Divine Wrath: Its Rhetorical Use by the Contemporary Writers of Isaiah, Jeremiah, and Ezekiel for Social Control in the Aftermath of Jerusalem's Destruction.

Abstract

This study demonstrates that the writers of Isaiah, Jeremiah, and Ezekiel employed the language of conquest to construct innovative images of God as god, king, and judicial disciplinarian. When the writers characterized God as threatening and punishing, they often used the language of divine/royal wrath. They built this presentation of God and God’s wrath into a literary tool for social control in the aftermath of Jerusalem’s destruction. The study analyzes the ideological message that serves social control at three levels: the obvious meaning of the text, the metaphoric message, and the rhetorical development of subtle messages within the text. The rhetorical development is assessed using three models; each model compares the different enunciations of the texts that serve social control with each other. The first model also compares some of these texts with conquest accounts from other biblical traditions. The results of these analyses demonstrate the manner in which the writers of the Isaiah, Jeremiah, and Ezekiel use the language of wrath on several levels of literary development to encourage their audience to self-regulate according to social norms desired by the writers.