E. The Reign of Hezekiah
29. Zion to be Threatened but Saved (29:1-24)
Altar of Burnt-Offering,” JBL 39(1920)137-42; S . Fe&in,
“The Meaning of Ariell JBL 39(1920)131-37; A. H. Godbey,
“Ariel, or David Cultus,” AJSL 41(1924-25)253-66; W. H.
Irwin, Isaiah 28-33: Translation with Philological Notes (Rome:
Biblical Institute Press, 1977)44-67; F. Lindstrom, God and the Origin of Evil: A Contextual Analysis of Alleged Monistic Evidence in the Old Testament (Lund: CWK Gleerup, 1983) 96-105.
(presumably an allusion to the events now reported in the story in Josh. 10:6-14), so Yahweh would fight against his own people. In an assonance-filled declaration, Isaiah states the peculiarity of such divine behavior: “To do his deed, strange would be his deed; to work his work, alien would be his work!”
With verse 22, Isaiah returns to confront directly the scoffers of verse 14, those Jerusalemite leaders contemptuous of Hezekiah’s policies of non-participation in the revolt and of patient submission to Assyria. The leaders are warned not to scoff “lest their bonds be made stronger.” What Isaiah means here remains uncertain. Were certain opponents of Hezekiah’s position already being restrained, or is this merely some general cliche of warning? More likely, Isaiah here warns the people that if they revolt, the Assyrians will win, and their control over the vassal state of Judah will be intensifed (see above, on 22:8, chap. 4, sect. 24). The prophet tells his audience that he has heard a decree about the calamity and destruction that are to come from Yahweh upon the whole of the land if general rebellion erupts (see 10:23).
Isaiah 28:23-29
In verses 23-29, Isaiah moves to assure the people that judgment and destruction are not Yahweh’s last word. In a series of images drawn from agricultural pursuits, the prophet argues that different times and different conditions require different actions. The farmer does not forever plow, for the one plowing also sows; God has taught that this is right and proper (w. 23-26). After the crops are harvested, they are not all treated the same way. What is proper for the product is what must be applied. This, too, is something God has taught (w. 27-29). God, who is wonderful in counsel and excellent in wisdom and has instructed people in the propriety and timeliness of agricultural pursuits, should also be trusted in his instructions about the propriety of events in the political sphere. For Isaiah, the times called for one not to be in haste; rebellion was not God’s will for the time. Beyond the plowing, the sowing, and the waiting would come the harvest. But not now.
In this chapter, Isaiah continues his attack on those in Jerusalem who advocated revolting against Assyria and cooperating with the Ephraimite rebels. At the same time, the prophet draws on elements of the Zion theology to declare that, although the city might be attacked, it would be defended by Yahweh and not finally be taken. Thus in this speech, as elsewhere in the book, Isaiah proclaims that Zion will not only be attacked and threatened but will also be rescued at the climactic moment.
The material in this chapter does not indicate that Judah and Jerusalem, or even Samaria, were under any immediate threat from Assyria. Ephraim’s rebellion, which brought Shalmaneser on the scene in 727, had been momentarily sidetracked by Hoshea’s submission. In the days that followed this initial submission, the fires of rebellion were rekindled. Sufficient time passed to allow Jerusalemites to push for joining the movement and to scoff at Hezekiah’s and Isaiah’s position of non-involvement. That Isaiah’s predictions about a speedy decimation of Israel had not materialized (see 17:4-9) probably had put the prophet on the defensive. Some Jerusalemites, similar to the general population in Samaria, hoped to push the royal court into revolt.
The following is an outline of the speech’s content.
(1) Jerusalem will be threatened and attacked but saved (l-8)
(2) An address to the equivocating Jerusalemites (9-12) (3) A condemnation of superficial loyalty (13-14)
Isaiah Isaiah’s Preaching and the lsafanic Narrafives
Palestine and his return to Assyria, where he spent 726, probably form the background of Isaiah’s speech. The monarch’s absence from the scene may have been the occasion for the scoffing by Jerusalem’s leadership, their mockery of Isaiah, and an upsurge in pro-rebellion senti- ment. Isaiah was thus forced onto the defensive. His argument was that when the year passed and the festivals rolled around, then Ariel would be oppressed. No doubt, the hearers could have initially understood the speaker-the “I”
in verses 2-3-as Shalmaneser, promising that he would attack the city as had David long ago. Enough uncertainty about who was to attack Ariel and turn the city into an altar hearth would have remained to have created anxiety in the audience lest it was Yahweh speaking.
The attacker describes the siegework thrown up around the city (v. 3), the humiliation of being beaten into the dust from which appeals will be made (v. 4), and the incalculable number of the forces that will attack the city (v. 5).
After painting a portrait of the humiliating attack on Ariel and leading his listeners to await a description of the city’s destruction, Isaiah drastically shifts the torte of the presenta- tion at the end of verse 5: “suddenly, in an instant. . . . ”
Then follows a description of Yahweh’s intervention and the divine rescue of the city. With the ferocity and the forms of a mighty storm, Yahweh will save the city so that the threat will suddenly appear as a dream, like a nightmare from which one awakes with conditions unchanged and with only the memory of things dreamed (w. 6-8).
(4) Denunciation of political intrigue (15-16) (5) The future as a reversal of the present (17-24)
lsaiah 29:1-8
The prophet opens this speech with a unit replete with first person references but without the speaker’s being identified (w. l-5). The ancient audience, like the modem reader, must have wondered: ‘Who is going to attack the city like David of old?’ The audience could have thought it was the prophet speaking as if he were Yahweh, but without the usual indicators of divine address. Was the prophet having Yahweh now describe his strange work and alien deed (28:21)? On the other hand, listeners could easily have assumed that the prophet was speaking as if he were Shalmaneser, the Assyrian monarch. The tension over who is to attack Zion builds and is not resolved until, in verse 6, Yahweh is presented as Zion’s defender.
Isaiah begins by referring to Jerusalem as Ariel. The exact meaning of ‘ariel is uncertan, although other texts suggests a meaning like “altar hearth”-that is, the top of the altar where sacrifices were burned (see Ezek. 43:15-16). Refer- ences to ‘ariels appear in II Samuel 23:20, in which they could refer to either persons or structures, and an ‘ariel david (royal altar?) is mentioned in the Moabite inscription as something dragged away from a site (see ANET 320). Isaiah apparently chose this designation for the city for two reasons. First of all, it allowed him to play on the name as he spoke about the enemy’s turning the city into an “altar hearth” (v. 2). In the second place, it allowed the prophet to describe the horror of an attack on the city without directly saying the word Zion or Jerusalem in the same breath with describing an enemy assault. That Ariel refers to Jerusalem is indicated by the phrase “the city where David encamped” (or “against which David encamped”).
The time designation in verse lb-“Add year to year, let the feasts circle round”-goes with verse 2 and the following, rather than with verse la, which simply identifies Isaiah’s addressees. The time envisioned by the prophet was probably after the lapse of a year or a full cycle of the festival seasons. The withdrawal of Shalmaneser from Syro-
Isaiah 29:9-l 2
With verse 9, Isaiah turns to address his audience, the people of Jerusalem, directly. He opens with rare and reduplicated verb forms that suggest images of equivocation and incomprehension (v. 9a). We might translate verse 9a loosely as “fiddle and faddle, hem and haw.” The prophet attacks the Jerusalemite population that has shown un- certainty and has wavered over what course of action to take in the debate over revolt. The change in the Hebrew verbal forms from plural imperatives in verse 9a to plural perfects in verse 9b is to be explained by the fact that in the
Isaiah’s Preaching and the lsaianic Narratives
working undercover, of trying to hide their activity from Yahweh, and of assuming that their deeds will not become known (to the Assyrians ? to Yahweh?). In verse 16, the prophet compares the actions of those counseling revolt to the defiance of a product against its producer.
latter Isaiah is speaking of the proponents of revolt: “they (the ones pushing for revolt) are drunk but not from wine; they stagger but not from strong drink.” As in 28:1-B, Isaiah here describes the compulsion to rebellion as drunkenness and inebriated idiocy.
In verse 10, Isaiah declares that the people’s inability to understand and their equivocation must be the consequence of Yahweh’s having cast on them a deep sleep, closing their eyes and hooding their heads so they become incapable of seeing things aright (see 6:9-10). (The references to prophets and seers in verse 10 are probably editorial glosses.) In verses 11-12, Isaiah compares their perception of the whole matter to that of one who cannot read the words of a sealed document because it is unopened or to that of a person with an open document who has never learned to read.
Isaiah 29:13-14
In verses 13-14, the prophet introduces the first clearly Yahweh oracle in the address. The oracle is composed of two parts, an accusatory denunciation of the population (v. 13) and a statement about divine action (v. 14). In the denunciation, the people are accused of having no real devotion and commitment to Yahweh; their hearts are far from him, and their obedience is superficial. The divine action that is promised in verse 14 is not specified, other than to declare that it would be some marvelous or awesome thing that would baffle or overawe the people-that is, it would make clear the divine intention-and in the process the wisdom of the wise and the learning of the learned ones would fail or no longer be made public. Here Isaiah is referring to those who, in favoring rebellion, saw themselves as the ones who really understood the political and historical realities and could offer their wisdom and understanding, advocating revolt as the wise course of action.
Isaiah 29:15-l 6
In verses 15-16, Isaiah again denounces the secret plotting going on among the leaders who hoped to bring the south into the ranks of the rebels (see 28:14-15). They are accused of
Isaiah 29:17-24
The speech closes with a presentation about the future (vv. 17-24), a future that Isaiah describes as near at hand (v. 17a). The central thrust of verses 17-19 is the reversal of status. God will set things as they should be (see v. 16a).
What exists now will be transformed into its opposite: the (forest of) Lebanon will become an orchard (Carmel), Carmel (an orchard) will become a forest, the deaf will hear (see vv. ll-12), the blind will see (see v. lo), the humiliated will rejoice in Yahweh, and the land’s needy will shout with joy over the Holy One of Israel. This will come about because the ruthless (the Assyrians?) will be no more (see v. 6), the scoffer will vanish (see 28:14), cut off will be all those anxious to accuse, those making others guilty through a word (of slander), those setting traps for the ones who want to settle matters publicly in the gate, and those throwing into confusion the one in the right. Such descriptions indicate the strongly divided opinion and tensions that must have existed in Jerusalem over the issue of revolt (see Mic. 7:5-6, which probably belongs to the same period).
Verses 22-24 conclude with a Yahweh oracle that speaks of the new situation to prevail “in the house of Jacob” (probably to be understood as designating the whole people of Yahweh). No longer will people be ashamed and their faces pale because of humiliation and oppression. Instead, the house of Jacob will behold the offspring Yahweh has given them and the people will hallow their God and stand in awe.
Those confused and uncertain will acquire understanding, and those backbiting and complaining will receive instruc- tion. In other words, the troubled, confused, and uncertain state of affairs that had torn apart the people and divided them into factions will disappear, and a new state of national existence will result.
Isaiah Isaiah’s Preaching and the lsaianic Narratives
of the old state of Israel-namely, the central hill country south of the valley of Jezreel. Hoshea was recognized as king by the Assyrian monarch. Tribute was imposed on Israel, but no clear reference is made in Assyrian texts to the reduction of Israelite territory (ANET 284 [the first paragraph of the inscription on p. 283 has been incorrectly restored]; see THAT I 373-74).
By 728, Hoshea and Samaria had again become involved in an anti-Assyrian movement (see Isa. 17, and, above, chap. 4, sect. 19). When the Assyrians moved back into Syria-Pales- tine, Hoshea capitulated and resumed paying tribute to Assyria, probably in 727 (II Kings 17:3). The new Assyrian monarch, Shalmaneser V, was unable to suppress the widespread revolt immediately and spent 726 back in Assyria. During this interval, Hoshea, apparently under popular pressure, sent messengers and gifts to Egypt hoping to secure Egyptian aid for the rebels.
II Kings 17:4 reports that Hoshea “sent messengers to So, king of Egypt, and offered no tribute to the king of Assyria, as he had done year by year.” Since no Egyptian pharaoh named So is attested to in ancient sources, two possible alternatives for interpreting this text have been suggested.
One approach is based on emending the text to read, “He sent messengers to Sais, to the king of Egypt.” In this case, the Egyptian ruler would have been Tefnakht, who reigned in Sais in the western Delta. Diodorus (1.45.2) has preserved a story about Tefnakht that, in explaining his devotion to the simple life, reports an incident that occurred while he was
“on a campaign in Arabia.” This would indicate that he was active in Syria-Palestine at some point during his career.
A second interpretation of this text retains the present reading and takes So as an abbreviation of the name Osorkon (Iv). This pharaoh ruled in Tanis in the eastern Delta near Palestine. His family, the XXIInd Dynasty, had long followed a policy of encouraging anti-Assyrianism in Syria-Palestine.
At any rate, both Tefnakht and Osorkon IV were, at least nominally, under the authority of the Ethiopian ruler, Piye, who had recently sent ambassadors into Syria-Palestine (see Isa. 18 and, above, chap. 4, sect. 20). On the surface, all evidence thus pointed to a favorable hearing in Egypt for any appeal from anti-Assyrian rebels in Syria-Palestine.
30. WOE TO THOSE WHO GO DOWN TO EGYPT