Isaiah 24-27
Isaiah 27:1 has long
been considered an indisputable example of literary dependence of a biblical passage
on ancient Near Eastern literature since two lines are quoted verbatim from an
Ugaritic text (KTU 1.5 i.1-3). Regardless of the overlap, questions
remain concerning the likelihood that Isaiah in eighth-century Judah should be
aware of a Late Bronze Age Ugaritic text circulating half a millennium earlier.
Also worthy of note and the subject of frequent comment is the fact that what
was part of the Ba’al myth in Ugaritic has been transformed in Isaiah to a
metaphor for historical parties. This passage therefore provides the parade
example for suggesting the comparative paradigm for the Old Testament use of myth—a
retasking of familiar imagery to a new locution.
William Barker’s
groundbreaking work has suggested that this verse is only one small part of a
larger kingship polemic that stretches across Isaiah 24-27 (Barker, William D.
2014. Isaiah’s Kingship Olemic: An Exegetical Study in Isaiah 24-27. FAT
2/70. Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck). The most notable additional parallels that he
identifies between Isaiah and Ugaritic are mawet in Isaiah 25:6-8 and
Mot in the Ba’al myth (W. Barker 2014, 209-10) and the banqueting motif found
in connection with those (though he sees Isaiah as inverting the marzeaḥ
Northwest Semitic feast). He concludes that the Ugaritic perception of Litan (=
Leviathan in Isa. 27:1) is that it is one of Mot’s functionaries. This observation
pulls all the parallels together to lead to the conclusion that Isaiah 24-27 is
a “polemic against Mot, in which Yhwh’s secure and unlimited kingship is
proclaimed over every enemy, including Death [mawet] and its allies” (W.
Barker 2014, 2012). This conclusion is further supported by the nearly
identical narrative progression observed in Isaiah 24:17-25:8 and the Ba’al
Myth (KTU 1.4 vii-1.5 ii.20) in comparable discussions of divine
kinship. He concludes, “The general message of Isa. 24-27 concerning Yhwh’s
sovereignty is that his kingship is eternal, immutable, mutually exclusive, and
enforced against all challengers. Isaiah 24-27, then, is primarily a polemic
against challenges to Yhwh’s rule and a polemic in favour of Yhwh’s firmly established
and unlimited kinship” (W. barker 2014, 212). Isaiah need not have been
familiar with the distinct Ugaritic textual tradition that expressed these
ideas. He may simply have drawn from the “cultural river” in which such ideas
were commonly known in the Levant.
This passage stands
as the most persuasive example of such polemic in the biblical text, and as
such it exemplifies the phenomenon of diffusion and demonstrates the method of intertextual
retasking. (John H. Walton, “Interactions in the Ancient Cognitive Environment,”
in Jonathan S. Greer, John W. Hilbert, and John H. Walton, eds., Behind the
Scenes of the Old Testament: Cultural, Social, and Historical Contexts [Grand
Rapids, Mich.: Baker Academic, 2018], 337-38)
