Isaiah 41
This is a chapter of unique importance for the understanding of the prophey of Second Isaiah. The interpretation of this poem of 29 verses — or, specifically, of its verses 1–3 and 25 f. — carries with it the entire conception of “the Prophet of the Exile”; his quality, his message, the amount of the prophecy that can be assigned to him, and indeed the theory of the origin of chapters 34–66. Two widely different interpretations, the one incompatible with the other, are well established in the history of Old Testament exegesis.