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.
Canter Bridge 