The Literary Message of Isaiah

Publication: Avraham Gileadi, The Literary Message of Isaiah. A ground-breaking literary approach at the cutting edge of all Isaiah studies that analyzes key literary features of the Book of Isaiah. For Judeo-Christian readers: 296 pages. (First edition, Hebraeus Press, 1994; second edition, 2012). Softcover, $22.95, ISBN 978-0-910511-16-0. E-Book, $8.95, ISBN 978-0-910511-22-5.

Back Cover: A holistic literary structure dividing the Book of Isaiah into two halves, each composed of seven antithetically paired themes, draws on events from Israel’s past to systematically develop an apocalyptic prophecy and a Hebrew messianic theology. When subjected to structural, typological, and rhetorical analysis, the Book of Isaiah discloses prophetic secrets that have lain dormant for millennia.

Testimonial: “Dr. Gileadi has achieved a major breakthrough in the investigation of a book of such complexity and importance as the Book of Isaiah”—Professor David Noel Freedman, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor.

Testimonial: “Dr. Gileadi’s work will render obsolete almost all the speculations of Isaiah scholars over the last one hundred years, enabling scholarship to proceed along an entirely new line”—Professor Roland K. Harrison, Wycliffe College, Toronto School of Theology.

From Avraham Gileadi: What began as my Ph.D. thesis took another ten years to fully flush out into this signal work on the Book of Isaiah’s literary features. Beyond that I spend a year improving its writing to make it feel less academic and more readable to the common man. In the 1950s, William Brownlee, a colleague of my mentor, Professor Roland K. Harrison of Wycliffe College, Toronto, had discovered a seven-part bifid division in the complete Dead Sea scroll of Isaiah that Harrison believed deserved analyzing. This I discovered to be a synchronous holistic structure within which Isaiah had encoded a prophecy of the end of the world and a theology that preempts the New Testament gospel of Jesus.

Contents:

part I: ruin & rebirth (Isaiah 1–5; 34–35)

part II: rebellion & compliance (Isaiah 6–8; 36–40

part III: punishment & deliverance (Isaiah 9–12; 41–46)

part IV: humiliation & exaltation (Isaiah 13–23; 47)

part V: suffering & salvation (Isaiah 24–27; 48–54)

part VI: disloyalty & loyalty (Isaiah 28–31; 55–59)

part VII: disinheritance & inheritance (Isaiah 32–33; 60–66)

CONCLUSION

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Excerpt: In summing up, the first unit of Part III (Isaiah 9–12) vests a redemptive role in a Davidic figure who serves as Jehovah’s agent of punishing hostile entities and of delivering a remnant of Jehovah’s people. That Davidic figure consists of a composite of the biblical types of kings David, Solomon, and Hezekiah as well as of the biblical heroes Abraham, Moses, Joshua, and Gideon. In developing its ideal agent of Jehovah’s redemption, the second unit (Isaiah 41–46) essentially maintains this composite of types, with the exception that the universal warrior type, Cyrus, replaces the Israelite warriors Joshua and Gideon. Cyrus adds the rebuilding of Jerusalem and the temple to Jacob/Israel’s release from bondage, new exodus, new wandering in the wilderness, return from exile, and new con­quest as events through which Jehovah manifests his redemption. Another event for which Cyrus sets a precedent—treading down nations for Jacob/Israel’s sake—the second unit subsumes under the event of a new conquest.

Excerpt: The first unit, moreover, structurally juxtaposes the Davidic figure with an archtyrant of whom an anonymous and mythologized “king of Assyria” serves as a type. As an agent of Jehovah’s punishment, this tyrant figure prevails over Jehovah’s reprobate people until his retributive task is accomplished. Isaiah’s use of metaphorical pseudonyms reveals that at the end of his work of destruction the Davidic figure overthrows him. Because no viable precedents or types exist for such Davidic ascendancy over Assyria, Isaiah resorts to metaphor to depict this. A pattern of alternating chaos and creation motifs in Isaiah 1–12 confirms the Davidic figure’s victory over the king of Assyria. Within that chaos/creation pattern, Assyria’s Tyrant figure identifies with the forces of chaos and the Davidic figure with the powers of creation—creation succeeding chaos.