The Book of Isaias (Isaiah)

The Book of Isaias opens the Prophets in the Catholic Bible, after the wisdom books and before Jeremias. Its Latin title in the Vulgate is Liber Isaiae; modern English Bibles spell the name Isaiah. It is the longest of the prophetic books and the prophet the New Testament quotes most: Our Lord read from it at Nazareth, St John the Baptist described his mission in its words, and the Ethiopian of the Acts was reading it in his chariot.

St Jerome, in his preface to the book, wrote that Isaias "should be called not so much a prophet as an evangelist," because he set out the mysteries of Christ and the Church so plainly "that you would think he was not foretelling the future, but composing a history of the past." Below this guide, every chapter is given in the Latin Vulgate beside the Douay-Rheims.

The prophet Isaias and the authorship of the book

The book names its author in its first line: "The vision of Isaias the son of Amos, which he saw concerning Juda and Jerusalem in the days of Ozias, Joathan, Achaz, and Ezechias, kings of Juda" (Isaias 1). Isaias lived in Jerusalem, counselled its kings, and was married to "the prophetess" of chapter 8; his father Amos is not the prophet Amos of Thecue.

The Church has always received the whole book as the work of this one prophet, and the witnesses are many. The Holy Ghost, speaking in Ecclesiasticus 48, praises "Isaias, the great prophet, and faithful in the sight of God," who "with a great spirit... saw the things that are to come to pass at last, and comforted the mourners in Sion" (48:25, 27): the comfort of Sion is the very matter of chapters 40 to 66. 2 Paralipomenon records that Isaias wrote the acts of King Ozias (26:22) and that the deeds of Ezechias were written "in the vision of Isaias the son of Amos, the prophet" (32:32).

The New Testament cites both halves of the book under his name: St John quotes Isaias 53:1 and Isaias 6:10 side by side and adds, "These things said Isaias, when he saw his glory, and spoke of him" (John 12:38-41); St Matthew applies Isaias 40:3 to the Baptist (Matthew 3:3); and the eunuch of Queen Candace was reading "Isaias the prophet" at chapter 53 when Philip met him (Acts 8).

When the question of several authors was raised in modern times, the Pontifical Biblical Commission answered it in its decision of 28 June 1908, On the character and author of the Book of Isaias, approved by St Pius X. It affirmed that the book contains true prophecies; that a prophet may speak of things far off and address a future generation, so that the standpoint of the Exile in chapters 40 to 66 does not prove a later writer; and that neither the arguments from language and style, nor all the arguments taken together, prove that the book must be ascribed to two or more authors. Many modern scholars divide the book between Isaias and later disciples (a "Second" and "Third Isaiah"); we hold to the teaching the Church has received, which the New Testament itself supposes.

Tradition holds that Isaias died a martyr under the wicked King Manasses, sawn asunder. St Justin Martyr records it in his Dialogue with Trypho (120), the Talmud repeats it, and many Fathers saw an allusion to him in Hebrews 11:37: "they were cut asunder." The Roman Martyrology commemorates him on 6 July.

Date and historical setting

Isaias received his call "in the year that king Ozias died" (Isaias 6), that is, about 740 BC, and he was still prophesying during the invasion of Sennacherib in 701 BC. His ministry therefore covered some forty years in the eighth century before Christ, through the reigns of Joathan, Achaz and Ezechias, and perhaps into the first years of Manasses. The book was written over that ministry, more than a century before the fall of Jerusalem in 586 BC and long before Cyrus, whom it names (44:28; 45:1).

The setting explains much of the book. Assyria was swallowing the small kingdoms of the West, Israel fell in 722 BC, and Juda was tempted to trust in Egypt or Assyria rather than in the Lord. Isaias stood before Achaz and Ezechias with one counsel: faith. "If you will not believe, you shall not continue" (7:9). The history of these reigns is told in 4 Kings 18–20, whose account of Ezechias is repeated almost word for word in Isaias 36 to 39.

Summary of the Book of Isaias, chapter by chapter

Isaias is about the holiness of God and the salvation He prepares for a sinful people. It moves from judgment to consolation: through the Child born of the Virgin, the King of David's line and the suffering Servant, God gathers a remnant of Israel and the Gentiles into a new Jerusalem. The book falls into two great parts, the oracles of judgment in chapters 1 to 39 and the "Book of Consolation" in chapters 40 to 66, with the history of Ezechias between them.

Juda and Jerusalem, and the Book of Emmanuel (chapters 1–12)

The book opens with God's lawsuit against His people: "The ox knoweth his owner, and the ass his master's crib: but Israel hath not known me" (Isaias 1). Chapter 2 sees all nations streaming to the mountain of the Lord, and chapter 5 sings the song of the vineyard that brought forth wild grapes. Chapter 6 is the prophet's call in the Temple.

Chapters 7 to 12, often called the Book of Emmanuel, are spoken in the crisis of the Syro-Ephraimite war: to the faithless Achaz God gives the sign of the Virgin and Emmanuel (chapter 7), then promises the Child who is "God the Mighty" (chapter 9) and the rod from the root of Jesse on whom the Spirit rests (chapter 11), and ends in a hymn of thanksgiving (chapter 12).

Oracles against the nations (chapters 13–23)

These chapters pronounce "burdens" on Babylon, whose fallen king is taunted as Lucifer in chapter 14, on Assyria, the Philistines, Moab, Damascus, Egypt, Edom, Arabia and Tyre (chapters 13–23). Even here mercy breaks through: in chapter 19 Egypt itself will build an altar to the Lord and be called His people.

The judgment of the world (chapters 24–27)

Sometimes called the "Apocalypse of Isaias," chapters 24 to 27 widen the horizon to the whole earth, its judgment and the final banquet of the Lord on His mountain, where "he shall cast death down headlong for ever: and the Lord God shall wipe away tears from every face" (Isaias 25:8). St John takes them up in Apocalypse 21.

Woes on Jerusalem and the promise of the King (chapters 28–35)

Chapters 28 to 33 warn Juda against trusting in Egypt and promise "a tried stone, a corner stone, a precious stone" laid in Sion (28:16), which St Peter applies to Christ (1 Peter 2:6). Chapter 32 announces a king who shall reign in justice. Then, in chapter 35, the blossoming of the desert: "Then shall the eyes of the blind be opened, and the ears of the deaf shall be unstopped."

Ezechias, Sennacherib and the sign of the sun (chapters 36–39)

These chapters tell how, at Ezechias' prayer and Isaias' word, the angel of the Lord struck the Assyrian army besieging Jerusalem (chapters 36–37); how Ezechias was healed of his sickness and the shadow went back on the dial as a sign (chapter 38), with the king's canticle sung at Lauds; and how his display of treasures to the envoys of Babylon drew the prophecy of the exile (chapter 39).

The Book of Consolation (chapters 40–48)

"Be comforted, be comforted, my people, saith your God" (Isaias 40). The prophet announces to the exiles their return from Babylon. The Lord mocks the idols made by craftsmen (chapter 44) and raises up Cyrus, "my anointed," to set His people free (chapter 45). Here too appears the first song of the Servant of the Lord in chapter 42.

The Servant and the Suffering (chapters 49–57)

The Servant is called from his mother's womb to be "the light of the Gentiles" (chapter 49), struck and spat upon without turning away his face (chapter 50), and in the fourth song, from 52:13 through chapter 53, wounded for our iniquities and led as a lamb to the slaughter. Sion then hears that her children will be more than she can number (chapter 54), and all who thirst are invited to the waters (chapter 55).

The new Jerusalem and the new heavens (chapters 58–66)

The last chapters teach the true fast (chapter 58), the dawn of glory over Jerusalem to which the Gentiles come bearing gold and frankincense (chapter 60), the Anointed sent to preach to the meek (chapter 61), and the Conqueror who comes from Edom in garments red from the winepress (chapter 63). The book ends with the promise of "new heavens and a new earth" (chapter 65) and with the gathering of all nations to see the glory of the Lord (chapter 66).

Themes and the Catholic reading

The Holy One of Israel. No title of God is more Isaias' own. The vision of the seraphim crying "Holy, holy, holy" governs the whole book: sin offends the infinite holiness of God, and salvation is His work alone. The Church sings the seraphim's words in the Sanctus of every Mass, and before the Gospel the priest prays the Munda cor meum, asking God, who cleansed the lips of the prophet Isaias with a burning coal, to cleanse his heart and lips. The seraphim themselves are the highest of the nine choirs of angels.

The Virgin and Emmanuel. "Behold a virgin shall conceive, and bear a son, and his name shall be called Emmanuel" (7:14). St Matthew declares it fulfilled in the birth of Our Lord (Matthew 1:22-23). Against translators who rendered the word "young woman," St Irenaeus defended the reading "virgin" of the Septuagint and the Apostles (Against Heresies III, 21), and the Church has always read it of the virginal conception of Christ. Many Fathers also saw Our Lady in the "rod out of the root of Jesse" (11:1), the virga of the Vulgate, from which the flower, Christ, rises.

The Messias, King and God. The Child of chapter 9 is "God the Mighty, the Father of the world to come, and the Prince of Peace"; the shoot of Jesse in chapter 11 receives the sevenfold Spirit. From Isaias 11:2-3, which the Vulgate gives with seven names, the Church draws the number of the seven gifts of the Holy Ghost. These titles fill the liturgy of Advent, and three of the great O Antiphons, O Radix Jesse, O Clavis David and O Emmanuel, are taken from Isaias 11:10, 22:22 and 7:14.

The suffering Servant and the Passion. Isaias 53 is the clearest prophecy of the Passion in the Old Testament: "he was wounded for our iniquities, he was bruised for our sins: the chastisement of our peace was upon him, and by his bruises we are healed." Philip, beginning from it, "preached unto him Jesus" (Acts 8:35); St Peter echoes it: "by whose stripes you were healed" (1 Peter 2:24).

St Augustine quotes it at length in The City of God (XVIII, 29). The Fathers read the Servant as Christ suffering in our place, the satisfaction that the Council of Trent teaches when it says that Our Lord "merited justification for us by His most holy Passion on the wood of the cross, and made satisfaction for us unto God the Father" (Session VI, chapter 7). We follow the prophecy through the Gospels in the Passion of Jesus Christ.

The call of the Gentiles and the Church. Isaias sees all nations flowing to the house of the Lord and kings walking in the brightness of Jerusalem's rising. St Augustine tells in his Confessions (IX, 5) that St Ambrose advised him, before his baptism, to read Isaias, because he more plainly foretells the Gospel and the calling of the Gentiles. The Fathers read the new Jerusalem of the last chapters as the Church, mother of the nations.

Famous chapters and verses of Isaiah

Isaiah 6, "Here am I, send me." "In the year that king Ozias died, I saw the Lord sitting upon a throne high and elevated... Upon it stood the seraphims... And they cried one to another, and said: Holy, holy, holy, the Lord God of hosts, all the earth is full of his glory." A seraph cleanses the prophet's lips with a live coal, and then "I heard the voice of the Lord, saying: Whom shall I send? and who shall go for us? And I said: Lo, here am I, send me" (6:1-8, Isaias 6).

Isaiah 1:18. "If your sins be as scarlet, they shall be made as white as snow: and if they be red as crimson, they shall be white as wool" (Isaias 1).

Isaiah 3:18-20, the ornaments of the daughters of Sion. The passage behind searches for the "anklet chain from the Book of Isaiah": "In that day the Lord will take away the ornaments of shoes, and little moons, and chains and necklaces, and bracelets... and ornaments of the legs" (Isaias 3).

Isaiah 7:14. "Behold a virgin shall conceive, and bear a son, and his name shall be called Emmanuel" (Isaias 7).

Isaiah 9:6. "For a CHILD IS BORN to us, and a son is given to us, and the government is upon his shoulder: and his name shall be called, Wonderful, Counsellor, God the Mighty, the Father of the world to come, and the Prince of Peace" (Isaias 9), the Introit Puer natus est of the third Mass of Christmas.

Isaiah 14:12. "How art thou fallen from heaven, O Lucifer, who didst rise in the morning?" Challoner notes that it is spoken "according to the letter" of the king of Babylon, and may be applied spiritually to the prince of devils, "who was created a bright angel, but fell by pride and rebellion against God" (Isaias 14).

Isaiah 40:31. "They that hope in the Lord shall renew their strength, they shall take wings as eagles, they shall run and not be weary, they shall walk and not faint" (Isaias 40).

Isaiah 42:1. "Behold my servant, I will uphold him: my elect, my soul delighteth in him: I have given my spirit upon him" (Isaias 42), applied to Our Lord in Matthew 12.

Isaiah 53. "Despised, and the most abject of men, a man of sorrows... All we like sheep have gone astray... and the Lord hath laid on him the iniquity of us all" (53:3-6, Isaias 53).

Isaiah 58:6-7, the true fast. "Is not this rather the fast that I have chosen?... Deal thy bread to the hungry, and bring the needy and the harbourless into thy house" (Isaias 58).

Isaiah 61:1. "The spirit of the Lord is upon me, because the Lord hath anointed me: he hath sent me to preach to the meek." Our Lord read it at Nazareth: "This day is fulfilled this scripture in your ears" (Luke 4:21; Isaias 61).

Its place in the canon and in the liturgy

Isaias is a protocanonical book of the Old Testament, received by Jews and Christians alike, and listed by the Council of Trent among the sacred and canonical books (Session IV, 1546). It is the first of the four greater prophets, before Jeremias with Baruch, Ezechiel and Daniel; in the Hebrew Bible it stands among the Prophets (Nevi'im), not in the Torah. The Douay-Rheims keeps the Latin name Isaias; the King James and modern versions write Isaiah, with the same chapters and verses. Our texts are the Latin Vulgate of St Jerome and the Douay-Rheims Bible.

In the Roman Breviary the lessons of Matins in Advent are taken from Isaias. In the 1962 Missal Isaias gives the Introit Rorate caeli (45:8) of the fourth Sunday of Advent, most of the lessons of the Advent Ember Days, among them the prophecy of the Virgin (7:10-15), which is also the Epistle of the Annunciation; the Introit Puer natus est of Christmas; and the Epistle of the Epiphany, "Arise, be enlightened, O Jerusalem: for thy light is come" (60:1-6). In Holy Week, the Mass of Wednesday has two lessons from Isaias, the Conqueror from Edom (62:11; 63:1-7) and the whole of the fourth Servant song (53:1-12). Follow these days in our liturgical calendar and Today's Gospel.

How to read the Book of Isaiah

Read it in its seasons, as the Church does: in Advent, in Passiontide, at the Epiphany. For a first reading, begin with the call of Isaias 6, then the Book of Emmanuel in chapters 7 to 12, then go straight to the consolation of chapter 40 and read through to the end; return afterwards to the oracles against the nations. Read a chapter at a time, with the Latin beside the English: where the Douay is obscure, the Vulgate often makes it plain.

Frequently Asked Questions

Who wrote the Book of Isaiah?

The Church has always received it as the work of the prophet Isaias, son of Amos, who prophesied in Jerusalem in the eighth century BC. The book names him in its first verse, and the New Testament quotes both halves under his name (John 12:38-41; Acts 8:28). The Pontifical Biblical Commission in 1908 held the arguments for several authors inconclusive, though many modern scholars assign chapters 40 to 66 to later writers.

How many authors wrote the Book of Isaiah?

In the traditional Catholic teaching, one: the prophet Isaias, inspired by the Holy Ghost. The theory of a "Second" and "Third Isaiah" rests mainly on chapters 40 to 66 addressing the exiles; the Pontifical Biblical Commission answered in 1908 that a true prophet can speak to a future generation.

When was the Book of Isaiah written?

It was written during the ministry of Isaias, from about 740 BC, "the year that king Ozias died" (Isaias 6:1), until after the siege of Jerusalem by Sennacherib in 701 BC. That is the eighth century before Christ, under Joathan, Achaz and Ezechias, kings of Juda; scholars who divide the book date its later chapters to the Exile and after.

What is the Book of Isaiah about?

It is about the holiness of God, His judgment on sin, and the salvation He promises through the Messias. Chapters 1 to 39 rebuke Juda and the nations and announce Emmanuel, born of a virgin; chapters 40 to 66 comfort the exiles, present the suffering Servant who dies for the sins of many, and foretell the new Jerusalem. The Fathers read it as the Gospel foretold.

How many chapters are in the Book of Isaiah?

The Book of Isaias has 66 chapters, in the Douay-Rheims and the Vulgate as in the King James and modern Bibles. You can read every chapter, Latin and English side by side, from the Book of Isaias on our site.

Is the Book of Isaiah in the Old Testament or the Torah?

Isaias is in the Old Testament, the first of the four greater prophets, before Jeremias. It is not part of the Torah, which is the five books of Moses; in the Hebrew Bible it belongs to the Prophets.

Was the Book of Isaiah in the Dead Sea Scrolls?

Yes. The Great Isaiah Scroll, discovered in 1947 in the first cave at Qumran, contains all 66 chapters and was copied around the second century before Christ, one of the oldest complete manuscripts of any book of the Bible. Its text agrees substantially with the Hebrew text that St Jerome translated for the Vulgate a few centuries later.

What does the Book of Isaiah teach us?

It teaches that God is thrice holy, that He calls His people to penance, faith and justice toward the poor, and that He keeps His promises. Above all it teaches us to know Christ: born of the Virgin, filled with the sevenfold Spirit, wounded for our iniquities, and King of the new Jerusalem. St Jerome wrote in his commentary on this book that ignorance of the Scriptures is ignorance of Christ.

Read the whole Book of Isaias verse by verse, in Latin and English, in the Iter Fidei Catholic Bible app.

Sources. Holy Scripture, Douay-Rheims (Challoner) and Latin Vulgate: Isaias; Ecclesiasticus 48; 2 Paralipomenon 26 and 32; 4 Kings 18–20; Matthew 1, 3; Luke 4; John 12; Acts 8; Hebrews 11. St Jerome, Prologue to Isaias and Commentary on Isaias. St Irenaeus, Against Heresies III, 21. St Justin Martyr, Dialogue with Trypho 120. St Augustine, The City of God XVIII, 29, and Confessions IX, 5. Council of Trent, Session IV (1546) and Session VI, chapter 7 (1547). Pontifical Biblical Commission, De libri Isaiae indole et auctore, 28 June 1908. Bishop Challoner's notes to the Douay-Rheims. Catholic Encyclopedia (1913), "Isaias." Roman Martyrology, 6 July. Missale Romanum and Breviarium Romanum (1962).