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For more than three decades, I have had the privilege and opportunity to teach the book of Isaiah at various venues and to diverse audiences. These audiences include BYU students of Biblical Hebrew, Education Week classes, Sunday School classes, youth groups, firesides, professionals in the field of biblical studies (scholars, professors, and academic researchers), religious groups from various faiths, and short online videos. I have enjoyed teaching very specific Hebrew terms in Isaiah; his parallelistic configurations, literary devices and figures of speech; his religious themes; and much more. Over the course of time, I have also taught the topics that are found in this chapter—prophetic speech forms in Isaiah, categories of prophecy in Isaiah, the prophetic perfect tense, prophecies of judgment in Isaiah, and the names God, LORD, and Lord in Isaiah. Each of the topics in this chapter can provide readers with additional understanding of Isaiah’s extraordinary book.

Prophetic Speech Forms in Isaiah

Old Testament prophets used a number of speech forms, or formulaic expressions, when they revealed God’s word to their audiences. These speech forms, indicative of prophetic authority and prerogative, are largely unique to the prophets and their revelatory world. That is to say, such expressions as “Thus saith the Lord,” “H��arken to the word of the Lord,” and “The Lord has sworn” are not common to the worlds of government and law, commerce and trade, or people’s everyday speech. Rather, these expressions belong to prophets and indicate their authority to speak in the Lord’s name. These expressions also demonstrate that prophetic speech forms focus on the Lord—nearly all of them include the Lord’s name.

Table 14.1 features five prominent prophetic speech forms in Isaiah’s text: the messenger formula, the proclamation formula, the oath formula, the woe oracle, and the revelation formula. For each of the five speech forms, the table includes the name of the form, the words of the form, scriptural examples, and the purpose of the form.

Table 14.1. Prophetic Speech Forms in Isaiah

Categories of Prophecy in Isaiah

Learning the different types of prophecy in the scriptures can help us gain a better appreciation of the prophetic word, how God’s prophets prophesy, and how prophecies are fulfilled. Below, I examine the six different types of prophecy.

Conditional Prophecy

The prophecy is not absolute, but contains a condition or stipulation (often introduced with the conjunction “if”). For instance, Isaiah 1:19–20 contains two conditional prophecies: “If ye be willing and obedient, ye shall eat the good of the land: But if ye refuse and rebel, ye shall be devoured with the sword” (emphasis added). See also the conditional prophecy in Isaiah 59:9–11.

Unconditional Prophecy

No conditions are attached to the prophecy; it will be fulfilled regardless of circumstances. Several examples exist in Isaiah, including the following examples in Isaiah 53 (regarding the suffering Messiah): “Surely he hath borne our griefs, and carried our sorrows” (v. 4); “H�� was wounded for our transgressions, he was bruised for our iniquities” (v. 5); and “H�� was oppressed, and he was afflicted” (v. 7).

Single Fulfillment

A prophecy that has only one legitimate fulfillment. For example, some of the prophecies pertaining to Jesus Christ’s atoning sacrifice have a single fulfillment, meaning they occurred at one distinct time, such as the following from Isaiah 53: “And he bare the sin of many, and made intercession for the transgressors” (v. 12).

Multiple Fulfillment

A prophecy that has multiple potential fulfillments—that is, the prophecy will be fulfilled multiple times. On this topic, see chapter 12, “Ways to Read Isaiah—Six Outlooks.”

Symbolic Action as Prophecy

A symbolic action as prophecy is a nonverbal communication that prefigures a future situation. An example appears in Isaiah’s dramatization (20:1–6), in which he was commanded to walk “naked and barefoot,” as a symbolic action as prophecy. Isaiah’s action prophesied of the time when the Assyrians would take the Egyptians and Ethiopians captive and cause them to walk naked like slaves.

Type

A type is a symbol that serves as a prophecy and finds fulfillment in a later historic occurrence or event, sometimes called “a type and a shadow.” For example, the brazen serpent was a type of Christ on the cross; and the Day of Atonement was a type that foreshadowed Jesus Christ’s Atonement. Types and shadows in Isaiah include Isaiah and his children (“for signs and for wonders,” 8:18); the cities Sodom and Gomorrah; and the nations of Assyria, Egypt, Edom (Idumea), and Babylon, which are also types and shadows of ungodly peoples in the last days.

The Prophetic Perfect Tense

On occasion, Isaiah used the grammatical past tense or the present tense when he referred to future events. Biblical Hebrew scholars call this the “prophetic past tense” or the “prophetic perfect.” As Joüon and Muraoka explain, “In prophecies a future event is sometimes regarded as having already been accomplished.”[1] The prophetic past tense can be very confusing to readers, because when we use the past tense in our everyday speech and writings, we refer to things that have already happened. For example, if we say, “I purchased some food at the store,” we know that this is a completed action, because “purchased” is the past tense of the verb “to purchase.” Other examples of the past tense include “she went to the temple,” “they walked in the park,” “the queen reigned for twenty years,” and so forth.

Seven centuries before Jesus Christ’s crucifixion, Isaiah prophesied that the Messiah “was wounded for our transgressions” (53:5; emphasis added). He used the grammatical past tense for a future event. Isaiah used the prophetic perfect in the following examples from Isaiah 53 (emphasis added):

• “H�� hath bourne our griefs, and carried our sorrows” (v. 4)
• “H�� was bruised for our iniquities” (v. 5)
• “The chastisement of our peace was upon him” (v. 5)
• “The Lord hath laid on him the iniquity of us all” (v. 6)
• “H�� was oppressed, and he was afflicted” (v. 7)
• “H�� was cut off out of the land of the living” (v. 8)

There are additional examples of the prophetic perfect in the book of Isaiah.

The Book of Mormon prophet Abinadi’s explanation helps us to better understand the prophetic perfect. After he employed the prophetic perfect, he then explained its use: “Now if Christ had not come into the world, speaking of things to come as though they had already come, there could have been no redemption” (Mosiah 16:6; italics added; see also Jarom 1:11). Abinadi, along with Isaiah, spoke of Christ’s coming into the world as if the event had already occurred.

Prophecies of Judgment in Isaiah

Nephi spoke concerning God’s judgments and prophetic warnings to peoples, cities, and nations in Isaiah’s writings (see 2 Nephi 25:6). By studying these prophetic warnings, we can learn much regarding the way that the Lord God deals with wicked communities and dispenses his punishments on them. We can also liken them to us and our day and age. These particular prophecies generally consist of three parts: (1) the introduction (“A prophecy against/a burden of [Babylon, Moab, Assyria, the wicked, and so forth]”), (2) the reason for the judgment (the accusation), and (3) the judgment itself (what will happen to the wicked if they do not repent).

Isaiah offers several of these prophecies, generally introduced with the words “A prophecy against” (from the Hebrew masa’, which literally means “a burden”). Table 14.2 lists the cases of prophecies of judgment in Isaiah (together with the scriptural references).

Table 14.2. Prophecies of Judgment in Isaiah

The Names God, LORD, and Lord in Isaiah

God

The Hebrew name Elohim (generally translated “God” or “gods”) is attested 94 times in Isaiah, and El (generally translated “God” or “god”) appears 22 times.

The Divine Names Elohim and El written in modern Hebrew font.

LORD

The Hebrew Yahweh, from which we have the name Jehovah, is translated “LORD” (in all uppercase letters) in the King James Version. This convention to employ LORD rather than Jehovah was held by many early English translations of the Old Testament. LORD is attested 450 times in Isaiah.

The Divine Name Yahweh written in modern Hebrew font.

Lord

The Hebrew adon or adonai is translated “Lord” (lowercase letters). The convention to employ Lord was also held by many early English translations of the Old Testament, including the King James Version. Lord appears 64 times in Isaiah.

The Divine Name adonai written in modern Hebrew font.

Conclusion

The book of Isaiah is a magnificent work, in part because it is comprised of a host of fascinating components and parts. We have closely examined many of these components in previous chapters—Isaiah’s poetry, his use of multiple speakers, and his employment of symbols, literary devices and writing techniques. In this chapter, we have learned of other significant matters that assist us as we endeavor to comprehend Isaiah’s writings, including the following:

• Prophetic speech forms that are indicative of prophetic authority and prerogative, which are largely unique to the prophets and their revelatory world.
• Categories of prophecy in Isaiah that can help us gain a better appreciation of how God’s prophets prophesy and how their prophecies are fulfilled.
• The prophetic perfect tense, which helps us to comprehend why Isaiah used past-tense forms when he prophesied of future events.
• Prophecies of judgment, which are prophetic warnings to peoples, cities, and nations.
• The eternally significant names of God (El and Elohim), LORD (Yahweh—Jehovah), and Lord (adon or adonai).

All these components serve to demonstrate that Isaiah’s writings are, indeed, of utmost import to us, even though we are more than 2,700 years removed from the time that Isaiah lived and prophesied.

Notes

[1] Joüon andMuraoka, Grammar of Biblical Hebrew, 335.