Texts in Conversation
Isaiah 11 describes a future return from Assyria, similar to the exodus from Egypt. The Greek Septuagint translation changes Assyria to Egypt, since there were likely not many Jewish people in Assyria when the Septuagint was translated.
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2500 BCE
1000+ CE
Isaiah 11:16
Hebrew Bible
15 The Lord will divide the gulf of the Egyptian Sea; he will wave his hand over the Euphrates River and send a strong wind; he will turn it into seven dried-up streams and enable them to walk across in their sandals. 16 There will be a highway leading out of Assyria for the remnant of his people, just as there was for Israel, when they went up from the land of Egypt.
Date: 740–450 BCE (based on scholarly estimates)
LXX Isaiah 11:16
Septuagint
15 And the Lord shall make desolate the sea of Egypt; and he shall lay his hand on the river with a strong wind, and he shall strike the seven channels, so that men shall pass through it dry-shod. 16 And there shall be a passage for my people that is left in Egypt: and it shall be to Israel as the day when he came forth out of the land of Egypt.
Date: 100–1 BCE (based on scholarly estimates)
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Notes and References
"... analyzing comparatively the passage under inspection and its Hebrew parent text, it is worth saying a few words regarding the dating of the text. While many of those working on the Hebrew text of this passage still wrestle on whether to take it as a pre-exilic or postexilic text, the LXX scholars should note on the one hand Troxel’s aforementioned interesting observation concerning the translator’s reliance on texts (via intertextual links) dated from the third century B.C.E, and, on the other hand, the reference in LXX Isaiah 11:16 to “a highway that will be made across the Delta and the Egyptian sea, not for the Assyrians, as in the Masoretic text, but for ‘my people left in Egypt’.” These elements alone strongly suggest that we are dealing here with a text that is made to clearly refer to the Hellenistic Diaspora ..."
Abi T. Ngunga, Messianism in the Old Greek of Isaiah: An Intertextual Analysis, FRLANT 245 (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2013), 100–101.
* 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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