Revised by Michael Chan, 8/24
Battle Hymn of the Republic
Isaiah 63 was one of the biblical texts that provided the inspiration for the patriotic American song, “Battle Hymn of the Republic,” by Julia Ward Howe. Howe, an abolitionist, visited Washington, D.C., with her husband in November of 1861, several months after the beginning of the Civil War. While there, they heard Union troops, who were camped on the outskirts of the city, singing a marching song called “John Brown’s Body.” Howe, who was already a published poet, was urged by a preacher friend to write new lyrics to the tune.
Howe wrote about what happened next:
I awoke the next morning in the gray of the early dawn, and to my astonishment found that the wished-for lines were arranging themselves in my brain. I lay quite still until the last verse had completed itself in my thoughts, then hastily arose, saying to myself, I shall lose this if I don’t write it down immediately. I began to scrawl the lines almost without looking…. Having completed this, I lay down again and fell asleep, but not before feeling that something of importance had happened to me.
She sold the poem to Atlantic Monthly, where it was published in early 1862. The passage that gave rise to some of the song’s imagery is found near the end of Isaiah, in an oracle against Israel’s enemies:
“Who is this that comes from Edom,
from Bozrah in garments stained crimson?
Who is this so splendidly robed,
marching in his great might?”“It is I, announcing vindication, mighty to save.”
“Why are your robes red,
and your garments like theirs who tread the wine press?”“I have trodden the wine press alone,
and from the peoples no one was with me;
I trod them in my anger
and trampled them in my wrath;
their juice spattered on my garments,
and stained all my robes.
For the day of vengeance was in my heart,
and the year for my redeeming work had come. (Isaiah 63:1-4)
God, like one who stomps on grapes in a winepress, will tread on the enemies of Israel (in this case, Edom), until their blood stains the divine garments. Howe uses the image to claim God on the side of the North, to speak of God’s wrath against the sin of human slavery:
Mine eyes have seen the glory of the coming of the Lord:
He is trampling out the vintage where the grapes of wrath are stored;
He hath loosed the fateful lightning of His terrible swift sword:
His truth is marching on.
Glory, glory, hallelujah!
Glory, glory, hallelujah!
Glory, glory hallelujah!
His truth is marching on.
In the last verse of the hymn, Howe uses Christological imagery to speak directly about the sin of slavery:
In the beauty of the lilies Christ was born across the sea,
With a glory in His bosom that transfigures you and me;
As He died to make men holy, let us die to make men free!
While God is marching on.
The “Battle Hymn of the Republic” with its prophetic imagery and its claim on divine justice, quickly became one of the signature anthems of the Union troops. Nearly 80 years later, it also inspired the title of John Steinbeck’s 1939 novel, The Grapes of Wrath.
Chariots of Fire
The 1981 movie Chariots of Fire tells the story of Eric Liddell, a Scottish runner who competed for Great Britain in the 1924 Olympic games in Paris. Liddell, born to Scottish missionary parents in China and a devout Christian himself, refused to compete in the heats for the 100-meter race, which he was favored to win, because they were being held on a Sunday. He competed instead in the 400-meter race on a weekday, taking home the gold medal and breaking the Olympic and world records in that event.
In the movie, Liddell preaches in the Church of Scotland in Paris on the Sunday when he might have been racing. He begins his sermon by reading from Isaiah 40:
Hast thou not known? Hast thou not heard,
that the everlasting God, the Lord,
the Creator of the ends of the earth,
fainteth not, neither is weary?
There is no searching of His understanding.
He giveth power to the faint,
and to them that have no might He increaseth strength.
Even the youths shall faint and be weary,
and the young men shall utterly fall;
but they that wait upon the Lord shall renew their strength;
they shall mount up with wings as eagles,
they shall run and not be weary,
and they shall walk and not faint. (Isaiah 40:28-31 KJV)
After winning gold at the 1924 Olympic games, Liddell returned to China as a missionary. In 1941, under the Japanese occupation of China, Liddell sent his wife and two young children to Canada (her home country) to keep them safe. Liddell stayed on to teach and to help with relief efforts. He was imprisoned in 1943 with 1500 other foreign nationals in a Japanese internment camp. By all accounts, Liddell was a constant source of encouragement and hope to those in the camp, especially the youth. Liddell died in the internment camp in 1945, five months before it was liberated. On the gravestone of the “Flying Scotsman” are these words from Isaiah: “They shall mount up with wings as eagles. They shall run and not be weary.”
The Fall of Lucifer
Isaiah 14:3-23 is a lament over the king of Babylon, who is not named, but whom generations of commentators identified as Nebuchadnezzar. One verse in the lament, however, was interpreted by early readers to be referring to the fall not of an earthly ruler, but of a heavenly one. Specifically, the verse was understood to be about the fall of Satan, originally an angel of light who rebelled against God and was cast down from heaven.
The verse in question states:
How you are fallen from heaven,
O Day Star, son of Dawn!
How you are cut down to the ground,
you who laid the nations low! (Isaiah 14:12)
The story of the fall of the angels, arising in part from this verse, is recounted in the 1st century BCE Jewish work, The Life of Adam and Eve. Jesus also likely refers to it in Luke 10:18: “I watched Satan fall from heaven like a flash of lightning.” And Paul picks up on this interpretation of the Isaiah passage when he writes, “Satan disguises himself as an angel of light” (2 Corinthians 11:14).
The book of Revelation elaborates on the story in the vision of chapter 12:
And war broke out in heaven; Michael and his angels fought against the dragon. The dragon and his angels fought back, but they were defeated, and there was no longer any place for them in heaven. The great dragon was thrown down, that ancient serpent, who is called the Devil and Satan, the deceiver of the whole world—he was thrown down to the earth, and his angels were thrown down with him (Revelation 12:7-9).
In the Vulgate, Jerome translated the Hebrew word “Day Star” (helel) in Isaiah 14:12 as the Latin “Lucifer” (light-bearer), who was in classical mythology the morning star. “Lucifer” then became in Christian tradition another name for Satan.
All the medieval English cycles of mystery plays began with the story of the fall of the angels. Dante, for his part, goes back to the original context of Isaiah to identify the being that “fell like lightning from the sky” as Nebuchadnezzar, not Satan (Purgatorio 11:25-26). Milton, however, at the beginning of Paradise Lost, names “the Serpent” or Satan as the being whose “pride / had cast him out from Heav’n, with all his host / of rebel angels.” It is Satan who is “hurl’d headlong flaming from th’ethereal sky” (1:36-38, 45).
The Fifth Gospel
Many patristic authors considered the book of Isaiah the “fifth Gospel,” after Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John. Isaiah was designated a “gospel” for many reasons: the messianic passages contained therein (Isaiah 7:14, 9:6-7, 11:1-9); the suffering servant song of Isaiah 52-53; the passage quoted in reference to John the Baptist, “the voice of one crying out in the wilderness, ‘Prepare the way of the Lord.’” (Luke 3:4; cf. Isaiah 40:3); as well as many other Isaiah passages quoted in the New Testament.
All of these passages, argued the patristic writers, pointed to the coming of Jesus as the Messiah. The church father Jerome, for instance, wrote of the prophet Isaiah that he “should be called an evangelist as well as a prophet because he describes all the mysteries of Christ and the church so clearly that you would think he is composing a history of what has already happened rather than prophesying about what is to come” (Preface to the Prophet Isaiah).
God’s Alien Work
The prophet writes in Isaiah 28:21 about God’s judgment on Israel:
“For the Lord will rise up as on Mount Perazim / he will rage as in the valley of Gibeon / to do his deed—strange is his deed! / and to work his work—alien is his work!”
In commenting on this verse, Martin Luther made a sharp distinction between God’s “proper” work of grace and God’s “alien” work of judgment. Though it is an “alien” work, God’s judgment, too, is for our benefit, because God is wise and good: “But when our flesh is so evil that it cannot be saved by God’s proper work, it is necessary for it to be saved by His alien work”–that is, God must destroy our ungodliness in order that we might be saved (Luther’s Works, vol. 16, pp. 233-234).
Handel’s Messiah
The Book of Isaiah is one of the most important sources for the libretto of George Frideric Handel’s oratorio, Messiah. Composed in 1741 over the course of about four weeks, the oratorio was first performed in Dublin as an Easter composition. It is now a permanent musical fixture of the Christmas season in the English-speaking world. The libretto consists of texts from the Bible (primarily from the King James Version), compiled by Charles Jennens and set to music by Handel.
Isaiah provides the texts for half of the first movement of the oratorio, “The Messiah’s Birth and Ministry,” including the first three musical pieces after the overture: “Comfort ye my people” from Isaiah 40:1-3, “Every valley” from Isaiah 40:4, and “And the glory of the Lord” from Isaiah 40:5. These texts from Isaiah – along with others from Isaiah 7, 9, 35, 40, and 60 – are understood as prophesying the birth, life, and ministry of the Messiah Jesus.
In the second movement of the oratorio, “The Messiah’s Suffering, Death, and Establishment of His Kingdom,” the suffering servant song of Isaiah 52-53 (along with Psalm 22) is the primary basis for speaking of the Messiah’s suffering. The musical pieces here include “He was despised” from Isaiah 53:3, “Surely He hath borne our griefs” from Isaiah 53:4-5, “And with His stripes we are healed” from Isaiah ,53:5b, and “All we like sheep have gone astray” from Isaiah 53:6.
Isaiah, in Handel’s Messiah, speaks with a prophetic voice of Jesus the Messiah, the joy of his birth and ministry and the sorrow of his suffering and death. Isaiah’s voice thereby continues to speak to successive generations not only of those who read the Bible but also those who hear Handel’s music. The Christmas season for many would not be complete without hearing the soaring proclamation through Handel’s music of Isaiah 9:6: “For unto us a Child is born, unto us a Son is given: and the government shall be upon His shoulder: and His name shall be called Wonderful, Counsellor, the mighty God, the everlasting Father, the Prince of Peace.”
Here I Am, Lord
In Isaiah 6, the prophet sees an awe-inspiring vision of the Lord in the Jerusalem Temple and receives a call to prophesy: “Then I heard the voice of the Lord saying, ‘Whom shall I send, and who will go for us?’ And I said, ‘Here am I; send me!’” (Isaiah 6:8).
The story of Isaiah’s call has inspired various songs over the years, including one of the most popular contemporary church hymns in the English-speaking world: “I the Lord of Sea and Sky,” by Daniel Schutte. The song was published in 1981 and is also known by its first line, “Here I Am, Lord.” The verses are composed as God’s speech, always ending with the question from Isaiah 6, “Whom shall I send?”:
I, the Lord of sea and sky, I have heard my people cry.
All who dwell in dark and sin my hand will save.
I who made the stars of night, I will make their darkness bright.
Who will bear my light to them? Whom shall I send?
And the chorus echoes Isaiah’s answer:
Here I am, Lord. Is it I, Lord?
I have heard you calling in the night.
I will go, Lord, if you lead me.
I will hold your people in my heart.
This hymn, originally composed for an ordination, continues to be sung today at Christian ordinations and commissioning services across the English-speaking world.
Holy, Holy, Holy
The six-winged seraphs in Isaiah’s temple vision sing “Holy, holy, holy is the Lord of hosts; the whole earth is full of his glory” (Isaiah 6:3). Revelation echoes this song of praise in John’s vision of God’s throne room, where four living creatures, each also with six wings, cry, “Holy, holy, holy, the Lord God the Almighty, who was and is and is to come” (Revelation 4:8).
The synagogue and church both picked up the seraphs’ doxology in their liturgy. As part of the Amidah, the central prayer of any Jewish worship service, congregants chant the Kedushah (sanctification) blessing, which in part quotes Isaiah 6. Here is one English translation of the Hebrew prayer:
We will sanctify Thy name in the world even as they sanctify it in the highest heavens, as it is written by the hand of Thy prophet: “And they called unto the other and said, Holy, holy, holy is the Lord of hosts; the whole earth is full of His glory.”
In the early church, patristic writers associated the three-fold repetition of “holy” with the doctrine of the Trinity. Cyril of Alexandria wrote, “They say ‘holy’ three times and then conclude with ‘Lord of hosts.’ This demonstrates that the Holy Trinity exists in one divine essence.” That trinitarian interpretation continues in the Christian traditions that assign Isaiah 6 as the text for Trinity Sunday, and in the 1826 hymn by Reginald Heber that is often sung on that Sunday in the Western church, “Holy, Holy, Holy! Lord God Almighty!” The refrain of the hymn proclaims, “Holy, holy, holy, merciful and mighty! God in three Persons, blessed Trinity!”
The song of the seraphs found its way also into the Christian liturgy of both Orthodox and Roman Catholic churches. The Trisagion (Greek for “thrice holy”) hymn, used across Orthodox churches, dates back to at least the 4th century:
Holy God, Holy and Mighty, Holy and Immortal, have mercy on us.
Holy God, Holy and Mighty, Holy and Immortal, have mercy on us.
Holy God, Holy and Mighty, Holy and Immortal, have mercy on us.
Glory be to the Father and to the Son and to the Holy Spirit.
Both now and forever and from all Ages to all Ages. Amen.
Holy and Immortal, have mercy upon us.
Holy God, Holy and Mighty, Holy and Immortal, have mercy on us.
Finally, the Sanctus is a doxology included in the Eucharistic Prayer in Roman Catholic and many Protestant liturgies. The Sanctus dates back at least to the 4th fourth century, probably earlier. As part of the Roman Mass Ordinary, it was first sung from around 1300 in plainchant, and then became part of countless musical settings of the Mass. The Sanctus quotes both Isaiah 6 and Matthew 21:9:
Holy, Holy, Holy Lord God of hosts.
Heaven and earth are full of your glory.
Hosanna in the highest!
Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord!
Hosanna in the highest!
In all of these ways, the song of the seraphs echoes down through the centuries for countless believers in both synagogue and church.
Isaiah at Qumran
The book of Isaiah achieved a great deal of prominence in the Second Temple period among Jews and eventually, Christians (see “Isaiah in the New Testament” entry in Bible in the World – Isaiah). To give just one example, the Jewish sect that lived at Qumran, by the Dead Sea, apparently held Isaiah in high esteem. At least 20 separate scrolls of Isaiah were found at Qumran, including the Great Isaiah Scroll, which is a complete copy of all 66 chapters and one of the first Dead Sea Scrolls discovered in the caves around Qumran. That scroll, a great cultural treasure, was the central exhibit of the Shrine of the Book at the Israel Museum in Jerusalem when it opened in 1965. A replica of the scroll is still prominently displayed there, while the original is stored for safekeeping elsewhere at the museum.
The works of the Qumran community itself are filled with allusions to and quotations of Isaiah. The community viewed itself as the “holy seed” (Isaiah 6:13), the remnant of the faithful, while the priestly establishment in Jerusalem was equated with the “scoffers who rule this people in Jerusalem” (Isaiah 28:14). The descriptions of the leader of the sect, the Teacher of Righteousness, known from the Thanksgiving Hymns and other sectarian writings, seem to have been influenced by the servant songs in Isaiah.
Isaiah in the New Testament
Isaiah is one of the most frequently cited Old Testament books in the New Testament. The name Isaiah occurs more than 20 times in the New Testament, but there are many more instances of direct or indirect quotations of the prophetic book therein. The first quotation from Isaiah appears in Matthew 1:23, where the evangelist cites Isaiah 7:14: “All this took place to fulfill what had been spoken by the Lord through the prophet: ‘Look, the virgin shall conceive and bear a son, and they shall name him Emmanuel,’ which means, ‘God is with us’” (Matthew 1:22-23).
All four Gospel writers, in fact, utilize texts from Isaiah to introduce their accounts of Jesus as God’s Messiah. The Gospel of Mark begins, “The beginning of the good news of Jesus Christ, the Son of God. As it is written in the prophet Isaiah, ‘See, I am sending my messenger ahead of you, who will prepare your way; the voice of one crying out in the wilderness: Prepare the way of the Lord, make his paths straight’” (Mark 1:1-3; cf. Isaiah 40:3, Malachi 3:1).
Luke also introduces John the Baptist with a quotation from Isaiah 40:3-5: “The voice of one crying out in the wilderness: ‘Prepare the way of the Lord, make his paths straight. Every valley shall be filled and every mountain and hill shall be made low; and the crooked shall be made straight, and the rough ways made smooth; and all flesh shall see the salvation of God’” (Luke 3:4-6). In the following chapter, Jesus reads in the Nazareth synagogue from the scroll of the prophet Isaiah, “The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he has anointed me to bring good news to the poor….to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor” (Luke 4:18-19; cf. Isaiah 61:1-2). Then Jesus says, “Today, this scripture has been fulfilled in your hearing” (Luke 4:21). According to Luke, then, Jesus himself is the fulfillment of Isaiah’s prophecy.
John, too, begins his Gospel with a quotation from Isaiah 40:3-5. When John the Baptist is asked if he is Elijah or the Messiah, he says no, but then describes himself in these words: “I am the voice of one crying out in the wilderness, ‘Make straight the way of the Lord,’ as the prophet Isaiah said” (John 1:23).
Paul and the other Epistle writers quote Isaiah to speak about God’s judgment and mercy, about the identity of the church as God’s people, and, again, about Jesus as the fulfillment of Isaiah’s prophecy: “For it stands in scripture: ‘See, I am laying in Zion a stone, a cornerstone chosen and precious; and whoever believes in him will not be put to shame’” (1 Peter 2:6; cf. Isaiah 28:16).
Finally, in the book of Revelation, which draws heavily on Old Testament themes and images, there are no explicit references to Isaiah, but there are more than 40 allusions to the prophet’s words. Many of these allusions have to do with judgment, but Revelation’s beautiful vision of the New Jerusalem in chapter 21 also makes reference to the “new heavens and a new earth” of Isaiah 65:17 and God destroying death and wiping away the tears from all faces in Isaiah 25:7-8 (Revelation 21:1, 4).
The Jesse Tree
One of the messianic passages of Isaiah begins:
A shoot shall come out from the stump of Jesse,
and a branch shall grow out of his roots. (Isaiah 11:1).
Beginning in the 11th century, this verse gave rise to countless visual representations of the lineage of Jesus in an artistic type called the Jesse Tree. These Jesse Tree illustrations –found in stained glass, illuminated manuscripts, sculpture, and paintings alike –typically depict Jesse (father of David) lying down with a tree sprouting from his body. At the top of the tree are Mary and Jesus, and in the branches, various ancestors of Jesus, taken from the genealogies of Matthew 1 and Luke 3.
In the Vulgate, the Latin word for “shoot” or “rod” is virga, which was seen by many interpreters as a reference to the word “virgin” (Latin: virgo); hence, the association of this verse with the Virgin Mary. The Jesse Tree continued to be a popular subject of European artists through the 16th century. In modern times, a form of the Jesse Tree is used as an Advent activity and devotional.
Lectionaries and Isaiah
The book of Isaiah is read in both Jewish and Christian worship services more than any other prophetic book. In the Jewish liturgical year, for Sabbaths and festivals, Isaiah is read as the haftarah (prophetic) reading some 20 times during the year. The haftarah reading is chosen to go along with the assigned Torah reading. It is noteworthy that the majority of the haftarah readings from Isaiah come from the latter part of the book (chapters 40-66), where texts of comfort and restoration predominate.
In the three-year Christian Revised Common Lectionary, Isaiah appears more than 50 times, more by far than any other prophetic book. Passages from the Old Testament are chosen to go along with the assigned Gospel readings. Isaiah texts are used especially during Advent, Christmas, Epiphany, and Holy Week.
Lo, How a Rose E’er Blooming
The book of Isaiah has provided inspiration for countless hymns over the centuries, including the Christmas carol, “Lo, How a Rose E’er Blooming.” Composed in German as Es ist ein Ros entsprungen, the hymn is by an anonymous composer and appeared first around 1580 in a manuscript from St. Alban’s Carthusian monastery in Trier, in the Rhineland region of Germany.
The carol is based loosely on two passages from Isaiah, as well as one from the Song of Songs:
A shoot shall come out from the stump of Jesse,
and a branch shall grow out of his roots. (Isaiah 11:1).The wilderness and the solitary place shall be glad for them;
and the desert shall rejoice and blossom as the rose. (Isaiah 35:1 KJV).I am a rose of Sharon,
a lily of the valleys. (Song of Songs 2:1).
The “Rose” of the hymn first referred to Mary, but by 1609 the lyrics were changed so that the image referred to Jesus. The hymn uses that image of a rose and references Jesse (King David’s father) in verse 1. Then it mentions Isaiah explicitly in verse 2:
Lo, how a Rose e’er blooming
From tender stem hath sprung!
Of Jesse’s lineage coming
As men of old have sung.
It came, a flower bright,
Amid the cold of winter
When half-gone was the night.Isaiah ’twas foretold it,
The Rose I have in mind:
With Mary we behold it,
The virgin mother kind.
To show God’s love aright
She bore to men a Savior
When half-gone was the night.
The hymn, like all Christian music, reads these Old Testament passages in light of the New Testament; in this case, the birth of Jesus to the Virgin Mary, as told in the Gospels of Matthew and Luke. The hymn continues to be sung widely during the Advent and Christmas seasons.
Multiple Authors
Traditionally, Jewish and Christian interpreters ascribed the authorship of the book of Isaiah to the 8th century BCE prophet known as Isaiah of Jerusalem. This is the prophet identified in the very first verse of the book:
The vision of Isaiah son of Amoz, which he saw concerning Judah and Jerusalem in the days of Uzziah, Jotham, Ahaz, and Hezekiah, kings of Judah. (Isaiah 1:1).
This is also the prophet who received a call to prophesy in “the year that King Uzziah died” (Isaiah 6:1).
The problem with this identification of the book’s author is that beginning in chapter 40, the text speaks of the Babylonian exile, which began in 587 BCE, more than 150 years after King Uzziah died.
Comfort, O comfort my people,says your God.Speak tenderly to Jerusalem,and cry to herthat she has served her term,that her penalty is paid,that she has received from the LORD’S handdouble for all her sins. (Isaiah 40:1-2).
Indeed, in chapter 45, the text speaks at length about Cyrus, the Persian emperor who conquered Babylon and allowed the Jews to return to their homeland in 539 BCE, which is 200 years after King Uzziah died, long past any natural lifespan of the prophet Isaiah.
One of the first scholars to comment explicitly about this chronological discrepancy was the 12th century Jewish exegete and philosopher Abraham Ibn Ezra, who argued that the latter part of Isaiah (chapters 40-66) reflected the historical context of the Babylonian exile. Traditional commentators, however, explained this historical issue by asserting the ability of the prophet to foretell the future.
With the rise of modern biblical criticism, Wilhelm Gesenius, a 19th century biblical scholar, argued that chapters 40-66 were written by an anonymous prophet that he named “Pseudo-Isaiah.” And Bernhard Duhm, another German biblical scholar, built on the work of Gesenius and others in his 1892 commentary on Isaiah, where he distinguished not two but three separate sections and authors of the book of Isaiah: Chapters 1-39 were the work of the 8th century prophet; chapters 40-55 the work of Deutero-Isaiah or Second Isaiah; and chapters 56-66 the work of Trito-Isaiah or Third Isaiah. Duhm’s work was very influential in Isaiah scholarship well into the 20th century.
Without denying the multi-author theory of Isaiah’s composition, many later 20th century and 21st century scholars have explored the thematic and verbal relationships between the different sections of the book. These scholars have highlighted the theological and literary unity of the final form of the book, while still acknowledging that Isaiah is the work of several authors and/or redactors.
The Ordering of the Three Major Prophets
In the Talmudic ordering of the Hebrew Bible, or Tanakh, the three major writing prophets were placed after the book of Kings and ordered as Jeremiah, Ezekiel, and Isaiah. The Septuagint ordering, which Christian Bibles follow, has them in the order Isaiah, Jeremiah, [Lamentations], and Ezekiel.
The rabbinic ordering is not chronological, as Isaiah of Jerusalem prophesied in the 8th century BCE while Jeremiah and Ezekiel were exilic prophets, primarily of the 6th century BCE. The rabbis of the Talmud explain that their ordering is thematic rather than chronological. Kings ends with judgment and the destruction of the Temple, and Jeremiah is completely a book of judgment and destruction against Jerusalem. Ezekiel begins with the destruction of the Temple and ends with consolation. And Isaiah is all consolation (b. Bav. Bat. 14b).
The Peaceable Kingdom
From 1820 to 1849, Edward Hicks, a painter and Quaker minister from Pennsylvania, painted more than 60 versions of a scene that he called “The Peaceable Kingdom.” He based this series of paintings on Isaiah 11:
The wolf shall live with the lamb,
the leopard shall lie down with the kid,
the calf and the lion and the fatling together,
and a little child shall lead them.
The cow and the bear shall graze,
their young shall lie down together;
and the lion shall eat straw like the ox.
The nursing child shall play over the hole of the asp,
and the weaned child shall put its hand on the adder’s den.
They will not hurt or destroy
on all my holy mountain;
for the earth will be full of the knowledge of the Lord
as the waters cover the sea. (Isaiah 11:6-9).
The paintings by Hicks depict several of the animals named in the passage lying down peacefully together, along with a little child or children standing among them. In some of the paintings, he quotes explicitly from Isaiah 11. Many of the paintings also include in the background a depiction of Quaker leader William Penn’s 1682 treaty with the Delaware/Lenape people, whereby Penn purchased land from the Native Americans to establish and expand the colony of Pennsylvania. Hicks considered this historical event an example of “the peaceable kingdom,” where conflict is averted and peace prevails.
Signs of God’s Redemption
In Isaiah 35:3-6, the prophet describes God’s coming salvation:
Strengthen the weak hands,
and make firm the feeble knees.
Say to those who are of a fearful heart,
“Be strong, do not fear!
Here is your God.
He will come with vengeance,
with terrible recompense.
He will come and save you.”
Then the eyes of the blind shall be opened,
and the ears of the deaf unstopped;
then the lame shall leap like a deer,
and the tongue of the speechless sing for joy.
When John the Baptist’s disciples ask whether Jesus is “the one who is to come,” Jesus refers to the events of this text as signs of the kingdom that Jesus is inaugurating with his deeds of healing and compassion (Matthew 11:2-6). This messianic interpretation of the text stands behind George Frideric Handel’s use of it in the well-known alto recitative in his oratorio Messiah: “Then shall the eyes of the blind be opened.” Indeed, many of the familiar words in Handel’s oratorio are taken from the book of Isaiah. (See “Handel’s Messiah” entry in Bible in the World – Isaiah.)
The Suffering Servant Song
Isaiah 52:13 – 53:12 is the fourth and last of what many scholars call the “servant songs” of Isaiah, first described as such by scholar Bernhard Duhm in his 1892 commentary on Isaiah. (The other servant songs are Isaiah 42:1-9, 49:1-7, and 50:4-11.) Each passage refers to God’s “servant,” who is sometimes explicitly identified as Israel. In this last servant song, however, the prophet seems to be referring to a particular individual. And this individual suffers for the sake of others; namely, the prophet’s own community and by extension, all those in subsequent generations who hear or read these words:
Surely he has borne our infirmities
and carried our diseases,
yet we accounted him stricken,
struck down by God, and afflicted.
But he was wounded for our transgressions,
crushed for our iniquities;
upon him was the punishment that made us whole,
and by his bruises we are healed.
All we like sheep have gone astray;
we have all turned to our own way,
and the Lord has laid on him
the iniquity of us all. (Isaiah 53:4-6).
The passage goes on to describe the vindication and exaltation of the “servant”:
The righteous one, my servant, shall make many righteous,
and he shall bear their iniquities.
Therefore I will allot him a portion with the great,
and he shall divide the spoil with the strong,
because he poured out himself to death
and was numbered with the transgressors,
yet he bore the sin of many
and made intercession for the transgressors. (Isaiah 53:11-12).
The church, from earliest times, identified the suffering servant as Jesus, the one who bore the sins of humanity on the cross. When Philip comes across the Ethiopian eunuch in the book of Acts, the latter is reading this passage from Isaiah and asks Philip whom the prophet is describing. Philip then tells him about Jesus (Acts 8:26-40).
Matthew connects Jesus’ healing ministry with Isaiah 53:4, “This was to fulfill what had been spoken through the prophet Isaiah, ‘He took our infirmities and bore our diseases’” (Matthew 8:17). Likewise, in Luke, on the night before the crucifixion, Jesus quotes Isaiah 53:12 as he prepares to go to the Mount of Olives to pray: “I tell you, this scripture must be fulfilled in me, ‘And he was counted among the lawless;’ and indeed what is written about me is being fulfilled” (Luke 22:37). Luke later describes how Jesus is crucified between two criminals, as fulfillment of this prophecy (Luke 23:32-43).
First Peter also speaks of the suffering of Christ using words and images from Isaiah 53:
…Christ also suffered for you, leaving you an example, so that you should follow in his steps. “He committed no sin, and no deceit was found in his mouth.” When he was abused, he did not return abuse; when he suffered, he did not threaten, but he entrusted himself to the one who judges justly. He himself bore our sins in his body on the cross, so that, having died to sins, we might live for righteousness; by his wounds you have been healed. (1 Peter 2:21-24; cf. Isaiah 53:5, 9).
This identification of Isaiah’s suffering servant with Jesus continued from the New Testament writers to the early church fathers, theologians such as Irenaeus and Justin, and down through the centuries. Whomever the book of Isaiah was originally describing in chapters 52-53, the suffering servant is now inextricably associated with Jesus, so much so that the suffering servant song is traditionally read every year on Good Friday: “But he was wounded for our transgressions, crushed for our iniquities; upon him was the punishment that made us whole, and by his bruises we are healed.”
Swords into Plowshares
There is a bronze sculpture on the grounds of the United Nations (UN) complex in New York City called “Let Us Beat Swords into Plowshares.” The sculpture, by Soviet artist Evgeniy Vuchetich, was a gift to the United Nations from the Soviet Union in 1959. It depicts a muscular man holding a hammer aloft, with which he is beating a sword into a plowshare, an agricultural tool for tilling the ground. The sculpture illustrates the mission of the UN, to prevent wars and promote human flourishing around the world. Vuchetich drew his inspiration from Isaiah 2, a passage that is echoed in Micah 4:
For out of Zion shall go forth instruction,
and the word of the LORD from Jerusalem.
He shall judge between the nations,
and shall arbitrate for many peoples;
they shall beat their swords into plowshares,
and their spears into pruning hooks;
nation shall not lift up sword against nation,
neither shall they learn war any more. (Isaiah 2:3b-4; cf. Micah 4:2-3).
Later, in the early 1980’s, the sculpture became a symbol of the church-based political resistance movement in East Germany. Many young people in the church sewed on their clothing a round badge with a drawing of the sculpture surrounded by the words, “Schwerter zu Pflugscharen” (“swords into plowshares”). The church played a major role in the resistance movement that led to the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989, the collapse of the repressive East German government, and the reunification of Germany in 1990.
Yad Vashem
Established in 1953 by the Israeli Knesset (parliament), the Holocaust museum and remembrance center in Jerusalem is named Yad Vashem, which means “a monument/memorial and a name.” This name comes from Isaiah 56:
Do not let the foreigner joined to the Lord say,
“The Lord will surely separate me from his people”;
and do not let the eunuch say,
“I am just a dry tree.”
For thus says the Lord:
To the eunuchs who keep my sabbaths,
who choose the things that please me
and hold fast my covenant,
I will give, in my house and within my walls,
a monument and a name
better than sons and daughters;
I will give them an everlasting name
that shall not be cut off. (Isaiah 56:3-5).
In its original context, the prophecy promised that faithful, covenant-keeping eunuchs – unable to have children – would still be remembered by succeeding generations. They would have “a monument and a name.” This promise stands in contrast to earlier laws that banned eunuchs from the priesthood and from communal worship (Leviticus 21:20; Deuteronomy 23:1).
The name Yad Vashem for the Holocaust museum in Jerusalem was chosen for similar reasons: The six million Jews who died in the Holocaust, like the eunuchs of the ancient world, had their futures cut short. Many of their family lines died with them. In this memorial museum, they still have “a monument and a name.” Indeed, Yad Vashem maintains the most complete database in the world of the names of Holocaust victims, and the “Hall of Names” on Yad Vashem’s campus houses millions of “Pages of Testimony,” one-page forms with the names, photos, and biographical details of Holocaust victims, submitted by their surviving friends and family. The names are also listed in a monumental “Book of Names” at the museum.
The promise of remembrance first written by the prophet over 2500 years ago illuminates the mission of an institution dedicated to the memory of a people nearly wiped out by genocidal hate. On the entrance gate to the museum are carved the words (in Hebrew): Yad Vashem. And over the gate at the exit of the museum, another prophet’s words provide hope: “I will put my breath into you and you shall live again, and I will set you upon your own soil” (Ezekiel 37:14).
