Biblical Hebrew Forum

["Liz Fried" <lizfried AT umich.edu>]

> -----Original Message-----
> From: Harold R. Holmyard III [mailto:hholmyard AT ont.com]
>
> Dear Liz,

> >God does not speak of himself in the third person.
> >Where does that occur?
>
> Isaiah 45:1 is an example.

Thus says YHWH to his anointed:
"To Koresh whom I take by his right hand."
This is not God speaking of himself in the third person.
This is the prophet quoting what God said.



>
> >Not to me. Isa. 61:1ff is Cyrus talking. He is the only one anointed
> >in the book of Isaiah (Isa 45:1).
> >This is what put me on to the fact that Cyrus is the servant in 49 and
> >42 (receives the spirit). Besides, compare Isa 61 to the Cyrus cylinder.
> >Williamson says that here Trito-Isaiah is taking on roles that have
> >been left unfulfilled by Cyrus. There were no roles unfulfilled by Cyrus.
> >Cyrus fulfilled  *all* of God's purposes (44:28).
>
> Isaiah 61:1-3 seems to reflect a person with a closer relationship to God
> than the historical Cyrus. Cyrus continued to worship his native gods.

Of course Cyrus continued to worship his native god (s?).
This is not Cyrus' actual words, this is put in his mouth by the prophet.
However, if you compare it to the Cyrus Cylinder you note interesting
parallels.
In any case, these are the prophet's hopes and dreams for Cyrus.
I don't think Cyrus was physically anointed either, but I do think the
prophet believed that Cyrus was the redeemer of Israel.

>
> (snip)
>
> >> I said, "but the Servant is meek and bears suffering," and
> cited 49:4 for
> >> that reason, not because it showed weakness. It suggests the bearing of
> >> suffering to me.
> >
> >Just the bearing of responsibility.
>
> You should consider whether there suffering lay behind a statement like:
>
> "I have labored to no purpose; I have spent my strength in vain and for
> nothing."

Not suffering, no. Just discouragement.
God cheers him up.

>
> > Simeon applied the
> >> words to the Messianic child (Luke 2:32).
> >
> >Forgive me, but I don't see the relevance of later Christian
> interpretation,
> >or later Talmudic interpretation even.
>
> Simeon was not a Christian in the normal sense. He was an old man alive at
> the time that Jesus was born.

I don't think it relevant.

>
> >There is no antecedent third person pronoun in 52:14, that is only in the
> >Greek,
> >the Hebrew has *you*. The person standing before the speaker, ie., the
> >prophet.
> >The speaker must be Trito-isaiah or someone else.
> >The "you" suggests it does not refer to the person spoken of in 52:13,
> >else it would have been "him." And as Dan said, the more
> difficult reading
> >is to be preferred.
>
> The "you" in Isa 54:14 is a momentary address by God to the servant, but
> the rest of the Hebrew verse 14 goes back to the third person description
> characteristic of verse 13.

Or not.

>
> >I still think it refers to the prophet since it continues
> 50:4-9. Prophets
> >can also be referred to as God's servant, obviously. I did a search on
> >servant in the tanak, and a great many people are called it, even Caleb.
>
> Sure, prophets were God's servants. You must be referring to 50:10. It is
> possible that it could refer to the prophet, but these seem to me to be
> prophecies. There is no clear basis given in the rest of the book for such
> sufferings by Isaiah. Rather, the historical context seems
> against this. If
> the situation had changed, it seems that the book would signal
> that fact in
> some way.

The prophet was arrested, tried, flogged, had his beard plucked out.
Imprisoned, marked for death. All that's in 50 and in 53.
It fits the historical situation perfectly. Why not?


>
> >> I can see how you can apply 52:13 to Cyrus, but I think that
> verse 13 is
> >> connected to verse 14. So the ultimate fulfillment relates to
> someone who
> >> suffered for sin.

Suffered because of the people's transgressions.
Had they left when they had a chance, he wouldn't have gotten into that
mess.

>
> >Ultimate fulfillment only from a christological view, not from the view
> >of 539-8. That ultimate fulfillment comes from the release from Babylon
> >and the return, the rebuilding of the temple, that is the ultimate
> >fulfillment.
> >It is the new Exodus, the redemption, the promised land.
>
> How does suffering for sin in 52:14-53:12 relates to Isaiah, if that is
> your view?

I agree with Whybray, even before I read him.
I think the prophet had been encouraging people to leave under Cyrus,
but Cyrus quickly left Babylon to go fight other wars. He left Cambyses
in charge. I suspect that it was a situation of a new king in Babylon who
did not know Deutero- Isaiah, did not know of the permission to leave. When
he continued to advocate leaving, he got into trouble with the authorities.
Whybray also points out the oracles against Babylon, which may also have
brought him into trouble with them.
But I'm talking about the 6th century prophet who lived in Babylon,
not an 8th century one who predicted all this.


>
> >> I do not accept the division of Isaiah into parts separated in
> authorship
> >> by one or more centuries. I spent a portion of my doctoral research
> >> verifying for myself that the grounds for this division are
> linguistically
> >> weak. Rather, they depend on the supposition that Isaiah could
> not predict
> >> the future, a view that is contrary to Scripture.
> >
> >In fact, the opposite is true. It is because Proto-Isaiah had said that a
> >remnant would return that second Isaiah was able to incorporate
> > first isaiah's work in his own.
>
> That is one possibility. Another is that Isaiah wrote everything.
I don't regard that as an interesting possibitlity, so we are talking
at cross purposes really.


>
> >We have two entirely different world views then. I hadn't
> realized from your
> >previous
> >posts you were so conservative.
>
> Do you mean that your world view excludes the possibility of Isaiah
> foretelling the future? You just admitted that he did. What in your world
> view would prevent you from attributing the authorship of the entire book
> to Isaiah?

I'm afraid I'm an inveterate positivist.

>
>
> I have affirmed that Cyrus is meaningful. But there is another
> anointed one
> in Isaiah, the Davidic king.

It is very interesting, isn't it, that the Davidic king is never called
anointed in the entire book of Isaiah. Don't you find that interesting?


 The term anointed does not have to be used
> with him, because that fact was known and assumed.

But why refrain from using it on him? Why save it for Cyrus only???

If God could raise up a
> Gentile to accomplish His will for Israel, how much more could he raise up
> an Israelite king to do His will? That king is the subject of many
> prophecies in the first part of the book. Those prophecies are not empty
> but will have fulfillment. To say that Isaiah 40-55 has no direct relation
> to the ultimate and glorious hopes expressed in the first and
> third part of
> the book seems unlikely to me. And those hopes require an
> Israelite Messiah
> from the perspective of Tanak prophecy.

Well, I think these Messianic prophecies, like Isa. 11, were added later,
added after 2nd-Isaiah, because of frustration with the Persian kings,
but again, we are arguing at cross purposes. There is no place for us
to come to an agreement here.

> (snip)
>
>
> Do you believe in a Jewish messiah, an end time deliverer for the nation
> Israel?

No, not at all.

>
> Why should I look at this word of Peter????
>
> Peter was a first century Jew making statements about the Tanak. Evidently
> he reflected at least one common viewpoint of his time. 'Christ," of
> course, is synonymous with "Messiah."

But how is someone reading Isaiah 500 years later (and reading it
tendentiously)
going to know any more than we???
I don't believe he had special revelation, so his views are no more
worthwhile than
yours or mine are.

Liz Fried


<snip>

>
>                               Yours,
>                               Harold Holmyard
>