The Prophecy of Isaiah: An Introduction Commentary

This has been a very helpful book for me as I explore the book of Isaiah. There are so many approaches to Isaiah that I was getting a bit lost in all the swirling opinions that totally changed how to approach the book. This commentary is straight forward and simply takes the text and comments on it using historical, cultural, and textual insights that I wouldn't otherwise have access to.

J. Alec Motyer [For years I pronounced his name to myself as "mot-yer", but I have subsequently been told that it is pronounced "mo-teer". I don't have this on especially good authority, so if I ever meet him I will wait for someone else to pronounce his name before I confirm for all that I am an ignoramus. I do not consider being an ignoramus about the pronunciation of words or names, however, to be ignominious: it is the mark of an autodidact, an honor to whch I am only partially entitled.] As I was saying before I was so rudely interrupted, Motyer is my kinda guy. He proclaims from the start that what he set out to do for the book of Isaiah is impossible: to include all the material -- linguistic, exegetical, expository, introductory -- that he has collected over years of lecturing on the Hebrew text of Isaiah. Whew! "But," he says, "of course the world is not big enough to contain such a book, no publisher foolish enought to undertake it, nor am I competent to write it." What we have here in this commentary is the glory without the blood and guts: the benefit of his depth of study, without the underlying minutiae. And the gleanings are rich indeed. His footnoes alone are a model of scholarly efficiency: to follow each to its source would be in itself a course in Hermeneutics and History of Theology. Moreover, he keeps them on the foot of the page, as they should be, so that the reader doesn't need to flip back and forth to read them. The work is not, however, pedantic. This depth of study and insight into the work of some obscure ancient, such as Nicolas of Cusa for example, would be tedious indeed. But his subject is Isaiah, the premier of the Hebrew prophets. Isaiah is as "full of quotes" as Shakespeare, and is even more readable. The combination of Isaiah and Motyer holds a permanent place in the roll of biblical citicism.Other recommended books on the subject:  Isaiah: An Introduction and Commentary (Tyndale Old Testament Commentaries)   Introduction to the Old Testament  and the two-volume commentary  The Book of Isaiah, Chapters 1-39 (New Intl Commentary on the Old Testament)The Book of Isaiah: Chapters 40-66 (New International Commentary on the Old Testament)

Alec Motyer writes an excellent and sensible commentary on the text of Isaiah. He is conservative on the unity of the book but does not waste large amounts of space dealing with unnecessary critical issues, (something that is thankfully welcome in a world where the unfortunate scholarly trend is to mangle the text with source and form criticism). He is also a sane interpreter of prophecy, and doesn't press the language of the text into absurd "over-literal" meanings. In short, Motyer gets high marks for writing a commentary that reads the text on its own terms.Motyer's exegesis of the text mostly consists of analyzing individual words and showing parallels, both with other parts of Isaiah and with other portions of Scripture. He does not include a translation of the text, so you'll need to have a Bible open while reading this to follow his points (although if you're reading any commentary, you should really be doing that anyways!) I found a number of his literary considerations to be helpful. He also takes the New Testament use of Isaiah seriously, which adds an additional level of insight to the text.The only criticism I have is that sometimes Motyer's outlines of specific passages strike me as arbitrarily contrived. It is as if he is trying too hard to make parallels and chiasms "fit" with each other. For instance, in the section on the oracles against the nations (chs. 13-27), he argues that the section breaks into three cycles (13-20, 21-23, 24-27), but then tries to make each individual element in the cycle parallel to each other, resulting in some rather awkward parallels. (One wonders, for instance, how what the oracles against Moab and Arabia have to do with each other, and furthermore, how they would be parallel to the "banquet" passage in 25:1-12). I am also not sure I agree with his overall three-fold division of Isaiah into: "The Book of the King" (1-37), "The Book of the Servant" (38-55), and "The Book of the Anointed Conqueror" (56-66). However, these concerns are really secondary compared to the value of this 500+ page work.Overall, I would still recommend Motyer's commentary. He has a number of useful exegetical insights. If I could only have one Isaiah commentary, Oswalt would be my first choice. If I could have a second, I would get Motyer and use him to supplement Oswalt.

I bought this to prepare an essay on ch. 35. It is clear and detailed but doesn't deal with when/how it will be fulfilled. Perhaps this is deliberate to keep the commentary to a reasonable size.

This is recommended reading for the current course module that I'm doing over three years. It comes highly reccommended by the course tutors and rather than borrow, I purchased my own copy to allow me to annotate as necessary.