Chapter 9. Theological Ethic and history: Isaiah 1-33; Micah 1-77 (Part 3. Positive Judgment: Classical Prophetism) (Song of the Vineyard: The Old Testament) (Napier, B.D.)

Tiglath-pileser (745-727) first consolidated his eastern territories before turning west; but in 738 Rezin of Damascus and Menahem of Israel render the tribute of vassals, and other small western states capitulate. Pekah in Samaria and Rezin later conspire to throw off the Assyrian yoke, but needing the support of Judah, and finding Ahaz (735-715?) unwilling to join, they lay siege to Jerusalem in the hope of deposing Ahaz. In extreme straits, Ahaz reverts to the crude rite, persistently condemned in prophetic Yahwism, of child sacrifice, and offers up his own son as a burnt offering (1 Kings 16:3). He also appeals to Tiglath-pileser, against Isaiah's advice (2 Kings 16:7; Isa. 7) which was certainly prudentially given: since the Assyrian king would not in any case tolerate for long such independent and insurrectionist action on the part of vassals, Ahaz obligated himself unnecessarily.

In 734, then, the Assyrians campaign in the west with bitter vengeance. Damascus and Northern Israel are mercilessly plundered and for the first time Assyria invokes in this area the policy of deportation, the removal to other parts of the empire of appreciable numbers of the population and particularly the real or potential leaders around whom subsequent rebellion might form. Judah is not molested at this time, but she remains in diminished circumstances from the occupation of Rezin's and Pekah's armies. And Ahaz the king is summoned peremptorily to Damascus where, in partial token of his subservience to Assyria, he arranges for the erection of an altar in the Temple in Jerusalem copied from an imported Assyrian altar in Damascus. This we suspect underlies the account of 2 Kings 16:10 ff. Ahaz hardly went to such pains and expense in the midst of his humiliation simply to satisfy his aesthetic delight in some Syrian altar he chanced to see in Damascus! Commonly in the ancient East political dependence required formal recognition of the victor's gods, a fact explaining in part the common prophetic protest against any and all kinds of "alliances" with superior powers.

By 732 Tiglath-pileser had efficiently organized and consolidated his western territories north of Samaria into Assyrian provinces. It is important to remember that Hoshea of Samaria (732-724) owed his throne to Tiglath-pileser, a fact which made his subsequent rebellion all the more odious to Assyria. Early in the reign of Shalmaneser of Assyria (727-722) Hoshea begins a series of politically unfaithful flirtations with Egypt. 2 Kings 17:4 puts it succinctly: "Assyria found conspiracy in Hoshea." The prophet Hosea speaks of the ultimate folly of this kind of action when he characterized the pro-Egypt party as silly doves without sense, calling to Egypt, going to Assyria (Hosea 7:11, cf. 8:9). King Hoshea in Samaria openly declares his intentions to divorce Assyria in 724 (2 Kings 17:4). Assyrian forces are able to imprison Hoshea; but probably to their surprise and dismay, Samaria does not surrender and Assyria is put to the effort of a three-year siege before the capital and kingdom of North Israel falls in 722-21, never again to be so reconstituted. Sargon II (722-705) had succeeded Shalmaneser before the fall of Samaria. In Sargon's own annals, the conquest is claimed several times. And again, Assyria follows its policy of shifting the best classes of populations, deporting thousands of Israelites eastward, and importing thousands from Aramaic-speaking countries, who in time lose their identity among the inhabitants of Palestine. The subsequent attitude of the Judean Jew toward the Samaritan (cf. in the New Testament John 4) draws from the memory of this fusion of population elements. The immediate problems of the North are described in 2 Kings 17:29 ff.

The history of surviving Judah is resumed in 2 Kings 18. Hezekiah (715-687?) had come to the throne in Jerusalem a few years after Samaria's fall (perhaps a few years before; his dates present particularly difficult problems). He defies Assyria in two ways: he institutes elaborate religious reforms, always in the ancient East a gesture of independence; and even more brazenly, he undertakes extensive defense measures. The outer fortifications of Jerusalem are strengthened, an act of military strategy against which the prophet Isaiah speaks a devastating theological word: it is right and good that this be done, he says in effect to the king, but you and your action are condemned in this kingdom of Yahweh unless it be done for Yahweh's sake and to his honor and glory (see Isa. 22:8b-11). The same critical prophetic word appears in the same passage applied to Hezekiah's attention to the acute problem of the city's water supply in time of siege. The Gihon spring, outside the city wall - ancient Jerusalem's only unfailing source of water - is made inaccessible to attackers, and its waters channeled through a tunnel cut through the rock, into the city, for a distance of about 1700 feet. The spring, the tunnel, and the terminal pool of Siloam are still in use today. In the tunnel's construction, workmen began at opposite ends.

At the point of meeting someone inscribed a brief account of this remarkable feat of ancient engineering in the limestone wall - soft when first exposed to air. It is one of our oldest and best Hebrew inscriptions, even though the first half is unfortunately missing:

[. . . when] (the tunnel) was driven through. And this was the way in which it was cut through: - While . . . (were) still. . .axe(s), each man toward his fellow, and while there were still three cubits to be cut through, [there was heard] the voice of a man calling to his fellow, for there was an overlap in the rock on the right [and on the left]. And when the tunnel was driven through, the quarrymen hewed (the rock), each man toward his fellow, axe against axe; and the water flowed from the spring toward the reservoir for 1200 cubits, and the height of the rock above the head(s) of the quarrymen was 100 cubits.⁸

It is remarkable that Hezekiah got by for so long a time without a spanking from Assyria. In 711 he is party to a rebellious coalition of western states inspired by Egypt or Babylon, or both; yet he appears to escape the punishment which they receive. But in 701 Sennacherib (705-681) moves in to pour the wrath of Assyria on all the small western states, as well as Egypt. Jerusalem, besieged by Assyria, escapes destruction. Why and how? Why was the siege lifted?

2 Kings 18-19 lists three reasons:

1. Hezekiah's payment of tribute (18:14-16), a prodigious sum then - the equivalent of at least ten to fifteen million dollars. Assyrian records indicate a more critical tribute including some of Hezekiah's daughters, his "concubines, male and female musicians."⁹

2. Urgent military business elsewhere - rumor of trouble (19:7).

3. Plague (the angel of Yahweh, 19:35).

Some believe that three separate, conflicting accounts of the same episode are combined in the present Kings narrative - Tribute, 18:14-16; Rumor, 18: l7-19:9a; and Plague, 19:9b-35. Not uncommonly this kind of explanation has been offered:

"If I were Sennacherib [quite a stretch, even for the most elastic Old Testament man!] the first two reasons would be enough - tribute paid and insurrection in the east. Since from my point of view the third is unnecessary, we will throw it out. Besides, we must remember the great Old Testament axiom that where two or three accounts of one episode are gathered together somebody lied." This kind of argument is dubiously climaxed with the assertion that Hezekiah's prayer in 19:14-19 is theologically incompatible with the eighth century (true enough of the prayer in its present form), and that therefore the whole account is obviously late and, of course, spurious.

Happily this point of view even in the FBI itself - the Federated Biblical Investigators - is on the wane. It is clear that the payment of tribute alone was not enough. After receipt of it, and before joining battle with the Egyptians at Eltekeh in the Philistine plain region, Sennacherib expressed his continuing distrust of Hezekiah in a note of sharp warning which Hezekiah took as more than warning; he took it as a threat to return and demolish the city of Jerusalem. If such was, in fact, the Assyrian plan, as both Hezekiah and Isaiah believed, the deed of destruction could have been accomplished then as easily as at any time in the period of Assyrian ascendancy. Morale in Jerusalem was at a record low. On every hand, surrounding nation-states were prostrate. In Judah, forty-six cities had been destroyed. Sennacherib boasts, "As to Hezekiah, the Jew, he did not submit to my yoke; I laid siege to forty-six of his strong cities, walled forts, and to countless small villages in their vicinity, and conquered them. . ."¹⁰No pride remained in Jerusalem. Hezekiah had stripped the temple, exhausted all wealth, and even surrendered members of his own family in tribute. The three practical explanations for Assyria's withdrawal seem probable, but we must examine the explanation in terms of Israel's history. For, as we have seen, the Old Testament sets down history as it has been interpreted by faith.

In accordance with the faith that Yahweh is effectively involved with Israel's history, Northern Israel does not perish accidentally by the impersonal exigencies of history. Destruction is not seen in the Old Testament as the inevitable culmination of a series of events. On the contrary, the catastrophe is explicitly the judgment of Yahweh. Now, the question arises: Is the interpretation, indigenous to the narrative and inextricable therefrom, right or wrong? The answer depends, does it not, upon each interpreter's response to the ultimate validity of the claims of faith. No one may determine another's answer. Every reader must answer for himself the ultimate question of the validity of Israel's historical faith.

But on this all can agree. The Assyrian forces made a sudden, totally unexpected withdrawal, sparing Jerusalem from what had appeared to be certain doom. In the biblical perspective of faith it is a minor consideration indeed whether Assyrian forces were hastily moved for strategic reasons, or were driven back east by a devastating wave of virulent infection, or by severe food or water poisoning, or even by bubonic plague. It could well have been a withdrawal impelled both by the threat of serious trouble elsewhere in the empire and the ravages of epidemic illness or disease. In the faith of Israel and in the kingdom of Judah it was in either case, or both cases, another of Yahweh's redeeming acts. It was the power of his Word fulfilling itself in history. This kind of repeated application of the proposition that Yahweh's dominant sphere of self-disclosure is history rather than nature is responsible for the persistent biblical address to human history and the full range of human life and human existence.

Of the sixty-six chapters in the present book of Isaiah the final block, chapters 40-66, is demonstrably from the sixth century; and it is highly probable that chapters 34-35 date from the same century. Chapters 36-39 are narrative rather than oracular material, paralleled in 2 Kings 18-20. We look for the eighth-century prophet Isaiah, then, in chapters 1-33.

In this block, four units appear:

1-12 In large part authentically Isaianic; and mainly from the prophet's earlier ministry.

13-23 Oracles for the most part against foreign nations with nonIsaianic material predominating.

24-27 An apocalyptic section, later even than any thing in 40-66.

28-33 Isaianic material again predominating; and mainly from Isaiah's later years.

By Isaianic, we do not mean necessarily that which comes unmediated, directly from the lips or "pen" of the prophet, but that which is substantially his, some of it no doubt committed to memory in the circle of his disciples (see, now, Isa. 8: 16). The present book is the product of a number of "Isaiahs" but the first Isaiah is prominently, authentically represented, and as we shall see, strikingly influential in the utterances of subsequent prophets who are known by his name.

Ofthe man himself, several details are clear. His orientation is that of an urbanite. He is a man of Jerusalem to whom the covenant is the David-Zion covenant. His language, his politics, and even his theology are impressively shaped by his urban existence.

He is a man highly placed in Jerusalem either by virtue of professional status or possibly by royal birth or by both. King Ahaz listens to him, if he does not heed him; and Hezekiah, by any standards one of Judah's most distinguished kings (see the deuteronomic estimate of him, 2 Kings 16:1-8, matched only by the Josiah formula, 22: 1-2), not only listens and heeds, but is strongly dependent on the prophet. Moreover, Isaiah moves and speaks, despite occasional public ridicule (28:9 f.), with the assurance of one who knows his position is fundamentally secure.

Isaiah is married and sufficiently content with the title "prophet" to refer to his wife simply as the "prophetess" (8: 3). To our knowledge they have two sons, both named, as were Hosea's children, symbolically: Shear-Jashub, "a remnant shall return," 7:3, obviously predicating the tragedy that will leave only a remnant, but at the same time affirming the expectation of productive survival; and Maher-Shalal-Hash-Baz, "The spoil speeds, the prey hastes," 8:1-3, with initial reference to the imminent collapse of the Rezin-Pekah alliance against Jerusalem in 734, but perhaps later with reference to Judah herself as the soon-to-be spoil and prey of Assyria.

No prophet is "typical." But no prophet more forcefully, comprehensively, and eloquently represents classical Israelite prophetism than Isaiah. His force, comprehensiveness, and almost unmatched eloquence are, of course, factors in his great stature. But it is his own honest, unneurotic, thoroughly realistic appraisal of himself and his generation together with his historical and existential knowledge of the Word of Yahweh that create the essence of his distinction.

Now let me speak directly. Neither I, who write these present words, nor anyone else can convey to you in words about Isaiah what is so powerfully articulated in the Isaianic oracles themselves. Indirectly, and occasionally directly, I have tried to say all along: Let no one else do your reading of the Old Testament for you! In another text I have presumed (admitting there the presumption) to discuss the content of Isaiah's prophetism under the seven headings of Covenant, Yahweh's Holiness, Judah's Pride, Judgment, Redemption, The Messianic Hope, The Quality of Faith.¹¹ It is presumption because neither Isaiah's prophetism nor that of any other prophet may be thus categorized. These are in no sense separable concepts. Any one is of an inextricable piece with all the others. Nevertheless, these categories point to the major emphases not only of Isaiah but of classical prophetism as a whole, and I will later attempt a somewhat similar summary view of all of prophetism (chapter 10).

Let me now indicate briefly some of the lines, paragraphs, chapters that for varying reasons always stand out in my own perusal of Isaiah - and around these you may direct your own conversations with the prophet.

The account of his call, chapter 6, no doubt now colored by his post-call career, is unquestionably the most intimately revealing single chapter in Isaiah, embracing explicitly or implicitly all the persistently sounded notes of his prophetic voice.

Mark the moving, empathic indictment of chapter 1; the knowing ox and ass contrasted with unknowing Israel; the awful totality of the Yahweh-Israel alienation - all this with the key to Yahweh's controversy with Israel (v. 13), "1 cannot endure iniquity and solemn assembly!" (cf. Amos 5:21b).

Observe the strange and stirring, but characteristic, alternation between oracles of wrath and compassion (seen also in Hosea and Amos), illustrated in the "floating oracle" (because it also appears in Micah 4) at the beginning of chapter 2, in which is envisaged the redemption which the very catastrophe of judgment makes possible.

The merciless castigation of human pride, repeatedly and brilliantly articulate and everywhere presupposed, even in the prophet himself in his own call, is characteristic of Isaiah:

They bow down to the work of their hands (2:8) . . . [they] carry out a plan, but not mine (30:1) . . . are wise in their own eyes, and shrewd in their own sight (5:21) . . . whose deeds are in the dark, and who say, "Who sees us? Who knows us?" [29:15; its Isaianic authenticity doubted by some]. . . who say to the seers, "See not"; and to the prophets, "Prophesy not to us what is right; speak to us smooth things, prophesy illusions" (30:10).

Now read that sweeping condemnation of human pride in 2:12-17 where, on wings of furious prophetic indignation, Isaiah moves north to Lebanon, east across the Jordan to Bashan, on somewhere, anywhere to the mountains - and then to the symbols of human pride, the high towers, the fortified cities, and the proud, frail craft that sail the seas. The pride that renders Judah sick unto dying is the more critical because it is shared - by all men!"

The powerful prophetic Word to Assyria in chapter 10 is one of Isaiah's most notable passages.

The Song of the Vineyard, 5:1-7, with its devastating conclusion, is the more intense for its play on words:

He [Yahweh] looked for justice [mishpat], but behold, bloodshed [mishpah]; for righteousness [s^edaqah], but behold, a cry [s^e'aqah].

Isaiah offers prophetic encouragement under siege, both in 734 and 701 (see 7:7 and 37:29; 2 Kings 19:28), with the plea for a very different kind of response to Jerusalem's release from siege in 22:12-14 (here, as occasionally elsewhere, we cannot surely tell whether the reference is to 734 or 701).

Yet he persists in the prophetic conviction of cataclysmic judgment based on the proposition that "If you will not believe, surely you shall not be established" (7:9b):

For thus said the Lord Yahweh, the Holy One of Israel, "In returning and rest you shall be saved; in quietness and in trust shall be your strength."

And you would not,. . . (30:15)

"Surely this iniquity will not be forgiven you till you die," says the Lord, Yahweh of hosts (22:14)

Consider the unequivocal language of judgment earlier in chapter 30 (vv. 12-14); and these words, more bitter than anything else in Isaiah if intended (as may well be the case) as irony and not (as most translations) as a compassionate "evangelistic" invitation:

Come now, let us reason together, says Yahweh: though your sins are like scarlet, shall they be as white as snow?!

Though they are red like crimson, shall they become like wool?! (1:18)

"Egypt" again, certainly! But beyond?

I will turn my hand against you and will smelt away your dross . . . and remove all your alloy (1:25)

The fire will burn but its ultimate function is to purify. A remnant, and the tragic conditions to produce it, will be - but that remnant will return (Shear-Jashub, 7:3). The fire from the altar of Yahweh by which Isaiah himself is cleansed for Yahweh's service (6:6 f.) symbolizes the nature and function of judgment and points beyond judgment to Yahweh's purposive redemption.

Finally, observe the two remarkable passages, 9:2-7 and 11:1-9 (which very well may be Isaianic, despite considerable adverse critical judgment), looking forward to the ultimate fulfillment of the David-Zion covenant (for Isaiah, the covenant) in a Messiah, an "anointed one," in and through whose rule "the zeal of Yahweh of hosts" (9:7) will effect justice and righteousness (in the theologically dependent sense) not only in Israel but in all the earth (11:4-9).

This is Isaiah. He knows himself to be a man of unclean lips, dwelling in the midst of a people of unclean lips. He knows this because he knows and "sees" the holiness of Yahweh, the quality without which Yahweh would not be Yahweh, that by which Yahweh is Yahweh, the justice and righteousness which are Yahweh, which may be appropriated as light is appropriated from the sun - and must be appropriated if covenant life is to continue at all, if covenant purpose is to be fulfilled.

All that is truly Isaianic derives from this dialogue between human uncleanness which is pride and Yahweh's holiness which is the ultimate prophetic assertion of faith.

Micah, youngest of the four great eighth-century prophets, is a man from the country, as much shaped by his orientation there as Isaiah by the city of Jerusalem. His home is Moresheth, probably Moresheth-Gath, near the old Philistine city of Gath. We can imagine what his town and area suffered from every invading or even passing army in the last four decades of the eighth century; and we can better understand the intensity of his prophetic wrath especially when the high fortress-city of Jerusalem is his target. Look at 3:2 f. Has any government seat, have any government personnel, ever been so bitterly castigated?

The present book and the relationship of its parts to the prophet himself may be thus briefly indicated:

1-3 With the possible exception of 2:12 ff., this may with confidence be assigned to Micah.

4-5 Here 4:6-7 and 5:7-8 presuppose knowledge of the fall of Jerusalem and Judah. The rest would appear to be, if not from Micah, then from his time or from the reign of Manasseh (from c. 687) shortly after.

6:1-7:7 It is impossible to say whether this is or is not from Micah; but one can say that in time and perspective it is removed from the prophet only a little, if at all.

7:8-20 This is certainly not from Micah. It reads like a cultic psalm and is patently post-fall in origin. Its prophetic reaffirmation of the covenant, verse 20, is marred by a bitter, narrow nationalism.

Especially in the sections chapters 4-5 and 6-7, we sense an affinity with Isaiah and the circles of his disciples:

But you, O Bethlehem Ephrathah¹³

. . . . . . . . . from you shall come forth for me one who is to be ruler in Israel, whose origin is from of old

. . . . . . . . .

Therefore he [Yahweh] shall give them [Judah] up until the time when she who is in travail has brought forth;

. . . . . . . . .

And he shall stand and feed his flock in the strength of Yahweh, in the majesty of the name of Yahweh His God. (Mic. 5:2ff.)¹⁴

But as for me (Micah? Or a prophet from the Isaiah circle?)

I will look to Yahweh

I will wait for the God of my salvation; (Mic. 7:7)¹⁵

We further note the strong anti-Assyrianism of 5:10 11., reminiscent even in language of the Isaianic circle. If some of this material in chapters 4-7 is from Micah, or if it fairly represents what was in fact the prophetic mind of Micah, then it may be that we will have to predicate a relationship, if indirect, between Isaiah and Micah; and so see Micah, even as we see Isaiah. as holding in faith the prophetic expectation of redemption beyond judgment.

The affinity between the book of Micah and the Isaiah circle is further marked by the presence in both books of the floating oracle (Isa. 2:2-4 and Mic. 4:1-3). Whether it is the original utterance of one or neither of these eighth-century prophets, it is one of prophetism's finest and most lyrical expressions of the hope for covenant fulfillment. Mic. 4:4 adds the verse:

They shall sit every man under his vine and under his fig tree, and none shall make them afraid; for the mouth of Yahweh of hosts has spoken.

The book of Micah includes that matchless summary of the theological ethic:

He [Yahweh] has showed you, O man, what is good;¹⁶and what does Yahweh require of you but to do justice and to love kindness¹⁷ and to walk humbly with your God. (Mic. 6:8)

The essence of prophetism is never merely the moral and the ethical. Micah 6:8 does not, as is sometimes loosely claimed, constitute a summary of classical prophetism. Prophetism is always theological-historical. The theological ethic is never an end in itself, but only the necessary condition for the historical fulfillment of the Yahweh-Israel covenant. This full prophetic faith is given climactic summary in the floating oracle; and even more eloquently, movingly, in this phenomenal utterance originating probably in circles of prophetism subsequent to Isaiah, but, perhaps not without some justification in view of his tremendous influence, attributed to him in Isaiah 19:23 f.

In that day there will be a highway from Egypt to Assyria, and the Assyrian will come into Egypt, and the Egyptian into Assyria, and the Egyptians will worship with the Assyrians.

In that day Israel will be the third with Egypt and Assyria, a blessing in the midst of the earth, whom Yahweh of hosts has blessed, saying, Blessed be Egypt my people, and Assyria the work of my hands, and Israel my heritage.

1. M. Noth, History of Israel, trans. S. Godman (from Geschichte Israels, 2nd ed.), New York, 1958, p. 253.

2. Cf. S. Mowinckel, Psalmenstudien, Kristiania, 1922, vol. II, pp. 315 ff., who argues that the cult embraces the future: "Der Kult, das Fest ist in erster Linie Vorwartsschauend."

3. On the foregoing discussion, see G. von Rad, Theologie des Alten Testaments, Munich, 1957, vol. 1, pp. 72-76.

4. See H. H. Rowley, The Servant of the Lord and Other Essays on the Old Testament, London, 1952, p. 114, n. 2.

5. As the damaged Assyrian text is reconstructed and translated in James B. Pritchard, Ancient Near Eastern Texts, 2nd ed., Princeton, 1955.

6. W. A. L. Elmsie, How Came Our Faith, New York, 1948, p. 269 n. For a superb and completely documented discussion of the Hosea-Gomer problem, see H. H. Rowley, "The Marriage of Hosea," Bulletin of the John Rylands Library,XXXIX, no. 1 (September, 1956).

7. Also read 2 Kings 15; II Chron. 26; 2 Kings 16; 11 Chron. 28-30; 2 Kings 17-21 (compare 18-20 with Isa. 36-39); cf. Ps. 46.

8. Pritchard, op. cit., p. 321.

9. Ibid., p.288.

10. Ibid.

11. B. D. Napier, From Faith to Faith, New York, 1955, chap. IV.

12. Ibid., pp. 182f.

13. Reference is to the Davidic line; Bethlehem Ephrathah is the birthplace of David.

14. Cf. Isa. 9, 11,40:11.

15. Cf. Isa. 8:17.

16. Or, Man has showed you what is good, but what does Yahweh require of you.

17. Hesed, a covenant term denoting loyalty, faithfulness, and even something akin to the New Testament concept of grace, the giving of more than the relationship may properly demand.

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