Book of Isaiah

The Book of Isaiah (Hebrew: ספר ישעיה, Sefer Y'sha'yah) is a book of the Bible thought to be written by the Prophet Isaiah, who lived in the second half of the 8th century BC. The Book of Isaiah contains many prophecies about ancient Israel, its people, and its enemies. Tradition says that all 66 chapters of the book were written by Isaiah, but other theories say that some chapters were written by one or more other people. This is mainly because they were about a later period and the text doesn't mention Isaiah after Chapter 39.

Isaiah, the son of Amoz lived in the Kingdom of Judah during the time of four kings from the mid to late 8th-century BCE. During this time, Assyria was growing to the west from what is now Iraq towards the Mediterranean, destroying first Aram (modern Syria) in 734–732 BCE, then the Kingdom of Israel in 722–721, and Judah in 701.

The defeat of Jerusalem by Babylon and the exile of its top people in 586 BCE followed. Chapters 40 to 55 are given to the Jews in exile, telling them about the hope of return. This was the time of king Cyrus the Great – in 559 BCE he became ruler of a small kingdom in what is today Iran. By 540 he ruled a big empire from the Mediterranean to Central Asia, and in 539 he conquered Babylon. Isaiah's predictions of the fall of Babylon and his talk about the glory of Cyrus as one who would help Israel mean these prophecies are about the period of 550–539 BCE.

The Persians ended the Jewish exile, and by 515 BCE some of the exiles had returned to Jerusalem and rebuilt the Temple. This is what the final chapters of Isaiah are about.