The Book of Isaiah
The Book of Isaiah
Salt and Light Institute
Winter 2010
Welcome to the resource page for the Salt & Light Class for the Book of Isaiah! Here you will find mp3 recordings of each week’s lesson, lesson notes, as well as some of the visual aids used in class. I will also post other resources here that will not be part of the class, such as book recommendations for further study and scholarly articles that might help some of the more academic minded. The Book of Isaiah is truly one of the most important books of the Old Testament for its messianic vision, present hope, and ability to place its readers firmly within God’s work to reconcile the world to himself through his future Messiah, whom the New Testament has identified as our Lord, Jesus Christ. I hope these resources may help your faith be strengthened, and your love for Scripture grow strong.
| Week | Lesson | MP3 | PPT | Visual Aids | |
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| 1 | Prophecy in the Old Testament |  |
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NT out of OT parallel OT-NT OT as roadmap |
| 2 | Reading Biblical Prophecy | |
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Isaiah Outline and Reading Tips From Prophet to Book #1 From Prophet to Book #2 |
| 3 | Introduction to the Book of Isaiah | |
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Chronology of Kings in Israel/Judah Chronology of Ancient Near East and the Divided Monarchy |
| 4 | The Troubled Vineyard (Isa 2-5) | |
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no aids |
| 5 | The Messianic Sign of the Future (Isa 6-9) | |
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no aids |
| 6 | A Royal King (Isa 9-12) | |
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no aids |
| 7 | From Assyria to Babylon (Isa 13-39) | |
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Summary of Isa 1-12 |
| 8 | You Are My Servant, Pt 1 (Isa 40-45) | |
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A Visual Look at Isa 1-39 A Summary of Isa 1-39 |
| 9 | You Are My Servant, Pt 2 (Isa 48-54) | |
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Outline of Isa 40-55 with notes |
| 10 | The Grand Vision (Isa 55-66) | |
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Online Resources:
The great thing about the internet today is that you don’t have to look too hard to find some great basic resources for studying the Scriptures. I’ve challenged you in class to read through the Book of Isaiah during the first three weeks of class. This will make our discussions the rest of the weeks much better. It only takes 3 hours to read straight through it. It often takes us longer for many different reasons. One thing I’ve found to help focus me is reading along with an audio bible. There’s a couple free ones out there that will do the job for you. Here’s are the links. The first three you can download and put on your mp3 player, the ESV can only be listened to online.
- Word English Bible – reads well, not sure of its background
- New International Version (NIV) – a great thought-for-thought translation
- King James Version (KJV) – for you old school folks. Numerous OT scholars I’ve studied with still think this is the best translation of the OT.
- English Standard Version (ESV) – a great literal translation of the text that is also readable. Once you get to the site, just click “listen” to hear it. You cannot download this one, though you can buy it for $30.
I also encouraged you to find outlines of books of the Bible to help in breaking it up into sections. This will help you study the book in parts, especially helpful in Isaiah. Our aim to grasp the message of the whole book by understanding the whole in light of the parts, and the parts in light of the whole.
- The NIV Introductory Notes are a superb online resource that will get the job done well. I was surprised to find these online for free.
- Two compact commentaries I use almost every time I pick up the Bible are found in the recommendations below: John Sailhamer’s “NIV Compact Bible Commentary” and Gordon Fee’s “Reading the Bible Book-by-Book”. In both cases, their value for exceeds the price.
Book Recommendations:
As with any book recommendations that I give, I don’t always support every idea in these books. I ask for you to be a critical reader of any book and to not believe everything your read. Some of these books do not come from conservative, evangelical scholars, but in my opinion offer nuggets of insights into how to understand the book of Isaiah in literary terms. I will mark the more evangelical commentaries and resources with an * to help you distinguish them (only one commentary is not evangelical).
Commentaries
- *John H. Sailhamer, NIV Compact Commentary (Zondervan, 1995)
- *John N. Oswalt, Isaiah: The NIV Application Commentary (Zondervan, 2003)
- Brevard Childs, Isaiah (Westminster John Knox Press, 2000) [note: Childs has the reputation of being a moderate to liberal scholar, though his insights into how the book reads as a whole are often brilliant, you just have to learn to take some parts of the commentary more seriously than others]
- *Christopher Seitz, Isaiah 1-39: Interpretation Series (Westminster John Knox Press, 1993)
- *Christopher Seitz, Isaiah 40-66: New Interpreter’s Bible Volume VI (Abingdon Press, 2001)
- *Christopher Seitz, Reading and Preaching the Book of Isaiah (2002)
- *EJ Young, The Book of Isaiah (3 Vol Set)
- *JA Motyer, Isaiah (Tyndale)
- *Gordon Fee and Douglas Stuart, How to Read the Bible Book by Book
Other Books That May Be Helpful for Understanding Biblical Prophecy
- *Robert Chisolm, Handbook on the Prophets
- Abraham Joshua Heschel, The Prophets (a classic)
- Walter Brueggemann, The Prophetic Imagination
- *John Sailhamer, Biblical Prophecy
- *Fee and Stuart, How to Read the Bible For All Its Worth
- *William Dyrness, Themes in Old Testament Theology
- *Duvall and Hays, Grasping God’s Word
Andy, are there no Pdf files for weeks 5 to 10?