History and Hope

First, History and Hope develops an interpretive strategy based on ancient Israel’s agro-ecological past. Through comparisons to the thought and practice of several contemporary agrarian thinkers (such as Wendell Berry), it draws attention to the holistic, traditional worldview of the people who created the Bible and develops an “agrarian hermeneutic” that is then used to examine the book of Isaiah. This interpretive strategy, which introduces a variety of observations consistent with ancient Israel’s subsistence culture, offers a new lens on the Bible that is historically and phenomenologically appropriate to its premodern character. Second, the study applies modern narratology to the book of Isaiah in its final form, a move that allows for a careful delineation of the differences in knowledge that stand between the book’s characters and its implied reader. When combined with an agrarian hermeneutic, narratological precision opens understanding of Isaiah’s written rhetoric to the associative, soil-bound logic by which it is constructed.

In the past, many scholars have regarded Isaiah 28–35 as little more than a fragmentary reiteration of ideas already found in prior parts of the book. Now, through exegetical analysis of Isaiah 28–35 from an agrarian perspective, these eight chapters are interpreted as a rhetorical key to the overall book’s coherent vision of destruction and hope.