The Prophet Isaiah

Artwork for a preaching series on Isaiah, at Hope College.

For starters, I don't think I really realized how many biblical references come from this book until re-digging into it for this project. Passages like:

• - Turn your swords into ploughshares

• - A shoot will come up from the stump of Jesse

• - The wolf will lie down with the Lamb

• - A voice calling in the wilderness...Make straight a way for the Lord

• - The Suffering Servant

It is such a central text - at the heart of so much of what Christians hope and believe about the Messiah!

Because of that, I really wanted to come up with a design that represented a fuller picture of the prophecy - and the prophet himself - rather than just focusing on one image.

The concept for this layout is based on an old book illustration I stumbled across in the MET archive (above).

Seeing the central figure, surrounded by a series of icons helped open up my mind for a way to contain a collection of images from the text. I love numerical symbols as well, so having a set of 12 was an added satisfaction.

The symbols themselves are meant to represent a loosely linear reading of the text.

• - That is is divinely inspired,

• - That Isaiah is cleansed for to speak it,

• - That something will need to be cut down before something new can sprout up,

• - That peace will come (and we are invited to participate),

• - At the cost of the affliction, redemption and renewal of the Suffering Servant (the four icons above)