A scholar who has spent his life in this book gave me a number. It changed how I think about quitting.
Avraham Gileadi learned Hebrew in Israel and attended rabbinic school there. He took his doctorate at Brigham Young University under Hugh Nibley. His dissertation traced a literary structure running through Isaiah that changes how the whole prophecy reads. He translated Isaiah into English out of the Hebrew, the Dead Sea scroll, and the Septuagint.
I have worked in his material for more than eleven years. Years ago I asked him a plain question: how long does it take?
His answer was about two years of steady study before Isaiah really begins to open.
I want to tell you why I think that is the best news in this whole enterprise.
It means the door has a timetable.
Think about what happens to most of us. We decide this year is the year. We open Isaiah with real intent. We get three chapters in, the words slide off the page, and somewhere in the first month we quietly stop.
And then — this is the part that does the damage — we conclude the problem is us. Not smart enough. Not spiritual enough. Not trying hard enough.
It is none of those.
Two years is simply what it costs. That is not a judgment on you. That is the price of the thing, the way a language has a price and an instrument has a price. Nobody quits Spanish in week three and decides they are stupid. They decide they have not gotten there yet, because everyone knows a language takes time.
Nobody ever told us Isaiah takes time.
And nobody told us the other thing: Isaiah has a language of his own — and it turns out to be the language nearly every prophet after him speaks. Jeremiah uses it. Ezekiel uses it. Daniel, Hosea, Micah, Nahum. Nephi, Jacob, Abinadi.
Here is how far it runs. Scholars count somewhere around six hundred quotations, paraphrases, and allusions to Isaiah in the New Testament — more than any other Old Testament book. Not a passing influence. A saturation.
Watch where it shows up. The virgin birth is announced in Isaiah’s words — Matthew 1:23 quoting Isaiah 7:14. John the Baptist is introduced in Isaiah’s words, in all four gospels — the voice crying in the wilderness, Isaiah 40:3. The Savior’s own mission statement, the first public words of His ministry in the synagogue at Nazareth, is Isaiah 61 read off a scroll. Paul’s armor of God is built from Isaiah 11 and 59. The Ethiopian eunuch is reading Isaiah 53 in his chariot when Philip finds him, and that chapter is where the conversion happens. Every knee shall bow — Isaiah 45:23, quoted twice by Paul. And death is swallowed up in victory — Isaiah 25:8.
Then there is the book everybody else gives up on. Revelation is stitched through with Isaiah: the First and the Last, holy holy holy, they shall hunger no more, a new heaven and a new earth.
And the book we know best does the same thing. Roughly a third of Isaiah is quoted or closely paraphrased inside the Book of Mormon — twenty-one full chapters, plus verses scattered through sermon after sermon. Nephi copies Isaiah 48 and 49 out for his brothers, then thirteen straight chapters, Isaiah 2 through 14. Jacob takes 50 and 51. Abinadi stands before King Noah’s priests and recites Isaiah 53 to men who will burn him for it. And the Savior Himself quotes Isaiah 54 in full, and Isaiah 52 more than once. Moroni closes the whole record with Isaiah’s words — awake, and arise from the dust.
Five prophets and the Lord, across a thousand years, all reaching for the same book.
Learn Isaiah and you have not learned one book. You have learned the grammar the rest of them wrote in.
Here is the other half of it.
A handcart company crossing to the Salt Lake Valley walked for about three months. Terrible months. Rocky Ridge in a blizzard, and people did not survive it.
Two years is eight times that — and it has no Rocky Ridge. There is no single dreadful night that tests you and then ends. There is just the walking. Week after week, nobody watching, no rescue party coming over the hill, because you never told anyone you were walking.
And nobody ever quit a handcart trek because they thought they were not smart enough.
We quit Isaiah for that reason. In week three.
So take the number and use it. When week three comes and the chapter will not open, you will not be failing. You will be in week three of a hundred and four, exactly where a person is supposed to be at week three.
That is the whole gift of knowing the number.
And I will tell you what else I asked Avraham, because it turned out to matter more. The Savior commanded us to search Isaiah diligently — 3 Nephi 23:1. I always assumed diligently meant consistently. Steadily. Keep at it.
I asked him what he thought it meant.
His answer took the roof off, and it was not what I expected.
I will tell you that one next.
This is part of a weekly series walking through Isaiah one week ahead of Come Follow Me.
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