Seek and Read

Part 1 — Historical Context

In 722 BCE, the Assyrian Empire destroyed the northern kingdom of Israel. In 701 BCE, Assyria nearly did the same to the southern kingdom of Judah. Having set siege to Jerusalem, the Assyrians were forced to withdraw due to a devastating illness among the besiegers and political instability in the Assyrian heartland. In the late 7th century BCE, the Assyrian Empire crumbled and into the political void the Babylonians poured their own resources for empire. In 597 BCE, the Babylonians took Jerusalem, deported large numbers of the social elite to Babylon, and put Zedekiah on the throne. Zedekiah pledged to support Babylonian hegemony but proved treacherous. In 587 BCE, the Babylonians set siege to Jerusalem, breached its walls, sacked and burned the city and dismantled the temple of Yhwh. A second deportation of social elite occurred. Many of the lower levels of Judahite society remained behind to farm the land. Formerly without land and under social oppression from the Judahite elite, the peasants were able to scratch out a living on the former estates of the mighty. In 540 BCE, the Persians, under King Cyrus, took Babylon, bringing the Babylonian Empire to its end. Persia’s empire would eventually reach from Eastern Europe to the Indus River Valley. It would last until 331 BCE when the Macedonian army, under Alexander the Great, would defeat the Persian army at Gaugamela. Early on, the Persians allowed deported populations to return to their ancestral territories and to take up the reigns of local government. The peasants whom the Babylonians left behind were displaced and made to serve the interests of the Judahite social elite and their Persian managers.

Judah became a Persian province. Although some Persian authorities resided in Jerusalem, the city was relatively autonomous—as long as it did not interfere with the Persian imperial agenda. That agenda was to control as much wealth as possible and to funnel large amounts of it back to the Persian homeland. Persian ideology maintained that all the material wealth of the Empire belonged by divine decree to the Persian king. From the Persian point of view, the king was simply taking what was his. Whatever happened in the provinces, the flow of wealth must be constant. Rebellion could be put down with ruthless savagery. Autonomy had its limits.

A component of the Persian plan to secure and maintain control over the vast Empire involved the policy of allowing local landowners and members of the social elite to benefit from the imperial system by allowing them control over regional operations for producing goods and services. The local elite kept some of it for themselves before shipping the rest off to Persia. The Persians were particularly interested in controlling wealth in the form of silver and gold. This is the point at which Persian interests in regional temple estates came to play. Temples were centers of commerce. A successful temple estate was a money-making machine for the Persians. Tithes of gold and silver flowed into temple treasuries. Some temples had foundries where silver and gold would be melted, refined, and then shaped into tablets or blocks that could be easily transported back to Persia. There is strong evidence that the Persians subsidized the operations of temples and encouraged the local observations of the ancient religions that once thrived before the onslaught of Babylon. The temple in Jerusalem was one such structure. From approximately 520-515 BCE, the Persians assisted in the rebuilding of the temple, planning to employ it as a source of revenue for the imperial center of control and, most likely, as a storage facility for military forces.

The Jerusalem priesthood and the Judahite social elite were happy to oblige and to be of assistance any way they could. A few voices rose up in protest but were silenced by force. One of the voices of protest persists to this day. It was out of the social and political conditions of early Persian Judah that a prophetic figure, by name unknown, collected and compiled the material to which he gave the superscription, “The Vision of Isaiah son of Amoz, which he saw in the days of Uzziah, Jotham, Ahaz, and Hezekiah, kings of Judah.” (Isa. 1:1) The prophet who gave the world the book of Isaiah (hereafter BI) conveyed a divine demand that stood in direct contrast to the agenda of the local Judahite social elite and the interests of the Persian Empire. Whereas the Persian king claimed ultimate cosmic authority as a gift of the Persian deity Ahura Mazda, BI declared that Israel’s God, Yhwh, the Holy One of Israel was and always will be sole king and that all others were pretenders doomed to destruction. The compiler sharpened the prophetic word to take aim at the heart of the Persian mechanics of the production of wealth, the temple in Jerusalem. The book begins (Isa 1:10-15) and ends (Isa 66:1-3) with a declaration of the illegitimacy of the temple and condemns the liturgical acts that occur there. It is such a shocking declaration that many contemporary Bible scholars cannot believe that BI meant it and that there must be factors somewhere in BI that mitigate God’s “no” for the rebuilding of the temple and the resumption of sacrifices. And yet, as if forewarned of such a response, BI transmits Yhwh’s declared resolve לעשות מעשהו זר מעשהו ולעבד עבדתו נכריה עבדתו, “to do his work; strange is his work and to do his deed, foreign is his deed.” (Isa 29:14) Furthermore, BI presents Yhwh as announcing הראשנות הנה באו וחדשות אני מגיד בטרם תצמחנה אשמיע אתכם, “The former things? They are gone. New things I now make known. Before they sprout I report them” (Isa 42:9). Finally, Isa 65:17 begins a brilliantly executed poetic depiction of Yhwh’s ultimate promise כי הנני בורא שמים חדשים וארץ חדשה, “I am about to create a new heaven and a new earth.”

BI never names the Persian Empire; but it permeates the space that BI creates in which to frame its meaning. Yhwh assigns time limits to Assyria and Babylon and by implication, to Persia as well. The compiler-prophet-poet of BI arranges the more ancient parts of his text to remind his contemporary readers of the fate of empires; the fall of Assyria and Babylon foreshadows the fall of Persia; and to readers throughout ages to come, the fall of all political schemes of power and control.

BI does not address the Persian powers but the Judahite social elite. By configuring the vision as the work of Isaiah, the 8th century prophet of Jerusalem, the compiler of BI conceals his own identity but also informs his contemporaries that, even from the time of Isaiah, Yhwh has taken Judah’s political schemes as rebellion against the true divine sovereign. Against the standard wisdom of military necessity, BI portrays the ancient prophet as declaring that Judah’s security rests in Yhwh and Yhwh only. The ancient prophet of the 8th century BCE must have shocked his audience by advocating what to them seemed the surest way to defeat; to stand by and simply let Yhwh come to the nation’s defense; and yet, this is precisely what the prophet demanded. כי כה אמר אדני יהוה קדוש ישראל בשובה ונחת תושעון בהשקט ובבטחה תהיה גבורתכם ולא אביתם, “For thus my master, Yhwh, the Holy One of Israel has said, ‘In turning and in rest is your deliverance; in
confidence and trust is your power, but you did not consent’ ” (Isa 30:15).

In BI’s portrayal of Yhwh as Israel’s only king—indeed the cosmic king—it challenges its readers to consider the viability of a way of life that the prevailing political wisdom will see as a threat. The ideal subject of Yhwh’s kingdom does not wield sword and spear, but the most powerful weapon of all, the divine declaration of Yhwh’s sole monarchy and of what Yhwh plans to do about it. This ideal subject is the servant of the Lord whose destiny figures in the entire book but most pointedly in Isa 40-55; the servant of the Lord personifies, fleshes out, or embodies what it means to be King Yhwh’s loyal subject within the current material reality of a world inhabited by power hungry nations. The servant’s task is not to implement the new creation but to bear testimony to its inevitability. It is this testimony that brings down on the servant the anger of human political systems that act out of ignorance and fear. It seems a hopeless task—to speak God’s truth to power; but the outcome is not up to the servant, but to Yhwh, who declares, כן יהיה דברי אשר יצא מפני לא ישוב אלי ריקם כי אם עשה את אשר חפצתי והצליח אשר שלחתיו “So shall the decree that goes forth from my mouth be: it shall not turn back to me empty but shall perform whatever I decide and it shall succeed for whatever purpose I send it” (Isa 55:11).

---

[i]Y. Lotman, The Structure of the Artistic Text (trans. Gail Lenhoff et. al.; Michigan Slavic Contributions; University of Michigan: Ann Arbor, 1977), 59.

Graduate Education

Ph.D. in Biblical Studies — Drew University — 1984-1986

M. Phil. in Biblical Studies — Drew University — 1981-1984

Academic Employment

Associate Professor, Department of Religion, Baylor University, 1995-

Assistant Professor, Department of Religion, Baylor University, 1991-1995

Lecturer, Department of Religion, Baylor University, 1986-1991

Instructor, Department of Philosophy and Religion, Bergen Community College, Orange, New Jersey, Spring, 1986

Publications

“The Social Background of Early Israel’s Rejection of Cultic Images: A Proposal,” Biblical Theology Bulletin 17 (1987): 138-144.

“Peasants in Revolt: Political Allegory in Genesis 2-3,” Journal for the Study of the Old Testament 47 (1990): 3-14.

“Hebrew pithon peh in the Book of Ezekiel,” Vetus Testamentum 41/2 (1991): 233-235.

“Anub, Azel, Berechiah, Besodeiah,” The Anchor Bible Dictionary, Vol 1, A-C. New York: Doubleday, 1992.

“Izrahiah,” “Joiaim,” The Anchor Bible Dictionary, Vol 3, H-J. New York: Doubleday, 1992.

“Meshullam,” The Anchor Bible Dictionary, Vol 4, K-N. New York: Doubleday, 1992.

“Obadiah,” “Raddai,” “Ram,” “Resheph,” “Rinnah,” “Shaphan,” “Shimeathites,” The Anchor Bible Dictionary, Vol 5, O-Sh. New York: Doubleday, 1992.

“Telah,” “Zaham,” “Zetham,” “Zimmah,” Vol. 6, Si-Z. Anchor Bible Dictionary. New York: Doubleday, 1992.

“Yahweh’s Strongman? The Characterization of Hezekiah in the Book of Isaiah,” Perspectives in Religious Studies 31 (2004): 383-397.

“Psalm 29 as Semiotic System: A Linguistic Reading,” Journal of Hebrew Scriptures 9/12 (2009) http://www.jhsonline.org

“Consider the Source: A Reading of the Servant’s Identity and Task in Isaiah 42:1-9,” in The Desert Will Bloom: Poetic Visions in Isaiah. Ancient Israel and Its Literature. Edited by A. Joseph Everson and Hyun Chul Paul Kim (Atlanta: SBL, 2009), 181-196.

Forthcoming

“Jeremiah” in The New Interpreter’s One Volume Commentary. Nashville: Abingdon.