03/05/2022 – Day 006 – Isaiah 1 – 5 / “The Messianic Prophet” – quoted more than any other prophet in the New Testament.
I knew this as many times as I have been through Isaiah but it continues to amaze me the similarities between Isaiah’s time and our time today, quite a challenge for our call under the great commission. Again, as is my common practice for introducing a significant new book study, I am going to pull excerpts from Halley’s Bible Handbook:
“Isaiah – The Messianic Prophet:
Called the Messianic Prophet because he was so thoroughly imbued with the idea that his nation was to be a Messianic Nation to the world; that is, a nation through whom one day a great and wonderful blessing would come from God to all nations; and he was continually dreaming of the day when that great and wonderful work would be done.
The New Testament says that IOsaiah ‘saw the glory of Christ and spoke of him’ (John 12:41)
Rabbinic tradition has it that Isaiah’s father, Amoz (not Amos the prophet), was a brother of king Amaziah. This would make Isaiah the cousin to king Uzziah, and grandson of king Joash, and thus of royal blood, a man of the palace…
He is quoted in the New Testament for than any other prophet. What a mind he had! In some of his rhapsodies he reaches heights unequaled even by Shakespeare, Milton, or Homer.
His Martyrdom. A tradition in the Talmud, which was accepted as authentic by many early Church Fathers, states that Isaiah resisted Manasseh’s idolatrous decrees, and was fastened between two planks, and ‘sawn asunder’ thus suffering a horrible death. This is thought to be referred to in Hebrews 11:37.
Assyrian Background of Isaiah’s Ministry
For 150 years before the day of Isaiah, the Assyrian Empire had been expanding. As early as 840 B.C., Israel, under Jehu, had begun to pay tribute to Assyria. While Isaiah was yet a young man (734 B.C.), Then a few years later, the Assyrians came on into Judah, destroyed 46 walled cities, and carried away 200,000 captives… Thus, Isaiah’s whole life was spent under the shadow of threatening Assyrian power, and he himself witnessed the ruin of his entire nation at their hands, except only Jerusalem.
ARCHAEOLOGICAL NOTE: The Isaiah Scroll
…
And now in 1947, at Ain Fashka, about 7 miles wouth of Jericho, 1 mile west of the Dead Sea, some wandering Arab Bedouins, carrying goods from the Jordan Valley to Bethlehem, searching for a lost goat, in a wadi that empties into the Dead Sea, came upon a partially collapsed cave, in which they found a number of crushed jars with protruding ends of scrolls. The Bedouins pulled out the scrolls, took them along, and passed them on to St. Mark’s Syrian Orthodox Convent in Jerusalem who turned them over to American Schools of Oriental Research.
One of these scrolls was identified as the BOOK OF ISAIAH, written 2,000 years ago, a 1000 years older than any know manuscript of any Old Testament book. An AMAZING DISCOVERY!
It is a roll, written on parchment, about 24 feet long, made up of sheets about 10 by 15 inches, sewed together, in script of ancient Hebrew, with evidence that it was made in 2nd century B.C.
This, and other scrolls, had, originally, been carefully sealed in earthenware jars. Evidently they were part of a Jewish library, which had been hidden in this isolated cave, in time of danger, perhaps in the Roman conquest of Judea.
Essentially it is the same as the Book of Isaiah in our Bible, a voice from 2000 years ago, preserved in the wondrous Providence of God, confirming the integrity of our Bible. W.F. Albright calls it, ‘The greatest manuscript discovery of modern times.’ (See 1948 and 1949 issues of Bulletins of the American Schools of Oriental Research and The Biblical Archaeologist..)”
Soli Deo Gloria! Follow this through for the next Saturdays for the conclusion of the book of Isaiah!