Word Biblical Commentary, Volume 24: Isaiah 1-33

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Each section of Word Biblical Commentary Vol. 24: Isaiah 1-33 is divided into several subsections, which enable students of the Bible to approach their study of Isaiah from whichever angle they like. Much like a play, Chapters 1-33 of Isaiah are separated into five acts which each have several scenes and episodes. Every scene contains the following sections:

• Bibliographies have been assembled to provide the reader with access to literature on the passage or subject at hand. They are listed whether or not they have been used by the author or cited in this commentary.
• Translations are deliberately literal to give the reader a starting point for understanding the Hebrew idiom. The metrical notation is not, and cannot be definitive. It is intended to convey the general poetic pattern of parallelism.
• Notes deal with textual variations and explain the reasons for translations. In Isaiah there are many hapax legomena, words that occur only once in the Bible, so that the need to explain word meanings is immense. Grammatical explanations that will help the student translator are also included.
• Form, Structure and Setting sections draw on form-critical and redactional studies whre applicable. They have analyzed sections to find the literary genre and to show other evidences of the shape of the compositions that may aid understanding and exposition. Throughout the discussion, the reader will find more structural analyses showing the use of an arch form than traditional outlines.
• Comment sections deal with the meanings of words or of a verse or two at a time, providing information that may add to the reader's understanding. Sometimes this leads into word-studies that relate the use of a word in a verse to its use in the larger work or even in the Old Testament as a whole. Occasionally an Excursus is used to give a more complete discussion of a pertinent subject.
• Explanation sections attempt to pull together the insights from the earlier sections to show what a passage as a whole is about and what it means in the context of the Vision.

• Who was Isaiah?
• What is Isaiah?
• Who were the book's first readers?
• How was the book composed? (Starting Point, Materials, Goals and Methods)
• How did Isaiah influence early Judaism and the New Testament?