"The Holy One of Israel" in the book Isaiah an exegetical study

Abstract

This study is a multi-dimensional exegesis of ‗רְדושׁ יִשְשָאֵל ‘ (‗the Holy One of Israel‘) in Isaiah as it occurs in the Biblia Hebraica Stuttgartensia (Elliger et al., 1997:675-779) (BHS5) and focuses on its origin, denotations, connotations and frames of reference. Regardless that twenty six of the thirty three explicit occurrences of ‗the Holy One of Israel‘ in the Hebrew Bible occur in Isaiah and despite that holiness of YHWH constitutes the nature of YHWH and of the religion expounded in the Hebrew Bible ( רְדֹשִׁים תִהְיוּ כִי רָדושׁ אֲנִי יְהוָה [be holy because I, YHWH, am holy] [e.g., Lev 19:2]), no in-depth multi-dimensional exegesis of ‗the Holy One of Israel‘ has been done to date. Exegesis is statement(s) on a word, a phrase, a sentence, a dream or a vision. It distinguishes objects/texts to be interpreted, objects in the interpretation and revelation of God. Exegesis is, therefore, undergirded by assumptions on knowledge, signs and symbols, how the signifier relates to the signified and by how people communicate – the ‗self‘ or ‗reader‘ is central.Multi-dimensional reading corroborates the central theoretical argument that ‗רְדושׁ יִשְשָאֵל ‘ (‗the Holy One of Israel‘) refers to YHWH, God of Israel, and that its connotations comprises jointly and severally the denotations and connotations of ‗רָדושׁ ‘ (‗holy‘) and ‗יִשְשָאֵל ‘ (‗Israel‘) depending on the context of each occurrence. The narrative and kerugma in Isaiah collaborate that the relationship between a literary work of art and the physical world is arbitrary, and that literary concept does not necessarily reflect the physical world. The tripartite Isaiah hypothesis that was the scholarly ―standard‖ since Duhm into the 1970s is still evident in contemporary publications although there is a growing dissatisfaction with it. The current agenda is controlled by a variety of new issues, methodologies and interpretive perspectives that either refresh, challenge or add to the scope of the previous interpretive agendas. The difficulty of identifying different fragments and editorial processes and of dating them with certainty, and the lack of consensus make the arguments for (dis)unity indefensible. Delimitating the minimum number of elements for intertextuality may lead to argumentum ad absurdum. Nonetheless historical critics in recent decades assume that Isaiah is essentially Second Temple compilations by elite. Notwithstanding these difficulties the layout of Masoretic Text of Isaiah suggests that 1–66 is a sequence while chronological distribution of Uzziah, Jotham, Ahaz and Hezekiah suggests continuity of 1–39. The activities of Isaiah, similarities across Isaiah, traditions, nature of prophecy, a glimpse of history interwoven with a hint of kerugma in Isaiah suggest that the content in Isaiah originated from the eighth century BCE Isaiah ben Amoz except editorial additions. Although scholarship is moving towards multi-dimensional and interdisciplinary approaches, there would be challenges in maintaining balance of emphases in approaches and assumptions in exegesis.