Introduction to Isaiah's Book Order

Every book in the Bible uniquely matches a chapter in the book of Isaiah. The rest of this page offers a sampling of those matches with brief explanation so you can see how this idea works.

Memory Game

If you've ever played the children's game Memory the process for matching the books of the Bible with the chapters of Isaiah works the same.

Memory is a deck of picture cards. Every card in the deck has a matching card. To play you shuffle the cards and place them face down. The first player turns over two cards. If the cards match he/she keeps them and gets another turn. If the cards do not match they are placed face down again and the next player goes. The game continues until all the cards are matched.

In the realm of the Bible the deck of memory cards are the books of the Bible and the chapters of Isaiah. Each book in the Bible has content that uniquely matches a chapter in Isaiah. The outcome of simply matching books and chapters is a book order defined by scripture. Such a book order is unique and akin to an inspired book order.

Example Matches

The best way to understand how the books and chapters match is to simply run through as many examples as we can squeeze into this introduction. You'll soon have a taste for how this works.

Isaiah 2 Exodus

Exodus is the story of "exiting" Egypt and meeting with Yahvah at Mt. Sinai to receive the call, the law and build the tabernacle, God's portable house. The pivotal chapter in the book is probably the point when the Israelites arrive at Mt. Sinai after crossing the Red Sea.

The rest of Exodus 19 states that Israel was chosen from the nations of the world to be a priest to the nations of the world. Then in Exodus 20 the Ten Commandments are given. By Exodus 25 the book focuses on the process of building Yahvah a tabernacle with a brief pause for the golden calf debacle.

Isaiah 2 begins with a well known passage that hits all the high-level themes in the book of Exodus. Here's an excerpt from the longer passage.

The "mountain" is clearly present in this quote as is the "law" and the "house of God," all themes from the book of Exodus. Much of the rest of Isaiah 2 also matches themes from Exodus including the golden calf story. On the strength of these several correlations, Isaiah 2 and Exodus are a strong match.

Isaiah 15 Lamentations

Lamentations is the book in the Bible about crying. It's even named as such. And when you read Lamentations it's clear how sad the captivity of the Jews and the destruction of Jerusalem was. Lamentations even equates the taking of people from Jerusalem to Babylon as falling from heaven to earth (Lamentations 2:1). The opening verses of Lamentations reveal the tone of sadness present throughout the book.

Of the 66 chapters in Isaiah one is an amazing match to Lamentations simply because it uses every possible adjective for lamenting one could imagine. It's also a match to Lamentations because the crying, weeping, howling and wailing of Isaiah 15 is over captivity.

All of Isaiah 15 plays to lamenting in some form or another. No other chapter in Isaiah so thoroughly deals with this behavior just as no other book in the Bible so thoroughly displays utter sadness like Lamentations. For this reason Isaiah 15 and Lamentations are a strong match.

Isaiah 20 Micah

Micah is an interesting character and one who does some mourning of his own. His book begins with a prophetic vision of Yahvah leaving his place in heaven to destroy Samaria and Jerusalem because of their persistent sin. Micah's response to this vision may surprise you.

As strange as Micah's response of going naked may seem to many of us he's not the only prophet to respond to an invading army in this way. Isaiah does the same thing as recorded in Isaiah 20.

There are a couple other stories of nakedness in the Bible, like Saul's, but none that work like Micah and Isaiah's. Only Micah and Isaiah share the similarities of 1) being writing prophets 2) who go naked 3) when the Assyrians 4) invade. With these similarities in both Isaiah 20 and Micah we have a unique match.

Isaiah 26 Psalms

Psalms is the song book of the Bible. Every chapter in Psalms is a song. No other book in the Bible is completely songs, though a few have a song here or there. Here's an excerpt from Psalm 118.

Just at Psalms is the song book of the Bible, Isaiah 26 is the song chapter of Isaiah. No other chapter in Isaiah is a song though a couple chapters have short songs or reference songs. Isaiah 26 even begins by saying "this is a song" just so we don't miss the fact.

Reading through the rest of Isaiah 26 you'll notice it is similar to Psalms both in terms of it's style and content. Psalms has a definite style as does Isaiah, but Isaiah 26 reads more like Psalms than Isaiah. Given the similarity of style in Isaiah 26 and Psalms and the fact that Isaiah 26 is to Isaiah like Psalms to the Bible these are a strong match.

Isaiah 27 Job

If you search the Bible for the word "leviathan" you'll discover it's a low occurrence word that appears in Isaiah 27, Psalm 74, Psalm 104 and Job 41. The Job passage is the longest and most familiar.

Here's the Isaiah 27 leviathan reference.

First note that Isaiah provides the answer to Yahvah's rhetorical questions to Job. Job cannot control leviathan, but Yahvah can and will. The question remains, however, whether Psalms is a better match to Isaiah 27 than Job.

The answer is simply that Psalms is not particularly known for it's two short references to leviathan and Psalms as a book of songs is a natural match with Isaiah 26 as we discussed above. With Psalms confidently paired with Isaiah 26 we are free to match Job, with it's well known leviathan passage, to Isaiah 27, with it's leviathan reference.

Isaiah 32 Joel

Joel is a short book most known for a passage quoted by Peter on the day of Pentecost in Acts 2. Joel has merit beyond just what Peter quotes, but it's amazing to see how often the matches between Isaiah and the books of the Bible play to familiar passages.

Here's the actual passage from Joel that Peter quotes in Acts.

If you search Isaiah with the word "Spirit" you'll find many references to the Holy Spirit, but only two that relate to an "outpouring" of the Holy Spirit. Those chapters are Isaiah 32 and 44.

Here's the "outpouring" of the Holy Spirit portion of Isaiah 32.

If you're familiar with the book of Joel it begins with the problem of famine. In fact most of Isaiah 32 matches Joel on the subject of famine. But note how the Isaiah 32 quote relates the "outpouring" of the Holy Spirit to water that makes the field fruitful and fixes the problem of famine. Of the two chapters in Isaiah that deal with the "outpouring" of the Holy Spirit Isaiah 32 matches the secondary problem of famine so clear in the book of Joel.

Isaiah 44 Acts

Acts is the famous story of Pentecost and the outpouring of the Holy Spirit in the New Testament. The Holy Spirit is mentioned throughout the Bible and "poured out" in other places besides Acts, but Acts is the highest occurrence place of this type of event and the Pentecost story at the start of Acts is the definitive case.

The Pentecost outpouring was so important Jesus mentioned the event several times beforehand. One occasion is recorded at the beginning of Acts.

Jesus said the Holy Spirit would "come on" his followers so they could "witness" to him, that is tell others about their encounter with Jesus. Isaiah 44 also has an outpouring of the Holy Spirit for the purpose of witnessing.

With the passages of Isaiah 32, Joel, Isaiah 44 and Acts linked via Peter's quote on Pentecost, the four probably form a context for understanding Pentecost.

Isaiah 45 Philippians

In Philippians 2 there is a beautiful song that tells the story of Jesus leaving heaven for earth, followed by his death on the cross, and ultimately his ascension/exaltation to heaven as master of all. The climax of this song/story is the realization that every knee will bow to Jesus' rule and every tongue confess that he is Lord.

Though most Bibles don't treat these few verses as a direct quote, the inspiration behind these verses is clearly from Isaiah 45.

It's amazing how often in this study through Isaiah that Yahvah and Jesus are combined. We saw that Isaiah 44 refers to the outpouring of the Holy Spirit for witness to Yahvah while Acts is clearly about the outpouring of the Holy Spirit for witness to Jesus. Here in Isaiah 45 every knee will bow and tongue confess to Yahvah and in Philippians every knee will bow and tongue confess that Jesus is Lord. One wonders if the intended meaning of this saying is that "Jesus is Yahvah."

Other places in the Bible clearly state that Jesus is Lord as do other chapters in Isaiah, but the imagery of "every knee bowing" and "every tongue confessing" is a unique match between Isaiah 45 and Philippians.

Isaiah 50 First Corinthians

First Corinthians is a fairly long book as letters go, but there's a subplot in First Corinthians that Isaiah 50 matches. First, here's the short subplot passage about the believer who was rebuked for having a sexual relationship with his mother.

It's not exactly clear to me whether this man was sexually active with his biological mother or perhaps a step-mother, but either situation is clearly out of bounds for a confessing believer as in either case the woman is another man's wife. Perhaps the woman was his biological mother, though, because Paul says even the pagans don't behave this way. Whatever the specific problem the solution is to send the man away from the fellowship of believers in Jesus.

Isaiah 50 starts with an interesting dialogue between Yahvah and a man whose mother was given a certificate of divorce and "sent away." In fact Yahvah seems to say that the man himself was also "sent away" just like in First Corinthians.

There's mention of sexual immorality in other books of the Bible, and Leviticus outlaws a sexual relationship between a mother and son, but First Corinthians is the only place where we have a story about this problem. So too, Isaiah has sexual immorality issues in a few places, but only Isaiah 50 has this son/mother thing where they are "sent away" like First Corinthians talks about. On these grounds we have a unique and strong match between Isaiah 50 and First Corinthians.

Isaiah 56 First Timothy

First Timothy is the personal letter Paul wrote his apprentice Timothy. He outlines various issues pertinent to Timothy's role as a young leader and in particular Paul lays out the prerequisites to spiritual leadership as an elder. Here's the passage on eldership.

As you can see the list of prerequisites for service as an elder are long and fairly steep. I would argue more so than we even realize, but that's a topic for another time. Isaiah 56 matches the book of First Timothy, though in an opposite of sorts. Here's what Isaiah 56 has to say about the elders or "shepherds" of Israel.

The "watchmen" or "shepherds" of Isaiah 56 are adjectives for the "elders" of First Timothy and therefor a match. Isaiah 56 also matches at least a subset of the prerequisites listed in First Timothy. Isaiah 56 mentions drunkeness and greed in particular. In the case of First Timothy drunkards should not be elders while in Isaiah 56 elders are drunkards. Many of the matches between books of the Bible and chapters are opposites, so I have no problem considering Isaiah 56 and First Timothy a strong match.

Isaiah 13 Isaiah

I've saved one of the most interesting matches for the final example. It holds that if each chapter in Isaiah matches a book in the Bible, one of those chapters matches the book of Isaiah itself.

I'm told mathematicians calls this kind of structure a "fractal" and that computer programmers will recognize this as "recursion." Whatever the term we use to describe the behavior it's clear the Bible is self-referencing in interesting ways.

The Bible is recursive when it uses one of it's books, Isaiah, to establish the order of it's books. Isaiah is recursive when one of it's chapters is about itself. In essence you could treat Isaiah 13 as a miniature Bible. Odd to think this way at first, but it appears to be normal in the Bible.

Okay, on to the question of why Isaiah 13 and Isaiah match. The strongest evidence is the way the two passages begin. Here's the opening line of Isaiah.

Note the pieces of this opening. 1) Isaiah 2) the son of Amoz 3) sees a vision 4) about Judah and Jerusalem. Now look at the start of Isaiah 13.

Depending on what translation you read the word order may change or the exact vocabulary may shift around, but the same four pieces from the opening of Isaiah are present in the opening of Isaiah 13. 1) Isaiah 2) the son of Amoz 3) has an oracle 4) about Babylon. The only difference is the substitution of "prophecy" for "vision" and "Babylon" for "Judah and Jerusalem."

There is a similar opening at Isaiah 2, but it lacks component 3), a reference to a "vision" or "prophecy," and Isaiah 2 strongly matches the book of Exodus, which we covered earlier. So the identical literary style of Isaiah 13 and Isaiah, and the fact no other book in the Bible or chapter in Isaiah opens the same, makes Isaiah 13 and Isaiah a strong match.

Summary

You are probably developing a pretty good feel for how the chapters and books match. We've seen that sometimes there is more than one book that is a candidate for matching a particular chapter and only by matching both books to the best chapters in Isaiah are we able to continue confidently. We've seen that sometimes books and chapters triangulate, such as the "outpouring" theme in Isaiah 32 and 44 and in Joel and Acts. We've seen that sometimes a book will quote it's matching chapter, but that is not always proof of a match. We've also seen how the Bible is recursive about Isaiah and Isaiah 13.

In the reports for each chapter-book pair on the following pages you'll notice there are typically multiple matches between each chapter and book pair. For space I've limited the above examples to only one match so you could get a broad feel for the strategy. In the individual reports there's room to delve in deeper to all the known matches between each chapter-book pair. Enjoy!

To begin reading the individual reports click the Next >> link in the footer.

By Ryan Eaton
Posted Monday, Issachar 22, 12999