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ISAIAH THE
PROPHET
Anonymous (Investgator 89, 2003
March)
TWO SETS OF PROPHECIES The book of
Isaiah in the
Old Testament has
two sets or categories of prophecies:
2 Prophecies for the distant future, the "last days". Before discussing these two sets of prophecies let's see whether Isaiah is credible and reliable.TESTABLE MATERIAL CORRECT Isaiah has many statements confirmed correct. Isaiah 44:9-20
criticises
the stupidity of
worshipping idols. Every ancient nation around Israel from Spain to
Persia,
tens of millions of people, worshipped idols. Yet all such worship
eventually
vanished. Some idols survive as museum pieces – not as gods worshipped.
Isaiah's counsel is thus confirmed.
In the 19th
century critics rejected
the existence of Sargon of Assyria. (Isaiah 20:1) In 1843
archaeologists
excavated his palace at Khorsabad and various inscribed records. They
confirmed
that Sargon was a powerful Assyrian king who reigned 721-705 BC.
It's been
estimated that
30% of people in
Western countries take astrology seriously. Yet Isaiah condemned the
trust
Babylon placed in astrologers:
Let them stand forth and save you, Those who divide the heavens, who gaze at the stars, Who at the new moons predict what shall befall you. Behold, they are like stubble, the fire consumes them; They cannot deliver themselves from the power of the flame. (47:13-14) That astrology
is
worthless for predicting
the future of individuals and of nations is confirmed by science. The Weekend
Australian, for example, reported on "astrological bunk". (1985,
December
14-15)
30% of people are wrong but Isaiah is right. Isaiah condemned
excessive
drinking of wine.
(5:22) Tens of millions of people ignore this to their own detriment.
Isaiah
doesn't mention health or psychological reasons, but health reasons are
given in the book of Proverbs. Isaiah also condemned bribery.
(5:23)
Again, millions ignore this and the result is "corruption" in law and
politics
to the detriment, sometimes, of entire nations.
People often
justify their
moral lapses by
relabelling evil as good. One Nazi leader called the Nazi murderers of
millions of people in Eastern Europe "decent". Parents who sexually
abuse
their children often say, "I saw nothing wrong with it." By considering
a large range of moral evils – thievery, lying, immorality, terrorism,
smoking, etc – we see that everyone performs the self-deception
of labelling evil as good and good as evil. Such moral relabelling was
common in Isaiah's time too and he condemned it:
who put darkness for light and light for darkness, who put bitter for sweet and sweet for bitter! (5:20) Prior to the
finding
of the Dead Sea
Scrolls the oldest manuscript of Isaiah was a 10th century
CE
copy. Skeptics could therefore claim that Isaiah was revised and
changed
century after century and the original was very different to what's in
our Bibles.
However, the
Dead Sea
Scrolls discovered
from 1947 to 1956 included a copy of Isaiah in Hebrew copied in the 2nd
century BCE. It revealed that the text stayed almost constant over the
centuries. Geisler and Nix (1968) compared the Dead Sea Scroll of
Isaiah
Chapter 53 with the Masoretic Text of the tenth century. Chapter 53 has
166 words. In 1,000 years only one word was added, the word "light" to
verse 11. This confirmed what Isaiah predicted:
but the word of our God will stand forever. (40:8) This was a bold
prophecy considering
that both Assyria and Babylon – the world's "super powers" around 700
BCE
and 600 BCE respectively – tried to extinguish the Jews and their
worship.
Furthermore, in 2001 translation of the whole Bible reached 392
languages,
which means Isaiah is available in at least that many – "the
word
of our God will stand forever."
THE PROPHET Isaiah was a
prophet who
lived in Jerusalem.
He became a prophet in the last year of the reign of King Uzziah of
Judah
in 740 BCE. (6:1) Isaiah was married and had two sons. The last
historical
event he mentions is the death of King Sennacherib of Assyria
(37:37-38)
which occurred in 681 BCE.
Isaiah's
prophetic
ministry lasted 60 years
and overlapped the reigns of five kings of Judah:
When Isaiah was young the
Old Testament prophets
Hosea, Micah, Amos and Joel were active. After his death there were no
prophets for fifty years. Then came Jeremiah, Ezekiel, Daniel, Obadiah,
Zephaniah and Habakkuk.
The major
political events
of Isaiah's time
included:
732 BCE: Tiglath-pileser III of Assyria devastated Northern Israel and deported the population of Galilee. (2 Kings 15:29) 720 BCE: Sargon of Assyria destroyed the ten-tribe Northern Kingdom of Israel. 710 BCE: Sargon defeated a coalition of nations – Babylon, Elam, Phoenicia, Moab, Edom, Philistia, Egypt, etc. 701 BCE: Sennacherib of Assyria attacked all the cities of Judah. Isaiah
chapters 1-39 are
set in the Assyrian
period. Isaiah prophesied the destruction of many nations. The
Assyrians
carried out many of these predictions during Isaiah's lifetime.
Chapters 40-66
are set in
the time of the
Babylonian Empire. In 605-585 BCE the Babylonians deported the Jews in
a series of invasions resulting in the "seventy-year-captivity". Isaiah
40-66 was written to comfort the captives and to predict their release
by Cyrus of Persia who conquered Babylon in 539 BCE. This occurred 140
years after Isaiah's death.
ONE ISAIAH OR SEVERAL? Many scholars
argue that
chapters 40 to 66
were not written by Isaiah but by at least one later writer and the
various
works were subsequently combined. This is the skeptic's conclusion –
since
if Isaiah around 700 BCE wrote about the Jewish captivity in Babylon,
which
started about 600 BCE, and even named Cyrus of Persia (44:28; 45:1) who
released the Jews in 537 BCE, it would imply prophecy inspired by God.
Conservative
scholars, in
contrast, argue
that the book of Isaiah has a literary structure and unity that implies
one
author. For example:
The
structure…declares
the unity of the
book, and effectually disposes of the alleged dual authorship and the
hypothetical
division of the book by modern critics into two parts…
(The
Companion Bible
1972 p. 930)
Conservative
scholars
also point to various
unifying features such as the phrase "Holy One of Israel". It occurs 12
times in chapters 1 to 39, 13 times in chapters 40 to 66 and only five
times in the rest of the Old Testament. (Douglas et al 1982)
The oldest known scroll of Isaiah – the 2nd-century BCE scroll – is one book but is not old enough to settle the debate. The New Testament treats Isaiah as one book and uses Isaiah's name 22 times. However, that's not relevant evidence of its unity to skeptics since to accept it is to accept the authority of the New Testament which skeptics don't accept.
"FIRST" ISAIAH – CLEAR PROPHECIES Trying to
dispose of
Isaiah's accurate prophecies
by dividing Isaiah into two or three books doesn't suffice because the
alleged "first" Isaiah also has true prophecies fulfilled centuries
later.
For example
regarding the
Philistines:
This predicts
the
extinction of the Philistines.
The prophet Amos concurs: "…the remnant of the Philistines shall
perish."
(Amos 1:8) The Philistines get lost to history after 500 BCE:
Another prophecy
is
about Babylon:
Funk & Wagnalls says, "The temples [of Babylon] continued in use for a time, but the city became insignificant and almost disappeared before the coming of Islam in the 7th century AD." Alexander the Great tried to overturn Isaiah's prophecy. Funk and Wagnall's says, "Alexander the Great captured the city in 330 BC and planned to rebuild it and make it the capital of his vast empire…" Alexander conquered lands from North Africa to India and then planned to turn west and conquer Europe. In 323 BCE emissaries from many Western lands visited him. Babylon would have become the capital of the world utterly refuting Isaiah. Instead, the
military
genius who ruled the
largest ancient empire came to ruin. Alexander died, aged only 33, and
his empire disintegrated and Isaiah's prophecy triumphed.
19th and 20th century visitors to Babylon sometimes commented on its desolation and the howling of jackals among the ruins.
ISAIAH – TWO GROUPS OF PROPHECIES Some sectarian religions give many of Isaiah's prophecies two fulfilments. They might give Isaiah's denunciation against Jerusalem a second application against Christendom or against the United States. Isaiah's prophecies of doom against various nations like Babylon are similarly given parallels with modern nations or modern institutions. Sectarian prophecies based on such a double-fulfilment notion have always failed. Furthermore, Isaiah nowhere hints at multiple meanings to "Israel", "Babylon", "Assyria", etc. Therefore I
conclude that
Isaiah intended
one fulfilment for his predictions.
Isaiah, however,
contains
two groups of prophecies.
I do not mean the prophecies for the Assyrian period and
Babylonian/Persian
period.
Rather the two
sets I
refer to are:
2 Prophecies for the distant future — "the last days". Read Isaiah
Chapter 1.
There Jerusalem
(around 740 BCE) is called a "prostitute" and condemned: "Once the home
of justice and righteousness,
she is now filled with murderers." (1:21)
In chapter 1, Isaiah is concerned with Jerusalem of his time and the immediate future. Chapter 2 introduces "another vision that Isaiah…saw". It's about the distant future, the "last days" or "latter days":
It shall come
to pass in
the latter
[last] days that the mountain of the house of the LORD shall be
established
as the highest of the mountains, and shall be raised above the hills;
and
all the nations
shall flow to it, and many peoples shall come and say: "Come, let us go to the mountain of the LORD, and the house of the God of Jacob; that he may teach us his ways and that we may walk in his paths." He shall judge
between the
nations, and shall
decide for many people; and they shall beat their
Isaiah's
long-range
predictions are about
these "last days" and how they start and how they end.
The phrase "the
last days"
occurs 14 times
in the Old Testament and five times in the New Testament:
The Old Testament does not state when the
"last days" start. A clue is in Daniel chapter 2. There King
Nebuchadnezzar
has a vision about the "last days". (Daniel 2:28) The vision lists four
successive kingdoms or empires usually identified as:
1
Nebuchadnezzar's empire
of Babylon;
Nebuchadnezzar's
vision
culminates with the
"kingdom of God" replacing the fourth empire and lasting forever. The
"last
days" therefore commence during the time of the Roman Empire.
Another clue is
in Micah.
The prophet Micah
associates the "last days" with a ruler from Bethlehem who: "shall be
great
to the ends of the earth." (Micah 4:1 to 5:4)
The New
Testament is more
specific. It says
the "last days" had started in the year Jesus died. At Pentecost after
Jesus' death the Apostle Peter quoted the prophet Joel:
sons and your daughters will prophesy… I will show wonders in the heaven above and signs on the earth beneath, blood, and fire, and vapour of smoke; the sun shall be turned into darkness and the moon into blood, before the day of the Lord comes, the great and manifest day. (Acts 2:17-21 day. (3:8) This suggests
that
"the last days" refer
to thousands of years – the plural implies at least two "days" or 2,000
years.
The Old
Testament implied
that the "last
days" would start after three great empires had come and gone and a
ruler
out of Bethlehem becomes, "great to the ends of the earth." The New
Testament
clarifies this and suggests the "last days" started by 33 CE and would
go for thousands of years.
RELEVANCE OF TWO SETS OF PROPHECIES Prophecies about
the
immediate future were
relevant for Isaiah's immediate audience because the hearers would see
some predictions fulfilled and could therefore know the message was
reliable.
This gave them the option of heeding the ethics Isaiah taught and
returning
to God. (e.g. 1:2-27; 5:7-12; 10:1-3)
Prophecies about
the
distant future were
also relevant to Isaiah's immediate audience because such prophecies
offered
hope that the final result would be OK – all setbacks and all evil were
temporary and God would triumph.
People living
much later,
in the actual "last
days", would also find Isaiah relevant because they would experience
some
fulfilments in their time and could therefore also see Isaiah as
"inspired"
and trust in the predictions still to be fulfilled.
Isaiah
alternates between
the two sets of
prophecies. Chapter 1 applies to his time. Chapter Two introduces
the distant "last days". Many chapters have both categories – verses
about
the immediate future and verses about the distant future.
A provisional
list of
Isaiah's predictions
for the distant future (i.e. for the "last days"), using in most cases
the New Testament as a guide, follows:
RECURRING SITUATIONS Sometimes the
New
Testament refers to Isaiah
and applies the reference to the Christian era in cases where Isaiah is
not predicting the distant future. For example:
…continually
all day my
[God's] name is
despised. (52:5)
Compare: For it is
written, "The
name of God is
blasphemed among the Gentiles because of you." (Romans 2:24)
Such uses of
Isaiah
are made when a similar
situation recurs in the Christian era or when people repeated the evils
of earlier times and the same condemnation therefore fitted them. For
example,
if someone in the 21st century advocates Nazism I might
quote
Winston Churchill's criticisms of Nazism, not to imply that Churchill
prophesied
about the specific 21st-century individual but because the
same
condemnation of the same evil is valid across time. Other examples of
applying
Isaiah's words when similar situations recur are:
SUFFERING SERVANT Returning, now,
to
Isaiah's two categories
of prophecies. The "last days" would, as we saw in Isaiah 2 and Daniel
2, culminate in world peace under God's rule.
Isaiah's
long-range
predictions reveal events
leading to that world peace and necessary to achieve it. These events
include
the life of a righteous "suffering servant".
Isaiah mentions five servants of God:
The suffering servant in contrast is "righteous" and "suffered for our iniquities". He is without "deceit in his mouth" and "had done no violence". Isaiah 53 reads like the life of Jesus as in the New Testament.
Isaiah gives an
idea of
how widely this "servant"
would be known:
…so shall he
startle
many nations;
kings shall shut their mouths because of him… (52:15) This prediction is similar to what is predicted about the ruler from Bethlehem in the last days, "he shall be great to the ends of the earth." (Micah 4:1 - 5:4) This appears fulfilled as Christianity expanded and kings and nations converted to Christianity.
Because some of
Isaiah's
other prophecies
were about King Cyrus of Persia some people think the "suffering
servant"
refers to Cyrus. However, Cyrus is called God's "anointed" and
"shepherd"
(44:28 - 45:1-7; 41:25) but not God's "servant".
Such phrases as
"suffered
for our iniquities"
and "done no violence" and "righteous" do not describe Cyrus:
Surely there
is not a
righteous man on
earth who does good and never sins. (Ecclesiastes 7:20)
Cyrus was
anointed or
chosen to crush
the Babylonian Empire and send the exiled Jews back to Israel. Cyrus
fulfilled
that but not Isaiah's other prophecies such as:
He [God] will
swallow up
death forever,
and the LORD GOD will wipe away tears from all faces, and
the reproach of his people he will take away from all the earth, for the LORD has spoken. (25:8) VIRGIN BIRTH The New
Testament says:
Now all this
was done,
that it might be
fulfilled which was spoken of the LORD by the prophet,
saying, "Behold, a virgin shall be with child, and shall bring forth a Son, and they shall call His name Emmanuel, which being interpreted is, God with us." (Matthew 1:22-23 King James Bible)
This
prophecy is from
Isaiah 7:14 and
will be discussed separately.
CONCLUSIONS Accurate
history, accurate
prophecy, and
ethics that promote human good – and much of this still relevant in the
third millennium – is evidence Isaiah was inspired by someone whose
understanding
is unsearchable:
Who has
measured the
waters in the hollow
of his hand and marked off the heavens with a span, enclosed the dust
of
the earth in a measure and weighed the mountains in scales and the
hills
in a balance?…
All the nations are as nothing before him, and they are accounted by him as less than nothing and emptiness… The Lord is the everlasting God, the creator of the ends of the earth. He does not faint or grow weary, his understanding is unsearchable. (Isaiah 40) REFERENCES: Douglas, J D et al
(Editors) 1982, New Bible
Dictionary (Second Edition), Inter-Varsity Press, England, pp. 521-527.
Funk & Wagnall's
New Encyclopedia 1983,
Volume 3, Babylon.
Geisler, N.L. &
Nix, W. E. 1968, A General
Introduction to the Bible, Moody, USA.
Nolting, P. F. A
Prophetic Time-Term, The
Journal of Theology, Volume 24, September 1984, Number 3, pp. 25-38.
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