Immanuel in Imperial Context: Isaiah, God, and History

Abstract

This article investigates the implications of the Immanuel prophecy for the doctrine of God and the political idea of Israel that emerge from the book of Isaiah. It does this in conversation with both the Immanuel tradition elsewhere in the OT, as well as with an alternative ideology that Isaiah encountered through Assyria. I argue that Isaiah’s use of Immanuel in the context of the Syro-Ephraimite crisis and Assyrian aggression (Isa 6–12) allows him to avoid framing Zion theology as an Israelite version of Assyrian imperialism. But, in doing so, Isaiah also implies that the transcendent, high, and lofty God of Isa 6 will be willing to be “with” a people suffering his own judgment.

Stillness and salvation: Reading Psalm 46 in its context

“…7.14; 8.8, 10). 33 As Nathan Lovell (2022: 126) points out, though ‘[t]he Psalms are sometimes cited as a source for Israel’s Immanuel theology, … the language is in fact only explicit in Ps. 46, which shares the same divine warrior motif’.…”