page_title: Isaiah
section_title: Biography
hierarchical_section_title: Isaiah / Biography
caption_attribution_description: Isaiah stained glass window at St. Matthew's Lutheran Church in Charleston, SC.
context_page_description: Isaiah was the 8th-century BC Israelite prophet after whom the Book of Isaiah is named.
  Within the text of the Book of Isaiah, Isaiah himself is referred to as "the prophet", but the exact relationship between the Book of Isaiah and any such historical Isaiah is complicated. The traditional view is that all 66 chapters of the book of Isaiah were written by one man, Isaiah, possibly in two periods between 740 BC and c. 686 BC, separated by approximately 15 years, and that the book includes dramatic prophetic declarations of Cyrus the Great in the Bible, acting to restore the nation of Israel from Babylonian captivity. Another widely held view is that parts of the first half of the book originated with the historical prophet, interspersed with prose commentaries written in the time of King Josiah a hundred years later, and that the remainder of the book dates from immediately before and immediately after the end of the exile in Babylon, almost two centuries after the time of the historical prophet.
context_section_description: The first verse of the Book of Isaiah states that Isaiah prophesied during the reigns of Uzziah (or Azariah), Jotham, Ahaz, and Hezekiah, the kings of Judah (Isaiah 1:1). Uzziah's reign was 52 years in the middle of the 8th century BC, and Isaiah must have begun his ministry a few years before Uzziah's death, probably in the 740s BC. Isaiah lived until the fourteenth year of the reign of Hezekiah (who died 698 BC). He may have been contemporary for some years with Manasseh. Thus Isaiah may have prophesied for as long as 64 years.
  According to some modern interpretations, Isaiah's wife was called "the prophetess" (Isaiah 8:3), either because she was endowed with the prophetic gift, like Deborah (Judges 4:4) and Huldah (2 Kings 22:14–20), or simply because she was the "wife of the prophet". They had three sons, naming the eldest Shear-jashub, meaning "A remnant shall return" (Isaiah 7:3), the next Immanuel, meaning "God with us" (Isaiah 7:14), and the youngest, Maher-Shalal-Hash-Baz, meaning, "Spoil quickly, plunder speedily" (Isaiah 8:3).
  Soon after this, Shalmaneser V determined to subdue the kingdom of Israel, taking over and destroying Samaria (722 BC). So long as Ahaz reigned, the kingdom of Judah was untouched by the Assyrian power. But when Hezekiah gained the throne, he was encouraged to rebel "against the king of Assyria" (2 Kings 18:7), and entered into an alliance with the king of Egypt (Isaiah 30:2–4). The king of Assyria threatened the king of Judah, and at length invaded the land. Sennacherib (701 BC) led a powerful army into Judah. Hezekiah was reduced to despair, and submitted to the Assyrians (2 Kings 18:14–16). But after a brief interval, war broke out again. Again Sennacherib led an army into Judah, one detachment of which threatened Jerusalem (Isaiah 36:2–22; 37:8). Isaiah on that occasion encouraged Hezekiah to resist the Assyrians (37:1–7), whereupon Sennacherib sent a threatening letter to Hezekiah, which he "spread before the LORD" (37:14).
  Then Isaiah the son of Amoz sent unto Hezekiah, saying: "Thus saith the LORD, the God of Israel: Whereas thou hast prayed to Me against Sennacherib king of Assyria,
  this is the word which the LORD hath spoken concerning him: The virgin daughter of Zion hath despised thee and laughed thee to scorn; the daughter of Jerusalem hath shaken her head at thee.
  
  Whom hast thou taunted and blasphemed? And against whom hast thou exalted thy voice? Yea, thou hast lifted up thine eyes on high, even against the Holy One of Israel!" (37:21–23)
  According to the account in 2 Kings 19 (and its derivative account in 2 Chronicles 32) an angel of God fell on the Assyrian army and 185,000 of its men were killed in one night. "Like Xerxes in Greece, Sennacherib never recovered from the shock of the disaster in Judah. He made no more expeditions against either Southern Palestine or Egypt."
  The remaining years of Hezekiah's reign were peaceful (2 Chr 32:23–29). Isaiah probably lived to its close, and possibly into the reign of Manasseh. The time and manner of his death are not specified in either the Bible or other primary sources. The Talmud [Yevamot 49b] says that he suffered martyrdom by being sawn in two under the orders of Manasseh. According to rabbinic literature, Isaiah was the maternal grandfather of Manasseh.
  The book of Isaiah, along with the book of Jeremiah, is distinctive in the Hebrew bible for its direct portrayal of the "wrath of the Lord" as presented, for example, in Isaiah 9:19 stating, "Through the wrath of the Lord of hosts is the land darkened, and the people shall be as the fuel of the fire."
caption: Isaiah receives his vision of the Lord's house. A stained glass window at St. Matthew's German Evangelical Lutheran Church in Charleston, South Carolina
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