Immerse: Prophets - Flipbook - Page 68
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IMMERSE
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PROPHETS
Those who have been ransomed by the Lord will return.
They will enter Jerusalem singing,
crowned with everlasting joy.
In between these two sections, the fourth part of the book (pp. 101113) presents six oracles that announce “what sorrow awaits” Israel
and Judah. These oracles come from the twenty-year period between
Assyria’s conquest of Israel and its invasion of Judah.
The narratives in the sixth part of the book (pp. 116-123) describe
how God brought miraculous deliverance from the Assyrians when King
Hezekiah trusted in him. However, they also foreshadow the eventual
Babylonian conquest and exile.
The seventh part (pp. 123-155) describes a time in Babylon, over 150
years later. The Persian ruler Cyrus is about to conquer the Babylonians,
and his policy in other lands is to allow exiled populations to return
home. These long oracles are some of the most beautiful and encouraging in all of Scripture, assuring God’s people that his promise to end
their exile will surely be accomplished as intended. These oracles also
introduce a figure referred to as God’s “servant.” This servant has a
complex identity, likely referring initially to God’s people through whom
God will continue to work to bring about his purposes. Ultimately, these
servant songs point to the future Messiah who will bring deliverance
from the deepest exile of all—that of sin and death.
The final part of the book (pp. 155-175) speaks to an even later period, after the return from exile. Once again the people of Judah need
to be warned against injustice, oppression, and idolatrous worship. But
these oracles also look beyond the return from exile to a restoration
that is cosmic in scope. God’s glory will radiate from Jerusalem in a
fresh and powerful way, and Jerusalem will be a place of great joy in a
“new heavens and new earth.”
And so the book of Isaiah, which begins at a time when God’s covenant with David was gravely threatened, traces the grand sweep of redemptive history and points forward to the climactic covenant brought
by David’s greatest descendant and to the inauguration of the new
creation.
