A Tortured Translation

Most of the time comparing the original and a translation is fairly straightforward. Occasionally one finds places where one wonders where the translation came from. The Septuagint for Isaiah 21:4 is one of those:

ἡ καρδία μου πλανᾶται καὶ ἡ ἀνομία με βαπτίζει ἡ ψυχή μου ἐφέστηκεν εἰς φόβον

My heart wanders and iniquity baptizes me. My soul stands in fear. (Isaiah 21:4 LXX)

Nothing in the Hebrew leads us to expect this. The resultant text is interesting but not what other translations say. One wonders where on earth this came from.

His Hand is Stretched Out Still

Five times in the book of Isaiah, Isaiah uses the refrain:

For all this his anger is not turned away, but his hand is stretched out still. (Isaiah 5:25; 9:12, 17, 21; 10:4)

This phrase was recently cited to me as an instance of God's mercy. I can see how and why someone might take it that way, but doing so fails to understand the English, the underlying Hebrew, the scriptural context and the cultural context of the scriptural passages. There is actually a dissertation being written on this subject (see here), but I will give my own take.

Let's start with the scriptural context. The refrain occurs in Isaiah after passages wherein Isaiah discusses the various punishments that will befall the wicked. This includes having their carcasses strew the streets (Isaiah 5:25), the Syrians and the Philistines devouring Israel (Isaiah 9:12), having no mercy on the fatherless and widows (Isaiah 9:17), burning up the people and subjecting them to cannibalism (Isaiah 9:18-21), subjecting the people to captivity, slavery and death (Isaiah 10:4). So, whatever stretching out the hand is, it occurs in the context of punishing the wicked.

The English sentence is constructed to say that in spite of the punishments afflicted ("for all this") "his anger is not turned away" so that the punishments do not satisfy the Lord's anger. To the contrary ("but") the hand of the Lord is still stretched out. So a stretched forth hand, by any careful reading of the English, is a hand administering punishment.

The Hebrew is also clear on the subject. The idiom is yado netuyah [again, I do not have time for the diacritics] which means that the hand is hanging over, threatening, or bent. It is thus a threatening gesture.

Looking at the cultural context, Canaanite deities are often depicted as having their arms bent, hanging over, threatening, or stretched out. There is a good example in a stele from Ugarit, now in the Louvre (and for a better photograph, see the Louvre site):

Canaanite deity, possibly Baal (Louvre AO 15775)

This stele shows the god holding a weapon over his head ready to strike. His hand is netuyah, stretched out, bent, hanging over, and threatening. The upraised arm is the one that is netuyah. The same pose is known from statues from the same area.

Unidentified Canaanite deity (BM 134627)

A Canaanite deity, possibly Reshef (BM 25096)

This is the imagery that Isaiah is using and familiar to his audience, since there are many other examples of this sort of iconography in statues and steles of gods from Canaan. The iconographic motif comes from Egypt where it means the same thing.

Smiting scene at Medinet Habu

This is not a god in a merciful attitude.

What causes God to act this way? Isaiah enumerates these reasons in his discussion: calling evil good and good evil (Isaiah 5:20), being wise in their own eyes (Isaiah 5:21), taking away justice from the righteous (Isaiah 5:23), despising the law and word of God (Isaiah 5:24), not seeking the Lord (Isaiah 9:13), the leaders of the people causing them to err (Isaiah 9:16), decreeing unrighteous decrees, and depriving people of rights (Isaiah 10:1-2). Those guilty of such things should expect the wrath of the Lord to descend upon them.

So can God extend his hand in mercy? Absolutely! This metaphor in Isaiah, however, is not an example of that. God can also smite you, which is what this metaphor is about.

An Ensign for the Nations II

Last week I discussed Isaiah 11:12 and the idea that the ensign could also be understood as a sign or miracle. As interesting as it is, the Septuagint does not have the most interesting take on Isaiah 11:12. That honor goes to the Aramaic, and not the Syriac version either (Syriac is a dialect of Aramaic), which is no more informative than the Septuagint. The more interesting reading belongs to the Targum Jonathan. This is a translation of the Hebrew Bible into Aramaic from around the time of Jesus. It is generally thought to preserve the folk understanding of the biblical text from Palestine in the first century A.D. The passage in question consists of three words:

wa-zqup 'at la-`amamaya'

One could translate this as "and a sign will be lifted up to the nations" but other understandings are possible. The term 'at has a slightly wider meaning than sign or miracle. In Genesis 1:14, the term is used for the constellations. The term can also be used for letter as a unit of writing, not as a synonym for epistle.

The verb zqap also means to crucify or to hang. And aleph-taw, the two letters used to write 'at are the first and last letters of the Aramaic alphabet. There is an Aramaic saying about going from aleph to tav meaning from beginning to end. The Greek equivalent would be alpha and omega. That provokes some interesting speculation, but not any that would not be appropriate for a Sunday.

An Ensign for the Nations I

The magazine, The Ensign, gets its name from Isaiah 11:12:

And he shall set up an ensign for the nations, and shall assemble the outcasts of Israel, and gather together the dispersed of Judah from the four corners of the earth. (KJV)

The translation is adequate. One might quibble that nasa' really means to lift up and so it should be something like "he shall lift up an ensign for the nations." The point, however, seems small. One might also complain that nes as ensign is archaic and that standard or flag might be more current, although flag might be somewhat anachronistic.

The Septuagint, however, translates nes with σημεῖον which is a sign or miracle. This is a very different reading.

As it turns out, this idea is not unknown to Hebrew. The saying on the dreidel is nes gadol hayah šam "A great miracle happened there." So the Hebrew term nes easily encompasses the idea of a miracle.

The idea of lifting up a miracle to the nations as part of the gathering figures into the discussion in 3 Nephi 21 where the Book of Mormon is a sign for the gathering of Israel.

There is another interpretation from this text that I will save for next week.