J. Alec Motyer - Isaiah (TOTC)

Volume 20

General Editor: Donald J. Wiseman

An Introduction and Commentary

J. Alec Motyer

Additional notes

With this publication of Isaiah, the series of Tyndale Old Testament Commentaries draws to its conclusion. The aim throughout has been to provide the serious Bible reader with handy, up-to-date commentaries with the primary emphasis on the exegesis and meaning of the text. At the same time the series has sought to face major problems raised by critics of each book. Each author has been left to make his or her own contribution to the evangelical understanding and faith.

In 1993 Inter-Varsity Press published a major commentary, The Prophecy of Isaiah, by Dr Motyer. It was hailed as a major contribution, and the authors earlier invitation to contribute to the Tyndale series was renewed. The series rightly waited for this version. While it contains the essence of his earlier work and retains the earliers structure and textual divisions, much is new and original in this concluding volume.

Isaiah is a book of soaring spiritual insight and stirring declaration of the promises of God. Indeed, it is sometimes known as the fifth gospel. So perhaps it is appropriate that, despite his undoubted scholarship, it is Alec Motyers preachers heart that is most obviously at work in this commentary, bringing relevant application of the book to todays Christian church and reader.

In the Old Testament in particular no single English translation is adequate to reflect the original text. The version on which this commentary is based is the New International Version, but other translations are referred to as well, and on occasion the author supplies his own. Where necessary, words are transliterated in order to help the reader who is unfamiliar with Hebrew to identify the precise word under discussion. It is assumed throughout that the reader will have ready access to at least one reliable rendering of the Bible in English.

Interest in the meaning and message of the Old Testament continues undiminished, and it is hoped that this series will thus further the systematic study of the revelation of God and his will and ways as seen in these records. It is the prayer of the editor and publisher, as of the authors, that these books will help many to understand, and to respond to, the Word of God today.

D. J. Wiseman

I have set out to provide a readers commentary on Isaiaha companion to daily Bible readingand I believe that those who use it this way will reap the largest rewards from it. This is not to say that it cannot be used to look up spot verses or passages, for I have done my best not to evade difficulties and, in every such place, to ask what a reader, Bible in hand, would find most useful to know.

In 1993 IVP were kind enough to publish my larger commentary, The Prophecy of Isaiah, and it is only fair to say how this present work compares with that. First, I have felt comfortable in using again the structured outline of Isaiah which I worked out for the earlier book. Some reviewers criticized this or that aspect of my analysis, but, while I promise them that I have pondered what they wrote, they have not persuaded me to change my mind. Isaiah does not always stop to put down markers for us, and we come to his precious text to do the best we can. I do not see, for example, that I have opted for anything outrageous in dividing the book after chapter 37 rather than 39. R. E. Clements, whose approach to Isaiah is very far from mine, notes that a redactor has quite consciously sought to use these narratives [i.e. chs. 3639] to form a bridge between the Assyrian background of chs. 135 and the Babylonian background of chs. 4066, with ch. 39 forming a key transition unit (Isaiah 139, New Century Bible [Eerdmans/Marshalls, 1980], p. 277). I have simply made the bridge into a border-crossing.

Secondly, the majority of the explanatory and expository work in this commentary is certainly new in expression and quite considerably new in content. This is as it should be when we are dealing with the inexhaustible treasure of Gods Word. I have only very occasionally consciously quoted from The Prophecy of Isaiah.

As ever, I owe a huge debt to Inter-Varsity Press and its ceaselessly kind director and editors. Even I cannot remember quite when it was that George Manley invited me to contribute an Isaiah commentary to the Tyndale series, so long ago is it! I was both surprised and delighted when, having presented them with the larger commentary (for which they had not asked!), and thinking that surely my chance with the Tyndale series (sadly, like much else in life) had been frittered away, Frank Entwistle renewed the invitation. He, like Ronald Inchley before him, has been a gracious and more than patient friend. It is in order to enhance my book that I dedicate it to these three, and to the present editor of the Tyndale Old Testament Commentaries, men to whom we owe so much.

Originally, the plan was for a two-volume commentary and, to my delight, Derek Kidner had responded positively to my desire to dedicate volume two to him. I am certainly not going to allow the absorption of volume two (Isa. 3866) into volume one to deprive me of the pleasure and the honour of having his name associated with my bookeven at the expense of overloading the now single dedicatory page! I count it a great privilege to forge this small link with one who is both a great friend and a far greater and more sensitive contributor than I to the art of Old Testament commentary.

The completion of the Old Testament Tyndale series, begun with Derek Kidners delightful commentary on Proverbs in 1964, has been a long time coming and the fault is considerably mine. Just as God has been pleased to use individual volumes to his own glory in helping many readers to a fuller and deeper knowledge of his precious Word, may he now be pleased even more to use the completed series to that same supreme end!

Alec Motyer

Bishopsteignton, 1998