Journal of Biblical and Pneumatological Research. Paul Elbert

my holy one? We shall not die. You have set him for judgment and established him for chastisement, O Rock.34 (Hab 1:9–12).

Between Mydq the eastwind, and Mdqm ht) )wlh art not thou from everlasting, the inconceivable is told with chilling clarity: the desolate sigh of the wind’s aftermath, captives heaped like sand against the city walls, the lawless called to bring the lawful to the law. At its end, divinity confronts inhumanity in a completed metaphor “whose power creates the participation whereby its truth is experienced”35

Isaiah 2:4, Micah 4:3 and Joel 3:1036

Isaiah 2:4 He shall judge between the nations, and shall decide disputes37 for many peoples; and they shall beat their swords into plowshares, and their spears into pruning hooks; nation shall not lift up sword against nation, neither shall they learn war anymore.

      Micah 4:3 He shall judge between many peoples, and shall decide for strong nations afar off; and they shall beat their swords into plowshares, and their spears into pruning hooks; nation shall not lift up sword against nation, neither shall they learn war anymore.

      Joel 3:10 (MT 4:10) Beat your plowshares into swords, and your pruning hooks into spears; let the weak say, “I am a warrior.”

Insofar as these texts represent a thesis and antithesis, the question of which is the older has been labored as a point for comment. Although the discussion of the date of each is important, it is not entirely decisive in answering the question. The point is that the assumption that one text depended on another may not be the correct model at all. Instead, it is possible to assume a literary setting in which traditions were constantly interacting with the process of creating new texts or sayings, and that the results could be received both as tradition and as innovation.38

Isaiah and Micah were prophets in Jerusalem during the generation when the northern kingdom of Israel fell. Micah prophesied during the reigns of Jotham, Ahaz, and Hezekiah (742–698 BCE), and so of the three is the most solidly fixed in time. Isa 1–39 contains historical subjects ranging from the period of Assyrian domination of the Fertile Crescent up to the first years of Babylonian supremacy.39 Isa 40–55 pertains to the Exile, the return to Jerusalem under Cyrus of Persia; and 56–66 well fits Jerusalem’s restoration as an international hub. Isa 2:4 sounds a theme that received full treatment in Isa 56–66, but because Micah’s version existed in the Assyrian era, Isaiah’s need not be pushed into the Second Temple era. Only at a much more advanced stage of Israelite history could Mt. Zion be envisioned as the exalted center of international civilization.40 Isa 2:4 is as a pre-exilic seed from which grew the full-flowered vision of international peace created through worship of Israel’s God and observance of torah in Isa 56–66.

A parallel theme, stated as an act of God, exists in Psalm 46, a song of thanksgiving for divine protection of Jerusalem and its temple, particularly v. 10: “He makes wars cease to the end of the earth; he breaks the bow and shatters the spear; he burns the chariots with fire.” Micah and Isaiah were able to comment on the deliverance of Jerusalem from Ashurbanipal under Hezekiah, and Psalms adds its notion of divine intervention leading to the end of warfare in a separate genre. Variations between Isaiah, Micah and Ps 46:10 are compatible with how an oral tradition could be tailored for different purposes without altering its practical effect.41 All three briefly indicate a theological potential within Israelite thought to conceive of universal peace within the kingdom of God.

Despite these several visions of peace, it is still not clear whether Joel 3:10 (MT 4:10) contradicted their tradition or they are a contradiction of Joel’s tradition. The difficulty of dating Joel complicates rather than solves the question because Joel reads exactly like a classic pre-exilic doom prophecy in many respects, but contains some indications of archaizing composition that heavily depended on earlier material. 42

      The book of Joel provides a different kind of clue about the original tradition, one that does not depend on when he wrote. The entire book is a parable about salvation wrought upon agricultural imagery. Its coherence is a virtue of how well it selects and applies rural scenes to the varied themes of judgment of Israel, her restoration, and judgment of her tormentors. Joel sustained his parable without fully disclosing its meaning until, at 3:13 (MT 4:13), it becomes clear that the harvest under the sickle and the grapes in the press are people.

One among a profusion of agricultural scenes, Joel’s proclamation to take up arms and be courageous makes perfect sense in militias as early as the amphictyonic tribes of Judges, so it has been argued that Joel represents the older, original tradition.43 But whether this proclamation was reflected at an early date, or borrowed much later, is less germane than its origin in praxis rather than in prophecy. Taking up arms is the usual; a promise that arms will become agricultural tools and every man will be at peace is still prophetic. The thesis is ordinary; its antithesis is revolutionary. What clearly matters is the succinct reversal of common sense and the way the world is. If these three prophetic voices constitute a Bakhtian dialogue in which one voice reverses and redirects the original intentions of another, the great success of the venture is with Isaiah and Micah, even if they wrote before Joel.44

The fact that each version was crafted differently to serve the message of each prophet is a property of oral tradition which cohered through the sound of words.45 All three prophets recognized a traditional form for mustering rural militia so well known that it could even be reversed and still be recognizable. Isaiah and Micah held the traditional proclamation in tension with their new message by retaining its vocabulary while reversing its content.46 The effect was to heighten the utopian scene by holding the thesis within its antithesis, “A traditional image set in an unexpected context causes the hearers to look with new eyes . . . They receive new information in both domains that converge in the image.”47

      Zechariah 2:5 (MT 2:9)

Before World War II, Buber and Rosenzweig theorized that Hebrew scripture deliberately repeated key words (Leitwörter) to create the spiritual message (Botschaft). On the level of Hebrew grammar, the technique is a function of the versatile Hebrew root, which has two or three signature sounds in every verbal conjugation. The root’s consonants are also recognizable in nouns, adjectives, and proper names, so the consonantal sounds bind many meanings, and sometimes even contradictory meanings, into a single category marked by assonance. It was a form of art to choose a stem and repeatedly use it in varied grammatical iterations to create a message which derived its meaning from repeating sounds in its vocabulary. The technique well suits oral teaching and learning by ear because it facilitates memorization for the orator, and simplifies the task of the listener by providing refrains, and clearly marking themes. For example, the Exodus deliverance and wilderness traditions contain narrative and poetry that are well-structured for oral presentation because its themes are simply and memorably embodied through repeated use of key stems. Other Israelite authors working in varied genres could take up the Botschaft by using the same forms and vocabulary. Additionally, traditional vocabulary and form could be used to make a new tradition rooted in the old, so that the tradition sounded unified, but was allowed to evolve. Rosenzweig and Buber argued that thus the message of the Hebrew Bible was unified even in its multiplicity and translated it accordingly. On this theory, every effort