Isa 57:3-10 | KD | STEP | The reproachful language of the prophet is now directed against the mass of the nation, who have occasioned the “evil” from which the righteous is swept away, i.e., the generation that is hostile to the servants of Jehovah, and by whom those sins of idolatry are still so shamelessly carried on, which first led to the captivity. “And ye, draw nearer hither, children of the sorceress, seed of the adulterer, and of her that committed whoredom! Over whom do ye make yourselves merry? Over whom do ye open the mouth wide, and put the tongue out long? Are ye not the brook of apostasy, seed of lying?” They are to draw nearer hither ( hēnnâh as in ), to the place where God is speaking through His prophet, to have themselves painted, and to hear their sentence. Just as elsewhere the moral character of a man is frequently indicated by the mention of his father (2Ki 6:32), or his mother ( ), or both parents ( ), so here the generation of the captivity, so far as it continued to practise the idolatry by which its ancestors had brought upon themselves the Chaldean catastrophe, is called first עננה בּני (or more correctly עננה), sons of the sorceress (possibly the maker of clouds or storm, , Jer. auguratricis ), one who made heathen and superstitious customs her means of livelihood, viz., the community as it existed before the captivity, which really deserved no better name, on account of the crying contradiction between its calling and its conduct; and secondly , with regard to both the male and female members of the community, ותּזנה מנאף זרע, semen adulteri et fornicariae (Jer.), though Stier, Hahn, and others adopt the rendering semen adulterum et quod ( qui ) scortaris . A better rendering than this would be, “Seed of an adulterer, and one who committest adultery thyself,” viz., (what would be indicated with this explanation by the fut. consec. ) in consequence of this descent from an adulterer. But as זרע (seed, posterity), wherever it is more minutely defined, is connected with a genitive, and not with an adjective, the presumption is that ותזנה מנאף denotes the father and mother. ותּזנה is an attributive clause regarded as a genitive (Ges. §123, 3, Anm. 1), and more closely connected with מנאף htiw than if it was written ותזנה = וזונה, ): Seed of an adulterer, and consequently (Ewald, §351, b ), or similarly, of one who gave herself up to whoredom. Idolatry, prostitution, and magic are most closely allied. The prophet now asks, “Over whom do ye find your pleasure? For whom are your common contemptuous actions intended?” התענּג is only used here, and denotes the feeling which finds pleasure in the sufferings of another. The objects of this malicious contemptuous pleasure (Psa 22:8., ) are the servants of Jehovah; and the question, as in , is one of amazement at their impudence, since the men over whom they make merry are really deserving of esteem, whereas they themselves are the refuse of Israel: Are ye not a brook of apostasy, seed of lying? As apostasy and lying, when regarded as parents, can only produce something resembling themselves; the character of those from whom they are descended is here imputed to the men themselves, even more clearly than before. The genitives of origin are also genitives of attribute. Instead of ילדי (e.g., ) we have here ילדי before makkeph , with the shortening of a into i .

‏ Isaiah 57:3-10

The reproachful language of the prophet is now directed against the mass of the nation, who have occasioned the “evil” from which the righteous is swept away, i.e., the generation that is hostile to the servants of Jehovah, and by whom those sins of idolatry are still so shamelessly carried on, which first led to the captivity. “And ye, draw nearer hither, children of the sorceress, seed of the adulterer, and of her that committed whoredom! Over whom do ye make yourselves merry? Over whom do ye open the mouth wide, and put the tongue out long? Are ye not the brook of apostasy, seed of lying?” They are to draw nearer hither (hēnnâh as in Gen 15:16), to the place where God is speaking through His prophet, to have themselves painted, and to hear their sentence. Just as elsewhere the moral character of a man is frequently indicated by the mention of his father (2Ki 6:32), or his mother (1Sa 20:30), or both parents (Job 30:8), so here the generation of the captivity, so far as it continued to practise the idolatry by which its ancestors had brought upon themselves the Chaldean catastrophe, is called first עננה בּני (or more correctly עננה), sons of the sorceress (possibly the maker of clouds or storm, Isa 2:6, Jer. auguratricis), one who made heathen and superstitious customs her means of livelihood, viz., the community as it existed before the captivity, which really deserved no better name, on account of the crying contradiction between its calling and its conduct; and secondly, with regard to both the male and female members of the community, ותּזנה מנאף זרע, semen adulteri et fornicariae (Jer.), though Stier, Hahn, and others adopt the rendering semen adulterum et quod (qui)scortaris. A better rendering than this would be, “Seed of an adulterer, and one who committest adultery thyself,” viz., (what would be indicated with this explanation by the fut. consec.) in consequence of this descent from an adulterer. But as זרע (seed, posterity), wherever it is more minutely defined, is connected with a genitive, and not with an adjective, the presumption is that ותזנה מנאף denotes the father and mother. ותּזנה is an attributive clause regarded as a genitive (Ges. §123, 3, Anm. 1), and more closely connected with מנאף htiw than if it was written ותזנה = וזונה, Isa 1:21): Seed of an adulterer, and consequently (Ewald, §351,b), or similarly, of one who gave herself up to whoredom. Idolatry, prostitution, and magic are most closely allied. The prophet now asks, “Over whom do ye find your pleasure? For whom are your common contemptuous actions intended?” התענּג is only used here, and denotes the feeling which finds pleasure in the sufferings of another. The objects of this malicious contemptuous pleasure (Psa 22:8., Psa 35:21) are the servants of Jehovah; and the question, as in Isa 37:23, is one of amazement at their impudence, since the men over whom they make merry are really deserving of esteem, whereas they themselves are the refuse of Israel: Are ye not a brook of apostasy, seed of lying? As apostasy and lying, when regarded as parents, can only produce something resembling themselves; the character of those from whom they are descended is here imputed to the men themselves, even more clearly than before. The genitives of origin are also genitives of attribute. Instead of ילדי (e.g., Isa 2:6) we have here ילדי before makkeph, with the shortening of a into i. Isa 57:5-6

The participles which follow in the next v. are in apposition to אתּ, and confirm the predicates already applied to them. They soon give place, however, to independent sentences. “Ye that inflame yourselves by the terebinths, under every green tree, ye slayers of children in the valleys under the clefts of the rocks. By the smooth ones of the brook was thy portion; they, they were thy lot: thou also pouredst out libations to them, thou laidst meat-offerings upon them. Shall I be contented with this?” The people of the captivity are addressed, and the idolatry handed down to them from their ancestors depicted. The prophet looks back from the standpoint of the captivity, and takes his colours from the time in which he himself lived, possibly from the commencement of Manasseh’s reign, when the heathenism that had for a long time been suppressed burst forth again in all its force, and the measure of iniquity became full. The part. niphal הנּחמים is formed like נחן in Jer 22:23, if the latter signifies miserandum esse. The primary form is נחם, which is doubled like נגּר from גּרר in Job 20:28, and from which נחם is formed by the resolution of the latent reduplication. Stier derives it from; but even if formed from this, נחם would still have to be explained from נחם, after the form נצּת. 'Elı̄m signifies either gods or terebinths. But although it might certainly mean idols, according to Exo 15:11; Dan 11:36 (lxx, Targ., and Jerome), it is never used directly in this sense, and Isaiah always uses the word as the name of a tree (Isa 1:29; Isa 61:3). The terebinths are introduced here, exactly as in Isa 1:29, as an object of idolatrous lust: “who inflame themselves with the terebinths;” ב denotes the object with which the lust is excited and inf Lamed. The terebinth ('ēlâh) held the chief place in tree-worship (hence אלנם, lit., oak-trees, together with אלם, is the name of one of the Phoenician gods), ^{▼▼See Levy, Phönizische Studien, i. 19.} possibly as being the tree sacred to Astarte; just as the Samura Acacia among the heathen Arabs was the tree sacred to the goddess 'Uzza. ^{▼▼Krehl, Religioin der vorisl. Araber, p. 74ff.}

The following expression, “under every green tree,” is simply a permutative of the words “with the terebinths” in the sense of “with the terebinths, yea, under every green tree” (a standing expression from Deu 12:2 downwards) - one tree being regarded as the abode and favourite of this deity, and another of that, and all alluring you to your carnal worship.

From the tree-worship with its orgies, which was so widely spread in antiquity generally, the prophet passes to the leading Canaanitish abomination, viz., human sacrifices, which had been adopted by the Israelites (along with שׁחטי we find the false reading שׂחטי, which is interpreted as signifying self-abuse). Judging from the locality named, “under the clefts of the rocks,” the reference is not to the slaying of children sacrificed to Moloch in the valley of Hinnom, but to those offered to Baal upon his bâmōth or high places (Jer 19:5; Eze 16:20-21; Hos 13:2; Psa 106:37-38). As we learn from the chronique scandaleuse many things connected with the religious history of Israel, which cannot be found in its historical books, there is nothing to surprise us in the stone-worship condemned in Isa 57:6. The dagesh of חלּקי is in any case dagesh dirimens. The singular is wither חלק after the form חכמי (cf., עצבי, Isa 58:3), or חלק after the form ילדי. But חלק, smoothness, never occurs; and the explanation, “in the smoothnesses, i.e., the smooth places of the valley, is thy portion,” has this also against it, that it does not do justice to the connection בּ חלק, in which the preposition is not used in a local sense, and that it leaves the emphatic הם הם quite unexplained. The latter does not point to places, but to objects of worship for which they had exchanged Jehovah, of whom the true Israelite could say ה חלקי, Psa 119:57, etc., or בה לי חלק, Jos 22:25, and גּורלי תּומיך אתּה (Thou art He that maintaineth my lot), Psa 16:5. The prophet had such expressions as these in his mind, and possibly also the primary meaning of גורל = κλῆρος, which may be gathered from the rare Arabic word 'garal, gravel, stones worn smooth by rolling, when he said, “In the smooth ones of the valley is thy portion; they, they are thy lot.” In the Arabic also, achlaq (equilvaent to châlâq, smooth, which forms here a play upon the word with חלק, châlâq) is a favourite word for stones and rocks. חלּקי־נחל, however, according to 1Sa 17:40 (where the intensive form חלּוּק, like שׁכּוּל, is used), are stones which the stream in the valley has washed smooth with time, and rounded into a pleasing shape. The mode of the worship, the pouring out of libations, ^{▼▼Compare the remarks made in the Comm. on the Pentateuch, at Gen 29:20, on the heathen worship of anointed stones, and the Baetulian worship.} and the laying of meat-offerings upon them, confirm this view. In Carthage such stones were called abbadires (= אדיר, אבן); and among the ancient Arabs, the asnâm or idols consisted for the most part of rude blocks of stone of this description. Herodotus (3:8) speaks of seven stones which the Arabs anointed, calling upon the god Orotal. Suidas (s.v. Θεῦς ἄρης) states that the idol of Ares in Petra was a black square stone; and the black stone of the Ka'aba was, according to a very inconvenient tradition for the Mohammedans, an idol of Saturn (zuhal). ^{▼▼See Krehl, p. 72. In the East Indies also we find stone-worship not only among the Vindya tribes (Lassen, A.K. i. 376), but also among the Vaishnavas, who worship Vishnu in the form of a stone, viz., the sâlagrâm, a kind of stone from the river Gandak (see Wilson’s Sanscrit Lexicon s.h.v. and Vishnu-Purân, p. 163). The fact of the great antiquity of stone and tree worship has been used in the most ridiculous manner by Dozy in his work on the Israelites at Mecca (1864). He draws the following conclusion from Deu 32:18 : “Thus the Israelites sprang from a divine block of stone; and this is, in reality, the true old version of the origin of the nation.” From Isa 51:1-2, he infers that Abraham and Sara were not historical persons at all, but that the former was a block of stone, and the latter a hollow; and that the two together were a block of stone in a hollow, to which divine worship was paid. “This fact,” he says, “viz. that Abraham and Sarah in the second Isaiah are not historical persons, but a block of stone and a hollow, is one of great worth, as enabling us to determine the time at which the stories of Abraham in Genesis were written, and to form a correct idea of the spirit of those stories.”}

Stone-worship of this kind had been practised by the Israelites before the captivity, and their heathenish practices had been transmitted to the exiles in Babylon. The meaning of the question, Shall I comfort myself concerning such things? - i.e., Shall I be contented with them (אנּחם niphal, not hithpael)? - is, that it was impossible that descendants who so resembled their fathers should remain unpunished. Isa 57:7-8

The prophet now proceeds with perfects, like שׁפכתּ and העלית (addressed to the national community generally, the congregation regarded as a woman). The description is mostly retrospective. “Upon a lofty and high mountain hast thou set up thy bed; thou also ascendedst thither to offer slain offerings. And behind the door and the post thou didst place thy reminder: for thou uncoveredst away from me, and ascendedst; thou madest thy bed broad, and didst stipulate for thyself what they had to do: thou lovedst their lying with thee; thou sawest their manhood.” The lovers that she sought for herself are the gods of the heathen. Upon lofty mountains, where they are generally worshipped, did she set up her bed, and did all that was needed to win their favour. The zikkârōn, i.e., the declaration that Jehovah is the only God, which the Israelites were to write upon the posts of their houses, and upon the entrances (Deu 6:9; Deu 11:20), for a constant reminder, she had put behind the door and post, that she might not be reminded, to her shame, of her unfaithfulness. That this explanation, which most of the commentators adopt, is the true one, is proved by the expression מאתּי כּי which follows, and according to which זכרון is something inconvenient, which might and was intended to remind them of Jehovah. מאתּי, away, far from me, as in Jer 3:1, and like מתּחתּי, which is still more frequently used. It is unnecessary to take gillı̄th with ערותך understood (Eze 23:18) as equivalent to “thou makest thyself naked,” or with reference to the clothes = ἀνασύρεις. משׁכּב is the common object of all three verbs, even of ותּעלי (with double metheg), after Gen 49:4. On ותּכרת for ותּכרתי (cf., Jer 3:5), see Ewald, §191, b. The explanation “thou didst bind,” or “thou didst choose (some) of them to thyself,” is contrary to the general usage, according to which ל כּרת signifies spondere (2Ch 7:18), and (עם כּרת pacisci (1Sa 22:8), in both cases with בּרית to be supplied, so that מן (בּרית) כּרת would mean stipulari ab aliquo, i.e., to obtain from a person a solemn promise, with all the force of a covenant. What she stipulated from them was, either the wages of adultery, or the satisfaction of her wanton lust. What follows agrees with this; for it is there distinctly stated, that the lovers to whom she offered herself gratified her lust abundantly: adamasti concutibum eorum (mishkâb, cubile, e.g., Pro 7:17, and concubitus, e.g., Ezra 23:17), manum conspexisit. The Targum and Jewish commentators adopt this explanation, loco quem delegisti, or (postquam) locum delegisti. This also is apparently the meaning of the accents, and most of the more modern commentators have adopted it, taking יד in the sense of place or side. But this yields only a very lame and unmeaning thought. Doederlein conjectured that יד was employed here in the sense of ἰθύφαλλος; and this is the explanation adopted by Hitzig, Ewald, and others. The Arabic furnishes several analogies to this obscene use of the word; and by the side of Eze 16:26 and Eze 23:20, where the same thing is affirmed in even plainer language, there is nothing to astonish in the passage before us. The meaning is, that after the church of Jehovah had turned away from its God to the world and its pleasures, it took more and more delight in the pleasures afforded it by idolatry, and indulged its tastes to the full. Isa 57:9-10

In the closest reciprocal connection with this God-forgetting, adulterous craving for the favour of heathen gods, stood their coquetting with the heathen power of the world. “And thou wentest to the king with oil, and didst measure copiously thy spices, and didst send thy messengers to a great distance, and didst deeply abase thyself, even to Hades. Thou didst become weary of the greatness of thy way; yet thou saidst not, It is unattainable: thou obtainedst the revival of thy strength: therefore thou wast not pained.” The first thing to be noticed here, is one that has been overlooked by nearly all the modern commentators, viz., that we have here a historical retrospect before us. And secondly, a single glance at Isa 57:11 is sufficient to show that the words refer to a servile coquetry from the fear of man, and therefore to a wicked craving for the favour of man; so that “the king,” is not Baal, or any heathen god whatever (according to Isa 8:21 and Zep 1:5), but the Asiatic ruler of the world. Ahaz sent messengers, as we read in 2Ki 16:7., to Tiglath-pileser, the king of Assyria, to say to Him, “I am thy servant and thy son.” And Ahaz took the silver and gold that were in the house of Jehovah, and in the treasures of the palace, and sent a bribe to the king of Assyria. And again, at 2Ki 16:10., Ahaz went to Damascus to meet the king of Assyria, and there he saw an altar, and sent a model of it to Jerusalem, and had one like it put in the place of the altar of burnt-offering. Such acts as these are here described in the figure of Israel travelling with oil to the king, and taking a quantity of choice spices with it to gain his favour, and also sending messengers, and not only bowing itself to the earth, but even stooping to Hades, that is to say, standing as it were on its head in its excessive servility, for the purpose of obtaining allies. It seems most natural to take בּשׁמן as equivalent to בשמן משׁוּחה: thou wentest in oil (dripping with pomade), and didst apply to thyself many spices; but Beth after verbs of going signifies to go with anything, to take it with one and bring it, so that the oil and spices are thought of here as presents, which she took with her as sensual stimulants, with a view to the amorous pleasures she was seeking (Eze 23:41, cf., Hos 12:2). השׁפּיל signifies to go deep down in Jer 13:18; the meaning here is, to bow very low, or to degrade one’s self. By “the greatness or breadth of the way” (a similar expression to that in Jos 9:13), all the great sacrifices are intended which it cost her to purchase the favour of the heathen ruler. Although they were a great trouble to her, yet she did not say נואש, “it is hopeless;” the niphal of יאשׁ signifies in 1Sa 27:1, to betake one’s self to a thing with despair of its success. The participle in Job 6:26 means a despairing person; it also occurs in a neuter sense in Jer 2:26; Jer 18:12, viz., given up, i.e., absolutely in vain. She did not give up hope, although the offerings nearly exhausted her strength; on the contrary, she gained יד חיּת, “life of her arm,” i.e., (according to the use of חיה in the sense of reviving, and החיה, to bring to life again) new life in her arm, in other words, “the renewing of her strength” (recentem vigorem virium suarum). Thus, without noticing the sighs and groans forced from her by the excessive toil and fatigue, but stirring herself up again and again, she pursued the plan of strengthening her alliances with the heathen. Ezekiel’s picture of Aholah and Aholibah is like a commentary on Isa 57:3-10 (see Ezek 23).