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ויבן מגדל (Heb: the MT's 'he built a watchtower in its midst' ‏,(כמיצב גפן)‏ vine' plant of a choice ‏(ובבית מקדשי ביניהון)‏ midst' has been fully interpreted as 'I built my sanctuary in their ‏(בתוכו וגם־יקב חצב (Heb: and the MT's 'and he also hewed a wine vat in it' בו ) is fully interpreted as 'and I even gave my altar to atone for their sins' מדבחי יהבית לכפרא על חטאיהון)‏ ‏.(ואף The antiquity of this interpretation is defended by De Moor who notes that it deviates from the interpretation found in the Babylonian Talmud." 66 We therefore see a change from an allegorical element to the referent to which the original allegory pointed. This fits the typical strategy of the targuman to 'give the sense' of the Hebrew text for the interpretive benefit of his listeners. 67 A third interpretive element is the introduction of the concept of 'inheritance' ‏(אחסנא)‏ in the targumic rendering. 68 In this sense, the vineyard is seen as the inheritance of the people just as the land frequently is in the biblical narrative. 69 This element is important for its close association with Jesus' parable in that the tenants plot to try and gain the 'inheritance' (κληρονομία) in Mk 12:7. 70 A fourth important interpretive element is that in place of the Hebrew's "I will remove its hedge" משׂוכתו)‏ ‏,(הסר the Targum has God abandoning His vineyard: 'I will take up my Shekhinah from them ‏.(אסליק שכינתי מנהון)‏ 71 Evans notes that in referencing God's 'taking up his 66 De Moor, "Targumic Background," 70, citing, bSukka, 49a. See, however, jSukka, 21a; Tos. Sukka 3:4 (15). 67 See Ch. Rabin,“Hebrew and Aramaic in the First Century,” in The Jewish People in the First Century: Historical Geography, Political History, Social, Cultural and Religious Life and Institutions, eds., S. Safrai, and M. Stern (Philadelphia, PA: Fortress Press, 1976), 1030; Longenecker, Biblical Exegesis, 8-9; Chilton, "Targums," 800-01. אחסנא ('inheritance') with נחלה 68 Evans, Jesus, 401, n. 40, notes "that the meturgeman translates the Hebrew every time the word appears in Isaiah (19:25; 47:6; 63:17). In all three passages the LXX translates κληρονομία" which is precisely the terminology used in the Parable of the Wicked Tenants. 69 De Moor, "Targumic Background," 77, "According to Ps. 78:71 God entrusted this inheritance to David, as he אחסנתא Isa. 5:1 had done earlier to Saul (1 Sam. 10:1). It is therefore hardly accidental that in the Targum to 'inheritance' is an alternative interpretation of the vineyard = Israel." 70 Evans, Jesus, 401. 71 Cf. De Moor, "Targumic Background," 67-68. It is interesting to note that though both the Targum and LXX have the concept of divine abandonment, they both interpret this concept in different places. The LXX interpreted ('I will משׂוכתו ('I will make it a waste') as divine abandonment but the Targum has interpreted ואשׁיתהו בתה remove its hedge') as divine abandonment, perhaps because of the use of סור in texts where God is said to abandon 15 הסר
Shekhinah' the targuman means "the destruction of the Temple itself." 72 And while this is certainly possible, given that it has replaced 'removing of its hedge,' it is probably more likely that the taking up of the Shekhinah is a reference to Exile, which was present in the biblical narrative but became a classic association in rabbinic thought. 73 So where the previous texts we have examined we saw the interpretation of the destruction of the vineyard as removal of divine presence, the meturgeman makes this interpretation more clear and emphatic by the reference to the theologically important Shekhinah. 74 A final interpretive difference between the Targum and MT is found in v. 5. In place of the MT's 'I will break down its wall' גדרו)‏ ‏,(פרץ the Targum reads 'I will break down the place of their sanctuaries' ( ואיתרע בית מקדשיהון ). The plural form of sanctuaries is decidedly odd, but Chilton has argued that it is typical of the Targum to use a singular form of ‏,מקדש as in 5:2, followed by a plural form, as here in 5:5, "so that we are encouraged to think of such places (presumably synagogues) as distinct from the Jerusalem Temple, but as related to it in some way." 75 If the Targum has synagogues in view here, 76 as Chilton argues, then we see the meturgman updating the judgment from Isaiah 5 to his contemporary place in the synagogues. In this way, the judgment upon the Temple is extended to cover the whole of the contemporary Jewish religious leadership. In summarizing the interpretive importance of the Isaiah Targum we see that it has made even more explicit, elements which were implicitly noted in previous texts we have examined, such as the parabolic nature of the Song, the identification of the vineyard with the Temple and someone, e.g., Samson (Judg. 16:20) and Saul (1 Sam. 16:14; 28:16). 72 Evans, Jesus, 401. 73 De Moor, "Targumic Background," 67. 74 For the importance of the term Shekhinah ‏(שכינה)‏ in the Isaiah Targum see Bruce D. Chilton, The Glory of Israel: The Theology and Provenience of the Isaiah Targum (Sheffield, England: JSOT Press, 1983), 69-75. 75 Ibid., 18; also Chilton, Galilean Rabbi, 112. 76 De Moor, "Targumic Background," 69-70, disputes that the synagogues were in view here and suggests the emendation: מקדשי ('my sanctuary'), though he has no textual support for this. 16
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