Isaiah the Prophet
Isaiah is arguably the most popular of all the Hebrew prophets who wrote their oracles. His writings are cited more than any other Hebrew text in the New Testament, and there are more copies of Isaiah than all the other prophetic texts combined among the Dead Sea Scrolls.
The specific dates of the prophet Isaiah’s life are unknown, but most scholars place his prophet activity around the late eighth century and early seventh century B.C.E. Hezekiah relied on the counsel of the prophet Isaiah, perhaps as a court prophet with walk-in privileges (2 Kings 19:2). The stories involving the siege of Jerusalem and Hezekiah’s recovery from illness featuring both King Hezekiah and Isaiah the prophet are recorded on three separate occasions in the Bible—2 Kings 18–20, 2 Chronicles 32, and Isaiah 36–39.
In this BAS Library special collection, gain fascinating insights into Isaiah the prophet.
Articles
The Ophel excavations at the foot of Jerusalem’s Temple Mount have yielded numerous exciting discoveries, including a new Biblical signature. Archaeologist Eilat Mazar reveals what may be a seal impression of the prophet Isaiah—unveiled here for the first time ever—in honor of Hershel Shanks’s retirement as Editor of BAR.
Two masterful portraits of the prophet Isaiah were painted in Rome at the beginning of the 16th century. The first, by Michelangelo (see below), was painted on the Sistine chapel ceiling between 1500 and 1510.1 The second, by Raphael (see front cover), was painted in the Church of Saint Agostino barely two years after […]
The Book of Isaiah contains the most astounding prophecy in the Hebrew Bible. Ostensibly, the Prophet Isaiah, who flourished in the eighth century B.C.E., according to Isaiah 1:1, accurately foresaw events that occurred a couple hundred years later: He predicted that after the Jerusalem Temple was destroyed and the Jewish people exiled, a foreign […]
In 011, more than 60 years after the first seven Dead Sea Scrolls were discovered by the Bedouin in what became known as Qumran Cave 1, a splendid new edition of the Great Isaiah Scroll—1QIsaa, in more technical language—has been published in the official scroll series, Discoveries in the Judaean Desert (DJD). It is […]
010The book of Isaiah begins with a superscript:
Isaiah’s Song of the Vineyard is one of the most vivid and precise poetic passages in the Bible. In seven verses (Isaiah 5:1–7; see the sidebar to this article), the prophet presents a sustained metaphor for God’s care for his people, by portraying the deity as a meticulous, attentive vintner and his people as […]
30 The Hebrew prophet scholars call Second Isaiah loved to make fun of idols. He scathingly mocks them in as powerful a parody as anything in the Bible. But does he really understand the idols he condemns? I grant the literary artistry and effective polemic of this prophet, who is believed to have written […]