Monday, December 18, 2023

Gary V. Smith on the Evidence for a Preexilic Location in Judah for Isaiah 40-55

  

Evidence for a Preexilic Location in Judah

 

Since the evidence commonly cited to support a Babylonian exile audience for Isa 40-55 is inconclusive at best, what evidence from these chapters can we cite in support of a non-Babylonian and non-exilic setting for these chapters?

 

(1) Isaiah 41:8-14 offers two hints about the location of the prophet and his audience: First, God claims he took Israel (“the offspring of Abraham,” v. 8) “from the far ends of the earth” (v. 9), a phrase that a prophet living in Babylon would probably not use if he was addressing an exilic audience. Second, in 41:10, 13, 14, God encourages his people to “fear not,” even though they are at war with some enemy (vv. 11-12). A war setting does not coincide with any known Babylonian event while the people were in exile. The promise in 41:12 that God will cause the enemy to “become nothing” (‎יִהְי֥וּ כְאַ֛יִן, yihyû kē’ayin) and perish is reminiscent of only one way that Judah fought: YHWH’s defeat of the Assyrian army at Jerusalem in 701 BCE (Isa 37:36). Thus the setting here is preexilic, and this war coincides with events happening in Jerusalem in the time of Hezekiah.

 

(2) Isaiah 42:2 describes a people “plundered and looted, all of them trapped in holes.” Since these images of war (cf. 1 Sam 14:11) do not match any known setting from the Babylonian exile, they must refer to some preexilic event. These circumstances match the references to war against the destruction/ruin of Jerusalem in 51:13-14, 17-19. This prophecy predicts that the cup of God’s judgment that Jerusalem is now consuming will be drunk by her tormentors (51:22-23). This war could refer to Judah’s defeat when Sennacherib conquered forty-six walled cities. The great reversal of destinies when the enemy will drink the cup of God’s wrath (51:22-23) could refer to the angel from God defeating the Assyrian army (385,000 troops) around Jerusalem in 701 BCE (37:36).

 

(3) The future destruction of the temple referred to in Isa 43:28 indicates that this prophecy was issued at some time before the fall of Jerusalem and the destruction of the temple in 586 BCE. The two verbs ‎וַאֲחַלֵּ֖ל (wa’aḥallēl), “and I will pollute,” and ‎וְאֶתְּנָ֤ה (wē’ettěnâ), “and I will give,” point to the future plan of God, which requires a preexilic dating and is most naturally understood as a warning to the people in Jerusalem.

 

(4) Although the defeat of Babylon and the removal of its gods mentioned in 46:1-2 and 47:1-15 are often connected to Cyrus’ defeat of Babylon in 539 BCE, the Cyrus Cylinder claims that Cyrus did not destroy Babylon in that conquest; instead, he entered the city peaceably. Therefore, this prophecy probably refers to Sennacherib’s complete leveling of Babylon in 689 BCE, a preexilic event. This prophecy argues that Hezekiah should not trust in an alliance with Babylon cf. 39:1-8), because God will soon destroy that city.

 

(5) The lack of a specific mention of Babylon in the eschatological messages of the prophet that predict that God will bring people back to their land from the north and the south, the east and the west, and even from the ends of the earth (Isa 43:5-6), also argues against a Babylonian exilic setting. This orientation to Judah does not seem to refer to events at the time of Cyrus, when the Judeans returned from captivity in Babylon, but to the final restoration of God’s people when God establishes his kingdom.

 

A preexilic Jerusalem/Zion is reflected in the comment, “the destroyers and devastators will depart from you” (49:17). This does not describe Judeans departing from some peaceful Babylonian location. The departing of the destroyers mentioned here could refer to the flight of the remaining Assyrian troops after 385,000 were killed at Jerusalem (Isa 37:36).

 

(6) In most of Isa 40-55, the audience is identified as Jacob/Israel (mainly in chs. 40-48) or Zion/Jerusalem (mainly in chs. 49-55). From the very beginning, the prophet offers “comfort” to “Jerusalem” and “my people” (40:1-2), who are to go up on a high mountain to spread the good news to “the cities of Judah” (40:9). Newman Whybray turns things upside down with his statement that “Jerusalem (and also ‘Zion’) is often used by Deutero-Isaiah to designate the exiles rather than the actual city.” The names Israel and Jacob in the titles “the God of Israel/Jacob” and “the Holy One of Israel” (41:14, 16; 44:6; 45:15; 47:4; 48:17; 49:7 26; 52:12; 55:5) offer little help in resolving this issue. Of relevance here is Tiemeyer’s examination of the use of “Jacob/Israel” in Isa 40-55, which “little favours identifying Jacob-Israel with the exilic community in Babylon.” Some of these texts in Isa 40-55 that mention Jacob and Israel lack evidence for defining the location of the speaker or audience (40:27; 44:23), while the contexts of others apparently point to a literal location of Jacob/Israel in Palestine (41:8; 42:24; 43:22, 28; 44:21; 45:19; 46:3). A third group of texts offer encouragement on the basis of God’s eschatological deeds to fearful individuals whose geographical location is unknown (43:1, 5; 44:1-2; 46:13; 49:6). One text does refer to people in exile.

 

Scholars who have carried out a similar examination of the combination of the names Jerusalem and Zion (or of either term used alone) found in 49-55 suggest that the names can point to people in the literal city of Jerusalem, people in exile, or people in both locations. Even though these terms point to a place, in some texts this place may be a theological symbol (i.e., the place of God’s presence), suggesting that they may not refer primarily to a geographic place (40;1, 9; 44:14; 51:16, 17; 52:9), though some examples are unclear (41:27; 46:13; 51:16), while others seem to point to a place (and people) in Judah in an eschatological setting (51:3, 11; 52:1, 2, 7, 8, 9). Only two examples refer to a place (i.e., the city of Jerusalem) after the exile in Babylon (44:26, 28). (Gary V. Smith, “Cyrus or Sennacherib? Historical Issues Involved in the Interpretation of Isaiah 40-55,” in Bind Up the Testimony: Explorations in the Genesis of the Book of Isaiah, ed. Daniel I. Block and Richard L. Schultz [Peabody, Mass.: Hendrickson, 2015], 186-88)