Texts in Conversation
Micah describes mourning in the first person, with the speaker going barefoot and naked. The Greek Septuagint shifts all verbs to the third person, making Samaria the subject instead, likely to avoid depicting God lamenting in nakedness.
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2500 BCE
1000+ CE
Micah 1:8
Hebrew Bible
7 All her carved idols will be smashed to pieces; all her metal cult statues will be destroyed by fire. I will make a waste heap of all her images. Since she gathered the metal as a prostitute collects her wages, the idols will become a prostitute’s wages again.” 8 For this reason I will mourn and wail; I will walk around barefoot and without my outer garments. I will howl like a jackal and screech like an ostrich.33 9 For Samaria’s disease is incurable. It has infected Judah; it has spread to the leadership of my people and even to Jerusalem!
LXX Micah 1:8
Septuagint
7 And all her carved images will be cut in pieces, and all her wages will be set on fire, and all her idols I will appoint unto destruction, because from the wages of prostitution she gathered, and from the wages of prostitution she amassed wealth. 8 On account of this she will beat herself and lament; she will go barefoot and naked; she will make lamentation like serpents and mourning like the daughters of sirens. 9 Because her blow has prevailed, because it has come as far as Judah and has kindled as far as the gate of my people, as far as Jerusalem.
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Notes and References
"… The four shifts from first person to third person are also theologically motivated. … The LORD lamenting in nakedness was likely too scandalous for the translator. Therefore, he rendered the verse in such a way (four shifts in person) that the audience would understand the acts of mourning as those that Samaria would carry out. Gelston (2010, 96*) suggests that the shifts were “perhaps caused by doubt as to the identity of the subj.” It seems more likely that the translator understood the subject to be the prophet but did not want to risk his audience reading the Lord as the subject of the present context. Perhaps Isaiah 20:2–4 influenced the translator’s shifts. There the LORD commands Isaiah to walk naked and barefoot for three years as a sign that the king of Assyria will take away the Egyptian captives and Cushite exiles naked and barefoot in that context was not a sign of mourning but a way to shame those enduring judgment …"
* 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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