Isaiah 26 - Introduction

Isaiah 24-27. The World is Judged, Israel is Delivered. This section of the book is certainly not by Isaiah. It has points of contact with his prophecies, but with the work of later prophets as well. Its style is more artificial, and there are several characteristics which distinguish it from Isaiah's writing. Driver enumerates the following: many plays on words and alliterations, a tendency to rhyme, a frequent combination of nearly synonymous clauses often without connecting conjunctions, repetition of words, many unusual expressions. But in addition to these features of style, it should be observed that the ideas are far in advance of those of Isaiah's time, and go even beyond those of the Second Isaiah. The tone is apocalyptic, and so are its imagery and the forms of representation. Cheyne mentions the following points in this connexion: the physical convulsion of the world, the going up of all nations to the Divine feast at Jerusalem, the committal of the host of the height and the kings of the earth to prison, the mysterious designations of the world-empires, the trumpet blown to recall the Jewish exiles. The expectation of the resurrection of individual Israelites and the promise that death will be abolished, also stamp it as late. It is certainly post-exilic. It seems most likely that it should be placed in the late Persian period at the earliest, and for much of it the tremendous convulsion, caused in the East by Alexander the Great's overthrow of Persia, seems to supply the worthiest occasion. The doctrine of individual resurrection is less developed than in Daniel, and there is no necessity to bring it down to a Maccabean date. Probably, as Duhm was the first to point out, the section is not a unity. His analysis has been largely accepted: (a) the oracle itself consisting of Isaiah 24, Isaiah 25:6; Isaiah 26:20; Isaiah 27:1; Isaiah 27:12 f.; (b) Isaiah 25:1; (c) Isaiah 25:9; (d) Isaiah 25:12; Isaiah 26:1; (e) Isaiah 27:2. He was uncertain whether Isaiah 27:6 belonged to the main oracle or not. Probably it is a separate fragment.