There is an interesting textual variant between the DSS and MT of Isa 63:9. 1QIsaa reads בכול צרתמה לוא צר while the MT reads בְּֽכָל־צָרָתָ֣ם׀ לֹא צָ֗ר.
Commenting
on this variation, Israel Knohl wrote that it
took place at a fairly early date,
before the canonization of the prophetic books, a different picture is painted.
As a result of this textual change, we now read in the book of Isaiah the
following words:
In all their troubles He was troubled
[לו צר],
And the angel of His Presence delivered them.
In His love and pity He Himself redeemed them,
Raised them, and exalted them All
the days of old. (Isa. 63:9)
Written in this way, the verse claims
that God was troubled and suffered together with the people of Israel. However,
this is not the original version of this verse. In the original version, reflected
in the ancient Greek translation—the Septuagint—as well as in the Isaiah scroll
at Qumran and the Ketib tradition of the Masoretic text, the second Hebrew word
in that second clause if the word of negation, “lo” (לא), meaning “no.” This changes
the punctuation of the verse, which we need to understand thusly: “In all their
troubles it was not an emissary [לא ציר], or an angel. His Presence delivered
them.”
This version is making a strong statement:
that God, and not an angel or an emissary, redeemed the Israelites from their hardship.
This is akin to what it says in the Passover Haggadah, “I, and not an angel . .
. I am not a seraph . . . I and not an emissary . . . I my self and not anyone
else [delivered Israel from Egypt].” The words “His Presence delivered them”
may be understood in the context of Deuteronomy 4:37: “He took you out from Egypt
through His presence and His great might.” In other words, God Himself—His
presence—saved and redeemed the Israelites. According to this original reading
there is nothing in this verse to attest the idea that God suffers with the
people of Israel.
The slight textual change from the
word “lo” (לא) (no) to the prepositional “lo” (לו), meaning “to him” or “for
him,” which produced a very different meaning, is the first insertion of the
idea of a suffering God into the Hebrew Bible. Such an idea had been foreign to
biblical thinking, but the person who modified the verse wished to incorporate this
ideological innovation into the Bible.
When was this verse modified? One
cannot be certain, but one may offer a terminus a quem, a latest date possible.
We can make the assessment based on
another development in this text: the first appearance of an unknown angelic
figure. The emended version of Isaiah 63:9 speaks of “the angel of His
Presence,” meaning that God has designated a specific angel as such: that angel
who is in the immediate presence of God. God has sent this angel to redeem the
Israelites. Postbiblical Jewish literature refers to “the angel of Presence”
multiple times. Yehoel or Metatron, as the angel is named in the literature, is
understood to be particularly close to God and to see God’s countenance.
According to the book of Jubilees, a
sectarian work created in circles ideologically adjacent to the Qumran sect
(fragments of Jubilees were found among the Dead Sea Scrolls), the angel of the
Presence dictated the contents of Jubilees to Moses when the latter ascended to
Mount Sinai:
And He said to the angle of the
presence: “Write for Moses from the beginning of creation till My sanctuary has
been built among them for all eternity.” (Jub. 1:27)
The author of Jubilees was thus
familiar with the emended version of Isaiah 63:9, since it had to have been
from there he drew the figure of the angel of the Presence. The book of
Jubilees was likely composed toward the end of the second century BCE, and so
it stands to reason that the emendation of Isaiah 63:9 occurred before that
date. (Israel Knohl, The Messiah Confrontation: Pharisees Versus Sadducees
and the Death of Jesus [trans. David Maisel; Philadelphia: The Jewish
Publication Society, 2022], 168-70)
