The book made him famous — he was known as “Corsica Boswell” — and it was widely read in Europe. Among his readers was the young Bonaparte. It gave h… - Paul Johnson

Isaiah was not only the most remarkable of the prophets, he was by far the greatest writer in the Old Testament. He was evidently a magnificent preacher, but it is likely he set his words down in writing. They certainly achieved written form very early and remained among the most popular of all the holy writings: among the texts found at Qumran after the Second World War was a leather scroll, 23 feet long, giving the whole of Isaiah in fifty columns of Hebrew, the best preserved and longest ancient manuscript of the Bible we possess.216 The early Jews loved his sparkling prose with its brilliant images, many of which have since passed into the literature of all civilized nations. But more important than the language was the thought: Isaiah was pushing humanity towards new moral discoveries.

A man who takes more words than is necessary to tell more than he knows.

for. As with Abraham’s migration from Ur and Haran to Canaan, we must not assume that the Israelite exodus from Egypt was dictated purely by economic motives.