5.

5. Theological. From ch. 40 onwards major theological themes emerge which have played little or no part earlier: concern with the Exodus and wilderness deliverance, clearly pictured as the model for a new return from exile to the promised land (40:3–5); the restoration of a destroyed Jerusalem as a symbol of renewed divine favour (ch. 52); the concentration on creation, with the use of the distinctive Hebrew verb bārā’, used in Gen 1 but rare elsewhere, to speak of divine creative action; the concern with the role of a servant. All these themes have no obvious parallel in the earlier chapters.