This is the publication of the second talk in the Isaiah Project. The first can be found on the Elder's You Tube channel and the second one will be published there as well. Comments would be most welcome as this project is seeking deepen the level in which capable of carryout its exploration of the Isaiah Scroll, which we regard as a central mystery of the Word becoming text.
We have begun a series of talks on the Isaiah Scroll, this
being the second.
What makes a close reading of the Isaiah scroll so
fascinating is that through it, one is able to experience the spiritual effort
of a Biblical community responding to their history as it is unfolding. This is a contrast to other readings of the
Biblical text, say of Exodus, in which the spiritual effort is responding to a
remote history that is finished, and is being used as a surrogate for their own
historical moment. The latter case is haunted
by a vagueness about the past being remembered and about a present seeking
answers through remembering. The events
of the 12th century BCE migration out of Egypt are obscure and the
persons doing so in the 8th century, or the 7th century, or even
later, are equal obscure. But in the Isaiah scroll we are dealing with clear
verifiable historical events and with individuals whose presence can be clearly
felt by us as they struggle to make theological sense of what is happening to
them. This is both exciting and useful
for us who are engaged in our own attempt to come to a theological
understanding of what we are going through and with our own need for a
theological vision of our future.
In this second talk we will begin by taking on the early
part of the Isaiah scroll which begins with chapter 3 and ends with chapter
12. In our last talk we looked at the splendid
Hebrew poem which constitutes Chapter 12, a poem likely familiar to us because
we sing it as a hymn or canticle, “Surely is God who saves us.” Well one might ask, what sort of writer makes
use of a poem for closure! This writer has, I will attempt to demonstrate, also
opens his text with a poem, namely, verses 1 through 7 of Chapter 3. We also noted in our past talk that this
section of the text references particular dates, 641 BCE, the year king Uzziah
died, and again 634 the year in which Isaiah confronted King Ahaz on the road
that passes by the Gihon spring on the east side of the city of David. It also provides enough specific information
that we can imagine the date in which this text was finalized, which is
sometime after 722, when Samaria, the capital of the Northern kingdom fell to the
Assyrians, and some time before the death of King Ahaz, 615, referenced in
Chapter 13, and, therefore, well before Assyria lay siege to Jerusalem 701. The composition of text must happen around 720.
The core of this text, which one might consider the first
installment of the Isaiah scroll, is this encounter king and prophet. Uriah was king for fifty years, his last
years as co-regent with his son Jotham.
His advisors no doubt continued not only during the coregency but also
to the end of Jotham reign. One can
imagine the impatience of a new generation to assume power with the young
king.
Just as one can imagine the anxiety of the school of Jerusalem
prophets, to which the equally young Isaiah had been called, had about the
capacity of the new leadership to deal with impending crisis that the kingdom
faced.
With this in mind let us look at the open unit of Chapter 3,
which is a poem or at least, poetic prose.
האדון הנה כי
מסיר צבאןת יהוה
ומיהודה מירושלם
ומשענה משען
מים-וכל לחם-משען כל
Isn’t a fact that the
Lord,
Yahweh of the Hosts is removing
from Jerusalem and from Judah
the supply, the essential supply;
all the supply of bread,
and all the supply of water.
Note first that
adonai is not in its common form, but is modified by the definite article, ה and ends with ון-
on, a suffix which intensifying a noun and which is common in Hebrew
poetry. In this case this special
treatment seems dictated by a desire for a kind of cadence, 6 beats, then repeated
once, and then ending in line of 8.
There is also a consonance which is made possible by the use of the
Hebrew participles that are made with the performative מ,
m, along with the m ending on the words Jerusalem, bread and water. ירושלם לחם מים. This
brief text rings with the m sound.
The text begins in an unusual manner,
not in the way one would expect a prophetic statement, but in the manner of a
declaration of a present fact. There are
a number of ways to indicate a prophetic oracle, for example, common in Isaiah
is the term משאת “harsh prophesy” as at
the beginning of Chapter 13 and following.
Another form makes use of the verb נאם נאם-אדני,
“says the Lord,” as can be seen in the editorial insertion in this text, verse
15. Here however we read הנה כי which has been a puzzle for
translators. The first word is the very
common word for “because” or the demonstrative “that”. The second word is the equally common
command, “behold.” I would suggest that
this unusual conjunction in this case should be read as a declarative, “Isn’t
it a fact.” Isn’t it a fact that God has
taken away the sufficient support of bread and water? More important than material failure is the
failure in governance. Key individuals are missing: hero and warrior, judge and
prophet, soothsayer and elder, captain of fifty and the man of esteem, the
counselor and skilled crafts man and one who discerns the secrets, literally,
what is whispered, rumored about. The new people, on the other hand, disrespect
their elders. “They behave haughtily,
the youth against the elder and the base against the honorable.” In summation, verse 8, beginning with the
same כי: key, “In fact Jerusalem has stumbled,
and Judah is fallen.”
The attempt to understand these
alleged circumstances is colored by the later sieges of Jerusalem’s history,
701 by Sennacherib and 587 by Nebuchadnezzar.
That causes the text to be read as “a judgement oracles (Childes p. 33)
forecasting these later traumatic events. An example is translation of
Rosenberg, and others, who translate the verb forms, that are clearly past or
presently on-going action, as futures: The plain reading of v.4 שרים נערים ונתתי,
is “I have (or am setting) youth as princes, and v. 5 העם ונגש, the people are, or
are being oppressed. In the end it is
not what someone will do to Jerusalem and Judah, but what they have done to
themselves. Their timing could not be worse, for the prophetic school is acutely
aware of the rise of the Assyrian empire and the way it was about to transform life
in the Levent. Already they see that
Damascus, a long-time enemy, will be overrun and not long afterward the
Northern Kingdom bring Assyria to the borders of Judah.
Having identified this unit as a
poem, the question becomes, how did the prophetic school employ such a poetic
unit and why did they choose it to begin what is in effect the first installment
of the Isaiah scroll?
I would suggest that such poetic units
were seen as a basis for theological refection.
The reflective process would take place in a gathering of elders/disciples
of the prophetic community. It would unfold in a series of distinctive steps. The first step was to identify a judgment that
would be passed, second, the nature of judgment and resulting loss, and third,
the element of hope for a future in the context of the loss. The process is
substantially theologizing. This being the first instant we will have to wait
for confirmation that this pattern as a substantial feature of the Isaiah scroll. We will not, however, wait long for a second
poetic unit which undergoes this process is “the song of the beloved vineyard”
the very next chapter, Chapter 5. For now,
in verse 11 of this chapter, let note the “woe,” which states the judgment to
come: “Your men shall fall by the sword and your warriors in war. . . (the city’s)
gates shall lament, and morn and she shall be emptied out and she shall sit on
the ground.”
The result is that on that day of
judgment there will be seven women for every man and each women will plead to be
called by that one’ name in order that their reproach be may be removed. In the future exercise of this process the
result of judgment is the reduction of the population in which the land is
emptied, re-wilded. For example, in 7:21
we read “On that day one will keep alive a young cow and two sheep, and eat
curds because of the abundance of milk that they give; for everyone who is left
in the land shall eat curd and honey.” There
appears in such a formula a bad news, good news dynamic. In this case life will go on, marriage and children
will happen, and seconding that, “on that day “the sprout of the Lord shall be
for beauty and for honor and the fruiting of the land, for greatness and for
glory for the survivors of Israel.” Early on commentators identify this as a
messianic text, Christian, but also Rabbinic Judaism and even by the late
member of the prophetic school itself before it final publication.
Thus,
it anticipates the “messianic” text which will be found later as in Chapter 7,
verse 14 and Chapter 11, verse 1, ויצא חטר מגזע ישי משרשיו. It is significant that while the birth of
child is at stake in these examples, the terminology is not the same. This, I take it, indicates that this is not
so much an actual form of messianic expectation as it is a profound faith in capacity
of the Davidic dynasty to renew itself. This
translates into a faith in the future which in time becomes faith in the
messiah. The future orientation of the Isaiah scroll from beginning to end is a
theological revolution, to which we are all heirs.
The future, in the Isaiah
orientation is also accompanied by forgiveness, in this case a washing from “filth”
and “blood.” What is interesting with chapter 3-4 is, that these themes that
will be found throughout the Isaiah scroll, occur here, one might say, survive
here, in a manner that suggest that are an early, if not the original
occurrence of these themes.
We began this section with two
questions: How did the school use such a poetic unit and why was it chosen to
begin what in effect is the first installment of the Isaiah scroll. The answer to the first question is that the
school used the poetic units as the beginning of their theological reflection. The
poetic text held truth in a way that needed to be unpacked, theologically.
Second it sets out the coming transformation
of Levent life by the rise of the Assyrian Empire. With Chapter 5 and 6 the lay the background
for the message that Isaiah would carry to King Ahaz. It is the foundation story of the Isaiah
scroll.
In our next talk we
will turn to Chapter 7 and see in what way the event of the meeting prophet and king
set the agenda of the Isaiah scroll.
