Hank Smith:                      00:00:00             Coming up in this episode on followHIM.

Dr. Jeff Chadwick:           00:00:03             Why Isaiah? Because he’s also a remarkable individual. He is, for the eighth century BC, the Shakespeare of his era. He will somehow develop a literacy in Hebrew, a poetic literacy that is astounding, that ascends above anybody else of his era. His writings in Hebrew are simply sublime.

Hank Smith:                      00:00:37             Hello, my friends. Welcome to another episode of followHIM. My name is Hank Smith. I’m your host. I’m here with my Isaiah loving co-host John Bytheway. John, welcome back to followHIM. Five Lessons on Isaiah. Tell me what you’re looking forward to.

John Bytheway:               00:00:58             Isaiah 6, or 2 Nephi 16, is one of my favorite chapters in all of the standard works. I love how much there is in his call. I love his reaction to his call. I love what happens with the seraphim. I love how the Lord tells him it’s going to be hard. And I love how Isaiah says, “How long?” Which is such a great question. It’s Alma and Amulek, it’s Joseph Smith in Liberty Jail. Same question. Well, how long is it going to be like this? A lot of people listen to our podcast and say, “How long?” That’s what I’m looking forward to, that we get to do Isaiah 6 today.

Hank Smith:                      00:01:38             I am excited for the next five weeks. And to kick us off, I wanted to find an Isaiah expert. We got him. His name is Dr. Jeff Chadwick. Jeff, welcome back. We’re happy to have you back on followHIM.

Dr. Jeff Chadwick:           00:01:51             It’s a pleasure to be back with these two great of the three Nephites.

Hank Smith:                      00:01:56             Yes. That is John. John does not age. There’s just something happening. Jeff, tell us what you’ve been thinking of. You’ve been studying Isaiah for how long?

Dr. Jeff Chadwick:           00:02:08             Well, 50 years, actually. Literally 50 years ago, in the summer of 1976, I was a missionary in Germany. I just got transferred out of West Berlin being there for a year. Was sent to Bremen with another guy, Elder Matthew Galt, who’s a great friend still and was a area authority down in Georgia. Galt and I were there, two 20-year-olds, you know, on the senior side of our mission. What to do for companion study there in Bremen? We decided we’re going to do Isaiah. We sat down for the whole summer and we read every chapter of Isaiah, went through it with a fine tooth comb. First time for either of us. Of course, we’re total rookies at this. There weren’t many resources. We had Elder McConkie’s old Ensign article, 10 Keys to Understanding Isaiah. Had some passages in Talmage’s Articles of Faith, some passages in Marvelous Work and a Wonder by LeGrand Richards.

                                           00:03:06             But somehow we got through it, mostly not understanding context, but looking for the restoration. I would recommend it to every 20-year-old I know to read Isaiah now and digest it. 50 years, yeah. Professionally, I started as a seminary teacher in 1979. It was Old Testament, so the first time professionally was then, 47 years ago. Yeah, we’ve been doing this a while. There’s nothing better.

Hank Smith:                      00:03:37             Yeah. It comes recommended by the Lord himself.

Dr. Jeff Chadwick:           00:03:40             It does indeed.

Hank Smith:                      00:03:42             Jeff, we want to get into all of your expertise. Not only do you understand Isaiah, you understand Isaiah in its original language. That’s going to bless our lives today. John, it’s been a while since Jeff’s joined us. There might be some listeners who don’t know him. Tell us all about him.

John Bytheway:               00:03:58             Jeff characteristically says use a short bio. He already told us he’s been teaching in the church educational system as a religious educator since 1979. That’s when I was in seminary. He serves at BYU as the Jerusalem Center Professor of Archeology and Near Eastern Studies, also as a professor of church history in Jewish studies. Hank, before we hit record, Jeff was showing us, he’s going to have to tell us about this. He was examining the Isaiah scroll. I didn’t realize how long that thing was, but I want to add, he served another faculty here at the BYU Jerusalem Center currently, 2024 to 2025 during the current conflict with Iran. He taught in his 25th student program there, and in June, July of 2026, returned to the field of archeology in Israel as a senior consultant to the new archeological expedition at Tel Ashdod on Israel’s southern coast. Can you tell us about that scroll and that experience? Where was that?

Dr. Jeff Chadwick:           00:05:03             I’ve never seen this whole scroll. Little bits and pieces of it they’ll take out and display, but not the whole thing. This summer, they put the whole scroll on display again in a climate controlled room that you had to go through an airlock. They only let 10 people in the room at a time. Here you are looking at a scroll of Isaiah from the time that Jesus was reading from a scroll of Isaiah, 2,000 years ago. The leather of the scroll, the Hebrew is perfectly legible. You can read it today just as easily as 2,000 years ago. And it was amazing. And it really got me psyched to talk with you two brethren about Isaiah today.

Hank Smith:                      00:05:46             I bet that was such a touching moment for someone who loves this as much as you do.

Dr. Jeff Chadwick:           00:05:51             I had to pinch myself. That’s the touch, the pinch of, am I really getting to do this after all these decades in Israel?

Hank Smith:                      00:05:57             So great. Well, we’re glad to have you back. Let’s get started. Come, Follow Me manual. The lesson this week, God is my salvation, the first 12 chapters of Isaiah. Even if this is your first time reading the book of Isaiah, you might find passages that sound familiar. That’s because of all the Old Testament prophets, Isaiah is the one most often quoted in other books of scripture, including by the Savior himself. Isaiah’s words also appear often in hymns and other sacred music. Why is Isaiah quoted so often? Surely one reason is that Isaiah had a gift for expressing the word of God in vivid memorable language, but it’s more than that. Isaiah has inspired prophets for generations because the truths he taught transcended his own generation. He wrote of God’s great work of redemption, which is much bigger than one nation or one time period. From Isaiah, Nephi learned that he and his people, though separated from the rest of Israel, were still part of God’s covenant people.

                                           00:06:52             In Isaiah, New Testament writers found prophecies about the Messiah that were fulfilled right before their eyes. And in Isaiah, Joseph Smith found inspiration for the latter-day work of gathering Israel and building Zion. When you read Isaiah, what will you find? I love it. That is a passionate paragraph about Isaiah and we have a passionate guest. Jeff, where do you want to go from here?

Dr. Jeff Chadwick:           00:07:16             Chapter one is interesting in that it is very much like section one of the Doctrine and Covenants. It serves as a preface to the whole book of Isaiah. It’s not in chronological order. Isaiah chapter one actually is about a good 40 years in Isaiah’s ministry. The earliest of his prophecies begin with chapter two. And this is also interesting to me because that’s where Nephi begins with Isaiah. He knew that’s the natural beginning of the book. From Isaiah chapter 2 to Isaiah chapter 12 is one big chiasm. You start with this glorious picture of a latter-day temple, the time of the Lord’s presence in glory again in Israel, then it goes back and it goes down the X axis to ancient Israel and its wickedness and how it’s struggling through there. Then it will come forward to Isaiah 11 and 12, which are probably just kind of one chapter together, of the restoration of the gospel and the coming of the Messiah in the last days.

                                           00:08:22             So it starts big and ends big and in the middle it says, “Repent or die.” We always go for those great restoration parts in Isaiah, but it’s the repent or die parts that are kind of important to keep in mind, living in the time we do. It’s also, in the second part of Isaiah, the comfort and promise parts that we have to constantly be nourished by. I’d like to start today with 3 Nephi 23. When Jesus is visiting the Nephites, he’s going to be with them in his resurrection visit for three days. What do you do with only a finite amount of time in three days and you can’t preach all night? How does the Savior use his time with the Nephites? Well, of course he teaches his sermon on the mount, but then what does he do? He quotes lots of Isaiah to them. Now, if you’ve only got so much time and you have to figure out what am I going to do that’s most valuable, look at what Jesus thinks is most valuable.

                                           00:09:27             He teaches from Isaiah when he’s teaching the Nephites. He teaches primarily from Isaiah 52 and 54 about the gathering of Israel. He doesn’t even teach about himself. He knows people have got that covered. He teaches about the gathering of Israel, the greatest thing that’s going on in these latter days. Here’s what Jesus says to them. “Now behold,” this is verse one. “I say unto you that you ought to search these things, yea a commandment I give unto you, that ye search these things diligently. For great are the words of Isaiah.” You ought to all get two or three books on Isaiah and study from them as you go. But Jesus says it’s a commandment and you ought to be doing it diligently. I always ask my students, “How you doing on this commandment?” Most people say, “Well, that’s something that’s still down the line for me.”

                                           00:10:28             As a church, we have to do this. Verse two tells you why he’s so great, why you have to study it diligently, why it’s a commandment. “For surely he, Isaiah, spake as touching all things concerning my people which are of the house of Israel.” Everything you need to know about the scattering and gathering of Israel that is important, Isaiah teaches about. Jews have a heritage that goes back genealogically to the house of Israel. It is a remembered connection. Latter-day Saints have the same real connection and descent from the lost tribes of Israel, but we don’t have the paper trail. For us, rather than a remembered heritage, it is a restored heritage, but it is just as valid. We carry two names in the church. We carry the name of Jesus. That is our personal name. When we’re baptized, we become his, his sons and daughters by adoption. It is his name that becomes our name, but we also carry the name of Israel. That is our family name. Jesus is our personal name. Israel is our family name. Those are eternal. It’s really wonderful. Jesus explains to the Nephites why you need to understand Isaiah because you’re of Israel. Jesus is speaking to you through the book of Isaiah.

Hank Smith:                      00:11:52             Jeff, let’s back up. Let’s say I’m a brand new member of the church. This is all new to me. Can we do just a brief lead up? The Bible opens, we get to this man, Abraham. The Lord says, Abraham, your family, which is going to be known as the house of Israel, they’re going to bless all the families of the earth. The book of Genesis is that family. They don’t do so great at blessing all the families of the earth. Then they’re taken to Egypt. They come out of Egypt. The Lord puts them back in the promised land saying, okay, now is your chance to bless all the families of the earth. They fall apart a little bit. They choose kings. At what point then does Isaiah come on the scene? Has that recently happened? They’ve chosen kings and they’ve fallen apart. They broke into two kingdoms.

Dr. Jeff Chadwick:           00:12:37             Isaiah comes a thousand years, maybe even 1,100 years after Abraham. You have a thousand years for that covenant of Abraham, the covenants of Israel, to cook and obtain its savor. I’m diverging here, but let me go over to 1 Nephi 22, where Nephi, who’s been teaching from Isaiah to Laman and Lemuel tries to help them understand something. I’m in 1 Nephi 22:3, and he’s going to tell Laman and Lemuel that he’s been reading in Isaiah, and he says in verse three, “The things which I have read are things pertaining to both temporal and spiritual, for it appears that the house of Israel, sooner or later, will be scattered upon all the face of the earth and also among all nations.” Not all nations, but India, not all the face of the earth, but Africa. All nations. President Nelson could tell us, “We’re sending out you missionaries into every part of earth and you are gathering Israel and it’s the greatest work that’s ever happened.” Which again, coming back to Isaiah is why Isaiah’s so important. It’s the thing that lets us know.

John Bytheway:               00:13:50             I’m so glad you’re talking about this because when I was really young, I remember people wondering where the lost tribes were and when they were going to come forth. Are they hiding under the polar ice cap? Like you said, line upon line, we’ve learned, wait a minute, we are the lost tribes. I’m a lost tribe. I’m from it. We were lost. It’s lost that we didn’t know who we were. Like you said, I get my patriarchal blessing. I find out who I am. Here’s Nephi talking in 1 Nephi 22, and in verse four, he says, “There are many who are already lost.” As early as 600 BC, the tribes are already going all over the earth. Nephi even says, “Upon the isles of the sea as well.” No, there isn’t some group of lost tribes all living together.

Dr. Jeff Chadwick:           00:14:38             I remember being in the upper room of the Salt Lake Temple with, when you used to go on a mission, you used to go to Salt Lake Mission Home and go to the temple in Salt Lake City, and a general authority would host you and you got to, like, ask and answer questions. I remember saying to my companion as I sat next to him there, and it was like the third day of our mission, right? And I said, “Sit on your hands. Don’t ask anything. Seriously, this is a trap.” And sure enough, some Elder raised his hand and he said, “Elder so-and-so…” I actually know who the 70 was that was teaching us, but I won’t mention his name. “Elder so-and-so, where are the lost tribes of Israel?” You can guess what he said,” Well, Elder, if we knew where the lost tribes were, they wouldn’t be lost, would they? Next question.”

                                           00:15:22             Finally, like 10 years later, Elder Bruce R. McConkie wrote this wonderful book called A New Witness for the Articles of Faith. In it he had this whole section on Mormon myths about the scattering and gathering of Israel. Three or four of the ones that he shoots down are the broken off the planet and hiding behind the moon theory or the underneath the polar ice cap theory or all types of crazy things that we used to try and do because it wasn’t obvious where Lost Israel is. Well, it is obvious if you’re an anthropologist. Everywhere on the planet, because that’s what happens when you take one people and deport them, as the Assyrians did with the Israelites, into a different population and they start to intermingle. That’s what happens with humans is we produce other humans and they become then of multi-heritage, Assyrian, but also Israelite, or Babylonian, but also Israelite, or Elamite, but also Israelite.

                                           00:16:18             Those people moving through migration dynamics, because in the Middle East, people are going every which way, to China, to Africa, to Europe. Pretty soon, that hidden lineage of Israel spreads, just like the old shampoo commercial, you tell two friends and they tell two friends and so on and so on and so on. Literally, wherever you go on your mission, you’re gathering Israel. It’s important that we tell all of our missionaries, whether they are senior missionaries or young folks going out at 18 or 19, that that’s what they’re doing, because John and Hank, you will remember that no one told us 50 years ago that we were gathering Israel. We were teaching the gospel. We were happy to do it, but nobody said, “You’re gathering Israel.” I wished I had known then what I know now.

John Bytheway:               00:17:08             As recently as a couple of weeks ago, somebody had asked me about that idea of they’re all hiding somewhere. You mentioned it just a second ago that initially, perhaps, the scattering was in the North country, so sometimes when we see a verse that way, we think they’re only in the North countries. Well, that’s where they maybe went initially, but now, all over the planet. If you folks would like to hear a really beautiful big picture summary of going back to the Abrahamic Covenant and all this we’re talking about, go to Ensign College, find Hank Smith’s talk on this, because he did a really beautiful, with characteristic Hank-like energy. They’re thinking of bottling that and putting it in a prescription strength. But you can see Hank describe a really great big picture of history. What I like about what you did there, Hank, was then you see your part in it, that we’re going to go gather Israel, as Jeff just said. Now we know, oh, that’s what we’re doing, as President Nelson emphasized so beautifully.

Hank Smith:                      00:18:17             I did it because I believe what Jeff just said, that especially a missionary, but really any member of the church, you have to know this story. This is the why of the entire thing. We frequently talk about the restoration of Christ’s New Testament church. We’re okay there, but when Moroni appeared to Joseph Smith, Jeff, what does he say we’re going to do? He doesn’t say anything about restoring a New Testament church. He says, we’re going to fulfill Isaiah chapter 11.

Dr. Jeff Chadwick:           00:18:45             Right, yeah. We’re going to do Isaiah chapter 11 at some point during this broadcast, but that’s it. And he quotes it to him all the times he appears, too. Every time he re-quotes it there, Joseph Smith knew what Isaiah 11 was about, the gathering of Israel. John, you just pointed out something really fun. Israel began scattering to the north. There’s another thing happening, too, is that everybody didn’t go north. Some people went to the east, some people went to the west, some people to the south. We emphasize north as Latter-day Saints because of Section 133, but both Isaiah and Jeremiah emphasize that Israel returned from the North and from all the other directions that God spread them. And I don’t want to take anybody’s thunder away from Isaiah later on in the program, but in Isaiah 43, you have this wonderful promise by God to lost Israel in Isaiah 43:5, “Fear not, I am with thee.”

                                           00:19:44             “I will bring thy seed from the east and gather thee from the west. I will say to the north, give up, and to the south, keep not back. Bring my sons from far and my daughters from the ends of the earth, even every one that is called by my name.” That little passage is just one of dozens in Isaiah that tells you what’s going on with the scattering, which is to all locations on earth, and what’s going on with the gathering is that they’re going to be brought from all the corners of the earth, but what’s the instrumentality of the gathering? Is it a physical movement? No, that would be improbable. That would be impossible, really. We did it a little bit as pioneers, and we found out really what we eventually want to do is gather in place. Then what’s the function of the gathering? To become called by his name, Isaiah 43:7, “Even every one that is called by my name.” Once you have the name of Jehovah, the name of Jesus upon you because you’ve made that covenant, then you are gathered to your ancient family of Israel all over the world, north, south, east, west. Isn’t that great? Isaiah 43, folks, verse five, six, seven.

John Bytheway:               00:20:59             You talked about the Abrahamic covenant, which Hank does in his talk too. What was the point, the last part, to bless all the families of the earth. That’s another thing missionaries, I hope, will love to know, is that that’s the point. We’re bringing to past the Abrahamic Covenant to bless all of the families of the earth, and the greatest blessing we can offer them is to be sealed as families in temples, and that’s the point of the gathering. When Laman and Lemuel, they’re asking Nephi, they ask, “Well, is this temporal or is this spiritual?” And Nephi says, “Uh-huh.” All right. So, yeah.

Dr. Jeff Chadwick:           00:21:36             Everything is spiritual, but God’s doing this for real. It’s temporal. Gathering doesn’t necessarily mean temporally. You have to move from England to Salt Lake City. Gathering means you are gathering to the house of Israel, being gathered in the last days, and them becoming called by the name of Jehovah, which is the name of Christ. I’m stealing thunder here, but just do very quickly Isaiah 44. Isaiah 44 is also talking about the gathering of Israel. We just did Isaiah 43, now we’re in 44, and you bump over to Isaiah 44:5. The people who are being gathered, it goes like this, “One shall say, I am the Lord’s.” Notice it says L-O-R-D in caps there, “I am Jehovah’s.” Another shall call himself by the name of Jacob. Jacob is Israel. Now, Isaiah always says the same thing in synonymous couplets in poetry. He’ll say that same thing again, “I am the Lords,” and another will call myself by the name of Jacob.

                                           00:22:34             Another shall subscribe his hand unto the Lord, under Jehovah, and surname himself by the name of Israel. Surname is the family name. In the gathering, Israel is gathered and they get two names. One is Jehovah or Jesus, and the other is Israel. But the gathering of Israel is inherently becoming, belonging to the Lord Jehovah, the Lord Jesus Christ. It’s the gospel. It’s all there is to it.

Hank Smith:                      00:23:04             Jeff, again, for a brand new member of the church, I’ve been following the timeline this year. Israel chose kings, didn’t go so well. They broke into separate kingdoms. Now, you’re losing the Northern Kingdom and you’re a date guy. What do you date it at? You lose the Northern Kingdom in, what, 721? Is that what you’d say? Somewhere around there?

Dr. Jeff Chadwick:           00:23:26             The loss of the tribes of Israel is much more complex. There are three big attacks, two on the north. One attack is in 732. That drains about half of the northern kingdom of its Israelite population. Then the second attack on the north is on a reduced kingdom of the north, the area of Ephraim and Manasseh in what we would call Samaria. That drains the rest of the north, the rest of the northern kingdom around 722, 721, as you say. Then there’s a third attack that we don’t talk so much about. We ought to, because it’s key. It’s right in the middle of Isaiah. It’s in 701 BC, and that’s when the Assyrians attack Judah and carry away 90% of the population. Only a sliver of Judah is left to muddle on. Many of what we would say are the tribal heritage of Judah, the tribal heritage of Simeon, the southern tribes, Benjamin, et cetera, also go into dispersion and become lost Israel.

                                           00:24:34             In Jerusalem, after that third Assyrian attack in 701 BC, a small sliver of ancient Israel was preserved, didn’t get taken away. Jerusalem was miraculously spared. You’ve already talked about this in the lesson on Hezekiah and Jerusalem, the Lord spares Jerusalem. Inside the city of Jerusalem in 700 BC were maybe 20,000 people behind those walls that Hezekiah had built. They were of every tribe of Israel, not just of the tribe of Judah. Many had fled south from the Northern Kingdom and settled in Judah after 720, only to then face another Assyrian war 20 years later. Jerusalem was a multi-tribal heritage city. They had every tribe from Asher and Zebulon to Ephraim and Manasseh to Judah and Levi. This shows up then in Jewish history forever after, because Lehi, 100 years later, has Manassite heritage. Lehi’s friend Ishmael had Ephraimite heritage. Of course, you know there’s Judah there, and Nephi says that he’s a Jew, that his family are Jews.

                                           00:25:44             I say Jew, I mean them from whence I came, Nephi says. But to be a Jew didn’t mean being of the tribe of Judah specifically, but it meant being a citizen of Judah. Citizens of Judah, even in 600 BC, were of all tribes. And that’s why Jews today, all these years later, understand themselves correctly to be of all the tribes of Israel, not just of the tribe of Judah. We get that wrong a lot in our conversation. I teach Judaism at BYU, so this is a standard lecture that I give. Latter-day Saints are also legitimately descended from lost Israel and from all 12 tribes of lost Israel. Jews are descended from all 12 tribes of Israel who were the remainder of Judah that didn’t get taken away by the Assyrians. Latter-day Saints are connected to those who were taken away.

Hank Smith:                      00:26:42             Let’s keep going then, Jeff. So the Assyrian siege happens. You’ve taken away, what you’re saying, 90% of the people.

Dr. Jeff Chadwick:           00:26:50             By 700, Hank, only Jerusalem, of the entire two kingdoms of Israel, only Jerusalem is left by 700 BC. 20,000 people out of half a million.

Hank Smith:                      00:27:02             During Isaiah’s lifetime.

Dr. Jeff Chadwick:           00:27:05             That’s in the middle of Isaiah’s ministry.

Hank Smith:                      00:27:06             Then 100 years later, that’s where the Book of Mormon comes in. The Book of Mormon plugs into the Bible right there.

Dr. Jeff Chadwick:           00:27:14             Right in Jeremiah’s time, a century after Isaiah, Isaiah is as fresh and new to Jeremiah and Nephi and Lehi as Joseph Smith and the Doctrine and Covenants is to us.

Hank Smith:                      00:27:27             It is recent history.

John Bytheway:               00:27:29             Yeah. They, in their recent history, know that Jerusalem was miraculously preserved. Lehi has a tough sell saying Jerusalem’s going to be destroyed.

Dr. Jeff Chadwick:           00:27:41             This is the hard thing to talk about with Laman and Lemuel because they know the cultural history. They know that 100 years before 600 BC, God had spared Jerusalem. Jerusalem’s never been successfully conquered. They don’t think that Babylon is going to be a threat to Jerusalem. Well, they’re wrong, but there’s a logic in their mistake. Let’s run this to the other side of Nephi and Lehi’s voyage to ancient America. I’m bumping now as the last little introductory bit here to 2 Nephi 25, because we already talked about how Jesus felt about Isaiah, great are the words of Isaiah. Let’s do what Nephi does because Nephi lives so close in time to Isaiah. In 2 Nephi 25, here’s Nephi teaching the people of ancient America who are his new society. He’s converted them to the covenants of Israel, which we would say is the gospel. 2 Nephi 25, and this is after he’s quoted all those chapters of Isaiah in 2 Nephi 12 through 24.

                                           00:28:46             Nephi says, “Now, I Nephi do speak somewhat concerning the words which I have written, which have been spoken by the mouth of Isaiah. Behold, Isaiah spoke many things which were hard for many of my people to understand, for they know not concerning the manner of the prophesying among the Jews.” That’s not something you would say of the people of Lehi’s party that got on the boat. They were all Jews. Ishmael knew about. Zoram knew about the prophesying of the Jews. Lehi knew. He taught Laman and Lemuel, Sariah, all the women folk, they all understood Isaiah. It was their culture. Who Nephi’s been teaching that don’t know anything about the manner of the Jews is the Native Americans that are now his little kingdom. Verse five, Nephi says, “Yea, my soul delighteth in the words of Isaiah.” That’s what I hope everyone that’s listening to us will come to feel.

                                           00:29:44             Most people say, “My soul is terrified of them.” I get that. That’s why you’re not into the commandment of reading Isaiah, because you’re terrified of it. This is not unusual among us. It’s certainly not unusual among any Christians either. Isaiah is tough. That little story from the Korean War, which is apocryphal but very instructive, about the serviceman that was saved when a bullet was shot at him, and it happened to hit his serviceman’s copy of the scriptures that was in his front pocket. And when he opened it, it was a Book of Mormon and it had stopped exactly at 2 Nephi 12, just where the Isaiah chapters begin and the bullet was unable to pierce through them. That’s like us. It’s really hard to pierce through those chapters.

John Bytheway:               00:30:32             Nothing gets through 2 Nephi.

Dr. Jeff Chadwick:           00:30:36             They will become delightful to you, but Nephi explains why, and this is where the work part of this comes in, folks. You’re going to have to do some work. Nephi says in verse five, “My soul delighteth in the words of Isaiah, for I came out from Jerusalem. Mine eyes have beheld the things of the Jews.” You have to be taught after the things of the Jewish context. And then when I talk about that, I’m talking about ancient Judah, not today’s Judaism. You have to know a little bit about the land of Israel. You have to know a little biblical geography. You have to know a little bit of the history. Now, in verse six, Nephi says, “I have not taught my children after the manner of the Jews, but I of myself have dwelt at Jerusalem. I know concerning the regions roundabout, I have made mention of my children concerning the judgements of God, which have come to pass among the Jews.” By the way, things which come to pass among the Jews, that’s history.

                                           00:31:30             That’s the history of the time of Isaiah. That’s Old Testament history, the things which have come to pass. I know concerning the regions round about. I know about the land. I know the geography. I know something of the context of Isaiah. I know something concerning the manner of prophecy that Isaiah speaks like a poet, that he speaks in synonymous couplets, that often he is speaking metaphorically, interweaving it with things that are literal. You have to know how to process both of those, the literal and the metaphoric, the real and the symbolic. And you’ll be able to see God’s purposes, including the gathering of Israel on every page.

Hank Smith:                      00:32:14             That’s wonderful. We’ve set him up. He’s in the middle of the scattering. Lehi is yet to come on the scene. He’s 100 years away. Isaiah’s life opens. Is that where we are right now? His ministry, his texts, his book?

Dr. Jeff Chadwick:           00:32:30             It’s a little complicated, but let’s do the book. Let’s just go to Isaiah 1. We pointed out already that Isaiah 1 is a chapter that’s unique because it’s not in chronological order. The rest of the book of Isaiah from 2 forward will have a chronology to it. But Isaiah 1 was a special revelation, gets put into the first chapter position, like a preface to the whole book. And then with chapter 2 of Isaiah, you have the oldest of his prophecies just the way in Doctrine and Covenants chapter 2, you have the earliest of the revelations of the prophet Joseph Smith. Let’s deal with Isaiah 1 first. Now, Isaiah 1 belongs to that year of the aftermath of the third Assyrian attack against the Israelites, the attack on Judah of 701 BC. Isaiah 1, the year there is going to be 700 BC. And on the first morning of 700 BC, the people of Jerusalem woke up and they’re all that’s left of two whole kingdoms of the house of Israel, the northern kingdom of Israel and the southern kingdom of Judah, which have been destroyed, thousands killed, and literally hundreds of thousands carried away as captives, deported by the Assyrians to become essentially state slaves and be resettled in other lands who will very quickly over just a few generations lose their Israelite identity.

                                           00:34:09             As you said, by the time you get to 600 and Nephi, Nephi says, “Where they are, we know not.” That assimilation and that loss of identity was rather quick, just three or four generations. Lost Israel did not get lost because they didn’t know where they were. They knew where they were. Even the Bible knows where they were taken. Lost Israel became lost because over a very short period of time, they forgot who they were. They lost their identity. As we open in Isaiah 1, we’re looking at a summary of Isaiah’s ministry up to 700, up to 700 BC. He starts out around 742 BC. So he’s been prophesying for over 40 years. In Isaiah 6, which I know you love, John, that’s his first vision. He says, “In the year that King Josiah died,” that’s 742 BC, “he sees the Lord in the temple.”

                                           00:35:03             Now, in Isaiah 1, we’re in 700 BC. We start out with the vision of Isaiah, the son of Amoz, which he saw concerning Judah and Jerusalem in the days of Uzziah, Jotham, Ahaz, and Hezekiah, Kings of Judah. That’s a summary statement of 40 years. By the way, I’m going to come back to this. Notice what the vision of Isaiah was about. Don’t get put off by this because we’ll come back and we’ll fix this in a minute, but it’s not about Joseph in Jackson County. It’s not about Ephraim and Utah. It’s about Judah and Jerusalem. That’s the setting, that’s the context of Isaiah. And that’s why Nephi said you have to come to know those things of the Jews to get the context. Isaiah is applicable across societies, across millennia. Isaiah teaches as much about the latter-day restoration and the Latter-day Saints as you could ever pocket, but that’s by application.

                                           00:36:14             It’s by what Nephi calls likening unto us. The context of all of Isaiah is Judah and Jerusalem. While it’s great, as I did as a 20-year-old missionary 50 years ago, to read Isaiah and see yourself in it, and we should, and we should apply it to ourselves and liken it to ourselves, if you want to get to the first level of Isaiah, you have to get to it on the Judah and Jerusalem level. And I promise you, once you get it on its context level, the application becomes even richer and more possible.

Hank Smith:                      00:36:50             Jeff, I want to pause and emphasize what you just said. In biblical scholarship, it’s called Exajesus, or not ex-Jesus, it’s a Latin term, but this is crucial because often, Jeff, we jump to application without understanding author intent, what the audience would’ve heard, and the application isn’t as rich. Nephi gets context. That’s why his application is so wonderful.

Dr. Jeff Chadwick:           00:37:17             He made every attempt that he could to apply Isaiah to his people, but while they were able to accept that from him, they didn’t ever really get good at it themselves. Or what you don’t see lots of Book of Mormon people doing, Mormon, for example, or Alma or Helaman or King Mosiah or King Benjamin, they don’t use Isaiah. They use their own prophets because they’re comfortable with them, but they’re not using Isaiah. There’s only four people in the Book of Mormon that use Isaiah, and three of them were born in the Middle East, Nephi, Jacob, and Jesus. There’s this one odd guy out called Abinadi who is a mysterious character. Abinadi in Book of Mormon situation is a lot like Elijah in Judaism. He’s a mysterious person. We can’t quite figure him out. But Abinadi quotes Isaiah 53, and that’s all we get from him on that.

                                           00:38:13             But it’s Nephi and Jacob, who are both native Middle Easterners, and Jesus, obviously, native Middle Easterner, born in Bethlehem, who know how to deal with Isaiah, and they were all Jews. To the extent that any Latter-day Saint out there will try to do what Nephi did and learn those things of the Jews which would help them, that Old Testament context, which would help them understand Isaiah, you’ll be blessed with that contextual layer that becomes this foundation for building your understanding of the restoration and the gathering.

John Bytheway:               00:38:50             Then you go, now I see why they’re saying great are the words of Isaiah, because he could prophesy the attack of an Assyrian army in his time and missionaries going out in the latter days, an army of missionaries for a totally different reason and use the same words. No wonder they say great are the words of Isaiah. So that is just one example.

Dr. Jeff Chadwick:           00:39:14             Isaiah is the ultimate glass onion. It has so many wonderful layers. They’re like crystal. You can see through some layers to get to other layers. It’s wonderful. What we just read in Isaiah 1, verse one, the vision of Isaiah, the son of Amoz, which he saw about Judah and Jerusalem in the days of the four kings from 740 to 700, Uzziah, Jotham, Ahaz, Hezekiah, that’s the ancient chapter heading. Verse one is actually the ancient chapter heading. We have a modern chapter heading there, but verse one is the actual ancient chapter heading. Now Isaiah’s prophecy and exhortation begins in verse two. “Hear, O heavens, give ear earth.” Now, what does that sound like to you? “Hearken, O ye people,” just like section one of the Doctrine and Covenants. Then he lets them have it because this is why Israel has been defeated. Judah has been defeated, smashed to smithereens and deported because they’ve been wicked for 500 years.

                                           00:40:22             We’re in 700 BC, Moses leaves and Joshua takes over with the House of Israel around 1200 BC, five centuries, a half of a millennium when, as you pointed out, the ancient house of Israel had its moments that looked promising, but in general weren’t quite able to get up to those high covenant values that the law of Moses required. The law of Moses is the basis of the gospel. Let’s not play any games with this. The 10 commandments are the gospel. After hear, O heavens give ear O earth, hearken my people, I’ve nourished and brought up children. I’ve raised the house of Israel and they’ve rebelled against me. That’s verse two. That’s the whole rest of the chapter after chapter. You guys got this because you earned it. You earned the disaster that has come upon you. Verse four, “A sinful nation, a people laden with iniquity, a seed of evildoers,” onward and onward.

                                           00:41:27             We could tear apart every verse here, but what you do see in verse six is indicative of where the land is on the first morning in 700 BC, because the land of Israel and the two former kingdoms that existed there, Israel and Judah, Isaiah or the Lord here likens unto a victim that’s been severely beaten and left for dead. Verse five, “Why should you be stricken anymore? You will revolt more and more? The whole head is sick. The whole heart is faint. From the sole of the foot, even to the head, there is no soundness in it but wounds and bruises and putrefying sores. They have not been closed, neither bound up, neither mollified with ointment.” This is a beaten up victim that’s got wounds all over and nobody’s treating him. Well, this is the injured body image of what’s happened to the land of Israel and the people of Israel.

                                           00:42:25             And if you’re too dense to get that, the Lord then goes from those metaphors to the literal. Verse seven,”Your country is desolate because it’s been deported both north and south. Your cities are burned with fire. Your land, strangers devour it in your presence. It is desolate as overthrown by strangers.” There’s not a city of Judah that wasn’t destroyed other than Jerusalem. The Emperor Sennacherib declared that his armies had destroyed 46 major cities in Judah, just in Judah, along with countless villages and had deported from Judah in 701 BC, 200,150 people. The land was desolate. Only Jerusalem was spared, which is what verse eight says, “The daughter of Zion,” that’s Jerusalem, “is left.” This is very beautiful because King James uses beautiful language. “Like a cottage in a vineyard, a lodge in a garden of cucumber.” What it actually says is a harvest shack in an empty field.

                                           00:43:33             This is a shack in an empty field. That’s what Jerusalem is. It’s so beautiful you think, “Oh, this is so lovely,” but that’s not really what it’s saying. It’s a harvest shack in an empty harvested field where everything else has been taken away. Then God says, “Except the Lord of hosts had left unto us a very small remnant,” which means if God had not spared Jerusalem in 701 BC, we should have been like Sodom. We should have been like Gomorrah. Totally extinct. That’s how important that thing was that you just studied when you did 2 Kings 18 through 20, right? The Hezekiah adventure, is that God spared Jerusalem so Israel would not become extinct. So there would be a tiny bit left from which he could restart the program. But then he goes on to say to even those of Jerusalem, “Hear the word of the Lord, ye rulers of Sodom.”

                                           00:44:31             You didn’t get saved because you were any better than the people that got deported. You got saved. What did Jesus say there in Isaiah 37 in 2 Kings 19? “I will spare this city for my own sake and for my servant David’s sake,” not because the people are any better than the ones I let be killed or get deported, but I have, God said, a mission for the house of Israel, and I need some of it to be spared here in 701 BC. But they’re still wicked too. So what does he say? Jump over to 16 and we’ll be done with chapter one. Wash you, make you clean, put away the evil of your doings.” Now wash there, rachatzu is the word that is used. Rachatz is the verb in Hebrew to wash your hands, but also to immerse yourself in water. If you are washing ritual immersion as a Jew, it’s not only tevilah, which is immersion, but it’s rachatza, it’s washing.

                                           00:45:35             When you go swimming in Israel, and you see the no swimming signs, it says, ein rachtzah, no washing. Wash you is to get in the water and become clean. To say, wash you, make you clean, put away the evil of your doings, is the backward Hebrew way of saying, “Repent and be baptized.” Right there in Isaiah 1:16. We see Nephi using the word baptism in 1 Nephi. This was not unusual to him. All of ancient Israel was told that they should wash spiritually, ritually, as a sign of cleaning themselves from their sin, from their wickedness. “Wash you, make you clean. Put away the evil of your doings from before mine eyes. Cease to do evil. Learn to do well. Seek judgment.” Verse 18, “Come now, saith the Lord. Let us reason together. Though your sins be scarlet, they shall be white as snow.” This is all about the blessings of repentance and forgiveness.

                                           00:46:34             Though they be red like crimson, they shall be as wool. There’s the promise. Repent. This is what’s being said to Jerusalem in 700 BC. “I kept you here. Everybody else is gone. Repent, be baptized, take advantage of that covenant, that gospel covenant of the law of Moses, and you’ll be forgiven. And though your sins be scarlet, they could be white as snow. But right now, House of Israel, what happened to you is because I asked you all these years to repent and you didn’t and repent or die came to happen. That’s the preface to Isaiah, because the whole first part of Isaiah is repent or die and they didn’t repent so they died. But now the Lord’s telling those that were left in Jerusalem, here’s how we’re going to move forward. I still have a plan for Israel.

Hank Smith:                      00:47:30             Jeff, the difference between, you said something like over a thousand years from when the covenant is first established with Abraham to Isaiah. Why doesn’t the Lord, in your opinion, why doesn’t the Lord just get a new family? This is not working. He said, “Abraham, your family’s going to bless all the families of the earth.” Here we are, how many hundred years later?

Dr. Jeff Chadwick:           00:47:50             I actually don’t think it would’ve worked any better with anybody else. People are people. His ways are not our ways. I haven’t any answer for what you just asked. I don’t discern one out of scripture. He just made the decision. I’m sticking with this one. Abraham, Isaac, Jacob. And of course he has because that’s how the covenant has come down to us. Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, let’s not forget Sarah and Rebekah and Leah and Rachel. Joseph and his wife, Asenath. Those are our patriarchs and matriarchs in whose name this covenant would become established and spread throughout the earth. We praise everyone from Abraham to Joseph and our grandmothers from Sarah to Asenath. We realize that that’s our family. This is the one that he was going to go with. Maybe when we’re in Sunday school in 500 years, we can ask.

Hank Smith:                      00:48:42             And he made a promise.

Dr. Jeff Chadwick:           00:48:43             And it’s eternal, yeah. The whole part of the world that says this covenants of Israel are superseded, that somehow the church replaces Israel? No, no, no, no, no, no, no.

John Bytheway:               00:48:54             If you’ve got ups and downs in your family, it was ever thus. There have always been ups and downs in the family of God, so there might be ups and downs in yours too. The Lord will work with you the way he worked with them.

Hank Smith:                      00:49:12             Yeah. I like his patience, even though it’s hard for Israel sometimes. He’s like, “This is going to hurt, but you are going to learn. I have not given up on you. I like that, what you said, Jeff, you’re not extinct. I still love you. I’m still here.

Dr. Jeff Chadwick:           00:49:28             As you go through the Old Testament, rather than looking, as many people tend to, looking at it as a multi-generational failure, I actually am intrigued by and lifted by how in each generation you have successes. I think we’re a little harsher on their failures than we are on our own failures. We’ll go after Moses for smiting the rock twice. The Lord’s a lot more merciful with them than we are. What was Moses’s punishment for smiting the rock twice? Well, he doesn’t get to go to the promised land. Oh, let’s see. What did he get instead? He got translated. That’s a tough choice to make. Promised land or translated. Well, which would I rather have? I remember the story of Bob Matthews. Many people will recognize the name Robert Matthews, one of the greatest religious educators in Latter-day Saint history. Great dean here at BYU.

John Bytheway:               00:50:29             Patriarch.

Dr. Jeff Chadwick:           00:50:31             I was sitting in the Ogden High Seminary with a whole group of seminary teachers. This was back in the mid-80s, in an in-service, and Bob Matthews was teaching us. We were doing the Doctrine and Covenants. Bob Matthews said that when he first became a religious educator, this is in the 1950s, okay, you had to have a general authority interview, as we still all do. The general authority that interviewed him was Joseph Fielding Smith, who was President of the Quorum of the Twelve in the 1950s, as you’ll remember. Joseph Fielding Smith is one of my great heroes. As he’s interviewing young Robert Matthews, Bob said that they were discussing scripture things, and somehow the conversation turned to David. Somehow in the conversation, young Bob Matthews said, “Well, David won’t go to the celestial kingdom.” Bob said that President Smith looked at him and said, “Oh, won’t he?” Bob Matthews, understandably, sat back and was now very worried.

Hank Smith:                      00:51:37             Nevermind.

Dr. Jeff Chadwick:           00:51:38             Because that’s not an answer you would have expected from Joseph Fielding Smith, questioning whether David has lost his exaltation. “Oh, won’t he?” And Bob Matthews said that he then said, “Well, well, will he?” He said that President Smith said, “Maybe, I don’t know.” Bob said that he took that throughout his career as a reminder that he’s not the judge. How many people in modern days have done things that would essentially put them in the situation that David would be, and you think you’ve lost it all, then work their way back into fellowship, into activity, into even contributing and leadership and being redeemed. Those are the highlights of the Old Testament that I love. David is obviously, as he is writing those Psalms that he is moving through his later years, is a man of spirit. If I can see that in David, if Bob Matthews could see that in David, if Joseph Fielding Smith could see that in David, that’s a light for me all through the Old Testament.

Hank Smith:                      00:52:53             Right. The way the Lord deals with Israel in this text, it’s the same Lord dealing with Israel today.

Dr. Jeff Chadwick:           00:53:00             He is not going to give up. As it says in Isaiah, “The guardian of Israel doth not slumber nor sleep.” He will never give up.

John Bytheway:               00:53:10             Maybe the Savior is really good at saving. Maybe the Savior, Redeemer, Deliverer is really good. The Advocate is really good at all of that stuff.

Dr. Jeff Chadwick:           00:53:25             Yeah, maybe that’s why he’s the one. No one else could have done it. Everything’s returning. The remnant is what would remain after the 701 BC attack.

Hank Smith:                      00:53:41             Jeff, this has been fantastic. One, we now know all the background. We’ve been through the preface. What do we do next?

Dr. Jeff Chadwick:           00:53:49             Well, one of the things to understand is how the Book of Isaiah is put together. Obviously, this chapter that belongs in context around 700 BC is bumped back to the beginning of the book, just the way section one is bumped back from 1831 to the beginning of the Doctrine and Covenants. But now you begin with chapter two as the natural beginning of Isaiah’s prophecies. You go all the way through 66. Going back a couple of hundred years, scholars begin to look at the differences between the first 33 or 34 chapters of Isaiah, the last 25 chapters of Isaiah, and they say, “These look real different.” The ideas, the conversation in Isaiah 2 through Isaiah 34, maybe even Isaiah 35 a little bit, is like repent or die. Israel has just not kept his covenant and the Lord’s going to allow the Assyrians to smash you guys if you do not repent.

                                           00:54:57             But all of a sudden with Isaiah 40, it’s, O house of Israel be comforted. You have value yet, and someday Israel will be regenerated. You change themes completely. Some of the conversation is different enough between this earlier part of Isaiah and the later part of Isaiah that scholars naturally said, maybe there are different authors at work here. Most scholars now do not attribute Isaiah 40 to 66 to be the writings of Isaiah of Jerusalem 700 BC. I’m not saying that some Latter-day Saints scholars aren’t also multi-authorship scholars. I know some, I disagree with them. From a Latter-day Saint perspective, the Book of Mormon now has become the key to understanding reality of the Bible, just the way the Book of Mormon was always meant to be that tool which bears witness of the Bible. The Book of Mormon demands this. Now, I know there will be even some of my own colleagues that will say, “We don’t think it demands it in the way that you say it does.” Well, you have to come up with how it’s possible otherwise.

                                           00:56:11             Nobody has successfully, from my perspective. There are four chapters in Isaiah that are not the product of Isaiah. They are Isaiah 36, 37, 38, and 39, and they are simply a word for word repeat of material from 2 Kings 18 through 20. But what they do is they serve as an explanatory bridge between the chapters that are essentially the repent or die chapters, chapter 1 through 35, and the chapters after the destruction and deportation is done, the chapters from 40 to 66, which are the be comforted Israel, God still has a purpose, and Israel will flourish, and God will gather Israel in his own time. Those four chapters from 2 Kings tell the story of the destruction of Judah and the salvation of Jerusalem. They basically are right there in that 700 BC realm. They’re written a little later. I would say 2 Kings 18 through 20 was written around 620 BC.

                                           00:57:19             I look at it as a biblical scholar, as part of the deuteronomic history that we ascribe in the best conservative terms to the creation of the text that comes out of the reign of Josiah. They make sense in terms of being around in 600 BC, but they’re not authored by Isaiah, they’re the bridge. You have to recognize that there are two very different parts of Isaiah. The first 35 chapters are this repent or die warning, and you have to also recognize how the theme changes so drastically starting with chapter 40, because chapter 40 recognizes the damage is done. Israel is now scattered, and we have to look to how we progress forward. But if you understand the context of the destruction of both kingdoms in those three Assyrian attacks, 732, 722, 701, you understand why Isaiah 40 starts out with saying, be comforted, O my people, that have been so decimated, for Israel will be gathered again. So this is how the book of Isaiah is put together, and here’s a visual on this, it’ll be available, is chapter one is the preface.

                                           00:58:37             It’s written round 700 BC, but it’s kicked to the front because it’s the preface. Then there’s chapters 2 through 35, a big block that you can call Isaiah part one. It’s the repent or die part. It’s the part before 700 BC, when there’s still a chance for Israel, but alas, God will allow the Assyrians to attack and deport both kingdoms. Then you have the little bridge that’s written in there from 2 Kings 18 through 20, that’s Isaiah 36 through 39. Then you have a big block that you can call Isaiah part two. It’s the part where Isaiah changes themes because the situation has changed. The kingdoms are gone now. Jerusalem’s all that’s left. There will be a dispersion of the tribes of Israel that will become lost because they’ll lose their identity and be blended in with the whole world over centuries. And the promise in Isaiah 40 through 66 is that blending, that dispersion and scattering of Israel will bless all Gentile nations.

                                           00:59:46             Now, one of the things you see happening in the second part of Isaiah is that a theme moves from about, oh, Isaiah 40 through 55 from talking about the gathering of Israel to an additional theme in 56 through 66, which is that the scattering of Israel involves the Gentiles, and the Gentiles now are invited to the temples and invited to the house of Israel. That’s Isaiah simply following the theme the Lord’s giving him, which is that the entire earth, all the families of the earth, the Gentile families will be blessed. In Genesis 17, where God says, “I will make you a father of many nations, Abraham.” You know what that actually says in Hebrew? It says Av Hamon Goyim, which is, “I will make you a father of many Gentile nations.” Goyim is the word for Gentile nations. Jewish people use the word goyim to describe non-Jews.

                                           01:00:42             It means Gentiles. Well, it’s not just that Abraham would be a father of many nations. It says specifically in Hebrew in Genesis 17, you will be a father of many Gentile nations Av Hamon Goyim. That’s what Isaiah is moving as you move from 40 to 50 to 66, and especially from 56 to 66, the idea that the covenants of Israel now dispersed to all the Gentiles. Isaiah is now pushing forward the theme of the eventual gathering of Israel from all over the planet. That’s how the book of Isaiah is put together.

Hank Smith:                      01:01:16             What do you want to do next, Jeff?

Dr. Jeff Chadwick:           01:01:18             Let’s do Isaiah 2. It is the context of Isaiah 2, and I call it the great Jerusalem temple prophecy. This then in Isaiah 2 is how Isaiah kicks off his book with a bang, the greatest prophecy. Well, I won’t say it’s the greatest prophecy in the entire book of Isaiah because I think that it has a parallel in Isaiah 11. And that’s why I talk about the whole section of Isaiah here from Isaiah 2 to Isaiah 12, essentially, as a chiasm, because it starts with a bang and it ends with a bang. Both have to do with the coming of the Lord God of Israel, the holy one of Israel, the second coming of Christ, basically. But we tend to read Isaiah 2 as Latter-day Saints in reference to ourselves, in reference to a very valid application of Isaiah 2, a very valid likening of Isaiah 2.

                                           01:02:15             But we often don’t see is that Isaiah 2 verses two through four are talking about a temple in Jerusalem. The temple in Salt Lake, which we always use as the archetypal temple in the tops of the mountains, which every commentary points to when we look at Isaiah 2, we don’t often recognize that what we’re doing with that, which we’re allowed to do and which we’re encouraging to do, is we’re likening Isaiah out of context into where we’re at now. Everybody, fasten your seat belts. Let’s do Isaiah chapter two in context. Then how much more we’ll appreciate that newly redesigned Salt Lake temple and every other temple we have in the tops of our metaphorical mountains wherever we’re at. Isaiah 2:1 is again an ancient chapter heading. The word that Isaiah, the son of Amoz saw concerning Judah and Jerusalem. Again, doesn’t say Joseph in Jackson County, doesn’t say Ephraim in Salt Lake City, it says Judah and Jerusalem.

                                           01:03:26             Verse two, “It shall come to pass in the last days.” It is a latter day thing. Isaiah is not now talking about his own day. They’ve got a temple in his own day. It’s the temple of Solomon. It sits there on the mountain of the temple, the Temple Mount, the Har Habayit in Hebrew. He’s talking about something that will happen in the last days when a temple will be at that place. Now, both of you and many of your listeners have been to that place, to that temple mount in Jerusalem. Verse two, “It shall come to pass in the last days that the mountain of the Lord’s house,” okay, this is the Har Habayit Yahweh, the mountain of Jehovah’s House, “will be established in the top of the mountains.” Now, this is about Judah and Jerusalem. The mountain of the Lord’s house is already known in Old Testament language.

                                           01:04:32             It’s the place where Solomon’s temple stands. We call it in English the Temple Mount. In Hebrew, it’s called Har Habayit, which means the mountain of the house. They don’t have to say the mountain of the house of Jehovah because that’s understood. They just say the house, the temple, the mountain of the temple. That will be established in the tops of the mountains. In other words, in the latter days, that place, which itself sits among mountains, as anybody’s visited Jerusalem, the temple mount there sits between the Mount of Olives and between the high mount that is in the western part of the old city and sits in the tops of the Judean mountains surrounding. This is a great hymn that says, “Zion stands with hills surrounded.” Remember that one? That’s true. Ancient Zion, ancient Jerusalem, was a mountaintop location that sat among surrounding mountains. The Temple Mount sits among its surrounding mountains, but it’s called the Temple Mount because the Lord’s house is there.

                                           01:05:34             The mountain of the Lord’s house shall be established in the top of the mountains and shall be exalted among the hills. That’s Isaiah saying the same thing twice. Now look what it says, “All nations shall flow unto it.” Not just nations that you identify as, you know, identifiably ancient Israel. All nations, every nation on earth will have a part in that latter day temple on that sacred spot.

                                           01:06:11             All nations will flow unto it. That’s not something that ever happened with Solomon’s temple. Only people who were identifiably ancient Israelite flowed to Solomon’s temple. It’s not a thing that has happened with Herod’s temple in Jesus’ day. That was a Jewish temple. This is a temple that will be there in that place that all nations will call theirs. And that’s because all nations will understand they are of Israel. That will be universally accepted by everyone of Israel. Verse three, many people will go and say, “Come ye, let us go up to the mountain of the Lord, to the house of the God of Jacob.” Understand there, they’re identifying as Israel. Not only is it the mountain of Jehovah, but it’s the God of Israel. Jacob is Israel. People coming to there will know their heritage. They will know who they worship, and he will teach us of his ways and we will walk in his paths.

                                           01:07:10             The temple that will be there in Jerusalem on that sacred mountain, and I point out that there is no other location that qualifies as this spot in Isaiah 2:2, other than that one which is identified in the Old Testament as the mountain where that temple stands. In the latter days, and this is obviously in a day to come, that’s not anything that’s happening right now. We don’t even proselyte in Israel now, but a day will come when a temple will stand there again. People will go there to be taught by the God of Jacob. He will teach us of his ways. We will walk in his paths. Why? Because he will reign personally on the earth. He is coming to Jerusalem. In addition to wherever else he goes, because he has interests everywhere, including here, he is coming to Jerusalem. Then of course, you have the ending couplet, out of Zion shall go forth the law and the word of the Lord from Jerusalem.

                                           01:08:13             Now, Zion is the synonym for Jerusalem. Zion’s the other word in the Bible for Jerusalem. Zion, every time it occurs in the Bible, refers to Jerusalem from its first occurrence in 2 Samuel 5, right through really until you get into the Book of Revelation in the New Testament. Zion is always the synonym for Jerusalem. The only time when Zion in the Bible does not refer to Jerusalem is when it’s used in the wider sense of the land in which Jerusalem exists, the land of Zion, or as Nephi would say, the land of Jerusalem. The Hebrew word for perfect in modern Hebrew is metzuyan.

                                           01:08:52             And the way you say Zion in Hebrew is tziyon. Perfect. Zion means perfection, a city of some type of perfection. That’s also what Jerusalem means because the word shalem is the word for wholeness or perfection. Jerusalem, the city of wholeness, the city of perfection. We always say city of peace. That’s nice. That’s not exactly what it is. It’s not Jerushalom, it’s Jerushalem. The old word for it in Genesis is simply Salem, Shalem. Not Shalom, Shalem, this type of inherent perfection. And what happened to the city of Shalem of Melchizedek? They had reached a certain perfection. But that’s what Zion and Jerusalem are, is they are synonym names for a city where the Lord’s ultimate perfection is personified in his own presence and by those who are perfected by him. But this passage, this great Jerusalem temple prophecy goes on in verse four to say, He will judge among nations.

                                           01:10:09             Rebuke many people, repent, but at this point, they’ll respond to it. They’ll beat their swords into plowshares, their spears to pruning hooks. Nation will not lift up sword against nation, neither shall they learn war anymore. Why? Because we are in that area, that metaphoric thousand years when the Savior reigns personally on earth and peace prevails. We’re looking at the coming of Christ and the millennial temple here in Jerusalem. Now, understanding that we’re talking about Jerusalem is not something you see in our commentaries. We always focus on our own temples here. That’s okay because our own temples are the prelude to Christ coming. Our own temples are the instrumentation of the gathering that will in fact continue in to Christ’s coming and his dwelling personally on the earth. It’s going to take a long time to get everything done. Brother McConkie talks about that in his book, The New Witness for the Articles of Faith.

                                           01:11:12             The gathering will go on and will ultimately be a millennial work. But in any case, the context of Isaiah 2 is Jerusalem and the temple that Christ himself will ordain there when he cometh. Everything else that we do with this passage is permitted and also inspired likening. We look at our Salt Lake temple there and we see it in this passage. We’re perfectly justified in it, but doesn’t it make it even more delicious to see what the context is? This now is not historical context. This is future prophetic context. This is telling you there’s an end in sight and it’s coming. The other component of this is when you get to Isaiah 11, when you get the branch of the stem of Jesse who will come, that’ll be the Messiah, and he will usher in that same period when they don’t learn war anymore. Isaiah 2 starts a chiasm that will conclude in Isaiah 11.

                                           01:12:28             And in between Isaiah 2, verses two through four and Isaiah 11:1, it’s one long tutelage, one long repent or die situation, which is why I wanted to open with the great Jerusalem temple prophecy because by the time you get to verse six, we’re again into, well, you’ve forsaken thy people the house of Jacob and you’re full of flaws and problems now. Let’s address those. I love the way that the great Jerusalem temple prophecy ends up there with that little flourish in verse five, “O house of Jacob, come ye, let us walk in the light of the Lord.” Now, again, this is what Nephi starts out with. When he’s going to quote a whole bunch of Isaiah for the purpose of his people learning to liken Isaiah unto themselves, he starts with Isaiah 2 in 2 Nephi 12. He doesn’t start with a preface. That’s not germane to where his people are at. He starts with Isaiah 2, the natural start of the book and the great Jerusalem temple prophecy, which again is a sign of the authenticity of the Book of Mormon, because most people don’t understand that Isaiah 1 is not the beginning of the book.

Hank Smith:                      01:13:43             Especially at, what, a 23-year-old in upstate New York. Jeff, Isaiah 2: 1-5. There’s the bookend on this side. And then I go to Isaiah 12 and there is a similar bookend. Is that right? And then in between here is going to be a lot of repent, repent, repent.

Dr. Jeff Chadwick:           01:14:01             Let’s just do Isaiah 12 now. It begins with Isaiah 11. It’s a long bookend because there’s nothing in Isaiah 11 and 12 that actually is repent or die. This is simply a longer triumphal prophecy. If we hadn’t artificially broken Isaiah into chapters, beginning with 11:1, you’d go all the way down to verse six of chapter 12, and it would be one big bookend. Let’s start with Isaiah 11:1, then we’ll do the intermediary stuff.

Hank Smith:                      01:14:33             So the opening was Isaiah 2: 1-5, and then this is the other side starting at 11:1?

Dr. Jeff Chadwick:           01:14:40             Right. In chapter 10, you’ve got basically a very dramatic and scary geographical countdown to the threat against Jerusalem. In Isaiah 10, what you see is essentially that the Assyrians are coming city after city, and they’re all in the Jerusalem area, Aiath, Michmash, Ramah, Giibeah of Saul, Anathoth, and in verse 32, it says, “He shall remain at Nob,” the Assyrians. “He shall shake his hand against the mount of the daughter of Zion.” In other words, the Assyrians will do this. They’ll go, I’m against you, Jerusalem. I’m ready to get you. But it won’t get them. Behold, verse 33 of chapter 10 says, “The Lord of hosts shall lop the bough with terror.” Like if he’s got that hand up, the Lord’s going to cut that arm right off. He’s going to smite the Assyrians. You had this lesson already in 2 Kings 18 and 19. He smote the Assyrians, Hezekiah’s time, and they didn’t get Jerusalem.

                                           01:15:44             Knowing about that 701 BC attack is key, and we don’t teach it. We teach about the loss of the northern kingdom, but we never focus on how badly the southern kingdom was hit. Every city was destroyed. 200,000 people deported, and they’re our ancestors too, but they didn’t get Jerusalem. And why didn’t they get Jerusalem? Because the Savior said, “I will defend this city to save it for my own sake and for my servant David’s sake.” What is the purpose of that? The purpose is the eventual blessing of the world with the lineage in the covenant of Israel. The culmination of that will be the coming of the Messiah. After Jerusalem, at the end of chapter 10, is threatened but not taken, you jump from that moment, 700 BC, all the way to the end times again. When, chapter 11, verse one, there shall come forth a rod out of the stem of Jesse and a branch shall grow out of his roots.

                                           01:16:51             We know that this is talking about the coming of Christ. It’s not the coming of Christ in his mortality, although chapter 11, verse 1 will be used by Matthew as a reference to Jesus’ birth in Bethlehem. But chapter 11 is ultimately about the coming of the Lord, the rod and the branch who will be the Christ. And at this coming, what will happen? Verse four, he will judge with righteousness. He will judge the poor, reprove with equity the meek of the earth. He’ll smite the earth with the rod of his lips. With the breath of lips, he shall slay the wicked. Jump to verse six, “The wolf shall dwell with the lamb and the leopard will lie down with the kid, the calf and the young lion and the fat lean together and little child shall lead them.” This is the millennium. This is the coming of Christ.

                                           01:17:41             Christ is that rod and branch. Then you also see the same thing because chapter 10 does not just a couplet in lines, but he does a couplet in paragraphs. Verse 10 talks about the root of Jesse, which shall stand for the Ensign to the people. That too will be Christ. To it shall the Gentiles seek. The actual Hebrew word is goyim again, the Gentile nations. But that’s the gathering of Israel. The Gentiles seeking Christ is the gathering of Israel. Verse 11 goes on to say the Lord will set his hand a second time to recover the remnant of his people from everywhere. From the time of the Assyrians, Egypt, Cush, Elam, verse 12, he shall set up an ensign. Now the word in Hebrew there is nes, which is a word for a signal flag, but it’s also the word used in Hebrew for a miracle.

                                           01:18:42             He will set up an ensign for the nations. He’ll set up a miraculous signal to the Gentiles and he will assemble the outcasts of Israel. Now think about that because Isaiah says things in couplets, synonymous couplets that are synonyms. It says the same thing twice. When he says in verse 12, he will set up an ensign for the nations, the goyim, the Gentiles, and assemble the outcasts of Israel. That’s the same thing. Setting up a sign, the great gospel, the ensign to the nation, and gathering from the Gentiles is the gathering of the outcasts of Israel. It’s a synonymous couplets there in verse 12. “And gather together the dispersed of Judah from the four corners of the earth.” That’s a very important thing too, because this is a third part of what is essentially a threefer, because you’re gathering the descendants of lost Israel, the Goyim, but you’re also gathering people who’ve always known they were Israel. You’re gathering Judah.

                                           01:19:47             That is a very important component of the Latter-day gathering of Israel. The Latter-day Saints are busy with the work of gathering lost Israel, but the Latter-day Saints are not gathering Judah. The Lord himself is gathering Judah in his own way. As section 45 says, He is scheduled to appear to them in his own time and way in such a way that verse 13, “the envy of Ephraim shall depart and the adversaries of Judah shall be cut off.” The envy of Ephraim is the hostility toward Ephraim, and Ephraim is basically the umbrella name for the gathering of lost Israel. Ephraim is the umbrella name for the Church, basically, Joseph and Ephraim. Judah is the umbrella name for Jews in all of our Latter-day Saints speak, and that’s correctly so, even though the Jews are of all 12 tribes, well, so are the lost tribes of all 12 tribes, that’s not a problem.

                                           01:20:54             But it says the envy of Ephraim shall depart, which means the hostility toward the Restored Church will depart because when Christ comes, he’s going to make sure everybody understands what His church is. But the adversaries of Judah shall be cut off. As Judah gathers, they have a very adversarial situation that they have to address and endure. And in verse 13, going back to it, just to close it off, Ephraim shall not envy Judah and Judah shall not vex Ephraim. Here’s an important thing. I see right now in Christianity in general, and even among some Latter-day Saints, a general disdain for Judah. And honestly, as a person charged with teaching about Jews and Judaism, this is something that is a problem. In our conversation as Latter-day Saints, we’re often very kind and very generous and brotherly to our Jewish friends, yet in our conversation about Jews historically, we’re generally very negative.

                                           01:22:02             We’re very negative about Jews when we teach the New Testament. We tend to be negative about Judah when we teach the Old Testament. We don’t stop and think that the successes of the Old Testament were Jewish successes. The church of the New Testament was all Jewish for decades. All of those people that joined in the book of Acts with a very small number of Gentiles, really, maybe 5% of the church was Gentiles by the year 60, was mostly Jews. It was a great success story. Who were all those people converted on the day of Pentecost? Who were all those people that were seeking after the hem of Peter? Who were all those people that were baptized at every holiday in the book of Acts? They were Jews. In general, even the ones that didn’t wind up being part of the church brought forth a heritage of the Old Testament that comes down through the Jewish ethos and what we would call the Judeo-Christian tradition that blesses the world everywhere.

                                           01:23:13             When I see in verse 13 that it says, “Ephraim shall not envy Judah and Judah shall not vex Ephraim,” I see that those barriers that we still have are going to break away. We’ll understand things better, and we’ll understand things better because we’ll understand that we are all Christ’s. This is a marvelous thing where you get the branch coming. It’s the Messiah. He gathers Israel. He has dealt with the enmity toward Israel. He has reconciled the various parts of Israel to each other. And in chapter 12, “In that day, O Lord, I will praise thee, though thou wast angry with me,” the whole ancient problem with Israel, and even ever since, we’ve never really measured up. Can we really say, as Latter-day Saints, that we’re measuring up? Isn’t the word repent still the first word that we need to do?

Hank Smith:                      01:24:14             Right. It’s the second principle of the gospel.

Dr. Jeff Chadwick:           01:24:16             If you’re looking at people that get chastised by the Lord, who in the history of the restoration was chastised more than Joseph Smith?

Hank Smith:                      01:24:25             It opens with that, section three.

Dr. Jeff Chadwick:           01:24:26             Yeah. So thou wast angry with me. That applies across the board, but thine anger is turned away and thou hast comforted me. Isaiah 12:2, “Behold, God is my strength. I will trust and not be afraid for the Lord, Jehovah.” Or in Hebrew, it says, “Yah, Yahweh is my strength and my song. He has become my salvation, therefore with joy shall ye draw water out of the wells of salvation, the water of salvation.” The interesting thing about verse three, it’s a very popular song in Israel. <foreign>. It’s called the water song in Israel.

Hank Smith:                      01:25:06             “Shall you draw water out of the wells of salvation?”

Dr. Jeff Chadwick:           01:25:09             Mm-hmm. <foreign>. Water, water, water, water. Won’t it be wonderful when everyone of all the house of Israel realizes that the water of their salvation is the living water? I’m pretty sure this is the verse that Jesus was referring to when he referred to himself in John 4 as living water.

John Bytheway:               01:25:42             Yeah. During the Feast of Tabernacles, when they drew water out of the pool of Siloam and went back up to the temple, isn’t this the verse they cited at least?

Dr. Jeff Chadwick:           01:25:54             Yeah. I don’t know if they’re singing the little tune I sang, but. But yeah, that’s the verse that they quoted.

John Bytheway:               01:26:01             I was standing once by the pool of Siloam trying to explain the drawing of the water ceremony and stuff at the Feast of Tabernacles, and my dear friend Hank Smith walked by and took a picture of me. I’m so glad I have that picture.

Hank Smith:                      01:26:15             I did.

Dr. Jeff Chadwick:           01:26:15             You put that one. Let’s get that visual in there.

John Bytheway:               01:26:18             Oh, hi, Hank.

Hank Smith:                      01:26:19             Yeah. I was like, “Hey, there’s John Bytheway.”

John Bytheway:               01:26:21             Hey, funny seeing you here.

Dr. Jeff Chadwick:           01:26:24             The people you run into in Jerusalem, you know?

Hank Smith:                      01:26:27             Yeah, I’ve run into Jeff in Jerusalem.

Dr. Jeff Chadwick:           01:26:29             You say it’s a small world. Well, Jerusalem is where that small world meets. It really is. It’s amazing.

John Bytheway:               01:26:37             I was walking out of Gethsemane once and saw this guy sitting. Gethsemane’s a pretty big area, this area near Gethsemane. I walk out, “Man, that looks like Daniel Peterson.” “Hey, Brother Peterson.” It was Daniel Peterson sitting there, so.

Hank Smith:                      01:26:50             That’s so funny, because I ran into Michael Wilcox right there in that exact spot. I reckon he had a followHIM jacket on. Jeff, one thing, that bridge from Isaiah 10 to 11, you did that for me, and I’d never seen it before. For some reason, those chapter headings really clear the slate, and you’re like, okay, now we’re talking about a new subject. But he’s not. He’s saying, I have to stop Assyria because this root is going to grow the Messiah, or else they would’ve been as Sodom and Gomorrah. They would’ve been completely extinct, but he’s going to preserve this root so the Messiah can come. How long has that been there? And I hadn’t seen it.

Dr. Jeff Chadwick:           01:27:29             I would love to spend time in Isaiah 5 with this beautiful parable. It’s not an allegory, it’s simply a parable likening one thing to another. The people of Israel are likened to a vineyard which brings forth bad grapes. Now, what’s the Lord going to do with this vineyard of bad grapes in Isaiah 5? Well, because he’s tried again and again and again with it, he’s simply going to allow it to be torn down. And then he ends up by saying verse seven, “The vineyard of the Lord of hosts’ house of Israel and the men of Judah his pleasant plant.” They just wouldn’t be righteous, so he’s going to allow them to be torn down. By the way, this is very poetic. In verse seven, the Lord says, “He looked for judgment, but behold oppression, for righteousness, but behold a cry.” That’s basically what the covenant demands you do, to have godly judgment and godly righteousness.

                                           01:28:21             And God had looked to Israel for 500 years for this, but it had never really worked in this vineyard, either Israel or Judah. Instead of judgment, mishpat, he got oppression, mizpah, they rhyme. Instead of righteous, tzedakah, he got a cry, an outcry, Tsa’aqah. Everything rhymes in Isaiah. That’s what’s fun about his poetry. Isaiah 5 is using this wonderful little parable of the vineyard basically to say, the vineyard is toast, because it just wouldn’t bring forth good fruit. By their fruits, ye shall know them. “This is very important. Where does that saying come from? Well, basically from here. By their fruits, they either live or die. That’s that beautiful one in Isaiah 5. That’s easy. People can do that.

Hank Smith:                      01:29:07             John loves this. What is the Hebrew for wild grapes?

Dr. Jeff Chadwick:           01:29:12             Oh, let me just get that for you. ‘Cause it’s not grapes. I mean, we say wild grapes, we don’t have a word for it.

John Bytheway:               01:29:18             It’s be- beushim. Beushim?

Dr. Jeff Chadwick:           01:29:22             Yeah. Beushim.

John Bytheway:               01:29:23             I learned it from Terry Ball.

Dr. Jeff Chadwick:           01:29:26             Yeah, you would, because Terry Ball is a botanist and loves that stuff, doesn’t he? Archaeobotany, there’s nothing quite like it. I’m reading now from my Hebrew Bible and chapter 5, and we’re going to go to verse four. What it says is, “I was looking for anavim, grapes, but what I got was Beushim,” which means something shameful. And that something shameful is able to be used with all kinds of things, like bad fruit. We had no way to make that work. I was looking for grapes and I got garbage. So King James has done here something that makes the literature of the King James version so beautiful. Instead of saying, “I was looking for grapes and got garbage fruit,” it just says wild grapes.

Hank Smith:                      01:30:21             Wild grapes. That, that’s not that bad.

Dr. Jeff Chadwick:           01:30:23             I was hoping for grapes that I could make good wine from, but I got garbage. And Jerusalem is like a harvest shack in a empty field.

Hank Smith:                      01:30:31             What do you want to do next?

Dr. Jeff Chadwick:           01:30:33             Let’s do six. Here we are then in the middle of this repent or die section, like from about the middle of chapter two of Isaiah all the way through chapter 10 of Isaiah, this crucial repent or die section. Isaiah reports how he got this job. Everybody that I know understands this to be essentially Isaiah’s first vision. It’s a parallel to what happens to the prophet Joseph Smith. And it happens very early in his life. The chapter six verse one says, “In the year that King Uzziah died, I saw the Lord sitting upon a throne high and lifted up and his train filled the temple.” That’s a marvelous thing. Well, the year that King Uzziah died is reliably in the Judahite chronology 742 BC. 41 years before the attack on Jerusalem we’ve been talking about. It’s at least 54 years prior to the first year that’s possible for Isaiah’s death.

                                           01:31:45             King Hezekiah dies in 687 BC. He’s succeeded by his son Manasseh, who was the worst king ever in the history of both houses of Israel. Manasseh is said to have executed the age of Isaiah, who would be by that time, 80s, 90s-ish. We’re looking for a time when Isaiah is probably having this vision. He’s probably in his very young adulthood. If we look at the prophet Joseph Smith, when he’s starting his work, first vision when he’s 14, in his 15th year, he’s working with Moroni from age 17 on. I would feel comfortable with looking at Isaiah as about age 18 to 20 in chapter six, which means he’s probably born sometime around 760 BC. That will mean that he is easily 70 years old by 690 and into his 70s, or maybe he’s even born a little bit before 760 BC, and he’s into his 80s before he’s executed by Manasseh.

                                           01:32:51             But in any case, he’s a young man and we already know in chapters seven and eight of Isaiah that he’s having young sons. He has a wife and he has young sons because one is named Shear-jashub, and he takes him on a walk and go meets with King Ahaz outside the walls. And then he has a new little baby boy in Isaiah eight that will have the unfortunate name of Maher-shalal-hash-baz. Destruction is coming quickly. Mrs. Isaiah must have been unhappy with those names. But we know that he’s still a young fatherhood guy by Isaiah seven or eight to kind of put this calling in perspective.This is the time when any of us would be called on a mission.

Hank Smith:                      01:33:32             Oh, okay. Yeah.

Dr. Jeff Chadwick:           01:33:33             This is a time when Joseph Smith was working with the angel Moroni to prepare to receive the plates, age 18. And you can go one or two years aside of that. But that’s when Isaiah sees the Lord sitting in his temple. Of course, the angels, the seraphim are in there and they’re singing holy, holy, holy. Then Isaiah is upset because he can’t believe he’s seen the Lord. And he gets the message, which in verse eight is, “Whom shall I send?” To do what? Well, to be God’s warning to Israel. “Whom shall I send?” Verse eight. Isaiah says, “Here am I, send me.” So good, you’ve got the calling, you’re willing. Verse nine. He said, it says in Hebrew, “You hear indeed, but you don’t understand. You see indeed, but you don’t perceive.” I’ve given you all of this, but you’re just not getting it. “Make the heart of this people fat, make their ears heavy.” That’s actually the wrong way of translating this.

                                           01:34:36             The heart of this people is made fat. Their ears are made heavy. They shut their eyes lest they see with their eyes, lest they hear with their ears. They’ve cut everything off, basically. They’ve shut me out, God is saying. And he’s telling this to Isaiah because this is the people he has to go teach to. In other words, Isaiah, I’m sending you to a hard crowd and chances are they’re not going to listen, but you have to go on the mission anyway. Did anybody ever feel like this on their mission?

Hank Smith:                      01:35:07             Yeah, like this is not working.

Dr. Jeff Chadwick:           01:35:10             Try working in West Berlin, okay, in the 1970s. Slam, slam, slam, slam. This is the way that being a prophet of the Lord is, and especially a young called emissary of the Lord. We all go through it on those missions where we are not mostly received, we’re mostly rejected. There’s something that we ought to liken to ourselves in this. Isaiah will have undoubtedly some successes, but it’s going to be a hard mission. And yet it’s got to be done because the Lord cannot visit the punishment without adequate warning. Isaiah gets to be the warner. Now, why Isaiah? Because he’s also a remarkable individual. He is for the 8th century BC, the Shakespeare of his era. He will somehow develop a literacy in Hebrew, a poetic literacy that is astounding, that ascends above anybody else of his era. His writings in Hebrew are simply sublime. There are other prophets that prophesy real good, but it’s not like reading Shakespeare.

                                           01:36:36             Isaiah in Hebrew is like reading Shakespeare. He is a master of the language. Everything rhymes, everything has meter. Our friend Vic Ludlow wrote Isaiah prophet, seer and poet, and that’s what he was. He was an amazing poet. Jeremiah, he’s a good workaday prophet. Jeremiah’s a lot like Joseph Smith, but Joseph Smith was not Shakespeare. Isaiah was Shakespeare. There’s a reason maybe that he’s chosen at this young age for a very hard mission, and that is because the message to the house of Israel can be couched in language that is language for the ages. Language that is so sublime and captures the mission so well that Christ would say, “Great are the words of Isaiah.” But it’s the tough mission. You’re going to go to this people who don’t hear and won’t listen to you, won’t convert and be healed.

                                           01:37:36             And in verse 11, Isaiah says, Oh, okay. Lord, how long? Two years? 18 months? And the answer is this. He answered and said, “Until the cities be wasted without inhabitant and the houses without man and the land be utterly desolate. And the Lord have removed men far away and there be a great forsaking in the midst of the land.” Now we’ve discussed that because it was in the preface how everything’s going to be desolate, destroyed and deported. And Isaiah, your mission is until it’s all gone.

Hank Smith:                      01:38:27             Jeff, could you do a quick translation for me? Because students frequently have the question on chapter six, verse 10. It sounds like the Lord wants this to happen. And I liked what you just said. You’re saying that’s not what it says. Make the heart of this people fat, almost like he’s saying, but I don’t want them to see with their eyes and hear with their ears. But you did not put it that way.

Dr. Jeff Chadwick:           01:38:46             Yeah, that’s not the way that I read the Hebrew here. It’s more like the heart of this people is fat. The word make is in the second line, but not in the first. The heart of the people is fat and sassy. Their ears have been made heavy. They’ve shut their eyes. It’s them that are ignoring it. This is not the Lord that’s caused this to happen. They’ve done this themselves. Yeah. Yeah. Sometimes we quote these verses and you get them quoted and paraphrased in the New Testament as if the Lord intentionally made this so. That’s not what the language is really conveying. It might be that you have a little bit onto part of the King James scholars in both the Old and the New Testament giving the unspirituality a causation. In other words, God makes some people unspiritual. In this case, because it’s a Christian translation, it’s God made those Jews unfaithful. There’s a latent antisemitism in many translations that is not really justified in terms of what the Hebrew says. It was their own choice to have fat hearts and heavy ears.

Hank Smith:                      01:40:00             Very similar to the Lord hardened the heart of Pharaoh, where you’re like, “No, he didn’t.” Yeah.

Dr. Jeff Chadwick:           01:40:06             Yeah. Even in Hebrew, that exists. That’s a literary device, but it’s not even really here. This is a King Jamesian thing.

John Bytheway:               01:40:13             Hank, I think you have a relative named Paul Hoskisson, right? Isn’t he a relative?

Hank Smith:                      01:40:17             I do. I do. Yes. That is my mother’s cousin.

Dr. Jeff Chadwick:           01:40:20             One of my great mentors, by the way.

Hank Smith:                      01:40:22             Great soul.

Dr. Jeff Chadwick:           01:40:23             Paul Hoskisson was so kind and good to me.

John Bytheway:               01:40:26             Well, I quote Uncle Paul in my book and I liked what he said here too. He said, “Because of peculiarities in the Hebrew language, this has been translated, make the heart while some scholars believe it should be declare the heart of this people to be fat.” That’s in an article Paul Hoskisson wrote called The Latter-Day Saint Reading of Isaiah in the 20th Century. In fact, I have a note here that the calling of Isaiah seems to be so important that it’s quoted or something close in Matthew, in Mark, in Luke, in John, and in Acts. My favorite one is in Acts because it puts the responsibility for hardening hearts and for closing off ears on the people themselves, not the prophet. This is Acts 28:27. “For the heart of this people is waxed gross, and their ears are dull of hearing, and their eyes have they closed.”

                                           01:41:30             See who closed the eyes? The people did. “Less they should see with their eyes and hear with their ears and understand with their heart and should be converted and I should heal them.” It’s amazing to me that this verse was so important that it’s in Matthew, Mark, Luke, John, and Acts. It’s repeated. This is the whole point. This is what Jesus wants to do. He wants us to be converted and to be healed. The frustration is that people have closed their ears and closed their eyes and their hearts are insulated from the truth. That’s a favorite verse of mine.

Dr. Jeff Chadwick:           01:42:12             Let me, if I could, go back to that question of Lord, how long for this difficult mission? The answer that the Lord gives in verse 11 and 12 is until everything’s gone, till everything’s desolate, until both the kingdoms of Israel are dead and gone, until every house of Judah has been destroyed, all the people are desolate far away. I have excavated at numerous sites in Israel where at the end of the eighth century, everything was devastated with huge burn levels, okay, as the Israelite towns in both the north and the south between 732 and 701 were being destroyed. I brought with me something interesting here today. I want to show it to you. You see what that is? That is a rock, but it’s a very carefully shaped rock. That is a sling stone. That is an Assyrian slingstone.

John Bytheway:               01:43:19             Ouch.

Hank Smith:                      01:43:20             It’s like a baseball.

Dr. Jeff Chadwick:           01:43:22             There are so many thousands of these that are found at the cities in the levels that were destroyed at the end of the eighth century BC, that it’s like finding civil war bullets at Gettysburg. They’re just everywhere. I brought this as a reminder that the destruction we’re talking about is real. Someone who was my very distant ancestor 2,700 years ago was being attacked by the Assyrians, survived the attack to be led away on a 500-mile march to be resettled among other people, have to learn a different language, have to be a state slave for the rest of their life, and whose grandchildren would forget they were ever of Israel. This is Isaiah to me. It’s very personal. Now that we have seen how difficult Isaiah’s mission would be, that he was going to have to do this and it essentially is that he’s a voice of warning that’s going to be ignored.

                                           01:44:28             Sometimes as missionaries today, we have to process that. We aim for success. We’re trying to gather Israel, but not all of Israel is going to gather. The elect will hear his voice. And you have to reconcile yourself to the fact that sometimes those missions are going to be a little desolate, like Isaiah’s would. Yet, somehow in your mission, you will plant seeds that will develop in the future. That’s what you find in verse 13, the last verse of this chapter six of Isaiah’s mission call. Unfortunately, it’s horribly translated in the King James version. And nobody can ever make any sense of it. So let me read the horrible translation first, then I’m going to try to give you a better one. Verse 12, “The Lord will have removed men far away. There will be a great forsaking in the midst of the land.” 13. “But yet in it shall be a tenth and it shall return and be eaten as a teil tree and as an oak whose substance is in them when they cast their leaves, so the holy seed shall be the substance thereof.” What?

Hank Smith:                      01:45:47             Yeah. It’s supposed to be this beautiful message. It’s supposed to be the good part of this destruction and it’s gotten butchered.

Dr. Jeff Chadwick:           01:45:55             We had this discussion earlier is the word return, which of course is a variant of the Hebrew particle shuv, which can be used for turn or return, but it’s also the particle that is the basis of Yoshev, which means to dwell. Rather than use it as return here, which I think the King James scholars thought was justified because so much of what happens later in Isaiah talks about returning, the King James scholars did not really understand very well the context of the 701 BC attack or even the context of much of the scattering, much of the deportations. What they didn’t pick up is that Jerusalem not falling to the Assyrians would remain. That’s what you should translate return as in verse 13 is remain. But if you want to make it really remain dwelling, I would prefer to translate verse 13 as follows.

                                           01:47:02             Yet in it, in what? In the land. Last word of verse 12 is land. Yet in it, meaning in the land, shall a tenth remain dwelling. Now, that’s going to be Jerusalem in 700 BC. Maybe 20,000 people were behind the walls of Jerusalem safely and didn’t get taken away by the Assyrians, whereas 200,000, 150 were taken away by Sennacherib’s own accounting. That’s about a tenth. The tithe of the kingdom of Judah would actually remain safe in Jerusalem. That’s what God’s going to start over with. So let me do this again. Yet in it, meaning in the land, a tenth shall remain dwelling. That will be the people of Jerusalem who were not conquered and didn’t get carried away. And it shall be consumed like an oak tree. That’s what a teil tree is, is actually an oak tree. They have oak. We call them Tabor Oaks in the land of Israel and they’re kind of a low and shrubby tree, so you don’t see it translated oak in the way you think of the oak of Sherwood Forest in England.

                                           01:48:18             They put teil tree there, but it’s a little shrub oak. It shall be consumed like an oak tree. What will be consumed? That tenth that remained in Jerusalem, those people that remain in Jerusalem in 700 BC will grow up into a thriving society again over the next century. By 600 BC, Jerusalem will be full again. It will be thriving. But what will happen is the Babylonians will come and will consume it. The second line, it shall be consumed like an oak tree is the Babylonian destruction, and they will deport. They will take the Jews away in 586 BC. Now, Babylonian deportation was not like Assyrian deportation. The Assyrians deported as a matter of policy and in order to strip identity. Babylonians only deported as a matter of exception. It wasn’t to strip identity. The Jews did not forget their identity in Babylonian captivity. I would say, if we might put it this way, they had a very harsh rehabilitation program, the Babylonians did.

                                           01:49:30             They were saying to the Jews, we’re not trying to change you into something other than Jews. We just need you to be loyal Jews, loyal to the Babylonian realm. We’re taking you from where we couldn’t trust you and bringing you to Babylon where you will be still Jews, but you’re going to learn to be the citizens of the realm. And by the way, that worked. The Jews thrived in Babylon, so much so that many stayed there. And Daniel thrived, others thrive. But there was a return after the Babylonian realm falls in 539. Cyrus in 537 directs Jews to return to Jerusalem. They do, they build a second temple. So we come to the third line here. Now, you read, it says, “As an oak whose substance is in them, as an oak tree, which casts its own regeneration with its leaves, the holy seed is in that regeneration.”

                                           01:50:26             Now, I’ve done a different job from when they cast their leaves, the holy seed shall be in the substance thereof. That oak tree, of course, oaks send out acorns. In those acorns are the new trees. The Babylonians destroy Judah and Jerusalem and take them away, but they leave acorns because they don’t become lost Israel. They have acorns that will grow again, and Judah grows back, even though the Babylonians will destroy it. That growth back will be the holy seed. I’m going to read this again, and I’ll send you a visual. Yet in it, a tenth shall remain dwelling, and it shall be consumed like an oak tree. And as the oak tree, which casts its own regeneration with its leaves, the holy seed is in that regeneration, which means though Judah will be taken away by the Babylonians, it will regenerate. And the holy seed, the holy one of Israel, will be the result of that regeneration.

                                           01:51:41             In other words, that tenth that remained in Jerusalem was there not for the people’s sake, but for my servant David’s sake. And David, of course, referring to the ultimate son of David, the Christ. That’s what verse 13 is saying. A tenth is going to survive in 701 BC. They’ll get taken away, the Babylonians, like an oak tree casting its leaves, but it’ll regenerate because oaks send out their acorns. The holy one of Israel will come from that regeneration. That’s the rainbow. That’s the silver lining in Isaiah’s dark cloud. He will witness Jerusalem be spared and he will produce the document that will help not only with the eventual coming of the Messiah, but with the ultra eventual finishing of the Messiah’s work, which will be the gathering of scattered Israel in the last days. That’s the middle point of this great chiasm that starts out with the great Jerusalem temple prophecy, ends with the coming of Messiah and the gathering. In the middle is Isaiah’s mission call in which he’s told that it’s a tough mission, but it looks forward to that Messiah and that gathering.

Hank Smith:                      01:53:08             You’ve got hope in the beginning, hope at the end, and this hope in the middle.

Dr. Jeff Chadwick:           01:53:13             And everybody, whoever goes on a mission should realize that’s what we’re doing. It’s all about that gathering. It’s all about that hope. Every bad day you have, remember Isaiah had a worse one. He got sawed in half.

Hank Smith:                      01:53:28             Yeah, this is a bad day.

John Bytheway:               01:53:30             Let me back you up on that with Old Testament scholar Paul Y. Hoskisson. He wrote, “As Paul states in Galatians 3:16, the seed referred to in the Old Testament is Christ, and it is that seed that comprised the substance that is the life of Israel here symbolized by trees. In other words, the Messiah of Israel would be born of the spiritually dormant remnant of Israel living in the land of Palestine, and he is the life substance of Israel.”

Dr. Jeff Chadwick:           01:54:01             Well, that’s why he’s Paul Hoskissen, because he’s so smart.

John Bytheway:               01:54:04             I also like that Terry Ball said that teil tree and the oak tree can have all their leaves eaten off, can even be cut down and they’ll grow back.

Dr. Jeff Chadwick:           01:54:14             Yeah, that shrub oak never goes away. You can’t kill it with Roundup.

Hank Smith:                      01:54:19             Jeff, this has been fantastic. I like that we’ve taken this little section of scripture, said, “Here’s how it’s organized. Here’s a message of hope in the beginning, a message of hope at the end. Right in the middle is Isaiah’s call.” And it really is, like you said, it is rough. Things are going to, you’re going to be ignored, but there are going to be seeds of hope that will one day grow into the Messiah and into the gathering.

Dr. Jeff Chadwick:           01:54:47             That’s what we have to remember ultimately about our own missions, is that there is a reason for all of this. There’s a reason to be faithful. There’s a reason to be joyful even with the bad days. Part of your mission extends to having your own family and your own children, and sometimes things don’t always work out the way you’d like to, but in the end, God is at the helm, and this is going to work.

Hank Smith:                      01:55:15             This is going to work.

John Bytheway:               01:55:17             I was wondering how my wifi would work today because my daughter’s home MTC, you know, one floor below me right now, learning some French vocabulary out to France.

Dr. Jeff Chadwick:           01:55:31             Well, good luck, because that’s a tough mission.

John Bytheway:               01:55:34             It is. Her oldest sister went there. It’s kind of a fun thing that my oldest daughter and my youngest daughter going to the same mission. It’s kind of a beautiful thing.

Hank Smith:                      01:55:45             Jeff, thank you. We’ve got five lessons on Isaiah this year. Our first one, you’ve really given us a good place to start. You’ve also, not only intellectually and with your scholarship, but also with that message of, “We’re a lot like Isaiah. It’s hard, but the Lord is going to give us beauty for ashes out of this forest fire is going to come new growth.” John, I’m excited. I’m more excited now for these next four lessons.

John Bytheway:               01:56:14             Yeah. Let’s see with our eyes. Let’s hear with our ears. Let’s understand with our heart. Let’s be converted and be healed. That’s what the Lord wants.

Dr. Jeff Chadwick:           01:56:24             Well, you’ll get into those lessons and you’ll hit those marvelous works and wonders and folks, you’ll have a great time with Isaiah all the way through. Just enjoy these weeks in September and October as you are doing what the Lord has asked us to do, to search Isaiah diligently.

Hank Smith:                      01:56:43             Your enthusiasm for Isaiah has proved highly contagious, as Elder Maxwell would say. We want to thank Dr. Jeff Chadwick for being with us today. We want to thank our executive producer, Shannon Sorensen, our sponsors, David and Verla Sorensen. And every episode, we remember our founder, Steve Sorensen. Like we said, we’ve got more Isaiah coming up next week on followHIM. As a thank you to our wonderful listeners, we’d love to gift you the digital version of our book, Finding Jesus Christ in the Old Testament. It offers short, meaningful insights drawn from our past Old Testament episodes. Visit followhim.co, that’s followhim.co, to download your free copy today, and you’ll also find the link to purchase the print edition. Thank you for being part of our followHIM family. Of course, none of this could happen without our incredible production crew, David Perry, Lisa Spice, Will Stoughton, Krystal Roberts, Ariel Cuadra, Heather Barlow, Amelia Kabwika, Sydney Smith, and Annabelle Sorensen.

                                           01:57:45             Whatever questions or problems you have, the answer is always found in the life and teachings of Jesus Christ. Turn to him, followHIM.