The Unity of Isaiah

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One Body in Sickness and in Health


Does the world really need another commentary on the Book of Isaiah? Well, does the world ever need a new telescope with which to observe the stars?

Like those heavenly lights, the Word of God is the constant, but the clarity with which we observe it changes over time. That increase in comprehension is usually incremental; for example, some new insight on the meaning of a Hebrew word gained from an Akkadian cognate, or the discovery of the location of an ancient city named in the text.

As a result, a new commentary will mostly “commentate” the work of its predecessors. There is nothing wrong with this. Because a continued “reassembly” of knowledge works to critique and solidify previous gains in understanding, fact-gathering is extremely helpful when practiced by skilled and godly minds. As a fresh meditation upon all that has been written before, every new book is a meeting of minds. Strung together, the labors through the centuries comprise a process of sifting. Even the errant theories and bogus assertions serve to hone our knowledge as they are debated and eventually discarded.

However, we have a problem when the tomes are getting bigger and bigger but not better and better. As is necessary, these books are not just repositories of enlightening facts and helpful exposition, but also of conflicting opinions on puzzles that remain to be solved.

The trouble is that this baggage, which has accumulated over the centuries, is growing rather than shrinking. These layers of sediment, much like the speculations of the rabbis, are not the result of a growing understanding of the text so much as evidence of an inability to get to the bottom of it.

If they did understand it, they could explain the reasons for its apparent oddities and obscurities clearly, succinctly, and with a minimum of conflict. Out of five plausible theories, one might finally be verified, agreed upon, and its proponents vindicated. Technical commentaries could then lose some of the ballast, and all of the barnacles.

Until that occurs, these mammoth publications not only obscure the text as much as they illuminate it, but also imply to both clergy and laity that anything beyond a rudimentary comprehension of the Bible is impossible without mastery of the original languages and a familiarity with two millennia of theological discussion.

Thus, quite unwittingly, the hermeneutical “industry” has become a burden for the people, a hindrance instead of a help. In the search for answers, pastors pay big bucks for big books that turn out to be anthologies of guesswork. And Christians are left to wonder why the experts are still so mystified. The Bible is designed to provoke deep thought and intellectual labor, but exegesis seems far more arbitrary than it ought to be if the Bible were actually the Word of God.

So, there are two questions to be asked by the reader of this commentary. Firstly, is there anything to be written about the Book of Isaiah that has not been said before? And secondly, if something new is being said, is it just more novel assertions, vain speculations, and unverifiable opinions to be added “line upon line” to a pile that now reaches to high heaven?

Perhaps more than any other book of the Bible, Isaiah itself is a formidable mountain to be scaled. Because it lacks an obvious narrative and often disregards chronology, it is, as they say, something that is more to be endured than enjoyed.

Add to its lack of plot the enigmatic character of most of its scenes and we can understand why, for many, reading Isaiah is like watching a foreign movie without any subtitles.

Other parts of the Bible are similarly obscure, but not in such an extended manner. Aside from a cluster of inspiring verses “rescued” from the prophecies’ mostly unfathomable sea, Isaiah takes far more than it gives.

This book is an attempt, and I believe a successful one, to change that forever. It might be described as a “map” of the prophecy, but that would not do it justice. Such maps that I have read are little more than summaries, a list of ingredients without any insight into the methodology of the chef, let alone what he was actually cooking.

So, this “map” is not like a map of the landscape that simply tells you what there is and where it is. It gets into the mind of the author, looks at each piece and shows you not only why it is, but also why it is where it is. Instead of counting off the chapters like a prisoner marking the days on his cell wall, the reader will come to perceive the excesses of the prophet as an extended, roudy, literary feast that he never wants to end.

“Leave them wanting more” might seem like advice that Isaiah rejected—until we realize what’s actually cooking, and our impatience turns to delight. As I have written elsewhere, we want quick judgments from the prophets, but instead God invites us to take our time and swill the delicate flavors of every single variety of grape in the Vineyard of Wrath.1

As a literary guide, The Shape of Isaiah is not intended to serve as a commentary so much as a curator. Instead of rattling on about the history of the subject of each painting, important as that is for our understanding of the text, this book focuses on the technique of the artist, explaining his careful use of light and shadow, color and monochrome, brush and knife.

Since the text is not static like a painting, the prophet’s use of melody, rhythm, and reprise are also illuminating. These elements are not mere ornament; they are the keys to the text. This means that identifying them is just as important a technical pursuit as translating the Hebrew words.

Other commentaries describe all of the isolated parts, but none of them manages to put a firm finger on what actually makes it tick as literature. This analysis shows you exactly how it all fits together, and how that structure is not just helpful but utterly indispensable for the work of interpretation.

Without a handle on the internal logic of the work, the best theologians can only deal with it as a literary shambles. They can describe each piece of the mosaic—what color it is, where it was sourced from, and how it was made—but they do not perceive the image that they comprise as parts of the whole.

Without that visual “key,” the deliberate, meticulous, “crystalline” arrangement of the book is misperceived as chaos. David Dorsey writes:

All literary compositions have a structure. A book, a personal letter, a sermon, even a recipe, has an internal arrangement, sometimes referred to as “surface structure.” A typical sermon, for example, may be organized into three parts: introduction, body of three points, and conclusion. A sermon would not be appreciated if it simply consisted of hundreds of unrelated statements, one after the other, without any discernible order.
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The practice of structuring communication, whether written or oral, is universal among humans, as shown by studies among numerous languages and dialects throughout the world. Humans need and appreciate communication that is arranged and organized.
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This was true in ancient Israel. The pages of the Old Testament reflect a keen interest in literary structure. Hebrew authors and editors generally took great pains to arrange their compositions in ways that would help convey their messages…
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Analyzing the structures of Old Testament books is difficult for two reasons. First, the Hebrew authors used no visual, graphic structure markers to help readers follow their organization. The original manuscripts of their compositions, like most written works from ancient times, probably contained few if any graphic indicators of their organization. The chapter and verse divisions in the Old Testament were added centuries after the Old Testament books were written. In contrast to modern Bibles, the text of ancient Hebrew manuscripts generally ran on and on without break, filling column after column from top to bottom and from side to side, without set-off titles, subtitles, indentations, or other visual structure indicators. Modern readers are unaccustomed to such lack of visual helps…
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The absence of such visual structure markers does not mean that ancient authors were unmindful of the structure of their composition or that their compositions had less rigorous structural patterns than our modern books. On the contrary, numerous linguistic studies of various unwritten tribal languages suggest that aurally-oriented compositions generally feature sophisticated structural patterns, indeed, often more sophisticated than our modern Western counterparts. The blandness of an ancient text’s appearance reflects rather the cultural reality that ancient texts were written primarily to be heard, not seen. Texts were normally intended to be read aloud, whether one was reading alone or to an audience. Accordingly, an ancient writer was compelled to use structural signals that would be perceptible to the listening audience. Signals were geared for the ear, not the eye, since visual markers would be of little value to a listening audience.
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To study structure in the Hebrew Bible, then, requires paying serious attention to verbal structure indicators—as we do, for example, when we listen to a sermon and try to grasp its general outline and main points. The Hebrew Bible is full of such verbal structure cues… To follow a biblical author’s organization, one must learn to watch (or listen!) for aural structure markers.
The second difficulty in studying structure in the Hebrew Bible is that ancient Hebrew structuring patterns and techniques were different from ours. For example, symmetry, parallelism, and structured repetition appear throughout the Old Testament; these and related patterns are so foreign to modern readers that it is easy to miss—or misunderstand—them.2
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If you have ever seen a picture of the Great Isaiah Scroll from Qumran, you will understand what Dorsey is saying. The Hebrew text is a featureless stream of data. The only way to perceive the structure of the text, and via the structure the full meaning of the text, is to “convert” it into the spoken word.

This, of course, relates to the nature of the Word of God itself, which only comes alive when it “takes on flesh.”

For modern readers, an awareness of such devices is more than an aid to hermeneutics. A structural analysis quickly dispatches the debate over whether the Book of Isaiah is a single work or an anthology of works by different authors.

Since no method could be discerned behind the apparent “madness” in the book’s arrangement, another explanation was proposed—Isaiah’s original work had one, maybe two, “reboots” by later authors. These are referred to as Deutero-Isaiah and Trito-Isaiah, which is the academic equivalent of numbering movie sequels with Roman numerals. What we call the Book of Isaiah is thought by many to be a miniature literary tradition within the canon of scripture.

Arguments for multiple authors can be traced back as far as the Middle Ages. They were formalized in 1788 by J. C. Doederlein, and popularized by Berhard Duhm in 1982.

Today, few theologians reject the consensus that the book was a compilation of works by more than one “Isaiah.”

The main reason for this theory is the obvious shift in tone and content between chapters 1-39, 40-55 and 56-66. (Some within this school take the idea even further, dividing the book into smaller fragments by numerous authors.)

Duhm theorized that each of the three segments was from a different historical period: pre-exilic, exilic and post-exilic. This solid observation certainly raises a good question, but is an assumption of multiple authorship over successive eras a good answer? If true, it compromises not only the integrity of the prophecy, but also the integrity of the authors or redactors who tried to pass off later writings as the work of the original prophet, not to mention the trustworthiness of the Bible itself.

If it can be shown that Isaiah is in fact the work of a single author, the intention of the very first verse of the book is not compromised. As Barry G. Webb writes:

There is no denying that the book contains a great diversity of material. It moves from verse to prose and back again many times. There are lawsuits, hymns, narratives, terrifying descriptions of judgment and tender passages of comfort. The many changes of character and scene, mood and style, can be quite bewildering. Scholarship has generally responded to this diversity by separating out the various elements and subjecting each of them to independent, intense scrutiny, a strategy which has not been without its value. But the opening verse points the reader in a fundamentally different direction. It subsumes all this diverse material under the heading ‘the vision of Isaiah…’ It tells us that what we are about to read is fundamentally one thing, an integrated whole. It is not just that it is all attached in some way or another to one person (the ‘visions’ or ‘words’ of Isaiah would have served well enough to convey that), but that the varied content itself amounts to a single thing, one gigantic vision, and that we will have to apply ourselves to reading it as such if we are to understand it.3
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Webb rightly understands that the blatant divisions in the text are actually turning points and climaxes, just as we find in dramatic presentations such as novels, plays, and cinema. As divisions between “acts,” these are evidence of the literary integrity of the book rather than fissures in a fragmented composition, doing precisely the opposite of what those who rely on historical or redactionist methodologies claim.

In fact, the abrupt “markers” that provoked the question concerning authorship in the first place are themselves the evidence that verifies the correct answer, and it is not multiple authorship. The “jagged edges” within the book are not the result of later authors or redactors shunting different works together like railway carriages, not even merely episodic dramatic devices. Instead, they are artifacts of the chiastic (symmetrical) arrangement of the book, a plan that can only be explained if it were composed by a single author.

A Condemnation, pleading, promise of restoration (1-12)
B Oracles against the nations (13-27)
C Collection of woe messages (28-35)
D Historical narratives (36-39)
C1 Yahweh’s supremacy over worthless idols (40-48)
B1 Songs of the Servant (49-54)
A1 Condemnation, pleading, promise of restoration (55-66)
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Although it is not obvious from all of the section titles, the corresponding parts in the symmetry share similar themes. We will consider these in the overview of the book.

The point here is to say that Dorsey’s Isaiah chiasm fells the higher critics’ multiple-author theory with a single blow.

Imagine a builder constructing, say, a third of a bridge in the hope that other later builders might cotton on and finish the job after he has passed away. It is a ridiculous assertion.

If we turn the standard chiastic presentation on its side, it does indeed resemble a bridge, and this is another clue to the purpose of the author in his arrangement of the book.

The symmetry is not ornamental but didactic. As any good teacher knows, there is no point shouting at your students from the other side of the river of knowledge. You must meet them where they are and take them to where you are; you must become a bridge.

Isaiah’s literary bridge has steps, which explains the sudden shifts, but where exactly was he taking his class? Well, to the future of course. Old, corrupt Jerusalem was on one side of the bridge, and a new, pure Jerusalem was on the other—a city free of idolatry. In other words, the book as whole describes a process of destruction and restoration. This particular river of knowledge was the River of Death, and this “bridge” went under the water.

The City of David, like the world of Noah, would undergo a baptism at God’s hand. It would die and be resurrected. That is why it was not referred to as “the holy city” until after the exile. The restoration extended the purity of the Temple to the walls and gates of the city as a more glorious “body.” Dividing the book into disparate historical pieces misses the point of its deliberate arrangement. Walter Brueggemann writes:

The book of Isaiah is like a great fugue, always advancing to fresh statements, at the same time continually returning to pick up and restate themes already sounded. The book is a longitudinal study of the destiny of the city of Jerusalem, for the book believes that all the purposes of God and all the claims of Israel are concentrated in that old and troubled city. Over the centuries, the city of Jerusalem was buffeted about in turn by the Assyrians, the Babylonians, and the Persians. The book of Isaiah asserts that all the vagaries of international history and geopolitics are to be understood in and through the hidden, resolved working of Yahweh, the God of Israel.
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The pivot point of the book of Isaiah is in the unwritten, unspoken silence between verses 39:8 and 40:1. It is commonly thought that chapters 1-39 come from an older prophetic source in the Assyrian period (between 740 and 700 B.C.E.) and chapter 40 begins a new theme in the Babylonian period, two centuries later (540 B.C.E.). In that textual gap the book of Isaiah encompasses the destruction of Jerusalem in 587 B.C.E. by the Babylonians and the deportation of the people from Jerusalem into Babylonian exile. Chapters 1-39, with insistent warning, move toward that destruction and deportation; chapter 40 in turn begins a hope-filled move out of exile into a new historical possibility of homecoming for deportees, a homecoming willed by Yahweh. In its two parts, the book of Isaiah is about deportation and homecoming, about loss and hope. But in terms of Yahweh’s intention, it is about the judgment of God upon Jerusalem and the deliverance of God for a new Jerusalem.
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The judgment of God upon the city of Jerusalem that culminates in destruction and deportation is rooted in the old Torah traditions of Moses. From its beginning, Israel is under the commands of Yahweh, and its well-being depends upon response to Yahweh in the form of obedience… [but] even at its most devastating the faith of the book of Isaiah everywhere affirms that beyond judgment, Yahweh will work a newness of well-being…
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The sweep of the book of Isaiah is unparalleled in the Bible for lining out the history and destiny of Jerusalem, a history and destiny that have a deep fissure at the center. This poetic account is so crucial for biblical faith, because Jerusalem is the sign and embodiment of Yahweh’s way with the world, so that we may extrapolate God’s way here to God’s way elsewhere, a way of fidelity, judgment, and healing…
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The grid of the book of Isaiah is Jerusalem lost and Jerusalem restored, with the fissure located between chapters 39 and 40. That is clear and concrete. Without denying that, it has been possible in Christian interpretation to see that this grid of lost and restored becomes the way in which the pivotal events in the life of Jesus are construed:
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loss = crucifixion;
restoration = resurrection:
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“That Christ died for our sins in accordance with the scriptures, and that he was buried, and that he was raised on the third day in accordance with the scriptures…” (1 Corinthians 15:3-4). That is, the life of Jesus relives the life of Jerusalem. In both cases, it is the miracle of restoration (resurrection) that is “the news.”4
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What Brueggemann misses is the fact that the major shift or pivot does not occur “in the unwritten, unspoken silence between verses 39:8 and 40:1.” The pivot is actually the historical narrative itself (36-39), and that is the reason why it was included. The story of Isaiah’s interaction with King Hezekiah did not need to be repeated for any reason other than a theological one. It was included to make a point.

Just as Brueggemann observes that Jesus “relives the life of Jerusalem,” this earlier king of Judah himself underwent death and resurrection in a symbolic sense. Moreover, the reason why the events in the narrative section are slightly out of order is because they are a microcosm of the seven sections of the entire book. This is further evidence that the Book of Isaiah is the work of a single author.

What is “unwritten, unspoken” is not the pivot itself but the theological explanation of the narrative. Isaiah begins with a city so corrupt that renovation (in spiritual terms) will be impossible. Like the Levitical laws concerning leprosy, this corruption is shared by the people of the city (Leviticus 13) and their houses (Leviticus 14). This is why the prophet describes the idolatry and injustices of the City of David in terms of human sickness.

The whole head is sick,
and the whole heart faint.
From the sole of the foot even to the head,
there is no soundness in it,
but bruises and sores
and raw wounds;
they are not pressed out or bound up
or softened with oil.
(Isaiah 1:5a-6)

The House of David would become so derelict that the only remedy would be to tear it down. Jesus also alludes to the laws concerning “house leprosy” in His condemnation of the Temple.

Jesus left the temple and was going away, when his disciples came to point out to him the buildings of the temple. But he answered them, “You see all these, do you not? Truly, I say to you, there will not be left here one stone upon another that will not be thrown down.” (Matthew 24:1-2)

It is not until after Hezekiah is healed and writes a testimony of praise to God that the nature of the sickness and the cure is revealed. This is the “apocalypse” of the episode, the key to the main reason for the inclusion of the historical narrative.

Now Isaiah had said, “Let them take a cake of figs and apply it to the boil, that he may recover.” Hezekiah also had said, “What is the sign that I shall go up to the house of the Lord?” (Isaiah 38:21-22)

This is the point at which we discover the connection between the first chapter and the pivot of the prophecy. Because of his faith, Hezekiah was being honored by God as a priest-king. The priest bears the sacrificial knife as a mediator for men, and the king bears the sword against evil doers as a mediator for God. These two roles were prefigured in the Tree of Life (priestly submission to heaven) and the Tree of Knowledge (dominion of the earth). The sin of all men is the sin of Adam—seizing what God has promised but without the obedience required of us.

The sin of Adam was repeated in a social sense in the murder of priestly Abel by the natural heir, kingly Cain. After the exile of Cain, the same sin was repeated in a national sense in the intermarriage between the two family trees—the priesthood of Seth and the kingdom of Lamech. This resulted in a society so godless and unjust that the only remedy was the destruction of the entire race.

After the Great Flood, faithful Noah was commissioned as the first priest-king, a man who was meek before God (priesthood) and bore the sword as a judge with both justice and mercy (kingdom).

The line of Noahic priest-kings included two kings of Jerusalem: faithful Melchizedek and unfaithful Adonizedek. Since the Noahic order was becoming corrupt, the Lord split humanity in two, setting apart Israel as a priestly people to prevent the contagion that led to the Flood.

The Noahic order also included Job and the other “sons of God” whom the Lord assembled before Him in worship for inspection. We see a similar event in Revelation where the Christ—as the priest-king of a new “Melchizedekian” order—inspects the pastors of the churches of Asia.

Job was singled out by God as “the best of the flock,” and this explains the reason for his suffering. His colleagues were convinced that he was judged by God because he was not as blameless as he appeared. But in terms of his role, he himself was no longer offering sacrifices but bearing the sins of his people in his own body.

For this is a gracious thing, when, mindful of God, one endures sorrows while suffering unjustly. For what credit is it if, when you sin and are beaten for it, you endure? But if when you do good and suffer for it you endure, this is a gracious thing in the sight of God. For to this you have been called, because Christ also suffered for you, leaving you an example, so that you might follow in his steps. He committed no sin, neither was deceit found in his mouth. When he was reviled, he did not revile in return; when he suffered, he did not threaten, but continued entrusting himself to him who judges justly. He himself bore our sins in his body on the tree, that we might die to sin and live to righteousness. By his wounds you have been healed. For you were straying like sheep, but have now returned to the Shepherd and Overseer of your souls. (1 Peter 2:19-25)

Job’s office as a priest-king5 explains the nature of his trials. Firstly, all of the trappings of kingdom—his dynasty and his wealth—were taken from him. Secondly, his own body was no longer “without spot” in the sight of God. In ceremonial terms, he was no longer qualified to lead worship.

And the Lord spoke to Moses, saying, “Speak to Aaron, saying, None of your offspring throughout their generations who has a blemish may approach to offer the bread of his God. For no one who has a blemish shall draw near, a man blind or lame, or one who has a mutilated face or a limb too long, or a man who has an injured foot or an injured hand, or a hunchback or a dwarf or a man with a defect in his sight or an itching disease or scabs or crushed testicles. No man of the offspring of Aaron the priest who has a blemish shall come near to offer the Lord’s food offerings; since he has a blemish, he shall not come near to offer the bread of his God. He may eat the bread of his God, both of the most holy and of the holy things, but he shall not go through the veil or approach the altar, because he has a blemish, that he may not profane my sanctuaries, for I am the Lord who sanctifies them.” So Moses spoke to Aaron and to his sons and to all the people of Israel. (Leviticus 21:16-24).

But in actual terms, Job had become a living sacrifice. This is why Jesus provoked the Pharisees—those who valued their physical perfection but whose hearts were not perfect before God—to pluck out an eye or cut off a limb (Matthew 5:27-30). For them, ceremony had become a cloak for hypocrisy.

Now, unlike Job, Hezekiah could not be an actual priest-king. Those roles were deliberately divided within Israel for the same reason that they were divided between Israel and the Gentiles—to prevent spiritual contagion until the Savior came. He would end the need for continual animal sacrifices by dying on the earth (priesthood), and establish a true and lasting dynasty by sending His Spirit from heaven (kingdom).

King Uzziah’s sin in the Sanctuary was “Adamic” in the sense that he attempted to unite these offices before God’s time. We are told that he was proud, but in ceremonial terms his actions were a claim to be a divine savior—a king like those of the Gentiles.

As a result he was excluded from the house of the Lord in the same way that Adam was exiled from the Garden (2 Chronicles 26:16-23). Unlike Hezekiah, he was not healed, and thus he pictured the fate of the proud City of David.

This is perhaps why Isaiah was called by God in the year that King Uzziah died (Isaiah 6:1). His commissioning occurs not at the beginning of the prophecy, as is the case in other books, but at the center of the first section—just as Hezekiah’s sickness is at the center of the entire book. Indeed, the first “volume” of Isaiah (1-12) is the first instance of the complete prophecy in miniature.

Hezekiah could not be a priest-king without coming under judgment, but unlike Uzziah he could be a priestly king, like his father, David, who ate the bread of God (1 Samuel 21:3-6). In other words, unlike Uzziah, his sickness was not a judgment for his owns sins, but a bearing of the curse for the sins of others. He himself had borne the “ten steps” of the Law of Moses in his own body (Isaiah 38:8).

As Isaiah would give the king a sign, so also Hezekiah himself was a sign to a city covered in bruises and open sores. He was a human “type,” a legal representative of the work of God. Just like Noah, he was a “bridge” from the old world to the new. God would reverse the course of the natural world and “turn back time,” creating, in covenantal terms, “a new heaven and a new earth.”

After Hezekiah was healed by Isaiah, he asked when his exclusion from the house of the Lord would end. In this, he represents all Israel returning to Jerusalem and rebuilding the Temple after the captivity. Like Hezekiah, Israel suffered for its own sins, but also for the sins of the surrounding nations. 6

Thus, the ultimate proof of the unity of Isaiah is the sickness and health of the Judahic king at the center of the history—Uzziah as a reprise of the first Adam and the city of Man, and Hezekiah as a promise (though imperfect, like his father) of a better Adam, a suffering servant (priest) who is also, somehow, a king.

The Shape of Isaiah: A Covenant-literary Analysis will be available in 2022. If you would like to support this project you can become a subscriber or make a one-off donation via Paypal to mbull [at] bullartistry.com.au

  1. See “Cooking as Eschatology” and “Eschatology as Cooking” in Michael Bull, God’s Kitchen: Theology You Can Eat & Drink.
  2. David A. Dorsey, The Literary Structure of the Old Testament: A Commentary on Genesis – Malachi, 15-16.
  3. Barry G. Webb, The Message of Isaiah, 26-27.
  4. Walter Brueggemann, “A Story of Loss and Hope,” Sojourners,
    November-December 1998.
  5. See James B. Jordan, “Was Job an Edomite King?” Biblical Horizons 130 & 131.
  6. Not only did Israel’s priesthood offer sacrifices for all nations, but, like Abraham, Israel directly bore the Edenic curse of barrenness upon the land and the womb. This burden increased in intensity as one approached the House of the Lord: the Levites possessed no land, and the virgins who served at the Tabernacle bore no children.
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