J. Gordon McConville. Isaiah

McConville, professor emeritus of Old Testament theology at the University of Gloucestershire in Gloucestershire, England, is the series editor with Mark J. Boda of the Baker Commentary of the Old Testament Prophetic Books. McConville is well-known for his work on Deuteronomy and the prophets, and he brings years of theological insights to this work. His greatest contributions in this work are his overviews, his theological insights, and the thoroughness in explaining the biblical text (more than 725 pages). He highlights well the book’s rhetorical strategies and its relation to history, which are two of the major goals of the commentary series (p. viii). McConville also does a good job of highlighting theological reflections at the end of each section, but a few times these turn into more of a summary than a developed theological reflection of the section (see, e.g., pp. 72–73, 150–53, 225–26, 232).His introduction is very short, containing only seventeen pages. While the things he includes are important, it still could use further discussions on subjects like the purpose of the book, its distinctives, its genre, its editorial techniques, themes, etc. His discussion on authorship is extremely sparse. McConville briefly summarizes his view as: “The book was composed over a relatively long period and completed much later than Isaiah’s own lifetime” (p. 8). While a fairly common modern view, his arguments did not seem all that convincing. He argues that the book’s rhetorical discourse calls for responses from the audience that could not have been made from people in Isaiah’s day (p. 9). McConville is correct, but few have ever argued that the book is only written to people in Isaiah’s day but to the nation of Israel and even its lasting significance to believers throughout history—certainly some of these would be around to confirm Isaiah’s predictions. Still, this is a rather small part of the commentary (though admittedly foundational to the whole book), and one can certainly gain much from his commentary whether they agree with his idea of authorship or not.McConville follows a fairly common breakdown of the book into the following sections: Chapters 1–12, 13–27, 28–35, 36–39, 40–55, and 56–66. Though he mentions the three introductions in the first part of the book (1:1; 2:1; 13:1) and at least two of the three refrains in the second half of the book (48:22; 57:21; 66:24), he surprisingly does not substantially use them in his section structure.The structure of each section of the commentary is very clear: (1) an overview; (2) an English translation with notes on vocabulary, grammar, textual issues, or literary forms mentioned in footnotes; (3) the interpretation of smaller units (anywhere from a verse to several verses); and (4) theological reflections. The English translations seem unnecessary given the numerous English translations now available and any significant changes could be discussed in the commentary section. The use of transliterations makes his work accessible for most people to see similar sounding words, plays on words, or significant Hebrew words. He preserves the more technical discussions for the footnotes, including things like specific readings of the Septuagint, specific Hebrew forms (niphal, piel, hiphil ), ketivs and qeres, and parts of speech. The interpretation section includes specific historical issues, important vocabulary, grammatical issues and other things related to the specific texts, and this is certainly the greatest contribution of this commentary.McConville makes clear and appropriate general theological reflections and applications from the biblical text (pp. 98–100, 113–16, 193–94, 458–459, 498, 613, 632) but is vague and indecisive when explaining more direct prophecies. He correctly argues that some of the prophesies are shaped or formed to point forward toward the New Testament; for example, in Isaiah 42, he says, “the servant has echoes of both Israel and Cyrus and is involved in the ‘new things’ that Yahweh is doing . . . ” (p. 474). Then in the “Theological Reflection,” he says, “the role of Israel as servant takes further shape in the memorable commission to be ‘a covenant for people, light for nations’” (p. 486), but he does not really explain how this development takes place or how this passage can be applied to Jesus by Simeon in Luke 2:32. Also, McConville states about Isaiah 7: “Matthew’s reception of the sign is faithful to Isaiah’s presentation of it in the sense that, both as it came to Ahaz and as it is fulfilled in Jesus, it comes at times when Israel is threatened or subdued by a hostile foreign power. . . . As in chapter 7, the theological reach of the chapter embraces both the events and issues in the time when Isaiah spoke and issues and events well beyond it” (p. 151). While what McConville says may be correct, he gives little guidance as to how this is the case. Another example is Isaiah 52:13–53:12, where McConville admits that the passage cannot be “straightforwardly applied to Israel” but then states: “The poem’s silences have contributed to its availability for appropriation. The NT and early church found in it an unparalleled resource for understanding the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus” (p. 604). But why they do this and whether it is a legitimate use of this passage are questions that are never answered in this commentary.This commentary is extremely useful for its explanation of the text and some of its theological insights. Whether or not you agree with McConville’s methodology or conclusions, it clearly fulfils at least part of its goals by highlighting the book of Isaiah’s rhetorical strategies and its relation to history. It seems to be weaker in describing how passages from Isaiah can be used by the New Testament authors, but to be fair this is clearly a difficult issue that has been contested throughout the ages and still continues to be debated.