The book of Isaiah--Theses and Hypotheses.

Abstract

The book of Isaiah is a complex unity that developed from a long redactional process, and this complex unity is the key to a biblical-theological appropriation of the book. Following Isaiah's "directions of meaning" will lead contemporary readers to discern a God who wills world-encompassing justice, righteousness, and peace, and who invites people to be agents of God's purposes in shaping the kind of future that God wills.

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Roland E. Murphy was not only a master of exegetical detail, but he also had the marvelous ability to survey a field of inquiry and to summarize succinctly its crucial affirmations, issues, and possibilities. Inspired by his example, I intend in this essay to consider recent scholarly study of the book of Isaiah. For the format of this essay, I have borrowed a genre that Murphy featured in his essay, Wisdom--Theses and Hypotheses. In so doing, I hope to honor in some small way the memory of my teacher, mentor, and friend. Under the heading of "Theses," I shall offer and elaborate upon three statements that seem to constitute an emerging consensus among scholars of the book of Isaiah. Under the rubric of "Hypotheses," I shall suggest and explore three ways in which recent study of the book of Isaiah may contribute to the realm of biblical theology.

Theses

1. The book of Isaiah should be read and interpreted as a unity.

Perhaps as much as or more than any other Old Testament book, the book of Isaiah and its recent history of interpretation demonstrate the profound shift that has occurred in academic biblical studies. Thirty years ago, it was highly unusual (although not impossible) to find a scholarly voice that was ready to defend the unity of the book of Isaiah. Rather, it was an "assured result" of biblical criticism that there were three "Isaiahs," each of which derived from a different prophetic figure, as well as from a different historical, geographical, and socio-political situation--eighth-century First Isaiah of Jerusalem (chapters 1-39), sixth-century Isaiah of Babylon (chapters 40-55), and sixth- or fifth-century Isaiah of the Restoration (chapters 56-66). Furthermore, it was frequently concluded that each of these sections of the book of Isaiah constituted, in essence, its own separate "book," which could and even should be interpreted without reference to the others.

But, things have changed dramatically. Now it is highly unusual to find a scholarly voice that is not ready to defend the unity of the book of Isaiah, at least on some grounds. There are some, such as Richard Coggins, who recently confessed, "There is a real sense in which I continue to find the book unreadable" (91); however, this view is clearly part of a shrinking minority. Definitive evidence in this regard is the appearance in 2001 of Brevard Childs's critical commentary on the entire book of Isaiah, reversing the long-standing practice of commenting separately on the alleged three "Isaiahs" (see also Watts1985 and 1987). Other recent commentaries continue to reflect past practice, but their authors recognize and comment upon the problematic nature of their task (see Tucker; Seitz 1993 and 2001).

To be sure, various scholars perceive the unity of the book of Isaiah quite differently. A few conclude that the unity of the book derives from its having a single author, either eighth-century Isaiah of Jerusalem, who foresaw the events reflected especially in chapters 40-66 (see Motyer; Oswalt), or a fifth- or fourth-century figure who looked back to offer a theological construal of several hundred years of Israelite and Judean history (see Quinn-Miscall; Watts 1985 and 1987). Many more scholars conclude that the book of Isaiah is unified by theme(s) and purpose(s) that result from a long process of growth and redaction that began in the eighth century and continued into the third or even the second century BCE (see Carr; Childs; Clements 1980 and 1982; Rendtorff; Seitz 1993 and 2001; Steck 2000). Still others bracket out the questions of authorship, dating, and redaction in favor of simply reading the book as a final literary product (see Conrad). As divergent as these interests and approaches may be, they share the conviction that the book of Isaiah is, in some sense, to be interpreted as a unity.

To be sure, one might suspect that the general movement in biblical studies beyond historical approaches to more literary and "canonical" approaches may be leading contemporary scholars to find more unity in the book of Isaiah than any author and/or editor(s) ever intended (and hence more than is actually there!). David Carr has articulated this suspicion, suggesting that scholarly assumptions of unity may mean that "we will be impelled to find such [unitary literary] shape in texts whether or not it is there" (79). Even so, while Carr doubts that an "an overall macrostructural integration" (79) exists for the book of Isaiah, he is willing to speak of "the complexity of the unity" (78; see also Rendtorff) that exists as a result of the editorial process that has produced the book of Isaiah in its final form. This notion of a complex unity of the book leads us to a second thesis.

2. The complex unity of the book of Isaiah is the result of an extended redactional process, and the resulting complexity suggests that unity does not mean uniformity.

Scholars have long noticed that certain words, phrases, and themes occur throughout the book of Isaiah--the reference to God as "the Holy One of Israel," the significance of Zion, the centrality of sin and forgiveness--and recent study of the book of Isaiah has suggested even more pan-Isaianic concerns, such as blindness and sight (Quinn-Miscall: 89-93), the role of Torah (Sweeney 1996a), and the importance of exodus language and themes (Sweeney 1996a: 64-65; for a summary of pan-Isaianic language and themes, see Seitz 1993: 3). Furthermore, there are structural features that link the three sections of the book that were formerly treated separately--the similarities between chapters 1 and 65-66, the opening and concluding chapters of the book; the way that chapter 35 summarizes the content of chapters 1-34 and anticipates chapters 40-66 (see Tucker: 280, who cites Steck 1985: 101-03; Sweeney 1996b: 451; and Clements 1980: 275); and the featuring of Babylon in chapter 39 that anticipates the situation of chapters 40 and following (see Seitz 1993: 16, 261-66).

The pan-Isaianic language and themes, along with indications of structural linkages among the allegedly separate sections of the book, make unassailable the conclusion that the book of Isaiah is to be read as a unity. As suggested above by Carr, however, there is not a clear, unambiguous macrostructure for the book; and this makes for a complex unity. Seitz, a staunch defender of the unity of the book, has this complexity in mind when he suggests that "Isaiah is a book of paradoxical linkages" (1993: 17). Other scholars are even more explicit about the complexity of Isaiah's unity. For instance, Peter Quinn-Miscall, although he traces the origin of the book of Isaiah to a single fifth-or fourth-century author, straightforwardly acknowledges the "contrast and even contradiction within Isaiah" (56; see 173, 192).

In contrast to Quinn-Miscall, Odil Hannes Steck concludes that the contrast and contradiction in Isaiah are definitive evidence of the book's redaction; and this position reflects the consensus that has emerged among scholars. In the following quotation, Steck also touches upon two key issues in Isaiah that demonstrate that the book's unity does not mean uniformity--first, Isaiah's view of the future (in Steck's words, "the metahistorical final events"); and second, the role and destiny of the nations:

   ... the book adopts material understandings with respect to
   the metahistorical final events and purpose that are not only
   different and that amplify one another, but material understandings
   that actually contradict one another. By no means
   could all these material understandings be simultaneously
   original. A glance at the expectations that Isaiah fosters
   makes this statement self-evident. Jerusalem's completion of
   salvation can also include the nations in some passages (see,
   for example, Isa 2:2-5; 33; 49:14-26; 60-62 [66]), but in
   other passages Jerusalem's completion of salvation is bound
   with the downfall of these nations (Isa 13; 24-27; 30:27-33;
   24; 63:1-6) [2000: 70; emphasis added].

It should be noted, however, that even though Steck insists that the book of Isaiah developed diachronically (that is, through a long period of time), and even though he is interested in tracing and dating the various levels of redaction, he is equally insistent that the book of Isaiah be approached, read, and interpreted as a book. In essence, then, Steck calls for both a diachronic and synchronic reading of Isaiah. Or, more specifically in Steck's words: "The task is more precisely a historically inquiring synchronic reading of the entire book" (2000: 20; see 20-65). According to Steck, only when interpreters are in touch with the shape and contours of the book of Isaiah in its final form will they be able to sort out its process of growth without yielding to presuppositions and preconceptions (such as, for example, the premature judgment that most of the material in chapters 1-39, or even chapters 1-12, derives from eighth-century Isaiah). In any case, Steck's call for "a historically inquiring synchronic reading" reinforces the important conclusion that the unity of the book of Isaiah does not mean the uniformity of its complex material. Indeed, as my final thesis will suggest, a recognition of the complex unity of the book lays the foundation for biblical-theological reflection on the book of Isaiah.

3. The book of Isaiah's complex unity--especially its contrast and contradiction--provides the key to biblical-theological reflection on the book of Isaiah.

The long process of tradition that has resulted in the complex unity of the book of Isaiah is important because it affirms something about the kind of God revealed in the prophetic books (and in Scripture as a whole). As Steck succinctly puts it, "The fluidity of the growing prophetic tradition and the fluidity of the dynamic God who turns to every generation are connected" (2000: 165; emphasis added). In short, a living God cannot be adequately discerned and described except by a living tradition. This means, of course, that Isaianic and all prophetic renderings of God, God's purposes, and God's future are inevitably "time-bound" (Steck 2000: 166; see 165-8). The long process of tradition that lies behind the book of Isaiah (and the other prophetic books as well) thus bears testimony to a dynamic, living God; and it also explains why tradents in different generations (and perhaps in different places) preserved and transmitted material that is contrasting and even contradictory. In this sense, the contrast and contradiction within the book of Isaiah are especially important, not only in pointing toward the literary and historical conclusion that the book is a complex unity that developed through time, but also in pointing toward a living God whose purposes must be discerned and articulated anew by every generation of God's people.

Steck seems to be aware that people of faith often tend to be afraid of the notion of a living God whose purposes are dynamic--that is, people think that God should be more "absolute." Steck addresses this fear as follows:

   The change of perspectives and the accentuations in the
   course of the prophetic transmission thus should not frighten.
   To the contrary, these perspectives show the dynamic
   nature of God and realistic experience. They also restrain
   doctrinaire one-sidedness [2000: 188].

Again, the contrast and contradiction within the book of Isaiah turn out to be especially important. At the same time that they offer witness to a living God, they commend humility as an essential posture for biblical interpretation and theological reflection. In other words, the danger of positing an "absolute" God is that this God will simply be static; and the accompanying danger is that the people of God may bind themselves to perspectives and courses of action that the living God may have abandoned generations ago!

But if God and God's will are dynamic, the question then arises as to what prevents biblical interpretation from being merely relativistic. In the following quotation, Steck offers a perspective on this question, while he again affirms the time-bound nature of prophetic speech and thus the necessity to discern and articulate God's will as part of an ongoing process of participation in a living tradition:

   If exegetical effort does not just trace time-bound effort, but
   also traces the essential ideas of inner-biblical exegesis, then
   biblical truth cannot be adapted in the philosophical and theological
   reflection of ancient biblical formulations. It can only
   be adapted in living tradition. This living tradition ventures
   to formulate anew and to extend the formulation in
   changed realms of thought, life, and experience. It thus protects
   the fact that speech about God is always time-bound
   speech. To that extent, speech about God is close to history,
   life, and experience. Stated pointedly, one must certainly
   not steadfastly affirm ancient formulations, ancient ways of
   thinking, and ancient experiences in a later time. Rather,
   one should expose earlier perceptual worlds perceived in
   ancient texts in every subsequent period of new testing in
   thought and life [Steck 2000: 190; emphasis added].

The key phrases here are "essential ideas of inner-biblical exegesis" and "earlier perceptual worlds." The challenge of contemporary biblical-theological interpretation, therefore, is first to identify the "essential ideas" or affirmations about God and God's purposes that are found in the book of Isaiah--Isaiah's "perceptual world," if you will--and then to consider how these ideas and affirmations might function in our radically changed and changing contemporary world. This approach amounts to our "new testing" of the book of Isaiah's affirmations about God and God's will in the present world of our own "thought and life."

Steck also describes this approach in slightly different terms, which are also helpful. He speaks of an ancient text's "direction of meaning," which should be discerned and honored by contemporary interpreters to avoid arbitrariness (as well as to avoid the "doctrinaire one-sidedness" mentioned above). As Steck puts it:

   Nevertheless, experience also teaches that inappropriate
   adoptions of the text also exist that misunderstand the text's
   direction of meaning.... The clarifying power of the text
   and the adopting imagination of the receiver should move
   along the same material line, so that the receiver in a much
   later time does not force his/her own provision of meaning
   (whether pious or impious) onto the biblical text....
   Historical-theological inquiry watches over this direction of
   meaning so that it remains the leading direction of meaning
   in the subsequent period [Steck 2000: 181].

Insofar as contemporary interpreters honor the ancient text's "direction of meaning" and move along its "material line," it is possible, according to Steck, to achieve a "higher unity of meaning" (184) between the ancient text of the book of Isaiah and contemporary biblical-theological reflection on it. To be sure, theological reflection on the book of Isaiah (that is, Old Testament theology) and sermons based upon Isaiah will "have to be continually rewritten" (184). In other words, what the text meant and what it means today will not be "directly identical," due to profound differences between the ancient and contemporary world-settings; but what the text meant and what the text means "can be identical in a mediated form" (184). This "higher unity of meaning" should be the goal of contemporary biblical-theological interpretation of the book of Isaiah. As Steck concludes, "In this task, which falls to the theologians and preachers, the growth of the prophetic books, like the Hebrew Bible as a whole, already provides a model" (187).

In the remainder of this essay, I shall identify three "essential ideas" or affirmations about God and God's purposes that lie at the heart of the book of Isaiah's "perceptual world." For each, I shall also suggest some possibilities for what it might involve to follow this "direction of meaning" in our contemporary world. Keeping in mind the book of Isaiah's complex unity that corresponds to a living, dynamic God, I offer these reflections in full awareness of their time-bound character; and following Roland Murphy's humble lead, I label them "Hypotheses."

Hypotheses

1. The book of Isaiah portrays a sovereign God who claims all nations as God's own, and who wills world-encompassing justice, righteousness, and peace.

Like the entire prophetic tradition, the book of Isaiah emphasizes the central importance of justice and righteousness. If Isaiah 1 is indeed an introduction to the whole book, as some have suggested, then it is not surprising that it features justice and righteousness as the heart of God's will. "Seek justice" (v 17) is the basic commandment from God to God's people. Justice and righteousness are what God looks for among God's people (vv 21, 26-27); and as elsewhere, this means provision for the needy (vv 17, 23). Not only is the centrality of justice and righteousness evident in the earliest portions of the book (see also 5:1-7, 16; 9:7; 10:2; 11:3, 5); but justice and righteousness also remain important throughout the rest of so-called First Isaiah (see 16:5; 26:9-10; 28:6, 17; 30:18; 32:1, 16-17; 33:5), as well as in the portions of the book formerly designated as Second and Third Isaiah (see 40:14; 42:1, 3-4, 6; 45:8, 24; 51:4, 7; 54:14; 56:1; 58:2, 8 [NRSV "vindication"]; 59:8-9, 14-17; 60:17; 61:3, 8, 10-11).

In Isaiah's (and the Bible's) perceptual world, the responsibility for enacting justice and righteousness, the result of which is peace (see Isa 32:16-18), belongs in both the human and divine realms to the monarch (see Pss 72:1-7; 96:10-13; 97:2; 98:6-9; 99:4). Hence, the centrality of justice and righteousness in Isaiah at least implicitly affirms God's sovereignty (see the explicit affirmations of God's sovereignty in Isaiah 6:1, 5; 33:22; 52:7); and it is significant that God's sovereign claim is not just upon a particular people and place (Judah and Zion), but rather God's sovereign claim is world-encompassing. This is evident from nearly the beginning of the book, in what some scholars identify as a programmatic text for the entire book, 2:2-4 (see Conrad: 156-58). Not coincidentally, 2:4 says that God "shall judge between the nations," an affirmation that could be translated, "will establish justice among the nations."

But even if 2:2-4 is not a programmatic text for the entire book, it is clear enough that God is portrayed throughout Isaiah as a universal sovereign. The king of Assyria operates (unknowingly) at God's command (7:17-20; 10:5-11), and the future of Assyria depends on God's doing (10:12-19; see 37:33-38). Babylon too is under God's sway (see 39:5-8), and King Cyrus of Persia is even called in 45:1 God's "anointed" (messiah)! And when the establishment of God's justice is at issue in Isaiah 42, the servant (see Hypothesis 2) "will bring forth justice to the nations" (v 1; emphasis added) and will establish "justice in the earth" (v 4; emphasis added). The world-encompassing scope of God's justice certainly recalls 2:2-4 (compare also "teaching" in 42:4 with "teach" and "instruction" in 2:3).

To be sure, this "direction of meaning" (see Thesis 3) is often cited by scholars when they point to the contrast and contradiction in the book of Isaiah. While God's universal establishment of justice, righteousness, and peace often seems to include the salvation of the nations--that is, the nations will participate in the life-giving work that God wills and is working to accomplish (in addition to 2:2-4 and 42:1-4, see 49:14-26; 56:3-8; 60:1-62:12)--this is not always the case. In other texts, the nations seem destined for destruction. This is especially the case in Isaiah 13-23, the block of material usually called "Oracles Against the Nations," in which there are harsh words about Babylon, Assyria, the Philistines, Moab, Damascus, Ethiopia, Egypt, and Tyre (see also Isa 24-27; 30:27-33; 34:1-17; 63:1-6), apparently as a way of announcing salvation for Judah/Israel and Zion (see 14:1-2, 32).

How then might contemporary readers begin to follow the "material line" of this "direction of meaning"? Given the contrast and contradiction, restraint and humility are in order (see Thesis 3, above). There is no room for Jews or Christians (including contemporary Israelis and U. S. citizens who fashion their country as a "Christian nation") to be triumphalistic; that is, there is no warrant for construing the "Oracles Against the Nations" as evidence that God is "on our side" and "against them." Such a conclusion is even more clearly ruled out by the fact that much of the material in the book of Isaiah (and the other prophetic books) might accurately be labeled, "Oracles against Israel and Judah"! More to the point, it seems, God is against sin in the form of injustice and unrighteousness. As Quinn-Miscall concludes, "To put it simply, sinners are sinners and God reacts against them whether they are Israelite, Assyrian, or any humans" (157).

Israel/Judah's hope lay not in receiving partial treatment from God, but rather in receiving God's grace, God's willingness to forgive sinners and to remain committed to them despite their disobedience (see Isa 40:1-2). Given the necessity on God's part to pursue justice finally by way of forgiveness, there is no reason given in Isaiah to think that God's forgiveness is not also extended to Assyrian sinners and to any human sinners. Indeed, as we have seen, there is much to suggest that God wills justice, righteousness, and peace on a world-encompassing scale. Even the oracle against Egypt in Isaiah 19 concludes with the astounding vision of a day when "Israel will be the third with Egypt and Assyria, a blessing in the midst of the earth, whom the LORD of hosts has blessed, saying, 'Blessed be Egypt, my people, and Assyria, the work of my hands, and Israel my heritage'"(vv 24-25). The language of blessing, of course, echoes the promise to Abraham in Genesis 12:1-3. Abraham, Sarah, and their descendants will be blessed, but they are also somehow to effect blessing for "all the families of the earth" (v 3). If God is partial, it is partiality to justice, righteousness, and peace among all nations. In Quinn-Miscall's words again, "A society, a people, who live justly and righteously will experience deliverance and triumph in all aspects of their lives" (209).

To be sure, to follow this "direction of meaning" in our world does not give us a blueprint for the future nor a neat set of policies for the present. But for those of us who seek to appropriate the book of Isaiah faithfully as a living tradition, there is much to consider and to test. Right now, for instance, we are experiencing and participating in a world-encompassing phenomenon known as "globalization." On the surface, it may sound like something of which the book of Isaiah would whole-heartedly approve; and indeed, it may harbor great potential for justice, righteousness, and peace on a global scale. But, as Joseph Stiglitz (winner of the 2001 Nobel Prize in economics) points out in his GLOBALIZATION AND ITS DISCONTENTS, globalization is primarily taking the form of economic imperialism on the part of the few wealthiest countries in the world (the so-called G-7 nations, or now with Russia, the G-8); and the result "has all too often been to benefit the few at the expense of the many, the well-off at the expense of the poor" (20). The widening gap between rich and poor is breeding discontent, which almost certainly is contributing to a disturbing resurgence of tribalism and terrorism throughout the world. Over against the current form of globalization, perhaps those faithful to the living tradition of Isaiah can insist upon and work toward an alternative form of globalization--an Isaianic, biblical form of globalization--that articulates God's claim on all nations, that refuses to demonize any nation, that proclaims God's opposition to injustice wherever and by whomever it occurs, and that thereby contributes to the world-encompassing peace that God wills. As Hypothesis 2 (below) suggests, the people of God are invited to this calling.

2. The book of Isaiah affirms that God's people and God's place have a special role to play in the proclamation and embodiment of God's will in the world.

As suggested above, the Judean monarchy was entrusted with the earthly enactment of the justice and righteousness willed by God, the cosmic sovereign. But as the whole prophetic canon suggests, the monarchy was seldom faithful to God and God's purposes. As Edgar Conrad points out, the death of each king in the book of Isaiah--Uzziah, Ahaz, and Hezekiah--precipitates a crisis--the Syro-Ephraimite, the Assyrian, and the Babylonian crises respectively. As he concludes, "This structuring of Isaiah's vision indicates the failure of kingship to bring lasting peace and security" (144). Of course, the final form of the book of Isaiah knows of the disappearance of the monarchy following 587 BCE; and it also seems to offer a response to the question: Given the demise of the monarchy, what earthly agency will be responsible for the enactment of God's justice, righteousness, and peace? As Conrad puts it, the book of Isaiah envisions "the birth of a new kind of royalty" (148), as one of the "new things" (42:9; see 43:19) that God is doing in the world.

This proclamation of "new things" in 42:9 comes at the conclusion of the first of the servant songs. The identity of the servant has been and is being extensively debated, but the most likely possibility is that the servant is Israel/Judah--that is, the people of God as a whole (see 41:8-9; 43:10; 44:1-2, 21). The "everlasting covenant" formerly attached to the Davidic monarchy (see Ps 89:3-4, 28, 34) now belongs to "everyone" (Isa 55:1, 3). The whole people of God are to be God's earthly agent for the enactment of God's will.

While the people of God play a special role, it is not necessarily an exclusive role, as suggested by Isaiah 56:3-8 (see "servants" in v 6). Citing this passage, Quinn-Miscall concludes, "Anyone, even a foreigner, can be a servant of the Lord; anyone can perform divine tasks and worship God.... A servant can be an individual, a group, or an entire nation" (188). In any case, God's people--no matter how broadly defined or constituted (see Hypothesis 1 concerning God's claim on all nations)--have a role to play in the enactment of God's will in the world.

So, according to the book of Isaiah, does God's place, Zion/Jerusalem. So-called First Isaiah has long been described as a proponent of a Zion tradition, but the centrality of Zion is evident throughout the book of Isaiah. As is the case with the concept of the people of God in Isaiah, the boundaries of Zion are increasingly broadened. At the beginning (2:2-4) and at the end (66:23) of the book of Isaiah, the whole world flows to Zion (see also 56:3-8, especially v 7). From one perspective, the glorification of Zion as, in essence, the capital of the world (see also Isa 62:1-12; Pss 46, 48, 87), seems like a piece of ancient Judean propaganda, something best abandoned in our contemporary context of turmoil in the Middle East. Is it advisable even to attempt to follow this "direction of meaning" in the book of Isaiah? To be sure, caution and humility are again in order; but it seems possible to appropriate the Zion tradition as symbol. Zion represented the intersection of heaven and earth, God's "house," the place where God was palpably accessible. Is not the portrayal of the Temple as "a house of prayer for all peoples" (56:7) the book of Isaiah's way of affirming that God wills blessing and life for all the world? If so, then this affirmation is entirely congruent with the book's portrayal of a God who wills world-encompassing justice, righteousness, and peace (see Hypothesis 1).

What about Jerusalem as a still-thriving actual place? Given the Isaianic tradition as a living tradition, is there not something highly appropriate about the fact that Jerusalem is a truly international city, a place visited by people from all over the world, as well as a place revered by Jews, Christians, and Muslims? And, although perhaps unthinkable to many Jews and Christians, might not the Isaianic tradition actually lead us to celebrate this reality rather than seeing it as a source of consternation and contention? To celebrate Jerusalem's international status and constituency would appropriately honor the God of all nations; and it might facilitate Jerusalem's becoming what its name seems to mean etymologically, the "gate/foundation of peace," as well as Jerusalem's becoming the geographical point from which peace radiates into all the world (as Isaiah envisions in 2:2-4). This challenge faces us and the world toward the future, as we suggest in our third Hypothesis

3. The book of Isaiah invites God's people and the world into an open future in which change is genuinely possible.

Although the prophets have sometimes been viewed simply as announcers of doom, they are presented in the final forms of the prophetic books as preachers of repentance. In situations of injustice and unrighteousness, they simultaneously indict the guilty and urge repentance aimed at transformation. To be sure, the commissioning of Isaiah in 6:9-13 seems to reinforce the conclusion that the prophets simply announce doom. Isaiah's words will apparently have no effect, except to deafen and blind the people (v 10). But the book of Isaiah later affirms that "the eyes of the blind shall be opened, and the ears of the deaf unstopped" (33:5). New things are possible! Indeed, God is doing "new things" (42:9; see 43:19), including the preparation of God's servant-people to be "a light to the nations" (42:6; see Hypotheses 1 and 2), a calling that means that the people too are "to open the eyes that are blind" (42:6).

According to Conrad, the structure of the book of Isaiah reinforces the perspective of a future of new possibility. Whereas deliverance from Assyria is both announced (chapters 7-8, as well as 10:12-27) and narrated (chapters 36-38), deliverance from Babylon is announced but not explicitly narrated. Conrad suggests that the book of Isaiah thus leaves its readers in waiting, perpetually anticipating and living toward a future entrusted to God. As he sums it up, "To read this alien text from the past is to share in a vision of the future" (161; see 79-82). This future seems to be what the book of Isaiah means by God's creation of"new heavens and a new earth" (65:17). God's new future should not be relegated to the realm of apocalyptic, end-of-the-world eschatology. Rather, God makes possible new things in the immediate future, indeed in the here and now. As Walter Brueggemann suggests, the material leading up to chapter 65 illustrates the new things that God was inviting and equipping people to do--welcoming the unclean and the nations into God's house (56:3-8), transforming ritual into provision for the needy (58:6-8), and recovering the radically compassionate provisions of the Jublilee year (61:1-4). Brueggemann calls these new things the "release of social imagination" (102; see 98-102).

How might we pursue this "direction of meaning"? In their book, HOPE'S EDGE, Frances Moore Lappe and Anna Lappe suggest that our world is locked into "thought traps" that perpetuate destructive patterns of behavior and that result in widespread poverty and despair. Their "Thought Trap Five" involves the belief that things cannot essentially change, forcing us to think that we'd best "stop bothering even to imagine something different" (29). If the Lappes are even close to being correct, then one of the most valuable aspects of the living Isaianic tradition is to invite us to follow a God who does "new things" and who invites people to do "new things" as well. To follow this God is to be liberated from the "thought traps" that stifle social imagination and faithfulness. To follow this God is to envision and to enter a future that promises not resignation and despair, but reconciliation and hope.

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Quinn-Miscall, P. D. 2001. READING ISAIAH: POETRY AND VISION. Louisville, KY: Westminster John Knox Press.

Rendtorff, R. 1996. The Book of Isaiah: A Complex Unity, Synchronic and Diachronic Reading. Pp. 32-49 in NEW VISIONS OF ISAIAH, edited by R. F. Melugin & M. A. Sweeney. Journal for the Study of the Old Testament, Supplement 214; Sheffield, UK: Sheffield Academic Press.

Seitz, C. R. 2001. The Book of Isaiah 40-66: Introduction, Commentary, and Reflections. Pp. 307-552 in THE NEW INTERPRETER'S BIBLE, vol. 6, Nashville: Abingdon Press.

1993. ISAIAH 1-39. Interpretation. Louisville, KY: John Knox Press.

Steck, O. H. 2000. THE PROPHETIC BOOKS AND THEIR THEOLOGICAL WITNESS, translated by J. D. Nogalski. St. Louis, MO: Chalice Press.

1985. JESAJA 35 ALS REDAKTIONELLE BRUCKE ZWISCHEN DEM ERSTEN UND DEM ZWEITEN JESAJA. Stuttgarter Bibelstudien 121. Stuttgart, Germany: Katholisches Biblewerk.

Stiglitz, J. E. 2002. GLOBALIZATION AND ITS DISCONTENTS. New York, NY: W.W. Norton and Co.

Sweeney, M. A. 1996a. The Book of Isaiah as Prophetic Torah. Pp. 50-67 in NEW VISIONS OF ISAIAH, edited by R. F. Melugin & M. A. Sweeney. Journal for the Study of the Old Testament, Supplement 214; Sheffield, UK: Sheffield Academic Press.

1996b. ISAIAH 1-39, WITH AN INTRODUCTION TO PROPHETIC LITERATURE. Forms of the Old Testament Literature 16. Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans Publishing Co.

Tucker, G. M. 2001. The Book of Isaiah 1-39: Introduction, Commentary, and Reflections. Pp. 25-305 in THE NEW INTERPRETER'S BIBLE, vol. 6. Nashville, TN: Abingdon Press.

Watts, J. D. W. 1985. ISAIAH 1-33. Word Biblical Commentary 24. Waco, TX: Word Books.

1987. ISAIAH 34-66. Word Biblical Commentary 25. Waco, TX: Word Books.

J. Clinton McCann, Jr., Ph.D. (Duke University), was supervised in his dissertation work by Roland E. Murphy. Since 1987, he has taught Old Testament at Eden Theological Seminary in Webster Groves, MO; where he is now the Evangelical Professor of Biblical Interpretation. He chaired the Psalms Section of the Society of Biblical Literature from 1989 to 1998, and he is author of A THEOLOGICAL INTRODUCTION TO THE BOOK OF PSALMS: THE PSALMS OF TORAH (1993) and the Psalms commentary in THE NEW INTERPRETER'S BIBLE (1996). His most recently published essay is The Hermeneutics of Grace: Discerning the Bible's "Single Plot" (INTERPRETATION, January 2003); and his most recently published volume is JUDGES, a commentary in the Interpretation series (2002). He is currently working on a theological introduction to the Old Testament/Tanach, as he continues to improve his facility in Spanish as part of an ongoing interest in Latin American theology and biblical interpretation.