The concept of election and second Isaiah: recent literature

Biblical Theology Bulletin, Winter, 2001 by Joel S. Kaminsky

Evidence that there is even a spectrum within the categories of election is supported by the Joseph story, a narrative in which Jacob's whole family belongs to the people of Israel who are indeed described as God's elect, yet Joseph is the one person who is the elect of the elect. One can think of a host of other instances in the Bible, such as Judah, the tribe from which David and his descendants come, or God's choice of Aaron's family for the priesthood and specific branches within Aaron's family for the honor of the high priesthood. This idea may be what texts like Second Isaiah have in mind when they describe one part of Israel functioning as God's servant and messenger to the rest of Israel in exile. Even among the elect there are gradations of election.

Much the same can be said of the non-elect, as some seem quite close to the elect and others much more distant. Thus Deut. 23:3-8 draws some rather sharp distinctions between Moabites and Ammonites as opposed to Edomites and Egyptians. When one looks at the language in Genesis 17 and 21 describing Ishmael's status, it is clear that even though he is outside of the covenant (17:19, 21), he is barely outside it. For starters, he is circumcised and thus has the bodily mark of the covenant and receives a special divine blessing, even though he is explicitly excluded from that covenant (Gen 17:18-26; 21:12-13). The category of the non-elect is far more ambiguous than that of the anti-elect, for the non-elect may or may not find favor with God, whereas the anti-elect simply incur divine disfavor for which they clearly will be punished. Unfortunately, too frequently these important nuances have been overlooked in general discussions concerning the biblical concept of election.

Having sketched out the major problems that have arisen when scholars have treated the biblical concept of election in general, it is now time see how these issues have affected the treatment of election within the prophetic corpus, or at least one small piece of this corpus that is regularly invoked in discussions of election, Second Isaiah.

The Nations in Second Isaiah's Prophetic Eschatology

Proof of the overarching biases towards universalism and against particularism can be found in the profusion of articles and even whole books dedicated to examining exactly how universalistic or nationalistic a prophet like Second Isaiah was (de Boer, Davidson, Gelston, Halas, Hollenberg, Levenson 1996, Melugin, Orlinsky, Snaith, Van Winkle, Weinfeld, Wilson, et al). Up until very recently, almost all of the many arguments to make sense of the textual inconsistencies in Deutero-Isaiah could be fit into two rubrics (see Wilson, 1-10 for summary). One position maintains that Second Isaiah is ultimately a universalist; in such a reading the more particularistic and nationalist elements are either ignored (Blank: 138-60), or played down in one of the following ways. They are attributed to his early ministry which he eventually overcame (Lindblom, 400-03,428; Stuhlmueller), they are viewed as interpolations from a later more regressive nationalist writer (note Westermann, 360 where he explains the nationalistic thrust of Isa 60:12, a passage from Third Isaiah with close affinities to Second Isaiah, as "a later expansion of the text"), or they are proof of how difficult it is to fully transcend one's cultural framework (Gelston 1965, 316). A second group of scholars argue that Second Isaiah is for all intents and purposes a nationalist, not a universalist. In this reading, many of the universalistic passages are challenged as misinterpretations or qualified by placing them into a larger contextual framework that is heavily nationalistic in tenor (de Boer, 80-110; Orlinsky, 36-51; Snaith, 154-65).