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LXX Isaiah

Septuagint

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Chapter 51

1 Listen to me, you that follow after righteousness, and seek the Lord: look to the solid rock, which you have hewn, and to the hole of the pit which you have dug. 2 Look to Abraham your father, and to Sarah that bore you: for he was alone when I called him, and blessed him, and loved him, and multiplied him. 3 And now I will comfort you, Zion: and I have comforted all her desert places; and I will make her desert places as the garden of the Lord; they shall find in her gladness and exultation, thanksgiving and the voice of praise.⁠ 4 Hear me, hear me, my people; and you kings, listen to me: for a law shall proceed from me, and my judgment shall be for a light of the nations. 5 My righteousness speedily draws near, and my salvation shall go forth as light, and on my arm shall the Gentiles trust: the isles shall wait for me, and on my arm they will trust. 6 Lift up your eyes to the sky, and look on the earth beneath: for the sky was made firm like smoke, and the earth shall grow old like a garment,⁠ and the inhabitants shall die in like manner: but my salvation shall be for ever, and my righteousness shall not fail. 7 Hear me, you that know judgment, my people in whose heart is my law: do not fear the reproach of men, and do not be overcome by their contempt. 8 For as a garment will be devoured by time, and as wool will be devoured by a moth; but my righteousness shall be for ever, and my salvation for all generations. 9 Awake, awake, Jerusalem, and put on the strength of your arm; awake as in the early time, as the ancient generation. Are you not it⁠ 10 that dried the sea, the water, even the abundance of the deep; that made the depths of the sea a way of passage for the delivered 11 and redeemed? for by the help of the Lord they shall return, and come to Zion with joy and everlasting exultation, for exultation and praise shall be upon their head, and joy shall take hold of them: pain, and grief, and groaning, have fled away. 12 I, even I, am he that comforts you: consider who you are, that you were afraid of mortal man, and of the son of man, who are withered as grass. 13 And you have forgotten God who made you, who made the sky and founded the earth; and you were continually afraid all the days because of the fierce anger of him that afflicted you: for whereas he counseled to take you away, yet now where is the fierce anger of him that afflicted you? 14 For in your deliverance he shall not halt, nor wait; 15 for I am your God, that troubles the sea, and causes its waves to roar: the Lord of hosts is my name. 16 I will put my words into your mouth, and I will shelter you under the shadow of my hand, with which I fixed the sky, and founded the earth: and the Lord shall say to Zion, You are my people. 17 Awake, awake, stand up, Jerusalem, that have drunk at the hand of the Lord the cup of his fury: for you have drunk out and drained the cup of calamity, the cup of fierce anger: 18 and there was none to comfort you of all the children whom you bore; and there was none to take hold of your hand, not even of all the children whom you have reared. 19 These two things are against you; who shall sympathize with you in your grief? downfall, and destruction, famine, and sword: who shall comfort you? 20 Your sons are the perplexed ones, that sleep at the top of every street as a half-boiled beet; they that are full of the anger of the Lord, caused to faint by the Lord God. 21 Therefore hear, you afflicted one, and drunk, but not with wine; 22 thus says the Lord God that judges his people, Look, I have taken out of your hand the cup of calamity, the cup of my fierce anger; and you shall not drink it any more. 23 And I will give it into the hands of those who injured you, and those who afflicted you; who said to your soul, Bow down, that we may pass over: and you leveled your body with the ground to them passing by outside.

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Compare Isaiah 51:3 and LXX Isaiah 51:3

Hebrew Bible · Septuagint

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Summary

Isaiah 51 speaks of God’s future comfort for Zion in the third person. The Greek Septuagint translation shifts this into God’s own voice and changes some verbs so that God at times states what he did instead of what he will do.

Passages

Isaiah 51:3

Hebrew Bible
1 “Listen to me, you who pursue godliness, who seek the Lord. Look at the rock from which you were chiseled, at the quarry from which you were dug. 2 Look at Abraham, your father, and Sarah, who gave you birth. When I summoned him, he was a lone individual, but I blessed him and gave him numerous descendants. 3 Certainly the Lord will console Zion; he will console all her ruins. He will make her wilderness like Eden, her arid rift valley like the garden of the Lord. Happiness and joy will be restored to her, thanksgiving and the sound of music. 4 Pay attention to me, my people. Listen to me, my people! For I will issue a decree, I will make my justice a light to the nations. 5 I am ready to vindicate, I am ready to deliver, I will establish justice among the nations. The coastlands wait patiently for me; they wait in anticipation for the revelation of my power.
740–450 BCE (scholarly estimate) Read in Isaiah

LXX Isaiah 51:3

Septuagint
1 Listen to me, you that follow after righteousness, and seek the Lord: look to the solid rock, which you have hewn, and to the hole of the pit which you have dug. 2 Look to Abraham your father, and to Sarah that bore you: for he was alone when I called him, and blessed him, and loved him, and multiplied him. 3 And now I will comfort you, Zion: and I have comforted all her desert places; and I will make her desert places as the garden of the Lord; they shall find in her gladness and exultation, thanksgiving and the voice of praise. 4 Hear me, hear me, my people; and you kings, listen to me: for a law shall proceed from me, and my judgment shall be for a light of the nations. 5 My righteousness speedily draws near, and my salvation shall go forth as light, and on my arm shall the Gentiles trust: the isles shall wait for me, and on my arm they will trust.
100–1 BCE (scholarly estimate) Read in LXX Isaiah

References

"... Even God himself emerges from the shadows of reported deeds to speak directly to Zion for himself. In 51:3 three descriptions of divine activity are turned into first-person accounts ... Furthermore, the addition of vuv and the translation of the Hebrew perfect by the future tense ... raise the possibility that this report has been entirely contemporized, and is being applied in a more directly homiletical fashion to a contemporary audience that has not yet seen Zion comforted in its day ..."
David A. Baer, When We All Go Home: Translation and Theology in LXX Isaiah 56–66, JSOTSup 318 (Sheffield: Sheffield Academic, 2001), 55.

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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