Isaiah:
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30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40 41 42 43 44 45 46 47 48 49 50 51 52 53 54 55
56 57 58 59 60 61 62 63 64 65 66
3:1 KI HINEH HA ADON YHVH TSEVA'OT MESIR MIYRU-SHALA'IM U MIY'HUDAH MASH'EN U MASH'ENAH KOL MISH'AN-LECHEM VE CHOL MISHAN-MAYIM
כִּי הִנֵּה הָאָדוֹן יְהוָה צְבָאוֹת מֵסִיר מִירוּשָׁלִַם וּמִיהוּדָה מַשְׁעֵן וּמַשְׁעֵנָה כֹּל מִשְׁעַן-לֶחֶם וְכֹל מִשְׁעַן-מָיִם
KJ (King James translation): For, behold, the Lord, the LORD of hosts, doth take away from Jerusalem and from Judah the stay and the staff, the whole stay of bread, and the whole stay of water
BN (BibleNet translation): For, behold, the Lord, YHVH the Lord of the Hosts of the Heavens, will remove from Yiru-Shala'im and from Yehudah both silo and store, every stick of bread, and every stash of water...
We need to understand that chapters are a late addition by the Christian translators, where the original Yehudit text was a continuous piece of writing, not even paragraphed. So we can state that this verse is not the start of a new sermon or oracle, but a continuation of the last one, effectively chapter 2 verse23, and needs to be read as such.
Is this an image of a famine, or of a siege, or even both - which is to say, is he predicting the fall of what is left (Yehudah, Bin-Yamin, Shim'on), or describing the fall of what has just been lost (the Northern Kingdom)? The deity is once again YHVH Tseva'ot, the Lord of the Hosts of the Heavens, which is not a concept that would have been understood by anyone from Adam to Yehoshu'a, though it would have been menaingful to King David, whose role as Mashiyach was to represent the Earthly Host; the Hosts were the Civil Service of Angels, so to speak, though angels were a decidedly Zoroastrian concept, and so I am two hundred years too early to be using the term here; "angels" in Hebrewism were "messengers" (mal'achim - מלאכים), the emanations of the light from stars which bring astrological messages to Earth, interpretable by seers and prophets in the pre-Isaiac sense of that word (and presumably, because the Earth too reflects sunlight and thereby illuminates the sky, life-forms on other planets regard Earth as an angel too, and draw horoscopal conclusions from its orbits).
MASHEN U MASHENAH... MISHAN: All three words appear to derive from the same root, though it may be an even more complex word-game than at first appears. If the root is MISH'EN, then we have the notion of "support", and the modern word for "employees" (without whose "support" the businessman cannot operate), which comes from the fact that the man in charge in the ancient world always carried a staff. But that initial Mem may suggest the Pi'el or Hiph'il of a different root, and that would have to be Sheen-Ayin-Nun (שען), which happens to be a "clockmaker", a SHA'AH being an hour of time. I think it probably is not that on this occasion, but the deity as the world's clockmaker (and the reason for Richard Dawkins calling his book "The Blind Watchmaker") is an image that recurs throughout the Tanach, starting with the word-game on its very opening word: Bere'shit, which is not the same as Be HAT'CHALAH...
3:2 GIBOR VE ISH MILCHAMAH SHOPHET VE NAVI VE KOSEM VE ZAKEN
גִּבּוֹר וְאִישׁ מִלְחָמָה שׁוֹפֵט וְנָבִיא וְקֹסֵם וְזָקֵן
KJ: The mighty man, and the man of war, the judge, and the prophet, and the prudent, and the ancient,
BN: The mighty warrior, and the man of war; the judge, and the prophet, and the diviner, and the elder...
Again we have to ask: is Yesh'a-Yah here predicting, or describing events that have already taken place: the captivity of the leadership, civil, judicial, military and spiritual?
NAVI...KOSEM: Note that a clear distinction is made between these two: in Y-Y's usage, he would count himself as a NAVI, a man who uses his intellect to interpret verifiable data rationally, and then Bloom's Taxonomise it into predictions of the future, where a KOSEM is a "seer", a person who reads palms or stars, arranges ouija boards, practices Gematria and sees patterns in the leftover tea-leaves in the bottom of the cup.
3:3 SAR CHAMISHIM U NESU PHANIM VE YO'ETS VA CHACHAM CHARASHIM U NEVON LACHASH
שַׂר חֲמִשִּׁים וּנְשׂוּא פָנִים וְיוֹעֵץ וַחֲכַם חֲרָשִׁים וּנְבוֹן לָחַשׁ
KJ: The captain of fifty, and the honourable man, and the counsellor, and the cunning artificer, and the eloquent orator.
BN: The squadron commander, and the man of rank, and the counsellor, and the seductive charmer, and the clever charismatic ...
And the middle and merchant and artisan classes too, (which of course did not exist in Mosaic times).
I presume he is making this rather tedious and otherwise pointless list as a way of making sure that every one of his listeners understood that he (even she) knew that he was included.
I presume he is making this rather tedious and otherwise pointless list as a way of making sure that every one of his listeners understood that he (even she) knew that he was included.
Note the rhythmic and alliterative repetition of the Chet (ח) in this verse, and his ability to do it without needing the Chaf (כ) as well. From verses such as this we can be certain that Y-Y's text were public recitals, not written to be read, and that the emotional power driven by these rhythms and alliterations etc were key to his success (and yes, I am fully aware that Adolf Hitler and Donald Trump, to name but two, used exactly the same rhetorical devices).
3:4 VE NATATI NE'ARIM SAREYHEM VE TA'ALULIM YIMSHELU VAM
וְנָתַתִּי נְעָרִים שָׂרֵיהֶם וְתַעֲלוּלִים יִמְשְׁלוּ בָם
KJ: And I will give children to be their princes, and babes shall rule over them.
BN: "And I will appoint youths to be their princes, and the capricious will rule over them...
The above leaves behind a vacuum of anxiety and opportunism; is this Y-Y actually recognising the catastrophic implications of the divine wrath? Or is this a foreshadowing of 7:14? My next note answers that question.
VE NATATI: Sudden switch to a first person that appears to be the deity, or at least Y-Y surrogating for him, which is an interesting rhetorical device of some arrogance: I know what the deity wants, so take heed of me. So, again, the philosopher turns into the despot.
And where do we close the quotation marks? There is no obvious indicator in the verses that follow, but the text is often self-evidently Y-Y speaking for himself.
TA'ALULIM: The root means something like "capricious", and is an intensive verb created by prefixing a TAV (ת) to the actual root, ALAL: for which see the links at the link, most of which take us back to verse 1 of this chapter. Translating it as "babes", I presume, is KJ wanting to echo it with NE'ARIM, but it is also slightly over-stating that by rendering it as "children". NE'ARIM are youths, teenagers, and yes, still children, but older than the "babes" that follows. The point here is that, just like the basics of bread and water in verse 1, so the disaster will take away all the capable potential potentates, and you will end up with Nero and Caligula when you had hoped for something rather more messianic.
3:5 VE NIGASH HA AM ISH BE ISH VE ISH BE RE'EHU YIRHAVU HA NA'AR BA ZAKEN VE HA NIKLEH BA NICHBAD
KJ: And the people shall be oppressed, every one by another, and every one by his neighbour: the child shall behave himself proudly against the ancient, and the base against the honourable.
BN: "And the people will be oppressed, person by person, neighbour against neighbour, and children will be disrespectful of their elders, and the base likewise the honourable...
3:5 VE NIGASH HA AM ISH BE ISH VE ISH BE RE'EHU YIRHAVU HA NA'AR BA ZAKEN VE HA NIKLEH BA NICHBAD
וְנִגַּשׂ הָעָם אִישׁ בְּאִישׁ וְאִישׁ בְּרֵעֵהוּ יִרְהֲבוּ הַנַּעַר בַּזָּקֵן וְהַנִּקְלֶה בַּנִּכְבָּד
KJ: And the people shall be oppressed, every one by another, and every one by his neighbour: the child shall behave himself proudly against the ancient, and the base against the honourable.
BN: "And the people will be oppressed, person by person, neighbour against neighbour, and children will be disrespectful of their elders, and the base likewise the honourable...
… a breakdown of values and… and people will do "as they see fit in their own eyes", which was the major complaint of the epoch of the Shoftim (Judges).
Where it was a CHET two verses ago, now it is a Nun (נ) that drives the oratory.
Where it was a CHET two verses ago, now it is a Nun (נ) that drives the oratory.
3:6 KI YITPHOS ISH BE ACHIV BEIT AVIV SIMLAH LECHAH KATSIN TIHEYEH LANU VE HA MACHSHELAH HA ZOT TACHAT YADECHA
כִּי יִתְפֹּשׂ אִישׁ בְּאָחִיו בֵּית אָבִיו שִׂמְלָה לְכָה קָצִין תִּהְיֶה לָּנוּ וְהַמַּכְשֵׁלָה הַזֹּאת תַּחַת יָדֶךָ
KJ: When a man shall take hold of his brother of the house of his father, saying, Thou hast clothing, be thou our ruler, and let this ruin be under thy hand:
BN: Then some man will take hold of his brother, someone from his own clan: "You have a robe. You be our ruler. You take responsibility for this dreadful mess."
I have chosen this as the point at which the quotation marks end and Y-Y resumes as himself.
SIMLAH: Means "a robe", which is what the elders wore, everyone else simply wearing tunics; but is something else idiomatic intended?
3:7 YISA VA YOM HA HU LEMOR LO EHEYEH CHOVESH U VE VEITI EYN LECHEM VE EYN SIMLAH LO TESIMUNI KETSIN AM
KJ: In that day shall he swear, saying, I will not be an healer; for in my house is neither bread nor clothing: make me not a ruler of the people.
BN: On that day he will reply, saying: "I am not taking any responsibility for any of this. In my house there is neither bread nor robe. You will not make me the ruler of a people."
The conditions he is describing could be anywhere in time or history; what matters is not the dating or the specific context, but the ideology behind it: his attribution of the impact to the godlessnesses of the victims rather than to the actions of whoever caused it, Human or Natural. The human is a mere agent or tool or instrument of the deity; and that is fine if the deity is the E of science, but not if he is the E of superstition.
3:8 KI CHASHLAH YERU-SHALA'IM VIY'HUDAH NAPHAL KI LESHONAM U MA'ALELEYHEM EL YHVH LAMROT EYNEY CHEVODO
KJ: For Jerusalem is ruined, and Judah is fallen: because their tongue and their doings are against the LORD, to provoke the eyes of his glory.
BN: For Yeru-Shala'im is ruined, and Yehudah has fallen; because their tongues and their deeds are pointed towards YHVH, to provoke him to the depths of his honour.
Is this a continuation of the response by the unnamed man in verse 7, or Y-Y again? I have rendered it as the latter, but the semi-colon after "fallen" seems to me just as likely to be the point of change.
It does rather seem, though, as if we have moved forward a long way since the Sennacherib era of the first and second chapters; this verse at least appears to infer the conquest by Nebuchadnezzar in 586 BCE, 140 years after Sennacherib.
CHASHLAH: See the link.
MA'ALELEYHEM: See my note to TA'ALULIM at verse 4; this comes from the same root, and again is one of those occasions when a root is intensified by the prefixing of a Tav. But now we need to jump forward to verse 10, where the same word is used, but now with a decidedly positive intention; this does not impact on the translation here, but it may well do at verse 4, where we now have to wonder if that is not in fact from an entirely different root, and this and verse 10 the puns he is deriving to make a clever point linguistically.
EYNEY: Yes, "eyes". But Ayin is also "a well", and also "nothingness", and Y-Y will play with these multiple meanings throughout the book.
3:9 HAKARAT PENEYHEM ANTAH BAM VE CHATA'TAM KI SEDOM HIGIYDU LO CHICHEDU OY LE NAPHSHAM KI GAMLU LAHEM RA'AH
KJ: The shew of their countenance doth witness against them; and they declare their sin as Sodom, they hide it not. Woe unto their soul! for they have rewarded evil unto themselves.
BN: The very look on their faces bears witness against them; and they describe their sins like Sedom, not even trying to hide it. Woe unto their souls, for they have brought wickedness upon themselves.
SEDOM: Alluded to throughout chapter 1; it becomes, throughout the writings of all the Prophets, and remains as such in the idoms and colloquialisms of our time, a standard metaphor for human wickedness, though it is fairly clear from both the Genesis and Exodus texts that what happened at Sedom was a volcanic eruption, and blaming that on humans belongs to the Mythological, not the Metaphysical Age.
3:10 IMRU TSADIK KI TOV KI PHERI MA'ALELEYHEM YO'CHELU
KJ: Say ye to the righteous, that it shall be well with him: for they shall eat the fruit of their doings.
BN: But say this of the righteous, that it shall be well with them; for they shall eat the fruit of their deeds.
PHERI: see my note on the moles in the previous chapter (verse 20).
KJ: Woe unto the wicked! it shall be ill with him: for the reward of his hands shall be given him.
BN: Woe to he who behaves wickedly! He will receive the consequences of his actions.
RASHA RA: Quoted in the Yigdal, a setting of Maimonides' "Thirteen Principles of Faith" which is sung in every Jewish synagogue on Friday evenings: "Gomel le-ish chesed ke-miphalo noten le-rasha ra ke-rishato - He rewards with kindness according to the deed, and evil in equal measure."
3:12 AMI NOGSHAV ME'OLEL VE NASHIM MASHLU VO AMI ME'ASHREYCHA MAT'IM VE DERECH ORCHOTEYCHA BILE'U
KJ: As for my people, children are their oppressors, and women rule over them. O my people, they which lead thee cause thee to err, and destroy the way of thy paths.
BN: As for my people, a babe is their master, and women rule over them. O my people, they who lead you cause you to err, and destroy the footholds on your paths.
This gives us the first instance of Y-Y's misogyny - and alas it won't be the last. Nor can he be defended, as many have tried to do, by claiming that it is merely "ideological patriarchalism", the belief that men are the stronger sex and women the weaker, and that therefore men should rule; it is, alas, a hint of the same hatred of women that we will find in St Augustine later on: the whited sepulchre, the Whore of Babylon, the whore and the harlot, Original Sin, every one of those disgraceful calumnies.
KJ: The LORD standeth up to plead, and standeth to judge the people.
BN: YHVH stands up to make his case, then remains standing to pass judgment on the nations.
LARIV is really "to quarrel", but here it is being used in the sense of a trial lawyer prosecuting. And this is important for we who translate and comment on these texts, because, in Y-Y's time, ha-Satan was his "adversary", the lawyer for the defense, and nothing demoniacal in that role.
AMIM is plural: the universal judgment of "that day", rather than just the Yom Kippur of the Yehudim.
3:14 YHVH BE MISHPAT YAVO IM ZIKNEY AMO VE SARAV VE ATEM BI'ARTEM HA KEREM GEZELAT HE ANI BE VATEYCHEM
KJ: The LORD will enter into judgment with the ancients of his people, and the princes thereof: for ye have eaten up the vineyard; the spoil of the poor is in your houses.
BN: YHVH will pass judgment on the elders of his people, and its princes. "You have devoured the entire vineyard; even the gleanings that belong to the poor are in your houses...
This extends the attack on bad leaders to an accusation of corruption and extgreme selfishness. See for example Leviticus 19:9 ff, but also the famous Hillel triplet in Pirkei Avot - for which click here.
First use of the image of the vineyard that will become one of the dominant images of the book. The vine is significant because the fermented grape is eucharistic, where the juice from any other fruit is merely juice. But the vine is also symbolic: male circumcision is understood to be the equivalent of clipping the vine so that it may run to fruit; in some cultures female circumcision is carried out for the same reason.
BI'ARTEM: Should this be in quotation marks, as per my note to VE NATATI at verse 4? The last phrase of verse 15 appears to confirm it.
3:15 MAH LACHEM TEDAK'U AMI U PHENEY ANIYIM TIT'CHANU NE'UM ADONAI YHVH TSEVA'OT
KJ: What mean ye that ye beat my people to pieces, and grind the faces of the poor? saith the Lord GOD of hosts.
BN: "How dare you crush my people, and grind the faces of the poor?" says YHVH, the Lord of the Hosts of the Heavens.
This now calls the leaders tyrannical and calls for social justice; it is strange to witness Y-Y in his shifts of mood, at some points an ultra right winger, happy to see the destruction of entire populations as a merited consequence of sin, and then the positive-idealist resurfaces as an ultra left winger, demanding employment rights, justice, economic egalitarianism, a social contract. But I guess that this is how it must be, for a serious philosopher, stepping outside the daily world to observe and comment on it: this fails because it has too much freedom, and so an anti-liberty response, but this fails because it is pinned down too tightly, and so a pro-liberty response.
MAH LACHEM: The parenthesis belongs to the Masoretic text, and is one of those occasions when even the most committed have to acknowledge that scribal error may be involved - easier to do with Yesh'a-Yah than with Mosheh, of course. But we need to ask: what if it were intended to be MELACHEM or MILCHOM or any one of several other permutations which are viable from known roots and regular conjugations? To which the answer is: no one who has done that has yet come up with an alternative that makes sufficient sense in the context to be worthy of further scholarship. So we have done our duty, and asked. So we shall remain content with MAH LACHEM, and then recognise that it also fits the style of Yesh'a-Yah perfectly.
ADONAI YHVH TSEVA'OT: needs its standard explanation (click here); and then see verse 17.
samech break
3:16 VA YOMER YHVH YA'AN KI GAVHU BENOT TSI'ON VA TELACHNAH NETUYOT GARON U MESAKROT EYNAYIM HALOCH VE TAPHOPH TELACHNAH U VE RAGLEYHEM TE'AKASNAH
BN: And in addition YHVH says: "Because the daughters of Tsi'on are arrogant, and walk with stretched-forth necks and wanton eyes, strutting and mincing as they go, and making a tinkling with their feet."
Immediately after which he returns to the right-wing rant, berating slutty women… see my note to verse 12. Though I suspect that this is also, as with the ASHERIM and ASHTEROT that have been referenced earlier in the book, not just misogyny but Y-Y overtly rejecting the fertility cults in which the women groom themselves like disco-participants in order to arouse their own oestrogen as well as the male response (see Genesis 1:28)... in the Mythological Era, all religious ritual and ceremony reflected the needs of fertility, in the world of food as much as in the world of baby-making: rain please at the right time to make the corn flourish, sun please but not too strong that it causes famine, and the endless tales of barren women having babies, none of whom of course were ever barren, but in this way the goddess can be honoured and thanked. Sacrifice of that first-born male child (or simply his foreskin) is thus no different from sacrifice of the first fruits of the orchard or the vineyard or the corn-field or the dairy: each is a gesture of propitiation towards those gods. But for Y-Y, in the Metaphysical Age, agricultural fertility is about developing intelligent farming strategems which take into account all possible seasonal eventualities (you know the gods are going to send monsoon rains at some point: why haven't you dug ditches around the fields to soak up the excess water? where are you linen shades, ready to erect on poles around the crops when the heat-wave happens, as it will?), and are able to deal with them; and that does not require sacrifice, but only "obedience" - keeping to the agreed strategic plan, the "rules" of engineering etc. Interestingly, the techniques of farming developed by the modedrn state of Israel to "make the desert bloom" and to turn the Hula and Jezreel swamps into agricultural land, would unquestionably meet Y-Y's full approval (well, maybe not "full"; he is bound to find fault in some aspect of it!)
RAGLEYHEM TE'AKASNAH: A matter of custom and fashion: ankle jewelery, worn the same as ear and finger jewelery, where girls today prefer the lip, the nose. But today's "sexually liberated young women" are practically jewel-free, compared with Y-Y's boutique shopping list in the next several verses!
3:17 VE SIPACH ADONAI KADKOD BENOT TSI'ON VA YHVH PAT'HEN YE'AREH
KJ: Therefore the Lord will smite with a scab the crown of the head of the daughters of Zion, and the LORD will discover their secret parts.
BN: So the Lord will smite with a scab the crowns of the heads of the daughters of Tsi'on, and YHVH will lay bare their secret parts.
ADONAI: see the note above. Adonai means "Lord" in the sense of "Sire" or "Your Majesty" - the addressing of a king. In verse 15 Y-Y used it to address YHVH Yseva'ot, who is unquestionably the father of the pantheon, the sun-god who rules the "cabinet" of twelve constellatory ministers and six planetary co-deities. But here the two are separated, Adonai doing the "smiting" but YHVH doing the "discovering". And Y-Y is telling us what will be at the end of days. So is Adonai now the Messiah, or is ADONAI the earthly king, who will deal with matters at the human level? See the very next verse.
I don't mean to sound anything other than totally serious when I ask this: what kind of a "scab" is intended here? Is he wishing syphillis upon them? And if not, again, what kind of "scab"? Or are we misunderstanding PAT'HEN? Not an easy root to deconstruct, as per the link. Interesting though that the two major options considered by the scholars are the genitalia and the forehead - isn't that precisely the direction in which Y-Y wants the human emphasis to shift!
samech break
3:18 BA YOM HA HU YASIR ADONAI ET TIPH'ERET HA ACHASIM VE HA SHEVIYSIM VE HA SAHARONIM
KJ: In that day the Lord will take away the bravery of their tinkling ornaments about their feet, and their cauls, and their round tires like the moon,
BN: On that day the Lord will remove the splendour of their ankle jewelery, and the fillets, and the crescents...
Again Adonai, and again "on that day" - so this can only be the Messiah. And how intriguing, to find the reborn David, who is addressed as Adoni in the Psalms, "reborn" as Adonai - both of course variations on Adonis, the Tammuz-Osiris-Jesus of the Phoenician world.
ACHASIM: I simply draw your attention to Proverbs 7:22, where the same word is used, and yes they are still a type of ankle-bracelet, but meaning "fetters" (stocks" in the KJ rendition, but "stocks" were specific to its epoch), not "adornments". I presume Y-Y's audience would have been fully aware of the ambivalence.
SHEVIYSIM: Gesenius has an interesting theory on this (under Sheviysim rather than under its root, SHAVAS, if you are looking it up): that it was a word borrowed from one of the pre-Arabic languages of Babylon or Mesopotamia, and meant "little suns"; the idea being that the band itself is circular, making a kind of sun-halo, and that it was supplemented by sun-coloured orbs worn around the neck. He notes that the word that follows here, SAHARONIM, means "little crescents", which would of course be moon-crescents, and the surrogate for the fertility goddess thereby adorned in a manner that conjoins ("to interweave" is the more common usage of the root SHAVAS) both of them in holy harmony.
3:19 HA NETIPHOT VE HA SHEYROT VE HA RE'ALOT
KJ: The chains, and the bracelets, and the mufflers,
BN: The pendants, and the bracelets, and the veils...
And the Armani suits, the Coach handbags, the Gucci stilettoes...
3:20 HA PE'ERIM VE HA TSE'ADOT VE HA KISHURIM U VATEY HA NEPHESH VE HA LECHASHIM
KJ: The bonnets, and the ornaments of the legs, and the headbands, and the tablets, and the earrings,
BN: The head-dresses, and the armlets, and the sashes, and the corselets, and the amulets...
KJ: The rings, and nose jewels,
BN: The rings, and the nose-jewels...
No Fabergé, no Lagerfeld, no Chanel No 5... no mention of tatoos though; I wonder if they did, or didn't... no, tatoos were officially prohibited in the Mosaic Code (Leviticus 19:28) though it would appear that it was commonplace among the other nations.
3:22 HA MACHALATSOT VE HA MA'ATAPHOT VE HA MITPACHOT VE HA CHARITIM
KJ: The changeable suits of apparel, and the mantles, and the wimples, and the crisping pins,
BN: The aprons, and the mantelets, and the cloaks, and the girdles...
All the boutique stores, GAP, Reiss, H&M, all of them, pffff! gone, replaced by? The biblical equivalents of the burqa, the nun's habit, the chastity belt, the sheitl, I have no doubt.
3:23 VE HA GILYONIM VE HA SEDIYNIM VE HA TSENIYPHOT VE HA REDIYDIM
KJ: The glasses, and the fine linen, and the hoods, and the vails.
BN: And the gauze robes, and the fine linen, and the turbans, and the mantles.
3:24 VE HAYAH TACHAT BOSEM MAK YIHEYEH VE TACHAT CHAGURAH NIKPAH VE TACHAT MA'ASEH MIKSHEH KARCHAH VE TACHAT PETIYGIL MACHAGORET SAK KI TACHAT YOPHI
KJ: And it shall come to pass, that instead of sweet smell there shall be stink; and instead of a girdle a rent; and instead of well set hair baldness; and instead of a stomacher a girding of sackcloth; and burning instead of beauty.
BN: And it shall come to pass, that instead of sweet spices there shall be rottenness; and instead of a girdle rags; and instead of curled hair baldness; and instead of a linen robe a girding of sackcloth; branding instead of beauty.
3:25 METAYICH BA CHEREV YIPOLU U GEVURATECH BA MILCHAMAH
KJ: Thy men shall fall by the sword, and thy mighty in the war.
3:26 VE ANU VE AVLU PETACHEYHA VE NIKATAH LA ARETS TESHEV
KJ: And her gates shall lament and mourn; and she being desolate shall sit upon the ground.
BN: And her gates shall lament and mourn; and utterly bereft she shall sit upon the ground.
Now he speaks of mourning – all this the consequence of the withdrawal of divine favour as a consequence of unrighteousness. We need again to contrast this with the Mosaic; there it was natural disaster which consequenced (earthquake, drought, general infertility), here it is man-made, but with man simply a tool of the deity. We have to wonder, though, what terrible abuse, or tragedy, or bullying, or experience, could lead to a man hating the world to quite such a degree.
PETACHEYHA: doesn't translate as gates. Well, yes it does, but a PETACH is first and foremost "an opening", and Y-Y has been punning around various sorts of fertility-related openings throughout this chapter.
3:7 YISA VA YOM HA HU LEMOR LO EHEYEH CHOVESH U VE VEITI EYN LECHEM VE EYN SIMLAH LO TESIMUNI KETSIN AM
יִשָּׂא בַיּוֹם הַהוּא לֵאמֹר לֹא אֶהְיֶה חֹבֵשׁ וּבְבֵיתִי אֵין לֶחֶם וְאֵין שִׂמְלָה לֹא תְשִׂימֻנִי קְצִין עָם
KJ: In that day shall he swear, saying, I will not be an healer; for in my house is neither bread nor clothing: make me not a ruler of the people.
BN: On that day he will reply, saying: "I am not taking any responsibility for any of this. In my house there is neither bread nor robe. You will not make me the ruler of a people."
The conditions he is describing could be anywhere in time or history; what matters is not the dating or the specific context, but the ideology behind it: his attribution of the impact to the godlessnesses of the victims rather than to the actions of whoever caused it, Human or Natural. The human is a mere agent or tool or instrument of the deity; and that is fine if the deity is the E of science, but not if he is the E of superstition.
3:8 KI CHASHLAH YERU-SHALA'IM VIY'HUDAH NAPHAL KI LESHONAM U MA'ALELEYHEM EL YHVH LAMROT EYNEY CHEVODO
כִּי כָשְׁלָה יְרוּשָׁלִַם וִיהוּדָה נָפָל כִּי לְשׁוֹנָם וּמַעַלְלֵיהֶם אֶל יְהוָה לַמְרוֹת עֵנֵי כְבוֹדוֹ
KJ: For Jerusalem is ruined, and Judah is fallen: because their tongue and their doings are against the LORD, to provoke the eyes of his glory.
BN: For Yeru-Shala'im is ruined, and Yehudah has fallen; because their tongues and their deeds are pointed towards YHVH, to provoke him to the depths of his honour.
Is this a continuation of the response by the unnamed man in verse 7, or Y-Y again? I have rendered it as the latter, but the semi-colon after "fallen" seems to me just as likely to be the point of change.
It does rather seem, though, as if we have moved forward a long way since the Sennacherib era of the first and second chapters; this verse at least appears to infer the conquest by Nebuchadnezzar in 586 BCE, 140 years after Sennacherib.
CHASHLAH: See the link.
MA'ALELEYHEM: See my note to TA'ALULIM at verse 4; this comes from the same root, and again is one of those occasions when a root is intensified by the prefixing of a Tav. But now we need to jump forward to verse 10, where the same word is used, but now with a decidedly positive intention; this does not impact on the translation here, but it may well do at verse 4, where we now have to wonder if that is not in fact from an entirely different root, and this and verse 10 the puns he is deriving to make a clever point linguistically.
EYNEY: Yes, "eyes". But Ayin is also "a well", and also "nothingness", and Y-Y will play with these multiple meanings throughout the book.
3:9 HAKARAT PENEYHEM ANTAH BAM VE CHATA'TAM KI SEDOM HIGIYDU LO CHICHEDU OY LE NAPHSHAM KI GAMLU LAHEM RA'AH
הַכָּרַת פְּנֵיהֶם עָנְתָה בָּם וְחַטָּאתָם כִּסְדֹם הִגִּידוּ לֹא כִחֵדוּ אוֹי לְנַפְשָׁם כִּי גָמְלוּ לָהֶם רָעָה
KJ: The shew of their countenance doth witness against them; and they declare their sin as Sodom, they hide it not. Woe unto their soul! for they have rewarded evil unto themselves.
BN: The very look on their faces bears witness against them; and they describe their sins like Sedom, not even trying to hide it. Woe unto their souls, for they have brought wickedness upon themselves.
SEDOM: Alluded to throughout chapter 1; it becomes, throughout the writings of all the Prophets, and remains as such in the idoms and colloquialisms of our time, a standard metaphor for human wickedness, though it is fairly clear from both the Genesis and Exodus texts that what happened at Sedom was a volcanic eruption, and blaming that on humans belongs to the Mythological, not the Metaphysical Age.
3:10 IMRU TSADIK KI TOV KI PHERI MA'ALELEYHEM YO'CHELU
אִמְרוּ צַדִּיק כִּי טוֹב כִּי פְרִי מַעַלְלֵיהֶם יֹאכֵלוּ
KJ: Say ye to the righteous, that it shall be well with him: for they shall eat the fruit of their doings.
BN: But say this of the righteous, that it shall be well with them; for they shall eat the fruit of their deeds.
PHERI: see my note on the moles in the previous chapter (verse 20).
MA'ALELEYHEM: See my notes at verse 4 and then verse 10. The second psrt of verse 11 says the same thing, just with a different way of saying it.
3:11 OY LE RASHA RA KI GEMUL YADAV YE'ASEH LO
3:11 OY LE RASHA RA KI GEMUL YADAV YE'ASEH LO
אוֹי לְרָשָׁע רָע כִּי גְמוּל יָדָיו יֵעָשֶׂה לּוֹ
KJ: Woe unto the wicked! it shall be ill with him: for the reward of his hands shall be given him.
BN: Woe to he who behaves wickedly! He will receive the consequences of his actions.
RASHA RA: Quoted in the Yigdal, a setting of Maimonides' "Thirteen Principles of Faith" which is sung in every Jewish synagogue on Friday evenings: "Gomel le-ish chesed ke-miphalo noten le-rasha ra ke-rishato - He rewards with kindness according to the deed, and evil in equal measure."
3:12 AMI NOGSHAV ME'OLEL VE NASHIM MASHLU VO AMI ME'ASHREYCHA MAT'IM VE DERECH ORCHOTEYCHA BILE'U
עַמִּי נֹגְשָׂיו מְעוֹלֵל וְנָשִׁים מָשְׁלוּ בוֹ עַמִּי מְאַשְּׁרֶיךָ מַתְעִים וְדֶרֶךְ אֹרְחֹתֶיךָ בִּלֵּעוּ
KJ: As for my people, children are their oppressors, and women rule over them. O my people, they which lead thee cause thee to err, and destroy the way of thy paths.
BN: As for my people, a babe is their master, and women rule over them. O my people, they who lead you cause you to err, and destroy the footholds on your paths.
This gives us the first instance of Y-Y's misogyny - and alas it won't be the last. Nor can he be defended, as many have tried to do, by claiming that it is merely "ideological patriarchalism", the belief that men are the stronger sex and women the weaker, and that therefore men should rule; it is, alas, a hint of the same hatred of women that we will find in St Augustine later on: the whited sepulchre, the Whore of Babylon, the whore and the harlot, Original Sin, every one of those disgraceful calumnies.
But at least there is also an appropriate condemnation of the bad leaders among the men, who are are blamed for the plight of the nation.
And let's be honest, when Y-Y is doing one of his negative-misanthropic rants, there is scarcely a form, type, species or genre of humanity that doesn't get spat upon, most catarrhally.
pey break
3:13 NITSAV LARIV YHVH VE OMED LADIN AMIM
pey break
3:13 NITSAV LARIV YHVH VE OMED LADIN AMIM
נִצָּב לָרִיב יְהוָה וְעֹמֵד לָדִין עַמִּים
KJ: The LORD standeth up to plead, and standeth to judge the people.
BN: YHVH stands up to make his case, then remains standing to pass judgment on the nations.
LARIV is really "to quarrel", but here it is being used in the sense of a trial lawyer prosecuting. And this is important for we who translate and comment on these texts, because, in Y-Y's time, ha-Satan was his "adversary", the lawyer for the defense, and nothing demoniacal in that role.
AMIM is plural: the universal judgment of "that day", rather than just the Yom Kippur of the Yehudim.
3:14 YHVH BE MISHPAT YAVO IM ZIKNEY AMO VE SARAV VE ATEM BI'ARTEM HA KEREM GEZELAT HE ANI BE VATEYCHEM
יְהוָה בְּמִשְׁפָּט יָבוֹא עִם זִקְנֵי עַמּוֹ וְשָׂרָיו וְאַתֶּם בִּעַרְתֶּם הַכֶּרֶם גְּזֵלַת הֶעָנִי בְּבָתֵּיכֶם
KJ: The LORD will enter into judgment with the ancients of his people, and the princes thereof: for ye have eaten up the vineyard; the spoil of the poor is in your houses.
BN: YHVH will pass judgment on the elders of his people, and its princes. "You have devoured the entire vineyard; even the gleanings that belong to the poor are in your houses...
This extends the attack on bad leaders to an accusation of corruption and extgreme selfishness. See for example Leviticus 19:9 ff, but also the famous Hillel triplet in Pirkei Avot - for which click here.
First use of the image of the vineyard that will become one of the dominant images of the book. The vine is significant because the fermented grape is eucharistic, where the juice from any other fruit is merely juice. But the vine is also symbolic: male circumcision is understood to be the equivalent of clipping the vine so that it may run to fruit; in some cultures female circumcision is carried out for the same reason.
BI'ARTEM: Should this be in quotation marks, as per my note to VE NATATI at verse 4? The last phrase of verse 15 appears to confirm it.
3:15 MAH LACHEM TEDAK'U AMI U PHENEY ANIYIM TIT'CHANU NE'UM ADONAI YHVH TSEVA'OT
מלכם (מַה-לָּכֶם) תְּדַכְּאוּ עַמִּי וּפְנֵי עֲנִיִּים תִּטְחָנוּ נְאֻם אֲדֹנָי יְהוִה צְבָאוֹת
KJ: What mean ye that ye beat my people to pieces, and grind the faces of the poor? saith the Lord GOD of hosts.
BN: "How dare you crush my people, and grind the faces of the poor?" says YHVH, the Lord of the Hosts of the Heavens.
This now calls the leaders tyrannical and calls for social justice; it is strange to witness Y-Y in his shifts of mood, at some points an ultra right winger, happy to see the destruction of entire populations as a merited consequence of sin, and then the positive-idealist resurfaces as an ultra left winger, demanding employment rights, justice, economic egalitarianism, a social contract. But I guess that this is how it must be, for a serious philosopher, stepping outside the daily world to observe and comment on it: this fails because it has too much freedom, and so an anti-liberty response, but this fails because it is pinned down too tightly, and so a pro-liberty response.
MAH LACHEM: The parenthesis belongs to the Masoretic text, and is one of those occasions when even the most committed have to acknowledge that scribal error may be involved - easier to do with Yesh'a-Yah than with Mosheh, of course. But we need to ask: what if it were intended to be MELACHEM or MILCHOM or any one of several other permutations which are viable from known roots and regular conjugations? To which the answer is: no one who has done that has yet come up with an alternative that makes sufficient sense in the context to be worthy of further scholarship. So we have done our duty, and asked. So we shall remain content with MAH LACHEM, and then recognise that it also fits the style of Yesh'a-Yah perfectly.
ADONAI YHVH TSEVA'OT: needs its standard explanation (click here); and then see verse 17.
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3:16 VA YOMER YHVH YA'AN KI GAVHU BENOT TSI'ON VA TELACHNAH NETUYOT GARON U MESAKROT EYNAYIM HALOCH VE TAPHOPH TELACHNAH U VE RAGLEYHEM TE'AKASNAH
וַיֹּאמֶר יְהוָה יַעַן כִּי גָבְהוּ בְּנוֹת צִיּוֹן וַתֵּלַכְנָה נטוות (נְטוּיוֹת) גָּרוֹן וּמְשַׂקְּרוֹת עֵינָיִם הָלוֹךְ וְטָפֹף תֵּלַכְנָה וּבְרַגְלֵיהֶם תְּעַכַּסְנָה
KJ: Moreover the LORD saith, Because the daughters of Zion are haughty, and walk with stretched forth necks and wanton eyes, walking and mincing as they go, and making a tinkling with their feet:
BN: And in addition YHVH says: "Because the daughters of Tsi'on are arrogant, and walk with stretched-forth necks and wanton eyes, strutting and mincing as they go, and making a tinkling with their feet."
Immediately after which he returns to the right-wing rant, berating slutty women… see my note to verse 12. Though I suspect that this is also, as with the ASHERIM and ASHTEROT that have been referenced earlier in the book, not just misogyny but Y-Y overtly rejecting the fertility cults in which the women groom themselves like disco-participants in order to arouse their own oestrogen as well as the male response (see Genesis 1:28)... in the Mythological Era, all religious ritual and ceremony reflected the needs of fertility, in the world of food as much as in the world of baby-making: rain please at the right time to make the corn flourish, sun please but not too strong that it causes famine, and the endless tales of barren women having babies, none of whom of course were ever barren, but in this way the goddess can be honoured and thanked. Sacrifice of that first-born male child (or simply his foreskin) is thus no different from sacrifice of the first fruits of the orchard or the vineyard or the corn-field or the dairy: each is a gesture of propitiation towards those gods. But for Y-Y, in the Metaphysical Age, agricultural fertility is about developing intelligent farming strategems which take into account all possible seasonal eventualities (you know the gods are going to send monsoon rains at some point: why haven't you dug ditches around the fields to soak up the excess water? where are you linen shades, ready to erect on poles around the crops when the heat-wave happens, as it will?), and are able to deal with them; and that does not require sacrifice, but only "obedience" - keeping to the agreed strategic plan, the "rules" of engineering etc. Interestingly, the techniques of farming developed by the modedrn state of Israel to "make the desert bloom" and to turn the Hula and Jezreel swamps into agricultural land, would unquestionably meet Y-Y's full approval (well, maybe not "full"; he is bound to find fault in some aspect of it!)
RAGLEYHEM TE'AKASNAH: A matter of custom and fashion: ankle jewelery, worn the same as ear and finger jewelery, where girls today prefer the lip, the nose. But today's "sexually liberated young women" are practically jewel-free, compared with Y-Y's boutique shopping list in the next several verses!
And of course this is as it should be. A hierodule is not a prostitute, even if she is doing what she does in order to end up in bed with a man. She is surrogating for the goddess of fertility, and so she must look like a goddess, in her personal beauty, but also in the enhancements of gold and silver, amber and ruby, silk and retted linen. See Genesis 1:28.
TE'AKASNAH: The phrasing of the next verse makes clear the "message" from the deity has been delivered, but the unfinished opening of the sentence ("KI GAVHU... Because...") suggests that it has not been in full. Is this an error in the text?
TE'AKASNAH: The phrasing of the next verse makes clear the "message" from the deity has been delivered, but the unfinished opening of the sentence ("KI GAVHU... Because...") suggests that it has not been in full. Is this an error in the text?
3:17 VE SIPACH ADONAI KADKOD BENOT TSI'ON VA YHVH PAT'HEN YE'AREH
וְשִׂפַּח אֲדֹנָי קָדְקֹד בְּנוֹת צִיּוֹן וַיהוָה פָּתְהֵן יְעָרֶה
KJ: Therefore the Lord will smite with a scab the crown of the head of the daughters of Zion, and the LORD will discover their secret parts.
BN: So the Lord will smite with a scab the crowns of the heads of the daughters of Tsi'on, and YHVH will lay bare their secret parts.
ADONAI: see the note above. Adonai means "Lord" in the sense of "Sire" or "Your Majesty" - the addressing of a king. In verse 15 Y-Y used it to address YHVH Yseva'ot, who is unquestionably the father of the pantheon, the sun-god who rules the "cabinet" of twelve constellatory ministers and six planetary co-deities. But here the two are separated, Adonai doing the "smiting" but YHVH doing the "discovering". And Y-Y is telling us what will be at the end of days. So is Adonai now the Messiah, or is ADONAI the earthly king, who will deal with matters at the human level? See the very next verse.
I don't mean to sound anything other than totally serious when I ask this: what kind of a "scab" is intended here? Is he wishing syphillis upon them? And if not, again, what kind of "scab"? Or are we misunderstanding PAT'HEN? Not an easy root to deconstruct, as per the link. Interesting though that the two major options considered by the scholars are the genitalia and the forehead - isn't that precisely the direction in which Y-Y wants the human emphasis to shift!
And then there is the "laying bare", or otherwise "discovering", of their "secret parts". Given that this is precisely what the women are hoping to achieve by dressing in this manner, surely the deity should be covering them up, not discovering them? But if it is indeed the forehead, and not the genitalia...
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3:18 BA YOM HA HU YASIR ADONAI ET TIPH'ERET HA ACHASIM VE HA SHEVIYSIM VE HA SAHARONIM
בַּיּוֹם הַהוּא יָסִיר אֲדֹנָי אֵת תִּפְאֶרֶת הָעֲכָסִים וְהַשְּׁבִיסִים וְהַשַּׂהֲרֹנִים
KJ: In that day the Lord will take away the bravery of their tinkling ornaments about their feet, and their cauls, and their round tires like the moon,
BN: On that day the Lord will remove the splendour of their ankle jewelery, and the fillets, and the crescents...
Again Adonai, and again "on that day" - so this can only be the Messiah. And how intriguing, to find the reborn David, who is addressed as Adoni in the Psalms, "reborn" as Adonai - both of course variations on Adonis, the Tammuz-Osiris-Jesus of the Phoenician world.
ACHASIM: I simply draw your attention to Proverbs 7:22, where the same word is used, and yes they are still a type of ankle-bracelet, but meaning "fetters" (stocks" in the KJ rendition, but "stocks" were specific to its epoch), not "adornments". I presume Y-Y's audience would have been fully aware of the ambivalence.
SHEVIYSIM: Gesenius has an interesting theory on this (under Sheviysim rather than under its root, SHAVAS, if you are looking it up): that it was a word borrowed from one of the pre-Arabic languages of Babylon or Mesopotamia, and meant "little suns"; the idea being that the band itself is circular, making a kind of sun-halo, and that it was supplemented by sun-coloured orbs worn around the neck. He notes that the word that follows here, SAHARONIM, means "little crescents", which would of course be moon-crescents, and the surrogate for the fertility goddess thereby adorned in a manner that conjoins ("to interweave" is the more common usage of the root SHAVAS) both of them in holy harmony.
3:19 HA NETIPHOT VE HA SHEYROT VE HA RE'ALOT
הַנְּטִפוֹת וְהַשֵּׁירוֹת וְהָרְעָלוֹת
KJ: The chains, and the bracelets, and the mufflers,
BN: The pendants, and the bracelets, and the veils...
And the Armani suits, the Coach handbags, the Gucci stilettoes...
3:20 HA PE'ERIM VE HA TSE'ADOT VE HA KISHURIM U VATEY HA NEPHESH VE HA LECHASHIM
הַפְּאֵרִים וְהַצְּעָדוֹת וְהַקִּשֻּׁרִים וּבָתֵּי הַנֶּפֶשׁ וְהַלְּחָשִׁים
KJ: The bonnets, and the ornaments of the legs, and the headbands, and the tablets, and the earrings,
BN: The head-dresses, and the armlets, and the sashes, and the corselets, and the amulets...
And the botox, and the liposuction...
PE'ERIM: This was an age when everyone covered their heads with the same cloth that covered their bodies, the men usually with a burnous, the women with what today would be called the chādor. KJ's "bonnets" again reflects the clothing of its epoch
3:21 HA TABA'OT VE NIZMEY HA APH
PE'ERIM: This was an age when everyone covered their heads with the same cloth that covered their bodies, the men usually with a burnous, the women with what today would be called the chādor. KJ's "bonnets" again reflects the clothing of its epoch
3:21 HA TABA'OT VE NIZMEY HA APH
הַטַּבָּעוֹת וְנִזְמֵי הָאָף
KJ: The rings, and nose jewels,
BN: The rings, and the nose-jewels...
No Fabergé, no Lagerfeld, no Chanel No 5... no mention of tatoos though; I wonder if they did, or didn't... no, tatoos were officially prohibited in the Mosaic Code (Leviticus 19:28) though it would appear that it was commonplace among the other nations.
3:22 HA MACHALATSOT VE HA MA'ATAPHOT VE HA MITPACHOT VE HA CHARITIM
הַמַּחֲלָצוֹת וְהַמַּעֲטָפוֹת וְהַמִּטְפָּחוֹת וְהָחֲרִיטִים
KJ: The changeable suits of apparel, and the mantles, and the wimples, and the crisping pins,
BN: The aprons, and the mantelets, and the cloaks, and the girdles...
All the boutique stores, GAP, Reiss, H&M, all of them, pffff! gone, replaced by? The biblical equivalents of the burqa, the nun's habit, the chastity belt, the sheitl, I have no doubt.
3:23 VE HA GILYONIM VE HA SEDIYNIM VE HA TSENIYPHOT VE HA REDIYDIM
וְהַגִּלְיֹנִים וְהַסְּדִינִים וְהַצְּנִיפוֹת וְהָרְדִידִים
KJ: The glasses, and the fine linen, and the hoods, and the vails.
BN: And the gauze robes, and the fine linen, and the turbans, and the mantles.
Mind you, there's some lovely poetry in all these lists. The "y" sounds in this verse, the "ma" sounds in the previous one. But replaced by what? And what is left in life, for a woman, if this is taken away? Oh yes, I forgot, the kitchen, and babies. And don't forget the whip!
3:24 VE HAYAH TACHAT BOSEM MAK YIHEYEH VE TACHAT CHAGURAH NIKPAH VE TACHAT MA'ASEH MIKSHEH KARCHAH VE TACHAT PETIYGIL MACHAGORET SAK KI TACHAT YOPHI
וְהָיָה תַחַת בֹּשֶׂם מַק יִהְיֶה וְתַחַת חֲגוֹרָה נִקְפָּה וְתַחַת מַעֲשֶׂה מִקְשֶׁה קָרְחָה וְתַחַת פְּתִיגִיל מַחֲגֹרֶת שָׂק כִּי-תַחַת יֹפִי
BN: And it shall come to pass, that instead of sweet spices there shall be rottenness; and instead of a girdle rags; and instead of curled hair baldness; and instead of a linen robe a girding of sackcloth; branding instead of beauty.
Describing their undoing (in the recriminatory sense, but the pun is valid).
PETIYGIL: Another of the much-disputed words for which Gesenius seems to offer the best explanation: that it either conflates PETAG, which is a type of "linen", with PATIYL, which is "a thread" or "a cord", or PETI, which suggests "roundness", with the Chaldean GOL'A, which is "a robe".
KI: I am afraid that I just couldn't resist that ambiguity. Having dismissed all the brands in my previous comments... this is the only form of branding left, and of course, as Heinrich Heine famously pointed out, where they start by branding...
PETIYGIL: Another of the much-disputed words for which Gesenius seems to offer the best explanation: that it either conflates PETAG, which is a type of "linen", with PATIYL, which is "a thread" or "a cord", or PETI, which suggests "roundness", with the Chaldean GOL'A, which is "a robe".
KI: I am afraid that I just couldn't resist that ambiguity. Having dismissed all the brands in my previous comments... this is the only form of branding left, and of course, as Heinrich Heine famously pointed out, where they start by branding...
3:25 METAYICH BA CHEREV YIPOLU U GEVURATECH BA MILCHAMAH
מְתַיִךְ בַּחֶרֶב יִפֹּלוּ וּגְבוּרָתֵךְ בַּמִּלְחָמָה
KJ: Thy men shall fall by the sword, and thy mighty in the war.
BN: Your menfolk will fall by the sword, and your mighty heroes in the war.
And yay, roll on global warming, and we can wipe out the entire species in one fell flood! And no Arks this time, eh Yesh'a-Yah, no foolish naiveties of Arks this time, to provide that pathetic mediocrity the human race with yet another chance?YHVH knows they'll only fail again.
3:26 VE ANU VE AVLU PETACHEYHA VE NIKATAH LA ARETS TESHEV
וְאָנוּ וְאָבְלוּ פְּתָחֶיהָ וְנִקָּתָה לָאָרֶץ תֵּשֵׁב
KJ: And her gates shall lament and mourn; and she being desolate shall sit upon the ground.
BN: And her gates shall lament and mourn; and utterly bereft she shall sit upon the ground.
Now he speaks of mourning – all this the consequence of the withdrawal of divine favour as a consequence of unrighteousness. We need again to contrast this with the Mosaic; there it was natural disaster which consequenced (earthquake, drought, general infertility), here it is man-made, but with man simply a tool of the deity. We have to wonder, though, what terrible abuse, or tragedy, or bullying, or experience, could lead to a man hating the world to quite such a degree.
PETACHEYHA: doesn't translate as gates. Well, yes it does, but a PETACH is first and foremost "an opening", and Y-Y has been punning around various sorts of fertility-related openings throughout this chapter.
Isaiah:
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