Autor: Voegelin, Eric

Buch: Israel and Revelation

Titel: Israel and Revelation

Stichwort: Struktur v Deutero-Jesaia, neuer Maßstab: nicht die Satzung vom Sinai, sondern Erwartung des Erlösers

Kurzinhalt: structure of Deutero-Isaiah; from the order of the Chosen People under the Sinaitic Berith to an order under the Redeemer God

Textausschnitt: 123/13 The main organization of the work is easily to be discerned, because the incisions are marked by the position of the Servant Songs. The major subdivisions are:
(1) A Prologue (Isa. 40-41);
(2) a First Part (Isa. 42-48, barring the dubious Isa. 47);
(3) a Second Part (Isa. 49-53); and
(4) an Epilogue (Isa. 54-55).
The Prologue sets forth the message of salvation and its implications. The First Part, beginning with the First Song, deals with the salvation of Israel. It culminates in the exhortation to the exiles to leave Babylon and to let the news of the redemption spread to the ends of the earth (Isa. 48:20-22). The spreading of the news of Israel's redemption forms the transition to the Second Part, beginning with the Second Song. The process of salvation now expands to the nations and culminates, in the Fourth Song, in the recognition of the Servant as the representative Sufferer by the kings of the gentiles. The hymns of the Epilogue, finally, envisage the process of salvation as completed for Israel (Isa. 54) and the nations (Isa. 55). A redeemed mankind will surround Jerusalem, in response to the Holy One of Israel. (498; Fs)
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124/13 The composition itself emerges from the substance of the revelation; and this substance is to be found in the opening oracle of the book (Isa. 40:1-2): (498; Fs)
Comfort, O comfort my people -
says your God-
Speak to the heart of Jerusalem,
and call to her:
That her time of service is ended,
that her guilt is paid in full,
That she has received from Yahweh,
double for all her sins.
The oracle marks an epoch in the history of prophetism inasmuch as it breaks with the classic form of the great prophets from Amos to Jeremiah and creates a new symbolic form. In the first place, it is not a "word of Yahweh" spoken to the prophet, and through him, but a divine command of which the recipient is informed by heavenly voices. And to the mediation of the command in heaven there corresponds, second, a new mediating function of the prophet. For the hearer of the heavenly voices is no longer the mouth through which Yahweh warns his people to return to order, but the mediator of a message which supersedes the alternatives of punishment and salvation hinging on the existential appeal. (498f; Fs)
125/13 The meaning of this new type of prophecy will best be clarified through the elimination of suggestive misunderstandings: (499; Fs)
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Hence, suffering and salvation are both present, but they have changed their complexion, as we may say provisionally, in as much as they are no longer "alternatives" linked by the appeal. (499; Fs) (notabene)
(2) Is the new complexion of suffering and salvation, then, due to the disappearance of the appeal? This assumption would be the second misunderstanding. For the salvation announced by Deutero-Isaiah is not a divine act that transfigures the order of Israel and mankind, but a revelation of God as the Redeemer. And since the revelation requires human response, the prophet has to appeal very energetically to the people not to reject the message of salvation (Isa. 44:22: ) (499; Fs)
I have blotted out, as a vapor, your transgressions,
and, as a cloud, your sins;
Return to me, for I have redeemed you.
And the appeal is resumed in the Epilogue (Isa. 55:6)
Seek Yahweh while he may be found, call upon him while he is near!
Hence, the appeal has disappeared no more than the alternatives, though it also has changed its complexion. For the whole question of the people's conduct lies now in the past: Israel has suffered for its defection, and it has been forgiven. The appeal is therefore no longer concerned with conduct as measured by the Sinaitic legislation, but with the acceptance of God the Redeemer. (500; Fs) (notabene)
(3) The form elements of the classic prophetic symbolism thus are all present, though in a different mode. Moreover, through the elimination of the misunderstandings, the cause of the change has been traced to the shift of the prophet's interest from the order of the Chosen People under the Sinaitic Berith to an order under the Redeemer God. The character of this new order is flashlike illuminated by the prophet's use of the berith symbol. In Isa. 42:6 the Servant is appointed as "a berith to the people, as a light to the nations." And more elaborately, in Isaiah 55:3-5, the prophet lets God say: (500; Fs)