Hauling from his inventory a curious spate of metaphors, the prophet manufactures a curious animal collage in order to depict YHWH’s defense of Zion’s ‘hill’ (גבעה). One wonders whether that arguably diminutive substitute for the usual ‘mount’ (הר) is intended to express Zion’s hypothetical helplessness in the absence of such divine protection.
For thus the LORD said to me, As a lion or a young lion growls over its prey, and—when a band of shepherds is called out against it— is not terrified by their shouting or daunted at their noise, so the LORD of hosts will come down to fight upon Mount Zion and upon its hill.
Like birds hovering overhead, so the LORD of hosts will protect Jerusalem; he will protect and deliver it, he will spare and rescue it.’
Isaiah 31.4-5 (NRSV)
YHWH is a lion, unafraid of any who might sally to drive it away. Neither ‘terrified by their shouting or daunted at their noise’, YHWH’s prowling signals the end of a town’s captivity. The prey in his grasp belongs entirely to its predator. Who would brave that growl?
As the metaphor shifts from feline to fowl, so does the imagined time frame experience its own evolution. The lion’s prey is recently captured, its change of hands the thing that alarms all those enraged shepherds who have only just realized their loss. Now, however, YHWH ‘like birds hovering overhead’ becomes the all-seeing protector of a Jerusalem that has fallen entirely into his claim. No sneaky enemy will surprise Jerusalem, nor its overflying Protector. Conquest has become dominion.
Two features of this unexpected, animalesque field of imagery surprise. One is the audacity of depicting YHWH in terms of creaturely specimens. The other is the daring imagination of him in the plural.
Zion is not troubled by these details. Down below the swallows’ vigilant darting, finally, she rests. Protected, delivered, spared, and rescued.
Canter Bridge 