Talking Back to God: An Examination of the Audience’s Prayers in the Book of Isaiah

Abstract

The book of Isaiah is marked by frequent instances of the audience character speaking. Notable among these speeches are five texts in which the audience character prays to YHWH: Isaiah 12, 26:1–18, 33:2, 59:9–15a, and 63:7–64:11. The question that this thesis seeks to answer is as follows: what is the rhetorical function of the prayers of the audience in the book of Isaiah? In order to answer this question, each chapter of this thesis examines one of the aforementioned prayers and examines it along two major lines. First, each chapter performs a textual analysis of one of the prayers with the aim of understanding its main argument. Second, each chapter interrogates one of the prayers according to its intertextual function within the book of Isaiah. Specifically, this section examines the prayer’s place in the structure of Isaiah, its contribution to Isaian themes, and its characterization of the audience of Isaiah. Of particular interest in the characterization section is the relationship between the author and audience.

The fruit of this analysis is the observation of three rhetorical effects wrought by the audience’s prayers in Isaiah. First, the prayers respond to and propose topics relevant to the broader argument of the book. Second, the development of the prayers makes use of a regressive metanarrative. Finally, the development of the prayers displays an author-audience coalescence.