beuken_1990
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In the last decades opinion concerning the origin of the book of Isaiah (BI), as almost universally since B. Duhm (1892), has begun to waver. Some scholars no longer consider the book a combination of three more or less independent documents, Proto-Isaiah (PI), Deutero-Isaiah (DI) and Trito-Isaiah (TI), which have each experienced their own redaction history. The book is, rather, the result of a complicated process, in which extensive vorlagen of what now are called the three principal parts, have been joined together by means of sweeping redaction, which has attuned all the materials to each other.
Announcement (56.1-8)
Aposiopesis
The conclusion of this cursory voyage through 56.9-63.6 is that the question of the 'servants of YHWH' keeps our attention in this section, even though the term is not used. The absence of the term itself is functional and therefore we can speak of an aposiopesis. Gradually the servants emerge from nowhere as a party through the development of the concepts 'righteousness' and 'offspring, seed', which changes into 'people' at the end. The chapters mentioned contain one drama, in which the servants rise up from oppression and sin[,] in order to become the righteous offspring of the Servant. At the end, after the anticipated entry into the sanctuary of Zion (62.10-12), they are constituted as such.
Lament (63.17)
[…]
The imperative 'return' (shûb), addressed to God and without a prepositional adjunct, occurs, to be sure, only in the language of prayers (Pss. 6.5; 90.13; with a similar adjunct in Exod. 32.12; Num. 10.36; Pss. 7.8; 80.15), 1) but it also belongs to the themes which connect TI with DI. The only other place in Isa. 40-66 where there is question of God's returning (shûb), is the provisional end of DI: 'For eye to eye they see YHWH returning to Zion' (52.8). It is true that there the verb is followed by 'to Zion', but it is very noticeable that this is missing in the plea of 63.17. If this verse had said: 'Return to thy servants', nothing more than the traditional appeal to Israel's election would have been at stake, as we know this from the collective lament (cf. Pss. 79.2, 10; 89.51; 90.13, 16). In the expression which we now find, 'for the sake of thy servants', dominates a certain perspective. God must return not because those who prey consider themselves as his faithful servants, but in order that they really do serve him. There servitude is more a goal in view than an existing reason.2)
Vindication (ch. 65)
The knowledge of the Servants (66.14)
Summary
2)
The preposition lema'an expresses the motivation for an action or its purpose. The latter meaning evidently is true when the word is connected to a verbal form (finite or infinitive); cfr. H.A. Brongers, 'Die Partikel lema'an in der biblisch-hebräischen Sprache', in Syntax and Meaning. Studies in Hebrew Syntax and Biblical Exegesis (OTS 18; Leiden: Brill, 1973), pp. 86-92. Sometimes, however, the causal aspect recedes in favor of a final one also when the preposition is connected to a noun (1 Kgs 11.39; Pss. 5.9; 8.3; 48.12; cf. the remarks of BDB 1906, p. 775a, [sub b] and also the loci [sub a] summarized under 'to maintain'). It seems to us that this is the case in Isa. 42.21; 62.1; 65.8.
beuken_1990.1503649631.txt.gz · Last modified: 2017/08/25 10:27 by francesco