Williamson, `Pre-Exilic Isaiah'
24
Aufgabe, die eher allgemeinen Anschauungen von v. 11 Yber die VerwYstung des
Landes im Sinne einer totalen Deportation genauer zu fassen'.
69
The question which this raises is what conceivable purpose could be served by
this addition if the core text were already post-exilic? The attempt to clarify that the
earlier prophecy had been fulfilled in the events surrounding the exile makes sense
only on the presupposition that the core text preceded this and needed such
clarification. That a reference to the exile was added in the post-exilic period to a
text which, ex hypothesi, was already written after the event and when no such
clarification was required, and when, moreover, the judgment of exile was already a
thing of the past, beggars belief.
Again for reasons of space, I limit myself to this one example of what I have
called the historical depth in the literature which makes up Isaiah 1-39. Many other
examples of additions which clarify how Isaiah's pronouncements were fulfilled in
the events of the Babylonian destruction and deportation have been proposed,
70
and
a careful discussion of each would be required. Other arguments of a similar nature
might be mounted in terms of the evident dislocations of material during the course
of the book's growth (the current setting of 5:25-29 + 30 is only the best known
example), whereby material which once served one purpose has now been reused
redactionally, sometimes rather awkwardly, to serve another purpose altogether.
71
I
maintain that, even limiting ourselves to the core of widely agreed examples, this
has the effect of shifting a considerable body of oracular material into the pre-exilic,
and probably Isaianic, period.
69
Becker, Jesaja, 64-65.
70
See especially R.E. Clements, `The Prophecies of Isaiah and the Fall of Jerusalem in 587 B.C.', VT 30
(1980) 421-36.
71
For some examples, see H.G.M. Williamson, `Isaiah xi 11-16 and the Redaction of Isaiah i-xii', in
J.A. Emerton (ed.), Congress Volume: Paris 1992 (VTSup 61; Leiden: E.J. Brill, 1995) 343-57, and
`Relocating Isaiah 1:2-9' in C.C. Broyles and C.A. Evans (eds.), Writing and Reading the Scroll of Isaiah:
Studies of an Interpretive Tradition, 1 (VTSup 70/1; Leiden: E.J. Brill, 1997) 263-77.