The Great Isaiah Scroll, the best preserved of the biblical scrolls found at Qumran from the second century BC, contains all the verses in this chapter.
The parashah sections listed here are based on the Aleppo Codex.[4] Isaiah 51 is a part of the Consolations (Isaiah 40–66). {P}: open parashah; {S}: closed parashah.
Sarah is mentioned alongside Abraham; Abraham is described as "the rock from which you [the Israelites] were hewn" and Sarah is described as "the hole of the pit from which you were dug",[7] the latter being a reference to her maternal womb. Abraham was called when he was alone i.e. childless.[8]
John Skinner, in the Cambridge Bible for Schools and Colleges, says it is "difficult to decide" whether the words in verse 9 are addressed to the Lord "by the prophet himself, or by the community of true Israelites". Skinner presents verses 9-10 as a prayer for divine intervention and verses 12-16 as "the divine answer to this prayer".[16]
The reference to Rahab is to Egypt, not to the Rahab associated with the Israelites' capture of Jericho in Joshua 2:1–24. Use of the name as a symbol for Egypt "rests on the conception of a conflict in days long past between Jehovah and the monsters called Rahab and the Dragon".[16] In Psalm 89, the Lord "rules the raging of the sea" and "breaks Rahab in pieces".[17]