Texts in Conversation
Isaiah 65:15 describes the unrighteous being forgotten and the faithful receiving a new name. The Aramaic translation in Targum Jonathan adds the “second death” to describe the final fate of the unrighteous. This addition reshapes the passage from shame and reversal to include eschatological judgment.
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Isaiah 65:15
Hebrew Bible
13 So this is what the Sovereign Lord says: “Look, my servants will eat, but you will be hungry. Look, my servants will drink, but you will be thirsty. Look, my servants will rejoice, but you will be humiliated. 14 Look, my servants will shout for joy as happiness fills their hearts. But you will cry out as sorrow fills your hearts; you will wail because your spirits will be crushed. 15 Your names will live on in the curse formulas of my chosen ones. The Sovereign Lord will kill you, but he will give his servants another name. 16 Whoever pronounces a blessing in the earth will do so in the name of the faithful God; whoever makes an oath in the earth will do so in the name of the faithful God. For past problems will be forgotten; I will no longer think about them.
Date: 7th-5th Centuries B.C.E. (based on scholarly estimates)
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Jonathan Isaiah 65:15
Targum
13 Therefore thus saith the Lord God, Behold, my righteous servants shall eat, but ye, wicked, shall be hungry: behold, my righteous servants shall drink, but ye, wicked, shall be thirsty: behold, my righteous servants shall rejoice, but ye, wicked, shall be ashamed: 14 Behold, my righteous servants shall sing for joy of heart, but ye shall cry for sorrow of heart, and ye shall howl for vexation of spirit. 15 And ye shall leave your name for a curse to my chosen: for the Lord God shall slay you with the second death, and call His righteous servants by another name: 16 That he who blesseth in the earth shall bless by the God of the covenant, and he that sweareth in the earth shall swear by the God of the covenant; because, the former troubles shall be forgotten, and because they shall be hidden from before me.
Date: 200-300 C.E. (based on scholarly estimates)
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Notes and References
"... There are six occurrences of the expression Second Death within the official Targums Onqelos and Jonathan, namely Deuteronomy 33:6, Isaiah 22:14, 65:6, 15, and Jeremiah 51:39. Moreover, it occurs in some of the Palestinian Targums to Deuteronomy 33:6, and in a variant reading to Targum Psalms 49:11 ... The meturgeman disconnected the positively coloured word ‘wise’ from the negative concept of dying, by taking the wise as the subject of the sentence and adding ‘the wicked’ as direct object. This interpretation reminds of Isaiah 33:17 and 66:24 ..."
Houtman, Alberdina and Magda Misset-van de Weg
"The Fate of the Wicked: Second Death in Early Jewish and Christian Texts" in Houtman, Alberdina, et. al. (eds.) Empsychoi Logoi – Religious Innovations in Antiquity: Studies in Honour of Pieter Willem van der Horst
(pp. 405-424) Brill, 2008
* 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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