Texts in Conversation
The language of restoration in Isaiah 35 resembles earlier ancient Near Eastern traditions, such as the Akkadian Surpu tablets, that similarly describe the god Marduk healing the sick and restoring the people.
Share:
Surpu IV
Sumerian and Akkadian Incantations
Ancient Near East
It rests with you, Marduk, to keep safe and sound, the committing of assault or violence, who defeated the Asakku, to eat what is taboo to one’s god, to infringe an interdict and to release it, to visit the wife of one’s friend secretly, to visit unwittingly the daughter of his god, bad luck, complaint, the pointing of the finger, the complaining to the god, to say how happy! and not to guide, to make the angry god and goddess return to a man, to conciliate a person’s wrathful god, angry goddess, to pacify the angry heart of the god and the goddess, to extirpate sin, to remove crime, to make good error, to heal the sick, to lift up the fallen, to take the weak by the hand, to change a bad fate, to bestow a good protective god upon somebody,
Date: 1200 B.C.E. (based on scholarly estimates)
Isaiah 35:3
Hebrew Bible
2 Let it richly bloom; let it rejoice and shout with delight! It is given the grandeur of Lebanon, the splendor of Carmel and Sharon. They will see the grandeur of the Lord, the splendor of our God. 3 Strengthen the hands that have gone limp, steady the knees that shake. 4 Tell those who panic, “Be strong! Do not fear! Look, your God comes to avenge; with divine retribution he comes to deliver you.” 5 Then blind eyes will open, deaf ears will hear. 6 Then the lame will leap like a deer, the mute tongue will shout for joy; for water will burst forth in the wilderness, streams in the arid rift valley. 7 The dry soil will become a pool of water, the parched ground springs of water. Where jackals once lived and sprawled out, grass, reeds, and papyrus will grow.
Search:
Notes and References
"... In official cult activities as in personal beliefs, the prayers composed in the Akkadian language stood alongside different religious texts in both Sumerian and Akkadian – namely, incantations, hymns, lamentations and other kinds of songs as well as longer literary works commonly called myths and epics by modern scholars. Although different ancient terms were used, all Akkadian prayers had more or less similar, if not identical roles in the cult and daily life of these ancient people. It is, however, rather complicated to determine what ‘a prayer’ was in antiquity or what kind of ancient texts belonged to the genre of ‘prayer’. The modern classifications of ancient Mesopotamian texts are normally given on the basis of comparison of the contents of the ancient texts with their equivalents in the Bible but with no regard to the ancient identifications. Hence these categorizations do not always present entirely accurate pictures.15 There are two reasons for such inaccuracy: 1) the difference of conceptions with regard to certain styles of compositions between the Akkadian speakers and modern people, and 2) similarities in formulae and contents shared by different genres.16 Some scholars often classify a text as a prayer while others call the exactly the same text a hymn or a psalm ..."
* 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.
Your Feedback:
Leave a Comment
Anonymous comments are welcome. All comments are subject to moderation.