Isaiah 'twas foretold it

Isaiah 'twas foretold it,
the Rose I have in mind,
with Mary we behold it,
the Virgin Mother kind.
To show God's love aright,
she bore to us a Savior,
when half-spent was the night.

By long tradition, Holy Mother Church has read from the Book of the Prophet Isaiah during Advent and Christmas. St. Thomas Cranmer refers to this in the Preface to the Book of Common Prayer (1549), noting that in the pre-reformation liturgy “the book of Isaiah was begun in Advent,” but “never read through.” Neither do we still read it through, though we do a better job of it with the three-year Eucharistic Lectionary and the Daily Office Lectionary than we used to. In this last, we have encountered passages from the first part of Isaiah during Advent and the days following Christmas Day, and will go straight through from Chapter 40 to the end over a six-week period after the Epiphany.

It is well that we read from Isaiah when we want to learn about the Incarnation. Of all the prophets, he (along with the Psalmist) foresaw most clearly the coming of the Messiah, as “God-with-us” and as the Suffering Servant.

The Book of Isaiah is long and complex. Scholars have suspected for a long time that not all of it was written by Isaiah, son of Amoz, writing from slightly before “the year that King Uzziah died” (6:1) on through the reign of Hezekiah. There is a tradition, perhaps alluded to in Hebrews 11:37, that he was sawn asunder by order of Manasseh.

For once, I agree with the scholars: there is a definite stylistic shift at Chapter 40, to say nothing of the shift in focus from Assyria to Babylon. But Jewish and Christian tradition before the nineteenth century assert that the whole book is the work of Isaiah son of Amoz, and it could well be so.

“First Isaiah,” so to speak, is brought to a fitting conclusion by Chapter 35: “The wilderness and the solitary place shall be glad for them: and the desert shall rejoice, and blossom as the rose. . . .” There follows an account of the siege of Jerusalem by the army of Sennacherib king of Assyria, Isaiah's role in this, and subsequent events concerning Hezekiah (Chapters 36-39). The link to “Second Isaiah” comes with the visit of emissaries from Babylon in Chapter 39, and Isaiah's prophecy that all that the King had shown them would be carried away to Babylon (39:5-8). I believe that all of this through the end of Chapter 39 was from the hand of the son of Amoz, and there the book ended for several generations.

It seems logical to me that a later writer during the Exile would note Isaiah's prophecy and consider it appropriate to append what we now have as Chapters 40 through 66 as a fleshing-out of what Isaiah foretold. Many (though not all) scholars further divide the book, calling 56-66 “Third Isaiah” and placing it after the Exile.

More than any of the other Prophets, Isaiah offers passages of astounding beauty that can be taken out of their context – as we do in liturgy and song. Many of these passages have been fruitful ground for composers, and some are so thoroughly wedded to their musical settings that we can hardly read them without inwardly singing them -- “Comfort ye, comfort ye my people” (40:1), “And the glory of the LORD shall be revealed” (40:5), “He shall feed his flock like a shepherd” (40:11) -- to name but three from a single chapter.

One more hymn text, this one from the modern writer Jaroslav J. Vajda, a stanza from a magnificent Christmas hymn, “Where shepherds lately knelt”:

How should I not have known
Isaiah would be there,
his prophecies fulfilled?
With pounding heart, I stare:
a Child, a Son,
the Prince of Peace --
for me.

(copyright 1986 by Jaroslav J. Vajda)

In spirit, we stand at the manger alongside shepherds and magi, patriarchs, prophets, apostles, and martyrs, and all that will ever call upon the name of the LORD – indeed, all of creation, for the oxen and asses were there at his side from the beginning and the angels sang in the sky. “Then shall all the trees of the wood shout for joy before the LORD when he comes. . . .”

But more than most, Isaiah has given us words to sing to and about this Child.

For unto us a child is born, unto us a son is given: and the government shall be upon his shoulder: and his name shall be called Wonderful, Counsellor, The mighty God, The everlasting Father, The Prince of Peace. (Isaiah 9:6)