‘En-Roeh’ is the title of a 512 page commentary on Isaiah, Habakkuk and Nahum by W. A. Wordsworth published in 1939 by T&T Clark of Edinburgh and now only available through second-hand sources such as www.abebooks.co.uk. It is mainly a commentary on Isaiah (477 pages), but the two minor prophets are included as Wordsworth dates them to the eighth century. The principal interest in the book is the commentary on Isaiah, which may be familiar from the occasional quotation by H. A. Whittaker in his commentary on Isaiah.
Wordsworth states in the preface that he worked alone on the commentary for fourteen years and it is not a conventional approach. Wordsworth was an Anglican vicar, not an academic scholar, and his approach is allegorical in the sense that he sees in Isaiah a story of Immanuel an eighth century counterpart to Christ. The fact that he worked alone is evident on every page because the commentary bristles with originality (a rare thing in scholarly commentary).
In a nutshell, for Wordsworth, the book of Isaiah is from Isaiah of Jerusalem and he prophesies for the kings noted in 1:1; he charts the life story among other things of an eighth century messiah who becomes prominent in various oracles throughout the book. Broadly speaking the life story is similar to that of Christ. This figure is Immanuel, the Wonderful Counsellor, The Rod of Jesse, the Suffering Servant and the Anonymous Conqueror, all rolled into one.
Although it can be shown that Wordsworth’s allegory is incorrect, this does not render his commentary valueless. Every now and then he has an insight into the text apart from the allegory that is worth clocking and filing away for use in a more measured eighth century reading.
The main criticism to be levelled against the book is not the Immanuel story it constructs but in the approach taken to the Hebrew text (MT) which is to emend it freely according to the intuitions of the author about rhythm (p. 1). Emendation is quite extensive and sometimes it seems motivated by the need to see the allegory in the text. Nevertheless, the reader with Hebrew should mark a difference with Wordsworth’s emendations; they seem to be part of a reverential regard for the original text that he thinks he is recovering and a high estimate for the work of the Masoretes. In this he is somewhat different to the rather cold and critical approach of the scholar who emends the text according to his preferred readings.
Wordsworth is ignored by other commentaries first, because he treats the later chapters of the book as a commentary on Isaiah’s times rather than exilic and post-exilic period; and secondly, because his approach is allegorical and too imaginative with the text.
The commentary is not a ‘must-have’ but it has some value for the independent Bible student who works with the Hebrew text, provided s/he has a filter mechanism to ignore the speculative emendations and extract the insights that Wordsworth has on the MT. If you are happy with standard church commentaries such as the Tyndale series (Motyer is the relevant author of the Isaiah volume), then the commentary will seem so ‘out-of-box’ that it is just plain wrong-headed. But if you are looking to discover what Isaiah is really about, then Wordsworth will add something to that process.
Review of “The Early Earth” by John Whitcomb (1972)