The Bible and the Dead Sea Scrolls: The ... - josephprestonkirk

J. J. M. ROBERTS 281
frags. 6–7 lines 10–11, 14–15 speaks of the “returnees of Israel,” however,
and the historical impact of the return from Babylonian exile may have
suggested the identification of the enemy from whom deliverance was
promised as the Babylonians. Moreover, the 4QpIsa a (4Q161) interpretation
of the continuation of the same context suggests a similar connection
to the Babylonian exile. After citing Isa 10:24–27, which promises deliverance
to the inhabitants of Zion from the Assyrian yoke, the pesher
offers an unfortunately broken interpretation of the passage, which contains
the line, “when they return from the wilderness of the peoples”
(Mym(h rbdmm Mbw#b). The expression, “wilderness of the peoples”
(Mym(h rbdm), is derived from Ezek 20:35. Ezekiel is visualizing the
return from Babylonian exile as a kind of new exodus, and in Ezekiel the
wilderness of the people is analogous to the “wilderness of the land of
Egypt” of the first exodus (v. 36), as a place where God can judge his
people and weed out the rebels before bringing the righteous remnant to
his holy mountain. This judgment involves bringing his people “under
the rod” (+b#h txt), to discipline them (v. 37). It seems clear that the
mention of both the “rod” of discipline and the allusion to the “way of
Egypt” in Isaiah 10 triggered an association with the Ezekiel passage for
the Qumran interpreter, and he read Isaiah through the eyes of Ezekiel’s
promise of a return from Babylonian exile.
Nevertheless, it is doubtful whether either pap4QpIsa c (4Q163) or
4QpIsa a (4Q161) were thinking of the historical Babylon. The reference
to Babylon in pap4QpIsa c (4Q163) is probably to be understood as a
code word for the more contemporary foreign enemies of the Qumran
community, either the late Seleucid state or Rome. 4QpIsa a (4Q161)
identifies the enemies that march up to Jerusalem to threaten it with the
“Kittim” (My)ytk), a designation that can be used of Seleucid or Ptolemaic
Greeks (the “Kittim of Asshur” and the “Kittim in Egypt” of 1QM
1.2–4), but which the pesharim generally use to refer to the Romans. In
any case, for the Qumran commentator, the enemy army portrayed in
Isaiah 10, which has or will threaten Jerusalem before the city’s final
deliverance, is neither the historical Assyria mentioned in the text of
Isaiah 10, nor the later Babylon; it is most likely a Roman army.
Such reinterpretation of the biblical text is clearly an attempt to make
it relevant to the time of the interpreter, but this process of contemporizing
reinterpretation can already be detected within the biblical text of
Isaiah itself. The same process of reinterpreting Assyria as Babylon that
one finds in pap4QpIsa c (4Q163), for instance, is already anticipated at a
number of points in the biblical text of Isaiah. Isaiah 40–55, of course,
comes from the period of the Babylonian exile, and Babylon is clearly