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LXX Isaiah

Septuagint

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Chapter 34

1 Draw near, you nations; and listen, you princes; let the earth hear, and they that are in it; the world, and the people that are in it. 2 For the fierce anger of the Lord is upon all nations, and his anger upon the number of them, to destroy them, and give them up to slaughter. 3 And their people who were killed shall be cast forth, and their corpses; and their ill aroma shall come up, and the mountains shall be made wet with their blood. 4 And the sky shall be rolled up like a scroll: and all the stars shall fall like leaves from a vine, and as leaves fall from a fig tree.⁠ 5 My sword has been made drunk in heaven: look, it shall come down upon Idumea, and with judgment upon the people doomed to destruction. 6 The sword of the Lord is filled with blood, it is glutted with the fat of lambs, and with the fat of goats and rams: for the Lord has a sacrifice in Bozrah, and a great slaughter in Idumea. 7 And the mighty ones shall fall with them, and the rams and the bulls; and the land shall be soaked with blood, and shall be filled with their fat. 8 For it is the day of judgment of the Lord, and the year of the recompense of Zion in judgment. 9 And her valleys shall be turned into pitch, and her land into sulfur; and her land shall be as pitch burning 10 night and day; and it shall never be quenched, and her smoke shall go up: it shall be made desolate throughout her generations, and for a long time; 11 and birds and hedgehogs, and ibises and ravens shall dwell in it: and the measuring line of desolation shall be cast over it,⁠ and donkey-centaurs shall dwell in it. 12 Her princes shall be no more; for her kings and her princes and her great men shall be destroyed. 13 And thorns shall spring up in their cities, and in her strong holds: and they shall be habitations of monsters, and a court of ostriches. 14 And demons shall meet with donkey-centaurs, and they shall cry one to the other: there shall donkey-centaurs rest,⁠ having found for themselves a place of rest. 15 There the hedgehog has made its nest, and the earth has safely preserved its young: there the deer have met, and seen one another's faces. 16 They passed by in full number, and not one of them perished: they did not seek one another; for the Lord commanded them, and his Spirit gathered them. 17 And he shall cast lots for them, and his hand has portioned out their pasture, saying, You shall inherit the land for ever: they shall rest on it through all generations.

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Compare Isaiah 34:11 and LXX Isaiah 34:11

Hebrew Bible · Septuagint

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Summary

Isaiah 34 describes a cursed wasteland, with the Hebrew referencing wild birds and animals. The Greek Septuagint inserts fantastical and mythological birds and also adds a reference to a “donkey centaur” which may also be translated as “goat demon.”

Passages

Isaiah 34:11

Hebrew Bible
10 Night and day it will burn; its smoke will ascend continually. Generation after generation it will be a wasteland, and no one will ever pass through it again. 11 Owls and wild animals will live there, all kinds of wild birds will settle in it. The Lord will stretch out over her the measuring line of ruin and the plumb line of destruction. 12 Her nobles will have nothing left to call a kingdom, and all her officials will disappear.
740–450 BCE (scholarly estimate) Read in Isaiah

LXX Isaiah 34:11

Septuagint
10 night and day; and it shall never be quenched, and her smoke shall go up: it shall be made desolate throughout her generations, and for a long time; 11 and birds and hedgehogs, and ibises and ravens shall dwell in it: and the measuring line of desolation shall be cast over it, and donkey-centaurs shall dwell in it. 12 Her princes shall be no more; for her kings and her princes and her great men shall be destroyed.
100–1 BCE (scholarly estimate) Read in LXX Isaiah

References

"... The Septuagint of Isaiah has a minus in 24:10. In place of Hebrewּ ("the desolate town is destroyed"), the Greek reads ("every town is deserted"). Tov marks תֹהוּ as the minus. While there is no precedent for a שָׁבַר // ἐρημόω equivalent, the Isaiah translator uses ἔρημος as an equivalent for תֹהוּ in 34:11. This suggests that the minus pertains to נִשְׁבָּה. In either case, the translator has condensed the Hebrew phrase. There is also a significant transformation in 34:11 ... Tov suggests the Hebrew has been condensed into a single phrase, while καὶ οἰκοπετοῦνται οἰκήσουσιν ἐν αὐτῇ appears as a plus .. Isaiah 24:10 and 34:11 ... Alternatively, the translator has rendered only the first part of the Hebrew phrase accurately and, for whatever reason, rendered the second with καὶ οἰκοπετοῦνται οἰκήσουσιν ἐν αὐτῇ. Ottley notes these two possibilities and suggests the former option might be an addition from Isaiah 13:22 ..."
Aaron C. Fenlason, “Translation Technique and the Intertextuality of Creation in LXX Isaiah 40–55” (PhD diss., Midwestern Baptist Theological Seminary, 2022), 113.
"... while one might expect a clear distinction between the mythical and the unclean, several non-pentateuchal texts associate them quite closely. Overlap appears most prominently in Isa 34:11–14, where both wild and mythical birds or creatures comprise the list of various ruin dwellers: hawk, owl, Lilith, and possibly “goat demon.” The importance of hybridity as a conception for the “demonic” or for “evil” or just for the “powers beyond the human world” may provide some insight into the conceptual distinctions between “clean/unclean” or “shunned/welcomed” in the legal texts. Houston makes this connection explicit ..."
Peter Altmann, Banned Birds: The Birds of Leviticus 11 and Deuteronomy 14 (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2019), 44.

References are not endorsements of their contents. Read each reference in full to understand its author's intentions in using these texts.

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