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Archive for December, 2023

for the sake of the redeemed: Isaiah 63

Posted in textures, tagged , , , , , , on December 29, 2023| Leave a Comment »

One ought not turn one’s hand to the interpretation of a great text and then declare favorite and least favorite portions of it. The worthwhile interpreter is either in or out.

Yet one may perhaps whisper his distaste quietly when a particular passage comes back around. Today, this interpreter releases a quiet sigh.

‘Who is this that comes from Edom, from Bozrah in garments stained crimson? Who is this so splendidly robed, marching in his great might?’  

‘It is I, announcing vindication, mighty to save (רב להושיע).’ 

‘Why are your robes red, and your garments like theirs who tread the wine press?’  

‘I have trodden the wine press alone, and from the peoples no one was with me; I trod them in my anger and trampled them in my wrath; their juice spattered on my garments, and stained all my robes.

For the day of vengeance was in my heart, and the year for my redeeming work (ושנת גאולי) had come.

I looked, but there was no helper; I stared, but there was no one to sustain me; so my own arm brought me victory, and my wrath sustained me.

 I trampled down peoples in my anger, I crushed them in my wrath, and I poured out their lifeblood on the earth.’

Isaiah 63.1-6 (NRSV, emphasis and Hebrew text added)

This exceedingly bloody text is also oddly dialogical. YHWH parries a questioner’s queries, the first two asking him to clarify his identity and the third to explain his blood-stained clothing.

If modern and post-modern sensibilities recoil at such a depiction of a warrior god, we can at least allow him the grace of hearing out his motivation.

As consistently with matters of divine violence in the book of Isaiah—and generally in the rest of the Hebrew Bible—his fury is not unleashed upon humans for the mere satisfaction of bloodthirst. Rather, such warfare is necessary within its own rhetorical scheme for the purpose of achieving some human-facing good.

I have italicized two clauses above in order to bring out this point. In responding to his interlocutor’s two ‘Who?’ questions, YHWH describes his might as unleashed in order to save. The object of his rescue is left unspoken, but Jacob/Israel must certainly stand in as the core beneficiary (v. 1).

Then, in explaining his red garments, YHWH unleashes this justification:

For the day of vengeance was in my heart, and the year for my redeeming work (ושנת גאולי) had come.

Isaiah 63.4 (NRSV, emphasis and Hebrew text added)

The Hebrew quoted above might just as well be rendered ‘and the year of my redeemed’, a more concrete translation that brings into clearer view the human beneficiaries of YHWH’s assault upon the nations without materially changing the picture. ‘Redeeming work’ and ‘redeemed (ones)’ are both plausible.

The point I wish to make in pointing out the rescuing and redeeming purpose of YHWH’s violence is that in Isaiah divine violence is normally instrumental rather than nakedly punitive. Readers who are unable to conceive or justify purposeful violence will not be assuaged by the observation.

Others will find it possible to imagine a circumstance where resistance to YHWH’s intended shalom is so entrenched and unyielding that only removal of his opponents will allow other humans to flourish.

In either case, the trajectory of Isaiah’s vision returns time and again to violence on behalf of Zion’s redeemed, not as a major theme but certainly as an unavoidable one.

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substitution: Isaiah 61

Posted in textures, tagged , , , , , , on December 28, 2023| Leave a Comment »

Following the splendidly unilateral YHWH-work of chapter 60, an anointed figure bursts exuberantly upon the scene in chapter 61. He is perhaps to be seen as a further adumbration of the servant-of-YHWH figure. He bears YHWH’s own spirit, the oil of anointing still fresh upon his forehead. His attention turns already toward those who need YHWH-work most.

The spirit of the Lord GOD is upon me, because the LORD has anointed me; he has sent me to bring good news to the oppressed, to bind up the brokenhearted, to proclaim liberty to the captives, and release to the prisoners; to proclaim the year of the LORD’S favor, and the day of vengeance of our God; to comfort all who mourn…’

Isaiah 61.1-2a (NRSV)

It is a profoundly moving chapter, not least for those who see in Jesus of Nazareth a concretization of the profile of this rescuing agent of YHWH.

Then Jesus, filled with the power of the Spirit, returned to Galilee, and a report about him spread through all the surrounding country. He began to teach in their synagogues and was praised by everyone.When he came to Nazareth, where he had been brought up, he went to the synagogue on the sabbath day, as was his custom. He stood up to read, and the scroll of the prophet Isaiah was given to him. He unrolled the scroll and found the place where it was written:

 ‘The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he has anointed me to bring good news to the poor. He has sent me to proclaim release to the captives and recovery of sight to the blind, to let the oppressed go free, to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor.’

And he rolled up the scroll, gave it back to the attendant, and sat down. The eyes of all in the synagogue were fixed on him. Then he began to say to them, ‘Today this scripture has been fulfilled in your hearing.’

Luke 4.14-21 (NRSV)

In two places, though by different means in each, the prophet describes the anointed figure’s work in terms of substitution. Those who benefit from his YHWH-work will find their condition so materially transformed that they shall receive for each aspect of their disgrace its opposing counterpart. The figure, speaking in the first person, claims that he has come …

…to provide for those who mourn in Zion— to give them a garland instead of ashes, the oil of gladness instead of mourning, the mantle of praise instead of a faint spirit.

Isaiah 61.3a (NRSV, emphasis added)

Two distinct pinpoints of alliteration accentuate the delight expressed by the Hebrew text: פאר תחת אפר (‘a garland instead of ashes’) playfully inverts two of each noun’s three consonants and שמן ששון piles identical sibilants together.

The picture is one of radical transformation rather than mere amelioration of the plight of ‘those who mourn in Zion’. The substitution of one experience for another is both extreme and complete.

This type of polarity reverberates through the chapter. However in one other moment it approaches the concreteness that I have sketched out for the three oppositional pairs in verse 3.

Because their shame was double, and dishonor was proclaimed as their lot, therefore they shall possess a double portion; everlasting joy shall be theirs.

Isaiah 61.7 (NRSV)

NRSV’s translation obscures a fresh use of תחת (‘instead of’), the preposition that separates each experience from its opposite in verse 3. This prepares the reader to expect further oppositional pairing. It does indeed occur, as I read the verse, though this time more subtly. The word משנה appears in both halves of verse 7, possibly with a play upon its alternative meanings: (a) a double quota and (b) the corresponding counterpart.

‘Their shame was double (משנה)…’ we read, this affirmation of a copious burden of shame fortified by the immediately following claim that ‘dishonor was proclaimed (or ‘sung out’) as their lot’. Then, in the second half of the verse, we learn that ‘they shall possess a double portion (משנה)’, this claim again strengthened by the supportive but differently configured phrase ‘everlasting joy shall be theirs’. (Curiously, NRSV does not translate בארצם, which would normally be glossed by ‘in their land’.)

It seems to me that 7b accentuates first one meaning of משנה to depict the outsized shame or double portion of shame that Zion’s mourners have suffered. Then the second meaning of the same word underscores that their eventual, everlasting joy shall be every bit as extravagant. The latter shall displace and substitute for the former.

So does the prophetic text in one of its most lyrical moments reverse the fate of its protagonists. YHWH’s anointed and spirit-endowed agent shall accomplish, we who know of Zion’s mourning are encouraged to believe, complete and total transformation.

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theodicy and promise: Isaiah 59

Posted in textures, tagged , , , , , , on December 27, 2023| Leave a Comment »

Isaiah’s fifty-ninth chapter is seldom quoted. Perhaps it is too bleak for recall, let alone for amplification.

The strong note of theodicy comes in the form of an unidentified (prophetic?) voice, asserting that YHWH’s capacity to save has not somehow become diminished. Rather, the people’s stubborn instinct for rebellion lies at the root of the present disgrace.

The oracle alternates between description of injustice as 2nd-person accusation (v. 3, ‘For your hands are defiled with blood…’), 3rd-person description (v. 4, ‘No one brings suit justly, no one goes to law honestly…’), and 1st-person testimony:

Therefore justice is far from us, and righteousness does not reach us; we wait for light, and lo! there is darkness; and for brightness, but we walk in gloom.

Isaiah 59.9 (NRSV)

Such oscillation between grammatical voices is not rare in biblical prophecy. Yet here the sequential march from the second to the third to the first persons and the relentlessness comprehensiveness of injustice seem intended to justify YHWH’s anger and unresponsiveness by means of exhaustive description of Judahite rebellion.

Still, the familiar script of a divine victory that proves redemptive for people makes its appearance.

First, the well-armed deity is seen repaying his enemies in a way that raises hopes of what may be a welcome restoration of justice.

According to their deeds, so will (YHWH) repay; wrath to his adversaries, requital to his enemies; to the coastlands he will render requital.

So those in the west shall fear the name of the LORD, and those in the east, his glory; for he will come like a pent-up stream that the wind of the LORD drives on.

Isaiah 59:18-19 (NRSV, emphasis added)

The nature of this two-fold fear—of YHWH’s name and of his glory—is not to be discovered by way of an atomistic reading. But I have argued elsewhere that such universal recognition of YHWH’s justice in Isaiah is interpenetrated with at least the potential of broad blessing to the nations, whom I presume appear here in the two locative expressions ‘in the west’ and ‘in the east’.

Second, this oracle arrives at its almost predictable destination as it comes to its own conclusion.

And he will come to Zion as Redeemer, to those in Jacob who turn from transgression, says the LORD. And as for me, this is my covenant with them, says the LORD: my spirit that is upon you, and my words that I have put in your mouth, shall not depart out of your mouth, or out of the mouths of your children, or out of the mouths of your children’s children, says the LORD, from now on and forever.

Isaiah 59.20-21 (NRSV)

As is its custom, Isaianic intimation of a cosmic outcome that is glorious rather than stingy includes the possibility of final resistance. We see this darker side of things here in the positive assertion that ‘those in Jacob who turn from transgression’ will be the beneficiaries of YHWH’s covenant, presence, and words. The offer, apparently, is not taken up by everyone. And the fate of those nations to which allusion is made—so I have argued—in verses 18 and 19 escapes mention in this concluding declaration.

By the time we arrive at this mostly bleak panorama, the vision of Isaiah is nearing its concluding declarations. They will be full of light with mere tinges of darkness, as chapter 59 emphatically is not. Yet it is important to observe that even here in chapter 59, among the book’s darker landscapes, hope manages to abound even though restricted to a few final verses.

This hope is not giddy. It remembers all too well those who choose neglect of YHWH’s justice and who carry this resistance through to outright and presumably final opposition.

Meanwhile, a lavish promise of inter-generational longevity quiets the hearts of ‘those in Jacob who turn from transgression.’

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the lost and the mountain: Isaiah 57

Posted in textures, tagged , , , , , on December 27, 2023| Leave a Comment »

The book called Isaiah accustoms its reader to blistering oracles against peoples that suddenly turn towards redemption when it seems all hope is lost. But that rough formal parallel is nearly all that Isaiah 57’s opening oracle offers us for orientation.

This is no oracle against some comfortably remote foreign nation. Rather, 57.1-14 (reading with the tradition embedded in the Masoretic Text; RSV initiates a new section at verse 15) appears to address Judah immersed in aberrant rites via accusations that have seldom been hurled at her in these pages.

Probably, we should also read 56.10-12 with the section before us, once again receiving a helpful clue from the Masoretic Text’s reading tradition. That at least provides a suspect for the crimes in question: ‘his sentinels’ (v. 10), perhaps with NRSV ‘Israel’s sentinels’; and ‘shepherds’ (v. 11), though in verse 11 one may be dealing with a corrupt text. In any case, the absence of explicit naming of the perpetrator(s) leaves one assuming that Israel/Judah, its majority, or its leaders stand accused. And not only accused, but reduced to animal status as ‘wild animals’ (v. 9) and ‘dogs’ (vv. 10-11).

It makes for dreary reading, particularly as this text follows immediately upon a stirring welcome of pious gentiles into the holiest places. Yet two details require us to reckon with a faithful minority even among abject Israel/Judah.

First, 57.1 introduces a righteous person, in his singularity so outnumbered by malefactors that his death is a relief. The recourse of translations like the NRSV to the plural for the sake of gender neutrality masks his or her lonely breed of righteousness, so reminiscent of the blessed person of Psalm 1. He is, indeed, one amidst the many.

Then at the oracle’s conclusion—again, following the reading tradition embedded in the Masorete’s labors—we read again of a blessing expressed in the singular, though surely in addition a representative or corporate singular, notwithstanding any attempt to stipulate that the righteous are few.

But whoever takes refuge in me shall possess the land and inherit my holy mountain. It shall be said, ‘Build up, build up, prepare the way, remove every obstruction from my people’s way.’

Isaiah 57.13b-14 (NRSV)

Curiously, even this outlier of a jeremiad frames minority blessing in the language of pilgrimage to Zion, or at least in the vocabulary of the outcome of such journeying. And it builds upon the familiar motif of doomed religious activism vis-à-vis the enduring blessing of Yahwistic quietism amid crisis. It is the one who ‘takes refuge in’ YHWH who will inherit his holy mountain. The well-known Isaianic verbal reiteration (סלו־סלו / ‘Build up, build up…’) further ties this strange oracle into its familiar context.

So does judgement cast upon a people whose redemption by this point we have been trained to anticipate prepare us for a dismal set piece of the final of the book’s three sections.

So does YHWH’s mountain endure as the quintessential representation of the destiny of the redeemed, however scarce and storm-tossed they be or however massive their exuberant surge to glory.

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Now that they can hear again…: Isaiah 55

Posted in textures, tagged , , , , on December 25, 2023| Leave a Comment »

Isaiah’s generative vision, as I see it, loads prophetic shoulders with an almost unbearable weight.

Then I heard the voice of the Lord saying, ‘Whom shall I send, and who will go for us?’ And I said, ‘Here am I; send me!’

And he said, ‘Go and say to this people: “Keep listening (שמעו שמוע), but do not comprehend; keep looking, but do not understand.”

Make the mind of this people dull, and stop their ears, and shut their eyes, so that they may not look with their eyes, and listen with their ears (ובאזניו ישמע) and comprehend with their minds, and turn and be healed.’

Isaiah 6:8-10 (NRSV, emphasis and Hebrew text added)

The cessation of visual and aural acuity, even if the theme does not originate in this vision as I believe that it does, flourishes across the book via frequent retouchings. Ordinarily in Isaiah, the predictable result of the people’s sensory loss a tragic is a tragic failure to understand. Willful refusal to see and to hear in the Isaianic vision eventually produces the inability to do so. The people become fools.

But not forever.

Why do you spend your money for that which is not bread, and your labor for that which does not satisfy? Listen carefully to me (שמעו שמוע אלי), and eat what is good, and delight yourselves in rich food.

Incline your ear, and come to me; listen (שמעו), so that you may live. I will make with you an everlasting covenant, my steadfast, sure love for David.

Isaiah 55.2-3 (NRSV, emphasis and Hebrew text added)

Such reiteration, thematic and lexical, does not exist in a vacuum. Rather, the text indulges in classic Isaianic reversal of the earlier theme of lost audition. Now, YHWH’s command through his prophet is not to fail to hear and so to stumble about stupidly into alienation from Jacob’s God. Rather, the listening—notice the same verbal combination around the root שמע and the repetition of ‘ear’ (אזן)—produces a feast and the inclining of the ear overcomes Judah’s erstwhile alienation from YHWH and brings life.

Any close reading of the text will—or should—service this play of concept and of word.

What lingers just below the surface is more easily missed. The trope of the ignorant nation persists and survives into this text, notwithstanding its location fairly late in the book. But now the allusion is fragrant with redemptive development.

See, I made (David) a witness to the peoples (לאומים), a leader and commander for the peoples (לאמים).

See, you shall call nations (גוי) that you do not know (לא־תדע), and nations (וגוי) that do not know you (לא ידוך) shall run to you, because of the LORD your God, the Holy One of Israel, for he has glorified you.

Isaiah 55.4-5 (NRSV, emphasis and Hebrew text added)

Laying aside for the moment consideration of David’s unexpected (and, strictly speaking, unkingly) presence here, both Israel and the nations find themselves joined in ironic ignorance. It is a momentary, indeed imaginary, ignorance, because it is barely named and contemplated before it is erased.

Israel and the nations are viewed as mutually uncomprehending of each other’s reality. One need not imagine that they are unaware of the other’s existence. Rather, one might say that Israel and the nations cannot and do not understand each other.

Yet this mutual inscrutability is glimpsed in its ultimate moment precisely because Israel has now consciously become the Convener of Nations and those peoples, for their part, come running to Israel. The people’s sudden attractiveness is all YHWH’s work: for he has glorified you.

Isaiah’s ironic currents and undercurrents in a text like this run in more than one direction but not at cross purposes.

The picture is a stunning recapacitation of Israel’s ability to see, hear, and comprehend, a glorification of Jacob’s erstwhile deaf and dumb children that restores their Abrahamic purpose and brings the nations running toward them and to their God.

The streaming of the nations to Zion that has been a kind of percussive beat from chapter two forward here takes on the profile of an astonishingly international reconciliation. Israel, true to form, becomes both agent and participant in YHWH’s redemptive purpose without ever, for one moment, losing her accent amid the swirling onrush of suddenly eager peoples.

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the elevation of YHWH’s servant (Isaiah 52 and 53)

Posted in textures, tagged , , , , , , on December 24, 2023| Leave a Comment »

It is too easy from a comfortably remote position to criticize the versification of the Hebrew Bible that is a legacy of Middle Ages scholarship. Usually, close inspection throws up considerations that explain the decisions that were made, even when they do not entirely justify them.

Still, the bifurcation of the fourth ‘servant song’ and its collocation across two chapters (Isaiah 52.13—53.12) is an indefensible tragedy. The piece simply must be read as a unity.

When one does so—happily, the editors of the NRSV and other modern Bibles encourage the reader in this direction—a number of high-level observations become possible. I deal with just one of them in this moment.

The opening line is breathtaking in its identification of YHWH’s servant with one of the key components of YHWH-elevating vocabulary in Isaiah.

הנה ישכיל עבדי ירום ונשא וגבהּ מאד
See, my servant shall prosper; he shall be exalted and lifted up, and shall be very high.

Isaiah 52.13 (NRSV, emphasis added)

In the light of the trauma that YHWH’s servant endures in the subsequent verses, it was perhaps necessary to clarify from the outset that the adventure ends well. Nevertheless, the terms of the exaltation represent a stunning application of Isaianic YHWH descriptors to the servant himself.

I refer here to ירום ונשא (‘he shall be exalted and lifted up’). Apart from ‘the Holy One of Israel’, the language of רם ונשא is the Isaiah tradition’s preferred language for specifying YHWH’s incomparability. The two words are applied to YHWH’s throne in what I consider to be programmatic fashion in the generative vision at 6.1. After dozens of instances in which the two terms (and even more often, one or the other) is artfully maneuvered, רם ונשא becomes something very near to an alternative name for YHWH himself.

For thus says the high and lofty one (כי כה אמר רם ונשא) who inhabits eternity, whose name is Holy: I dwell in the high and holy place, and also with those who are contrite and humble in spirit, to revive the spirit of the humble, and to revive the heart of the contrite.

Isaiah 57.15 (NRSV, emphasis and interpolated Hebrew text added)

The climactic and most famous fourth servant song—a designation that is unfortunate chiefly for its marginalization of servant motifs that fall outside of their arbitrarily drawn lines—thus declares in its opening syllables a remarkable elevation of the servant. It seems to me best to see this as an inclusion of YHWH’s servant within the counsel or purpose (עצה) of YHWH himself.

The suffering of the servant is then made all the more astonishing, not least his unenviable plight of being crushed by YHWH himself, because it sits so uncomfortably alongside the opening declaration that YHWH’s servant occupies YHWH-like conceptual altitudes and acquires via an eventual elevation YHWH-like majesty (if this is how the yiqtol + v-qatal + v-qatal sequence in 52.12 imply).

No wonder, then, the enduring fascination across religious boundaries of this irrepressibly evocative poem.

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Listen up!: Isaiah 51

Posted in textures, tagged , , , , on December 23, 2023| Leave a Comment »

Isaiah’s fifty-first chapter weaves together a refreshingly positive description of its audience with an insistent summons to pay attention. Indeed, the chapter begins in just this fashion, stating its direction from the very outset. In the following extracts from chapter 51, I will italicize the verbal summons and emphasize the addressee descriptions in bold.

Listen to me, you that pursue righteousness, you that seek the LORD. Look to the rock from which you were hewn, and to the quarry from which you were dug.

Look to Abraham your father and to Sarah who bore you…

Isaiah 51.1-2a (NRSV)

Then just a few verses later:

Listen to me, my people, and give heed to me, my nation...

Isaiah 51.4a (NRSV)

The third summons elides the expected vocative descriptors:

Lift up your eyes to the heavens, and look at the earth beneath…

Isaiah 51.6a (NRSV)

Yet the addressee/vocative descriptors soon resume:

Listen to me, you who know righteousness, you people who have my teaching in your hearts; do not fear the reproach of others, and do not be dismayed when they revile you.

Isaiah 51.7 NRSV)

After an interlude where it is ‘the arm of the Lord’ rather than the people that is addressed imperativally, the established pattern is taken up again:

Rouse yourself, rouse yourself! Stand up, O Jerusalem…

Isaiah 51.17a (NRSV)

It is important to observe that the pattern continues well into chapter 52. Its last appearance in the chapter before us initiates a trend towards recognizing the addressees’ trauma and vulnerability, which flows meaningfully toward the famous ‘fourth servant song’, where YHWH’s servant does in fact fall wounded under YHWH’s own blow.

Therefore hear this, you who are wounded, who are drunk, but not with wine…

Isaiah 51.21 (NRSV)

When literature erects structural markers as evident as these, any valid reading must take them into account and bow to their programmatic purpose. The evidence highlighted above invites the reader to contemplate the addressees as the favored people of YHWH, though perhaps more specifically a subsection of that people that has been particularly attentive to instruction and peculiarly concerned with YHWH’s ‘righteousness’ and ‘justice’. Their rescue from calamity is imminent. Though they hope to see it, trepidation in the face of impediments to their redemption may restrain them from bold participation, this against the current of ‘my Torah’ (51.7) which the people have in their hearts. This description is gleaned from the descriptors I highlighted above in bold.

The italicised portions, for their part, seem in the aggregate to summon the people to consider the ancient and enduring purpose of YHWH to bless them. They are urged to interpret their recent calamity not as the elimination of that divine purpose but rather as an especially painful but temporary interruption that will soon be superseded by the resumption of the promise.

If this reading adequately comprehends the text’s structure, then one might see chapter 51 (continuing into chapter 52) as a prophetic broadside against what we moderns call ‘recency bias’. From the soul of the Isaianic vision emerges the claim that YHWH’s purpose has always been to bless, that he has not turned permanently against his people, and that faith in the ancient teaching must now assume the posture of courage.

On the basis of this understanding, the even more vibrant summons that await the reader in chapter 52 find their grounded meaning.

Awake, awake, put on your strength, O Zion! Put on your beautiful garments, O Jerusalem, the holy city; for the uncircumcised and the unclean shall enter you no more.

 Shake yourself from the dust, rise up, O captive Jerusalem; loose the bonds from your neck, O captive daughter Zion!

Isaiah 52.1-2 (NRSV)

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reversal of fortunes: Isaiah 49

Posted in textures, tagged , , , , , , on December 22, 2023| Leave a Comment »

The reading tradition reflected in our Masoretic Text separates 49.7 off from 49.1-6. Additionally, 49.7 begins with a ‘speaker marker’ (‘Thus says YHWH…’) that has evidently been regarded as a gentle separator of what follows from what has gone before.

Nevertheless, the content of 49.7 all but clamors to be read in relationship with verses 1-6.

The chapter’s first section presents the servant of YHWH protesting his own fatigue and incapacity for large tasks.

And (YHWH) said to me, ‘You are my servant, Israel, in whom I will be glorified.’

But I said, ‘I have labored in vain, I have spent my strength for nothing and vanity; yet surely my cause is with the LORD, and my reward with my God.’

Isaiah 49.3-4 (NRSV)

Curiously, YHWH’s response is to inform his servant of the even larger mission that lies before him.

And now the LORD says, who formed me in the womb to be his servant, to bring Jacob back to him, and that Israel might be gathered to him, for I am honored in the sight of the LORD, and my God has become my strength—he says, ‘It is too light a thing that you should be my servant to raise up the tribes of Jacob and to restore the survivors of Israel; I will give you as a light to the nations, that my salvation may reach to the end of the earth.’

Isaiah 49.5-6

The displacement of the ‘tribes of Jacob’ as the be-all and end-all of the servant’s commission in favor of a greater mission to illuminate ‘the nations’ is so radical a departure from expectation that the translator of Septuagint Isaiah will not abide it. The Greek translation of Hebrew Isaiah was executed for the sake of Greek-speaking Jewish communities in Egypt at about 150 years B.C.E. The individual charged with the monumental task of rendering the Hebrew Isaiah scroll in Greek evidently can not bring himself to disparage the mission of YHWH’s servant to dispersed Jews. Instead of the Hebrew text’s vision of the servant’s restoration of Israel as a ‘small thing’, the Septuagint translator offers us:

καὶ εἶπέν μοι Μέγα σοί ἐστιν τοῦ κληθῆναί σε παῖδά μου τοῦ στῆσαι τὰς φυλὰς Ιακωβ καὶ τὴν διασπορὰν τοῦ Ισραηλ ἐπιστρέψαι· 

And he said to me, ‘It is a great thing for you to be called my servant so that you may set up the tribes of Iakob and turn back the dispersion of Israel.’

Isaiah 49.6 (NETS, emphasis added to reflect emphasis in Greek text)

Returning to the Hebrew text, verse 7—the indication of a new paragraph notwithstanding—appears to address the conundrum that is established when a global commission is laid upon such weary shoulders. After all, it is not merely the case that the servant has protested his own exhaustion, admittedly alongside his confidence that YHWH’s provision is sufficient (v. 4). It is also the case that the servant in his profound identification with Jacob’s exiled tribes cannot claim much credibility among the nations whom his exertions are meant to enlighten.

Notwithstanding, the prophet has YHWH adumbrate yet another Isaianic reversal of fortunes that will implicate the servant’s exhaustion and his lack of credibility among gentiles.

Thus says the LORD, the Redeemer of Israel and his Holy One, to one deeply despised, abhorred by the nations, the slave of rulers, ‘Kings shall see and stand up, princes, and they shall prostrate themselves, because of the LORD, who is faithful, the Holy One of Israel, who has chosen you.’

Isaiah 49.7 (NRSV)

One senses here the innate tension between restoration of a lost and longed-for stasis, on the one hand, and the incursion of an entirely new arrangement, on the other. The prophet intuits a reversal so profound that the servant cum Israel will soon stand at the very head of the now submissive nations.

Yet the tensions are felt in multiple directions rather than just one. If it seemed for a moment that restoration of Jacob/Israel was too small a matter, it now appears that Jacob is to be quite grand as kings and princes stand to honor her and bow to submit to her.

What is more, the relationship between the illumination of the nations and their submission to Jacob/Israel is a complex matter, one that I think plays a part in a wider argument that the gentile nations’ reconfigured and submissive relationship to Israel is intended for their well-being and is therefore to be welcomed by them.

In the light of such a complex and radical promise, it is no wonder that Isaiah’s recurring plea is that little Jacob should forget the former things and open heart and mind to a new thing. The prophet’s imagined future, it would seem, could not exist without the remembered past. Yet neither can it remain defined by what Israel has known thus far. Or experienced. Or been.

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tender no more: Isaiah 47

Posted in textures, tagged , , , , , , on December 21, 2023| Leave a Comment »

The trope ‘daughter (of) Zion’ and others that share the same structure are all but a signature mark of the Isaianic tradition. The parentheses around ‘of’ are required by the fact that ‘daughter’ (בת) appears in the construct state, a phenomenon that commonly links one noun into a possessive relationship with an immediately following noun.

So, if we are to take our cues from ordinary prose usage, בת ציון would mean ‘Zion’s daughter’ or ‘the daughter of Zion’. The construction is used as well with Gallim, Tarshish, Sidon, Babylon, and of course Jerusalem.

Scholars have lingered over the precise meaning we should ascribe to the expression. In my view, the notion of the ‘appositional genitive’ is the most persuasive. This understanding eschews the notion of possession, which places both בת and the subsequent name of a people or place on the same plane. The result is helpfully describe in a recent work on Lamentations in this way:

As an appositional genitive, the phrasing would mean that Zion as a type of daughter is respected and dear, which yields a sense that is more or less equivalent to the metaphorical sense for which Magnar Kartveit has recently argued … In such usage, the poet depicts the city as a vulnerable and devastated young woman, thus heightening once again the pathos of the poetry. Its use intends to evoke emotion rather than description … A translation more along the lines of ’tender or dearest Jerusalem/Zion’, then captures well the vulnerability and defencelessness of the city.

Jill Middlemas, Lamentations: an introduction and study guide. T&T Clark (2021), 27-28.

In the passage before us, it is not Daughter Zion but rather Daughter Babylon/Chaldea that arrests our gaze.

Come down and sit in the dust, virgin daughter Babylon (בתולת בת־בבל)! Sit on the ground without a throne, daughter Chaldea (בת־כשדים)! For you shall no more be called tender and delicate.

Take the millstones and grind meal, remove your veil, strip off your robe, uncover your legs, pass through the rivers.

Your nakedness shall be uncovered, and your shame shall be seen. I will take vengeance, and I will spare no one.

Our Redeemer—the LORD of hosts is his name— is the Holy One of Israel.  

Sit in silence, and go into darkness, daughter Chaldea (בת־כשדים)! For you shall no more be called the mistress of kingdoms (גברת ממלכות).

I was angry with my people, I profaned my heritage; I gave them into your hand, you showed them no mercy; on the aged you made your yoke exceedingly heavy.

You said, ‘I shall be mistress forever (גברת עד),’ so that you did not lay these things to heart or remember their end.

Isaiah 47.1-7 (NRSV, emphasis and interpolated Hebrew added)

A number of details require scrutiny. First, the clustering of ‘daughter of…’ instances is not precisely unprecedented, but it does not fail to be remarkable. Additionally, the first ‘daughter of…’ phrase in verse 1 adds the descriptor ‘virgin’, which produces NRSV’s ‘virgin daughter Babylon’. This addition—again, not unprecedented in the Isaiah scroll—appears to underscore the motif of tenderness, innocence, and vulnerability.

Second, the succession of three instances of ‘(virgin) daughter (Babylon/Chaldea)’ with two of ‘mistress’ (גברת) places both female metaphors in a context where each can only be interpreted in the light of the whole. If, as I have suggested, the daughter metaphor denotes a people’s youth and vulnerability, the deployment of ‘mistress’ depicts the same people’s haughty maturity. The juxtaposition of the two invites the reader to imagine Babylon/Chaldea across the range of her feminine trajectory from a sharply ironic angle. In both cases, the woman in question shall be utterly humiliated.

Third, the tone—as I have intimated just above—is savagely ironic. The entire oracle is an artifact of te vengeance literature. The prophet appears to speak of empathy for a young, vulnerable, tender girl, on the one hand, and admiration for a regal woman, on the other. In fact, the prophet witholds both—empathy and admiration—in the interest of demeaning the Babylonian captor that has been Israel’s tormentor.

In point of fact, Babylon/Chaldea has never in Israel’s experience been tender or vulnerable. Nor has the imperium been the object of admiration, though fear has manifestly been the posture of Judah’s heart as the Babylonian shadow has crept closer. As the ‘mistress of kingdoms’ (גברת ממלכות) and the ‘mistress forever’ (גברת עד, overriding with many the Masoretic accentuation and syntax), Babylon in the prophet’s view is powerful and long-lived only in appearance. In fact, in the face of YHWH’s rage, the empire will soon be brought low. Her inability to respond to Judah’s plight with mercy and her cruelty towards Judah’s most vulnerable (v. 6)—even though it was YHWH who delivered Judah into her hands—has assured her eventual disgrace.

Unaware of her impending doom (v. 7), Lady Babylon for the moment rides high. But not for long. The particularly acid humor of the powerless surges to flood tide in this text, a perspective that claims to know more than appearances claim. If YHWH is indeed ‘our Redeemer’, ‘the Lord of Hosts’, ‘the Holy One of Israel’, (v. 4)—so the prophet exhorts Judah to consider—things could hardly be otherwise. Imperial pretension shall not stand.

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incomparable: Isaiah 45

Posted in textures, tagged , , , , , on December 20, 2023| Leave a Comment »

Biblical monotheism pivots on the concept of incomparability.

Its spokespersons seem uninterested in emptying the skies of other beings, indeed we are at points allowed a glimpse of quite populated skies. But none of whoever else may exist ‘out there’ is to be compared with YHWH. He is unique. He is incomparable. He is the only one of his kind.

The book of Isaiah grows quite fierce about the matter.

I am the LORD, and there is no other; besides me there is no god. I arm you, though you do not know me, so that they may know, from the rising of the sun and from the west, that there is no one besides me; I am the LORD, and there is no other.

 I form light and create darkness, I make weal and create woe; I the LORD do all these things.

Isaiah 45.5-7 (NRSV, emphasis added)

YHWH is here addressing Cyrus, the pagan king whom he has taken by the arm as his closest ally. Cyrus is not allowed fully into YHWH’s counsel, indeed he appears largely ignorant of the Big Thing of which he has become a protagonist.

But the prophet is jealous that YHWH’s incomparability be acknowledged from one horizon to the other. This is biblical monotheism at its most assertive. It is common to Isaiah but rather consistent across the biblical text. YHWH’s uniqueness is not merely an abstract point that people who worry about such things might care to ponder. It is instead a reality that must be, will be, universally acknowledged.

I have included in the above quotation the words that are presented to us as the chapter’s seventh verse.

I form light and create darkness, I make weal and create woe; I the LORD do all these things.

Isaiah 45.7

It would be easy to read this as a new thought that a piecemeal text has pushed up against an earlier idea with no necessary connection between the two. However, it would be unlike the book of Isaiah to engage in such arbitrariness.

It seems more likely that the kind of monotheism that is here claimed on behalf of reality itself relieves Israel of looking for other powers, the existence of whom might explain the bad stuff that the people have experienced. Or if not relieve, then oblige.

If YHWH in his sovereign mastery over creation and history is unique and incomparable, then one had better seek causality in him rather than in several. Such a totalistic monotheism quite frankly creates philosophical, even ethical dilemmas, that will not be evaded.

But from the prophet’s perspective, at leave one knows where one must go for answers.

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