Isaiah 1

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Chapter 1


1:1 CHAZON YESH'A-YAHU VEN AMOTS ASHER CHAZAH AL YEHUDAH VIYRU-SHALA'IM BIYMEY UZI-YAHU YOTAM ACHAZ YECHIZKI-YAHU MALCHEY YEHUDAH

חֲזוֹן יְשַׁעְיָהוּ בֶן אָמוֹץ אֲשֶׁר חָזָה עַל יְהוּדָה וִירוּשָׁלִָם בִּימֵי עֻזִּיָּהוּ יוֹתָם אָחָז יְחִזְקִיָּהוּ מַלְכֵי יְהוּדָה

KJ (King James translation): The vision of Isaiah the son of Amoz, which he saw concerning Judah and Jerusalem in the days of Uzziah, Jotham, Ahaz, and Hezekiah, kings of Judah.

BN (BibleNet translation): The manifesto of Yesh'a-Yah ben Amots, which he expounded concerning Yehudah and Yeru-Shala'im, in the days of Uzi-Yah, Yotam, Achaz, and Yechizki-Yah, kings of Yehudah.

CHAZON: I am wondering whether this really should translate as "vision", rather than "oracle"; and if it does, then we need a clear definition of the term. It isn't a vision, for example, such as happened to Muhammad on Laylat al-Qadr, "The Night of Power", when the Qu'ran was first revealed to him, or on the night of the Isra, when he was taken by winged horse to visit Yeru-Shala'im and meet the Jewish prophets. But is it perhaps a "vision" in the sense that contemporary institutions use the term, defining their corporate strategies by means of it? Probably, if he were living and "preaching" today, we would call it his "ideological position" (which of course requires an engaged poietikon!), and his "preaching" "public debating". Either way, the notion of "oracle" and "prophecy" as being mere horoscope readings, or guesses based on lines in the palm, is not only incorrect but deeply insulting. With Yesh'a-Yah we are encountering one of the very first great thinkers of the Metaphysical Age, and the best part of a century before any of his comparables: Confucius and Lao-Tse in China, Guatama Buddha and Mahavira in India, Pythagoras in Egypt.

   And placing this as the first word of the book is like writing a manifesto. A clear statement: what you are about to read is not a collection of poems, a mystery thriller, a memoir, nor indeed a sermon: I am going to lay out my "vision".

YESH'A-YAHU: His name is given second, as though anonymity would have sufficed, because it is the "vision" itself that matters, not the ego of the man who happened to think it into clarity and coherence. 

READER TAKE NOTE AS THIS APPLIES THROUGHOUT THIS BOOK: The name is also given in its later, masculinised form - originally, and still on numerous occasions in the various texts, he was Yesh'a-Yah: the change is Hasmonean, when the Omnideity was established as the one and only ruler, and all other members of the previous polytheon were absorbed, assimilated, and, where necessary, masculinised. We will see the same with Chizki-Yah (Hezekiah) in a moment, and indeed every Yah-name without exception, will appear as Yahu in the Yehudit text. And we need to note this, because this is therefore not the Ezraic text, but a redacted version constructed later on, one that has been edited to reflect considerable change and development in the theology. This will become especially significant when we reach the later chapters, and the current Yesh'a-Yah's several successors. HOWEVER, BECAUSE ONE OF THE PRIMARY GOALS OF THEBIBLENET IS TO TRACE THE SOURCES AND ORIGINS OF THESE TEXTS, I WILL BE RESTORING THE YAH-NAME ON EVERY OCCASION IN MY ENGLISH RENDITION, BUT LEAVING THE TEXT IN ITS MASORETIC FORM FOR THE YEHUDIT.

Besides this, to return to textual analysis, we also need to recognise that Yesh'a is a variation of Yehoshu'a (Joshua), Hoshe'a (הוֹשֵׁ֙עַ֙ - Hosea), and Yish'ai (both King David's father and Christian Jesus), as well as yielding one of the two key subjects of the book, in this case the Moshi'a rather than the Mashiyach: the means of living an effective life rather than kingship (the first link is incorrect, but it is also the standard explanation in the Christian world.) Most English translators render the name as "YHVH is salvation" - YHVH, or really his consort, the full moon goddess YAH, but either way not some future "son of God" - and this will be the main thread of his preaching throughout the first 39 chapters of his book, which are the only ones that [pretty well] all scholars are happy to attribute to him.

In full his name is Yesh'a-Yah [or Yesh'a-Yahu] ven Amots (יְשַֽׁעְיָ֣הוּ בֶן־אָמֹ֔וץ), "ben" being "the son of...", though neither part was likely to have been his birth-name. From the non-coincidence of it reflecting what he is about to preach, Yesh'a-Yah is obviously an adopted name, probably the chieftainship title of a Guild of Prophets, the earliest version of what is now the Yeshivah; and therefore taken by whoever held that position - and we will see that the book covers a historical period of two full centuries, so there will have been very many. And we can also surmise that it was an attempt to reopen that guild that led whatever-his-name-was to take the name Yesh'u (Jesus) later on.

VEN AMOTS, likewise, sounds like a title, in the way that we might say Ethelred the Unready or Catherine the Great. In this case "Yesh'a-Yah the Strong-Minded". But that only translates half it. "Salvation (Yesh'a) comes from understanding the laws of Nature (Yah for its physical manifestations, Yahu for its essence), and then building a code of ethics and a life of disciplined responsibility based on that understanding (see verse 11), and for this you will need a strong and independent mind (ben Amots)" would provide a complete paraphrase of both the full name and the full chazon.

AMETS, like the chazak part of Chizki-Yah (Hezekiah, though he is rendered throughout this book as Yechizki-Yahu), means "strong"; but it is more complex than that. The adjacent illustration is simply Gesenius' page on the word, and you can see the complexity for yourself - note especially the Psalm 80:18 reference, which Y-Y parallels in his own 44:14, though I particularly like, and from his preachings am confident that he would too, the "make the mind active and strong" of Gesenius' first definition: Plato's poietikon, which Plato wanted barred from his Republic, but Aristotle insisted was the key to its success. We shall be following this argument extensively through these pages.

Yesh'a-Yah's epoch is defined in 1:1, the epoch of Uzi-Yah (עֻזִּיָּ֧הוּּ - c. 791–739 BC), usually rendered in English as Uzziah (is this the Azaz-Yah of 2 Kings 15?), his son Yotam (Jotham - יֹותָ֛ם), Yotam's son Achaz (Ahaz - אָחָ֥ז), who by all accounts was a most wicked and sinful king*, and good king* Yechizki-Yah (Hezekiah - יְחִזְקִיָּ֖הו); so we can date this epoch very precisely, because we know that Sennacherib besieged Yechizki-Yah in Yeru-Shala'im around 700 BCE – see also 2 Kings 19:23–28 and 2 Kings 20 (both of which are Isaiac), and Isaiah 37:24–29. The impression of verses 7-8 in this chapter is of a country already conquered, in part if not in full, though in all likelihood Y-Y began his preaching in 742 BCE, when the threat from Assyria was still growing, and his intention at that time simply to warn the people.

* we have to be cautious about these descriptions: every book is written with an agenda, so a wicked and sinful man in one person's terms may represent the heroic role-model in another's.

YEHUDAH VIYRU-SHALA'IM: Again the historical context: Sennacherib, and his immediate predecessors Shalman-Ezer V and Sargon II, had conquered the whole of the northern kingdom by around 750 BCE, taking its people away into captivity, somewhere in Turkey probably, or northern Mesopotamia, where they disappeared frrom history as "The Lost Tribes". What was left was Yehudah, which had long ago assimilated Shim'on and now assimilated Bin-Yamin, and it was Sennacherib's return, now threatening that tiny residue, that turned Yesh'a-Yah into the Al Gore or perhaps the Greta Thunberg of his day.

1:2 SHIMU SHAMAYIM VE HA'AZIYNU ERETS KI YHVH DIBER BANIM GIDALTI VE ROMAMETI VE HEM PASH'U VI

שִׁמְעוּ שָׁמַיִם וְהַאֲזִינִי אֶרֶץ כִּי יְהוָה דִּבֵּר בָּנִים גִּדַּלְתִּי וְרוֹמַמְתִּי וְהֵם פָּשְׁעוּ בִי

KJ: Hear, O heavens, and give ear, O earth: for the LORD hath spoken, I have nourished and brought up children, and they have rebelled against me.

BN: Hear, you heavens, and Earth, lend me your ear, for YHVH has spoken: "I have raised children, and brought them up, and they have rebelled against me."

HA'AZIYNU takes us back to Mosheh's final speech to his people, in Deuteronomy 32. I have been unable to resist the Antonian, or perhaps I should say the Shakespearian, in translating it the way I have; but we know that many of Shakespeare's greatest lines were quotes from, or adaptations of, the first English translations of the Bible, the Wycliffe even before the publication of the King James; and Deuteronomy 32, the Ha'aziynu, especially - because this is the source of Portia's great speech in court: "The quality of mercy..." ("The Merchant of Venice", Act 4, Scene 1). The Antony can be found in "Julius Caesar", Act 3, Scene II (ll127ff).

YHVH: There is be nothing to be gained, if you read on in this commentary, but have not first read my page on YHVH, and followed it up by reading my page on CHAVAH (Eve). Because this is Yesh'a-Yah's understanding of the "gods"; not some anthropomorphised Santa Claus who lives in a Wonderland called Heaven and spends his days surrounded by angels, scrutinising life on Earth so that he can find fault with it and punish it, but rather the metaphor described and explained by Moshe ben Maimon in the opening chapter of his "Guide For The Perplexed". The E of Elohim exactly equivalent to the E that equals MC2. Essence, not yet manifested in physical form - that requires Chavah. LEHIYOT and LECHIYOT, to be and to exist. But read those two links, and the Maimon, and then read on here.

PASH'U: The following is from my section on Paragraph Six of the Amidah, in "A Myrtle Among Reeds":

   What is the difference between "chatanu - sinned" and "pash'anu - transgressed"? Biblical usage suggests that a pesh'a is stronger than a chet. A chet will incur a forfeit or a fine, but is expiable and may only be an error. A pesh'a has the sense of wilfulness, even of protest or rebellion against the Law and against God. That is why the words for pardon are also varied - a selicha for the chet, a mechilah for the pesh'a. Selicha is forgiveness, mechilah the full pardon, relative strength to relative strength. Only on Yom Kippur itself do we ask for and receive the highest level, beyond selicha, beyond mechilah, the full kappara which gives the day its name, the complete obliteration of our sins from the record books, the nulling and voiding of the entire page, so that we may start again afresh, at-one."

The CHET will make its appearance in verse 4.

1:3 YADA SHOR KONEHU VA CHAMOR EVUS BE'ALAV YISRA-EL LO YADA AMI LO HITBONAN

יָדַע שׁוֹר קֹנֵהוּ וַחֲמוֹר אֵבוּס בְּעָלָיו יִשְׂרָאֵל לֹא יָדַע עַמִּי לֹא הִתְבּוֹנָן

KJ: The ox knoweth his owner, and the ass his master's crib: but Israel doth not know, my people doth not consider.

BN: The ox knows his owner, and the ass his master's stable; but Yisra-El does not know, my people does not even consider.

AMI: "My people". Y-Y now functions as "spokesperson" for YHVH, and so it is not always obvious whether he is saying what he thinks, as himself, or saying what he thinks YHVH thinks, as his "spokesperson" - though really these ought to be the same thing. For this reason I will not be placing statements in quotation marks unless it is extremely clear that it requires them, as in verse 1.

SHOR...CHAMOR: But these are brainless creatures who respond like Pavlov's Dog to feeding, stroking and whipping, as passive as a Plato would require of his humans. The question here for us: what does Yisra-El not "know", and what does Y-Y think they ought to know? The edicts of the republic, or the laws of science? We shall wait and hopefully learn this as we continue.


1:4 HOY GOY CHOT'E AM KEVED AVON ZERA MERE'IM BANIM MASHCHIYTIM AZVU ET YHVH NI'ATSU ET KEDOSH YISRA-EL NAZRU ACHOR

הוֹי גּוֹי חֹטֵא עַם כֶּבֶד עָו‍ֹן זֶרַע מְרֵעִים בָּנִים מַשְׁחִיתִים עָזְבוּ אֶת יְהוָה נִאֲצוּ אֶת קְדוֹשׁ יִשְׂרָאֵל נָזֹרוּ אָחוֹר

KJ: Ah sinful nation, a people laden with iniquity, a seed of evildoers, children that are corrupters: they have forsaken the LORD, they have provoked the Holy One of Israel unto anger, they are gone away backward.

BN: Oi such a sinful nation, such a people weighed down with iniquity: seed of evil-doers; children who can only act corruptly. They have abandoned YHVH. They have deserted the Holy One of Yisra-El. They have become decadent.


HOY: see also verse 24, and many other occasions when Y-Y shrugs in just this way, the source of the Oi in Yiddish.

CHOT'E: see my note to PESH'A at verse 2.

AVON: Goes with PESH'A and CHOT'E, yet a third level of "sin" - most easily seen in the "Thirteen Attributes", located at Exodus 34:6-7, sung repeatedly at Rosh ha Shanah and Yom Kippur.

NAZRU ACHOR: I am reading this as an idiom, and therefore translating its intention; the literal meaning is, alas, rather meaningless.


1:5 AL MEH TUKU OD TOSIYPHU SARAH KOL ROSH LACHALI VE CHOL LEVAV DAVAY

עַל מֶה תֻכּוּ עוֹד תּוֹסִיפוּ סָרָה כָּל רֹאשׁ לָחֳלִי וְכָל לֵבָב דַּוָּי

KJ: Why should ye be stricken any more? ye will revolt more and more: the whole head is sick, and the whole heart faint.

BN: How many more beatings can you take for your misbehaviour? Your head is completely battered, your heart fainting...

AL MEH: Will recur and recur, in variant forms, generally understood as Y-Y saying "How long?" as in "when will they ever learn, o when will they ever learn?", very much a Y-Y message throughout this book.

OD TOSIYPHU SARAH: "Od tosiyphu" is straightforward: "go on adding", but SARAH is less so. This is not SARAH as in Av-Raham's wife; she is spelled with a Seen (ש), not a Samech (ס); ditto "princess", which is the probable meaning of that name. Deuteronomy 13, and several others, use it for ... but you really need to go and look at that passage, the whole of it from the start to the samech break at verse 12, and if Y-Y isn't alluding to that passage, explicitly and deliberately, then coincidence just reached a new height, right down to the keyword here, the DAVAR, which is the means by which the E operates in the world, and then the invitation, posed as a challenge to his listeners, of the Deuteronomic verses 10-12 (and if this presents a challenge to those who insist that Deuteronomy is Second Temple, and late Second Temple at that, I refer you to my comment at the opening of this chapter, that what we are reading is a Hasmonean redaction of Yesh'a-Yah, and not the original).

ROSH: Yes, the head, but at the opening of the Book of Bere'shit (Genesis), the ROSH is also the very source of life itself, and so once again the laws of science, nature, YHVH.

LEVAV: An important distinction is made throughout the Tanach between the LEV - anatomically the heart - as the source of emotion, and the LEVAV, as the source of thought, however subjective. Both are rooted in the word for "heart", and at no point in the entire Tanach will thought, let alone intellectual reasoning, be located in that vast emptiness of nerve, offal and tissue known as the mind, or the brain, or indeed anything else inside the head, including that modern invention the Psyche. Here it is LEVAV. But see verse 18.

DAVAI: And on go the word-games, never ceasing, as is the case with all the prophets. Every available double-meaning sought out and used, like the compiler of a crossword puzzle. From the DAVAR to the DAVAH is only a short distance - DAVAH means "sick", albeit only lightly so, where LACHALI was the full sickness - but from the DAVAH which needs therapy, to the D'VEI - the school of philosophy - which will provide it, all you need is to attend Y-Y's next study-session.

1:6 MI KAPH REGEL VE AD ROSH EYN BO METOM PETSA VE CHABURAH U MAKAH TERIYAH LO ZORU VE LO CHUBASHU VE LO RUK'CHAH BA SHAMEN

מִכַּף רֶגֶל וְעַד רֹאשׁ אֵין בּוֹ מְתֹם פֶּצַע וְחַבּוּרָה וּמַכָּה טְרִיָּה לֹא זֹרוּ וְלֹא חֻבָּשׁוּ וְלֹא רֻכְּכָה בַּשָּׁמֶן

KJ: From the sole of the foot even unto the head there is no soundness in it; but wounds, and bruises, and putrifying sores: they have not been closed, neither bound up, neither mollified with ointment.

BN: From the sole of the foot to the tip of the forehead there is not a single healthy cell; only wounds, and bruises, and festering sores: nor have they been bandadged or tourniqueted, let alone soothed with oil.

KAPH REGEL: is that not the ankle or heel rather than the sole? A KAPH is actually a spoon, and the REGEL is the leg, so this is descriptive, and I guess it depends how flat-footed a person is. (see also verse 15, where KAPEYCHEM is used as the palms of the hands).


1:7 ARTSECHEM SHEMAMAH AREYCHEM SERUPHOT ESH ADMAT'CHEM LE NEGDECHEM ZARIM OCHLIM OTAH U SHEMAMAH KE MAHPECHAT ZARIM

אַרְצְכֶם שְׁמָמָה עָרֵיכֶם שְׂרֻפוֹת אֵשׁ אַדְמַתְכֶם לְנֶגְדְּכֶם זָרִים אֹכְלִים אֹתָהּ וּשְׁמָמָה כְּמַהְפֵּכַת זָרִים

KJ: Your country is desolate, your cities are burned with fire: your land, strangers devour it in your presence, and it is desolate, as overthrown by strangers.

BN: Your land is desolate; your cities have been torched; strangers eat your produce in your very presence, and it is desolate, as if overthrown by floods.

1:8 VE NOTRAH VAT TSI'ON KE SUKAH VE CHAREM KI MELUNAH VE MIKSHAH KE IR NETSURAH

וְנוֹתְרָה בַת צִיּוֹן כְּסֻכָּה בְכָרֶם כִּמְלוּנָה בְמִקְשָׁה כְּעִיר נְצוּרָה

KJ: And the daughter of Zion is left as a cottage in a vineyard, as a lodge in a garden of cucumbers, as a besieged city.

BN: And the daughter of Tsi'on is left like a booth in a vineyard, like a lodge in a garden of cucumbers, like a besieged city.


Need to deconstruct those images. Note the vineyard, which will become a recurrent image throughout the book: can we assume something equivalent to the Bacchic or the Dionysic, with these booths rather more brothels than beer-kiosks? And does it really mean "cucumbers"? I thought that was a Melefephon. See Numbers 11:5.


1:9 LULEY YHVH TSEVA'OT HOTIR LANU SARID KIM'AT KI SEDOM HAYIYNU LA AMORAH DAMIYNU

לוּלֵי יְהוָה צְבָאוֹת הוֹתִיר לָנוּ שָׂרִיד כִּמְעָט כִּסְדֹם הָיִינוּ לַעֲמֹרָה דָּמִינוּ

KJ: Except the LORD of hosts had left unto us a very small remnant, we should have been as Sodom, and we should have been like unto Gomorrah.

BN: If YHVH the Lord of Hosts had not left us a tiny remnant, we should have been like Sedom, we should have been like Amorah.


YHVH TSEVA'OT: YHVH as Prime Minister, with the other gods and goddesses as his Cabinet; which makes this earlier than Hasmonean, and probably Ezraic - I shall not point these out every time, but there is a constant shifting back and forth throughout these early chapters, as though the Hasmonean editor found parts of the text that he simply couldn't redact, or missed, or was under orders not to push the Omnideity too hard, because there were still large numbers who had not surrendered to it (click here).

This is not simply the standard politician's scare-mongering as a way of winning votes; this is a reference back to the destruction of the northern tribes, and the "remnant" refers to Yehudah and Yeru-Shala'im, as in verse 1. Those listening to Y-Y could see for themselves the ruined cities, the bereaved families, the approaching army of Sennacherib.

SEDOM...AMORAH: Sedom and Gomorrah in the English rendition; two of the five the Cities of the Plain destroyed by volcanic eruption at the time of Lot (Genesis 19)

Pey break - and note that the Pey and Samech breaks in this book are not the same as those in the Five Books of the Torah. There, they primarily indicate breaks for the reading of the Law, the Samech standing for the Sedra, which is the section to be read that week, the Pey standing for each Pareshah, which are the seven sub-divisions of the weekly reading; a full explanation of this can be found here. Elsewhere in the Torah, and always in the other books, the Pey stands for "Petuchot" ("open") and the Samech for Setumot ("closed"), both serving to indicate a break in the text (remember that Yehudit scrolls did not have any other punctuation, or use paragraphs); the Pey is always at the beginning of a line, the Samech mid-line, both serving to indicate a break.

1:10 SHIM'U DEVAR YHVH KETSIYNEY SEDOM HA'AZIYNU TORAT ELOHEYNU AM AMORAH

שִׁמְעוּ דְבַר יְהוָה קְצִינֵי סְדֹם הַאֲזִינוּ תּוֹרַת אֱלֹהֵינוּ עַם עֲמֹרָה

KJ: Hear the word of the LORD, ye rulers of Sodom; give ear unto the law of our God, ye people of Gomorrah.

BN: Hear the word of YHVH, you rulers of Sedom; lend an ear to the teaching of our gods, you people of Amorah.


TORAH: The same word that is used for the Mosaic Code, but Y-Y uses the word throughout the book to mean "enlightenment", and quite probably the Torah as we know it did not exist in his days anyway.

SHIM'U: Is this sarcasm? Because obviously they can't hear, because they were wiped out in their entirety by that volcanic eruption. I ask, because this is the sacred scroll of a Prophet of the deity, and surely such a book can only be reverential, pious and... and am I being sarcasticv in saying this? Indeed I am, as indeed is he. This is not a pious monk, preaching passive obedience; this is a very angry young man, out there determined to make the world hear him, and sarcasm is one of his very powerful weapons. Be ready for it, because it will recur continually.


1:11 LAMAH LI ROV ZIVCHEYCHEM YO'MAR YHVH SAVA'TI OLOT EYLIM VE CHELEV MERIY'IM VE DAM PARIM U CHEVASIM VE ATUDIM LO CHAPHATSTI

לָמָּה לִּי רֹב זִבְחֵיכֶם יֹאמַר יְהוָה שָׂבַעְתִּי עֹלוֹת אֵילִים וְחֵלֶב מְרִיאִים וְדַם פָּרִים וּכְבָשִׂים וְעַתּוּדִים לֹא חָפָצְתִּי

KJ: To what purpose is the multitude of your sacrifices unto me? saith the LORD: I am full of the burnt offerings of rams, and the fat of fed beasts; and I delight not in the blood of bullocks, or of lambs, or of he goats.

BN: Why do you make all these sacrifices to me, says YHVH. I am stuffed from the burnt-offerings of rams, and the fat of fed beasts; and I take no pleasure from the blood of bullocks, or lambs, or billy-goats.


And now, the key to the manifesto, establishing Yesh'a-Yah's key theological position; and it changes Mosaic "Hebrewism" at the root: "I have had enough of rams… I take no pleasure from the blood of bulls." The entirety of Leviticus, and a good deal of Exodus, Numbers and Deuteronomy, overthrown, rejected (assuming that they even existed yet, as orthodoxy insists but many secular scholars question). And yet we think of Yesh'a-Yah and his fellow Prophets as simply the next chain in the link, the one described in the opening verse of Pirkei Avot: "Mosheh received the Torah on Mount Sinai and handed it down to Yehoshu'a. Yehoshu'a handed it down to the Elders, the Elders to the Prophets, and the Prophets to the Men of the Great Assembly." But we shall see, as we explore this text, that Yesh'a-Yah was not the recipient of the Mosaic Code at all; this change to its fundamental practice radically transforms the role of the Levitical priesthood, and of the Temple; and we shall see, as hinted above, that Yesh'a-Yah's concept of the deity, and of the deity's covenant, will be radically different as well. Yesh'a-Yah is not a "Hebrew" prophet; perhaps he is a proto-Jewish prophet, but let us wait to pin any label at all on him; for the moment I simply note what he was not.

And what precisely is the change? It is the transition from the Mythological Age to the Metaphysical Age. In the former, the forces of the cosmos were anthropomorphised, creatures imaginable as Super-Humans, and therefore treatable as you would treat a king or a playground bully: follow his orders and kiss his backside and he will invite you to join his gang, refuse and disobey him and expect the predictable consequences: the technical term is "propitiation". Y-Y rejects the anthro, insists on the metaphor and the laws of Nature: you cannot propitiate an erupting volcano (to use his Sedom and Amorah allusion). What you can do is study the eruption at every phase and geographical point, try to understand what it is, how it is, and then plan your future from that knowledge. Ditto seasons, rain and sun, male and female, age, illness: know the world, its ways, its laws, and build your life accordingly. The gods don't want your sacrifices (acts of worthless and wasteful propitiation), they want your obedience (your life lived according to the laws of Nature).

I promise, now that I have explained all this twice, not to do so a third time unless absolutely necessary; nor do I need, as Y-Y says it perfectly coherently himself.

1:12 KI TAVO'U LERA'OT PANAI MI VIKESH ZOT MI YEDCHEM REMOS CHATSERAI

כִּי תָבֹאוּ לֵרָאוֹת פָּנָי מִי בִקֵּשׁ זֹאת מִיֶּדְכֶם רְמֹס חֲצֵרָי

KJ: When ye come to appear before me, who hath required this at your hand, to tread my courts?

BN: When you come to stand before me, to trample my courts, who required this from your hand?


Exactly the sort of public statement that is likely to get a man stoned to death as a false prophet, as per his allusion to Deuteronomy 13 in verse 5.

REMOS: Definitely "trample", not just "tread". Click here. And I can't help wondering, because he always chooses his words so carefully, whether RA-MOUSA isn't being alluded to as well; we would say RAMESES, the Pharaoh who pursued Mosheh out of Mitsrayim.

1:13 LO TOSIYPHU HAVIY MINCHAT-SHAV KETORET TO'EVAH HI LI CHODESH VE SHABAT KER'O MIKR'A LO UCHAL AVEN VA ATSARAH

לֹא תוֹסִיפוּ הָבִיא מִנְחַת-שָׁוְא קְטֹרֶת תּוֹעֵבָה הִיא לִי חֹדֶשׁ וְשַׁבָּת קְרֹא מִקְרָא לֹא אוּכַל אָוֶן וַעֲצָרָה

KJ: Bring no more vain oblations; incense is an abomination unto me; the new moons and sabbaths, the calling of assemblies, I cannot away with; it is iniquity, even the solemn meeting.

BN: Bring me no more vain oblations; these offerings are an abomination to me, these new moons and Sabbaths, this holding of convocations - I cannot endure iniquity in the midst of a solemn assembly.


Why is there a hyphen in MINCHAT-SHAV?

"Do not bring any more futile sacrifices; incense is an abomination to me." Even Rosh Chodesh – the feast and celebration of the New Moon – and the Sabbath and the chagim (pilgrim festivals – Passover, Shavu'ot and Sukot) are rejected: though not the festivals themselves. But no reason why is given: no reason for this change: no source. Is the Sedom reference perhaps also a hint at paganism, or hypocrisy, or a lack of Kavanah (sincerity as well as intensity) in the Moslem sense of Munafiqun: those who claim sincerity with their lips but do not practice it in their lives because they do not really mean it in their hearts? Or is simply a matter of priests imposing their orthodoxy upon the passive, which is the Platonic, versus individuals defining their own lives and codes for living it, which is the Aristotelian?

1:14 CHADSHEYCHEM U MO'ADEYCHEM SAN'AH NAPHSHI HAYU ALAI LA TORACH NIL'EYTI NESO

חָדְשֵׁיכֶם וּמוֹעֲדֵיכֶם שָׂנְאָה נַפְשִׁי הָיוּ עָלַי לָטֹרַח נִלְאֵיתִי נְשֹׂא

KJ: Your new moons and your appointed feasts my soul hateth: they are a trouble unto me; I am weary to bear them.

BN: My soul hates your new moons and your appointed seasons; they are a burden to me; I am tired of having to put up with them.


But why? How long before you tell us why (sorry, but the jest is irresistible; and will self-explain if you have patience)?

1:15 U VE PHARISCHEM KAPEYCHEM A'LIM EYNAI MI KEM GAM KI TARBU TEPHILAH EYNENI SHOME'A YEDEYCHEM DAMIM MALE'U

וּבְפָרִשְׂכֶם כַּפֵּיכֶם אַעְלִים עֵינַי מִכֶּם גַּם כִּי תַרְבּוּ תְפִלָּה אֵינֶנִּי שֹׁמֵעַ יְדֵיכֶם דָּמִים מָלֵאוּ

KJ: And when ye spread forth your hands, I will hide mine eyes from you: yea, when ye make many prayers, I will not hear: your hands are full of blood.

BN: And when you hold out your hands, I will hide my eyes from you. And even when you say more and still more prayers, I will not hear them. Your hands are full of blood.

KAPEYCHEM: the palms of the hands, mirroring the soles of the feet in verse 6.

A'LIM EYNAI: But not in the sense of HISTIR PANAV, when the deity turns a moral blind eye, allowing evil to enter; this is simply the act of not looking.

1:16 RACHATSU HIZAKU HASIYRU RO'A MA'ALELEYCHEM MI NEGED AYNAI CHIDLU HA RE'A

רַחֲצוּ הִזַּכּוּ הָסִירוּ רֹעַ מַעַלְלֵיכֶם מִנֶּגֶד עֵינָי חִדְלוּ הָרֵעַ

KJ: Wash you, make you clean; put away the evil of your doings from before mine eyes; cease to do evil;

BN: Wash yourselves. Make yourselves clean. Take your evil doings away from where I have to see them. Better still, cease to do evil.

This calls for purification at every level, flesh, soul, mind and behaviour, but especially… but listen to the poetry of this as well: RACHATSU... HIZAKU... HASIYRU... and then RO'A balanced by RE'A. 

HA RE'A: But we do still require a Y-Y definition of evil, because everybodys definition is their own, and doesn't necessarily match ours today. Or mayve "evil" is simply a failure to do "good"; good gets defined in the next verse, and how easy it would be for a later Yesh'a-Yah to turn those five statements into a sermon on the mount! Or a still later equivalent, learning from the same sources, into a Sura of the Qur'an (try here)!

1:17 LIMDU HEYTEV DIRSHU MISHPAT ASHRU CHAMOTS SHIPHTU YATOM RIVU ALMANAH

לִמְדוּ הֵיטֵב דִּרְשׁוּ מִשְׁפָּט אַשְּׁרוּ חָמוֹץ שִׁפְטוּ יָתוֹם רִיבוּ אַלְמָנָה

KJ: Learn to do well; seek judgment, relieve the oppressed, judge the fatherless, plead for the widow.

BN: Learn to do good deeds. Seek justice. Relieve the oppressed. Judge the fatherless. Plead for the widow.


The shift from the Mythological Age to the Metaphysical, from deities who represent the physics of the cosmos, to ones who manifest human abstract aspirations: a leap in human development from Key Stage 1 to Key Stage 2.

Righteous behaviour; this is now a god of mercy and justice, not of fertility; an abstractly ethical not a volcanic or a tectonic physical literality, a god who will send human armies to do his work of punishment for him, not frogs and locusts, not angels or cherubim; a god of social contract not of feudal covenant. And such a deity requires a new name, and from the inferences of Yahu and El above, can we deduce that this is when YHVH was invented?

And note that this verse is written iambically until the final pair, which adds a completing syllable - again, this is not just politico-religious manifesto, this is always, also, poietikos in its fullest sense.

samech break


1:18 LECHU NA VE NIVACHECHAH YOMAR YHVH IM YIHEYU CHATA'EYCHEM KA SHANIM KA SHELEG YALBIYNU IM YA'DIYMU CHA TOL'A KA TSEMER YIHEYU

לְכוּ נָא וְנִוָּכְחָה יֹאמַר יְהוָה אִם יִהְיוּ חֲטָאֵיכֶם כַּשָּׁנִים כַּשֶּׁלֶג יַלְבִּינוּ אִם יַאְדִּימוּ כַתּוֹלָע כַּצֶּמֶר יִהְיוּ

KJ: Come now, and let us reason together, saith the LORD: though your sins be as scarlet, they shall be as white as snow; though they be red like crimson, they shall be as wool.

BN: Come now, and let us reason together, says YHVH. Though your sins are like scarlet, they shall become as white as snow; though they are red like crimson, they shall become like wool.

LECHU NA: A very polite request; an invitation indeed. Not an order from a despot. This too is new. Previously the relationship was always based on "fear" (pachad or yar'at) - and it will continue to be so in some chapters at least of this book - whereas "faith" (emuna) is about trust based on intellectual credulity. We are in the 6th century BCE, the moment when, across the human universe, an extraordinary leap appears to have taken place, that moment that our children today expect to obtain around the age of ten or eleven, that moment at which abstract thought becomes possible; so we can see the shift from "fear" to "faith" as a shift from the subjective to the objective, from the literal to the abstract, from the location of thought within the LEV to its repositioning within the LEVAV.

NIVACHECHAH: KJ's translation calls for the use of "reason", but is this what the Yehudit word really meant back then? If it was, then this too is important evidence of the transition from the Mythological Age. (Click here for examples of the usage of this root elsewhere in the Tanach; but note that none of them use the root in this grammatical form, which is the causative or Hiph'il)

Need to comment on the colours; all allude to earlier stories. Is the SHANIM here a reference to the TOLA'AT SHANIM of Exodus 25 (et al, but especially there)? Note that TOL'A itself appears at the end of the verse. It gets translated as "scarlet", which was the Zerach-Parets thread in the Yehudah-Tamar story, and feeds Nathaniel Hawthorne's use of the colour in his "The Scarlet Letter".


1:19 IM TO'VU U SHEMA'TEM TUV HA ARETS TO'CHELU

אִם תֹּאבוּ וּשְׁמַעְתֶּם טוּב הָאָרֶץ תֹּאכֵלוּ

KJ: If ye be willing and obedient, ye shall eat the good of the land:

BN: If you are willing and obedient, you shall eat of the good of the land.

TO'VU...TUV: This is where I start to really like, admire, respect Yesh'a-Yah, regardless of the irrelevance of whether I agree with him or not, share his opinions, like him as a human being, etc. What always draws us to the truly great amongst the general mediocrity of human beings: the left side of the brain working just as effectively as the right side of the brain, and concurrently. So there is the intellectual articulating his profound ideas with passionate lucidity (that's a Donnesque paradox, but accurate: the "naked, thinking heart"); but at the same time there is the creative artist at work, the poet determined to be just as fastidious with language as he is with theme. So he plays TO'VU ("to be willing") against TUV ("to be good") as a lexical game, as though making out that the two are the same thing, which they are from their common root, but only are in a Platonic world in which someone else defines "goodness" and you are "willing" to obey. At the same time he does so by inviting the recognition of a famous phrase - the Mah Tovu that modern Jews sing every day to start their prayers, but which in his time would have been known from the Temple liturgy. Then he echoes TO'VU in TO'CHELU, repeating the T-sound for musical effect, imitating the methodology of the Psalms to show off his expertise. And managing to preach a sermon simultaneously (actually, that's the weakest point of the verse, because it's a double-argument, and either way an ideological imposition at worst, a pious hope at best, and even then entirely unsubstantiated by historical evidence).

Let me pick up that last parenthesis in more detail. The verse speaks of "willing" and "obedient", and this is central to Yesh'a-Yah's ideology. He too expects total subservience to the law (though, as above, exactly what that law is becomes somewhat vague, because he appears to reject much of the Mosaic; he will use the concept of "righteousness" in a broad, indeed a most abstract, manner, but without properly defining it; and this will become one of the problems of the text) in precisely the way that modern Chasidic Judaism, and mediaeval Talmudic Judaism, use it, in the Moslem sense that Islam means, inter alia, "submission". Platonic Republicanism is an ideology of passive complicity, and we need to keep that in mind when Y-Y calls on us to use our "reason"; because he is no different from any other demagogue: what he really means is "use your brain to make the logic and rational choice – which is to give up using your brain, your capacity to do logic and be rational, and blindly accept the laws of the deity as interpreted by me, Yesh'a-Yah". A totalitarianism, and a cult of personality. In fact, if his followers wish to follow the ideology of Yesh'a-Yah, the first thing that they need to is to reject Yesh'a-Yah! Nietzsche, defining a very similar ideology in "Also Sprach Zarathustra" nearly three thousand years later, recognised and acknowledged that irony, and his greatest follower, Nikos Kazantsakis, explains in detail how he did precisely that, while remaining his most committed follower, in his "Report To Greco". The point being: you cannot accept anyone else's definition until you have renounced it, and then made it your own by discovery.

HA ARETS TO'CHELU: So, for the purposes of these commentaries,  we need to find out what it is that he expects us to be "willing" to accept, and "obedient" to, because it is not the full set of Laws given to Mosheh, key components of which he himself has already rejected, as above. We need to wait and see how the theology will develop; the reward however remains that of the Shem'a (Deuteronomy 6:4, but you need to read on to 6:12, and then Deuteronomy 11:13-15)


1:20 VE IM TEMA'ANU U MERIYTEM CHEREV TE'UKLU KI PI YHVH DIBER

וְאִם תְּמָאֲנוּ וּמְרִיתֶם חֶרֶב תְּאֻכְּלוּ כִּי פִּי יְהוָה דִּבֵּר

KJ: But if ye refuse and rebel, ye shall be devoured with the sword: for the mouth of the LORD hath spoken it.

BN: But if you refuse and rebel, you shall be devoured by the sword; for the mouth of YHVH has spoken.


And this, by contrast, is where I intensely dislike Yesh'a-Yah, to the point that I would happily see him stood up against a wall and devoured by that sword himself. This is the voice of the Papal Bull, the speechifying of Erdogan, the finger-pointing of Boss Tweet: I'm the boss, what I say goes; I know what is and is not right, correct, proper and acceptable, because "the mouth of YHVH has spoken" through me. Disagree and die.

But am I right to respond like this? is Y-Y himself establishing this as a deliberate paradox? My Nietzsche-Kazantsakis analogy covers precisely this. The last sentence especially: "The point being: you cannot accept anyone else's definition until you have renounced it, and then made it your own by discovery." And if the "laws" that Y-Y is insisting are indeed "the laws of Nature", then he is correct: obey them and you will live, reject them, rebel against them, and you will die. No better an example in our world than global warming. Then is he simply telling us to use our reason to understand Nature better, which is the study of science, and then its application.

TE'UKLU: How can the Chaf be medugash here? Surely this must be read as TE'UCHLU?


pey break


1:21 EYCHAH HAYETAH LE ZONAH KIRYAH NE'EMANAH MELE'ATI MISHPAT TSEDEK YALIN BAH VE ATAH MERATSCHIM

אֵיכָה הָיְתָה לְזוֹנָה קִרְיָה נֶאֱמָנָה מְלֵאֲתִי מִשְׁפָּט צֶדֶק יָלִין בָּהּ וְעַתָּה מְרַצְּחִים

KJ: How is the faithful city become an harlot! it was full of judgment; righteousness lodged in it; but now murderers.

BN: How has the faithful city turned into a harlot? She who was full of justice. Righteousness lodged with her, but now murderers.

Exclamation mark or interrogation mark!?

ZONAH: not KADESHAH which is a very different concept. This is back-street prostitution, not the rites of Asherah or the May-King and May-Queen ceremonies. And anyway he means it as a metaphor: the real whores are the ones his namesake would kick out of the Temple (Matthew 21:12)

TSEDEK: Which is not really "Justice", but the much broader "righteousness" - in the same way that we use the word TSEDAKAH to mean "charity", but it isn't the giving of the alms that makes TSEDEK manifest, it is, and Yesh'a-Yah will have much to say about this in the chapters that follow, the sincerity of the empathy and compassion which induce the act of giving. And don't forget that David's first Kohen Gadol (High Priest) bore the name Tsadok, Adoni-Tsedek in full, as his official title (2 Samuel 8:16–18), and the intellectual battle, fought throughout the Hasmonean period and very much alive at the start of Christianity, was between the Pharisees (Hellenistic Greeks who followed Y-Y's aversion to propitiation and wanted synagogues instead) and the Sadducees, who were the upholders of the Temple traditions. Pharisees in Yehudit are Perushim, Sadducees are Tsadokim.

1:22 KASPECH HAYAH LE SIYGIM SAV'ECH MAHUL BA MAYIM

כַּסְפֵּךְ הָיָה לְסִיגִים סָבְאֵךְ מָהוּל בַּמָּיִם

KJ: Thy silver is become dross, thy wine mixed with water:

BN: Your silver has turned into dross, your wine is mixed with water.


The first outing for one of Y-Y's most often repeated rants; and I need to point out from the beginning that it is not an anti-Capitalist rant as such, but a tirade against those who reduce the necessary world of trade and commerce to a mere flea-market, who run hedge-funds as an insurance policy against their own unwise investments, in order to make profit from it either way and twice over, who sell products that they know are harmful, who cheapen and cut corners regardless of safety and quality, whose goal is personal aggrandisement and not the meeting of the needs of the wider community. As per my note to the previous verse, this is the same as Jesus overturning the tables of the money-lenders in the Temple - though both in the broadest sense are the reduction of the sacred to the profane, of culture and civilisation to pointless entertainment. Nor is this Socialism versus Communism; it is really about "ethical capitalism", and ultimately it is about creating a civilisation that practises what it preaches in the realms of morality and responsibility.

1:23 SARAYICH SORERIM VE CHAVREY GANAVIM KULO OHEV SHOCHAD VE RODEPH SHALMONIM YATOM LO YISHPOTU VE RIYV ALMANAH LO YAVO ALEYHEM

שָׂרַיִךְ סוֹרְרִים וְחַבְרֵי גַּנָּבִים כֻּלּוֹ אֹהֵב שֹׁחַד וְרֹדֵף שַׁלְמֹנִים יָתוֹם לֹא יִשְׁפֹּטוּ וְרִיב אַלְמָנָה לֹא יָבוֹא אֲלֵיהֶם

KJ: Thy princes are rebellious, and companions of thieves: every one loveth gifts, and followeth after rewards: they judge not the fatherless, neither doth the cause of the widow come unto them.

BN: Your leaders are corrupt, and make their companions among thieves. Everyone loves bribes, and follows after rewards. They fail to judge the fatherless, and the cause of the widow does not even reach their ears.


The prostitutes in the back-alleys behind the street-stalls, the profiteers in the black-marketplace, and the secular souls who are supposed to clean this up and make it right are just as bad themselves - leaving only the priests and prophets available to make "God's world" (unless they turn out to be Hophni and Pinchas, the sons of Eli at the opening of the Book of Samuel!). Standard religious rhetoric of course. But what exactly does he mean by "corruption"? Is it a secular criminality or a religious paganism? Apparently the two are not that easily distinguishable in a human world which has been established as a deliberate echoing on Earth of the patterns of the Cosmos. So in Yesh'a-Yah there is the false god Mammon, and the real sin is complacency and self-interest, a lack of community awareness let alone responsibility (eat your hearts out, Tea Party followers of Ayn Rand!)


samech break


1:24 LACHEN NE'UM HA ADON YHVH TSEVA'OT AVIR YISRA-EL HOY ENACHEM MI TSARAI VE INAKMAH ME OYEVAI

לָכֵן נְאֻם הָאָדוֹן יְהוָה צְבָאוֹת אֲבִיר יִשְׂרָאֵל הוֹי אֶנָּחֵם מִצָּרַי וְאִנָּקְמָה מֵאוֹיְבָי

KJ: Therefore saith the Lord, the LORD of hosts, the mighty One of Israel, Ah, I will ease me of mine adversaries, and avenge me of mine enemies:

BN: Therefore the Lord, YHVH Tseva'ot, the Lord of Hosts, the Mighty One of Yisra-El, he says: "Oi, but I shall relieve myself of my adversaries, and avenge myself of my enemies...


Yet another of the many names for god, catalogued almost in this chapter. But ADON YHVH TSEVA'OT is not the usual construction.

ENACHEM... INAKMAH: Y-Y is again playing word-games with us: as though the "comfort" comes precisely from the "revenge". The first word gives us the name Menachem, as in the "terrorist" Menachem Begin; the second gave the name of the European Jews who went after the Nazis who had managed to elude Nuremberg: Dam Yisra-El Nok'am they called themselves, "the DIN" (which just happens to mean "justice" for short): "The blood of Israel shall have vengeance", by literal translation. Simeon Niementhal, the greatest of all Nazi-hunters, specifically rejected this, by titling his memoirs "Justice, Not Revenge". Justice, of course, has already been on Y-Y's lips in this chapter - see verse 21.

The same word-game recurs in one of the very last chapters [need to check which and cite it; but also cross-reference back to here from there]

NE'UM: Yesh'a-Yah regularly uses NE'UM for YHVH speaking, which is not used at all in Torah as far as I recall - VA YOMER  and VA YEDABER are the usual formulae. Is one perhaps shaman-oracular, through the serpent-mask of the priestess, and the other Urim-and-Tumim oracular, through the dice of the High Priest? Or does Y-Y have the authority to do either or both of these himself, in his role as Abbot of the Guild of Prophets? Or more likely, given that both of those are superstitions from the mythological era, he probably just used his brain.

1:25 VE ASHIYVAH YADI ALAYICH VE ETSROPH KA BOR SIYGAYICH VE ASIRAH KOL BEDIYLAYICH

וְאָשִׁיבָה יָדִי עָלַיִךְ וְאֶצְרֹף כַּבֹּר סִיגָיִךְ וְאָסִירָה כָּל בְּדִילָיִךְ

KJ: And I will turn my hand upon thee, and purely purge away thy dross, and take away all thy tin:

BN: And I will turn my hand against you, and purge away your dross as if with lye, and take away all your precious metals.


1:25 echoes 1:22 in pointing to metals. We might well ask how a god might do this; the text later will tell us repeatedly that YHVH acts both through Nature (volcanoes, earthquakes, hurricanes, droughts et cetera) and through the "agency" of selected human beings, usually warrior-enemies. So the former reflects the natural, while the taking away of the precious metals is precisely what a conquering power would do.

Once again the poetry outshines the metallic prose: internal rhyme especially, not conveyed in the English translations but readable in the transliteration for those who don't know Yehudit (ALAYICH... SIYGAYICH... BEDIYLAYICH but also ASHIYVAH... ASIRAH, and you can see for yourself the continuation of the same rhymes into the next verse).

1:26 VE ASHIYVAH SHOPHTAYICH KE VA RI'SHONAH VE YO'ATSAYICH KE VA TECHILAH ACHAREY CHEN YIKAR'E LACH IR HA TSEDEK KIRYAH NE'EMANAH

וְאָשִׁיבָה שֹׁפְטַיִךְ כְּבָרִאשֹׁנָה וְיֹעֲצַיִךְ כְּבַתְּחִלָּה אַחֲרֵי כֵן יִקָּרֵא לָךְ עִיר הַצֶּדֶק קִרְיָה נֶאֱמָנָה

KJ: And I will restore thy judges as at the first, and thy counsellors as at the beginning: afterward thou shalt be called, The city of righteousness, the faithful city.

BN: And I will restore your judges as in the beginning, and your counsellors as at the first; and afterwards you will be called the city of righteousness, the faithful city.

VE ASHIYVAH...KE VA TECHILAH: very slightly modified, this became a core phrase in the Amidah, but it is there as a petition, where it is here as a threat. And now, guess which paragraph of the Amidah it is to be found in... The Eleventh Blessing: Din - Justice (see "A Myrtle Among Reeds" page 202).

VA RI'SHONAH... VA TECHILAH: makes an important distinction, one that I have pointed out in my notes to Genesis 1:1.

Does "City of Righteousness" offer an etymology of Yeru-Shala'im, with the broadest rather than the narrowest definition of Shalom?


1:27 TSI'ON BE MISHPAT TIPADEH VE SHAVEYHA BI TSEDAKAH

צִיּוֹן בְּמִשְׁפָּט תִּפָּדֶה וְשָׁבֶיהָ בִּצְדָקָה

KJ: Zion shall be redeemed with judgment, and her converts with righteousness.

BN: Tsi'on shall be redeemed with justice, and they who return to her with righteousness.


This retains a separation between Ts'ion and Yeru-Shala'im, which I think is best understood through the parallel of Rome and the Vatican City, or Bei-Jing and the imperial Forbidden City.

But does this not belong with Deutero-Isaiah in the latter chapters? First Isaiah was before the conquest of Yeru-Shala'im. (I asked the same question at verse 9, and for the same reason.)



1:28 VE SHEVER POSH'IM VE CHATA'IM YACHDAV VE OZVEY YHVH YICHLU

וְשֶׁבֶר פֹּשְׁעִים וְחַטָּאִים יַחְדָּו וְעֹזְבֵי יְהוָה יִכְלוּ

KJ: And the destruction of the transgressors and of the sinners shall be together, and they that forsake the LORD shall be consumed.

BN: Then the destruction of the transgressors and of the sinners will take place at the same time, and they who forsake YHVH shall be consumed.


What is the difference between a "transgressor" and a "sinner"? In what manner will they be "consumed", given that YHVH is sick of all this blood and sacrifice? Pesh'a and Chet are both used here: see my note at verse 2.


1:29 KI YEVOSHU ME EYLIM ASHER CHAMADETEM VE TACHPERU ME HA GANOT ASHER BECHARTEM

כִּי יֵבֹשׁוּ מֵאֵילִים אֲשֶׁר חֲמַדְתֶּם וְתַחְפְּרוּ מֵהַגַּנּוֹת אֲשֶׁר בְּחַרְתֶּם

KJ: For they shall be ashamed of the oaks which ye have desired, and ye shall be confounded for the gardens that ye have chosen.

BN: For they shall be ashamed of the terebinth oaks which you have desired, and you shall be confounded for the gardens that you have chosen.

Unlike verse 21, the Eylim and Asherim are now explicitly mentioned, and the sacred groves where both were used for the "pagan" rites and ceremonies, confirming that Y-Y is making a distinction between the ZONAH and the KADESHAH - though he rejects and denounces both practices. 

EYLIM: Specifically the terebinth oak, but that is not the significant reason for my placing the word in my translation. In the rites and ceremonies of this world, terebinth oaks and scarlet oaks and herm oaks and weeping paks had different connotations, mythologically and therefore ritualistically. The scarlet has been mentioned, separately, in verse 18, and it was the scarlet oak that produced the holly for the crown of thorns worn by the new Mashi'ach at his "coronation", and the bough of the scarlet oak which, in J.G. Frazer's explanation of the term, was "sacred". Not always explicitly named, the scarlet oak will become central to the latter chapters of this book. Click here for more on this, and start at "Section 1) The Sacred Grove".


1:30 KI TIHEYU KE ELAH NOVELET ALEHA U CHE GANAH ASHER MAYIM EYN LAH

כִּי תִהְיוּ כְּאֵלָה נֹבֶלֶת עָלֶהָ וּכְגַנָּה אֲשֶׁר מַיִם אֵין לָהּ

KJ: For ye shall be as an oak whose leaf fadeth, and as a garden that hath no water.

BN: For you shall be like a terebinth oak whose leaf is fading, and as a garden that has no water.

GANAH: not GAN; a human garden, the sort Voltaire recommended cultivating, in a back-garden or even on a balcony. A GAN is an entire valley, cultivated by farmers, or GAN EDEN, an entire planet, cultivated by gods and goddesses.


1:31 VE HAYAH HE CHASON LI NE'ORET U PHO'ALO LE NIYTSOTS U BA'ARU SHENEYHEM YACHDAV VE EYN MECHABEH

וְהָיָה הֶחָסֹן לִנְעֹרֶת וּפֹעֲלוֹ לְנִיצוֹץ וּבָעֲרוּ שְׁנֵיהֶם יַחְדָּו וְאֵין מְכַבֶּה

KJ: And the strong shall be as tow, and the maker of it as a spark, and they shall both burn together, and none shall quench them.

BN: And the strong shall be like tow, and his work as a spark; and they shall both burn together, and none shall quench them.

NE'ORET: Used also in Judges 16:9, "tow" are the seeds that fly off when you shake out the flax (and apparently the flax seeds are very good, and very healthy, foodstuff).

NIYTSOTS: Why a "spark". The last great "punishment for sin" was Sedom and Amorah, which he has already referenced, in which fire and brimstone struck the five cities. So is he predicting another volcano? Or it simply a metaphor. In later mythologies, especially the Christian, the burning fire would be understand as Hell; but She'ol, the Underworld of Y-Y's time, was not regarded demoniacally. Dead matter went there to be recycled, and that too was one of the laws of Nature. More likely, given that he is speaking of the sacred groves, this is Guy Fawkes in his ealiest manifestation. At the start of the planting year you make a scarecrow to ward off the evil birds and badgers and other hungry creatures who will devour your crop, and you stand that scarecrow upright on a vertical pole, and hold his arms wide for waving at those creatures by nailing another wooden pole across his back. And when the harvest is done, you burn the stubble as you burn the tow, and you throw Guy Fawkes on the bonfire too, because you have no further use for him, and will make another one next year. Each of these two events would have taken place in the sacred grove, one at the spring, the other at the autumn equinox.

pey break

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