Isaiah 6–12 9780567661722, 9780567030597

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For Bella and Theo Zach and Lottie Otto and Clara

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G E NE R A L E D ITO R S’ PR EFACE

Much scholarly work has been done on the Bible since the publication of the first volumes of the International Critical Commentary in the 1890s. New linguistic, textual, historical and archaeological evidence has become available, and there have been changes and developments in methods of study. In the twenty-first century there will be as great a need as ever, and perhaps a greater need, for the kind of commentary that the International Critical Commentary seeks to supply. The series has long had a special place among works in English on the Bible, because it has sought to bring together all the relevant aids to exegesis, linguistic and textual no less than archaeological, historical, literary and theological, to help the reader to understand the meaning of the books of the Old and New Testaments. In the confidence that such a series meets a need, the publishers and the editors are commissioning new commentaries on all the books of the Bible. The work of preparing a commentary on such a scale cannot but be slow, and developments in the past half-century have made the commentator’s task yet more difficult than before, but it is hoped that the remaining volumes will appear without too great intervals between them. No attempt has been made to secure a uniform theological or critical approach to the problems of the various books, and scholars have been selected for their scholarship and not for their adherence to any school of thought. It is hoped that the new volumes will attain the high standards set in the past, and that they will make a significant contribution to the understanding of the books of the Bible. G. I. D. C. M. T.

PR E FA C E

The preparation of this volume has taken me one year longer to complete than originally scheduled, for which I must apologise; I can only plead the pressure of other duties in the last years of my tenure in Oxford in mitigation. Nevertheless, as with the first volume, I have received much help and advice from many friends and colleagues, for which I am grateful. A few deserve especial thanks. I was privileged to be invited to serve as a Visiting Professor at the Pontifical Biblical Institute in Rome for part of one semester in 2009 and again for a semester in 2016. On both occasions I was able to make significant progress with this volume. I am indebted to the Faculty there for their invitation and hospitality. On both occasions the library staff were outstandingly helpful, and on the second occasion it was also a privilege to be able to read slowly through the Peshitta text of these chapters with Professor Craig Morrison and his doctoral student Attila Bodor. Closer to home Ben Clackson has carefully read every word in draft and helped me in many ways, not least in achieving a reasonable degree of consistency in terms of how secondary works are cited. Above all, however, my editor, Professor Graham Davies, has offered me much wise advice and saved me from many mistakes; I am conscious of how much I stand in his debt. A little over a year before this work was completed Professor John Emerton died. It was he who first invited me to write this commentary. It is no secret that his scholarly example, first as my teacher and then for many more years as a colleague and senior mentor, exerted considerable influence on the development of my career. While I cannot suppose that he would agree with everything I have written here, I am sorry that I shall not have the benefit of his comments upon it. I continue to remember him with great appreciation. The dedication of this volume, however, looks to the future. In these chapters of Isaiah there are several references to children, both the prophet’s and others’. It is therefore appropriate to link what I have written with my six grandchildren, with much love and affection. HGMW Southwold, Suffolk

B IB L IO G R A PH Y

Commentaries on Isaiah (marked **) and other frequently cited monographs (marked *) are referred to in the body of the commentary by author’s name alone. Other works listed in this bibliography are cited by short title. Abegg, M., P. Flint, and E. Ulrich, The Dead Sea Scrolls Bible (Edinburgh, 1999). Abernethy, A. T., Eating in Isaiah: Approaching the Role of Food and Drink in Isaiah’s Structure and Message (BibIntS 131; Leiden, 2014). Achenbach, R., ‘The Pentateuch, the Prophets, and the Torah in the Fifth and Fourth Centuries b.c.e.’, in O. Lipschits, G. N. Knoppers, and R. Albertz (eds), Judah and the Judeans in the Fourth Century B.C.E. (Winona Lake, 2007), 253–85. Ackroyd, P. R., ‘Isaiah i–xii: Presentation of a Prophet’, in Congress Volume: Göttingen, 1977 (VTSup 29; Leiden, 1978), 16–48, repr. Studies in the Religious Tradition of the Old Testament (London, 1987), 79–104. Aejmelaeus, A., ‘Von Sprache zur Theologie: methodologische Überlegungen zur Theologie der Septuaginta’, in Knibb (ed.), The Septuagint and Messianism, 21–48, repr. On the Trail of the Septuagint Translators: Collected Essays (Biblical Exegesis and Theology 50; Leuven, 2007), 265–93. Ahituv, S., Echoes from the Past: Hebrew and Cognate Inscriptions from the Biblical Period (Jerusalem, 2008). Albrecht, K., ‘Das Geschlecht der hebräischen Hauptwörter’, ZAW 15 (1895), 313–25, and 16 (1896), 41–121. Albright, W. F., ‘The Assyrian March on Jerusalem, Isa. x, 28–32’, AASOR 4 (1922–23), 134–40. **Alexander, J. A., Commentary on The Prophecies of Isaiah (repr. Grand Rapids, 1978; original publication in 2 vols: 1846–47). *Allegro, J. M., Qumrân Cave 4: I (4Q158–4Q186) (DJD 5; Oxford, 1968). Alonso-Schökel, L., ‘Is 12: De duabus methodis pericopam explicandi’, VD 34 (1956), 154–60. Alt, A., ‘Jesaja 8,23–9,6: Befreiungsnacht und Krönungstag’, in Baumgartner et al. (eds), Festschrift Alfred Bertholet, 29–49, repr. KS ii, 206–25. Anderson, B. W., ‘ “God with Us”—In Judgment and in Mercy: The Editorial Structure of Isaiah 5–10(11)’, in G. M. Tucker, D. L. Petersen, and R. R. Wilson (eds), Canon, Theology, and Old Testament Interpretation: Essays in Honor of Brevard S. Childs (Philadelphia, 1988), 230–45.

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BIBLIOGRAPHY

Anderson, B. W., and W. Harrelson (eds), Israel’s Prophetic Heritage: Essays in Honor of James Muilenburg (London, 1962). Arnold, M., G. Dahan, and A. Noblesse-Rocher (eds), L’exégèse d’Isaïe 8, 1-8 (Paris, 2013). Arnold, P. M., Gibeah: The Search for a Biblical City (JSOTSup 79; Sheffield, 1990). Aster, S. Z., The Unbeatable Light: Melammu and Its Biblical Parallels (AOAT 384; Münster, 2012). Auret, A., ‘Another Look at wmw in Isaiah 8:6’, OTE 3 (1990), 107–14. **Auvray, P., Isaïe 1–39 (SB; Paris, 1972). Bach, R., Die Aufforderungen zur Flucht und zum Kampf im alttestamentlichen Prophetenspruch (WMANT 9; Neukirchen, 1962). *Bäckersten, O., Isaiah’s Political Message: An Appraisal of His Alleged Social Critique (FAT II/29; Tübingen, 2008). Baer, D. A., ‘It’s All About Us! Nationalistic Exegesis in the Greek Isaiah (Chapters 1–12)’, SBLSP 40 (2001), 197–219. Bagg, A. M., Die Assyrer und das Westland: Studien zur historischen Geographie und Herrschaftspraxis in der Levante im 1. Jt. v.u.Z. (OLA 216; Leuven, 2011). Bahar, S., ‘Two Forms of the Root NWP in Isaiah x 32’, VT 43 (1993), 403–5. **Baker, D. W., ‘Isaiah’, in J. H. Walton (ed.), Zondervan Illustrated Bible Backgrounds Commentary, iv (Grand Rapids, 2009), 2–227. Balentine, S. E., The Hidden God: The Hiding of the Face of God in the Old Testament (Oxford, 1983). Balogh, C., ‘Isaiah’s Prophetic Instruction and the Disciples in Isaiah 8:16’, VT 63 (2013), 1–18. —‘Historicising Interpolations in the Isaiah Memoir’, VT 64 (2014), 519–38. **Barnes, A., Notes, Critical, Explanatory, and Practical, on the Old Testament: The Book of the Prophet Isaiah (Glasgow, 1851). **Barnes, W. E., Isaiah (The Churchman’s Bible; 2 vols; London, 1901). Barr, J., Comparative Philology and the Text of the Old Testament (Oxford, 1968). —The Variable Spellings of the Hebrew Bible (Schweich Lectures, 1986; Oxford, 1989). —Bible and Interpretation: The Collected Essays of James Barr (3 vols; ed. J. Barton; Oxford, 2013–2014). Bartelmus, R., ‘Jes 7 1-17 und das Stilprinzip des Kontrastes syntaktischstilistische und traditionsgeschichtliche Anmerkungen zur “ImmanuelPerikope” ’, ZAW 96 (1984), 50–66. Bartelt, A. H. ‘Isaiah 5 and 9: In- or Interdependence?’, in A. B. Beck et al. (eds), Fortunate the Eyes That See: Essays in Honor of David Noel Freedman in Celebration of his Seventieth Birthday (Grand Rapids, 1995), 157–74.



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—The Book Around Immanuel: Style and Structure in Isaiah 2–12 (BJS 4; Winona Lake, 1996). *Barth, H., Die Jesaja-Worte in der Josiazeit: Israel und Assur als Thema einer produktiven Neuinterpretation der Jesajaüberlieferung (WMANT 48; Neukirchen-Vluyn, 1977). *Barthel, J., Prophetenwort und Geschichte: die Jesajaüberlieferung in Jes 6–8 und 28–31 (FAT 19; Tübingen, 1997). *Barthélemy, D., Critique textuelle de l’Ancien Testament. II. Isaïe, Jérémie, Lamentations (OBO 50/2; Freiburg and Göttingen, 1986). Barton, J., Joel and Obadiah: A Commentary (OTL; Louisville, 2001). Baumgartner, W., et al. (eds), Festschrift Alfred Bertholet zum 80. Geburtstag gewidmet (Tübingen, 1950). Bautch, R. J., and J. T. Hibbard (eds), The Book of Isaiah: Enduring Questions Answered Anew. Essays Honoring Joseph Blenkinsopp and His Contribution to the Study of Isaiah (Grand Rapids, 2014). Beale, G. K., ‘Isaiah vi 9-13: A Retributive Taunt against Idolatry’, VT 41 (1991), 257–78. Becker, J., Isaias—der Prophet und sein Buch (SBS 30; Stuttgart, 1968). —‘Wurzel und Wurzelsproß: ein Beitrag zur hebräischen Lexikographie’, BZ nf 20 (1976), 22–44. *Becker, U., Jesaja—von der Botschaft zum Buch (FRLANT 178; Göttingen, 1997). —‘Der Messias in Jes 7–11: zur “Theopolitik” prophetischer Heilserwartungen’, in S. Gillmayr-Bucher, A. Giercke, and C. Nießen (eds), Ein Herz so weit wie der Sand am Ufer des Meeres: Festschrift für Georg Hentschel (EThSt 90; Würzburg, 2006), 235–54. *Beentjes, P. C., The Book of Ben Sira in Hebrew (VTSup 68; Leiden, 1997). Beer, G., ‘Bemerkungen zu Jes. 11, 1–8’, ZAW 18 (1898), 345–47. Behrens, Prophetische Visionsschilderungen im Alten Testament: sprachliche Eigenarten, Funktion und Geschichte einer Gattung (AOAT 292; Münster, 2002). Ben Zvi, E., and C. Levin (eds), Thinking of Water in the Early Second Temple Period (BZAW 461; Berlin, 2014). **Bentzen, A., Jesaja (Copenhagen, 1944). *Berges, U., Das Buch Jesaja: Komposition und Endgestalt (HBS 16; Freiburg, 1998) = et, The Book of Isaiah: Its Composition and Final Form (HBM 46; Sheffield, 2012). —‘Personifications and Prophetic Voices of Zion in Isaiah and Beyond’, in J. C. de Moor (ed.), The Elusive Prophet: The Prophet as a Historical Person, Literary Character and Anonymous Artist (OTS 45; Leiden, 2001), 54–82. —Jesaja 40–48 (HThKAT; Freiburg, 2008). —Jesaja: Der Prophet und das Buch (Biblische Gestalten 22; Leipzig, 2010) = et, Isaiah: The Prophet and his Book (Classic Reprints; Sheffield, 2012).

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Beuken, W. A. M., ‘The Prophet Leads the Readers into Praise: Isaiah 25:1-10 in Connection with Isaiah 24:14-23 Seen against the Background of Isaiah 12’, in H. J. Bosman and H. van Grol (eds), Studies in Isaiah 24–27 (OTS 43; Leiden, 2000), 121–56. —‘ “Lebanon with its Majesty Shall Fall. A Shoot Shall Come Forth from the Stump of Jesse” (Isa 10:34–11:1): Interfacing the Story of Assyria and the Image of Israel’s Future in Isaiah 10–11’, in F. Postma, K. Spronk, and E. Talstra (eds), The New Things: Eschatology in Old Testament Prophecy. Festschrift for Henk Leene (ACEBT 3; Maastricht, 2002), 17–33, revised as ‘The Emergence of the Shoot of Jesse: An Eschatological or a Now Event?’, CTJ 39 (2004), 88–108. **—Jesaja 1–12 (HThKAT; Freiburg, 2003). Bickert, R., ‘König Ahas und der Prophet Jesaja: ein Beitrag zum Problem des syrisch-ephraimitischen Krieges’, ZAW 99 (1987), 361–84. Bjørndalen, A. J., Untersuchungen zur allegorischen Rede der Propheten Amos und Jesaja (BZAW 165; Berlin, 1986). Blank, S. H., Prophetic Faith in Isaiah (New York, 1958). Blenkinsopp, J., ‘The Prophetic Biography of Isaiah’, in E. Blum (ed.), Mincha: Festgabe für Rolf Rendtorff zum 75. Geburtstag (NeukirchenVluyn, 2000), 13–26. **—Isaiah 1–39: A New Translation with Introduction and Commentary (AB 19; New York, 2000). —Opening the Sealed Book: Interpretations of the Book of Isaiah in Late Antiquity (Grand Rapids, 2006). *Blum, E. ‘Jesajas prophetisches Testament: Beobachtungen zu Jes 1–11’, ZAW 108 (1996), 547–68, and 109 (1997), 12–29. Boda, M. J., C. J. Dempsey, and L. S. Flesher (eds), Daughter Zion: Her Portrait, Her Response (SBL Ancient Israel and its Literature 13; Atlanta, 2011). Boehmer, J., ‘ “Jahwes Lehrlinge” im Buch Jesaja’, Archiv für Religions­ wissenschaft 33 (1936), 171–75. Boogaart, T. A., ‘Reflections on Restoration: A Study of Prophecies in Micah and Isaiah about the Restoration of Northern Israel’ (Groningen diss., 1981). *Bosshard-Nepustil, E., Rezeptionen von Jesaia 1–39 im Zwölfprophetenbuch: Untersuchungen zur literarischen Verbindung von Prophetenbüchern in babylonischer und persischer Zeit (OBO 154; Freiburg and Göttingen, 1997). Bostock, D., A Portrayal of Trust: The Theme of Faith in the Hezekiah Narratives (Milton Keynes, 2006). Boulluec, A. Le, ‘Isaïe 8, 1-8 selon la Septante et dans le christianisme antique’, in Arnold et al. (eds), L’exégèse d’Isaïe 8, 1-8, 35–71. Bovati, P., Re-Establishing Justice: Legal Terms, Concepts and Procedures in the Hebrew Bible (JSOTSup 105; Sheffield, 1994).



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Brettler, M., God Is King: Understanding an Israelite Metaphor (JSOTSup 76; Sheffield, 1989). Brichto, H. C., The Problem of “Curse” in the Hebrew Bible (SBLMS 13; Philadelphia, 1963). Brockelmann, C., Hebräische Syntax (Neukirchen-Vluyn, 1956). Brockington, L. H., ‘The Greek Translator and his Interest in DOXA’, VT 1 (1951), 23–32. *—The Hebrew Text of the Old Testament: The Readings Adopted by the Translators of the New English Bible (Oxford and Cambridge, 1973). Brooke, G. J., Exegesis at Qumran: 4QFlorilegium in its Jewish Context (JSOTSup 29; Sheffield, 1985). —‘Isaiah in the Pesharim and Other Qumran Texts’, in Broyles and Evans (eds), Writing and Reading, 609–32. —‘The Qumran Pesharim and the Text of Isaiah in the Cave 4 Manuscripts’, in A. Rapoport-Albert and G. Greenberg (eds), Biblical Hebrew, Biblical Texts: Essays in Memory of Michael P. Weitzman (JSOTSup 333; Sheffield 2001), 304–20. Brown, W. P., ‘The So-Called Refrain in Isaiah 5:25-30 and 9:7–10:4’, CBQ 52 (1990), 432–43. Broyles, C. C., and C. A. Evans (eds), Writing and Reading the Scroll of Isaiah: Studies of an Interpretive Tradition (VTSup 70/1-2; 2 vols; Leiden, 1997). **Brueggemann, W., Isaiah 1–39 (Westminster Bible Companion; Louisville, 1998). Bruin, W. M. de, Isaiah 1–12 as Written and Read in Antiquity (Pericope 8; Sheffield, 2013). *Brunet, G., Essai sur l’Isaïe de l’histoire: étude de quelques textes notamment dans Isa. vii, viii & xxii (Paris, 1975). *Bruno, D. A., Jesaja: eine rhythmische und textkritische Untersuchung (Stockholm, 1953). Budde, K., ‘Über die Schranken, die Jesajas prophetischer Botschaft zu setzen sind’, ZAW 41 (1923), 154–203. *—Jesajas Erleben: eine gemeinverständliche Auslegung der Denkschrift des Propheten (Kap. 6,1–9,6) (Gotha, 1928). —‘Zu Jesaja 8, Vers 9 und 10’, JBL 49 (1930), 423–28. —‘Zu Jesaja 1–5’, ZAW 49 (1931), 16–40, 182–211, and 50 (1932), 38–72. Bürkl, M., ‘Grandeur et démesure dans les oracles contre les nations du prophète Ésaïe’, Trans 41 (2012), 25–40. Burrows, M., ‘The Conduit of the Upper Pool’, ZAW 70 (1958), 221–27. **Calvin, J., Calvin’s Commentaries. III. Isaiah (Grand Rapids, n.d.). Caquot, A., S. Légasse, and M. Tardieu (eds), Mélanges bibliques et orientaux en l’honneur de M. Mathias Delcor (AOAT 215; Kevelaer and NeukirchenVluyn, 1985).

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Cazelles, H., ‘La vocation d’Isaïe (ch. 6) et les rites royaux’, in L. Alvarez Verdes and E. J. Alonso Hernández (eds), Homenaje a Juan Prado: Miscelánea de Estudios Biblicos y Hebráicos (Madrid, 1975), 89–108. —‘La guerre syro-ephraïmite dans le contexte de la politique internationale’, in D. Garrone and F. Israel (eds), Storia e Tradizioni di Israele: Scritti in Onore di J. Alberto Soggin (Brescia, 1991), 31–48. Chan, M., ‘Rhetorical Reversal and Usurpation: Isaiah 10:5–34 and the Use of Neo-Assyrian Royal Idiom in the Construction of an Anti-Assyrian Theology’, JBL 128 (2009), 717–33. Cheyne, T. K., The Prophecies of Isaiah (2 vols; London, 1880–81). —Introduction to the Book of Isaiah (London, 1895). **—The Book of the Prophet Isaiah: Critical Edition of the Hebrew Text (SBOT 10; Leipzig, 1899). —Critica Biblica, or Critical Notes on the Text of the Old Testament Writings (London, 1904). Childs, B. S., Isaiah and the Assyrian Crisis (SBT, 2nd series 3; London, 1967). **—Isaiah (OTL; Louisville, 2001). Chilton, B., ‘Two in One: Renderings of the Book of Isaiah in Targum Jonathan’, in Broyles and Evans (eds), Writing and Reading, 547–62. Christensen, D. L., ‘The March of Conquest in Isaiah x 27c-34’, VT 26 (1976), 385–99. **Clements, R. E., Isaiah 1–39 (NCBC; Grand Rapids and London, 1980). —Isaiah and the Deliverance of Jerusalem: A Study of the Interpretation of Prophecy in the Old Testament (JSOTSup 13; Sheffield, 1980). —‘The Prophecies of Isaiah and the Fall of Jerusalem in 587 B.C.’, VT 30 (1980), 421–36. —‘ “A Remnant Chosen by Grace” (Romans 11:5): The Old Testament Back­ ground and Origin of the Remnant Concept’, in D. A. Hagner and M. J. Harris (eds), Pauline Studies: Essays Presented to Professor F. F. Bruce on his 70th Birthday (Exeter, 1980), 106–21. —Old Testament Prophecy: From Oracles to Canon (Louisville, 1996). —‘The Meaning of hrwt in Isaiah 1–39’, in J. G. McConville and K. Möller (eds), Reading the Law: Studies in Honour of Gordon J. Wenham (LHB/ OTS 461; New York and London, 2007), 59–72. —Jerusalem and the Nations: Studies in the Book of Isaiah (HBM 16; Sheffield, 2011). Clines, D. J. A., Job 1–20 (WBC 17; Dallas, 1989). —Job 21–37 (WBC 18A; Nashville, 2006). Cogan, M., and H. Tadmor, II Kings: A New Translation with Introduction and Commentary (AB 11; New York, 1988). Cohen, H. R., Biblical Hapax Legomena in the Light of Akkadian and Ugaritic (SBLDS 37; Missoula, 1978).



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Cole, D. P., ‘Archaeology and the Messiah Oracles of Isaiah 9 and 11’, in M. D. Coogan, J. C. Exum, and L. E. Stager (eds), Scripture and Other Artifacts: Essays on the Bible and Archaeology in Honor of Philip J. King (Louisville, 1994), 53–69. Collins, A. Y., and J. J. Collins, King and Messiah as Son of God: Divine, Human, and Angelic Messianic Figures in Biblical and Related Literature (Grand Rapids, 2008). Collins, J. J., ‘The Sign of Immanuel’, in Day (ed.), Prophecy and the Prophets, 225–44. —‘Isaiah 8:23–9:6 and its Greek Translation’, in A. Voitila and J. Jokiranta (eds), Scripture in Transition: Essays on Septuagint, Hebrew Bible, and Dead Sea Scrolls in Honour of Raija Sollamo (JSJSup 126; Leiden, 2008), 205–21. **Condamin, A., Le livre d’Isaïe (EB; Paris, 1905). Conrad, E. W., Fear Not Warrior: A Study of the al tîrā Pericopes in the Hebrew Scriptures (BJS 75; Chico, 1985). —Reading Isaiah (OBT; Minneapolis, 1991). Cook, P. M., A Sign and a Wonder: The Redactional Formation of Isaiah 18–20 (VTSup 147; Leiden, 2011). Coppens, J., Le messianisme royal. Ses origines. Son développement. Son accomplissement (Lectio Divina 54; Paris, 1968). Corley, J., ‘Elements of Coronation Ritual in Isaiah 11:1-10’, PIBA 35 (2012), 1–29. Cornill, C. H., ‘Die Composition des Buches Jesaja’, ZAW 4 (1884), 83–105. Couey, J. B., Reading the Poetry of First Isaiah: The Most Perfect Model of the Prophetic Poetry (Oxford, 2015). Crook, M. B., ‘A Suggested Occasion for Isaiah 9 2-7 and 11 1-9’, JBL 68 (1949), 213–24. Crüsemann, F., Studien zur Formgeschichte von Hymnus und Danklied in Israel (WMANT 32; Neukirchen-Vluyn, 1969). —Die Tora: Theologie und Sozialgeschichte des alttestamentlichen Gesetzes (Munich, 1992) = et, The Torah: Theology and Social History of Old Testament Law (Edinburgh, 1996). Dafni, E. G., ‘rcbAd[w vpnm (Jesaja x 18)’, VT 49 (1999), 301–14. Dalman, G., ‘Palästinische Wege und die Bedrohung Jerusalems nach Jesaja 10’, PJ 12 (1916), 37–57. —Arbeit und Sitte in Palästina (7 vols; Gütersloh, 1928–42). Davies, A., Double Standards in Isaiah: Re-evaluating Prophetic Ethics and Divine Justice (BibIntS 46; Leiden, 2000). Davies, E. W., Prophecy and Ethics: Isaiah and the Ethical Tradition of Israel (JSOTSup 16; Sheffield, 1981). Davies, G. I., Hosea (NCBC; London and Grand Rapids, 1992). Davies, G., and R. Gordon (eds), Studies on the Language and Literature of the Bible: Selected Works of J. A. Emerton (VTSup 165; Leiden, 2015).

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Davies, P. R., and D. J. A. Clines (eds), Among the Prophets: Language, Image and Structure in the Prophetic Writings (JSOTSup 144; Sheffield, 1993). Day, J., The Recovery of the Ancient Hebrew Language: The Lexicographical Writings of D. Winton Thomas (HBM 20; Sheffield, 2013). —(ed.), Temple and Worship in Biblical Israel (LHB/OTS 422; London, 2005). —(ed.), Prophecy and the Prophets in Ancient Israel: Proceedings of the Oxford Old Testament Seminar (New York and London, 2010). Dearman, J. A., Property Rights in the Eighth-Century Prophets: The Conflict and its Background (SBLDS 106; Atlanta, 1988). *Deck, S., Die Gerichtsbotschaft Jesajas: Charakter und Begründung (FzB 67; Würzburg, 1991). —‘Kein Exodus bei Jesaja?’, in F. Diedrich and B. Willmes (eds), Ich bewirke das Heil und erschaffe das Unheil (Jesaja 45,7): Studien zur Botschaft der Propheten. Festschrift für Lothar Ruppert zum 65 Geburtstag (FzB 88; Würzburg, 1998), 31–47. Dekker, J., Zion’s Rock-Solid Foundations: An Exegetical Study of the Zion Text in Isaiah 28:16 (OTS 54; Leiden, 2007). Delekat, L., ‘Ein Septuagintatargum’, VT 8 (1958), 225–52. —‘Zum hebräischen Wörterbuch’, VT 14 (1964), 7–66. **Delitzsch, Franz, Commentar über das Buch Jesaia (4th edn; Leipzig, 1889) = et, Biblical Commentary on the Prophecies of Isaiah (Edinburgh, 1894). Delitzsch, Friedrich, Die Lese- und Schreibfehler im Alten Testament (Berlin and Leipzig, 1920). Dever, W. G., ‘Archaeology and the Social World of Isaiah’, in R. B. Coote and N. K. Gottwald (eds), To Break Every Yoke: Essays in Honor of Marvin L. Chaney (Sheffield, 2007), 82–96. De Vries, S. J., From Old Revelation to New: A Tradition-Historical and Redaction-Critical Study of Temporal Transitions in Prophetic Prediction (Grand Rapids, 1995). *Dietrich, W., Jesaja und die Politik (BEvTh 74; Munich, 1976). Dieu, L. de, Critica Sacra, sive Animadversiones in loca quaedam difficiliora Veteris et Novi Testamenti (new edn, Amsterdam, 1693). **Dillmann, A., Der Prophet Jesaia (KeHAT; 5th edn; Leipzig, 1890). **Dillmann, A., and R. Kittel, Der Prophet Jesaja (KeHAT; 6th edn; Leipzig, 1898). Dinur, U., and N. Feiy, in I. Finkelstein and Y. Magen (eds), Archaeological Survey of the Hill Country of Benjamin (Hebrew; Jerusalem, 1993). Dohmen, C., ‘Verstockungsvollzug und prophetische Legitimation: literatur­ kritische Beobachtungen zu Jes 7,1-17’, BN 31 (1986), 37–55. —‘Das Immanuelzeichen: ein jesajanisches Drohwort und seine inneralt­ testamentliche Rezeption’, Biblica 68 (1987), 305–29.



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—‘A Productive Textual Error in Isaiah 2:18-19’, in Y. Amit et al. (eds), Essays on Ancient Israel in its Near Eastern Context: A Tribute to Nadav Na’aman (Winona Lake, 2006), 377–88. —‘Poetic Vision in Isaiah 7:18-25’, in Everson and Kim (eds), The Desert Will Bloom, 77–89. —‘Isaiah 30:1’, in M. N. van der Meer et al. (eds), Isaiah in Context: Studies in Honour of Arie van der Kooij on the Occasion of his Sixty-Fifth Birthday (VTSup 138; Leiden, 2010), 185–96. —‘The Waters of Shiloah (Isaiah 8:5–8)’, in I. Finkelstein and N. Na’aman (eds), The Fire Signals of Lachish: Studies in the Archaeology and History of Israel in the Late Bronze Age, Iron Age, and Persian Period in Honor of David Ussishkin (Winona Lake, 2011), 331–43. —‘Isaiah: Prophet of Weal or Woe?’, in R. P. Gordon and H. M. Barstad (eds), “Thus Speaks Ishtar of Arbela”: Prophecy in Israel, Assyria, and Egypt in the Neo-Assyrian Period (Winona Lake, 2013), 273–300. —‘The Vindication of Redaction Criticism’, in K. J. Dell and P. M. Joyce (eds), Biblical Interpretation and Method: Essays in Honour of John Barton (Oxford, 2013), 26–36. —‘Jacob in Isaiah 40–66’, in L.-S. Tiemeyer and H. M. Barstad (eds), Continuity and Discontinuity: Chronological and Thematic Development in Isaiah 40–66 (FRLANT 255; Göttingen, 2014), 219–29. —‘The Theory of a Josianic Edition of the First Part of the Book of Isaiah: A Critical Examination’, in T. Wasserman, G. Andersson, and D. Willgren (eds), Studies in Isaiah: History, Theology, and Reception (LHB/OTS 654; London, 2017), 3–21. —‘The Evil Empire: Assyria in Reality and as a Cipher in Isaiah’, in R. G. Kratz and J. Schaper (eds), Imperial Visions: The Prophet and the Book of Isaiah in an Age of Empires (FRLANT; Göttingen, forthcoming). Winckler, H., Alttestamentliche Untersuchungen (Leipzig, 1892). Wolff, H. W., Frieden ohne Ende: Jesaja 7,1-17 und 9,1-6 ausgelegt (BSt 35; Neukirchen, 1962). Wong, G. C. I., ‘Is “God With Us” in Isaiah viii 8?’, VT 49 (1999), 426–32. —‘Deliverance or Destruction? Isaiah x 33-34 in the Final Form of Isaiah x–xi’, VT 53 (2003), 544–52. Wood, A., Of Wings and Wheels: A Synthetic Study of the Biblical Cherubim (BZAW 385; Berlin, 2008). **Wordsworth, C., The Holy Bible in the Authorized Version; with Notes and Introductions, 5. Isaiah, Jeremiah, Lamentations, and Ezekiel (London, 1871). Worschech, U. F. C., ‘The Problem of Isaiah 6:13’, AUSS 12 (1974), 126–38. Woude, A. S. van der, ‘Jesaja 8,19–23a als literarische Einheit’, in van Ruiten and Vervenne (eds), Studies in the Book of Isaiah, 129–36. **Wright, G. E., Isaiah (Layman’s Bible Commentaries; London, 1964).



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Würthwein, E., ‘Jesaja 7,1–9. Ein Beitrag zu dem Thema: Prophetie und Politik’, in Theologie als Glaubenswagnis: Festschrift zum 80. Geburtstag von Karl Heim (Hamburg, 1954), 47–63, repr. in E. Würthwein, Wort und Existenz: Studien zum Alten Testament (Göttingen, 1970), 127–43. **Young, E. J., The Book of Isaiah: The English Text, with Introduction, Exposition, and Notes (NICOT; 3 vols; Grand Rapids, 1965). Young, R. A., Hezekiah in History and Tradition (VTSup 155; Leiden, 2012). Zehnder, M., ‘Variation in Grammatical Gender in Biblical Hebrew: A Study on the Variable Gender Agreements of Jret “At the Very Time” ’, VT 43 (1993), 112–15, that ‘the k denotes temporal precision not approximation’, hence ‘at the very time’ (p. 113; this had already been stressed by Dillmann). 14  B. A. Levine, Numbers 21–36: A New Translation with Introduction and Commentary (AB 4A; New York, 2000), 186. 15  See, for instance, Driver and Gray, Job, 319–20. 16  J. R. Wilch, Time and Event: An Exegetical Study of the Use of >eth in the Old Testament in Comparison to Other Temporal Expressions in Clarification of the Concept of Time (Leiden, 1969), 35–38; E. Jenni, THAT ii, 373 = TLOT ii, 954. 17  The acute nature of the dilemma we face may be judged by the fact that neb favours the second approach whereas the reb has reverted to the first. 18  There is an excellent and detailed survey of the history of this interpretation in the present verse, from some of the early versions, through the medieval and Reformation periods, and on into the critical era by Emerton, ‘Problems’, 160–65; it does not, therefore, need to be repeated here. See also subsequently L. Lepore, ‘Isaia 8,23b (9,1-6): ricostruzione letteraria e riletture teologiche’, RivB 46 (1998), 257–76.

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which render the first verb as past and the second as future. I can see no justification for appealing to the so-called prophetic perfect in the second case but not in the first; in view of the close parallel between the two parts of the verse the two verbs must surely be construed alike in this respect. An explanation of the tense can be offered, however, to suit either sense of dybkh: either the reference in both halves is indeed past, with dybkh = ‘treat harshly’, as suggested, for instance, by Eshel, ‘Isaiah viii 23’, who refers the references to assaults on the northern kingdom by Ben-hadad and then (in 732 bce) by Tiglath-pileser III,19 or we take strongly the role of this verse as introductory to the following in which, for whatever reason, the depiction of deliverance is cast in the perfect (‘have seen a great light’). Given that neither approach is free of difficulty and that either seems to be linguistically possible, we can only ask what other factors might incline us to favour one over the other. (i) Examples of ÷war and ÷wrja used together in the Hebrew Bible have been grouped into three categories by Young, Hezekiah, 153–54, namely temporal sequence (‘first X…then Y’), temporal contrast (‘the latter will be different than the former’), and entirety/completeness. The latter category is exclusively exilic or post-exilic. This exhaustive categorization leaves no place, he claims, for the words to refer to two different kings or the like, and if the text is pre-exilic (as he believes), then some form of temporal interpretation is to be adopted. In this connection and in support of his conclusion, we may note that the closest parallel with our verse seems to be Jer. 50.17b: lbb ûlm [rxardkwbn] wmx[ ÷wrjah hzw rwa ûlm wlka ÷warh, ‘First the king of Assyria devoured it, and now at the end King Nebuchadrezzar of Babylon has gnawed its bones’. Here, ÷warh and ÷wrjah are almost always

19  Since ultimately I am not going to follow this path, I merely list here some of the main proposals for alternative historical identifications in relatively recent times (my only additional comment with regard to the considerable number of much earlier attempts to identify two Assyrian kings, such as Tiglath-pileser III and either Shalmaneser/Sargon [who later defeated Samaria] or Sennacherib [whose Palestinian campaign in 701 bce is well known], is that they refer to the conquests of two different geographical regions [e.g. the northern part of Israel and then either the remaining part of Israel or Judah], which we now know cannot be squared with the geographical designations in our verse): Luzzatto; W. E. Barnes, and then more fully in ‘A Study of the First Lesson for Christmas Day’, JTS 4 (1902–1903), 17–27; Budde, 99–105 (who in this respect was supported by O. Eissfeldt against Alt in his helpful attention to the parallel Jer. 50.17 in ‘Jeremias Drohorakel gegen Ägypten und gegen Babel’, in A. Kuschke [ed.], Verbannung und Heimkehr: Beiträge zur Geschichte und Theologie Israels im 6. und 5. Jahrhundert v. Chr. Wilhelm Rudolph zum 70. Geburtstage [Tübingen, 1961], 31–37, repr. KS iv [Tübingen, 1968], 32–38); Ginsberg, ‘Unrecognized Allusion’; Driver, ‘Isaianic Problems’; Boogaart, ‘Reflections on Restoration’, 106–14; Herbert; Irvine, 222–25; A. Schoors, ‘Historical Information in Isaiah 1–39’, in van Ruiten and Vervenne (eds), Studies in the Book of Isaiah, 75–93 (84); Blenkinsopp.



8.23b–9.6

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understood as adverbial accusatives of time (GK §118n),20 so that we can see how the parallel supports the traditional approach to our verse. (ii) Whether our verse always stood as an introduction to what follows or has been added in its present position to serve that purpose, the immediate sequel speaks of people in deep darkness having now come to see the light. This suggests that our verse too might be providing a contrast between dark and light (Beuken), because if it were all focussing on the darkness it might be considered to give too great an emphasis to that which the following verses claim has been left behind. (iii) The geographical places listed in the two main lines of our verse relate to at least overlapping geographical regions (see the exegesis below). So something is happening to the same region, regarded under two different socio-political labels. This also favours the view that we are here dealing with some form of antithetic parallelism:21 the region of the old tribal Israel being oppressed on 20  See, for instance, D. J. Reimer, The Oracles Against Babylon in Jeremiah 50–51: A Horror Among the Nations (San Francisco, 1993), 41–43. Even the commentaries that pay attention to the Hebrew text generally assume this without seeing the need for justification or further discussion. In a brief comment, S. R. Driver, The Book of the Prophet Jeremiah (London, 1906), 370, noted as an alternative, ‘or we might construe, “the first one (who) devoured him was the king of A.; and this, the last one (who) gnawed his bones, was,” etc.’. Emerton, ‘Problems’, regards this as ‘possible’, though he offers no reason for favouring what seems to be a more awkward understanding. Otherwise, I have found the same line taken (again without any comment whatsoever) by W. L. Holladay, Jeremiah 2: A Commentary on the Book of the Prophet Jeremiah Chapters 26–52 (Hermeneia; Minneapolis, 1989), 393. 21  The argument from antithetic parallelism with regard to the other elements in the verse (time references and verbs) is stressed in particular by J. Høgenhaven, ‘On the Structure and Meaning of Isaiah viii 23B’, VT 37 (1987), 218–21. His observations are all well made, but of course there is a danger of circular argumentation, that is to say, of arguing from an assumption that the lines are related antithetically to then claiming that the arguments have demonstrated this (see the middle of p. 219 in particular). In this connection I should also note that Young, Hezekiah, 154–55, is a bit misleading in his attempt to make the same point in regard to the two verbs without further qualification. He writes ‘in every other verse in the Hebrew Bible in which the roots llq and dbk appear, they serve to contrast rather than complement each other’ (see too Roberts: ‘when the two roots are used together, they are always contrasted with each other; they are never used as synonyms’). While this may be true at the formal level, it does not directly reach the result for our verse that Young wants. In 1 Sam. 2.30, 2 Sam. 6.22, and Isa. 23.9, his broader point holds but the root dbk is not hiph‘il. In the closely related group of references 1 Kgs 12.4, 10; 2 Chron. 10.4, 10, where in two cases it is hiph‘il, it clearly has the sense of ‘make heavy’ while lqh means to ‘make light’ (of an oppressive burden). These uses may be said to ‘complement each other’ but hardly in a way which usefully illuminates our verse in the way Young would like. On the basis of the evidence provided one might equally well say that the use of the hiph‘il was reserved precisely to distinguish this different meaning.

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the one hand and the way to which it was consequently referred within the Assyrian Empire having something else done to it on the other. This favours the traditional approach; I regard it as a particular weakness of Emerton’s approach, ‘Problems’, that he strings these place names together as though they formed part of a longer sequence. Some way has to be found of treating them in parallel, not in sequence. (iv) The verse may have influenced Deutero-Isaiah in some passages, and in particular he seems to have taken ‘first’ and ‘last’ as a quasi-divine title: see 44.6 and 48.12, ‘I am the First and I am the Last’, and 41.4 is similar. As I have tried to show elsewhere, this is a distinctive divine title, and one which has been developed in other important ways in DeuteroIsaiah in relation to his well-known contrast between the former (or first) things and the things that are yet to come.22 It seems most unlikely that the words in Isa. 8.23 were already themselves intended to be used as a divine title,23 though equally the way Deutero-Isaiah has taken them might be thought to favour their application to characters rather than to periods of time. However, this needs to be balanced by the strong sense in Deutero-Isaiah, also using this or closely related language, that history can be divided into two great phases, the one ending in divine judgment and the other commencing with the inbreaking of light and deliverance. This interesting evidence from early reception does not seem to tip the balance decisively either way but to be compatible with either approach. (v) For what it is worth, the two key words, when used elsewhere in the first part of the book of Isaiah, refer to periods of time, not to individuals; see 1.26; 30.8. In the light of these wider considerations, although with considerable continuing hesitation, I incline towards the traditional approach as the more firmly based. hxra: 1QIsaa has Åra for the first occurrence and Årahw for the second; while the first gives us the construct state that we expect, the second (a definite article on the construct) is clearly impossible, and the difference between the two occurrences does not inspire confidence that this is original. There are one or two other places where the scroll omits such a he (Kutscher, 413–14), but there are equally cases of the reverse. Various proposals have been advanced over the years either to explain the usage here (e.g. that there is an element of motion in the verb: ‘to bring shame on/to’; so, for instance, Dillmann; Duhm; Marti) or to suggest that there has been some textual corruption (e.g. that the words were incorrectly divided, or that the letters were put in the margin to ‘correct’ 22  See my article ‘First and Last in Isaiah’, in H. A. McKay and D. J. A. Clines (eds.), Of Prophets’ Visions and the Wisdom of Sages: Essays in Honour of R. Norman Whybray on his Seventieth Birthday (JSOTSup 162; Sheffield, 1993), 95–108, as well as Book, 67–77. This study has been picked up by several scholars since as the basis for further reflections; see, for instance, B. Gosse, ‘Isaiah 8.23b and the Three Great Parts of the Book of Isaiah’, JSOT 70 (1996), 57–62; Heskett, Messianism, 99. 23  Contra Y. Komlosh, ‘¹[;Wm — Wp[;wÒ: Explanation of Certain Obscure Passages in Isaiah’ (Hebrew), Bar-Ilan 4–5 (1967), 42–49.



8.23b–9.6

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the masculine adjectives to feminine and that they were then added back in the wrong place; see Delitzsch, Lese- und Schreibfehler, 30). These and other proposals have been fully evaluated by Emerton, ‘Problems’, 152–53, and we may agree that he has shown how weak they are. I agree rather with his conclusion that ‘there are a number of places in the Old Testament where he locale has lost its distinctive force (GK §90f, g), and the occurrences in Isa. viii. 23 may be examples of such otiose use’. (I note here without further comment that Emerton then proceeds correctly to discount some entirely conjectural emendations that have been proposed, either to change some of the place names following [e.g. Procksch, followed by Barth, 160–61] or to add to them [e.g. Alt, ‘Jesaja 8,23–9,6’];24 these emendations lack any textual support and are based entirely on prior decisions about what ‘ought’ to have been written in the prevailing historical circumstances, a line of thought that the exegesis below will suggest is unnecessary.) At the end of the verse LXX adds ta; mevrh th`~ Ioudaiva~, a plus which applies the oracle which originally referred to the northern kingdom to the southern; it looks as though this is a reflection of the state of Hellenistic Palestine as familiar to the translator; cf. Seeligmann, 80–81; Lust, Messiansim, 161. 9.1. Årab yby: as with ryxqb tjmk in the next verse, this is a paradigm example of the construct state before a preposition; cf. GK §130a; JM §129m; WO, 155. hgn…war: here and later in this passage the qatal forms have often been described as examples of the ‘prophetic perfect’ (the LXX renders the first as an imperative and the subsequent ones through to the end of v. 4 as futures). This must not be understood, however, as indicating that qatal simply refers to the future when the context indicates that this is required—a frequent misunderstanding. The whole history of debate about this is surveyed in Rogland, Alleged Non-Past Uses, Chapter 3, with attention to the present passage on pp. 73–75.25 In line with comparable examples elsewhere he explains the bulk of the passage as descriptive of the prophet’s vision with real time indicated as future in the final clause of v. 6. There may be form-critical considerations to take into account as well (see below). Whether ‘vision’ is the best way to describe the present passage may be questioned, therefore, but the grammatical point retains its value nevertheless. twmlx: this word occurs 18 times in MT and it is vocalized as a compound noun, ‘shadow of death’. Apart from proper names, compound nouns are not certainly found elsewhere in ancient Hebrew (l[ylb is another disputed example). Nevertheless the ancient versions generally indicate that they are

24   More recently Roberts has followed the same approach as Alt but, for several reasons, slightly changed his proposed addition from d[lg rhw ÷wrh qm[ to d[lgh Åraw ÷wrh. But the need to make the names in the first and second halves of the verse overlap precisely seems to me unnecessary. 25  The question is also discussed (with differing results as regards the present passage) by Klein, ‘The “Prophetic Perfect” ’.

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following the same interpretation as the Masoretes,26 and as this includes the LXX (12 out of the 18 times; here, ejn…skiaó' qanavtou) it is clearly a very ancient reading tradition. It has been defended by a number of studies in the comparatively recent past,27 Barr, for instance, making the points (inter alia) that (i) the Masoretic tradition is demonstrably very old and therefore cannot simply be ignored; it would be unprecedented for an abstract noun in -ut to be altered so early without any real justification by what he calls a ‘midrashic-etymological explanation’; (ii) there are a few passages among the 18 where Barr judges that the sense ‘darkness’ does not fit very well; (iii) the traditional explanation may rest on an early idiomatic usage; (iv) the word might have been a place or personal name, like twmz[, in which the second element might originally have been the deity Mot; the word might therefore be a development within an Israelite context of a name such as ‘shadow/protection of Mot’, and ‘the valley of twmlx’, Ps. 23.4, can then be closely paralleled with ‘the valley of Baca’ in Ps. 84.7; see too the personal name lalxb, ‘Bezalel’, ‘in the shadow/protection of El’. Barr concludes that there is no simple explanation and that probably several different factors need to be borne in mind in the history of this word; whatever other conclusions are reached, the Masoretic understanding should not simply be dismissed as an artificial invention. Despite the strength of these arguments, problems with this explanation of the word have long been noticed and an alternative has been canvassed since at least the time of Ibn Janach (eleventh century).28 (i) ‘Shadow’ does not have the kind of sinister overtones that it does in English (and many other languages) but is used rather for a shade and protection from the burning sun; the nearest it comes to the required sense is as an image of frailty and transitoriness.29 Thus it is difficult to see how the threatening ‘shadow of death’ could realistically 26  The evidence is fully set out in D. W. Thomas, ‘twšn and T ¹yqtw, both ‘strengthen’. Gray was thus especially troubled by all this, although he did not propose any change. Driver, ‘Studies’, 378–79, suggested a comparison with Arabic šaḡaba to justify translating ‘and Y. has drawn his adversaries against him’. In my opinion, however, these concerns are unwarranted, the current sense being a contextually wholly appropriate semantic development of the familiar verb; see the commentary below. ÷yxr yrx: ‘the enemies of Rezin’ seem to be out of place here.19 The next verse will specify that the agents of God’s judgment on Israel will be Aram 17  For the considerable variety within the book of Job, see E. Dhorme, A Commentary on the Book of Job (Nashville, 1968), 133. 18  See especially Koenig, 87–103, who includes a detailed critique of Driver which need not be repeated here. He is also somewhat critical of his predecessors, including Ottley, 156; Ziegler, 63, 109; and Seeligmann, 47, 78. See more recently van der Kooij, ‘Accident or Method?’, 367–70, and Troxel, 147–48, both of whom are critical of Koenig’s attempt to find here some anti-Samaritan motivation. 19  Irvine’s suggestion, 239–40, that we could render ‘oppressors in the charge of Resin’ is an unconvincing construal of the construct here.

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and the Philistines. As Rezin was the king of Aram, a reference to his enemies here, presumably the Assyrians (see 2 Kgs 16.9), as recognized already by the medieval commentators, does not fit, and attempts to suggest that the reference here is to Arameans in the Assyrian army (cf. Gesenius, following Ibn Ezra; Knobel) are not convincing (not least because of the qualifying ‘from the east and…from the west’). While it is true that it was ultimately the Assyrians who conquered Israel (see most recently Childs and Beuken), the present context clearly states that they were not in view at this point in time. A number of Masoretic mss read yr, which was favoured by some older commentators (e.g. Houbigant, 356–57, Lowth, Ewald, Studer, ‘Textkritik’, 175), but this is probably an inner-Masoretic change (see Barthélemy) and in any case does not give very good sense either; why should his ‘princes’ be mentioned here rather than Rezin himself? Nearly all commentators therefore agree that the reference to Rezin is to be understood as an early marginal gloss identifying more closely the main enemy in view and that the text originally read wyrx (or wyrrx, ‘its oppressors’, with Kaiser, and Wildberger; both attribute the proposal to Budde, but they do not give an exact reference). The close parallelism with wybya in the second half of the line strongly supports this (including what might otherwise be considered a slightly abrupt use of the pronominal suffix; the singular must refer to ‘all the people’ or to Ephraim in v. 8, but I have rendered as a plural to suit English usage), and the emendation has the further advantage of restoring the expected line-length. The alternative suggestions that we should emend to ÷yxr hrox;, ‘his adversary Rezin’, with appeal to the LXX (see below; cf. Marti; Wade, Auvray), or ÷yxr yrrx, ‘oppressors from Rezin’ (Roberts), have the disadvantages of introducing a specific and singular adversary where the parallel leads to a different expectation and also of pre-empting the more particular detail which follows in the next verse. It also leaves the line unexpectedly long. Similar objections confront Michaelis’s conjecture ÷wyx rh for ÷yxr (with appeal to LXX; ‘Anzeige’, 135–36) and Tur-Sinai’s suggestion that wyl[ should be emended to ÷ruxuyÒ (cf. 2 Kgs 16.5), ‘his adversaries that set siege upon upon him’. ûsksy: lexicographers differ over the analysis of this rare form (see too 19.2). BDB entered it anew under its addenda et corrigenda, 1127A, as the pilpel of ûkc IV, which on the basis of Arabic and Ethiopic cognate nouns, ‘thorn, point of spear’ (and cf. µykc, ‘thorns/barbs’, in Num. 33.55, and twkc, ‘darts’, in Job 40.31), they construed as ‘prick/spur on’; HAL, 704, suggests that it is the pilpel of ûws with a similar meaning (‘aufreizen’), and DCH vi, 130 analyses likewise, but with the sense of ‘stir up, provoke’ (unexplained etymologically, as is usual with DCH, but apparently based on KBL). For a possible reason for choosing this rare verb here, see the commentary below. Stade, ‘Zu Jes. 3,1’, 141, wanted to emend to ûsks, but this is hardly necessary; however it should be explained historically, the concomitant use of yiqtol with qatal in poetry is not uncommon; see Driver, Tenses §27 (last paragraph), 36; WO §31. 10-11a. The LXX has an interesting independent reading of this passage: kai; rJavxei oJ qeo;~ tou;~ ejpanistanomevnou~ ejpÆ o[ro~ Siwn ejpÆ aujtou;~ kai; tou;~ ejcqrou;~ diaskedavsei, Surivan ajfÆ hJlivou ajnatolw'n kai; tou;~ ÒEllhna~ ajfÆ hJlivou dusmw'n tou;~ katesqivonta~ to;n Israhl o{lw/ tw'/ stovmati, ‘and



9.7-20

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God will strike those who rise up against them on Mount Zion, and he will scatter (their) enemies, Syria from the rising of the sun and the Greeks from the setting of the sun, those who devour Israel with open mouth’.20 If we start with the two names in v. 11, we should note that tou;~ {Ellhna~ is an unprecedented equivalent for µytlp and that this is the only place where ÓEllhn occurs in the LXX of Isaiah (it occurs in five other books of the LXX, always corresponding with ÷wy). In addition, Suriva does not occur elsewhere in LXX Isaiah either (the usual equivalent for µra there is Aram, though Suvro~ occurs at 17.3). There is therefore a strong case for maintaining that ‘we are directly and unmistakably transported into the historical atmosphere of Palestine in Hellenistic times’ (Seeligmann, 81) with references to the Seleucid realm and the Hellenized coastal cities. The rendering of the first part of v. 10 is usually explained as being based on a variant Vorlage ÷wyx rh yrx ta in place of MT ÷yxr yrx ta (Gray, Barthélemy). While this is possible, it seems to me equally likely that the translator might have been led to misread his Vorlage (as in MT) on the basis of his clear contemporizing tendency at this point, given that it would have been meaningless to speak on that basis of Rezin or of a threat to the northern kingdom, whereas a promise of security for the residents of Mount Zion would have been very much to the point. The unusual equivalence of diaskedavsei for ûsksy may pick up on its occurrence shortly before in 9.(3)4; see de Sousa, 134. 11. µra: P ltm in Is. 9:18’, CBQ 12 (1950), 153–54; he was followed by, inter alia, Hummel, ‘Enclitic Mem’, 94; Young; Kaiser (first edition; in the fifth he changed to the solution favoured above); and Motyer. 69  See, for instance, Smith, ‘Old Testament Notes’, 62; Gray; Greenspahn, Hapax Legomena, 148. 70  J. Blau, ‘Etymologische Untersuchungen auf Grund des palaestinischen Arabisch’, VT 5 (1955), 337–44 (342–43).



9.7-20

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a tlkamk: as mentioned above, some have emended conjecturally here because they do not find this phrase fits well with their understanding of the previous line; as a consequence they turn it into an anticipation of the cannibalism which will follow. But, for all the slight awkwardness in the present order of the text, there is no tension with the previous clause as understood above, and such an anticipation would be stylistically quite out of place, since the description builds artfully to a climax through the next verse. It is therefore preferable not to consider any changes at this point. The phrase itself is also attested at v. 4 above. 19. rzgyw has no subject or object, which is awkward, but I cannot see that this is sufficient evidence to postulate a rzg II, ‘devour’, contra DCH ii, 341;71 see further the commentary below. lwamAl[: 1QIsaa lwamAl[w. While this can scarcely be correct as it stands, it is possible that it is caused by an incorrect division of an earlier lwamAl[ wlkayw, a plural form of the verb being necessary to match the plural w[b at the end of the line. This is all likely to be secondary, however, as a singular is expected throughout to balance the situation in the closely parallel first colon. w[b: the plural form here is undoubtedly awkward and, as already noted above, and see further below, it may in turn have given rise to other scribal errors. It has often been suggested that the waw should be joined as the conjunction to the following word (Wildberger). Assuming the present order of the clauses is correct, however, this would damage the otherwise strong and rhetorically effective parallelism with the last clause of v. 18, the lack of conjunction serving to introduce a certain ‘shock effect’ into each line. LXX (which brings up ya as the subject of this verb), V, and T all render as singular, so that I prefer simply to delete the waw as a scribal error. w[rz: ‘his (own) arm’. Whatever the Masoretes had in mind, this does not seem credible because the description is supposed to relate to inter­necine conflict, not self-harm. The text is admittedly well supported. 1QIsaa agrees exactly with MT (though with plene spelling: w[wrz) and 4QIsae has the plural form, wy[rz, which must nevertheless be using the same noun since the plural of [r"z< only occurs once, with suffix (1 Sam. 8.15), and there with reference to seeds of grain, not with the developed sense of descendant, which is only ever collective. LXX, V, and P all follow MT as well. Only T differs: hybyrq, though it should be noted that this is within a different image from MT, where ‘arm’ would hardly be appropriate (‘they shall plunder everyone the goods of his neighbour’, an interpretation, though not a reading, favoured by Rashi and Kimhi), and against using T to support an emendation to w[r (see Lowth and many others since, including Gray) it should be noted that, according to Barthélemy, 71, the Targum of Isaiah always uses a form of rbj for [r, never byrq. Other evidence which has been cited in favour of emendation is equally questionable; for instance, the addition of tou' ajdelfou' following tou' bracivono~ in a number of LXX witnesses (see the apparatus in the Ziegler edition) is more likely to be a case 71  Cf. Delekat, ‘Zum hebräischen Wörterbuch’, 11–13; M. Görg, ThWAT i, 1001–4 = TDOT ii, 459–61.

450

ISAIAH

of late assimilation to the wyja of the previous verse than evidence for a double reading including w[r in the translator’s Vorlage. The suggestion to read /[rÒz", as first proposed by Honeyman72 (neb: ‘each feeds on his own children’s flesh’; BHS), may be supported by a variant text as cited in an al-tiqre at BShab. 33a,73 but this hardly amounts to much of a case, so that the proposal remains conjectural, and its only advantage is that it remains very close to the consonantal text; as a concept it has something of a parallel in Jer. 19.9, though that passage does not include the use of [rz. The sense is not appropriate either, since the point here is not to refer to a time of great distress (which is what the possible eating of one’s own children implies; see the commentary below), but rather to the rapacious eating of one’s fellows or brothers (see the next verse). In addition there is no evidence that [rz can cover the sense of brother or fellow; Est. 10.3 and Ezek. 22.6 are cited, but neither is convincing. The attempt further to explain MT’s vocalization as a euphemism to avoid a direct reference to a revolting practice is belied by the considerable number of references to cannibalism elsewhere (see the commentary below). We must therefore either accept MT (Barthélemy, 71, who then spoils his case by arguing that it has the sense of ‘aid’, which ruins the obvious parallelism with v. 18c) or (as I prefer) to accept on the basis of the textual evidence that there has been a very early corruption and emend to what we expect, namely wh[r, the line as a whole then becoming identical with Jer. 19.9. The spelling w[r, which would be even closer to MT, occurs only once elsewhere (Jer. 6.21) against about 115 of wh[r; it is therefore possible, but less likely. wlkay: 1QIsaa lkayw, which it must, therefore, take with the following verse. LXX agrees (favgetai ga;r), even though it also includes a verbal form, e[sqwn, in the preceding clause as well. I assume in consequence that the scroll takes w[b alw with the phrase that follows it: ‘and they will both be satisfied each with the flesh of his arm’. Parallelism within this verse as well as especially between the last clause of vv. 18 and 19 shows that the scroll reading must be secondary. 4QIsae aligns with MT at this point, as, within their own idiom, do each of the other ancient versions. 20. The first half of the verse is expressed very tersely, though fully intelligibly, in our Hebrew sources; for the poetic syntax, see Miller, ‘Verb Gapping’, 57–58. LXX expands with the addition of verbs (favgetai and poliorkhvsousi), and in the second clause T adds ytyml ÷wrbjty, but there is no need to assume that they had any other text than ours. HUBP detects some duplication from 7.1 (LXX; see too Ziegler, 63; Wagner, Reading the Sealed Book, 96 n. 117) and 7.2 (T), which seems contextually plausible. For the last line of the verse, see on 5.25 and v. 11 above. 72  A. M. Honeyman, ‘An Unnoticed Euphemism in Isaiah ix 19-20?’, VT 1 (1951), 221–23. 73  See M. Wallenstein, ‘An Unnoticed Euphemism in Isaiah ix 19-20?’, VT 2 (1952), 179–80 (who wrote explicitly to support Honeyman’s proposal); S. Talmon, ‘Aspects of the Textual Tradition of the Bible in the Light of the Qumran Manuscripts’, Textus 4 (1964), 95–132 (127).



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17. According to the detailed analysis of Bjørndalen, Unter­such­ ungen, 231–44, the language in this stanza is allegorical; he finds two allegories, the first in vv. 17-18b and the second in 18c-20, and in each case a single event only is in mind. It refers to something in the recent past which would have been well known to the first audience, but which inevitably is unknown to us today. This may seem initially frustrating, but equally it might well fit with my remarks relating to the referents of the previous stanzas, where again we saw that there was debate over the possible historical allusions and at the same time the possibility had to be left open that in fact the present composition (whatever may have been ‘originally’ intended) could equally well be paradigmatic of the downward spiral of a corrupt society. If so, then the sometimes elaborate (but entirely hypothetical) attempts of some commentators to distinguish between, for instance, different social classes as represented by the different types of vegetation, or equally the carefully drawn lines between the referent of ‘people’ as opposed to ‘land’, become unnecessary. The poetic language as we now have it in the text allows for multiple applications by the readers as suits their own readerly contexts. The concept of burning fire as an instrument of judgment is familiar in Isaiah (1.31, 5.24, and elsewhere), and the present verse is clearly echoed later in 10.17. More creatively the image as used here does not directly have God as subject but rather the general word wickedness (h[r), so that evil is presented as carrying its own destruction within it. The specific point at issue in the wider context is that the breakdown of civil society in the previous stanza will eventuate in civil strife, moral failure thus leading to violent self-destruction. The same point applies to the following clause, in that whereas usually briers and thorns are the consequence of judgment (see on 5.6), here, unusually, it is they that are devoured by the culpable wickedness. The image of destructive fire is extended in the second half of the verse from scrub to forest, so that the whole scene is magnified (see Nielsen, 188–90). Thickets is a rare word, though readily intelligible. It appears on its own at Gen. 22.13, but otherwise only at 10.34 below, where the same thickets of the forest as here is used, but there with destruction by felling rather than by fire. Although swirled up is uncertain (see above), the column of smoke is clearer. As was noted above, twag is based on a verb that means ‘to rise up’, and words derived from it are used elsewhere by Isaiah with regard

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to the kind of pride and hubris which he regards as a cardinal sin (see the survey at v. 8 above); our precise form occurs with that general sense in 12.5; 26.10, and 28.1, 3, the last two of which at least are probably Isaianic. Wildberger is therefore certain that the word was used here in consciousness of this double meaning, and he may be right. 18-19. The first two colons of v. 18 continue closely from v. 17, but the third colon suddenly introduces the reality, rather than just the imagery, of civil strife. Furthermore, this third colon is closely parallel with the third colon of v. 19. Given that elsewhere the lines of this refrain poem are consistently bi-cola, it has therefore often been suggested that 19c should be moved up to join with 18c as another bi-colon (cf. Procksch; Donner, 69; Clements; Wildberger; Blenkinsopp; BHS).74 The allusion to devouring the flesh of one’s neighbour is then spelt out initially by the equally food-related imagery of 19a-b and then by the explicit statements of v. 20a. While this suggestion has its undoubted attractions, there are other ways of looking at the material. In the present order, v. 18c is relatively general in content, but is clearly introduced as something of a surprise by its lack of initial conjunction. It begins to indicate what the poet has in mind with his image of wickedness burning as fire and of even the people becoming compared to fuel. Building on this suspense, v. 19a-b then changes the image in accordance with what has just been said to elaborate upon it by reference to the need for food, the rapacious quest for which does not satisfy. Then climactically, in a clause which again lacks an introductory conjunction, the two preceding forms of imagery are brought together with the appalling statement of strife as a form of cannibalism within the one society. The use of two tri-cola—a poetic device which we have seen elsewhere can also be used to develop a climax—seems appropriate, and it is a wooden form of analysis indeed which cannot allow a poet the freedom to introduce variation for stylistic effect. Of course, for those who wish to count lines mechanically, the total length of this part of the poem is not affected either way. 18. With this verse we move towards a more direct acknowledgment of the events described as being a part of God’s response to the failure to repent after the previously described sins and admonitory  Or vice versa, e.g. Marti; Feldmann.

74



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response. Fury (hrb[) is a strong word which, with reference to divine anger, is always ‘Yahweh’s reaction to inappropriate human behaviour’ (e.g. in addition to the present passage 10.6; Ezek. 22.21; Hos. 5.10; 13.11), and it has been suggested that it should be distinguished from the many other words for anger in Hebrew by probably evoking ‘specifically the element of unbridled emotion within anger as manifested in corresponding actions’.75 It is often (though not always) associated elsewhere with fire (e.g. ‘the fire of my wrath’ occurs four times in Ezekiel: 21.36; 22.21, 31; 38.19), so that it is wholly appropriate in the context of the extended image which has been developed in the present passage as an expression of God’s response to the ‘burning’ of human wickedness. That the land was darkened at a time of such calamity is a frequent expectation, as indicated in the notes above in connection with the case for this present translation; see 8.22 and 9.1 for examples in the nearest context. Although it is probable that the line of thought was triggered by the reference to smoke in the previous verse, we should be careful to note that there is a clear distinction between that verse as depicting the results of human activity and the present one as a statement of God’s response. The second colon acts as a crucial pivot in the development from imagery to actuality. On the one hand, to say in the light of the foregoing that the people have become like fuel for the fire could refer, for instance, to the destruction of the nation by foreign enemies; see explicitly Ezek. 21.36, and inversely 9.4 above. On the other hand, the clause is sufficiently open to be developed by the following colon as indicative of the fact that, shockingly, on this occasion the destruction will be internecine. It goes along with this that tlkam, fuel (otherwise only at 9.4, q.v.), is based on the same root as ‘devour’ in both vv. 17 and 19, thus again drawing together image and reality.

75  K.-D. Schunck, ThWAT v, 1033–39 = TDOT x, 425–30. The etymology of the word is uncertain. Schunck follows Driver, ‘Some Hebrew Roots’, 69; ‘Problems in the Hebrew Text of Proverbs’, Biblica 32 (1951), 173–97 (185–86), and Emerton, ‘Notes on Jeremiah 12 9’, 189, in ascribing it to a second root rb[, cognate with Arabic ǵabira, ‘be malicious, bear rancour’; this proposal has also been accepted by HAL and DCH; see further G. Sauer, THAT ii, 205–7 = TLOT ii, 835–36.

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No one spares another: the object of the verb is less ambiguous in Hebrew than in English translation, lit. ‘a man does not spare his brother’. The verb (whose appearance in 1QIsaa at v. 16 above may be based on the present verse) occurs some 41 times in the Hebrew Bible but elsewhere in Isaiah only at 30.14. In the latter case it is used in its neutral or impersonal sense of ‘spare’, as when a pot is shattered ‘without sparing/ruthlessly’, so that not a single sherd remains. Three quarters of all occurrences, however, are negative, as in our verse, and have a much more personal application; either people (e.g. Hab. 1.17) or God (e.g. Jer. 13.14; 21.7; Zech. 11.6) show no mercy or pity on the person or people involved. It does not generally have the kind of religious or spiritual overtones with which we tend to associate the English equivalent; the few examples of the latter seem to be late and are all positive (Joel 2.18; Mal. 3.17; 2 Chron. 36.15).76 The use here is therefore quite forceful and leads well into the more detailed amplification in the following two verses. 19. Cut meat: the verb simply means ‘cut, divide’, with a variety of objects, though not used elsewhere for butchery. The addition of ‘meat’ is therefore simply a deduction from the context. Cannibalism is not unknown elsewhere in the Hebrew Bible.77 Several times it is mentioned (whether literally or not) in the context of a wish to express an extreme state of distress, such as the conditions of people undergoing siege (Lev. 26.29; Deut. 28.53, 55; 2 Kgs 6.28-29; Jer. 19.9) or severe post-conflict famine (Lam. 4.10); at Mic. 3.3 it is used figuratively as a way of expressing the lack of social justice within a class-based system; at Isa. 49.26 it comes closer to our present verse in reference to Israel’s oppressors devouring one another (surely not eating their own flesh), while at Ps. 27.2 and Job 19.22 it refers to the attacks on an individual by his enemies. More pictorial allusions occur at Zech. 11.9-16 and Eccl. 4.5. None of these seems to be quite so extreme an expression as the present instance, however, where the whole point of the line is to emphasize the complete depravity of the situation.

 See further M. Tsevat, ThWAT ii, 1042–45 = TDOT iv, 470–72.  For references to this practice in other ancient Near Eastern texts, see I. Eph‘al, The City Besieged: Siege and Its Manifestations in the Ancient Near East (CHANE 36; Leiden, 2009), 61–62. 76 77



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The drift of the first two cola of the verse is towards exaggeration for rhetorical effect. The use in parallel of on the right and on the left indicates comprehensiveness while remained hungry and was not satisfied underlines the rapacious appetite that drove the barbarity.78 Just as with v. 18, the third colon begins with ya, ‘a man’, without any preceding conjunction. The abrupt form of speech in each case has climactic force. Flesh is the word regularly used in connection with the eating of animal meat (22.13; Gen. 9.4), but only with the blood drained out; needless to say, there is no such reference here. It is not easy to know in quite which way we should interpret this unusually strong form of condemnation. In Micah the issue is one of social justice. Here, the following verse suggests something more in the realm of inter-tribal rivalry. Obviously land seizure would be one possibility, but it would seem a rather weak cause unless it was accompanied by some significant level of violence. Perhaps, in view of the foregoing paragraphs, we should link the accusation rather with the turbulent closing years of the kingdom of Israel, when there were several coups d’étât which involved bloodshed and violence and thus effectively civil war (cf. 2 Kgs 15). Several more specific suggestions within that general framework have been suggested (see the survey in Wildberger’s commentary on v. 20), but all suffer from the disadvantage that none of our historical sources makes any direct reference to specifically tribal conflicts, which is what v. 20 seems to imply. 20. If this last comment is along the right lines, then Manasseh and Ephraim may have been chosen for mention here for the reasons given in the general introduction to this whole poem above. Together they are set against Judah: Clements proposes that this clause should be regarded as ‘a redactor’s addition who has sought to bring out more forcefully that the final defeat of the Northern Kingdom arose because the people there refused to reunite with Judah and accept the Davidic monarchy’. In his view, the original 78  S. U. Gulde, Der Tod als Herrscher in Ugarit und Israel (FAT II/22; Tübingen, 2007), 141, draws attention to a remarkably close Ugaritic parallel at KTU 1.23.63-64, from which she deduces that the form of wording must have been in some kind of wider proverbial circulation. This rather supersedes C. F. Whitley, ‘Some Aspects of Hebrew Poetic Diction’, UF 7 (1975), 493–502 (497–98).

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prophecy concerned only the northern kingdom in its final decade. (See too, though for different reasons, Becker, 149; Kruger, ‘Another Look’.) In view of the familiarity with this kind of Judean gloss in Hosea, it is, perhaps, surprising that this suggestion has not been more widely adopted; Sparks, Ethnicity and Identity, 198, for instance, is strongly tempted, but ultimately decides against, even though explicitly without conviction. The reason is presumably that it is not so certain as Clements maintains that the poem originally referred exclusively to the northern kingdom (see on v. 7), and also that, as a Judean author, Isaiah would himself no doubt have had an interest in the effect of his observations on his own nation. In my opinion, the first colon of the verse would, on its own, have been a curiously weak poetic ending to the stanza. On the assumption, then, that the line is an integral part of the poem, it is not surprising that many commentators see here a reference to the Syro-Ephraimite invasion: it was only in times of common enmity that this fraternal strife was set aside. Wildberger finds this difficult, however, on the ground that the poem is supposed to be looking back to past events (‘das ist chronologisch aber doch schwierig, zumal bereits auf diese Ereignisse zurückgeblickt wird’, not a strong objection, as this can apply to the invasion in any case); he therefore proposes instead the battle between Amaziah of Judah and Jehoahaz of Israel (2 Kgs 14.8-14). This seems even less likely, however, since in that case it was Judah, not the northern kingdom, which was the aggressor. More likely Oswalt is correct: he finds it unlikely that any specific event is here in view, any more than in the case of the inter-tribal fratricide of the first line. ‘It is more likely that he was referring to the long history of hatred between the northern and southern parts of the nation.’ Once again, I find only such a paradigmatic interpretation fully free from other difficulties. For the second half of the verse, see on 5.25 and v. 11 above. In my view, a fourth stanza which originally followed here has been almost entirely lost when its conclusion and then the fifth stanza were moved to the end of ch. 5; see Isaiah 1–5, 403. For the use of the same refrain at 10.4, see the introductory section to 10.1-4 immediately below.

W O E TO S O C IA L O P P R ESSORS (10.1-4)

[1] Woe to those who decree iniquitous decrees, and who, as busy scribes, write trouble, [2] to turn away the needy from judgment and to steal the legal rights of the poor of my people, so that widows become their spoil, and so that they might plunder the fatherless. [3] So what will you do on the day of visitation, and at the time of the devastation that will come from afar? To whom will you flee for help, and where will you leave your treasured possessions, [4] so as to avoid crouching among the prisoners and among the slain who have fallen? Yet despite all this his anger has not turned back, and his hand is still stretched out.

Some fragments of these verses are preserved in 4QIsae, but they show no differences from MT. 1. µyqqjh: 1QIsaa lacks the article, so that it is strictly parallel with µybtkm later in the verse. In this particular matter, LXX follows MT. The syntax of the verse is not sure, and this is just one element in a wider range of uncertainty; see further below. For the likelihood (in view of v. 3) that this participle is already, strictly speaking, a vocative that might, therefore, be rendered, ‘you who decree’, see Hillers, ‘Hôy and Hôy-Oracles’, 186–87. yqqj: 1QIsaa yqqwj (anticipated already by Michaelis, Anzeige’, 136–37); this aligns the form more closely with the commoner form of the construct plural of qj (yQeju), and, though not attested elsewhere, it may represent a more classical form than MT.1 The form in MT is attested also in Jud. 5.15. It might be explained as an unusual weakening of the vowel in the (postulated) secondary or alternative form of the construct yqeq]ju (Delitzsch), but it is more usually thought to have been derived (or at least the Masoretes may have supposed that it derived) from the related form *qje (GK §93bb; JM §96Ap). MT at Jud. 5.15 is very uncertain, however, and most commentators emend there. It is therefore likely that we should distinguish between an explanation of the (secondary) Masoretic form and a probable earlier form retained in the scroll. The use of this alternative form (however vocalized) may have been favoured to strengthen the alliteration in the verse.

 Cf. Driver, ‘Hebrew Scrolls’, 21; Kutscher, 375 with 478.

1

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µybtkmw: as it stands, a plural participle pi‘el of btk, the only other attested occurrence of the pi‘el being in the last word of the present verse. As it stands, the syntax of MT may be explained in two possible ways: (i) wbtk is the main verb of the clause, continuing from (and so parallel with) the participle in the first half of the line. It is true that the participle, when continued by a finite verb, is usually followed by the imperfect (as at 5.8, 23, which Dillmann cites), but the use of the perfect is also attested (cf. GK §116x). µybtkm is then a ‘strengthener’ of the plural subject, and so indefinite (cf. GK §118m–p): ‘and who, busily writing, write trouble’; cf. LXX; V; Dillmann; Gray. (ii) Alternatively µybtkm may be the word which is parallel with µyqqjh, the remainder being a relative clause without ra: ‘(Woe to…) the scribes who wrote out (decrees of) hard labour’; cf. rv; WO, 416; Gesenius; Marti; Feldmann; Porath, 160; Beuken. It is likely that this was the understanding of the scribe of 1QIsaa (see above) but not of MT, as one would then expect the article on µybtkm. In fact, ywh is not often followed by an anarthrous participle plural; more usually either the article is present or the plural participle is in the construct form (as could easily have been written here: yqqwj) or it is qualified by an adjective. The first alternative is thus more likely. This otherwise unattested use of the pi‘el of btk is considered difficult by some, and in addition it is noted that T rendered µybtkm with a nominal form, btk, ‘a writing’. Some, therefore, proposed reading a construct plural here, ybeT]k]miW (one Masoretic ms also has this;2 cf. HUBP), so furnishing a nice parallel with yqqj in the first half. This was then taken a step further by Ginsberg, who retained the consonantal text but explained the final µ as an ‘enclitic mem’.3 Some commentators and others have followed him in this,4 and Cohen has most recently taken this one step further in maintaining that it also justifies vocalizing the last word in the line as a qal, the pi‘el, he maintains, being justified only by the participle preceding it, which, of course, he has now eliminated.5 Alternatively, others prefer to vocalize the word as a plural noun, µybiT;k]mi (BHS; Blenkinsopp), but this seems awkward; presumably (no explanation is offered), lm[ is construed in apposition. The evidence here is of mixed value. The Targum reading is of no real textcritical value, its singular form making clear that there is an element of free rendering at least. The possibility that there was a pi‘el of btk seems difficult to deny as a matter of principle, especially in a line which we have already seen above may have been partly conditioned by the desire for striking alliteration. 2

 In addition the notoriously unreliable Kennicott 96 ms has the singular form

btkm.

3  Ginsberg, ‘The Ugaritic Texts’, 115, and then slightly more fully in ‘Some Emendations’, 54; he has been followed by Roberts. 4  E.g. Hummel, ‘Enclitic Mem’, 94; Young; Donner, 69; Wildberger; Oswalt; Watts. 5  C. Cohen, ‘The Enclitic-mem in Biblical Hebrew: Its Existence and Initial Discovery’, in C. Cohen, A. Hurvitz, and S. M. Paul (eds), Sefer Moshe: The Moshe Weinfeld Jubilee Volume (Winona Lake, 2004), 231–60.



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And appeal to the use of enclitic mem remains conjectural, despite all assertions to the contrary. On the other hand, the proposed emendation (with or without enclitic mem) provides neater parallelism, even if it is without any direct textual witness. In view of the almost unanimous textual witness of the scrolls and versions, and given that there are no insuperable objections to MT, I have therefore retained it here while acknowledging that others may prefer to follow a conjecture that they consider leads to a slightly easier reading. 2. ÷ydm: Wildberger notes the similar expression fpm hfh elsewhere (Deut. 16.19; 24.17; 27.49 [sic; read 27.19]) and argues on this basis that the m should therefore be deleted here (unless it is construed as an enclitic mem; so Ginsberg, ‘Some Emendations’, 54, who of course moves the letter to the end of the previous line, and Kaiser in the first edition of his commentary, but not, apparently, in his revised edition). Wildberger’s reason is that ÷yd means ‘Rechtsanspruch, Rechtsstreit, Rechtsspruch’, not ‘Gericht’, which may be correct, but I cannot see why that should lead to the consequence he suggests; see further in the commentary below. A better approach to the answer he wants would be to follow Cohen.6 He cites more than twenty nouns that are attested both with and without a preformative mem, apparently without any difference in meaning. He therefore proposes that ÷ydm is a substantive and that it is found also at Jud. 5.10. The parallelism in the line would thus be exact: twfhl//lzgl, ÷ydm//fpm, and µyld//ym[ yyn[. We might also add that LXX and P render as if ÷yd(m) were the direct object of twfhl (and V has in), though it is difficult to judge if that is strong enough evidence for an alternative reading or simply a matter of translation ad sensum. This is an attractive suggestion, but it remains questionable. Both the text and the meaning of ÷ydm at Jud. 5.10 are uncertain, and in fact Cohen cites our verse in order to strengthen his minority opinion there. Furthermore, hfh + obj + ÷m is attested elsewhere (Job 24.4), so that there is no real problem with the usual interpretation of MT. The argument from parallelism carries some weight, but it is questionable whether it is strong enough on its own to oblige us to postulate the existence of this uncertain noun. taw: this stands unusually in front of an indefinite noun, a phenomenon that seems to be slightly more frequent in poetry (where the definite article is in any case frequently omitted) than prose; cf. GK §117c-d. JM §125h suggests that the reason here was to make clear that the word following was the object, though sense would hardly allow otherwise. Perhaps an additional concern was to lengthen the otherwise very short half-line. wzby: a finite verb following an infinitive7 generally continues the force of its governing preposition (in this case l); cf. GK §114r; JM §124q; Gibson, 131. The rendering as a final clause is thus continued here, and this may itself have further favoured the use of the imperfect rather than the perfect; contrast v. 1.

 M. Cohen, ‘mekerōtehem (Genèse xlix 5)’, VT 31 (1981), 472–82.  For reflections on this combination in terms of parallelism, see Couey, Reading the Poetry, 85–86. 6 7

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3. µwyl: l is used number of times with µwy (as well as other temporal nouns) to mean ‘at/on the day of…’; e.g. Hos. 9.5; cf. BDB, 516–17; König, Syntax §331f (lamedh temporis); WO, 206. I am therefore not clear what Wildberger’s point is when, by comparison with rqbl, ‘every morning (?)’, at Amos 4.4 and Ps. 30.6, he insists that our word here must mean ‘am Tag’, not ‘auf den Tag’. haw: this word is used with a range of meanings, and in terms of etymology a case can be made for each of ha and aw, these probably being in any case related. There are other related nouns as well (hawm, ÷wa, hya, ta). There is thus no likelihood that we can arrive at a precise definition of meaning by philology alone but must survey the varied uses as best we can establish them from their differing contexts elsewhere and then choose what seems to fit the present passage best; see the commentary below. l[: usually ‘upon’. This is unlikely to be an Aramaism, ‘to’, and emendation to la would be unnecessarily cavalier; nor need we infer confusion (Budde, ‘Jesaja 1–5’, 69; JM §133b). The best suggestion, as in Knobel, Dillmann, Delitzsch, and Duhm, is explained by Gray’s rendering: ‘prob. pregnant—to whom will ye flee and rely on them?’. For the pregnant use of prepositions (though without reference to this verse), see GK §119ee-gg; usually it is the verb of motion that is unexpressed; here the situation is the reverse. wbz[t: Ehrlich maintains that this is an impossible reading because it is introduced by hna, which has to be followed by a verb of motion. He therefore proposes Wz[it;, ‘bring into safety’, as in v. 31 below, and cf. Exod. 9.19; Jer. 4.6; 6.1. This proposal is favoured as preferable, even if not necessary, by Budde, ‘Jesaja 1–5’, 69, and by Wildberger. However, bz[ is occasionally followed by a preposition implying motion when it has the sense of depositing for safe keeping (Delitzsch cited l in Job 39.14, and dyb in Gen. 39.6; some other examples are included among the list of qualifying prepositions in DCH vi, 329–30; see too a number included in the ‘problem passages’ by E. Gerstenberger, ThWAT v, 1204 = TDOT x, 588). Equally, hna can be used ‘pregnantly’, as at Ruth 2.19, where it is followed by ty[, and the same could apply here. Thus MT may stand. µkdwbk: neb’s ‘your children’ follows a suggestion by Tur-Sinai, 182 (with consequential changes also in the next verse), who based his case on Hos. 9.11. However, the latter verse does not justify the conclusion that dwbk itself can simply mean ‘children’ (see the commentaries on that passage for more plausible alternative interpretations that work within the regular semantic range of dwbk); nor is there any basis for such a suggestion within Isaiah, where the word occurs relatively frequently. 4. The first line is difficult. There is no evidence from the main textual witnesses to suggest any corruption so that if a solution is sought by emendation it can only be conjectural. 1QIsaa is the same as MT with the exception of reading rwsa for rysa. The same difference occurs at 42.7 (while at 24.22 the scroll omits the word altogether, presumably by accident), and there is a similar K/Q variation at Jud. 16.21, 25. To find significance here in 10.4 but not in 42.7 is implausible (contra Kutscher, 366–67); the same applies to neb’s ‘gaoler’, vocalizing the scroll as r/sa; (Brockington, 178). 4QIsae supports MT so far as it is preserved: ]tjt [rk ytlb[. LXX renders the first half as tou` mh; ejmpesei`n eij~ ejpagwghvn, ‘so as not to fall into misery’, which Gray shows can be lined



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up neatly with LXX renderings of the same Hebrew words elsewhere; the only possibility for difference, he concedes, is that the translator may have read ytlbl instead of just ytlb. For the last word he favours the alternatively attested spelling ajpagwghvn, with which he compares the rendering of the verb ajpavgein at Gen. 39.22; 40.3; 42.16. Ottley, by contrast, explains the spelling now favoured by Ziegler as possibly assimilated to 14.17. Either way,8 there is clearly no ground here for emendation. The second half of the line is not translated (in this it is but one in a lengthy list of omitted parts of verses; cf. Ziegler, 48–51), though many later recensions add a rendering. The remaining versions seem also to have attempted to render the same text though there is a strong tendency to give second person plural subjects to the verbs; cf. V, P, and T, though T is rather free (e.g. taking [rk as equivalent with Aramaic [ra). Working, then, initially with MT, difficulties include the precise significance of ytlb, the sense of tjt, and the fact that following the second person plural verbs of v. 3 we now have a third person masculine singular in the first half of the line and a third person plural in the second half. Several solutions were proposed long ago (as acknowledged already by Calvin) and have been variously followed since. Among these, (i) Kimhi suggested that ytlb = ‘without me’, as at Hos. 13.4, and then takes ‘my people’ (cf. v. 2) as the subject of [rk: so something like ‘without me (this people) will kneel in the place of prisoners’. This was essentially followed by av, ‘without me they shall bow down under the prisoners’; Vitringa; Lowth. However, tlb + personal suffix (only otherwise 1 Sam. 2.2; Hos. 13.4) does not mean ‘without’ = ‘in my (etc.) absence’ but rather ‘except, apart from’, which is less suitable in our verse. We should therefore probably regard the yod as an enclitic/paragogic (JM §93q). (ii) Ibn Ezra understood ytlb as ‘except, unless’: he has to suppose that something like ‘they will not escape’ is implied by the previous verse, and this is then followed by ‘unless they bow down under (in the place of) prisoners and (unless) they fall down under the slain’. This general approach has been adopted by many, at least as regards the understanding of ytlb; see, for instance rv (somewhat freely), ‘they shall only bow down…’; rsv, ‘Nothing remains but to crouch…’; niv (favoured by Motyer); BDB, 116B, ‘save that’ (with reference also to Gen. 43.3; Num. 11.6), and construing the line as ironic; Knobel; Delitzsch (‘there is nothing left but to…’); Jacob; Clements; Childs. (iii) As a variation on this, de Dieu, Critica Sacra, 197, construed the first half of the line as subordinate to the second, ‘unless they crouch among the prisoners, they will fall among the slain’, or the like; so Gesenius; Hitzig; Dillmann; Barthélemy, 73–74 (who, incidentally, misrepresents Gesenius here). Gray objected to all these approaches on the ground that ytlb must follow a negative (though he allowed that this might just be implied; Orelli, for instance, thinks that the questions of v. 3 imply a negative, while Naegelsbach 8  The issue is discussed more fully, and in agreement with Gray rather than Ziegler, by P. Walters, The Text of the Septuagint: Its Corruptions and their Emendation (Cambridge, 1973), 129–30; see too Seeligmann, 21.

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finds a negative in the implied answers) and that the subject must remain the same as in the previous sentence, which in this case, as we have seen, it is not. He therefore conjectured that ytlb might have originally been ytlbl (so previously, for instance, Houbigant, 357) or perhaps (by haplography) ytlbm, he vocalized [rk as an infinitive construct, and he emended wlpy at the end of the line to wlpt, resulting in ‘an excellent Hebrew construction’: ‘To avoid crouching under (?) the prisoners, and falling under the slain’. In my opinion, his discussion of ytlb is somewhat hyper-critical; it is difficult to suppose that it could not be used in poetry as an equivalent of ytlbl without requiring emendation (cf. GK §163c, and Gibson, 176, where, however, it is treated as introducing an exceptive rather than a final clause; JM §160l–m; nrsv, ‘so as not to crouch…’; neb). This must, however, be followed by an infinitive construct, so that the vocalization ['rok] should be preferred; I assume that the Masoretes thought of ytlb as a conjunction that could be followed by a finite verb; µa ytlb occurs twice with a finite verb following at Amos 3.3, 4, and they may have (wrongly) supposed, on the basis of the nominal clause at Gen. 43.3, that the µa was optional (cf. Budde, ‘Jesaja 1–5’, 69); but in any case the problem of the switch in subject remains. For wlpy, however, no emendation is required; we may follow the proposal of Gaster, ‘Notes’, 92, in construing it rather as a relative clause without ra, so that both tjt phrases in the line are dependent on [rk, a perfectly regular poetic form (see v. 3a, to go no further). Sense suggests that tjt does not literally mean ‘under’, but rather ‘in place of’ (BDB, 1065B), hence ‘among’ (nrsv); Orelli points to the similar wording in Ezek. 32.20, where, however, the preposition ûwtb is used. Bäckersten, 136, objects to this rendering of tjt and suggests instead that it ‘here implies retribution, i.e. “he kneels (in retribution) for the prisoners” ’ (he cites in support Gen. 44.4; Isa. 43.4; Zeph. 2.10, though in fact these do not seem to me to be entirely appropriate parallels). The meaning he then seeks is difficult, however, as he has to apply it to the Assyrians which then requires as a further hypothesis that the line be bracketed as a later gloss. While there is room for doubt at the margins, therefore, the present form of the text is well attested and can be construed satisfactorily. There is no need for more radical emendations, such as Kissane, w[rkt yk, ‘when ye bow down…’, or the once very popular proposal of Lagarde (involving only one redivision of words so far as the consonantal text is concerned): rysa tj t[rk ytlb, ‘Beltis is crouching, Osiris is shattered’;9 the thought may be compared with 46.1 and Jer. 50.2; cf. Duhm; Marti; Wade; Procksch; Steinmann; Fohrer; Eichrodt; Donner, 69. However, neither deity is attested elsewhere in the OT and there is no reason why Egyptian gods should be introduced at this point; appeal to the obscure ch. 28 is not sufficient justification. Dillmann dismissed the proposal as an ‘Einfall’!

9  Note also his somewhat comparable emendation at 1.31, recorded in n. 22 of the commentary on 1.27-31.



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Similarly there is no need to follow Labuschagne,10 who suggested that tlb was an equivalent of Ugaritic blt, a negative exclamation, and so moved the yod to the following word to read [rky: ‘No, he will crouch among the prisoners’ (somewhat similarly Hayes and Irvine). Apart from being somewhat speculative, the problem of the verbal subjects remains, despite what Labuschagne states, for it would be singular here but plural in the parallel. As an improvement on Labuschagne, Wildberger (followed by Porath, 161), takes ytlb as an independent negative (cf. Num. 11.6), ‘No! All in vain!’, and then vocalizes [rk as an infinitive absolute. This is possible, but it is not clear that Num. 11.6 is really a parallel for the proposed usage; it seems rather to introduce an exceptive clause, as in option (ii) above. For the second line, see on 5.25.

Two related questions face the commentator on this passage: how do these verses fit into the wider context in the book (an answer to which is necessary before dating is discussed), and to whom are they addressed? The first problem arises from the observation that the passage is a woe-saying, which has suggested to many that it should be closely related to the woe series in ch. 5. On the other hand, the passage ends with the stretched-out hand refrain, which seems at first to tie it closer to the main part of ch. 9. It is not clear, therefore, how these two facts should be held together. The majority of current critical commentaries take the view that most of the passage has been displaced, either accidentally or by redactional design, from some point in ch. 5 and that the refrain at the end was added later in order to integrate the passage into its new setting. The first, spasmodic discussions of this topic,11 which noted in particular such matters as the fact that there are six woe-sayings in ch. 5, so that the addition of that in ch. 10 would make up a series of seven, and the contrasts between 9.7-20 and 10.1-3 (e.g. the orphans and widows appear to lack divine pity in 9.16 but despoiling widows is condemned in 10.2), and which therefore suggest either that the verses should be moved elsewhere or that

 C. J. Labuschagne, ‘Ugaritic blt and biltî in Is. x 4’, VT 14 (1964), 97–99.  Studer, ‘Zur Textkritik des Jesaja’, 172–74; Giesebrecht, Beiträge zur Jesaia­­kritik, 3–24 (with an astonishing degree of re-ordering of the relevant material); Hackmann, Zukunftserwartung, 54–56. 10 11

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some material had fallen out between chs 9 and 10, do not appear to have convinced the major commentators who followed them. Duhm (and cf. Skinner), for instance, accepted that there were uncertainties, including the question whether the verses were directed towards Israel or Judah, but he nevertheless considered either hypothesis unnecessary. Marti noted the same points of difficulty as his predecessors and was prepared to go a little further than Duhm; he agreed that 10.1-3 could hardly be a direct continuation of the preceding passage and that they had probably come from elsewhere among the remaining Isaianic sayings. But he was reluctant to go any further in identifying where that might have been. Previous suggestions all disagreed with one another, and given the fact that ch. 5 was already somewhat fragmentary he concluded that any attempted reconstruction should be avoided (‘sehr gewagt und von grossen Schwierigkeiten begleitet’). Gray, somewhat uncharacteristically, seems to be undecided. He sees the essence of the problem to lie in the uncertainty whether the oracle is addressed to Israel or to Judah. If it refers to Israel (Ephraim), then it will have been a strophe in the poem on divine anger—and Gray is clearly impressed by the fact that it is of the same length as his version of the other strophes. If it refers to Judah, however, then it probably did not belong in its present position originally but he remains reluctant to specify further, not least because ‘the question and the address in 103 differentiates this section no less from the “Ah’s” of 58-24 than from the other strophes of the poem’. Finally Fullerton, ‘Isaiah’s Earliest Prophecy’, argued in detail and in full dialogue with his predecessors that the passage could not possibly have been any part of the original composition of 9.7-20 or 5.26-29 It seems that a change to mainstream opinion followed in the wake of the later work of Budde. Although in his textual comments he argued conventionally that his preferred order of material in this regard was 5.22; 10.1; 5.23; 10.2-4a; 5.2412 (which may or may not seem plausible), his major contribution was his earlier broader discussion of the composition history of this whole part of Isaiah as discussed above, in which he insisted that Isa. 6:1–9:6 was an originally separate composition dubbed the ‘Isaiah Memoir’. Noting that there is not a precise join between the end of ch. 5 and 9.7  Budde, ‘Zu Jesaja 1–5’, 67–68.

12



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but equally that there are close links between the series of woes in ch. 5 and the start of ch. 10 as well as the fact that there are parts of the refrain poem both before and after the memoir, Budde suggested in an uncharacteristically vague manner (pp. 3–4) that in the course of the insertion of the memoir into its present position there was some serious accidental disruption to the material which now surrounds it, leading to the present untidy order. Whatever doubts we may now entertain about the hypothesis as a whole, its impact on the study of the first part of Isaiah was immense, and many commentaries since have more or less taken it for granted as a starting point. This made it easier to accept as a consequence that aspects of the present ordering of the material might be accidental, so that the notion that, for instance, 10.1-4 might be shifted elsewhere seemed less controversial than it had before. Little more demonstration of this is necessary than to observe that an element of such a rearrangement has even been incorporated into an official translation of the Bible for use in public worship.13 It continues to be a ground for concern, however, that even as many commentators have agreed that some such displacement took place, so they equally remain as divided as ever in their suggestions for the recovery of the hypothetical original order.14 Clements and Barth, 110–11, followed by, for instance, Sheppard, ‘The Anti-Assyrian Redaction’, and Blenkinsopp, all slot 10.1-4a at the very start of the series, before 5.8. The major alternative proposal is that of such commentators as Fohrer, Schoors, Jacob, Wildberger, and Roberts, who put 10.1-3/4 after 5.24 and 5.25-29/30 after 9.20 (and similarly Kaiser, who has 10.1-2 following 5.23, both being subsequently expanded). Other possibilities include Mowinckel, ‘Komposition’, 275, who favoured the order 5.1-7; 9.7-20; 5.25-30; 10.1-4; 5.8-24; Donner, 66–75, who left 10.1-4 where it is but

13  In the neb 5.24-25 is moved to follow 10.1-4. This is simply noted, not explained in any way, by Brockington, 176 (the canonical order was restored, however, in reb). 14  It should be noted that others continue to defend the present order of the material; see, for instance, Irvine, 121–25 and 235–50, who uses primarily historical arguments to uphold his case, while Brown, ‘The So-Called Refrain’, and Sweeney both advance more literary (though different) considerations. Without arguments, Seybold, Poetik, 90–93, also finds in vv. 3-4 a final strophe to the refrain poem.

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moved 5.25-29 to follow it, Fey, 83–104, who did the same except that he included 5.25 in the middle of 9.16, Vermeylen, 169–72, who altered the order of several of the woe sayings in such a way as to include 5.8-10 followed by 10.1-3 at the end of the series,15 and Seybold, Poetik, 90–93, who proposed 9.7-20; 5.25-27; 10.3-4. This brief survey, which is far from exhaustive, produces sufficiently diverse results to justify our asking once again if the starting point is correct. Several factors suggest that an alternative approach might prove to be more satisfying. First, the observation that there are currently six woe-sayings in Isaiah 5, so that the addition of 10.1-4 would bring the figure up to the significant number of seven,16 may be countered by an alternative solution which I have quite separately advanced previously, namely that 1.4 originally stood at the head of the series in ch. 5 (see the commentary on 1.4). A second reason for questioning whether 10.1-4 ever stood in a position other than its present one relates to the integrating role which it plays in its present position. On the assumption that it once stood elsewhere, it has long been recognized that the last line of v. 4 must have been added later in order to join it with the refrain poem which precedes it; this might have been either by the person who consciously brought vv. 1-4a here or by somebody else if the displacement was accidental. Either way, the point is acknowledged that this line was added deliberately to bind the passage in to its present context.

15  A detailed critique of Vermeylen’s analysis of chs 5–10 as a whole was offered by L’Heureux, ‘The Redactional History’. He describes 10.1-4 as a ‘supplementary strophe’ to the outstretched hand poem, ‘put together by a redactor at a later time’ (p. 112). This is comparable to the position that will eventually be favoured here as well. He also traces a careful redactional purpose behind the arrangement of the materials and so is resistant to attempts to reconstruct earlier orders. In this, see too (though very differently) Bartelt, ‘Isaiah 5 and 9’, and Blum. Anderson, ‘God with Us’, also seeks an intelligible redactional shape for the material as it currently stands, though he recognizes more candidly that this was probably a second stage in the composition history. 16  This still remains the sole argument for joining 10.1-4 with 5.8-19 in, for instance, Deck, 209, and Crüsemann, Die Tora, 30–31 = Torah, 20. Procksch also considered the argument from the number seven to be significant, but he solved the problem by the imaginative step of postulating that a woe-saying had been lost between 5.13 and 14.



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In addition to that one line, however, it should be further noted that the verses share exactly the same length and structure as the preceding stanzas in the refrain poem (allowance made, of course, for some later additional elements in the present text); see especially Gray, and L’Heureux, ‘The Redactional History’, 112–13. It would certainly be a striking coincidence if this were the result of a chance move of some material to which the refrain element had subsequently been added.17 We should observe next, however, that the passage is also followed by a woe-saying, beginning in v. 5. Admittedly, 10.5 seems to set out on a major new section in the book, as its focus is clearly anti-Assyrian. Nevertheless, given the evident fondness for woesayings to be grouped, the use of such a saying at 10.1 works well as an integrating feature looking forwards,18 just as 10.4b does backwards. Furthermore, as several of the more recent studies noted above have shown, the use of a woe-saying at this point leads to a neatly chiastic structure around the so-called memoir (woes—outstretched-hand poem—memoir—outstretched-hand poem—woe). Finally, attention should be drawn to the fact that will be noted in the course of the exposition below that a considerable number of the component parts of this passage echo material elsewhere either in the close context or in 3.13-15 (see already briefly Stade, ‘Zu Jes 3,1’, 139). While it would be difficult to demonstrate dependence, this would not be surprising if the passage were indeed written as an integrating element in the wider composition. In short, factors of differing kinds and from several different directions combine to suggest that this unprecedented combination of a woe-saying and the outstretched-hand refrain may best 17  It should be noted as an alternative, however, that Korpel, ‘Structural Analysis’, makes a similar sort of argument in favour of joining the passage to ch. 5, the whole of the woe series being an Isaianic exposition of the Song of the Vineyard (5.1-7). Her theory involves her including not just 10.1-4 within ch. 5 but also 10.5-6. Implausibly, she then has to maintain that the ywh of v. 5 ‘did not designate Assyria as the object of God’s wrath’ but was merely a form of exhortation; this was reinterpreted as a woe-oracle only by a post-exilic redactor who added the passage starting in 10.7. 18  This point is emphasized strongly by Bäckersten, 135–60. Indeed, it forms part of his argument that the passage is, in fact, anti-Assyrian. Regardless of whether that suggestion be accepted, his conclusion that our passage serves as an ‘editorial bridge’ is close to that advocated here.

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be explained as a (sometimes—to our way of thinking—slightly artificial) redactional device to serve both as a conclusion to all that precedes by its combination of these two distinctive elements from the preceding chapters and as a help with the transition to the next section immediately following. A consequence of this conclusion is that the passage can no longer be regarded as the work of Isaiah himself but must rather be the work of the redactor who brought much of his material together into something approaching the shape of this part of the book that we have now.19 Elsewhere we have often found reasons to suppose that this was in the exilic period, as attention was drawn to the fulfilment of Isaiah’s judgment sayings in the catastrophe that had overtaken the nation. In this passage the evidence is not strong enough conclusively to demonstrate that this must have been the case, but the comments on vv. 3-4 below will show that it is a very reasonable hypothesis and indeed that there are a few elements in the text which have no real parallel in Isaiah’s own sayings but which relate more closely to the experience of the exilic community as that may be reconstructed from the second half of the book.20 A further consequence is that the debate about the identity of the addressees in this passage more or less answers itself. Not unreasonably, most commentators have assumed that the nature of the indictment points to an internal, Judean audience. The accusations here are similar to those in 3.13-15, for instance. On the other hand, the passage which immediately precedes this one is explicitly addressed to Jacob/Israel (9.7), while the verse immediately preceding, 9.20, deals with Manasseh and Ephraim. Given that no change of addressee is indicated and that this passage is of the same shape and length as the component parts of 9.7-20, a significant 19  It follows as a consequence that the exegesis of these verses should not tie itself too closely to the specific historical circumstances of the eighth century, as, e.g., in W. Zwickel, ‘Die Wirtschaftsreform des Hiskia und die Sozialkritik der Propheten des 8. Jahrhunderts’, EvTh 59 (1999), 356–77, who links the abuses cited in particular to state policy that sought to accommodate the influx of refugees from the northern kingdom after the fall of Samaria, or Crüsemann, Tora, 30–34 = Torah, 20–23, who makes this passage a cornerstone in his exposition of the history of written law in the pre-exilic period. 20  This conclusion also renders unnecessary the suggestion that v. 4a should be regarded as a later addition to the oracle precisely on the ground that it seems to reflect a later point of view; e.g. Porath, 161–62.



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minority opinion has always been that the addressees here remain the northern kingdom. Finally, as was briefly noted above, Bäckersten has most recently advanced the bold hypothesis that it is Assyria who is here addressed. Clearly, an evaluation of the strengths and weaknesses of each of these possibilities would be a lengthy undertaking, but in fact, if my suggestion about the later, redactional nature of the composition here is correct, then the whole issue is side-stepped. Self-evidently the indictment is of a generalizing kind to underline, at the close of a major section of the book, how and why the fall of Jerusalem and the exile of many of the people had taken place. It refers inevitably, therefore, to Judeans, and its links with the preceding passage are to be explained by redactional imitation rather than necessary continuation of subject matter. In such circumstances it is not surprising that the change of addressee was not explicitly spelt out. 1. Given that we have already determined that this woe-oracle is directed against Judeans, the main issue that has been discussed (for woe, see on 1.4) has been whether it refers to legislation or administration. If the former (e.g. Dillmann; Duhm; Marti; Wildberger; Kessler, Staat und Gesellschaft, 39–41), then secondary questions tackle the extent to which the legislators may have been acting legally and in the national interests even though the negative impact was mainly on the poor, which incited Isaiah’s opposition;21 alternatively, this might just have been a case of people abusing their authority for personal gain. If, on the other hand, the abuse is seen to be more administrative (e.g. Delitzsch; Gray; Kaiser; Clements; Stansell, Micah and Isaiah, 111; Dearman, Property Rights, 43; Porath, 162–70; Beuken), then the setting is usually understood more narrowly as affecting the abuse of due process in the law courts; again, the issue of the extent to which this was knowingly illegal arises. The vocabulary used in this verse is not sufficient in itself to settle this issue. Those who decree…decrees, using the participle and a nominal form of qqj, might incline us initially to think in terms 21  E.g. Davies, Prophecy and Ethics, 81–83, who links it especially with property to which the crown might have some claim; Høgenhaven, 175–77, who links it with Hezekiah’s preparation for his revolt against Assyria.

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of legislation. The verb means ‘to cut in, engrave, decree’, and the commonest related noun, qj, is familiar as ‘statute’ in Deuteronomic literature and elsewhere. However, neither is an exclusive usage. The verb has a wide range of applications, and this would, in fact, be the only passage where the qal would relate to the framing of law. Elsewhere it is used twice with ‘write’ (btk) as the parallel verb (as here, albeit in the pi‘el)—at 30.8 in connection with the recording of prophetic oracles, and at Job 19.23 (hoph‘al), where Job wishes that his words were recorded in a book. Elsewhere in Isaiah (to go no further) the significance of the verb is wide enough to cover hewing out a tomb in the rock (22.16), engraving of the name of Zion on God’s hand (49.16), and (po‘lel participle) acting in some function that is parallel with judge and king, with reference to God (33.21). Similarly, the only noun from this root used elsewhere in Isaiah with the meaning ‘statute’ or the like is at 24.5, a very late passage. The only other occurrence in Isaiah is 5.14, ‘without measure/limit’—an otherwise unattested phrase. It may in any case be significant that the author here uses a rare form; its only other occurrence is at Jud. 5.15 (the text is uncertain), where it certainly could not mean statute. Despite initial inclinations, therefore, there is no strong reason to see a reference to the making of new laws in this line. The question has to be decided on other grounds. Given that the parallel line is even more bland (though using an otherwise unattested pi‘el of btk), we have to move to the next verse for guidance. Two factors there point strongly to the administrative rather than the legislative interpretation. First, as we shall see, the accusation concerns unjust manipulation of the legal system; this is less easily aligned with the framing of new law. And second, the specific reference to widows and orphans in the second half of the verse is suggestive of those who had no natural legal representative rather than that a new law somehow singled them out, a most unlikely eventuality in view of all that we know of their paradigmatic role in the legal system throughout the ancient Near East (including Israel). Finally, it is worth noting three rather close parallels to this passage, at least so far as its vocabulary goes. In Prov. 22.22-23 (Whedbee, 107–9; Dietrich, 18), we find: ‘Do not rob the poor, because he is poor, or crush the afflicted in the gate; for the Lord will plead their case and despoil of life those who despoil them’. The inclusion here of ‘in the gate’, together with the image of God



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acting as a defence lawyer on behalf of the poor makes clear that the abuse concerns court procedures. At Ps. 94.20, where the ‘seat/ throne of destruction (contra nrsv)’ is probably a parody on the ‘seats/thrones for judgment’, as in Ps. 122.5, we read of one who ‘forms trouble (lm[) by decree (qj)’. As Tate comments on this clause, ‘the term qj is used of ordinary enactments and decrees (such as the legal conditions of a deed of purchase in Jer 32:11)’.22 Although this is a difficult verse in several respects, it seems clearly to indicate that qj can well be used in connection with the judicial practice of the law. Third, and closest to home, Isa. 3.13-15 also has many vocabulary items in common with our passage and the general accusation is more or less the same; indeed, it seems likely that the author of our passage was influenced by this earlier Isaianic saying to some considerable extent. But there too it is clear that the imagery is set in the law courts, not the legislature. Of what in particular, then, were those accused in this verse deemed to be guilty? What they wrote down is said to be iniquitous (÷wa) and trouble (lm[). The first term occurred already at 1.13, where we noted that it was particularly familiar from the wisdom literature (perhaps Psalms should also have been mentioned) and where I cited Wildberger’s gloss, ‘the criminal way of thinking’. Trouble is also quite common, appearing over 50 times, and with a somewhat comparable distribution.23 Although very occasionally it can have the sense of toil or labour which may bring reward, more usually, as here, it has the negative significance of trouble as sorrow or misery. The two words appear in parallel or very close association on quite a number of occasions in lament psalms as well as Job (cf. Pss. 7.15; 10.7; 55.11; 90.10; Job 4.8; 5.6; 15.35; also at Num. 23.21; Isa. 59.4; Hab. 1.3), from which it becomes clear that it has very much in the forefront the notion of trouble that others have devised against the person lamenting and that there is an appeal to God for deliverance from it. This sense is also attested a number of times when each word is used on its own elsewhere in similar contexts (cf. Beuken). The occurrences at Isa. 59.4, Ps. 7.15, and Job 15.35 are sufficiently close to suggest that they occur in some form of proverbial saying, so that we here have

 M. E. Tate, Psalms 51–100 (WBC 20; Dallas, 1990), 491.  Cf. B. Otzen, ThWAT vi, 213–20 = TDOT xi, 196–202.

22 23

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almost stereotypical language. I conclude, therefore, that our writer has drawn on a standard word pair as a way of expressing the general observation that the law could be manipulated by those being addressed in a manner which brought trouble, and hence hardship, on those for whom it was supposed to act as a means of redress. This way of expression, however, is sufficiently generalized as not to reveal exactly how this was done. Two more points remain as possible clues. First, we need to consider who is being addressed. The reference to writing, together with the implication of the second half of the verse that a number of trained officials were involved, makes it most unlikely that a local court setting—‘in the gate’, as the idiom goes—is envisaged (contrast 3.14, where I suggested that the names of the officials were indicative of both local and centralized appointees). We have evidence, on the other hand, that in Jerusalem there was some sort of higher court of referral.24 In the first place, of course, the king was the ultimate ‘judge’, and we have several narrative illustrations of that as well as references in the Psalms that support it. (Whether or not the narratives are historically accurate does not affect their evidence that this is what the writers could realistically suppose.) Second, there is an account in 2 Chron. 19.4-11 of how Jehoshaphat (ninth century) reformed the judicial system by instituting a court in Jerusalem to which cases could be referred from the local courts. Needless to say, the fact that this is recorded only in Chronicles has led many to doubt its historical value, though opinions are divided, with some strong advocates of its essential accuracy.25 Given the date considerably later than Isaiah’s time that I ascribe to this passage, it is not difficult to imagine that the author could have had this court in mind. 24  This link has also been made by C. Hardmeier, ‘Die judäische Unheils­ prophetie: Antwort auf einen Gesellschafts- und Normenwandel im Israel des 8. Jahrhunderts vor Christus’, in his Erzähldiskurs und Redepragmatik im Alten Testament: unterwegs zu einer performativen Theologie der Bibel (FAT 46; Tübingen, 2005), 243–71 (253–54). 25  For a full discussion, including a comprehensive survey of alternative positions, see B. S. Jackson, ‘Law in the Ninth Century: Jehoshaphat’s “Judicial Reform” ’, in H. G. M. Williamson (ed.), Understanding the History of Ancient Israel (Oxford, 2007), 369–97. Jackson acknowledges the Chronicler’s ‘spin’, but finds that in terms of institutional history some such development at that period was likely.



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Interestingly, Jackson, in the article just mentioned, observes tell­ingly that neither court as depicted in Chronicles worked on the basis of written law; in both cases the judges acted ‘charismatically’, as he puts it (note, for instance, the repeated references to God being with the judges in their work and of their functioning on his behalf; hence the warning in 19.7 not to be perverted by partiality or bribes. Jackson’s conclusion seems secure for the local courts, but his interpretation of v. 10 in relation to the Jerusalem court is less certain, though possible; even so, see v. 11). In that case we should have a further argument for maintaining that the writing here mentioned was not of the laws on which the court ruled but rather of the records of decisions reached. Such a manner of procedure also helps explain how decisions could be reached that were open to the kind of moral challenge here presented. We may deduce, therefore, that those addressed in the first half of the verse will have been the members of the elite who served in this high judicial capacity.26 (For the suitability of this court dealing with issues that may have affected land in the countryside, see on v. 2.) Whether they themselves wrote down their decisions and judgments, or whether professional scribes (as probably in the second half of the verse) did it on their instruction, is immaterial. As busy scribes is simply my guess to capture a possible force of the otherwise unattested use of the pi‘el participle of btk. The text is challenged by some (see above), and the use of the pi‘el here is explained by others as iterative. 2. In the first line equivalents of judgment (÷yd), steal (lzg), legal rights (fpm), poor (yyn[), and my people (ym[) all appear in 3.13-15, which may be consulted for some of the detail.27 There is a 26  Hentschke’s attempt to maintain that there was an older form of official named a qqwjm seems overly speculative; it is based only on three scattered texts (Deut. 33.21; Jud. 5.14; Isa. 33.22) and they are by no means necessarily so specific; cf. R. Hentschke, Satzung und Setzender: ein Beitrag zur israelitischen Rechtsterminologie (BWANT 83; Stuttgart, 1963), 11–20; for more detailed criticisms, see G. Liedke, Gestalt und Bezeichnung alttestamentlicher Rechtssätze: eine formgeschichtlich-terminologische Studie (WMANT 39; Neukirchen-Vluyn, 1971), 157–58 with 159–61. 27  Add now also P. A. Bird, ‘Poor Man or Poor Woman? Gendering the Poor in Prophetic Texts’, in B. Becking and M. Dijkstra (eds), On Reading Prophetic Texts: Gender-Specific and Related Studies in Memory of Fokkelien van DijkHemmes (BibIntS 18; Leiden, 1996), 37–51. For a wider study of poverty as

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slight difference, however. There it was the Lord who was depicted as rising to exercise judgment on behalf of his oppressed people whereas here the same vocabulary is used to refer to what we might call due legal process. That meaning is attested elsewhere for both the words referring to the legal system (÷yd and fpm), so that there is no particular difficulty (pace Wildberger); see, for instance, Jer. 5.28; Ps. 140.13. The verb to turn away is frequent in legal terminology and usually has the sense of ‘to pervert’ justice.28 Here, however (according to MT, defended above), it takes the needy as its object, so indicating that the officials in question acted with some intent to prevent those with a case from even reaching the court. The needy (µyld), a term not used previously in Isaiah, occurs frequently elsewhere in parallelism with other words for ‘the poor’ and in antithetical parallelism with ‘the rich’, so that it is difficult to isolate in what way it may be distinctive.29 Where overtones are present, they seem to imply such ideas as weak, thin, slight. It is not equivalent of destitute, however; the needy person was still liable for the half-shekel ‘atonement’ tax in Exod. 30.15, while Lev. 14.21 indicates that he might be able to afford a lamb (with other gifts) as an offering. (Note that equally, using a different word for the poor, Prov. 13.23 indicates that he might nevertheless have a field of which he could be deprived by injustice.) All this is suggestive of a small-holder or something of the sort, one who could just scrape a living together but who would be put in jeopardy by any misuse of the kind of patronage system on which he would have regularly depended to even out better and worse agricultural years. The situation envisaged here, therefore, may be compared with that already explained at 3.13-15 and 5.8-10 above, where I included some cautionary remarks concerning older simplistic described here, see U. Berges, ‘Die Armen im Buch Jesaja’, Biblica 80 (1999), 153–77; indeed, he starts his particular discussion of Isaiah with this present passage (p. 160). 28  Bovati, Re-Establishing Justice, 191–92. Bäckersten’s objection, p. 139, that it would be ‘an outrageous statement that the crown’s measures were intended to rob the poor of justice’ overlooks the familiar use, as here, of the so-called ‘pseudo-citation’, a common rhetorical device that does not carry the implication that those accused actually said or thought what is superficially attributed to them. 29  See the full presentation and analysis of H.-J. Fabry, ThWAT ii, 221–44 = TDOT iii, 208–30; also Schwantes, Das Recht der Armen, 20–29.



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‘capitalist’ interpretations and indicated a range of possible factors that might have been the cause. In the present instance, given my preference for the composition of this passage as a late redactional summary, we should probably not press any particular circumstance too far; the author will have wanted simply to sum up in a generalizing way some of the worst abuses as identified by Isaiah himself and other prophetic predecessors.30 It may be noted as an additional point here, however, that the case has rightly been made in the recent past that these concerns were not limited to rural areas but that they could also apply equally (and sometimes more appropriately) to city-dwellers both as the objects of oppression and as oppressors of those with land outside the cities in which they might have personal interests for a variety of reasons.31 At 3.14 Isaiah accused his audience about what they had ‘robbed from the poor’ (yn[h tlzg). Here, the same vocabulary is reflected but the accusation is transferred more metaphorically to the perversion of the legal process itself: to steal (lzgl) the legal rights of the poor (yyn[) of my people. This shift seems entirely appropriate in a later redactional reflective summary. While rather obviously steal (or ‘rob’) is not used elsewhere in formal legal discourse,32 its use in the closely similar Prov. 22.22 (‘do not rob [lzg] the poor…or crush the afflicted [yn[]’) was noted at v. 1 above (and see too the comments on 3.15). The antecedent of the first person singular suffix on my people (otherwise not used in this passage) is ambiguous, as it might theoretically refer to either God or the prophet. Given the influence already noted repeatedly from 3.13-15, the most likely explanation is that this too is derived from the use of ‘my people’ in 3.15, so that a reference to God is implied. For the stereotypical reference to widows and fatherless (orphans), see on 1.17 (and cf. 9.16); they stand representatively for all those who do not have natural legal champions. That they are 30  Kreuch, Das Amos- und Jesajabuch, 57–58, is surely correct to cast doubt on Fey’s claim that there is specific direct influence from Amos 2.7. 31   See W. J. Houston, ‘Exit the Oppressed Peasant? Rethinking the Background of Social Criticism in the Prophets’, in Day (ed.), Prophecy and Prophets, 101–16. 32  Schwantes, Das Recht der Armen, 105, however, notes qdxw fpm lzg, ‘robbery of justice and right’, at Eccl. 5.7, and that the two words occur in the same context, at least, in Isa. 61.8.

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made spoil and plunder is again no more than colourful language, possibly inspired by the use in v. 6 below. There, it is more or less expected (the treatment of their enemies by the Assyrians); here it is shocking, as it refers to inner-community abuse. For the semantic range of the words themselves, see on 8.4. 3. For the switch to second-person address in a woe-oracle, see on 5.8. By addressing the evil-doers directly at this point, the force of the implied judgment is heightened. The rhetorical questions, what will you do and to whom will you flee, also indicate that there can now be no escape. This does not demand a reference to the final fall of the kingdom, but it would certainly be appropriate. The anticipated judgment is described with a rising vocabulary of horror. The verb and noun ‘visit’/visitation (dqp/hdqp) have a wide range of applications from visiting in compassion and grace to visiting in punishment.33 Only the context indicates in each case what sort of ‘visit’ is intended, and the following remarks relate exclusively to punishment. The day of visitation appears also in the (probably late) Mic. 7.434 and in plural form (‘days of visitation’) at Hos. 9.7, and note that ‘what will you do’ also occurs just before, in 9.5; what is more, 9.3 and 6 make clear that exile is part of this punishment. The verb from which this noun derives is common elsewhere in Hosea (1.4; 2.15; 4.9, 14; 8.13; 9.9; 12.3), and a survey could show that the punishment envisaged is serious and can be final, even if its nature is not specified in further detail. This fits with its prominent use elsewhere in early written prophecy, e.g. Amos 3.2, 14, and we may note that it will be Assyria’s own fate according to the additional comment in Isa. 10.12 just below. This general term is therefore specified here, by a ‘parallelism of nearer definition’, as devastation that will come from afar. It is uncertain whether this noun, haw, has any Semitic cognate that does not derive directly from Hebrew so that determination of its sense is dependent on context and later tradition. Beyse defines it (and the verb from which it derives) as ‘part of the vocabulary of catastrophe’.35 At Isa. 17.12-13 and Ps. 65.8 it refers to the roar or thunder of water or the sea, and Jer. 51.55 is closely related to this.   G. André, ThWAT vi, 708–23 = TDOT xii, 50–63.  Note also ‘the year of visitation’ in Jer. 11.23; 23.12; 48.44, and the ‘time of visitation’ in Jer. 6.15; 8.12; 10.15; 46.21; 49.8; 50.27, 31; 51.18. 35  K.-M. Beyse, ThWAT vii, 898–901 = TDOT xiv, 236–39. 33 34



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In Prov. 1.27 it is parallel with hpws, ‘storm wind’, while at Ezek. 38.9 and Zeph. 1.15 it is used in close association with clouds and darkness. The verb appeared at Isa. 6.11 (and cf. 37.26; 2 Kgs 19.25) to describe the devastation of cities, and at Job 30.3 and 38.27 it seems to refer to desolated arable land. Closer still to our passage, at Isa. 47.11 it refers to the ruin of Babylon, presumably by foreign attack. It can equally refer to individual destruction (Pss. 35.8; 63.10; Job 30.14[?]; Prov. 3.25). The word has often been rendered here as ‘devastating storm’, but it is clear that the uniting element in the uses of the word is destruction and devastation; only occasionally does this clearly take the form of a storm, and in the present passage, while that is not impossible, it does not seem to be required. Gray’s link to the storm of the theophany therefore seems to outstrip the evidence.36 The use at 47.11 seems conceptually closest, and there its intensity is marked by its coming at the climax of a string of disasters through the earlier part of the verse. The parallel in thought may also be supported by the possible echo here of 5.26, where come and from afar both occur with reference to the swift and sudden invasion by a foreign nation; de Jong, 125, notes the close parallel in wording at Jer. 4.16; 5.15, which would fit my presumed dating well (but contrast Dietrich, 45–47). The second line of the verse serves further to underline the inescapable nature of the punishment. The need for help in Isaiah’s own day was recognized when some turned to Egypt for support (31.1-3), but the closer parallel for the combination of flee for help comes in the only other pairing of these two terms in the OT, at 20.6. There, ‘the inhabitant of this coastland’ observes the fate of those ‘to whom we fled for help and deliverance from the king of Assyria’ and they recognize that now they have no hope of escape. This verse is probably an addition to the core of the narrative in Isaiah 20 and on the basis of some of its other textual and historical links Cook has dated it to the exilic period.37 This would bring it close to the date I have postulated above for our passage as 36  A strong case for finding theophanic echoes throughout this line has been made, however, by S. Grätz, Der strafende Wettergott: Erwägungen zur Traditionsgeschichte des Adad-Fluchs im Alten Orient und im Alten Testament (BBB 114; Bodenheim, 1998), 211–13. 37  Cook, A Sign and a Wonder, 139–44.

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well, and influence one way or the other is possible. Either way, it reinforces the conclusion that the present verse is concentrated on the hopeless nature of the addressees’ plight. Treasured possessions is a contextually determined rendering of µkdwbk, usually ‘your glory’. It is too simplistic, and linguistically unsound, just to state that dwbk has a basic meaning of heaviness which can therefore mean wealth. In biblical usage it generally means honour, and this is certainly a prominent notion in Isaiah.38 There are a number of other passages where somebody’s honour is defined in particular by their wealth or ‘substance’,39 though this nuance is clearer in some cases than others; see, for instance, 61.6, where it stands in parallel with µywg lyj, ‘strength/wealth of nations’; 66.12; Gen. 31.1; 1 Kgs 3.13 (the first of a number of passages where dwbk occurs in close association with r[, ‘riches’); Prov. 3.16; 8.18; 22.4; Nah. 2.10; Ps. 49.17, 18; 2 Chron. 17.5; 32.27, etc., and possibly also Gen. 45.13 (and for the use of the adjectival form with this sense, see Gen. 13.2). The force of the usage here, therefore, is probably to imply that these oppressors had taken pride and sought self-assurance in their wealth (broadly defined) and furthermore that this gave them standing in society. But in the time of judgment, the question where will you leave all this indicates both that it cannot deliver them and also that it cannot be preserved for the future. It fits with the Isaianic theme that there is no source of security or position other than God. 4. The rendering of the first line of this verse is admittedly uncertain (see the notes above), so that any interpretation has to be marked as uncertain. As understood here, it continues the rhetorical questions of v. 3: where will you flee so as to avoid…? The two fates, whose advent is deemed to be inevitable, are pretty final in their consequences and thus are suggestive of the fall of the kingdom of Judah. The word used here for prisoners (rysa) occurs elsewhere in the Hebrew Bible only at 42.7, which is a central passage in relation to the fate of those in the Babylonian exile, and 24.22 (which is a much later text and where the word applies to foreign kings); we may also compare the use of the related form µyrwsa at 49.9 and 61.1. The accompanying verb, crouching, is also indicative of  See on 6.3 and my essay ‘From One Degree of Glory to Another’.  See the discussion by Fox, Proverbs 1–9, 157; slightly differently Wagner, ‘The Glory of the Nations’, 202. 38 39



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degradation. It does not occur anywhere else in Isaiah 1–39, but (with varying applications) see 45:23; 46:1, 2; 65:12. Similarly, the addition of the slain who have fallen, while using common vocabulary, suggests that the nation confronts only death or deportation. For the final line of the verse, see the introductory discussion above for its place in the composition and the commentary on 5.25 for the wording.

WO E TO A S S Y R IA (10.5-15)

Woe to Assyria, the rod of my anger and the staff of my rage [it is in their hand] [6] I send him against a godless nation and command him against a people who arouse my fury, to despoil spoil and to plunder plundering, and so to make them something that is trampled down like mud in the streets. [7] But he does not think along these lines, nor is he minded to act in this way, for his mind is set on destroying and on cutting off far from few nations. [8] For he says: Are not my commanders one and all kings? [9]Is not Calno like Carchemish? Or is not Hamath like Arpad? Or is not Samaria like Damascus? [10] Just as my hand has reached out against the idol kingdoms—and their images were (more numerous) than those of Jerusalem and Samaria—[11]indeed, just as I have acted against Samaria and her idols, so I will act against Jerusalem and her idols. [12] When the Lord completes all his work on Mount Zion and in Jerusalem I will punish the fruit of the arrogance of the king of Assyria’s mind and the boasting of his haughty looks. [13] For he says: I have achieved this by the strength of my own hand, and by my own wisdom, because I am so clever; and I have removed the boundaries of the peoples, and I have plundered their provisions, and like a bull I have brought down those who sat (enthroned). [14] And my hand has reached out, as to a nest, for the wealth of the peoples; and as one gathers eggs that have been abandoned, so I have gathered in all the earth; and there was none that escaped by flying, or that opened its beak and chirped. [5]



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Should the pick vaunt itself above the one who hews with it, or should the saw magnify itself over the one who pushes it to and fro? As if a rod should try to shake the one who picks it up, as if a staff should pick up someone who is not wood!

[15]

5. ym[z µdyb awhAhfmw: ‘a staff is he in their hand my wrath’, for which Delitzsch comments that there are two possibilities: either ym[z is ‘a permutation of the predicative awh, which is placed emphatically in the foreground’ (‘and it is a staff in their hand, mine indignation’; cf. Naegelsbach), or µdyb awh is elliptical for µdyb awh ra, ‘the staff which they hold is (the staff of) my wrath’ (Gesenius; cf. Beuken; similarly Mittmann, ‘Wehe!’, who takes µ[z as the subject and hfm as the predicate; but for his interpretation of µ[z as ‘Verwünschung’, see the commentary below; for a fuller survey of early views, see Alexander). König adds as a third possibility that awh can occasionally serve as a copula (Gen. 2.14 etc.), and so renders ‘überhaupt denen, in deren Hand mein Grimm ein Stock war!’ All this is difficult, however, because (i) everywhere else in this poem Assyria is taken as a singular, not a plural as in µdyb (Dillmann acknowledges this but does not find the inconsistency decisive, citing vv. 24, 25 and 26 below, but the problem is that they are not necessarily all part of an originally single composition), and (ii) the obviously expected parallelism of ypa fb and ym[z hfm is interrupted by µdyb awh. More recently, in order at least to circumvent the first of these difficulties, several commentators have suggested that we here have an example of the enclitic mem: ‘a staff is he in the hand of my fury’.1 This hardly gives good sense, however, as we know from the first half of the verse that ‘it is the staff that is the instrument of God’s anger, rather than the hand that is angry’ (Emerton, ‘Enclitic mem’, 331). Equally, Tsumura has tried perfectly reasonably to explain the syntax of MT by appeal to what he classes an AXB pattern (here, effectively a broken construct chain), hence ‘the staff of my fury is in their hand’,2 but he fails to comment on the difficulty posed by the plural form of suffix.

1  So first, very briefly, Ginsberg, ‘The Ugaritic Texts’, 115, and again in ‘Some Emendations’, 54; see further Hummel, ‘Enclitic Mem’, 94; W. L. Holladay, ‘Structure, Syntax and Meaning in Jeremiah iv 11-12A’, VT 26 (1976), 28–37 (36 n. 31); Oswalt; B. A. Levine,‘ “Wehe, Assur, Rute meines Zorns!” (Jesaja 10,5)’, in M. Oeming and K. Schmid (eds), Der eine Gott und die Götter: Polytheismus und Monotheismus im antiken Israel (AThANT 82; Zurich, 2003), 77–96 (89: ‘Arm-Stock’); Smith; Roberts. D. N. Freedman, ‘The Broken Construct Chain’, Biblica 53 (1972), 534–36 (repr. in Pottery, Poetry, and Prophecy: Studies in Early Hebrew Poetry [Winona Lake, 1980], 339–41), combines the supposition of an enclitic mem with a slight emendation to read µ-ydyb, ‘in my hand’. 2  D. T. Tsumura, ‘Literary Insertion (AXB Pattern) in Biblical Hebrew’, VT 33 (1983), 468–82 (472–73), and ‘Literary Insertion, AXB Pattern, in Hebrew and Ugaritic’, UF 18 (1986), 351–61 (354).

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The LXX also goes its own way at this point.3 Instead of an equivalent of hfm it gives another word for anger and runs the two halves of the verse together: rJavbdo~ tou' qumou' mou kai; ojrgh'~ ejstin ejn tai'~ cersi;n aujtw'n, ‘the rod of my wrath and anger is in their hands’. It also introduces ojrghv into the opening clause of the next verse, apparently using it to represent the verbal suffix on wnjla: th;n ojrghvn mou eij~ e[qno~ a[nomon ajpostelw'; alternatively, though less plausibly in view of the word order, it might have been introduced from the second line of v. 6, where ytrb[ appears not to have been translated. On the basis of the former supposition, Ulrich conjectures that ym[z was therefore taken by the translator with v. 6.4 This still does not solve the problem of kai; ojrgh'~ in v. 5, however. Since there is nothing about the wording here that need have caused the translator any difficulty (cf. 10.24, for instance), it may simply be that it represents an ad sensum interpretative rendering of hfm (so Ottley; Troxel, 228 n. 117, noting that at 10.26 there is a comparable use of oJ qumo;~ aujtou' to render whfmw as well as the use of ojrgh for ‘atypical equivalents in two other places’ [37.3; 59.19]; Wilk, ‘Between Scripture and History’, 200; Seeligmann, 11 n. 8, conjectures actually emending to plhghv, but that seems rash to me). In that case, and with ym[z included in v. 6, it is clear that LXX presupposed a text similar to MT, as do P and V (with different line division); T paraphrases radically. 1QIsaa and such fragments of 4QIsae of this verse as survive also attest the same text. In view of the obvious difficulties with MT, which cannot be adequately explained away, and the united textual tradition which forecloses any supported form of emendation, conjectures of various sorts have been proposed over the years, e.g., omit awh (Lowth; Blenkinsopp; Chan, ‘Rhetorical Reversal’; but this still leaves the problem of the plural suffix), move ym[z to follow hfmw without any further change (Knobel and Fischer, but this faces the same difficulty), read ydyb awh ym[z hfmw (Procksch, and cf. Scott; BHS, but such extensive conjectural rewriting is not generally favoured these days if it can be avoided), ym[z hfmw (w)mdyb awh (Driver, ‘Studies’, 383, followed by neb, Clements, and Wildberger, following Procksch but keeping MT with the alternative conjecture that the plural suffix was originally of the singular form wm- [cf. GK §§ 91l and 103f n. 3], though it remains uncertain that this form of suffix could be used on a singular noun, even if it can have singular force on a preposition), emend µdyb to µwyb (Kissane: ‘a staff is he in the day of my wrath’), or ydyb (Schreiner, 3  A separate debate about LXX in this passage, which does not directly affect our discussion of the Hebrew text, concerns the extent to which contemporaneous events may have influenced the translator. Seeligmann, 87–88, tentatively proposed that there were allusions to the Maccabean victories over Seleucid Syria (‘the Assyrians’), and in some respects he was followed by van der Kooij, 34–38. The opposite opinion has been argued by Troxel, 209–34, and idem, ‘What’s in a Name?’ 4  Ulrich, ‘Light from 1QIsaa’, 202–3. Were that correct, we could further conjecture that v. 5b might originally have read µdyb whfmw, ‘and his staff is in their hand’. This still leaves the problem of the plural suffix on dy, however, so that it does not seem a useful track to follow.



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Sion-Jerusalem, 264; Fohrer, who also regards it as part of a gloss) or wydyb (Kaiser, but it is not certain that the ‘metre’ requires a word here, as he asserts), or dyb (Popper), or µyrIhe (Ehrlich; cf. v. 15). In my opinion, the most likely solution remains that which has been widely proposed, namely, without any change to the text, to bracket µdyb awh as a later explanatory gloss, as explained further in the exegesis below; see, for instance, Hitzig (who seems first to have proposed this), Ewald, 281–83; Duhm; Marti; Gray; Skinner; Condamin; Wade; Driver, ‘Glosses’, 125; Donner, 142; Schoors; Hardmeier, Texttheorie, 230; Barth 23; Watts; de Jong, 127. 6. ytrb[ µ[: for the force of the construct relationship here, see JM §129g. Gibson, 31, and WO, 144, equally plausibly propose ‘who incur my wrath’. Mistakenly construing this as a regular subjective genitive (perhaps under the influence of much later Maccabean history), LXX (which we have seen in v. 5 is rendering somewhat freely in this passage) may have understood this as ‘the people who execute my fury’ and so ‘collapsed it’ simply into tw'ó ejmw'ó law'ó ‘my people’ (Troxel, 229), thus effectively turning the force of the passage on its head. (Alternatively, but less plausibly, the translator may have moved the element of ‘fury’ into the first half of the verse; see on v. 5 above.) This may also help account for the rendering of the first part of the last line of the verse as kai; katapatei'n ta~ povlei~, ‘and to tread down the cities’. lll and zblw: forms of the inf. constr. of ["[ verbs are not stable, as this combination shows; cf. BL, 435–39; JM §82k. K wmylw, Q wmwlw; both forms of the inf. constr. are attested elsewhere (BDB, 962A), though the Q form is much commoner (BL, 399). 1QIsaa has Q but without the suffix (µwlw, pace Burrows) whereas 4QIsae includes the suffix though most of the previous part of the word has been lost (wm[…]). Metrical considerations are not sufficient evidence to delete the word as a gloss (contra Donner, 142). 7. wbblb dymhl: LXX ajpallavxei5 oJ nou'~ aujtou', ‘his mind will change’. Ottley speculated that the translator’s text had some form of hn rather than dm (he does not comment on the preposition before the noun, however), but unnecessarily. It is probable that the translator already anticipated the difficulties that some more modern commentators have (equally unnecessarily) found in this line (see the exegesis below) and so rendered in an interpretative manner to circumvent the possible misunderstanding. On the unusual use of nou'~ here, see Troxel, 229–30. f[m al: for the rendering in T (syjb al), see S. Speier, ‘Zu drei Jesaja­ stellen’, ThZ 21 (1965), 310–13 (312–13). 8. Whereas most versions and 1QIsaa seem to support MT, LXX reformulates this verse quite dramatically, and also joins it closely to the next one: kai; eja;n ei[pwsin aujtw'ó Su; movno~ ei[ a[rcwn, kai; ejrei'…, ‘And if they say to him, “You alone are ruler”, then he will say…’. Several factors may be in play here; part of it may simply be paraphrase, as urged by Troxel, 100, and ‘What’s in a 5  So the universal reading in extant mss. Ziegler conjecturally (and neatly) emends to ajpallavxai, which can mean ‘destroy’ as well as ‘change’.

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Name’, 342 (against Ottley); part may relate to the translator’s wider concern to contrast the nature of Israel’s future ruler with that of non-Israelite kings (Freund, ‘From Kings to Archons’, 68); but what needs to be added to these observations is the likelihood that, since movno~ is not an attested equivalent for wdjy elsewhere, he also read wdjy as d?yÀjy (contra Ottley, but see HUBP), an impossible reading in the present text and so one which may have constrained him to rewrite more freely. rmay yk: there is no need to conjecture that the yod on rmay should be deleted as a dittograph (Gray). Apart from the fact that the passage is uniformly in the imperfect, Isaiah elsewhere distinctively uses this speech form where normally a perfect might be expected; see on 1.11 and v. 13 below. wdjy: this adverbial use with a somewhat emphatic force is relatively common,6 so that there is no need to follow Talmon in emending to ydIjy yrE in order to find here a reference to the Assyrian king’s council.7 9. Once again, while all other textual witnesses are in agreement with MT (though P read the first letter of wnlk as a b), LXX departs significantly: the first two words are rendered kai; ejrei' Oujk e[labon th;n cwvran th;n ejpavnw Babulw'no~ (‘and he will say, Did I not take the country above Babylon’), in place of the third word (wnlk) we find kai; Calannh, ou| oJ puvrgo~ wjÊkodomhvqh (‘and Chalanne, where the tower was built’), and Arabia is supplied as the equivalent of Hamath and Arpad. Two features stand out here, in addition to the wider concerns about the translator’s construal of this passage as a whole. First, some of the unusual geographical equivalents were thought by Seeligmann, 78–79, ‘to make it conform to the diaspora of his own time’, and in this he has been followed by, for instance, Tov, ‘Personal Names’, 421. Second, there is an evident allusion to the story of the Tower of Babel in Gen. 11.1-9, a narrative whose influence on the translator was already noted at 9.10, and see also 11.11 below (on this, in addition to the other works mentioned in this paragraph, see Koenig, 87–103). Both points have been challenged by van der Kooij, 36–38, who modifies the first proposal by linking the names with the areas of Seleucid conquests (especially Antiochus III; see too Wilk, ‘Between Scripture and History’, 194–95); in addition he maintains that Calannh points away from the Babel story and proposes instead that the tower refers to the building of the capital city Seleucia. On this occasion, Troxel, 145–48 and 226–28, and ‘What’s in a Name?’ works carefully through van der Kooij’s arguments in order to refute them in favour of a position closer to Seeligmann’s. For example, it is probable that the translator identified wnlk with hnlk 6  See BDB, 403B; DCH iv, 198; for discussions of this lexeme, see further JM §102d n. 7; J. Mauchline, ‘The Uses of yaḥad and yaḥdāu in the Old Testament’, TGUOS 13 (1947–49), 51–53; M. D. Goldman, ‘Lexicographical Notes on Exegesis’, ABR 1 (1951), 57–67 (61–63); J. C. de Moor, ‘Lexical Remarks concerning yaḥad and yaḥdaw’, VT 7 (1957), 350–55; H.-J. Fabry, ThWAT iii, 595–603 = TDOT vi, 40–48. 7  S. Talmon, ‘The Sectarian djy—A Biblical Noun’, VT 3 (1953), 133–40 (139), correctly dubbed ‘dubious’ by Pulikottil, 167, in the course of his extended discussion of the word at Qumran in comparison with the biblical text (165–85).



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in Gen. 10.10, rendered in LXX as Calannh ejn th'Ê gh'Ê Sennaar, thus linking it firmly with Gen. 11. Going beyond Troxel’s discussion, it is interesting also to note at this point that 4QpIsac f.6.4 appears to refer v. 13 of this chapter to ‘the region of Babylon’, though unfortunately the rest of the interpretation is lost; this may suggest some sort of shared tradition of interpretation with LXX (see Metzenthin, 208–9). alAµa…alh: as at 40.28, and for the syntactically positive counterpart, see on v. 15 below (cf. van Leeuwen, ‘Die Partikel µai’, 40). qmdk: 1QIsaa qmrdk; see on 7.8. 10-11. The syntax of these two verses is challenging. As the text stands (see, for instance, Hitzig, Knobel, Alexander, Delitzsch, and Dillmann), v. 10 cannot sensibly be construed as a complete sentence (‘As I have struck… so their images…’); the second line must therefore be a compressed circumstantial clause (see GK §133e, Gibson, 46, and WO, 265, who supply other examples of the pregnant use of ÷m, in which contextual commonsense has to suggest what appropriate verb or adjective should be supplied [pace Ehrlich, and differently Liss, 142]; hence here ‘more numerous’; ‘stronger’ would also be possible). Verse 11 must therefore be the apodosis of v. 10, with the comparative element (rak) repeated in order to add greater specificity: as my hand has struck out against the idol kingdoms—in fact, as I have acted specifically against Samaria—so I will act against Jerusalem. The construction is complicated, however, by the fact that the apodosis adds alh at the beginning, so that the resumptive element is not identical, as would normally be expected. In addition, v. 11 could be construed very well as an independent sentence. The flow between the two verses is thus far from obviously smooth. One solution8 is to resort to paraphrase by way of a slight expansion ad sensum to try to represent what the text implies and to allow that this syntactical unevenness can be tolerated because, as will be argued below, these verses look like later additions of a sort which compare closely with some added anti-idol elements elsewhere in the first part of Isaiah which also have some awkwardly expressed elements. Better, perhaps, though at this stage of research more speculative, is to adopt the solution suggested by Sivan and Schniedewind. They argue on the basis of quite a wide range of evidence that alh was an asseverative particle in Classical Hebrew.9 In the present case they claim that any attempt to render it as introducing a rhetorical question (as is traditional) fails to deal adequately with its combination here with the ÷k…rak series which it introduces. In support they note further the parallel expressions ÷k…rak ûa (Deut. 12.22) and hnh ÷k…rak (1 Sam. 26.24). They thus render alh as ‘indeed’.10

8  Young’s suggestion, that v. 11 is a second protasis with v. 10 and that v. 12 is the apodosis, does not seem possible; the ÷k of 11b must be syntactically decisive. 9  On this, see also A. Moshavi, ‘Rhetorical Question or Assertion? The Pragmatics of al¿h} in Biblical Hebrew’, JANES 32 (2011), 91–105 (with further bibliography). 10  D. Sivan and W. Schniedewind, ‘Letting Your “Yes” Be “No” in Ancient Israel: A Study of the Asseverative al and aOlh}’, JSS 38 (1993), 209–26 (214–15).

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Other scholars have concluded that the present form of the text cannot be tolerated, however. Marti takes v. 10 alone as a later addition and proposes that in the second line we should emend to µlwry ylyspm and add either wbr or µybr. Neither emendation seems necessary, however, and the problem remains that v. 10 would still not be a comprehensible sentence on its own; it would be most unusual to have a gloss added which had to be syntactically dependent on what follows. Gray regards v. 10 as ‘mutilated’, but although he sets out some of the difficulties he does not present a clearly stated solution. Kissane reads the second line of v. 10 as ÷wrmy µlwry µa hdwhy ylysp wlkwyh, ‘Shall Judah’s images succeed? Shall they protect Jerusalem?’, but this is too free and bold a conjecture to command support. A similar reaction applies to the suggestion of Tur-Sinai, 182–83, who reads the last two words of the first half as tk,l,m]m¾ ÷wrm, and then continues hylyspw hylylaw (‘As my hand hath found the kingdom of Samaria and her idols and graven images excelled those of Jerusalem’). 10. l…haxm: it is very rare for l to govern the object after axm; see also v. 14 below, Neh. 9.32, and Ps. 21.9. axm includes within its semantic range the notion of hostile encounter, and that is presumably emphasized here, so I have paraphrased as ‘has reached out against’; this may represent a slight development from the sense in v. 14, from where the expression here is taken. lylah: 1QIsaa µylylah. P and T also imply plural. The context clearly shows that a reference to idols is intended, and for this the plural is always used elsewhere. Text-critically that leaves a delicate balance between MT’s lectio difficilior and a decision whether it is possible even as an anomaly. Either way, the context does not favour rendering the singular here as ‘worthless’ (Motyer; Blenkinsopp), while the conjectural emendation to hL,aeh; tkol;m]M¾l¾ (Cheyne; Ehrlich; Jacob) is feeble. LXX has ojloluvxate, which at 13.6 renders wlylh. As this is graphically quite close to MT, it cannot be adduced as evidence for this emendation either, as others have proposed. (The LXX’s free rendering of the first half of the line is effectively a continuation of the interpretive line which he adopted in v. 9; cf. Ziegler, 63–64, and Troxel, 228.) µhylyspw: another example of the preference for the masculine form of the third person plural suffix on a plural noun, despite the feminine plural antecedent; see on 3.16. 12. hyhw is lacking in 1QIsaa but is presupposed by LXX.11 In terms of classical syntax, hyhw should be resumed by another waw + perfect, whereas here it is resumed by the imperfect dqpa. This construction is also sufficiently frequently attested, however, for us not to conclude that the scroll’s form must be superior; cf. GK §112y, referring inter alia, to Isa 2.2; 3.24; 4.3; 7.18, 21, 22, 23 (other examples are listed by Driver, Tenses §121, obs. 1). Although the examples from ch. 7 all concern the formulaic awhh µwyb hyhw, which perhaps allows them to be construed somewhat in isolation, and although the same might be said of 2.2 (and cf. Mic. 4.1) with its µymyh tyrjab, 3.24 and 4.3 at least 11  Elements of 10.12-13 and 19 are preserved in 4QpIsac fragments 6–7, col. ii; see Horgan, 97–98 and 110–12; Metzenthin, 206–12. There are no textual variants, but for one element of interpretation, see on v. 9 above.



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remain as secure parallels. On both those occasions 1QIsaa also has variants: wyhyw at 3.24 and hyhyw at 4.3. Reasons have been given in the commentary ad loc. for maintaining that the scroll is probably secondary. The substitution of a waw conjunctive for a waw consecutive (e.g. waw + imperfect where MT has waw + perfect) is not uncommon in the scroll, including instances of a change from hyhw even when not being used in our particular construction, and Kutscher, 357, not unreasonably attributes this to the influence of what he calls ‘later Hebrew’. In the present instance either attested form of the text is possible, but in view of the scroll’s treatment of the same construction elsewhere in a manner which is demonstrably later the suspicion must be that its omission here is also secondary. dqpa: LXX ejpavxei, hence third person versus all other witnesses to the text, which have first person. Following the third-person reference to ynda in the previous clause, dqpy would certainly be smoother, and most commentators and indeed many modern translations (e.g. neb, nrsv) simply emend accordingly (cf. BHS). They may be right, but on the other hand LXX may equally be understood as a simplifying rendering (see comments on the next phrase as well, and Wilk, ‘Between Scripture and History’, 200–1, finds this characteristic of the translator’s stylistic variations throughout this passage), while the harder reading of the majority of witnesses introduces a certain vividness of style, effectively introducing a direct form of speech by a change of subject (König; Knobel aptly compares 22.19). This has recently been favoured also by Barthélemy, 74–75, and Beuken.12 rwaAûlm bbl ldgAyrpAl[: as vocalized by the Masoretes this is a single construct chain, which even GK §128a notes is of unusual length. Syntactically, dqp does sometimes have the accusative object omitted, so that MT is certainly possible; see further in the commentary below. An attractive alternative possibility would be to construe rwaAûlm as the direct object, with the rest of the previous Al[ phrase as strictly parallel with the following one; cf. neb: ‘he will punish the king of Assyria for this fruit of his pride13 and for his arrogance and vainglory’. Against this, however, there is no object marker before ûlm, as might have been expected on the basis of its use earlier in the verse, the absence of any suffix on bbl is abrupt (contrast wyny[ in the parallel phrase at the end of the verse, and note neb’s ‘his pride’), and the word order is not what might have been expected. I have therefore hesitantly rendered with MT above. LXX has simplified (and paraphrased) the first part of the phrase somewhat—ejpi to;n nou'n to;n mevgan—and then construed the king of Assyria14 as standing in apposition with it.

12  The alternative proposal of Gaster, ‘Notes’, 72, that ynda is ‘an incorrect gloss’ and that rwaAûlm is the subject, is highly implausible. 13  Presumably vocalizing bb;le, though Brockington does not comment. 14  In fact, he translates as to;n a[rconta tw'n ÆAssurivwn, which again raises the question whether he has more contemporary circumstances in mind. Of some 80 occurrences of ûlm in Isaiah (including 25 occurrences of rwaAûlm), only here and

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13. rma: 1QIsaa rmawy, thus conforming exactly with v. 8 (q.v.). While either is obviously possible (and LXX supports MT’s perfect), I have adopted the scroll reading as marginally harder and because it is attractive (though not inevitable) to think that the author or editor who was responsible for both may have been consistent. dyrwaw…rysaw: the wider context is an account of the Assyrian’s speech, and in this the verbs have past reference both in the preceding line and in the material following. P, V, and T also all treat as past tense; LXX has future, but it renders the qatal and wayyiqtol forms in this passage as future as well (whether or not this is under the influence of a contemporizing interpretation of the passage; see above), so that it is obviously not a reliable guide. We should therefore have expected these verbs to be vocalized as waw consecutives (as with axmtw following), and most commentators and translators simply make that simple revocalization accordingly. So far as the ‘original intention’ of the text is concerned that is obviously correct and I have translated accordingly, but it does not explain why the Masoretes should have so blatantly vocalized differently; they cannot have meant these two verbs to be taken in a final sense (the usual significance of a simple waw with imperfect). Kimhi sought to make a virtue exegetically of the presence of both future and past elements in this verse by relating them to past Assyrian conquests and to future intentions (see now also Beuken), while Ibn Ezra suggested that the future here refers to things taking place in the present; they both, therefore, treat the waws as copulative, as became normal in later forms of the language. More recently Hitzig, Delitzsch, Dillmann, GK §107b n. 2, and others have proposed that in this instance the verbs should be taken as iterative; alternatively (König, Syntax §366t) this may be a case where, as with similar instances elsewhere, there is a tendency by the Masoretes to throw statements into the future if they are considered to be as yet unfulfilled. Neither suggestion, however, is able to explain the evident inconsistency that results (ytw and axmtw). Interestingly, the same applies at 63.3-6, which includes the only other occurrence of dyrwaw. rysaw: while Ehrlich is correct to observe that this is the only passage where the hiph‘il of rws has lwbg as its object and equally that lwbg is elsewhere frequently the object of gysh (mentioned already by Hitzig and Knobel), that is no good cause to propose an emendation. rysh can govern a very wide range of objects (see DCH vi, 138–41) and, in view of the Assyrian policy of incorporating rebellious territory into Greater Assyria, it seems entirely appropriate here. The point is not the same as (re)moving boundary stones between fields. µhytdyt[w: 1QIsaa agrees with K though with the longer suffix form (hmhytwdyt[w); Q has µh,yte/dWt[}w". dt[ means ‘be ready’ (though the qal is not attested), and the derived adjective in the K form means ‘ready, prepared’, though elsewhere always of people. The only other place where the Q spelling occurs in the consonantal text is at Est. 8.13 (again with reference to people), but in that passage there is again a K/Q distinction with Q there equivalent to at 8.21 is the equivalent not the expected basileuv~ or similar. As before, Troxel, 230–34, adduces several lines of argument to urge caution.



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K here. It would thus be tidy to suppose that the Masoretes made a distinction between dyt[ referring to people who are ready in one way or another and dwt[ (a passive participle form, attested as a reading only here in Q) for things made ready, i.e. stores, provisions. We should then have to suppose that the K tradition here (followed also by the scroll) arose because of the greater frequency of the K form. LXX th;n ijscu;n aujtw'n is obviously too paraphrastic here to be of any real help, V principes is probably following K (unless it is based on dWT['; see below) but is less suitable as an object of ytw, P wnksyhwn supports the understanding I have suggested, and so too, probably, does T’s looser ÷whtjbwt ywrq. Wildberger seems confused here in his argument against Q; he states that dWt[} (= Q) means ‘ihre Böcke’ (ram or he-goat) in the sense of ‘their leaders’, and that this is not suitable in the context. However, for that the vocalization should be dWT[' (for which see Mittmann, ‘Wehe!’, 120), for which there is no Masoretic tradition here. Curiously, Wildberger does not appeal to V in support, as he might have done;15 Gray toys with this, with reference to 14.9, but he does not in fact adopt it. ytw: this looks like a po‘el of hcv. It must be assumed that this is a variant spelling (not otherwise attested) of the familiar root hsv (so already Kimhi), which gives excellent sense here; indeed, some mss have this spelling (see the third apparatus in HUBP), no doubt as a correction to the more familiar form.16 This is the only instance of a po‘el of a h"l verb (GK §75z); furthermore, it is difficult to distinguish the meaning of the po‘el from the qal (pace GK §55b), so that one might speculate as to the reason for its occurrence here. In the course of a discussion of the po‘el in general but with particular reference to Isaiah, Gzella offers two possible explanations: either it was a rhetorical ploy to assimilate the sound to that of the two preceding verbs (which both derive from hollow roots) or it is a ‘hybrid form which combines the consonantal skeleton of the root hsv with the vowel melody of the—otherwise unattested—polel…of its less frequent variant ssv’. Either way, the use of the po‘el would be ‘a mere device for creating a by-form on the spot’.17

15  Couey, Reading the Poetry, 173 n. 128 and 176, by contrast, cites both V and s in favour of this reading, which he then adopts, albeit without realizing, apparently, that this also involves a change to the Masoretic pointing; he might have been explicit that he is therefore working outside the Masoretic tradition, not simply choosing one option within it. 16  For a suggested explanation of the unusual spelling (basically, attraction of the s to the preceding ), see Delitzsch, Lese- und Schreibfehler, 60; Greenspahn, Hapax Legomena, 165–66. 17  H. Gzella, ‘So-called Po‘el Forms in Isaiah and Elsewhere’, in van der Meer et al. (eds), Isaiah in Context, 63–81 (74). The essay provides a full discussion of previous studies of this verbal theme in arguing that the po‘el was a genuine morphological entity but that (unlike its equivalent in Arabic) it was not productive of any distinct meaning; it was available as a by-form for rhetorical or other poetic effects.

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rybak: this word (together with the first three letters of the next) is missing from 1QIsaa because of damage to the scroll, so that it cannot help in the textual discussions at this point except to the extent that it does not presuppose a longer text than MT.18 The Masoretic tradition preserves two readings. Q has ryBiK', an adjective meaning ‘great, mighty, much’, but occasionally used also as a substantive elsewhere (e.g. Job 34.17, 14; cf. Kimhi: ‘those who dwell in a great and strong place’). jps, ‘and exiled their vast populations’, apparently takes the word as a construct, but as Irvine, ‘Problems’, 141–42, observes, this would be unparalleled; it would be better to follow the more usual approach of taking the word as what he calls an ‘adverb of manner’, hence ‘like a mighty one’. K, which is more widely favoured, has ryBia'K]; indeed, Tsumura seeks to explain the current vocalization as an example of vowel sandhi (i.e. a fusion of two vowels whereby one is swallowed up by the other), citing other examples where, especially with a, shewa + short vowel > short vowel only (and cf. GK §23d).19 Be that as it may, the sense could be similar, though there are also other possibilities, such as that there is a reference here to a bull (a familiar symbol of strength in Assyrian art), or even to the divine title ‘the Mighty One’ (in which case we might consider vocalizing rybia;K; or ryBia'K;, for which there is also some evidence from antiquity; cf. HUBP); see further the exegesis below. The importance of this latter possibility here is that it has sometimes been used as an explanation for the origin of Q, the Masoretes wanting to avoid directly mentioning such a blasphemous claim (e.g. Dillmann; Zorell; König; Irvine, ‘Problems’20). The evidence of the versions has been differently evaluated. LXX reads kai; seivsw povlei~ katoikoumevna~, ‘and I will shake the inhabited cities’. P and T also have a reference to cities, and the latter’s pair ÷ypyqt ÷ykrk might indicate awareness of both Q and K readings. These translations have been used as part of the evidence to support radical emendations (see below). More plausibly, in my opinion, Irvine, ‘Problems’, shows in some detail that there are innerexegetical factors at work here which more naturally presuppose MT. LXX’s use of seivsw for the hiph‘il of dry is unparalleled, but it occurs in 14.16 for the hiph‘il of zgr in a passage which also (see v. 17) refers to the destruction of cities by a foreign tyrant. This parallel might have suggested itself to the translator on the grounds that he read Q as = ‘a great number of inhabitants’ and that he would have understood this from earlier in the passage (vv. 9-11) as 18  Assuming Ulrich and Flint are correct in tracing a remnant of the letter b before the µy of µybwy, Parry and Qimron’s proposed restoration of µym[ must be discounted. 19  D. T. Tsumura, ‘Vowel sandhi in Biblical Hebrew’, ZAW 109 (1997), 575–88; he analyses the present example on p. 586. 20  Irvine also suggests a further possibility, namely that there could be an allusion to the Akkadian cognate abāru, ‘strength’, as used by Assyrian kings in their own inscriptions, but in the case of quite a common lexeme such separate treatment here seems unlikely.



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a reference to the cities there listed.21 Alternatively, as suggested by Olofsson,22 it is possible that Q’s rybk was misunderstood or read as hrybk (and this is especially attractive with regard to T with its ÷ykrk rather than atrq), not ry[ as presupposed by those who wish to emend. I conclude that good sense can be made of MT, that the versions do not necessarily presuppose a significantly different text, and that a tricolon at this point is rhetorically effective (see below). Nevertheless, many emendations have been proposed. Duhm observed that the line is short, that the versional evidence suggests variant readings, that after dyrwaw we should expect an expression of direction, and that the comparison ‘like a mighty one’ is unnecessary after the first line of the verse. He therefore conjectured that, principally by haplography, something like the following text became corrupted: rp[bw µyr[h rpab dyrwaw µybwy, ‘and I have brought down the cities into ashes and the enthroned into the dust’. This has been followed with only minor variations by, for instance, Marti (with µhybwy in place of µybwy); Wade; Donner, 143 (who reads ybwy Årah at the end), Wildberger; Clements (tentatively), et al., and cf. BHS in part; similarly, but less radically, Gray simply emends rybak to rp[b. Irvine, ‘Problems’, has dealt with all these points in detail. In addition to his discussion of the versions (see above) he observes that the hiph‘il of dry is not always followed by an indication of direction (see Prov. 21.22; Pss 56.8; 59.12),23 and that a further reference to the king’s boasting, especially as interpreted below, is contextually appropriate. Other minority proposals seem equally unnecessary, e.g., rwb la drwaw (Ehrlich), bybia;K], ‘like ripe corn’ (Kissane) or dwbk (Popper) or rbak, ‘like pinions’ (Mittmann, ‘Wehe!’, 121–23) for rybak, add µyb[b, ‘on the clouds’ before µybwy (Fischer), dbeaoK] ryDIa'w" for rybak dyrwaw (Bruno, 263), and DÒrÒaew:, ‘and I have chastized’ for dyrwaw (Tur-Sinai; Auvray). µybwy: ‘those who sit’, which can mean either inhabitants/residents or those who sit enthroned. Although the ancient versions tend to favour the former, both possibilities are well supported in more modern times. See further the exegesis below. 14. LXX again renders freely.24 Whether this should be taken as a specific allusion to the Hellenistic period (see Seeligmann, 81, though with a mistaken conflation of the Hebrew wording of vv. 14 and 10; van der Kooij, 38) remains uncertain. In particular it loses the vivid metaphor of the last line (as does T) in favour of a generalized expression of comprehensive dominance. l…axmtw: see on v. 10 above. 21  For an alternative speculation, see B. Gosse, ‘L’emploi de kbyr dans le livre d’Isaïe, un problème de méthodologie’, BZ ns 33 (1989), 259–60. 22   S. Olofsson, God Is My Rock: A Study of Translation Technique and Theological Exegesis in the Septuagint (ConB, OT Series 31; Stockholm, 1990), 91–92. 23  See too Leavins, Verbs of Leading, 182–83. 24  For some discussion of later Hebrew non-Masoretic variants in this verse, see H. G. von Mutius, ‘Nichtmasoretisch Jesaja-Zitate im Midrasch ha-Gadol und eine Grundsatzbemerkung zum verhältnis von Masora und Koran’, BZ ns 53 (2009), 106–17 (106–8).

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÷qk: for the use of the definite article here, see the discussion on 1.18 (µynk). For the pregnant use of the comparative particle, see GK §118w and below. The word order, with the reduced comparative clause represented by ÷qk coming between the verb and subject of the main sentence, is explained by C. L. Miller, ‘The Syntax of Elliptical Comparative Constructions’, ZAH 17–20 (2004–2007), 136–49 (146–47). ¹sakw: for the use of the infinitive construct with an unexpressed impersonal subject, see JM §124s; Gibson, 130. ddn: this is a qal participle of ddn, ‘retreat, flee, wander, stray’. As usually construed (e.g. ‘there was none that moved a wing’; nrsv), this would then be the only transitive use of the verb in this theme, and the sense of ‘move/ flutter’ can be little more than a guess from the context; it is difficult to justify the supposed semantic development implied. Mittmann, ‘Wehe!’, 125, correctly notes this difficulty, and observes furthermore that in other places where the verb applies to birds (whether literally or metaphorically) it always has the sense of ‘to flee’ (Isa. 16.2-3; Jer. 4.25; 9.9; Ps. 55.7-8; Prov. 27.8). He therefore proposes that the same should apply here and that ¹nk should be construed as an adverbial accusative. I have adopted this in my translation. 15. l[: on both occurrences in this line LXX renders a[vneu. This is hardly good evidence for a text reading ÷m or a reason to suppose that the translator did not understand the word (contra Seeligmann, 68). As the second line also shows, and as we have seen repeatedly through this passage, the LXX rendering is better understood as paraphrastic. µa: for the syntax, following an interrogative h, see GK §150h; JM §161e; M. S. Smith, Poetic Heroes (Grand Rapids, 2014), 220–22. wpynm: 1QIsaa wyp ynm. While it is true that there is a gap between the two elements in the scroll (not noted in printed editions before Ulrich and Flint), it is difficult to believe that there is any intention actually to construe as two words (‘from his mouth’?), not least because it still follows the preposition l[. The plural form of suffix was seen at 5.25 to be not uncommon (see Kutscher, 443) and perhaps to reflect dialectal pronunciation (Kutscher, 51 and 447). In the present instance, however, there may rather be conscious assimilation to the plural form in the next line (q.v.). ¹ynhk: for the use of k in this construction, see WO, 203. The infinitive construct is here being used verbally with fb as its nominative subject; see not only the use of ta, but also the Masoretic vocalization with initial qamets rather than a shortened form that would have been used for a construct of the nominal form; cf. GK §115i; Gibson, 130. taw: the conjunction, which is attested in a number of leading Masoretic mss, makes no sense here and just seems to be an aberrant reading. It is not present in 1QIsaa or many other Masoretic mss; cf. HUBP. One might consider whether it once belonged with the previous word, wfb, ‘his rod’, making clear the connection back to v. 5, but the textual evidence plus the lack of suffix on hfm in the second half of the line rather tells against this. wymyrm: sense from the wider context as well as the evidence of P and V (LXX and T paraphrase, but also seem to presuppose a singular understanding)



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indicates that the referent of this participle is almost certainly singular (contra Alexander). Some commentators therefore emend to singular, wmyrm, while others explain as a somewhat artificial form of the ‘plural of majesty’ to indicate that God is the subject; cf. GK §124k (and see on 3.12); JM §136e; WO, 123; Hitzig; Gray. Å[ al: al is used not infrequently to negate a single word; see the examples listed already by Lowth and also at GK §152a n. 1, including ya al and µda al at 31.8. There is no good reason to emend to Åjl, ‘the taskmaster’, as suggested by Robertson, ‘Some Obscure Passages’, 318–19. The attempt by Amzallag25 to deduce from this that a hfm was originally a ‘copper sceptre hung up on a wooden staff’ seems to me to rest on a complete misunderstanding of the present verse.

The introductory ‘woe’ leaves no doubt that a new section begins here. It differs in some details from the use of ‘woe’ previously, however (see the commentary below), so that it cannot be merely a continuation from 10.1. In particular, its application to a foreign power, Assyria, marks it out as distinctive while at the same time Assyria remains the primary focus of attention throughout ch. 10 as a whole (at least). The word thus functions at a formal level to connect this passage with the preceding one, and in this it is also joined by the repetition of ¹a, ‘anger’, in v. 5 from v. 4.26 Equally, it should not be forgotten, however, that, as we have seen, 10.1-4 is a relatively late addition in terms of the composition as a whole, so that there is much to be said for the opinion of Becker, 200, that the present passage once followed immediately after the refrain poem and that its verbal connections with that poem (see on v. 6 below as well as ¹a, which is part of the refrain; he also wonders whether ‘send’ in v. 6 picks up 9.7) indicate that part of its purpose was to take forward and to identify the unnamed threat of that poem. (This, I should add, would be even more likely the case if at that early stage the stanza now found in 5.26-29 were still in its original place.) At the same time, however, this passage marks the start of a larger new section in the book (Sweeney; Berges, 124 = et, 108) in which the threat to Judah, though real, is shown to be limited, with 25   N. Amzallag, ‘Yahweh, the Canaanite God of Metallurgy?’, JSOT 33 (2009), 387–404 (395). 26  It would therefore be hazardous to start speculating about possible alternative locations for the passage, contra Procksch, who links it with 14.24-27.

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strong hope for a subsequent fresh beginning (ch. 11), this leading to a hymn of thanksgiving (ch. 12). This hymn marks the end of the whole of the first major division of Isaiah (chs 2–12, with ch. 1 as introduction to the whole book). It is noteworthy in support of this reading that, following our present poem (which at the synchronic level includes 10.16-19), all the material up to and including ch. 12 is introduced with the phrase awhh µwyb (hyhw), ‘on that day’ (10.20, 27; 11.10, 11; 12.1, 4; note that 11.1 does not mark a completely fresh unit; see the commentary ad loc.). There is less agreement as to where, within this larger section, the immediate passage concludes.27 The opening words of v. 20 (‘it will come to pass on that day…’) are an obvious fresh introduction, so that some commentators define the present unit as comprising vv. 5-19.28 In the introduction to vv. 16-19 below, however, I defend the view that they cannot have been originally composed as part of 5-15: they are not included within the speech pattern of 5-15, the Lord is there referred to in the third rather than the first person, and there are many signs of literary dependence on other passages elsewhere in Isaiah which suggests a completely different style of composition from that which characterizes vv. 5-15. The introductory ‘therefore’ in v. 16 thus suggests that vv. 16-19 were written later as a conscious additional and explanatory supplement to 5-15. The difference in use of ‘woe’ suggests that this passage is unlikely to slot neatly into some fixed form-critical category, so that (as I have argued in connection with a number of other passages previously) we can hardly use that approach to determine the answers to other questions which this passage raises. It will be better, therefore, from the point of view of method, to tackle literary-critical issues first on the basis of other considerations and then at the end to ask whether form-criticism can help evaluate what emerges as the earliest form of the text available to us.29

27  We may note as an extreme that Vermeylen, 252–54 and 296–97, even thought that the original continuation of 10.5-19 was 14.24-27, all the material in between having gradually accumulated over time. 28  See also A. Schmitt, Prophetischer Gottesbescheid in Mari und Israel: eine Strukturuntersuchung (BWANT 114; Stuttgart, 1982), 112–20. 29  A similar comment might be made about the unpersuasive arguments of Gitay, 191–211, that 10.5-32 should be taken in their entirety as a single speech.



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The opinion of most scholars that v. 12 is a later addition is to be accepted. It is clearly prose, and the suggestion that a poetic fragment can be salvaged from the second half of the verse is rejected in the commentary below. It starts, at least, with reference to both God and the Assyrian king in the third person, which does not fit the prevailing context of direct speech by them both. It also differs from the wider context by referring to the Assyrian in this manner and by introducing Mount Zion. In fact, a reference to Jerusalem is altogether out of place in a poem which is dealing primarily with the Assyrian’s punishment of Samaria on God’s behalf, but that argument would not hold if vv. 10-11 (or v. 11 alone) were original; I shall turn to that next. But even without this last point it seems impossible to defend v. 12 as part of the original poem. (On the question of what v. 13 most naturally follows, see below; it certainly is not v. 12!) Needless to say, the fact that the verse has been added later does not deprive it of theological importance; see the commentary below for its teaching and for a possible indication of the glossator’s audience; Blenkinsopp links it closely with 4.2-6. Turning next, then, to vv. 10-11, opinions differ between those who think that both are secondary and those who think that v. 11 could be original. The syntax of the two verses is not clear, but it was argued above that it seems best to treat them as two parts of a single sentence. Discussion of their literary status also therefore starts best by treating them together. There are several reasons for concluding that they too have been added subsequently (but prior to v. 12) to the original poem.30 (i) The series of rhetorical questions in v. 9 leads up to Samaria as its climax, and this seems to be the city which the passage as a whole has in view (see the commentary on v. 6). The references in vv. 10-11 to Jerusalem, with Jerusalem mentioned first in v. 10, seem both rhetorically and from the point of view of substance to be out of place, therefore, giving the impression of being a later application to a second set of circumstances. (ii) The verses suggest that the judgment to fall is a punishment for idolatry, but this differs from what has preceded. The previous

30  For some who argue the point in reasonable detail, see, for instance, Duhm; Donner, 142–43; Höffken, Untersuchungen, 247–48; Dietrich, 116–18; Høgenhaven, 116; Deck, 36; Liss, 144–45.

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two verses report the bragging of the Assyrian king on his power and independence of action, so that a switch to a discussion of the relative strength of different nations’ gods seems out of place. (iii) The general boasting of the Assyrian is continued directly in v. 13, and this looks like the natural continuation from v. 9. Along with v. 12, therefore, it would be easiest if vv. 10-11 could be bracketed out as well. (iv) The expression l ydy haxm, ‘my hand has found/struck out against’, seems to be an echo of its more natural use in v. 14, and the use of yty[ and h[a, ‘I have acted/I will act’, in v. 11 looks like a similar echo of yty[ in v. 13. This suggests that our verses are dependent upon the earlier poem. (v) The convoluted syntax of these two verses (however construed) is quite out of keeping with the surrounding material, and in addition they do not seem so convincing as elevated poetry; line lengths are awkward, and the repeated use of rak (plus ÷k) looks prosaic. (vi) It will be suggested in the commentary below that these two verses join a series of other short additions in Isaiah 1–39 which all focus on idols (though in a manner quite different from the anti-idol passages in Isa. 40–55). Unlike previous commentaries, therefore, it becomes possible to account for this addition as part of a wider group which show similar interest, thus making the addition less random in nature than is usually supposed.31 If the conclusion is right that vv. 10-11 should be taken together and that both seem to be secondary, we need only note briefly that a few have adopted the ‘halfway’ position that v. 11 is original and v. 10 is secondary (e.g. Marti; Fohrer); this, however, faces most of the same difficulties that we have already noted with regard to vv. 10 and 11 together. An influential modified proposal on this by Childs, Isaiah and the Assyrian Crisis, 42–43, has been followed by, for instance, Barth, 23; Vermeylen, 255; Gonçalves, 260; Becker, 202; 31  A most subtle variant on this conclusion is advanced by Machinist, ‘Ah, Assyria…’. Initially he provides a fine synchronic reading of the whole passage as it now stands, with careful consideration of its rhetorical focus and structural integrity; his readers are thus led to believe that he firmly supports the authorial integrity of the whole. Later, however, he returns to the question after consideration of some of the historical allusions in the text and agrees that vv. 10-12 cannot have been part of the very earliest form of this text; they represent an update in the light of Sennacherib’s campaign, with significant consequences for the interpretation of the passage as a whole. He still does not, however, adopt the view that v. 12 was added only later than vv. 10-11.



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Blum, 560; and Bäckersten, 153–54.32 He suggested that the two words for ‘and her idols’ (hylylalw and hybx[lw) should be regarded as later additions, the remainder then being a suitable part of the original oracle. It seems to me extremely questionable, however, whether one should just pick out odd separate words from a passage for deletion in order to make the remainder fit a presupposed notion of what the passage should be about. There is no evidence in the present case to support this move, the resulting text, though roughly balanced in terms of line length, remains prosaic in its construction, and the proposal does not come up with any plausible motivation for the later addition of these two words. As they stand, they link the verse closely in purpose with v. 10, which is acknowledged as secondary, so that it seems altogether more plausible to take v. 11 along with v. 10, with which it is syntactically joined, as part of the same addition. The clear desire to retain at least some reference to Jerusalem in the passage has already been shown to be unnecessary. We turn next to a consideration of v. 15. The first half of the verse uses rhetorical questions to reinforce the main ‘message’ of the preceding passage while the second half consciously links this back to the wording and imagery of the opening v. 5. Many commentators find this a satisfying conclusion to the earliest layer of composition. Others disagree. Some express themselves memorably but in a manner that is closer to a value judgment than an argument: ‘Dies weitschweifige, gegen die vorhergehenden Strophen so stark abfallende, jedenfalls sie nicht fortsetzende Gedicht kann nicht von Jes. sein’ (Duhm). Vermeylen finds the use here of ‘rod’ and ‘staff’ differs from its use in v. 5 and so consigns the verse to a later hand; like Marti before him, he compares 29.16 and 45.9 as illustrative of the same sort of outlook. Opinions here may evidently differ, but it seems difficult to me to press such considerations as far as these commentators have done (see the exegesis below). More important, because more evidence based, is the argument of Blenkinsopp, who takes v. 15 with what follows on the ground that the use of a rhetorical question followed by comment is a common feature of prophetic discourse and this comment Blenkinsopp finds 32  In fairness, it should be noted that in his more recent commentary Childs seems to accept that vv. 10-12 were not part of the earliest layer of composition while also focussing his attention, of course, on expounding their important contribution to the text that we now have.

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in vv. 16-19, introduced by ‘therefore’. He lists some ten passages in support of this, but in fact not one of them includes ‘therefore’. In my opinion his correct observation of this technique is fully satisfied by v. 15 on its own, with the second half commenting appropriately on the questions in the first half (see also below on the use of ‘therefore’ to introduce material which has been added later). On this basis, too, I do not share the view of some that merely the first half of the verse should be accepted as original (Wildberger; Barth, 23; Liss, 145; so correctly Dietrich, 119; Høgenhaven, 117; Kaiser; Mittmann, ‘Wehe!’). The provisional result of this literary-critical analysis is that the original poem comprised vv. 5-8, 13-15. Verses 10-12 were added later, and the commentary below will suggest that v. 12 is itself partially dependent on 10-11 and so is later than they are.33 The next question, therefore, is whether form-critical sense can be made of the original poem. It looks initially like a woe-oracle but it differs from most of those we have seen previously in that it is not addressed directly to the object of the woe, Assyria being referred to rather in the third person; by comparison with other woe-oracles in Isaiah, this section of the passage also seems to be longer than usual (Wildberger). Although this can be followed by a justification introduced by ‘therefore’, that is by no means essential, and we have seen plenty of cases where this is not the case. As elsewhere, so here the content of the judgment and its justification are included at length within the oracle (see especially the three-fold use of yk in vv. 7, 8, and 13); this too looks like an expanded version of what might initially be expected, therefore. A final distinctive feature is the formulation of v. 15 with its use of rhetorical questions and comment (Childs, Assyrian Crisis, 41, somewhat cavalierly dubs this ‘a wisdom saying which has the form of a disputation fable’). It is clear from this combination of unusual features that the initial categorization as a woe-oracle cannot suffice.34 While I 33  For reasons of space I have deliberately left out of consideration other, usually more radical, proposals, which have not attracted any significant support; see, for instance, Fullerton, ‘Problem’, and Huber, 41–50 (both opposed by Kaiser); Höffken, Untersuchungen, 248–49. There is a brief survey in Kilian, Jesaja 1–39, 104–6. 34  The difficulties in construing this passage as a woe-oracle are well noted by Weisman, Political Satire, 84–93. His useful analysis then proceeds wholly



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have emphasized several times elsewhere in this commentary that the application of form criticism must not be followed in a mechanistic or determinative manner, allowance needing to be made for independence and creativity in Isaiah’s speech forms on some occasions, it looks as though with regard to the present passage Murray, ‘Rhetoric of Disputation’, has set us on a more positive course by offering a full substantiation of a position which had previously been only briefly mentioned.35 With a realistic appreciation of possible variety between individual examples, Murray finds three essential elements in a disputation, namely thesis, counter-thesis, and dispute, these three being present in the ‘logical deep structure’ rather than necessarily in the ‘rhetorical surface structure’ (even though they will often be represented there as well). Although this form is best known in DeuteroIsaiah, Murray finds it in some other prophetic passages as well, including ours: vv. 5-6 present the thesis, v. 7 the counter-thesis, and vv. 8-9, 13-14 the dispute. This dispute opens (characteristically) with rhetorical questions, so that the fresh set of questions in v. 15 fits well as a further dispute element. Murray then expands at some length on the distinctive elements of this passage within his category as a whole, arguing reasonably on the basis of the challenge Isaiah faced in persuading his Judean audience of the conclusion he wished them to reach: ‘A rhetorically more effective approach was to play out a disputation between Yahweh and Assyria, in which sentiments about Assyria’s role, in all likelihood on the basis of the content of the passage to reach a definition such as ‘a polemic in poetic meter uttered by God’ (p. 86). While this is most helpfully expounded on the following pages, it remains purely descriptive and so hardly amounts to a form-critical alternative to ‘woe-oracle’. 35  See, e.g., Dietrich, 118–19, following a hint from J. Begrich, Studien zu Deuterojesaja (BWANT 77; Stuttgart, 1938), 42. See subsequently Clements, Isaiah and the Deliverance of Jerusalem, 38; C. Hardmeier, ‘Jesaja im Umbruch’, VF 31 (1986), 3–31 (8–9); Deck, 38; Blum, 560–61. For a full survey of earlier studies of the disputation genre, see Graffy, A Prophet Confronts. On p. 22 he finds the designation ‘inadequate’ for our present passage. Murray’s analysis seems to me to answer fully the objections to the proposal in its previous forms by Childs, Isaiah and the Assyrian Crisis, 44, and especially Whedbee, 68–73, as well as Graffy. Whedbee correctly labels the present full form of the text ‘baroque’, but then objects to the disputation label as being dependent on ‘isolated and subordinate elements in the speech’. This appraisal can hardly stand now in the face of Murray’s subsequent analysis.

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substantially similar to those held by his target audience, were presented in such a way as in the event to elicit that audience’s condemnation of Assyria’ (p. 110). As regards date, nearly all commentators have agreed that the original poem should be ascribed to Isaiah. The sentiments expressed fit well with his outlook, as the exposition below will suggest, and the allusions to the northern kingdom, as found in v. 6, are clearly his, whereas there are no allusions apparent to later passages (contrast vv. 16-19). The apparent climax of the list of place names in v. 9 as well as the sense of immediacy that the verse exudes also fits best within Isaiah’s period.36 Although it is true that ‘Assyria’ can sometimes serve elsewhere as a sobriquet, there is nothing in the present passage to indicate that this is the case here and any such suggestion seems to me to be artificial.37 If Isaianic authorship is agreed, there is greater diversity about the exact date within his ministry; indeed, some commentators refuse to be drawn (e.g. Oswalt; Motyer; Childs; Beuken). As interpreted below, the list of place names in v. 9 precludes a date as early as the Syro-Ephraimite invasion (e.g. Vitringa; Delitzsch; Smith; Hayes and Irvine; on their correct observation about the use of the imperfect in vv. 6-7, see the commentary below on v. 6) or even Sargon’s campaign in 720 (Sweeney; de Jong, ‘Window’, 99–102) and it suggests rather that we should not look earlier than 717 bce. Some have thought that the failure to list Ashdod, which was subjugated 36  Dever, ‘Archaeology’, mentions that vv. 5 and 9-12 ‘reflect realities that could be confirmed by archaeological data’ (see pp. 87–88), but unfortunately he does not provide any details. M. A. Sweeney, ‘Dating Prophetic Texts’, HS 48 (2007), 55–73, rightly points to this list of names and two or three other such details elsewhere to favour an eighth-century date, but this hardly justifies extending this date to 10.5–12.6 as a whole, as he too quickly concludes. I prefer the position of Beuken, ‘Lebanon with its Majesty’, who at the synchronic level finds two parallel panels in 10.5-34 and ch. 11, but who also recognizes that this has ‘emerged from a long and complicated process of evolution’ (p. 17). 37  See most recently Becker, 200–205, who draws particular attention to some similarities with 36.18-20 and 37.12-13 (curiously, see also Watts), though of course it is difficult to be sure which way any dependence may lie (cf. Laato, “About Zion”, 104–5); furthermore the references to idol gods, at least, relate to the secondary material in vv. 10-11. His arguments have been examined in detail by Liss, 166–71. For the few contrary opinions about Isaianic authorship in previous scholarship, see the list at Barth, 26 n. 50, and add Kaiser; against Mowinckel’s arguments in this regard, see Høgenhaven, 118.



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by the Assyrians in 711, indicates a date earlier than that (hence quite narrowly between 717 and 711; e.g., Procksch; Schreiner, Sion-Jerusalem, 265; Dietrich, 118; Barth, 26; Høgenhaven, 118; Gonçalves, 260), but this particular argument is weak. There is no suggestion that every city conquered by Assyria should be included, and Ashdod would not have suited the north–south arrangement of the list so well (given that it is south of Samaria; see correctly Bosshard-Nepustil, 240–41 n. 6). Others, therefore, have claimed that the passage should best be set immediately prior to the Assyrian invasion in 701 bce in the course of Hezekiah’s revolt (e.g. Duhm; Marti; Skinner; Kissane; Fohrer; Auvray; Gallagher, 85–86; Blenkinsopp). Clements not unreasonably rejects this latter opinion on the ground that ‘Isaiah condemned the alliance on which Hezekiah’s revolt was based, and foretold its disastrous outcome’. It may be noted in addition that this date is often supported by the reference to Jerusalem in v. 11, but if, as argued above, that verse is secondary, then that part of the argument loses its force. While there can be no final certainty, therefore (so Gray; Wildberger; Clements; Deck, 39), the earlier date, possibly in connection with the Ashdod rebellion, which began in 713, is to be preferred. In formal terms, this passage is poetically quite regular, though not, perhaps, as rigid as some have suggested. Mittmann, ‘Wehe!’, for instance, sets out the whole of the original poem as a series of 3+3 lines with the single exception of vv. 6b and 13b with 14a (both 3+4; rmay yk in v. 8 is rightly taken as an anacrusis, as it would also be in v. 13 if original). Likewise Donner, 142, simply states ‘Metrum: Doppeldreier (Sechser)’ and Wildberger comments that ‘the meter of the section is very consistent, a rarity, composed almost solely of three-stress bicola’ (exceptions being then allowed for vv. 6b, 13b, the last colon in v. 14, and v. 15).38 These all exclude vv. 10-11 and v. 12, which by any showing would be less regular, though this is not generally included in arguments for or against originality.

38  For those who favour a ‘colometric’ analysis, see Lescow, Das Stufenschema, 269–74. Diverging opinions about the division of the passage into stanzas is slightly anachronistic. My analysis immediately following indicates where Isaiah himself seems to have wanted to mark particular divisions.

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In my own analysis I should want to make some refinements to this basic position. First, without the gloss in v. 5, that line is clearly 3+2 with ywh in anacrusis, which seems suitable for an expression of woe (e.g. 5.20), or else 2+2+2; there is no overall consistency on the length of lines introduced by ywh elsewhere. Second, I should agree that v. 6b is longer than most lines in this poem (perhaps to be construed as 2+2+2) and offer the suggestion that this fits with a pattern that we have met repeatedly elsewhere, namely that there is either a lengthening or a break in rhythm (or both) at the end of poetic units; in this case, it would be to make clear the distinction between God’s statement of purpose and the start of the description in v. 7 of the Assyrian’s response. Third, and more importantly, I prefer to construe the second half of v. 13 as a tricolon, which (again as we have seen elsewhere) can be used to mark something of an emphasis. (The middle colon has only two words, but most commentators agree that µhytdyt[w can support two stresses.) This emphasis seems rhetorically effective in context. As a consequence of this, v. 14a becomes a 3+2, which seems acceptable and certainly better than Mittmann’s attempt to take the whole line as merely 4 stresses (Wildberger offers no comment on this). Finally, v. 15a is long; even if it can just about be taken as a 3+3, this can be done only by discounting no fewer than four prepositions/conjunctions. We do not know enough about how poetic rhythm was understood in antiquity, but this seems unusually generous. The line has the feel of a wisdom saying (even if it is not proverbial; see the discussion in Whedbee, 72), so that a break in rhythm for this concluding and to some extent resumptive element in the poem is appropriate. This refinement in appreciation for the poetic character of the passage is matched by its supreme artistry in satire and caricature (see especially Weisman, Political Satire, and Eidevall). The details of this will be noted at the relevant sections of the commentary below, but it is appropriate to observe here how the play on and reversal of prominent elements in Assyrian royal and imperial propaganda are distributed throughout the poem. The whole may be summarized in Machinist’s words (‘Assyria’, 734): ‘In short, the Assyrian becomes in Isaiah what the “enemy” was in his own inscriptions, who “trusted in his own strength” and “did not fear the oath of the gods” ’, on which Eidevall, 44, comments: ‘In other words, traits from the Assyrian enemy image were projected onto



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its official self-image. The effect was a caricature.’ The question how Isaiah, and by implication his Judean audience, would have known such elements has been discussed by several scholars,39 but at the end of the day we need not, perhaps, be so surprised at this. After all, the whole point of propaganda is that it should become widely known among those whom it is intended to impress. Knowledge of the type of material known to us now only from monumental inscriptions could have been widely disseminated by means of oral proclamation and transmission. The artistry of the present poem is a good illustration of its effectiveness. 5. Woe: see on 1.4. There are three differences in the usage here from all those we have met previously, however, and these strongly suggest that this cannot be part of the long series which came to its conclusion in 10.1 (Blenkinsopp even calls the usage here ‘somewhat incongruous’). First, unlike all the previous woes, this is directed against a foreign power, and is not internal to Judah or Israel. Second, this is the only example of this type of prophecy in Isaiah 1–12 which is presented as divine speech rather than as a

39  See especially Machinist, ‘Assyria’, 730–31, with some earlier bibliography (and see also the discussion of one aspect of this at 8.7 above), and subsequently Liss, 141–66, and ‘Undisclosed Speech’, section 3.1; S. Z. Aster, ‘Transmission of Neo-Assyrian Claims of Empire to Judah in the Late Eighth Century B.C.E.’, HUCA 78 (2007), 1–44; W. Morrow, ‘Tribute from Judah and the Transmission of Assyrian Propaganda’, in H. M. Niemann and M. Augustin (eds), “My Spirit at Rest in the North Country” (Zechariah 6.8): Collected Communications to the XXth Congress of the International Organization for the Study of the Old Testament, Helsinki 2010 (BEATAJ 57; Frankfurt am Main, 2011), 183–92; more broadly, M. Weinfeld, ‘The Protest against Imperialism in Ancient Israelite Prophecy’, in S. N. Eisenstadt (ed.), The Origins and Diversity of Axial Age Civilizations (Albany, 1986), 169–82; R. Lamprichs, Die Westexpansion des neuassyrischen Reiches: ein Strukturanalyse (AOAT 239; Kevelaer and Neukirchen-Vluyn, 1995); S. W. Holloway, Aššur Is King! Aššur Is King! Religion in the Exercise of Power in the Neo-Assyrian Empire (CHANE 10; Leiden, 2002); E. Frahm, ‘Mensch, Land und Volk: Aššur im Alten Testament’, in Renger (ed.), Assur, 267–85; Bagg, Die Assyrer und das Westland; A. Berlejung, ‘The Assyrians in the West: Assyrianization, Colonialism, Indifference, or Development Policy?’, in M. Nissinen (ed.), Congress Volume: Helsinki, 2010 (VTSup 148; Leiden, 2012), 21–59. Note here may also be taken of the comparison of this passage with the Psalms of Yahweh’s kingship in the light of responses to Assyrian universalizing claims in Flynn, YHWH Is King, 163–71.

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prophetic word (de Jong, 127; van der Kooij, ‘Nimrod’, 14; 1.24 is not a woe-oracle, of course). Third, what immediately follows is not the source of the implied condemnation but rather a statement of God’s purpose in the current circumstances. From one point of view, therefore, the immediate sequel is surprising indeed, but it is not the cause of woe against Assyria; that comes only with v. 7 and beyond. Calvin suggested that ‘woe’ had different meanings, including that it could be used simply as a call to attention, and that one should translate accordingly in varied contexts (see here the ‘O’ and ‘Ho’ of av and rv respectively). In the present case, however, it seems unlikely that the word serves only as a summons (Alexander), especially as (unlike at 1.24 and 17.6, to which Schmid appeals), the woe introduces the passage rather than coming within it, and to that extent it is difficult to put it into a wholly different category from 10.1 and the series in ch. 5. It seems obvious that Assyria refers especially to the political and military elements of that nation, since that is how Judah and the neighbouring states would have actually encountered it. In the following verses, however, it becomes clear that the embodiment of the state in the person of its king is the primary reference; see especially v. 8. Rod and staff have already appeared in close connection in MT 9.3 (though we have seen that there is some textual doubt about hfm, ‘staff’, there), and they will recur together again in vv. 15 and 24 below as well as at 14.5, 28.27, and 30.31-32, while rod on its own also occurs at 11.4 and 14.29 (at 19.13 it occurs in the sense of tribes, clans) and staff on its own at 10.26. With a basic meaning of staff, stick, rod, they could be used for quite a wide range of tasks, such as (i) agricultural or pastoral implement, (ii) rod for punishment or chastisement, (iii) weapon, and (iv) symbol of power (of any leader of a group, not necessarily, though very occasionally including, a monarch).40 It is true, therefore, that among this range of uses the words can refer to a ‘sceptre’ (e.g. Amos 1.5, 8; Ps. 45.7), but the uses in Isaiah 1–39 where the words occur in 40  This is A. Salvesen’s taxonomy of fb in Muraoka (ed.), Semantics, 122–36 (128); others differ slightly, as she shows; see, for instance, H.-J. Zobel, ThWAT vii, 967–68 = TDOT xiv, 304–5. The semantic overlap in the relevant senses with hfm is sufficient to conclude that they are used more or less synonymously in the present passage; cf. H. Simian-Yofre, ThWAT iv, 818–26 = TDOT viii, 241–49.



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parallel seem never to have this sense in mind,41 but nearly always42 to refer to a rod or stick used for beating and even killing (note, for instance, the use of hkh, ‘to smite’, at 10.24; 14.5-6, 29; 30.31). Furthermore, Brettler, God Is King, 80–81, observes that none of the passages where the kingship of God is a dominant theme (such as Isa. 6) ever mentions him carrying a sceptre: ‘the royal sceptre is not projected onto God’.43 There is therefore no virtue in trying to import some ambiguity into the present verse (contra Watts, Eidevall, 46–47, and Beuken); these implements are for divine discipline to be exercised in the ways spelt out in the next two verses. The notion of the Assyrian king being effectively God’s weapon is found in several Akkadian texts in periods close to Isaiah’s time. Chan, ‘Rhetorical Reversal’, refers to some where the king is called ‘the weapon of the great gods’ or ‘the weapon which destroys’. He then rightly follows Machinist in underlining the theological importance of the reversal implied by Isaiah in that now ‘all the actions of the Assyrian monarch are understood to come not from the command of his god Assur, but from the power of the Israelite god’ (Machinist, ‘Assyria’, 734; see too Liss, 150–52; Keel, Geschichte Jerusalems, 402); in other words at this first stage in the oracle there is an implicit claim not just that the Assyrian king is under God’s command but even more that the God of Israel has dethroned the Assyrian god. It is largely from the Assyrian king’s failure to recognize and so act in accordance with this new situation that his culpability derives. These implements are to give expression to God’s anger and rage. The former is familiar as having been included in the repeated refrain of 5.25 (where the word occurs twice), 9.11, 16, 20, and 10.4. There, the threat was imminent, whether for Israel or Judah or both; now, as threatened by 5.25-29, it is made explicit that it is the 41  Of the uses where one or other word occurs on its own, the best case might be made for 11.4, but the parallelism there again points more strongly to a (metaphorical) weapon of aggression. 42  At 28.27 the reference is to some form of threshing. 43  See too R. Jungbluth, Im Himmel und auf Erden: Dimensionen von Königs­ herrschaft im Alten Testament (BWANT 196; Stuttgart, 2011), 179–86, including a rejection of the contrary opinion (though based on different lexemes) of E. Ruprecht ‘Das Zepter Jahwes in den Berufungsvisionen von Jeremia und Amos’, ZAW 108 (1996), 55–69.

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Assyrians who are God’s agents in this matter, but who themselves become culpable by exceeding their divine brief. The much less common word rage (µ[z) has not appeared before in Isaiah, though it recurs, again in parallel with anger, and no doubt in close relation with the present verse, at v. 25 below, where it is the lead term in the pair; the two words occur in close proximity also at 30.27, while it occurs on its own at 13.5 and 26.20. Outside Isaiah 1–39 it occurs regularly in parallel with other terms for anger, such as ¹a ÷wrj, hrb[, and ¹xq; furthermore at Lam. 2.6 we have the expression wpa µ[zb, ‘in the rage of his anger’.44 In all these cases it refers to God’s wrath, and at 13.5 it is interesting to note that it is used following ylk, ‘the weapons of his wrath’, which again are wielded by foreign powers; it is thus closely parallel with our verse and so further confirms the interpretation of rod and staff given above. Mittmann, ‘Wehe!’ maintains that the word means rather ‘Verwünschung’ (‘curse, spell’), with reference to 30.27, Jer. 15.1618, and Hos. 7.16 (somewhat similarly Wildberger, who further argues that hfm refers primarily to a magical or divining rod and that µ[z is the verbal expression of the more emotive ¹a). In these passages µ[z is linked with divine speech in some way, but that does not necessarily mean that it is restricted to a form of speech, as the parallel in 30.27, to go no further, is sufficient to show: ‘his lips are full of µ[z, and his tongue is as a devouring fire’. The older English rendering ‘indignation’ possibly tried to capture the fact that this is a form of wrath (the normal current equivalent) that can find verbal expression (the verb is used sometimes in parallel with ‘curse’ and the like), and so I have rendered rage for the same reason. Nevertheless, as the majority of uses elsewhere in parallel with words for anger of some sort clearly show, it is difficult to suggest that we have anything more than synonymous parallelism here, a fact which Mittmann also plays down by his retention of MT, and his construal of rage as subject, and staff as predicate, a rendering that ignores the grammatical parallelism with the first half of the line and retains the plural suffix on ‘their hand’, which we saw in the notes above to be a fatal difficulty in MT. 44  See BDB, 276B–277A. B. Wiklander, ThWAT ii, 623 = TDOT iv, 109, gives a longer list of what he calls ‘synonyms’, but since µ[z does not always occur in the same contexts this already presupposes what the word means rather than providing evidence to establish that in the first place.



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It is in their hand: the case has been made in the notes above for regarding these two words (µdyb awh) as a later gloss. The first half of the verse is clear that Assyria is the rod that God wields to express his anger, and v. 15 indicates that this is the same for the staff of the second half as well (this point is overlooked by Knobel and others who try to drive a wedge between the two halves of our present verse in order to circumvent the obvious demands of parallelism45). At the level of the primary text, therefore, we have a consistent and colourful metaphor which fits also with the following verses, and the words ‘it is in their hand’, however hedged about, stand in obvious tension, if not contradiction, with this imagery. Elsewhere, however, rod and staff are used as a way of referring to the weapons or other forms of oppression that were wielded by the Assyrians or others: 9.3; 10.24; 14.5. The gloss will therefore have been added in order to try to harmonize these two images by way of emptying the present verse of its vivid presentation. It is impossible to date this harmonizing gloss, but on the assumption that a reference to 10.24 was the main motivation it might be that the author of that passage himself added it, or else at any time after that; the date of that passage is controversial, however; see the commentary there for discussion. 6. I send him…and command him: these common verbs make clear that Assyria (or rather, probably now the Assyrian king, referred to in the third masculine singular) is indeed merely God’s agent. While ‘sending’ is the standard verb for dispatching a messenger or other servant on some errand, however formal (see 6.8, to go no further46), here it is used in the pi‘el. While this has been said not to indicate any major semantic difference from the qal,47 it certainly imparts an ominous tone when it is not being used in the sense of ‘send away, dismiss’ (followed by ÷m), but rather 45  Mittmann, ‘Wehe!’, followed by Beuken, finds here by way of synthetic parallelism a dialectal element that opens the door to the dichotomy in the following verses: Assyria as God’s rod, but also as having a staff in their own hands, which opens up the possibility of their acting independently and so sinfully. Even if a subtle reading of the present text, this still falls foul of the problem that the suffix on dy should then be singular. 46  For a full survey with regard specifically to messengers, at least, see Meier, The Messenger, 37–42. 47  F.-L. Hossfeld and F. van der Welden, ThWAT viii, 64 = TDOT xv, 66. Better is M. Delcor and E. Jenni, THAT ii, 909–16 = TLOT iii, 1330–34.

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(as here) by the preposition b (see already Gesenius); Wildberger therefore suggests ‘laß ich es los’. Thus it occurs a number of times for God sending various sorts of wild animal on punitive missions, which would be quite suitable here metaphorically (hornets: Deut. 7.20; teeth of beasts: Deut. 32.24; snakes: Num. 21.6; Jer. 8.17; lions: 2 Kgs 17.25, 26; destroying swarms of flies and frogs: Ps. 78.45; an army of locusts and other vermin: Joel 2.25), but equally, again with God as subject, we find such other threatening objects as leanness/wasting disease (v. 16 below; Ps. 106.15), the sword (Jer. 9.15 and 49.37 [followed by yrja]; 24.10 and 29.17 [both followed by famine and disease]), ‘arrows of famine’ (Ezek. 5.16; cf. 5.17), cursing and other forms of destructive agents (Deut. 28.20; Mal. 2.2), fire (Ezek. 39.6; Hos. 8.14; frequently in Amos 1–2), disease and pestilence (Lev. 26.25; Ezek. 14.19; 28.23; Amos 4.10; 2 Chron. 7.13), anger and wrath (using different lexemes; Exod. 15.7; Ezek. 7.3; Ps. 78.49; Job 20.23), terror (Exod. 23.27), one person against another (Zech. 8.10), and enemies in general (2 Kgs 24.2). Command can be used especially in royal contexts almost with the sense of ‘appoint’, and Wildberger thinks that this is especially appropriate in the present verse, not least because here too it is followed by the preposition l[. That seems weak, however, especially following the threatening tone of the first half of the line. The two verbs do not get used frequently in parallel elsewhere, it is true, but see 2 Chron. 7.13, where they occur with this menacing sense. Elsewhere, the pairing is relatively neutral from the semantic perspective (Exod. 4.28; 1 Sam. 21.3; Jer. 27.3-4), but they certainly do not support this narrower sense of ‘appoint’; interestingly, in Jer. 14.14 and 23.32 the mark of the false prophet is precisely that God did not send or command them. For nation and people, see on 1.4, where they are similarly portrayed in negative terms. The nation which there was ‘sinful’ is here godless, for which see on 9.16, and the people who there were ‘guilt-laden’ are here the people who arouse my fury (for the grammar, see the notes above), using a different word for wrath than in v. 5 but one found previously in 9.18. Thus the particular aspects of the description here both come from adjacent stanzas in the refrain poem. Similarly, the first part of the statement of purpose, to despoil spoil and to plunder plundering, is a clear echo of the name of Isaiah’s child in 8.1-4: the two nouns, spoil and plunder, are part



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of that name in 8.1 and 3, while spoil occurs again in its explanation in 8.4. In the present verse, these two nouns have been linked with their cognate verbs in a typically Hebrew form of idiom (see comparable uses for these words at Ezek. 29.19; 38.12, 13) which can admittedly only be captured with poor English style. That reprise of 8.1 is amplified here by the explanation that things will go even further this time, that it will make them something that is trampled down like mud in the streets. In 5.5 the vineyard was subject to trampling, but there by animals in a rural image that was applied only at the end to Israel and Judah. Here, the depiction is urban from the start and sharper—not so much an accidental consequence of the breaking down of a protective wall as the aim of the whole directive. It is therefore unlikely that there is any direct allusion here to 5.5; rather, as Wildberger points out, trampling occurs as a form of judgment also at 28.18 and we should note especially that there is a close analogy in 5.25, where corpses become ‘like offal in the streets’; see the commentary there for a list of passages outside Isaiah that show how widespread was horror at the notion of corpses being left exposed in the streets. Two wider and important questions arise in connection with this verse that now need to be addressed: the identity of the nation being judged and the ‘tense’ element of the verbs. Some commentators maintain that the nation in question is Israel/ Samaria (e.g. Gesenius; Hitzig; Procksch; Schreiner, Sion-Jerusalem, 264; de Jong, 128; van der Kooij, ‘Nimrod’, 15; Schmid, ‘Anfänge’, 435), some that it is Judah (e.g. Marti; Fischer), and some that it is both (e.g. Dillmann; Young; Clements). In the latter two cases, however, the reasoning is either very general, based simply on an assumption about what Isaiah must have meant, or else on arguments based especially on vv. 10-11, which I have already argued (with many others) are not part of the earliest composition. All the arguments built on solid textual evidence agree in clarifying that originally Israel must have been in view: (i) the allusions already noted to 9.16 and 18 indicate that the ‘godless nation’ is Ephraim/Israel and that it is they who have incurred God’s fury; (ii) this same point of reference continues with the reference back to 8.1-4 that it is Samaria whose spoil will be carried away; (iii) in 28.3 ‘the crown of the drunkards of Ephraim will be trampled under foot’; thus all four clauses in the verse have close parallels elsewhere in the early material in Isaiah that refers explicitly

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to Ephraim, Israel, or Samaria; (iv) finally, the sequence of cities conquered by the Assyrian as listed in v. 9 reaches its climax with Samaria (see below). Now, it may well be that, rather as in the case of the sequence in 7.8-9a, the reader is meant tacitly to conclude from this that the same could apply by extension to Jerusalem, but that is not the same thing as saying that Jerusalem is directly mentioned here (a point perhaps not fully grasped by Liss, 149). The whole structure of the passage leads up to, and should therefore be referred to, Samaria. The verbs for ‘send’ and ‘command’ are imperfect, and the same will apply to those in the next verse. If they are taken as a simple future—what God intends to do, thus dating the passage before the fall of Samaria—a difficulty obviously arises with the reference to Carchemish in v. 9 as a city that has already been taken. As we shall see, that refers to 717 bce, i.e. after the fall of Samaria. It is true that Carchemish had been subdued previously by the Assyrians and tribute exacted, but the argument of v. 9 depends on like being compared with like, so that we need to look for the date when it was effectively made part of greater Assyria, with some of its inhabitants deported and some new Assyrian settlers brought in. This precludes dating the present passage before 717 and hence before the fall of Samaria a few years earlier (contra Delitzsch; Hayes and Irvine; Sweeney). Of the majority who correctly date the passage later (see the introductory discussion above for the variety of suggestions), few directly address the question of how to render these verbs. Gray suggests that they ‘may be frequentative’,48 but that does not seem to fit the rather precise application to the mission explicitly against Samaria. Procksch thinks alternatively that they ‘enthalten finalen Sinn, der Jahves Absicht ausdrückt, die im Zorngericht über Israel bereits erfüllt ist’. Better, I think, is to postulate the use of the historic present.49 The words of the Assyrian in vv. 13-14 will show 48  See too Hitzig; Fullerton, ‘Problem’, 178 n. 1; Mittmann, ‘Wehe!’, 117; Liss, 149. 49  Cf. Brockelmann, Syntax §42e; slightly differently JM §113h. The complexities of the question are discussed at length by R. Bartelmus, HYH: Bedeutung und Funktion eines hebräischen “Allerweltswortes”—zugleich ein Beitrag zur Frage des hebräischen Tempussystems (ATSAT 17; St. Ottilien, 1982), 54–66. For a discussion of yiqtol verbs in poetry, see recently Joosten, 425–32. Of course it might be claimed that the verbs here are an archaic preterite, but that seems less likely.



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that he regards these events as already past, and so we may suppose that the imperfect is used here to add a sense of vivid immediacy to the expression of God’s purpose; cf. Kissane, ‘against an impious nation do I send him…’. This also allows the inference to be drawn that Judah should heed the lessons of history. 7. The introductory but he (awhw) is emphatic (cf. Obermayer, Göttliche Gewalt, 77): there is a strong contrast between God’s plans and the Assyrian’s self-presentation of his fulfilment of that role. Two closely parallel clauses give expression to his thought. The second is the more straightforward: nor is he minded to act in this way, literally ‘and his heart does not think so’.50 Given that, as is well known, the heart was considered to be the seat of mental and intellectual activity, and that ‘think’ (bj) includes the sense of plan or devise, my English paraphrase seems to convey reasonably closely what is intended. The verb in the first half of the line, the pi‘el of hmd, is less common. The verb means ‘to be like’, and Jenni has described the semantic development in question as follows: ‘pi. “to equate, compare” and estimatively “to consider appropriate, plan, imagine” ’.51 It occurs also at 14.24 as the leading verb in parallel with Å[y, ‘plan by taking counsel’. It is therefore difficult to draw a sharp distinction between the two halves of our line; they seem together to emphasize the fully conscious resolve of the Assyrian not to see things the same way as the God who commissioned him. In the text as we now have it, this startling position is substantiated by three separate clauses each introduced with yk, for, ‘because’ (cf. 9.3-5); see the second half of this verse and the introduction to vv. 8 and 13 (and if vv. 10-12 are later additions, as maintained here, they will, of course, have followed in quicker succession than they do now). The second and third examples both come with part of the verb ‘to say’ and so have been regarded by many as later editorial additions. It would be intelligible for this to be added at v. 13 after the addition of vv. 10-12 in order to clarify the flow of thought, and the words might have been added at v. 8 in imitation. This is far 50  For a possible Akkadian parallel for ÷k al (lā kinnu/kitti), implying more specifically ‘not right, evil, wrong’, see R. Goldstein, ‘A Suggestion Regarding the Meaning of 2 Kings 19:9 and the Composition of 2 Kings 17:7-23’, VT 63 (2013), 393–407 (397). 51   E. Jenni, TLOT i, 339 (cf. THAT i, 451); see also H. D. Preuss, ThWAT ii, 267 and 270 = TDOT iii, 251 and 253.

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from certain, however, as v. 8 does in fact introduce direct speech by the Assyrian which would not otherwise be so clear, so that it could equally well be original. Some commentators take the view that only one substantiation can be permitted, but this seems unnecessarily restrictive. Each of the three adduces a different element of independent self-assertiveness and hubris and each can be readily understood as contrary to the divine intention. The first is to exceed the extent and severity of the stated commission; the second is to brag about the superiority of the officials under the Assyrian king’s command; and the third is to boast of his own prowess in all that he does. I therefore see no reason to bracket any of them out or to try to interpret any in a manner which makes it the same as another. In the present verse, the Assyrian boasts first that his mind (i.e. his heart, as in the previous line) is set on destroying. While it is certainly the case that God had already commissioned him to make Israel like something that is trampled down like mud in the streets, and that as we have seen that already looks relatively final, it seems clear from the way that this verse is worded that to destroy them goes one step further: complete annihilation or extermination.52 The verb (dymh) occurs sometimes in Deuteronomy (and also in the Deuteronomic History) with regard to what Israel should do to the indigenous population when entering the promised land (7.24; 9.3; 31.3, 4; cf. niph‘al in 7.23; 12.30) but it is used even more frequently in the warnings of punishment and the curses with which Israel herself is threatened if she disobeys the covenant conditions (Deut. 6.15; 7.4; 9.8, 14, 19, 25; 28.48, 63; the niph‘al form occurs more frequently in ch. 28; see vv. 20, 24, 45, 51, 61; see too 4.26). Elsewhere it can also be applied (inter alia) to the eradication of dynasties and the destruction of cities and their populations. Significantly, Lohfink observes that when it occurs in a series of verbs with the same object it nearly always stands last, as if to indicate that it represents ‘the bitter end of the whole chain of events’. As here so elsewhere, destroying is used in close association with cutting off (tyrkhl); cf. Lev. 26.30; Deut. 12.29-30; 1 Sam. 24.22; Isa. 14.22-23; 48.19; Ezek. 14.8-9; 25.7; Mic. 5.9-13; Ps. 37.38, though we may note that this is not as common as its 52  For fuller detail relating to most of the following description, see N. Lohfink, ThWAT viii, 176–98 = TDOT xv, 177–98.



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association with dba, ‘perish’ (some 23 times). Both verbs occur a number of times on their own elsewhere in Isaiah, and, as Beuken points out, everywhere else such complete annihilation is God’s prerogative alone (for destroy, see 13.9; 23.11; 26.14; 48.19; for cut off, see 11.13; 14.22; 18.5; 22.25; 29.20; 48.9; 55.13; 56.553). All this strongly supports the view that the Assyrian had exceeded what God intended in terms of the severity of the judgment (contra Høgenhaven, 115; Liss, 152–53; Bäckersten, 152–56). Mittmann, ‘Wehe!’, 117, summarizes nicely: ‘nicht Verwüstung, sondern Vernichtung (lehašmîd), nicht Ausplünderung, sondern Ausrottung (lehakrît)’.54 An additional charge, however, is that he has annihilated too many nations rather than focussing just on Samaria (far from few; f[m al, ‘not a few’), so that the extent as well as the nature of the judgment is excessive (note how the singular ywg, ‘nation’, of v. 6 is picked up by the plural nations in this verse; see also on v. 14 below). These words stand last in the sentence so that they receive a degree of emphasis. 8. For he says introduces the second substantiation for the woe. Although some have considered that these two words must have been added later, there is no particular reason to adopt this view. They helpfully mark the transition to direct speech by the Assyrian king from previous references to him in the third person, and as a rubric the words may perfectly well stand in anacrusis. On the characteristically Isaianic imperfect form of the verb (rmay), see on 1.11. States could go through several stages of relationship with Assyria. The most severe (from a local perspective), usually following repeated rebellion, was for the state effectively to be dismantled, for its territory to be drawn into Greater Assyria, some of its population resettled elsewhere in the Empire (‘exile’) and for an Assyrian rather than any local dignitary to be given supreme rule.55 Thus 53  Curiously, Beuken fails to mention 9.13. He also lists 37.24, but this is not to the point here: the verb is qal and it applies to the Assyrian in relation to cutting down trees. 54  See also Sparks, Ethnicity and Identity, 199–202; de Jong, 128; van der Kooij, ‘Nimrod’, 15. 55  Cf. M. Cogan, Imperialism and Religion: Assyria, Judah, and Israel in the Eighth and Seventh Centuries B.C.E. (SBLMS 19; Missoula, 1974).

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in addition to apparent bluster, there was a significant element of truth in the claim, are not my commanders one and all kings?56 (see comparably 36.9; for discussion of this point of comparison and of those in the next three verses, see Gallagher, 75–87). Even though the conquests of cities listed in the following verse were achieved at various times by more than one individual Assyrian king, there is an element of corporate-speak here(!), and it will be suggested that they all gain their place in the list of v. 9 because of the particular campaigning of the one king Sargon II, who should therefore probably be identified as the presumed speaker here. Whether there is also an element of Hebrew–Akkadian wordplay here, as suggested by Wildberger, Machinist, ‘Assyria and its Image’, 734–35, and now especially Machinist, ‘Ah, Assyria…’, 198–99, seems less certain, though possible (see Hom, 38): Hebrew r, here rendered ‘commander’, might be paired with Akkadian šarru, ‘king’ (of an entire land), whereas Akkadian malku (‘prince, king’, hence of lesser rank) might be thought to echo Hebrew ûlm (here ‘king’). An important consequence of this boast is that we should look for dates when the cities in the following list were subjected to this ultimate form of humiliation or its equivalent, not just when they were initially conquered or obliged to pay tribute. 9. The list (with which 36.19/2 Kgs 18.34 may be compared in some respects) appears to be arranged geographically rather than chronologically by date of conquest, so that it leads inexorably up to Samaria at the end.57 In each pair as translated the first lies geographically south of the second. In the Hebrew text, however, the order is the reverse, so that there is a smooth north to south sense of direction (literally ‘is not like Carchemish Calno…or is not like Damascus Samaria?’). The first, Calno, is the only one whose location is uncertain (for the variety of proposals which have

56  See A. Lemaire and J. M. Durand, Les inscriptions Araméennes de Sfiré et l’Assyrie de Shamshi-ilu (Hautes Études Orientales 20; Paris, 1984), 44; van der Kooij, ‘Nimrod’, 16. 57  For this list see now especially A. R. Millard, ‘Where Are the Gods of…? Where Are the Kings of…? Place Names as a Clue to the Dating of Passages in the Books of Isaiah and Second Kings’, in Zehnder (ed.), New Studies, 183–91. See too, for the setting in a wider political context, Bagg, Die Assyrer und das Westland; W. Mayer, Politik und Kriegskunst der Assyrer (Münster, 1995), 301–41.



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been advanced over the years, see Wildberger), so that we have to be cautious. On the one hand we have seen in the notes above that we should be wary of linking the name with hnlk in Gen. 10.10, but on the other there is a reference to a different Calneh in Amos 6.2 which could well be the same as ours. It is now generally identified with Kullania/Kinalua,58 the capital of ancient Unqi (el-Amq) in the lower Orontes Valley.59 Carchemish lies further north, on the middle Euphrates, close to the modern border between Syria and Turkey.60 Hamath (modern Hama, on the Orontes in mid-Syria) and further north Arpad (modern tel refad, twenty miles north of Aleppo) are generally paired in the Hebrew Bible as here (36.19; 37.13; 2 Kgs 18.34; 19.13; Jer. 49.23).61 The dates when these cities came under direct Assyrian rule vary (see Machinist, ‘Ah, Assyria…’, 203–5). For Carchemish, for instance, the date of incorporation as a province was 717,62 for Calno it was probably 738,63 for Hamath it was 720 (though it had been reduced to a rump state already in 738),64 for Arpad 740,65 Damascus became the capital city of one of four new Assyrian provinces in 732 bce,66 while for Samaria the date is probably 58  For the different spellings, see the detailed explanation by N. Na’aman, ‘Sennacherib’s “Letter to God” on his Campaign to Judah’, an updated version of which appears in Ancient Israel, 135–52 (148–49); the full range of spellings and further bibliography are listed in A. M. Bagg, Die Orts- und Gewässernamen der neuassyriscchen Zeit. I. Die Levante (Répertoire Géographique des Textes Cunéiformes vii/1; Wiesbaden, 2007), 141–42, 147–48. 59   J. D. Hawkins, RLA 5 (1976–80), 597–98; Paul, Amos, 201–2; cf. T. P. Harrison, ‘Recent Discoveries at Tayinat (Ancient Kunulua/Calno) and their Biblical Implications’, in C. M. Maier (ed.), Congress Volume: Munich, 2013 (VTSup 163; Leiden, 214), 396–425. 60  J. D. Hawkins, RLA 5 (1976–80), 426–46; see too T. Seidl, ‘Carchemish in Near Eastern Historiography and in the Old Testament’, OTE 22 (2009), 646–61. 61  For some discussion of the relationship between these passages and our present verse, see E. Ben Zvi, ‘Who Wrote the Speech of the Rabshakeh and When?’, JBL 109 (1990), 79–92; Gallagher, 76–85. Machinist, ‘Ah, Assyria…’, 194–96, develops this parallel more broadly. 62   J. D. Hawkins, RLA 5 (1976–80), 441, 445; K. Radner, RLA 11 (2006–2008), 58. 63  J. D. Hawkins, RLA 5 (1976–80), 597–98, and RLA 6 (1980–83), 305–6; K. Radner, RLA 11 (2006–2008), 61. 64  J. D. Hawkins, RLA 4 (1972–75), 67–70. 65  K. Radner, RLA 11 (2006–2008), 58. 66  Pitard, Ancient Damascus, 186–89.

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720.67 It is possible, therefore (and generally presumed), that this verse reflects on a period of Assyrian conquest over a period of some twenty years or so. I am attracted, however, to an alternative approach (see already Procksch) which begins from the observation that four of these cities, even though sometimes already under Assyrian rule, are known to have taken part in the anti-Assyrian alliance which fought against Sargon II in 720 bce, namely Hamath, Arpad, Samaria, and Damascus.68 In addition, Carchemish was annexed just three years later.69 The only one of the six not mentioned in Sargon’s annals, therefore, is Calno, but since his annals are far from having been preserved in their entirety we may speculate that it was included as well. It is therefore highly likely that the verse refers to events that were all related to a single Assyrian king and that took place within a short span of time.70 If so, it is likely that these events were well known to Isaiah’s audience and that he was speaking or writing in this passage under their relatively recent impact. 10. The Assyrian king’s bragging rhetoric will continue in v. 13. This present verse and the following one change direction somewhat in several respects. Unlike the direct claim of conquest and destruction in the previous verses, several references to idols are introduced here. While they could be viewed as a partial explanation of the meaning of ‘a godless nation’ in v. 6, the whole point of the argument up until this point is that the Assyrian had chosen 67  There has been much discussion about the precise course of events relating to the fall of Samaria and its date. For an outstandingly clear summary of the many suggestions that have been advanced and evaluation of them against the Akkadian and biblical sources, see K. L. Younger, ‘The Fall of Samaria in Light of Recent Research’, CBQ 61 (1999), 461–82; see too B. Becking, The Fall of Samaria: An Historical and Archaeological Study (SHCANE 2; Leiden, 1992). 68  A. Fuchs, Die Inschriften Sargons II. aus Khorsabad (Göttingen, 1994), 89, line 25 (trans. p. 314) and 200–1, line 33 (trans. p. 345); see also ANET, 284–85; CoS ii, 293 and 296; N. Na’aman, ‘New Light on Hezekiah’s Second Prophetic Story (2 Kings 19:9b-35)’, Biblica 81 (2000), 393–402 (394 n. 9), repr. in Ancient Israel, 180 n. 5. 69   It does not, therefore, seem necessary to associate the reference here with the initial subjugation of Carchemish in 742, as Sweeney feels obliged to do in order to associate this passage with Sargon II. 70  This possibility is overlooked by E. Haag, ‘Jesaja, Assur und der Antijahwe: literar- und traditionsgeschichtliche Beobachtungen zu Jes 10,5-15’, TTZ 103 (1994), 18–37, who therefore dubs the speaker as an ‘das übergeschichtliche Ich’ (33).



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not to follow God’s commission as given there but rather (cf. v. 7a) to go his own way in conquest and annihilation (vv. 7b-9). These idol references are therefore somewhat out of place (though one may compare the argument of the Rabshakeh as presented later on in 36.18-20; note, however, that there µyhla is used consistently for ‘gods’, unlike the three words used here for idols). Second, the geographically well-structured list of v. 9, which reaches its climax with the reference to Samaria, is here broken by referring to Jerusalem first in v. 10 and then reversing the order in v. 11. Third, we have already seen that there is good reason for believing that all the previous verses have Samaria alone as their ultimate point of reference (even if admittedly there may be the intention that readers in Judah and Jerusalem should draw consequences from what was being said). The introduction of Jerusalem in these two verses is therefore quite out of place within the context so far. Finally, against the stylistically straightforward wording of the previous verses we suddenly come into a syntactical tangle (see the notes above) as well as having phraseology which can be better rendered as prose than poetry (pace BHS; note the introductory rak, to go no further). In my discussion of 2.20-21 I argued that those verses had been added by a later glossator in order to explain an early textual error in v. 19 and that this related to the fate of idols. I mentioned briefly there, and have subsequently explained more fully elsewhere (‘A Productive Textual Error’), that 30.22 and 31.7 seem to be additions from the same hand. They are also clear prose additions to their present context and they overlap considerably in their language, not least in relation to idols. More recently I have suggested that the same may be said of 30.1 (‘Isaiah 30:1’). There is therefore every likelihood that the two verses here come from this same editor, who was clearly concerned to warn against the dangers of idol worship in a much later day on the basis that it was a significant factor in causing the original defeat of Jerusalem: the repeated use of lyla/ µylyla is characteristic (two references in each of 2.20 and 31.7, and I have already noted above that this distinguishes the present passage from 36.18-20), while µylysp, ‘images’, occurs also at 30.22. Only the approximate synonym µybx[ (end of v. 11) is peculiar to our passage (it occurs nowhere else in chs 1–39; note also that hksm occurs only in 30.1 and 22 and hdpa only in 30.22). It is interesting, furthermore, that the wording and style of these

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passages contrasts quite markedly from the famous satirical antiidol polemical passages in Deutero-Isaiah. It may be that the latter are directed against any temptation to follow the gods of Babylon whereas our present group of passages may have in mind rather the temptation to worship Yahweh in the guise of an idol in Judah.71 My hand has reached out against: literally ‘my hand has found to’. The verb ‘to find’ is regularly used in idioms for the impact of negative circumstances; for instance, hardship, distress, punishment, as well as ill-disposed humans, such as warrior, enemy and so on (see the extensive list of subjects of this verb at DCH v, 435–36). It is thus an entirely appropriate way to describe the onslaught of the Assyrian king. It occurs about a dozen times with ‘hand’ as subject, though not always with threatening intent; see, however, Jud. 9.33; 1 Sam. 23.17, and Ps. 21.9 (again with l) for examples of military or similar hostile action. In the present instance, however, it is likely to have been inspired in particular by the use of the same idiom in v. 14, a further small pointer to the secondary nature of the present verse in its context. The idol kingdoms: idol is here lyla (see the notes above for discussion whether to emend to plural). For discussion of the lexeme, see on 2.8. Although usually applied to the idols of Israel and Judah, there are other examples of its application to foreign nations; see 19.1, 3; Ps. 96.5. It is used here, of course, in order deliberately to establish the link with Samaria (and by implication Jerusalem) in the following verse. Their images (µhylysp): the singular lsp, for which our word seems to serve as the regular plural, does not occur anywhere in chs 1–39, though it is common in 40–55. This plural, however, is found also at 30.22 (on which see above) and 21.9 (which looks closer in content to 40–55, where the plural form occurs only once, at 42.8). Even if originally it referred specifically to a carved form of image from either stone or wood, it seems over time to have 71   I have explored this more fully in ‘Idols in Isaiah in the Light of Isaiah 10:1011’, in R. I. Thelle, T. Stordalen, and M. E. J. Richardson (eds), New Perspectives on Old Testament Prophecy and History: Essays in Honour of Hans M. Barstad (VTSup 168; Leiden, 2015), 17–28. For a recent discussion of many related wider issues in connection with passages about idols, see J. Middlemas, The Divine Image: Prophetic Aniconic Rhetoric and Its Contribution to the Aniconism Debate (FAT II/74; Tübingen, 2014), esp. Chapter 2.



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acquired the general sense of image without particular regard to its precise nature. The point of the reference here is to indicate that even though the other nations had many idols, they were unable to save them from the Assyrians; how much less will Jerusalem’s and Samaria’s. 11. As proposed in the notes above, this verse continues the previous one in order to refine the statement even further so that it focusses on Jerusalem alone. The ‘just as’ (rak) of v. 10 is resumed by the just as at the start of this verse, the introductory alh being construed as an asseverative particle, indeed. The argument, then, is that just as the Assyrian has already done to (acted against) Samaria and her idols (i.e. the same sort of idols as characterized the other nations in v. 10), so he will now do to Jerusalem and her idols. Note the use in both clauses of the verb h[, this being possibly drawn from v. 13, there translated ‘achieved’. The word for Jerusalem’s idols is µybx[, which is relatively rare72 and which does not occur anywhere else in Isaiah 1–39 and only once in Deutero-Isaiah (46.1, referring to the idols of Babylon; a related form in 48.5 refers to what Jacob/Israel might have thought had God not already told them better). It is difficult to know whether the word was chosen here for any reason other than variety of terminology.73 One possibility for consideration is to note that the word is relatively frequent in Hosea, perhaps with reference to the golden calves (see 4.17; 8.4; 13.2; 14.9; only in Psalms is it as frequent), and also that it occurs in Mic. 1.7 in specific association with Samaria;74 did our glossator therefore think that it was characteristic of the northern kingdom and so particularly appropriate here where Jerusalem is being compared with Samaria in relation to its judgment by Assyria (perhaps by now a cipher for any foreign power) for idolatry? In any case, quite contrary to the  For a survey, see M. I. Gruber, DDD, 127–28.  For some cautionary remarks against drawing historical conclusions about the nature of idols in Jerusalem from this passage (because it is represented as a statement made by foreigners, and ‘biblical authors deliberately let foreigners express ideas that indicate their misunderstanding of the religion of Israel or Judah’), see N. Na’aman, ‘No Anthropomorphic Graven Image: Notes on the Assumed Anthropomorphic Cult Statues in the Temples of YHWH in the PreExilic Period’, UF 31 (1999), 391–415 (414). 74  Interestingly, the clause in which it occurs is often thought to be a later addition. 72 73

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thrust of the wider passage as a whole, these two verses seem to be offering an explanation for the ultimate fall of Jerusalem as of Samaria before it. Given the late date ascribed to this glossator, it must be assumed that he still sees the need to warn against idolatry even in his day, something known already from Trito-Isaiah and its echo in 1.29-31. 12. This verse is self-evidently in prose. While it is possible to read the second half as a long line followed by a short one, with I will punish governing two paralleled objects, this hardly makes it poetry: the rhythm is not persuasive and the convoluted construct chain in the first half is most unpoetic. There does not, therefore, seem to be any realistic chance of salvaging a line of original Isaianic material here (contra Childs, Assyrian Crisis, 43; Barth, 24–25; Weisman, Political Satire, 87–88). With the advantage of hindsight the glossator wanted on the one hand to acknowledge Assyria’s divinely given commission against Jerusalem but then on the other hand to explain why it had eventually been defeated—initially, we may assume, in the events of 701 bce as interpreted in Judean tradition (see chs 36–37, for instance) and then finally in its complete demise at the hands of Babylon. Important lessons on the theological interpretation of history were thus to be drawn from reflection on the course of the long history of Judah, and these were applicable at any later time as well wherever human pride raised its head (cf. Hertzberg, ‘Nachgeschichte’, 76–77). An indication of such a wider application seems to be attested in the very fragmentary 4QpIsac (see Metzenthin, 210–11). The Lord (ynda): see 6.1 (and cf. 3.15, 17, 18). Completes: while the pi‘el of [xb can (like the qal) mean ‘to cut off’, it is also attested once or twice with the developed sense of ‘finish, complete, accomplish’. Gray draws attention to Zech. 4.9, which he renders rather well as ‘give the finishing touch’;75 otherwise, see only Lam. 2.17 (nrsv: ‘carry out’; this is fully discussed by Salters, Lamentations, 165–66). His work: ‘what he does’; this therefore links up with the theme noted above in v. 11 and its link with v. 13. More speculatively, 75  Vermeylen is correct, however, to reject Wildberger’s suggestion that the present verse also refers to the building of the second temple. In addition to his remarks, note too the comment above on ‘his work’.



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Skehan, ‘Note’, suggests that the link with v. 11 is even stronger because in addition to the effective repetition of work and Jerusalem, [xby, completes, includes the reverse spelling of most of the word hybx[lw as well. This strengthens the case, he claims, for the argument that the addition of v. 12 was by an author who already had v. 11 in place before him. Mount Zion: see 4.5 and its close link with 2.2-3, even though this exact phrase does not occur in the latter. By pairing it here explicitly with Jerusalem, it is difficult to avoid the impression that the writer wishes to combine both sacred and secular spheres as integral parts of a single whole; he does not entertain the notion that the one could survive unchastened without the other. The identical wording occurs at Joel 3.5 [et, 2.32],76 where it refers to the (undoubtedly post-exilic) community that escapes as a saved remnant. There may be a hint here towards the identity of the community whom this glossator is addressing in order to encourage them that the time of punishment is now well and truly past. I will punish: the verb dqp, ‘attend to, visit’, is used with several other broadly related meanings, and Jeremiah, at least, shows sufficient awareness of this deliberately to play on it (Jer. 23.2: ‘you have not attended to them [Israel as a flock]; So I will attend to [= punish] you for your evil doings’; in this example, we should note that ‘you’ renders µkyl[, while ‘for your evil doings’ is introduced by the object marker ta; in other words a closer rendering that captures the grammar more transparently might be the more archaic expression ‘I will visit your evil deeds upon you’). It is sometimes maintained that this form of expression derives from the pronouncement of a judge.77 Whether or not that is the case, it seems difficult to apply directly in the present instance because of the use of ta. The correct English equivalent must be ‘I will punish you (l[) for (ta) your evil doings’. Similar examples (including some where ta is omitted before the object but where the construction is the same) include Exod. 32.34; Isa. 13.11; Jer. 21.14; 36.31; Hos. 1.4; 2.15; 4.9; Amos 3.14; Zeph. 1.8-9, 12. In development of 76  It is interesting to note that Barton, Joel and Obadiah, 98, also tentatively links this passage in Joel with Isa. 4.2-6. 77  See G. André, ThWAT vi, 716–17 = TDOT xii, 57–58; for his fuller study of this verb, see Determining the Destiny: PQD in the Old Testament (ConB, OT Series 16; Stockholm, 1980).

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this, we should construe in like manner those passages where we find l[ alone; that is to say, passages where we are told who is being punished but not the reason.78 Clear examples include Jer. 11.22 (‘I am going to punish them’, followed by a separate statement that people will die by sword or famine); 29.32 (‘I am going to punish Shemaiah…and his descendants’); 9.24-25; 23.34; 30.20; 44.13; 46.25.79 Confusion arises, however, from the observation that in a few passages it looks as though l[ introduces the reason for punishment: ‘Shall I not punish them (µb) for (l[) these things?’ (Jer. 9.8; cf. 5.9 and 29 which are the same except µb is [accidentally?] omitted). This is obviously much less common, but allows that in principle our verse would also omit (perhaps as understood) a reference to the person punished and that the two long phrases refer to the cause of the punishment, not its object (see also in the notes above). This possibility nevertheless seems less likely, given that the usage is restricted to three more or less identical passages in Jeremiah (one of which includes µb) whereas the commoner form of the idiom, summarized above, is found in a much wider variety of books, including Isaiah. Barth, 22, appeals to these three passages in Jeremiah to avoid what he perceives as a difficulty with the usual view, namely that one cannot punish…fruit: ‘nur die Taten selbst können ja Objekt von “heimsuchen” sein, nicht deren “Frucht” ’. He therefore renders dqp as an absolute, for which he suggests ‘abrechen’ (‘cancel, settle accounts’) as an approximate equivalent, with l[ expressing the reason. Apart from the fact that one might consider Barth’s objection hyper-critical and not sufficiently strong to override the preference for finding here the overwhelmingly normal construction,80 1 Sam. 15.2 (to which he does not refer) comes close to our verse in that there God says he will ‘visit (punish?) all (direct 78  To be strictly accurate, the reason is sometimes described separately, perhaps in a clause introduced by yk; the important point for our purpose is that it is not introduced by ta. 79  For clarity’s sake I have not included here passages where la stands in the position normally filled by l[. The reasons for this variation are open for discussion. 80  Note too T. E. McComiskey, ‘Prophetic Irony in Hosea 1.4: A Study of the Collocation l[ dqp and its Implications for the Fall of Jehu’s Dynasty’, JSOT 58 (1993), 93–101, who finds no problem here on the ground that the verb means ‘visit upon, attend to’, and that ‘punish’ is itself only a contextually derived rendering where appropriate.



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object, introduced by ta) that the Amalekites did to Israel’. The fruit of the arrogance of the king of Assyria’s mind seems closely parallel with this. The list of faults has deliberately picked up on several Isaianic notions that are already familiar from elsewhere. For arrogance of… mind (bbl ldg), see on 9.8; for boasting, see on 3.18 and especially 4.2 (where it was rendered ‘finery’, again in association with pride); for haughty looks, see on 2.11, where both elements come in parallel expressions (‘haughty eyes…men’s pride’) that are close to the present verse and where other parallels are cited, and also 2.17 and 5.15. These echoes show clearly that in the present verse too any sense of human beings seeking to exalt themselves to the same elevation as God (see on 6.1) are automatically doomed because of hubris. In addition, fruit as the consequence of deeds occurs at 3.10. Beuken observes that the phraseology also helps bind the verse into the wider poem in ways additional to those we have already noted above; in particular he mentions that the two words bbl ldg link vv. 7 and 15 and that the roots of the words µwr trapt also both occur in v. 15: rapty and wymyrm; it is difficult to be sure how conscious these particular echoes are, however. The king of Assyria: we have seen how Isaiah seems almost deliberately to avoid the use of this title in the preceding verses, even though by the time we get to vv. 7 and 8, at least, he is clearly in view. The title occurs in 8.4, however, as well as in several of the historicizing glosses in chs 7–8 (7.17, 20; 8.7) which, it was suggested at 8.4, may well have been dependent upon it. 13. With for he says the speech of the king of Assyria that was interrupted by vv. 10-11 and 12 is now resumed. Unlike at v. 8 the verb in MT is perfect (rma) and many commentators regard the clause as redactional. As it stands, the introductory yk would introduce a third substantiation for the initial ‘woe’, and we saw at v. 7 that each of the three is different from the other two, this one concentrating on the Assyrian’s boast of his own prowess in all that he does. While it is difficult to be sure, it would thus be attractive to retain the rubric as part of the original composition, albeit in anacrusis, and the view was defended in the notes above that, with 1QIsaa, we should read imperfect here as well, just as in v. 8. In the first half of the verse the king boasts of his personal abilities and in the second (continuing into v. 14) of what he has actually done in consequence. I have achieved this simply represents the

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word ‘I have done’, and we saw that this probably inspired the use of the identical ‘I have acted’, as well as the imperfect form ‘I will act’, in v. 11, q.v. Here the boast is amplified by the words by the strength of my own hand. It was noted at 8.11 above that the hand of God refers especially to his power, even though the emphasis in that verse was focussed on prophecy. While divine power is the commonest usage of ‘hand’ in relation to God, it can also have the metaphorical sense of strength in relation to humans as well, though less frequently (see BDB, 389B; see, for instance, Deut. 8.17—a close parallel to our verse; 32.37; Num. 20.20; Jud. 9.24; 2 Kgs 19.26; the same applies to Akkadian usage; we need go no further than the boast of Sargon II himself: ‘I captured with my own hand Hanunu, the king of Gaza’; see CoS ii, 296, and for further examples see Gallagher, 78–79). There may thus be another veiled charge here of the Assyrian seeking to usurp the divine prerogative. To military power is added wisdom, a faculty widely acknowledged as essential for kingship throughout the ancient Near East. The biblical example of Solomon is well known. In Isaiah too the need for royal wisdom is mentioned prominently; see especially on 11.2 below. More broadly, the topic was fully discussed at 5.21 above, where it was observed, among other things, that within Judah itself there was also the temptation which underlies the present usage to take human credit for what should be regarded as a divinely given attribute (and note too 14.26-27, where God’s ‘planning’ [Å[y], a theme closely related to wisdom, and his ‘hand’ are also juxtaposed). Attention was also drawn there to Gen. 41.39, where Joseph is said to be µkjw ÷wbn, ‘discerning and wise’, so bringing into play the same root as that rendered here as I am so clever (ytwnbn). If the situation is thus straightforward from a Judean perspective—the Assyrian is claiming as his own what ought to be regarded as a divine endowment81—the polemic is sharpened by the observation that it chimes in closely too with a familiar trope 81  See especially W. McKane, Prophets and Wise Men (SBT 44; London, 1965), 68–69. M. W. Hamilton, The Body Royal: The Social Poetics of Kingship in Ancient Israel (BibIntS 78; Leiden, 2005), 259–61, stresses as of especial note the complete failure of the Assyrian king here to attribute any of his success to Aššur or other deities, as was usually done; this adds emphasis to his boasting against the Judean deity; see too Machinist, ‘Ah, Assyria…’, 200–1.



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in Assyrian royal propaganda (cf. Liss, 157–58). Wildberger, for instance, points to the boast of Ashurbanipal that Nabu has given him wisdom, while even closer in time to Isaiah Gallagher, 79–80, cites the claims of Sargon and Sennacherib among many other potential references to this effect; Sargon: ‘The king who is sharp in his senses, capable of all the crafts, the equal of the sage(s), who has become great in knowledge and wisdom, and exalted in insight’; Sennacherib: ‘wise in all craftsmanship…through the clever understanding which the noble Niššīku had given me, (and) in my own wisdom…’.82 Isaiah’s references to claims to both power and wisdom by the Assyrian king are thus treated in a closely comparable manner. In their annals, the Assyrians usually ascribed their power and wisdom to their god and claimed that their enemies were defeated because they foolishly trusted in their own strength.83 Here, the use of the same language in the Assyrian’s mouth reverses this application, making him instead into the one who is guilty of hubris (see Machinist, ‘Assyria and its Image’, 734).84 This form of reverse polemic is certainly continued with the claims of achievements that come next. As already mentioned briefly in the notes above, the claim that I have removed the boundaries of the peoples is to be equated with claims to have annexed territories into greater Assyria; it has little directly to do with the legal protection of land-owners for their property (which uses a different verb), as has sometimes been proposed, though of course Judean readers may have made a mental link as part of their reason for condemning Assyria, not least on the wider ground that in their view it was God who had assigned the 82  Gallagher cites this rendering from the older edition by D. D. Luckenbill; for a more recent edition and translation, see now Grayson and Novotny, Royal Inscriptions, 140–41. 83  See F. M. Fales, ‘The Enemy in Assyrian Royal Inscriptions: “The Moral Judgement” ’, in H.-J. Nissen and J. Renger (eds), Mesopotamien und seine Nachbarn: politische und kulturelle Wechselbeziehungen im Alten Vorderasien vom 4. bis 1. Jahrtausend v. Chr. (Berlin, 1982), 425–35. 84  Bürkl, ‘Grandeur et démesure’, notes that some of the vocabulary and themes of vv. 13-14 have parallels elsewhere in Isaiah in connection with foreign hubris (see chs 13–14, 15–16, 23) and that these coincide in several respects with 2.11-17. While the observations are sound it seems to me more likely that they derive from Isaiah’s own outlook and mode of speech rather than that, as Bürkl proposes, they should all be ascribed to a later editorial hand.

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nations their territory (Deut. 32.8, where precisely µym[ tlwbg also occurs; see Wade, and cf. Åra twlwbg in Ps. 74.17). The close parallels in Akkadian annals were particularly stressed by Machinist, ‘Assyria and its Image’, 725,85 who cited an example from Tiglath-pileser III, and by van der Kooij, ‘Nimrod’, 17, who cited an example from Esarhaddon,86 while Gallagher, 80, once again adduces examples that are chronologically even closer to the present chapter by Sargon II and Sennacherib and summarizes that ‘this is commonly mentioned among the N[eo-] A[ssyrian] kings’. I have plundered their provisions: for the general theme, see on v. 6 and 8.1-4 above, though the vocabulary used here is quite different and is somewhat obscure (see the notes above for discussion). The word used for provisions is so rare that it is difficult to be sure quite why Isaiah chose to use it here; one possibility (little more than a guess) is that it is more encompassing than either ll or zb, which may generally imply material goods, whereas provisions might include stores of food as well. A closely related form of the word can also be used for people. At any rate, such comprehensive plundering is very frequently attested in Assyrian accounts of their triumphs; Sargon, for instance boasts in connection with his defeat of the king of Carchemish: ‘I brought forth him together with his family as prisoners. I plundered gold, silver, along with the property of his palace, and the sinful inhabitants of Carchemish, who (had supported) him, along with their possessions’ (CoS ii, 293), while in a manner that is typical of what he repeatedly writes in his annals Sennacherib states of his campaign against Judah that ‘I brought out of them 200,150 people, young (and) old, male and female, horses, mules, donkeys, camels, oxen, and sheep and goats, which were without number, and I counted (them) as booty’ (Grayson and Novotny, Royal Inscriptions, 65). As we have seen above, the text of the last line of this verse is not certain, so that the following exegesis can only be tentative at best. Nevertheless, I have argued already that every other line in the verse has parallels with the public statements of Assyrian kings from this period, and that too may help with what otherwise looks

 See now more fully in ‘Ah, Assyria…’, 197–98.  Cf. Parpola, Assyrian Prophecies, 16.

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like an odd element in the text as defended here without resort to radical emendation. Gallagher, 81 (and see too Eidevall, 44), notes several passages where in his campaign reports Sennacherib explicitly compares himself with a bull in all its strength, e.g. ‘I set out from Ashur ahead of my army like a mighty bull’, and ‘with my personal elite bodyguard and my merciless battle troops I set out ahead of them like a wild bull’.87 It is thus attractive to suppose that there is another echo here of a typical Assyrian boast. In addition, there is an old suggestion that there may be an allusion here too to the bull statues as known from the excavation of Assyrian royal sites (Orelli: ‘the ox-deities lying before the Assyrian palaces’), but this must be less certain on the ground of what might reasonably have been known in Judah. At 1.24 we find the same consonants as here but differently vocalized to give the divine title ‘the Strong One’. In the discussion there it was noted that many have considered that this vocalization was an artificial device to avoid pronouncing what became later to be theologically unacceptable, namely to call God by his earlier title ‘the Bull of Jacob/Israel’, though it was also noted that there must be considerable uncertainty about this. Be that as it may, it is difficult not to suppose that to Judean ears it would have looked and sounded as though the Assyrian king was here usurping, in one way or the other, a form of address that more properly belonged exclusively to the God of Israel. Those who sat: although this participle can refer generally to ‘inhabitants’, which could fit if the reference were to general destruction of the region, the more specific sense of sitting enthroned is more probable. The word is used on its own (as here) with this sense several times elsewhere (see Pss 2.4; 9.8; 29.10; 55.20). More tellingly, the verb dyrwaw, I have brought down, is most easily understood as depicting dethronement, as at 47.1; the parallelism in Amos 1.5, 8, also points in this direction, as observed by Eitan, ‘Contribution’, 59. It thus forms a good contrast with v. 8 above. The fate of foreign kings in the Assyrian annals is variously described: many flee at the approach of the Assyrian army (and are

87  These are from accounts of his first and fifth campaign respectively. The most recent edition, Grayson and Novotny, Royal Inscriptions, 33 and 134, has ‘wild ox’ in the first example.

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usually caught thereafter), others are executed after resistance, and so on. The general claim that they were (nearly) all deposed would not be out of place. 14. My hand has reached out…for: for the Hebrew idiom, see on v. 10 above. The object here, wealth (lyj), was discussed at 8.4 above, where it stood in parallel with ‘spoil’ (ll), so that from one perspective the thought here is conceptually close to v. 6. The difference, however, is that there God’s plan was that this should be exercised against Israel only, whereas here the Assyrian has interpreted his brief universally: the peoples (and see all the earth in the next line). There is thus effectively a reprise of the implied accusation that was also noted at the end of v. 7 with its ‘far from few’. As de Jong, 128–29, well summarizes the indictment of this poem, ‘Yahweh ordered a specific action against Ephraim, but not against the whole world, and his order involved plunder and devastation, but not deportation and abolition of territorial boundaries’. The presentation is enlivened, however, by the comparison with robbing eggs from nests. The verb to gather occurs at the start and the end of the middle line of the verse, and at the end, where it refers directly to the Assyrian’s rapaciousness, the first-person element is strengthened by the addition of the pronoun yna. When reading I have gathered in all the earth, it is difficult not to think with Mittmann, ‘Wehe!’, 125, of the regular Assyrian self-description ‘king of the world…king of the four quarters’. Gallagher, 82, draws attention to Assyrian uses of bird imagery (we might add not least the famous description of Sennacherib shutting Hezekiah up ‘like a bird in a cage’), but the parallels are not close. Moreover, the simile is extended throughout this verse by further completely unparalleled elements in a manner which suggests that it is best ascribed directly to Isaiah’s fertile imaginative style, seen several times already elsewhere (e.g. the song of the vineyard in 5.1-7). The portrayal of an enclave, especially if high up, as a nest where one may hope to be safe occurs also at Num. 24.21; Jer. 49.16; Obad. 4; Hab. 2.9,88 and cf. Job 39.27. It was considered 88  For a study of the semantic development of ÷q from ‘dwelling, abode’ to ‘family, kin’ to ‘nest’ (rather than the reverse, as is usually thought), see J. Barr, ‘Is Hebrew ÷q “Nest” a Metaphor?’, in A. S. Kaye (ed.), Semitic Studies in Honor of Wolf Leslau on the Occasion of his Eighty-Fifth Birthday November 14th, 1991 (Wiesbaden, 1991), 150–61 (repr. Bible and Interpretation iii, 641–51).



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acceptable to gather eggs and even fledglings, provided the sitting or attending mother bird was left (Deut. 22.6). The emphasis in the imagery here, therefore, is not on the act of taking eggs as such—and indeed, the Assyrian adds in further mitigation of his acts that the eggs had been abandoned—but rather first again on the comparison with having gathered in all the earth and second on the implication that his conquests were all too easy: being overwhelmed by his power and radiance, as emphasized so often in the annals, the subdued nations were rendered incapable of offering any form of resistance. This added to his self-deception that his sovereignty was without limits (Beuken). The last part of the verse emphasizes this point with further colourful language. Given that within this extended image the eggs had been abandoned, presumably by the sitting mother, we must assume that it was the newly hatched fledglings which neither escaped by flying (literally: ‘with a wing’) or opened their beak and chirped (the same verb as at 8.19). We have to depict them as helpless and petrified at the advance of the predator. 15. The passage concludes with a wisdom saying89 which in its second line neatly reverts back to the opening ‘woe’ in v. 5 (see the introduction to this passage above). In the first line the same underlying point is made as in the second but with the use of the different images of stone-masonry and wood-cutting. Although ÷zrg does not occur elsewhere in Isaiah, the way in which its use is described in Deut. 19.5 (and cf. 20.19) shows that it could be very much like an axe as we know it today: it has a handle, and when it is swung to cut down a tree its head can accidentally fly off dangerously. It is therefore usually rendered ‘axe’, and clearly that is sometimes appropriate elsewhere. The associated verb here, bxj, hews (with it), however, is relatively common and can apply to various forms of cutting/digging/hewing out (see already 5.2, ‘hewed out [a winepress]’). Nowhere else, however, is it ever used of wood-cutting but almost always of some form of stone or rock. It occurs (twice, and perhaps three times) specifically in conjunction with ÷zrg in

89  Whedbee, 72, draws attention to a possible (and of course unrelated) parallel in Ahiqar: ‘[H]ow can wood contest with fire, flesh with knife, man with k[ing]?’ He is also correct, however, in observing that there is a significant difference in terms of purpose. The translation here is cited from Porten and Yardeni, Textbook, 3, 37.

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the Siloam Tunnel Inscription,90 so that there the i­mplement must be suitable for cutting through rock or stone. Similarly, the occurrence of ÷zrg at 1 Kgs 6.7, though not described in detail, is also in a passage where stone working is uppermost and where there is no reference to wood whatsoever. It therefore seems that the noun could serve both for wood- and stonework and so has to be rendered appropriately in consequence.91 Hence here I prefer pick to the usual ‘axe’.92 Similarly, a saw (a hapax legomenon, though the root is well attested in other Semitic languages93) is also closely comparable in principle to our understanding of a saw, given the way that it is said to be moved here (the same verb recurs in the next line, there translated shake); pushes it to and fro is, of course, my paraphrase, based on the deduction in the first place that it must be a saw. The only other wood-working tool that is moved around is a plane, but that would not be so suitable in this context and we already have another Classical Hebrew lexeme for that, namely h[xqm (Isa. 44.13), from [xq, ‘to scrape’. The ironic situation envisaged, which makes its point in a telling manner simply by its amusing absurdity, is that as a mere tool a pick or a saw would be getting ideas decidedly above its station if it were to try to act as superior to the one who wields it. Needless to say, Isaiah manages to equate this with what he regards as the cardinal human sin of hubris by his choice of verbs, vaunt itself and magnify itself. Neither verb as such appears elsewhere in the first part of the book of Isaiah, but their sense is transparent, and interestingly both roots recur in the secondary v. 12; see the comments above on 90   See conveniently SSI i, 21–23; HAE, 178–89; Ahituv, Echoes, 19–25 (Hebrew edn, 15–20); F. W. Dobbs-Allsopp et al., Hebrew Inscriptions: Texts from the Biblical Period of the Monarchy with Concordance (New Haven, 2005), 499–506. 91  See Koller, Semantic Field, 27–33. 92  For an excellent illustration, Mittmann, ‘Wehe!’, 128, points to the relief in Ashurbanipal’s palace at Nineveh of Assyrian soldiers demolishing the Elamite city of Ḫamānu. Mittmann offers no documentation of this relief; it has to be BM 124919, catalogued by R. D. Barnett, Sculptures from the North Palace of Ashurbanipal at Nineveh (668–627 B.C.) (London, 1976), 58, and Plate LXVI. The Museum has also made a good coloured photograph available online: www.britishmuseum.org/research/collection_online/collection_object_details/ collection_image_gallery.aspx?partid=1&assetid=328800001&objectid=366845 (accessed 1 December 2016). 93  For fuller details, see Koller, Semantic Field, 55–57 and especially 129–61.



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‘arrogance’ (ldg) and ‘boasting’ (trapt).94 It suggests that they may have been recognized early on as characteristic. The same logic is applied by extension to a rod and a staff, from which, of course, the passage began in v. 5, so that the conclusion is deliberately applied to the Assyrian. Shake is the same verb as rendered pushes it to and fro just before, so tying the image and its application even closer together. Similarly, the two halves of the present line are brought close together by the use in each of the verb pick up. It may not be coincidental that this is the verb which is also often used for raising up and exalting somebody whom God wishes to favour. Its converse, of course, is ‘to bring down’, as in v. 13. Though not quite in strict parallelism, they appear together paradigmatically in 1 Sam. 2.6-7: ‘The Lord…brings down (dyrwm) to Sheol and raises up; …he brings low, he also exalts (µmwrm)’. Someone who is not wood: this superficially curious expression contains the key to the irony. Wood is effectively a shorthand way of referring to an idol. Although more usually it appears as the collocation of ‘wood and stone’ (e.g. Deut. 4.28; 28.36, 64; 29.16; Isa. 37.19; Hab. 2.19, and frequently), there are occasions when the designation as wood on its own also occurs (Isa. 44.13-17, 19; 45.20; Jer. 10.3, 8; Hos. 4.12). The implication here, then, is that the prime mover is not an idol, which the Assyrian thought he could dominate, but the living God who gave him his commission in the first place and whose commands cannot be exceeded with impunity.

94  For the background notion ‘that empowerment is visually perceived as adorn­ment’, see L. Shedletsky and B. A. Levine, ‘The mšr of the Sons and Daughters of Ugarit (KTU2 1.40)’, RB 106 (1999), 321–44 (330).

T H E B U R N IN G L IG H T (10.16-19)

Therefore the Sovereign, the Lord of Hosts, will send leanness among his stout ones, and under his glory a burning will be kindled like the burning of fire. [17] And the Light of Israel will become a fire, and his Holy One a flame; and it will burn and devour his thorns and his briers in a single day. [18] And to the glory of his forest and of his garden land he will put a complete and utter end; and it will be like when a fugitive dissolves in terror, [19]that the rest of the trees of his forest will be so few in number that even a youngster would be able to write them down. [16]

A fragment of these verses is preserved from 1QIsab, but the words that can be read show no deviation from the Masoretic textual tradition. 16. ÷wdah: for the rendering, see on 1.24 (and cf. 3.1). The word is omitted in some mss and it has no equivalent in LXX. The parallel passages just listed, combined with the evidence of 1QIsaa, suggest that it should be retained, however (contra Feldmann; BHS). ÷wzr wynmmb: there is considerable ambiguity here, as explained in the exegesis below where the present rendering is justified, and to some extent this applies also to wdbk in the next line. Although in this verse LXX again renders with some freedom (÷kl is taken as ÷k al, kai; oujc ou{tw~; ÷wzr is uniquely rendered ajtimivan, which draws wynmmb to eij~ th;n sh;n timh;n1 [contra HR], and the last line is compressed into a single clause), neither from it nor from any other witness is there any evidence for a variant text. dq"yE: third masculine singular imperfect qal of dqy, ‘be kindled, burn’. For the unusual vocalization, see GK §69f and p. Driver, ‘Isaiah i–xxxix’, 41–42 (followed by neb; Brockington, 178), emends radically. He omits ÷wdah, brings up rbAd[w pnm from v. 18 (where he thinks it does not fit) to the end of the first line, and changes the vocalization of

1  Ziegler, 140, sees this the other way round (i.e., timhv gave rise to ajtimivan), but that seems less plausible to me. However, we agree in seeing the force of parallelism affecting the translation.



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the second word of the second line to /dbeK],2 ‘under his liver’, being understood to mean ‘within his body’, hence: ‘Therefore the Lord of hosts will send disease/ on their stoutest men, wasting the whole body,/and within their bodies a fever like fire shall burn’. This seems too speculative to entertain. dbk, for instance, is never used to mean body; as an organ, the liver was regarded as the seat of the emotions. 17. laryArwa: the fact that this precise wording does not occur elsewhere as a reference to God is no good reason to emend conjecturally to something like rwx (Ehrlich), bwa (Tur-Sinai) or yhla (Schwarz, ‘…das Licht Israels’, with reference to 29.23). The sense of MT is transparent and the parallelism supportive. dja µwyb: LXX may have read awhh µwyb, though there is no reason to prefer this to the more vivid and less common MT; cf. Troxel, 221 n. 91. Since, however, the translator joined the phrase to the following verse, whose first word (dwbkw) he rendered ajposbesqhvsetai (presumably wbky [so Ottley], wbkw [so HUBP], or hbky [so Ziegler, 111; Ulrich, ‘Light’, 201]), the commoner form of the phrase would automatically have suggested itself to him. The first part of the last line of v. 17 is both abbreviated and altered somewhat. hr[bw has been drawn into the previous line to qualify hbhl (and Gray in fact wants to follow in this, with the slight emendation to hr[b, but he is then at the same time obliged to delete dja µwyb for metrical reasons, for which there is no textual justification), but why wrymw wty (words well recognized elsewhere) should have been rendered ‘wood like grass’ is unclear. HUBP compares 9.17 (see too Wilk, ‘Between Scripture and History’, 202), but the wording is not the same. 18. rbAd[w pnm: this expression does not occur anywhere else, though it is unanimously supported in every detail by all the main textual witnesses (see Dafni, ‘Jesaja x 18’). For further discussion of its meaning, see the comments below. There is no good reason to think that the words here have anything other than their commonest meaning, as attested also in other contexts where they occur together or in parallel, so that suggestions such as ‘von der Gurgel bis zum Genital’3 are most implausible. Because the thought is considered to be incompatible with vegetation, some have proposed moving the words elsewhere. Gray, for instance, suggested that they were a fragment of a longer sentence, of which the rest is now lost, following v. 16 (but this was part of his wider judgment that vv. 16-19 had suffered widespread corruption as a whole); Driver, ‘Isaiah i–xxxix’, 41–42, included them in v. 16 (see above); Procksch (and cf. BHS), furthermore, just deleted them. The starting point for all this speculation is unjustified however (see below), so that there is no need to follow them further. hlky: LXX, P, and T render as active, like MT; V (consumetur, and cf. s ajnalwqhvsetai) as passive. Noting that the verbs in the second line of the previous verse are third person feminine, some commentators have declared the masculine active form here to be impossible—it should have read hlkt. Hence  For this see already Michaelis, ‘Anzeige’, 138.  See O. Sander, ‘Leib-Seele-Dualismus im Alten Testament’, ZAW 77 (1965), 329–32. His suggestion is judged to be ‘unlikely’ (!) by N. P. Bratsiotis, ThWAT i, 860 = TDOT ii, 326 n. 15. 2 3

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they revocalize as a pu‘al, hL,kuyÒ, ‘will be finished/destroyed’ (see Wildberger; BHS; Driver, ‘Isaiah i–xxxix’, 42; neb). While obviously possible, this hardly seems necessary. In this sort of composition, an unannounced reference back to God (from whom we started out in v. 16 and who is referred to again in v. 17) is fully intelligible.4 Moreover its position at the end of the line (which gives it considerable emphasis) may be explained as due both to the need to preserve good rhythmic balance (3+3) and to associate it closely with rbAd[w pnm. ssn ssmk hyhw: this clause has caused so much difficulty that several commentators admit defeat and fail to offer any rendering (e.g. Gray; Barth 28–30). It is attested in 1QIsaa. The ancient versions mostly link ssn with swn but otherwise render variously, suggesting that there was no common tradition of interpretation. LXX kai; e[stai oJ feuvgwn wJ~ oJ feuvgwn ajpo; flogo;~ kaiomevnh~ clearly finds two uses of the root swn and then presumably adds an explanatory reference to the fire (cf. v. 17) for clarification (Ziegler, 93; we might consider the possibility that the addition was based on a misreading of wr[y Å[ in v. 19); this can hardly justify Lowth’s emendation to ssn amk, as correctly noted by Alexander and Ottley. V et erit terrore profugus (which Jerome refers to the defeated Assyrian army) also links ssn with swn but presumably understands ssm as referring to the use of ssm in the niphal with bl to mean ‘melt away in fear’. P wnhw