Isaiah 26:16
Hebrew Bible
14 The dead do not come back to life, the spirits of the dead do not rise. That is because you came in judgment and destroyed them, you wiped out all memory of them. 15 You have made the nation larger, O Lord; you have made the nation larger and revealed your splendor; you have extended all the borders of the land. 16 O Lord, in distress they looked for you; they uttered incantations because of your discipline. 17 As when a pregnant woman gets ready to deliver and strains and cries out because of her labor pains, so were we because of you, O Lord. 18 We were pregnant, we strained, we gave birth, as it were, to wind. We cannot produce deliverance on the earth; no people are born to populate the world.
Date: 7th-5th Centuries B.C.E. (based on scholarly estimates)
Source
LXX Isaiah 26:16
Septuagint
14 But the dead will not see life, nor will physicians raise them up; because of this you have brought them and destroyed them and taken away all their males. 15 Increase evils on them, O Lord; increase evils on the glorious ones of the earth. 16 O Lord, in affliction I remembered you; with small affliction your chastening was on us. 17 And as a woman in travail is about to give birth and cries out in her pangs, so were we to your beloved because of the fear of you, O Lord. We conceived and travailed and gave birth; we produced a wind of your salvation on the earth, but those who dwell on the earth will fall. 19 The dead shall rise, and those who are in the tombs shall be raised, and those who are in the earth shall rejoice; for the dew from you is healing to them, but the land of the impious shall fall.
Date: 1st Century B.C.E. (based on scholarly estimates)
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Texts in Conversation
The Hebrew version of Isaiah 26:16 describes others turning to God in distress, using third-person language to depict a collective response to discipline. The Greek Septuagint translation shifts this to a first-person statement, with the speakers themselves recalling their experience.
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Notes and References
"... In 26:16, a personalizing conversion redirects the human piety and divine discipline that are found in the Masoretic text towards first-person referents. The plaintive cry, 'O Lord, in distress they sought thee, they poured out a prayer when your chastening was upon them', becomes the more immediate, 'Lord, in distress / remembered thee, in slight affliction was thy correction upon us' ..."
Baer, David A.
When We All Go Home: Translation and Theology in LXX Isaiah 56-66
(p. 55) Sheffield Academic Press, 2001
* 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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