Isaiah 52:12 - 53:12

Here are my observations, comments, etc. for the text this week:

52:12 The Hebrew word for "in haste" (בחפזון) is the same word used in Deut 16:3 to describe the manner in which Israel exited Egypt. (The word is also used in Ex 12:1 to describe the manner in which the Passover meal should be eaten.) Is 52:12, then, some kind of a reversal of the flight described in Exodus? Because YHWH goes before "you" and forms the rearguard, there will be no need for haste?

52:13 The glorification of the servant on account of his (I believe a female servant would have a different ending) success in this verse is interesting and perhaps magnifies the suffering that follows.

52:14 (1) The meaning of the text translated "inhumanly deformed" (משחת מאיש) is difficult, I gather, for lexicographers (and translators) to deal with. A translation perhaps closer to the sensibilities of Hebrew would be "transformed from human," but you Hebraeophiles feel free to correct me! (2) "And his disfigured appearance" (ותארו) might be better understood as "his beautiful form." (3) The two previous observations, of course, suggest that the inhumanness of the servant's appearance might not refer to his appearance after being beaten (as Jesus' preumably was) but rather his inhuman (dare I say even immortal or god-like?) form. This observation probably won't stand throughout my reading, but I want to mention it anyway.

52:15 "So he will sprinkle" (יזה) "many nations" is translated by the NRSV as "so he shall startle many nations." Clearly, Isaiah originally had baptism in view, but this made the NRSV committee uncomfortable. ;)

53:1 The Hebrew phrase לשמעתנו (NRSV: "what we have heard") has a few possible translations: 1) "what we have to reveal" (i.e., "revelation"); in the passive, "what has been revealed to us"; 2) "proclamation"; 3) "our news" (I get these possibilities from Koehler-Baumgartner, which prefers the last translation).

53:2 This verse already seems to be moving toward the marred, unsightly appearance of the servant that I noted above might be a beautiful, immortal appearance. I'm not sure why this is linked to the simile of a root out of dry ground. ?

53:3 The phrase that the NRSV translates "and as one from whom others hide their faces" (וכמסתר פנים ממנו) is a bit grammatically puzzling to me. The first word seems to me to be a piel participle ("one who hides"), but the piel of this verb supposedly only occurs in Isa 16:3 (K-B). Of course, the word is not pointed exactly like a piel participle should be pointed. I guess I would offer this tentative translation: "and as one who hides faces from us."

53:4 Why is it that verbs of lifting or carrying our used with reference to pain and sickness? Does this mean that the servant suffered the same sickness and pain that the "we" regularly experiences? Or does it mean that the pain or sickness was somehow removed? Are pain and sickness being used metaphorically for some other type of experience?

53:5 (1) How has the servant been wounded by "our" wrongdoing? (I put the "our" in quotation marks because I'm not sure who the "our" refers to.) Is this servant some psychological extension of God's personality? (2) The phrase that the NRSV translates "we were healed" (נרפא-לנו) reads in Hebrew as "he has been healed for us." Waltke and O'Connor cites only this as an example that "rarely, ל governs the subject of a passive verb" (210). Since this is the only example they cite, the syntactical category is obviously suspect.

53:6 The last half of this verse is a bit confusing. Koehler-Baumgartner suggests that the verb הפגיע (a hifil) means the following: "with acc. of thing and ב of person, to let something hurt someone Is 53:6 (iniquity hurting the servant)." This makes no sense with the direct object marker את governing עון. The NRSV has a better syntactical understanding of the second half of this verse (ויהוה הפגיע בו את עון כלנו), it seems to me, although the meaning they attribute to the verb may be slightly off: "and the LORD has laid on him the iniquity of us all." I guess I would consider translating the last half of this verse as follows: "And YHWH looks after all of us [who are] with sin."Of course, the verse does not presume that everyone is with sin.

53:7 Why will the servant not open his mouth? This verse tempts me to find a historical referrent, although I usually try to avoid doing this too much!

53:8 (1) K-B suggests two possibilities for עצר: "distress, oppression"; or "captivity, imprisonment." The first of these meanings is difficult to reconcile with the next phrase (וממשפט לקח) because in some sense משפט (justice) seems to be the oppostive of oppression. So I guess I prefer slightly the second meaning, although the first might work as well. To be in captivity was justice, in a sense. (2) I'm not exactly sure what נגע refers to. Is it merely (as K-B suggests it usually means in a general sense) the onset of an illness?

53:9 (1) For Hebraeophiles: what is the ב doing on במתיו? It does not seem to be parallel to the first part of the clause. (2) Was it customary to give one's death to/with the rich (the Babylonians?) if one did violence or practiced fraud?

53:10 Why would YHWH delight in crushing him? Was this because this was the fulfillment of justice?

53:11 "And he shall carry their sins" (ועונתם הוא יסבל): why is there now a change in the personal pronoun suffix? Up until now, if I am not mistaken, the focus has been on "we" and "you."

53:12 (1) תחת אשר: "Instead of being" or "in return for"? (See K-B under 4) b. of the first word of this phrase [blogger is preventing me from inputting the Hebrew here for some reason].) (2) ואת-פשעים נמנה: "and he was counted among the disloyal." K-B's suggestion of "disloyal" sounds rather different from the more traditional "transgressors" (see NRSV). (3) Here, יפגיע has the sense "look after" (compare with my translation of 53:6 above). (4) Will the servant look after the disloyal because they are one of his kind (that is, he was counted among the disloyal).

Just one last (perhaps wrongheaded) question: might the servant in this passage be referring to the generation of Israel that has now died/been crushed?

The Social Logic of Isa 40:1-11

Elizabeth Clark, in her provocative, thought-provoking book History, Theory, Text: Historians and the Linguistic Turn, cites Gabrielle Spiegel's work on the "social logic of the text" as one of the most promising ways forward for historians after the linguistic turn. Spiegel's concept of the social logic of the text suggests that the social location of the speaker is subtly (and sometimes not so subtly) embedded in the text, and that the "moment of inscription"—"the moment of choice, decision, and action"—provides the historian a means for investigating the "social reality of the text." Spiegel argues, "At work in shaping a literary text is a host of unstated desires, beliefs, misunderstandings, and interests which impress themselves upon the work, sometimes consciously, sometimes not, but which arise from pressures that are social and not merely intertextual" (emphasis mine). These external social pressures leave their mark on the text and allow the historian a means for constructing a text's social context.

For Spiegel, the concept of the "social logic of the text" enables the historian to find the "text's social site—its location within an embedded social environment of which it is a product and in which it acts as an agent—and its own discursive character as 'logos,' that is, as itself a literary artifact composed of language." The text both acts and is acted upon, and it is both linguistic and material. Further, Spiegel emphasizes that texts possess social (and not merely linguistic) realities; "even the purely aesthetic character of a work can be related to the social world from which it emerges."^, I approach Isa 40:1-11 as a text that has been substantially shaped by external social elements that constitute various strands of the author's social context. I examine the text of Isa 40:1-11 in order to construct a social context based on the residues of these social pressures, which left their mark on the text.

In particular, the disembodied voice of verses 3 and 6 and the grass metaphor in verses 6-8 provide excellent possibilities for an analysis of the sort that I have proposed here. Given the text itself, these two elements seem to be incongruent with, or at least problematic for, the text's logic. This causes me to believe that there is an underlying social logic that causes these elements to fit the logic of the rest of the passage but that is unavailable to us as readers set within a radically different social context. I am uninterested in the specific, broad historical context. Rather, I am interested in the local context that surrounded this particular passage (my assumption is that language is always local). I am still exploring what people have said about the social context of this passage, so I may have more to say on Wednesday.

Isaiah 45:9-19

Here are my comments, findings, and observations for this week:

45:9 The first half of this verse seems to lack parallelism, or at least I don't understand its parallelism: הוי רב את-יצרו חרש את-חרשי אדמה. I want to understand חרש את-חרשי אדמה as "the potsherd [which attacks] the potsherds of earth." It seems as though חרשי should be pointed so as to mean "craftspeople of" rather than "potsherds of." What were the Masoretes thinking?

45:11 I'm a little confused about what to do with האתיות שאלוני על-בני (at the beginning of the second half of the verse). The first participle ("those who come") is feminine, but the imperative verb and "my sons" are both masculine. I'm not even sure how to begin! Perhaps one could understand this as "ask me [concerning] those (women) who come [forth] and concerning my sons." Can anyone help?

45:12 The second half of this verse has what seems to me to be a peculiar order for Hebrew: אני ידי נטו שמים וכל-צבאם צויתי. The thought begins with אני ("I"; compare the beginning of verse 12) but fails to make use of this pronoun until the "I have commanded" (צויתי) at the end of the verse. Is the intervening material, then, parenthetical? This would be the result of this arrangement: "I (my hands have spread out the heavens and all their heavenly bodies) have commanded!" Or "I (my hands have spread out the heavens) have even commanded the heavenly bodies."

45:13 (1) I notice that the NRSV inserts Cyrus into this verse, although the name does not occur in the Hebrew. This may certainly be appropriate to insert the name (from verse 1), but I just thought I would note this. (2) The "exiles" are also mentioned in this verse. Do we need to modify our understand of the "exiles" as the result of Middlemas's broader interpretation? Or is it appropriate to keep the translation "eciles" here?

45:14 (1) Does עליך יעברו in the first half of this verse mean something like "they will pass over you?" How does it fit in with the rest of the sentence? (2) At the end of the first half of the verse, what does it mean for these peoples/nations to בזקים יעברו? Are they headed somewhere else? Or do they belong to Israel? (3) ישתחוו ("they will bow down"): is it a Hishtaphel of חוה or a Hithpael of שחה? HELP! GRAMMATICAL AMBIGUITY! :) (4) Again, the no other gods concept arises.

45:15 Why does God keep hidden? Contrast verse 19, where YHWH seems to suggest that he did not speak in secret. Is there another dialog going on here?

45:17 עד-עולמי עד: what an odd phrase this is that ends this verse! Does this begin to approach the philosophical concept of eternity? (My guess is, probably not.)

45:18 This verse sounds very familiar! These are familiar epithets that we had in earlier focus texts. Is Amy getting soft on us by giving us a verse to translate that we have already had instead of a verse full of hapax legomena? :) (I'm only kidding, Amy! I have felt plenty challenged by the Hebrew!)

45:19 תהו: The NRSV suggests "chaos" (perhaps in contrast to "order" at the end of the verse), while Koehler and Baumgartner suggest something along the lines of "useless, futile." Literally, I think, the word refers to wilderness. Does this relate to the wanderings in Exodus at all?

Isaiah 42:1-9; 18-25

Here are my observations, findings, and comments for this week:

42:1 How should we translate the first three words of the second half of this verse? "I will give my spirit on account of him (for his sake)?" "I will place my spirit on him?" The latter translation seems more appropriate to the following context, but the Hebrew seems to allow for both possibilities.

42:2 What is the significance of this individual's failure to cry out? Does the juxtaposition of this verse with the previous one suggest the manner in which this individual will effect justice (that is, without needing to say anything)? I am totally aware of the anachronism here, but (I hate to admit it!) this verse seems difficult for me to interpret outside of Matt 12:18-28, where a typological reading of this passage provides a more certain referent than the Isaiah passage does by itself.

42:3 Here I just need to record my initial reaction: Wow, it's amazing how much I have been submersed in the New Testament. When these words are removed from their New Testament context, I have no clue to what they refer. (Don't misunderstand me, though; I know full well that the New Testament interprets these words allegorically, or allegoretically, or perhaps typologically. It's just that these words are enigmatic to me in their original context, which is perhaps why Jewish followers of Jesus could interpret them the way they do.)

42:4 (1) What does it mean that this individual will not oppress (or "mistreat") until he establishes justice on the earth? Do I have the correct meaning of this word? (Does anyone have the correct meaning?!) (2) In the second half of this verse, this individual appears to be a teacher of sorts, whereas previously, this individual seems to be primarily concerned with bringing about justice. Who is this individual?

42:5 The first half of the verse mentions YHWH's creation of the "heavens" and his activity concerning the land and plants, whereas the second half of the verse seems to be primarily concerned with human beings and, possibly, animals (in the last participle of the verse). I'm not sure if this is significant, but I seem to recall the "creation" (or "ordering") of these things being better separated in the Genesis accounts.

42:6 How can an individual be a "covenant for the people" or a "light for the nations?"

42:7 Is the action of "opening the eyes of the blind" metaphorical (i.e., those who have failed to understand will finally understand) or literal (i.e., this individual will heal those who are physically blind)?

42:8 Again, the name (and identity) of God (YHWH) appears to be in question. YHWH is the one who acts and the one who deserves praise and glory, not another (unnamed) god.

42:9 I think the divisions of this verse in Hebrew are too constraining. In the second half of the verse, the first word seems to go with the fifth word, and the second with the fifth. Why not translate them all together without the Masoretic constraints? "I who announced before the new things that have sprouted will cause you to hear." (Compare the NRSV's "See, the former things have come to pass, and new things I now declare; before they spring forth, I tell you of them.")

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42:18 Again, are these references to the deaf and blind metaphorical or literal? (By literal, I don't mean they refer to something that has or will actually happen but rather they possess a physical [corporeal?] meaning within this particular text.)

42:19 The messenger is blind and deaf?! I need to look at the greater context for this. What does kimšulläm mean?

42:20 The grammar of this verse (in particular, the use of the infinitive at the beginning of the second half of the verse) seems a little off. Ah, I just checked Waltke and O'Connor, and they give a number of passages (including this one) where the infinitive absolute is used as a finite verb. Thus, they translate this as "He opens his ears but hears nothing" (594) rather than "to open ears and he will not hear."

42:21 What does it mean to enlarge one's teaching? To me, this presumes that the teaching that exists is insufficient, so the teaching needs to be extended in order to do a better job.

42:22 Who are the people being referred to here?

42:23 When is this "time to come (later)?" What does this suggest about what this text is claiming?

42:24 There is a change of subjects here that is interesting. "We have sinned" against YHWH, but "they did not want to walk in his ways nor did they listen to (obey) his instruction." Does this reflect a culpability that extends to the present based on the behavior of a previous generation? The present generation, one presumes, is (the author hopes!) willing to walk in the ways of YHWH and obey his instruction.

42:25 Who is the "him" being referred to here, and why did he receive YHWH's wrath and anger? And why was he so impervious to its effects?