Introduction to Isaiah and Menorah-Tree Structures
Composed 700 years before the birth of Christ, Isaiah was writing about the curses of the covenant being poured out on a tree. This is astounding. All of the Scriptures are pointing to a tree, pointing to the cross of Christ. We have a Sovereign God who is a loving God. God did not leave us with uncertainty, and this is in fact one of the central messages of Isaiah, that God was telling us about the coming of His Son long before He was born. There is no doubt of this in the Old Testament, and the coming of Messiah who is our High Priest.
This page logically follows from the previous pages under the Scriptures tab of this website. To help make the connection it introduces one of the Menorah-Tree structures in Isaiah, and presents the associated land-regions of the proposed Menorah branches. Also, this page presents the single authorship of Isaiah, and provides a scholarly review portal. More detailed information on the literary structure of Isaiah is found under the Study Materials Tab.
Stanza to Menorah Branch Correspondence
The image presents the literary structure side-by-side with a Menorah and connecting lines in between the two, thus presenting the correspondence of stanzas (and their land-region locations) to branches. This data in graphical form is quite detailed for an introductory page, but providing it here gets directly to a larger understanding of the scroll, and points to the incredible capacity of the inspired author Isaiah in the 8th Century BC. We have an amazing heritage in the inspired Scriptures.
In the chart on the left of the image, each line represents a stanza. The third column of numbers indicates the verse count of those stanzas, and the red boxes show that the verse count is fold-over or chiastic for the branch pairs.
Two key concepts to notice are: 1) the branches are ordered in pairs, the text does not list branches in a left-to-right or right-to-left manner as one might look at a Menorah, and 2) the author Isaiah used “near” and “far” in the text as structural markers, as he did through all of his scroll.
There remains a great need for more investigation, and this image is by no means the final. Keep in mind that Isaiah commentaries are often multi-volume works.
Correspondence of Stanzas to Menorah Structure
The figure shows one of the proposed Menorah or lampstand-tree structures in Isaiah. In a nutshell, it has been proposed that Isaiah’s scroll can be succinctly described as the destruction of the tree of Ancient Israel (Isaiah 28 - 33) via the curses of the covenant, and then after the sacrifice of our Lord in Isaiah 53, a new tree is presented representing the Kingdom of Christ (Isaiah 57:14 - 62:10). In other words, we are metaphorically brought near to a new tree. This new tree can also be thought of as the cross of Christ, because the cross or the tree are representative of the nature of His Kingdom. Isn’t that interesting!
Of course, Isaiah is a lengthy book, so there is a much more to be understood.
Please also refer to the Menorah structure for Isaiah 57:14 - 62:10 under the Sections of Isaiah page, found under the Study Materials tab. If you believe the knowledge of literary structure in Isaiah will help your friends understand the flow of the book, and read it, please forward this website link to them.
To learn more about the Menorah-Tree structures and how they profoundly influence the way in which Isaiah can be read, click the link on Study Documents. To learn a little about the single authorship of the scroll, continue on below.
Discussion of Single Authorship of the Scroll
Isaiah is a magnificent and awesome scroll! In beginning a discussion on the structure of Isaiah, it is important to note that the scroll clearly has a single inspired author, and that Isaiah the author wrote this scroll during his lifetime. Isaiah lived mostly in the 8th century BC, born around the 760’s or 750’s and then perhaps he was still living as late as 680 BC. For reasons that will be presented on this webpage, the Book of Isaiah clearly had a single concept from its inception, and Isaiah’s book is inextricably interlinked by major themes.
Isaiah was written by a single inspired author.
Unfortunately, the idea that the Book of Isaiah had multiple authors crept in starting with the so called “Higher Criticism.” Commentaries from my Isaiah bookshelf clearly show this division in the literature, and it is very evident on the internet.
Generally, when something like this happens, something fundamental has been missed. Indeed, not enough attention has been paid to literary structure, and therefore basic things have been missed!
An essential idea in this investigation is that the single concept / single authorship of Isaiah has not been easily understood because the Menorah-tree structures in the book have not been understood.
On this website, information on Isaiah is built primarily under the Study Materials Tab, and you can easily go to that page. However, before going on to Isaiah, please ask yourself, “Do I really have the pre-requisites from Deuteronomy well in hand?” If not, do yourself a favor which will save much time in the long run.
This next link is intended for invited Biblical Scholars only, who will hopefully review materials in advance of the materials being made public. After materials are reviewed, they will be posted in a public area on this website.
