Woe interrupted

In a 2004 article in the Concordia Journal Andrew Bartelt examines the structure of Isaiah 2-12, including the interrupted series of woes in chapter 5. He points out that the six woes of chapter 5 are chastically arranged in a way that anticipates a seventh and climactic woe:

A. Woe #1 (v. 8): socio/economic abuse

B. Woe #2 (v. 11): alcohol overindulgence

C. Woe #3 (v. 18): human wisdom over God’s

D. Woe #4 (v. 20): threefold inversion of reality

C’. Woe #5 (v. 21): human wisdom over God’s

B’. Woe #6 (v. 22): alcohol overindulgence

A’. Woe #7: ?? (socio/economic abuse)

5:23 alludes to social and economic abuse, but doesn’t give us the seventh woe. Where is it?

It doesn’t appear until the beginning of chapter 10, and its appearance is anticipated by a resumption of a phrase first used in 5:25: “His anger does not turn away, His hand is still stretched out,” a phrase that is repeated as a refrain in chapters 9-10 (9:12, 17, 21; 10:4). As Bartelt says, “most commentaries have simply assumed that 5:25 is a misplaced or even displaced fragment of the second poem, but it might better be understood as intentionally anticipating this second poem and forming a structural link. In fact, a key element of each poem appears in the other. Could it be that the listener/reader, upon hearing the refrain in chapter 9, now recognized an element that seemed to be an addition to the first poem but is now understood to be integral to the second? Would this cause him to consider the interdependence also of the message? And might he even then be looking for the missing link, that seventh ‘woe’ that was left unspoken?”

Then 10:1-3 gives us the final woe: “The fourth stanza provides just what we were set up to be looking for. The final woe begins the final stanza (or is it?), and, appropriately, the focus of this judgment deals with the theme of socio/economic sins, expanding beyond the terse and partially pulled punch of 5:23. Here an entire stanza of the poem calls to account those who distort justice, neglect the rights of the needy, and despoil and plunder the widows and orphans. The poem concludes with one more refrain, and the message moves on to a different focus, now pronouncing ‘woe’ upon Assyria. But that moves beyond the boundary of this second, complementary poem, and commentators agree that 10:5 begins a new major section.”