Episode Transcript
[00:00:00] Speaker A: Well, a lot of Latter Day Saints consider Isaiah to be one of the most challenging books to get into. So what better way to do that than talking to one of the world's experts on Isaiah in some ways. Welcome Don Perry to the show. This is very exciting to have you. Both Stephen and I are former students of yours. Neil is the lame left one out,
[00:00:16] Speaker B: but, but don't hold that against Don. The fact that Jasmine and I are his former students, both learned Hebrew from Don at BYU.
[00:00:23] Speaker A: So, Dr. Don Perry, you are a scholar of Hebrew Bible and the Dead Sea Scrolls at Brigham Young University. Tony, tell us a little bit about yourself and how you've come to this point in your life.
[00:00:31] Speaker C: I've taught biblical Hebrew at BYU for 33 years and I've also taught Qumran Hebrew, which is the Dead Sea Scrolls Hebrew and Mishnaic Hebrew, which is Mishnah, which is rabbinic Hebrew from 200 BC to 200 AD.
And I love teaching Biblical Hebrew. This is my job, this is my full time occupation. I, I present papers internationally on the topic. I write books, I research and I write.
And one of my favorite, one of my most important contributions pertains to the Book of Isaiah.
And so I spent a lot of time working on the Book of Isaiah. And January of 1994, Professor Emmanuel Tove from the Hebrew University of Jerusalem called me to his office. I was in Jerusalem at the time, and he invited me to become a member of the international team of translators of the Dead Sea Scrolls. And I've remained on that team unto this day.
And then at one point, I was invited to serve as a member of the Board of directors for the Dead Sea Scrolls Foundation. And I've loved every minute, every minute of my time teaching at byu, researching and writing Isaiah, both for scholars and academic communities and university libraries, and also for lay audiences.
[00:02:02] Speaker A: Wow, that is quite the list there.
[00:02:05] Speaker B: Can I add something? And hopefully not to flatter you too much, Don, but just so our audience is aware, when he says, I got a call from Emmanuel Tove to say to come on the Dead Sea Scrolls team, that's like saying I got a call by Michael Jordan to come on the Chicago Bulls to be on the NBA team, like, in terms of like Dead Sea Scrolls scholarship. Emmanuel Tove. Yeah, Neil, am exaggerating this.
[00:02:27] Speaker D: Not at all. Yeah, so that's actually a great analogy.
[00:02:30] Speaker B: That's quite a compliment to Don's abilities with Hebrew to have this very august scholar and others bring him on the team and we'll show some of his publications here. On Isaiah, you probably have heard of the great Isaiah scroll that, you know, the famous Great Isaiah scroll from the Dead Sea Scrolls. Yeah. Don was one of the guys working on the Great Isaiah scroll.
[00:02:49] Speaker D: Don is probably. I mean, you can probably count on one hand the number of people who have the level of expertise of that scroll that Don here has.
[00:02:58] Speaker C: You're both very kind. Thank you.
[00:02:59] Speaker A: And you recently have started a YouTube channel called Jesus Christ in Scripture.
[00:03:03] Speaker C: Yes, yes.
[00:03:04] Speaker A: Here, where you share a lot of like Old Testament insights or Hebrew insights into understanding the Scriptures. It's pretty great. I think there's a lot of great gems in there.
[00:03:11] Speaker C: Thank you.
[00:03:11] Speaker A: So when it comes to tackling Isaiah for Latter Day Saints, a big barrier is it's not. And it came to pass, the Lord commanded me to build a boat or plates. Like, it's not narrative. There's a lot of people, places, things that are confusing and. And the prose itself, especially in the King James Version, can be really confusing for Eng readers. So in your experience, how can Latter Day Saints best start to tackle and get into this very dense seeming text?
[00:03:38] Speaker C: As I see it, there are three huge barriers to understanding Isaiah, and number one is his poetry.
And I'm prepared to share some of his poetry and discuss it with this group. So his poetry is number one, who is the speaker in Isaiah? There are 60 different speakers in Isaiah. Who's speaking now? Now, who's speaking? Is it the Lord? Is it Isaiah? Is it Hezekiah? Is it someone else?
[00:04:07] Speaker A: They're not making clear distinctions all the time.
[00:04:09] Speaker C: No, no. And the antecedents, he, him, you, she, her, and so on, are not always clear. So number one is poetry. Number two is speaker, who are the speakers? And number three are his amazing, extraordinary figures of speech. And we'll talk about each of these.
[00:04:28] Speaker A: Okay, so poetry. How do we understand Hebrew poetry?
[00:04:32] Speaker C: So poetry, Isaiah is made up of little two lined poetic parallelisms. We call them parallelisms because the two lines parallel or correspond with each other in one form or another.
And there are. I've counted these and people think I'm a little crazy. And like, don't you have a job? Or don't you? Don't you need to mow the lawn or spend time with your children or sleep? There are 1,100 examples of his poetry. They are extraordinary. And we're going to look at several of them.
There are dozens of categories. We're just going to take a peek today, maybe look at 15 or 20 of them.
So let's begin with what's called Synonymous parallelism. Isaiah 1, 3 and synonymous means the two lines parallel 1 way or another.
So look at the color coding. But Israel does not know. My people do not understand.
Notice Israel corresponds with my people. My people. That's Israel does. And do I put them a blue font? Not, not. And then know and understand. That's a little parallelism.
[00:05:46] Speaker A: And I imagine for an English speaking audience like that can feel repetitive, like that would be bad English that you're saying the same thing twice.
[00:05:53] Speaker C: Yes, yes.
[00:05:54] Speaker B: Something the Book of Mormon's been criticized for. Yes, it's of nature. Mark Twain and others famously made fun of it for that reason.
[00:06:01] Speaker C: That's right.
[00:06:02] Speaker B: Good Hebrew literary convention.
[00:06:03] Speaker C: It's great Hebrew. Yes. And one of the purposes of parallelism is to emphasize.
So Isaiah says it once and then he repeats it a little differently and it's like a punchline. Oh, I get it now.
[00:06:18] Speaker A: So in English, when we think of beautiful poetry, one form of that is like rhyming, using alliteration but also meter, like keeping something rhythmic. Is there anything like that in Hebrew? Like, how can we appreciate the beauty of what Hebrew poetry is doing when it's so different from English poetry?
[00:06:36] Speaker C: I love that point. And your question?
Isaiah rarely uses rhymes. I found 16 verses out of or 16 examples out of 1100 where he uses rhymes. I'm going to give you one example in a few minutes. So they don't use rhymes like we do in our hymns and our Western poetry. He uses thoughts. So parallel thoughts, parallel words, synonyms, antonyms, and so on.
[00:07:09] Speaker A: So the concepts are rhyming but not necessarily the words themselves.
[00:07:11] Speaker C: Yes. Right. So it's a different form and it's a different approach, but it's powerful, spiritually powerful.
[00:07:19] Speaker A: Cool.
[00:07:20] Speaker C: Okay, we're going to look at now what's called antithetical or opposites. This is Isaiah 65:14 and I'm just pulling out examples out of the 1100. Behold, my servants shall sing for gladness of heart, but you shall cry out for pain of heart. Again, I've color coded it so my servants parallels you shall sing, shall cry.
Both.
Both come from the mouth. Singing and crying out gladness of heart and pain of heart, showing the two different emotions that can come from the heart.
So gladness, pain of heart.
So that's an example.
Antithetical adjectives. Now I'm going to go just a little bit brief, deeper. I hope people follow this. I don't want them to be discouraged. I really want everyone to search diligently. Those are Christ's words. Don't just read Isaiah Search Isaiah. That's his expression. So this is Isaiah 54. 7. For a brief moment, I deserted you. But with great compassions I will gather you. And I want you to notice that in the Hebrew brief is singular, and it just means like one moment.
[00:08:43] Speaker A: And that one's quoted in the Doctrine and Covenants, I think. Right. This is when Joseph Smith's in Liberty Jail. God is kind of using some of these passages to comfor Joseph Smith.
[00:08:51] Speaker C: Yeah.
[00:08:52] Speaker B: Apparently what we're doing here is we're emphasizing the momentariness of God withdrawing his presence or himself from us, but then immediately following up with the overabundance. Eternal or overabundance. Exactly. Of compassion that he follows us with. Yeah, correct.
[00:09:07] Speaker D: And you talk about, I mean, you have here like the plural amplification.
[00:09:11] Speaker C: Yes, yes.
[00:09:12] Speaker D: And that's a. That's a concept in Hebrew where, like, the reason great is plural is to really amplify just how great we're really talking.
[00:09:19] Speaker C: Yes. I love the way you, you articulated that. That's right. And by the way, plural amplification, to amplify it, put in the plural to make it larger with great compassion. So both great and compassions are in the plural, which is.
[00:09:35] Speaker A: Bad English, you would just say compassion as a singular.
[00:09:38] Speaker D: Yes, it's a lot of it.
[00:09:39] Speaker A: But in Hebrew, you pluralize it compassions.
[00:09:43] Speaker C: Well said. And I should say that plural amplification is One of the 30 categories of Hebraisms in the Book of Mormon. It's found in the Book of Mormon plural amplification. And like you just said, Jasmine, someone might criticize the Book of Mormon and say bad English F on your report, on your research paper. But no, A, because it's ancient Hebrew.
[00:10:07] Speaker A: Right. Bloodsheds, instead of just the bloodshed, strifes,
[00:10:11] Speaker B: contentions, all that kind of stuff.
[00:10:14] Speaker C: Now, one of Isaiah's figures is called dialogue. He uses dialogue a lot as a teaching tool.
And within the dialogues he has parallelisms. So this is from Isaiah 49, 14, 15.
So there's Lady Zion, that's the woman.
And the Hebrew has feminine forms. And Lady Zion says, the Lord has forsaken me, my Lord has forgotten me. So again, I hope with the color coding, you can see the parallelistic nature. The Lord responds, can a woman forget her nursing child that she should have no compassion on the son of her womb?
And so son of the womb parallels, child forget, no compassion, woman. And she. And then the Lord continues, even these may forget. And this is another figure of speech, really, as a woman who's nursing her child going to forget oh, oh, it's been hours since I. Oh, I've got to go nurse the child. No, a woman will not forget her nursing child. And when he says these may forget that this is yet another figure that Isaiah is using to really reinforce what's being taught. Yet I, the Lord will not forget you. All right. Emblematic Isaiah uses six different figures of speech that deal with symbolism. And sometimes I teach these six to my students, and when they really get into it, it opens up all the scriptures, because all scripture, including the Doctrine and Covenants and Book of Mormon, use all six. And these are the six are metaphor, simile, metonymy, synecdoche, personification, and implication.
That's a lot. It's a lot. And I'm not trying to lose people by saying this, but Isaiah was so profound. And the Book of Mormon is in that area too, uses all of those. So a simile, remember, is using the figure like or as and comparing two things. So notice this double simile's parallelism. In Isaiah 1:19, we should have been as, and the as is the marker for the simile as Sodom, and we should have been like. And the like is another simile marker. And to Gomorrah, this one is so profound. And notice the two cities he uses were two cities that were destroyed because of wickedness. So Isaiah and those cities were destroyed centuries earlier, but his audience knew them and would have understood this. And Sodom and Gomorrah.
If Isaiah had have said as Sodom and as Jerusalem, or as Sodom and Bethlehem or Shiloh or others, it wouldn't have the same impact.
And then notice the double metaphor parallelism. So a metaphor for the vineyard of the Lord of hosts is the house of Israel, and the men of Judah are his pleasant planting. Now, Judah, were they a plant? No, this is a symbol.
Was the house of Israel actually a vineyard? No, this is symbolic.
[00:13:33] Speaker D: Right.
[00:13:34] Speaker C: Next one is personification, one of those six I just mentioned. Personification is where the poet or the author makes an inanimate thing into a person. I wish someone in high school had explained that to me. Person personification, and not just personification. What's that?
So notice the moon and the sun have qualities of a person.
Then the moon will be confounded and the sun ashamed. See how simple this is?
Two little lines.
[00:14:08] Speaker A: Yeah. In some ways, this feels like English class, because, I mean, sometimes I think we can look at Hebrew poetry or just, like, old texts and feel like it's just so different from what we're used to. It's just simplistic it's primitive, whatever you may think about it. But, I mean, you're talking about simile, metaphor, synecdoche, all these things that we learned in English class to help dissect and see the depth and the profound beauty of an English text. And we're doing the same thing here. I mean, it just shows that there's a lot of sophistication going on.
[00:14:33] Speaker C: Yes, well.
[00:14:34] Speaker D: And, yeah, I mean, we certainly do want to acknowledge, obviously, Hebrew literature and English. English literature are different, but, like, we have an English literature professor in our ward, and he is a Sunday school teacher, and a couple weeks ago when he taught the lesson on job, he spent a lot of time going through a lot of the literary art, his training as a professor of literature.
And obviously, I think he's just well read on what biblical scholars like you and others have said, because he's passionate about the Scriptures.
But his training as a professor of literature, I think, helped him be able to break down and dissect a lot of that for the class in ways that were really helpful and interesting.
[00:15:10] Speaker A: It makes it exciting and satisfying to peel back layers of what the author's trying to say in a way that's really beautiful.
[00:15:17] Speaker C: And I want to invite our audience for every verse we're citing, go back and read a greater context. So I'm just giving you examples, pulling little pieces out of context, but always we want to look at the greater context.
All right, grammatical.
This one.
I do a lot of grammar, and I love Hebrew grammar. I teach my students how to read and translate the Hebrew Bible. And so we do a lot of grammar. At first, the students are a little apprehensive, and. Oh, no. Grammar. Do I have to learn grammar? I just want to learn how to read Hebrew. But once they get into it, it opens up the text. So this is Isaiah, chapter 1, verse 10. And notice the grammatical parts. Hear, give, ear. Both of those are command forms or imperatives. The word of the Lord, the teaching of our God.
That's the object.
You rulers, you people.
And then of Sodom and Gomorrah.
And this covers everyone, by the way. Who else is there? Isaiah's message is for everyone who's excluded from you rulers and you people.
He's covering everyone.
[00:16:27] Speaker D: Right?
[00:16:28] Speaker C: So grammatical.
[00:16:29] Speaker A: Cool.
[00:16:31] Speaker C: All right, here is the sound equivalences that you mentioned earlier. This is one example. And I should tell you, I've been invited to give a podcast just on the first phonological parallelisms in Isaiah.
[00:16:44] Speaker A: That's very niche.
[00:16:46] Speaker C: Yeah, it is. I mentioned that I found 16.
[00:16:48] Speaker A: Cool.
[00:16:49] Speaker C: So we'll look at the English first, and then I'll take you through the Hebrews so you can hear the rhyming sound. And I want to remind everyone that the rhyming sounds disappear in the English. You don't have them. He looked for justice, but behold, bloodshed. Now pretend like that's one line because I didn't have space on the slide for righteousness, but behold, an outcry.
So he looked for Mishpat, but behold mishpach for tzedakah, but behold Tzeakah.
So do you see the rhymes there?
And his audience, they knew Hebrew.
I think this would have really resonated, like, oh, yet another level of Isaiah's.
[00:17:36] Speaker A: You're rhyming both the concepts or the thoughts, but also the words are sounding very similar. So it would have created this double emphasis.
[00:17:43] Speaker C: Yes.
[00:17:44] Speaker A: Cool.
[00:17:45] Speaker C: All right, this one.
So as you. You too might remember all.
[00:17:50] Speaker A: Will we all. Hebrew's pretty rusty. Stephen's using it More frequently this PhD right now.
[00:17:58] Speaker C: All Hebrew nouns are either feminine or masculine.
[00:18:01] Speaker A: Okay. I do remember that.
[00:18:02] Speaker C: Every noun.
[00:18:03] Speaker B: It's a gendered language with its nouns.
[00:18:05] Speaker C: Yeah. So? So I.
It's fascinating. Isaiah has many of these, and here's one example, and it features Hebrew, masculine and feminine nouns. This example is from Isaiah 43:16. Thus says the Lord.
And by the way, when it's Lord in King James in upper caps, that is Jehovah.
Thus says the Lord, who makes a way. Ways. Feminine in the sea.
Sea is masculine in the Hebrew language, a path.
It's feminine. In the mighty waters, it's masculine. So he's doing the feminine. Masculine, feminine, masculine. But again, it's like a double layer of understanding.
[00:18:53] Speaker A: Thoughts rhyme too.
[00:18:55] Speaker B: Cool.
[00:18:56] Speaker C: This is parallelism. That presents a contrast in grammatical mood. Let's read it, and then I'll show you what I mean. Is there a God besides me?
That's an interrogative sentence.
[00:19:09] Speaker A: So, question, question.
[00:19:11] Speaker C: Isaiah has over 100 questions. Again, I've counted them. How many questions? He teaches by questioning, there is no rock. I know not any. And that's the declaration. So note the implied response to the question in line one is negative. Is there a God besides me? No.
The explicit response in line two is a negative. Is there a God besides me? No. No, there's no rock. I know not any.
Another.
Another layer.
I've got a handful more.
[00:19:44] Speaker A: Let's do it.
[00:19:45] Speaker C: Good.
[00:19:45] Speaker D: Yeah, let's keep going.
[00:19:46] Speaker C: All right, this one.
I really hope everyone sticks with me. I'm using a little Hebrew here, but I'm trying to show everyone.
I really want everyone to see how powerful this is.
[00:19:58] Speaker D: Yeah.
[00:19:59] Speaker C: If you are willing and obedient, you shall eat the good of the land. Now, the verb to eat is a call in the Hebrew and it's an active verb to eat. You will eat. It's like you will eat food, but if you refuse and rebel, you shall be eaten. It's the same verb in Hebrew, a call, but now it's passive. And now instead of you'll eat the good of the land, like produce and fruit and all the wonderful things that are offered in the Holy Land, if you refuse and rebel, you'll be eaten by the sword.
A couple more examples. This is progression parallelism. We're still doing two line parallelisms. The Lord has taken his place to contend. Reeve, that's the Hebrew word. And I've given you a lexicon. Reave means to contend, plead, conduct a lawsuit, make out a case, make a defense. The British spelling. In case people think I misspelled defense,
[00:21:02] Speaker D: all our UK viewers will know.
[00:21:04] Speaker C: So Tay has taken his place to contend. So this is a legal setting. We're in Isaiah 3:13, and Isaiah uses legal words and then it says he stands to judge peoples. So the first line, the Lord is as an attorney or lawyer. He's contending. Reeve. He's conducting a lawsuit. And then it progresses and then the Lord stands to judge peoples.
[00:21:31] Speaker A: So I see the word content and I think fight. But in this case it's a legal contention.
[00:21:35] Speaker C: Yes, yes, excellent. Thanks for pointing that out. So from attorney. And then he takes his role as the judge of the peoples.
Now we're going to transition.
Anything else on parallelism?
[00:21:47] Speaker A: I think that's a great foundation.
Let's move on.
[00:21:51] Speaker C: So Isaiah has.
I've counted these, I've listed them, I've documented them. He has over 100 chiasmuses.
[00:22:02] Speaker A: And that's something that's probably familiar to a lot of Latter Day Saints because that's talked about a lot in the Book of Mormon.
[00:22:07] Speaker C: Yes, it is. There are 300 plus examples of chiasmus in the Book of Mormon.
[00:22:13] Speaker D: And I guess now could be a moment we could mention you do have a whole edition of the Book of Mormon, the poetic parallelisms of the Book of Mormon. That puts all the chiasms and a lot of these other parallelisms that you have found in the Book of Mormon lays them out in the full text so you can see them in full context.
[00:22:30] Speaker A: It is a super helpful resource.
[00:22:32] Speaker D: Yeah, absolutely.
[00:22:33] Speaker C: You're very kind, thank you.
I'm going to show you two examples of chiasmus from Isaiah.
I think the most famous example is Isaiah 6:10.
And I formatted the lines so they're easy for the eye to read and with an indentation.
And so I have as and the A's correspond in some way. And I put corresponding words in bold font. And the B's correspond and the C's correspond. And here we're using body parts make the heart of this people dull and their eyes heavy, and blind their eyes, lest they see with their eyes and hear with their ears and understand with their hearts and turn and be healed. So here are the chiastic elements. Heart, ears, eyes, eyes, ears, hearts.
[00:23:29] Speaker A: Yeah, Lots of body parts.
[00:23:31] Speaker C: And then the next one is my translation.
Because the syntax or the word order in the Hebrew retains the chiasmus, but the King James using an English, a British English syntax or word order loses some of the features. So I'm following the Hebrew here. And it goes like this. This is a longer one. It's super powerful. Arise, shine, for your light has come and the glory of the Lord has risen upon you.
For, behold, the darkness will cover the earth. And now I'm going to go in reverse order and gross. Darkness the people but will arise upon you, the Lord and his glory will appear on you, and the nations will come to your light and kings to the brightness of your rising.
Is that amazing?
[00:24:29] Speaker A: Yeah, that's a big succession there. But I think it's really cool. And I mean, lots of light, lots of darkness. It's playing with a lot of imagery.
[00:24:37] Speaker B: And the idea of the rising of the light reveals the Lord's glory after period of darkness.
For whatever it's worth, because I have the Hebrew in front of me.
It's Kumi Ori to arise o light.
That name sounds familiar. Kumi Ori, anyone?
Later essay suggested perhaps the etymology of kimora might be something like arise o light, which thematically works since the light of the Book of Mormon arises out of the hill. Cumorah. Right. That's a little bit of a speculative theory, but I just sense I'm from him. Like that sounds kind of interesting.
[00:25:14] Speaker A: People familiar with the New Testament story where Jesus raises the girl. He's like
[00:25:20] Speaker B: one of the little Aramaicisms in the Greek of the New Testament. So anyway, it's just kind of interesting. This is one of my favorite metaphors in all the Book of Isaiah. The idea of light rising out of the earth. Right. To reveal the Lord's glory at his coming. Yeah, great, cool.
[00:25:35] Speaker C: I'd like to just show two or three examples of Book of Mormon cosmos. Are we good at that? There are about 300 examples there, which is a strange, astounding. So this is from 1st Nephi 15. Nephi exhorts his brothers to keep God's commandments. Wherefore I, Nephi did exhort them to I put this in bold, give heed unto the word of the Lord.
Yea, I did exhort them with all the energies of my soul and with all the faculty which I possessed that they would give heed to the word of God.
[00:26:09] Speaker B: Simple, nice and clean, yet powerful.
[00:26:11] Speaker D: Well, and just the parallelisms themselves. It's several words that are used to express that parallel concept which strongly suggests, I think it's not coincidence, right?
[00:26:22] Speaker C: Yes.
[00:26:23] Speaker B: You have to intentionally have those words formatted that way in that order for it to work, right?
[00:26:30] Speaker C: I think so too. I agree with you. Let's just look at one more example.
This is from First Nephi 4, 33, 35. And it's Nephi speaks to Zoram with an oath.
And I spake unto him, even with an oath.
Now this one, I'm going to read it backwards. I'm going to do the two A's and then the two B's. So I'm going to do it out of order.
I don't want any of the audience to think I'm crazy. I'm just doing it kind of to
[00:26:57] Speaker D: reading the Paris together.
[00:26:58] Speaker C: I'm reading and I spake unto him, even with an oath at the words which I spake, that he need not fear.
And it came to pass that Zoram did take courage that he should be a freeman like unto us, thou shalt have place with us.
If he would go down in the wilderness with us.
Therefore, if thou wilt go down into the wilderness to my father.
And I also spake unto him, saying, surely the Lord hath commanded, in keeping the commandments of the lord and the two Fs us to do this thing.
And shall we not be diligent?
Now I read it out of order, but I hope everyone followed my point.
[00:27:49] Speaker D: This gets talked about a lot as evidence of Hebrew literary form and stuff like that in the Book of Mormon, and rightfully so. But even aside from that, just the complexity that it illustrates existing within the Book of Mormon text. And people will try to argue that maybe Joseph Smith knew about chiasmus or whatever, and they'll find a few obscure 19th century sources that might mention it. Just knowing about it doesn't make it easy to compose on the fly, as you're dictating to a scribe 300 plus examples of these, some of which are quite elaborate and complex, especially because there's
[00:28:24] Speaker A: some that even like require a knowledge of Hebrew to construct them. Like the one, is it in Helaman where they do
[00:28:32] Speaker C: with Lord.
Yeah, that's it. Yeah.
[00:28:35] Speaker A: You have to know Hebrew to know that Zedekiah pairs with Lord and like, I think that's pretty cool.
[00:28:39] Speaker C: And there's another one where it has mankind and Adam and electrical. Say Adam means mankind human, right?
[00:28:46] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:28:47] Speaker C: Or human humankind.
[00:28:48] Speaker D: Yeah. Adam.
[00:28:49] Speaker B: Yeah. This is not like C. Jane, run levels of chiasmus, which some people will point to occasionally. Well, green eggs at hand. Dr. Seuss has chiasmus. Yes. It's true that you can sometimes inadvertently pair chiasmus just by repetition, just by, you know, rhyming, structure, meter, things like that. Right. That does sometimes happen. Guys, this goes way above that. Right. Way beyond that.
[00:29:13] Speaker A: The depth, the sophistication of it.
[00:29:14] Speaker B: Yes, exactly.
[00:29:15] Speaker C: And these are set in the context.
They're not independent of a context of 500 pages of a running narrative and history. And they flow perfectly with the rest of the text.
[00:29:28] Speaker D: Yeah.
[00:29:30] Speaker C: Why did Isaiah employ parallelisms?
I get asked this a lot. So here are some possible ideas to heighten or emphasize a particular teaching. To encourage learning and memorization. It's a lot easier to memorize a chiasmus or a parallelism when they have parallel thoughts.
To facilitate singing and oral comprehension. To add color. And this is, I think, the best reason in my mind to add color and richness and beauty to the message and then to maintain the sacred and age old tradition of presenting God's word in poetic fashion. And that's the last one I got from Sean Hopkin, who teaches Isaiah at byu. He, he presented that one and he knew about this list. He said, you should also include this last one.
[00:30:23] Speaker A: All right, so we understand poetry in the book of Isaiah. What other things can help us kind of unlock and unravel what's going on?
[00:30:30] Speaker C: Isaiah's literary devices or his figures of speech, they're complex.
And people read that and they say, what? What's that about?
But if you search diligently and just spend a lot of time, maybe a lot of time on a single verse, sometimes you might remember in our classes, we'd spend an hour on a single verse in Hebrew and we still wouldn't unlock and uncover all of its beauty and power.
[00:30:58] Speaker A: So part of that was just we were dumb. We're still learning it.
[00:31:03] Speaker D: If we were smuggling, you're way Too humble.
[00:31:07] Speaker C: You're humble.
So I did a year long research of Isaiah's symbols, figures of speech and literary devices. And I looked in the books, in the scholars and the academic books and how many figures of speech did Isaiah use? And I'm going to define figures of speech in just a moment. How many did they use? And Ethelbert Bullinger, who wrote the book Figures of Speech used in the Bible in 1898, he came up with the greatest list of figures of speech used in the Bible and in Isaiah. But I found some others who have dealt with it and as I recall they covered about 12 or 14 different literary devices in Isaiah. So I started looking at Isaiah and researching with, with literary devices in mind and I came up with 44.
And then I published these in a festrift for one of my, my friends, Daniel Peterson and I titled it Unlocking Isaiah's Closed Book.
Colon Figures of Speech, Literary Devices and Writing Techniques. So I'd like us to just look at four or five of the 44. Okay, but if we understand where he's coming from, again, it opens up the book.
So we'll begin with his similes. We looked at his similes earlier and I want everyone to just think we use similes every day in, in modern English, in American English. Here is some example. She is as brave as a lion. Now is she a lion? No, but she's as brave. He's as busy as a bee. That concept is as clear as crystal. See, these are similes. Isaiah uses dozens of examples of similes.
So let's look at some of his.
And again, similes are marked with like or as Isaiah 19:14, as a drunken man staggereth in his vomit.
[00:33:18] Speaker A: Very vivid, very vivid.
[00:33:20] Speaker C: And that's like you say, very vivid.
[00:33:23] Speaker A: And it transcends time.
[00:33:25] Speaker D: People can pretty readily understand even today.
[00:33:28] Speaker C: Jumping down to Isaiah 1:18, Though your sins be as scarlet. Let's pause for a second. Our sins are the color red.
Notice the three colors here, scarlet, red and crimson.
Now symbolically, though your sins be as scarlet, they shall be as white as snow. Because God lives, Jesus is our Savior.
Though they be red like crimson, they shall be as wool. See the four similes.
Thy people Israel be.
We're taking this out of context. As the sand of the sea. How many people of Israel will be at some point?
They'll be so common, they'll be as the sand of the sea. These are similes. All right, that's one of the 44.
Let's look at three or four more examples. One is duplication this is really pretty simple. It's where you repeat a term for emphasis. We have some examples in our hymns. Come, come ye saints. Not just come ye saints. And I know it deals with rhythm and metrical schemes and music and so on.
All is well. All is well. See the emphasis here?
Far, far away duplication on Judea's plains. By the way, in Israel, when we sing this, we say close, close at hand.
[00:34:54] Speaker D: Well, and I was going to say, to go outside of our hymns context, you've got Star wars right in a galaxy for far, far away.
[00:35:03] Speaker C: There it is again.
And look at the last example. The rain poured down, down, down.
Motivational speeches. Never, never, never give up. So for emphasis, Isaiah uses this. Let's look at two or three examples.
Holy, holy, holy is the Lord of hosts. Isaiah 6, 3.
Babylon is fallen, it's fallen.
Comfort ye, comfort ye, Awake, Awake. And so on. These are just some examples.
[00:35:37] Speaker A: Sure. Add some emphasis.
[00:35:40] Speaker C: Ready for the next one?
[00:35:41] Speaker A: Let's do it.
[00:35:41] Speaker C: Okay.
Exclamation.
And my translation tries to show exclamations. That's a sudden cry from the heart. So some translations will do a comma, and that's not the right emphasis. And I know commas and periods are modern devices, so I use exclamation marks. But let's look at some examples that we use in our hymns and elsewhere. Hark, the herald angels sing. Oh, come all ye faithful. Those are exclamations. Isaiah uses these.
Awesome.
Wow. Oh, yikes. And so on.
So we do these if we can. See that we use these.
And we don't use all of his figures of speech and so on, but if we can relate to some of them, it'll open up Isaiah. All right, so let's look at examples of exclamations from Isaiah.
And when you read this, I'd love it if people would read Isaiah out loud to themselves or to their spouse or family or classroom and let their voice articulate exclamations so it's not monotone.
Woe unto the wicked.
For example, ah, sinful nation, how art thou fallen from heaven, O Lucifer. See, some of these are from King James. I've kind of mixed up. Just so everyone knows. O Lord.
So the O as an exclamation, I beseech thee, and thy God reigneth. Isaiah 52. 7.
Monotone. Thy God reigneth with heart, thy God reigneth.
And that's changes the emphasis. It changes emphasis.
[00:37:37] Speaker D: Absolutely.
[00:37:38] Speaker C: Ready for the next one?
[00:37:40] Speaker A: Yes.
[00:37:40] Speaker C: Right.
Exaltation is rejoicing. And we use these two.
We thank thee, O God. For a prophet, rejoice, the Lord is king.
And here are some examples from Isaiah, and I'm just using samples. There are a lot more.
Seeing unto the Lord. And by the way, Isaiah has several examples of seeing synonyms of sing that some are sing with heartfelt rejoicing. Sing aloud, Cry out loud and so on. Cry out and shout.
This is all good news, thou inhabitant of Zion.
This is for those who passed away. Awake and sing, ye that dwell in the dust. Why? Why sing? Why be joyful? Because Jesus lives and he is. He's the resurrection and the life.
[00:38:40] Speaker A: So you've been using a lot of hymns in these examples to help kind of illustrate these concepts. And I know the Book of Psalms are songs that would have been set to music. Is there evidence that Isaiah would have also had musical settings anciently? Or is this mostly like text and read poetry?
[00:38:56] Speaker C: No, we have some songs in his book, but there's also evidence that he's using psalms and thoughts and expressions from psalms. Let's just look at one more example. It's Isaiah 49. 13.
Sing, O heavens.
And notice there are two things here. We have exaltation and we have exclamation. Sing O heavens. And we have what's called metonymy. So three figures going on right here in those words. Metonymy, meaning those in the heavens.
[00:39:29] Speaker D: And that plural heavens. Is that some plural amplification?
[00:39:33] Speaker C: Yes. Yes. Yeah.
[00:39:34] Speaker D: So there's a lot of layers here.
[00:39:37] Speaker C: There are a lot of layers from
[00:39:38] Speaker D: what we've talked about.
[00:39:39] Speaker C: And Isaiah, so he doesn't speak just to his audience. And we're going to look at that in a few minutes. His immediate audience in Jerusalem, he's also speaking to those in heaven.
Angels and beings in heaven. That's his reach. Sing O heavens. This is just not a figure of speech. Those that are in heaven, you also join in the singing.
[00:40:02] Speaker A: Cool.
[00:40:03] Speaker C: We have examples of angels singing in choirs during temple dedicatory prayers and so on, where angels join in on singing the hymn, Sing, O heavens, and be joyful, O earth, meaning those on earth. Isaiah is not commanding the planet, the planet to sing, but those who live on the earth.
[00:40:29] Speaker B: This is metonymy. The earth standing in for the people on the earth.
[00:40:33] Speaker C: See, that's why I really want everyone to learn some of the figures of speech and literary devices. So it'll open up just this example and break forth into singing. So all of this, and then why.
Why do this? See that 4F, O, R. F O, R. That'll probably be key in Kaph Yod or one of the forms.
And it introduces the motive clause. Why sing? Why be joyful? Why break forth into singing? Because the Lord hath comforted his people.
So why are we saying, because the Lord hath comforted his people? That's another thing I'd like everyone to learn is the motive clauses. They're in the Book of Mormon, the Doctrine and Covenants, the Bible, and so on.
[00:41:25] Speaker B: Indeed. Ki niham aronai amo.
[00:41:28] Speaker C: Thank you. Excellent. Let's look at the next example. It's called prophetic past tense. Oh, that's such a fancy term. But all that means is prophets using past tense forms for a future event.
And we have these in the Book of Mormon.
[00:41:45] Speaker D: I mean, there's a point where Abinadi kind of explicitly says it. He says, speaking of things which are to come, as if they.
I'm probably getting the exact wording wrong, but we can put the Book of Mormon passage on.
[00:41:57] Speaker C: That's perfect. I love that.
[00:41:59] Speaker D: It's pretty explicit with Abinadi.
[00:42:02] Speaker C: So the Hebrew calls it prophetic perfect, meaning the past tense.
So notice isaiah and Isaiah 53 uses past tense to refer to the future of Jesus. Atoning, sacrifice. He was wounded. See, that's past tense for our transgressions. And you say, wait, he wasn't wounded. He won't be for another 700 years.
[00:42:26] Speaker A: We would say, he will be wounded.
[00:42:27] Speaker C: Yeah, yeah, we'd say, he will be wounded. But so certain is prophecy that sometimes the prophets would use past tense for future events. He hath borne our griefs and carried our sorrows. Past tense for a future event.
He was bruised for our iniquities.
All we, like sheep have gone astray.
So we talked about personification.
So a person personizing it. Here are three or four examples from Isaiah, and if you understand this figure speech, it'll open up the passage.
Look at the second example. The mountains and the hills shall break forth before you into singing. What mountains are going to sing? And hills. And they're going to break forth. And the trees of the field will clap their hands. Isaiah 55.
Put on thy beautiful garments, O Jerusalem. What Jerusalem? The city you wear garments.
The earth mourneth our sins, testify against us.
Good with personification.
Isaiah uses rhetorical questions, as I mentioned earlier. There are about 100 of them as I recall.
To what purpose does the multitude of your sacrifices unto me, saith the Lord. It's a rhetorical question. We use rhetorical questions all the time in our speech.
Who hath required this at your hand? And then he goes on and explains, without waiting for an answer, what more could have been done to my vineyard.
[00:44:05] Speaker A: We see that in Jacob 5.
[00:44:06] Speaker B: Yeah, I was going to say that's also in Jacob 5 as well.
[00:44:09] Speaker A: So we've gone over a lot of technical aspects of Hebrew, but what about the spiritual message? How can we start to unravel what Isaiah is really trying to say to us?
[00:44:20] Speaker C: Here's the most important message about Isaiah, in my opinion.
That book was the Jehovah focused book. What do I mean?
He refers to the name Jehovah in the Hebrew 450 times.
That's astounding.
[00:44:39] Speaker B: That's a lot.
[00:44:40] Speaker C: 450 times we have had three prophets plus others who have explicitly said Jehovah is Jesus Christ.
So Isaiah is about Jesus Christ. The book of Isaiah is about Jesus Christ. Jesus commanded us to study Isaiah. Search diligently the words of Isaiah. I think in part this is my opinion, because it was about him. Capital H, I am. It was about Jesus Christ, our Lord. There are prophecies of Jesus Christ. Isaiah 53 is an astounding example. But there are other prophecies.
There are.
And then just take the 450 occurrences of Jehovah, the name Jehovah, and play out what the context is.
Here's Jehovah, the ineffable name. The name that's so sacred that some people won't even say the word Jehovah in the Hebrew.
So the 450. And then when you find that, go before and after and say, all right, what is the.
The. What's the context? Why is his name here?
And then study it and find out how it's. What. What it means.
[00:45:58] Speaker A: Well, I think that's really significant that especially in Judaism, there's a lot of reverence around the name itself. I mean, yes, we will more casually say Jehovah, Yahweh, Jesus Christ, but in, in Jewish tradition, there's a huge reverence around it where you wouldn't. Won't even say it. Y.
I have a lot of holy envy for that. I think that's like a beautiful way to respect the Lord. And I think also Latter Day Saints can really appreciate the idea of having sacred names that we don't disclose outside of certain sacred settings.
[00:46:27] Speaker C: Yes.
[00:46:28] Speaker A: And so I love the idea referencing God's name as much as we can.
[00:46:31] Speaker B: I don't think there's any controversy. Don, when you say that a big reason why the Lord in the Book of Mormon commands us to study Isaiah is because it's about him.
[00:46:40] Speaker A: I think that's not controversial.
[00:46:41] Speaker B: I think it's rather explicitly like the context of why in third Nephi, he says, he says to do this and also why Nephi explicitly. One of the reasons why Nephi says he includes this chunk of Isaiah chapters and others is because it's himself, Nephi, his brother Jacob and Isaiah are the three witnesses for Jesus Christ.
[00:47:00] Speaker C: Right.
[00:47:01] Speaker B: And he explicitly says that's one of the reasons why he's including this. And so that ties in very, very nicely with your point there, I think.
[00:47:07] Speaker D: And I think this is something that John W. Welch has talked a lot about. But Nephi is doing this after he's had his own just really expansive prophetic vision, Messianic vision, Messianic vision about what's going to unfold in the future and the role that Jesus Christ is going to play. And it really kind of seems like what he's doing is he's seeing that vision and he's reading it back into Isaiah and saying, we saw the same thing. He saw what I saw. And then he's putting these passages in and there's a lot of, you know, like I said, John W. Welch has done a lot of work on this, showing how there's a lot of interconnections to Nephi's visions and then the parts of Isaiah that he quotes.
[00:47:44] Speaker A: So, and I know a lot of people will maybe provide the critique that like Christians Christianize Isaiah too much, that they're reading into it, what wouldn't have been there for an ancient Jewish audience. And I think there's probably some, a lot of valid perspectives there. But at the same time, like Latter Day Saints, like you said, have this additional perspective that Nephi literally saw the Messiah. He saw what Jesus Christ was going to do and made the connection that, oh, this is what Isaiah is talking about. And then Jesus Christ comes in third Neph and says this is what Isaiah is talking about. So I think Latter Day Saints just have an added layer of being able to see Christ in that book.
[00:48:20] Speaker C: So there are three factors I want to emphasize.
One is, in my new translation, I put every time there's a pronoun that refers to Jehovah, I put it in capital.
And Jehovah he, capital H, E, and so on. I think, I think that's very important. It separates him, capital H, him from all the other characters in Isaiah number two. Isaiah gives us 200, about 200 explicit quotations from Jehovah. And I think you've all looked at a red font letter edition of the New Testament where Jesus words are in red font.
So I've kind of done that with Isaiah, the book of isaiah. So the 200 quotes, what are the actual quotes? The words of Jehovah in Isaiah.
And then point number three regarding Jehovah in Isaiah is this idea. You said it just a minute ago, Jasmine, about holy envy.
I've lived in Jerusalem, in the Holy Land three different times with my family.
The first time I lived there is 1986, 1988. And one of my professors was a religious Jew.
And when we'd read scriptural texts, he took his kippah out, which is the hat, and he'd put it on to separate for everyone, including himself. I'm now going to transition from just talking modern Hebrew and talking about this concept or this. We're going to read sacred scripture. So he put on his kippah and it was a transition. And I love that idea of transitioning when we're reading sacred text. And sometimes I tell my students, when you come across the sacred name Jehovah, pause for just a split second to separate it from all the others. I'll give you an example. And Isaiah said, and then you have his words, but here's another. And the Lord said, so just kind of separate it some way to show that this is the ineffable name. It's holy. All of God's names are holy. And this is one of them.
[00:50:43] Speaker A: I mean, in that example you gave, that person put on clothing to signal that transition. And Latter Day Saints will do the same thing. We have ritual clothing in certain settings to help us transition, create sacred space. But even when we're just doing our scripture studies, we can create some ways to create sacred space in just even our little scripture study table. Well, if you, you have listened to this episode and you are wondering like, okay, but I don't know Hebrew. I don't know all of this stuff. I don't have all the knowledge you have. Like, what's the next step for trying to untackle or trying to tackle Isaiah?
[00:51:15] Speaker C: All right, this is my opinion, but I think everyone in the world should learn biblical Hebrew. Everyone benefit everyone. All faiths, all religions, believers, non believers should learn biblical Hebrew and draw from the light of God's word in the original.
It is so powerful.
And that's my hope and my wish.
I teach at byu. This is what I do.
[00:51:42] Speaker A: So what's the best way to start learning biblical Hebrew from square one?
[00:51:48] Speaker C: Okay, this is going to be talking about myself. I don't know if I should do that.
[00:51:52] Speaker A: Well, I'll just point out
[00:51:55] Speaker D: he literally, he Thinks you should learn it so much that he wrote a book to help you.
[00:51:59] Speaker B: He writes a book about it, makes
[00:52:00] Speaker A: it nice and accessible.
And I honestly feel called repentance because I started this come follow me year, like, trying to, like, brush off my Hebrew a little bit and do it with my scripture study. And I totally got out of the habit. But this is motivating me of the beauty and. And the richness of actually diving into the Hebrews.
[00:52:15] Speaker B: And we as Latter Day Saints have ample prophetic precedent for learning Hebrew.
[00:52:20] Speaker C: Yes, yes.
[00:52:20] Speaker B: Don. Who in the prophetic tradition of the Latter Day Saints studied biblical Hebrew?
[00:52:26] Speaker C: Well, of course, the prophet and seer, Joseph Smith.
[00:52:29] Speaker B: Indeed.
[00:52:29] Speaker C: And others of the school of the Prophets.
[00:52:31] Speaker B: Indeed. And I would point out the fact that Joseph Smith's study of Hebrew was a revelatory process for him, because some of his Hebrew learning under a Jewish tutor, Joshua Sasha, ends up in our Book of Abraham, in our pearl of great price. And you see some Hebrew words and phrases. And that is deliberately the form of Hebrew that Joshua Sasha taught Joseph Smith. Right. The form of the words that appear, the transliteration that he uses.
So quite literally, our scripture in the Book of Abraham is in part a product of Joseph Smith's study of Hebrew.
[00:53:05] Speaker C: Yes.
[00:53:05] Speaker D: And you know, there's that passage in the Doctrine and Covenants that the Lord reveals things according to our language and according to our understanding. And I think you can actually see this with Joseph Smith as he learns more.
You know, he translates the Book of Mormon and then he does the jst, the Joseph Smith translation. Then as he learns Hebrew, it seems just open him up and the Lord is able to reveal so much more to him. We see it start to come out in things like Abraham, like the theology of the Nauvoo theology and things that we see.
The more we know. Right. If the Lord reveals according to our language and our understanding, then the more we know, the more we are open. We can be open to revelation from the Lord.
[00:53:45] Speaker C: That's exactly right. Precisely right. And I need to add on this textbook two items. One is Jerry Clements co authored it with me.
[00:53:54] Speaker A: She is awesome.
[00:53:55] Speaker C: She's totally awesome.
[00:53:56] Speaker A: Taking Hebrew.
[00:53:56] Speaker C: Did you take Hebrew from her?
[00:53:57] Speaker A: She was just like. So on top of the grammar and correcting, somebody got it wrong.
[00:54:02] Speaker C: The second thing is, at Brigham Young University, we offer three different courses for non traditional students, meaning people who want to learn biblical Hebrew without worrying about a transcript entry or without worrying about grades and.
And exams and quizzes. So we started this well in January. We had 900 students just so you know how.
[00:54:31] Speaker A: Wow, that's great. Well, if you do want to. If you liked this kind of stuff, go check out the YouTube channel, Jesus Christ in Scripture, where Don Perry and Tammy hall go through stuff like this all the time on all sorts of aspects of the Old Testament. And we'll put links to all of these wonderful publications Don has done in the description below. Remember, you can study deeply, believe boldly, and we'll see you next time.
