"A present-day reader will normally open the book of Isaiah in order to learn something about the activity and preaching of the prophet who lived in the eighth century. He will, of course, find what he is looking for in this commentary, in so far as it endeavours to identify the primary material from the
prophet, particularly in chs. 28-31. But what a modern reader seeks and the purpose of the men to whom we owe the book of Isaiah in the form in which it has been handed down are fundamentally different. The redactors, as we call these anonymous persons for want of a better term, were not concerned to preserve sayings actually uttered by the prophet as faithfully and as unchanged as possible."
In this commentary the author acknowledges from the outset, moreover, the established conclusion of scholarship that chs. 24-27, "The Apocalypse of Isaiah," and chs. 36-39, an appendix from the book of Kings, are distinct and separate blocks of tradition. He recognizes a discernible outline for the balance of the material, including "The Oracles of the Nations" in chs. 13-23; chs. 28-32 containing a basic collection of sayings of Isaiah; ch. 33 on "The Inauguration of the Kingdom," and chs. 34-35 on "The End of Edom and the Redemption of Zion."
Professor Kaiser, in his commentary, distinguishes between eschatological, proto-apocalyptic and apocalyptic material. Eschatological expectations look forward to a decisive crisis in the destiny of Israel and of the nations but do not depart from the sphere of history. Apocalyptic expectations look forward to a crisis brought about by supernatural or cosmic intervention with calcuiations concerning the beginning of the events of the end. Most of the text is described as proto-apocalyptic-covering the transitional stage between eschatological and apocalyptic expectations.
This book is a translation of a volume in Das Alte Testament Deutsch series.