Isaiah 40-66

Hanson’s Isaiah 40–66 is eloquent, humane, and often pastorally moving, especially on hope after judgment, the renewal of Zion, compassion for the oppressed, and the Servant’s non-coercive way of accomplishing God’s purpose. Yet its governing weakness is that a historical-critical framework too often controls the exegesis rather than serving it. Hanson assumes an anonymous exilic “Second Isaiah,” later “Third Isaiah”/disciple circles, and a post-exilic conflict between visionary outsiders and priestly or Zadokite authorities; but this reconstruction often becomes speculative. Isaiah 36–39 already prepares for Babylon, the Cyrus passages function as genuine divine foretelling rather than merely exilic political interpretation, and Isaiah’s repeated claim that Yahweh alone declares and accomplishes the future should not be muted by assuming such prophecy impossible. Likewise, Isaiah 56–66 should not be reduced to a reconstructed party struggle: the text more naturally contrasts true and false worship, covenant faithfulness and rebellion, justice and oppression, the Lord’s servants and the wicked. Hanson’s sociological model tends to impose an external scheme on the text, turn concrete idolatry into metaphor, and make Isaiah 66 anti-temple even though Isaiah 56–66 contains positive temple imagery. Most importantly, his broad individual/communal reading of the Servant blunts Isaiah 52:13–53:12: sinful Israel cannot straightforwardly be the innocent sufferer who bears others’ sins, and the passage’s central logic is vicarious, sin-bearing suffering. Hanson is not crude or irreverent toward God, and his theological sensitivity is real; but his commentary too often weakens Isaiah’s canonical unity, predictive force, messianic shape, holy judgment, and atoning center by filtering them through conjectural historical reconstruction.

Hanson's commentary is disappointing for one major reason: as part of the Interpretation series it is supposed to offer the preacher or teacher homiletical and applicational insights from the text of Scripture as we have it today. Hanson seems to get too bogged down in discussions of II and III Isaiah to actually give the preacher or teacher such insights. When he does, they stem not from the actual text from Isaiah, but from Hanson's historical-critical interpretations of that text.