Grace Theological
Journal 8.1 (1987) 3-18.
[Copyright © 1987
Grace Theological Seminary; cited with permission;
digitally prepared for use at
Gordon and
ISAIAH 40-55 AS
ANTI-BABYLONIAN POLEMIC
EUGENE H. MERRILL
Isaiah
40-55 is essentially a polemic against the theology and
worldview of the Assyro- Babylonian culture
of the Jewish exile fore-
seen by and already at least partially contemporary to Isaiah of
rhetorical devices borrowed largely from cuneiform language and
literature itself. These devices include rhetorical questions and self-
predications in participial form. The peculiar effectiveness of the
prophet's polemic lies in his defense of his own God and religious
tradition by using ancient Near Eastern genres to demolish the claims
of the gods of
* * *
INTRODUCTION
THOUGH
there can be no doubt that the most important, over-
riding theme of Isaiah 40-55 is that of salvation,1
a major adjunct
to that theme is the prophet's assault upon the religio-cultural struc-
ture of the Babylonian
society from which the Jewish exiles were to
be delivered. It was necessary for them to see
both the bankruptcy of
pagan life and institutions--especially as manifest
in the gods and
cult--and, by contrast, the incomparability of their
God and his
historical and eschatological purposes for them.
Isaiah's unremitting rhetorical attack is called
"polemic." Wester-
mann sees polemic as an
aggressive element of the prophet's preach-
ing conscripted in service
of the message of salvation.2 It is a shifting
of the contest from the battlefield to the law
court for the purpose of
demonstrating forensically that
Yahweh is the Lord of history, the
one who is able to link the past with the present
and the future.
1 This point was made years ago by E. J.
Young, The Book of Isaiah, Vol. 3
(NICOT; Grand Rapids: Eerdmans,
1972) 17.
2 C. Westermann,
Isaiah 40-66, A
Commentary (OTL;
1969) 15.
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THE DEFINITION AND EARLY USE OF POLEMIC
Polemic is "a controversial discussion or
argument: an aggressive
attack on or the refutation of the opinions or
principles of another."
It
is also "the art or practice of disputation or controversy.”3
The
only nonbiblical examples
of such a literary type surviving from the
ancient Near East are a dozen or so Sumerian and
Akkadian disputa-
tions of a fabulous nature.4
To date no others of a more judicial or
formally forensic nature have been attested. The
OT, then, is excep-
tional, and within the OT the
disputation sections of Isaiah 40-55 are
the more fully developed. One may say, then, that
the use of polemic
in Isaiah 40-55 originated in Israelite soil, or,
at least, not in
There are, however, instructive insights to be
gained by con-
sidering briefly the salient
features of the classical rhetoricians. This is
not to suggest, of course, that Isaiah was influenced
by them, because
he long antedated any of them.5 But the
psychological structures that,
produced the different traditions obviously had
much in common.6
Classical Greek rhetoric was defined by
Aristotle as the counter-
part of dialectic.7 It is a subject, he
said, that can be treated syste-
matically. He saw the essence of
the art of rhetoric to be the
argumentative modes of persuasion.
Any appeals to the emotion
"warp the judgment." This suggests that rhetoric, in the
classical
sense, is another way of describing what is here
meant by polemic, or
perhaps polemic is a major form of rhetoric, a
point to be made
shortly.
Kennedy,8
describing classical rhetoric synthetically, finds the
following elements: (1) invention--the subject and
the arguments to
be used in proof or refutation, these arguments
consisting of: (a) direct
evidence (witnesses, contracts, oaths), (b)
evidence from history,9 and
3 P. B. Gove, ed., Webster's Third New International Dictionary (
1753.
The etymon is Gr. poleme<w, "make war, fight";
cf. W. P. Arndt and P. W.
Gingrich,
A Greek-English Lexicon of the New Testament,
2nd ed. (
of
4 S. N. Kramer, The Sumerians (Chicago: The University of Chicago, 1963) 217-
23; W. G. Lambert, Babylonian Wisdom Literature (Oxford: Clarendon, 1960) 150-51.
5 According to Greek tradition the art of
rhetoric was invented by either Tisias or
Corax in
suasion in
6 For this "structuralist"
understanding of the relationship of form to common
human psychology, see R. Knierim,
"Old Testament Form Criticism Reconsidered,"
Int 27
(1963) 439-46.
7 Aristotle, "Rhetoric," I, 1,
in R. M. Hutchins, ed., Aristotle: II,
vol. 9 of Great
Books of the Western
World
(Chicago: Encyclopedia Britannica, 1952) 587.
8 Kennedy, Persuasion, 10-12. :
9 The appeals to history are interesting
in light of the frequent use of history as
evidence in Isaiah 40-55; cf. 40:21; 41:8-9;
42:5-9; 43:8-13; 44:6-11; etc.
MERRILL:
ISAIAH 40-55 AS ANTI-BABYLONIAN POLEMIC
5
(c)
emotion, gestures, etc.; (2) arrangement, consisting
of prooemium
(introduction), narration (historical background), proof, and
epilogue;
(3)
style; (4) memory; and (5) delivery. Formally or
stylistically,
rhetoric consisted of trope and scheme.10
The former, having to do
with detailed figures of speech, usually includes
metaphor, simile,
personification, irony, hyperbole, and
metonymy. Scheme, which
refers to structure, suggests the use of allegory,
parallelism, antithesis,
congeries, apostrophe, enthymeme, and the
rhetorical question. One
can see that these can and do overlap in places.
Aristotle, whose discussion of rhetoric was the
point of departure
thenceforth, identified three functional aspects of
rhetoric: political,
forensic, and epideictic.11 Forensic,
which has to do with the court
room, was, to him, the most important of the three.
He maintained
that such a form must have (1) accusation and
defense, (2) a rehearsal
of the past, and (3) an appeal to justice and
injustice. Central in the
argument of forensic is the enthymeme, a loose
type of syllogism,
which may take two forms: (1) demonstrative, that
which is created
by the juxtaposition of compatible propositions;
and (2) refutative,
that which is formed by the conjunction of
incompatible propositions.
The
latter, he says, is better because the proof is clearer to the
audience.12
Aristotle also held that there were two general
modes of per-
suasion--example and enthymeme. His kinds of
enthymeme have just
been described. Examples could consist of historical
parallels or
invented parallels, such as illustrations or
fables.13 The appeal to the
past was a favorite device of Isaiah, as will become
apparent.
The
refutation element of forensic, which Aristotle viewed as
being so important, could be advanced by
counter-syllogism or by
the bringing of an objection. There are four main
kinds of these:
(1)
directly attacking the opponent's own statement; (2)
putting for-
ward another statement like it; (3) putting forward
a statement con-
trary to it; and (4) quoting
previous decision.14 It is striking that
Isaiah
employed some or perhaps all of these refutation
techniques.15
Classical rhetoric continued to find expression
in the Hellenistic
world and in
and adapted by Jewish scholars in their apologetic
against polytheism
10 T. O. Sloan, The New Encyclopaedia Britannica, ed. Philip
W. Goetz (
Encyclopaedia
Britannica, 1982) 15.700.
11 Aristotle, "Rhetoric," I, 3
(p. 587).
12 Ibid., II, 22
and 23 (p. 559).
13 Ibid., II, 20
(p. 589). Perhaps the fables of Sumerian disputation constitute just
such examples.
14 Ibid.,
II, 25 (p. 589).
15 Numbers 2 and 3 were particularly
favored by the prophet who often used the
very language of his opponents against them.
6
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and other deviations from post-exilic Judaism. The
principal genre
used was diatribel6 (similar to polemic).
This genre found frequent
express.ion in the Haggadah where Marmorstein has
suggested that it
occurs in four types: (1) dialogues between two
parties (e.g., God and
and (4) response to a real or imagined objection by
an opponent,
usually introduced by "if a man say to you
. . ." or "anyone who
says. . . .”17
L. Wallach, in his
study of a dispute between R. Gamaliel II and
a pagan philosopher found in Mekilta, Massaket Bahodesh,
points
out that it represents an old sediment of the older
Jewish polemic
against idolatry. He shows that "its argumentation
is the same as the
one used since the days of the prophets and its topoi are the same as
those employed by Hellenistic Judaism in its defense
of monotheism
against the aggressions of polytheism.”18
Hellenistic Judaism, of
course, drew heavily upon classical rhetorical models.
POLEMIC IN ISAIAH 40-55
In order for one's polemic to be effective one
must understand
the nature of his antagonist. Specifically, Isaiah needed
to be inti-
mately acquainted with both
the Welt and the Weltanschauung of the
sixth century Mesopotamian civilization.19
It is my purpose here to
demonstrate that by the revelation of God, Isaiah possessed
such
knowledge and to indicate the special ramifications
of that fact for
the prophet's legitimate use of polemic.
At the outset, however, it must be stressed that
caution should be
used in establishing connections between biblical
and nonbiblical
phenomena whether literary or otherwise. For
example, much of
what is characteristic of Isaiah may find its
prototypes in earlier
Hebrew
literature or may not require a Babylonian setting to explain
its use. The very object of concern, the
disputation or polemic,
illustrates this well. Peterson reminds us that,
"it is surely a vain
enterprise to propose that Deutero-Isaiah
was directly influenced by
16 From diatribh<, "occasion for
dwelling on a subject" (Aristotle, "Rhetoric," III,
17
[p. 672]).
17 A. Marmorstein,
"The Background of the Haggadah," HUCA 6 (1929) 185-204.
18 L. Wallach,
"A Palestinian Polemic Against Idolatry," HUCA 19 (1946) 391. For
another study that recognizes both the biblical
and classical roots of rabbinic polemic
see H. A. Fischel,
"Story and History: Observations on Greco-Roman Rhetoric and
Pharisaism," in AOS
(Oriental
Series 3; Bloomington: Indiana University, 1969) 59-88.
19 It is impossible here to enter into the
question of the unity of Isaiah and/or the
predictive character of chaps. 40-55. For the standard arguments pro and con, cf. E. J.
Young,
An Introduction to the Old Testament
(Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1958) 215-
25;
O. T. Allis, The Unity of Isaiah (Philadelphia: Presbyterian
and Reformed, 1950)
139-50.
MERRILL:
ISAIAH 40-55 AS ANTI-BABYLONIAN POLEMIC
7
Babylonian
texts in those cases where he uses characteristically Baby-
lonian terminology which was
already common in pre-exilic Israelite
literary and cultic traditions.”20 Any
cosmopolitan Palestinian man of
letters would surely have been familiar with Akkadian literary works
and their Sumerian prototypes.21
At the same time, there are refinements and
evidences of precision
in the observations and descriptions of Isaiah
40-55 that require a
familiarity, however gained, which transcends
general knowledge of
the Neo-Babylonian cultural and religious milieu.
Koenig correctly
chides those who fail to see this provenience when he
says that the
tendency to minimize or ignore the possibility of
a Babylonian
influence is frequently observed, and this marks a
regression of his-
torical reflection with regard
to the way in which authors of the
preceding generation state the problem. He refers
to the extremes to
which Kittel went in making
these direct connections but says that the
general historical probability appears to be
that indicated by Kittel.
The exilic community, while never losing its
sense of identity
with and longing for the Palestinian homeland,
nevertheless certainly
came more and more to adapt to its new surroundings.
There was
bound to be an effect on language23 and in
such areas as technology,
arts, and crafts that were indigenous to
Mesopotamia.24 Many years
ago, Cassuto supported
the then recent views of Kittel, Sellin,
and
Gressmann that "Deutero-Isaiah"
was often influenced by Babylonian
literary style generally and, more particularly,
by the diction of the
hymns and prayers. He concluded by suggesting that
"even if all the
particulars of these studies are not to be accepted,
the fact of the
resemblance must be regarded as completely proven in
its general
outline.”25
20 Stephen L. Peterson,
"Babylonian Literary Influence in Deutero-Isaiah"
(Ph. D.
diss.,
21 Kramer, The Sumerians, 292.
22 J. Koenig, "Tradition iaviste et influence babylonienne
a l'aurore du judaisme,"
RHR 173 (1968) 140, n. 2.
23 Y. Kaufmann, The Babylonian Captivity and Deutero-Isaiah,
vol. 3 in History of
the Religion of
24 Cf. David Weisberg, Guild Structure and Political Allegiance in Early Achae-
menid
detailed descriptions of craftsmen and craft
techniques in Isaiah 40-55, facts which he
says "lead us to support the conclusion that
Isaiah chapters 40-55 were written by a
man who lived in
said of one who lived in
knew of them through cross-cultural contacts.
25 U. Cassuto,
"On the Formal and Stylistic Relationship Between
Deutero-Isaiah
and Other Biblical Writers," in Biblical and Oriental Studies, Vol. I (
Magnes,
1973) 165.
See also D. W. Thomas, "The Sixth Century B.C.: A Creative
Epoch
in the History of
Saviour (Leiden: Brill, 1973) 219.
8
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From a more negative standpoint, it is necessary
to understand
that the prophet viewed this exposure, on the whole,
as a deleterious
experience for the Jews, one that must be
interpreted within the
framework of the all-encompassing sovereignty of
Yahweh. His city
would be captured, its temple leveled, and its
citizens carried off to a
distant and hostile land. The pragmatist would
certainly construe this
not only as a defeat for
Marduk was supreme after all, as one could see from
the might and
extent of the Babylonian hegemony. The message of
Isaiah must
confront these political and historical realities
with the hope of salva-
tion and restoration. And
that hope must rest on a recognition of the
superiority of Yahweh and, conversely, the impotence
and even
nonexistence of the gods of
through which this issue could be clarified and
then laid to rest.
The message then is all relative to one event.
All that the prophet
sees and describes--nations, beasts, plants,
mountains, hills, depths,
and even heaven and earth--is tied into the
experiences of the exiles.
The
whole universe is under the control of Yahweh who will deliver
and renew his people.26 This is
expressed in protests against the alien
religion of their milieu and in apologetical statements about the
oneness and absoluteness of Yahweh. This is not
the first statement of
OT
monotheism,27 but in the context of Isaiah
it represents a claim
for Yahweh in opposition to the Babylonian deities.
Without that
claim, the exiles might be prone to accept those
deities along with
Yahweh
or instead of him.28
One can well imagine how attractive the pomp and
pageantry of
the Babylonian cult must have been to the defeated
and theologically
troubled Jews. As Muilenburg
puts it so well, "The great processions
like those on New Year's Day, the display of the
idols, the drama of
the cult, the ancient myths, the impressive
rituals, and the elaborate
pantheon may easily have tempted not a few to
abandon the ways of
their fathers and to seek the help of such powerful
gods as Marduk.”29
The
urgency of the prophet's appeal would indicate that the Jews'
interest is more than academic. There was
obviously a trend already
under way to forsake their heritage and become
assimilated to the
new religious culture.30
26 P. A. H. de Boer, Second Isaiah's Message (OTS 11; Leiden: Brill, 1956) 100.
27 See T. C. Vriezen,
An Outline of Old Testament Theology (
Blackwell, 1958) 178-79.
28 P. R. Ackroyd,
Exile and Restoration: A Study of Hebrew
Thought in the Sixth
Century (Philadelphia: Westminster,
1968) 42.
29 James Muilenburg,
"The Book of Isaiah. Chapters 40-66," IDB, 5.397.
30 J. M. Wilkie, "Nabonidus and the
Later Jewish Exiles," JTS 2
(1951) 42.
Wilkie
suggests that this is evidence of persecution but
there is nothing in Isaiah 40-55 to bear
this out.
MERRILL:
ISAIAH 40-55 AS ANTI-BABYLONIAN POLEMIC
9
The religious crisis that the prophet faced had
to be addressed in
a way that would be totally convincing. As Mihelic says, "In order to
overcome the attraction of the Babylonian ritual and
the natural
tendency of a conquered people slavishly to ape
their victors, our
poet-prophet had to present the
concept of Yahweh in categories
which would dwarf the gods of the nations from every
possible angle
of vision.”31 As we have seen, from the
standpoint of classical
Aristotelian
forensic rhetoric, the strategy of comparing and con-
trasting opposing propositions
is effective and persuasive. And this is
all the more true when the protagonist uses forms
and formulations
drawn from the very inventory of his opponent!
Gressmann was one of the first
scholars to recognize that this is
precisely what Isaiah did.32 He
understood that such borrowing poses
a problem to modern readers who are accustomed to
regard the
prophet as a highly original and imaginative
thinker not likely to
have imitated others. But Gressmann
understood correctly that the
prophet is employing the method of contrast.
Isaiah wishes to show
that Yahweh is infinitely superior to the Babylonian
gods and proceeds
to do so by using the terminology of their
mythological literature to
deny the very gods celebrated in that literature.
As Whybray has noted,
Isaiah is particularly dependent upon the
language and literature of the Babylonian hymns,
prayers, and royal
inscriptions.33 This is because these
genres are filled with devices such
as self-praise, self-predication, and rhetorical
questions, all of which
are admirably suited to the forensic, disputational style that Isaiah
apparently found to be most effective in asserting
the claims of
Yahweh in opposition to those of the Babylonian
deities.
These
devices appear throughout his composition, but
are particularly
frequent in the disputation and hymnic sections, precisely where one
would expect them to be (see below).
CHARACTERISTICS
OF POLEMIC IN ISAIAH 40-55
As just indicated, polemic underlies all that
Isaiah 40-55 has to
say about salvation and restoration. In the broader
sense, that polemic
assumes the structure of the trial or
disputation speeches, but more
particularly it is expressed
(whether in disputation sections or else-
where) by the techniques of rhetorical question and
self-predication.
31 Joseph L. Mihelic, "The Conquest of God in Deutero-Isaiah,"
BR 11 (1966) 35.
32 H. Gressmann, Der Messias
(FRLANT 26;
recht, 1929) 61.
33 R. N. Whybray,
The Heavenly Counsellor
in Is. 40, 13-14 (SOTS, Monograph
Series 1;
themselves almost entirely to these genres.
10
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These
appear and reappear over and over, but here we can only
define them and give some examples.34
Rhetorical Questions
Whybray suggests there are a
minimum of 72 examples of rhe-
torical questions in the 333
verses in Isaiah 40-55, 33 of which
employ the personal pronoun ym.35 And of
these Yahweh refers to
himself in 40:26; 41:2, 4; 42:24; 45:21.36
When followed by a noun and
the relative rwx or in expressions such
as "who is God but. . . ,"
there is the clear implication of uniqueness.
The most striking example, perhaps, is 45:21:
Speak up, compare testimony--Let them even take
counsel together!
Who announced this aforetime, Foretold it of
old?
Was it not I the Lord? Then there is no god
beside me,
No God exists beside Me
who foretells truly and grants success.37
With
this, compare a hymn of Istar:38
Who is equal to me, me?
Who is comparable to me,
me?
Far
more common is the application of rhetorical questions to the
gods by the poets themselves. And, of course, this
is true of Isaiah as
well, where the question is not so much "who is
like me?" as it is
"who is like you (or him)?"
In the famous interrogation of 40:12-26 the
rhetorical ym is used
no fewer than six times in order to establish the
incomparability of
Yahweh as omniscient and omnipotent creator. By skillful comparison
34 All the examples that follow are of
rhetorical questions with a divine subject or
self-predication. That is, they have the
"I-form" in common. These are by no means the
only polemical devices the prophet uses (second and third
person uses also are employed
effectively), but they are the most direct and
perhaps most devastating in their forensic
appeal.
35 The rhetorical with ym is frequently used by
the worshipers of Yahweh elsewhere
in the OT (Exod
Job
26:22) but in only one other place by Yahweh of himself (Jer
49:19 = 50:44).
M.
Smith, JAOS 83 (1963) 419, attributes
"Second Isaiah's" use of the interrogative to
Persian
influences, especially the Gathas, Yasna 44, where a series of questions is asked
of Ahura Mazda about
creation.
36 Whybray, Counsellor, p. 22; cf. Exod 15:11; Deut
2
Sam 22:32; Jer 49:19; Isa
42:19; Psa 35:10.
37 The translation here and throughout
(unless otherwise noted) is that of The
Prophets: Nevi’im (Philadelphia: Jewish Publication Society of America,
1978).
38 G. A. Reisner,
Sumerisch-babylonisch Hymnen (MOS
10; Berlin, 1896) n. 56,
obv. 1-3; cf. CT 15,7-9, obv. 1-2, trans. now in ANET2, 576.
MERRILL:
ISAIAH 40-55 AS ANTI-BABYLONIAN POLEMIC
11
of the work of Yahweh to that of the foreign gods,
whose idols, in
fact, must be themselves created by their
worshipers, the prophet lays
to rest the pompous claims to incomparability made
by these gods
throughout the hymnic
literature. The following Akkadian hymns to
Samas, Ninlil, and a
personal god must suffice for purposes of
comparison:
Mighty, glorious son, light of the lands,
Creator of all the totality of heaven and earth
are you, Samas39
O lady of mankind, creator of
All things, who guides
The whole of creation.40
My god, holy one, creator of
all peoples are you.41
These
passages are not couched in the rhetorical question form,
though examples can certainly be adduced,42
but they are sufficient to
show that the incomparability of Yahweh in creation
is expressed in
this form in Isaiah as a response to claims made by
or on behalf of
various Mesopotamian deities.
Self-predication
This rhetorical device, common in the Sumerian
and Akkadian
literature, especially in the hymns of self-praise
and royal inscrip-
tions, consists, according to
Dion, of nominal phrases in the parti-
cipial predicate, where the
subject is sometimes the divine name and
sometimes the divine "I"; or else of
brief propositions in which the
imperfect translates a permanent truth alternating
or not alternating
with the participles.43
In the earliest period of cuneiform literature
the formula was
used with the gods only, mixed at times with
narration in the third
39 P. A. Schollmeyer,
Sumerisch-babylonische Hymnen und Gebete an Samas
(Paderbom, 1912) n.
18, obv. 8-9.
40 S. Langdon, Sumerian and Babylonian Psalms (
1909) n. 23, obv. 7-10
(Hymn to Ninlil).
41 Lambert, JNES 33 (1974) 277, I, 55 (dingir.sil.dib.ba
to a personal god). The
prayer, however, is based on a well-known prayer to
Sin (p. 270).
42 See, e.g., IV R, 9 (Hymn to Sin),
translated by A. Falkenstein in A. Falkenstein
and W. von Soden, Sumerische und Akkadische. Hymnen und Gebete (
gart; Artemis-Verlag, 1953) n. 44, obv. 24-25;
J. Bollenrucher, Gebete und
Hymnen an
Nergal, LSS I/VI (
2/IV
(
43 H.-M. Dion, "Le genre litteraire sumerien de l' 'hymne a soi-meme' et quelques
passages du Deutero-Isaie," RB
74 (1967) 218.
12
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person.44 In the Old Babylonian
period it was appropriated by kings
with the "I am" followed by participial
predications.45 This continued
to be the practice in Akkadian
texts down to the Neo-Babylonian
period.46 Gressmann
observed that "Second Isaiah" took this basic
and abbreviated form and greatly expanded it into hymnic com-
positions making it a major part of his literary
production.47 And,
Gressmann said, only "Second Isaiah," of
all the biblical writers, uses
the formula.48
Dion lists four passages
which he finds to be especially character-
istic of this genre:
44:24b-25, 26; 45:6b- 7; 48: 12b-13; 50:2b-3. Others,
more imbedded in their contexts, are 43:10bb-13; 44:6b-7; 45:12,
18b,
19, 21b; 46:9b-l0. Finally, two others, much more brief, and one
of dubious authenticity, are 41:4b; 42:8; and
51:13aa, 15, 16ba. He
also suggests, with hesitation, the possibility of
this element outside of
"Second
Isaiah," namely, in Deut 32:29; 66:1a; Jer
32:27; Hosea 13:4;
Joel
Stephen Peterson, along with other scholars, has
noted that the
"I
am" form with full predications is found primarily in the trial
speeches and the Cyrus oracle.50 In
one of these trial speeches, 43:22-
28,
Yahweh contends with
44:21-22;
45:20-25) the dispute is with the foreign nations and/or
their gods. It is unusual to find the hymn of
self-praise in a trial
speech form but, as Peterson points out, "this
prophet has intention-
ally adapted a Babylonian hymn to function as the
verdict in the trial
speech. The appropriateness of this adaptation is
apparent from the
perspective that the trial speeches in question are
between Yahweh
and foreign nations and gods.”51
This is not to say that every "I am"
form is a self-predication in
the Babylonian form. Westermann
shows that "Second Isaiah" com-
bines two different types of the form, which have two
different
44 For an important study of the "I
am" formula, see
Jahwe," Gottes Offenbarung (Mtinchen:
Kaiser, 1963) 11-40.
45 Sumerian royal inscriptions, such as
votive or dedicatory texts, contained royal
names with many titles and epithets, but the
predication took the form of finite
transitive verbs. See W. W. Hallo, "The Royal
Inscriptions of
HUCA 33 (1962) 15-22.
46 See Eduard Norden, Agnostos Theos: Untersuchungen zur Formengeschichte
religioser Rede (1913; reprint,
47 H. Gressmann,
"Die literarische Analyse
Deuterojesajas," ZAW 34 (1914) 285-
95.
The passages he identified as hymnic self-predication
are 41:44ff.; 42:8ff.; 43:11ff.;
44:5ff.; 45:3ff., l8ff.; 46:9ff.; 48:11ff., 17ff.; 49:26; 50:2;
and 51:5.
48 Ibid., 290.
49 Dion,
"Le genre litteraire sumerien,"
217.
50 Peterson,
"Babylonian Literary Influence," 124.
51 Ibid., 124-25.
MERRILL:
ISAIAH 40-55 AS ANTI-BABYLONIAN POLEMIC 13
origins.52 One always is connected
to a word of salvation which in
Isaiah
40-55, usually occurs in the oracles of salvation genre (41:10,
13,
14b; 43:3) or in other words of salvation (41:17b; 43:25; 46:4;
48:17;
49:23; 51:12). This type finds its roots in
seen in Gen 15:1, 7; 26:24; 28:13; 46:3; 17:1ff;
35:11ff.; Exod 3:6ff;
etc.53 The other type is the true
self-predication or self-glorification
and as such is a type of praise. As Westermann suggests, "Deutero-
Isaiah"
was the first in
way. "He took over this non-Israelite, and obviously
Babylonian,
form with the deliberate polemical purpose of
contrasting
God
as the one God with the foreign gods who vaunted their power
and might against each other.”54
In these respective types of the "I
am" formula the self-
predications serve different
functions. The indigenous Israelite style
serves in the salvation oracle as the basis for the
announcement of
salvation. Hymmc
expansions of the formula m this type express
Yahweh's
saving relationship to
speeches, however, the self-predication
distinguishes Yahweh from
other gods in polemic fashion. Often it makes the
assertion that there
is no other God but Yahweh (43:11,12-13; 45:18,
21; 46:9).55 Usually
the native form is much more brief, but that which
is adapted from
the Babylonian style is greatly expanded with
relative clauses and
participial phrases as predicates, a formula
characteristic of Isaiah
40-55.
The assumption is, then, that the expanded form
of self-
predication characteristic of Isaiah is an
adaptation of the Sumerian-
Akkadian style
with which the prophet would have been familiar.
This
seems almost certain given the virtual absence of this hymn type
in other Hebrew literature and its prevalence
throughout cuneiform
hymnic and other genres of
literature.56
52 Westermann, Isaiah, 26.
53 See P .-E. Dion. "The Patriarchal Traditions and the Literary
Form of the
'Oracle
of Salvation'" CBQ 29 (1967)
198-206. Cf. also C. Westermann, Basic Forms
of Prophetic Speech, trans. H. C. White (Philadelphia: Westminster,
1967) 125. He
points out that self-predication occurs already at Mari
so that self-predication as a
prophetic device goes back to an early, if
non-Israelite, setting.
54 Westermann, Isaiah, 26. A good example of a self-predication of Marduk, which
Meier
says, "appeared to have carried no little weight
in the wisdom schools of
Sargonic times" (my translation from the
German), has been published by G. Meier,
"Ein Kommentar zu
einer Selbstpradikation des
Marduk aus Assur," ZA
47 (1942)
241-46.
55 R. F. Melugin,
"The Structure of Deutero-Isaiah" (Ph.D. diss.,
56 Westermann, Isaiah, 156. Not all scholars accept
this, of course. M. L. Phillips,
"Divine
Self-Predication in Deutero-Isaiah," BR 16 (1971) 35, argues that the source
of
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Dion, in a study previously
cited, picked up on ideas developed
by Norden and Gressmann, and attempted to show that the use of
self-predication in the typical Isaianic form must be traced back
ultimately to the Sumerian "hymns to oneself.”57
He lists eleven
examples of these and concludes after studying
them that all the
pieces he had examined take the form of hymns in the
first person,
the divine "I" being repeated in them
with almost wearisome per-
sistence.58 He then outlines the
following characteristic structure:
proclamation of names and epithets;
the position of the god in the
pantheon, especially his relationship with the
great gods; his beneficial
and destructive powers over men and the universe,
including enemy
lands; and usually a reference to the number and
importance of the
sanctuaries over which he rules.
Two examples each from Isaiah and the Sumerian
sources will
suffice for now. The first is the short form
found in the oracle of
salvation in Isa 43:1-7.
But now thus said the
Lord
Who created you, O Jacob,
Who formed you, O Israel:
Fear not, for I will
redeem you;
I have singled you out
by name,
You are mine.
When you pass through
water,
I will be with you;
Through streams
They shall not overwhelm
you.
When you walk through
fire,
You shall not be
scorched;
Through flame,
It shall not burn you.
For I the Lord am your
God,
The Holy One of
I give
Because you are precious
to me,
And honored, and I love
you,
I give men in exchange
for you
And
peoples in your stead.
the expanded self-predication, which he admits is
unique to "Second Isaiah," must be
sought not in Babylonian inspiration but in the
covenant tradition of
57 Dion,
"Le genre litteraire sumerien,"
(1967).
58 Ibid., 223; the
examples he gives are on p. 222, n. 36.
MERRILL:
ISAIAH 40-55 AS ANTI-BABYLONIAN POLEMIC 15
Fear not, for I am with you:
I will bring your folk from the East,
Will gather you out of the West;
I
will say to the North, "Give back!"
And to the South, "Do not withhold!"
Bring My sons from
afar,
And my daughters from the end of the earth-
All
who are linked to My name,
Whom I have created,
Formed, and made for My
glory.
Most scholars see this oracle of salvation as a
piece made up of
two shorter ones (1-4, 5-7) but combined by the
prophet into one
unit. It may be analyzed as follows:
Introduction la
Assurance of salvation
1ba,
5aa
Nominal substantiation lbd, 5ab
Verbal substantiation 1bbga
Outcome 2-4, 5b-7
The
self-predications appear in the introduction in the participial
forms jrxb and jrcy and in v 3 where Yahweh describes himself as
jyhlx and jfywvm lxywy wvdq. These brief
ascriptions are, of course,
not unique to Isaiah and can hardly be said to be
dependent on
Babylonian
analogues.59
In the disputation texts, however, there appears
the expanded
self-predication, an example of which is
44:24-28:
Thus said the Lord, your
Redeemer,
Who formed you in the womb:
It is I, the Lord, who
made everything,
Who alone stretched out the heavens
And unaided spread out the earth;
Who annul the omens of diviners,
And make fools of the
augurs:
Who turn sages back
And make nonsense of
their knowledge;
But confirm the word of My
servant
And fulfill the
prediction of my messengers.
It is I who say of
And of the towns of
59 Note, for example, the frequent uses of
participial xrb outside Isaiah as cited
by
Paul
Humbert, "Emploi et portee du
verbe bara (creer) dans l'Ancien
Testament," TZ 3
(1947) 401-22.
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(I,) who said to the
deep, "Be dry;
I will dry up your
floods,"
Am the same who says of
Cyrus, "He is my Shepherd;
He shall fulfill all my
purposes!
He shall say of
And to the
Though
this pericope forms the introduction to what is
commonly
called the "Cyrus Oracle," it is by itself
cast in the form of a hymnic
self-predication.60 But its intent is
clearly that of disputation as
Schoors has demonstrated.61 In other
words, it is an excellent example
of the use of expanded self-predication as the
basis for establishing
the credentials of the accuser, in this case
Yahweh.
Gressmann recognized only the hymnic quality of the section and
pointed out the fact that it consists almost
entirely of a series of
participles following the divine name in the
messenger formula, "Thus
said the LORD.”62 It is in its entirety,
he said, a Selbspradikation.
Within
this relatively brief poem of about 20 lines there are at least
eleven participial ascriptions to Yahweh involving
nine different
verbs.63 These demonstrate the
awesome power and wisdom of God
as creator (24), predictor (25-26), and redeemer
(27-28).
Turning now to the cuneiform literature, there
is a Sumerian
hymn of self-praise, a genre far more common in
Sumerian than
Akkadian.64
The following is the translation of an Inanna Hymn65
by
W.
H. P. Romer:66
8 Mein Vater hat mir den Himmel gegeben,
hat mir
die Erde gegeben,
9 ich--die
Himmelsherrin bin ich,
10 misst
sich einer, ein Gott mit
mir?
60 Westermann, Isaiah, 154-55, refers to the passage as
a descriptive hymn of praise
in the first person of self-glorification.
61Schoors, Saviour, 267-73. He bases his argument
on the presence of the
messenger formula (24a) and the similarity of the
passage to the disputation of
45:9-13.
62 H. Gressmann,
"Die literarische Analyse
Deuterojesajas," 289-90.
63 The following verbs appear: rmx (44:26, 27, 28); lxg (24); rcy (24); hFn (24); hWf
(24);
fqr (24); drp (25); Mvq (26); bvw (25). Five of these occur in v 24 alone!
64 So E. Reiner,
"A Sumero-Akkadian Hymn of Nana," JNES 33 (1974) 221. She
cites as Akkadian examples
an Old Babylonian self-praise of Istar (VAS 10, 213 =
SAHG, 381, n. 3), "Marduk's address to the Demons" (Lambert, AfO 17 [1957-58]
310ff.; 19 [1959-60] 114-19), and the Gula Hymn of Bullutsa-rabi,
discussed below.
65 VAS
10, n. 199, III 8-31; published by H. Zimmern, Sumerischen Kultlieder aus
altbabylonischer Zeit (
66 W. H. P. Romer,
"Eine sumerische Hymne mit Selbstlob
Inannas," Or,
n.s. 38
(1969)
97-114.
MERRILL:
ISAIAH 40-55 AS ANTI-BABYLONIAN POLEMIC 17
11 Mullil hat mir den Himmel gegeben
<hat
mir> die Erde <gegeben>
12 ich--<die
Himmelsherrin bin ich>.
13 Die Herrenschaft
hat er mir gegeben,
14 die Herrinnenschaft
hat er mir gegeben
15 den Kampf hat er mir gegeben,
die [Schla]cht?
<hat
er> mir <gegeben>,
16 die Flut hat er mir gegeben,
den [wi]r belwind (?)
<hat
er> mir <gegeben>,
17 Den Himmel hat er als Kappe auf mein
Haupt gesetzt,
18 die Erde als Sandale
an meinen Fuss gebunden,
19 den reinen Gottermantel an meinen Leib gebunden,
20 das
reine Szepter in meine Hand gelegt.
Though
the style of these lines is not participial, it is certainly
self-predicative. One might well assume
that the traditional self-
introduction ("I am") with
a following string of names and epithets
made up the lacunae. And probably these took the
form of appos-
itional nominatives or
participles.67 The "I am" does survive in lines 9
and 12.
An Akkadian example is
the Gula hymn of Bullutsa-rabi,
a
composition that probably dates from the Persian
period.68 In the
first 187 of a total of 200 lines the goddess Gula speaks. In the
opening section the deity introduces herself
with participles, nominal
clauses, and several statives.
The passage reads as follows:
1 The goddess, the most powerful of all deities that
reside in shrines--
2 I am an aristocrat, I am a lady, I am
resplendent, I am exalted,
3 My location is lofty, I am feminine, I have
dignity,
4 I excel among the goddesses.
5 In heaven my star is great, my name in the
underworld,
6 Mention of me is sweet--men discourse on
7 Sound health and the healing touch,
8 My great name is Nintinugga.
The
remainder of the hymn consists of alternating sections in which
the goddess praises herself and then her spouse. Bullutsa-rabi is
67 This is the form taken
by other Sumerian hymns of this type. See Falkenstein,
SAHG, n. 24 ("A Sulgi Hymn") in which 11.1-19 are the "I am"
section, following
which are statements with finite verbs; and so
throughout the Sulgi hymns (Castellino,
Two Sulgi
Hymns
[BC] Studi Semitici 42
[Roma: Universita di Roma,
1972] B, 11-12,
82, 119-21; C, 1-6). For the structure of
this form, see von Soden, "Hymne,"
RLA 4
(1972-1975) 539-40.
68 W. G. Lambert,
"The Gula Hymn of Bullutsa-rabi,"
Or 36 (1967) 105-32.
Lambert
suggests a date for its original composition between 1400 and 700 B.C.
(p.
109).
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an individual on whose behalf prayer is made in
the last section
(II. 188-200) to the two deities. As we indicated above,
the Akkadian
exemplars of the self-praise are limited to only
three or four, though,
of course, the hymns and prayers in the second and
third person are
very common.
CONCLUSION
The preceding, on which little comment has been
made, are
sufficient to show that the self-predication formula
is attested in both
Sumerian and Akkadian hymnic literature as well as in Isaiah. And
since it is lacking elsewhere in Hebrew literature
(with the exceptions
already noted) one must allow the possibility at
least that Isaiah
appropriated and adapted this
particular literary vehicle as a heuristic
and polemical device with which to exalt and praise
Yahweh in
opposition to the gods of
Dion's assessment when he says that the concrete
example of this
borrowing by the prophet may help us to appreciate
better the
marvelous power of assimilation by which the Word
of the living God
always utilizes to its own ends the ancient religious
heritage of
humanity. Indeed, the prophet of Yahweh does not
hesitate to benefit
from authentic resources of the pagan milieu in
which he finds himself.
A
master himself of ancient eloquence, he seizes well the majesty and
power of persuasion of discourse by which gods and
kings generally
reveal their splendor in the Orient. He adopts therefore
this method,
up to that time unused in
news concerning the Creator and Savior.69
Without doubt, the most
effective polemic is that in which the protagonist
(mis)uses the argu-
ments of his adversary and
does so by a sarcastic, mocking use of the
very language of his opponent. Much more of this
could, without
question, be communicated by the special nuances
that are possible to
oral discourse. But no one of the exilic community
could fail to be
impressed by the subtleties as well as the overt
expression of the
prophet as he attempted to demonstrate to them
the incomparability
of their God.
69 Dion, "Le genre litteraire sumerien,"
233-34.
This
material is cited with gracious permission from:
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Theological Seminary
www.grace.edu
Please
report any errors to Ted Hildebrandt at:
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