Introduction
If a prophet receives the word of the Lord and delivers it in the market place or in the king’s court or to a gathering of his disciples, the character of its oral delivery should be preserved in the written record. As oracles were written down and arranged, they may have undergone transformation, but any oral qualities should still be noted.
Whether an oracle was first delivered at court, in a market place, among disciples, or in religious settings, is not the focus of this article. The content of the oracles may lend credence to the choice of one setting rather than another, but this is a separate topic. Our interest is the feature of orality in oracles. Our examples will be from Isaiah 40-48, and we have chosen these because their oral nature is a decisive argument against the conservative commentators’ approach[1] which states that Isaiah of Jerusalem initially wrote these oracles for the generation that would live at the end of the exile. Our argument is that these oracles betray their oral engagement with a contemporary audience.[2]
Oral Markers
That a prophet spoke his oracles to an audience who found them relevant to themselves is perhaps an obvious principle. This does not mean that a prophet did not speak about the long-term future, but it does mean that such a future would be relevant to his audience. A written record of speaking should leave markers of such speech. This is what we find in Isaiah 40-48; these oracles have all the marks of a lively engagement between Yahweh and his people at the time of their being inspired. What therefore are the markers that indicate oracles were delivered orally?
1) It is often the case that a jarring effect is felt by the reader as s/he reads the text of Isaiah 40-48. This effect marks sharp boundaries between units in the text – a change of tone or topic, or a change of addressee. This recognition of units of discourse in the text does not preclude their arrangement making sense. Nevertheless, short independent units can be identified, and the question arises as to whether these originated in a writing context or whether they reflect an oral context of delivery.
Isaiah 40:1-11 would illustrate these qualities: vv. 1-2, 3-5, 6-8, 9-11 are obvious units, and as you read, the boundaries are marked. Nevertheless, their arrangement makes sense: the call to speak in v. 1 is taken up in vv. 3-5; the voice that said “cry” in v. 6 picks up the speaker of v. 2 who says “cry”; the message of comfort for Jerusalem, in v. 2 is naturally followed by a message for the cities of Judah in vv. 9-11.[3]
Such units reflect different oral situations: vv. 1-2 illustrates a situation where there is a command to speak to a city; vv. 3-5 indentifies the voice as someone in a wilderness; vv. 6-8 is a conversational fragment; and vv. 9-11 is a command to Jerusalem. This kind of analysis is a simple reading “off the page” and it shows that there is often a straightforward inference from the oracle unit on the page to an oral situation in which the unit was embedded as a part of a larger dialogue.
2) An oral delivery is often indicated by verbs of speaking. This is seen in Isa 40:2, where there is a command to speak to Jerusalem; it is shown in Isa 40:3 where a voice is “out there” crying in the wilderness; it is evident in Isa 40:9, where the command is given to take good news to the cities of Judah. Such indications show that the message of the prophet(s) is relevant to the audience that they are being directed to address.
Such relevance and orality can settle the question of the authorship of Isaiah 40-48. Most scholars ascribe these chapters to a Second Isaiah because the message is one that was delivered orally to an audience and because it bears the stamp of being made relevant to them. Such scholars therefore reject the view that Isaiah of Jerusalem could have been the one who delivered these oracles. Their content is, according to such scholars, about the end of the Babylonian Exile.
This logic is sound, and it shows why conservative scholars are wrong to hold that Isaiah of Jerusalem wrote these oracles about the end of the Exile. They envisage a process of writing for a future generation rather than a market-place engagement with the people, or a challenge to the court of the king. But the material in Isaiah 40-48 has all the marks of rhetoric and persuasion in a live environment. Accordingly, the only way to retain Isaiah of Jerusalem as the author is to read Isaiah 40-48 as about the visit of the Babylonian envoys in 700 and the campaigns of Sennacherib against Babylon in 700. This re-configuration is quite straightforward if only because prophetic oracles have a certain historical indeterminacy about them that makes the identification of an historical catalyst uncertain.
The following table lists some expressions introducing speech. They constitute announcements, declarations, pronouncements, and so on. They may introduce oracles of salvation or judgment, perhaps a legal argument; in any event, if they were only written for use a hundred and fifty years later, they would lose their quality of being announcements, pronouncements and so on.
| “thus saith the Lord” | Isa 42:5, 43:14, 16, 44:2, 6, 24, 45:1, 14, 48:17 |
| “but now[4] thus saith the Lord” | Isa 43:1, cf. 49:5 |
| “saith your God” | Isa 40:1 |
| “saith the Lord” | Isa 41:21 |
| “saith the Holy One” | Isa 40:25 |
| “declares the Lord” | Isa 41:14 (NASB), 43:10 (NASB) |
| “crying” | Isa 40:3, 6 |
| “pronounced” | Isa 43:12 (KJV, “declared”) |
| “the Lord has spoken” | Isa 40:5 |
3) Engagement through questions
also indicates a live situation made up of two parties. For example,
“Woe unto him that striveth with his Maker! Let the potsherd strive with the potsherds of the earth. Shall the clay say to him that fashioneth it, What makest thou? or thy work, He hath no hands?” Isa 45:9 (KJV)
This questioning is reinforced by the address of a “Woe!”. Many questions are posed in Isaiah 40-48,[5] and answers are invited. Sometimes the questions are given a second person address, for example,
“To whom then will ye liken God? Or what likeness will ye compare unto him?” Isa 40:18 (KJV)[6]
Questions may use names such as “Israel” and “Jacob”, for example,
“Why sayest thou, O Jacob, and speakest, O Israel, My way is hid from the Lord, and my judgment is passed over from my God?” Isa 40:27 (KJV)
This shows the dialogical nature of the oracles.
4) Engaging an audience can also be indicated through commands that require an immediate response, for example,
“Keep silence before me, O islands…” Isa 41:1 (KJV)
“Fear[7] thou not…” Isa 41:10 (KJV)
“Let them bring them forth, and shew us what shall happen…” Isa 41:22 (KJV)
“Behold[8] my servant whom I uphold…” Isa 42:1 (KJV)
“Sing unto the Lord a new song…” Isa 42:10 (KJV)
“Hear ye deaf; and look ye blind…” Isa 42:18 (KJV)
“Let all the nations be gathered…” Isa 43:9 (KJV)
“Remember these, O Jacob and Israel; for thou art my servant…” Isa 44:21 (KJV)
These commands mean something in the situation of their delivery; we do not have here a prophet writing for a generation one hundred and fifty years in the future. Accordingly, there is, for example, an offer of help for that fear (Isa 41:14), and there is a command to look at God’s servant. A command to sing suggests a hymn for use at the time of the command, and so on.
5) A second person address also indicates the oral nature of oracles, for example,
“But thou, Israel, art my servant, Jacob, whom I have chosen…” Isa 41:8 (KJV)
“Ye are my witnesses, saith the Lord” Isa 43:10 (KJV)
“For your sake I have sent to Babylon…” Isa 43:14 (KJV)
This kind of address indicates the presence of the audience listening to the delivery of an oracle which is about them:
“Behold I will make thee a new sharp threshing instrument…” Isa 41:15 (KJV)[9]
Corresponding to the second person address, there is the first person assertion which is very common in Isaiah 40-48, for example,
“And who, as I, shall call, and shall declare it, and set it in order for me, since I appointed the ancient people? and the things that are coming, and shall come, let them shew unto them.” Isa 44:7 (KJV)
The move back and forth between the first and second person is a strong indicator of an oral situation from which oracular material has been preserved.
6) Demonstratives (“this”, “that”, “now”) are also important indicators of live dialogue. These expressions tie speech to live situations. For example,
“Remember this, and shew yourselves men: bring it again to mind, O ye transgressors.” Isa 46:8 (KJV)
“Thou hast heard, see all this; and will not ye declare it? I have shewed thee new things from this time, even hidden things, and thou didst not know them. They are created now, and not from the beginning; even before the day when thou heardest them not; lest thou shouldest say, Behold, I knew them.” Isa 48:6-7 (KJV)
“Come ye near unto me, hear ye this; I have not spoken in secret from the beginning; from the time that it was, there am I: and now the Lord God, and his Spirit, hath sent me.” Isa 48:16 (KJV)
The prevalent use of demonstratives is a strong indicator of oracles delivered in live situations.
Conclusion
The oral quality of Isaiah 40-48 is self-evident and not just because of linguistic features like demonstratives, questions, commands, and first and second person address. The more a reader reflects upon these qualities of the text, the more it becomes obvious that the oracles reflect a live engagement between Yahweh and his people. The oracles are therefore not an initially written vision of Yahweh’s engagement with his people at the end of the Babylonian Exile. They are a record of oracles delivered by Isaiah of Jerusalem at court, in the market place, or to his disciples, about the direction of policy in the light of the visit of the Babylonian envoys after the Edomite campaign.
[1] J. A. Motyer, The Prophecy of Isaiah (Leicester: InterVarsity Press, 1993); Isaiah (Tyndale; Leicester: InterVarsity Press, 1999).
[2] The standard work in this area is Y. Gitay, Rhetorical Analysis of Isaiah 40-48: A Study of the Art of Prophetic Persuasion (Unpublished PhD thesis, Emory University, 1978); see 1-57 for his review of scholarship.
[3] For a defence of this Judean reading see H. Barstad, A Way in the Wilderness (JSS Monograph Series 12; Manchester: University of Manchester, 1989), 8-20.
[4] It was “now” that the Lord was pleading with Judah.
[5] Questions: Isa 40:12-14, 41:2, 4, 26, 44:7-8
[6] Second Person Questions: Isa 40:21, 25, 28, 42:23,
[7] Fear Commands: Isa 43:2, 5, 44:8
[8] Behold Commands: Isa 40:15, 41:11, 24, 29, 43:19, 44:11.
[9] Second Person Address: Isa 41:24, 43:2-3
The Origin of the Organic World – Part One