Biblical Hebrew Forum

[clayton stirling bartholomew <c.s.bartholomew AT worldnet.att.net>]

I wrote:

> Could anyone give me a run down on this book:
> 
> Motyer, J. Alec Prophecy of Isaiah:An Introduction & Commentary InterVarsity
> Press Downers Grove 1993, 544pp, Hard Cover

Greetings, 

After reading the off list comments of several list members and mulling it
over I went ahead and purchased this book even though the expository tone of
the work gave me misgivings at first about the overall quality of the
scholarship.  

I have now spent several hours looking at it and have a few observations.

There are isolated places here and there where Motyer seems to take a little
flight of fancy, like his treatment of the wings covering the feet of the
Cherubim in chapter six. I did not run into a lot of this sort of thing.

The author's approach to lexical questions is somewhat different than what I
am accustom to seeing in Greek studies. The author makes repeated reference
to root words. If this were done in a NT Greek context I would be asking:
Why talk about root words at all?  Perhaps I don't sufficiently appreciate
the problems of doing lexical semantics in OT Hebrew. The constraints placed
on the OT Hebrew scholar by the limited quantity of literature in ancient
Hebrew perhaps dictate a somewhat different approach to lexical problems
than one would take in Koine Greek.

Motyer devotes a lot of space to the analysis of middle and high level
literary structure. This is a big big plus. I only wish that more of the
commentaries in my library took this approach. I am assuming that Motyer has
had 30 years to think about these structures and has come up with some
valuable insights about how Isaiah hangs together on the meso and macro
levels. This feature alone is worth the price of the book.

I calculated (roughly) the difference in content between this work and the
Tyndale edition which is now available by Motyer. Based on word count,
Motyer had to cut more than 50% of the words out of this work to put it into
the Tyndale format. This is a lot of cutting. Since the longer work is
available in paperback for about $15 I cannot quite see why anyone would
want to purchase the reduced version unless the Tyndale version has been
modified to reach a more popular level audience.

Anyway, Thanks again for the help with this. Motyer's book looks like a
keeper. 

Clay 


--  
Clayton Stirling Bartholomew
Three Tree Point
P.O. Box 255 Seahurst WA 98062