CONTENTS
4. Compositional Issues Related to Chapters 56-66
Since chaps. 56-66 are a separate literary unit and are frequently attributed to a later prophet (often called “Trito-Isaiah”), it is necessary to address the specific issues that are connected to interpreting these chapters. It is important to understand the issues that led to the formulation of this hypothesis, trace the arguments for and against this approach to understanding these chapters, and consider carefully the implications of accepting or rejecting this theory. This process of evaluation will enable the reader to interact with the conclusions of various commentators that hypothesize a Trito-Isaiah who lived in the postexilic era around the time of Ezra and Nehemiah.
When a person initially starts reading chaps. 56-66, it may appear to be introducing a new theological perspective because it deals with the new themes of Sabbath keeping, allowing foreigners into the
temple, and observing a fast that honors God. These are not common themes in the preceding chapters. But the more one reads and examines the messages in this new literary section, the more one realizes how close these messages are to the themes within the theology of the rest of the book of Isaiah. In fact, there are numerous quotations, restatements, or allusions to ideas treated earlier in chaps.
1-55. The Sabbath and fasting may be new topics, but in reality they are just another way to talk about how one can demonstrate true righteousness, just relationships, and trust in God. The underlying theology of these messages still relates to God's judgment of human sinfulness, his promises to bring salvation to all people, and the need for people to act justly and maintain their covenant relationship with God. They do not sound that different from the essential thrust of the earlier messages in the book of Isaiah. Therefore it is important to weigh very carefully the evidence for suggesting that chaps. 56-66 were written at a different time by a different author and addressed to a different audience.
Although the literary evidence suggests that the unit beginning in chap. 40 ends in 55, thus making 56-66 the final section of chapters in this book, it is doubtful that these messages are so unique that they must be placed in a completely different setting, at a different date, and by a different author(s). Early precritical studies of the book of Isaiah, like the commentary by J. Calvin, do not mention any problems of consistency between chaps. 56-66 and the theology of the preceding chapters.111
(1) Are Chapters 56-66 a Separate Book?
Critical commentators since the time of B. Duhm112 (1892) have usually identified chaps. 56-66 as a separate book by a prophet called Trito-Isaiah from Jerusalem (not from Babylon) in the postexilic era
(not from the Babylonian exile). Duhm distinguished this book from the earlier chapters in Isaiah partially because the subject matter (sacrifices and Sabbath) and the setting seemed to be somewhat different. He thought this section was written shortly before the time of Nehemiah with later redactional processes adding a few verses down to the Hasmonean period (78-69 BC). He related the internal disagreements within the community over the temple in Jerusalem (66:1) to the Samarians' opposition described in Ezra 4:1-5. Some commentators agreed with Duhm's position on the unity of chaps. 56- 66 (K. Elliger) and his dating of the material, but many later studies have tended to identify various dates for different chapters and multiple authors or redactors within chaps. 56-66.113
Although Duhm's theory quickly spread and was widely accepted by many critical scholars, not everyone thought that chaps. 56-66 were a separate book written by someone different from the author of 40-55. C. C. Torrey examined and rejected the dominant critical hypotheses of his day concerning Trito-Isaiah, partially because he did not believe the author of chaps. 40-55 was in Babylon114 (thus there was no change in setting when one comes to chaps. 56-66) and because he thought that many of the promises of hope in chaps. 40-66 referred to the distant future, not the postexilic era. Torrey does makes the very questionable claim that the verses about Cyrus and Babylon were added to the text of Isaiah by someone who was trying to make Isaiah's prophecies fit the theological and historical framework of Chronicles; thus, he attempted to understand the book of Isaiah without these passages. Since there is no real basis for dismissing the verses about Cyrus and Babylon, Torrey's views are usually considered somewhat extreme, so his perspective has not gained acceptance; in fact, many commentators largely ignore his contributions.115 Much more attention is now being given to the several possible redactions of Isaiah 56-66.
(2) Redactional Theories
C. Westermann's analysis of the growth of chaps. 56-66 has had a major impact on the discussion of the redaction and composition of these chapters. He proposed several distinct compositional stages with their own distinctive approaches to key theological themes in order to justify his interpretation of the literary production of chaps. 56-66.
1. Stage one was when the nucleus of the message of salvation in chaps. 60-62 was written. It includes an unqualified offer of salvation very similar to what is found in earlier chapters of Isaiah (plus other salvation oracles in 57:14-20; 65:16b-25; 66:6- 16, and possibly 58:1-12). The foreign nations will bring back Israelites and serve them, thus they have a part in the salvation God will establish in Zion. Westermann views this salvation as unconditional. Within this material the first person voice of the prophet Trito-Isaiah is heard in 61:1-3, a disciple of Deutero- Isaiah. He dates these chapters to the era of Haggai and Zechariah (around 520-515 BC).116 These chapters were set within the framework of two preexilic community laments in chaps. 59 and 63:7-64:11 (63:7-64:11 was a lament spoken shortly after the fall of Jerusalem in 587 BC).117 This material shows no serious division of the Hebrew community between the righteous and those who rebelled against God.
2. A second stage involved the addition of several independent messages (mostly preexilic prophetic judgment oracles that were reapplied to a postexilic setting) referring to the conflict between the righteous believers and the wicked transgressors (56:9-57:13;
57:21; 59:2-8; 65:1-16a; 66:3,5,17). These messages contrast the worship and the destiny of these two groups.
3. The third stage in the process of developing chaps. 56-66 involved the addition of harsh judgments on foreign nations (60:12; 63:1-6; 66:6,15-16,20,22-23) that are quite different from the positive attitude toward the foreign nations that is found in earlier chapters in Isaiah and in 60-62. This stage also included some apocalyptic additions in 60:19-20; 65:17,26; 66:20,22-24.
4. A fourth stage involved the addition of short messages at the
beginning and end of this series of messages (56:1-8; 66:18- 19,21) that invite Gentiles into the community on equal terms with the Hebrews.118
Westermann suggests that these messages were primarily intended to encourage those who were greatly disillusioned because the grand promises made about the city of Jerusalem in earlier chapters of Isaiah (chaps. 40-55) were not being fulfilled in the postexilic era. This hypothetical reconstruction of the gradual development of chaps. 56-66 was based on the questionable hypothesis that each different topic requires a separate author and a later stage in the development process, even though many of the topics in each of these stages have already received some treatment in earlier chapters of the book of Isaiah. P. D. Hanson justifiably criticized Westermann's approach as being too rigid in attributing only one narrow theme to each of the different stages, thus ignoring the complexity of the community's situation and their broad theological background.119
More recent studies by J. Vermeylen and S. Sekine have produced even more complicated redactional theories that suggest that multiple redactors used preexilic, exilic, and postexilic texts that they adapted, expanded, or reapplied to address the contemporary situation of the Hebrew people during the time of Nehemiah down to the third century BC.120 These studies tend to emphasize how very different ideas (sometimes even contradictory) were brought together, demonstrating how fragmented these chapters really are (especially 56-59 and 63-66). The thorough and well-argued study of P. A. Smith has moved the pendulum back to a less complicated and a more believable conclusion that there were only two author/redactors, TI (Trito-Isaiah) who wrote 60:1-63:6 and TI2 who wrote 56:1-8; 56:9- 57:21; 58:1-59:20; 65:1-66:17. His primary criteria for identifying these two redactors were their distinctive vocabulary and ideology.121 His analysis provides many significant insights into each literary unit,
but one could suggest that several of the distinctive differences he identifies (the use of rhetorical questions, distinct vocabulary) are largely attributable to the differences in the topics under discussion rather than the differences between two different authors. Most of the redactional studies, with the exception of P. A. Smith, have produced highly fragmented readings of these chapters that overstress the differences between ideas that are not inherently contradictory.122 Since an author/redactor is multidimensional and can weigh both sides of contradictory ideas in different ways, the results of some of these studies are quite subjective. They fail to appreciate the coherence of the literary structures within these chapters and their common dependence on earlier messages in the book of Isaiah.
(3) Sociological Reconstructions
In contrast to the different redactional approaches to chaps. 56-66, P. D. Hanson understood chaps. 56-66 as a collection of anonymous oracles that have “adhesive ingredients” that “betray a sort of a unity”
around basic themes defined by a similar community situation, but he largely ignores the authorship/ redaction debate. He adopts what he calls a “contextual-typological method” of analyzing the poetic structures, meter, and genres (the rise of apocalyptic and the salvation- judgment oracle), which includes a sociological analysis of the conflict found in chaps. 56-66. He uses this information to understand the growth of ideas from earlier chapters, the breakdown of classical prosaic forms and genres, and the evidence for a new crisis situation where different social groups (prophetic visionaries and noneschatological Zadokite hierocrats) were struggling against one another for control of the temple in Jerusalem.123 He concludes that the Zadokite priests who agreed with Ezekiel's program of temple restoration in Ezek 40-48 had control of the temple and its syncretistic services. They wanted to maintain their authority, while their
opponents who followed Second-Isaiah and the restoration program of chaps. 60-62 felt rejected and powerless. This led the disillusioned visionaries toward an apocalyptic solution where God would come to his temple and restore true worship after judging the unrighteous. He identifies chaps. 56-66 as a distinct group of texts because the traditional bi-and tricolon structure of earlier prophecy has given way to what he calls longer more “baroque prosodic units.”124 By identifying 66:1-16 with the construction of the temple at the time of Haggai and Zechariah, he pinpoints an absolute date (520-515 BC) for the writing of this message and consequently he attempts to give a general chronological order to all the other oracles. In spite of this innovative way of analyzing chaps. 56-66, J. L. Kugel largely dismissed Hanson's syllable counting method of understanding poetry;
thus, he seriously undermined the poetic evidence supporting part of Hanson's thesis.125 B. Schramm thoroughly critiqued Hanson's sometimes circular reasoning and identified several areas where his interpretations of specific verses are problematic.126 B. S. Childs also rejected Hanson's speculative sociological reconstruction of two postexilic warring parties (visionaries and hierocrats) in chaps. 56- 66.127 Many would agree that a great deal of Hanson's reconstruction is read into material; for example, Hanson understands the references to Abraham our father in 63:16 as a claim by the rejected visionaries that they have a relationship to the patriarch Abraham.
Their argument was to counter the Zadokites who claimed the names Abraham and Israel for themselves. This interpretation is highly questionable, for there is no other independent evidence to confirm that the name Abraham was ever used to identify a specific priestly group in Judah. Although chap. 58 is not aimed at one group, Hanson reinterprets the criticism of those fasting as part of a polemic against the Zadokite priest who professed to be close to God but were really unworthy. There are numerous anomalies that do not make much sense in Hanson's broader interpretation of the rise of
apocalyptic, for example his negative view of the hopes of the prophets Haggai and Zechariah. In addition, if the priestly ideas in Zechariah 1-8 were united in one book with the apocalyptic material in Zechariah 9-14, could these two approaches really be mortal enemies of one another at the time Third Isaiah was written? If these two approaches are as contradictory as Hanson claims, why were they both placed in the same book (Zechariah)?128
J. Blenkinsopp hypothesizes that chaps. 56-66 once had a superscription just like 1:1, but it was editorially removed when these messages were added to the book of Isaiah.129 Although he finds some themes that are common within both chaps. 40-55 and 56-66 (comfort, the coming of God, the glory of God, justice, and the servant/servants) and chaps. 1-39 (the condemnation of Edom in chaps. 34 and 63), two of the distinct ideas in 56-66 are that God's offer of salvation is contingent on the removal of all moral obstacles, and that not all the people of Israel are God's people. Blenkinsopp also finds a strong influence from deuteronomic language and theology.130 He hypothesizes that there is a connection between the “tremblers at God's word” in 66:2,5 and the persecuted “tremblers at God's word”
in Ezra 9:4; 10:3. The idolatrous temple priests who were in power in Jerusalem excluded the righteous from holding land; thus, he finds both theological and sociological factors impacting the life and literature in chaps. 56-66.131 Within chaps. 56-66 Blenkinsopp was able to find “faint imprints of prophetic and scribal activity carried on over several generations by a movement or school owing allegiance to the prophetic leader and teacher responsible for the core of 40-55.”132 The audience for this book was the disillusioned and disoriented people of Judah who endured rampant injustices over several years, so these messages were an “ongoing writing” that underwent
“development, modification, reinterpretation, and reconfiguration to meet the demands of new situations.”133 The evidence for some of these conclusions is minimal or nonexistent,134 so it is significant that
Blenkinsopp does not focus his exegesis on a redactional analysis of the “modifications” and “reconfiguration” of each verse.
(4) Balancing Continuity and Discontinuity
Although many critical commentators refer to a distinctive prophetic person called “Third Isaiah,” others focus much more attention on the interconnections that chaps. 56-66 have with 1-55, rather than just highlighting areas of discontinuity. A few find so much continuity with chaps. 1-55 that they do not even hypothesize a Third Isaiah prophet, but only the presence of a new literary unit that could be referred to as the third section of the book of Isaiah.
J. Muilenburg used the insights of rhetorical criticism to identify the literary characteristics that are found in biblical texts in order to discover their structure, stylistic features, repetitions, and their use of rhetorical devices. He observed that the language and style of chaps.
40-55 and 56-66 are very close, thus the “weightiest arguments against the literary integrity of 40-66 is the difference in historical situations which they appear to presuppose.”135 He recognizes in chaps. 56-66 a different author from chaps. 40-66 because 56-66 include different topics like the Sabbath, fasting, fractional strife, a different eschatological outlook, less literary independence, and a different setting.136 He concludes that these messages represent the religious life in Judah after 538 BC. But when he comes to 56:1 in his commentary he states that “we have not a radical break with the past, but a development.… The poem as a whole is akin to Second Isaiah.
…Yet there are striking differences.”137 He views this new writer as a disciple of Second Isaiah. Within his exegetical notes he does identify a few later additions (59:21; 62:12; 66:17-24), but he spends far more time and effort demonstrating the close relationship and dependence
these verses have with earlier traditions in the book of Isaiah. Thus he finds many areas of continuity as well as a few signs of discontinuity.
B. S. Childs claims that chaps. 56-66 were deliberately dehistoricized so that they could be read as the eschatological fulfillment of the prophecies of chaps. 1-55. Thus one should not use a different historical setting as the main issue that makes 56-66 unique.
He “strongly supports the recent move (cf. Beuken, Rendtorff, Steck) to interpret chaps. 56-66 as part of a larger literary collection rather than to assume its function as an independent corpus.”138 His canonical approach causes him to reject the extremes of some redactional treatments and pay far more attention to the close interdependency between chaps. 1-55 and 56-66. He does not view these allusions to earlier texts as an attempt to correct or remold earlier messages; instead, he believes these allusions draw on the authoritative status of earlier texts to support what is being said in chaps. 56-66.139 He rejects Hanson's sociological reading and prefers to focus on the role of intertextuality, a phenomenon that signals the continuity with past messages in 1-39 as well as 40-55. Childs concludes that the role of these chapters is “to unite the major themes of both First and Second Isaiah into one literary composition.”140 Thus he rejects the common hypothesis that Third Isaiah reinterprets the unfulfilled hopes of salvation in Second Isaiah.
C. R. Seitz follows some of Child's conclusions, though he states them in such a way as to offer his own nuanced understanding. He recognizes that the messages in chaps. 40-66 do not emphasize the social location of this audience. He concludes that all of 40-66 has a Jerusalemite orientation,141 thus one cannot use a change of historical location as a means of dividing chaps. 40-55 from 56-66. Seitz also breaks with the traditional division of the final unit by identifying chaps. 54-66 (not 56-66) as the final literary unit in the book.
Although many commentators focus a great deal of attention on the destruction of the temple and its rebuilding, Seitz can find no place in
chaps. 40-66 where the text reports the destruction of the temple or its rebuilding. He finds any attempt to date or propose an historical setting based on temple information to be highly speculative. He concludes that the focus is much less on the status of the temple and much more on God's judgment of Israel, the nations, and the whole world. Emphasis is given to the eventual revelation of his glorious salvation to the redeemed from Zion and from all over the world.142 Seitz believes chaps. 40-66 “are concerned with God's vindication of the servant, as promised in 52:13-53:12”143 and his seed, the
“servants” of 56-66. His exegetical comments emphasize the continuity between the theology of 40-53 and 54-66 based on similar themes as well as direct allusions or quotations of earlier messages.
The conflict between different groups in 56-66 is not viewed as anything new, for similar conflicts are evident in 40-55 (42:18-20;
43:22-24; 44:25; 45:9-13; 50:4-9).144
J. Oswalt concludes that chaps. 56-66 were written to address a situation after the return from exile, but he finds relatively little historical evidence within these chapters. Chapters 56-66 address the
“necessity of living out God's righteousness and the inability or failure of people to do so.”145 There is some level of discontinuity though, for he interprets the audience to be made up of people who have returned from the exile.146 In these messages the prophet identifies the characteristics that are found in God's elect, the marks of the servant of the Lord. It is possible to display these characteristics because God's grace enables a person to be delivered from the effects of sin and live a holy life. Oswalt also states that these chapters “were written to show how the theology of 40-55 fits into that of chapters 1- 39.”147 Thus part of the purpose was to demonstrate a certain level of continuity throughout the book of Isaiah. He rejects Hanson's sociological reconstruction and other redactional approaches that divide these chapters into ever-smaller editorial additions.148 The key themes in these chapters are: (a) God's grace is available to all; (b)