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
18:1 HOY ERETS TSILTSAL KENAPHAYIM ASHER ME EVER LE NAHAREY CHUSH
הוֹי אֶרֶץ צִלְצַל כְּנָפָיִם אֲשֶׁר מֵעֵבֶר לְנַהֲרֵי כוּשׁ
KJ (King James translation) : Woe to the land shadowing with wings, which is beyond the rivers of Ethiopia:
BN (BibleNet translation): Woe to the land infested by the buzzing of crickets, which is beyond the rivers of Kush...
KUSH: But which one? Most English versions give Ethiopia, but there are two very different places which get named as Kush in the Tanach, so is this Kush of Africa (Upper Egypt really, but it included what is now Sudan, plus Eritrea to its east, and northern Ethiopia), or - much more likely in the context of the previous chapters - Kush of Iraq/Iran? Hopefully the text below will resolve this question.
TSILTSAL: A TSEL is a "shadow", so there may be a pun here, doubling the shadow, but a TSELTSEL is actually a completely different word, and it is the name for a cricket in Deuteronomy 28:42. But I have explained this in full in my note there.
The original land "infested by the buzzing of winged creatures" was of course Mitsrayim, at the time of the plague (see my note at Exodus 10:4); though (and again see my note at Deuteronomy 28:42), that was the ARBEH, not the TSILTSAL. But if that is the allusion that Y-Y is making, then KUSH must indeed be Ethiopia (Upper Egypt).
18:2 HA SHOLE'ACH BA YAM TSIYRIM U VICHLEI GOM'E AL PENEY MAYIM LECHU MAL'ACHIM KALIM EL GOY MEMUSHACH U MORAT EL AM NOR'A MIN HU VA HAL'AH GOY KAV-KAV U MEVUSAH ASHER BAZ'U NEHARIM ARTSO
הַשֹּׁלֵחַ בַּיָּם צִירִים וּבִכְלֵי גֹמֶא עַל פְּנֵי מַיִם לְכוּ מַלְאָכִים קַלִּים אֶל גּוֹי מְמֻשָּׁךְ וּמוֹרָט אֶל עַם נוֹרָא מִן הוּא וָהָלְאָה גּוֹי קַו-קָו וּמְבוּסָה אֲשֶׁר בָּזְאוּ נְהָרִים אַרְצוֹ
BN: ... which sends its messages across the sea on paper boats floated on the surface of the waters! Go, you lightweight messengers, to a nation of giants with bronzed skin, to a people respected as awesome from their beginning until today; a nation that is as oppressive as it is suppressive, a people whose land the rivers divide!
TSIYRIM: "Ambassadors" is possible, but rare - the usage occurs only in the Book of Proverbs (13:17 and 25:13), but Proverbs 26:14 also has TSIYR in its meaning as "the hinge of a door". TSIYRIM at 1 Samuel 4:19 have the same meaning that we witnessed with Y-Y at 13:8, which is labour pains. But Y-Y too uses the word with an entirely different meaning, "idols", in 45:16, while Psalm 49:15 uses it for "the physical body". How is so much variant meaning possible from a single root? In pasrt because words acquire colloquial meanings for all sorts of unimaginable reasons ("wizard" became a popular word in English through the 19th and most of the 20th century, meaning "awesome" - "NOR'A" here. Nothing to do with Merlin or magic. It was the name of the first horse to with the 2000 Guineas, and it was a 100-1 outsider.) So, for this word, the root is TSIYR, and it has to do with circular motion, which I guess describes the movements of a hinged door, and the constant repetition of pain at parturition, and no doubt the ambassadors go, go back with the response, go again, go back again... but how it gets to be idols or the human body...
HA SHOLE'ACH BA YAM: Nonetheless, if these whatever-they-ares "come by sea", that would mean either the Mediterranean or the Red Sea. The former could be from Lower Egypt, or elsewhere in the Med, but Upper Egypt would have been via the Red Sea: Aqaba was definitely an Edomite port as early as then, which is why it is incorrectly called the Red Sea: red is Adom, Edom is Edom; it should be called the Edomite Sea. This does not resolve our Africa-Arabia question though, because a by-sea delegation from the Persian Gulf would also come the Red Sea route, passing Eritrea and Sudan on the way, anchoring at Aqaba.
VICHLEI GOM'E: "Vessels of reed" suggests the Nile bulrushes, which should infer Ethiopian rather than Mesopotamian Kush, except that, to get to Kena'an from Ethiopia, you would be more likely to come up the Red Sea to southern Kena'an, than to go overland by camel.
But the phrase also compels an entire re-think... because...
VI CHLEI: Keylim are not really "vessels" in the sense of "ships"; they are "vessels" in the sense of "things that hold and carry something", of which ships may be one poossibility, but clay jars and silver wine-bechers for goods are rather more likely, and papyrus scrolls, if not actually hardback books, ditto for ambassadorial messages.
GOM'E: is definitely Egyptian bulrush rather than any other, papyrus Nilotica, though Lucan IV.136 has it as "bibula papyrus", which suggests that in Roman times they took the papyrus to Byblos to turn the scrolls into hardback books - papyrus rushes are not known to grow in that part of coastal Syria. Pliny the Elder (Natural History xiii 21-26) tells how the Egyptians made all manner of things out of papyrus, including shoes, baskets, clothes, and... guess what, despite the notes above, even ships. What, paper ships? Yes. Now go to Exodus 2:3, and what did his mother float Mosheh in, but a TEVAT GOM'E, an "ark" made of bulrushes, though she did have to "TACHMERAH" it "VA CHEMAR U VA ZAPHET, to "daub it with pitch and slime", before it could be relied upon to float.
Can you have papyrus without a marsh? I ask only because the other occasion when the word comes up is in Job 8:11, and he asks, so I have. More importantly, can you send a papyrus boat all the way to Kena'an, if you haven't specifically mentioned the pitch and the slime? Might it turn out that the TSIYRIM are "messages", rather than "messengers", and "idolatrous messages" at that, and they are being, colloquially speaking as in the world of politicians, "floated", but in "paper boats", which are a bit like paper castles?
MAL'ACHIM: No question that the TSIYRIM are being carried by "messengers", but messengers don't have to be human - I point this out only because the translation in the Christian versions is almost unique here, translating MAL'ACHIM as it should be, as "messengers", and not as on every other occasion, as that made-up silly nonsense "angels".
KALIM: means "light", as in the sort of weight that paper has, even paper made from papyrus, rather than the beams from the stars that get mistaken for messages from angels.
GOY MEMUSHACH U MORAT: Who are the giants these envoys are going to? Is Y-Y seriously taking us back to the world of the Anakim and Nephilim, even metaphorically? Or does he, like Shmu-El (Samuel), mean the Pelishtim? The description sounds remarkably like the Ma'asai of Kenya! Wamasai originally, a Nilotic people too, who went south from Upper Egypt to where they can be found today, immediately south of... Ethiopia.
BAZA: With an Aleph ending, as here, means "to divide", and that could be the Nile, separating eastern from western Mitsrayim, or "the Land of the Two Rivers", the part of Arabia in the "divided" section between the Perat and the Tigris. (BAZAH with a Hey ending means "contempt"!)
And finally, to complete this lengthy exegesis, take a look at Sefaria, which offers up yet another rendition of this altogether; though it too is quite certain that this is African Kush, not Mesopotamian.
BAZA: With an Aleph ending, as here, means "to divide", and that could be the Nile, separating eastern from western Mitsrayim, or "the Land of the Two Rivers", the part of Arabia in the "divided" section between the Perat and the Tigris. (BAZAH with a Hey ending means "contempt"!)
And finally, to complete this lengthy exegesis, take a look at Sefaria, which offers up yet another rendition of this altogether; though it too is quite certain that this is African Kush, not Mesopotamian.
18:3 KOL YOSHVEY TEVEL VE SOCHNEY ARETS KI NESO NES HARIM TIR'U VE CHI TEKO'A SHOPHAR TISHMA'U
כָּל יֹשְׁבֵי תֵבֵל וְשֹׁכְנֵי אָרֶץ כִּנְשֹׂא נֵס הָרִים תִּרְאוּ וְכִתְקֹעַ שׁוֹפָר תִּשְׁמָעוּ
KJ: All ye inhabitants of the world, and dwellers on the earth, see ye, when he lifteth up an ensign on the mountains; and when he bloweth a trumpet, hear ye.
BN: All you inhabitants of the world, and you dwellers on the Earth, when an ensign is lifted up on the mountains, see it; and when the horn is blown, hear it. {S}
TEVEL: Yes, "world", but normally we would expect the word OLAM for that. As with Shophar, later in the verse, serious writers have reasons for choosing one synonym over another. Click here for lots of explanation and examples, but in brief, TEVEL means just Planet Earth, where OLAM means the entire Kosmos (see Psalm 90:2 which makes this distinction very clearly). TEVEL roots in YUVAL, which can mean "to carry", but also "to flow", and it will be worth looking at my links to YUVAL and TUVAL-KAYIN, and then thinking through whether these names were in fact mythological deities, analogical expressions of the workings of the Kosmos, rather than "historical characters". YUVAL also recurs at verse 7, definitely with the meaning of something being "carried" or at the very least "brought".
NESO: The word came up at 5:26, and it was unclear then either what precisely was intended: a "miraculous sign", as in some DAVAR, some "Word" of the deity - an earthquake, a volcanic eruption, some incident in outer space visible from Earth, severe thunderstorm - or some physical event like the sudden appearance of a foreign army, forming in preparation for an invasion; or indeed, the sudden arrival of a group of messengers on a papyrus boat, carrying a scroll from their leader warning of such an invasion.
SHOPHAR: The NESO accompanied on this occasion by trumpet-blasts. Note that the trumpet is a Shophar, not a Chatsotsrah: see my explanation of the difference here. But in brief, we can now safely assume that the NESO will be a DAVAR; and indeed the next verse will confirm it.
18:4 KI CHOH AMAR YHVH ELAI ESHKOTAH VE ABIYTAH VI MECHONI KE CHOM TSACH ALEY OR KE AV TAL BE CHOM KATSIR
כִּי כֹה אָמַר יְהוָה אֵלַי אשקוטה (אֶשְׁקֳטָה) וְאַבִּיטָה בִמְכוֹנִי כְּחֹם צַח עֲלֵי אוֹר כְּעָב טַל בְּחֹם קָצִיר
KJ: For so the LORD said unto me, I will take my rest, and I will consider in my dwelling place like a clear heat upon herbs, and like a cloud of dew in the heat of harvest.
BN: For thus has YHVH said to me: "I will sit quietly, and I will look on from my dwelling-place, like clear heat in sunshine, like a cloud of dew in the heat of harvest";
AMAR: I have explained this previously and shall not repeat myself; I merely point out that the text uses AMAR for the deity speaking through the Prophet, but the matter being "spoken about" is the DAVAR: a perfect illustration of the difference between these two key words.
The deity inhabits this mountain (previously we have been told Tsi'on – is that what is intended here? see verse 7).
ESHKOTAH: Sheket is "quiet", both in the sense of "silence", and of "being still". But will he "be still" like he was that day at Giv-On in Joshua 10:12 (but the verb used there was DAMAM, not SHAKAT), or is this "miracle" going to be nothing more than a YEVARECHECHA, the greatest of all the "Words" of the deity: summer sunshine. If it is to be taken as a "banner", a "symbol", an "ensign", then surely it must be the former: a solar eclipse.
18:5 KI LIPHNEY KATSIR KE TAM PERACH U VOSER GOMEL YIHEYEH NITSAH VE CHARAT HA ZALZALIM BA MAZMEROT VE ET HA NETIYSHOT HESIR HETAZ
כִּי לִפְנֵי קָצִיר כְּתָם פֶּרַח וּבֹסֶר גֹּמֵל יִהְיֶה נִצָּה וְכָרַת הַזַּלְזַלִּים בַּמַּזְמֵרוֹת וְאֶת הַנְּטִישׁוֹת הֵסִיר הֵתַז
KJ: For afore the harvest, when the bud is perfect, and the sour grape is ripening in the flower, he shall both cut off the sprigs with pruning hooks, and take away and cut down the branches.
BN: ...for before the harvest, when the blossom is over, and the bud becomes a ripening grape, he will cut off the sprigs with pruning-hooks, and the shoots he will take away and lop off.
Vineyards and branches once again, desolated before they harvest, so that… but the deity doing this, using the traditional instruments of husbandry, but metaphorically, suggests that the sun will neither "stand still", nor YEVARECHECHA, or at least, it might be both, but what will matter is the sheer strength of that sun, turning fertile land into dried-up wasteland.
Look again at HESIR, or is it HA SIR - verb or definite article and nou? It really could be either, and meaningful either way. The answer lies in the root: SUR, "to turn aside" - the precise opposite of YEVARECHECHA, though Y-Y does not use the phrase HISTIR PANAV, which literally means "turn his face aside" (see my explanation of this at Exodus 3:6). That is the conventional opposite of the YEVARECHECHA, the petition in one to "turn your face to shine on us", the literality in the other of "turning his face aside". So why is it SUR here, and not HISTIR PANAV? Because this is DAVAR, performed by the deity: on this occasion drought. HISTIR PANAV has the deity turning his face aside (pretending not to notice, or at least turning a blind eye), and thereby allowing some human calumny or tragedy to take place.
18:6 YE'AZVU YACHDAV LE EYT HARIM U LE VEHEMAT HA ARETS VE KATS ALAV HA AYIT VE CHOL BEHEMAT HA ARETS ALAV TECHERAPH
יֵעָזְבוּ יַחְדָּו לְעֵיט הָרִים וּלְבֶהֱמַת הָאָרֶץ וְקָץ עָלָיו הָעַיִט וְכָל בֶּהֱמַת הָאָרֶץ עָלָיו תֶּחֱרָף
KJ: They shall be left together unto the fowls of the mountains, and to the beasts of the earth: and the fowls shall summer upon them, and all the beasts of the earth shall winter upon them.
BN: They shall be abandoned together for the ravenous birds of the mountains, and for the beasts of the Earth; and the ravenous birds shall summer on them, and all the beasts of the Earth shall winter on them. {S}
18:7 BA ET HA HI YUVAL SHAI LA YHVH TSEVA'OT AM MEMUSHACH U MORAT U ME AM NORA MIN HU VA HAL'AH GOY KAV-KAV U MEVUSAH ASHER BAZ'U NEHARIM ARTSO EL MEKOM SHEM YHVH TSEVA'OT HAR TSI'ON
BN: They shall be abandoned together for the ravenous birds of the mountains, and for the beasts of the Earth; and the ravenous birds shall summer on them, and all the beasts of the Earth shall winter on them. {S}
18:7 BA ET HA HI YUVAL SHAI LA YHVH TSEVA'OT AM MEMUSHACH U MORAT U ME AM NORA MIN HU VA HAL'AH GOY KAV-KAV U MEVUSAH ASHER BAZ'U NEHARIM ARTSO EL MEKOM SHEM YHVH TSEVA'OT HAR TSI'ON
בָּעֵת הַהִיא יוּבַל שַׁי לַיהוָה צְבָאוֹת עַם מְמֻשָּׁךְ וּמוֹרָט וּמֵעַם נוֹרָא מִן הוּא וָהָלְאָה גּוֹי קַו-קָו וּמְבוּסָה אֲשֶׁר בָּזְאוּ נְהָרִים אַרְצוֹ אֶל מְקוֹם שֵׁם יְהוָה צְבָאוֹת הַר צִיּוֹן
BN: At that time a gift shall be brought to YHVH, the Lord of the Hosts of the Heavens, from a nation of giants with bronzed skin, and from a people respected as awesome from their beginning until today; a nation that is as oppressive as it is suppressive, a people whose land the rivers divide, to the place of the name of the Lord of the Hosts of the Heavens, Mount Tsi'on. {P}
SHAI: And we have to wonder if the "gift" is self-referential, Yishai (later Latinised as Jesus) being the diminutive of Yesha-Yah, in the same way that David is to Yedid-Yah, or in English Guy to Guilliam and Bill to William.
Note that this verse deliberately echoes and repeats the language of verse 2.
SHEM: The source, I believe, of the naming of the deity as Ha Shem, "the name", for those who suffer from the Jewish superstition that his real name, which is YHVH, may not be pronounced.
HAR TSI'ON: Confirmation of my assumption at verse 4.
And still no certainty whether KUSH in this oracle is Upper Egypt or Mesopotamia.
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
No comments:
Post a Comment