Structure:
Another proposal that treats the hymns as key evidence but draws significantly different conclusions about composition is that of Ulrich Berges. Also drawing on what he identifies as the major structural devices—that is, the hymns and instructions to depart—Berges identifies four primary layers of development in chapters 40–55.20 He considers the hymns “the most obvious structural features within chaps. 40–55,”21 and indicates that the “Exodus commands” structure the chapters in “three parts (40–48; 49–52; 54–55).”22 His proposal assigns to “exilic tradents” the compiling of the “oracle materials” from the “exilic prophet,” which results in a version of chapters 40–48 punctuated by hymns.23 This composition is then further developed by the returned exiles in the “first Jerusalem redaction” to incorporate 49–52 and 40:1–5, 9–11.24 A “second Jerusalem redaction” attaches 54–55 and 40:6–8 as a response to the “delayed salvation.”25 Berges understands the fourth servant song as a separate addition.26 Interestingly, the primary structural devices that Berges identifies (hymns, commands to depart) are assigned to multiple hands in his redactional proposal.27 Similarly, the Servant Songs, while “an integral part of the textual corpus,” derive from multiple redactional layers. Berges, Book, 316. Berges indicates that the Servant Songs “themselves hardly play a structuring role” (p. 310). As noted above, Berges treats the fourth Servant Song as an addition made chronologically later than the “second Jerusalem redaction” (p. 377). However, he gives the “golah redaction” credit for the placement of the first Servant Song (p. 335), and considers that the “first Jerusalem redaction” placed the second Servant Song (p. 344).
Isa 40–55 is arguably dominated by such poetry (See Heffelfinger, I Am Large). Second Isaiah employs sudden shifts of speaker and theme, and ideas and motifs regularly appear in tension with one another (Heffelfinger, I Am Large, 63–65). That is, Second Isaiah arguably employs tension and juxtaposition as a mode of poetic meaning-making (Heffelfinger, I Am Large, 66–67). If this is the case, it should lead to particular caution in assigning materials to different redactional hands based on their apparent discontinuity with their immediate contexts.44 Indeed, regarding Duhm’s position on the Servant Songs, Tull Willey appropriately comments that “hyperbole and paradox, and the logical tensions that result from them, permeate not only this character, but the entire text of Second Isaiah, and are not easily resolved on a rational level.
Interestingly, Second Isaiah differs from many other prophetic collections within the Hebrew Bible, because the explicit markers of the compilation process familiar in such collections are notably absent from these sixteen chapters.54 In comparison with other prophetic collections, most particularly Isa 1–39, Second Isaiah lacks the markers one might expect to find. These include both “historical notices” (e.g., Isa 6:1; 7:1; Amos 1:1) and headings announcing the word (hadābār, e.g., Isa 2:1; Jer 7:1; 11:1; cf. dĕbar Ezek 6:1; 7:1; 12:1; Joel 1:1), a vision (ḥăzôn, e.g., Isa 1:1; cf. without ḥăzôn Amos 7:1, 4; 8:1), or an utterance (massaʾ, e.g., Isa 13:1; 15:1; 17:1; 19:1; 21:1, 11, 13; 22:1; cf. a similar phenomenon without the term massaʾ in Jer 48:1; 49:1, 23, 28).55 This absence of formal markers presents a distinctive set of problems for compositional analysis. It has the potential to suggest that the final redactors intended the work to be read as a unified whole, and particularly in light of the oracles preceding and connected by more formal means to the prophetic ministry of Isaiah of Jerusalem.
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