Correlative Ameliorations That
Alter the Identity or Status of Non-human Beings Other than god in Chs. 56-66
Isaiah 65.3.
The word διμονιον is
rare in those LXX books that are translated from the Hebrew Bible. For this
reason, the four occurrences in Isaiah stand out disproportionately. Our attention
is drawn to LXX Isaiah 65, that describes aberrant cult in a manner that may
suggest that the translator has specific contemporary practices in mind.
MT Isa. 65.3 reads as follows:
העם המכעיסים אותי על־פני תמיד זבחים
בגנות ומקטרים על־הלבנים
. . . a people who provoke me to
my face, continually, who sacrifice in gardens and burn incense upon bricks . .
.
In an unauthorizied elaboration
upon this cult, the LXX makes two remarkable assertions. In the first place, it
asserts that the burning of incense upon bricks—as perhaps sacrifice in
gardens—is performed for the benefit of (the) demons. The phrase τοις δαιμονιοις is wholly
without parallel in the Hebrew text. In the second, it immediately describes
these demons as figures of the worshippers’ deluded imaginations: α ουκ εστι (Curiously, הישׁבים—the very next
word, in 65.5—appears not to have been translated here. It is conceivable that
the translator considered that α ουκ εστι correspond to these Hebrew letters, though it is difficult to imagine what that connection might have been).
Isa. 65.11 may also identify a
demonic element in aberrant cult, though here there is some motivation in the
Hebrew expression הערכים לגד שׁלחן as well as some textual uncertainty.
It
appears that the translator is willing to ascribe the worst motives to these
worshippers. For our purpose, the salient point is his simultaneous claim that
the demons they mean to worship do not exist at all. (David A. Baer, When We All Go Home:
Translation and Theology in LXX Isaiah 56-66 [Journal for the Study of the
Old Testament Supplement Series 318; The Hebrew Bible and its Versions 1;
Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press, 2001], 176-77)
