In Unwavering Holiness: Pivotal Moments in the Book of Isaiah, Part One, Walter Brueggemann and Brent Strawn lead readers through Isaiah 1-39, moving between looming predictions of punishment against Israel for breaking covenant with God and shining moments that lift the ultimate hope of Israel’s restoration.
Walter Brueggemann and Brent Strawn provide an accessible guide to Isaiah, in two parts, helping contemporary readers to grasp both the uncompromising demands of God’s holiness and God’s unshakable faithfulness to covenant relationship and desire to bring about a good future for God’s people. Isaiah is a dramatic book of prophecy and oracles that sweeps through the histories of Israel’s kings and dealings with surrounding nations, levying judgment, and destruction but also offering the hope of restoration, blessing, and shalom. This great prophet’s words are a lot to take in. Israel is taken to task for exploiting the poor and seeking security in political treaties and the human economy rather than in the fidelity of God. Ignoring the call of covenant to enact economic justice and righteousness for neighbors, Israel experiences the holy rule of God as working through geopolitical events that lead to the demise of Jerusalem. But Isaiah doesn’t rest here—Unwavering Holiness forecasts ahead to the promise of return to Jerusalem from the Babylonian exile and to the imagination of the early church, inspired by the poetry of Isaiah to place its hope in Jesus the Messiah.
The ultimacy of God’s governance and faithfulness in the swirl of global political chaos and fear anchors this Bible study, helping readers grasp Isaiah’s vision of the covenantal fidelity of the Lord who wills newness amid sordid failed history. This book will help readers seek to identify the movement of God in the seeming chaos of sociopolitical machinations—in the midst of the natural consequences of forsaking the holy way on a global scale (climate disaster and the self-destruction of fearful, power-mongering governments)—and to continue to look for the inbreaking of God’s shalom.
Questions for reflection and discussion are included at the end of each chapter, making this book ideal for individual or group study.
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Walter Brueggemann is William Marcellus McPheeters Professor Emeritus of Old Testament at Columbia Theological Seminary. An ordained minister in the United Church of Christ, he is the author of dozens of books, including Sabbath as Resistance: Saying No to the Culture of Now, A Gospel of Hope, and Interrupting Silence: God's Command to Speak Out.
Brent A. Strawn is Professor of Old Testament and Professor of Law at Duke University. Previously, he was the William Ragsdale Cannon Distinguished Professor of Old Testament at the Candler School of Theology at Emory University. He is the author of numerous articles, chapters, and books, including The Old Testament Is Dying: A Diagnosis and Recommended Treatment and The Old Testament: A Concise Introduction.