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Source: (consider it)
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Thread: O Woman who tellest good tidings to Zion
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Chamois
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# 16204
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Posted
Isaiah chapter 40 v9
There are commonly two different translations of the first line of this verse:
1. Oh thou that tellest good tidings to Zion
2. Oh Zion, herald of good tidings
If I have understood the commentators correctly, the reason for this disagreement is that in the Hebrew text the pronoun "thou" is feminine singular.
One commentary I read said that "the feminine form of the pronoun is puzzling". But surely it's only "puzzling" if you don't consider that the verse could be addressing a woman?
This seems to me bizarre. It appears from other passages in the Bible that the chief cult prophet in Jerusalem (not in the northern shrine at Bethel) was a woman whose official title seems to have been "the prophetess". Here role and importance is most clearly shown in the passage in 2 Kings 22 where King Josiah sends a formal, top-level deputation to enquire about the book of the law which has been found in the temple. This was at a time when the book of Jeremiah shows us Jerusalem positively heaving with male prophets, but the when the king needs a definitive oracle on cult matters this is given by the prophetess Huldah. After the exile we find Nehemiah asking God to curse the prophetess of his day, a woman called Noadiah who evidently was an influential and dangerous political opponent. So why wouldn't there have been a prophetess in Jerusalem during the exile? And why shouldn't Second Isaiah have sent her an oracle from Babylon?
When I read this verse as being addressed to the official prophetess in Jerusalem it all falls into place. She is being instructed to go up to the temple mount (always the "high" mountain in Judaism) at one of the pilgrim festivals and make an official, public announcement to the men from all the Judean towns who have come in to present themselves before the LORD, as required in the Torah. And who better to make such an announcement than the chief cult prophetess, whose word on matters of religious observance was paramount?
Surely somebody must have considered this explanation of the feminine "thou" before? If not, why hasn't this been considered? Any thoughts?
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Adam.
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# 4991
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Posted
RSV translates this verse as:
quote:
Get you up to a high mountain, O Zion, herald of good tidings; lift up your voice with strength, O Jerusalem, herald of good tidings, lift it up, fear not; say to the cities of Judah, "Behold your God!"
NRSV and NAB basically make the same moves. I had always understood the person addressed in this verse (who, grammatically, must be feminine; the pronouns, verb forms and word for 'herald' all concur on this) as being Zion / Jerusalem personified. This allows the verse to fit well with 40:1, which is in the masculine plural (which would be used for a group of mixed gender). That is "Comfort ye, comfort ye my people" and this verse are addressed to the same people: Jerusalemites. In v.1, they are addressed as a plural group of people; in v.9, as a singular collection, which is feminine as cities often are.
There certainly were female prophets throughout Israel's history (or for as long as there were prophets at any rate), but I'm unaware of their being a particular Jerusalem office which was of necessity held by a female. In fact, the two examples you give don't seem to be office holders at all. Huldah lives in the new part of the city (not where the Temple and Palace where).
I take one of the central themes of II-Isa to be that the whole of Israel to be a prophetic people. Drawing attention to one specific prophet in its opening hymn seems to detract from that.
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Chamois
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# 16204
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Posted
Yes, that's one of the standard two interpretations of this verse, but there are problems with it.
To start with, nobody (whether an entire nation or an individual) who wanted to make a public, heraldic announcement would start off by climbing a random high mountain. For the simple reason that if the herald stands at the top of some random mountain, who is going to hear the announcement? On top of a high mountain you'd be lucky to meet a couple of shepherds, a hunter and somebody cutting wood. Heraldic announcements are always made in crowded places - town squares and market places, or in front of an opposing army drawn up in formal battle line. You certainly wouldn't be able to speak to all the cities of Judah from the top of any old high mountain. Unless, I suppose, you could yodel, but even then could you rely on anyone understanding what you were saying?
That's why I would interpret the "high mountain" to be Mount Zion itself, the temple mount in Jerusalem. This accords with the Zion tradition in the book of Psalms - the temple mountain being "beautiful in elevation". You would find lots and lots of people on the temple mount on a festival day and Jeremiah was specifically instructed to make prophetic announcements there on more than one occasion. Note the very similar vocabulary in Isaiah 40 v 9 and Jeremiah 26 v2 - in the RSV translation both the Isaiah proclamation and Jeremiah's prophecy are made to "the cities of Judah". The men from all the cities of Judah would be gathered on the temple mountain at the three pilgrim festivals of Tabernacles, Passover and Weeks. If we make allowances for Second Isaiah being more poetic in expression, Isaiah 40 v9 reads very like one of the many instructions to Jeremiah to go and make a public prophetic announcement in a particular place.
Secondly, it's very difficult in Isaiah to tell where one poem ends and the next one starts, but most translators and commentators don't think that verses 9-11 of Isaiah 40 are part of the same poem as verses 1-2. The RSV breaks the first 11 verses of the chapter into four poems (vv1-2, 3-5, 6-8 and 9-11). Other translators make different divisions but I've never seen 9-11 considered as part of the opening poem. So can you really justify assuming that the person addressed by God in verse 9 is the same as the group of people addressed by God in verse 1? That seems very doubtful to me.
Thirdly, the announcement which starts in v9 is being made to the people of Judah who are living IN Judah, informing them that God is returning to Jerusalem. So it makes sense that second Isaiah's oracle is directed to a prophet in Jerusalem. And the second person singular pronoun "thou" is feminine, so this is a prophetess.
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Alan Cresswell
Mad Scientist 先生
# 31
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Posted
There do seem to be two alternatives presented in our English translations.
1. Something along the lines of "You who bring good news to Zion, go up on a high mountain." Which seems to be addressing an individual herald with a message for Zion. In which case the high mountain would be Zion itself - a classic parallelism. And, where else would a herald go to make an announcement to the city of Jerusalem and the towns of Judah?
2. Something along the lines of "Zion, bringer of good news, go up on a high mountain". In which Zion itself is the herald. But Zion is already a high mountain, so the message seems to be telling Zion to be what they already are, the bringer of good news. To borrow a later allegory, a city on a hill cannot be hidden. We have a call to Zion to be that unhidden city, a light to the nations declaring the good news.
Which is the best reading of the Hebrew I'll have to leave to others more knowledgable than me.
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Nigel M
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# 11256
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Chamois:
...it makes sense that second Isaiah's oracle is directed to a prophet in Jerusalem. And the second person singular pronoun "thou" is feminine, so this is a prophetess.
The imperatives in, and the pronoun in the Masoretic Text of, the first couple of verses are plural, though, so it would have to be a group of people. Assuming, that is, that humans are in view here.
Another possibility is that the group being addressed is the divine council, in a reflection of the commission in chapter 6. Chapter 40 would then act as a reapplication of chapter 6, which introduced a mission of judgment compared to this later mission of comfort.
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Lamb Chopped
Ship's kebab
# 5528
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Posted
You can't get too fussy with poetry--"say to the cities of Zion" is (considered literally) just as silly as "get thee up unto a high mountain" to make your proclamation. Since when does a collection of masonry listen to anything?
So the "high mountain" could be the Temple Mount, but it could just as easily be any random metaphorical mountain from which to shout good news to the world. The point is the broadcasting, not the precise details of how it happens.
We have a darn close parallel in "Go, tell it on the mountain" and that youth group song "I'll shout it from the mountain tops..."
By the way, I'm glad to see I'm not the only one quoting it from Handel's version. ![[Cool]](cool.gif)
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Mamacita
Lakefront liberal
# 3659
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Posted
It pops into my brain every time I read this thread!
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Gee D
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# 13815
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Lamb Chopped:
By the way, I'm glad to see I'm not the only one quoting it from Handel's version.
Messiah contains all things necessary for salvation.
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Chamois
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# 16204
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Posted
Originally posted by Nigel M:
quote:
The imperatives in, and the pronoun in the Masoretic Text of, the first couple of verses are plural, though, so it would have to be a group of people. Assuming, that is, that humans are in view here.
Another possibility is that the group being addressed is the divine council, in a reflection of the commission in chapter 6. Chapter 40 would then act as a reapplication of chapter 6, which introduced a mission of judgment compared to this later mission of comfort.
Yes I agree. I picture the opening of chapter 40 as a scene where God has a team of heralds lined up waiting for their marching orders. Then the following short poems are the "commissions" of three of these heralds - one (angel) to command the mountains and valleys of the desert to form a level road, next Second Isaiah who is to speak to the discouraged exiles in Babylon and finally a third herald to speak to the inhabitants of Judea.
But whether these were all originally one poem, as Adam thinks, seems debatable. The juxtaposition could be the work of the redactor of the text.
Originally posted by Lamb Chopped:
quote:
You can't get too fussy with poetry--"say to the cities of Zion" is (considered literally) just as silly as "get thee up unto a high mountain" to make your proclamation. Since when does a collection of masonry listen to anything?
Second Isaiah is arguably the most talented poet in the Bible. All the poetry in the second part of Isaiah is subtle and the wording is very carefully considered. I don't think it's "fussy" to consider it's interpretation in the same spirit.
Jeremiah 26 v2 which I cited upthread uses exactly the same wording, translated literally in the KJV and RSV as "the cities of Judah" and expanded by Gateway to "the people of the towns of Judah". Significantly, in this verse Jeremiah is specifically instructed to make his announcement to the cities of Judah in the courtyard of the Lord's house. The OT prophets frequently allude to each other's prophecies. I'm sure Second Isaiah's auditors/readers would have picked up this allusion to Jeremiah and understood Isaiah to be evoking a formal announcement made on the temple mount.
quote:
By the way, I'm glad to see I'm not the only one quoting it from Handel's version.
You've given me an ear worm! I wasn't thinking of Messiah - my generation was totally immersed in the KJV in childhood and it's so much part of my mental furniture that I automatically quote it when quoting from memory. But the Ship's spellchecker didn't like it at all, it kept "correcting" "tellest" to "tallest" ![[Big Grin]](biggrin.gif)
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Chamois
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# 16204
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Posted
Thanks for your comments, everyone, but so far nobody has attempted to answer my original question so I'm going to re-state it:
Since the Biblical text shows us that women prophets were active and influential in Jerusalem before and after the exile (regardless of whether or not prophetesses had any specific formal role), why has nobody apparently considered that Isaiah 40 v9 could simply be an oracle addressed to a woman prophet?
The consensus of your comments so far acknowledges that this is possible. I accept that nobody can prove it, but why has it not been considered as a possible interpretation?
Why has this possibility been disregarded everywhere (including on this thread!) without discussion? What makes it unworthy of serious consideration?
Answers on a postcard please. ![[Devil]](graemlins/devil.gif)
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Brenda Clough
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# 18061
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Posted
Innate, culturally ingrained sexism, of course. Everybody knows that.
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Adam.
Like as the
# 4991
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Posted
You might look at R.W. Fisher, "The Herald of Good News in Second Isaiah" in Rhetorical Criticism, Festschrift for James Muilenberg (ed. Jackson & Kessler, Pittsburgh, 1977), 117-32. I haven't read it, but Brevard Childs refers to it in his exegesis of this verse (on p. 301 of his OTL commentary). Fisher argues that we should read "herald of Zion" and that this person is Second Isaiah. You'd have to look at his article to see what conclusions (if any) he draws from that for the gender of the prophet.
I think your idea is a good idea for an idea, if that makes sense. Biblical scholarship, as Brenda puts more concisely than I, has throughout its history exhibited the androcentrism that has plagued almost all human activity and has at times imposed an androcentrism that is even more extreme than that of our Biblical texts. Looking for places where memories of women's agency may linger is both important and also often provides an easy place to make a novel contribution, given the high chance that something's been overlooked. So, I'm very pleased to have been exposed to your suggestion, but I remain unconvinced.
For a start, I still agree with Childs that the prologue to Second Isaiah is 40:1-11. Of course, verse 9 may originally have stood separately as an oracle to a female prophet: neither grammar nor history makes that at all implausible. But, as it stands now it's well integrated into a poem that isn't about individuals; it's about a proclamation of good news that starts in the heavenly assembly and then draws in the earthly city.
I'm just too taken with the appositional reading ("the herald, ie. Zion, ...") to be convinced by an alternative. I don't think the image is particularly awkward (though I know that greater minds than mine have been troubled by it): Zion is being conceived of as a people rather than as a geological object, and climbing to high places is an effective way of being heard by lots of people in an age without electric amplification.
It also hasn't been mentioned yet in this conversation that the Septuagint replaces the feminine participle with a masculine one (and all the other markers of gender in Hebrew are unmarked in Greek).
After having had this conversation, if I were teaching this passage, I'd remind people of the existence of female prophets and then explain why I prefer a communitarian understanding of prophecy to an individual one here.
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Chamois
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# 16204
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Posted
Adam, thanks very much for your comments and for the reference. I will certainly see if I can get hold of it.
I wouldn't rule out treating Isaiah 40 vv1-11 as a single poem. I just think we always need to be careful about considering redaction, especially with prophecies which were probably originally oral, written down later and compiled later still. Personally I do see these verses as one poem but I think there are three stages, not two: the prophecy to inanimate creation, then a prophecy to the exiles in Babylon (who are seeing their elders who actually knew Jerusalem gradually dying off and are still stuck in exile and losing hope in God's promise of restoration) and finally in vv9-11 a prophecy to the people living in Judah that God is returning to them with the exiles. Considering vv6-8 as being addressed to the exiles fits in with the remainder of chapter 40 ("do you really think God is incapable of doing this?") so perhaps vv9-11 belong before vv6-8 and the redactor transposed them. But of course you can argue about redaction indefinitely. Whichever way you slice it, it's a glorious poem and like all great poetry it contains and conveys multiple meanings simultaneously.
quote:
It also hasn't been mentioned yet in this conversation that the Septuagint replaces the feminine participle with a masculine one (and all the other markers of gender in Hebrew are unmarked in Greek).
I didn't know that but it doesn't surprise me. Ezra and the rabbis who followed him were determined to expunge women's religious practices from the Biblical record. Consider how the song of Deborah was co-attributed to Barak, and the song of Miriam was co-attributed to Moses, Aaron, Uncle Tom Cobley and all, leaving Miriam repeating the chorus. I'm told that the rabbis taught that "Jeremiah spoke to the men and Huldah spoke to the women", which is completely contrary to the plain text. So I'm sure rabbinical translators were delighted to take the opportunity expunge another possible allusion to a powerful, prophetic woman. But I think it's extremely interesting that they actually thought of bothering to do this. To me it implies that at that time some people were reading these verses as addressed to a woman…………….
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Chamois
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# 16204
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Posted
Originally posted by Brenda Clough:
quote:
Innate, culturally ingrained sexism, of course. Everybody knows that.
You'll see from my previous post that I agree with you.
Thanks for the postcard!
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The steadfast love of the Lord never ceases
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Lamb Chopped
Ship's kebab
# 5528
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Chamois:
Thanks for your comments, everyone, but so far nobody has attempted to answer my original question so I'm going to re-state it:
Since the Biblical text shows us that women prophets were active and influential in Jerusalem before and after the exile (regardless of whether or not prophetesses had any specific formal role), why has nobody apparently considered that Isaiah 40 v9 could simply be an oracle addressed to a woman prophet?
The consensus of your comments so far acknowledges that this is possible. I accept that nobody can prove it, but why has it not been considered as a possible interpretation?
Why has this possibility been disregarded everywhere (including on this thread!) without discussion? What makes it unworthy of serious consideration?
Answers on a postcard please.
The first and simplest reason I wouldn't consider it is that it makes no sense to me that the Lord would use one prophet to tell another prophet (of any gender) what to do. Why wouldn't he just speak to them directly?
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Chamois
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# 16204
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Posted
Originally posted by Lamb Chopped:
quote:
The first and simplest reason I wouldn't consider it is that it makes no sense to me that the Lord would use one prophet to tell another prophet (of any gender) what to do. Why wouldn't he just speak to them directly?
I think it depends on whether you believe God always speaks one-to-one. The return from exile was very much a communal event involving the whole nation, both those who had gone into exile and those who had remained in Judah, and the poem or poems which begin Isaiah 40 call on the whole nation and indeed the natural world to participate. So to me it makes sense for God to speak initially to one prophet, who is calling all sections of the community to join in, including other prophets. This is not to say that there wouldn't have been parallel messages given to other prophets, too.
After all, when mobilising a large group of people with divergent interests you need to have somebody clearly in charge.
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