Book of Prophet Isaiah Essay

Prophet Isaiah, the son of Amos, was descended from a royal tribe. Isaiah was born during the reign of King Uzziah, Jothan, Ahaz, Hezekiah and Jehovah. During his reign the nation as a whole enjoyed times of prosperity and temporal development. The whole nation mourned his passing from the scene at a time when his presence seemed needed the most. Under him the worship of Jehovah was encouraged but he was not strong enough to secure the destruction of the high places where idolatrous practices were continued. His reign must be ranked as one of the outstanding of the southern kingdom. He walked in the ways of his father, and under him the people continued to worship the Lord Jehovah after the manner of the commandment, though still the places of idolatry were allowed to remain. Ahaz, whose whole reign was one chronicle of disaster and destruction. With an absolute abandon, Ahaz gave himself over to the overthrow of the ordained order of worship, broke the commandment in almost every de tail, destroyed the temple worship and finally closed the doors of the house of God. In the most calculated manner he conspired to obliterate the memory of the service of the Lord of all Israel, the Redeemer and the Holy One. Then he was followed on the throne by his son Hezekiah, who was very unlike his fathers and set about reviving the worship in the temple, which his father had abolished. He attempted, with some success to obliterate idol worship, and to deliver his people from the yoke of foreign power. It was under him that Isaiah came into his own, and was treated with high favour. In this position he was given every opportunity for the use of his keen and divinely inspired power of discernment into the facts of the contemporary situation. The name, Isaiah, means ‘Jehovah saves,’ or ‘Jehovah is salvation’, and through days of crisis and disaster greater than any before in the history of the people, his call was constantly to faith in the One Who alone could save the land. His role was ever that of inspiring and challenging the drooping spirits of the men of Judah at times when hope seemed dead. His ministry was a long one stretching as it did through the reigns of Uzziah, Jothan, Ahaz and Hezekiah. His father’s name was Amoz, and there is a Jewish tradition that he was a brother of King Amaziah; in which case Isaiah would be the cousin of King Uzziah. Naturally enough, it is impossible to be really sure of this, but it is certainly a reasonable explanation of the fact that Isaiah enjoyed immediate and regular entrance to the royal house. And also that he had the ear of the most influential people of his day. In spite of this, he remained a simple and undaunted spokesman for Jehovah, and tradition again affirms that it was for this reason that he was put to death in the reign of the wicked Manasseh, Hezekiah’s successor. He was married and he himself called his wife ‘the prophetess’ (Isaiah 8:3). He had two children, one named Shear-jashubl, which means ‘a remnant shall return,’ and the other Maher-shalalhashbaz, which means ‘haste ye to the spoil.’ These names were given to them as portents of what was to come and also as a reinforcement of the prophet’s predictive message. Apart from this, there is little else known of his personal history except what is found in the book itself. The exact length of his ministry is not known for sure, but he definitely laboured for at least forty years. From the last year of King Uzziah’s reign 740 B.C. to the fourteenth year of ther reign of King Hezekiah in 701 B.C. and it is clear that through all this period of time his call and challenge were unremitting and persistent. His aim was ever definite – the establishment of the worship of the Lord in righteousness and truth amongst the chosen race. His Message Isaiah’s prophecy, the longest of all the Old Testament prophecies divides first of all quite naturally into two parts, chapters 1-39, and 40-66. Because of this split, critics during the last century have seen fit to decide that two separate authors are responsible for the prophecy and that the second one was written some hundred years after the first one. Unfortunately, there is nothing in the prophecy itself by the way of names and such like to establish the truth or the falsehood of this statement. However the nature of the second part of the book seems to indicate that it was said to a nation at a time when they were in a completely different condition from that of the exile in Babylon, during which time some people maintain that it was written. As well as these two separate parts, the prophecy also divides into nine sections. The Book of Isaiah (Hebrew: × ¡Ã— ¤Ã— ¨ ×™× ©Ã— ¢Ã—™×”) is the first of the Latter Prophets in the Hebrew Bible, preceding Ezekiel, Jeremiah and the Book of the Twelve. (The order of the subsequent books differs somewhat in the Christian Old Testament). The first 39 chapters prophesy doom for a sinful Judah and for all the nations of the world that oppose God, while the last 27 prophesy the restoration of the nation of Israel and a new creation in God’s glorious future kingdom;[1] this section includes the Songs of the Suffering Servant, four separate passages referring to the nation of Israel, interpreted by Christians as prefiguring the coming of Jesus Christ.