Texts in Conversation
Isaiah 26 describes others turning to God in distress, using third-person language for a collective response to discipline. The Greek Septuagint translation shifts this to a first-person statement, with the speakers themselves recalling their experience.
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2500 BCE
1000+ CE
Isaiah 26:16
Hebrew Bible
14 The dead do not come back to life, the spirits of the dead do not rise. That is because you came in judgment and destroyed them, you wiped out all memory of them. 15 You have made the nation larger, O Lord; you have made the nation larger and revealed your splendor; you have extended all the borders of the land. 16 O Lord, in distress they looked for you; they uttered incantations because of your discipline. 17 As when a pregnant woman gets ready to deliver and strains and cries out because of her labor pains, so were we because of you, O Lord. 18 We were pregnant, we strained, we gave birth, as it were, to wind. We cannot produce deliverance on the earth; no people are born to populate the world.
Date: 740–450 BCE (based on scholarly estimates)
LXX Isaiah 26:16
Septuagint
14 But the dead shall not see life, neither shall physicians by any means raise them up: therefore you have brought fierce anger upon them, and killed them, and have taken away every male of them. 15 Bring more evils upon them, Lord; bring more evils on all the glorious ones of the earth. 16 Lord, in affliction I remembered you; your chastening was to us with small affliction. 17 And as a woman in labor draws near to be delivered, and cries out in her pain; so we have been to your beloved, because of your fear, Lord. 18 We have conceived, and have been in pain, and have brought forth the breath of your salvation, which we have made upon the earth: but they that dwell upon the earth shall fall. 19 The dead shall rise, and they that are in the tombs shall be raised, and they that are in the earth shall rejoice: for the dew from you is healing to them: but the land of the ungodly shall perish.
Date: 100–1 BCE (based on scholarly estimates)
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Notes and References
"... In 26:16, a personalizing conversion redirects the human piety and divine discipline that are found in the Masoretic text towards first-person referents. The plaintive cry, 'O Lord, in distress they sought thee, they poured out a prayer when your chastening was upon them', becomes the more immediate, 'Lord, in distress / remembered thee, in slight affliction was thy correction upon us' ..."
David A. Baer, When We All Go Home: Translation and Theology in LXX Isaiah 56–66, JSOTSup 318 (Sheffield: Sheffield Academic, 2001), 55.
* 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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