Like most Bible readers I know, I often skimmed quickly through the book of Isaiah, and Jeremiah as well, anxious to move on to easier reading. Even for many Bible geeks I knew, it seemed too hard to understand.

I knew that Jesus quoted Isaiah more than any other prophet. Yet every effort I made to dive into it, I came away frustrated.

It didn’t offer any immediate gratification, like as when reading the book of Jonah. Jonah is a story that flowed, and led me on an interesting, somewhat adventurous journey. It’s hard to go on a journey with Isaiah, unless you’re prepared in several ways.

My attitude adjustment began when I heard Dr. Shon Hopkin talking about Isaiah as prophetic poetry. It does not reward lazy reading. Isaiah is the best Hebrew in the Bible, by far. More about that later.

As a young man, I put effort into reading several Shakespeare plays, which are indeed a form of poetry. As I began to understand the esoteric expressions, the alliteration, and how to look at situations in different ways, I was richly rewarded with a greater understanding of Elizabethan English, and I enjoyed some spontaneous chuckles as well. I was now open to trying a similar approach to Isaiah.

There are many highly-educated scholars like Dr. Shon Hopkin who are willing to share their insights into Isaiah. When an Institute Of Religion class became available in my area, for free, my wife said, “I want to go to that.” So we began attending the weekly class at a church building.

The focus of our new class is “You Can Understand Isaiah.” The first session was an introduction to the history and geography of ancient Israel and Judah. The instructor didn’t actually read anything from Isaiah to us that first day.

In a later class the instructor was talking about ancient manuscripts, how all the biblical books were copied by scribes, because they didn’t have a printing printing press. Of course the book (or scrolls) of Isaiah was copied by scribes, writing in Hebrew. It was tedious work, and required lots of scroll space. It seemed superfluous or unnecessary to write the complete Hebrew words, so they usually left out the vowels, and the punctuation.

Hundreds of years later, when scholars or committees began to translate these old books into English, there was lots of room for interpretation. The men who gave us the Authorized, or King James Version of the Bible, did a pretty good job with the tools they had; however, they didn’t have all the tools available to us today. Those who aren’t so presumptuous as to suggest that their translation of the Holy Bible is a perfect, pure representation of the original texts, dropped straight out of heaven, can benefit from these tools right now.

There is a new book I suggest, to help anyone search the prophecies of Isaiah, called Opening Isaiah. It presents five different English translations of Isaiah, in five columns. The first column on the left is the King James Version of Isaiah. The other columns show the differences found in the Joseph Smith Translation, the Book Of Mormon, the Dead Sea Scrolls, and the New Revised Standard Version. Important differences found in the NIV are included in the footnotes. You essentially get six different opinions on what Isaiah was actually trying to teach.

There are many good Isaiah commentaries already, but this one takes the cake, and provides five scoops or flavors of Isaiah side-by-side.