Texts in Conversation
Isaiah describes the narrow escape of a small remnant, comparing Judah’s near destruction to the fate of Sodom. The Greek Septuagint omits the word meaning “small,” suggesting a larger, more visible surviving community, based on the translator's reality.
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2500 BCE
1000+ CE
Isaiah 1:9
Hebrew Bible
8 Daughter Zion is left isolated, like a hut in a vineyard or a shelter in a cucumber field; she is a besieged city. 9 If the Lord of Heaven’s Armies had not left us a few survivors, we would have quickly been like Sodom, we would have become like Gomorrah. 10 Listen to the Lord’s message, you leaders of Sodom! Pay attention to our God’s rebuke, people of Gomorrah!
Date: 740–450 BCE (based on scholarly estimates)
LXX Isaiah 1:9
Septuagint
8 The daughter of Zion shall be deserted as a tent in a vineyard, and as a storehouse of fruits in a garden of cucumbers, as a besieged city. 9 And if the Lord of Sabaoth had not left us a seed, we should have been as Sodom, and we should have been made like Gomorrah. 10 Hear the word of the Lord, you rulers of Sodom; attend to the law of God, you people of Gomorrah.
Date: 100–1 BCE (based on scholarly estimates)
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Notes and References
"... Re-thinking history leads to piety: God had punished Israel by exiling and martyrdom; Israel, however, had not been totally destroyed but was alive. In Isaiah 1:9, the Greek translator deliberately left out the modifier “little” because he “actualized the text in the light of a very considerable Jewish community in Palestine and the Diaspora, which was, for the translator, no small thing” ..."
Martin Meiser, The Septuagint and Its Reception: Collected Essays (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2022), 105.
* 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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