Free Study Guide IncludedIsaiah: A Friends Illuminated Commentary
The prophet of justice, mercy, and the suffering servant — themes central to Quaker faith. Fox and Penington returned to Isaiah constantly, finding in its pages both prophetic challenge and messianic promise.
- 66 chapters · ~90,000 words
- EPUB + Study Guide
This edition
Read itE-book · EPUB
- Time to read5.7 hours
- Length81,700 words
- Files1 EPUB, DRM-free
How we get 5.7 hours
This figure is here so you can compare one book against another. Every title on the site is timed from its own word count at the same reading speed — nothing is adjusted book by book — so if this edition says 5.7 hours and another says half that, the second one really is about half the reading. It is a measure of size, in the way a page count is. Your own pace is your own: at the speeds typical adult readers actually manage, this edition runs anywhere from 4.5 hours to 7.8 hours.
What is in this edition
| Modernized text | 81,700 words |
|---|---|
| Total | 81,700 words |
Counted from the text of the EPUB you receive. Navigation, the title page, the table of contents and the licence page are excluded — they are packaging, not reading.
The reading rate
238 words per minute, for adult silent reading of non-fiction, applied unchanged to every title on the site. We did not pick the number; it is the pooled result of a published meta-analysis. Nothing is adjusted book by book — that consistency is what makes two of these figures worth comparing.
Brysbaert, M. (2019). How many words do we read per minute? A review and meta-analysis of reading rate. Journal of Memory and Language, 109, 104047. doi:10.1016/j.jml.2019.104047
190 studies, 18,573 participants.
The same paper puts most adult readers between 175 and
300 words per minute, and those two speeds give the
4.5 hours and 7.8 hours above.
Because time is words divided by speed, an even range of speeds produces an
uneven range of times, so 5.7 hours sits nearer the fast end of that
range than the middle of it.
If it were a paperback
Roughly 233–327 pages.
Words per printed page is a typesetting convention, not a measurement — it moves with trim size, type size and leading. The range above assumes 250–350 words a page. Friends Illuminated publishes no print edition of this book; the figure is here only because pages are a more familiar size than words.
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About This Edition
Isaiah is perhaps the Old Testament book most deeply embedded in early Quaker consciousness. George Fox quoted it more than almost any other prophetic text. Isaac Penington found in the suffering servant passages a description of the inward work of the cross. The vision of beating swords into ploughshares became central to the Quaker peace testimony. And Isaiah’s relentless critique of hollow religion — sacrifices and solemn assemblies while justice is denied to the poor — spoke directly to what Friends saw as the corruption of the established church. This commentary traces those connections carefully, showing how Isaiah shaped the theological imagination of first-generation Friends and how its themes continue to address the church in every age.
The commentary proceeds chapter by chapter through Isaiah’s sixty-six chapters, drawing on the writings of Fox, Penington, William Penn, Robert Barclay, and other Friends at each point of contact. It does not assume the reader is a biblical scholar; each section begins with a clear account of the passage before moving into the Quaker engagement with it. The free Group Study Guide included with every purchase is designed for meeting groups, book clubs, and adult religious education, with questions for both individual reflection and communal discussion.
