Allan MacRae: Isaiah1-6: Lecture 01:
Biblical Theological
Seminary, 1976
Prayer: We thank you
that we can study the word of light, we pray that as we study it, it will enable
us to understand it and to see your purposes and your fires in our lives. We
ask in Jesus name, Amen.
The course this year is covering a portion of Isaiah different than what we
covered last year, and yet there is necessarily in the first lecture a
certain amount of overlapping, so those of you who had the course last year
will pardon the fact that there will be a third of this morning’s lecture will
overlap. An introduction to the book as
a whole,-- and it will overlap some of what you had last year. I don’t think that there will be anything
else this semester, that will overlap because it is a very different part of
the book of Isaiah with a whole different subject matter from that which we
dealt with last year.
I don’t think we need to start with the text of Isaiah,
I’ll simply start with an outline of what we want to cover. And under that, you’ll notice I said part
one, you’ll notice this year that we are dealing with two separate and rather
unrelated sections of Isaiah, the first part and the last part. They are unrelated, but each is tremendously
important and very interesting and so I am going to call it part one, as long
as we are dealing with part one, and under that roman numeral one there is: “Introductory,” and under that I have listed
as A: “The supreme excellence of the book”.
All literary scholars agree, that one of the great masterpieces of the
worlds literature is the book of Isaiah.
To the Christian it is even greater importance, for this book contains
more pictures of Christ than any other part of the Old Testament. Many
different aspects of Christ’s life, primarily of course, the story of his death
and its importance for us, his resurrection, and his future activity, are
carefully described in the book of Isaiah.
Naturally there are those who have different opinions as to how much of
this Isaiah understood. Well, Peter tells us that the prophets were “searching
what manner of time, the spirit of Christ, which was in them, did signify, when
he testified before hand of the sufferings of Christ, and the glory that should
follow.” (I Peter 1:11) So we have it
on the authority of the apostle Peter that the prophets looked forward to the
activities of Christ. They probably understood a great deal about these
activities, but there was probably a good deal they did not understand, but the
Holy Spirit so led them in what they wrote, that it could be later read and
understood in the light of our fuller knowledge of Christ, and we could see how
very, very much of the important facts about Christ and the meaning of these
facts is already contained in the book of Isaiah.
The book of Isaiah is quoted in the New Testament,
probably more than any other section of the Old Testament. There are a great many times when the New
Testament quotes Isaiah by name and there are many other times where it quotes
“as the scripture says” And so for the
real understanding of the New Testament, you need to know the book of Isaiah.
The book of Isaiah has a Hebrew style that is perhaps the
finest that ever was written. It has a great deal of alliteration. It has many
distinctive literary features. We will not deal with these in this class except
in so far as they pass over into English. But the remarkable thing about Hebrew
is that so much can be translated into other languages. The Mohammadans boast
that the Koran is such a great literary masterpiece that it cannot possibly be
translated you must read it in the Arabic.
All translations only give a feeble idea of it. The great thing about
the Bible is that while no translation exactly represents it, a tremendous part
of its literary excellence can be passed over into another languages. One
reason for this is the nature of Hebrew poetry. Isaiah’s poetry is not so much
a matter of a particular length of syllables or of rhyme though these we do
enter into in some extent, but it is a matter of parallelism of thought. It is
a matter of arranging thoughts in certain order it is a matter of uses of
metaphor and similes, and interrogation. Practically every rhetorical figure
you will ever find is found somewhere in the book of Isaiah. And so it is one
of the great literary masterpieces of the world and one of the most important
books in the Bible for the Christian. And yet, unfortunately, there is comparatively little or no amount
understood by Christians.
Most Christians are familiar with a number of isolated
verses in Isaiah. They may have memorized the 53rd chapter of
Isaiah. And some of the great verses
earlier in the book that we use at Christmas.
But of the great flow of thought in the book, the interrelations of the
parts, the sections that do not immediately bear on the life of Christ, most
Christians have a little idea. I have
here a book in which a statement is made about the first chapter in Isaiah. It
says “the first chapter is a marvel of condensation. It is a complete manual of
religion, setting forth the relationship of God and of people. The duties growing out of that relation the
error to be avoided and the results of obedience and disobedience to the divine
will. And this not in the dry abstract terms of a theological system but in
concrete pictures which the simplest souls can understand and appreciate.” But
how many people have much realization of what there is in Isaiah, in the first
chapter? We will not spend a great deal
of time on the first chapter because we have many other matters that I think
are intrinsically more important, and we will move on to them, but this
statement gives an idea of the greatness of this work and of the amount that
can be gained by careful studies of even that one chapter.
Now section 3 is “The importance of the Old Testament.”
And this I believe needs emphasizing among Christians “The importance of the
Old Testament.” It’s all too often forgotten. I have occasionally passed a
church in which I’ve seen a sign “no creed but the New Testament” that is not a
Christian statement. To the Christian
the source is not the New Testament, it is the Bible. And the Bible is one. The
New Testament constantly refers to the Old Testament. Constantly quotes from
the Old Testament. The apostles and the New Testament writers over and over
build their argument upon quotation from the Old Testament. To the Christian
the Old Testament is of tremendous importance and when you think of the fact
that in one particular Bible I looked into, the New Testament covered 396 pages
and the Old Testament 1333 pages; in other words more than three times as long.
More than three fourths of the Bible is the Old Testament. The New Testament
brings out the great Christian truths. Very very clearly it’s tremendously
important to study the Old Testament, and to neglect it would be utterly wrong.
I’ve often said it’s far better to know Greek thoroughly than to have a slight
knowledge of Greek and Hebrew. But even a slight knowledge of Hebrew is a great
value enabling one to read commentaries and to understand discussions but of
course, a good thorough knowledge of both is better, but above all get a good
thorough knowledge and ability to interpret the statements of the New Testament
in the original.
Well, Capital C we’ll move on to, which is “The
importance of the prophetic books.” In the OT the average person who has
attended Sunday school is familiar with some of the stories in Genesis and
Exodus and Joshua and Kings and perhaps a very few stories from the prophetic
books. But the average Christian never gets into the inside of these books, to
understand them, and there are principles you have to have in mind in order to
understand them. This same Bible that I spoke of that has the New Testament of
396 pages, devotes 378 pages to the books from Isaiah to Malachi, to those 17
books of the Old Testament. Almost as long, they are, as the whole New
Testament.
I must confess that in my second year of teaching in
theological seminary I started at the beginning of Isaiah and every day read a
chapter or two until I got to the end of Malachi and when I got through I had
practically no recollection of anything I had read. It was just words, I did
not then understand the principles of
interpretation of it to have it really meaningful to me. Since then I’ve
devoted thousands of hours to studying these books and they are absolutely
endless in the amount of vital truth that they contain that is very important
for the Christian. The importance of the prophetic books, C, then we see is
something that cannot be over emphasized.
But we look at D. “The difficulty of the prophetic
books.” I noticed the difficulties very vividly, as I said at that time when I
read them through continuously without any understanding, really, and I was
then already teaching my second year in seminary. In my seminary course that I
had taken, there had been much discussion of the minute points of some of the
prophetic books. But to really get into them and to understand their meaning
and their relationship and how to go at them, I had never really gotten until I
got busy studying them and comparing them and finding the principles which open
them up and make them living and vital.
But I’m just going to mention three difficulties. Number
1) - the poetic lineage. The prophetic books are very largely composed of
poetic lineage. And until one recognizes this fact and learns a little bit
about the nature of Hebrew poetry he is not apt to get into the beauty of them
or to have any great understanding of the real meaning. And of course, these
poetic features are carried over into English and unfortunately many of the
translators have failed to recognize and understand some of these principles. As a result they have made translations which
while verbally, they may be quite accurate, do not give a proper idea of the
interrelation of the parts. One big reason for that is the fact that in Hebrew
you have one common conjunction. The letter waw
is the common conjunction which we would say means ‘and’. But it is much
broader than our English ‘and’. Though our English ‘and’ is much broader than
most other would think. We say, “I
looked for Him and He was not there,” we might say that. It would be more
accurate for us to say, “I looked for Him but He was not there.” Our ‘and’ in
English sometimes carries the meaning of ‘but’. Now in Hebrew the waw which in half the cases, at least,
is best translated by ‘and’, in many many cases can be represented by ‘but’ or
‘yet’ or ‘moreover’ or ‘then’. I came across one verse in Daniel in which it
was translated four different ways in the course of one work in the King James
Version. It simply is a broader word than our English “and”, though our English
“and” is a broader word than the average speaker of English recognizes even
though he does use it in the broader way, which is part of the language. So the poetic language is one cause of
difficulty.
A second is the local situation. The prophets were not
men who sat in an ivory tower somewhere and looked up at the sky and wrote down
visions that they saw (occasionally they did have visions like this). But as a
rule, they were out among the people, dealing with situations of their time.
And God was giving them messages and related to these situations. And then out
of the many messages that God gave His people that had vital relation to the
situations of their time, God selected certain ones to be written down in the
books that were to have great meaning for people of all subsequent times. But
all of these messages have certain relationships to the local situations. These
local situations are explained in the books of Kings and Chronicles—some of
them later in the books of Ezra and Nehemiah. The local background is often
referred to and implied without being fully explained in the prophetic book.
And until we find what it is, sometimes we fail to get the full meaning.
And then number 3: “there are partial glimpses of the
future.” No prophet, so far as I know, ever sat down to write a full history of
the situation that would be ahead. He was not writing a history book for the
future. People sometimes say that “prophecy is history written in advance.”
Well, there is a sense in which this is true. There is a sense in which it is
history written in advance but we don’t understand what history is. We think,
often, that by "history" we mean just events, one after another,
occurred. Now if you take a history of
the last fifty years and in that history you tell what happened in January 1, 1926
in
Now capital E, “The purposes of prophecy and their
relation to prediction.” There are many purposes of prophecy. The word prophet
has come to mean somebody who foretells the future but that’s not what it means
in the Bible. It means a man who speaks on behalf of someone else. A prophet is
one who represents God and gives God’s message. So that is truly what prophecy
is. And some would say that and stress it in such a way as to make you think
that they never predicted the future. Actually, prophecy is full of predictions
of the future because it is very definitely related to the specific purposes of
prophecy.
I’m listing these very briefly under three main headings.
First, “To call men to repentance.” The prophet is there to call people to
repent of their sin and turn to God and he’s also there to call God’s people,
the true believers, to turn away from the sin that so easily besets them and to
turn back to a fuller obedience to God. And so this does not cover simply the
unfaith of the ungodly, it covers all of those to whom the prophet speaks. Probably two-thirds of what the prophet spoke
was for this specific purpose: To call
people to turn away from their sins and to look to the Lord’s provision and be
saved; to call people who are already believers to turn away from the sin that
so easily leads them astray and to devote themselves more fully to doing the
Lord's will. Now prediction has a great
deal to do with this because the prophet tells what the future is, of those who
fail to follow the Lord. He tells of the
suffering and misery that are ahead for them.
He also tells what God is going to do upon his own nation in the
comparatively near future, say within ten years, or within one hundred, or
within five hundred. He tells of the
future in this life and the future in later times in relation to this call to
repentance.
The second great purpose of prophecy can be summarized in
the words “To comfort and reassure believers,” or “To comfort believers and
give them assurance.” When the prophet
speaks of the terrible things that God is going to do, such as punishing his
people for their sins; when he stresses them--and some of them stress it a
tremendous amount--these are not passages we should pass over lightly in our
study, although we will have to pass over many of them quickly in this class
because we want to get to some of those that are of most immediate relevance to
us. But I would urge you, if you study
these passages yourself in the coming years, that they reflect on your life in
part and your activity for Christ. But
Isaiah greatly stressed the way that God was going to deal with those that
turned against his Holy law, true believers were apt to give way to
despair. They knew they were part of the
nation; as such they were implicated in its sin. They knew the terrible things the prophet
said would come, were definitely going to come, they knew judgments were ahead
for them, and therefore they might tend to become terribly disturbed. As so while perhaps two-thirds of the
prophetic books are devoted to the purpose of leading men to repentance,
leading unbelievers to turn to God, leading believers to clean up their lives
and follow Him more closely, perhaps a third of the content of the prophetic
book is devoted to the purpose of comforting and reassuring those who truly
believe. And often the prophet does not
say, "now I have quit talking to those people, now I am going to talk to
these." It does not introduce a
sharp indication of the change. He just,
in cold print as it stands, just goes straight on, and you have to recognize
that the prophet either turns his head away from one group to another, he
thinks of individuals scattered among the group particularly rather than the
whole group, he makes a change in his manner perhaps which in not indicated in
the writing. And so as you read it often
there is a very sharp and sudden transition from the purpose of calling men to
repentance, to the purpose of comforting and reassuring believers.
Now the third purpose does not affect us today so
directly, that is “The purpose of giving specific guidance.” That was the great purpose of the prophets in
ancient times. Isaiah said, when
Sennacherib came with his army and he threatened the people of Jerusalem and
demanded that they surrender, and told the terrible things that he would do to
them if they didn’t, and gave them promises that he would be good to them if
they would, Isaiah said “don’t surrender
don’t give into him, God is going to protect you, God is going to deliver you.”
And he made them these wonderful promises.
He said just like birds flying, God will protect
Now this purpose is very important in Old Testament times
that is the purpose of giving specific guidelines. It is not particularly
important in the parts of Isaiah we are going to study this semester. It just
doesn’t have to enter in as other portions. But the sections in which this is a
vital purpose while not directly of importance for us today are never the less
of great value as showing the manner of God’s dealings and giving us principles
which we can apply in situations that confront us in the present time. And so
this matter of giving specific guidance in your general study of prophecy is a
great future importance, not so much a connection with this particular
semester. But this is vital to
recognize, that God gave that specific guidance before his whole word was
available. And now we have the whole Scripture and he wants us to study it and
get are principles of guidance from it. And while he may choose at certain
times and certain ways to give us definite personal guidance, his great desire
for us is that we learn to understand his word so that we can apply its
principles. And he says in one hymn he can guide us with his eye not having to
give us direct words but leading us to know that our steps are towards him and
that he is working in our lives if we take these principles and apply them.
Now capital F “The perspective of prophecy.” In other words, we have in these prophecies
glimpses of the future. How are we going to relate them to each other? Do they
proceed right in chronological order? How are they arranged?
Well, number one under this category I said that it is
not simply that we listen in advance. I have already referred to that fact, so
we won’t have to go into that further right now. So now we go onto number two
the order is often logical other than chronological. The prophet is dealing
with God's punishment for sin then he tells what God's going to do. Then he is dealing with God’s blessing on his
people; he looks forward to a particular occasion of blessing that has
relevance to the particular matter he is dealing with. And thus the order is often logical rather
than chronological and we are doing wrong to assume that there must be a
chronological relationship.
I am going to give an illustration of this from the
history books, an illustration that brings out I think in a very interesting
and difficult way the fact that the order is often logical rather than
chronological. I am going to turn to a passage in the history books that at
first sight you would not say was prediction. In fact, I have had theological
professors say to me that’s not prediction those are commands. And yet on the
little examination it’s obvious that they are not commands. This is the story
of Elijah. I trust all of you are familiar with it. In 1 Kings 19 where the
Lord spoke to Elijah, Elijah was so terrified with Jezebel’s vain threats that
he had fled clear down to Sinai. And there God showed himself in power to
Elijah in order to comfort him and to strengthen him and to encourage him. And
then we read in verse fifteen “The Lord said go and return on your way to the
wilderness of
And then the word of the Lord to Elijah continues and the
next verse: “And Jehu the son of Nimshe
you shall anoint king over
After the Lord said this in verse 16 He continues, “And
Elisha the son of Shaphat, the son of Abel-meholah, you shall anoint as prophet
in your place." And Elijah couldn’t pick out a man and anoint him to be prophet
in his place and as far as the Scripture goes, he never anointed Elisha. In
fact when Elijah died, or was taken up to heaven rather, He looked on Elisha as
one who poured water onto his hands when he washed them, (his menial servant).
And he tried to get away from him but Elisha stayed with him, and finally
Elijah said, “What would you like me to do for you when I’m taken up?” And
Elisha said, “I would like to have a double portion of your spirit." That
means a duplicate portion or perhaps the portion of an elder son, the double
portion an elder son would seek. “I'd like to be your successor in other
words!” And Elijah didn't say, “Well I'm ready to anoint you to be
prophet in my place.” Elijah said, “You've asked a hard question.”
And he said, “Only if you see me as I'm taken up will you know that you can be
my successor.”
So these were not commands, they were not given as
commands, that is the verse we read in 1 Kings 19:15-18. 2 Kings 8:8-15 tells how Hazael became king
of Syria; 2 Kings 9:1-13 tells how Jehu will be king of Israel; and I Kings
19:19-21 tells how Elijah threw his mantle over Elisha as Elisha was ploughing;
and when Elisha said, “Wait a minute till I go and say goodbye to my family and
I'll follow you,” Elijah says, “What have I got to do with you?” That's
pretty far from anointing him as his successor. They are predictions of
who the successors will be and the changes God is going to make. But
you notice the order of them? Elisha was called to be Elijah's successor
before either of the other two was fulfilled. The order is logical rather
than chronological. It starts with the great kingdom of Syria. God
is going to make a change there. Then it goes to the kingdom of
which Elijah was so terrified. God's going to make a change there, and
then he says, “Elijah, You've done a great work. You've done a great work
and you deserve great credit, but now you've gotten frightened from this wicked
woman and fled into the wilderness here. Your work has got to be carried
on by someone else. You’re not able now to go ahead and do the great work
that's needed to follow up the wonderful things you've done. We have to
train a new man. Hire a new man that can do that, and that man will be
Elisha. But that one was fulfilled long before either of the other
two. The order is chronologically not one, two, three; but it's two,
three, one. The order of prophecy is often that way. It is logical,
rather than chronological.
An illustration that often occurs to me is the
illustration of a mountain range. If you look at a range of hills off in
the distance, you see the near hill and it'll be higher in some places, lower
in others, and then behind there may be another range and there may be another
and there may be three of four ranges. When you look at the near one, you
can't tell, often, whether the one you see back of it is right back of it or
whether there's a big space in between. And you'll look at one range and
you'll see, behind a certain part of it, you'll see the third range. The second
doesn't show at that point. Then you'll look a little further along and
you will see the first and the second. And then you'll look a
little further on and you'll see the first and the third and the fourth. It
varies. And you might say "logical" is the particular place you
look and the "chronology" is obviously what's back of it. But
you look at one and then another and so in the order is logical, rather than
chronological.
Now, instead of giving the next point right now, I'm
going to do something that I should do at the end of class, but usually forget
when I leave it to the end of class. So I'm going to do it right now
instead. And that is to assign the lesson for next week, the
assignment for September 20. Number one is to note all correspondences
as to thought between the early verses of Isaiah 2 and those of Micah 4.
Now this, I'll say a word or two more about, but for the moment just get it in
mind. That is the first part of the assignment for next time. I
shouldn't say the first part. I hope the first part will be to review
today's lecture because it's far easier to review it right now than just before
exam time. But then, note these correspondences. That I want you to
write out, but we'll discuss that after a minute.
The second part is to note any important connection
between each of these three groups of verses, or each of these two groups of
verses, and the latter verses of the preceding chapter. In other words, as you look at Isaiah 2, look
back at the last few verses of Isaiah 1 and see what the connection is. How does it tie in with it? Is there a close connection? As you look at Micah 4, look back at Micah 3
and see if there is a close connection or not between these two passages. The chapter divisions in the Bible were put
in by an English archbishop in the thirteenth century. And it is amazing in the book of Hebrews how
often the first verse of each chapter’s a summary of the previous chapter, and
could just as well be the last verse of the previous chapter. And many times the chapter divisions are
quite wrong. Cambell Morgan, the noted
English expositor, said once in my hearing that “in nine cases out of ten the
chapter divisions were wrong.” Now I
think he was quite extreme in that, I think often they are very well
placed. But they are badly placed on
enough occasions that it is always wise to look back for the connection. So I’d like you to do that and write out next
time any important connection (not trivial ones) but really important
connections between the first few verses of Isaiah 2 and the last few verses of
what precedes, or between particular things in the first few verses Micah 4 and
what precedes.
And then number three; explain the purpose of Isaiah
2:1. Look at the first verse of chapter 2
and see what you think the purpose of that is.
Please answer each of these questions from your own study without using
help. This is what you thought. I find that one can get far more from the
Bible than from most help and if you don’t, if you need help, you get far more
from the help if you first try to do it yourself. Well, this is to done direct from the Bible,
and I don’t care what Bible version you use.
Use any Bible version that you would find, and, if fact, if we have
variety in the class so much the better.
But I’d like you to state on your paper what Bible version you’re
using. And then after you’ve done this
yourself, then, if you wish, look in one or more commentaries and state their
answer to question three. I’m not asking
you, necessarily, to do this, but if some of you are interested in seeing what
commentaries say about the purpose of Isaiah 2:1, it will be interesting to see
what they say, but I fear most of them will say something that doesn’t add much
understanding to it, but it will be interesting to note, perhaps. It is not my purpose to have you look at a
lot of books and comparative statements.
I find it much better to look at the Scripture and see what you get from
it, and then look at other things if you want to. But I’m usually not even assigning you to
look at anything.
The King James Version has some very bad slip ups in it,
but on the whole it is an excellent translation, probably as good a translation
as has ever been made, but it’s in the language of three hundred years ago, and
a great many of the words just give a different impression today from what they
meant to the writer. I got used to it
most of my life and I’ve been using it, mainly.
The New American Standard Bible, is on the whole, a good, accurate
rather literal translation, and very useful.
The New NIV that has just recently come out has got some very fine
rendering, but some very terrible ones, too.
I think it was done a little too hastily I don’t think they were quite
ready to publish it. I think they wanted to get something out quickly to arouse
interest in the Old Testament, which I hope will be an excellent production.
But it has some very fine things in it. Now you can use any of those, or if you
would like to use the Jerusalem Bible, or the Revised Standard Version, or the
New English Bible or any other for this particular class, but I think the
different one uses you may have some points of interest you come across in some
you would like to wait on the fact. But those three are the best we have, but
in the case of all three, time and again the translators failed to see the
interrelations between verses. There
were very important things that were just overlooked by the fact that the
emphasis was put on the particular sentence rather than on the meaning of the
particular sentence in relation to major sentences. So I don’t care which of
the these you use, if you would like to compare several, of course, its’ up to
you.
Now the first of these questions should not be correspondences. I would like
to give you an idea of how I’d like that done.
But you see on this page how I have marked it, that there in Isaiah
chapter 2 and verse 2 I put a 1 next to it, and by that I meant that this verse
is very very similar to verse 1 of Micah 4. You see.
I can’t put them next to each other because there is a black space in between;
I’ll have to cut off part of the page to do that. But you see the two verses
are almost identical. So I put a 2 here on Micah to show that it is very close
to the first verse of Isaiah 2 and a 1 on that to show that it’s like that
verse in Micah.
Now if you can
look at these first five verses of each of these chapter and you’ll find one
prophet may say “all,” the other may say “many;” you’ll find little differences
like that, that are of interest, but not related to our present purpose. For
our present purpose we will call these 2 verses identical, even though they are
not exact they are very very close; the idea is the same. You can just indicate
which verses in each are related in thought to the other. I am not
interested in identical words. But actually among the prophetic books, you will
rarely find two passages so similar as these:
This is rare. So it’s very interesting
that we do have this similarity. Now for this particular thing it would be
better not to use the NIV, simply because we don’t have the NIV of Micah
yet. So you need another translation to
be able to see the verbal similarities much more closely than if you compare
the NIV just for Isaiah with one of the other translations.
Now we go on to “the division of the book of
Isaiah.” I don't want to take much time
on this because in this class we are just dealing with the Septuagint
division. You will also find that
chapters 36 to 39 are different from the rest of the book (history). Isaiah is what we call a book of
prophecy. He is exhorting, he is looking
forward to the future, he is comparing things.
It is a series of messages. And
that is very different from, for instance, the book of Kings or Proverbs. But in this book of Isaiah, which has
comparatively few statements of events, what you call historical statements,
you have very few in the book, aside from chapters 36 to 39. You have there, four chapters which describe
a series of events. In the course of
them, Isaiah gives some long messages.
But you have that somebody came and said something, somebody answered,
certain things happened. It’s a
historical section. And so the book of
Isaiah naturally divides into three parts: Chapters 1 to 27, 35, 36-39 and and
40 to 66.
Now there are those who call 1 to 39 "First
Isaiah" and call chapter 40 and on "Deutero-Isaiah," and say it
was written 150 years later. I don’t
believe that at all. But it’s
interesting to note that just as the Bible has 39 books in the Old Testament,
27 in the New, what they call the First Isaiah has 39 chapters and the rest of
the book is 27 chapters. Now that’s
purely coincidental, but it’s a help to remember, the divisions. Now, this historical section 36-39, then, is
in the middle. There and up to there the
chapter divisions are, many of them, quite well made.
You notice that chapters one through six is the section
we’re going to study as part one of this course. Then, 7 to 12 is the Book of Immanuel, 13 to
23 is largely about other nations, 24 to 27 is called the Isaiah Apocalypse,
it’s a view of, you might say, the consummation of the ages following the
statements largely about other nations.
And then 28 to 35 is about Immanuel continued. So last year we studied 7 to 12 and 28 to 35,
which makes one unit closely related.
Now you notice these divisions could all be made according to
chapter. But when you go on after
chapter 36, the chapter divisions are very poorly made. There are two main divisions after that:
chapters 40:1 to 56:8, I used to call the “Gospel of Isaiah”. I’ve now changed it to “Isaiah sees the
Savior” because this is the section which tells about the atonement. And it leads up to the atonement, stresses
it, explains it. I gave a course in this
section two years ago. But it ends
abruptly at 56:8. I shouldn’t say it
ends abruptly there, I should say the archbishop didn’t notice it there. Because the next three verses of chapter 56
belong with the remaining part of the book.
Well, we are going, in this course, to take those as part two, that last
half. And that is a section of Isaiah
which is comparatively little known, but one of the most thrilling sections of
the whole book, when you really get into it and see its real meaning.
Now, a capital H, “The structure of Isaiah 1 to 6 and the
comparison to Micah 1 to 7.” Isaiah and
Micah prophesied at about the same time.
Many books refer to Micah as Isaiah’s younger, as a man who was younger than Isaiah, but I
know of no evidence for that. We don’t
know which was younger, which was older.
But they were about the same time.
And each of them starts: i.e., the first six chapters of Isaiah and the
first seven chapters of Micah, with rebuke for sin, then go on to deal with
God’s blessing in the future. Then another passage of rebuke for sin, then a
wonderful passage of blessing for the future.
The second one, in Micah, corresponds to the first one in Isaiah. Then you will have again a passage of rebuke
for sin and then the last chapter of this section of Isaiah and the last
chapter of Micah is either a prayer to God or a vision of God. So there was a
remarkable similarity of structure between them.
And for next time, I would like you to make this
comparison between the beginning of Micah 4 and the beginning of Isaiah 2,
noting the relationship of each to the last few verses of the preceding
chapter. I see the clock has moved so we better stop for now. Oh, I didn’t mean
to show you the basic themes yet, but that I’ll show you next time…
Edited and read by: Dr. Perry Phillips
Transcribers: Steven Fletcher,
Peggy Hennings, Grace Nield, Jared Deame, Micah Wilson, Ben Garvin, Heather
Reid, Tim Campbell, Joanna Gallagher, Christine Houlette, Tiffany Savage, Amy
Nicols;
Class-Editor: Joshua Bell: Outliner: Holland Stewart
MacRae,
Isaiah 1-6: Lecture 1 Outline
I.
Introduction to
Isaiah 1-6
A.
The supreme
excellence of the book
1.
Isaiah is one of the great masterpieces of the world’s literature
2.
To the Christian more pictures of Christ than any other part of the Old
Testament
a.
How much did Isaiah understand?
b.
1 Peter 1:11
The prophets were "searching
what manner of time, the spirit of
Christ, which was in them, did signify, when he testified
before hand of the sufferings
of Christ, and the glory that
should follow."
c.
Quotes in the New Testament more than any other section
of the OT: Isaiah/as the Scripture
says
d. To understand the NT you have to
understand Isaiah
3. Isaiah
as a Literary Masterpiece
a. The book of Isaiah has a
Hebrew style that is perhaps the
finest that ever
was written
b. Much of the literary style
can be translated contra Koran
c. Key literary device is
parallelism of thought
d. Almost every rhetorical
figure found in Isaiah
B.
Key book for Christians
1.
Most Christians unaware
a. Most Christians know Isaiah 53 and Christmas
stories
b. Most Christians unaware of the great flow of
thought of
the book
c. Isaiah ch. 1 itself is called "Complete
Manual of Religion"
2.
The importance of the Old Testament
a. Sign "No creed but the New
Testament" is not Christian
b. Whole Bible is our creed
1. New Testament constantly refers to the Old
Testament
2. 3/4 of the Bible is composed of the Old
Testament
C.
The importance of the prophetic books
1. Many Christians know stories of
Genesis/Exodus...
2. Prophets often ignored yet Isaiah-Malachi =
size of the NT
3. Need to understand principles of prophetic
interpretation:
personal
confession
D.
The difficulty of the prophetic books--finding principles to open them
up
1. Poetic lineage: much of the prophets is Hebrew poetry
therefore
one must
understand poetic features
a. For example:
waw "and" translated many ways including
"but" "then"
"moreover" and "yet" so it is much
broader
than our English word "and"
b. Translating and understanding poetry is
difficult
2. Local situation
a. God is giving messages related to local
situations
b. Historical situations described in
Kings/Chronicles/Ezra/Nehemiah
3. Partial glimpses of the future
a. Nature of history writing. Not just a list of events but
the
interrelation of events and their meaning
b. Brief vistas of the future not complete and
not totally
understood
and function in relation to the message
being
given at that time: rebuke or comfort
E.
The purposes of prophecy and their relation to prediction
1. A prophet is one who represents God and gives
God’s message
not
just one who tells the future
2. Purposes of prophecy
a. The prophet is there to call people to repent
of their sin
and
turn in obedience to God
1)
2/3's of the prophets manifest this purpose
2)
Future tells suffering of those who fail to repent b. To comfort and reassure believers giving them
assurance
1)
With all the predictions of coming judgment,
believers
comforted not to despair
2) Perhaps 1/3 of the prophetic book is devoted
to the
purpose
3)
Prophet's unannounced switch between purposes
results
in sudden/abrupt transitions in their texts
c. Giving specific guidance
a.
Vital to
recognize that God gave that specific guidance when before His whole Word was
available
b.
Isaiah's
specific guidance resist Sennacherib when he attacks Jerusalem, God will
protect
c.
Jeremiah
specific guidance do not resist the Babylonians for God has delivered you into
their hands...true/false prophets
d.
Discovering
principles for our times
F.
The perspective of prophecy
1) How are we going to
relate them to each other? How are they
arranged?
a) It is not simply this that we listen in
advance
b) Does it proceed right in chronological order?
1)
Often logical not chronological
a. The story of Elijah meeting God at Sinai (I
Kgs. 19)--3 predictions not commands
1)
Hazael, son of nobody to be the king
of Syria
--Elijah doesn't do this, Elisha does
2) Jehu to be anointed king of
Israel
--Elijah doesn't do it, Elisha
sends
someone to do it
3)
Anoint Elisha as Elijah's replacement
--Elijah doesn't do that although Elisha
asked for a double
portion of his spirit
4)
Order predictions given: 1, 2, 3 order
actually happen 2,
3, 1
Logical
not chronological arrangement
c) Mountain
range illustration: distance the near
and far hills
look
close but miss the valleys in between.
Similar to
prophecy
logical not chronological arrangement
Aside
on the assignment for next time: three
things:
1) Note all the correspondences
between the early verses in Isaiah 2 and
Micah 4.
2) Look at connections between the
beginning of Isaiah 2 and the end of
chapter 1
3)
Look at the connections between the beginning of Micah 4 and the end
of Micah 3.
Guidelines:
What do you think of the
chapter divisions?
Do not use commentaries,
look at it for yourself
Focus on the thought
flow not the minute details
Use a good
translation: KJV, NASB, NIV
II.
Divisions of
Isaiah
A. Historical events section 36-39 unique in the
book
B. 3 Divisions: 1-27, 28-39, and 40-66
1) Chapters 7-12 and 28-35
make up the "Book of Immanuel"
2) Chapters 13-23 mostly
describe other nations
3) Chapters 24-27 referred to
as "Isaiah’s Apocalypse"
4) Chapters 40:1-56:8 called
“Isaiah sees the Savior”
H.
The structure of Isaiah 1-6 and the comparison to Micah 1-7
1. Isaiah and Micah prophesied at about the same
time
We don’t
know which was younger and which was older
2. The parallel structure: Isaiah 1-6 and Micah
1-7
a) start with rebuke for sin,
b) God’s blessing in the
future.
a') Another passage of rebuke
for sin
b') A wonderful blessing
for the future.
a'') Then you will have again a
passage of rebuke for sin
c) Last chapter Isaiah 6
and Micah 7 is either a prayer
to God or a
vision of God