Texts in Conversation
Isaiah 18 says God waits and watches from “my place,” an ambiguous location which may refer to heaven. The Greek Septuagint changes this to “my city,” placing God in Jerusalem and turning distant watching into a picture of active presence.
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2500 BCE
1000+ CE
Isaiah 18:4
Hebrew Bible
3 All you who live in the world, who reside on the earth, you will see a signal flag raised on the mountains; you will hear a trumpet being blown. 4 For this is what the Lord has told me: “I will wait and watch from my place, like scorching heat produced by the sunlight, like a cloud of mist in the heat of harvest.” 5 For before the harvest, when the bud has sprouted and the ripening fruit appears, he will cut off the unproductive shoots with pruning knives; he will prune the tendrils.
Date: 740–450 BCE (based on scholarly estimates)
LXX Isaiah 18:4
Septuagint
3 all shall be inhabited as an inhabited country; their land shall be as when a signal is raised from a mountain; it shall be audible as the sound of a trumpet. 4 For thus said the Lord to me, There shall be security in my city, as the light of noonday heat, and it shall be as a cloud of dew in the day of harvest. 5 Before the reaping time, when the flower has been completely formed, and the unripe grape has put forth its flower and blossomed, then he shall take away the little clusters with pruning-hooks, and shall take away the small branches, and cut them off;
Date: 100–1 BCE (based on scholarly estimates)
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Notes and References
"... In LXX Isaiah 18:4, the “place of God”, refers to Jerusalem, while the Masoretic text can also refer to a heavenly “place” of God. Furthermore, the statement of the Masoretic text, “I want to rest and look (at my place)” is rendered differently in the Septuagint; the translator might read (“I will give peace and security”), the latter instead of (“look up, look carefully”), or he did not find the latter in its Vorlage. He transmuted the announcement of disaster into a salvation announcement that has parallels elsewhere in Isaiah Septuagint; while, according to the Masoretic text, God does not intervene, the rendering in the Septuagint offers the possibility to introduce the concept of God’s intervention ..."
Martin Meiser, The Septuagint and Its Reception: Collected Essays (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2022), 150.
* 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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