Undisclosed Speech: Patterns of Communication in the Book of Isaiah

This article deals with the lacking communicational equivalence between the prophet and his contemporaries created by the ‘command not to comprehend’ (Isaiah 6). The structure of non-comprehension is regarded as a necessary result of the prophetic word and describes the impossibility of comprehending what Isaiah himself could only understand after the event of his purification (Isa 6:6-7). Prophetic message and its rejection are thus complementary elements...