ABSTRACT
In the [American] Society of Biblical Literature Annual Meeting in New Orleans, November 1996, there was a panel session on 'Teaching the Prophets'. The chief speaker, David L. Petersen, pinpointed five clusters of issues which, as he hoped, would be included in courses on the so-called 'prophetic literature'. These are: (1) definitions of 'prophecy' and 'prophets' and 'prophetic activity'; (2) cultural contexts; (3) literary topics, including the question of 'prophecy and poetry' as well as 'the part and the whole'; (4) social issues, as reflected in the 'prophetic' texts and presumably fulfilling certain roles in their production, reception and transmission; and (5) postmodern perspectives, including feminist perspectives. I find this program attractive. It is a questioning program, as Petersen intended it to be. Older assumptions are not taken for granted. In that spirit, I would like to offer a preliminary analysis of Isaiah 50. This analysis is certainly not a comprehensive analysis but one that opens up several of the issues Petersen lists so precisely: issues of cultural milieu, social issues, literary questions and, of course, a feminist perspective. What I will try to do is to show that, by adopting a feminist perspective-one of several such perspectives possibleboth reader and text are allowed another kind of existence. This different existence neither negates nor disqualifies other perspectivesinspired readings (for instance, those of classical or radical Hebrew Bible, mainstream commentators); neither is it inferior to those simply because it is born of an admittedly biased reading. My own program agrees with Petersen to a large extent, especially on the question of how the reader's sensitivity contributes towards another and perhaps more pluralistic understanding of a 'prophetic' text. However, and precisely in deference to readers' sensitivities, I would like to dwell on some problems of reading, interpreting and teaching the 'prophetic literature' in general, before I proceed to exegete the specific passage Isa. 50. 1-11.
