III.

Later Isaiah

The second main section of the Book of Isaiah (chapters 40-66) may be divided into two subsections. The first (chapters 40-55) is now attributed to an anonymous author who wrote about the time of the fall of Babylon in 539 bc. He is commonly called Deutero-Isaiah or Second Isaiah. The author (or authors) of the second subsection (chapters 56-66) is referred to as Trito-Isaiah or Third Isaiah.

A.

Second Isaiah

The main themes in chapters 40-55 are the following: (1) the Lord God of Israel is “God of the whole earth” (54:5) and beside him there is no other; (2) the nation of Israel, his servant, is to be redeemed from “the furnace of affliction” (48:20) into which God had placed it “for a brief moment” (54:7) because of its past blindness and deafness to his law; (3) the divine instrument for accomplishing the redemption of Israel is to be the Persian king Cyrus the Great (44:28-45:4), and, after the Lord punishes the oppressors of Israel (chapter 47), Zion will be restored, and the Lord “will make her wilderness like Eden, her desert like the garden of the Lord” (51:3).

Four passages of Deutero-Isaiah have had special significance for both Christian and Jewish commentators ever since biblical times. These are the “Servant songs” (42:1-4, 49:1-6, 50:1-9, 52:13-53:12), which Christians traditionally consider to be prophecies concerning the mission and the passion of Jesus Christ, but which most Jews traditionally interpret as a personification of postexilic Israel.

B.

Third Isaiah

Chapters 56-66 of the later Isaiah are now generally regarded as a composite work, primarily because of the numerous shifts in tone, the liturgical character of certain passages (56:1-57:21), and the apparent echoing of earlier themes. According to this view, the several authors (who may have thought of themselves as disciples of the Second Isaiah) lived and wrote mainly in Jerusalem between the end of the exile, after 538 bc, and the ministry of the Jewish prophet Nehemiah. On the whole, their work is characterized by a greater emphasis on ritual requirements, such as the observance of ritual fasts and the Sabbath. Also in these chapters, the expressed and implied relations between God and humankind and God and Israel, and between suffering and sin, are applied more narrowly to the remnant of Israel. Chapters 60-62, however, recall the passionately idealistic and spiritual tone of earlier sections: Jesus recited part of Isaiah 61 in the synagogue at Nazareth, precipitating a highly dramatic scene (Luke 4:16-30).