Texts in Conversation
Isaiah 21 ends God’s instruction with a command that the sentry must stay alert. The Greek Septuagint translation changes the end of what God says into a narrative observation, shifting from divine speech to a description directed at the reader.
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2500 BCE
1000+ CE
Isaiah 21:7
Hebrew Bible
5 Arrange the table, lay out the carpet, eat and drink! Get up, you officers, smear oil on the shields! 6 For this is what the Lord has told me: “Go, post a guard! He must report what he sees. 7 When he sees chariots, teams of horses, riders on donkeys, riders on camels, he must be alert, very alert.” 8 Then the guard cries out: “On the watchtower, O Lord, I stand all day long; at my post I am stationed every night. 9 Look what’s coming! A charioteer, a team of horses.” When questioned, he replies, “Babylon has fallen, fallen! All the idols of her gods lie shattered on the ground!”
Date: 740–450 BCE (based on scholarly estimates)
LXX Isaiah 21:7
Septuagint
5 Prepare the table, drink, eat: arise, you princes, and prepare your shields. 6 For thus said the Lord to me, Go and station a watchman for yourself, and declare whatever you shall see. 7 And I saw two mounted horsemen, and a rider on an donkey, and a rider on a camel. Listen with great attention, 8 and call Uriah to the watch-tower of the Lord. And he said, I stood continually during the day, and I stood in the camp all night: 9 and, look, he comes riding in a chariot and pair: and he answered and said, Babylon is fallen; and all her images and her idols have been crushed to the ground.
Date: 100–1 BCE (based on scholarly estimates)
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Notes and References
"... In Isaiah 21.7 one reads of a sentry's attentive listening in these terms ... The LXX changes this third-person prediction to an imperative ... It is unclear whether the translator considers the imperative to be directed towards the sentry - as it is the sentry who will hear in the Masoretic text - or towards the reader. At first glance, the former seems more likely ..."
David A. Baer, When We All Go Home: Translation and Theology in LXX Isaiah 56–66, JSOTSup 318 (Sheffield: Sheffield Academic, 2001), 30–31.
* The use of references are not endorsements of their contents. Please read the entirety of the provided reference(s) to understand the author's full intentions regarding the use of these texts.
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