FHJC - Isaiah Resources (units 1-4c)

See the rest of our resources here: https://www.sefaria.org/groups/FHJC-Isaiah-Series

UNIT 1: II Kings 18-19

Sennacharib, Emperor of Assyria. 8th century BCE

Sennacharib's Annals. Written in Cuneiform. 38cm by 14 cm. Written between 691 and 689 BCE. There are three known complete versions (and fragments of others), all containing nearly the same text. Found in Ninveh, the ancient Assyrian capital, 1830.

Sennacharib's account of the Jerusalem campaign from the Sennacharib Annals

In the continuation of my campaign I besieged Beth Dagon, Joppa, Banai-Barqa, Azuru, cities belonging to Sidqia who did not bow to my feet quickly (enough); I conquered (them) and carried their spoils away. The officials, the patricians and the (common) people of Ekron--who had thrown Padi, their king, into fetters (because he was) loyal to (his) solemn oath (sworn) by the god Ashur, and had handed him over to Hezekiah, the Jew (Ha-za-qi-(i)a-ú ^amel Ia-ú-da-ai)--(and) he (Hezekiah) held him in prison, unlawfully, as if he (Padi) be an enemy--had become afraid and had called (for help) upon the kings of Egypt (Mus(u)ri) the bowmen, the chariot(-corps) and the cavalry of the king of Ethiopia (Meluhha), an army beyond counting--and they (actually) had come to their assistance. In the plain of Eltekeh (Al-ta-qu-ú), their battle lines were drawn up against me and they sharpened their weapons.

Upon a trust (-inspiring) oracle (given) by Ashur, my lord, I fought with them and inflicted a defeat upon them. In the mêlée of the battle, I personally captured alive the Egyptian charioteers with the (ir) princes and (also) the charioteers of the king of Ethiopia. I besieged Eltekeh (and) Timnah (Ta-am-na-a), conquered (them) and carried their spoils away. I assaulted Ekron and killed the officials and patricians who had committed the crime and hung their bodies on poles surrounding the city. The (common) citizens who were guilty of minor crimes, I considered prisoners of war. The rest of them, those who were not accused of crimes and misbehavior, I released. I made Padi, their king, come from Jerusalem (Ur-sa-li-im-mu) and set him as their lord on the throne, imposing upon him the tribute (due) to me (as) overlord.

As to Hezekiah, the Jew, he did not submit to my yoke, I laid siege to 46 of his strong cities, walled forts and to the countless small villages in their vicinity, and conquered (them) by means of well-stamped (earth-) ramps, and battering-rams brought (thus) near (to the walls) (combined with) the attack by foot soldiers, (using) mines, breeches as well as sapper work. I drove out (of them) 200,150 people, young and old, male and female, horses, mules, donkeys, camels, big and small cattle beyond counting, and considered (them) booty. Himself I made a prisoner in Jerusalem, his royal residence, like a bird in a cage. I surrounded him with earthwork in order to molest those who were leaving his city's gate. His towns which I had plundered , I took away from his country and gave them (over) to Mitinti, king of Ashdod, Padi, king of Ekron, and Sillibel, king of Gaza. Thus I reduced his country, bur I still increased the tribute and the katru -presents (due) to me (as his) overlord which I imposed (later) upon him beyond the former tribute, to be delivered annually.

Hezekiah himself, whom the terror-inspiring splendor of my lordship had overwhelmed and whose irregular and elite troops which he had brought into Jerusalem, his royal residence, in order to strengthen (it), had deserted him, did send me, later, to Nineveh, my lordly city, together with 30 talents of gold, 800 talents of silver, precious stones, antimony, large cuts of red stone, couches (inlaid) with ivory, nîmedu -chairs (in-laid) with ivory, elephant-hides, ebony-wood, box-wood (and) all kinds of valuable treasures, his (own) daughters, concubines, male and female musicians. In order to deliver the tribute and to do obeisance as a slave he sent his (personal) messenger.

How did Rabshakeh know the language of Judah??? -

https://www.bibleinterp.com/PDFs/Levin-Rabshakeh.pdf

In this article, Yigal Levin argues that the Assyrian Rabshakeh was in fact an exiled Northern Israelite who rose up through the ranks in the Assyrian court. (Compare this with Daniel 1, where Daniel and his friends do the same.) This would explain how he knew of King Hezekiah's religious policies so well, and how other Judeans and Isrealites reacted to them; as well as "Yehudit," or Hebrew.

UNIT 2: ISAIAH 6

Isaia 6 Illustration

God's "Liturgical Body"

(As opposed to the "Natural-Human," or the "Cosmic")

(Also, see my The Bodies of God source sheet; https://www.sefaria.org/sheets/241076?lang=bi)

from Mark Smith's The Three Bodies of God in Ancient Israel, 480-481

The second body of God is superhuman in scale. This divine body may be characterized as a “liturgical body,” as it belongs to the constellation of themes associated with the temple or palace of the deity located on the holy mountain35 (cf. Amos 9:1; for a human analogue, cf. 1 Kgs 13:1)

...

Isaiah 6 offers another example of the super-human sized body. The prophet begins in his first-person voice: “I saw Yahweh sitting on a throne, high and lofty; and the hem of his robe filled the temple” (v. 1). In addition, what the prophet sees of the deity is a seated body enthroned “high and lofty.” According to v. 1, the prophet is having this experience in the Jerusalem temple (reflected also in the mention of the doorposts and the “House” in v. 4). The throne where the divine body is seen is not the divine throne in heaven (as in 1 Kgs 22:19; cf. Jer 23:18, 22) but the throne in the holy of holies of the temple. The divine clothing fills the temple. Radiating from the divine body in the temple, the divine glory (kābôd) fills the earth (v. 3; cf. Num 14:21, Jer 23:24). The physical structure of the temple suggests some measurements of the divine body as seen by the prophet here. According to 1 Kgs 6:23–28, the throne consists of two cherubs,47 each one measuring ten cubits in height; with a cubit measuring a foot and a half, the height of the two cherubs comes to fifteen feet. Elsewhere, cherubs are what the deity rides on (2 Sam 22:11 = Ps 18:10). The cherubs in the holy of holies are usually envisioned as constituting the seat of the throne (although they also provide armrests in some depictions).

Either way, the text suggests a “mental image”48 of the deity seated about fifteen feet high. In the vision of Isaiah, therefore, YHWH is represented as seated about ten times human size. This recalls God’s size in Exod 33–34. This scale is attested also in an extrabiblical parallel to Isa 6:1, namely, the superhuman-sized throne of Baal in KTU 1.6 I 56–65.49 In sum, the divine body as experienced by both Moses and Isaiah is not represented as flesh; it appears to be a body of “glory” (kābôd) manifest on earth.

What's a seraph?

8th-century Seals

Ashna was a contemporary of Isaiah, as well as a courtier of King Ahaz!

(taken from Sommer, see below)

Similarities between Isaiah 6 and the seals:

• Both represent YHWH as King; sits enthroned in Isaiah's vision, and wears a crown in Ashna's seal;

• Surrounded by seraphs

---from Nature, Revelation, and Grace in Psalm 19: Towards a Theological Reading of Scripture, by Ben Sommer

https://pdfs.semanticscholar.org/411f/feebe41a02dd1051e327f958b9ba8bf42053.pdf

The Uraeus, from Greek for "on its tail," or Egyptian, "rearing cobra". Egyptian symbol of sovereignty, royalty, deity, and divine authority.

This Israelite cult stand from the site of Ta’anach was likely used before the establishment of the first Jerusalem temple... The top level depicts a winged sun-disk riding a horse.

--- from https://www.bibleodyssey.org/en/tools/image-gallery/t/taanach-cult-stand

Some explicit and implicit sun imagery in a familiar psalm (see Sommer above) :

Unit 3: Isaiah 1

Hittite Suzerainty Outline:

1. Preamble
2. Historical Prologue
3. Presentation of the parties of the treaty
4. Conditions of the treaty
5. Witnesses (lists of various gods)
6. Blessings and curses

---from George Mendehall, Covenant Forms in Israelite Tradition, 1954

The "Covenant Lawsuit" Outline (the riv)

1. Description of the Scene of Judgement
2. The Speech of the Plaintiff
   1. Heaven and Earth are appointed judges
   2. Summons to the defendant (or judges)
   3. Address in the second person to the defendant
      1. Accusation in question-form
      2. Refutation of the defendant's possible arguments
      3. Specific indictment

The Summoning of the Heavens and the Earth as Witnesses

Rabbi Samuel David Luzzato (Shadal), Italy, 19th century

From Wikipedia on Israel (name): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Israel_(name)

Commentators differ on the original literal interpretation. The text of Genesis etymologizes the name with the root śarah "to rule, contend, have power, prevail over": שָׂרִיתָ עִם־אֱלֹהִים (KJV: "a prince hast thou power with God"), but modern suggestions read the el as the subject, for a translation of "El/God rules/judges/struggles", "El fights/struggles".

...

In Jewish and Christian texts from the Greco-Egyptian area during Second Temple Judaism and beyond the name was understood to mean "a man seeing God" from the ʾyš (man) rʾh (to see) ʾel (God).

איש-ראה-אל --->>> (א)יש-רא(ה)אל--->>>ישראל

Parallel to Isaiah 1:30

(below: The Kuntillet ajrud inscriptions, from the 9th or 8th century)

Interjections

This is one of the 10 parts of speech of Biblical Hebrew. Generally a word of exclamation in which the speaker makes known his/her inner emotional state.

Here are three which are very much related, two of which we have already seen:

הוי - Expresses grief, pain, sorrow, misery. Usually translated as "Alas!", or "Woe!"

אהה - Expresses complaint, or strong despair.

אוי - An impassioned expression of grief and despair, often as though pronouncing woe upon the person(s) to whom it refers, almost always governing the object of its pronouncement with an inseparable preposition or a pronominal suffix.

Here is another one which we have seen, also in Isaiah 1:

איכה - Expresses intensity. Has an affinity with הוי above.

Chapter 1 Summary

Verses 1-9 שמעו שמים

• Witnesses invoked;
• Israel demonstrated to be worse than animals, in not even recognizing their own creator;
• Continually seeks out her own beatings;
• The only remnant being a result of God's kindness

Verses 10-14 שמעו דבר ה

• God has had it with hypocritical sacrifices and prayer.
• Israelites given clear instructions on how to make amends; Do good. Pursue justice. Aid the wrong. Fight for the orphan. Defend the widow.

Verses 18-20 לכו נא ונוכחה

• Redemption is possible. And either Israel shall eat from the good of the land, or shall be consumed by the sword.

Verses 21-23 איכה !

• How low Jerusalem has fallen!
• Linguistic parallels to the laws of the Rebellious Child, who is deserving of death. (Not for the first time this chapter.)

Verses 24-31 לכן נאם האדון

• God will pursue vengeance;
• Jerusalem will be restored;
• Ends on a downer.

Some view this ch as a single speech that is especially comprehensive in its subject matter and biting in tone. Alternatively, it may be a summary of the contents of the books as a whole, written specifically to be an introduction, probably to chs 1-33... ----- from the Jewish Study Bible Commentary

Superscriptions Compared - Which came first?

צדקה as "retribution"

Unit 4a: Isaiah 7 The Syro-Ephraimite War

Below: Tiglath Pileser III (aka Pul).

Killed the Assyrian Royal family and usurped the throne, ruling Assyria from 745-727. Succeeded by his son Shalmenassar V (whom we saw in our first unit, see 2 Kings 18:9), who was then succeeded by his son Sennacharib, whom we also saw in the first unit.

Summary-Inscriptions of Tiglath-Pilesar III

“Israel (lit- Omri-land Bit-Humria)… All its inhabitants (and) their possessions I led to Assyria. They overthrew their king Pekah (Pa-qa-ha) and I placed Hoshea (A-u-si) as king over them. I received from them 10 talents of gold, 1,000 (?) talents of silver as their [tri]bute and brought them to Assyria.

---from The Center for Online Judaica Studies, http://cojs.org/tiglath-pileser_iii_and_the_syro-ephraimite_war-_kalah_palace_summary_inscription_4-_730_bce/

"House of Omri" in Assyrian inscriptions

The "House of Omri" is believed to have been the Assyrian name for the Kingdom of Israel. Assyrian kings frequently referred to Omri's successors as belonging to the "House of Omri" (Bit Hu-um-ri-a).

The table below lists all the historical references to Omri in Assyrian records. (taken from Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Omrides

Fuller's Field

At the end of the conduit . . .—The king was apparently superintending the defensive operations of the siege, probably cutting off the supply of water outside the walls, as Hezekiah afterwards did (2Chronicles 32:3-4). The “upper pool” has been identified with the Upper Gihon pool (Birket-el-Mamilla) or the “dragon’s well” of Nehemiah 2:13. A lower pool meets us in Isaiah 22:9. The “fuller’s field” was near En-rogelim (Isaiah 36:2; 2Samuel 17:17).

---From Charles Ellicot's commentary, 19th century, England

This reservoir was probably filled from the rains, and from the superfluous waters of the upper pool. It is now in ruins. The water from this pool would flow off into the valley of Hinnom, and thence, into the valley of Jehoshaphat or Kedron, or subsequently into the pool of Hezekiah, situated "within" the city; see the notes at Isaiah 22:9, Isaiah 22:11. Why Ahaz was at that place, the prophet does not say. It is possible he was examining it, to see whether the fountain could be stopped up, or the water diverted so that it could not be used by the enemy, and so that they could be prevented from maintaining a protracted siege; compare 2 Chronicles 32:4. It is probable that the king had gone to this place attended by many of his counselors, and as this was the main source of the supply of water to the city, a multitude would be there, and Isaiah could have an opportunity not only to deliver his message to Ahaz and his court, but in the presence of a considerable concourse of people, and might thus inspire confidence among the alarmed and dejected inhabitants of the city.

---Albert Barnes, 19th century, NY

What is "fulling?"

Fulling or tucking or walking (“waulking” in Scotland) is a step in clothmaking which involves the cleansing of cloth (particularly wool, but also cotton) to eliminate oils, dirt, and other impurities, and making it thicker. The worker who did the job was a fuller, tucker, or walker. In Scotland they were known as “waulkers.”

Depending on the part of England where they lived, three surnames developed for people who completed this part of the operation: Walker in the north and midlands, Fuller in the south-east and Tucker in the south-west.

If your last name is Fuller, Tucker or Walker somewhere in your past is an ancestor who did this work to keep him/herself and the family – along with the family name – alive. (Read on and be thankful you missed it.)

----from https://threadingthroughtime.wordpress.com/2014/09/09/whitening-fabric-before-the-advent-of-bleach-meet-the-fullers/

below: Is this Fuller's Field? These three Vs were found near Gihon Spring.

Perhaps these Vs were there for purposes of "fulling," a weaving and whitening process. Below is a picture of what some of the machinery might look like:

The "almah"

In the book of Matthew, one of the 1st-century accounts of the life and times of Jesus, the miraculous nature of Jesus's birth is of paramount importance. Here are a few verses from Matthew 1:

Matthew 1:18 Now the birth of Jesus the messiah took place in this way. When his mother Mary had been engaged to Joseph, but before they lived together, she was found to be with child from the Holy Spirit.

Matthew 1:22-23: All this took place to fulfill what had been spoken by the Lord through the prophet: "Look, the virgin shall conceive and bear a son, and they shall name him Emmanuel!"

The Crossway Study Bible commentary (a Christian publication) states the following:

The word translated virgin refers specifically to a "maiden" - that is, a young woman who is unmarried and has not had a sexual relationship with anyone. Thus Matthew rightly applied this prophecy to the virgin birth of Christ. This prophecy also had significance for Isaiah's day. Ahaz and his house stood judged by God for unbelief. The passage gave hope to faithful believers like Isaiah for a future Messiah. The sign finds its final fulfillment in the virgin birth of Jesus, who is literally "God with us".

Similarly, in the later account in the book of Luke:

Luke 1:30-31, 34-35: [Gabriel] the angel said to her [Mary], "Do not be afraid, Mary, for you have found favor with God. And now you will conceive inyour womb and bear a son, and you will name him Jesus... Mary said to the angel, "How an this be, since I am a virgin?" The angel said to her "The holy spirit will come upon you, and the power of the Most High will overshadow you; therfore the child to be born will be holy.

But the term in Hebrew is "almah." Does it really mean "virgin?" Let's take a look at its other appearances in the TaNaKh, with this question in mind: If we could translate the whole verse except for this word; what translation might we intuitively come up with? Virgin? Young woman? Something else?

And for comparison, here are the two cases where the term occurs in its masculine form:

The Septuagint

The 3rd century Greek translation of Israelite and Judean literature

Isaiah 14: διὰ τοῦτο δώσει κύριος αὐτὸς ὑμῖν σημεῖον· ἰδοὺ ἡ παρθένος ἐν γαστρὶ ἕξει καὶ τέξεται υἱόν, καὶ καλέσεις τὸ ὄνομα αὐτοῦ Εμμανουηλ·

Wikipedia's Summary

The modern scholarly consensus is that the tradition rests on very slender historical foundations. In the entire Christian corpus the virgin birth is found only in the Gospel of Matthew and the Gospel of Luke: both are probably from the period AD 80-100, both are anonymous (the attributions to Matthew and Luke were added in the 2nd century), and it is almost certain that neither was the work of an eyewitness. Matthew and Luke did not find their story in Mark, nor did one of them derive it from the other, nor did they find it in a common source. Raymond E. Brown suggested in 1973 that Joseph was the source of Matthew's account and Mary of Luke's, but modern scholars consider this "highly unlikely", given that the story emerged so late. It follows that the two narratives were created by the two writers, drawing on ideas in circulation in some Christian circles perhaps by around 65 AD.

Matthew uses Isaiah 7:14 to support his narrative, but scholars agree that the Hebrew word used in Isaiah, "almah", signifies a girl of childbearing age without reference to virginity, and was aimed at Isaiah's own immediate circumstances. Paul does not mention it and assume Jesus's full humanity, Mark, the earliest gospel, seems unaware that there was anything exceptional about the birth, and in the Gospel of John Jesus has both father and mother (he is "the son of Joseph, whose father and mother we know" (John 4:21-22), repeating Philip's words to Nathanael at John 1:45, "We have found him about whom Moses in the law and also the prophets wrote, Jesus, son of Joseph from Nazareth").

---- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Virgin_birth_of_Jesus#Arguments_and_evidence

Here's an interesting thought published by Samuel N. Deinard in The American Journal of Semitic Languages and Literatures back in 1899 (!!!!)

What, then is the "oth" Isaiah here offers? Nothing else than that "The child to which the young woman (a person well known to his hearers) is soon to give birth will be a son." ... When this prediction concerning the birth of a son proves true, then, the prophet adds, the young woman will confidently call him Emmanu-el, for the people will be convinced that the former prediction, לא תקום ולא תהיה, will also prove true.

---from Notes on Isaiah, Chapt. 7, page 167

Ugarit on map

Why is Ugarit so important?

Check out this brief, incredibly informative explanation by Michael Heiser, What's Ugarit Got to do with Anything? https://www.logos.com/ugaritic

Here are some highlights:

You might be thinking that all you really need to know about the religion of the Israelites is in the Bible. You’d only be partially correct in that thought. We are centuries removed from the world of the Bible, and a lot of material in the Bible is pretty obtuse to those of us in the 21st century. Those who wrote the Bible weren’t writing for a technological society, and so words, phrases, descriptions, and concepts that were completely familiar to an Israelite are lost on us. There’s also the matter of the kinds of ideas that were floating around in Israel from other religions—like Baal worship—that were being embraced by people who were supposed to be following the God of Israel. You have to wonder why, to paraphrase Elijah (1 Kings 18:21), Israel kept halting between two opinions as to who was the true God.

Ugaritic, the language of ancient Ugarit (in modern Syria), isn’t something that most people think about when it comes to Bible study. However, the clay tablets discovered and deciphered in the late 1920s and early 1930s provide an unparalleled glimpse into the life and religious worldview of the ancient Israelites. Some (including myself) would argue that they are as important as the Dead Sea Scrolls. Ugaritic is important because of the fact that its vocabulary is so close to biblical Hebrew — many Ugaritic words are letter-for-letter the same as biblical Hebrew. It is the religion of Ugarit, however, that is especially important to Old Testament scholarship.

With that, how can Ugarit help us with our almah question?

Here is an incredible passage from the aptly titled A Solution to the Immanuel Prophecy in Isaiah 7, published in Journal of Biblical Literature, 1972, page 449-456: https://www.jstor.org/stable/3263678?seq=7#metadata_info_tab_contents

The evidence from Ugarit has been rightly adduced to ascertain the meaning of 'almah, but thus far a crucial element from that evidence has escaped proper evaluation. In the three places where glmt, the exact equivalent to 'a1zmah, is used, it refers to a young woman being sought in marriage. Two of the three instances are found in the Keret epic, where Keret was pursuing Hurriya, the daughter of King Pebel, as a prospective wife (line 204). The second time gZmt occurs describing Hurriya is at her wedding in text 128, II, 22: "The girl thou causest to enter thy court / will bear thee seven sons.''1l In the story of Nikkal and the Kathirat, the moon god Yarih pays the bride- price for the goddess Nikkal; but before the marriage negotiations, however, we find our closest parallel to Isa 7:14: "a virg[in] will give birth . . . Lo a maid will bear a son.''l2 The Ugaritic words tld bt1/[t] and hl g1zmt tld b[n] resemble 7:14 in several respects, obviously providing us with the same sort of announce- ment. As Gray has shown, the prediction that the bride would bear offspring was fittingly made in this "stock formula" at marriage.l3 In Hebrew 'almah also appears where marriage is imminent. Rebekah is called 'al7nah in Gen 24:43, just prior to becoming Isaac's wife. Her family sent her away with the hope that she would become "the mother of thousands of ten thousands." (vs. 60). Prov 30:19, which speaks of "the way of a man with a maiden" might refer to "the bride who has just been brought home,''14 or to a young man eager to secure a particular girl as his wife. If 'aImah refers to a girl soon to be married, and if the announcement of Isa 7:14 is characteristically given close to one's marriage, where is Isaiah's marriage to this young woman described? The solution seems to lie in 8:1-4... We will return to this point after we make some progress in chapter 8. But there are two other passages from his conclusion that I want to share:

The "marriage" solution to the relationship between chs. 7 and 8 clarifies two vigorously debated points about 7:16x. One is the meaning of 'almogh. It must mean "virgin," as Ugaritic text 77 has proved by its parallelism of glmt and btlt, equivalents to Hebrew "young woman" and "virgin."42 The woman is not mar- ried, for the wedding does not take place until 8:1-3. This does not mean, how- ever, that the mother was a virgin at childbirth...

And finally, his closing point:

Matthew's use of this passage in the NT is consistent with his references to other OT verses. On occasion he employs a secondary interpretation which dif- fered considerably from the primary message. In Matt 2: 15 Jesus' stay in Egypt fulfilled Hos 11: 1, "Out of Egypt have I called my son," a verse referring to the exodus. Similarly Matt 2:18, describing the agony over Herod's murder of young boys in Bethlehem, cites Jer 31:15, where Rachel wept over her children in Ramah. This mourning is related to the captivity of Israel44 and is illustrative of the intense suffering brought on by Herod's act. Jeremiah's prophecy received a "new fulfilment" through Herod's atrocity.45 In an analogous manner Matthew selected Isa 7:14 to describe the birth of Jesus. The language was perfectly suited to Matthew's purpose; and where he went beyond the normal interpretation, he clearly explained the circumstances.

The RSV Controversy

When the Revised Standard Version translators rendered "almah" as "young woman" in 1952 it immediately became a center of controversy for conservative Christians, who believed that this passage predicted the virgin birth of Jesus. The RSV quickly replaced the KJV in many churches across America, but fundamentalist American Christians argued that nowhere in the Old Testament was an almah anything other than a young unmarried girl, and one pastor publicly burned a copy of the RSV. Isaiah 7:14 became a litmus test of orthodoxy among conservatives,but most modern Bible translations use "young woman".

The original meaning of the word parthenos in the Septuagint (i.e., the Hebrew Bible translated by Hellenistic Jews in Koine Greek) is "young woman", not "virgin", but the word changed meaning over the centuries;^[1] thus the authors of Matthew and Luke believed instead that Isaiah would predict a virgin birth for the coming Messiah, so they endorsed their choice by quoting the Greek translation.

^---https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Isaiah_7:14

Testing God

The Testament of Matthew 4

Then Jesus was led up by the Spirit into the wilderness to be tempted by the devil. And after fasting forty days and forty nights he was hungry. And the tempter came and said to him, "If you are the Son of God, command these stones to become loaves of bread."

But he answered, "It is written: Man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word that comes from the mouth of God" (Deut 8:3)

Then the devil took him to the holy city and set him on the pinnacle of the temple and said to him, "If you are the Son of God, throw yourself down, for it is written: 'He will command his angels concerning you,' and 'On their hands they will bear you up, lest you strike your foot against a stone.' (Psalm 91)

Jesus said to him, "Again it is written, You shall not put YHWH your god to the test!'"

So wasn't Ahaz acting piously??? Why did Isaiah get upset?

See Shmuel Vargon's comment on page 290, from Prophecy of Rebuke or Consolation?, from Beit Mikra: Journal of the Study of the Bible and Its World 46:4.

Link: https://www.jstor.org/stable/pdf/23508816.pdf?ab_segments=0%252Fbasic_SYC-5187%252Ftest&refreqid=excelsior%3A468694f65ff490264c383c2dd9ef1340

Isaiah 7: 18-25. The "On those days"

What's going on here; Blessings? Or curses?

HarperCollins Commentary

7:17 - Whether the verse is a promise or a threat to Judah is ambiguous.

7:18-25 - Four sayings that expand on v. 17.

JSB

7:18-25 - Predictions of disaster for Judah... The reference to curds and honey is unclear; They are either delicacies the survivors are privileged to enjoy or meager provisions left after the punishment. The passage exemplifies the ambivalent tone of Isaiah's doctrine of the surviving remnant: It is unclear whether the description f this future is to be viewed negatively (since only a remnant endure) or positively (since they do in fact endure).

Robert Alter

7:22 - This sounds as though they are enjoying plenty, like the child Immanuel, but given the dire content of the three verses that follow, it probably eans, in what may be an ironic twist, that they will live off the produce of their remaining livestock and what honey they can gather but will be unable to grow crops.

Here's a fascinating theory by Shmuel Vargon in his article Prophecy of Rebuke or Consolation?, published in Beit Mikra: Journal of the Study of the Bible and Its World 46:4, page 289-303.

In addition to the abstract below, see the following:

top of 292 - The medieval commentators see them as blessings

bottom of 295-296 - In contrast to the medievals...

bottom of 298-299 (eating curds and honey)

bottom of 301 - Hand of the redactor

Abstract

The article is concerned with the problem of the demarcation, structure, and meaning of the literary unit in Isa. 7:18-25, regarding which the commentators differ: is its message one of encouragement, blessing, and consolation to the kingdom of Judah, or do its verses threaten of the coming tribulations? The conclusion drawn by the article is that this literary unit is not integrally related to the literary unit in Isa. 7:1-17, and the connection is redactional. Likewise, there is no organic connection between the different passages in this literary unit (vv. 18-25). The unit consists of four parts, that depict future tribulations, each consisting of a self-contained prophecy that is to be understood in and of itself. The redactor's placing of these prophecies, immediately after a prophecy addressed to Ahaz in a definite historical context, has given them a new meaning, as part of the politicial message delivered to Ahaz in the period of the struggle of Aram and Israel against the House of David.

Unit 4b: Isaiah 8 The Syro-Ephraimite War ii

Who are the witnesses?

Who is this child???

In Hebrew 'almah also appears where marriage is imminent. Rebekah is called 'al7nah in Gen 24:43, just prior to becoming Isaac's wife. Her family sent her away with the hope that she would become "the mother of thousands of ten thousands." (vs. 60). Prov 30:19, which speaks of "the way of a man with a maiden" might refer to "the bride who has just been brought home,''14 or to a young man eager to secure a particular girl as his wife. If 'aImah refers to a girl soon to be married, and if the announcement of Isa 7:14 is characteristically given close to one's marriage, where is Isaiah's marriage to this young woman described? The solution seems to lie in 8:1-4 where in the briefest of terms the "ceremony" and aftermath are mentioned. In this difficult passage the key words are "reliable witnesses." ... Witnesses are never involved in establishing the content or time of a prophecy, so it is difficult to connect the witnesses with the prophetic aspect of 8:1 per se, especially in view of the vagueness and terseness of Isaiah's writing here. (page 450-451)

If the child of Isaiah and the prophetess fulfilled the prophecy of Immanuel, why did Isaiah name the same child Maher-shalal-hash-baz? Actually there is a limited identification of the two in 8:8, where the land of Judah is called "your land, O Immanuel." Immanuel seems to be on the scene, whereas in 7:1k his birth is only predicted. In 8:10 the Hebrew words 'mnw occur again, not as a name, but with the assurance that God was indeed with them.37 Hence, "Immanuel" expresses the promise aspect of the sign, whereas "Maher- shalal-hash-baz" relates more to its judgmental side.

The question whether 7: 14-15 denotes promise or judgment has sharply divided commentators, but both deliverance and defeat must be in the picture.38 The double name helps to eluci- date this phenomenon. Num 14:9 illustrates the meaning of "the Lord is with us" when the Israelites are challenged on the basis of God's presence not to fear the people of the land and rebel against God. This was precisely the dilemma of Ahaz, who trembled before people ( 7: 3 ) and failed to depend on the rescuing "God who is with us." Immanuel's mother gave him the positive name, "God is with us,"39 but his father called him by the more ambiguous term, "Speeding to the spoil, hurrying to the plunder." (454-455).

from A solution to the Immanuel Prophecy, see above.

Differing translations of verse 9:

A wonderful Purim midrash quoting Isaiah

Water-Imagery in victory and defeat

See here for more translations: https://biblehub.com/isaiah/8-14.htm

Compare with Alter's translation, and see comment in Olam haTaNaKh.

From HarperCollins on 8:14

Both stone and rock were used in Israelite religious language as metaphors for God as a place of refuge (1 Sam 7:12; Ps 31:3); Isaiah adds a shocking modifier to each term to set up a terrifying contrast. God will be either a sanctuary or the stone or rock that destroys (cf. 28:16-17), depending on whether one fears God more than anything else.

Hiding of the Face

The 'ovot and yed'onim

Robert Alter on אבות וידענים (from 1 Samuel 28:3)

The two Hebrew terms are generally paired, and both refer to the spirits of the dead. The latter is derived from the verbal root y-d-' "to know." The ghosts and familiar spirits are linked metonymically with the necromancers who call them up, but the terms themselves primarily designate the spirits. Biblical views about postmortem existence tend to fluctuate. Often, the dead are thought to be swallowed up in "the Pit" (she'ol) where they are simply silenced, extinguished forever. Sometimes, the dead are imagined as continuing a kind of shadowy afterlife in the underworld, rather like the spirits of the dead in Book 11 of the Odyssey. Following on this latter view, necromancy in the ancient Hebrew world is conceived not as mere hocus-pocus but as a potentially efficacious technology of the realm of spirits, which however, has been prohibited by God, Who wants no human experts interfering in this realm.

Richard Elliot Friedman in his Commentary to Leviticus 19:31:

There is arechaeological and textual evidene that ancient Israelites engaged in ancestor veneration, i.e., worship at the site of the tombs of known relations. The Israelite priests were opposed to this, and the biblical law codes forbid it. It appears to have come to an end during the reign of Hezekiah, king of Judah. My colleague Baruch Halpern has shown that it was an ironic consequence of the Assyrians' destruction of the Israelite countryside, which cut the people off from these traditional sites.

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It has been suggested that the etymology of the term 'ob can be sought in the Ugaritic phrase il 'ib, usually understood as cognate to Hebrew elohe abiw but plausibly meaning "god of the pit" rather than "god of the father(s).

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Although the biblical references to life after death are often noted to be fewer than one would have expected, the fact remains; these references plus the archaeological evidence show that Israelites in biblical times believed in an afterlife.

From Ancestor Worship: Is it Biblical? by Choon Sup Bae and PJ van der Merwe, http://www.scielo.org.za/scielo.php?script=sci_arttext&pid=S0259-94222008000300009&lng=en&tlng=en

Watts (1985:126) says that this Scripture also contains a fairly derogatory reference to the practices of necromancy when it describes the diviners/mediums/spirits who "chirp and mutter" . This implies a garbled gibberish which the necromancer utters in his/her trance-like state. The text explicitly refers to people who consult the dead and therefore to the belief that the dead have the ability to help the living. This was necessary since the Ancient Near East (including Israel) was drawn to divination as much as any other group of nations in the history of mankind. The context here suggests that Isaiah had to defend his prophetic calling and role against diviners and spiritualists.

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Gehman (1999:152) refers to Gesenius who defined a medium as someone with "a familiar spirit". The Hebrew word ob denotes in its simplest terms, "a leather bottle" which was typically used for water or wine. It later also denoted a "necromancer, sorcerer, conjurer who professes to call up the dead by means of incantations [magic words] and magic formulas, in order that they may give response as to doubtful or future things.".

This clearly compares the medium to a leather bottle, filled with a spirit. From the belly of the medium come the gurgling, bubbling sounds of the spirit which possessed him/her.

Here's something interesting in light of the above;

The Septuagint's translation for אוב from Leviticus 19:31:

εγγαστριμύθοις - "gastromancy". gastro=stomach.

Gastro/belly in Latin is venter. "Speech" in Latin is "loqui." Anything sound familiar?

Here is an excerpt from Wikipedia:

Originally, ventriloquism was a religious practice. The name comes from the Latin for to speak from the stomach, i.e. venter (belly) and loqui (speak). The Greeks called this gastromancy (Greek: εγγαστριμυθία). The noises produced by the stomach were thought to be the voices of the unliving, who took up residence in the stomach of the ventriloquist. The ventriloquist would then interpret the sounds, as they were thought to be able to speak to the dead, as well as foretell the future.

Unit 4c: Isaiah 8 The Syro-Ephraimite War iii

After revisiting some verses, we'll see a Psalm from a completely different perspective:

Alter on verse 24:

Vineyards will turn to brambles, and wild beasts will roam there - hence the need for bow and arrow.

Who could be saying this psalm? (Any way to connect it with our Syrio-Ephraim crisis?)

From Alter's commentary:

"Joseph," in contrast to "Judah" or "Jacob," is a reference to the northern kingdom. The Septuagint includes in its superscription for this psalm, "concerning the Assyrians." It may well have been composed at a moment when the northern kingdom of Israel was threatened but, on the basis of the content of the poem, not yet destroyed by Assyria.

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The Hebrew (verse 14) "ziz" suggests "moving thing," in all likelihood a reference to insects and othe rcrawling things. In the quasi-allegorical vehicle of the violated vine, the Assyrian army is imagined as other than human - a wild boar, a ravenous swarm of pestilential crawling creatures.

What's really brilliant about parallelism is that there's almost always some kind of forward progression, or development. This might manifest itself in one of several ways:

• Narrative progression - The second line follows, chronologically, on the heels of the first;
• Intensification - The second line takes the image or metaphor of the first and strengthens it;
• Specification - In the second line, the psalter hones in, where first there was a description in more general terms;
• Concretization - The move from an abstract image to something concrete;
• Antithetical - The two lines are juxtaposed for contrast.

Another child

Interesting comment:

HarperCollin Commentary: The divine birth or adoption of the king was announced on his coronation day. As in the Egyptian coronation ritual, where the birth is announced to the other gods, the "for us" probably refers to the angelic members of God's divine council.

What is the child's name?

KJV, NKJV: Wonderful, Counselor, Mighty God, Everlasting Father, Prince of Peace.

NIV, NLT, ESV, NASV: Wonderful Counselor, Mighty God, Everlasting Father, Prince of Peace.

NET: Extraordinary Strategist, Mighty God, Everlasting Father, Prince of Peace.

JPS 1917: Pele-joez-el-gibbor-Abi-ad-sar-shalom;

JPS: The Mighty God is planning grace; The Eternal Father, a peaceable ruler.

Brenton Septuagint (translation of the Greek Septuagint, 1844): Messenger of great counsel: for I will bring peace upon the princes, and health to him.

Douay-Rheims Bible: Wonderful, Counsellor, God the Mighty, the Father of the world to come, the Prince of Peace.

Alter: And his name is called wondrous councillor, divine warrior, eternal father, prince of peace, making leadership abound and peace without end on the throne of David and over his kingdom to make it firm-founded and stay it up in justice and righteousness, forever more. (I just couldn't figure out where, for Alter, the name stops! What do you think?)

JSB commmentary: This long sentence is the throne name of the royal child. Semitic names often consist of sentences that describe God; thus the name Isaiah in Heb means "The LORD saves"; Hezekiah, "The LORD strengthens"; In Akkadian, the name of the Babylonian king Merodach-baladan (Isa 39:1) means "the god Marduk has provided an heir." THese names do not describe that person who holds them but the god whom the parents worship. Similarly, the name given to the child in this v. does not describe that child or attribute divinity to him, but describes God's actions.

Alter commentary: This string of epithets has been associated by many generations of Christian commentators and readers with Christ. What the prophet has in mind, however, is not "messianic" except in the strictly political sense: he envisages an ideal king from the line of David who will sit on the throne of Judah and oversee a rule of justice and peace. The most challenging epithet in this sequence is 'el gibor, which appears to say "warrior-god." The prophet would be violating al biblical usage if he called the Davidic king "God," and that term is best construed here as some sort of intensifier.

Handel's Take on Isaiah 9:5