Sunday, January 16, 2022

Johan Lust on Ezekiel 17:22-23 and the Messianism of the Septuagint

  

The Tender Twig Plucked from the Topmost Crown of the Cedar (17,22-23)

 

Employing allegorical language, the first sections of chapter 17 speak of a great eagle, representing the king of Babylon, breaking off the topmost shoot of a cedar tree, representing the king of Judah. In a final section, however, the Lord announces: “I myself will take a sprig from the lofty top of a cedar, and will set it out. I will break off from the topmost of its young twigs a tender one, and I myself will plant it upon a high and lofty (תלול) mountain; on the mountain height of Israel I will plant it” (vv. 22-23a, RSV).

 

The Greek translation of this passage given in the critical editions facilitates a Christological interpretation. It interprets the adjective at the end of verse 22 תלול (lofty) as a verb followed by a personal pronoun κρεμασω αυτον “I shall hang him”, and combines this phrase with the beginning of v. 23 “on a high mountain of Israel”. This mainstream Septuagint reading is probably due to inner Greek corruption, influenced by Christian thoughts about the Messiah hanging on the cross upon the mountain of Golgotha. It may have been influenced by the so-called anthologies of the inter-testamental and early Christian periods in which several Old Testament texts were groups thematically.

 

The more original Old Greek text, however, preserved in p967, does not read the verbal expression κρεμασω αυτον “I shall hang him”, but the adjective κρεματος “hanging”, corresponding to MT’s adjective תלול “high, lofty”. It describes the mountains, not the messiah. Furthermore, its rendition of vv.22-23 is less open to an individual messianic interpretation than MT. Where MT speaks of one individual tender shoot (רך) the Old Greek has no direct equivalent. Moreover, the plural forms in v. 23 prove that the translator had a collective entity in mind: “ . . .their hearts I will nip off, and I myself will plant (them) upon a mountain high and hanging, on a lofty mountain, Israel. I will plant (them) and they shall bring forth blossom . . . “

 

One is obliged to conclude at this juncture that the Old Greek did not enhance the individual messianic characteristics of the page, rather it diminished them. (Johan Lust, “Messianism in LXX-Ezekiel: Towards a Synthesis,” in M.A. Knibb, ed., The Septuagint and Messianism [Bibliotheca Ephemeridum Theologicarum Lovaniensium 195; Leuven: Leuven University Press, 2006], 418)