Isaiah Class Recap

Isaiah Class Recap

-February-

Literary and Poetic Isaiah

Next Class: Apocalyptic Isaiah

March 15^th

 7 pm

Teresa Vincent’s home

                 

Our class in February focused on the literary style of Isaiah.  Melissa reminded us how accomplished and educated Isaiah was, making him very well versed in complicated styles of writing.  Additionally, it appears that many prophetic utterances seem to fall into these poetic styles, and can be found throughout scripture.  For instance, Melissa pointed out that the entire Book of Jonah, as well as many verses in the Book of Mormon are written as “Chiasmus”, which is a form of inverted parallelism used as a poetic structure.  Isaiah used this style throughout his writings.  Perhaps this was one way scripture could be easily preserved, as much ancient scripture had to be memorized and passed down orally.  Having the scripture in poetic form perhaps allowed for easier memorization.

A simple explanation of Chiasmus is that the text follows a top to bottom flow, the main point in the center, and then reflected in a mirror image.  An example that Melissa shared was this verse from Isaiah 6:10 –

(a) Make the heart of this people fat,

(b) and make their ears heavy,

(c) and shut their eyes;

(c') lest they see with their eyes,

(b') and hear with their ears,

(a') and understand with their heart,
and convert [return], and be healed.

Being able to have the basic (very basic!!) understanding of the literary styles Isaiah used to express his revelations, we can look for patterns, ponder on the symmetry of the ideas, and receive personal understanding as to the layers of the meaning.

Melissa stressed the importance of having a commentary to study with, as it would be almost impossible to understand the complicated styles without a more studied guide.  She suggested Victor L Ludlow’s Isaiah, Prophet, Seer and Poet.