Oh You Destroyer Who Has Not Been Destroyed: We noted in the Introduction that the major copy of Isaiah from Cave 1 at Qumran leaves a space after chapter 33, and this chapter indeed closes off the first half of the book. It does this quantitatively, because we are fairly precisely half way through the book. It also does it thematically and verbally. At one level chapter 33 is jerky and puzzling. The addressees keep changing, we are not clear who is being talked about, and no train of argument develops through it. Its unity, consistency, and coherence come from its expository relationship with all that has preceded. It pairs with chapter 1, which provided an anticipatory summary of the message of Isaiah.

Chapter 33 has two distinctive features when compared with that opening synthesis of Is…