 We're going to move on now to our second literary prophet, and this is the prophet Hosea. He was a native of the northern kingdom. So, Amos and Hosea, you're going to associate with the Assyrian crisis, and they are prophets of the northern kingdom of Israel. He's prophesying in the time of Jeroboam II. Jeroboam reigned until about 747. Okay? And then he continues to the last king, who is confusingly named Hosea. So, he prophesies in the 740s, 30s, 20s, somewhere in there. He doesn't seem to have seen the fall of Israel, though. Now, Hosea is considered by many to be the most difficult of the prophetic books. The Hebrew is very difficult, and it sometimes seems rather garbled. It's very hard to render it intelligibly. But structurally, we can divide the book into two main sections. Chapters 1 to 3 have a certain coherence to them, and then chapters 4 through 14. 1 to 3 tells of the prophet's marriage to a promiscuous woman named Gomer. This is his marriage as a metaphor for Israel's relationship with God. And these chapters also contain an indictment or a lawsuit. Remember this Reeve form, lawsuit form. We're going to see it both in Hosea and Isaiah today. Then chapters 4 through 14 contain oracles primarily. Oracles against the nations, but also against the kingdom of Israel. We're going to be focusing primarily on chapters 1 to 3, which are so distinctive to Hosea, and we'll refer occasionally to some of the other chapters where they might pronounce an important theme for Hosea. So, again, the historical background for the book of Hosea is the Assyrian threat. The Assyrians are wiping out a number of the smaller states in the ancient Near East, the middle of the eighth century, and Israel obviously could not be far behind. And the line that was taken by Hosea was to condemn the attempts that were made by various kings, the kings of Israel's kings, to withstand defeat or to avoid defeat at the hands of Assyria. If Assyria was going to conquer Israel, Hosea said, then it was God's just punishment. And to fight against it, to fight against the inevitable, was simply another kind of rejection of God, another rejection of his plans and purpose. It demonstrated a lack of trust or faith in the power of God. Hosea 10, verse 13, spells out the disastrous consequences of trusting in human power, or foreign alliances, rather than trusting in God. And this is a theme that we'll see occurring again and again. Hosea 10, verse 13, you have plowed wickedness, you have reaped iniquity, and you shall eat the fruits of treachery, because you relied on your way, on your host of warriors. He was suggesting inaction. Now, that surely would have been viewed by the king and the court as against all reason. Who was Hosea's insistence? Israel was faced with a choice. Who, in whom, should she place her trust? In God, or in human leaders and their armies. Hosea 1,7 goes so far as to suggest that actually the moment of decision has passed for the northern kingdom. There's still some hope for the southern kingdom, but the northern kingdom has obviously made its choice, and it was the wrong choice. Hosea says that God says, I will no longer accept the house of Israel or pardon them, but I will accept the house of Judah, and I will give them victory through the Lord their God, victory through the Lord their God. I will not give them victory with bow and sword and battle by horses and riders. If you think that's what gives you victory, you're mistaken. Some see that verse as perhaps a later interpolation into Hosea as such a positive assessment of the southern kingdom. But there is this sense of impending disaster that resonates throughout the book of Hosea. Chapter 8, verse 7, they sow wind and they shall reap whirlwind, standing stalks, devoid of ears, and yielding no flower. If they do yield any strangers shall devour it. Israel is bewildered. So the catastrophe is unavoidable, and Hosea has often been described as painting a portrait of unreleaved gloom. It's very grim. He seems to hold out no real hope for Israel. She has to pay the price for her infidelity to God. But we need to look a little more closely at some of the books before we accept that evaluation entirely. And I think the one overarching theme that helps us organize most of the material in the book of Hosea, and one that shows its deep indebtedness to, or interconnectedness with, the book of Deuteronomy, is the theme of covenant, particularly Deuteronomy's notion of covenant. So I've put covenant at the top there, and we see this theme being played out in several different ways. The first I've just discussed, as Yahweh's covenant partner, as the vassal of the covenant partner, Yahweh, the sovereign, Israel should be placing her confidence entirely in Yahweh. Any foreign alliance, any alliance with Egypt against Assyria, for example, is against the terms of that covenant, that exclusive treaty between God and Israel. And she should not be relying on her military might, but relying on the sovereign, the suzerain. So anything short of complete trust in Yahweh's power to save the vassal Israel is a violation of the terms of the covenant. So we see it in the notion of confidence, exclusive confidence and trust in God and his power. A second way in which the theme of covenant is expressed is found in Hosea's denunciation of social injustice and moral decay, and of course this is a theme that's common to the prophets. Here he follows Amos, but he's now the first to couch his charge in the form of this formal rieve or lawsuit in which God is said to bring a charge against Israel for violating the terms of the covenant, for breach of covenant. This happens in chapter 4. In chapter 3 verses of chapter 4, Israel's charged. And Hosea employs language that deliberately invokes the Decalogue. Here are the word of the Lord, O people of Israel. For the Lord has a case, a lawsuit, against the inhabitants of this land, because there is no honesty and no goodness and no obedience to God in the land. False swearing, dishonesty and murder and theft and adultery are rife, picking out key terms from the Decalogue. False swearing, murder, theft and adultery, of course occurred, a threesome in the Decalogue. Crime are rife, these things are rife. Crime follows upon crime, for that the earth is withered, everything that dwells on it languishes, beasts of the field and birds of the sky, even the fish of the sea perish. Unlike Amos, Hosea also engages in a prolonged or sustained condemnation of Israel's religious faithfulness, which is figured in terms of adultery. And so here again the theme of covenant is dominant and organizes the prophet's presentation. To represent Israel's faithlessness, he invokes other types of covenantal relationships as metaphors, most notably the metaphor of marriage. Marriage can be referred to as a breit, as a covenant between a husband and wife, and so it's an appropriate metaphor. And we see it primarily in chapters 1 through 3. He addresses the relationship between Yahweh and Israel through the metaphor of marriage, and Israel is the unfaithful adulterous wife. He describes in lurid terms her lecherous addiction to images and idols, her adulterous worship of Baal. He points to the nation's leaders and their failures, the kings and the priests, their failure to prevent the people's waywardness, their debauchery. This chapter is reported in the third person, and this contains God's command to Hosea to marry a promiscuous woman as a symbol of God's own marriage with a faithless wife, Israel. Go get yourself a wife of Hordom and a children of Hordom, for the land will stray from following the Lord. So he marries this woman named Gomer, and she bears three children who have very inauspicious names. These names are symbolic of God's anger over Israel's infidelity, Jezreel. Jezreel, because God plans to punish Jehu for his slaughter of the house of Ahab, even though Ahab was no favorite of God, you still should not raise your hand against the Lord's anointed. And so Jehu will have to be, Ahab will have to be avenged. Jehu will have to be punished at Jezreel, which is where the murder happened. Lo ru'chama, which means not loved, not forgiven, because God will no longer love or forgive or pardon the house of Israel. And the third child's name is Lo ami, not my people, a sign that God has dissolved the covenant bond. He has rejected Israel as his people, divorced Israel. There really could be no more stark and shocking denial of the covenant than this. Chapter 3 contains a first person, this first person account of God's command to him. There it said that God commands him to be friend, although he seems to hire a woman, on condition that she not consort with others. The woman again symbolizes Israel, who's brought into an exclusive relationship that requires her to remain faithful to one party, in contrast to her customary behavior. And then sandwiched between Chapter 1 and Chapter 3, the accounts of which have the accounts of these relationships that are metaphors for God and Israel's relationship. Sandwiched between them is the almost schizophrenic Chapter 2. It contains, again, a sustained, violent, very violent account on the faithless wife, on faithless Israel, and God's formal declaration of divorce. She is not my wife, and I am not her husband. This would affect a divorce, the statement uttered by a husband. We have that in verse 4. Yet, this is also, this chapter also contains, a very gentle and very loving portrait of reconciliation. And it's in that portrait of reconciliation that we see another aspect of the covenant concept emerge, an aspect that was, again, most pronounced in the book of Deuteronomy. As Israel's covenant partner, God loves Israel, and he actually longs for her faithfulness. This steadfast covenantal love, one of the words that's repeatedly is chesed, but it refers to a special kind of steadfast love, loyal love. This covenantal love will reconcile God to wayward Israel, just as Hosea is reunited, or reconciled with his faithless wife. And the prophet imagines a return to the wilderness. And God is imagining what it would be wonderful if we could return to the wilderness and covenant again. And this time it would be a permanent and eternal marriage. And three children who were cast off at birth, they will be redeemed and accepted by their father. Those are some of the ideas contained in this passage. This is Hosea 2, verses 16 to 25, the reconciliation. Assuredly I will speak coaxingly to her and lead her through the wilderness and speak to her tenderly. I will give her her vineyards from there and the valley of Ahor as a plough land of hope. And there she shall respond as in the days of her youth, she came up from the land of Egypt. So the period of the Exodus and wandering is romantically imagined as this time of a very good and close relationship between God and Israel. And in that day you will call me Ishii, and no more will you call me Ba'ali. This is a pun. Both of these words can mean my husband. Ishii is my man, a male, and Ba'ali is my Lord. Women would have used both for their husbands. But Ba'ali obviously has connotations with the God Ba'ali. Instead of calling me Ba'ali, my Ba'ali you will call me Ishii, my husband using a word that's free of Ba'ali connotations. For I will remove the names of the Ba'alim from her mouth, and they shall never more be mentioned by name. In that day I will make a covenant for them with the beasts of the field, the birds of the air, and the creeping things of the ground. And I will banish bow and sword and war from the land. Thus I will let them lie down in safety. And I will espouse you forever, back to the marriage metaphor. I will espouse you with righteousness and justice and with goodness and mercy. And I will espouse you with faithfulness, and then you shall be devoted to the Lord. In that day I will respond, declares the Lord. I will respond to the sky, and it shall respond to the earth. And the earth shall respond with new grain and wine and oil, and they shall respond to Jezreel, the first of the children. I will sow her in the land as my own. Jezreel was a fertile valley, not just a place of war and death. And I will say to Loh Rukhama, not loved, back in favor. And I will say to Loh Ami, not my people, you are my people. And he will respond, you are my God. So, Hosea isn't unrelevantly gloomy and grim. It does provide these images, these very stirring images of hope and consolation and reconciliation. Amos also held out hope in the form of a remnant that would survive the inevitable destruction. So, we need to think about the two traditions that prophets like Amos and Hosea are drawing on in this combined message of doom on the one hand and hope on the other. Really what the prophets are doing is drawing on two conceptions of covenant, the two conceptions that we saw in our study of the Pentateuchal material and on into Samuel. On the one hand they recognize the unconditional and irrevocable covenant that God established with the patriarchs as well as the eternal covenant with David, with the House of David. Those covenants were the basis for the belief that God would never forsake his people. But on the other hand, of course, they place emphasis on the covenant at Sinai. It's a conditional covenant. It requires the people's obedience to moral, religious, and civil laws in the covenant code, and it threatens punishment for their violation. The prophets are playing with both of these themes. Israel has violated the Sinaiic covenant and the curses that are stipulated by the covenant must follow national destruction and even exile. They will follow. They have to. But alienation from God is not and never will be complete and irreparable because of the unconditional covenant, the covenant with the patriarchs, the covenant with the House of David. So Israel will be God's people forever despite temporary alienation. The notion of election and act of purely undeserved or unmerited favor and love on God's part, not due in any way to a special merit of the people, undergirds the prophetic message of consolation. And Hosea paints a very poignant and moving portrait of this special and indissoluble love that God bears for Israel. And in doing so, he draws on a second metaphor. So we've had the metaphor of husband and wife, a covenantal relationship. We also have the metaphor of parent-son, which can also be understood in terms of a covenant with obligations. All right? The parent-son relationship entails loyalty and love, but also obligation. One of the obligations that is understood to fall on the parent is the obligation of disciplining a rebellious or ungrateful child, while never forsaking that child. So that's a model that works very well with the prophetic message. Hosea 11, 1-4, and then skipping to verses 8-9. I fell in love with Israel when he was still a child, and I have called him my son ever since Egypt. Thus were they called, but they went their own way. They sacrificed about Aleem and offered a carved images. I have pampered Ephraim, another name for Israel, right Ephraim. I have pampered Ephraim, taking them in my arms, but they have ignored my healing care. I drew them with human ties, with cords of love, but I seemed to them as one who imposed a yoke on their jaws, though I was offering them food. How can I give you up, O Ephraim? How surrender you, O Israel? How can I make you like Adma, or render you like Zavoyim, other foreign places? I have had a change of heart. All my tenderness is stirred. I will not act on my wrath. Will not turn to destroy Ephraim, for I am God, not man, the Holy One in your midst. I will not come in fury." See, there are these alternating passages of violent rejection and tender love and reconciliation. And with these alternating passages, the prophet is able to capture or convey a passionate struggle taking place in the heart of God. They're giving us that passionate emotional portrait of God. It's the struggle of a lover who's torn between his jealous and his undying love. And it's the struggle that is won ultimately by love, because God cannot let Israel go. We're going to see that each of the prophets we look at holds these two covenantal ideas in tension, and they will emphasize one or the other, depending on the particular situation, the particular historical situation. Sometimes when it's a time of relative ease or comfort, then the prophet emphasizes the violations of the covenant, the punishment that will inevitably come for these violations, and they'll downplay God's eternal commitment to his people. But in times of despair and suffering and destruction, then the prophet may point out that violations of the covenant were the cause of the distress, but they will emphasize God's undying love for Israel and hold out hope, therefore, for a better future. Now, we're going to leave the northern prophets and move to southern prophets. Isaiah is the longest prophetic book. The interpretation of many passages in the book of Isaiah as symbolic references to Jesus make it one of the most quoted books of the Bible by Christians. Isaiah was a contemporary of Amos and Hosea, right second half of the eighth century. He was active for a little bit longer period. He was active into about the 690s, somewhere in there. But he prophesied in the southern kingdom of Judah when the Assyrian Empire threatened and destroyed the northern kingdom. Right? The northern kingdom falls 722. And then, of course, was threatening Judah. So he's active for over 50 years, and he counsels Judah's kings. He counsels them through two sieges. I've listed these for you. The siege of 734, where he counsels King Achaz, and then the siege of 701, where he counsels his son Hezekiah, or Hischia, Hezekiah. Give you a little bit of a historical background to these sieges so you understand them. But those are the main dates that can help orient your approach to Isaiah. We have excellent evidence, by the way, for all of these events in the Assyrian sources and also archaeological finds. The archaeological finds show destruction by the Assyrians at the places that we believe were destroyed at the times they were destroyed. But this is what happened. In 734, you have the Assyrians, who at this time are under Tiglot Pileser, and they're extending their control through the region. So they're coming from the northeast. So first they're going to hit Aram in Syria, and then advance on the northern kingdom of Israel. So Aram and Israel joined together in an alliance. They're trying to resist the advancing Assyrians. Judah refused to join the alliance. The southern kingdom refused. So in anger, Aram and Israel moved south and lay siege to Jerusalem. So the first siege, the siege of 734, is actually a siege of Jerusalem by the northern kingdom of Israel in alliance with the Aramans. They were trying to force Judah's cooperation in standing against Assyria. King Ahaz of Judah decided to appeal to Assyria for help, to Tiglot Pileser for help. He submits to the Assyrians as a vassal. He pays tribute. We have a record of the tribute that was paid, in the Assyrian records, in 734. And this action is condemned by the biblical writers. The Deuteronomistic historian in 2 Kings 16 condemns this action. Isaiah also condemns it. So Judah has made itself vassal to Assyria. And this is the case until HaZaz's son Hezekiah decides that he will assert the nation's independence. The Assyrians are angry about this. This is now after the fall of the northern kingdom of Israel. The Assyrians are angry, and under Senecharib they attack. They devastate many of the cities in the countryside. And again, archaeology confirms what we know from the Assyrian records, and they advance on Jerusalem and lay siege to Jerusalem in 701. And just as he had counseled King Ahaz, Israel, now counsels Hezekiah. In the end, Jerusalem wasn't destroyed. A heavy tribute was paid to the Assyrians, but eventually the Assyrians did withdraw. They were overextended to a large degree. All right, that's the general historical background. We'll come back to some of the details in a minute. But let me first give you a sense of the general structure of this very large book. The claim that the prophetic books are anthologies, anthologies of oracles, and other materials compiled by the prophet, or by his disciples, that is to say schools that kept a set of prophecies and then added to those core prophecies because of their firm belief and their continuing relevance. That portrait of the anthological nature of prophetic books is really demonstrable in the book of Isaiah. I've put the basic structure up there for you. The first eleven chapters contain memoirs. Chapter one sets out some of the basic themes of Isaiah, but we have a lot of first-person narrative. Then we have various oracles against Israel. Some of this material refers to the attacks on Jerusalem, especially the Siege of 701. And there seems to be a kind of concluding hymn in Chapter 12. We then have about eleven chapters of Oracles Against Foreign Nations. That's a form that we also saw in Amos and Hosea, denouncing foreign nations, from Chapters 13 to 23. I'm skipping over Chapters 24 to 27. They are a little apocalypse, a sort of mythological vision of the end of days. And that probably dates to a much later time, the sixth century. That was the time in which the apocalyptic genre was really developing. So we skip over that. We don't think of that as associated with the historical Isaiah. And move on to Chapters 28 to 33. Here we turn from Oracles Against Foreign Nations to Oracles Against Judah and Israel and the relationship with Egypt. Right? This is a time where, caught between these two powers, Judah is trying to figure out with whom to make alliances, right, should she cast her lot with Egypt and so on. And these are from a slightly later period, down towards the Siege of 701. And they include accounts of Isaiah's counsel to Hezekiah in 701. 34 and 35 we'll kind of skip over for now. These also are post-exilic insertions. And then Chapters 36 to 39. This is third-person historical narrative. This is, in fact, Second Kings Chapters 18 to 20. That material has simply been inserted here. So those three chapters appear here in Isaiah. It's the story of the invasion of Sinacharib, the interactions of Isaiah and Hezekiah during the Siege in 701. So I'm stopping at Chapter 39, even though there are 66 chapters in the book of Isaiah, because most scholars agree, I think this is really a very strong consensus, that the remaining material is not the work of Isaiah of Jerusalem. It dates to a period long after Isaiah's lifetime. I've already mentioned the apocalypse, which we think is probably from the sixth century. That's embedded in there, Chapters 24 to 27. But the remaining material we speak of in two main sections. We refer to these as Second Isaiah and Third Isaiah. Chapters 40 to 55, which we refer to as Second Isaiah, assume a historical setting in which Babylon is dominating, not Assyria. And so we see that as coming at a much later time. Chapters 56 to 66 we refer to as Third Isaiah. This material contains oracles that are spread throughout the eighth to the fifth centuries. So we'll consider those on another occasion in their proper historical context. Right now we're looking at the material that is most likely attributable to First Isaiah, to Isaiah of Jerusalem. The book also contains material that is a repetition of material found elsewhere. I've already noted Second Kings 18 to 20 appears here. But in addition you have snatches of verses that appear in other places. So Isaiah 2, verses 2 to 4 are found in Micah, on the book of Micah 4, verses 1 to 4. Jeremiah 48 is essentially equivalent to Isaiah 15 and 16. So this kind of repetition among or between different books illustrates, again, the anthological nature of the prophetic corpuses, the prophetic corpus, that these were works that were compiled from material that sometimes circulated in more than one school. So if we turn now to the major themes of Isaiah, let's note first the common ground between Isaiah and the prophets, Amos and Hosea, that we've already discussed. Isaiah is consistent with Amos and Hosea in denouncing, again, the social injustice and moral decay, which is the cause of God's just and inevitable punishment. Isaiah 5, extracting from verses 8 through 24. Are those who add house to house and join field to field till there is room for none but you to dwell in the land? Are those who chase liquor from early in the morning until late in the evening or inflamed by wine? Are those who vindicate him who is in the wrong in return for a bribe and withhold vindication from him who is in the right? He joins Amos in the assertion that cultic practice without just behavior is anathema to God. Isaiah 1, verses 10 to 17. Hear the word of the Lord, you chieftains of Sodom. Give ear to our God's instruction, you folk of Gomorrah. I'm referring to his fellow countrymen as Sodomites, or people of Sodom and Gomorrah, who, of course, were the paragons of immoral behavior. What need have I of all your sacrifices, says the Lord? I am sated with burnt offerings of rams and suetive fatlings and blood of bulls, and I have no delight in lambs and he-goats. Your new moons and fixed seasons fill me with loathing. They have become a burden to me. I cannot endure them. Lift up your hands. I will turn my eyes away from you. Though you pray at length, I will not listen. Your hands are stained with crime. Wash yourselves clean. Put your evil doings away from my sight. Cease to do evil. Learn to do good. Devote yourselves to justice. Aide the wronged. Uphold the rights of the orphan. Defend the cause of the widow. These are harsh and shocking words. I'm sick of sacrifices. I'm sick of your festivals and holidays as long as you are. Amid these terrible acts. And like Amos and Hosea, Isaiah asserts that morality is a decisive factor in the fate of the nation. Again, the phrase, the passage that begins, are those who add house to house and join field to field. In my hearing said the Lord of hosts, Surely great houses shall lie forlorn, spacious and splendid ones without occupants. Assuredly my people will suffer exile for not giving heed, its multitude, victims of hunger, and its masses parched with thirst. So there are, of course, some commonalities, but Isaiah differs from Amos and Hosea in this. He places far greater emphasis on the Davidic covenant than on the Mosaic covenant. This is a key feature of Isaiah. The wilderness tradition, the Exodus tradition, the covenant at Sinai, these are so important to Amos and Hosea and are referred to by Amos and Hosea, but they have less of an explicit influence on Isaiah's prophecy. They're not there, but they have less of an explicit influence. Instead, Isaiah has an overriding interest in Davidic theology, the royal ideology that centers on Zion, an ideology that we discussed earlier. So we see this in his Reeve, his covenant lawsuit, which focuses a little less on the violations of the kingdom than it does on the failure of the kings and the leaders who have misled the nation and who will now have to be punished, as was stipulated in the Davidic covenant. We also see it in his firm belief in the inviolability of Zion. This is a clear doctrine with Isaiah, the inviolability of Zion. Yahweh has a special relationship with the Davidic royal line and the Davidic kingdom, Jerusalem or Zion, and he will not let either perish. And that belief undergirds and informs his consistent advice to the kings of Judah. Times of great danger are opportunities to demonstrate absolute trust in Yahweh's covenant with the line of David, with the House of David. The king must rely exclusively on Yahweh and Yahweh's promises to David and his city and not on military might or diplomatic strategies. So, if we look at Isaiah's dealings with King Haas, the first siege in 734, this is described in Isaiah chapters 7 and 8. Isaiah, who also has children with portentous names, this is a fad, I guess, among the prophets, his children's names are only a remnant will survive, and hasten for spoil, hurry for plunder, which indicates the destruction and exile. So, he goes to visit the king, and his advice to the king is, Be quiet and do not fear. Chapter 7 verse 4, the crisis will pass. 7 verse 9, if you will not believe, surely you shall not be established. This is an evocation of Zion theology. God is in the midst of the city. That means the Lord of hosts is with the people. Isaiah then offers Haas a sign of the truth of his prophecy, and that is namely that a young woman who has conceived will bear a son and will call him Emmanuel. It's Hebrew, Emmanuel. God is with us. Emmanuel is with us. So, this woman who has conceived will bear a son and will call him Emmanuel. This is in 7 verse 14. Now, in the New Testament, Matthew in chapter 1, verses 22 to 23, takes this verse as a prophecy of the birth of Jesus. This is based on a Greek mistranslation of the word young woman as virgin. The Hebrew term that's used is not in fact the term for virgin, but it was translated into the Greek with the term that can mean virgin. And moreover, the verb that's used in the Hebrew is in the past tense. A woman has already conceived. The birth is pending. It is imminent. This child will be born. God will be with us. The identity of the woman that Isaiah is speaking about is a matter of some dispute. So, some scholars take the verse as a reference to Isaiah's own wife. She's already had two children with portentous names, and now she's pregnant with a third. But the others take the verse as a reference to the king's own wife, who will bear his son Hezekiah, King Hezekiah. There are some problems with chronology. It doesn't quite work out that he would be the right age. But the fact is Hezekiah was a celebrated king. In fact, he managed to keep Judah intact against the Assyrian threat and kept Jerusalem from falling in the Siege of 701. And Second Kings, the book of Second Kings, chapter 18, verse 7, says of Hezekiah, the Lord was with him. Right? God was with him, connecting it to the name Emanuel. God is with us. God is with him. It's very similar and very, very similar in the Hebrew. In fact, sounds the same. So, in keeping with this interpretation, the idea that the child who he says will be able to, in a sense, save Judah is the child of the king, to be born Hezekiah. In keeping with that, scholars see the famous verses in Isaiah 9 as praise of King Hezekiah. These verses are verses that announce, For unto us the child is born, a wonderful counselor, a mighty God, an everlasting father, a prince of peace, referring then to an unending peace in which David's throne and kingdom are firmly established. And again, these verses have also been decontextualized and are utilized in Christian liturgies to this day, again as if they refer to the future birth of Jesus. In any event, Achaz doesn't heed Isaiah's call for inaction. He says he should be doing nothing. How could any king really follow such advice to seek no political or military solution? And so he appeals to Assyria for help against Aram and the northern kingdom of Israel, who are laying siege to him. And this is a disastrous development in Isaiah's eyes. If we move to the second siege in 701, we see that Isaiah really takes a similar stance. Hezekiah tries to form an alliance with Egypt now to stave off the Assyrian threat. And Isaiah castigates the king, and he castigates the king's men for abandoning Yahweh and relying on the frail reed of Egypt. And we find here an example of the bizarre and demonstrative behavior of the prophet. We'll see this in many of the prophets. We'll see it particularly in the prophet Ezekiel, but we see it with others, where they would engage in these symbolic acts that were meant to shock and attract attention. Isaiah paraded naked through the streets of Jerusalem to illustrate the exile and the slavery that would follow from this mistaken reliance on Egypt. He denounces the political advisers who counsel the king to form an alliance with Egypt because they are simply trusting in horses and chariots rather than gods. And Isaiah counsels differently. He says, for the Egyptians are man, not God, and their horses are flesh, not spirit. Chapter 31 verse 3, the king should simply trust in God. In the narrative account that we have of the siege of 701 that's found in chapters 36 and 38, it's also duplicated in 2 Kings, Isaiah counsels Hezekiah when the siege is underway not to capitulate to the Assyrians. This might seem to contradict his earlier message that Assyria was the rod of God's anger and that Hezekiah should not resist, but in fact there's a basic consistency to Isaiah's counsel. Just as his earlier counsel to trust in God rather than Egypt was based on his trust in God's promises to David and the inviolability of the royal city, so now his counsel to resist not to open the doors of the city to the Assyrians is based on his belief that Yahweh could not possibly intend to destroy his royal city. Isaiah 37 verses 33 to 35. Assuredly thus said the Lord concerning the king of Assyria, he shall not enter this city. He shall not shoot an arrow at it or advance upon it with a shield or pile up a siege mound against it. He shall go back by the way he came. He shall not enter this city, declares the Lord. I will protect and save the city for my sake and for the sake of my servant David, again for the sake of the Davidic covenant. And the fact that Jerusalem did in fact escape destruction after this terrifying siege by the Assyrians only fueled the belief, fueled the belief in the inviolability of David's city, Zion. Isaiah 6 contains a striking account of the call of Isaiah. Many of the prophetic books will feature some passage which refers to the prophet's initial call. And it's something we might expect to find at the beginning of the book, so obviously chronology is not the organizing principle in the book of Isaiah. But I want to draw your attention to God's extraordinary message to Isaiah at the time of his call or commission. Go and say to that people, hear indeed but do not understand. See indeed but do not grasp. Dull that people's mind. Stop its ears and seal its eyes, lest, seeing with its eyes and hearing with its ears, it also grasp with its mind and repent and save itself. Well, there's a nice literary chiasm before we get to the substance of it. In the last line you have heart, ears and eyes, and then these are repeated but in reverse order, eyes, ears and heart. But in this passage we return to the kind of bleakness that we saw in Hosea. Destruction is inevitable. God's message by his prophet will not be understood. And indeed God will see to it that the people do not understand the message. They do not heed the call to repent, do not save themselves, and so do not escape God's just punishment. It's a fascinating if theologically difficult passage. God tells Isaiah to prevent the people from understanding, lest through their understanding they turn back to God and save themselves. And again we see God or perhaps his prophet caught in the tension between God's justice and God's mercy. As a God of justice he must punish the sins of Israel with destruction. He indicated he would do so in the covenant. He must be faithful to those terms. But as a God of mercy he wishes to bring his people back. He wishes to send them a prophet to warn them of the impending doom and urge them to repent so that he can forgive them and renounce his plan of destruction. Yet how can he both punish Israel and so fulfill the demands of justice and yet save Israel and so fulfill the demands of mercy and love? Verses 12 and 13 in chapter 6 answer this question with an idea that we've seen a little in Amos and Hosea. When Isaiah asks how long the people will fail to hear, fail to understand, to turn back to God and save themselves, God replies, till towns lie waste without inhabitants and houses without people, and the ground lies waste and desolate, for the Lord will banish the population and deserted sites are many in the midst of the land. But while a tenth part yet remains in it, it shall repent, it shall be ravaged like the Terabinth and the Oak, of which stumps are left even when they are felled, and its stump shall be a holy seed. So God will punish, God cannot not punish Israel, and so the demands of justice will be met, and God will have upheld the terms of the conditional Mosaic covenant. But God will at the same time affect the salvation of his people in the future. He has sent a prophet with the call to return, and in due time a remnant of the people, a tenth, as Isaiah says, will understand and heed that call. They will receive God's mercy, and the covenant will be reestablished. And in this way the demands of love and mercy will be met, and God will have been faithful to his covenantal promise to the patriarchs and the royal house of David. The people's delayed comprehension of the prophet's message guarantees the operation of God's just punishment now and his merciful salvation later. While the notion of a remnant leads to the idea of a future hope, it wasn't a very consoling message at the time, because the prophets were essentially saying that the current generation would all but cease to exist. Isaiah 10 verses 21 to 23, only a remnant shall return, only a remnant of Jacob to mighty God. Even if your people, O Israel, should be as the sands of the sea, only a remnant of it shall return, destruction is decreed, retribution comes like a flood, for my Lord, God of hosts, is carrying out a decree of destruction upon all the land. While we've seen that the prophet's message of destruction and punishment in doom is very often accompanied by, often alternates with, a message of consolation and a promise of restoration, restoration of a purged or purified remnant in the land of Israel. This is where the prophets differ from the Deuteronomistic historian. The Deuteronomistic historian is more concerned with the justification of God's actions against Israel than with painting a vivid portrait of the time of a future restoration. But this period of restoration is elaborately envisioned in some prophetic writings, and it even takes on an eschatological tenor. The word eschatology means an account of the end. So in some of them, this becomes an eschatological vision, that the restoration will happen at the end of these, and the restoration will bring about some sort of perfect end time. So in Isaiah, for example, the return will be a genuine, wholehearted, and permanent return to God. It will be the end of sin. It will be the end of idolatry. All the nations of the earth will recognize the Lord of history. A new epoch will open in world history. It's an enormous transformation. It is the first to envisage this kind of transformation, the end of the dominion of idolatrous nations. When God comes to Jerusalem to save the remnant of Israel and gather in the dispersed exiles, it will be a theophany, a self-revelation of God, of worldwide scope. Isaiah 2, verses 2-4, In the days to come the mount of the Lord's house shall stand firm above the mountains and tower above the little hill, if you've ever been there. It's really not very big that the temple stood on will tower, like some large impregnable mountain over all other hills and mountains, and all the nations shall gaze on it with joy. And the many peoples shall go and say, Come, let us go up to the mount of the Lord to the house of the God of Jacob, that he may instruct us in his ways and that we may walk in his paths. For instruction Torah shall come forth from Zion, the word of the Lord from Jerusalem, and thus he will judge among the nations and arbitrate among the many peoples, and they shall beat their swords into plowshares and their spears into pruning hooks. Nations shall not take up sword against nation, they shall never again know war. Note this, the direction that Israelite thought is taking. The J-Source in Genesis assumed that all humans had knowledge of Yahweh from the time of creation. And remember that that was one of the distinctive traits of J as opposed to P, for example. They assumed, however, that humans turned from Yahweh. So Yahweh selected one nation to know him and covenant with him. The Book of Deuteronomy accepts that Yahweh is Israel's God. Other nations have been assigned to the worship of other gods, and that's just fine. But in classical prophecy, universal claims are made on behalf of Yahweh. According to the prophets, God will make himself known to all the nations as he once did to Israel, and the universal worship or recognition of Yahweh will be established at the end of days. This is a very different idea. And so, as a consequence of this idea, the very notion of Israel's election is transformed by the prophets. In the Torah books, the election of Israel means simply God's undeserved choice of Israel as the nation to know him and bind itself in covenant to him. But in the prophetic literature, Israel's election is an election to a mission. Israel was chosen so as to be the instrument of universal redemption, universal recognition of Yahweh. When God comes finally to rescue the Israelites, he will simultaneously reveal himself to all of humankind. They'll abandon their idols. They'll return to him. A messianic period of peace will follow. And eventually, we're going to see the idea that the mission for which Israel was elected was to become a light unto the nations. This is a phrase that we're going to see in other parts of Isaiah, Isaiah 49 and Isaiah 51 later. The royal ideology of Judah plays an important role in the eschatological vision of Isaiah because this new, peaceful, righteous kingdom is going to be restored by a Davidite. It's going to be restored by a king from the branch of Jesse. So, when you say the branch from the stump of Jesse, then you're referring to a Davidite. Isaiah 11 refers to the restoration of the Davidic line, which implies that it had been temporarily interrupted. So, Isaiah 11 may be post-exilic. It may date from a time when people were hoping for a messiah to arise and restore the line of David. Isaiah 11 verses 1 to 12 and 16. But a shoot shall grow out of the stump of Jesse. A twig shall sprout from his stock. The spirit of the Lord shall alight upon him. A spirit of wisdom and insight. A spirit of counsel and valor. A spirit of devotion and reverence for the Lord. He shall sense the truth by his reverence for the Lord. He shall not judge by what his ears perceive. Thus he shall judge the poor with equity and decide with justice for the lowly of the land. He shall strike down a land with the rod of his mouth and slay the wicked with the breath of his lips. Justice shall be the girdle of his loins and faithfulness the girdle of his lips. The wolf shall dwell with the lamb. The leopard lie down with the kid. The calf, the beast of prey and the fatling together and a little boy to herd them. The cow and the bear shall graze. The bear is vegetarian. No, not killing the cow but eating the grass with the cow. Their young shall lie down together and the lion like the ox shall eat straw. A babe shall play over a viper's hole and an infant pass his hand over an adder's den. The hostility, the animosity between humans and serpents or snakes, which was decreed at the fall in the expulsion from Eden, is reversed in this end time. This is a return to the situation in Paradise. In all of my sacred mount nothing evil or vile shall be done for the land shall be filled with devotion to the Lord as water covers the sea. And in that day the stock of Jesse that has remained standing shall become a standard to peoples. Nations shall seek his counsel and his abode shall be honored. In that day my Lord will apply his hand again to redeeming the other part of his peoples from Assyria as also from Egypt, Pethros, Nubia, Elam, Shinar, Hamat and the coastlands. Thus there shall be a highway for the other part of his people out of Assyria such as there was for Israel when it left the land of Egypt. So this new ideal Davidic king will rule by wisdom and insight and the spirit of the Lord will alight on him. That's a phrase that we saw being used in the case of judges, in the case of Saul or David. It refers to military might and strength here. It refers to counsel and a spirit of devotion to God. And this king's reign will begin an in-gathering of the exiles of the nation and a transformed world order. So to conclude, Isaiah is typical of the prophetic reinterpretation of the ancient covenant promises, giving Israel a hope for a better ideal future. And like the other prophets he declared that the nation was in distress not because the promises weren't true, but because they hadn't been believed. The nation's punishment was just a chastisement. It wasn't a revocation of the promises. The prophets pushed the fulfillment of the promises beyond the existing nation, however. It's only after suffering the punishment for the present failure would a future redemption be possible. So the national hope was maintained but pushed off to a future day. Right, we'll deal with some more prophetic books when we come back. Please be sure to take the handouts in the box and we'll be right back.