The Prologue to Deutero-Isaiah

This is true for the majority of Ashkenazi and Sephardi and even Karaite liturgies, though the custom of Italian Jews differs.

Most scholars subdivide Deutero-Isaiah into Deutero-Isaiah (40-55) and Trito-Isaiah (56-66), but with important exceptions, including Benjamin D. Sommer A Prophet Reads Scripture: Allusion in Isaiah 40-66 (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1998), and Shalom M. Paul Isaiah 40-66: Translation and Commentary (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2012).

Both series pre- and post- Tisha B’Av are already evidence in the Pesiqta de-Rav Kahana, a book of homilies on the Torah and Haftarah readings from the mid-first millennium C.E. in Palestine.

The earliest rabbinic source to imply that the latter half of Isaiah is from a different author is Abraham ibn Ezra (1089–1167), in his gloss on Isaiah 40:1.

This was first proposed by Frank Moore Cross, “The Council of YHWH in Second Isaiah,” Journal of Near Eastern Studies 12 (1953): 274–277, and has since been followed by many others.

Editor’s note: For more on this vision, see Richard Lederman, “The Seraphim,” TheTorah (2019); Marvin A. Sweeney, “When the God of Justice Goes Rogue,” TheTorah (2016).  See also my articles, "Strategies of Concentration and Diffusion in Isaiah 6" Biblical Interpretation 6 (1999), 58–86, reprinted in Francis Landy, Beauty and the Enigma and Other Essays on the Hebrew Bible (Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press, 2001), pp.   298-327, and "I and Eye in Isaiah or Gazing at the Invisible" Journal of Biblical Literature 131 (2012), pp.85-97.

For a more detailed account, see my, “The Ghostly Prelude to Deutero-Isaiah" Biblical Interpretation 14 (2006), 332–363; idem, “Spectrality in the Prologue to Deutero-Isaiah,” in The Desert Will Bloom: Poetic Visions in Isaiah, ed. Joseph Everson and Hyun Chul Paul Kim (Atlanta: SBL Press, 2009), 131–158.

See, for example, Ulrich Berges The Book of Isaiah: Its Composition and Final Form tr. Millard C. Lind (Sheffield: Sheffield Phoenix, 2012), pp.360-61.

For the first position, see Cross, "The Council of YHWH," followed by many others. The second is held by Joseph Blenkinsopp, Isaiah 40-55 (Anchor Bible; New York: Doubleday, 2002) p.180. U.Berges, Jesaja 40-48 (Freiburg: Herder, 2008) pp.38-43, thinks that Deutero-Isaiah was composed by exiled Temple-singers; and Klaus Baltzer, Deutero-Isaiah tr.Margaret Kohl (Minneapolis: Fortress, 2001) p.51, holds that it is addressed to everyone. There are many other possibilities.

עון, as my translation suggests, has a double meaning: it may be “iniquity” or “punishment,” two sides of the same coin. The ambiguity in the term is famously expressed in Cain’s declaration גָּדוֹל עֲו‍ֹנִי מִנְּשֹׂא “my iniquity/punishment is too great to bear” (Gen 4:13). See discussion in, Eliezer Finkelman, “Cain’s (Im)Penitent Response to His Punishment,” TheTorah (2016).

In other verses (Isa 49:14–21, 51:18–19) the people are described as her children, and she mourns for those who died in the siege, rejoices at their return, etc.

See especially Hos 2:16, and Stephen Geller, “A Poetic Analysis of Isaiah 40:1-2,” Harvard Theological Review 77 (1984), 418. 

As it is also in the prediction of destruction in Isaiah 6:11-13.

See Geller, “A Poetic Analysis,” 417 and Berges, Jesaja 40-48, 101.

Deutero-Isaiah is preoccupied with measure, for example (translation John Goldingay):

^{ישעיה מ:יב} מִי מָדַד בְּשָׁעֳלוֹ מַיִם וְשָׁמַיִם בַּזֶּרֶת תִּכֵּן וְכָל בַּשָּׁלִשׁ עֲפַר הָאָרֶץ וְשָׁקַל בַּפֶּלֶס הָרִים וּגְבָעוֹת בְּמֹאזְנָיִם.

^{Isa 40:12} Who has gauged the waters with his cupped hand, and surveyed the heavens by the handbreadth? Measured the earth’s soil by the gallon, and weighed the mountains with a balance, and the hills with scales. 

Ironically, the measure is of what is immeasurable.

For a brief discussion of the exodus theme in Deutero-Isaiah, and how the Sages made use of it, see Isaac Sassoon, “An Ideal Exodus?” TheTorah (2018).  For a book length study, see Enrique Farfan Navarro, El Desierto Transformado: un imagen deuteroisaiana de regeneración (Rome: Pontificio Istituto Biblico, 1992).  For a critique, see Lena-Sofia Tiemeyer, For the Comfort of Zion: The Geographical and Theological Location of Isaiah 40-55, VTSupp. 139 (Leiden: Brill, 2011).

Karl Elliger, Deuterojesaja 1:  Jesaja 40,1-45,7 (Neukirchen-Vluyn: Neukirchener Verlag, 1989), 19, provides many examples of ancient Near Eastern processional routes.

See, for example, Berges, Jesaja 40-48, 104–105.

Mountains are judged for their pride in Isaiah 2:14. The description has resonance with Isaiah 11, in which the new Davidic king will judge with the poor with equity. See also 57: 14–15, which is probably the first commentary on our text.

On the correlations with Jacob, see especially Meira Polliack “Deutero-Isaiah’s Typological Use of Jacob in the Portrayal of Israel’s National Renewal” in Creation in Jewish and Christian Tradition, eds. Henning Graf Reventlow and Yair Hoffman, JSOT Supp 319 (Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press, 2002), 72–110. The term Jeshurun is otherwise found exclusively in the poems at the end of Deuteronomy (Deut 32:15; 33:5, 26).

The MT here has the third person, “and he said,” but I prefer the reading of the Great Isaiah scroll, in Qumran, which reads “and I said,” as simpler and matching the first person account in 49.1-6. This is further supported by the LXX, which has ‎καὶ εἶπα, and the Vulgate “dixi,” both of which may be reading the same consonant as we have the MT, but with a pointing of, וָאֹמַר‏.

It is unclear where the direct response, i.e., the quotation of “what I said,” ends. The response could be just the words “What shall I cry?” or it could continue to the end of v.7 or even v.8.   

For some discussion of this term, see Elinoar Bareket, “Chesed: A Reciprocal Covenant,” TheTorah (2017); Marc Zvi Brettler, “‘Praise YHWH All You Nations’: Psalm 117,” TheTorah (2020). For a more detailed treatment, see, Carsten Ziegert, “What is חֶסד? A frame-semantic approach” Journal for the Study of the Old Testament 44 (2020): 693–710.

John Goldingay, “Isaiah 40-55 in the 1990s: Among Other Things Deconstructing, Mystifying, Intertextual, Socio-Critical, Hearer-Involving,” BibInt 5 (1997): 225–246 [p. 229].

It is indeterminate whether בת ציון means "daughter Zion" or "daughter of Zion," and in practice it makes little difference.

On the divine warrior tradition, see most recently Theodore J. Lewis The Origin and Character of God: Ancient Israelite Religion through the Lens of Divinity (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2020) 428–472.

e.g. Polliack, "Deutero-Isaiah's Typological Use of Jacob" pp.108-110, who also detects the hidden presence of Rachel, whose name means "ewe."