Introduction Isaiah is one of the most difficult of the prophet books, but also one of the most rewarding. Sometimes the reader feels that there is a dense forest to beat a way through before there is any chance of meeting the prophet, and the form a commentary is bound to take tends to reinforce this feeling: each verse has to be held up against the light, evaluated, and then laid by until the moment comes for a judgment on the whole book. And sometimes this moment never seems to arrive. The conviction