If the wiping out of Assyria’s army left its mark on Hezekiah, making him indiscreet, it also left its mark on Isaiah. His writing changes dramatically thereafter in both content and style. In fact, among the heady set, it is all but a foregone conclusion that someone else picked up the pen from this point on. “2nd Isaiah” is how they refer to Isaiah 40 to the end of the book. I’ll plead the same as G. K. Chesterton, who declared himself not competent to weigh in on how critics divided up the book of Job into at least two authors. All that he insisted upon was unity; he wasn’t overly particular as to how it was achieved. I’m inclined to take the same tone here. After all, it’s usually tradition that identifies the authors of the various Bible books, and tradition can be wrong.
On the other hand, one must remember that these higher critics of the historical-critical method do not come from the same planet as do people of faith. If miracles are not within the scope of your investigatory tools, that view quickly manifests itself into dismissing them. These theologians search for natural explanations as to why Sennacherib failed to take Jerusalam. A debilitating plague is what many have settled upon, as did Jean Pierre Isbouts, in his History and Archeology of the Bible Great Courses Lecture Series.
They don’t believe the miracles. This flavors all their subsequent conclusions as they eschew the steak to chew on the grizzle. It produces the same effect as when Trump posts that North Korea has launched all its nuclear missills. People of common sense run for the hills. Higher critics run to their keyboards to point out the idiot can’t even spell the word right.
Denigrating the miracle to a plague means for them that someone has gussied it up later to look like a miracle, maybe Isaiah himself. That’s what those dreamy half-crazed prophets are apt to do in the eyes of the higher critics: tell Mark Twainish tall tales sure to give their God a boost, repackaging political events into a religious worldview that they would feed to the masses.
Maybe that someone was Isaiah, as his crazed devotion to Jehovah inspires him to concoct tall tales. They seek to explain that Bible account in natural terms. They don’t think it is real. Thus, to them, as Isaiah is just the same ol religious kook he has always been, dressing up history to fit his beliefs, they don’t figure he’s capable of the different themed writing from chapter 40 on.
If their assumptions are incorrect, the picture changes and the change of style is easily accounted for. It’s not as though every time you turn around in Bible times there’s a miracle. They were exceedingly rare. Now, with the overnight defeat of Assyria’s finest, cut down by an angel, Isaiah is privy to what he has never seen before but has just read about and meditated upon. You don’t think that would change your writing style?
“All the nations are as something nonexistent in front of him; He regards them as nothing, as an unreality.” (40:17) I guess He just demonstrated that, didn’t he? As must as the Assyrian army was strutting about, it was snuffed out in a second.
“Look! The nations are like a drop from a bucket, And as the film of dust on the scales they are regarded. Look! He lifts up the islands like fine dust.” (40:15) Yeah, Isaiah just saw one dusted off pretty handily. You don’t think that would change his focus?
“He reduces high officials to nothing And makes the judges of the earth an unreality.” (40:23) Ditto.
When the Dead Sea Scrolls were discovered in 1947 and a completed scroll of Isaiah was unearthed, 1000 years older than any existing copy, Chapter 40 was found to start on the last line of a column, its first sentence completed on the next column. Plainly, the copyist, whoever he was, knew nothing of any “2nd Isaiah.”
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