Abram K-J, blogger, is reading "
Greek Isaiah in a Year" and is
with others in a facebook group collaborating in this effort. Bloggers
RodtRDH and DageshForte and I are meeting face to face weekly also to discuss not only Greek Isaiah and various English translations of Isaiah but also the Hebrew Book of Isaiah.
This morning I just joined Abram's fb group (he added me right away), but I'm afraid I'm a tad behind in the reading schedule. In other words, I've done just a cursory read of the Greek, the Hebrew, and various English translations for Isaiah 1:1-25. (And there are other beings here with me -- my favorite human being and one of our offspring neither of whom is so interested in the Greek and a couple of cats and a few dogs. We're talking about holiday stuff. They're tolerating my detachment to the readings, though one requested an aloud reading by me of an English translation of Isaiah 55; I complied. Anyways, these are my and our material conditions in a little house here in a neighborhood in Texas USA.) Here's what are the standout pieces of the Greek Isaiah for this week for me:
In 1:2, I'm interested in the Greek pun (accidental, unintended) formed by the generative noun for "ground" or "land" or "earth" and the generative verb for "genesis" or "beginnings" or "births" or "generations." Below, these phrases are bold fonted and underlined by me to highlight this. This has God [YHWH turned KYRIOS] speaking like a parent, if a male then Father and if a goddess then a mother. Maybe the earth is mother. At any rate, sky and ground form humans in Genesis, and here Kyrios generates sons and perhaps daughters.
ἄκουε οὐρανέ καὶ ἐνωτίζου
γῆ ὅτι κύριος ἐλάλησεν υἱοὺς ἐ
γέννησα καὶ ὕψωσα αὐτοὶ δέ με ἠθέτησαν
Next, in 1:8 and 1:9, I'm interested in the daughter and the seed:
ἐγκαταλειφθήσεται ἡ
θυγάτηρ Σιων ὡς σκηνὴ ἐν ἀμπελῶνι καὶ ὡς ὀπωροφυλάκιον ἐν σικυηράτῳ ὡς πόλις πολιορκουμένη
καὶ εἰ μὴ κύριος σαβαωθ ἐγκατέλιπεν ἡμῖν
σπέρμα ὡς Σοδομα ἂν ἐγενήθημεν καὶ ὡς Γομορρα ἂν ὡμοιώθημεν
In the Hebrew, there's no good idea that the word
sperma ought to be here. The Hebrew is
שריד. This means something like a left-behind remnant. In Isaiah 55:10, there is
זרע, which is for
σπέρμα sperma. So the Greek is adding something generative here, in the context of the explicit mention of the daughter. There's this idea of the soil seeded and the woman's womb seeded. This is stronger in the Greek, this ambiguity, than it is in the Hebrew. So what's up with that?
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