must be heard through the metaphor of exile. The words grow out of and are aimed at an alienated community (cf. Psalm 137). The central fact of the community of 2 Isaiah was the power and authority of Babylonian definitions of reality (cf. Isa. 39:1–8). Babylonian cultural voices in many ways shaped Jews just as they succeeded in shaping everything and everyone else in the empire. In as many ways as possible, it was the ideological intent of the empire to talk Jews out of Jewish perceptions of reality