Fallen is Babylon, Finished is Kedar: A Unified Reading of Isaiah 21 (original) (raw)
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The Journal of Theological Studies, 2017
, xx + 279 pp., hb £75 There are some fascinating and stimulating essays in this collection on the subject of the oracles against the nations (OANs). Corresponding with the length of the books themselves, there are four essays on Isaiah, five on Jeremiah and three on Ezekiel. In addition, there is a foreword by Marvin Sweeney and a concluding 'response' by Steed Davidson. Even before the book begins in earnest, Sweeney makes the interesting suggestion that the absence of Persia in Isaiah and Jeremiah indicates that YHWH is identified with Persia, as he is with Babylon in Ezekiel, since Babylon does not appear in Ezekiel's OANs (pp. xix-xx). In the first essay, Hyun Kim analyses sequences, patterns and intertextual references in the seemingly haphazard arrangement of the OANs and proposes that Babylon, more than Assyria, was the most heinous invader of Judah and Jerusalem (p. 17) and that Jerusalem was the ultimate target of divine judgement in the OANs. Blake Couey investigates the poetic presentation of the Moabite in Isaiah 15-16 and notes that the oracle focuses on the results of the attack, which seem to depict a military disaster, but evades the audience's desire for more details by withholding details (other OANs in Isa 13-23 are also vague) and providing illusions to create uncertainty. In so doing, the text encourages speculation, but may have been written in this way because the disaster had not yet happened and possibly never happened (cf. Jer 48:11). Todd Hibbard evaluates the textual variants of 'City of the Sun' in Isaiah 19:18, noting the three stages of variants, and proposes that perhaps Onias used this Isaiah text to support the building of the Jewish temple in Egypt. One of his supporting arguments is that the phrase 'on that day' (used five times in Isa 19:16-25) has been considered a late addition that reflects the reality of the diaspora in Egypt. Willem Beuken's essay compares and contrasts the common and different phrases for Babylon's fall and its aftermath in Isa 13-14 and Jeremiah 50-51. One of the phrases he looks at is 'Behold I am', which occurs forty-eight times in Jeremiah, six of which are in Jeremiah 50-51, and fewer times in Isaiah, one of which is in the prophecy against Babylon. The phrase focuses on helpless people suffering under Babylon and the model may stem from resistance oracles with the purpose of strengthening the conviction that God outstrips the tyrant in terms of power. Rannfrid Thelle addresses the idea that Babylon acts as Judah's doppelgänger in the book of Jeremiah (MT). Babylon is both the friend and enemy in Jeremiah, and Judah might recognise herself in the images that are used of Babylon and see that she (Judah) is under threat of destruction. At the same time, Judah is also to see herself as distinct. Thelle points out that Reviews 508
Isaiah and the Fall of the Kingdom of Israel
S. Hasegawa, C. Levin, and K. Radner (eds), The Last Days of the Kingdom of Israel (BZAW 511; Berlin: de Gruyter), 383–98, 2019
Isaiah and the Fall of the Kingdom of Israel Isaiah of Jerusaleml ived during the closing decades of the existenceo ft he neighbouring Kingdom of Israel and for some twenty years, at least,thereafter. Although he refers on anumber of occasions to what Biblical scholars label "The NorthernK ingdom," his references tend to be concentrated on events ad ecade or so before the final fall of Samaria. His allusions to the latter are generallyoblique, using the fate of Samaria as awarningofthe danger in which the southern Judah and Jerusalem stand if they continue with their present policies and lifestyle. In terms of political history,with which this volume is chieflyconcerned, it is thereforec lear that our harvest from Isaiah will be meagre. In addition to that, however,Ishallinthis paper try also to outline some of the ideological implications that follow from the fall of Samaria. In terms of the history of religion and the languagethat givese xpression to it,wemay find that Isaiah,both as historical prophet and as book, has much to contribute. It should come as no surprise if Istressfinally by wayofintroduction that by almostuniversalconsent onlyamodest amount of what is found in the book of Isaiah actuallyd erives straight from the eighth century. From chapter 40 onwards,despite manyr eferences to Jacob and Israel, all the material was written in the sixth and later centuries,ofc ourse. Equally, all agree that ag ood deal in chapters 1-39 alsocomes from the time after Isaiah himself, but exactlywhat is more controversial. In ahistorical study,such as the present one, thatisobviously am atter for concern, and Is hall have spacet om ake onlyafew remarks to justify the positions Ia dopt.What it is importantt ob ear in mind, however,i s that while Ia mu ndertaking as everelyd iachronic analysis that does not mean that we should simplydiscard the latermaterial. Rather,weshould value it highly as first-hand evidence of the later reception of material that mayhaveapplied originallyt oIsrael and Samaria. That reception, from earliest days on, is important evidence of the great impact on the development of subsequent thought that Isaiah had. Iw ant to begin with terminology, and specificallyw ith the ways in which Isaiah labelled the NorthernK ingdom. The so-called refrain poem in 9:7-20 makes for agood starting point.Inchapter 9wehavethreestanzas, each closed by an almostidentical refrain in verses
The Arabianisms in Isaiah's Prophecy against Dumah (handout and slides)
Isaiah's 'Oracle of Dumah' (21:11-12) contains some unusual linguistic features. In this talk, I investigate the hypothesis that these are meant to reflect an Ancient North Arabian language, Dumaitic. A critical reading of the text ultimately shows that this is plausible from a literary point of view, but the linguistic evidence is inconclusive.
This article shows that Isaiah 2:5-22 is based on the literary descriptions of Assyrian campaigns found in the Neo-Assyrian royal inscriptions. In these, the sovereign launches a campaign directed against the "proud" who refuse to recognize his sovereignty. The purpose of the campaign is to force polities which have not accepted Assyrian sovereignty to recognize the Assyrian king as the sole universal sovereign. Those who refuse to recognize his sovereignty are said to flee to inaccessible locations, and the royal "melammu" is described as causing this flight. In Isaiah 2:5-22, these characteristics are transferred to YHWH, who launches a campaign against proud idolators, who refuse to recognize His sovereignty, much like the Assyrian king. The study places this passage after the 701 campaign of Sennacherib.
D. Kahn, “The Continuity in the Prophetic Visions in First Isaiah (1–39)”,
in James Charlesworth (ed.), The Continuity of the Prophetic Genius of Isaiah (Grand Rapids, Michigan: Eerdmans, 2018), 35–72., 2018
Introduction In this article I will raise some thoughts about the continuity of writing in First Isaiah (Isa 1–39). Isaiah started to Prophesy during the last year of Uzziah. His last datable activity was recorded during Sennacherib's campaign against Judah in 701 BCE. However, it is clear that not all the material which is found in First Isaiah is to be dated to his time. It is possible to find additions of a later date in the text. No scholarly consensus exists today regarding the appropriate methods by which the prophetic books of the Hebrew Bible, including the book of Isaiah, are to be analyzed. The diachronic classical methodology employed by the late nineteenth and early twentieth century critics sought to distinguish, by means of literary-historical considerations, between a given prophet's actual words and later additions to and revisions of that prophet's message added by scribes and exegetes, in order to reconstruct the different compositional stages of prophetic books. The study of the book of Isaiah has advanced immeasurably in the last decade within the 'traditional' literary-historical method. However, dating biblical texts based only on classical biblical research, such as intertextuality, the development of religious ideas or grammar, as is mostly done, is problematic. In contrast, one of the main tendencies in contemporary Biblical studies is to read prophetic books as uniform and homogeneous literary works which are all late, at least as late as the time of their final production. Biblical scholarship has shifted in the last decades towards an aestethic-literary synchronic analysis. Thus, there has been an increasing tendency in recent scholarship to question whether it is even possible to perform such a reconstruction of the compositional stages of Proto-Isaiah. According to contemporary trend in Biblical studies, the original core of the book of Isaiah remains concealed behind the long process of reshaping and reformulation within the book. Scholars are reluctant to attempt reconstructing its compositional stages. Naturally, this tendency disregards the stages in the formation of the prophetic literature and their original ‘Sitz im Leben’. Others, combine the synchronic approach with a diachronic approach. As a consequence, there exists a growing trend in scholarship that views the prophetic books, including Isaiah, as a creation of the Persian and the Hellenistic periods. Such a viewpoint disregards the ancient origins of the prophetic literature, or views it as mere literature, without inquiring into the historical circumstances behind their composition. It is commonly accepted that much of the material in Proto-Isaiah is not original to the prophet. The oracles in the Book of Isaiah are commonly dated to a variety of periods: Conservative scholars date most of the work to the eighth century, the period of Isaiah himself; others to a Josianic/"Assyrian redaction - end 7th century; to the Exilic or postexilic Persian period, whether composed by Deutero or Trito Isaiah (6/5th and 5/4th c. BCE); to the Hellenistic (4th-3rd centuries) or even late Hellenistic/ Maccabean period (ca. 150 BCE). This clearly affects the question of composition and understanding of the book. Furthermore, setting certain oracles in the wrong historical context hampers the understanding of the original intent of the prophecies. In the following, I will survey various prophecies in the Book of First Isaiah and will date them chronologically according to historical events which they reflect. It seems that during the ministry of Isaiah, as well as during the decades after his death, there was a continuous and constant "Fortschreibung" i.e, updating, editing and composing of prophecies relevant to international relations, the fate of the exiles and God's intervention in these issues. On the other hand, the lack of major editing and additions dating to the Post Exilic Period (neither Persian nor Hellenistic) would point to the finalizing of the bulk of the Book of First Isaiah just a couple of decades before the earliest datable prophesies in Deutero-Isaiah mentioning Cyrus, King of Persia. This has ramifications on the editing process of the Book of Isaiah, a subject, which is highly debated in the past decades.
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