Part II: Most Magnificent Poet-Prophet of the 'Hebrew' People: Second-Isaiah 40-55

Posted June 12th, 2009

To the Religious Community of Louisiana:

Here our purpose is to teach you how to teach our young our ancient Hebrew prophetic corpus. This requires competence in Oriental scholarship: archeology, philology and history. We select the last and greatest prophet of the Jewish people, the Second-Isaiah [Chapters 40-55]. If post-modern religion is to survive as a meaningful institution (since no one with any sense in their head, common sense or horse sense, entertains the notion of the 'reality' of Deity in or outside of our cosmos), then it better understand its contribution to feeding the inner imaginative 'spirit' of 21st century man!

Deutero-Isaiah or Second-Isaiah performed this task admirably. What stimulated his imagination was the high cosmic speculation, mathematically and astronomically, of the Babylonian priesthood. He opens his prophetic corpus in true Babylonian Semitic fashion [Chapter 40:1-6]: By the tool of dream-vision, he receives his Commission to preach to his Judean people ["House of Jacob" & "House of Israel, or simply, "O House of Jacob called by the name Israel, sprung from the stock of Judah" Is 48:1"] in the Heavenly Court-Council of Yahweh with Yahweh's 'Sons of God' or "angels" [Psalm 29:1, Job 1:6 and 2:1 for this setting] characterized by three voices of Yahweh: 1st voice urges the angels to give "comfort" to Jerusalem [Is 40:1-2]; the 2nd voice commands the angels to construct a processional highway across the Arabian desert so Yahweh can lead his people home [Is 40:3-5]; and the third voice calls out to this unknown great prophet to "cry" Yahweh's great 'oracles of salvation' [Is 41:8-13, 14-16; 43:1-4, 5-7; 44: 1-5 & 54:4-6 (six of them)] to his people. They are going home. Yahweh is sending them home!

The Judeans had lost their King, their Land, their Temple and their Mosaic Covenant by the Babylonian captivity in Exile by the great military commander, Sargon II. The great Hebrew Volcanic-War God had fresh plans for His people: He was going to 'redeem' or 'ransom' them. The Hebrew term 'goel' ["Redeemer"] is a technical term for releasing a slave by paying a ransom or exchanging something of value for the release of the slave. Here Yahweh offers Cyrus the Great all of (known) Africa for the 'freedom of the Jews.' [Is 45:14]. Cyrus the Great will let Yahweh's "exiles go free without price or ransom" on their part [Is 45:13b].

Here you pay attention to how many times our poet-prophet author uses the noun 'redeemer' or verb 'redeemed' or 'ransomed': 41:14; 43:1, 14; 44:6; 45:22, 23b, 24 etc.

More Later

On June 12th, 2009 The Twins said:

We wish to correct a blunder in the above posting: It is not Sargon II who destroyed the Southern Kingdom and its capitol city, Jerusalem [This great military genius destroyed the Northern Kingdom and its capitol city of Samaria in 722 B.C. completing the work of Tiglathphileser III (744-727 BCE) and, more particularly, Shalmaneser V (726-722 BCE)].

It was, of course, the great Babylonian military King of Kings, Nebuchadnezzar II (604-562 BCE), who destroyed the Southern Kingdom and its capitol city of Jerusalem in 587 BCE, put a great number of dignitaries to the sword, and sent the whole elite of the nation into Exile---4,600 people according to a list at the end of the 'Book of Jeremiah, leaving only the people of the lower classes in the country, thus turning Judea into a Babylonian province.

The great city of Babylon was conquered in 539 BCE by the Persians and Medes under the brilliant commandership of the Persian Founder of the Achaemenian Empire, Cyrus the Great. It was his famous Edict of 538 BCE to the Nations of the World that inspired the cosmic, universal dimension of our poet-prophet's perspective. The Babylonian Captivity or Slavery lasted 49 years for the Judeans who were scattered among the Empire.