Isaiah

Chapters

1. 1
2. 2
3. 3
4. 4
5. 5
6. 6
7. 7
8. 8
9. 9
10. 10
11. 11
12. 12
13. 13
14. 14
15. 15
16. 16
17. 17
18. 18
19. 19
20. 20
21. 21
22. 22
23. 23
24. 24
25. 25
26. 26
27. 27
28. 28
29. 29
30. 30
31. 31
32. 32
33. 33
34. 34
35. 35
36. 36
37. 37
38. 38
39. 39
40. 40
41. 41
42. 42
43. 43
44. 44
45. 45
46. 46
47. 47
48. 48
49. 49
50. 50
51. 51
52. 52
53. 53
54. 54
55. 55
56. 56
57. 57
58. 58
59. 59
60. 60
61. 61
62. 62
63. 63
64. 64
65. 65
66. 66

In the maps

• Isaiah 7:14

  The sign of the virgin who conceives and bears 'God with us' is applied by Matthew to Mary and Jesus. Pitre's argument for the title 'Mother of God' rests here: if the child Mary bears is Immanuel, God with us, then Mary is the mother of God-with-us — a statement about who Jesus is before it is a statement about her. Honouring her as such guards the truth of the Incarnation.

• Isaiah 26:17

  Israel writhes like a woman in labour before the LORD, and the passage ends with the promise that the dead will rise. Pitre uses this to show the prophetic pattern behind the Jewish idea of the 'birth pangs of the Messiah': tribulation that gives birth to salvation and resurrection. Revelation's Woman in labour, and Mary's own travail at the cross, follow this prophetic script.

• Isaiah 53:3

  The Servant is a man of sorrows who carries the griefs of others. Pitre opens the chapter on Mary's birth pangs with the paradox that Jesus came not to take suffering away but to take it upon himself, alluding to this prophecy through Mark 10:45 (p 118). As Jesus is the 'man of sorrows,' Mary, the mother who shares his passion, is rightly called the Mother of Sorrows, Mater Dolorosa (pp 133–134).

• Isaiah 65:17

  God promises a new heavens and a new earth in which the former things are not remembered. Pitre's first observation on Isaiah 66:7 is that it comes right after this new-creation oracle (pp 120–121): the birth without labour is an act of the new creation, undoing the curse of Genesis 3:16. That is why the Fathers read Mary's painless birth of Jesus as a sign that the new creation had begun.

• Isaiah 65:23

  In the new creation no one labours in vain and no woman bears children for calamity — the two chief effects of the fall are undone. Pitre uses the verse to explain why Isaiah's next chapter foretells a birth before labour pains (pp 120–121): pain in childbirth belongs to the old creation, and its absence marks the new. Jewish sources (Leviticus Rabbah 14:9) say the same of the world to come.

• Isaiah 66:6

  Isaiah's oracle of the painless birth (66:7) is introduced by a voice from the temple. Pitre points out that Revelation borrows this scene: the heavenly temple is opened, voices sound, the Ark is seen, and a woman appears in labour (pp 58–59). Both the Ark and the Woman are therefore placed in the heavenly temple, which is why John can use them as two images of the same mother.

• Isaiah 66:7

  Zion gives birth without labour pains. Pitre reports that ancient Christians such as Irenaeus and Gregory of Nyssa took this as fulfilled in Mary's painless birth of Jesus at Bethlehem, a sign of the new creation reversing the curse of Genesis 3:16. The very same Fathers taught that her true birth pangs came later, at the cross, where she brought forth the children of God in sorrow.

• Isaiah 66:8

  Verse 7 spoke of an individual woman bearing a son; verse 8 speaks of Zion bearing children, a nation born in a day. Pitre observes that the identity of the mother is deliberately ambiguous, a woman and a city at once (p 120), which is why the prophecy can be fulfilled both in Mary's birth of the Messiah and in the birth of a people. The Targum and the rabbis read the passage of the Messiah's birth; Revelation 12 uses its Greek wording for the Woman in heaven.