Isaiah
c. 740–700 BC
“He was despised and rejected by men, a man of sorrows and acquainted with grief.” — Isaiah 53:3
The Argument
Isaiah is the most quoted prophet in the New Testament, and the literary reason is inseparable from the theological reason. Isaiah writes with an imaginative range and theological precision that is unmatched in the prophetic literature. He holds together judgment and restoration, exile and return, the specific political crisis of the eighth century BC and the cosmic renewal at the end of history.
The Servant Songs of Isaiah 42–53 are the center of gravity for the entire book. The figure of the Suffering Servant — despised and rejected, bearing the griefs of others, wounded for transgressions not his own, silent before his accusers, poured out in death and then vindicated — is so precisely drawn that it was written seven hundred years before the cross and Philip can read it to an Ethiopian eunuch and the man immediately asks: Who is this about?
Isaiah 40 — Comfort, comfort my people — is perhaps the most sustained piece of theological consolation in any literature. The writers who have drawn on it from Handel's Messiah to Marilynne Robinson's Gilead know they are drawing from a source that has not been exhausted.
The Literary Apologetic
New essays from the long tradition. No noise. Just letters worth reading.