Isa5 CUP p149-

Comp. by: M.SIVARAMAN Stage: Proof Chapter No.: 9 Date:28/4/18 Time:12:16:54 Page Number: 149 Title Name: CoueyEtAl 9 Isaiah’s Love Song A Reading of Isaiah 5:1–7 F. W. Dobbs-Allsopp In Ezek 33:30–33, Yahweh likens the prophet to a singer of “love songs” (šîr ʿăgābîm),1 a skilled musician with a “beautiful voice” performing before a live audience, whose pretty words (cf. Ps 45:2 [ET 45:1]) are heard but not acted on. The Song of Songs, of course, offers the Bible’s most obvious examples of what such love poetry was like. But Isa 5:1–7 remains of interest for a variety of reasons. If genuine to Isaiah of Jerusalem,2 it provides relatively early evidence for the knowledge of love poetry in Judah (ca. eighth century BCE). It also evidences in scope the same relatively brief scale that typifies most love poems from the ancient Near Oral versions of this essay were presented and discussed at the Mid-Atlantic Regional Society of Biblical Literature (New Brunswick, March 11, 2016), as a part of “Reading Biblical Poetry: A Symposium Celebrating the Publication of Chip Dobbs-Allsopp’s On Biblical Poetry ” (Princeton Theological Seminary, March 15, 2016), at the Bible Colloquium at Vanderbilt Divinity School (March 22, 2016), and as the J. J. M. Roberts Annual Lecture in Old Testament Studies at the Christian Scholar’s Conference (Lipscomb University, June 9, 2016). My thanks to all the organizers of these events for their kind invitations and to the participants for a generous and stimulating reception, which has greatly improved my reading of the poem and the quality of this essay. 1 Regardless of the textual difficulties in this verse, the image of the prophet as a singer of love songs is clear. 2 So H. G. M. Williamson, Isaiah 1–27, ICC (London: T&T Clark, 2006), 1:330–31; J. J. M. Roberts, First Isaiah, Hermeneia (Minneapolis: Fortress, 2015), 3–4. Further, I assume scribal mediation of various kinds in the process of writing the poem down and ultimately including it in a larger scroll; see Karel van der Toorn, Scribal Culture and the Making of the Hebrew Bible (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2007), esp. 173–204. As Williamson notices, the song “is clearly to some extent a self-contained unit” (Isaiah 1–27, 1:324) – extra spacing is used to separate the song from what precedes and follows it in Hebrew manuscripts (Aleppo, B19a, and 1QIsaa). 149 Comp. by: M.SIVARAMAN Stage: Proof Chapter No.: 9 Date:28/4/18 Time:12:16:54 Page Number: 150 150 Title Name: CoueyEtAl F. W. Dobbs-Allsopp East.3 And this Isaianic lampoon seems to trade on the very same awareness of the allure of the lyrical that informs the Ezekiel passage. In the close reading of Isa 5:1–7 that follows, I track the lyricism of Isaiah’s lampoon, situating it against the backdrop of ancient love poetry generally and following its logic of love through to its prophetic end – “justice” (mišpāt) and “righteousness” (sǝdāqâ).4 _ _ *** The genre of Isa 5:1–7 has been much debated,5 but there can be little doubt that it was intended and heard as a riff on a love song, a šîr yǝdîdōt as in Ps 45:1, or even a šîrat dôdîm, as suggested by the Greek rendering of our opening verse in both Alexandrinus and Sinaiticus.6 Why else, for example, reference Yahweh (even if only belatedly and obliquely) as yǝdîdî, “my love” (and dôdî, “my beloved” in MT) in v. 1? Nowhere else in the Hebrew Bible is Yahweh so designated. And the love song conceit is sustained through to the end of the poem – šaʿăšûʿāyw, “his delight” (v. 7) is language of intimacy (cf. Jer 31:20; Ps 119:47; Prov 8:30–31) that 3 4 5 6 Some Egyptian love songs are written on ostraca (e.g., Ostracon Gardiner, 304), and Sumero-Akkadian traditions of “erotic-lyric” are similarly small in scale (e.g., the NeoAssyrian “Love Lyrics of Nabû and Tašmetu” comprises a single tablet, some 56 lines). My construal of the text of Isa 5:1–7 with notes and translation may be found at: https:// ptsem.academia.edu/ChipDobbsAllsopp (last accessed: 2 January 2018). John T. Willis, “The Genre of Isa 5:1–7,” JBL 96 (1977): 337–62; Williamson, Isaiah 1–27, 1:327–28. The rendering of šîr yǝdîdōt “love song” as ōdē hyper tou agapētou (“a song for the beloved”) in G at Ps 45:1 (=LXX Ps 44:1), suggests that GAS in Isa 5:1 (asma tou agapētou, “a song of the beloved”) could reflect the very material reading long posited by Robert Lowth as a conjectural emendation: šîrat dôdîm, “love song” (Isaiah. A New Translation: with a Preliminary Dissertation [London: J. Nichols, 1778]; reprinted in Robert Lowth (1710–1787): The Major Works, ed. David Reibel [London: Routledge, 1995], 2:55–56). MT, 1QIsaa, and all the other versions preserve a different material reading, šyrt dwdy, which most construe after MT šîrat dôdî, “a song of my beloved” (e.g., J. A. Emerton, “The Translation of Isaiah 5, 1,” in The Scriptures and the Scrolls: Studies in Honor of A. S. van der Woude on the Occasion of His 65th Birthday, ed. F. García Martínez, A. Hilhorst, and C. J. Labuschagne, VTSup 49 [Leiden: Brill, 1992], 18–30; Williamson, Isaiah 1–27, 1:317–18). Others advocate vocalizing dwdy as dôday (“my love”), resulting in an explicit reference to “(my) love song” (Roberts, First Isaiah, 70, n. b.; cf. Joseph Blenkinsopp, Isaiah 1–39: A New Translation with Introduction and Commentary, AB 19 [New York: Doubleday, 2000], 205–07). But the addition of the possessive suffix in MT (and the other witnesses) looks suspiciously like a explicating gloss to clarify whose love song is being sung, namely the lover’s/farmer’s and not the singer’s. Even so, the phrase gestures to a love song proper, whether šîrat dôday or šîrat dôdîm (cf. Ps 45:1; CTU 1.3 iii.5–6). Comp. by: M.SIVARAMAN Stage: Proof Chapter No.: 9 Date:28/4/18 Time:12:16:54 Page Number: 151 Title Name: CoueyEtAl Isaiah’s Love Song: A Reading of Isaiah 5:1–7 151 gestures back to the song’s opening vocabulary of love.7 Indeed, once Yahweh is implicated as the lover (of Isaiah and the vineyard) in v. 7, the song (retrospectively) taps into the kind of ideology prominently promoted in rituals and poetry of divine love best exemplified from ancient Mesopotamia, namely, to symbolize “an intimate connection between the divine and human worlds and . . . to secure divine blessings – not only for the king but also for the people.”8 The chief upshot of Isaiah’s little allegory,9 after all, is to reveal just how out of sorts the divine-human relationship is, miśpāh (“bloodshed”) and sǝʿāqâ (“outcry”) instead of _ _ mišpāt (“justice”) and sǝdāqâ (“righteousness,” v. 7). Unlike Egyptian _ _ love poetry or the Bible’s Song of Songs, most of the erotic-lyric tradition in Mesopotamia gets projected mythologically – that is, involving deities instead of humans.10 In the Bible, that dimension of the erotic-lyric tradition is most obviously manifested in prophetic compositions like Hosea 2, where the divine-human relationship is imagined through the marriage metaphor. This tradition is also evident in Isa 5:1–7 – though here (as also in the Song) marriage is nowhere in view. Of course, Isaiah’s performance is anything but that of a straightforward love song (divine or otherwise). He bends the genre to suit his prophetic critique – genres are rarely pure or univocal.11 The poem itself is shaped in a traditional ring structure. The opening and closing sets of lines (vv. 1–2, 7) reference the beloved/farmer in the third person and envelop the two internal stanzas (vv. 3–4, 5–6), each of which begins with wǝʿattâ (“and now”) and is voiced in the first person of the beloved/farmer in MT. The major rhythmic contours of these sections 7 8 9 10 11 Roberts, First Isaiah, 70–74. Martti Nissinen, “Song of Songs and Sacred Marriage,” in Sacred Marriages: The DivineHuman Sexual Metaphor from Sumer to Early Christianity, ed. M. Nissinen and R. Uro (Winona Lake, IN: Eisenbrauns, 2008), 202. “Little” referring to its brevity and to the limited nature of its allegory (cf. Williamson, Isaiah 1–27, 1:328). It remains unclear whether the Song was ever read mythologically prior to the Hellenistic period, and nothing in it requires a mythological staging. This contrasts quite markedly with Isa 5:1–7, where the (limited) allegory is made explicit in v. 7. On other swerves away from the love song’s animating centers of focus, see W. G. Lambert, “The Problem of the Love Lyrics,” in Unity and Diversity: Essays in the History, Literature, and Religion of the Ancient Near East, ed. H. Goedicke and J. J. M. Roberts (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1975), 98–135; Gwendolyn Leick, Sex and Eroticism in Mesopotamian Literature (London: Routledge, 1994), 239–46. Comp. by: M.SIVARAMAN Stage: Proof Chapter No.: 9 Date:28/4/18 Time:12:16:54 Page Number: 152 152 Title Name: CoueyEtAl F. W. Dobbs-Allsopp get marked among other ways by variation in line length.12 At the seams of the song’s several sections, in particular, shifts back and forth between subtly longer and shorter sets of lines may be observed.13 The whole coheres around a central focus on the upkeep and destruction of the kerem (“vineyard”), the prototypical site of love in ancient Mediterranean love poetry. The term itself is repeated six times (vv. 1 [2x], 3, 4, 5, 7), and at least once in each stanza, which helps stitch the poem together as a single whole. It is joined by other word repetitions (e.g., q-w-h “to wait, hope,” vv. 2, 4, 7; ʿ-ś-h “to do, make,” vv. 2 [2x], 4 [4x], 5) and chains of soundplays (e.g., end-rhyme: ʿănābîm, “grapes” // bǝʾūšîm, “rotten grapes,” vv. 2, 4; internal rhyme: mišpāt, “justice” // miśpāh, _ _ “bloodshed,” sǝdāqâ, “righteousness” // sǝʿāqâ, “outcry”, v. 7). The most _ _ conspicuous of these involves the conjunctive waw, which heads fifteen of the poem’s twenty-nine lines and appears twenty-four times in total. i The opening couplet appears intentionally ambiguous, even misleading.14 The first line, ʾāšîrâ nāʾ lîdîdî (“let me sing of my love[r]”), on its own may be heard straightforwardly as articulating the intent to sing a song to or about the singer’s lover. It is a most traditional opening to a song (e.g., ʾăšîrâ la-yhwh “Let me sing to Yahweh,” Exod 15:1; cf. Judg 5:3; CTU 1.24 1; BM 47507 40 [= KAR 158 i.7]). The second line provides the object of the singing: “a love song about his vineyard.” Such denominations are not uncommon, either (e.g., “O God, a new song I will sing to you,” Ps 144:9; cf. Ps 59:17 [ET Ps 59:16]; RIH 98/02.2; CTU 1.3 iii.5–6). There are even lines that include both direct and prepositional objects (e.g., “Sing to Yahweh a new song,” Ps 96:1), as well as syntactic elaborations that carry over to a second line (e.g., “How can we sing a song of Yahweh / in a foreign land,” Ps 137:4; cf. Ps 98:1). The misdirection comes in the specification that the love song will be about a vineyard belonging to someone else, the singer’s beloved. That is, the initial 12 13 14 Hans Wildberger, Isaiah 1–12, trans. T. H. Trapp, CC (Minneapolis: Fortress, 1991), 179. For example, the call for judgment (vv. 3–4) begins with a couplet of two longer lines (fourteen and nine syllables, respectively), which contrasts with the mostly short lines of vv. 1–2 (mostly six or seven syllables). Gary Roye Williams, “Frustrated Expectations in Isaiah v 1–7: A Literary Interpretation,” VT 35 (1985): 459–65. Comp. by: M.SIVARAMAN Stage: Proof Chapter No.: 9 Date:28/4/18 Time:12:16:55 Page Number: 153 Title Name: CoueyEtAl Isaiah’s Love Song: A Reading of Isaiah 5:1–7 153 impression of a singer singing to his own lover requires immediate revision in light of the syntactic elaboration in the second line of the couplet. The love song is now sung at some remove, about another lover and his beloved, or in terms of the allegory, a farmer (who is not Isaiah) and his vineyard.15 Also to be emphasized is Isaiah’s explicit naming of the song as a “love song” šîrat dôdîm (with GAS) and the use of the vocabulary of love in these initial lines. The former perhaps comes most conspicuously into view in contrast to the more allusive reading of MT, šîrat dôdî (literally, “a song of my beloved”), a song, that is, that need not be a literal love song – singing would have accompanied work in the vineyards, especially during the harvest (e.g., Judg 21:20–21; Isa 16:10; Amos 5:17).16 Such an insistent designation is troubled almost immediately by the specification, lǝkarmô, “for/about his vineyard,” since normally lovers (human or divine) are serenaded in ancient love songs, not their vineyards. Indeed, part of the poem’s initial ambiguity is precisely the misfit between its denomination as a love song and its content – especially in the body of the poem (vv. 2–6), which features the cultivation and destruction of a literal vineyard. The use of dôdîm “love” (or dôd in MT) and kerem “vineyard” intentionally employs the vocabulary of love. Compare Song 7:13 – “Let us go early to the vineyards (kǝrāmîm) / . . . there I will give my love (dōday) to you.”17 And the song’s second couplet in Isa 5:1, kerem hāyâ lîdîdî / bǝqeren ben-šāmen (“a vineyard belonged to my lover / on a fertile spur”), continues the traditional vernacular of love, as made clear by a similar line from Song 8:11: “a vineyard belonged to Solomon in BaalHamon.” But in borrowing this image from the traditional repertoire of love poetry, the prophet is also fixing on the primary focus of his (love) song, the vineyard. The term kerem is repeated at the end of the second line and then immediately at the beginning of the third, which effectively slows the movement of the poem for auditory fixation and emphasis. The vineyard is one of the premiere settings for love in ancient Mediterranean 15 16 17 MT’s šîrat dôdî “a song of my beloved” ramifies this redirection. In this light, although the initial misdirection remains, it may be viewed as an explicating gloss (if not simply a good variant). See n. 6 above. Carey Ellen Walsh, The Fruit of the Vine: Viticulture in Ancient Israel, HSM 60 (Winona Lake, IN: Eisenbrauns, 2000), 181–86. See Williams, “Frustrated Expectations,” 360. Comp. by: M.SIVARAMAN Stage: Proof Chapter No.: 9 Date:28/4/18 Time:12:16:55 Page Number: 154 154 Title Name: CoueyEtAl F. W. Dobbs-Allsopp love songs.18 And on occasion in the Song of Songs, for example, the vineyard may even be metaphorized as a reference to the beloved girl herself or her sexuality (Song 1:6; 2:15). However, there is no similar attempt in these early lines of Isa 5:1–7 to implicate a figurative sense to the vineyard imagery. To the contrary, the prophet literalizes the image, especially in v. 2, where the various tasks of preparing the vineyard are described. He takes a common setting in ancient love poems, a vineyard, and makes it the principal subject of his discourse. Indeed, the chief function of this second couplet is to establish the animating scene for the little poem – a vineyard set amid the fertile terraced hills of Judah (cf. Jer 31:5; Amos 9:13) – and to reveal the lover as a farmer. The vineyard only becomes allegorized (and not personified at all) in v. 7 – “the vineyard (kerem) of Yahweh Sabaoth is the house of Israel.” The language of love in these opening lines accomplishes a number of important things. First, it sets (up) tone and expectations that, given the relatively brief compass of the Song, are never really left behind. The insistence on a love song, the naming of a lover, and the iterative setting in a vineyard – accompanied (in performance) no doubt by a host of nonsemantic cues, such as rhythm, tune, bodily gestures, scale – more than suffice to set the audience’s expectation for love. Second, the lack of an explicit identity for the lover/farmer is tolerated in a genre where anonymity prevails, or where identity is ascribed extratextually (e.g., in the Song the lovers are never truly named). Part of the overall force of Isaiah’s ditty depends on v. 7, where the allegorical bent of the prophet’s pantomime is revealed. That force is created in part by the wait of the intervening lines, which is permitted (without frustration) precisely because there is no expectation for a particular identity in such a (love) song. Finally, in specifying the vineyard as belonging to “Yahweh Sabaoth” in v. 7, the poignancy of Isaiah’s initial naming of his “beloved” as yādîd becomes most fully appreciated: yādîd is used chiefly in the Bible to figure Yahweh’s human adorant (e.g., Deut 33:12; Jer 11:15; Ps 127:2). Here the reversal of that usage is revealing. Not only have Israel and Judah failed in matters of mišpāt, “justice” and sǝdāqâ, “righteousness,” they have also _ _ not acted as a yādîd, “beloved.” That is, the appropriation of the term for Yahweh is telling, in contrast with its very withholding as a designation for Israel and Judah. A final observation about the poem’s opening couplets is their striking euphony. The high /ī/ sound of the hireq yod vowel is repeated nine times 18 See Michael V. Fox, The Song of Songs and the Ancient Egyptian Love Songs (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1985), 285–88. Comp. by: M.SIVARAMAN Stage: Proof Chapter No.: 9 Date:28/4/18 Time:12:16:55 Page Number: 155 Title Name: CoueyEtAl Isaiah’s Love Song: A Reading of Isaiah 5:1–7 155 over, and the cluster of root and near-root repetitions (esp. y-d-d, d-w-d, š-y-r, and k-r-m), means that shins, reshes, dalets, kaphs, and mems clatter and clash pleasantly. Even the press of original qatl forms – *karm _ (2xs), *qarn, and *šamn, all ending with a nasal consonant (mem or nun), tickles the ear and tongue. In fact, sound turns out to be critical to this song’s larger prosody. While Isa 5:1–7, like almost all other biblical poems, does not systematically orchestrate one kind of sound effect to any specific end, a wide use of various sound patterns nonetheless are prominent, and the poem comes closer than many other biblical poems to using sound to effect a rhythmic norm. Beyond the burbles of sound just noted in v. 1 and what is perhaps the Bible’s most famous bit of rhyming in v. 7 (mišpāt //miśpāh and sǝdāqâ //sǝʿāqâ),19 other plays on sound _ _ _ _ include the following: v. 2 opens with three wayyiqtol forms from two different verbal stems, which are manipulated to effect a repeated cadence (wayʿazzǝqēhû waysaqqǝlēhû / wayyit tāʿēhû, “and he dug it and cleared __ it of stones / and planted”); a splutter of consonance involving alephs and ayins resounds through the opening couplet in v. 5; and line internal rhyming and chiming punctuates vv. 5–7 (e.g., lōʾ yizzāmēr, “will not be pruned” // lōʾ yēʿādēr, “will not be hoed,” v. 6). This is by no means regularized, but the periodicity of some kind of soundplay is sufficient to rival the rhythmic norm of unscripted sounds and to create the anticipation (however nonpredictive) of yet further sonic flourishes. So when the rhyming does come in the poem’s final couplet, auditors are not surprised. Indeed, a great deal of satisfaction accompanies such a closing, as if the poem was heading to this way of ending all along, even though that could not have been known ahead of time and equally satisfactory means of closing the poem are imaginable. The glut of sonic effects also increases the felt density of the language, which enhances aural uptake and ensures a slower, more measured pace to the poem, especially when combined with the semantic opacity of this prophetic song (e.g., who is speaking? who owns the vineyard? why the love theme?). ii With the exception of the first longish line (10 syllables), v. 2 continues to feature relatively short lines in its three couplets. All are headed by a conjunctive waw, and wayyiqtol forms appear six times, five in lineinitial position. This allows a fairly economical narration of the farmer’s 19 See Edward L. Greenstein, “Wordplay, Hebrew,” ABD 6:969. Comp. by: M.SIVARAMAN Stage: Proof Chapter No.: 9 Date:28/4/18 Time:12:16:55 Page Number: 156 156 Title Name: CoueyEtAl F. W. Dobbs-Allsopp cultivation of his vineyard and also witnesses the impress of prose writing. This is not the only place that Isaiah’s love song betrays a conspicuous debt to a prose style of narration. Two more wayyiqtol forms are present in the song (vv. 4, 7); the phrase šiptû-nāʾ bênî ûbên karmî (“judge _ between me and my vineyard”) in v. 3 appears to be prosaic (see Gen 16:5; Exod 18:16; Judg 11:27);20 and a clump of prose particles in the first couplet of v. 5 (ʾet-, ʾēt, ʾăšer) underscores that couplet’s supporting prose syntax. Prose writing in a Hebrew vernacular script likely dates to the latter part of the ninth century BCE (on present evidence),21 and there is no reason the poetic prophecies of Isaiah of Jerusalem a century later could not bear the imprint of this new form of discourse. If so, note how it has been adapted poetically and acoustically. For example, the opening sequence of wayyiqtol forms in v. 2 has been specifically orchestrated sonically and rhythmically, and eight of the nine wayyiqtols in the poem are in line-initial position. The phrase šiptû-nāʾ bênî ûbên karmî stands out _ among its hundred plus prose parallels by the intentionality of its sonic shaping: the addition of the first person singular suffix on kerem provides the line with internal chiming (bênî // ûbên karmî); karmî (“my vineyard”) is integrated into the patterned repetition of this word throughout the song; and the addition of nāʾ helps tie the opening of this section to the openings of the sections that precede and follow it, where nāʾ also appears (vv. 1, 5). Of course, Isaiah’s prosaic style also benefits his poetry. The run of wayyiqtol forms in v. 2 capitalizes on biblical prose’s economy of narration – one of the chief gains of written narrative prose. In three short couplets, the prophet gestures effectively toward the energetic work of the farmer in his careful cultivation of the vineyard, something that could well have taken a storyteller many more verses to accomplish in the traditional idiom of oral narrative song (with its characteristic epic – lengthy – repetition). This brevity suits the song, which is compact and not interested in a protracted rendering of a farmer’s daily routine; with these brief, formulaic hints, Isaiah’s audience could easily fill in details for themselves from their own practical experience.22 So even while benefiting from written prose’s advantages, the song remains dominantly indexical 20 21 22 This idiom bên . . . ûbên may be poetic only in Ruth 1:17, but it still is under the impress of prose; Judg 5:27, Isa 59:2, and Song 2:2 each have two bêns but not the prose idiom. See F. W. Dobbs-Allsopp, On Biblical Poetry (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2015), 298–318. Walsh, Fruit of the Vine, 88. Comp. by: M.SIVARAMAN Stage: Proof Chapter No.: 9 Date:28/4/18 Time:12:16:55 Page Number: 157 Title Name: CoueyEtAl Isaiah’s Love Song: A Reading of Isaiah 5:1–7 157 in nature and thus bound to tradition, where meaning is supplied as much from outside as inside the text, from knowledge shared and broadly familiar. Isaiah briefly evokes a realistic picture of a vineyard somewhere on the fertile slopes in the (central) hill country of the Cisjordan (bǝqeren ben-šāmen “on a fertile spur”),23 and of the typical tasks undertaken by a local (eighth-century) farmer in the cultivation and upkeep of such a vineyard – choosing an appropriate site, loosening the soil and clearing it of stones, planting the vines, constructing a guard tower and press. Some of what is not mentioned here gets picked up in later lines, such as the need to enclose terraced vineyards with a wall or hedge (v. 5; cf. Num 22:24; Ps 80:13–14 [ET 80:12–13]) and the hoeing and pruning that would constitute part of the routine maintenance of a vineyard (v. 6; cf. Lev 25:3; Isa 18:5; Gezer calendar, l. 6). Indeed, all is neatly telescoped. For example, in the real world of ancient Judah, it could take from three to four years on average before newly planted vines would bear fruit24 – the hyper-literal base meaning for the verbal root q-w-h, “to wait” is to be emphasized in the verb’s threefold use in this love song (vv. 2, 4, 7). The point here is the poem’s insistence on being taken literally in these early lines. What is heard at the surface – a farmer’s litany of typical tasks for keeping (up) a vineyard – is mostly what is intended to be heard. Mostly. This turns out to be the setup for the rest of the song, the (cultivated) ground against which the remainder of the lines will play. The only tickle in Isaiah’s abbreviated farmer’s almanac of vineyard care comes sonically and rhythmically. And these clash a bit, perhaps with the intent to bemuse further. Each couplet in v. 2 is marked by soundplay. The first couplet involves a run of three wayyiqtol forms, each ending with the same object suffix (-ēhû in Tiberian Masoretic vocalization), while the other two couplets feature end-rhyme, -ô // -ô and -îm // -îm. The first two sets of like sounds underscore likeness, whether in the acts of 23 24 Ben-šāmen appears to be a geographical location (cf. Song 8:11) or even a place name (Blenkinsopp, Isaiah 1–39, 206). The Hebrew phrase alludes to the high aesthetics associated with royal or sacral anointing (cf. ʾet-qeren haššemen in 1 Sam 16:13; 1 Kgs 1:39; cf. 1 Sam 16:1; Ps 92:11 [ET 92:10]; CTU 2.72 29–31). The euphonic phrasing underscores this heightened aesthetic (see J. Blake Couey, Reading the Poetry of First Isaiah: The Most Perfect Model of the Prophetic Poetry [London: Oxford, 2015], 162). Walsh (Fruit of the Vine, 93–94) is likely correct in thinking that šāmen metonymically figures the vineyard’s fertility (see Gen 27:28, 39; Num 13:20; Deut 8:8; 32:13; Isa 28:1, 4; Ezek 34:14; Job 29:6). Walsh, Fruit of the Vine, 93, n. 16. Comp. by: M.SIVARAMAN Stage: Proof Chapter No.: 9 Date:28/4/18 Time:12:16:55 Page Number: 158 158 Title Name: CoueyEtAl F. W. Dobbs-Allsopp cultivation (-ēhû) or the site of building (bǝtôkô, “in its midst” // bô, “in it”); in the third set, by contrast, the end-rhyme helps hold together opposites, “grapes” (ʿănābîm) and “rotten grapes” (bǝʾūšîm).25 This high euphony of song is not out of character since, as noted, work in the vineyard would have occasionally been accompanied by work songs. On the other hand, already beginning in the second couplet of v. 1 and persisting through v. 4, the main rhythm is that of the unbalanced couplet, the so-called qînâ meter which traditionally accompanies dirges (e.g., Amos 5:2).26 Although this couplet type is by no means restricted to dirges (e.g., Ps 19:8–10 [ET 19:7–9]), I do not think it “absurd,” as H. G. M. Williamson suggests, that in this instance one implication of this rhythmic choice is to foreshadow the song’s “denouement.”27 Poetic rhythm effects meaning depending on how it is put into play. After the balance of the poem’s initial couplet, the seven unbalanced, qînâ-shaped couplets demand auditorial recognition, especially in a song (šîr), the very antithesis of a dirge (qînâ; cf. Amos 8:10; Lam 5:15). Moreover, each of the couplets that sound the farmer’s failed expectations are unbalanced (the final couplets in vv. 2, 4, and 7) – a rhythmic underscoring of intent, just in case auditors did not make the immediate association. The disappointment of a failed grape crop would have been devastating economically, something truly to be mourned. The second mention of failed expectation even mimes the traditional “why” of lament: “why (maddûaʿ) had I waited to make grapes, / but it made rotten grapes?” (v. 4). Here, as in Job 3:12 and Jer 14:19, for example, there is an intentional miss, a flaw if you will, in the mime. The word maddûaʿ “why” never occurs in psalmic laments, where instead lāmâ/lāmmâ is typical (e.g., Pss 22:2 [ET 22:1]; 42:10 [ET 42:9]; Lam 5:20). So even here Isaiah seems to signal yet further mystification through his word choice. If there is foreshadowing of the poem’s ending, however haunting, it may yet not be quite the expectation anticipated. And finally, this succession of limping, unbalanced couplets leads immediately to the announcement of impending destruction in v. 5 – “let me make known to you / what I am about to do to my vineyard” – which in turn is spelled out to good effect in terms of the undoing of all the farmer’s care-full cultivation (e.g., tearing down of 25 26 27 Bǝʾūšîm is a hapax legomenon. The root has as its basic meaning “to stink” (Exod 7:18; Isa 50:2; Qoh 10:1), so rotten or spoiled grapes are likely in view here (Walsh, Fruit of the Vine, 89). Wildberger, Isaiah 1–12, 179; Williamson, Isaiah 1–27, 1:326. Williamson, Isaiah 1–27, 1:326. Comp. by: M.SIVARAMAN Stage: Proof Chapter No.: 9 Date:28/4/18 Time:12:16:56 Page Number: 159 Title Name: CoueyEtAl Isaiah’s Love Song: A Reading of Isaiah 5:1–7 159 the terrace wall, ceasing to hoe or prune). Vineyards, because of their value in the lifeworld of the ancient Levant, figure prominently in biblical depictions of destruction (e.g., Deut 28:30, 39; Ps 80:13–14 [ET 80:12–13]). In Isa 16:10 the absence of song that would normally attend vineyard work is even remarked on, and in Amos 5:17, song is replaced with “lamentation” (mispēd). Thus, it is not absurd at all to follow the feel of the rhythmic contours in these early lines toward their ultimate overturning of the love song Isaiah set out initially singing (cf. Amos 8:10; Lam 5:15). iii In Isa 5:3 the change in line length and the opening wǝʾattâ, “and now” announce the shift to a new movement in Isaiah’s song. This is accompanied by a shift in voice. Now the farmer, adopting the first-person voice as his own, addresses a collection of Judahites. The two central sections of the poem hang together by virtue of this first-person voice and their like beginnings (wǝʾattâ “and now,” vv. 3, 5). The farmer asks his neighbors to “judge” (šiptû) between him and his vineyard. The abrupt introduction _ of forensic language calls attention to itself, especially given the agricultural focus to this point in the poem – not to mention that vineyards, though sometimes the focus of legal theory in antiquity (e.g., Exod 22:4 [ET 22:5]; Lev 19:10), ordinarily were not objectified as a party to a legal dispute.28 The immediate return to language from the earlier stanza in the two following rhetorical questions smooths the brief juridical rupture. But the turbulence is important as it helps the prophetic songster secure his ending when he comes to it. The plays on (the lack of ) “justice” (mišpāt) _ and “righteousness” (sǝdāqâ) in v. 7 (cf. Amos 5:7, 24), heard after the _ call to “judge” in v. 5 (šiptû), are all the more satisfying for having been _ briefly anticipated (cf. Deut 1:16; Isa 11:4; Prov 31:9). This brief eruption of forensic coloring also sharpens (at least momentarily) the image of the two collectives addressed, framing the yôšēb yǝrûšālayim “inhabitants of Jerusalem” and ʾîš yǝhûdâ “people of Judah” more specifically as the community elders and other elites (e.g., Isa 3:14), who would normally sit in judgment and deliberation at the city gate (e.g., Deut 22:13–21; 2 Sam 15:2; Isa 29:21; Job 31:21)29 – an image that shimmers again across the 28 29 See Willis, “Genre,” 350. Cf. Stephen C. Russell, “Gate and Town in 2 Samuel 15:1–5: Collective Politics and Absalom’s Strategy,” JAH 3 (2015): 2–21. Comp. by: M.SIVARAMAN Stage: Proof Chapter No.: 9 Date:28/4/18 Time:12:16:56 Page Number: 160 160 Title Name: CoueyEtAl F. W. Dobbs-Allsopp surface of the poem in v. 7, as precisely the same group is chiefly responsible for maintaining social justice in ancient Judah.30 The content words of the two rhetorical questions in v. 4 are all repeated from earlier lines (ʿăśôt, “do”; karmî, “my vineyard”; qiwwîtî, “I expected”; ʿănābîm, “grapes”; etc.) This tightens the stanza’s connection both with what precedes and with what follows, as some of these words (the root ʿ-ś-h, kerem) feature again in the opening couplet of the next stanza (vv. 5–6). As important, the iteration in v. 4 buttresses the picture of care already sketched, especially the fourfold repetition of ʿ-ś-h “to make, do” and the close version of the failed expectation couplet in v. 2. The first question in v. 4 points up the summative and indexical nature of the song’s initial depiction of vineyard cultivation: “what more was there to do for my vineyard / that I did not do in it?” Other pertinent acts of care could be easily formulated (e.g., active guarding, Isa 27:3; Song 1:6), and some are even referenced in later lines (e.g., building a protective wall, v. 5). But a more inclusive rendering is unnecessary, as auditors could easily fill in the details of agricultural care from the stereotyped depiction, and thus would give ready assent to the central thrust of the prophet’s question – yes, no more could have been done. Indeed, the threefold repetition of ʿ-ś-h in v. 4, as voiced by the farmer, underscores the vigor of his effort – “I did . . . did . . . did.” It is the break in the pattern in the fourth repetition of the root that locates the source of disappointment: “but it (i.e., the kerem) made (or ‘did,’ wayyaʿaś) rotten grapes” (v. 4).31 This last line is repeated verbatim from the end of v. 2, but in that earlier rendition the intended subject (farmer or vineyard) is not made explicit. With the farmer’s adoption of the first-person voice in vv. 3–4, that ambiguity is resolved. Repetition and variation are at the heart of so much of this poem. iv The song makes its penultimate turn in vv. 5–6, signaled lexically by a second wǝʾattâ (“and now”) and rhythmically by a change to more 30 31 See Moshe Weinfeld, “‘Justice and Righteousness’ in Ancient Israel against the Background of ‘Social Reforms’ in the ancient Near East” in Mesopotamien und seine Nachbarn: politische und kulturelle Wechselbeziehungen im alten Vorderasien vom 4. bis 1. Jahrtausend v. Chr. (XXV. Rencontre assyriologique internationale Berlin, 3. bis 7. Juli 1978), ed. H. J. Nissen and J. Renger (Berlin: Reimer, 1987), 491–519. Williamson (Isaiah 1–27, 1:339–40) appreciates the sevenfold repetition of the root in vv. 2–5. Comp. by: M.SIVARAMAN Stage: Proof Chapter No.: 9 Date:28/4/18 Time:12:16:56 Page Number: 161 Title Name: CoueyEtAl Isaiah’s Love Song: A Reading of Isaiah 5:1–7 161 balanced couplets (and one triplet). Some initial word repetition from earlier stanzas in v. 5 (wǝʿattâ, nāʾ, ʿ-ś-h, kerem) eases the transition and continues to build coherence into the song. Here, too, another outbreak of prosiness is encountered. In the main, the clutter of prose particles (ʾet-, ʾēt, ʾăšer) and the syntactic expansion slow the tempo down as a way of setting up and making plain the announcement of what the farmer is now about to “do” (ʿōśeh) to his vineyard. And as in the other instances, the prose touches are poeticized. Here note the alliteration of alephs and ayins, the staging of ʾôdîʿâ-nāʾ (“I will tell you”) so that it chimes with ʾāšîrâ nnāʾ (“I will sing”) from the opening line (v. 1), and the use of the markers of direct object (ʾet-, ʾēt) to accentuate line structure. The two couplets and one triplet that follow describe the farmer’s decultivation of his vineyard. These lines in the farmer’s voice answer to and oppose the three couplets in v. 2, where the farmer’s labors (of love) on behalf of his vineyard were first narrated. In fact, these lines appear as the material undoing of those earlier lines. The formal elegance of three unbalanced, qînâ-shaped couplets in v. 2 – with each line headed by a conjunctive waw and the wayyiqtol form repeated six times over – is completely unraveled in vv. 5–6. The run of couplets this time is exploded by the song’s lone triplet (v. 6); none of the line groupings are patterned alike; and the dominantly parallelistic strategy in v. 2 gives way to the song’s most strikingly enjambed couplet: “and the clouds I will command / from raining upon it rain” (v. 6). The nonnormative, tortured syntax here seems to be the final ruining of the smooth run of wayyiqtols in the earlier lines.32 And just to underscore the point, waʾăšîtēhû, “I will make it” (v. 6) mimes the sonic pattern of the poem’s first three wayyiqtols (wayʿazzǝqēhû, “he dug it,” waysaqqǝlēhû, “he cleared it of stones,” wayyit tāʿēhû, “he planted it,” v. 2), only now as an act of unmaking, of __ decultivation (bātâ, “wasteland”).33 The semantics follow suit. In place of the digging, clearing, planting, and building of cultivation, the farmer announces his intention to destroy the vineyard’s hedge/wall, to cease hoeing and pruning (the routine tasks of care demanded by grape growing, cf. Gezer Calendar, l. 6), and even to 32 33 The stanza starts out with the song’s other pronounced bit of enjambment (v. 5), forming a nice inclusio that gives formal shape to this section. Bātâ is a hapax legomenon (cf. MH bātâ, “destruction”) with no obvious cognates. The sense seems clear enough from context – waste, ruin, desolation, destruction (cf. Syr., Vulg.). Comp. by: M.SIVARAMAN Stage: Proof Chapter No.: 9 Date:28/4/18 Time:12:16:57 Page Number: 162 162 Title Name: CoueyEtAl F. W. Dobbs-Allsopp withhold the life-giving rain that all agriculture depended on in this part of the world. This last, like the positioning of the vineyard as a party to a legal dispute, jars a bit; this is no ordinary farmer. These lines also feature sound- and wordplay: hāsēr, “removing” // bāʿēr, “devoured,” lōʾ yizzāmēr, “not be pruned” // lōʾ yēʿādēr, “not be hoed,” and mēhamtîr, “rain” _ // mātār, “rain.” These prepare auditors for the song’s final punch lines, _ which depend on line-internal rhyming (mišpāt, “justice” // miśpāh, _ _ “bloodshed” and sǝdāqâ, “righteousness” // sǝʿāqâ, “outcry,” v. 7). Note _ _ also the alliterative pairing šāmîr wāšāyit (“thorns and thistles”) and the sequence wǝʿālâ . . . wǝʿal . . . ʿālāyw (“and upon it . . . and upon . . . upon it”) punctuating the last three lines in v. 6. v The song’s concluding movement in v. 7 is marked initially by kî (“for, because”) – a particle that commonly appears at the end of biblical poems and sections of poems (e.g., Isa 1:20; Amos 4:13; Ps 133:3; Job 3:10) – and yet another change in line length, shifting to slightly longer lines (nine to eleven syllables) than that which typifies the immediately preceding stanza (v. 6: seven to nine syllables). The return to the third-person perspective of the song’s beginning (vv. 1–2) completes a version of the ring structure that so often contains and thus closes traditional songs. And then there is the change-up to verbless clauses. Most of the poem’s clauses to this point consist of verbal predicates – often involving finite verb forms. However, at the poem’s end in v. 7, the identity of the players in the allegory are finally revealed in a couplet consisting of verbless clauses: kî kerem yhwh sǝbāʾôt bêt yiśrāʾēl wǝʾîš yǝhûdâ nǝ_taʿ šaʿăšûʿāyw _ For the vineyard of Yahweh Sabaoth (is) the house of Israel and the people of Judah (are) the planting of his delight. The actional flow of verbal clauses momentarily stops in the stasis created by the two verbless clauses for the allegory’s unveiling. The final couplet is set up verbally (wayqaw, “and he waited/hoped,” echoing the ends of the first two stanzas in vv. 2, 4), but it too derives its punch through the contrasting verbless clauses at the ends of its two lines. Here the stasis underscores the damning disappointment and contrary reality, quite literally stopping the poem. This last bit of justly celebrated rhyming helps to close the poem forcefully, emphatically: Comp. by: M.SIVARAMAN Stage: Proof Chapter No.: 9 Date:28/4/18 Time:12:16:57 Page Number: 163 Title Name: CoueyEtAl Isaiah’s Love Song: A Reading of Isaiah 5:1–7 163 wayqaw lǝmišpāt wǝhinnê miśpāh _ lisdāqâ wǝhinnê _sǝʿāqâ _ _ He hoped for justice but instead there was bloodshed, for righteousness but instead there was outcry. (Isa 5:7) The missed expectations are mimed sonically and formally in the consonantal mismatches in the pairs mišpāt //miśpāh and sǝdāqâ //sǝʿāqâ, while _ _ _ _ the rhyming holds the pairs together so that auditors can hear (and 34 readers see) the mismatch. As it has been throughout the poem, the vineyard is the main focus of the allegorical move here at poem’s end. The citizenry of Israel and Judah – especially the elders and ruling elites – now is shifted from judge and onlooker (vv. 3, 5) to participant and target, as a consequence of being identified as the vineyard and the “planting” of Yahweh’s “delight” in v. 7. The poetics work to catch the citizenry out, to reveal in the language of the song the prevalence of miśpāh, “bloodshed” and sǝʿāqâ, _ _ “outcry” where there should be mišpāt, “justice” and sǝdāqâ, “righteous_ _ ness.” By contrast, the allegorization of Yahweh Sabaoth as lover and farmer is not scripted in the same way at the surface of the poem, but is more oblique. Ancient allegories frequently make explicit their participants (e.g., Ezek 23:4), but here there is no corresponding identification of Yahweh as farmer or lover (contrast Isa 27:3: “I Yahweh am its keeper”). Indeed, the farmer’s assumption of the divine powers to control the rain in v. 6 (see Job 38:25–28) suggests that the punch at poem’s end is not principally fixated on Yahweh. That is, the allegorizing in this poem is mainly limited and local and not wholesale.35 The slight unbalance in the length of lines in the final couplet (four words // three words) alludes to the qînâ rhythm that shaped vv. 2–4. This adds to the poem’s ending an undertone of mourning. But the prophets 34 35 The word miśpāh (glossed as “bloodshed”) is another hapax legomenon (cf. Arab. safaha, “to pour _out, shed”; saffāh, “shedder of blood, murderer”; Wildberger, Isaiah _ _ 1–12, 185). As with bǝʾûšîm in vv. 2 and 4, miśpāh may be a made-up rhyme word. _ Indeed, if its root derives from *s-p-h (cf. mispahat, “skin rash,” sappahat, “scab”), then _ _ _ perhaps even the spelling has been altered (cf. śippah in Isa 3:17). The spelling with a sin _ – which implies an anticipation of graphically enhances and underscores the aural play readers and not just listeners for this text. Thus Ronald E. Clements speaks appropriately of “allegorical features” (Isaiah 1–39, NCBC [Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1980], 56; cf. Blenkinsopp, Isaiah 1–39, 207; Couey, Reading the Poetry of First Isaiah, 162, n. 89; Jeremy Schipper, Parables and Conflict in the Hebrew Bible [Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2009], 112). Comp. by: M.SIVARAMAN Stage: Proof Chapter No.: 9 Date:28/4/18 Time:12:16:57 Page Number: 164 164 Title Name: CoueyEtAl F. W. Dobbs-Allsopp were fond of using the dirge (qînâ) ironically as a kind of condemnatory critique that proclaims the impending downfall of some person or polity, as in Ezekiel’s dirge over the king of Tyre (Ezek 27:1–36) or in Isaiah’s own māšāl (cum dirge) over the king of Babylon (Isa 14:3–23; see also Isa 47:1–15; Amos 5:1–3). So there is also a bite to Isaiah’s lament over the lack of mišpāt and sǝdāqâ. Indeed, the whole point of the little ditty is _ _ simple: to underscore this lack. Whatever specificity might accompany the terms miśpāh and sǝʿāqâ – the first is a hapax legomenon whose etymol_ _ ogy has yet to be fully unraveled and the second a general cry of despair or suffering (e.g., Exod 3:9; Ps 9:13 [ET 9:12]; Job 27:9) – they chiefly mark (sonically and formally) a rupture in the unquestioned and thus traditional norms of mišpāt, “justice” and sǝdāqâ, “righteousness,” _ _ which are paired more than forty times in the Bible (e.g., Gen 18:19; 2 Sam 8:15; Isa 1:27; Ps 72:1–2; cf. KAI 4.6–7). This is yet another point at which this poem makes plain its extratextual appeal to shared experience and tradition. The song does not so much explicate the wrongs that have generated miśpāh and sǝʿāqâ as expose and name them for what every_ _ body already knows them to be, namely, not mišpāt and not sǝdāqâ. _ _ Indeed, refusing a fifth iteration of the verb ʿ-ś-h, “to do, make” only adumbrates the complaint, a figural erasure of the traditional exhortation to do “justice” and “righteousness” (esp. Gen 18:19; Jer 22:3; Pss 99:4; 119:121; Prov 21:3; 2 Chron 9:8).36 At stake here is the very foundation of the cultured world – or better, the cultivated world (see Gen 2:8) – as the ancients knew it. The gods were responsible for establishing the foundations of the earth (Ps 102:26 [ET 102:25]; Job 38:4), and the lack of justice on earth could threaten to topple those foundations (Amos 8:4–8; Ps 82:5). Ancient love songs were sung to many ends, including securing divine blessing and ensuring fecundity and human flourishing. The latter is most obviously at issue in the so-called sacred marriage texts from ancient Mesopotamia. That the erotic was also an appropriate vernacular means for giving expression to similar themes in ancient Israel and Judah (and Persian period Yehud) is indicated by texts such as Hosea 2, Jer 3:1–5, Ezekiel 16 and 23, and Isaiah 54.37 This suggests that Isaiah’s choice to riff on a love song likely 36 37 G, Vulg., and Tg. resort to periphrastic renderings that supply the expected idiom that MT (and 1QIsaa) so artfully resists, thus ramifying the erasure itself and the damning critique it reveals. David M. Carr (The Erotic Word: Sexuality, Spirituality, and the Bible [New York: Oxford University Press, 2003], 65–72) rightly reads these texts together with Isa 5:1–7, sensing their broad literary kinship. Comp. by: M.SIVARAMAN Stage: Proof Chapter No.: 9 Date:28/4/18 Time:12:16:57 Page Number: 165 Title Name: CoueyEtAl Isaiah’s Love Song: A Reading of Isaiah 5:1–7 165 was intended to trade on these extratextual associations of the genre all along. That is, the final upshot of the small poem is to point up the failure to maintain traditional norms of justice and right-ness in Israel and Judah, a theme that was commonly enough inflected in the language of love. In the Bible (especially in the prophets), the staging of the erotic mythologically (i.e., involving Yahweh) is usually negative – at times even pornographic and/or misogynistic – and in service of critique. Yahweh is imagined as the jealous and wronged husband. Nowhere in Isa 5:1–7 is divine love elaborated narratively. No personification is ever evoked. There is no mention of marriage, sex, or adultery. The thematic touch is light and weighted toward the beginning of the short song. Nevertheless, the love song genre is entirely appropriate as a means to expose the rift in the divine-human relationship that emerges when basic norms of social justice falter. *** In his assessment of the form of Isa 5:1–7, Hans Wildberger reports that “it is frequently suggested that Isaiah wants to get the attention of his listeners by playing the part of a popular singer.”38 While Wildberger never totally disavows this idea, he seems to distance his own thinking from it, ultimately stressing the song’s formal resemblances to an “accusation speech” – something, one suspects, felt to be just a bit more serious than a simple love ditty.39 For me, however, Wildberger’s initial impression seems spot on. I do think Isaiah is posing (in a way) as a popular singer and spoofing a love song. Prophets were traditional performers, of whom we may presume a range of performative competencies (see 1 Kgs 20:35–43). This includes singing, which is specifically the image (however unflattering) in Ezek 33:32.40 And the repurposing of (verbal) art forms to different ends – here a love song – is well attested already in antiquity (e.g., the mock dirge in Isa 14:3–23; the Joban poet’s parody of Deut 32 in Job 12:7–841). As I have tried to indicate above, the vernacular of love in antiquity could be put to various uses, including critique, and staged 38 39 40 41 Wildberger, Isaiah 1–12, 177. Wildberger, Isaiah 1–12, 178; cf. Carr, Erotic Word, 60. Dennis Pardee, The Ugaritic Texts and the Origins of West Semitic Literary Composition (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2012), 123. Edward L. Greenstein, “Parody as a Challenge to Tradition: The Use of Deuteronomy 32 in the Book of Job” in Reading Job Intertextually, ed. K. J. Dell and W. Kynes, JSOTSup 574 (New York: Bloomsbury T&T Clark, 2012), 66–78. Comp. by: M.SIVARAMAN Stage: Proof Chapter No.: 9 Date:28/4/18 Time:12:16:58 Page Number: 166 166 Title Name: CoueyEtAl F. W. Dobbs-Allsopp mythologically, even in Israel and Judah. Thus Isaiah’s pose here, as a singer of love songs, is not at all innocent. In fact, the lyric medium of the love song is itself crucial to Isaiah’s exposé of the breakdown in mišpāt _ and sǝdāqâ. How he does it – as much through word- and soundplay, _ manipulation of rhythm, line-structure and form, as through semantics – is very much to point. The love song, like many of the Bible’s other nonnarrative poetic genres, is more than its thematic bits. In the end, then, Isaiah’s love song in behest of beloved divinity and about a muchloved vineyard proves to be a most congenial vehicle for his prophetic critique.