The History of Isaiah and the Age of Empires
October 2022 | Vol. 10.8
By Jacob Stromberg
The prophet Isaiah stood at the beginning of an age of empires in the ancient Near East. In order, the age saw the rise of the neo-Assyrian, neo-Babylonian, and Achaemenid Persian empires. Each came to rule over that land which, according to the Book of Kings, had once been the home of an undivided Israel under the reign of king Solomon, son of David. Each appears in the book of Isaiah.
As a Judean prophet in the eighth century BCE, Isaiah witnessed the destruction of the northern kingdom of Israel as well as the great reduction of the southern kingdom of Judah at the hands of the Assyrians. These events are the subject of much of the visionary material in Isaiah 1-39, which concludes with an account of the Assyrian invasion of the Judean kingdom. This narrative begins in the fourteenth year of king Hezekiah with the capture of “all of the fortified cities of Judah,” including Lachish from which the Assyrian king sent a messenger and “a great army” to threaten the remaining Judean leadership which had taken up a defensive position in Jerusalem. The Assyrian perspective on these events is well known from Sennacherib’s annals and the wall reliefs from his palace depicting the capture of Lachish.
Relief of Assyrian siege-engine attacking the wall of Lachish. Photo by Osama Shukir Muhammed Amin FRCP(Glasg) (CC BY-SA 4.0)
The account in Sennacherib’s annals shows significant overlap with the Isaianic account (Hezekiah remains on the throne), as well as some important differences. According to the Isaianic version (written after Sennacherib’s death for subsequent generations), the Assyrians were sent off by an angel of the Lord, an account motivated by the desire to attribute the defense of the city to a divine cause. This motive is consistent with Isaiah 22:8-14 (widely viewed as authentically Isaianic), in which the prophet criticizes the Judean leadership for a lack of trust in the Lord when they created a water conduit and defensive wall in preparation for the coming Assyrian onslaught, features widely identified as the Siloam tunnel and Broad Wall respectively.
It is important that the Isaianic account of this event is drawn from the Book of Kings, as this points to its role in the Book of Isaiah. In this narrative, Sennacherib offers the people hiding in Jerusalem a Solomonic kingdom under his own rule, in place of the would-be Solomonic renewal of Hezekiah’s reign (1 Kings 5:5; Isaiah 36:16). In the narrative, Hezekiah’s confession of the Lord’s kingship and his petition led to the divine defense of the city and a promise of the future renewal of the house of Judah thereafter.
In contrast to these events, the political interventions of the neo-Babylonian and Achaemenid Persian empires in the Levant took place long after the prophet had passed from the scene. In time, the Babylonians became responsible for the fall of the Judean kingdom, whereas the later Persian empire allowed the Jewish exiles to return home. Despite the prophet’s temporal remove from these later empires, their interventions into the lives of his people were felt in the book bearing his name.
One of the best-known examples is the explicit reference to king Cyrus (the first ruler of the Achaemenid Persian empire) in connection with the downfall of Babylonian rule (44:18-45:13; 47). Here, Cyrus is presented as the Lord’s “anointed”, whose appearance on the scene signaled the beginning of the divine plan: a plan to repatriate the Judeans to their homeland and to rebuild the cities (including Jerusalem) along with the temple there. The Isaianic portrait of Cyrus has long been compared to the famous Cyrus cylinder, in which Cyrus is portrayed as having been summoned by the Babylonian god Marduk to restore Babylon and some of the exiled peoples.
Siloam Tunnel. Photo by Tamar Hayardeni (CC BY-SA 3.0).
Composition of the Book of Isaiah
This reference to Cyrus has been seen as one of the keys to unlock the composition history of the Book of Isaiah. Scholars of all stripes agree that the Book of Isaiah is made up of two halves (chapters 1-39 and 40-66), the reference to Cyrus falling in its latter half. But scholarly views have changed regarding how the book reached its final shape. The older view – that each half was an independent composition – has fallen out of favor, as research has now shown the interdependence of these two parts.
Nevertheless, an older observation remains indispensable for understanding how the two have been related: the second half of the book speaks to (and not just of) an audience later than Isaiah himself. In 48:20, the audience is told: “come out of Babylon.” In 64:7-11, one finds a prayer over the ruins of the Jerusalem temple. Observations like these have led to the conclusion that someone besides the prophet wrote the second half of the book. By contrast, the first half of the book speaks as if to the prophet’s contemporaries. Just how much of this material comes from the prophet himself is a matter of debate, though certain details, like an apparent awareness of contemporary neo-Assyrian propaganda, suggest that at least some of it is ‘authentic.’
But what purpose was served by this distinctive two-part structure of the book? Many now agree that the latter half of the book aims to speak Isaiah’s vision into days beyond his own, the idea being that the power and commitments of the Lord were to be transhistorical. To this end, it is probable that the history of Isaiah was given a figural quality. The history recounted in the first half was to serve as an analogy for the future spoken of in its second half: the future being like the past because it taught a lesson. Hence, the later chapters of the book speak of a Solomonic restoration, wherein the Lord as a bridegroom will tend to Jerusalem as a bride (1 Kings 10:1-2; Isaiah 60:6; 62). That Jerusalem bears the name of Hezekiah’s wife, Hephzibah (“my delight is in her”), suggests a deliberate echo of Hezekiah himself, the king who was to be a new Solomon according to the account.
History of Interpretation
The figural nature of the book of Isaiah was appreciated at least as early as the Book of Daniel, which, in laying out its own vision for a future after Hellenistic rule, combines the language of the Assyrian crisis in the first half of Isaiah with echoes of the eschatological scenario portrayed in its second half. The figural quality of Isaiah’s historiography – wherein the past days of the prophet were meant to teach a lesson for future days – may also lie behind the later split between Rabbinic and Christian interpreters, reflected in their divergent handling of a passage like Isaiah 7:14, the birth of Immanuel. Where some early Rabbinic interpreters linked this to the birth of Hezekiah, early Christian interpreters read it in reference to Jesus. But in keeping with the book’s own historical meaning before these later readers, the birth of Immanuel was probably to be understood as an event that took place in the days of the prophet, which nevertheless bore a figural significance for the days to come, days long after Isaiah had passed from the scene.
Jacob Stromberg is Lecturer in Old Testament at Duke University and co-editor, with J. Todd Hibbard, of The History of Isaiah (FAT 150; Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2021).
How to cite this article
Stromberg, J. 2022. “The History of Isaiah and the Age of Empires.” The Ancient Near East Today 10.8. Accessed at: https://anetoday.org/stromberg-isaiah-empires/.
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