Isaiah: 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 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
Continuing the song "On That Day".
27:1 BA YOM HA HU YIPHKOD YHVH BE CHARBO HA KASHAH VE HA GEDOLAH VE HA CHAZAKAH AL LIVYATAN NACHASH BARI'ACH VE AL LIVYATAN NACHASH AKALATON VE HARAG ET HA TANIN ASHER BA YAM
בַּיּוֹם הַהוּא יִפְקֹד יְהוָה בְּחַרְבּוֹ הַקָּשָׁה וְהַגְּדוֹלָה וְהַחֲזָקָה עַל לִוְיָתָן נָחָשׁ בָּרִחַ וְעַל לִוְיָתָן נָחָשׁ עֲקַלָּתוֹן וְהָרַג אֶת הַתַּנִּין אֲשֶׁר בַּיָּם
BN (BibleNet translation): On that day YHVH, with his vast, sharp and powerful sword, will punish Liv-Yatan the fleeing serpent, and Liv-Yatan the twisted serpent; and he will slay the dragon that is in the sea. {S}
As per my title, this chapter is a continuation of the last, and the change of number is an error by the Christian translators. The Yehudit text does not have chapters anyway, but uses Pey and Samech breaks (for which see my note at Nehemiah 3:1); there were Samech-breaks at 26:11 and 12, and a series of Pey-breaks at 26:10, 15, 19 and 21; so it seems logical to assume that 27:1 is the resumption. And the form of words, "on that day", endorses this.
So we need to start by reminding ourselves what was happening "on that day" at the end of chapter 26. The song itself is about the triumphant completion of Yeru-Shala'im, with the Mosaic covenant now capable of fulfilment because all the prerequirements are in place. And with it the recognition by the rest of the world that their gods are falsehoods, that only YHVH and the Elohim are the true explanation of the workings of the Cosmos, and the beginning of the destruction of those false idols. Clearly it is this to which Y-Y is returning our current verse, though the last few verses of 26 did digress for a moment to berate those among his people who were not following YHVH with proper Kavanah.
LIPHKOD: Used three times in the last chapter.
LIV-YATAN: Elsewhere LEV-YATAN, and interesting to find him here, alongside Tahamat and Behemot earlier in this song: these after all were the pre-Creation inhabitants of the universal black hole, so their "removal" is by inference Creation
But is there one Liv-Yatan, described twice, or are there two different creatures? And is L-Y not himself "the dragon that is in the sea"? Melville certainly thought he was, when he reinvented him as Moby-Dick; and D. H. Lawrence too, in his essay on the novel - click here.
TANIN: But we need to read LIV-YATAN alongside the TANIN at the end of the verse, for which click here, and then the other pre-Creational land-and-sea beasts, for whom click here, and here.
This gives the sense of the deity of the milky way engaged in battle with the other deities, a kind of Götterdämmerung, the overthrow of Lucifer, and nothing to do with human life at all. But then, is it not worth considering that perhaps none of this book, perhaps nothing in Yesh'a-Yah, is about human life at all, but is entirely an account of the movements of the stars and planets, the operations of Nature in the Cosmos?
27:2 BA YOM HA HU KEREM CHEMER ANU LAH
KJ: In that day sing ye unto her, A vineyard of red wine.
This gives the sense of the deity of the milky way engaged in battle with the other deities, a kind of Götterdämmerung, the overthrow of Lucifer, and nothing to do with human life at all. But then, is it not worth considering that perhaps none of this book, perhaps nothing in Yesh'a-Yah, is about human life at all, but is entirely an account of the movements of the stars and planets, the operations of Nature in the Cosmos?
27:2 BA YOM HA HU KEREM CHEMER ANU LAH
בַּיּוֹם הַהוּא כֶּרֶם חֶמֶר עַנּוּ לָהּ
BN: On that day, sing of her: "A vineyard of fermented wine!"
Yes, the vineyard again, though we heard about the planning for this party at 25:6; but in full flow now, and hopefully they remembered the savouries and the marrow as well, because "that day" has come, the one on which everything profane has been overthrown, and ethical capitalism, human rights complete with human responsibilities, the United States of World Harmony, and the end of all personal quarrels and animosities, has come... to fruition.
But alas it never will come, and not only because of human nature, but because of divine nature, and divine Nature, and Divine nature, too. Because there will still be the volcanic eruptions, the cascading snowfalls, the need to eat impeded by flood or drought, and all those other divine creations which Humankind in our wisdom has rendered "endangered": the cancer cell, the Ebola virus, the malarial mosquito, the city-fox, the Martian ectoplasm.
CHEMER: My text, above, has CHEMER, which is is the standard Masoretic reading (click here and/or here for confirmation). But non-Christian publications that present the text in Hebrew, change the last letter from a Reysh to a Dalet, making the word CHEMED (click here), which renders the vineyard "desirable" rather than the wine "fermented" (click here). The answer to this puzzle surely lies, again, in Isaiah 25:6; there the wines were "not yet at the lees-stage", because the conditions were not yet right for the celebratory party. But now they are.
27:3 ANI YHVH NOTSRAH LIRGA'IM ASHKENAH PEN YIPHKOD ALEYHA LAILAH VA YOM ETSARENAH
KJ: I the LORD do keep it; I will water it every moment: lest any hurt it, I will keep it night and day.
Yes, the vineyard again, though we heard about the planning for this party at 25:6; but in full flow now, and hopefully they remembered the savouries and the marrow as well, because "that day" has come, the one on which everything profane has been overthrown, and ethical capitalism, human rights complete with human responsibilities, the United States of World Harmony, and the end of all personal quarrels and animosities, has come... to fruition.
But alas it never will come, and not only because of human nature, but because of divine nature, and divine Nature, and Divine nature, too. Because there will still be the volcanic eruptions, the cascading snowfalls, the need to eat impeded by flood or drought, and all those other divine creations which Humankind in our wisdom has rendered "endangered": the cancer cell, the Ebola virus, the malarial mosquito, the city-fox, the Martian ectoplasm.
CHEMER: My text, above, has CHEMER, which is is the standard Masoretic reading (click here and/or here for confirmation). But non-Christian publications that present the text in Hebrew, change the last letter from a Reysh to a Dalet, making the word CHEMED (click here), which renders the vineyard "desirable" rather than the wine "fermented" (click here). The answer to this puzzle surely lies, again, in Isaiah 25:6; there the wines were "not yet at the lees-stage", because the conditions were not yet right for the celebratory party. But now they are.
27:3 ANI YHVH NOTSRAH LIRGA'IM ASHKENAH PEN YIPHKOD ALEYHA LAILAH VA YOM ETSARENAH
אֲנִי יְהוָה נֹצְרָהּ לִרְגָעִים אַשְׁקֶנָּה פֶּן יִפְקֹד עָלֶיהָ לַיְלָה וָיוֹם אֶצֳּרֶנָּה
BN: I, YHVH, do husband it. I water it at every moment. Lest my anger should visit it, I shall husband it night and day.
27:4 CHEMAH EYN LI MI YITNENI SHAMIR SHAYIT BA MILCHAMAH EPHSE'AH VAH ATSIYTENAH YACHAD
KJ: Fury is not in me: who would set the briers and thorns against me in battle? I would go through them, I would burn them together.
NOTSRAH...ETSARENAH: "supervisor", "guardian", "keeper", but this is a vineyard, so I have gone for "husband", fully aware that English "husband" has a double meaning, just as Y-Y intends. Because this entire song is an image of the Garden of Eden, fathered by YHVH, brought to parturition by CHAVAH, the merging of the male with the female that outcomes as the physical manifestation of the primordial seed.
And of course the wine is sacramental, because (when red, not white) it symbolises the Eucharistic blood.
But it is also more signifcant than this, and I am shocked that Christian translators have not found a translation that incorporates it (yes, I definitely do mean "incorporates"). Rather than explaining it all again here, see my notes at 11:1, and remember that the original Christians did not call themselves Christians, they called themselves NOTSRIM, and they had been around as a Gnostic sect since the last years of Y-Y, mostly as followers of Yirme-Yah, though clearly, from this verse, "the branch of Yishai" is this Yesha, not the Christian one (or is this further evidence that Yesha was the title given to the Rosh Yeshiva, and so Isaiah and Jesus were simply the post-holders of their epoch?).
27:4 CHEMAH EYN LI MI YITNENI SHAMIR SHAYIT BA MILCHAMAH EPHSE'AH VAH ATSIYTENAH YACHAD
חֵמָה אֵין לִי מִי יִתְּנֵנִי שָׁמִיר שַׁיִת בַּמִּלְחָמָה אֶפְשְׂעָה בָהּ אֲצִיתֶנָּה יָּחַד
BN: I am not burning with anger. Who would [be so foolish as to] set the briers and thorns at war with me! I would trample them with one step. I would burn them to nothingness.
This is important to our understanding of Y-Y's deity, because the divine tantrum is one of his most familiar characteristics, yet he is also the bringer of beneficence: good and evil coming from the same source, not separated dualistically between deity and devil. So there can be life or there can be death. So the briers and thorns go with the earlier trees and branches, but these are the scratchy sort, not the fruitful. And the language, the very style of the declamation, matches perfectly that passage from the Book of Job to which I linked in verse 2.
But it is also poetical, and poets need to be able to play with whichever words meet their needs at the time. Several on this occasion:
CHEMAH comes from CHAM and means "heat" - of which "fury" is certainly one type. But see Psalm 19:7, and perhaps "fury" is a mistranslation. And then look at Isaiah 30:26, where Y-Y uses CHAMAH rather than SHEMESH for "the sun". So we do YEVARECHECHA, yearning for the sun "to turn its face and shine on us". But sensibly we put on sun-tan lotion first, and take a water-flagon. And if the rains of verse 3 don't come, we do the husbanding of the vineyards ourselves, with a hose or a watering can.
EPHSE'A: The root is PASH'A (פָשַׂע), but no Jew can hear PASH'A without also hearing PESHA, one of the three levels of sin. And reading it in the first person future, as here, any student asked for its root will probably guess EPHESS, rather than recognising the more obscre PASH'A. EPHESS means "nothing", and I have found a way to include this in my translation. PASH'A means "to step" or "to march", but in this conext becomes yet another version of the "treading" and "trampling" that we have witnessed throughout the last several chapters.
EPHSE'A: The root is PASH'A (פָשַׂע), but no Jew can hear PASH'A without also hearing PESHA, one of the three levels of sin. And reading it in the first person future, as here, any student asked for its root will probably guess EPHESS, rather than recognising the more obscre PASH'A. EPHESS means "nothing", and I have found a way to include this in my translation. PASH'A means "to step" or "to march", but in this conext becomes yet another version of the "treading" and "trampling" that we have witnessed throughout the last several chapters.
27:5 O YACHAZEK BE MA'UZI YA'ASEH SHALOM LI SHALOM YA'ASEH LI
אוֹ יַחֲזֵק בְּמָעוּזִּי יַעֲשֶׂה שָׁלוֹם לִי שָׁלוֹם יַעֲשֶׂה לִּי
BN: Or else let him yield to my strength, so that he may make peace with me. Yes, let him make peace with me.
The relationship is again Mafia-like in its protectionism; which comment becomes ironic when Ya'akov (Jacob) is mentioned in the next verse; Ya'akov who gave up his 10% protection money at Beit-El (Genesis 28:22).
27:6 HA BA'IM YASHRESH YA'AKOV YATSITS U PHARACH YISRA-EL U MAL'U PHENEY TEVEL TENUVAH
הַבָּאִים יַשְׁרֵשׁ יַעֲקֹב יָצִיץ וּפָרַח יִשְׂרָאֵל וּמָלְאוּ פְנֵי תֵבֵל תְּנוּבָה
BN: In days to come shall Ya'akov take root. Yisra-El shall blossom and bud. And the face of the world shall be filled with fruit. {P}
Blossom and bud continues the physical imagery used as metaphor, but fructified now. The message has become pure Omnideism: choices between fertility and destruction, light and dark, good and evil, but with the significant qualification that this is choice not conflict, dualism within monotheism, because both sides of the coin are the same deity, and not a bifurcation into Heaven-Hell, God-Devil.
Rare use of rhetoric in this verse.
YASHRESH: But what binyan (conjugation) is this? LEHASHRISH in the Hiph'il as most scholars assume? Or LESHARESH in the Pi'el? Both are possible, but neither yields YASHRESH in the future tense - it would either be YASHRIYSH or YESHARESH, so let's be generous and say that the Masoretic pointer must have been reading it with his Norman accent!
27:7 HA KE MAKAT MAKEHU HIKAHU IM KE HEREG HARUGAV HORAG
KJ: Hath he smitten him, as he smote those that smote him? or is he slain according to the slaughter of them that are slain by him?
YASHRESH: But what binyan (conjugation) is this? LEHASHRISH in the Hiph'il as most scholars assume? Or LESHARESH in the Pi'el? Both are possible, but neither yields YASHRESH in the future tense - it would either be YASHRIYSH or YESHARESH, so let's be generous and say that the Masoretic pointer must have been reading it with his Norman accent!
27:7 HA KE MAKAT MAKEHU HIKAHU IM KE HEREG HARUGAV HORAG
הַכְּמַכַּת מַכֵּהוּ הִכָּהוּ אִם כְּהֶרֶג הֲרֻגָיו הֹרָג
BN: Has he smitten him, as he smote those who smote him? And has he slain others in the same manner of slaughter as those who were slain by him?
Has he smitten who? Lev-Yatan again, I presume, though many scholars reckon this is about the deity treating his covenant-people rather more leniently than those others described in the destructions of the previous chapters. Why would Y-Y say that, in this context, when he has just described Yisra-El as putting down roots at last, in its homeland, and blossoming through the completion of the moral code and the Temple? And then, to make this even less likely as an explanation, the verse uses the masculine "him" (MAKEHU, HIKAHU, HARUGAV), which it never does for the AM, which is to say "the people" Yisra-El, because AM is feminine. Whereas the next verse does indeed switch to that feminine.
HA KE MAKAT MAKEYHU HIKAHU: Poetry! Poetry!
HEREG HARUGAV HORAG: Wonderful!
Odd though - some chapters are full of this sort of poetic play, followed by chapters with absolutely none. Can we assume that there are different writers, all named Yesh'a-Yah because all were Prophets of the same Guild, but from different generations? Or does it depend on the scribe who wrote this down later ? Remember that the Prophets never wrote anything down, or if they wrote scripts for themselves, they did not publish those scripts.
27:8 BE SA'SE'AH BE SHALCHAH TERIVENAH HAGAH BE RUCHO HA KASHAH BE YOM KADIM
HEREG HARUGAV HORAG: Wonderful!
Odd though - some chapters are full of this sort of poetic play, followed by chapters with absolutely none. Can we assume that there are different writers, all named Yesh'a-Yah because all were Prophets of the same Guild, but from different generations? Or does it depend on the scribe who wrote this down later ? Remember that the Prophets never wrote anything down, or if they wrote scripts for themselves, they did not publish those scripts.
27:8 BE SA'SE'AH BE SHALCHAH TERIVENAH HAGAH BE RUCHO HA KASHAH BE YOM KADIM
בְּסַאסְּאָה בְּשַׁלְחָהּ תְּרִיבֶנָּה הָגָה בְּרוּחוֹ הַקָּשָׁה בְּיוֹם קָדִים
BN: Measure for measure, when you send her away, thus should you resolve your quarrel with her; but he removed her with his rough blast on that ancient day.
BE SA'SE'AH: Or should that be BE SA'SAH - does the Aleph count as a consonant or a vowel on this occasion, because the answer to that affects the shva beneath the second Samech. I believe my transliteration is correct. If it were SA'SAH, as appearance would like it to be (or perhaps SA'SE'AH), there would need to be a sheva under the first Aleph, a patach under the second Samech, and no nikud at all under the second Aleph - and that would also leave open a question about the feminine ending, denoted by the Hey, but which is absent earlier. Again, I believe my transliteration is correct.
WHAT DOES SA'SE'AH mean anyway? Samech-Aleph-Samech-Aleph, so another of those double-words that Y-Y seems to enjoy so much. The root in fact is single, and probably with a Hey ending - SE'AH (סאה). It occurs as such just once in the Tanach, at Genesis 18:6, where Av-Raham tells Sarah to get "three measures of fine flour" ready to bake cakes for the messengers.
So these are not just measures, but some sort of playing with the concept of measures; and in the previous verses it has been questioned whether the treatment of one group was somehow more generous, more favourable, than that of another group. Which leads me to Leviticus 24:19-22:
And if a man maims his neighbour - as he has done - so shall it be done to him. Breach for breach, eye for eye, tooth for tooth; as he has maimed a man, so shall it be done to him. He who kills an animal shall make good for it; but he who kills a man shall be put to death. You shall have one manner of law, both for the stranger and for the home-born; for I am YHVH your god.
and thence to my translation. Shakespeare, incidentally, uses it in precisely the same way, in the speech that gives his play that title:
DUKE
For this new-married man approaching here,
Whose salt imagination yet hath wronged
Your well-defended honor, you must pardon
For Mariana’s sake. But as he adjudged your brother -
Being criminal in double violation
Of sacred chastity and of promise-breach
Thereon dependent for your brother’s life -
The very mercy of the law cries out
Most audible, even from his proper tongue,
“An Angelo for Claudio, death for death.”
Haste still pays haste, and leisure answers leisure;
Like doth quit like, and measure still for measure. -
Then, Angelo, thy fault’s thus manifested,
Which, though thou wouldst deny, denies thee vantage.
We do condemn thee to the very blockhere
Where Claudio stooped to death, and with like haste. -
Away with him.
(Measure for Measure, Act 5, Scene 1)BE YOM KADIM: And it may very well have been the east wind that brought the storm that shipwrecked the whale, but KEDEM is also the word for "ancient", and what Y-Y is seeking, to use a later liturgical equivalent, is a Kavanah-driven attention to the laws that were given by Mosheh, and which in our days are read on a weekly basis in synagogue, the ceremony of putting back the scrolls afterwards accompanied by the song "Eyts chayim hi le machazikim bo", which ends with the phrase "chadesh yameynu ka kedem", "renewed in our days to what they were in ancient times." Click here for the full song.
And as to the switch to the feminine - no question that this is Lev-Yatan, and yes, all of those "sea-monsters", the primordial dragons, were female: they had to be, in order to carry and give birth to the universe.
27:9 LACHEN BE ZOT YECHUPAR AVON YA'AKOV VE ZEH KOL PERI HASIR CHATA'TO BE SUMO KOL AVNEY MIZBE'ACH KE AVNEY GIR MENUPATSOT LO YAKUMU ASHERIM VE CHAMANIM
27:9 LACHEN BE ZOT YECHUPAR AVON YA'AKOV VE ZEH KOL PERI HASIR CHATA'TO BE SUMO KOL AVNEY MIZBE'ACH KE AVNEY GIR MENUPATSOT LO YAKUMU ASHERIM VE CHAMANIM
לָכֵן בְּזֹאת יְכֻפַּר עֲוֹן יַעֲקֹב וְזֶה כָּל פְּרִי הָסִר חַטָּאתוֹ בְּשׂוּמוֹ כָּל אַבְנֵי מִזְבֵּחַ כְּאַבְנֵי גִר מְנֻפָּצוֹת לֹא יָקֻמוּ אֲשֵׁרִים וְחַמָּנִים
BN: And so, in this way, shall the iniquity of Ya'akov be expiated, and this will be the outcome of the removal of his sin: that he will make all the stones of the altar like chalkstones that have been crushed to pieces, so that the Asherim and the sun-images can rise no more.
YECHUPAR: The full "atonement". Just as we encountered three levels of sin at verse 4, so there are also three levels of expiation. This, from page 15 of my book "Day of Atonement":
The triple concept of pesh'a, chata’ah and avon is crucial to the process of atonement; three entirely different types of sin, each with its own consequences. Biblical usage suggests that a pesh'a is stronger than a chet, where avon is full-scale iniquity, the deepest level of sin. 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; it requires a sacrificial offering at the Temple. This is why the words for pardon are also varied - a selichah for the chet, a mechilah for the pesh'a. Selichah 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 selichah, 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.
* "Relative strength to relative strength" - another way, though it didn't occur to me at the time that I wrote that book, of saying "measure for measure".
BE SUMO...: The second part of this verse comes with a philosophical conflict for which human history provides rather too much evidence. "False worship has to be destroyed". So Good Queen Bess was right to have every fresco on every Catholic church wall whitewashed into unrecoverable oblivion. So the Cromwellian Puritans were justified in shutting down the theatres and smashing the gargoyles on the exterior church walls. So Muhammad with the 365 ikons in the Ka'aba. So "Woke" and "Cancel" and the Nazi burning of the books and Mary Whitehouse... and so - this too must be included - even the destruction of the Temple in Yeru-Shala'im by Nebuchadnezzar in 586 BCE, because his gods were the true gods, and those of the Yehudim were therefore false.
CHAMANIM: Note those Hamans again, long before Purim! See my notes at Leviticus 26:30.
27:10 KI IR BETSURAH BADAD NAVEH MESHULACH VE NE'EZAV KA MIDBAR SHAM YIR'EH EGEL VE SHAM YIRBATS VE CHILAH SE'IPHEYHA
KJ: Yet the defenced city shall be desolate, and the habitation forsaken, and left like a wilderness: there shall the calf feed, and there shall he lie down, and consume the branches thereof.
CHAMANIM: Note those Hamans again, long before Purim! See my notes at Leviticus 26:30.
27:10 KI IR BETSURAH BADAD NAVEH MESHULACH VE NE'EZAV KA MIDBAR SHAM YIR'EH EGEL VE SHAM YIRBATS VE CHILAH SE'IPHEYHA
כִּי עִיר בְּצוּרָה בָּדָד נָוֶה מְשֻׁלָּח וְנֶעֱזָב כַּמִּדְבָּר שָׁם יִרְעֶה עֵגֶל וְשָׁם יִרְבָּץ וְכִלָּה סְעִפֶיהָ
BN: Because the fortified city will be left to stand solitary, a habitation abandoned and forsaken, like the wilderness; there the calf shall feed, there shall he lie down, and strip its branches bare.
SE'IPHEYHA: But the root (forgive the unavoidable pun) is not the NETSER of 11:1, nor the TSEMACH of 4:2, but an entirely physical branch, as are the KETSIYRAH in the next verse; so for once we can say that this is not a metaphor. And the next verse confirms it. These are the branches and bough of a "sacred tree", a physical tree that has been shaped and pollarded to provide some kind of Asherah or totem pole for the rites - see the illustrations at the link.
27:11 BIYVOSH KETSIYRAH TISHAVARNAH NASHIM BA'OT ME'IYROT OTAH KI LO AM BIYNOT HU AL KEN LO YERACHAMENU OSEHU VE YOTSRO LO YECHUNENU
בִּיבֹשׁ קְצִירָהּ תִּשָּׁבַרְנָה נָשִׁים בָּאוֹת מְאִירוֹת אוֹתָהּ כִּי לֹא עַם בִּינוֹת הוּא עַל כֵּן לֹא יְרַחֲמֶנּוּ עֹשֵׂהוּ וְיֹצְרוֹ לֹא יְחֻנֶּנּוּ
BN: When its boughs have withered, they shall be broken off. The women shall come, and set them on fire. For this is not a people with understanding. Therefore he who made them will not have compassion for them, and he who formed them will not show mercy to them. {P}
YERACHMENU: from the root RECHEM, meaning "the womb". Islam uses the same root to make the same abstract idea: bi-smi llāhi r-raḥmāni r-raḥīm - بِسْمِ اللهِ الرَّحْمٰنِ الرَّحِيْمِ - the Most Gracious, the Most Merciful. Compassion from the female, while the male deity is symbolised by the number Seven, which in Yehudit is Zayin (ז), which is also the penis, and drawn to look like it.
27:12 VE HAYAH BA YOM HA HU YACHBOT YHVH MI SHIBOLET HA NAHAR AD NACHAL MITSRAYIM VE ATEM TELUKTU LE ACHAD ACHAD BENEY YISRA-EL
KJ: And it shall come to pass in that day, that the LORD shall beat off from the channel of the river unto the stream of Egypt, and ye shall be gathered one by one, O ye children of Israel.
YERACHMENU: from the root RECHEM, meaning "the womb". Islam uses the same root to make the same abstract idea: bi-smi llāhi r-raḥmāni r-raḥīm - بِسْمِ اللهِ الرَّحْمٰنِ الرَّحِيْمِ - the Most Gracious, the Most Merciful. Compassion from the female, while the male deity is symbolised by the number Seven, which in Yehudit is Zayin (ז), which is also the penis, and drawn to look like it.
27:12 VE HAYAH BA YOM HA HU YACHBOT YHVH MI SHIBOLET HA NAHAR AD NACHAL MITSRAYIM VE ATEM TELUKTU LE ACHAD ACHAD BENEY YISRA-EL
וְהָיָה בַּיּוֹם הַהוּא יַחְבֹּט יְהוָה מִשִּׁבֹּלֶת הַנָּהָר עַד נַחַל מִצְרָיִם וְאַתֶּם תְּלֻקְּטוּ לְאַחַד אֶחָד בְּנֵי יִשְׂרָאֵל
BN: And it shall come to pass on that day, that YHVH will [beat off?] [his fruit] from the flood of the River as far as the [Brook of Egypt], and you shall be gathered one by one, you Beney Yisra-El. {P}
YACHBOT: We return again to this image of "threshing" the people, a universal John Barleycorn, a prefiguration of Tammuz reborn as Jesus. We saw this at 25:11 and it has come up in variant forms since.
Is this the SHIBOLET that I think it is? You can read the story at Judges 12; Shibolet itself comes up from verse 6.
Lots of square brackets. The first because I just don't like that translation. The second is not mine, but added by other translators, because the verse is clearly incomplete without something like this added. The third because I think the translators have the river wrong again, but think the first one is the Nile, when clearly it's the second, and so got for stream or brook of Egypt for the second, having no idea what it could be. In Biblical texts, when they say NAHAR, simply as "the river", it is always the Perat (Euphrates) that is intended; while the Nile is usually rendered as YE'OR (יאוֹר) as in Amos 8:8.
Is this the SHIBOLET that I think it is? You can read the story at Judges 12; Shibolet itself comes up from verse 6.
Lots of square brackets. The first because I just don't like that translation. The second is not mine, but added by other translators, because the verse is clearly incomplete without something like this added. The third because I think the translators have the river wrong again, but think the first one is the Nile, when clearly it's the second, and so got for stream or brook of Egypt for the second, having no idea what it could be. In Biblical texts, when they say NAHAR, simply as "the river", it is always the Perat (Euphrates) that is intended; while the Nile is usually rendered as YE'OR (יאוֹר) as in Amos 8:8.
27:13 VE HAYAH BA YOM HA HU YITAK'A BE SHOPHAR GADOL U VA'U HA OVDIM BE ERETS ASHUR VE HA NIDACHIM BE ERETS MITSRAYIM VE HISHTACHAVU LA YHVH BE HAR HA KODESH BIYRU-SHALA'IM
וְהָיָה בַּיּוֹם הַהוּא יִתָּקַע בְּשׁוֹפָר גָּדוֹל וּבָאוּ הָאֹבְדִים בְּאֶרֶץ אַשּׁוּר וְהַנִּדָּחִים בְּאֶרֶץ מִצְרָיִם וְהִשְׁתַּחֲווּ לַיהוָה בְּהַר הַקֹּדֶשׁ בִּירוּשָׁלִָם
BN: And it shall come to pass on that day, that a great horn shall be blown. And they who were lost in the land of Ashur shall come back, and they who were dispersed in the land of Mitsrayim. And they shall worship YHVH on the holy mountain at Yeru-Shala'im.{P}
The trumpet is the SHOFAR on this occasion, not the CHATSOTSRA: religious, not military. cf the 10th blessing of the Amidah for the Messianic triumph ("sound the great shofar…"), which is also about bringing back the "dispersed", though in the latter's case it is post-Roman, not post-Ashurian.
Isaiah:
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29
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
Copyright
© 2022 David Prashker
All
rights reserved
The
Argaman Press
