AP

Review of Hywel R. Jones, Isaiah’s Oratorio: An Appreciation of Isaiah Chapters 24-27, Edinburgh: Banner of Truth, 2025.

            Hywel Jones has presented here with a solid piece of work on Isaiah 24-27, which will repay close reading. This section of Scripture has been referred to as ‘The Little Apocalypse’ – but not by Hywel Jones. He sees it as ‘The Tale of Two Cities’, or, better still, as an oratorio in seven movements. Leland Ryken and Gordon Fee have written of the Bible as literature; Jones writes of Isaiah 24-27 as prophetic and eschatological, delivered as a kind of musical composition.

            The message is one both of judgment and of mercy. Throughout the short work, there are many stimulating and suggestive treatments of God’s Word. Even in the Garden, in Genesis 3:8, God comes walking in the ‘cool’ of the day. The word is actually ‘ruach’ (the word for ‘wind’ or ‘Spirit’), and is meant to be terrifying (pp.27-29). The ‘Righteous One’ could be synonymous with Yahweh (the LORD), but is probably the singing remnant (p.52). Death is the devourer (cf. Psa.49:14; 69:15; Prov.1:12; 27:20; 30:15,16) that will itself be devoured (Isa.25:8).

Isaiah 26:19 should be ‘Your dead shall live; my [not ‘their’] corpses shall rise.’ (p.106) This fits in with Matthew 22:32 with its description of God as the God not of the dead but of the living. Israel shall experience judgment, but that will not be the end for all Israelites. God is rich in mercy. It is therefore fitting that Appendix 3 (pp.153-167) comes from Herman Witsius’s The Economy of the Covenants between God and Man (Book4, Chapter XV), which sets out the compelling case from Romans 9-11 that God will yet call a great many Jews to saving faith in Jesus as the Messiah.

The gospel is not ‘God loves you and has a wonderful plan for your life’; it is the full-orbed presentation of God’s judgment and the kindness of His electing grace, to many Jews and many Gentiles. Be warned and be comforted.

– Peter Barnes