becomes decisive for interpretation. The book understands itself as a book whose audience is not Daniel’s as such. Indeed, this is its genius. And in this, recourse to Jeremiah by Daniel is matched by, and anticipates, the recourse to the Book of Daniel by readers outside his explicit contemporaneous setting. The Book of Isaiah can of course anticipate an audience for another day, and it does so explicitly (8:16–22; 12:1–6; 25:9; 30:8). The generation the prophet is addressing will not heed his message (6:10; 7:12; 29:9–12). A remnant will be raised up to preserve what he has spoken, so that it can be opened to a different providential purpose for a generation on the other side of God’s historical judgment in time (8:16–22). But the prophet is not speaking forth something that is unintelligible for his own historical place in time. Herein lies 7  See for example the insightful treatment of the relationship between the two parts of Daniel in Brevard S. Childs, Introduction to the Old Testament as Scripture (Philadelphia: Fortress, 1979).

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the difference with Daniel. The problem is not temporal: Isaiah is receiving messages and delivering them, but it is not the case that they make no sense for his time. No, they make absolute sense, but in this form, they are rejected. They are like so much gibberish (28:9–13). And the prophet is told that this will be so, in advance. His message will have the effect of closing ears and dulling comprehension (6:9–13). Taking note of this difference, it remains true as well that Isaiah makes reference to events outside of his own historical situation. Babylon and Media/Cyrus are genuinely the Babylon and Cyrus that we know emerged in time as great powers (13:1,17; 14:4; 22:2; 45:1). They are not strange ciphers referring to contemporaneous figures and events. The Babylon that is raised up and then defeated is the historical Babylon, which in turn is figurally anticipated by the overreaching arm of the Assyrian (5:25; 9:12, 17, 21; 10:4; also 10:5–19). Chapters 13–14 set forth this figural analogy by placing Babylon alongside Assyria and the theme of the outstretched arm (14:26–27).8 In ch. 21, the agent of prophetic announcement sounds remarkably close to the figure of Daniel, in the depiction that unfolds there. Elam and Media are summoned to bring Babylon’s evil to an end. A dire vision has been shown to me:   The traitor betrays, the looter takes loot. Elam, attack! Media, lay siege!   I will bring to an end all the groaning she caused. (21:2)

Like Daniel, the agent receiving this burden is staggered. At this my body is racked with pain,   pangs seize me, like those of a woman in labor; I am staggered by what I hear,   I am bewildered by what I see. My heart falters,   fear makes me tremble; the twilight I longed for   has become a horror to me. (vv. 3–4)

Yet the emphasis is not on incomprehensibility, and no other agency appears, as in Daniel, to explain the vision; it does not require his understanding because it is not for his day. That said, as the text continues, a lookout is posted on a watchtower and it is he who is made to deliver the announcement that Babylon is fallen. The resemblance to Habakkuk has been noted. Yet in the case of the prophet Habakkuk, the temporal proximity to the raising up and 8 

See the discussion in ch. 2 of the present volume.



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bringing down of Babylon is much closer, and the message of the book trades on this as at the heart of his particular burden.9 I believe the key to this extensional historical realism in Isaiah 21, with its subtle traversing of centuries of history separating the prophet from the Persian defeat of Babylon, is to be found in the achievement of chs. 13–14, as they develop integral motifs in chs. 5–12 preceding.10 The refrain from Isaiah involving the outstretched arm, collated with Assyria as agent of God’s wrath, makes perfect historical sense in his own contemporaneous time. Assyria is the rod of YHWH’s fury sent realistically against God’s own people, the people the prophet Isaiah confronts with the word given to him by God. But Assyria overreaches and the arm stretched out will bring Assyria’s role to an end. The fivefold refrain involving the outstretched arm of God matches the fivefold woe series beginning in ch. 5. In ch. 11, however, we learn that the final destiny of Assyria is destruction due to her arrogating the role of judgment to herself and outstripping the function given her in God’s plan. At this point the series is broken by the oracles against Babylon in ch. 13– 14. Only at the end of ch. 14 do we see the series resumed, and completed. The effect of this is to enclose Babylon as a type, and to bring her into the same vortex as Assyria, and indeed to treat them, though separated by more than a century of history, as figures of a single judgment in the selfsame plan of God. Plan, hand, banner – all of these instruments of God are capable of more than a single historical referent of purposing and judgment. As Isa 23:13 states it clearly, “Behold the land of the Chaldeans! This is the people; it was not Assyria.” Of course, it was Assyria and Babylon, but in tandem. The hermeneutical gap marked by Daniel and crucial to its mode of wisdom literary declaration is handled figurally within the timespan surveyed in the prophetic Book of Isaiah. In the first part of the book the prophet speaks realistically into the historical situation of Uzziah, Ahaz and Hezekiah, and of Assyrian agents dispatched by God for judgment. The position of chs. 36–39 at the close of this section, and the opening chapter describing the capital in similar terms (“like a booth in a vineyard”), allows the single agent Isaiah to address a history presented in terms of obedient and disobedient responses to God’s work. Ahaz and Hezekiah are presented as strong alternatives, as has been noted, through the contrasting depictions of chs. 6–8 and 36–37. The prophecies of this section of the book also speak of more distant times, including especially the emergence of Babylon, anticipated by ch. 39, and her final defeat at the hands of the Persians. How this is accomplished takes us into 9  See my discussion in Isaiah 1–39, IBC (Louisville: Westminster John Knox, 1993), 162–68. 10  See my discussion in ibid., 119–38.

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the next section of the book, but we can see that analogies between Assyria and Babylon have been constructed redactionally, through the figure of the outstretched hand of the Lord and the juxtaposition accomplished in chs. 13–14 and at other points in the Oracles Against the Nations. What Isaiah declared realistically in his own presentation of history found an echo in centuries ahead of him, and those who have shaped the witness have viewed that as providentially overseen, and so given to Isaiah through figural anticipations.

Former Isaiah and Latter Isaiah “Hezekiah did what was pleasing to the Lord and firmly followed the example of his ancestor David. This was what was commanded by the great prophet Isaiah, whose visions were trusted.  He made the sun move backward and lengthened the king’s life. He comforted the mourners in Jerusalem. His powerful spirit looked into the future, and he predicted what was to happen before the end of time, hidden things that had not yet occurred” (Sir 48:22–25). Of course the most obvious place where the ambition of the Book of Isaiah’s historical reach is best on display is at the border separating ch. 39 and ch. 40.11 Sirach sees the mighty deliverance of Hezekiah and Jerusalem as the consequence of the former’s firm faith, and his obedience to the word declared by “the great prophet Isaiah.” Isaiah’s ability to make time move, backwards and forwards, is almost a perfect description of what we are observing thus far in the redactional accomplishment of the final form. Sirach, operating on a different plane of course, sees this divine endowment as enabling Isaiah to look far into the future and predict things to come. The reference to hidden things probably comes from the reinforcing depictions of 1–39 and 40–66, whereby in the former the prophet preserves things for the future, given the recalcitrance of his day, while in the latter hidden things are disclosed. Former, latter and genuinely new form the lexicon of Isaiah 40–55 (41:22, 23; 43:9; 43:18–19; 45:21; 46:9), a vocabulary that takes its bearings from the present juxtaposition of these oracles with those of ‘former Isaiah’ (in whatever form chs. 1–39 existed at the time). Critical in this regard is the vocabulary found in 37:26 which speaks of 11 

For my own evaluation of the issue under discussion to follow, see esp. “The Divine Council: Temporal Transition and New Prophecy in the Book of Isaiah,” JBL 109 (1990): 229–47; idem, Zion’s Final Destiny: The Development of the Book of Isaiah: A Reassessment of Isaiah 36–39 (Philadelphia: Fortress, 1991); idem, “How is Isaiah Present in the Latter Half of the Book? The Logic of Chapters 40–55 Within the Book of Isaiah,” JBL 115 (1996): 219–40; idem, The Book of Isaiah 40–66, in vol. 6 of The New Interpreter’s Bible, ed. L. E. Keck (Nashville: Abingdon, 2001).

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determination from long ago and the general notion of the plan of God deeply integrated in the proclamation of Isaiah in Part One.12 I believe it will be helpful at this point to examine a previous model for understanding history and agency that took seriously the Book of Isaiah as a total project. This is the key point. One can deal with the question of history and agency by positing a complex diachronic explanation for both factors. One excavates the book and tries to determine which parts can be assigned to the primary agent, and when in time these parts spoke of historical events via that agent. The same procedure follows on by contemplating ongoing agency in the form of redactional supplementation. There isn’t a literary presentation via an agency that the Book of Isaiah itself is setting forth in any meaningful sense. It must be excavated according to the tools of historical-critical determination. But one can also note earlier efforts to wrestle with these dimensions of agency; prophetic prediction intelligible to contemporaries; long range prophecies for a later audience to attend to; and possible secondary prophetic agency speaking to contemporaries and to the distant future, yet at a later period in time. The earlier discussion takes its bearings by considering these matters as intrinsic to the Book of Isaiah as a whole book. I have in mind the 12th-century commentary of Abraham Ibn Ezra (1089–1164) and within it, his own critical references to the work of his revered predecessor R. Moses ibn Chiquitilla, whose 11th-century commentary on Isaiah is known only through Ibn Ezra’s exchanges. These two evaluations of the Book of Isaiah are extremely helpful examples of attention to the literal sense, constantly pressing against traditional views of the day, yet always concerned to evaluate the Book of Isaiah as a whole on the terms of its own complex deliverances.13 The two commentators can be usefully distinguished in this way. Ibn Chiquitilla believed the predictions of the book were almost entirely short-range. If they seemed grand and eschatological (what the tradition in which he stood saw as “messianic,” that is, having to do with the Judaism of his present day and its final denouement under God’s prophetic address). Ibn Chiquitilla, by contrast, argued this was the prophet’s use of heightened metaphor and elaboration to make his point. The first part of the book is principally about Sennacherib’s invasion – one sees this historical referentiality in ch. 1 and in chs. 36–39, which book-end the primary material in between. Predictions in chs. 1–39, then, would have been fully intelligible to Isaiah’s audience and in a compressed historical context. Hezekiah is the main figure the book focuses 12 

See my discussion in “Appeal to Former Things,” Zion’s Final Destiny, 199–202. I am especially indebted to the thorough and insightful reading of Uriel Simon, “Ibn Ezra Between Medievalism and Modernism: The Case of Isaiah XL – LXVI,” in Vetus Testamentum Supplement 36 (Leiden: Brill, 1985), 257–71. 13 

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on. He is the counterpart of Ahaz, the subject of royal promises in chs. 7, 9, 11, 32, and the hero of the narratives of 36–39. As an example of the speculation this could require, Isaiah 34 is about the destruction of Edom by an Assyria on route to siege Jerusalem.14 He also conjectured there was a restoration for Zion in the days of Hezekiah, which enabled him to account for passages like 11:11– 12. At the same time, and less frequently, he did allow for some predictions to refer to a Second Temple restoration at the time of Zerubbabel. The important thing to note here is that he was not bothered at all by the idea that the prophet could speak of events in the future that would have made no sense to contemporaries. It is just that for his purposes Isaiah did not do that very often. As for chs. 40 ff., he understood the servant as Hezekiah, even in 52:13–53:12. In Ibn Chiquitilla we can see a single agency at work across the bulk of the book, with some random exceptions in Part One and in the very latest chapters. History is densely brokered by this Isaiah agent through a focus on Hezekiah and Assyria’s march on Jerusalem, which failed and led to a restoration in this same period. Isaiah could refer to historical events associated with the restoration of the Second Temple, and it did not matter that, strictly speaking, the heavy emphasis on contemporary intelligibility and reference was dispensed with on these occasions. He greatly reduced these in the name of honoring what he saw as the largely contemporary historical context of the prophet and his pronouncements. In Ibn Ezra this reduction is adjusted in two ways. The first pertains to the presentation of 1–39. Like his predecessor, most of the material is that of the agent Isaiah speaking of historical events at the time of Hezekiah. But there is a greater quantity of material that addresses a future his audience would not have been able to understand; and that is no problem at all. That the transition between these two seemingly incompatible modes of prophetic address is never explained is of no moment. Ibn Ezra’s Isaiah continues to address the distant future, which of course includes his (Ibn Ezra’s) own day. As Simon carefully notes in his insightful analysis: It thus seems that the application of the majority of the prophecies to the immediate future can, in the mind of medieval commentators, be reconciled quite naturally with the foretelling of quite specific information, which can in our view have no real meaning for the prophet’s audience.15

The prophet himself can be included in that unintelligibility. It is natural for those divinely addressed not to know entirely what is being said to them and 14  Simon describes these as “wild assumptions about supposed historical events for which there is no evidence outside the prophecy itself, a kind of eventus ex vaticinio” (ibid., 260). 15  Ibid., 263.

20. The Presentation of History in the Book of Isaiah367



to operate with contemporaries all the same. This premodern idea is congenial to both our interpreters but in the case of Ibn Ezra, more so, at least in Part One of the book.16 Ibn Ezra also sees in the book’s historical referencing what one can call medium-range predictions, involving Nebuchadnezzar, the Persians, and the restoration to Zion of exiles from Babylon. Short, medium, and long-range all co-exist and emerge from a single agent inspired by God. The second and far more important difference is how Ibn Ezra deals with Latter Isaiah chapters. That he has no problem seeing prophecies from the first part of the book as referring to the Babylonian period and the release of deportees by the Persian empire, even down to details, provides a helpful benchmark. For this is not the way he personally views the material in 40 ff. For the more traditionally minded – this would not include Ibn Chiquitilla’s handling of 40 ff. – Ibn Ezra’s presentation of Isaiah and history in 1–39 offers a conciliating alternative to his own view when it comes to 40–66. And he says as much. One could hold the view, he avers, that Isaiah is speaking of the distant future just as Ibn Ezra believes he did in Part One.17 But he does not personally believe a close reading of these chapters is best served by maintaining a single agent inspired to see into the future in exactly the same manner he notes in Isaiah 1–39. And this is because it isn’t the same manner. The agent in chs. 40–55 is being spoken to. Isaiah is not speaking to himself about a death that will occur that will give rise to kings and princes paying tribute to him (49:7), even as Ibn Ezra accepts a certain kind of traditional-literal reading might head in this direction. It is simply too convoluted a reading, as he sees it, even as he otherwise doesn’t object to details of a distant future being vouchsafed way before the time of their intelligibility. The literal sense of these chapters is referring to a servant who is the agent himself, at a different time than the Assyrian period prophecies given by the agent Isaiah. 16 

I discuss the matter in the very specific case of 41:22–29 (“How is the Prophet Isaiah Present,” 221). Calvin held that this was a prophecy of the very distant coming of Cyrus which Isaiah uttered in his day. That tracks with the long-range prophecy assumptions under discussion here. The problem I was identifying, however, was how at the same time the prophet could appeal to witnesses given long ago, in the same contemporary context of distant predicting. Here is an example where Ibn Ezra in broad terms also senses something in the literal sense of chs. 40–55 that cannot be called long-range prediction, as he held in Part One, but rather contemporaneous speech at a very later time than Isaiah. I  do not believe Childs understood the point in his “defense” of Calvin, who was not a canonical reader of Isaiah but worked with different historical bearings and conceptuality (Isaiah, 317). Here the ambition of Ibn Ezra in Part Two can be grasped for what it is. He himself senses it as we shall see. 17  The text has in view 49:7, which speaks of kings arising and paying tribute. He thinks a traditional reader could take it that here the prophet Isaiah, long after his death, is being referred to. He just does not think the reading works (Simon, “Ibn Ezra,” 268).

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This is not long or medium range prophecy that would not have made sense to Isaiah’s audience, such as we have it elsewhere in chs. 1–39, but contemporary address to a different agent at a different point in time. Ibn Ezra does not rule out future predictions from this second agent himself, it is to be noted, once he has established this way of reading Part Two. Indeed, it is the near fulfilment of the prophecies related to the servant and his contemporaries which, when fulfilled in reality, will serve to encourage a later audience that the long range prophecies will also come to be fulfilled – both those in 1–39 and those which one can identify in this form in 40–66 (most of them in what we would call Third Isaiah). The short-range reliable fulfillments give credence to the medium and longer-range ones. So the fact that 40–55 introduces an agent whose vindication is to be assured in what is the short term period leading up to the sending of Cyrus and the return of the exiles, sits very congenially for Ibn Ezra alongside a portrait of Isaiah himself, whose short range prophecies involving Hezekiah and Zion would not prevent him being given divine access to longer range prophecies, including ones neither he himself nor his audience could understand. Both Isaiah and his later counterpart share this manner of prophetic activity in respect of history. Given Ibn Ezra’s concern to allow greater scope to the prophet Isaiah’s own long range prophecies as relevant to his own day, over against Ibn Chiquitilla’s reductions, one senses that the evaluation he gives of 40–55 presented a personal challenge to himself, brought about by his close attention to the peshat, and not otherwise, by some form of rationalism. He does not object to the idea of long-range prediction, but he grants it to two agents differently positioned in time. That he can accept this presentation of a Babylonian era agent is bolstered by the notion that the fulfillment of this agent’s prophecies allows the longerrange prophecies relevant to Ibn Ezra’s own day, including those at the end of the book, greater cause for trustworthiness. But it is a radical view all the same, measured against the tradition and the rationalist reading of his predecessor. Simon is especially helpful at this point in his essay. He notes that Ibn Ezra lived as a Jew in exile in his contemporary European historical setting. It would have been a congenial reading and a divine encouragement to have taken the message of these chapters as long-range prediction directed to his own day. Instead he operates in a mode for which I would use the language “figural.” The contemporary relevance is not undercut by seeing these chapters through the lens of a quite specific suffering and dying servant of the Lord. The short-range promised vindication of the servant is enacted in the gracious return from exile of the servant’s own contemporary Israel, and the ongoing witness of the “servants” who pay tribute in this final “song.”18 As he 18 

Seitz, “Isaiah 40–66,” ad loc. on 52:13–53:12.



20. The Presentation of History in the Book of Isaiah369

was a figure of God’s people Israel – you are my servant, you are Israel – his life and proclamation were offerings that breathed new life into that same Israel, who would take comfort from the longer range proclamations of final vindication and recreation, with which the book closes.19 Prophecy is not contemporaneous proclamations, middle-range, or distant predictions only, but involves agencies pressed into service who themselves become portents and sureties through time. This is what Ibn Ezra’s close reading disclosed to him as he wrestled with history in the presentation of the Book of Isaiah. In my own reading, it is the move to create figural analogies in Isaiah 1–39 (Assyria and Babylon; Jerusalem’s sparing in the days of Hezekiah as a type of future redemption; the halting of the nations in Isaiah’s day as a type of Zion’s preservation in the future, now with the same nations processing to Zion; Ahaz and Hezekiah as counter-types, and Hezekiah as a type of a king yet to come) that is picked up and developed in the Latter Isaiah chapters. The anonymous agent of Isaiah 40–55 is a figure of obedient Israel, as Isaiah had addressed this in the remnant of his own generation, the preservation of whose message would mean its extension in a new form in days to come. The former things will give birth to latter fulfillments and new things created for their own day.

Conclusion Ibn Ezra was keen to insist that the various categories of prophecy evidenced in the book of Isaiah  – short-term, mid-range, and eschatological  – served to reinforce each other in a comprehensive account of them in the book as a whole. This was his theological interpretation of their significance as distinct historical phenomena. For the modern/late-modern mind this notion would prove difficult conceptually. What was not available to him was a redactional model which could track how these various levels in the text – which he described as consisting of temporally distinctive ranges  – are in fact literarily interlocking, reinforcing, and have developed in conscious elaboration of one another. A canonical hermeneutics sensitive to the historical-redactional dimension can seek to demonstrate this as critical to the interpretation of the Book of Isaiah. This has happened as the book pressed for ongoing extension and successive contemporary application over the course of three centuries, via the development of figural analogies of various kinds. 19  Christopher R. Seitz, “‘You are my Servant, You are the Israel in whom I  will be glorified’ The Servant Songs and the Effect of Literary Context in Isaiah,” CTJ 39 (2004): 117–34. The essay appears in ch. 5 of the present volume.

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Here is where the historical presentation of the Book of Isaiah shows itself distinctive over against the compact referential world of Jeremiah and Ezekiel on one side, and the wisdom hermeneutics of time in Daniel on the other. The Book of the Twelve offers the closest analogy, but what it is in twelve literary witnesses, Isaiah is within its own singular portrayal of history and the prophetic agencies brokering it. A proper account of the presentation of history in the Book of Isaiah would need to bring into frame the productive character of the past, and why this dimension becomes increasingly called upon in the proclamation of later prophecy. In Isaiah this would include not just the general appeal to former things, but also the specific referencing of Abraham (41:8; 51:2), Sarah (v. 2), Eden (v. 3; 65:20–24), Noah (54:9), David (55:3) and the rich allusive appeal to Moses as servant-prophet.20 We have focused on the contemporary and future presentation of history and the agency necessary for that to work figurally. Yet at some point even that presentation only makes sense in reference to former things to which appeal is made in order to understand the present.

20  For the final servant song as a presentation which coordinates the prophet-servant, Israel, and Moses, see my “Isaiah 40–66,” ad loc. Also for the role of Moses, see Klaus Baltzer, Deutero Isaiah, Hermeneia (Minneapolis: Fortress, 2001).

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List of First Publications  1. “Account A and the Annals of Sennacherib.” Journal for Study of the Old Testament 58 (1993): 1–11.  2. “On the Question of Divisions Internal to the Book of Isaiah.” Society of Biblical Literature Seminar Papers (1993): 260–66.  3. “The Divine Council: Temporal Transition and New Prophecy in the Book of Isaiah.” Journal of Biblical Literature 109 (1990): 229–47.  4. “How is Isaiah Present in the Latter Half of the Book? The Logic of Chapters 40–55 within the Book of Isaiah.” Journal of Biblical Literature 115 (1996): 219–40.  5. “‘You are my Servant, You are the Israel in whom I will be glorified’ The Servant Songs and the Effect of Literary Context in Isaiah.” Calvin Theological Review 39 (2004): 117–34.  6. “Isaiah and the Search for a New Paradigm.” Pages 97–114 in Papers of the Henry Luce III Fellows in Theology, volume 3. Edited by Gary Gilbert. Atlanta: Scholars, 1999.  7. “Prophecy and Tradition-History: The Achievement of Gerhard von Rad and Beyond.” Pages 30–51 in Prophetie in Israel: Beiträge des Symposiums “Das Alte Testament und die Kultur der Moderne” anlässlich des 100. Geburtstags Gerhard von Rads (1901–1971) Heidelberg, 81–21. Oktober 2001. Edited by I. Fischer, K. Schmid, H. G. M. Williamson. Münster: Lit-Verlag, 2003.  8. “What Lesson Will History Teach? The Book of the Twelve as History.” Pages 443–69 in ‘Behind’ the Text: History and Biblical Interpretation. Edited by C. Bartholomew et al. Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 2003.  9. “The Book of the Twelve: New Horizons for Canonical Reading, with Hermeneutical Reflections.” Scottish Bulletin of Evangelical Theology 22 (2004): 151–72. 10. “Neither Redactional Unity nor Anthology – The Book of the Twelve and Isaiah.” Pages 37–48 in The Book of the Twelve: An Anthology of Prophetic Books or The Result of Complex Redactional Processes? Osnabrücker Studien zur Jüdischen und Christlichen Bibel, volume 4. Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2018. 11. “Prophecy and Canon,” from Elder Testament (2018)

388

List of First Publications

12. “The Prophet Moses and the Canonical Shape of Jeremiah.” Zeitschrift für die alttestamentliche Wissenschaft 101 (1989): 1–15. 13. “Of Mortal Appearance: Earthly Jesus and Isaiah as a Type of Christian Scripture.” Ex Auditu 14 (1998): 31–41. 14. “The Place of the Reader in Jeremiah.” Pages 67–75 in Reading the Book of Jeremiah: A Search for Coherence. Edited by M. Kessler. Winona Lake: Eisenbrauns, 2004 15. “Fixity and Potential in Isaiah.” Pages 37–45 in The Multivalence of Biblical Texts and Theological Meanings. Edited by C. Helmer. Atlanta: Scholars, 2006 16. “Prophetic Association.” Pages 156–66 in Thus Says the Lord: Essays on the Former and Latter Prophets in Honor of Robert R. Wilson. Edited by J. Ahn and S. L. Cook. London: T&T Clark, 2009 17. “Scriptural Author and Canonical Prophet: The Effect of Literary Association in the Canon.” Pages 176–88 in Biblical Methods and Interpretation: Essays in Honour of John Barton. Edited by K. Dell and P. Joyce. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2013. 18. “Provenance as a Factor in Interpretation.” Pages 19–32 in The Prophets Speak on Forced Migrations. Edited by Mark J. Boda, et al. Atlanta: SBL, 2015. 19. “Prophecy in the Nineteenth Century Reception.” Pages 443–69 in Hebrew Bible/Old Testament: The History of Its Interpretation, volume 3: From Modernism to Post-Modernism (The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries). Edited by Magnus Saebo. Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2015. 20. “The Presentation of History in the Book of Isaiah” in The History of Isaiah: The Making of the Book and Its Presentation of the Past. Edited by Todd Hibbard and Jake Stromberg. FAT I. Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2021.

Index of Sources Old Testament Genesis 1–3 19 1:31 145 12:6 122 20 233 Exodus 4:15–16 124 6:3b 72 6:5–7 72 16 237 19:16–20 233 20:19 124 20:21 124 32 234 32–34 336 32:14 234 33–34 190 34 169, 175 34:6 202 34:7 168n46 Leviticus 26

334, 334n14

Numbers 11 237 13–14 234, 237 14:10–12 237 14:11–16 234 14:17–19 234 14:20–35 234 20:10–13 235 Deuteronomy 1:17 239 1:26–40 235 1:36 235

1:37 235 1:38 235 2:14–15 234n7 3:23–39 235 3:26 239 5:3 193 5:22–31 233, 235 9 234 9:9ff 242 9:13–21 234 9:17 242 9:22–29 234 10:1–2 242, 242n21 17:16 89 18 233 18:15 332 18:15–18 232 18:15–22 232 18:16 243 28 334, 334n14 29–30 233 30:1ff 279 30:1–10 255 Joshua 5:13–15 260 1 Samuel 12 235 12:19–25 235 12:23 235 1 Kings 6–7 353n80 8:46–53 255 20:21 54 22 54, 57–59, 61, 68n49, 82

390

Index of Sources

22:20 54, 58, 62 22:21 58

Ecclesiastes 1:1 57n19

2 Kings 14 170–171, 338 14:25 171 14:25–27 164 14:27 171 16:5–9 41–42 16:9 41 17 41 18–20 10, 207, 212n1, 215, 305 18:5 41 18:7 42–43 18:7b 41 18:9–12 41 18:13 36 18:(13)14–16 35–36 18:13–16 35, 35n2, 37 18:14 39 18:14–16 10, 35–36, 35n2, 36n9, 40–43 18:17 285 19:9a 36 19:37 36 22–24 231, 241 24 351 24:2 252 25:27–30 255

Isaiah 1 173–174, 192, 309, 365 1–4 97 1–12 17, 25, 286, 288, 346 1–33 48 1–39 6, 9, 10, 10n21, 12–13, 14n32, 22, 25, 28, 30, 44–46, 60, 64, 67, 67n46, 72, 77, 80, 82–83, 85, 101, 111n42, 134, 267– 268, 289n19, 317–318, 345–346, 364–369 1–66 70 1:1 67, 127 1:4 81 1:26 83 2 215, 227 2:1–4 27, 192 2:1–5 89, 226, 268 2:2–4 305, 332 2:2–5 306 2:5 192 5 363 5–12 363 5:18 81 5:25 362 6 12, 12n28, 58–59, 61–64, 78, 81–82, 132, 287, 293 6–8 25, 283, 363 6–9 285 6:1 208 6:1–8 61 6:1–13 61, 63–64, 70 6:1–9:7 267 6:2 62 6:3 62, 81 6:5 57–58, 60, 62 6:8 58, 63 6:8–13 58 6:9–10 58, 62, 64, 85 6:9–11 81 6:9–13 65, 362 6:10 47, 361 6:11 55, 65 6:11–13 58, 78

Job 1:6–12 54 1:7 55 2:1–6 54 2:2 55 28 7 Psalms 1 174, 190 25 221 68:12 57n19 72:12 205 137 221, 319 147:19–20 114 Proverbs 8 161n21 8:22–23 161



Old Testament391

6:11b–12 64 6:12 65 6:12–13 64 6:13 83, 85 7 25, 111n42, 209, 284n6, 285, 287, 289n19, 366 7–8 10–11, 163, 285, 288 7–9 285 7–11 25 7:1–9:6 288 7:11 47 7:12 361 7:13–17 111n42, 289n19 7:14 282, 284–286 7:16 285 8 111n42, 284–285, 289n19 8:3–10 111n42, 289n19 8:4 284n6 8:5 285 8:7–8 47 8:9–22 110n41 8:10 285 8:16 90, 318, 348 8:16–17 81 8:16–20 110n41, 227 8:16–22 80, 361 8:18 83, 111n42, 289n19, 318, 348 8:20 333 9 25, 50, 209, 282, 285, 287–288, 366 9:1 267 9:1–7 111n42, 282, 289n19 9:2–7 285, 288 9:2–7[Eng.] 25 9:5 285 9:6 285 9:12 362 9:17 362 9:21 362 10:4 362 10:5ff 193 10:5–19 362 11 25, 50, 209, 282, 286–288, 363, 366 11:1ff 111n42, 289n19

11:1–9 111, 288 11:1–12:6 286 11:6 115 11:9 89 11:11–12 30, 366 11:11–16 287 11:16 83 12:1 81 12:1–6 83, 287, 361 13–14 11, 13, 46, 362–364 13–23 208, 252, 322–323, 346 13–27 48, 89 13–37 48 13:1 362 13:1–16 65n44 13:2–14:23 346 13:5 66 13:17 84, 362 13:17–22 65n44, 66 14 363 14:3–21 66 14:4 362 14:17 66 14:24–27 66 14:26–27 362 16:5 111n42, 289n19 17 345 18:6 66 21 46, 47n13, 119, 345, 362–363 21:1–4 84 21:1–10 47, 117, 346 21:2 84, 362 21:3–4 29n62, 362 21:7 119 21:11–12 47n13 22:2 362 22:14 81 23:13 65, 363 24–27 46, 65, 65n44, 340, 345, 347 24–35 346 25:9 361 27:1 47 27:2–6 48 27:9 81 28–31 35

392

Index of Sources

28–33 17, 48 28:1 65 28:1–4 64–65 28:2b–4 65 29:9–12 361 29:9–13 362 29:11–12 80–81, 227 30:8 80–81, 83, 227, 361 30:13 81 32 209, 288, 366 32–39 210 32:1–9 111n42, 289n19 33 7, 11, 22, 47n10, 48–49, 208–210 33–34 44n1 33–35 46 33–39 46 33:10 208 33:16 208 33:20–21 208 33:21 208 33:24 81 34 47n10, 366 34ff 208 34–35 9–11, 13, 22, 46–49, 89, 207, 340 34–39 11, 48–49, 207 34:1–4 48 35 46–47, 83 35:6–7 320n23 36–37 11, 35, 35n2, 207–208, 305, 363 36–38 11, 25, 47, 49 36–39 8n18, 10–12, 22, 46–49, 53, 65n43, 83, 111n42, 207, 212n1, 215, 285, 288, 289n19, 317, 323, 346, 363, 365–366 36:1 48 36:1–2 111n42, 289n19 37:1–20 111n42, 289n19 37:14–20 67 37:22–29 65 37:26 65, 364 37:30 111n42, 289n19 37:35 65, 67 38 67, 207

38:1 67 38:2–3 67 38:5 67 38:6 67 38:7 47, 111n42, 289n19 38:22 111n42, 289n19 39 9–10, 45–46, 48–49, 60, 64, 67, 70, 111n42, 207, 289n19, 322, 363–364 39:5–6 79n26 39:5–7 48 39:5–8 65 39:6 65, 67 39:7 65 39:8 65, 67 40 9, 12n28, 26, 45–46, 49, 55–56, 60–63, 65, 78–79, 94, 127, 208, 267, 293n9, 319, 323, 364 40ff 111n42, 289n19, 348, 366–367 40–47 105 40–48 11, 13, 14n32, 49, 66–70, 84, 87–91, 101, 103, 106–108, 163, 208–210, 257, 266–269, 291, 320, 322, 324n36 40–49 45 40–52 345 40–53 291 40–55 2–4, 9, 13n30, 23, 28, 30, 44, 46–47, 49, 51–53, 53n7, 61, 63, 66–67, 69, 76–79, 82, 91, 97–99, 205, 207, 226, 252, 267, 291–292, 319–323, 320n22, 346, 364, 367–369, 367n16 40–66 2, 6, 9, 10n21, 11, 12n28, 13, 14n32, 25, 30, 44–46, 49, 52, 52n5, 60, 63, 67, 69, 71–72, 75–77, 79–80, 84, 87, 90, 93, 101, 111n42, 116–117, 143, 207, 267, 289n19, 293, 317–318, 338, 340, 344–347, 364, 367–368



Old Testament393

40:1 52–55, 57n19, 57n20, 75 40:1–2 55, 57, 83, 85, 292 40:1–5 57–58 40:1–6a 59 40:1–8 51–53, 51n3, 55, 58–59, 61 40:1–11 12, 12n28, 14n32, 51n3, 52n6, 59–64, 66, 68–70, 68n48, 77–78, 81–82 40:1b 52 40:2a 53n10 40:3 53–54, 57, 57n20, 65, 75, 83 40:3–4 55 40:3–5 55, 57, 85 40:5 62, 82 40:6 53–57, 57n19, 58, 60–62, 75–78, 82, 84, 93n48, 103 40:6–7 58n22, 59, 65, 81 40:6–8 54n12 40:6a 57–58, 60 40:6b 64 40:6b–7 54, 57–62, 64–67 40:7 57, 64 40:7–8 65 40:8 57–59, 57n20, 59n23, 82 40:9 57, 57n19, 59–60 40:9–10 60 40:9–11 51n3, 53n10, 57, 59, 66n45, 68, 83 40:9b–11 82 40:12–31 85 40:15 322 40:21 84 40:27 105 40:28 84 40:31 222 41:1 52 41:1–13 85 41:2 73n7 41:8 69, 100n13, 370 41:9 100n13, 320n22 41:14–20 85 41:21 52 41:21–24 54n11 41:21–29 66, 85 41:22 52, 364

41:22–29 367n16 41:23 364 41:25 73–74, 84 41:25–29 73–74 41:26 74 41:27 57n19, 66, 84 42 85, 100, 104 42:1 69, 86 42:1–4 14n32, 98, 107 42:1–9 268, 323 42:4 105 42:5–9 87 42:9 80, 86 42:10 52 42:10–11 320n22 42:18 52 42:18–20 85 42:18–25 85 42:24 85 42:25 85 43:1 69 43:2 47 43:5–6 320n22 43:5–7 322 43:8 81, 85 43:9 364 43:10 84 43:12 105 43:16 47 43:18–19 364 43:19 86 43:20 47 44:1 52, 69, 100n13 44:1–20 54n11 44:2 69 44:8 84 44:19 80 44:21 100n13 44:23 52, 106 44:26 85 45:1 362 45:4 69, 100n13 45:8 52 45:20 52 45:21 85, 267, 364 45:22 52 46–47 323

394

Index of Sources

46:1 54n11 46:1–2 54n11 46:8 52 46:9 364 46:11 66, 85 46:12 52 47:1 52 47:5 52 47:8 52 47:12 52 47:14 85 48 14, 102, 105, 105n27, 268–269 48:1 52 48:1–2 106 48:5 209 48:6 266 48:6–7 13, 86, 103, 268 48:6–8 80, 86, 209 48:6–21 323 48:7 86, 209, 323 48:12 52 48:12–16 268 48:14 86 48:14–15 103–104 48:14–16 103–104 48:14–22 102 48:14a 86 48:14b 86 48:15 86, 104 48:16 13–14, 52, 69, 86, 88, 103, 105, 107–108, 269 48:16b 68 48:17–22 104, 108 48:20 52, 69, 100n13 48:20–22 86 48:22 49 49 86, 90–91, 94, 100–103, 105n27, 107, 291 49–53 14, 103, 268–269 49–54 68 49–55 14n32, 49, 320, 323 49–57 49 49–66 67, 93 49:1 52, 87–88 49:1–6 68–69, 69n51, 86, 88, 98, 101–103, 107, 268

49:1–6/7 13 49:1–7 75, 88, 91, 268–269 49:1–9 15 49:1–13 323 49:3 14, 69, 86, 89, 100, 106, 268 49:3–6 100 49:4 14, 69, 87–88, 90, 102–107 49:4b 89 49:5–6 69 49:6 14, 86–88 49:7 14, 69, 87–88, 98, 101, 107–108, 367, 367n17 49:12 320n22, 322 49:14–23 323 50 100, 345 50:1–4 269 50:4 103 50:4–9 69, 88, 91, 98, 108 50:4–11 14, 269 50:5 103 50:7 103 50:9 103 50:10–11 87–88 51:1 52 51:2 52, 370 51:3 370 51:4 52 51:7 52 51:9 52 51:17 52 52–53 100 52:1 52 52:2 52 52:7 57n19 52:7–10 14n32 52:11 52 52:13 108n38, 208, 271, 292 52:13–15 108 52:13–53:12 92, 98, 264, 269, 291, 323, 366, 368n18 52:15 14, 92–93, 292 53 87, 141, 264, 270–271, 323 53:1–6 92 53:1–12 268



Old Testament395

53:2 93 53:2–3 92 53:4–6 92 53:10 15 53:11 92 54 291, 323 54–55 323 54–66 270 54:1 52 54:1–17 323 54:2 208 54:4 52 54:9 370 54:9–17 325 54:17 15, 90, 92, 291 55 49, 288 55–66 15, 173 55:1 47, 52 55:2 52 55:3 52, 209, 370 55:6 52 55:11 80, 227, 325 55:17 90 56 49 56–66 2n3, 9, 28, 44–45, 49, 76–77, 91, 163, 291, 319, 322, 324, 346 56:1 52 57:14 52 57:21 49 58–66 49 58:1 52 60:1 52 60:4 52 60:9 320n22 61:1–4 88 61:1–7 91 61:10–11 88 62:10 52 63:17 90 65 270 65–66 173 65:8 90 65:9 90 65:13 90 65:13ff 173 65:14 90

65:15 90 65:20–24 370 66 270 66:2 173 66:10 52 66:14 90 66:24 49 Jeremiah 1 243, 249 1–6 236, 278 1–20 241 1:1–3 249n46, 251 1:5 57, 87–89, 238, 246, 249n46, 250, 254 1:6 60 1:10 89, 242–243, 245–246, 248–250, 249n46, 254 1:14 254 2:1–8 237 2:1–3:5 236 2:2–3 237 2:6 237 2:7 237 3:12–14 278 3:15–18 239 3:24–25 85 3:25 278 4:5–8 236 4:13–17 236 6 236 6:1–8 236 6:22 254 6:30 236 7 236, 278 7–20 279 7:1 56n17 7:2–15 56n17 7:16 236 7:25 350 9:12–16 278 11–20 236 11:14 236 11:18–12:6 236–237 12–20 89 14:11 236 15:1 235–236, 332 15:10–20 237

396

Index of Sources

15:17–18 245 15:19–21 245 16 279 16:10–11 279 16:19 279 18:18–23 237 20:7–13 239 20:7–18 237–238 20:8 238 20:11 238 20:11–12 238 20:11–13 238–239 20:12 238 20:13 238 20:14–18 238 21 239–241 21–36 239–241, 243, 246, 254–255 21–45 5, 7, 279, 359n4 21:1–2 239 21:5–6 239 21:7 239, 244 21:9 244n26 22 241 23:5 239 23:5–8 239 23:7–8 239 23:8 254 24 154, 240–241 24:1–10 154, 279 24:4–7 239–240 24:7 239 24:8–10 240 24:10 237n12, 243 25 236, 241, 246, 252–254, 351 25:3 236 25:8–9 252 25:8–14 252 25:12–14 252 25:13 253 25:15–26[MT] 252 25:17–26 249n48 25:26 252 25:28–29 254 26 171, 236, 241, 279 26:3 279 26:18 159, 192, 215, 309

26:23 241 27–29 240–241 28:10–11 154 28:12–15 154 29:6 241 29:10–14 239–240 29:14 239 30–31 239, 350 31:22 239 31:23 239 31:26 240, 251 31:31 239 32–34 241 32:36–44 239 32:44 239 33 239, 350 33:16 239 35 241 36 8, 90, 241–242, 241n18, 244–245, 247, 250, 250n50, 279, 351 36:2 250, 254 36:3 279 36:5 241 36:10 244 36:12 244 36:15 244 36:17–18 242 36:19 244 36:20 244 36:21–26 244 36:23 241 36:28 242n21 36:32 241, 244 37–39 89 37–44 351 37–45 240, 242, 245, 280 37:2 242n22 37:3 239 38:7–13 243 38:13 244n27 39:15 244n27 39:15–18 244n27 39:17 244 40 242 40:11–12 243 42 89 42–44 89



Old Testament397

42:2 243 42:4 243 42:10 243 43–44 246, 250 43:1–7 240, 243 43:8–44:30 249 43:17 243 44 247–248, 251 44:7–22 341n40 45 8, 90, 244n27, 245–254, 245n30, 250n50, 294, 294n13 45–52 253 45:1 247–250, 250n50 45:1–5 244 45:2–5 250n50 45:3 247–248 45:4 248, 252 45:4–5 248–249 45:5 244n26, 246, 253 46 251 46ff 250n50 46–49 253 46–51 242, 254 46–52 240, 246 49 302, 336, 342, 342n44, 350 50–51:58 252 50:1–51:58 253–254 51:59 253 51:59–64 249n46, 253 51:60 253 51:62 253 51:64 253 52 249n46, 254, 317, 346 52:31 254 52:31–34 254 52:34 254 Lamentations 3:1 14n32 4:21–22 221n20 Ezekiel 1–24 349 4:4–8 353n80 11:22–25 154 25–32 252, 349

33–48 252 38–39 349–350 40–43 353n80 40–48 17n38, 349–350 44:10 353n80 48:11 353n80 Daniel 1:4 212 2 74 7–12 355 7:15 74, 117 7:15–16 29 7:28 74, 117 8–12 355 8:15–17 29 8:17 74, 117, 226 8:27 74, 117, 226 10:8–12 226 10:14 74 12 271 Hosea 1 168 1:2 189 4:11–14 167 4:15 167 8:11–13 167 8:14 167 9:16 168 11:9 192 14 168 14:1–7 190–191 14:1–8 219 14:1–9 24 14:2–4 219 14:2–10 203n8 14:9 17–18, 174, 202, 221 Joel 1:2 169 1:13ff 191 1:13–14 171n51 1:15 169 1:20 171n51, 191 2:1 169 2:2 168–169 2:5 168 2:11 169

398

Index of Sources

2:12 169 2:12–16 202–203 2:13 190 2:13–14 171 2:14 169 2:15–16 171n51 2:15–27 203n8 2:19 191 2:25 169 3:16 17, 190n39, 220, 338 3:16[Eng.] 191 3:18 338 3:19 169, 220 4:16 168n46, 175n57 4:16–20 168n46 4:18 175n57 4:21 168n46 Amos 1 169 1–2 190n39 1:2 168, 168n46, 175n57, 190n39, 191, 220, 338 1:3–2:3 191 1:3–2:16 220 1:4 167 1:7 167 1:10 167 1:11–12 220 1:12 167 1:14 167 2:2 167 2:5 167 3:1 220 3:2 168, 312 4:4 167 5:5 167 5:18 169 5:18–20 166n36 7–8 167 7:1 169 7:1–3 167 7:1–8:3 220n19 7:2 169 7:2–3 220 7:4–6 167 7:5–6 220 7:7–8 167

7:9 167–168 8:1–2 167 9:8a 182 9:8b 182, 191, 313 9:8b–15 17–18 9:9ff 175n57 9:11–12 135 9:12 166, 166n35, 169, 175n57, 192 9:12–13 175n57 9:13 175n57, 338 Obadiah 1–4 221 10 169 10–14 221 17–21 192 19–21 169 21 166 Jonah 1 324 1:1–17 171n52 1:6–10 221 1:7 221 1:15–16 221 2:10–3:3 221 3:3–4 222 3.4–10 221 3:7–8 171n51 3:8 191 4:1–2 221 4:2 171, 190 4:5 222 4:6–11 197 Micah 1:1 332 2 305, 307, 313 3:9–12 306 3:12 21, 171, 192, 206–208, 210, 305, 309 3:14 175n58 4 192, 215, 227, 305 4:1ff 208, 210 4:1–4 27, 222, 226, 332 4:1–5 305 4:3 333 4:4 27, 305

Deuterocanonical Books399



2:18 223 2:18–19 173 2:20 223

4:5 192 5 171 5:5ff 171 5:5–6 171n52 6–7 346 7:8–20 17 7:18 171, 190 7:18–19 7:18–20 222 7:19 193

Zechariah 1 1–8

Nahum 1:2 171n52, 190 1:2–3 172 1:3 222 3:19 172, 193 Habakkuk 1:1 223n23 1:6 339 1:12–17 172 1:13–14 197 2:1–4 223n23 2:1–5 172 2:2 223n23 2:2–3 223n23 3:1–17 172, 197 3:1–19 223 3:17–19 197 3:19 223n23 Zephaniah 1:1–6 223 1:14 172 2:13 339 3:8 223 3:8–20 223 Haggai 1:1 223 2:1 223 2:10 223

55, 58–59 52n5, 55, 165, 226, 316, 316n5 1:1–6 196, 214 1:2–6 314 1:4 313 1:4–6 224 1:5–6 84 1:6 196 1:7 56 1:7–17 55 1:13 55–56 1:13–17 58 1:14 56 1:14–17 55 1:15–16 56 1:17 56 3:1–5 54 3:10 305 7 316 7–8 316 7:7 214, 224, 314 7:12 214, 224, 313 8:20–23 324 9 165 9–11 339 9–14 165n33, 226, 316, 319 12 165 14:1–21 224 Malachi 3 165 3:1 224 3:16 173, 225 3:16–18 224 3:18 173, 175

Deuterocanonical Books Sirach 48:22–25 364 48:24 325

48:24–25 96 49:10 164

400

Index of Sources

New Testament Matthew 23:13ff 140

Acts 15 272

Mark 6:50 150–151 14:62 151

Romans 3:2 262 9–11 271 11:25 258

Luke 15 222n21 15:28–32 197n50 16:31 264 24:27 198, 264

1 Corinthians 1 Cor 15 148, 258–259 1 Cor 15:3–4 261 2 Corinthians 11:6 181n10

John 4:26 151 6:20 150–151 8:24 151 8:28 151 8:58 151 13:19 151 14:15–30 260 18:5 151 18:6 151 18:8 151 20:30 151

2 Timothy 3:16 262 Hebrews 2:13

318, 348

2 Peter 3:16 315n3 Revelation 21:3 115

Talmud 14b

117, 164, 215n9, 225, 231, 337n21 14b–15b 200n2 15a 67n47

Bava Batra 12a 246 13b 164 14a 345

Patristic Works Justin Martyr Dialogue with Trypho 14.8.5 256

Index of Names Ackroyd, Peter R. 8n18, 9n19, 11–12, 12n28, 41n23, 51n1, 61, 61n31, 64n39, 65n43, 68, 68n48, 71n4, 76n15, 78–79, 78n19, 78n21, 82, 207, 207n16, 242n22, 284, 285n8 Albertz, Rainer 31n70 Albright, W. F. 155 Allen, Leslie C. 166, 166n35 Alt, Albrecht 25, 282, 282n1, 286 Ambrose 186, 256, 257, 265 Anderson, Bernhard 2n2, 4 Anderson, Gary 258n2 Apollinaris 354 Athanasius 161 Augustine 186, 256, 265 Bailey, D. P. 269n36 Baltzer, Klaus 2–4, 2n3, 98–99, 98n10, 99n12, 179, 320, 320n25, 322n32, 370n20 Barr, James 3 Barstad, Hans M. 52n5, 320n21, 320n23, 321, 321n27, 322n32 Barth, Hermann 43n29 Barth, Karl 200 Barton, George A. 355n89 Barton, John 26–27, 119, 119n11, 121, 121n14, 121n15, 125n22, 144, 144n36, 164n30, 299, 299n23, 299n24, 300n27, 314, 314n28 Bauckham, Richard 150, 151n51, 159n16, 162n25, 272n41 Becker, Joachim 7, 9n19 Begrich, Joachim 321n30 Berges, Ulrich 3n7, 10, 10n21, 12–13, 13n30, 14n32, 16n36 Berry, Donald K. 317n9

Bertholdt, Leonhard 338, 350, 354, 355n89 Bertholet, Alfred 353n81 Beuken, Willem A. M. 10n21, 15, 15n33, 90n45, 91n46, 111n43, 208, 208n19, 270n37, 270n38, 291, 291n1, 311, 311n24, 323n34 Bickerman, Elias 170, 170n49 Blenkinsopp, Joseph 17, 17n37, 151, 151n52, 162n22, 170n50, 181, 181n8, 213n4, 293n10, 320–321, 321n26, 322n32 Boda, Mark J. 316n7, 316n8 Bonfils, Joseph 122 Bornkamm, Heinrich 333n13 Bosshard-Nepustil, Erich 204n9 Boyd, Bernhard 180 Briggs, Charles A. 335, 335n17 Bright, John 1, 36n8, 36n9, 38, 38n16, 247n33 Brueggemann, Walter 2n2, 9, 121, 121n14, 121n15, 182 Bultmann, Rudolf 269 Bunsen, Christian C. J. von 52n5 Calvin, John 73–76, 73n7, 73n8, 73n9, 75n12, 78, 82, 84, 94, 225, 304, 307–312, 310n19, 310n20, 310n21, 311n22, 311n23, 318n14, 325, 332–333, 333n10, 333n11, 333n12, 341–343, 342n44, 342n45, 367n16 Campbell, Iain D. 357n95 Campenhausen, Hans von 259n6, 264, 264n20 Carr, David 9, 71n4, 78n18, 120n13, 126n24 Carroll R., M. Daniel. 111n42, 289n19

402

Index of Names

Carroll, Robert P. 4n10, 231n3, 232, 242n22, 244n26, 246, 346n32, 249n45, 249n46, 352, 352n76 Cartwright, Ben 181 Cheyne, Thomas K. 346 Childs, Brevard S. 2–7, 3n5, 3n6, 4n9, 5n12, 10n21, 12n28, 13, 13n31, 18, 25, 30n63, 32, 37, 37n14, 37n15, 63n38, 67n46, 77, 77n16, 79, 88n41, 95n3, 102–108, 102n18, 103n22, 104n25, 105n26, 105n27, 105n28, 105n29, 105n30, 106n35, 108n38, 111n42, 121, 121n15, 153n1, 157, 159n16, 160–161, 161n20, 162n24, 165n33, 181, 181n11, 182n14, 182n15, 184n23, 194n47, 195n48, 206, 206n13, 208–209, 208n20, 209n23, 231, 255n60, 262n15, 264n20, 267n30, 274n1, 277, 283, 283n3, 284–289, 284n5, 284n6, 286n12, 286n13, 287n16, 287n17, 291, 291n3, 293n7, 298–300, 298n22, 299n24, 306, 306n11, 315n2, 321, 321n30, 321n31, 347–348, 347n60, 348n63, 356, 356n91, 356n93, 361n7, 367n16 Clement 265 Clements, Ronald E. 9, 9n19, 12, 37, 37n10, 37n11, 37n12, 40, 42n24, 44n3, 51n1, 63n37, 63n38, 64, 64n41, 65n44, 71n4, 259n7, 284–285, 285n8, 324n35 Clifford, Richard J. 53n7, 59–60, 59n23, 59n25, 71n4 Clines, David J. A. 92n47, 93n49 Coats, George W. 243n25 Collins, John J. 354 Collins, Terence 171n51, 190n41, 191n42, 300n25, 312n25, 317n9 Conrad, Edgar W. 9, 12n28, 71n3, 81, 81n28, 192n45 Cornill, Carl Heinrich 353n81 Corrodi, Heinrich 349n67, 350, 354 Coxe, A. C. 260n8 Crenshaw, James L. 163n27, 166n37, 190n39 Cross, Frank Moore 53–54, 53n9, 53n10, 54n11, 54n12, 57n19, 61,

61n28, 63n36, 66, 81, 81n29, 293, 293n6 Cyril 260 Daniels, Dwight Roger 138n20 Davidson, A. B. 348, 348n61 Davis, Ellen F. 56n18, 246n31 De Wette, W. M. L. 330, 331n7, 333–334, 334n14, 337–339, 337n24, 337n25, 338n27, 338n28, 338n29, 350, 350n70, 350n71, 350n72, 350n73, 354–355, 354n82, 354n83, 354n84 Deist, Ferdinand 175, 175n56 Delitzsch, Franz 79–80, 90, 308, 318, 318n15, 318n16, 341n40, 348–349, 348n62, 348n64 Dell, Katharine 31n65 Didymus 307 Dillman, Christian F. A. 348 Diodore 161 Dion, P.‑E. 36n6, 36n8, 37n13 Dozeman, Thomas B. 31n66 Driver, Daniel R. 4n8 Driver, S. R. 335, 335n17, 348, 348n61, 355n87, 356n93 Duhm, Bernhard 52n5, 53n10, 57n20, 59n23, 76, 76n14, 97, 97n7, 99–100, 247n35, 247n36, 248n41, 248n43, 249, 249n45, 317, 317n10, 317n12, 319–320, 320n21, 330n4, 336n20, 340, 340n36, 341n37, 342, 342n42, 342n43, 346–347, 346n57, 349, 349n66, 352, 358, 358n2 Dyck, Andrew vii Eaton, John H. 53n10, 151, 151n52 Ehrlich, Arnold B. 251n52 Eichhorn, J. G. 117n7, 119, 119n12, 317, 317n13, 330, 333, 337n23, 345, 345n54, 350, 354–355, 355n86 Eichrodt, Walther 2n2, 3 Eissfeldt, Otto 248n44 Elliger, Karl 52n6 Engnell, Ivan 62n35 Enns, Peter 185n25 Erbt, Wilhelm 248n42 Eusebius 257, 261–262, 265, 354



Index of Names403

Ewald, Heinrich 52n5, 55n16, 317, 346–347, 346n56, 351–353, 351n74, 351n75, 352n77, 352n78, 353n79, 353n80, 353n81 Farrar, F. W. 356n93 Fohrer, Georg 244n28 Frei, Hans W. 136, 136n16, 181n13, 184n21, 334n15, 356n90 Friedlander, M. 76n13 Gadamer, Hans-Georg 161 Gese, Hartmut 143–144 Gesenius, Wilhelm 10, 36, 36n4, 317, 317n10, 345–347, 346n55 Geyer, John B. 38, 38n16, 38n17, 38n20 Giesebrecht, D. Friedrich 247n35 Gilkey, Langdon B. 155. 155n6 Ginsburg, H. L. 271n39 Gonçalves, Francolino J. 12n28, 35, 35n3, 37, 40n22, 41 Gottwald, Norman 2n2 Graf, Karl Heinrich 330, 335 Gray, John 38n20 Green, William Henry 331n6, 332, 332n9 Greenberg, Moshe 5, 252n54 Gregory of Nyssa 123n21 Gressmann, Hugo 52n6 Gunkel, Hermann 55n16, 132n5, 179n2, 183n18, 208, 209n22 Habel, N. 53n8, 61, 61n29, 61n32 Halpern, Baruch 224n24 Hardmeier, Christoff 12n28, 35n2, 36n9, 41–42, 43n28 Hauerwas, Stanley 295 Hävernick, Heinrich A. C. 308, 355, 355n88 Hayes, John H. 330n3, 345n53 Hengstenberg, Ernst W. 308, 347–348, 347n58, 347n59, 355 Herder, Johann Gottfried 181, 181n13 Heschel, Abraham 151, 151n52 Hill, Robert C. 341n39 Hillers, Delbert R. 306, 306n8 Hobbes, Thomas 354

Holladay, William Lee 4n10, 231, 231n2, 236n11, 241n18, 352, 352n76 Hölscher, Gustav 353n81, 349, 349n68 Hübner, Hans 136n17 Hugenberger, Gordon P. 259n7 Hyatt, J. Philip 245n29, 247n35 Ibn Chiquitilla, Moses 16, 29–30, 73n8, 365–368 Ibn Ezra, Abraham 16, 29, 30, 365–369, 367n16, 73n8, 76 Irenaeus 259–260 Isbell, Charles D. 241n19 Ittmann, Norbert 238n14 Jahn, Johann 350 Janzen, J. Gerald 254n58 Jenson, Robert W. 265n26 Jeremias, J. 3n4, 149–150, 150n49, 158–159, 158n15, 160n19, 166–167, 167n38, 167n39, 167n40, 167n41, 167n42, 168n43, 168n44, 175n57, 189, 189n37, 200n3, 201–202, 201n5, 206, 219n16, 220n18, 220n19, 269, 297, 297n21, 298–300, 299n24, 312, 312n26 Jerome 52n4, 181, 185, 212, 219, 338, 342, 354 Johnson, Dan G. 65n44 Jones, Barry A. 170, 170n48 Jones, Douglas R. 44n3, 63n38, 81, 81n27, 90n44, 267n30 Jowett, Benjamin 179n1, 184n22 Justin Martyr 256–257, 260–262, 265, 268 Kahle, Paul 47n10 Kaiser, Otto 252n53 Kamano, Naota 85n36 Kant, Immanuel 161 Kashow, Robert 357 Keck, Leander v, vii Keil, Karl Friedrich 308, 341n40, 355, 355n88 Kermode, Frank 258n5 Kessler, Martin 241n20, 244n28, 245n30 Kiesow, Klaus 51n3, 53n10, 61, 61n29, 320n23

404

Index of Names

Knierim, Rolf 62n35 Knobel, Karl A. 346 Koch, Klaus 151, 151n52 Konkel, August 12n28 Koole, Jan Leunis 106, 106n32 Koppe, J. B. 345, 345n51, 345n52 Kraetzschmar, R. 350 Kratz, Reinhard G. 13, 13n30, 87n40 Kuenen, Abraham 330, 346 Kutscher, E. Y. 58n21 Kuyper, L. J. 64n42 Kynes, Will 31n65 Laato, Antti 36, 36n5 Lack, R. 9n19 Leene, Henk 12n28 Legaspi, Michael 123n19, 123n20 Lessing, Gotthold 263 Levenson, Jon 16, 122–125, 122n16, 122n18 Liebreich, Leon J. 270n38 Lindbeck, George A. 19n44, 181–182, 181n12, 275n5 Liwak, Rüdiger 12n28 Loretz, Oswald 52n6, 53n10, 61n29 Lössl, Josef 202n6 Lowth, Robert 181, 181n13, 335, 336n18, 344, 345, 345n50 Ludlow, Morwenna 161n21 Luther, Martin 117–118, 118n9, 148, 264n20, 275–276, 305, 308–309, 333 Maimonides 122–123 Marti, Karl 52n5 Martyn, J. L. 266n28 Mayer, W. 12n28 McBride, Dean 57n19 McCartney, Dan 185n25 McKane, William 4n10, 231n3, 238n15, 239n16, 249n45, 309n18, 352, 352n76 McKenzie, John L. 53n7, 64n40, 64n42 Meade, David G. 50n16, 63n38, 68n48, 70n53, 78–79, 78n23, 195n48 Melugin, Roy F. 4n9, 61, 61n30, 61n32, 78–79, 78n22, 82, 97n8, 268n32, 319n19 Mentzer, Patrick vii

Methodius 354 Meyers, Carol L. 316, 316n6 Meyers, Eric M. 316, 316n6 Michaelis, J. D. 345, 354 Millard, A. R. 40n21 Möller, Karl 160n19 Motyer, J. Alec 7n4, 110, 110n41 Mowinckel, Sigmund 52n5, 52n6, 208, 208n21 Muilenburg, James 2, 2n2, 319–320, 319n19, 321n30 Newman, Judith 2n2 Newman, Murray L. 2n2, 233n6 Newsome, James D. 151, 151n52 Newton, Isaac 354 Nicholson, Ernest W. 319n17 Nogalski, James D. 157n13, 169n47, 187n29, 191n43, 203, 225n25, 317n9 North, C. R. 67n46, 73, 73n6, 267n30 Noth, Martin 2–3, 2n2, 3n4, 26, 31–32, 145n37, 235, 235n9 Oeder, George Ludwig 349n67, 350 Oehler, Gustav F. 337, 337n26 Olson, Dennis T. 217n13, 234n8 Olyan, Saul 58n21 Origen 161 Paton-Williams, David 68n50, 69n51, 89n42, 100n14, 106–107, 106n33, 106n34, 268n33, 291, 291n3 Petersen, David L. 55n14, 55n15, 57n19, 59–60, 59n26, 69n52, 165n31, 193n46 Pfeiffer, Robert H. 350n69 Pierce, Ronald W. 316n8 Pohlmann, Karl-Friedrich 231n3 Polk, Timothy 238n14 Pope, Marvin H. 54n13 Preus, James S. 309n17 Prévost, J.‑P. 151, 151n52 Provan, Iain W. 42, 42n26 Prussner, Frederick C. 330n3, 345n53 Pusey, E. B. 185–186, 185n26, 308–309, 308n13, 311–312, 331n6, 339n31, 341, 341n38, 343, 343n46, 355–356, 355n88, 356n92



Index of Names405

Qimron, Elisha 58n21 Rad, Gerhard von 2–4, 3n4, 16–19, 26, 31–32, 98, 98n11, 131–152, 131n2, 131n3, 132n6, 133n7, 133n8, 133n9, 135n11, 135n12, 135n13, 135n14, 135n15, 138n21, 139n22, 139n23, 140n24, 140n25, 140n26, 140n27, 142n31, 144n35, 145n37, 145n38, 145n39, 145n40, 146n41, 146n42, 147n43, 147n44, 149n48, 155–157, 156n7, 156n9, 157n10, 157n11, 160n19, 162n23, 254n59, 259n7, 275n3, 295–297, 304, 304n5 Raeder, Siegfried 333n13 Redditt, Paul L. 171n52, 187n29, 316n8 Rendtorff, Rolf 9, 9n19, 31–32, 31n69, 51n2, 63n37, 71n4, 76n15, 78–79, 78n20, 81n30, 82, 98n9, 166n36, 299, 299n24 Reuss, Eduard 310, 330, 339, 339n32, 340n33, 340n34, 340n35, 341, 342n41, 346, 355n89 Reventlow, Henning Graf 308n14, 308n15, 309n16 Rhymer, Joseph 183n19 Ricoeur, Paul 161 Ritschel 335 Rogerson, John W. 330n3, 331n8, 336n19 Römer, Thomas 31n70 Rosenzweig, Franz 19, 146–148, 150, 152, 156–157, 157n10 Rowley, Harold H. 53n9, 63n36, 231n1 Rowling, J. K. 200 Rudolph, Wilhelm 244n27, 247n34 Sailhamer, John H. 185n25 Schart, Aaron 160n19, 163n27, 165n32, 166, 168, 168n45, 187n29, 190n39, 316n8, 319n20 Schleiermacher, Friedrich 181 Schmid, Konrad 31n66, 31n68 Schökel, Luis Alonso 236n10, 243n25 Schoors, A. 62n35 Schwartz, Baruch J. 31n66 Seitz, Christopher R. 1n1, 4n11, 5, 6n13,

7n16, 7n17, 8, 10, 10n21, 10n22, 11n23, 11n24, 12–13, 12n26, 12n27, 12n28, 12n29, 14n32, 15, 15n34, 18n40, 19n41, 19n42, 19n43, 20, 20n45, 20n46, 20n47, 21n48, 23n50, 23n51, 24n52, 24n53, 24n54, 25, 25n55, 26n56, 26n57, 27n58, 27n59, 28n60, 29n61, 30n63, 31n64, 31n67, 35n1, 38n18, 38n19, 42n25, 44n1, 44n2, 45n4, 45n5, 46n7, 46n8, 48, 49n14, 49n15, 50n17, 51n1, 56n17, 71n1, 71n2, 71n3, 75n11, 76n14, 77–78, 77n17, 79n24, 81–82, 82n31, 82n32, 84n35, 86n38, 88n41, 89n43, 91n46, 93n51, 95n1, 95n3, 96n5, 101, 101n15, 102n16, 102n17, 103, 103n21, 103n23, 104n24, 107n36, 107n37, 108n39, 109n40, 111n42, 112n44, 114n1, 114n3, 115n4, 116n5, 118n9, 126n23, 127n25, 131n4, 137n18, 137n19, 141n28, 142n30, 143n33, 148n45, 148n46, 149n47, 154n3, 155n5, 156n8, 157n13, 159, 159n16, 159n17, 161n21, 162n23, 164n30, 170n50, 173n54, 174n55, 184n23, 185n24, 187n28, 187n29, 187n31, 187n32, 192n44, 198n51, 201n4, 201n5, 202n6, 203n7, 203n8, 205n10, 205n11, 206n12, 206n13, 207, 207n14, 207n15, 208n18, 209n24, 210n25, 212n1, 212n2, 214n5, 214n6, 215n8, 216n10, 217, 217n11, 217n12, 217n14, 219n15, 220n19, 222n22, 226n28, 226n29, 227n30, 231n3, 240n17, 242n23, 256n1, 258n3, 258n4, 259n7, 261n10, 261n11, 262n17, 263n18, 263n19, 265n25, 266n27, 269n34, 272n41, 274n1, 275n4, 276n6, 277n7, 278n8, 281n9, 282n2, 284n7, 285, 285n9, 287–289, 288n18, 289n20, 290n21, 291n2, 291n3, 293n6, 293n7, 293n10, 294n12, 294n13, 295n14, 296n19, 300n26, 300n27, 302n1, 305n6, 311n24, 315n2, 317n11, 319n18, 320n23, 322n32, 323n33, 323n34, 324n36, 324n38, 329n1, 330n2, 336n19, 337n22, 341n40,

406

Index of Names

343n47, 356n92, 358n1, 358n2, 359n3, 359n4, 360n6, 363n9, 363n10, 364n11, 365n12, 369n19, 370n20 Semler, Johann S. 354 Shea, William H. 36n8 Sheppard, Gerald T. 9, 71n4, 79, 79n24, 79n25, 79n26, 82–83 Simon, Richard 330 Simon, Uriel 30, 365n13, 366, 366n14, 366n15, 367n17, 368 Skinner, John 231n1 Smart, James D. 320n22, 321, 321n29, 322n32 Smelik, Klass A. D. 12n28, 36n9, 42, 42n27, 65n43 Smend, Rudolf 353n81 Smith, D. Moody 150n50 Smith, George Adam 19, 62n35, 179–183, 179n3, 180n4, 180n5, 180n6, 180n7, 181n9, 181n13, 182n16, 183n17, 194, 197–198, 304, 304n4, 307n12, 336, 336n19, 341, 341n38, 348, 348n61, 357 Smith, W. Robertson 304, 330n4, 335– 336, 335n17, 336n19, 356, 357n94 Snaith, Norman H. 52n4 Sneed, Mark 31n65 Sommer, Benjamin D. 267n31 Sonnet, Jean-Pierre 21n49, 31n70 Spinoza, Benedictus de 330, 354, 355n85 Stade, Bernhard 36, 36n7, 36n9 Stead, Michael R. 316n7 Steck, Odil H. 11n25, 13, 46, 46n9, 62n35, 83n34, 87n40, 108n38, 118, 118n10, 173n53, 187n30, 189n35, 204n9, 271n40 Steinmetz, David C. 184, 184n20 Stohlmann, Stephen 38n19 Stuhlmacher, Peter 143, 144 Sweeney, Marvin A. 51n1, 71n3, 97n6, 151, 151n53, 157n13, 187n29, 270n38, 283–288, 283n3, 284n4, 285n10, 286n11, 286n14, 287n15, 317n9 Taylor, Marion Ann 332n9, 335n17 Tertullian 257

Theodore of Mopsuestia 161, 304, 307, 341, 341n39 Theodoret 304, 307 Thiel, Winfried 231n3, 247n35, 248n41, 248n43, 249, 249n47, 251 Tholuck, Friedrich A. G. 308 Tomasino, Anthony J. 270n38 Torrey, C. C. 47, 47n10, 52n5, 321, 321n28 Tracy, David 114n2 Trebolle-Barrera, Julio 163n26, 164n28, 173n53, 189n36, 213n3, 359n5 Trobisch, David 159n16, 315n1 Utzschneider, Helmut 166 Van Buren, Paul 274, 274n2 Van Leeuwen, Raymond C. 165n32, 168n46, 190, 190n38, 190n40, 192, 219n17, 300n26 Van Oorschot, Jürgen 320, 320n24 Vanhoozer, Kevin J. 96n4 Vater, Johann S. 330 Vatke, Johann K. W. 330 Vermeylen, Jacques 7, 9n19, 118, 118n10 Vincent, Jean M. 53n7, 61n29, 62, 62n34 Vuk, T. 40n22 Waltke, Bruce K. 27, 305–307, 305n7, 306n9, 306n10, 309, 313 Wanke, Gunther 248n40, 253, 253n57 Ward, Timothy 157n12, 194n47 Watson, Francis 222n22. 223n23. 261n12, 304n3 Watts, John D. W. 7n14, 165n34 Weeks, Stuart 31n65 Weiser, Artur 247n37, 247n38, 247n39, 248, 248n41, 248n44 Wellhausen, Julius 42, 122, 122n17, 138, 191, 220, 296, 303, 303n2, 310, 313, 313n27, 330, 331n5, 335, 335n16, 346 Westermann, Claus 2, 52n6, 53n7, 57n19, 57n20, 58n22, 59–60, 59n23, 59n24, 62, 62n33, 92n47, 102n19, 103, 103n20, 132n5 Whybray, R. N. 93n49, 269, 269n36



Index of Names407

Wilcox, Peter 68n50, 69n51, 89n42, 100n14, 106–107, 106n33, 106n34, 268n33, 291n3 Wildberger, Hans 35n2 Williamson, G. A. 261n13 Williamson, H. G. M. 9, 10n20, 12–13, 12n28, 71n3, 106, 106n31, 267n29, 268, 293n8 Wilson, Robert R. 5, 26, 53n10, 54n11, 232n4, 233n5, 292–297, 292n4, 293n5, 294n11, 301 Wolff, Hans W. 254n59, 299n24 Wolters, Al 316n4

Wright, G. Earnest 2n2 Wright, N. T. 112, 112n44, 141, 141n29, 200, 200n1, 259, 264–265, 264n21, 264n22, 264n23, 265n24, 269, 272, 324n38 Xenophon 119 Yeago, David S. 262n14 Young, Frances M. 187n32 Zimmerli, Walther 3, 5

Index of Subjects Ahaz 11, 25, 41–42, 111, 116, 216, 226, 284, 286–288, 363, 366, 369 Amos, Book of 17, 27–28, 133–134, 150, 158, 160, 163–164, 163n27, 165n32, 166, 166n36 – prophet 1, 20, 28, 55, 135, 139, 149–150, 162–163, 163n27, 165n32, 166 Assyria 11, 42–43, 45, 47, 65–66, 111, 171, 171n52, 173–174, 192–193, 216, 222–223, 289n19, 307, 339, 343, 347, 362–364, 369 – annals of [Annals of Sennacherib] 10–11, 35–41, 35n1, 36n9 – assault and conquest of Judah 37, 41, 46, 208, 366 – defeat of 40, 171–172, 208, 305, 363 – king of [Sennacherib] 10, 39–43, 47–48, 158 – oracle against 170 – period/era of 8n18, 11, 18, 22, 29, 159, 162–163, 170, 196, 340, 367 Babylon 5, 11, 14n32, 41, 45, 47, 47n13, 52, 60, 64, 65n44, 70, 73–74, 79n26, 85–86, 104–105, 153–155, 158, 172–173, 196, 223, 240, 243, 244n27, 248n42, 252–254, 275, 277, 279, 319–323, 320n22, 325, 345–347, 359, 362–364, 367, 369 – emissaries of 207–208 – king of 36n9, 66, 76 – fall of 85, 346, 362–363 – oracle against 8, 249n48, 252–254, 363 – period/era of 8n18, 11, 18, 22, 74, 162–163, 340, 342, 355, 360, 367–368 Ben Sira 304

Book of the Twelve/The Twelve/The Minor Prophets 18, 19–22, 20n47, 26–28, 138, 142–143, 149–153, 157–159, 157n13, 160n19, 161, 163– 166, 164n28, 166n36, 168, 168n46, 170–171, 173–177, 173n53, 174n55, 177, 179–180, 185–193, 191n43, 196, 198–205, 201n5, 209–211, 213–216, 218, 227–228, 291, 296–297, 296n19, 299–300, 299n25, 303–304, 307–309, 311–312, 317, 329, 336n19, 337–339, 337n23, 341–343, 341n40, 344–345, 359–360, 370 Call narrative 12, 52–53, 53n7, 54n12, 58, 60–63, 65–66, 68–69, 68n48, 77–78, 82, 86–88, 104, Canonical approach 8, 23, 25, 29, 79n26, 113, 115, 121, 179, 193, 194n47, 195, 198, 229, 294–295, 299n24, 301, 306, 314 Cyrus 11, 14n32, 50, 66, 73, 75, 84–86, 103–104, 116–117, 158, 163, 267, 319, 346–347, 362, 367n16, 368 Daniel 29, 74, 117, 226, 331, 360 – 19th century reception 353–356 – Book of 15–16, 22, 29, 74, 74n10, 77, 95, 117, 186, 195n48, 211, 213, 319, 329–330, 336–337, 343, 349, 353, 359–360, 361n7, 370 – presentation of history 360–363 Deutero-Isaiah/Second Isaiah, biblical text 2–3, 10–11, 17, 44n2, 45n6, 46–49, 51, 51n2, 52n5, 54n11, 55–56, 61, 63–64, 67–69, 67n46, 68n50, 77, 84, 94–95, 97, 102, 106, 141, 142n56, 176, 207, 320–323, 340, 346, 358



Index of Subjects409

– prophet 9, 28, 44, 52–54, 53n10, 58–62, 66, 68n48, 69, 77–79, 81–83, 97, 102, 105, 108, 110, 120, 126, 134, 267, 292, 293n9, 319–320, 341, 345 Deuteronomy 24, 125, 167, 193, 213, 215, 217, 231–235, 234n7, 236n10, 239–240, 242–243, 255, 259, 279, 329, 334, 340, 351 Diachronic Approach 31n70, 46, 163, 176–177 Diachronic vs Synchronic Reading 7, 50, 50n16, 251 Egypt 28, 42, 52n5, 89, 167, 218, 220, 234, 236n10, 240, 243, 243n25, 245–251, 249n48, 253, 277, 281, 320, 322–323, 351 Elijah 136, 162, 213, 294, 311, 313, 318, 332, 335, 348 Elisha162, 213, 294, 311, 313, 318, 332, 348 Ephraim/The Northern Kingdom 21, 24, 164, 166–168, 171, 176, 180, 189, 192, 216, 219–220, 278, 287, 298 Exile 5, 23–24, 49, 79, 86, 95, 111–112, 112n44, 116–117, 154, 172, 216–217, 223, 225, 233, 240, 248n42, 254, 265, 270, 275, 279, 313, 319–320, 320n23, 322, 324, 324n38, 347, 368 – exiles/exiled (persons) 47, 52, 62, 73, 96, 153–155, 217, 239, 241–243, 243n24, 254, 279, 319–320, 320n22, 367–368 Ezekiel, Book of 5, 8–9, 17, 17n38, 29, 44, 48, 138, 163–165, 164n28, 173, 210, 212–213, 215–218, 246n31, 249, 252–253, 252n54, 319, 329, 331, 337–338, 337n21, 345–346, 349–350, 352, 353n81, 359–360, 370 – prophet 41, 46, 79, 87, 100, 153–154, 176, 216, 218, 240, 319, 345, 352–353, 353n79, 353n81 Final form/canonical form 4–8, 15, 17–24, 26–27, 29–31, 46, 50, 50n16, 70, 97, 99–101, 109–111, 114–115, 121, 140–145, 147–151, 155–157,

157n12, 159n16, 160, 163, 166–168, 173n53, 174, 186–188, 191, 198–199, 204, 206–208, 225, 227, 232, 277–278, 280, 283, 285, 287, 294–295, 298–299, 303, 306, 308, 312, 319, 321–322, 324–325, 334, 344, 352, 358, 364 First Isaiah/Proto-Isaiah 9, 11, 17, 44–48, 44n2, 50n16, 60–61, 63, 67, 126, 176, 187, 317, 322, 347 – prophet, see Isaiah of Jerusalem Form criticism 2, 3n6, 36, 51–52, 51n3, 55n16, 58–60, 66, 82, 97–99, 97n8, 98n9, 102–103, 132–133, 141, 268n32, 286, 293, 319, 321 Former and Latter Things 13, 45–46, 66–67, 80, 84, 87–90, 208, 218, 227, 256–257, 266–267, 269–270, 272–273, 322–323, 325, 369–370 Former Prophets/Deuteronomistic History 5, 16, 31, 42, 213–214, 231, 235, 252, 254n59, 255, 288, 294, 329 Habakkuk, Book of 20, 163–164, 172–173, 197, 201–202, 219, 222–223, 222n22, 223n23, 307, 309, 339, 341–343, 362 – prophet 134, 162, 172, 174–175, 195, 197–198, 223, 309, 343, 343n46, 362 Haggai, Book of 134, 164–165, 172–173, 185, 201, 223, 316, 319 – prophet 223–224, 294, 311, 313 Hezekiah, king of Jerusalem 8n18, 10–11, 13, 25, 30, 35–43, 48, 67, 67n47, 79n26, 111, 111n42, 207, 209, 215–216, 226, 282–286, 288–289, 289n19, 305, 307, 313, 338, 363–366, 368–369 – foreign treaties/alliances 35 – men of 117, 127, 225 – narratives 48 – prayer of 65, 67 – rebellion of 42 – reign of/period/era 35, 65, 67, 116–117, 176, 345 – tribute to Sennacherib 10, 35, 38–40, 43

410

Index of Subjects

Historical-criticism 3, 28, 100, 113, 160n19, 161, 184, 207–208 – historical-critical analysis 1, 4, 6–7, 20, 23–28, 31n70, 45, 50, 67, 75, 94, 160–161, 160n19, 181, 184n23, 185, 187, 192, 213, 265, 272, 274, 275, 281, 295, 296n19, 320, 365 Historical Jesus/Earthly Jesus 24, 111–112, 112n44, 141n54, 256–273 Hosea, Book of 17–18, 24, 28, 55, 133, 150, 158–160, 163–164, 163n27, 165n32, 166–169, 166n37, 171–176, 171n52, 180, 185, 187–192, 190n39, 196, 200–203, 200n2, 206, 210–213, 218–221, 220n18, 223, 227, 296–299, 307–308, 312, 338–339, 342, 359 – prophet 17, 134, 139, 149–150, 162, 165n32, 167–168, 189–191, 190n39, 197, 202, 298, 312, 341, 346 Immanuel 25, 47, 111n42, 282–285, 284n6, 288, 289n19 Interpretation, history of 27–28, 87, 116, 146, 161n21, 177, 184, 186–187, 202–203, 219, 225, 266, 282, 304, 306–307, 329–357, 365–369 Intertextuality/Inner-biblical exegesis 14, 27, 51, 61, 63, 184–185, 190, 204, 283, 287 Isaiah of Jerusalem 8, 15, 46, 53, 60–61, 66, 77, 79, 81, 127, 216, 226, 293 Jeremiah, Book of 4–5, 8–9, 17, 17n38, 23–24, 29, 44, 48, 55, 56n17, 76, 88, 90, 132–133, 142, 154–155, 162–166, 162n23, 164n28, 171, 173, 176, 187, 210–213, 215–217, 220, 227, 231–255, 274–281, 294, 317, 319, 329, 331, 336–338, 337n21, 340, 345, 347, 349, 349n66, 350–353, 353n80, 359–361, 370 – prophet 5, 8, 14, 24, 36n9, 41, 46, 56n17, 86, 88–89, 91, 100, 104, 108, 133, 135, 153–154, 159, 162, 174, 192, 217, 225, 231–255, 275, 278–280, 294, 303, 309, 313, 319, 341n40, 342n44, 351, 359n4

Jerusalem, city of 21, 38, 52, 55, 57n19, 66, 139, 154, 171–173, 171n51, 185, 206, 216–217, 237n12, 297, 303, 317, 319–321, 323, 364 – Council of 272 – Fall of 5, 153–154, 164, 191, 216, 221, 233, 248, 275, 307, 349 – siege of 10, 38–39, 38n20, 41, 366 – deliverance of 40, 48, 111n42, 216, 289, 364, 369 Joel, Book of 19n42, 20, 20n47, 24, 27–28, 143, 159–160, 163–164, 163n27, 165n32, 166, 166n36, 166n37, 168–169, 168n46, 171–172, 171n52, 174–177, 174n55, 185, 188–192, 190n39, 191n43, 196, 199–205, 203n8, 210–211, 218–221, 223, 225, 227, 296, 299, 299n24, 302–304, 307–309, 336, 336n20, 338–342 – prophet 28, 174–175, 226, 299, 303, 338, 341n40, 342, 346 Jonah, Book of 28, 143, 159–160, 164, 165n32, 166, 168–172, 170n50, 171n52, 174–177, 185, 191–192, 197, 197n50, 201–202, 204–205, 211, 218–219, 221–222, 227, 296, 307, 324, 333n12, 336, 336n20, 338–339, 341–342 – prophet 17, 28, 134, 136, 170–171, 171n52, 174, 193, 197, 214, 221–222, 222n21, 226, 324, 342 Josiah, king of Jerusalem 25, 42, 231, 283, 287–288, 350 – period/time of 236, 250, 334 – reform of 231–232, 287 Judah/The Southern Kingdom 21, 36–40, 38n19, 52n5, 57n19, 59, 139, 154, 162, 166–167, 168n46, 171n52, 173, 180, 190n39, 191–192, 211, 216–218, 220, 222, 236, 236n11, 237n12, 240–242, 243n24, 246, 248–250, 250n50, 252–254, 275, 278–280, 284n6, 287, 298, 308, 316, 318–320, 340, 348–349 Ketuvim [The Writings] 211–212



Index of Subjects411

Malachi, Book of 17–18, 22, 143, 159, 164–165, 165n33, 170, 172–173, 176, 185, 201–202, 204, 211–214, 218–219, 225, 227, 316, 338, 340 – prophet174–175, 224–225 Masoretic Practices/Notation 20, 206, 208 Masoretic Text [MT] 18, 22, 68, 143, 164, 168, 177, 188, 190, 213, 249, 249n46, 249n47, 342, 350 – vis-à-vis Septuagint 8, 57, 60, 77, 165, 165n32, 246, 251–254, 253n56 – vis-à-vis Qumran 60, 60n27, 77, 170 Micah, Book of 17, 27, 55, 133, 139, 159, 162–164, 165n32, 166, 168, 170–172, 171n52, 174–176, 180, 187, 192, 201–202, 206, 206n13, 208, 211, 213, 215, 218, 222, 227, 296, 305–307, 309–311, 332, 333n12, 336, 342 – prophet21, 27–28, 133, 149, 171, 171n52, 206n13, 297, 303, 305–307, 309–311, 313, 333 Moses 8, 14–15, 16n36, 28, 67n47, 87, 90, 92, 98, 104, 111, 122–126, 123n19, 190, 202, 211, 214, 217–218, 225, 225n27, 231–255, 259, 264, 270, 273, 280–281, 294, 310–311, 313, 329–331, 331n7, 332–336, 333n12, 339, 370, 370n20 Nahal Hever 164, 206 Nahum, Book of 164, 168, 170, 171n52, 172, 174–175, 188, 193, 201–202, 219, 222–223, 296, 307, 333, 336 – prophet 134, 172n52 Nebiʾim [The Prophets] 138, 180, 211–213 Nebuchadnezzar 275, 277, 354, 367, see also Babylon, king of New Testament 1, 6, 112, 148, 162, 200, 218, 226, 257, 261–262, 264n23, 270, 348 – critical study of 150 – reception of and relationship to Old Testament 23, 30n63, 96, 111, 136–138, 141, 143–144, 148–149, 211,

272, 274, 283, 317, 313, 324, 329, 332, 347, 354–355 – within Biblical Theology 24, 110, 147 Obadiah, Book of 133, 143, 159, 163n27, 164, 165n32, 166, 166n35, 166n36, 166n37, 168–171, 171n51, 171n52, 177, 185, 190n39, 191–192, 201–202, 204–205, 207, 211, 218–219, 221, 227, 302–303, 307, 336, 350 – prophet 341n40, 342, 342n44 Ostensive Reference 136, 142, 225, 324, 358 Pentateuch, see Torah, Books of Moses Persia 65n44, 66, 74, 173, 363, 367 – Cyrus the Persian, see Cyrus – period/context 11, 18, 22, 30, 162–163, 165, 315, 320, 337, 340, 345, 359 – warfare techniques 119 Postexile, literature/tradition 49, 302–303, 305 – period 17, 28, 31, 300n25, 307, 316, 334 Preexilic Prophecy/Literature 49, 55–56, 68–69, 201, 238, 306, 319 Prophetic disciples 26, 44, 53n10, 55, 69, 110–112, 110n41, 135, 291–294, 293n9, 297, 305, 310–312, 318, 332, 348 Qumran 19, 56, 58, 58n21, 60, 60n27, 66, 77, 170, 176, 206, 253n56, 265, 304, 307 Redaction criticism 5, 7, 47, 51, 254 Redactors/editors/tradents 14n32, 19, 21, 43, 50, 55, 58, 77, 97, 120–121, 135, 140, 145–146, 155–159, 163n27, 171n52, 177, 189, 190n39, 194, 204, 231, 232n4, 248, 251, 253, 261, 275, 284, 298, 303–304, 313, 321n30, 333, 333n12, 346 Rhetorical criticism 2, 2n2, 319 Samaria 41, 158, 171, 181n9

412

Index of Subjects

Sennacherib, see Assyria, king of – annals, see Assyria, annals – death 36 – invasion of Judah 30, 35–36, 39–40, 365 Septuagint [LXX] 8, 22, 52, 56, 58, 58n21, 60, 60n27, 66, 75, 77, 143–144, 163–165, 165n32, 168, 170, 177, 189–190, 246–247, 247n39, 249n46, 249n47, 249n48, 250n49, 251–254, 252n53, 253n55, 253n56, 350 Servant Song(s) 1, 4, 13, 14n32, 28, 68, 94–112, 108n38, 264n22, 268, 291, 346, 370n20 Synchronic Approach 125, see also Diachronic vs. Synchronic Reading

Tradition history 4, 18, 121, 131–152, 156–159, 160n19, 174, 177, 249, 297, 336 Trito-Isaiah/Third Isaiah, biblical literature 9–10, 17, 46, 49, 51, 97, 134, 176, 208, 291, 322, 358, 368 – prophet 44, 97, 113, 116, 118, 120, 126, 319, 341, 346

Talmud 67n47, 164 The Latter Prophets 16, 22, 31, 212–213, 330, 337 The Law, as canonical category 28, 141, 211, 213, 215, 215n7, 225, 304, 329–330, 332, 333n12, 335, 339, 339n32, see also Torah – as instruction 110n41, see also Torah, as instruction – Josiah’s book of 287, 333–334, 350 – prophetic understanding of 215, 310 The Major Prophets/The Three 17, 22, 29, 159, 163–165, 168, 173–174, 177, 180, 187, 210, 212–213, 215–216, 218, 227–228, 337, 344, 349, 354 Torah, Books of Moses/Pentateuch 2–3, 16, 26, 31–32, 67n47, 72, 92, 98n9, 122–126, 140, 190, 211, 213, 215, 225, 233, 246, 259, 295–296, 300n25, 329–331, 331n7, 333–334, 337, 346, 350, 353, 353n80, 356, see also The Law, as canonical category – as instruction 21, 215, 222, see also The Law, as instruction

Zechariah, Book of 12, 54–56, 68n49, 69, 82, 84, 143, 164–165, 172, 185, 196, 201, 207, 214, 218, 223–224, 294, 315–316, 319, 324 – prophet 55–56, 58, 69, 224–225, 294, 311, 313–314, 316, 341 Zephaniah, Book of 162–164, 172–174, 187, 201–202, 223, 309, 339, 342–343 – prophet 134, 162, 174 Zion 8n18, 12, 12n28, 14n32, 21, 28, 47, 50, 54–55, 57, 57n19, 59–60, 66, 66n45, 68–69, 80, 83, 96, 100, 103, 112, 132–133, 149, 166, 168, 171–173, 185, 190n39, 191–192, 206, 216, 223, 318, 320, 323–325, 366–368 – defeat of 49, 266 – deliverance of 8n18, 11, 47–48, 83, 207 – future of 6, 47–49, 112, 172, 208, 270–271, 369 – theology of/traditions concerning 48, 132, 138–139, 306

Wadi Murabbaʾat 164 Wisdom 24, 64, 223, 271 – ANE phenomena 26 – as hermeneutical category 26, 165n32, 360–361, 363, 370 – as literary category 7, 16, 31, 31n65, 137, 143, 170, 213