like no other God (see, e.g., Isa. 44:6–8; 45:18–21; 46:8–11; 48:3–7). As the Lord put it elsewhere: “Surely the Sovereign LORD does nothing without revealing his plan to his servants the prophets” (Amos 3:7). The author expects the reader to believe that he is speaking forward into the future beyond his own time because the Lord knows that future.12 In the next part of the book, the prophetic oracular vision of the same Isaiah looks forward to the end of the sixth century and far beyond, to the
Pages 40–41