How many Isaiahs does it take to write a book? Ask around and you’ll find all sorts of answers; there were two, maybe three, even a whole “Isaianic school” of prophets behind the book of Isaiah. But as a Christian you tend to assume (and it doesn’t seem like much of an assumption) that Isaiah was written by Isaiah. When you realise that this is not the consensus amongst academics it can leave you feeling a bit shaken.

This is where Alec Motyer comes to the rescue! I was recently reading his commentary The Prophecy of Isaiah in preparation for a sermon on Isaiah 6 and I found his introduction so helpful in this area. With decades of studying Isaiah behind him, he shows that you don’t need to throw your brain away in order to read Isaiah as the work of one prophet. Despite its clear sections of the King (ch. 1-37), the Servant (ch. 38-54) and the Conquerer (ch. 55-66), the book of Isaiah is woven together with several clear themes, the hope of a Messiah, the motif of the city, the Holy One of Israel, historical consistencies, and literary and structural features.

To give you an example of how this evidence points to a book written by one prophet, the title “the Holy One of Israel” is used repeatedly throughout the whole book, in every section. This is important, because it ties the three sections together and because the phrase isn’t used much elsewhere in the Old Testament (only seven times, compared with twenty-five occurrences across Isaiah). This points to the facts that we have the writing of one man in front of us, not that of multiple prophets from different times in history. 

Reading through the rest of the introduction, historical, theological, structural, even geographical evidence mounts up in support of a book written by one Isaiah. So if you just assumed that that this was the case, don’t let the critics scare you. Good evangelical scholarship is on our side, as well as plain common sense.