Last updated 10th July 2024: Online ordering is currently unavailable due to technical issues. We apologise for any delays responding to customers while we resolve this. For further updates please visit our website https://www.cambridge.org/news-and-insights/technical-incident
We use cookies to distinguish you from other users and to provide you with a better experience on our websites. Close this message to accept cookies or find out how to manage your cookie settings.
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 02 February 2009
We have long been accustomed to thinking of the great prophet of the exile, whose words are recorded in Isa. 40–55, as the seer who first discerned plainly the truth that Yahweh is the only real God in existence, and who drew the inference that He must therefore be the God, not of Israel only, but of all men the world over. But we have not always borne in mind the way in which this revelation came to the prophet. This was no sudden disclosure, unrelated to Israel's previous experience of Yahweh; it was a revelation indeed, but it came to the prophet through the travail of his own and his people's experience in Babylon.
page 308 note 1 There seems to be some confusion in the context in Judges 11. 12–33 whether the dispute was with Ammon or Moab. Chemosh was the national deity of the Moabites, as is clear from the Moabite stone.
page 308 note 2 The English Versions print ‘Lord’ or ‘God’ in capital letters, when the Hebrew text uses the divine name Yhwh, generally vocalised Yahweh.
page 308 note 3 Judges 11.24.
page 309 note 1 1 Sam. 26.19.
page 309 note 2 2 Kings 5.17.
page 309 note 3 Cf. 2 Kings 17.24–28, where the non-Israelites imported into the northern kingdom after the fall of Samaria trace the disasters that befall them to their ignorance of the cult of the local deity.
page 309 note 4 Amos 9.7.
page 309 note 5 Isaiah 19.24–25. It should be noted, however, that this passage is regarded by many scholars as post-exilic.
page 309 note 6 Isa. 10.5–15.
page 309 note 7 Isa. 36.20.
page 310 note 1 See Isa. 37, especially verses 20, 23, 29, 35.
page 310 note 2 See Jer. 7.4, 14; 5.12.
page 310 note 3 See Jer. 44.17, 18.
page 310 note 4 Alternatively the ‘other lords’ may be foreign rulers. But cf. also Jer. 16.13.
page 310 note 5 Isa. 43.22. Cf. also 48.5.
page 310 note 6 See especially Ezek. 20.41; 36.20, 36.
page 310 note 7 Ezek. 20.9. For the Exodus as a demonstration of Yahweh's superiority over the gods of Egypt, cf. Exod. 12.12; 15.18.
page 310 note 8 Isa. 52.5.
page 311 note 1 See also 40.1, 2; 43.27, 28; 48.9; 51.17.
page 311 note 2 Isa. 47.6. Cf. Zech. 1.15.
page 311 note 3 Isa. 51.22–23. Cf. 47 passim; 49.26.
page 312 note 1 Cf. 41.1–5. See North, C. R., ‘The “Former Things” and the “New Things” in Deutero-Isaiah’ in Rowley, H. H. (ed.), Studies in Old Testament Prophecy, pp. 111 ffGoogle Scholar.
page 312 note 2 Isa. 48.14.
page 312 note 3 Isa. 45.13.
page 312 note 4 Isa. 44.28.
page 312 note 5 See especially Isa. 48.3–11.
page 312 note 6 Cf. Exod. 9.16.
page 312 note 7 Isa. 52.7. The prophet delights to depict the release of the exiles and their triumphal return to Jerusalem in terms of imagery drawn from the Exodus tradition.
page 313 note 1 Isa. 40.15, 17, 22.
page 313 note 2 Isa. 40.25.
page 313 note 3 e.g. Isa. 2.20, 21. The word for idols in the Hebrew (elilim) is very similar to the word for God (Elohim), and the assonance is probably deliberate. The root meaning of the word seems to be ‘feeble, worthless’.
page 314 note 1 Isa. 46.1–4.
page 314 note 2 See especially Isa. 44.9–20.
page 314 note 3 Isa. 45.16. Cf. 42.17.
page 314 note 4 Isa. 45.17.
page 314 note 5 Isa. 43.10–12. Cf. also 43.21, 44.8.
page 314 note 6 This is not the place for a full discussion of these passages. See C. R. North, The Suffering Servant in Deutero-haiah, especially chapter 8, and his recent commentary, The Second Isaiah.
page 315 note 1 Isa. 42.1, 4.
page 315 note 2 Isa. 49.6.
page 315 note 3 Isa. 45.6.
page 315 note 4 Isa. 54.5.
page 315 note 5 Isa. 45.14. Cf. also 40.5, 49.7, 36, 55.5.
page 315 note 6 Isa. 44.5.
page 316 note 1 In ‘The Servant of the Lord in Deutero-Isaaiah’ in Rowley, H. H. (ed.), Studies in Old Testament Prophecy, pp. 187ff. The passages quoted are on pp. 191,197 and 198Google Scholar.
page 316 note 2 The genitive relation in the phrase 
perfectly susceptible of an interpretation ‘light of the Gentiles’, i.e. their enlightenment (objective genitive); Snaith's interpretation, ‘a light throughout all Gentile lands’, where the Gentiles are merely a geographical epithet describing where the light is to be seen, would better fit a text 
.
page 317 note 1 In Second-Isaiah's Message, Oudtestamentische Stuadien XI, chapter 5. The passages quoted are on p. 90.
page 317 note 2 See also Davidson, R., ‘Universalism in Second Isaiah’, Scottish Journal of Theology, 16, pp. 166ffCrossRefGoogle Scholar, which came to my notice only after the present article was completed. Davidson sees in Second Isaiah the heightening of a paradox running through the Old Testament doctrine of mission, between particularism and universalism. I am in agreement with his discussion of the positions of Sanaith and de Boer on p. 180, but question whether the tension in our prophet is so great as to be described as paradox. To my mind the refutation of the idols is sufficiently closely related to the corollary that Yahweh is the God of all the earth as to justify the claim that the central motif in this prophet is not so much ‘the renewal, the exaltation of Israel the Servant’ (Davidson, p. 179), as the vindication of Yahweh as the sole God through the restoration of His people and through their mission to the rest of the world.
page 318 note 1 See Snaith, N. H., The Distinctive Ideas of the Old Testament, pp. 90–93, for a brief discussion of the meaning (almost ‘salvation’) of the words translated ‘righteousness’ and ‘be justified’ in this prophetGoogle Scholar.
