“Come let us reason together,” Isaiah says. An exhortation to logical deduction with the help of syllogism?
Certainly, logic and syllogisms are involved, but the verb “reason” (yakach) is commonly translated as “argue” (Job 13:15) or “dispute” (Job 13:3; 22:4) or “judge” (Isaiah 11:3) or “reprove” (Job 6:25)) even “punish” (Job 5:17). Reasoning for Isaiah is reasoning together; it is a personal, social activity, not synapses firing in an individual’s isolated brain.
