When was Isaiah written?

Nothing more is known of the ancestors of Isaiah than that he was the son of Amoz. He prophesied in the days of Uzziah, Jotham, Ahaz, and Hezekiah, all kings of Judah. From the closing years of Uzziah to the death of Hezekiah would be from about B.C. 765 to 700, embracing a period of 65 years. The first verse says that the vision was concerning Judah and Jerusalem. Had due attention been paid to this, it would have prevented many things being ascribed in the headings of the chapters to the church, and the prophecy would have been the better understood. In few words the prophecy may be said to treat of the failures of the nation of Judah and the judgements upon it. Assyria is used as God's rod to punish them, and is then destroyed. Judgements are pronounced against the nations around the promised land that had been enemies to God's people. The Messiah is prophesied of and His rejection, and universal blessing is spoken of.

Nothing else is said of his personal history in the book which bears his name nor do we find anything about his death. There is a trustworthy tradition that he lived during the reign of Manasseh, also that he suffered martyrdom, because he reproved the vices and idolatries rampant during the reign of that wicked king. This tradition says that the mode of his death was by being sawn asunder. (See Hebrews 11:37 which, in case this tradition is true, would apply to Isaiah.) Josephus, the great Jewish historian, speaks of the cruel persecutions under the reign of Manasseh in the following words: "He barbarously slew all the righteous men that were among the Hebrews; nor would he spare the prophets, for he every day slew some of them, till Jerusalem was overflowed with blood."

The Times of Isaiah

Isaiah lived during the eighth century before Christ. This is fully confirmed by the chronology of the kings of Judah mentioned in the first verse of the book. To understand fully the prophecies which he made in the name of Jehovah, a good knowledge of the times in which he lived and acted as Jehovah's mouthpiece is eminently necessary. We shall enter into it a little more fully to help the student of this book.

Isaiah's prophetic service covered the reigns of the kings Uzziah, Jotham, Ahaz and Hezekiah. Uzziah's autocracy started around the year 767 BC and Hezekiah died around 697 BC. The prophet's service fell into this time. According to Jewish tradition Isaiah shall have been persecuted by the impious king Manasseh (son of king Hezekiah) and sawn asunder in a hollow trunk (compare with Heb. 11:37).

It was during the Middle Ages that the presumption was first made which said that not all 66 chapters of the book originated from Isaiah himself. Towards the end of the 18th century, during the time of the Enlightenment, theologicians and sceptics tried harder to prove that Isaiah could impossibly have written the whole book himself. It all started with ascribing chapters 40 to 66 to a writer of the 6th century BC (Deutero-Isaiah). During the 19th and 20th century the dismemberment of the book continued even further; the first 39 chapters were also ascribed to different authors and chapters 55 to 66 even to a so-called Trito-Isaiah who shall have been living around the turning from the 5th to the 6th century. The main reasons for this criticism are the divers subjects and the pretended unequal style of the divers paragraphs and mainly because of the apparition of King Cyrus' name around 200 years before his time (Is. 44:28; 45:1).

It would be too much for the given scope to go into details of the attacks of Bible-criticism. We would only like to state that thematic and stylistic differences are to be found in the works of nearly every secular author without anyone doubting their authorship. The argument that the style of the various paragraphs is too different is therefore little sound. For the similarities stand out at least as much, for example the frequent mentioning of God as "the Holy One of Israel" (compare Peculiarities).

The mentioning of Cyrus' name long before his time is one out of hundreds of examples in the Word of God who proof that God is declaring the end from the beginning (Is. 46:10). It is quite a characteristic of the prophet that he also receives messages concerning future things by the Spirit of God. The man of God out of Judah mentioned the name of king Josiah in front of king Jeroboam around 300 years before he ever lived (1 Kings 13:2). Isaiah has spoken many a prophecy not only concerning Cyrus but also regarding the Messiah, some of them being fulfilled already, some yet waiting to be fulfilled. The Jewish author Flavius Josephus writes (Jewish Antiquities XI 1.1-2) that the Persian king Cyrus read Isaiah's utterances concerning him with astonishment and thereafter gave the command for the return of the Jews (Ezra 1:1-4).

Isaiah (salvation of the Lord). This is the grandest, sublimest, and most comprehensive of the prophetical books; and because of its fulness of subjects and wide sweep of the prophetic future, occupying itself with the whole scene of God's purposes respecting Israel and the nations, is first in order in all Hebrew and English Bibles. If Isaiah lived to the close of Hezekiah's reign, then he must have worn the prophetic mantle for a period of at least sixty years, dating his introduction to the prophetic office from the last year of Uzziah's reign (Isa. 6). Being a Judah-prophet, and standing in high repute in the royal court, these magnificent prophecies were mainly uttered in Jerusalem. Jewish tradition asserts that the aged prophet, then about ninety years old, was "sawn asunder" during the reign of Manasseh, and that to protract his sufferings a wooden instrument was used for the cruel purpose. Many suppose that Heb. 11:37, "sawn asunder," refers to the barbarous martyrdom of our prophet. Isaiah too being their favourite prophet must have a royal parentage; so they tell us that Amoz the father of the prophet was a brother of king Amaziah. These traditions are not supported by a particle of evidence. We do not say they are false, neither can we affirm their truth.

This great prophecy is divided into two main portions, the first occupying Isa. 1 — 35, the second part consists of chaps. 40 to the end; the historical four chapters which divide the two great portions of the book are needful, as supplying the main subjects of the prophetic future. Now in this latter portion (Isa. 40 — 66) the prophetic intimations respecting Babylon and other nations are remarkably full, and have been fulfilled to the letter. Even Cyrus, the deliverer of the Jews from their Chaldean exile and the destroyer of Babylon, was prophetically appointed for the work, and surnamed about one hundred and fifty years before he was born (Isa. 44 and Isa. 45).

Here then our modern critics are on the horns of a dilemma. If this latter part of the prophecy be really the work of the "Evangelical Prophet," or of the "Fifth Evangelist," as some have termed Isaiah, then the authority of Holy Scripture is supreme, for God alone can reveal the future. But then this portion of Isaiah is an integral part of the book. How then can it be got rid of? Well, it is said that the last twenty-seven chapters were written after the events, and by Ezra, who is thus made the author of a stupidly arranged imposition. Can our denunciations of such unfounded suppositions be too scathing or severe?

When our Lord went into the synagogue at Nazareth, there was handed to him "the book of the prophet Esaias" (Luke 4:17-21). Ah! did the Lord of heaven and earth not know what our modern infidel scholars have found out, that only the first thirty-nine chapters in general constituted the book of Isaiah. He read a portion of Isa. 61, that is, one of the so-called spurious chapters, and when finished, He said "This day is this Scripture fulfilled in your ears." Was Christ reading, applying to the consciences of His hearers, and fulfilling what falsely professed to be written by Isaiah? But the theory is baseless, and absolutely false, for Paul, too, cites from the "great unnamed" author. The one to whom this absurd title is applied by certain German and English divines, was Isaiah to Paul (Rom. 10:20; Isa. 66) and Isaiah and Scripture to the Lord (Luke 4). Why these persistent efforts to set aside the historical Moses and the prophetic Isaiah? Just this, dear reader, that you may doubt everything and believe nothing. The full verbal inspiration of the Scriptures is the ground of all authority. Hold fast, then, the written word of God.

The name Isaiah means "Jehovah saves" or "Jehovah is salvation." He has well been called the evangelical prophet. There are more direct quotations as well as indirect allusions to this great book in the New Testament than from any other prophetic book. Josephus relates that Cyrus, the Persian king, was greatly moved by the reading of the book of Isaiah, one of the evidences, that Isaiah was not compiled after the exile. In the passage where Josephus speaks of the edict issued by Cyrus permitting the Jews to return, he says: "This was known to Cyrus by his reading the book which Isaiah left behind him of his prophecies; for this prophet has said that God had spoken thus to him in a secret vision,'My will is that Cyrus, whom I have appointed to be king over many and great nations, send back My people to their own land, and build My temple.' This was foretold by Isaiah 140 years before the temple was demolished. Accordingly, when Cyrus read this and admired the divine power, an earnest desire and ambition came upon him to fulfill what was so written." The early church held Isaiah in great esteem and recognized its great message. When Augustine had been converted he asked Ambrose which book he would advise him to study first. Ambrose told him, "The prophecies of Isaiah." All the great men of God, the instruments of the Spirit of God like Luther, Calvin, Knox and others acknowledged the greatness of this book and its message.

But what does all this mean? It is a denial of what is written in the first verse of this book, "The vision of Isaiah, the son of Amoz, which he saw concerning Judah and Jerusalem, in the days of Uzziah, Jotham, Ahaz and Hezekiah." And if several men wrote this book, if part was written during the Babylonian captivity and other parts added after the captivity, then this statement with which the book begins is untrue. This first verse assures us that the book is a whole, that all we find in it is the vision of one man. To deny this breaks down the truthfulness of the book and reduces it to the level of common literature. This is what the critics have done. But the book of Isaiah is quoted in the New Testament. The Jews always believed this book to have been written by Isaiah. They held this belief when our Lord was on the earth. He Himself read in the synagogue of Nazareth from chapter 61 which critics deny to be the writing of Isaiah. Quotations from Isaiah are frequently found in different parts of the New Testament. Twenty-one times we read of Isaiah and his words in the New Testament. The phrases used are the following: "Spoken by the prophet Esaias;" "Fulfilled which was spoken by Esaias;" "Well did Esaias prophesy;" "In the book of the words of Esaias;" "As said the prophet;" "These things said Esaias;" "Well spake the Holy Spirit by Esaias," "Esaias also saith;" "Esaias saith." This is evidence enough that the Lord and the Holy Spirit through the evangelists and the Apostle Paul set their seal to this uncontradicted and unanimous belief that Isaiah wrote this book. The critics by their methods impeach the testimony of the Lord Himself or charge the infallible Lord of Glory to have been limited in His knowledge and that He acquiesced in the current traditional belief of the Jewish people, knowing better Himself.

All the arguments of the critics are disproven by the book itself. One only needs to study this book and the careful study will bring out the unanswerable fact of the unity of the book of Isaiah. Only one person could have written such a book and that person did not write it by himself, but was the mouthpiece of Jehovah. This is the conclusion of an intelligent and spiritual study of the book itself. The silly and arbitrary restrictions the critics make, that Isaiah could not have written certain passages, because it was beyond his horizon, or that he could not have mentioned Cyrus, the Persian king, by name, over 150 years before he was born, springs from the subtle infidelity which is at the bottom of the destructive criticism, which denies the supernatural altogether.

As some may wish, and even claim it as fair, to know what one of the ablest of the neo-critics has proposed for the arrangement of the book, the reader is here given Ewald's view, who was second to none of his fellows in learning and in aesthetic insight, if we can say nothing of reverential faith, or of the Spirit-taught intelligence of the word, which is its fruit: Isa. 6; Isa. 2 — 4; Isa. 5:1-25; Isa. 9:8-21; Isa. 10:1-4; Isa. 5:26-30; Isa. 17:1-11; Isa. 7 — 8; Isa. 9:1-7; Isa. 14:28-32; Isa. 15 — 16; Isa. 21:11-17; Isa. 23; Isa. 1; Isa. 22; Isa. 28 — 32; Isa. 20; Isa. 10:5-34; Isa. 11; Isa. 17:12-14; Isa. 18; Isa. 14:24-27; Isa. 33; Isa. 37:21-35; Isa. 19; Isa. 21:1-10; Isa. 13; Isa. 14:1-23; Isa. 40 — 66; Isa. 34 — 35; Isa. 24; Isa. 25:6-11; Isa. 25:1-5; Isa. 25:12; Isa. 26 — 27. Isaiah 12 he says cannot be Isaiah's, but is of later origin. As for Isaiah 40 — 66 they are handed over to the Grosse Ungenanete (Great Unnamed). Yet Ewald differed from Rosenmüller and Gesenius, to say nothing of others more audacious still, in attributing to Isaiah inspiration, though we must bear in mind that this is, in German lips, far short of unerring certainty in scripture, or of distinct and divinely given foresight of the future, however distant. This topsy-turvy shuffle of our prophet's book comes from one as eminent for taste as for philology (oriental especially) and for chronological tact, who laid down as his judgement that "the learned follies of Tubingen have justly aroused in all foreign countries a dislike of German-knowledge!" (query, dreams?) Havernick and Drechsler are among the honourable exceptions. Of the new school of critics generally, we may say without exaggeration, what was said of others more openly profane in science, that their principle consists in believing everything but the truth, and exactly in proportion to want of evidence; or, to use the words of a poet, "In making windows that shut out the light, and passages that lead to nothing."

"Let us then for the time forget" (says the Camb. R. Prof. of Hebrew, Divine Library of the O.T., 26), "that this writing — or rather, whether it is the work of one writer, or of several, this group of writings — is attached to the book of Isaiah. Let us simply interrogate the document itself, and collect the evidence which it offers concerning its author, and the time and place and circumstances of its writing. Direct statement there is none. Very rarely does the author let his own personality appear at all. But of indirect evidence, indicating the circumstances under which he wrote, there is no lack." This would be reasonable if a merely human book were in debate; it is an absurd and unbelieving begging of the question in an avowed prophecy. "The circumstances" predicted are assumed to be evidence of the time when it was written. Rationalism takes for granted that of real prophecy there is none. The picture, on the one hand, of Jerusalem in ruins, the temple in ashes, the cities of Judah deserted, the land desolate; and, on the other, of Babylon the scene of captivity, and the tyrant that holds Zion's sons in thrall, is proof "entirely convincing"! of the time when the book was composed. For "the prophecy does not profess to predict the destruction of Jerusalem, the Babylonian exile, and the mission of Cyrus. These things are described, or assumed, as existing facts. What is foretold is the speedy deliverance of the exiles from their captivity. All these data point unmistakably to the last ten years of the Babylonian exile as the time at which the prophecy was delivered."

Starting, then, with this great principle — that it is the Holy Ghost who gives us to read prophecy, as bearing upon the glory of God, and connected with Christ, who shall yet be exalted, and whose glory shall fill the earth and heavens, all usurpers and pretenders being put down — let us look at this scene, as that which shows us the course of the world, up to that time. First, consider the position of the parties. Here was the proudest king in the world. He had gone forth at the head of victorious armies, before his father's death — before he had properly come into the undivided kingdom of Babylon. And now he has laid open to him a sphere of dominion, perhaps, beyond his ambition. He learns, with certainty, that it was God, in His providence, who had put him in this position. But more than that: he sees brought before him, in a few touches, the whole chart of the Gentile world — the leading features of its history from that day to the day of glory and judgment that is coming. He has brought before him the rise of another and neighbouring power, that had been already alluded to in prophecy; so that there was therefore no difficulty at all in gathering what was meant by it. The prophet Isaiah, who lived a hundred and fifty years before Cyrus was born, had not only referred by the Holy Ghost to the nation and king of the Medes and Persians, but had called him by name.

Cyrus named (44:28).

The outpouring of the Spirit upon Israel's seed promised in the beginning of the chapter has not yet taken place. Compare with chapter 32:15 and 59:21. Verses 21-23 look forward to the coming age of blessing. Then Israel will be "Jehovah's servant" on the earth; then their transgressions will be blotted out. Then the heavens, the earth, the mountains and the trees will break forth in singing. In verse 28 Cyrus is mentioned by name. This great Persian King was then in the distant future an unborn being. Jehovah knew him and named him through Isaiah. He calls him "my shepherd" and predicts his work. Josephus declares that when Cyrus found his name in the book of Isaiah, written 220 years before, an earnest desire laid hold upon him to fulfil what was written.

But what does all this mean? It is a denial of what is written in the first verse of this book. "The vision of Isaiah, the son of Amoz, which he saw concerning Judah and Jerusalem, in the days of Uzziah, Jotham, Ahaz and Hezekiah." And if several men wrote this book, if part was written during the Babylonian captivity and other parts added after the captivity, then this statement with which the book begins is untrue. This first verse assures us that the book is a whole, that all we find in it is the vision of one man. To deny this breaks down the truthfulness of the book and reduces it to the level of common literature. This is what the critics have done. But the book of Isaiah is quoted in the New Testament. The Jews always believed this book to have been written by Isaiah. They held this belief when our Lord was on the earth. He Himself read in the synagogue of Nazareth from chapter 61, which the critics deny to be the writing of Isaiah. Quotations from Isaiah are frequently found in different parts of the New Testament. Twenty-one times we read of Isaiah and his words in the New Testament. The phrases used are the following: "Spoken by the prophet Esaias"; "Fulfilled which was spoken by Esaias"; "Well did Esaias prophesy"; "In the book of the words of Esaias"; "As said the prophet Esaias"; "The saying of Esaias the prophet"; "These things said Esaias"; "Well spake the Holy Spirit by Esaias"; "Esaias also saith"; "Esaias saith." This is evidence enough that the Lord and the Holy Spirit through the evangelists and the Apostle Paul set their seal to this uncontradicted and unanimous belief that Isaiah wrote this book. The critics by their methods impeach the testimony of the Lord Himself or charge the infallible Lord of Glory to have been limited in His knowledge and that He acquiesced in the current traditional belief of the Jewish people, knowing better Himself.

All the arguments of the critics are disproved by the book itself. One only needs to study this book and the careful study will bring out the unanswerable fact of the unity of the book of Isaiah. Only one person could have written such a book and that person did not write it by himself, but was the mouthpiece of Jehovah. This is the conclusion of an intelligent and spiritual study of the book itself. The silly and arbitrary restrictions the critics make, that Isaiah could not have written certain passages, because it was beyond his horizon, or that he could not have mentioned Cyrus, the Persian king, by name, over 150 years before he was born, springs from the subtle infidelity which is at the bottom of the destructive criticism, which denies the supernatural altogether.