the-bible-and-the-dead-sea-scrolls

J. J. M. ROBERTS 285
Judah’s walled cities, Syria and Israel could not afford to become bogged
down in long, drawn-out siege warfare with Judah’s major border fortifications
on the main road, so a flanking move to bypass the border strongholds
was in order; crossing the pass between Michmash and Geba
seems to reflect that strategy.
The climax of this description, but not the end of the oracle, is reached
in 10:32, when the enemy stops at Nob just north of Jerusalem, perhaps
to be located on the present Mount Scopus, and shakes his fist at
Jerusalem. As I have demonstrated elsewhere, this gesture, whether it is
actually “shaking the fist” or some other movement of the hand, is clearly
an expression of contempt for Mount Zion. 35 That makes it impossible
to accept the attempt of Clements and other scholars to find the original
conclusion of the oracle here. 36 Given Isaiah’s view that Yahweh lives on
Mount Zion (8:18), one would hardly expect an Isaianic oracle to end
with a foreign enemy disparaging God’s city with apparent impunity;
and if that foreign enemy were the leader of the Syro-Ephraimitic coalition,
then it is simply out of the question. Isaiah’s well-known attitude
toward those two powers excludes such an ending.
The ending, in 10:33–34, gives God’s response to the arrogant presumptuousness
of this enemy. It portrays the enemy under the image of
a forest of tall, majestic trees, which God violently cuts down with an iron
tool. The word translated “ax” by the NRSV is not the same Hebrew
word used in 10:15, so there does not appear to be a direct connection
between 10:33–34 and the Assyrian oracle in 10:5–15 + 24b–27a, though
the theme of God’s humiliation of a foolishly arrogant enemy is the same.
The description of the enemy’s destruction uses a similar metaphor to the
one used for the destruction of Israel in 9:17 (ET 18) and 10:16–19, and
it also has close parallels to 2:12–13. The reference to the Lebanon may
be an allusion to the Syrian element in this enemy coalition, since Syria
apparently exercised some political influence in the Lebanon region, and
some of the Phoenician cities were part of their anti-Assyrian front.
If this analysis of Isa 10:16–34 has any merit, it suggests that the kind
of contemporizing reinterpretation of Scripture done at Qumran was
already being done within the biblical text itself, and in the case of the
Isaiah passage, quite likely by the prophet Isaiah himself. One should
remember that Isaiah’s prophetic activity extended over a period of at
least thirty-seven years—from the death of Uzziah to Sennacherib’s attack
35. J. J. M. Roberts, “Isaiah 2 and the Prophet’s Message to the North,” JQR 75
(1985): 301–2n29.
36. Ronald E. Clements, Isaiah 1–39 (NCB; Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1980), 120.