Why does Nephi start with Isaiah
2? Nephi copies so much of Isaiah that it is logical to ask why he didn’t start
at the beginning, with Isaiah 1 of the received text. I see two possible
reasons. First, Nephi’s copy of the Isaiah texts may not have started with chapter
1. Victor Ludlow suggests: “Most scholars agree that this chapter is not the
first prophecy received by Isaiah, but that it heads his writings because of
its profound, clear message.” (Victor L. Ludlow, Isaiah: Prophet, Seer, and
Poet [Salt Lake City: Deseret Book, 1982], 70) Thus, Nephi may have been
starting at the beginning, but his text had a different beginnings from ours.
The second possible reason is
that Isaiah 1 is directed to Isaiah’s contemporaries. IT speaks of the current
destruction at the hands of the Assyrians (Isa. 1:709) and calls that
population to repentance (Isa. 1:11-20). It may be that, with the focus of that
chapter on events over one hundred years prior, even if it were first on the
plates, it may not have been deemed relevant. Chapter 2 of Isaiah, however, begins
with a vision of the future of Jerusalem, and Nephi sees his people following
the social path that Isaiah outlines for that future Jerusalem. (Brant A.
Gardner, Second Witness: Analytical and Contextual Commentary on the Book of
Mormon, 6 vols. [Salt Lake City: Greg Kofford Books, 2007], 2:200)
In the case of Isaiah 1, the
results of a redaction-critical and a final-form reading coincide in a manner
which inspires greater confidence that this is the better way to start, and to
leave more narrowly historical speculations to the comments on the individual
units. The presence of a new heading at 2:1 clearly marks out the whole of ch.
1 as a major section in the book as we now have it. (Against attempts to
downplay the importance of 2:1, see the comments ad loc.) At the same time, a rigorous redaction-historical analysis
of the growth of the book suggests that 2:1 marks the start of the exilic
edition of Isaiah, and that ch. 1 was added later. The presence of probably
late material in the chapter is thus no argument against its overall unity, nor
does this view preclude the conclusion that some, perhaps much, of the chapter
may originally have been written by Isaiah himself. The important point for the
commentator is that units of different origin have been assembled here for the
first time as a redactional unity, and that they must therefore be interpreted
in the light of one another and the whole, not in part or in isolation. There
never was a part of ch. 1 less than the whole which preceded ch. 2 as an
opening of the book in its supposed ‘original’ form. If, as will be maintained
below, there is authentic Isaianic material here, then it will be necessary to
speculate from where else in the book it may have been extracted if we wish to
recover its possible historical context. (H. G. M. Williamson, A
Critical and Exegetical Commentary on Isaiah 1-27, 3 vols. [London: T&T
Clark, 2006], 1:8-9)
A widely accepted hypothesis
about Isaiah 1, first put forward by G. Fohrer, illustrates the complicated and
fascinating course of the book’s composition (see Willis for an alternative,
but I believe weaker, explanation). Even a superficial reading of Isaiah 1–2 is
likely to raise the question why the book seems to start twice, with rather
similar ‘titles’ in 1:1 and 2:1. Fohrer suggested that ch. 2 was originally the
beginning of an early edition of the book of Isaiah—not necessarily comprising
the whole of 2–39 or even 2–12; and that ch. 1 was added subsequently. That is
why it needed a fresh heading, since the original beginning of the book now
became ch. 2. This clearly implies a scribal redaction of the book, operating
at a literary, not an oral, level.
On the other hand, Fohrer did not
think that the oracles in ch. 1 were themselves the invention of scribes. On
the contrary, he thought most of them were authentic oracles of Isaiah. The
editors had joined them together in their present order, and prefixed them to
an existing ‘book of Isaiah’, but they had not made them up. They were to be
seen as a carefully chosen representative
selection of Isaiah’s words, arranged not chronologically but thematically,
and providing a short digest of the main themes of the rest of the book. (J. Barton, Isaiah 1-39 [London: T&T
Clark, 1995], 25)
The passages attributable to
Isaiah that come between 2:6 and 11:9 seem to be arranged throughout on the
basis of chronological considerations.
By contrast, chap. 1 cannot be
included within this framework. Scholars who are of the same mind on little
else agree here, and the history of the study of the text supports the fact,
that this chapter poses a problem that has to be resolved independently, a view
that is supported by the very fact that 2:1 has a new superscription, but also
and primarily because, at most, only a few of the individual sections within
this chapter can be attributed to Isaiah’s early period of activity. It is thus
correct to assume that this chapter at one time formed its own little
independent section. Fohrer (Das Buch Jesaja, Vol. 1 [19662]
24) thinks that it “is arranged as a well thought-out composition with a series
of observations that proceed to discuss the themes of sinful actions,
threatening judgment, possible deliverance, and realization of deliverance.” He
and others consider it to be a summary of the message of Isaiah (cf., as well,
idem, “Jesaja I als Zusammenfassung
der Verkündigung Jesajas,” BZAW 99 [1967] 148–167; J. Vermeylen, “Structure
et composition littéraire d’Isaïe I–XXXV,” 2 volumes, diss. Louvain [1972] 36,
and Jones, “The Traditio of the Oracles of Isaiah of Jerusalem,” ZAW 67 [1955] 238). But this thesis has
its problems. Fohrer himself recognizes that 1:29–31 does not allow itself to
fit very conveniently into this framework. Whether it really is intended to be
a summary of Isaiah’s message can be questioned on other grounds as well.
Though centrally important for Isaiah, there is no warning here against engaging
in disastrous political alliances, no summons to trust, and no “messianic”
hope. In spite of this, the thesis has observed something of significance. The
collection intends to state that there can be a future for Israel and
Jerusalem, even though its inhabitants demonstrate no insight and must thus be
punished severely, if only its people would now finally draw the necessary
conclusions from all that was happening. The two secondary verses, 1:27f.,
interpreted these observations in their own way. (It is hard to fathom why vv.
28–31, with many raising questions about whether it stems from Isaiah, was
inserted here.) It would seem that the chapter presents something like the
legacy of Isaiah. It is basically a great appeal to turn back. Isaiah 1:4–9
clearly belongs to the time after Sennacherib departed from Jerusalem, and the
short preceding utterance in 1:2f. would have been inserted before vv. 4–9
because it states briefly and clearly why the catastrophe of 701 took place.
The succeeding sections, vv. 10–17; 18–20; and 21–28 (indirectly vv. 29–31 as
well), all intend to state clearly what would have to take place for Israel
still to have a future. Either Isaiah himself, at the very end of his life, or
else one of his disciples would have assembled this little collection. It was
placed before the two main collections of words from Isaiah, preserved now in
2:6–11:9 and 28:1–31:9 and arranged essentially in a chronological order, so
that it could suggest that Israel should reconsider the words that Isaiah spoke
in earlier years with reference to the future after 701, in light of the grace
that Yahweh had offered the people (see 1:9). In addition to 1:4–9, among the
words that have been preserved from Isaiah, there is just one other speech that
was clearly uttered after Sennacherib’s withdrawal: 22:1–14. Though impossible
to prove, it makes sense that this section was located at one time near 1:4–9
and that the redactor of chaps. 13–23 would have torn it from its original
context. That would be a wild guess if one were not forced to conclude that the
same redactor extracted other Isaianic passages within chaps. 13–23 from their
original context as well. (Hans Wildberger, A Continental
Commentary: Isaiah 28-39 [Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 2002], 537-38)
