True and False Piety

The book of Isaiah has two distinct sections: chapters 1–39, which are in the voice of Isaiah ben Amoz, an eighth-century BCE prophet in Jerusalem (chapters 36–39 are a narrative insert from the book of Kings that mentions Isaiah), and chapters 40–66, which are mostly the words of an anonymous prophet, sometimes called Second (or Deutero-)Isaiah (or Second and Third Isaiah), prophesying to the Judean exiles in Babylonia in the sixth century BCE.

Isaiah 1–39. The eighth-century Isaiah, like his contemporaries Micah and Amos, lived at a time of growing disparity between rich and poor in Israel, when Assyrian military power was increasing. He spoke out against social and economic injustice and advocated reliance on God—as opposed to political and military alliances with neighboring states—in the face of the Assyrian threat. He envisioned destruction as punishment for Israel’s social and religious sins, but he maintained that a remnant of Israel would survive, the nucleus for the revival of a purified Israel. He never envisioned the destruction of Jerusalem, for, as God’s dwelling place, it was inviolable. Like Micah, Isaiah foresaw an age when war would cease and all nations would live in peace and recognize the God of Israel. At that time, a king descended from David would rule Israel in justice.

Isaiah 40–66. The exilic “Isaiah” prophesied in the last half of the sixth century BCE, during the end of the Neo-Babylonian Empire and the beginning of the Persian Empire. His teachings, responding to Babylonian polytheism, constitute the most explicit and sustained argument for monotheism in the entire Bible. He spoke messages of comfort and encouragement to the Jews living in exile in Babylonia, assuring them that the God of Israel, the creator of the world, maintained sovereignty over it and could therefore easily defeat their Babylonian captors. In the near future, God would cause Babylonia to fall to the Persian king Cyrus (559–530 BCE, described as God’s anointed servant) and would return the people of Israel to their home. The idea of the universality of God—that God has power over the entire world, not just over the land of Israel—is central to this prophet’s message, along with its counterpart, that the Babylonian gods, conceptualized here as inanimate human-made idols, are powerless. The prophet’s polemics against Babylonian religion were meant to convince his audience that the Babylonians ultimately had no power and that Israel’s own God still cared for them and protected them, even in a foreign land. He invoked the traditions of Abraham and Jacob, an assurance that the promise that God made to the patriarchs was still in force. The poetic speeches in these chapters, with their extensive use of marital and maternal imagery, are among the most beautiful and rhetorically effective in the Bible.

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