The frequency of references in Isa
40-55 to God as Redeemer is the fundamental reason that Marien Halvorson-Taylor
locates the audience of these chapters in an exilic setting. She believes the
author is picturing the exiles when using the metaphors of prisoners, desolate
children, a mother without children, and debt slaves, with the exile being
their prison sentence. Thus Halvorson-Taylor’s thematic reasoning based on
associated terminology that is only tangentially related to the exile or
redemption is unconvincing. According to Halvorson-Taylor, Judah needed a
Redemer (from the root ג-א-ל, g-‘-l, which occurs seventeen times in Isa
40-55; cf. the root פ-ד-ה, p-d-h, which occurs once) who would deliver
them and return them to their land in a new exodus experience. Although
Deuteronomy uses פ-ד-ה (p-d-h) six times, always to refer to the exodus,
it never uses ג-א-ל (g-‘-l) (which it uses twice) in this way. The book
of Exodus uses ג-א-ל (g-‘-l) only twice, both times to refer to the
exodus. In Isa 41:14 and 49:26 the term Redeemer (גּאַל, gō’ēl) serves
as a title for a God, who would help his people in war (42;11-14; 49;25-26); it
has nothing to do with an exodus or deliverance from exile. Isaiah 54:5, 8
include “Redeemer” as one of the titles of God, Isa 52:9 tells the “ruins of
Jerusalem” that God has redeemed (ג-א-ל, g-‘-l) them, and God’s plan to
redeem his people mentioned in 43:1 and 51:10 relates to the eschatological
gathering of Israel. Isaiah 44:22 connects the word “Redeemer” (גּאַל, gō’ēl)
lack any direct connection to an exodus experience (43:14; 44:6, 24 47:4;
48:17; 49:7). Isaiah 48:20 is the only verse that associates fleeing Babylon
with God’s redemption.
In contrast to Halvorson-Taylor,
Tiemeyer questions the claim that the use of exodus imagery proves a Babylonian
setting, since the general concepts associated with exodus events could be used
in various settings to illustrate God’s care for his people. Hans Barstad
maintains that the exodus imagery in Isa 40-55 is metaphorical and thus not a
major emphasis in these chapters. Furthermore, some parts of this text describe
God’s return to Jerusalem (40:5; 52:7012), not an exodus of Judeans. Although
exodus imagery is widely used in Isaiah, it is often a reminder of YHWH’s
powerful past actions in the original exodus (e.g., Isa 42:13; 43:16-17; 48:21;
5110; 52:3-4) or metaphorical imagery for what God will do eschatologically
(e.g., Isa 41:17-18; 43:2-3, 20; 49:10; 51:3; 52:12) when he gathers many
people from all nations to Zion. (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], 184-85)
