Texts in Conversation
Isaiah 9 describes people who have already seen the light and rejoiced. The Greek Septuagint translation shifts to the future tense and speaks directly to the audience, rewriting it into a promise of what they will one day experience.
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2500 BCE
1000+ CE
Isaiah 9:2
Hebrew Bible
1 The gloom will be dispelled for those who were anxious. In earlier times he humiliated the land of Zebulun, and the land of Naphtali; but now he brings honor to the way of the sea, the region beyond the Jordan, and Galilee of the nations. 2 (9:1) The people walking in darkness see a bright light; light shines on those who live in a land of deep darkness. 3 You have enlarged the nation; you give them great joy. They rejoice in your presence as harvesters rejoice; as warriors celebrate when they divide up the plunder.
Date: 740–450 BCE (based on scholarly estimates)
LXX Isaiah 9:1
Septuagint
1 people walking in darkness, see a great light: you that dwell in the region and shadow of death, a light shall shine upon you. 2 The multitude of the people which you have brought down in your joy, they shall even rejoice before you as they that rejoice in harvest, and as they that divide the captured goods.
Date: 100–1 BCE (based on scholarly estimates)
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Notes and References
"... This verse exemplifies the imperativization and personalization that is common to LXX Isaiah. The reading tradition crystallized in the Masoretic text vocalizes our verb ... and the text is consistently descriptive in the third person. The Greek translator has read the initial verb ... and has converted the final prepositional phrase from the third to the second person plural. The outcome of these conversions is that the verse now addresses either the readers or the readers as proxy for some original group of hearers. It has been cut loose from its historical moorings and contemporized. One might well conclude that it has been moved in a homiletical direction ..."
David A. Baer, When We All Go Home: Translation and Theology in LXX Isaiah 56–66, JSOTSup 318 (Sheffield: Sheffield Academic, 2001), 46–47.
* 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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