Old Testament · Major Prophets
יְשַׁעְיָהוּ
The Bible in miniature, holiness, judgment, Immanuel, and a servant pierced for us.
The longest and most quoted of the prophets, and the one whose range is hardest to hold in one hand. The first half thunders against Judah for injustice and for trusting Egypt instead of God, with Assyria at the gates. From chapter forty the voice changes entirely and speaks tenderness to people already in exile, naming Cyrus of Persia as the one God will use. Whether that is Isaiah of Jerusalem seeing far ahead or a later hand in his tradition is one of the standing questions of Old Testament scholarship, argued by people who take the book seriously on both sides. What everyone agrees on is where it lands: four servant songs, culminating in a figure despised and rejected, pierced for transgressions not his own, which the New Testament reaches for more than almost any other passage.
If you remember one thing
Sixty-six chapters that move from courtroom to comfort. No book outside the Psalms is quoted more in the New Testament, and chapter 53 is where more people have met the cross in advance than anywhere else in the Old Testament.
“But he was pierced for our transgressions. He was crushed for our iniquities. The punishment that brought our peace was on him; and by his wounds we are healed.”
Isaiah 53:5
Isaiah 6:9-10
Told to preach so that the people will not understand or turn and be healed. Quoted by Jesus about his own parables, and among the hardest sayings about hardening in Scripture.
Isaiah 7:14
The sign of the young woman, or virgin, and her son. The Hebrew almah, the Greek parthenos, the near-term sign to Ahaz, and Matthew's use of it are all part of a long and live discussion.
Isaiah 45:7
I make peace and create calamity. Read by some as God's sovereignty over judgment, by others as evidence that the Bible does not keep God at a safe distance from disaster.
Named here rather than skipped. Where Christians read a passage differently, we say so instead of choosing for you.
Everyone here has a write-up, drawn from the same records that explain the names while you read the text.
The towering prophet of Judah, called in the year King Uzziah died amid a vision of the thrice-holy LORD. He counseled kings against Assyria and saw far ahead, the virgin's son Immanuel, and the suffering servant pierced for our transgressions.
Also called Azariah, fifty-two years of building, farming, and a formidable army, as long as he sought God. But strength bred pride: he forced his way into the temple to burn incense, a priest's task alone, and leprosy broke out on his forehead at the altar. He lived apart until he died, the year Isaiah saw the LORD high and lifted up.
As faithless as any king of Judah. Ahaz burned his own son as an offering, sacrificed on every high hill, and when he saw a pagan altar in Damascus he had one built to match and pushed the LORD's altar aside. Told by Isaiah to ask God for a sign, he refused, and was given the sign of Immanuel anyway. At last he shut the temple doors.
One of Judah's finest, none trusted the LORD like him. He reopened and cleansed the temple, kept a great Passover, and smashed even the bronze serpent of Moses when it became an idol. When Assyria's Sennacherib besieged Jerusalem, Hezekiah spread the enemy's letter before God, and the angel of the LORD struck down the Assyrian camp. Granted fifteen more years, he unwisely paraded his treasure before Babylon's envoys.
He joined Aram to pressure Judah's Ahaz, the crisis behind Isaiah's Immanuel sign, but it backfired: Assyria's Tiglath-Pileser stripped away Israel's northern territories and deported their people. Pekah was then assassinated by Hoshea.
The one righteous man of his generation, who built a ship on dry ground on the strength of a warning about weather he had never seen. After the flood God set the rainbow as the sign of a covenant made with every living creature.
The Persian king whose policy was to send captive peoples home with their gods and their temple goods. For Judah that meant the end of exile. Isaiah names him as the LORD's shepherd and anointed, and a clay cylinder in the British Museum records his general policy in his own words.
The Assyrian king who took every fortified city of Judah and then failed at Jerusalem. His field commander's speech under the wall is a masterpiece of psychological warfare, delivered in Hebrew on purpose so the men on the wall could hear it. His army was struck down in the night and he went home, and was later murdered by his own sons.
The four Midianite leaders Gideon's campaign brought down. Oreb and Zeeb, whose names mean raven and wolf, were killed at the rock and the winepress that afterward carried their names. Zebah and Zalmunna were pursued far east and taken.
The names attached to prophets and officials to identify them: Isaiah son of Amoz, Ezekiel son of Buzi, Hosea son of Beeri, Joel son of Pethuel, Jonah son of Amittai, Zechariah son of Berechiah son of Iddo, Baruch son of Neriah, Zerubbabel son of Shealtiel.
A Bethlehemite of Judah, Boaz's grandson, whose eight sons were paraded before Samuel until the youngest was fetched from the sheep. His eldest, Eliab, is the one Samuel assumed was the choice, and who later snaps at David for coming to the battle line.
Not personal names but Assyrian titles, roughly chief cupbearer, commander, and chief officer. The Rabshakeh is the one who stood outside Jerusalem's wall and made a speech.
Games built on this book’s people and story.
