Description

Olof Backersten presents an attempt to call into question the scholarly consensus that Isaiah 1-39 contains a social-critical discourse, i.e. passages where the Jerusalemite elite is condemned for their complacent attitudes, their decadent life-style, and their more or less systematic oppression of the poor. He argues that the texts that have been proffered as proofs belong instead, with surprisingly few although notable exceptions, to a foreign-political discourse where the target for the critique is Judah's decision to rebel against Assyria (not social injustice). The author also makes a novel suggestion concerning why and how a social-critical outlook has been related to a foreign-political discourse in the book of Isaiah as a whole.