New Archaeological Find Could Have Belonged to Isaiah the Biblical Prophet
Archaeologists have found what appears to be proof of the existence of the prophet Isaiah. A half-inch piece of a clay seal seems to read “Isaiah the Prophet.”
Archaeologist Dr. Eliat Mazar found it during a scientific excavation in Jerusalem.
The Seal of Isaiah
Mazar’s team discovered the seal, or bulla, in the Ophel excavation, reported The Times of Israel. The site is located at the foot of the southern wall of the Temple Mount in Jerusalem. It is one of 34 seals found in 2009 in Iron Age garbage pits. These were found outside a royal bakery flattened when the Babylonians destroyed the city in 586 B.C. according to National Geographic.
Isaiah and Hezekiah
“Hezekiah had been essentially a vassal king of the Assyrian ruler Sennacherib,” says a story on the find in the Israeli newspaper Haaretz. The Jews rebelled and in 701 B.C. the Assyrians besieged the city. As recorded in Isaiah 38, King Hezekiah was dying. The prophet went to him and told him he would die.
Hezekiah prayed, “Please, O Lord, remember how I have walked before you in faithfulness and with a whole heart, and have done what is good in your sight.” He wept bitterly.
The chapter continues: “Then the word of the Lord came to Isaiah: ‘Go and say to Hezekiah, Thus says the Lord, the God of David your father: I have heard your prayer; I have seen your tears. Behold, I will add fifteen years to your life. I will deliver you and this city out of the hand of the king of Assyria, and will defend this city.'”
The Assyrians finally left, having failed to conquer Jerusalem. The Assyrians claimed Hezekiah bribed them. The Bible says the Lord delivered the city.
It is not intact, however. The legible portion reads “belonging to Isaiah.” The next line contains a partial word, “nvy.” This may be part of the word “prophet,” but without the last letter, archeaologists can’t be sure.
If the word is “prophet,” the word “would have definitively identified the seal as the signature of the prophet Isaiah,” said Mazar. Other scholars don’t believe that the word is “prophet,” some pointing out that it’s not preceded by the normal “the.” Mazar herself admits that “nvy” may be someone’s name.
King Hezekiah’s Seal
Notably, the seal was found only 10 feet away from where a seal of the biblical king Hezekiah was found in 2015. That intact bulla contained the words, “of King Hezekiah of Judah.”
Mazar believes that it makes sense that Isaiah the prophet’s bulla would be so close. “If it is the case that this bulla is indeed that of the prophet Isaiah, then it should not come as a surprise to discover this bulla next to one bearing King Hezekiah’s name,” given the relationship of the men in the Bible.
“The names of King Hezekiah and the prophet Isaiah are mentioned in one breath 14 of the 29 times the name of Isaiah is recalled,” added Mazar (2 Kings 19–20; Isaiah 37–39). “No other figure was closer to King Hezekiah than the prophet Isaiah.”
While it is possible that the clay impression did not belong to the prophet, Mazar said that either way, it is an incredible find. “Whether or not the bulla we found in the Ophel excavations is the bulla of the prophet Isaiah, it remains, nevertheless, a unique and fantastic discovery,” she wrote in the Biblical Archaeology Review.
