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12 - Isaiah as Poetry

from Part III - Isaiah as Literature

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  08 November 2024

By
J. Blake Couey
Edited by
Christopher B. Hays
Christopher B. Hays
Affiliation:
Fuller Theological Seminary, California
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Summary

J. Blake Couey, in “Isaiah as Poetry,” begins with the basic fact that nearly all of the book is written as poetry and encourages readers to approach it as such. He surveys its erudite vocabulary, its creative use of sound, and its parallelism and larger strophic structures. He closes with an extended appreciation of the “imaginative worlds” evoked in the book through the use of imagery and metaphors. He observes of its poetic vision that “its scope is nearly boundless.”

Keywords

poetryvocabularysoundmetaphorimaginationparallelismformimagery
Type
Chapter
Information
The Cambridge Companion to the Book of Isaiah , pp. 189 - 204
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2024

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References

Further Reading

Alonso Schökel, Luis. “Isaiah.” Pages 165–83 in The Literary Guide to the Bible, ed. Robert Alter and Frank Kermode. Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 1987.Google Scholar
Alter, Robert. The Art of Biblical Poetry. Rev. ed. New York: Basic Books, 2011.Google Scholar
Couey, J. Blake. “Poetry, Language, and Statecraft in Isaiah 18.” Pages 167–83 in Biblical Poetry and the Art of Close Reading. Edited by Couey, J. Blake and James, Elaine T.. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2018.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Couey, J. Blake. Reading the Poetry of First Isaiah: The Most Perfect Model of the Prophetic Poetry. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2015.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Culler, Jonathan. Literary Theory: A Very Short Introduction. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1997.Google Scholar
Dobbs-Allsopp, F. W. On Biblical Poetry. New York: Oxford University Press, 2015.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Eagleton, Terry. How to Read a Poem. Oxford: Blackwell, 2007.Google Scholar
Hays, Christopher B. “Damming Egypt/Damning Egypt: The Parnomasia of skr and the Unity of Isa 19, 1–10.” ZAW 120 (2008): 612–17.Google Scholar
Heffelfinger, Katie M. I Am Large, I Contain Multitudes: Lyric Cohesion and Conflict in Second Isaiah. BibleInt 105. Leiden: Brill, 2011.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Raffel, Burton. How to Read a Poem. New York: Meridian, 1984.Google Scholar
Roberts, J. J. M. “Double Entendre in First Isaiah.” CBQ 54 (1992): 39–48.Google Scholar
Schipper, Jeremy. “Why Does Imagery of Disability Include Healing in Isaiah?” JSOT 39 (2015): 319–33.Google Scholar
Tull, Patricia K. “Persistent Vegetative States: People as Plants and Plants as People in Isaiah.” Pages 17–34 in The Desert Will Bloom: Poetic Visions in Isaiah. Edited by Everson, A. Joseph and Paul Kim, Hyun Chul. Society of Biblical Literature Ancient Israel and its Literature 4. Atlanta, GA: Society of Biblical Literature, 2009.Google Scholar
Williamson, H. G. M. “Sound, Sense and Language in Isaiah 24–27.” JJS 46 (1995): 1–9.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

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  • Isaiah as Poetry
  • Edited by Christopher B. Hays, Fuller Theological Seminary, California
  • Book: The Cambridge Companion to the Book of Isaiah
  • Online publication: 08 November 2024
  • Chapter DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108692809.016
Available formats
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  • Isaiah as Poetry
  • Edited by Christopher B. Hays, Fuller Theological Seminary, California
  • Book: The Cambridge Companion to the Book of Isaiah
  • Online publication: 08 November 2024
  • Chapter DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108692809.016
Available formats
×

Save book to Google Drive

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Google Drive.

  • Isaiah as Poetry
  • Edited by Christopher B. Hays, Fuller Theological Seminary, California
  • Book: The Cambridge Companion to the Book of Isaiah
  • Online publication: 08 November 2024
  • Chapter DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108692809.016
Available formats
×