Texts in Conversation
Isaiah 49 changes Anat's battle feast in the Baal Cycle into the enemies' destruction of themselves, turning an older image of divine violence into a promise of rescue for Zion.
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2500 BCE
1000+ CE
KTU 1.3 II:20
Cuneiform Texts from Ugarit
Ancient Near East
Then behold! Anat proceeded to her house, the goddess started for her palace; but she was not sated with her fighting in the vale, her battling between the two cities. She arranged chairs for the warriors, she did arrange tables for the soldiers, stools for the heroes. Anat fought hard and looked, she battled and surveyed the scene; her liver swelled with laughter, her heart was filled with joy, the liver of Anat with triumph, as she plunged her knees in the blood of the guards, her skirts in the gore of the warriors, until she was sated with fighting in the house, with battling between the tables. The blood of the guards was wiped from the house and oil of a peace-offering was poured from a bowl. The virgin Anat washed her hands, the sister-in-law of peoples her fingers; she washed her hands of the blood of the guards, her fingers of the gore of the warriors.
Isaiah 49:26
Hebrew Bible
23 Kings will be your children’s guardians; their princesses will nurse your children. With their faces to the ground they will bow down to you, and they will lick the dirt on your feet. Then you will recognize that I am the Lord; those who wait patiently for me are not put to shame. 24 Can spoils be taken from a warrior, or captives be rescued from a conqueror? 25 Indeed,” says the Lord, “ captives will be taken from a warrior; spoils will be rescued from a conqueror. I will oppose your adversary and I will rescue your children. 26 I will make your oppressors eat their own flesh; they will get drunk on their own blood, as if it were wine. Then all humankind will recognize that I am the Lord, your Deliverer, your Protector, the Powerful One of Jacob.”
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Notes and References
“... Third, the battle produces heaps of corpses (Isa. 34:2) or skulls (Deut.
32:43; Ps. 110:6). The image of harvest appears in Anat’s “gleaning” and in
some biblical scenes of divine war (Joel 3:13; Rev. 14:14-20; cf. secular
examples in Judg. 8:1-2; 20:44-46; Jer. 6:9; cf. Jer. 49:9; Obadiah 5). Fourth,
like the second part of the Ugaritic passage given above, the aftermath of war
is described as a feast, a feature attested in Isaiah 34:6-7, 49:26 and perhaps
presupposed in the sacrificial language of Deuteronomy 32:43. This feast
includes feeding on the flesh of captives (Deut. 32:42), drinking the blood of
the victims (Isa. 49:26; LXX Zech. 9:15; cf. Num. 23:24), called “captives” in
Deuteronomy 32:42 (as in KTU 1.3 II), and wading in the blood of the
vanquished (Pss. 58:11; 68:24). Isaiah 49:26 alters the motif of feeding on the
captives. In this verse, the enemies will cannibalize themselves: “I will make
your oppressors eat their own flesh, and they shall be drunk with their own
blood as with wine.” The image of wading in the blood may be related to the
theme of the battle as bloody harvest. Because of its blood red color, the
image of the wine harvest appears in biblical descriptions of divine war (Deut.
32:42-43; Isa. 49:26; 63:3; Ezek. 39:19; Joel 4:13; Lam. 1:15; Rev. 19:15). ...”
Smith, Mark S.
The Early History of God: Yahweh and the Other Deities in Ancient Israel
(p. PDF 116) William B. Eerdmans Publishing Company, 2002
* 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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