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    Miracle in Isaiah: Divine Marvel and Prophetic World
    Miracle in Isaiah: Divine Marvel and Prophetic World
    Miracle in Isaiah: Divine Marvel and Prophetic World
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    Miracle in Isaiah: Divine Marvel and Prophetic World

    By John Goldingay

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    The book of Isaiah places a distinctive emphasis on the miraculous. It speaks about the miraculous more than any other book of Scripture. Because miracle runs through the whole of the prophecy, careful attention to it, as John Goldingay gives it here, not only unfolds the message of Isaiah but allows the theme to become a detailed commentary on the God of miracles.

    Miracle is a tricky word, so Goldingay defines what is meant by the miraculous in Isaiah before considering the miraculous features throughout the book: in testimonies to Yahweh's extraordinary communication with people such as prophets, in reminders of Yahweh's extraordinary acts long ago, in reports of the extraordinary acts whereby Yahweh rescues his people within the book's temporal framework, in promises of Yahweh's extraordinary acts of restoration in the future, and in Yahweh's extraordinary acts toward other peoples.

    What of the miracles of long ago? Did God create the world, devastate it and then start it off again, summon Abraham, deliver Israel from Egypt, drown the Egyptian army in the Red Sea, take the Israelites through the wilderness, dispossess the Canaanites, defeat the Midianites? What about the miracles that come after, including those witnessed in the New Testament--especially the raising of Jesus from the grave? Goldingay points to the interweaving of miracle with narrative in Isaiah itself to provide a clue: these are stories about real events which, with the help of the Spirit of God, have become narratives that captivate and edify.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherFortress Press
    Release dateMar 29, 2022
    ISBN9781506481807
    Miracle in Isaiah: Divine Marvel and Prophetic World
    Author

    John Goldingay

    John Goldingay is David Allan Hubbard Professor Emeritus of Old Testament at Fuller Seminary.  

    Read more from John Goldingay

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      Miracle in Isaiah - John Goldingay

      Cover Page for Miracle in Isaiah

      Praise for Miracle in Isaiah

      Goldingay has written a concise, engaging, and thought-provoking book on what constitutes a miracle in the book of Isaiah. Goldingay’s definition, which may surprise readers, is well supported by the text, and Goldingay communicates his insights lucidly and with scholarly gravitas. The outcome is an easily accessible yet also very learned study. I can recommend this book wholeheartedly.

      —Lena-Sofia Tiemeyer, Örebro School of Theology

      "Miracle in Isaiah is another helpful exercise in biblical theology. John Goldingay first teases out the meaning of the word miracle before exploring God’s extraordinary communication and acts of salvation on Israel’s behalf, relying on the prophet Isaiah throughout. The result confirms today’s Christian believers as participants in the sequence of past and future miracles, including citizenship in the miraculous new Jerusalem and the hope of a miraculous resurrection to a new kind of bodily life in Jesus."

      —Bill T. Arnold, Asbury Theological Seminary

      Goldingay has unparalleled international expertise on the theology of the book of Isaiah. In this book he breaks that down into an accessible format suitable for a wide readership to focus on a central element that has not previously been properly explored. Readers will here find themselves introduced to a central theme that opens up the richness of Isaiah in a fresh and illuminating manner. It is further enlivened by some personal engagement with the question of how modern readers, whether believers or not, should relate with the biblical presentation of miracle. It is one of those books that should not be missed.

      —H. G. M. Williamson, University of Oxford

      "With his trademark clarity and use of innovative categories, John Goldingay’s Miracle in Isaiah shows that the ‘miraculous’ in Isaiah goes far beyond a few well-known passages—it pervades much of the book. One cannot but appreciate how many new insights emerge from looking at Isaiah through the lens of miracle under the tutelage of one of the twenty-first century’s most prolific Old Testament commentators."

      —Andrew Abernethy, Wheaton College

      Miracle in Isaiah

      Miracle in Isaiah

      Divine Marvel and Prophetic Word

      John Goldingay

      Fortress Press

      Minneapolis

      MIRACLE IN ISAIAH

      Divine Marvel and Prophetic Word

      Copyright © 2022 John Goldingay. Printed by Fortress Press, an imprint of 1517 Media. All rights reserved. Except for brief quotations in critical articles or reviews, no part of this book may be reproduced in any manner without prior written permission from the publisher. Email [email protected] or write to Permissions, Fortress Press, PO Box 1209, Minneapolis, MN 55440-1209.

      All Scripture quotations, unless otherwise indicated, are the author’s own.

      Cover image: Edward Knippers, Isaiah in the Temple, 2008. Oil on panel

      Cover design: Kristin Miller

      Print ISBN: 978-1-5064-8179-1

      eBook ISBN: 978-1-5064-8180-7

      While the author and 1517 Media have confirmed that all references to website addresses (URLs) were accurate at the time of writing, URLs may have expired or changed since the manuscript was prepared.

      Contents

      Abbreviations

      Preface

      1. The Idea of Miracle in Isaiah

      2. Testimonies to Miraculous Communication

      3. Reminders of Miracles from Long Ago

      4. Reports of Threats and Promises Fulfilled

      5. Promises of Miraculous Restoration

      6. Threats and Promises for the World

      7. Conclusion

      Notes

      Scripture Index

      Authors Index

      Abbreviations

      JBL  Journal of Biblical Literature

      JSOT  Journal for the Study of the Old Testament

      KJV  King James Version

      LHBOTS  Library of Hebrew Bible / Old Testament Studies

      LXX  Septuagint

      MT  Masoretic Text

      NIV  New International Version

      NJPS  New Jewish Publication Society translation

      NRSV  New Revised Standard Version

      Vg  Vulgate

      VT  Vetus Testamentum

      In references with the form Isaiah 9:6 [5], the first formulation applies to printed English Bibles and the one in square brackets to printed Hebrew Bibles where they differ.

      Preface

      The book of Isaiah has a distinctive emphasis on the miraculous; it talks about the miraculous more than any other book in the Scriptures. The theme runs through the whole of Isaiah, and studying Isaiah in light of its talk about the miraculous turns out to open up Isaiah as a whole.¹

      Of course, miracle is a tricky word, and in this book, I first seek to articulate what counts as the miraculous in Isaiah. In the main part of the book, I then consider how the miraculous features throughout Isaiah: in testimonies to Yahweh’s extraordinary communication with people such as prophets, in reminders of his extraordinary acts long ago, in reports of the extraordinary acts whereby he rescues his people within the book’s temporal framework, in promises of his extraordinary acts of restoration in the future, and in undertakings regarding extraordinary acts toward other peoples.

      Scriptural translations are my own, usually comparable to ones in my version in The First Testament: A New Translation.² I like to talk in terms of the First Testament rather than the Old Testament because there is nothing old or out-of-date about it. (The title the Old Testament came into use some time after the New Testament period. Within the New Testament, these works that Jews commonly call the Torah, the Prophets, and the Writings are simply the Scriptures.)

      I will also be using the name Yahweh to refer to the God of whom the First Testament speaks. Most translations replace the name Yahweh with the expression the Lord, in keeping with Jewish usage. That usage likely arose to make clear that the God of Israel is not just an oddly named local Jewish deity; it also encourages reverence toward the name of God. On the other hand, in a book such as Isaiah, maybe more than any other, the point of what the prophet says depends on the fact that it refers specifically to Yahweh rather than some other Lord, some other so-called god. I am Yahweh and there is no other (e.g., 45:5) is a statement with a different kind of punch from I am the Lord and there is no other. (In case you wonder whether Jews are offended by gentiles using the name Yahweh, I think the answer is that they are not offended; avoiding the use of the name is a Jewish commitment, like keeping kosher, which Jews accept as their vocation but do not assume that gentiles must. But their reverence for the name of God does remind gentiles of an obligation in that direction.)

      1

      The Idea of Miracle in Isaiah

      We use the word miracle in English in two main ways. It can denote an extraordinary, significant event that is a direct act of God and cannot be explained in terms of regular cause and effect (we may or may not then believe there is such a thing). Or it can denote an event that is simply unexpected and amazing. In asking about how Isaiah speaks about the miraculous, we then have to take into account the way that words and concepts we use in English commonly have different meanings from the same words and concepts when they appear in English translations of the Scriptures. Examples that come to mind are words such as covenant, justice, and righteousness. In each case, there is an overlap between the meaning of those words in ordinary English usage and their meaning when they appear in English translations of the Scriptures—otherwise, the translations wouldn’t use those words. But there are also ways in which the Hebrew or Greek words that lie behind these translations have different implications.

      In the case of the word miracle, any focus on whether things can be explained by regular cause and effect already suggests that the customary Western idea of miracle may not correspond to a concept that underlies the First Testament or emerges from it. Indeed, we would be unwise to assume that the same notion runs through the entire First Testament, or even through Isaiah as a whole, let alone continues into the New Testament. So my initial aim is to tease out the equivalent to the notion of miracle that emerges from Isaiah.

      I can express the approach I will be seeking to take to this question in terms of several different models of interpretation:

      • In the terms of a mid-twentieth-century model of interpretation, I will treat that twofold understanding of miracle (as a direct act of God or, more broadly, as something extraordinary) as an initial understanding of the miraculous that constitutes a preunderstanding, or provisional understanding, that provides me with a way into a fuller understanding of the concept in Isaiah. I will be prepared to find that the study of the text leads into my getting a broader understanding of the concept of the miraculous; I will not want my preunderstanding to limit my understanding.

      • In late twentieth-century terms, I will recognize that initial twofold understanding as my initial horizon, which overlaps with the horizon in Isaiah but may not be identical to it. Because of the overlap, it opens up the possibility of coming to look at things from within that other horizon. But no two horizons are the same, and I will be seeking to broaden my horizon by looking at the subject within Isaiah’s horizon.

      • In the terms of another late twentieth-century framework, I will be aiming to be the implied reader, the ideal reader, or the intended reader of the texts.¹ In other words, I will be seeking to study my way into being the kind of person with the kind of assumptions and ways of thinking that the book itself and the author(s) of its different parts assumed when they were seeking to communicate with the audience they envisaged.

      • In anthropological terms, I will recognize that my twofold understanding implies an etic approach to the book. It is one that starts from my cultural framework and makes my cultural assumptions. The cause-and-effect way of thinking is a clear example. I will be seeking to gain a more emic appreciation, one that works within the cultural framework presupposed by Isaiah.

      With each approach, such study need not presuppose that the interpreter subsequently adopts the text’s understanding or horizon or framework. An interpreter may prefer to return to the one from which they started. I do acknowledge, however, that my own ultimate aim will be to assimilate my understanding or horizon or framework to the one I find in the text. It is an expression of the general stance I want to take in relation to the First Testament Scriptures. Admittedly, a paradoxical snag of that commitment is that I may unconsciously assimilate the ideas in the text to what I can accept: Confessional, theologically motivated readings often suspiciously end up saying exactly what the interpreter wanted them to say all along.² Yet all readings are somewhat confessional and theologically motivated, liberal ones as well as conservative ones.³ So conservative readers are wise to check out what liberal readers think they have seen, and liberal readers are wise to check out what conservative readers think they have seen.

      Isaiah

      I have been speaking of Isaiah and of the book of Isaiah. Isaiah ben Amoz, who is named at the beginning of this Scripture, lived in the eighth century BCE, and among the miracles that have traditionally been identified in the book is its referring to the rise of Cyrus the Great as Medo-Persian emperor nearly two centuries after Isaiah’s day (44:28; 45:1). In this volume, I assume that actually, the book of Isaiah as a whole includes messages from other figures after Isaiah who lived at least a quarter of a millennium subsequently. They were prophets or theologians or preachers or teachers who were inspired by the Holy Spirit, as Isaiah was. They were also in a sense inspired by Isaiah, or possibly were caused by him to ask questions that they want to reconsider. They knew of things that Isaiah said, and they saw more implications in them, or they wanted to extend them, or they wanted to say the different thing that needed saying now, the kind of thing that Isaiah might say now. A classic example is that Isaiah ben Amoz reports that Yahweh wants to make his people deaf and blind (6:10); it is an act of chastisement for their unwillingness to use their eyes and ears in their relationship with Yahweh. But in contrast, a subsequent prophet or preacher nearly two centuries later reports that Yahweh is opening blind eyes and urging blind people to look up and see (42:7, 18).⁴ Such later figures saw that there was a vitality in Isaiah’s words that made them want to work out their further implications. Paradoxically (or not), associating their own messages with Isaiah’s and holding back their own names was a way of recognizing the creative stimulus in Isaiah’s words.⁵ I do not imply that every later contribution to the book shared this particular inspiration. Indeed, other inspirations contributed to this process—including, for instance, Jeremiah’s inspiration in a passage such as 49:1–6. And some of the messages that appear in Isaiah look as if they were simply ones whose value was appreciated by the people who gathered the material that appears in the book. I think of these people as the curators of the book that came to be called Isaiah, the people who preserved its material so that it could be read and taken notice of in their day and beyond.

      I take a conservative and traditional version of the mainstream scholarly view that much of Isaiah 1–39 does go back to Isaiah ben Amoz, that most if not all of Isaiah 40–55 goes back to someone who worked in Cyrus’s time in the 540s, that most if not all of Isaiah 56–66 goes back to someone or to more than one person who worked nearer the end of the sixth century, and that the book was put into the form that we have in the fifth century.⁶ It is particularly difficult to have a strong conviction about how much of Isaiah 1–39 goes back to Isaiah ben Amoz, and my references to Isaiah in connection with those chapters, and with the rest of the book, regularly refer to the book that bears the name of Isaiah, which has indeed been nicely called The Book Called Isaiah,⁷ rather than to the person Isaiah himself. They thus do not imply a conviction about the authorship of particular messages. But anyway, this volume is looking at Isaiah as a whole, to which I will often refer as the Isaiah scroll. Even though a number of prophets and theologians contributed to it, it does not seem to be incoherent on the subject that is our focus in this volume; it wouldn’t be surprising if the curators of the eventual scroll assumed it to be coherent.⁸

      That last consideration perhaps accounts for what might otherwise seem a puzzle. If the scroll developed over at least two or three centuries, and maybe over half a millennium, one might expect to see some change in the way it sees things between (say) the time of Isaiah ben Amoz and the time of the material in Isaiah 56–66, let alone the material in Isaiah 24–27 (if one works with another traditional critical assumption—namely, that those chapters come from the Hellenistic period). And there is indeed some development, but it involves the elaboration of an existent way of seeing things more than a move into wholly new ways of seeing things. Isaiah ben Amoz often speaks of a city’s destruction (Jerusalem or an Assyrian city); Isaiah 25:1–2 speaks of the destruction of an unnamed city (variously identifiable with Jerusalem or an imperial city).⁹ Isaiah ben Amoz speaks of Yahweh’s day or that day as an occasion when Yahweh will implement his purpose in a definitive way; Isaiah 24–27 and Isaiah 65–66 speak about that prospect in much more detail, but it is a similar prospect. We have already noted that Isaiah 40–55 can imply, You know how Yahweh inspired Isaiah ben Amoz to picture things? Well, Yahweh is picturing things differently now. These different outlooks and perspectives fit within one broad viewpoint. So the changing perspectives within the Isaianic material over the centuries can be embraced within one account of their viewpoint that stands against the picture that emerges from Genesis or Joshua or Jeremiah or Qohelet, for instance. And I will not focus on the way these outlooks expressed within Isaiah changed over time.

      The Extraordinary

      To work toward an understanding of the idea of the miraculous in Isaiah, we will first consider passages that look as if they have a similar understanding to the idea in English. The most extraordinary passage is a divine declaration about the extraordinary in 29:14:

      Therefore here I am,

      once more doing something extraordinary with this people,

      doing something extraordinary, something extraordinary.

      Isaiah here uses two forms of the verb pālāʾ, then the related noun peleʾ, for which translations commonly use words such as amazing and wonder. The verse follows up an occurrence of the verb in 28:29 in a line with a noteworthy parallelism between its two halves, or cola. It’s tightly expressed; here is a rather prosaic translation:

      He has done something extraordinary, with a plan,

      he has done something big, with good sense.

      The parallelism in the line indicates that the extraordinary action meant doing something big or acting big; the plan it involved was one that embodied insight. The statement is the punch line to a description of the work of a farmer, who stands for Yahweh. Whereas 29:14 refers only to tough action that Yahweh is about to take, 28:23–29

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