Isaiah 40 besides being one of the pillars on which the book of Isaiah rests is magnificent. This podcast, trying to deal with the whole chapter can’t do it justice (for a bit more on the background try Isaiah 40 in Babylon) I may do some follow-up podcasts on the different parts. Anyway, this time you [&hellip...
Isaiah 6 is a powerful account of Isaiah’s dramatic vision in the temple, a little background brings this power sharply into focus. This post deals with only the first few words of the great account of Isaiah’s temple vision in Chapter 6. Maybe I’ll do another to follow it, it’s certainly a powerful chapter 😉 [&hellip...
The first chapter of Isaiah (which perhaps runs on to 2:4, but you decide 🙂 provides an introduction to this book in three parts, laying out the “big story” at the start...
Juxtaposition: putting things together to make something “more than the sum of the parts” is a common artistic skill, it is common (but often unrecognised) in the Bible. As my least favourite book of the Bible helps reveal!...
Isaiah 1:2-31 forms a coherent unit and introduces the themes and “movements” of the book. It may help to either have your Bible open at the passage, or listen to this reading of the text first, as I refer to rather than read from the passage in the main podcast...
The superscription in Isaiah 1:1 is not the only one in the book, which may be suggestive of the book’s own history. It also announces the book’s focus on Jerusalem the Holy City...
Describes why careful readers of Isaiah have for a thousand years thought of the book in (at least) three different imperial contexts...
This podcast introduces the book (not the prophet) Isaiah. We’ll begin to think about how this huge (66 chapters) sprawling book is organised. This will lead into a more detailed look at many of the parts over the coming months. This introduction to the book assumes some understanding of how prophets and prophetic books work. [&hellip...
It is certainly one of my favourite Bible passages, indeed it is many people’s favourite Bible chapter. Isaiah 40 is just full of superb phrases and pictures. Whenever it was composed, this chapter really comes to life and sparkles when it is heard as the Judean exiles in Babylon heard, it just before Cyrus the [&hellip...
