The Metamorphosis of Isaiah 13:2-14:27
Jonathan A. Goldstein
University of Iowa
The great Isaiah had foreseen the fall of Assyria. Could he have failed to foresee the events of the late seventh and early sixth centuries? There is reason to think that admirers of Isaiah, including Jeremiah, came to believe that Isaiah had indeed predicted both the rise and the still-future fall of Babylon. Those admirers were able to prove their point, it seems to me, by using an old manuscript of a real prophecy of Isaiah. They made only a few alterations at points where the manuscript may have been hard to read, to produce what we now have in Isa. 13:1-14:27. Let me explain why I think so. The words ascribed to Isaiah in those chapters have many strange features.
The content of the passage is as follows. In 13:2-22 is a description of the rising of merciless peoples from the distant mountains who will come upon "all the earth" on the "day of the Lord" to punish the proud and the wicked in a catastrophic invasion, which will be accompanied by eclipses of the heavenly bodies and by earthquakes. In 13:17 at least some of the inexorable invaders are identified as the Medes. The invaders (and perhaps the earthquakes, too) will destroy Babylon (13:18-22). According to 14:1-2, the aftermath will see the restoration of Israel, as Gentiles bring the Lord's people back from exile; the Israelites will possess their former captors as slaves. In 14:3-21 is a vigorous taunt song, which the liberated Israelites are to recite concerning the slain king of Babylon, contrasting his former arrogance with his humiliation in death. In 14:22-23, God promises to destroy Babylon completely. Strangely, in 14:24-27 comes an abrupt oath of the Lord to "break Assyria [not Babylon!] in My land" and to liberate the people.
The strange features of Isa. 13:2-14:27 go far beyond the mention of Assyria in 14:24-27. First, the prophecy bears the title, "The 'Babylon' Pronouncement, a Prophecy of Isaiah Son of Amoz." Both halves of this title are odd. Isaiah's own words let us know that he prophesied in the reigns of Uzziah, Ahaz, and Hezekiah, as does the editorial superscription to the book which bears his name. He certainly gave his predictions to Ahaz ca. 733 b.c.e. Babylon in Isa. 13:1-14:27 is portrayed as a cruel, great power, but from Isaiah's birth to the rise of King Nabopolassai in 626, Babylon could only with difficulty assert her independence and was more often the subject or victim of Assyria. Furthermore, in 13:19 Babylon is called "proud splendor of the Chaldeans." It is at least doubtful that Isaiah could have used that expression of Babylon. In the eighth century, Babylon had several kings of Chaldean stock, including Marduk-apla-iddina II, whose ambassadors came to Jerusalem in Isaiah's time. But during most of that century the Chaldean tribes were enemies of the city Babylon, and that hostility may have existed also in the opening years of the seventh century. 1 The Medes, too, are presented as a cruel, great power in Isa. 13:4-14, yet they were certainly no match for Assyria before the middle of the seventh century. Contrary to that passage, the Medes never overran the Near East, terrifying and slaughtering vast populations and destroying Babylon.
If Isaiah's prophetic vision really could penetrate the future, it should have been more accurate! And even if he did somehow predict the fall of a cruel Babylon to a cruel Media, what circle of Jews in the late eighth and early seventh centuries would have been interested enough to preserve a prediction that one distant power, then still small, would destroy another, also still small?
On the other hand, Jeremiah's generation bitterly resented the cruelty with which Nebuchadnezzar punished rebellious Judah, and they probably were im pressed by his readiness to "kill his own people" (cf. Isa. 14:20) by accepting heavy casualties in his battle of 601 against Egypt and in the siege of Jerusa lem. 2 Had not Babylon, like Assyria, exceeded her mandate as God's punishing instrument? Such Jews believed that Babylon in turn should be punished, and they looked to the Medes, the only great power bordering on Babylonia, to be the agents of God's retribution. 3 How, then, can Isa. 13:2-14:27 be the work of
Isaiah? Rather, one would think, it must represent the ardent wishes of Jeremiah's generation, and somehow this later composition found its way into the collection of the works of Isaiah.
There is reason to think that the declaration of Isaiah's authorship in the second half of 13:1 (the verse which serves as the title of 13:2-14:27) reflects an editor's awareness of how incongruous the prophecy is as a work of Isaiah. The prophecies in the Book of Isaiah could have circulated separately before they were brought together into a collection, and they could have received titles either while separate or when placed in the collection. Still, Isa. 1:1 is a title for the whole book, "The Prophecies of Isaiah Son of Amoz ..." Even if that verse is the title of only chapter 1, would not one assume, in the absence of statements to the contrary, that all pieces which followed were also by Isaiah? Yet the editor found reason to attach (or to leave in place) titles identifying Isaiah as the author not only of 13:2-14:27 but also of chapter 2.
One can guess why he did so. The glorious prophecy for Judah and Jerusalem in 2:1-5 follows somewhat incongruously on chapter 1, which is mostly an indictment of land and city, relieved somewhat by the promise that God will purge the dross and that the repentant will be redeemed. The title in 2:1 assures the reader that the author of 2:2-5 is indeed the same as the prophet of chapter 1. Similarly, the title of 13:2-14:27 may have been added or left in place because the editor wished to assure his reader that the same Isaiah who spoke to Ahaz also predicted the fall of Babylon, strange as it seems!
Even if we knew nothing of the history of the eighth and seventh centuries b.c.e., Isa. 13:2-14:27 would still be strange as a prophecy primarily concerned with Babylon. Babylon is not mentioned in the passage until 13:19. At least one scholar has suggested that, even in that verse, bbl ("Babylon") may be an interpolation. 4
Despite the incongruities of Isa. 13:2-14:27, it is difficult simply to reject the information given in the title. The portrayal of the barbarians gathering to be the Lord's scourge on the Lord's day is in keeping with the teachings and diction of the prophecies which certainly belong to Isaiah. As in 13:5-18, the great prophet taught that God would purge the arrogant from the world and that God's wrath would occasion great slaughter and destruction. As in 14:5-6, he also taught that the wicked empire of his day would be punished for wronging many nations, not just for injuring Israel. 5
One might try to explain away the anachronisms: "Babylon" in Isa. 13:2-14:27 might be a name for the Assyrian Empire — Assyrian kings on occasion called themselves "kings of Babylon," and elsewhere in the Bible a writer will use the name of one empire when he means another — and "Media" in our passage might be, not the name of an existing great power, but of a distant and barbaric people; the mention of the Chaldeans might be a later insertion. 6 Thus, Isaiah could have written most if not all of the passage.
Moreover, so effective is the taunt song in 14:3-21 that scholars have been reluctant to deny that Isaiah wrote it. 7 On the other hand, even defenders of 13:2-22 and 14:3-21 have held the Isaiah did not write 14:1-2, 22-23. 8
The anachronisms, however, cannot be explained away so easily. Assyrian kings did on occasion take the title "King of Babylon," but the title was used only in Babylon, not by non-Babylonian subjects of the empire. At 2 Kings 15:19, "Pul," which may have been the Babylonian royal name of Tiglath-Pileser III, is used, but the writer still calls him "king of Assyria," not "king of Babylon." All biblical examples of anachronistic use of names for empires use the name of the earlier for the later, never the name of the later for the earlier. 9 Excellence of composition and agreement with the thought and diction of Isaiah in themselves do not guarantee that Isaiah was the author. 10
The existing clues can point to a better way to solve the problems of Isa. 13:2-14:27, to show, first, that in most if not all of Isa. 13:2-14:27 we have words of Isaiah himself, written not against Babylon and her king, but against Assyria and her king and against Nineveh, her capital; and to show, second, that Jews of the sixth century b.c.e. who admired Isaiah and longed for retribution upon Babylon found it possible to read the passage as referring to her. 11
The text itself makes Assyria the target of Isa. 14:25. The mark of Assyria is on the rest of the verses, too. Although one passage in Jeremiah (50:31-32) denounces Babylon as the personification of "arrogance" (zdwri), the arrogance of the monarch in Isa. 14:13 was hardly characteristic of the kings of Babylon, even of the spectacularly successful Nebuchadnezzar II. The Books of Kings, Chron icles, and Ezekiel (who lived a quarter-century in exile under Nebuchadnezzar) do not accuse Babylon or her king of arrogance. Even in Habakkuk and Jeremiah (outside 50:31-32) the charges are only of wrongdoing and cruelty. Assyria, not Babylon, is the arrogant power in the histories and prophecies covering the age of the first temple and the Babylonian exile. 12
Evidence from Mesopotamia, including the inscriptions of the Assyrian and Babylonian kings, confirms the impression given by the Bible. The Assyrian kings boastfully report their great military conquests; the kings of Babylon tell of their constructive and peaceful accomplishments, especially of the building and repair of temples. 13
Though there are protests in Habakkuk and Jeremiah against the cruelty of Babylon, that trait as reflected in Isa. 14:3-6, 16-17, was characteristic rather of Assyria. Nebuchadnezzar's father, Nabopolassar, in an inscription boasts of having put an end to Assyrian cruelty. 14 The Books of Kings, Chronicles, and Ezekiel regard the Babylonian actions against Judah and her kings as just and make no accusations of cruelty. Even the Book of Lamentations complains only of the cruelty of war and siege and does not accuse the Babylonians.
The Assyrian kings, not the kings of Babylon, conspicuously "murdered their own people" (Isa. 14:20), grossly depleting the national manpower in war so that it is hard to find a trace of the Assyrians after the fall of their empire in 612. 15 By contrast, Babylonians survived for centuries as a subject nation after the fall of their kingdom in 539. 16
The text of Isa. 13:2-14:27 contains one more valuable set of clues indicating that the passage originally dealt with Assyria rather than Babylon. Apart from the title in 13:1, only 13:19 and 14:22 connect the passage with Babylon. What happens to 14:22 if we remove the word "Babylon" and insert references to Assyria and her capital, Nineveh? The verse comes to contain a stunning double pun: "I will wipe out from Assyria [ossur] name and remnant [us-'dr] and kith and [run wa-] kin from Nineveh [nfnua]." 17 It is likely that the author, at the end of 14:22, wrote not "declares the Lord" (rim yhwh) but "from Nineveh" (mnynwh). The ease of the transition from one reading to the other is visible even in English transliteration. If a reader in the sixth century found "from Nineveh" inappro priate or somewhat illegible, he would immediately be led by the occurrences of "declares the Lord" in v. 23 and in the first half of v. 22 to read the same here at the end of v. 22. Our context is the only one in Isaiah 1-39 in which multiple occurrences of rim yhwh come so close together. 18
If "Nineveh" originally appeared in 14:22, we may be sure that it also stood in 13:2, where the text now has hr nsph ("bare[?] hill"). Nsph ("bare"?) is a word of unknown meaning which occurs nowhere else in the Hebrew Bible. If the correct reading is "Nineveh," the prophecy no longer has an inappropriate beginning. Rather, as one would expect, it comes to the point immediately: a standard is to be raised on the hill of Nineveh, capital of Assyria, to make it the target of the gathering barbarian hordes. 19 Nineveh stood on two hills, now called "Kuyunjik" and "Nebi Yunus." What the two were called in antiquity is unknown, 20 but there is no evidence to show that one of them was not called the "hill of Nineveh." Indeed, Isaiah need not have known anything about the geographical nomenclature of Nineveh; it was common knowledge that standards used as signals to assemble were raised on hills. 21
Moreover, the enigmatic end of Isa. 13:2 can confirm that the verse originally contained references to Assyria or her capital city. No one has yet produced a satisfactory interpretation of pthy (the construct state of pthym, perhaps "openings" or "gates") in the last clause of that verse, wyb'w pthy ndybym ("Let them enter the gates[?] of nobles[?]"). Whatever pthym are, Mic. 5:5 contains good evidence that they are objects which Assyria was known to possess: "They shall waste the land of Assyria with the sword and the land of Nimrod in its pthym."
As for Isa. 13:19, "Babylon" may be an interpolation by those later Jews who wanted to find a prophecy by Isaiah predicting the fall of that city; on met-
rical grounds alone one might suggest it is an interpolation. 22 And desires for retribution upon Babylon could have led such a Jew to misread (whether deliber ately or unconsciously) "the pride of the arrogant" (g'wn zdym) 13 as "pride of the Chaldeans" (g'wn ksdym).
One can also easily explain the reference to the Medes in Isa. 13:17. The same sort of eye which misread nynwh ("Nineveh") as nsph could have misread gwy ("nation") as mdy ("the Medes"), and he or a later hand could have added the particle 't, which precedes the definite direct object. 24 The mention of an unnamed nation as God's punishing instrument is common. 25
Sennacherib was the first king to make Nineveh the chief city of Assyria. Our reconstructed prophecy, too, treats Nineveh as the capital; therefore, it cannot have been written before the reign of Sennacherib (704-681). 26
This reconstructed original of Isa. 13:2-14:27 is a cogent composition befitting Isaiah and his times and flows easily from clues in the extant text. There is more evidence in its favor: one later prophet can be shown to have read Isa. 13:2-14:27 when it still was directed at Assyria, when it still said nothing of Babylon; and another later prophetic composition just as clearly drew on Isa. 13:2-14:27 after it had been changed into a prophecy of the downfall of Babylon.
Zephaniah throughout his short book echoes the diction and ideas of Isaiah, and especially numerous are his borrowings from Isa. 13:2-14:27. 27 Zeph. 2:13-15 draws heavily upon that prophecy in the Book of Isaiah. In Zeph. 2:13, "He shall stretch his hand over the north and shall destroy Assyria and turn Nineveh into desolation, arid as the desert," we have the same parallelism of Assyria and
Nineveh as in our reconstruction of Isa. 14:22, and the same arid devastation as in Isa. 13:19-22. Both Zeph. 2:14 and Isa. 13:20 mention shepherds making their flocks lie down, although at Isa. 13:20, in contrast to Zeph. 3:14, the devastation is so great that the flocks will not lie down on the ruined site. According to both Zeph. 2:14 and Isa. 14:23, the qpwd ("bittern"?) will inhabit the ruins. In both Zeph. 2:15 and Isa. 13:21, wild beasts (or demons) will lie down on the site. If qpwd does indeed mean some kind of water bird, both at Zeph. 2:12-13 and at Isa. 13:19-22, 14:23, we have the incongruous prediction of both dry and watery devastation for the evil city. Where Isa. 13:21-22 mentions ruined mansions, Zeph. 2:14 mentions their windows, column capitals, thresholds, and cedar woodwork. Zeph. 2:15 contrasts the previous prosperity of arrogant Nineveh with her impending humiliation and destruction; Isa. 14:4-21 makes a similar contrast, about the king rather than about the city.One must not be blind to the differences between Zeph. 2:13-15 and the parallels in Isa. 13:2-14:27. But so impressive is Zephaniah's debt throughout his book to that prophecy in the Book of Isaiah, that he must have known the text. He may have had his own reasons for somewhat changing its predictions in his own 2:13-15, but perhaps the departures there from the prophecy in Isaiah are due to nothing more than Zephaniah's faulty memory of his source. In any case, Zephaniah attests that the version of Isa. 13:2-14:27 that lay before him predicted the destruction of Assyria and Nineveh, not that of Babylon. Zephaniah also gives some attestation that in his time 14:1-2 stood in that prophecy, although perhaps not everyone will grant that the parallels between Zeph. 3:9, 19-20, and Isa. 14:1-2 are strong enough to justify that conclusion. 28
Habakkuk prophesied at a time when Babylonian armies had begun to take spoils from Judah — at the earliest, well into the reign of Jehoiakim. His words may reflect a text of Isa. 13:2-14:27 wherein "Assyria" and "Nineveh" had been replaced by "Babylon." Just as Isa. 14:3-20 predicts the humiliating downfall of the arrogant, cruel, and destructive power, so Hab. 2:5-17 predicts the humiliating downfall of the greedy and destructive power. Both prophecies contain a taunt song (mif!) to be sung after the downfall of the tyrannical power (Hab. 1:6-17; Isa. 14:4-20). Both messages speak of the violence done to the Lebanon (Hab. 2:16; Isa. 14:8). Both complain of the tyrannical power's sins against plural nations, not just against the Lord's people (Hab. 2:5, 8, 13; Isa. 14:6, 16-17). In both, the tyrant is said to have sought to dwell on high (Hab. 2:9; Isa. 14:13). But even if Habakkuk read Isa. 13:2-14:27, we cannot tell whether he read it as a prophecy against Assyria and used it as a model for his message against Babylon, or whether already in his time someone had changed the text to make Babylon the target.
The parallels to Isa. 13:2-14:27 that run through Jer. 50:1-51:58 demonstrate conclusively that the author or authors of the latter knew Isa. 13:2-14:27. 29 He (or they) also knew Habakkuk 1—2. 30 Did the version which lay before the later writer or writers have Isaiah's original target, Assyria, or had it already been turned into a prophecy against Babylon? Close examination of Jet. 50:1-51:58 gives an unequivocal answer.
Like Isa. 13:1, Jer. 50:1 both names the prophet who is supposed to be the author and gives Babylon as his target. However, Jer. 50:2 does not have an equivalent for the "bare[?] mountain" (hr n$ph); the writer fails to specify the place for raising the standard, unlike his or Jeremiah's practice elsewhere. 31 In other verses, the writer seems embarrassed with his inability to read the word in Isa. 13:2 designating the place for raising the standard. Though Nineveh stood on two hills, Babylon was flat. There was no reason to speak of the "hill of Babylon." A writer who had no model before him would have spoken rather of her tower, the famous ziggurat Etemenanki. Nevertheless, at Jer. 51:25 Babylon is called the "mountain of the destroyer" (hr hmshyt) and, for the future, a "mountain of burning" (hr srph). Nowhere else in Jeremiah is the image of a volcano used, and it does not seem appropriate in Jer. 51:25. Let us rather note that s and s (written identically in ancient Hebrew) occur in nsph, mshyt, and srph, and that nsph and
srph both end in ph.
The conclusion seems inescapable: at some time before Jer. 50:1-51:58 was written, a version of Isa. 13:2-14:27 had puzzled a reader. Either that reader was unable to read "Nineveh" in 13:2 (because the writing was blurred), or he was unwilling to do so. It is hard to believe that all the original references to Nineveh and Assyria in Isa. 13:2 and 14:22 had become blurred. But believers in the great prophetic power of Isaiah could have had good reason to take advantage of any place in those verses that was hard to read or that merely looked something like what they wanted to see. Either way, they could (whether unconsciously or deliberately) alter the text without arousing too many suspicions among their contemporaries. Their beliefs could have driven them to remove legible or illegible references to Assyria and to replace them with references to Babylon. Why? Because otherwise the great Isaiah's prophecy in 13:2-14:27 contained too many
falsehoods.
True, Nineveh and Assyria were destroyed, and the king was killed, fulfilling the prophecy. But the civilized world had not suffered a cruel and devastating invasion by barbarians from the mountains to extirpate sinners (contrary to Isa. 13:4-9). Contrary to Isa. 13:9, there were no noteworthy eclipses (eclipses of the moon are common). There were no quakes in heaven or earth (contrary to Isa. 13:13). Captive peoples did not return to their homelands, and certainly not the descendants of those deported from the northern kingdom of Israel, nor did the Lord's people possess their captors and oppressors as slaves (contrary to Isa. 13:14; 14:1-2). The powers which conquered Assyria did not perpetrate merciless massacres of children (contrary to Isa. 13:18). The final defeat of Assyria did not occur in the Holy Land (contrary to Isa. 14:25).
There was a prophecy by Isaiah of the fall of Assyria (10:5-27) which had been completely fulfilled by 609 b.c.e.; it seemed even to predict Josiah's moment of prosperity (10:27) and Assyria's turning in her last struggles to rely on Egypt (10:26). If Isa. 13:2-14:27 as a prophecy of Assyria's fall was not only superfluous but false, what could have been God's and Isaiah's purpose in revealing it? On the other hand, surely God and God's great prophet should have given some forewarning and comfort to Israel concerning Babylon. Thus there were good reasons for the faithful to read Isa. 13:2-14:27 as a prophecy against Babylon and even for them to alter the text deliberately. Whether innocently or deliberately, someone after the time of Zephaniah's prophecy did make that alteration. When?
Since 1878, most modern commentators have held that Jeremiah could not have written 50:1-51:58, 32 on insufficient grounds, in my view. 33 Many scholars who deny that Jer. 50:1-51:58 are by Jeremiah concede that the narrative at 51:59-64 truly transmits Jeremiah's deeds and words (except for implying that everything in 50:1-51:58 is his). 34 But Jer. 51:62 resembles Isa. 14:22-23 and 13:19-20 enough to justify the conclusion that Jeremiah himself drew on Isa. 13:2-14:27. 35 And the deeds and words in that narrative are dated (51:59) in the fourth year of Zedekiah, ca. 593 b.c.e. Even if, as most modern commentators hold, members of the generation after Jeremiah wrote all of Jer. 50:1-51:58 (and even Jer. 51:59-64), they must have written before Cyrus of Persia conquered the Medes in 550, for otherwise the name of the Persians would have been prominent among those of the peoples in Jer. 50:9; 51:11, 27-28.
Thus, at a time between Nebuchadnezzar's first harsh measures against the kingdom of rebellious Jehoiakim (ca. 599 b.c.e.) and 550 b.c.e., Isa. 13:2-14:27 (which Zephaniah in about 612 b.c.e. still knew as a prophecy of the fall of Assyria) was turned into a prophecy of the fall of Babylon to invaders, among whom were the Medes. The prophecy brought some small comfort to the Jews who suffered the fall of the kingdom and the exile, and it was to have important effects in the future.