Isaiah 29 - Introduction

Isaiah 28-31. In the main these Chapter s belong to the period before Sennacherib's invasion in 701 (pp. 59, 71f.). Special prominence is given to the project of an alliance with Egypt, which was strenuously opposed by Isaiah but carried through in spite of him, though the attempt was made to keep it from his knowledge, a signal proof that his opposition was feared by its promoters. Several recent critics have regarded much in these Chapter s as post-exilic, in some cases on cogent, in others on more flimsy grounds. The transitions from gloom to radiance, from predictions of doom to glowing descriptions of the happy future, are in some cases very abrupt; the phraseology is sometimes non-Isaianic, and the ideas have more affinity with those in the post-exilic period than in the age of Isaiah. We must be on our guard, however, against pressing the argument from theological ideas too far, in view of the scantiness of the earlier prophetic literature now extant, and, remembering that Isaiah held the doctrine of the happy future as well as the doctrine of a terrible judgment, we should not too readily condemn the optimistic sections, especially when they are happy endings, as necessarily later insertions.