The book of Isaiah is one of the most complex and difficult to understand books in the entire Bible. The historical circumstances are of a time in our distant past, first of all, and in addition to that, Isaiah has used a lot of vivid symbolism that is often unclear and obscure. How can we disentangle the book and even begin to understand it?
Firstly, we have enough chronological information from Isaiah itself, and from extra-Biblical accounts, to establish a definite chronology for many of the events of the book – both the events that are explicitly referred to, and some that are only implied or referred to in passing. That will help in attempting to understand Isaiah as a whole.
Secondly, we need to approach Isaiah as literature, rather than looking at it through the lens of Biblical minimalism. What are the themes of Isaiah as a whole? What was the author trying to convey?
It really shouldn’t be that hard to do a “book report” on Isaiah, but unfortunately, an overt bias against the literary unity of the book, combined with a general lack of understanding of the historical and cultural context, make it very difficult to do. We’ve already written about the literary background of Isaiah, so let’s look at a brief chronological overview before diving into a literary analysis.
To begin, ever since the death of King Solomon, Israel had been divided as a nation. Ten of the original twelve tribes of Israel rebelled against the Davidic monarchy in Jerusalem, complaining of unjust taxation. These ten tribes in the north took on the name of “Israel” while the remaining two tribes in the south – Judah and Benjamin – took on the name of “Judah.”
The book of Isaiah itself begins at a very critical juncture in the history of the nation of Israel. The ten tribes of northern Israel were about to fall to a superior military power – the mighty empire of Assyria. Judah, on the other hand, escaped a similar fate – but only through a miracle.
Isaiah mentions a few important, historical players, and it would be helpful to have a brief look at them before we list the actual chronology.
| Isaiah the Prophet | The prophet Isaiah lived and ministered during the reigns of four Davidic kings: Uzziah, Jotham, Ahaz and Hezekiah. By tradition, he survived into the reign of the next Davidic king, Manasseh, who was an extremely wicked king who ordered Isaiah sawn in half. |
|---|---|
| King Uzziah | Also known as Azariah. Uzziah was the son of Amaziah, and reigned for 52 long years over Jerusalem. The Bible describes him as a righteous king. However, during the latter part of his reign, after a series of highly successful military battles against the surrounding nations, he went into the Temple to unlawfully offer a sacrifice so that God would bless his next battle. God cursed him with leprosy as a result of his rebellious act, and he was forced to abdicate and live in a separate house, away from other people, to avoid infecting them. |
| King Jotham | Jotham was the son of Uzziah. Not much is known of his reign, other than that he was a righteous king. |
| King Ahaz | King Ahaz was the son of Jotham, and was a wicked king of Judah who refused to trust in God’s protection. Instead, he turned to the very empire threatening northern Israel – Assyria – for protection against a potential coup d’etat by northern Israel. |
| Pekah, the son of Remaliah | Pekah was the king over northern Israel during part of Isaiah’s ministry, and the instigator of the plot to overthrow Ahaz and set a puppet king on the Davidic throne of Judah. |
| Rezin | Rezin was the king of Syria, a small country north of Israel, and a long-time enemy of northern Israel. Due to the rising threat of Assyria, Rezin formed an alliance with northern Israel for protection against Assyria conquering both of them. |
| King Hezekiah | King Hezekiah was the son of Ahaz, and was an extremely righteous king who put his trust in God’s protection at the most critical point in time. |
| Tiglath-Pileser III | Tiglath-Pileser III was the king of Assyria during the reigns of Uzziah, Jotham, and Ahaz. |
Another, very important thing to note about the kings of Israel and Judah is that there were times when more than one king ruled at the same time. The Bible never explicitly mentions this, but by putting the information on the reign lengths together with extra-Biblical information, we can deduce that such “co-regencies” must have occurred.
As an example, when King Uzziah was struck with leprosy, he couldn’t rule as king of Judah any more, even though he was still technically the king. Instead, his son Jotham became his co-regent, ruling in his stead. When King Uzziah died, Jotham continued to rule as the sole ruler over Judah. The entire period of Jotham’s reign was 16 years (see 2 Ki. 15:33), but much of that reign was as a co-regent with his father.
| 752 BC | Menahem begins ruling in northern Israel |
|---|---|
| 750 BC | Pekah begins ruling in Gilead (Galilee), east of the Jordan River, as a rival to Menahem. The area of the Galilee was where the tribes of Reuben, Gad, and half of the tribe of Manasseh lived. The other tribes of Israel all lived west of the Jordan River. |
| 750 BC | Uzziah struck with leprosy |
| 750 BC | Jotham begins ruling as a co-regent of Uzziah |
| 745 BC | Tiglath-Pileser III begins ruling Assyria |
| 742 BC | Tiglath-Pileser III invades Syria and northern Israel – specifically the northern tribal territories of Zebulun and Naphtali (see Isa. 9:1) which were along the “kings’ highway” running north to south through Israel. King Menahem paid him a tribute so that Tiglath-Pileser would call off the attack. |
| 742 BC | Menahem killed, Pehahiah becomes king over northern Israel (but not the Galilee area) |
| 740 BC | Pekah defeats Pekahiah, becomes sole ruler over all of northern Israel |
| 740 BC | Uzziah dies, Jotham becomes sole ruler |
| 740 BC | King Hezekiah born |
| 735 BC | King Ahaz begins ruling as a co-regent of Jotham |
| 735 BC | Conspiracy between Pekah and Rezin, king of Syria. Ahaz makes a pact with Assyria to protect himself. |
| 735 BC | Prophecy of Immanuel’s birth (see Isa. 7:1-16) |
| 734 BC | Immanuel born |
| 732 BC | Tiglath-Pileser III attacks the Galilee area of northern Israel much more severely (see Isa. 9:1), killing both Rezin and Pekah. |
| 732 BC | Pekah dies, Hoshea becomes king over northern Israel |
| 732 BC | Jotham dies, Ahaz becomes sole ruler |
| 727 BC | Tiglath-Pileser III dies, Shalmaneser V becomes king of Assyria |
| 724 BC | Maher-shalal-hash-baz prophecy (see Isa. 8:1-4) |
| 723 BC | Maher-shalal-hash-baz born |
| 723/722 BC | Samaria besieged by Shalmaneser V and conquered by Sargon II, and 27,290 people from Samaria, the capital of northern Israel, exiled |
| 723/722 BC | Immanuel is 11 years old, before the age when he knows to “refuse the evil and choose the good” – the age of Bar-Mitzvah. Maher-shalal-hash-baz is only a few months old, and can’t say “daddy” or “mommy” yet. |
| 722 BC | Shalmaneser V dies, Sargon II becomes king of Assyria |
| 722 BC | Merodach-Baladan seizes control of Babylon from Assyria |
| 716 BC | Ahaz dies, Hezekiah begins ruling as sole ruler over Judah. Hezekiah rules as a vassal-king of Assyria, because of Ahaz’ pact with Assyria. |
| 715 BC | Hezekiah repairs the Temple |
| 715 BC | Hezekiah invites a small remnant of northern Israelites to come to Jerusalem to observe a national Passover in the second month (roughly April/May; see 2 Chron. 30:1-11) |
| 710 BC | Merodach-Baladan escapes into exile, Babylon brought back under Assyrian control |
| 705 BC | Sargon II dies, Sennacherib becomes king of Assyria |
| 705 BC | Hezekiah begins preparing for revolt against Assyria, despite Isaiah’s warnings not to revolt, and makes an alliance with Egypt (see Isa. 30:1-2) |
| 703 BC | Merodach-Baladan seizes control over Babylon once more, for 9-10 months |
| 702 BC | Merodach-Baladan deposed again, Bel-ibni given the throne of Babylon by Assyria |
| 701 BC | Assyria besieges Jerusalem after having destroyed many of the cities of Judah |
| 701 BC | Immanuel is 33 years old. Maher-shalal-hash-baz is 22 years old. |
| 701 BC | Immanuel and Maher-shalal-hash-baz witness in Jerusalem (Isa. 51:19) |
| 701 BC | Assyrian siege broken by a miracle |
| 701 BC? | Hezekiah gets sick |
| 701 BC? | Hezekiah recovers. Merodach-Baladan sends gifts to Hezekiah, on account of Hezekiah’s sickness, even though he isn’t king over Babylon any more. |
| 697 BC | Manasseh begins ruling as a co-regent with his father Hezekiah |
| 689 BC | Babylon destroyed (during Assyrian rule) as a partial fulfillment of Isaiah 13-14 |
| 686 BC | Hezekiah dies, Manasseh becomes sole ruler |
There are a LOT of events in this chronological overview that bear discussion, but I’m only going to focus on a few important highlights, to give you an overall sense of what the book of Isaiah is all about.
Isaiah begins by describing the sorry state of the Jews living in the capital of Jerusalem. With a king who had been stricken by God with leprosy, the people had become metaphorically (possibly even literally!) stricken with similar skin conditions, representing their sinful state. Outwardly, they were keeping the Mosaic Law, but missing the point of the law – which was to treat one another with love and compassion. It had gotten so bad that God was ready to wipe out Jerusalem and utterly destroy it, like He had done with Sodom and Gomorrah!
And Jerusalem would have been utterly destroyed by Assyria…save for a “very small remnant” as Isaiah 1:9 puts it. And although Isaiah doesn’t immediately explain what remnant he’s talking about, we later find out that this is a righteous remnant of people.
If you go back and read the story of Sodom and Gomorrah in Genesis 18:20-19:29, when God declares that He’s going to destroy Sodom and Gomorrah for their wickedness, Abraham in turn asks if God would destroy it if there were even a small number of righteous people remaining in it. He begins at fifty, and works his way down to ten…but apparently there weren’t even ten righteous people left in those two cities. In other words, not even ten people who had genuine love and compassion for their fellow man.
Filling in the literary gaps, as it were, Isaiah is basically saying that unless there were enough righteous people left in Jerusalem, it would be utterly destroyed. But the problem was…there weren’t!
The story doesn’t end there, of course. Even though God decrees that because of northern Israel’s wickedness, they would soon be exiled to Assyria, God found a way to preserve Jerusalem – at least for a time. And the way that God did it, mostly goes unrecognized by most Biblical scholars today, because they simply don’t recognize the significance of what they’re reading.
Once the capital city of Samaria fell, Assyria didn’t immediately take all of northern Israel captive. In fact, it would be several more decades until the majority of the population was removed – during the reigns of Esarhaddon (681-669 BC) and Ashurbanipal (669-631 BC), according to Ezra 4:2 and 10.
That meant that when King Hezekiah began to rule in 716 BC, there were still many northern Israelites left in the land. And after cleansing the Temple of the despoiling things that his father King Ahaz had desecrated it with (see 2 Chron. 29:1-19), Hezekiah sent messengers to northern Israel, inviting whoever would come to Jerusalem to keep a national Passover observance there.
Originally, Passover was observed in the home (see Ex. 12:1-14). But because the people were still sinful, they couldn’t observe the Passover in the manner in which God had commanded it. So what King Hezekiah did instead was to cleanse and sanctify the priests and have these same priests offer sacrifices on behalf of the people. That way, God would respect the Passover observance, rather than rejecting it and treating it as “worthless,” as Isaiah 1:13-15 describes.
Interestingly enough, most of the northern Israelites rejected Hezekiah’s invitation, but a small remnant “humbled themselves” and came to Jerusalem (see 2 Chron. 30:1-20). This was the “righteous remnant” that Isaiah 1:9 was referring to!
How do we know for sure? Isaiah 10:20-22 tells us:
In that day the remnant of Israel,
the survivors of Jacob,
will no longer rely on him
who struck them down
but will truly rely on the Lord,
the Holy One of Israel.
A remnant will return, a remnant of Jacob
will return to the Mighty God.
Though your people be like the sand by the sea, Israel,
only a remnant will return.
With that small, righteous remnant, God could no longer find Jerusalem worthy of destruction, as Sodom and Gomorrah had been. Thus, despite the fall of northern Israel, their fall provided the means for Jerusalem’s miraculous salvation.
There are some very important ramifications of this righteous remnant, as well as some other, equally important themes in Isaiah – such as God’s covenant promise to King David that David’s royal dynasty would never be removed, and hence God was obligated to protect that dynasty, even if the Davidic monarch in question (King Ahaz, in this case) was wicked.
In future articles, we’ll be going into more detail on Isaiah’s two promised sons, Immanuel and Maher-shalal-hash-baz, and why they’re important. We’ll cover a type of literary genre present in the book of Isaiah called “oracles concerning foreign nations” – found in Isaiah 13-23 – and why that’s important. We’ll also discuss why historical events seem to be “all mixed up” in Isaiah, especially in the later chapters. For instance, we find mention of both Assyria, who was responsible for the exile of northern Israel and the destruction of many cities in Judah, in the late 700’s BC, shortly followed by Babylon, who was responsible for the exile of the Jews in three waves starting in 605 BC – over a hundred years later.
References:
Thiele, Edwin. Mysterious Numbers of the Hebrew Kings