Isaiah 55–66 and the Psalms: Shared Viewpoints, Literary Similarities, and Neighboring Authors

Abstract

Abstract:One of the main results of the last thirty years of research on the books of Isaiah and Psalms is that both are not just collections of individual texts but well-organized compositions. This is not unique to Isaiah and Psalms but applies to every book of the Old Testament. What is very special about these two books, however, is the centrality of Zion, the contrast of the righteous and the wicked, the inclusion of non-Israelites, the singing to YHWH, and the reservation regarding the sacrificial cult. A few scholars have already put forward the idea of temple singers as collective authors, who had begun their oratorio of hope in the Babylonian exile and continued it after their return to Jerusalem under Darius, connecting it to the literary heritage of Isaiah ben Amoz and his disciples. In this article, I further test the closeness of Isaiah and Psalms by analyzing some striking similarities between Isa 55–66 and the book of Psalms. The goal of this research is not to prove the identity of the authors of both compositions but to substantiate their intellectual neighborhood in postexilic times.