Canter Bridge

A grim vignette, set off by the ancient reading tradition embedded in the Masoretic text, shows that Israel’s failure was not a poor work ethic.

The Lord sent a word against Jacob, and it fell on Israel  and all the people knew it— Ephraim and the inhabitants of Samaria— but in pride and arrogance of heart they said: ‘The bricks have fallen, but we will build with dressed stones; the sycamores have been cut down, but we will put cedars in their place.’

So the LORD raised adversaries against them, and stirred up their enemies, the Arameans on the east and the Philistines on the west, and they devoured Israel with open mouth. For all this his anger has not turned away; his hand is stretched out still.  

The people did not turn to him who struck them, or seek the LORD of hosts.

Isaiah 9:8-18 (NRSV, emphasis added)

There is perhaps less indisputable encounter between YHWH and Jacob/Israel than meets the eye. The Masoretes vocalize דבר as דָּבָר, ‘a word’, but the Septuagint attests to a reading of דֶּבֶר, ‘a plague’ or ‘pestilence’. The latter reading accords more naturally with the context of persistent calamity and makes more sense in an oracle that decries the people’s unwillingness to discern the nature of what is going on around them.

In any case, the prophet describes the people as soldiering on with faces set stonily to rebuilding ruins instead of contemplation of causes.

The bricks have fallen, but we will build with dressed stones; the sycamores have been cut down, but we will put cedars in their place.

Isaiah 9.10 (NRSV)

Wartime devastation—for the uprooting of trees virtually obligates us to understand the scene in this way—does not subdue this lion-hearted people’s grim determination to carry on. Rather, it animates them to frenzied reconstruction of what has fallen down around them. The prophet does not admire this energy. He decries it as evasion of the message that fallen bricks and uprooted sycamores carry with them.

It is both tempting and understandable—it may even be correct—to conclude the passage with the familiar refrain about YHWH’s still uplifted hand in verse 12, as modern translations tend to do. However, the ancient reading tradition takes a different path by including verse 13 as this vignette’s final statement.

The people did not turn to him who struck them, or seek the LORD of hosts.

Isaiah 9.13 (NRSV)

Read as a conclusion, this summary in the accent of prophetic dialect levels an exceedingly strong accusation. The people’s frenzied wartime heroism conceals a stubbornness of immense proportions.

For the prophet, besieged Israel/Jacob was incapable of imagining that YHWH was behind the marauding armies that caused them such loss. Or that there was a message implicit in the destruction those armies wrought. Or both.

They did not turn. Nor did they seek.

So, the spokesman of a harsh prophetic realism declares, YHWH’s punishing hand remains raised to strike again.

The book’s programmatic and prefatory first chapter insinuates that scenes like this one will appear, though its vocabulary and inventory of metaphors are distinct.

Why do you seek further beatings? Why do you continue to rebel? The whole head is sick, and the whole heart faint. From the sole of the foot even to the head, there is no soundness in it, but bruises and sores and bleeding wounds; they have not been drained, or bound up, or softened with oil.

Isaiah 1.5-6 (NRSV)

Who knew that Assyria’s sword was clutched in YHWH’s hand in this searing moment?

Now healing must wait, that hand upraised still.