Alter makes the case that this book should be divided into three sections. “Isaiah son of Amoz, a Jerusalemite, began his career as a prophet in the 730s B.C.E…. Chapters 1-39 in the book that comes down to us incorporate the prophecies of Isaiah but also include much disparate material that is clearly later, some of it reflecting the imminent or actual fall of the Babylonian empire to the Persians in 539 B.C.E. Nothing from chapter 40 to the end of the book is the work of Isaiah son of Amoz. The strong scholarly consensus is that chapters 40-55 were composed by a prophet of the Babylonian exile, whose name is beyond recovery, prophesying a triumphant return of the exiles to Zion through the agency of the Persian emperor Cyrus…. The so-called Second Isaiah is followed by a Third Isaiah in what is now the last eleven chapters of the book. The situation presupposed in these chapters is the predicament of the community in the Persian province of Yehud, or Judah, after the rebuilding of the Temple, so the historical setting would have to be the fifth century B.C.E., although probably before the decisive mission of Ezra and Nehemiah in the middle of that century…. The claim that Third Isaiah is a disciple of Second Isaiah may be questioned because they are far too removed from each other in time—perhaps by as much as three generations.”
The bulk of the Book of Isaiah is written in verse. “It is above all the vehicle of poetry in all these prophets that demands close attention…. There are two reasons for the use of poetry, one theological and the other pragmatic. In most of these texts, the prophet represents himself as the mouthpiece of God’s words… and it is perfectly fitting that God should address Israel not in prose, which is closer to the language of everyday human intercourse, but in the elevated and impressive diction of poetry. The more pragmatic reason for the use of verse is that, as in all poetic systems, poetry is memorable in the technical sense…. All three of the principal poets in the Isaian corpus exhibit a good deal of technical virtuosity, and, of course, this will often not be visible in translation. Isaiah son of Amoz is particularly adept in thematically pointed wordplay…. Plays on words resist even approximation in English. More pervasively, in all of the Isaian poets, the expressive power of the line of biblical poetry, in which the second verset concretizes, intensifies, or focuses what is expressed in the first, is exploited with great resourcefulness.”
In Isaiah 1:3, Alter notes the book’s first use of the complementary versets, “the donkey its master’s stall. This line is a neat illustration of the pattern of focusing or concretization in the movement from the first verset to the second in biblical poetry. The first verset puts forth the general relation of beast to owner; the second verset (with metrical room for an additional word in the parallelism because the verb “knows” does double duty for both halves of the line and need not be repeated) then focuses on the place of nurture connecting beast and master.”
Alter stresses, in Isaiah 6:8, that God speaks through the prophet’s mouth, allowing him the authority to also speak in verse, “Here I am, send me. The obvious implication is that, the prophet’s lips having been cleansed, he is now ready to take up his mission. There is a linguistic note as well as a spiritual one in all of this: poetry, purportedly representing divine speech, is the prophet’s vehicle; now, with his lips purified, he is in a condition to utter this elevated and powerful form of speech.”
Throughout his footnotes, Alter also focuses on the aesthetics of the language. He calls out especially beautiful and powerful images in particular lines of verse. In Isaiah 9:1, he notes, “The people walking in darkness/ have seen a great light. This is one of the most arresting instances of antithetical parallelism in biblical poetry. The line is starkly simple yet haunting.”
In his commentary to Isaiah 24:1, Alter begins by making a historical conjecture and then continues to justify one of his translation choices, “The Lord is about to sap the earth and strip it…. These words mark the beginning of a new large unit that runs to the end of chapter 27. In the judgment of most scholars it is at the very least a century and a half later than Isaiah son of Amoz, but this prophet is also a strong poet…. In keeping with this prophet’s cosmic outlook, ‘erets here means “earth” rather than “land.” This is a poet who exhibits a vigorous inventiveness in emphatic sound-play. Thus, “sap” and “strip” in this translation are only a pale approximation of boqeq and bolqah in the Hebrew.”
Often, Alter explains the origins and history of particular words. In Isaiah 29:1, he gives a bit more background, “Ariel. Although the second verset makes it clear that this is an epithet for Jerusalem, wildly disparate proposals have been made for the etymology of the name. Perhaps the least strained is that it means “lion of God,” which is to say, not an ordinary lion but some sort of heraldic lion; and a good candidate for that would be the cherubs carved over the Ark of the Covenant, which are more or less winged lions. By synecdoche, then, this carved beast in the Temple might have become an epithet for the city in which the Temple stood.”
In Isaiah 37:24, Alter again combines his historical and poetic knowledge to give insight, “I will go up to the heights of the mountains/ the far reaches of Lebanon. Although Sennacherib’s campaign did include Phoenicia, here he is besieging Jerusalem. The mountains of Lebanon, however, are the proverbial loftiest heights in biblical poetry, and yarketey levanon, “the far reaches of Lebanon,” contains an echo of yarketey tsafon, “the far reaches of Tsafon,” the dwelling place of the gods. Sennacherib’s declaration at this point sounds rather like that of the overweening king of Babylonia brought down to Sheol in chapter 14, which may allude to the text here. The cutting down of lofty cedars also figures in chapter 14.”
Alter relates the suddenness with which Second Isaiah begins his prophecy in Isaiah 40:1, “Comfort, O comfort My people. The prophecies of Second Isaiah begin abruptly, with no introductory formula as “The word of the Lord came to me, saying.” If such introductory matter once existed, it would have been editorially deleted in order to encourage the perception that these prophecies are a direct continuation of what had preceded. Scholars have long puzzled over who is being addressed in the first verse…. Perhaps it is simplest to assume that those addressed are people in general, or even nations, enjoined to comfort Israel. In any event, the key word “comfort” at the very beginning of Second Isaiah sounds the great theme of Second Isaiah’s prophecies.”
One of Alter’s repeated themes in his commentaries is the gradual stress away from paganism and towards a devout monotheistic worldview in the biblical text. In Isaiah 40:12, he points out, “Who with his hand’s hollow has measured the waters. With this prophecy, soaring poetry becomes the vehicle to convey God’s magisterial role over all creation. It is perhaps at this point, most likely in the later sixth century B.C.E., that the universalist potential of biblical monotheism is fully realized.”
Much of the Book of Isaiah deals with the impact of the Babylonian exile and the quest to return. In Isaiah 42:14, Alter expands on the conundrums that must have been on the minds of many, “I have been silent a very long time,/ kept my peace, held Myself in check. These words answer a theological quandary that would have plagued the exiles: where is the God of Israel, why does He allow us to be reduced to this lowly state? What God says is that He has chosen to be silent and hold back, but that moment is now past. like a woman in labor now I shriek. This simile marks the startling transition from God’s silence and self-occultation to the moment when a new era is born, with birth pangs like a human birth.”
In Isaiah 43:19, Alter points out another cyclical theme in the Bible, “I will make a way in the desert. The great highway in the desert that God will lay down for the return from exile is a symmetrical antithesis to the “way in the sea” (v. 16) He made for Israel in its first liberation from servitude. History is thus seen in a pattern of cyclical recurrences, with differences.”
Again, in Isaiah 48:1, Alter combines his knowledge of history and poetic structure to make a comment as to the prophetic word choices, “house of Jacob/ who are called by the name of Israel. Although it is a regular procedure in poetic parallelism to use “Jacob” (the primary term) in the first verset and “Israel” (the name to which “Jacob” was changed) in the second verset, the wording here looks as if it may be a gloss on the two names. Formerly “Israel” designated the northern kingdom, but since that kingdom was destroyed, the name has been attached to the Judahites as well, who now constitute the entire people. This adoption of the national name is further explained by the third verset, “who came out from Judah’s womb.””
In Isaiah 56:1, Alter makes the case that the section of Third Isaiah has begun, “Keep justice and do righteousness. This moral exhortation, coupled with the urging to observe the sabbath in the next verse, strikes a new note in the Isaiah collection, one that some commentators have characterized as “sermonic.” It is the strong consensus of biblical scholarship, with only a few dissenters, that Isaiah 56-66 is a later composition than Isaiah 40-55, and almost certainly the work of more than one prophet…. The probable period for these prophecies is the early decades of the fifth century B.C.E., before the arrival from Babylonia of Ezra and Nehemiah.”
Alter explains the significance of a repetition in Isaiah 60:7, which a casual reader might easily miss, “the house of My splendor I will make splendid. This is not a redundancy. The Temple by rights is the house of God’s splendor, but only when it is completely rebuilt and grandly refurbished will it achieve its status as the house of God’s splendor.”
In Isaiah 63:1, Alter describes the monotheistic God, once again still personified with semi-pagan attributes, “Who is this coming from Edom,/ in ensanguined garments from Bosra? The first six verses of this chapter are the most vivid—and grisly—representation in biblical poetry of YHWH as a warrior-god. The image of God trampling the vineyard would be picked up in the Book of Revelation.”
Finally, Alter reminds us of the envelope form so often used in the Bible, this time in Isaiah 66:13, “As a man whose mother comforts him,/ so I Myself will comfort you,/ and you shall be comforted in Jerusalem. The triple insistence on this verb, following “her comforting breast” is an excellent allusion to the comforting, “Comfort. O comfort My people,” at the beginning of chapter 40, bringing all of 40-66 to closure in an envelope structure.”
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