For a printable version of this post, go here.
The
opening diatribe of the book of Isaiah (1:2-20) is remarkable for its searing
rhetoric, yet it concludes by offering a return to prosperity should the people
and leaders of Judah heed the word of their God. The speech begins with a call to heaven and earth
to act as witnesses and a summary brief against the nation (verses 2-3). It
ends with an appeal to reach a settlement and a conditional offer of
rehabilitation (verses 18-20).
I
discuss the poetry, unity, rhetoric, and history of interpretation of Isa
1:2-20 here.
In a future post I will provide a verse-by-verse commentary on the Hebrew for
those with no more than a basic knowledge of the language. The purpose of the
following is to encourage appreciation of the Hebrew text as poetry. So as not
to alienate the reader familiar with the received text, the Hebrew is presented
in Tiberian masoretic dress. The phonology the texts instantiated in origin is
a matter of reconstruction. That it differed from the phonology reflected in
the received text is undisputed. As I show in the case of Lam 1 elsewhere,
a reconstruction of the sound and stress patterns these texts would have
instantiated at the time of composition leads to the conclusion that they once
possessed a degree of sonic coherence and orchestration far beyond that
detectable in Tiberian masoretic Hebrew.
Vertical
alignment of versets facilitates the observation of parallelisms. A verset of two
to three stress units is given a line of its own, with stress units marked by the
use of the maqqeph like MT, but not always in accordance with it. Interstitial
gaps of varying dimensions set off lines, strophes, and stanzas. A circulus marks
a text or vocalization at odds with MT, excluding differences of a prosodic or
syntactic nature. Departures from MT
of the latter kind are marked in the sense that MT’s neumes reproduced below occasionally
clash with the construal of the text I propose. An introduction to the building
blocks of ancient Hebrew verse is offered elsewhere: start here.
The English translation
attempts to furnish a global approximation of the poetry and prosody of the
Hebrew, even if the results are necessarily piecemeal. I sometimes retain
examples of enallage, chiasm, ellipsis, and inversion which perforce result in
a less idiomatic rendering. Differences in the use of blank spacing define
stress units, versets, lines, strophes, and stanzas. Minimal use of
capitalization and punctuation is intentional. By and large capitalization
marks the onset of a stanza as defined in the general
rule.
The translation is designed to be read aloud, with the
prosodic and rhetorical flow of the text marked by patterns of intonation. Its
style is indebted to other translations which seek to capture something of the
poetry of the original. Those of David Curzon
deserve particular mention.
The bilingual edition is here.
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