The Book of Isaiah: A Working Outline

These days I'm thinking about the Book of Isaiah. Most of this relates to a series of lessons I'm preparing to teach at church.

It's been a long time since I engaged this behemoth of a book. Isaiah is vast. Vast in its time scale, its place in Judaism and in the life of Jesus, and its influence in the New Testament and in the history of the Christianity. It would be hard to find another piece of literature comparable in size that has made such an impact.

Trying to get some idea of the broad contours of Isaiah, I recently consulted my own notes and then took a look at the outlines found in various commentaries. Here's what I've settled on, for now, as a good working outline of the entire book.

The most basic way to think about the outline of Isaiah is to divide the 66 chapters of the book like this:

1-39

40-66

Anyone who reads Isaiah all the way through will notice the difference in tone from one section to the next, a shift often described as a change from judgment and condemnation to hope and comfort. Beyond that, Isaiah can be further divided into the following seven sections:

1-12
13-23

24-27

28-35

36-39

40-55

56-66

For what it's worth, the foregoing corresponds to the outline found in Isaiah: A Commentary, written by Brevard S. Childs, and first published in 2000. Most of today's scholars divide it similarly with only a few variations.