An overview of Isaiah

[Image: the light at the end of Hezekiah’s Tunnel. Allen Browne, 2014]

Hear the Prophets in their setting, and we see how the promises of God restoring his reign find their Yes in Christ. That’s how they apply to us.

The sheer size of the Major Prophets can feel daunting. This post is a high-level drone shot of the Book of Isaiah. He was called to proclaim God’s throne as the kingdom fell apart.

Isaiah 1–39

Isaiah assumes the covenant relationship between God and Israel: God as heavenly king, and the nation as his kingdom on earth. The Holy One of Israel is devoted to them, but they’ve turned their backs on him (1:4) even through God has honoured them as the highest representation of his presence on earth (2:2). God would need to bring them down (3:8) to fulfil his purposes (4:2), since God’s vineyard was not provided the flavour God intended in his world (5:4).

God called Isaiah (6:8) to tell Israel’s kings they were servants of God’s authority (7:9). God would bring Assyria to conquer them (8:7), but it’s not the end. God would provide the child to restore divine government to earth (9:6), while Assyria would fall (10:5). God would restore his reign through a branch growing from the stump of the Davidic kingship (11:1), revealing the Holy One of Israel among his people (12:6).

God reigns over all the nations of the earth, even the nations that threatened the existence of the Abrahamic project:

• the dominant treat from the north: Babylon (Isaiah 13, 21)
• the surrounding nations: Philistia (14), Moab (15–16), and Syria (17)
• the nations to the south: Ethiopia (18–20) and Egypt (19)
• God’s own people, whose disobedience threatens God’s plans (22)
• the trading port to the north that withstood Babylon for a time: Tyre (23)
• the whole earth that abuses God’s provision and programme (24).

Nevertheless, God’s purposes will be revealed in his people (25–27), even though their leaders misrepresent God’s authority (28), dishonouring God (29–30) by relying on human powers instead (31).

God will still raise up a nation that represents his reign (32), rescuing them from oppression (33), dealing with their oppressors (34), establishing the people who resonate with his song (35).

Those are the warnings and promises of divine kingship in Isaiah 1–35. How did it work out in practice? Isaiah 36–39 provides a historical interlude (repeating 2 Kings 18–20). Assyria a swept through the region, swallowing everything including Israel. Judah survived because King Hezekiah called on the heavenly king for help. But then Hezekiah started relying on Babylon. God warned, “They’ll take everything!” (39:6).

The ominous warning that Judah too will fall completes the tragedy of Isaiah 1–39. Everything is lost, the whole land.

Isaiah 40–55

The second part of Isaiah addresses God’s people in Babylon, about 170 years after God rescued Hezekiah from Assyria. Jerusalem and the temple are demolished. There’s no longer a land or nation under God’s rule: they’re living in exile.

But do you recall the earlier promise? When the Davidic dynasty had fallen like a tree, leaving only a stump in the land, God would still raise up a king — a branch growing from the stump. God’s anointed would restore the Lord’s majestic reign (Isaiah 11).

Well, another prophet now develops the message God gave Isaiah. Good news! The Lord is coming to reign over them!

Isaiah 40:3, 9-11 (NIV)
³ A voice of one calling: “In the wilderness prepare the way for the Lord …”
⁹ You who bring good news to Zion, go up on a high mountain.
You who bring good news to Jerusalem, lift up your voice with a shout,
lift it up, do not be afraid; say to the towns of Judah, “Here is your God!”
¹⁰ See, the Sovereign Lord comes with power, and he rules with a mighty arm. See, his reward is with him, and his recompense accompanies him. ¹¹ He tends his flock like a shepherd: He gathers the lambs in his arms and carries them close to his heart; he gently leads those that have young.

This is the origin of the word gospel. Two centuries before Christ, the Septuagint translators used the word euangelizō for Isaiah’s statement about bringing good news. The gospel (according to Mark 1:1-15) is the good news that God’s anointed (the Christ) is restoring God’s reign to his people (his kingdom).

Isaiah explains that God had called Israel to be his servant to the nations (41:8-9), a witness to God’s amazing leadership (43:10). In practice, they’d been about as helpful as a blind and deaf servant (42:19). That’s why they fell. But God had not given up on them! Astoundingly, the Lord became the servant to his fallen servant:

• Devoted to his people, the holy one of Israel buys them back — redeems them! That’s the keyword in Isaiah 41:14; 43:14; 47:4; 48:17; 49:7; 54:5.
• God’s own arm reaches and rescues his fallen servant. That’s the image in Isaiah 48:14; 50:2; 51:5, 9; 52:10; 53:1; 59:1, 16; 63:5, 12.

Israel had been commissioned as God’s light to the nations (42:6; 49:6). They’d fallen, but the nations would see the Lord doing right by his people (righteousness) — saving them from their oppression (51:4-5).

The divine rescue is the gospel:

Isaiah 52:7–10
⁷ How beautiful on the mountains are the feet of those who bring good news, who proclaim peace, who bring good tidings, who proclaim salvation, who say to Zion, “Your God reigns!” …
¹⁰ The Lord will lay bare his holy arm in the sight of all the nations, and all the ends of the earth will see the salvation of our God.

But how? If God is the servant sovereign who rescues his people rather than smashing his enemies into submission, how?

Isaiah 53 says the Lord’s arm is revealed in the Branch who enters the suffering of his people, their demise, their death. He is raised up by heaven’s life-giving power, as the leader of God’s people. God’s reign returns to earth in his suffering servant.

This is how God redeems his people and extends his reign to the nations. This is how God fulfils his covenant with Noah (54:9-10) and with David (55:3), calling everyone to seek his kingship (55:6). The fruitfulness God decreed in the beginning is restored as earth comes back under heaven (55:9-13).

Isaiah 56–66

The final section of Isaiah maintains this cosmic outlook for all people. Foreigners participate in God’s reign too (56:3). This is an astounding salvation that restores the whole earth under God’s reign.

God’s nation could not rescue themselves, so the Lord donned his armour and came to save them (59:15-20). But God didn’t save them by destroying their enemies; God saved his nation by bring the nations under his reign as well.

The violence that has covered the earth since Genesis 4 is subdued as the nations recognize God’s reign in his Anointed ruler and his people embody his reign:

Isaiah 59:19 – 60:3
59 ¹⁹ From the west, people will fear the name of the Lord, and from the rising of the sun, they will revere his glory. … ²⁰ “The Redeemer will come to Zion …
60 ¹ “Arise, shine, for your light has come, and the glory of the Lord rises upon you. … ³ Nations will come to your light, and kings to the brightness of your dawn.

King David had been the Lord’s anointed, empowered to embody heaven’s reign on earth. The kingship and the kingdom had fallen, but God promised to restore his people in his anointed:

Isaiah 61:1
The Spirit of the Sovereign Lord is on me, because the Lord has anointed me to proclaim good news to the poor. He has sent me to bind up the broken-hearted, to proclaim freedom for the captives and release from darkness for the prisoners …

This Scripture is fulfilled in Jesus of Nazareth. This is the gospel according to Luke 4:21.

The Messiah rescues God’s people from serving other powers, and sets right all that is wrong with the world. These twin themes — judgement and salvation — dominate the final chapters of Isaiah.

So it’s in the Christ that earth is restored under heaven, as a new creation where everything is set right (65:17-19). The regal relationship between earth and heaven decreed in the beginning is fulfilled in God’s gospel proclamation, “Heaven is my throne, and earth is my footstool” (66:1). God’s people live under his enduring reign, while those who rejected his kingship do not have a place under his reign (66:22-24).

Conclusion

Through the time when the kingdom of Israel was falling, and then the time when it had fallen, the Book of Isaiah declares the gospel — the good news of God’s kingship being restored to the earth in his Christ.

That’s the story we’re living in. That’s our identity and our calling as his kingdom, the community raised back to life in the Messiah.

That’s why the New Testament quotes Isaiah more than any other book except the Psalms.

What others are saying

Gordon D. Fee and Douglas K. Stuart, How to Read the Bible Book by Book: A Guided Tour (Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan, 2002), 174–175:

The book of Isaiah in many ways is the centerpiece of the story of Israel in the biblical story. Standing at the beginning of the Latter Prophets, even though not first chronologically, it serves to guide your reading of the rest of this tradition. But beyond that, its theological scope is all-embracing, constantly reminding Israel that Yahweh is the living God, the Creator and majestic Sovereign—and Judge—of all that is, as well as the compassionate Redeemer of Israel. Thus Isaiah looks forward to Israel’s judgment, to her redemption from exile through a second exodus, and, through her coming Servant King, to the fulfillment of the Abrahamic covenant that includes the nations in Yahweh’s salvation. And in the end it pictures the final redemption of Israel and the nations in a new heaven and new earth, when Zion, the place where Yahweh and people meet, is restored to its ultimate glory. Isaiah, therefore, had enormous influence on the New Testament writers, being cited or alluded to more often than any other Old Testament book except the Psalter.

Andrew T. Abernethy, The Book of Isaiah and God’s Kingdom: A Thematic—Theological Approach, (London: InterVarsity Press, 2016), 10–11:

Within Isaiah 1–39 a vision of the holy king who must judge Judah (ch. 6), an eschatological scene of God’s rule on Zion resulting in cosmic judgment (24:21–23) and an international feast (25:6–8), the hope of seeing the king in his beauty (33:17, 22), and a historical account of YHWH defeating Sennacherib (chs. 36–37) sit strategically within the subsections of Isaiah 1–39 (1–12; 13–27; 28–33; 34–39) to establish God’s kingship as an integral part of the first half of the book. Within Isaiah 40–55 God’s kingship is also extremely important, as an arch from 40:9–11 and 52:7 presents the gospel of God’s coming reign as king as fundamental to this section of the book. Within Isaiah 56–66 God’s kingship is at the centre of its chiastic arrangement, where there is the expectation that upon coming as a warrior king (59:15–20; 63:1–6) God will reside as an international King of glory in Zion where he will receive tribute from all nations (60–62). The book concludes on a similar note in Isaiah 66:1–2 and 18–24 by presenting God as the cosmic king who will reign in Zion, with all nations journeying to his glory. The strategic placement of passages pertaining to God’s kingship within the major sections of Isaiah places a spotlight on God as the king in Isaiah, both now and in the future.

Related posts

• New Testament quotations of Isaiah
• How to approach the Prophets
• How do the Prophets apply to us?
• How do the Prophets apply to Christ?
• When God called Isaiah (Isaiah 6)

Bible Project videos

• Isaiah with more detail on Isaiah 1-39 and Isaiah 40-66
• The gospel of the kingdom (explains the origin in Isaiah)