Journal: Bibliotheca Sacra
Volume: BSAC 38:152 (Oct 1881)
Article: The Language Of Isaiah 40-66
Author: William Henry Cobb

BSac 38:152 (Oct 1881) p. 658

The Language Of Isaiah 40-66

Rev. WM. Henry Cobb

However convenient it may be in a discussion to shift the burden of proof upon one’s adversary, it is a great gain to be able to assume the burden, and carry it successfully. If those who deny the unity of the Book of Isaiah are willing to stake the question on the actual phenomena in respect of diction which the sixty-six chapters present, those who defend the integrity of the book may abandon a merely apologetic attitude. They need no longer assert that the two main portions of this book cannot be proved to be the work of separate authors; they should undertake to prove the contrary. In a previous Article1 the attempt was made to show that the vocabulary of the last twenty-seven chapters presents feat-

BSac 38:152 (Oct 1881) p. 659

ures especially in its rare words, which are easy to explain if the author was a contemporary of Hezekiah, and difficult to explain if he was a contemporary of Cyrus. In the present Article the reader is invited to examine for himself the entire vocabulary of these chapters (proper names alone being excluded), and draw his own inferences. Out of the 1310 words used by Isaiah B (chaps, 40–66) 367 were regarded by the present writer as so common at all periods of the language that they would prove nothing on either side of the question before us; hence no attempt was made to count and classify their occurrences. But as the proper limit of this list is a matter of judgment, the words are given in full, without note or comment except the mere statement appended to six of them that they are not found in Isaiah A (chaps, 1–39). From the remaining 943 words a Hebrew index has been constructed, exhibiting the number of occurrences of each word and approximately the periods of its use. Two different classifications are presented, according to the plan explained in the previous Article, which we will now repeat.

The first method employs the first five letters of the alphabet, which are printed as far as possible on a line with the Hebrew word. The small figures above a letter indicate the number of times the word is found in that class. The books (in the order of the English Bible) from Genesis to Numbers inclusive are represented by a; Judges to 2 Samuel, also Psalms 1 and 2, by b; 1 and 2 Kings, Psalms 3, Proverbs, Jeremiah, Lamentations, Hosea to Zephaniah, constitute class c; Deuteronomy, Job, Ecclesiastes, and Psalms 4 belong...