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[First posted in 2013. Isaiah as literature—who would have ever thought of reading it purely for its literary merits! Certainly not religionists who use verses here and there as ‘prooftext’ to bolster their doctrinal positions. You might be disappointed with this article; in fact it most likely will appeal only to literature majors. . . but give it a chance, there is always something to learn from a purely literary approach to Scripture. In fact it is the best way to read any text and specially, biblical text which is first and foremost, written records using literary devices as old as antiquity. This is from our MUST READ/MUST OWN resource: The Literary Guide to the Bible, eds. Robert Alter and Frank Kermode. Reformatting and highlights added.]
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ISAIAH
by Luis Alonso Schokel
The Book of Isaiah is a collection, like a lake into which the waters of various rivers and tributaries flow.
It is customary to divide it into three parts:
- Isaiah, chapters 1-39;
- Deutero-Isaiah, chapters 40-55;
- and Trito-Isaiah, chapters 56-66.
The first part may be subdivided into six units:
- chapters 1-12, a series of oracles, largely by Isaiah;
- 13-23, oracles against pagans, many of which were composed later;
- 24-27, eschatology, added very late as a conclusion to the series of oracles against the pagans;
- 28-33, a new series of prophecies by Isaiah with several late insertions;
- 34-35, a diptych, eschatological in character, linked to chapter 13 and to the style of Deutero-Isaiah;
- and 36-39, a narrative section, with poems inset.
The second part (chaps. 40-55)
- is the most compact and homogeneous
- and responds to the historical situation of the Exile,
- anticipating the return to Zion.
The third part (chaps. 56-66)
- continues some themes of the second, following its style
- while introducing oracles whose subject is judgment.
- It closes with a new eschatology, chapters 65-66,
- repeating almost fifty words from chapter 1
- and thus enclosing the entire book in a gigantic envelope structure.
Isaiah, one of the richest and most important books of the Old Testament, brings into focus centuries of historical experience and poetic concerns.
- The events covered by Isaiah himself unfold between about 767 and 698 B.C.E., as is indicated in the list of king’s reigns in the superscription.
- The prophetic calling, according to 6:1, occurred in 740 B.C.E. Deutero-Isaiah is situated about 553-539 B.C.E.
- Trito-Isaiah appears to be post-Exilic.
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Isaiah
Today few scholars regard Isaiah as the work of a single poet.
- Even a substantial part of chapters 1-39 has been attributed to other authors,
- and, of the remaining oracles, numerous verses may be considered as layers of later sedimentation.
- No one today attributes to Isaiah chapters 24-27, most of 13-14, a good part of 31-33, or the second half of 11.
- From chapter 10 we must exclude at least verses 10-12.
- But if we also eliminate the doubtful or disputed verses, such as 2:2-5 and 11:1-9, where shall we encounter sufficiently important poems?
- A compromise solution consists in moving through the book,
- stopping to take note of the most important poems, regardless of authorship.
- Our concern is the book rather than its author, though we do not wish to overlook him entirely.
In the following paragraphs I shall concentrate on
- the stylistic elements commonly employed in chapters 1-39
- and on the poetic world of chapters 40-66.
Although in the prophetic collections we cannot speak about personal styles because the tradition tends to concentrate on common themes and forms,
- some special traits permit us to consider Isaiah as a classical writer:
- classical because of the distance he places between experience and the poem.
- That is, rather than allowing the experience, however traumatic, to break out spontaneously like a scream, he transforms it consciously into poetry.
- Similarly, Isaiah does not insert himself into the poem in order to express his own reactions;
- he is much more objective than subjective.
- He does not use the “lyric irruption” so characteristic of Jeremiah.
- Add to this formal perfection and a particularity of style, achieved by numerous resources which he handles masterfully.
- The poetic distance and concern with form tell us that we are very far from ecstatic, half-conscious, spontaneous outbursts.
- The prophetic “oracles” may be brief, but they are considerably more than loose oracular phrases.
Although the poetry of Isaiah is objective, in that it does not seek to express personal emotions, it is an intensely rhetorical poetry.
- The prophet wants his words to create a particular reaction in his listeners;
- he wants to affect them, shake them, motivate them by confronting them with transcendental issues.
- From the first, he implores, “Hear, O heavens, and give ear, O earth: for the Lord hath spoken” (1:2), instead of “Hear, O Israel,” as if the people of Israel were not listening and the speaker had to implore nature to be the witness of God.
- Note the emphatic, initial alliteration, shim’u shamayim.
- In the second oracle (1:10-20) he confronts the “rulers of Sodom, the people of Gomorrah”—no captatio benevolentiae, no currying the goodwill of the audience, but—a violent shaking, uniting the people with their vicious overlords.
- The third oracle (1:21-26) begins with a lyric complaint that is in reality a denunciation seeking a change of heart, if not the prognostication of an inevitable punishment.
A noteworthy example of the movement from the lyrical to the rhetorical within a single poem is 5:1-7.
- The lyric tone is announced in the title, “A Song of My Beloved,”
- and in the modulations of the first person, singing the trials of love’s labors lost.
- A song of love is disguised as a work song.
- Suddenly, in the third verse, shifting toward the audience, the poem appeals to the jury in a legal dispute on love:
- look at all he has done for her and yet she refuses to reciprocate.
- The rhetorical artifice creates an ironic twist:
- the listeners become the judges of their own conduct (like David listening to Nathan’s parable, 2 Sam. 12).
Another rhetorical device consists—
- in evoking the response of the listeners in order to turn it back against them, creating a boomerang effect.
- In 28:9-13 the listeners mock the prophet, reducing his oracles to the level of a grade-school lesson in the ABCs.
- Isaiah picks up the joke, transforms it into the unintelligible language of an implacable enemy, and hurls it back at the speakers.
Between the lyrical and the rhetorical is mockery—the taunting description, the satire—seen, for example,
- in the vignette describing in detail the coquettish walk and wanton glances of the women of Zion (3:16),
- listing their physical adornments and personal belongings (3:19-23).
- A related satiric scene, the representation of the drunken magistrates (28:7-8), is frankly brutal.
In accord with the rhetoric and the culture of the epoch, the prophet composes poetry destined for oral recitation, perhaps as a ballad or song (see Ezek. 33:37).
- The oral character of the poetry—the auditory effects and the great importance given to the sonorous quality of the words—affects the composition.
- Modern scholars should try to listen to it.
- Repetitions or similar sounds link words and parallel phrases which then unite or contrast with one another.
- A dominant sound or a play on words may become serious and even tragic; paronomasia draws out of a name an entire destiny.
- The sound delights, surprises, emphasizes, and aids the memory.
- Here are a few examples from the first chapters:
1:4 hoy goy (“ah, nation’): the noun rhymes with the interjection, as if it were the echo of a shout.
1:10 ‘am ‘amora (“people of Gomorrah”): “people” appears almost as if it were a part of “Gomorrah.”
1:18 kashanim … kasheleg (“like scarlet… like snow”): the sounds are linked here in order to contrast the opposed meanings.
1:19-20 to’ khelu… te’ uklu (“shall eat … shall be eaten” [AR]): a play of antonyms.
2:12 heharim haramim (“high mountains”): an effect something like“mountains eminent” in English.
3:6 simlah lekha … hamakhshelah (“you have a mantle… heap of ruins” [AT]).
The Hebrew phrase, because of the simplicity of syntactical articulation and the scarcity of adjectives and adverbs, is customarily short. Only a few oratorical texts resort to an elaborate phrasing, with subordinate clauses (a good example is Deut. 8:7-18). Likewise, the best Hebrew narration advances in a succession of brief phrases. The syntactic simplicity can present a challenge for the poet who has to shape, concentrate, oppose, surprise, or provoke his audience. He may select a phrase suggesting a solemn beginning, a polished closing statement, or a phrase which halts and wounds the listener in its cleverness, its emotional charge, or its enigmatic reference.
The third oracle (1:21-26) begins with a complaint of five words rhymed in ah: ‘eikhah haytah lezonah qiryah ne’ manah, “How is the faithful city become a harlot,” and concludes: “You shall be called Faithful-City Justice-ville” [AT].
Here are a few more instances of compact phrase that have an arresting or epigrammatic force.
If you don’t believe, you won’t survive. (7:9 [AT])
I will trust and not fear. (12:2 [AT])
For the cry is gone round about the borders of Moab. (15:8)
Let us eat and drink; for tomorrow we shall die. (22:13)
We have made lies our refuge and in falsehood we have taken shelter (28:15 [RSV])
Many of these phrases are paralleled by others and reveal their force in context. Logically, they impose a slow, emphatic delivery. On the other hand, there are verses that occur more than once, so that they begin to etch themselves into one’s memory. Perhaps there may even have been music that accentuated the impact of such phrases. This style of composition is conceived for oral recitation but it is not improvised. It reveals a conscious and controlled craft that makes enormous formal demands on the poet.
The short Hebrew phrase lends itself to parallelism in poetry.
Parallelism is, above all, a formal resource for the articulation of discourse, and in its most basic form it is dyadic, though three- and four-part divisions are not uncommon. Beyond four begins a series.
Parallelism consists in the formal correspondence of two consecutive brief utterances. The degree of correspondence may vary, and should, to avoid monotony.
By means of parallelism the poet is able to analyze one situation in two ways; he can dwell upon and show first one side and then the reverse of the same reality. In the corresponding half he may introduce an alternate rhythm.
Because parallelism is found so frequently in all genres of Hebrew poetry, it is best to focus on those examples composed with a particular end in mind.
Isaiah is a master in the original use of this method.
Verse 1:4 presents, after an interjection which governs everything that follows, four nouns each with its adjective. They proceed in an order of increasing proximity to God. The final adjective rings with the most force: “Ah, sinful nation, people laden with iniquity, offspring of wicked men, sons degenerate” [AT].
In verse 7 we hear the articulation of parallelism of the a + a’ + b type, containing rhymes which do not respond to the formal division. There are four possessive “your”s and three nouns, “country,” “cities,” “land.” By departing from the rigorous form, the fragment “in your presence” adds a tragic element. Listen to the effect:
Your country is desolate, your cities burned out,
your land, in your presence, aliens devour. [AT]
The oracle 1:2-10 ends with a parallelism whose extreme incisiveness, reinforcing rhyme, and evocation of the wicked cities cause listeners to shudder: “we should have been like Sodom, become like Gomorrah” [AT],kisdom hayinu la’amorah daminu (1:9)
There is nothing more conventional than the opposition of good and bad which Isaiah takes advantage of in 1:16-17 in order to join density with urgency. Two alliterative verbs and two nouns say it all: limdu heytev dirshu misphat, “cease to do evil, learn to do good.”
In one line (29:1) the poet concentrates the swift advance of time and its inexorable repetition: “Add year to year, / let the feasts run their round”[AT]. An imperative and jussive, the duplication of “year,” the feasts converted into an autonomous subject of the annual cycle—one could hardly pack more material into six words.
More complex is 29:15, which contains secondary bifurcation in the third line and crossed correspondences or chiastic elements: counsel/deeds, deep/hide/ darkness; these are words of challenge, and YHWH stands alone. The translation gives some idea of the original asymmetry:
Woe to those who hide deep from the Lord their counsel,
whose deeds are in the dark,
and who say: Who sees us? Who knows us? [AT]
Compare this calculated asymmetry with the regularity found in 30:1: “who carry out a plan, but not mine;/ and who make a league, but not of my spirit” [AT].
The regularity of parallelism achieves a special effect in a kind of military advance. After an introductory line, the rhythmic march files by rapidly, like its theme, indefatigable and precise (5:26b-29):
and lo, swiftly, speedily it comes!
None is weary, none stumbles,
none slumbers, none sleeps;
not a waistcloth is loose,
not a sandal thong is broken;
their arrows are sharp, their bows bent,
their horses’ hoofs seem like flint,
their wheels like the whirlwind:
Their roaring is like a lion,
they roar like young lions:
they growl and seize their prey,