Isaiah 1-39: A New Translation with Introduction and Commentary. (Briefly Noted).

Isaiah 1-39: A New Translation with Introduction and Commentary. By Joseph Blenkinsopp (Doubleday, $50). This recent volume in the Anchor Bible commentary series brings excellent historical critical and philological tools to the task of exegesis and will be followed by a second volume by B. on Isaiah 40-66. While B. admits that there are late redactional links between the first and last chapters of the book of Isaiah, he opposes the idea that Second Isaiah was written by a school of devotees to the Isaianic tradition and concludes that Second Isaiah's concern for the reconstruction of Jerusalem made a good fit with the single-minded concentration on the doomed fate of the city in chaps. 1-39. He stands opposed to advocates of a closer relationship between the two books (such as Hugh Williamson, Brevard Childs, and Christopher Seitz). B. is a good, reliable, and relatively succinct guide to the intricacies of this prophet, though, given the complexities of the book's origin and exegetical problems, no one woul d be expected to agree with his every move. (I tend to doubt, for example, that "Immanuel" is a good omen in 7:14 or that B. has correctly understood the messianic titles in 9:6.) Still, if I were asked to name the best current commentary on Isaiah 1-39, this would be it.