[CatherineTorpey]

Hi all!
Rev. Jacqui is preaching on “God is Change” and her text is Isaiah 11:1-10. For general background on Isaiah, please see the email I sent out last week. I don’t really have anything to add to what I said last week, so instead I’m sending you the translation of chapter 11 by Robert Alter, along with the notes to the chapter. He is very scholarly, so some of his notes have technical words that only scholars know, but I very much appreciate how he always makes a note when he makes choices that other scholars might disagree with. That gives us insight into ambiguities in the text. He makes the choice to follow Jewish and Christian tradition of translating the name “Yahweh” as LORD, or sometimes GOD – whenever you see all capitals, that lets you know that the Hebrew word is Yahweh (which for many centuries Jews have considered too sacred to say aloud). What I don’t like about his translation is a total lack of effort (as far as I can tell) to use any gender-neutral pronouns.

ISAIAH CHAPTER 11
1 And a shoot shall come out from the stock of Jesse, a branch shall bloom from his roots.
2 And the spirit of the LORD shall rest on him, a spirit of wisdom and insight, a spirit of counsel and valor,
a spirit of knowledge and fear of the LORD, his very breath in the fear of the LORD.
3 And not by what his eyes sees shall he judge, and not by what his ears hear shall he render verdict.
4 And he shall judge the poor in justice and render right verdict for the lowly of the land.
5 And he shall strike the land with the rod of his mouth, with the breath from his lips put the wicked to death.
And justice shall be the belt round his waist, faithfulness the belt round his loins.
6 And the wolf shall dwell with the lamb, and the leopard lie down with the kid.
And the calf and the lion shall feed together, a little lad leading them.
7 And the cow and the bear shall graze,
together their young shall lie, and the lion like cattle eat hay.
8 And an infant shall play by a viper’s hole, and on an adder’s den a babe put his hand.
9 They shall do no evil nor act ruinously in all My holy mountain.
For the earth shall be filled with knowledge of the LORD as water covers the sea.
10 And on that day the root of Jesse that is standing shall become a banner for nations.
Nations shall seek him out, and his resting place shall be glory.
11 And it shall happen on that day, the Master shall pull in His hand once more
to take back His people’s remnant that will remain from Assyria and Egypt
and from Patros and from Cush and from Elam
and from Shinar and from Hamath and from the coastlands.
12 And He shall raise a banner to the nations, and gather the banished of Israel
and the dispersed of Judah He shall assemble from the four corners of the earth.
13 And the envy of Ephraim shall vanish, and the foes of Judah be cut off.
Ephraim shall not envy Judah, nor Judah be hostile to Ephraim.
14 And they shall swoop on the flank of the Philistines by the sea,
together they shall plunder the Easterners.
Edom and Moab shall be subject to them, and the Ammonites under their sway.
15 And the LORD shall dry up the tongue of Egypt’s sea and wave His hand over the Euphrates with His fierce wind
and strike it into seven wadis, that one may trod upon it dry-shod.
16 And it shall become a highway for His people’s remnant that will remain from Assyria, as it was for Israel on the day it came up from the land of Egypt.

CHAPTER 11 NOTES
2. the spirit of the LORD shall rest on him. There is a phonetic link between ruaḥ, “spirit,” and naḥah, “rest,” through the alliteration of the consonant ḥet. The choice of the verb is apt: the spirit descends gently on the ideal ruler to come. This noun is then repeated another three times in an emphatic anaphora.

his very breath. The Hebrew here is literally a verbal noun (“his breathing,” “his smelling”?) that has somewhat perplexed interpreters, but the context indicates a sense like the one proposed in this translation. One should note that this verb reflects the same root as the reiterated word for “spirit.”

3. And not by what his eyes see. This is reminiscent of God’s words to Samuel, which have to do with making the right choice, that is, David, for the kingship: “For man sees with the eyes and the LORD sees with the heart” (1 Samuel 16:7). The ideal king breathes the spirit of the LORD, and that, rather than appearances, guides him in judgment.

5. he shall strike the land with the rod of his mouth. The formulation is a pointed oxymoron: striking the land and (in the second verset) killing the wicked are violent acts, but this king will somehow realize these ends necessary to justice through speech, in keeping with the spirit of the LORD that has rested on him.

justice . . . the belt round his waist. This extends the idea of the preceding line because a firmly encircled belt round the waist is what one wears going into battle.

6. And the wolf shall dwell with the lamb. The famous lines that begin with this phrase are a vivid reflection of the fondness for hyperbole manifested in Prophetic poetry. It is unlikely that the prophet literally envisaged a radical transformation of the order of nature in which carnivores would become pacific herbivores, but all this serves as a striking image for an ideal state when all violence will come to an end.
shall feed. The received text reads umeriʾ, “and a fatling,” but two ancient versions provide warrant for yimrʾu, “shall feed,” and the context seems to require a verb.

7. hay. The Hebrew teven generally means “straw” (as in its repeated use for brickmaking in the Exodus story), but since straw is not edible, “hay” would be the plausible English equivalent here.

8. put his hand. The Hebrew verb occurs only here, and so the translation is purely an inference from the context.

10. the root of Jesse that is standing. The apparent sense is “that is still standing,” i.e., that still remains and can be regenerated. But the syntax of the line is a little confusing: in the Hebrew “shall become” immediately follows “And on that day” and thus is distant from its probable predicate, “a banner for nations.”

his resting place. This Hebrew term is often used for a place of settlement that is safe from enemies. Its choice here might be intended to resonate with the spirit of the LORD that “shall rest” on the ideal king.

11. pull in His hand. The Masoretic Text says yosif, “he will again,” but this needs to be followed by an infinitive, and there is none in this line. The translation emends the verb to yeʾesof, for which “hand” would be an idiomatic grammatical object.

from Assyria and Egypt. Although some scholars prefer to see this entire prophecy as a composition of the exilic period, it was Assyria and Egypt’s hostility that were the concern of the Judahites in the later eighth century B.C.E.

12. He shall raise a banner to the nations. Earlier, God was raising a banner to far-off nations to attack Judah, but here the situation is reversed. the banished of Israel / and the dispersed of Judah. This might be taken as evidence of an exilic setting for this prophecy, but if it were written any time after 721 B.C.E., the prophet could have had in mind the grim fate of the northern kingdom as a signpost for what could happen imminently to the southern kingdom.

13. Ephraim. This is the northern kingdom of Israel.

14. they shall swoop on the flank of the Philistines . . . / they shall plunder the Easterners. The prophet envisages a united Israel and Judah striking enemies to the west, along the Mediterranean coast, and to the east, in Edom and Moab and perhaps even in Mesopotamia.

15. the tongue of Egypt’s sea. This looks like an image for the Red Sea, which is tongue-shaped.

His fierce wind. The first word baʿyam, occurring nowhere else, has defied etymological explanation, but the context suggests a sense like fierceness or power. The same word, ruaḥ, which means “spirit” above, here means “wind,” and the antithesis between a gentle spirit and a fierce devastating wind is pointed.

that one may trod upon it dry-shod. This clause completes a set of allusions to the miracle of the parting of the Sea of Reeds that runs through this and the next verse: the waving of the hand over the waters, the pushing back of the waters by a wind from God, walking where the sea was as on dry land. Here, of course, the drying up of the sea is a blight to the local inhabitants while the seabed becomes a highway for the saving remnant of Israel.

16. that will remain from Assyria. The Hebrew shows prominent sound-play: ʾasher yishaʾer meʾashur”

Kindle link to free sample of this book: https://a.co/cFPb0lz

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