Skip to main content

Getting It Right—Isaiah’s Checks and Balances

by Avraham Gileadi Ph.D.


Because Isaiah has permeated his entire prophecy with check and balances, one rarely needs to second guess his meaning. Seldom does Isaiah mention an event or idea just once, never to return to it. Rather, he frequently reiterates things in different contexts to ensure that readers get his message. Isaiah’s repeating events in different combinations with other events, for example, creates an entire web of interconnected events, which, together, define what he means by the end-time or end of the world. Such synchronized phenomena define the Book of Isaiah itself as a literary work of extraordinary complexity that is at once simple when its literary keys are revealed.


Linking ideas establish definitions of terms and entire scenarios. In one place, Isaiah may predict a new exodus of God’s people out of Babylon (Isaiah 48:20–21). In another, he identifies “Babylon” as the world and its wicked inhabitants whom God destroys in his Day of Judgment (Isaiah 13:1, 9, 11, 19). Elsewhere, he predicts that God’s people will return from throughout the earth at the time of a worldwide destruction (Isaiah 27:12–13). Further, God’s people’s exodus is from the four directions of the earth to Zion (Isaiah 43:5–6). Finally, he depicts remnants of all nations streaming to Zion in the “end-time,” giving us a time frame (Isaiah 2:2–3). And so forth.


12. 20. 2012


Read his weekly posts in: http://www.isaiahreport.com


 

Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Clothed with Salvation: The Garden, the Veil, Tabitha, and Christ

Daniel Belnap Studies in the Bible and Antiquity: Volume – 4, Pages: 43-69 Provo, Utah: Maxwell Institute, 2012 The views expressed in this article are the views of the author and do not necessarily represent the position of the Maxwell Institute, Brigham Young University, or The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.   Sandwiched between the account of Saul’s conversion in Acts 9 and Peter’s vision of the Gentiles in Acts 10 is the story of the raising of Tabitha. While staying in the town of Lydda, Peter, the presiding disciple of Christ, is approached by two individuals from the neighboring city of Joppa with the request that he come and attend to the then-deceased Tabitha. When he gets there, he is met by widows weeping and wailing over Tabitha’s departure. We know practically nothing of Tabitha except that she is a believer and a woman “full of good works and almsdeeds” (Acts 9:36). These works are revealed as the mourners present themselves before Peter, showing him the clo...
Post a Comment
Read more

The DNA of Abraham’s Children

Analysis of Jewish genomes refutes the Khazar claim. French Jews of the Middle Ages. From the 1901-1906 Jewish Encyclopedia, now in the public domain. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)  Jews have historically considered themselves “people of the book” ( am hasefer in Hebrew), referring to sacred tomes, but the phrase is turning out to have an equally powerful, if unintended, meaning: scientists are able to read Jewish genomes like a history book. The latest DNA volume weighs in on the controversial, centuries-old (and now revived in a 2008 book ) claim that European Jews are all the descendants of Khazars, a Turkic group of the north Caucasus who converted to Judaism in the late eighth and early ninth century. The DNA has spoken: no.  In the wake of studies in the 1990s that supported biblically based notions of a priestly caste descended from Aaron, brother of Moses, an ambitious new project to analyze genomes collected from Jewish volunteers has yielded its first discoveries. In a paper wit...
Post a Comment
Read more

Moses, Captain Moroni, and the Amalekites

Matthew Roper Insights Volume – 32, Issue – 4 Provo, Utah: Maxwell Institute The views expressed in this article are the views of the author and do not necessarily represent the position of the Maxwell Institute, Brigham Young University, or The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. After Israel’s deliverance from Egyptian bondage and crossing of the Red Sea, another enemy, the Amalekites, attacked the camp on its pilgrimage to worship God at Sinai. 1 Moses, in response to this cowardly act, directed Joshua to fight them. For his part, Moses would stand atop a nearby hill holding the rod of God. “And it came to pass, when Moses held up his hand, that Israel prevailed: and when he let down his hand, Amalek prevailed.” Moses, however, was tired and could not always keep his hands up, so “Aaron and Hur stayed up his hands, the one on the one side, and the other on the other side; and his hands were steady until the going down of the sun” (Exodus 17:8–12, emphasis added), allowin...
Post a Comment
Read more

English Language Help

Copyright Judaica World Archives