Isaiah 50-52

(January 5, 2014)

                In case I haven’t mentioned it before one of the things that I do in the process of marking my scriptures is to identify who the speaker is for every line.  I want to think through what I am reading and identify whether it is a prophet or a king speaking, whether it is an editorial comment from the subsequent writer, or whether it is the words of the Lord or words of an angel (and so forth).

                Isaiah has been particularly problematic in this regard for me, because it has seemed that textual clues are indicating that Isaiah is seamlessly going back and forth between his own words and the words of Deity.  I see clues such as referring to God in the third person on one line and the Lord referring to Himself in first person in the next (or in the very same line).  I have tried to tease them apart as best as I could, but I had little confidence in what I was determining.

                All that changed as I was reading today.  I realized that all of my problems could be solved with one simple realization – Isaiah was speaking much less often than I thought.  The textual clues that indicated to me Isaiah was interjecting also could be explained (and explained more consistently) by the fact that it was the Son speaking of the Father.  So a phrase (invented here for the purposes of demonstration), “I will judge my people and the Lord God will grant me the words I shall say” is difficult to deal with when determining who is speaking between Isaiah and the Lord.  But when I recognize that it is the Son speaking, and He is referencing the Father, it all makes sense.

                I imagine it would be nearly impossible for anyone to perform the marking exercise that I performed without coming to the same conclusion – that the Lord of Isaiah references a God over Him.  Going back, evidence of the Trinity and their separate natures are scattered throughout this book.