Tuesday, August 1, 2023

Adi Ophir and Isay Rosen-Zvi on Isaiah 66:18-21

  

An even more revolutionary model was offered by the author of chapters 56-66 in the book of Isaiah, probably a contemporary of Ezra. The visions that open and close “Third Isaiah” (56:109; 66:10-24) bring the nations into the story of redemption in an unprecedented manner. They are not associated with impurity and abominations but with recognition of and yearning for God, whose sovereignty and laws they have accepted. These visions, phantasmal or counterfactual as they may be, articulate a new set of relations between Israel, God, and the other nations. Under the “new heavens” on “the near earth” that the prophet promises to Israel (Isa. 65:17; 66:22), no other nation will be used to punish Israel or to demonstrate triumphantly God’s might and supremacy. “Genealogical purity” and the biopolitics of ethnic separation make little sense in a world in which God’s worship has become universal.

 

The separation from the nations can no longer be conceived as a way to avoid sin and guarantee God’s protection—it is the other way around: a faithful Israel would thrive and see a world and a time of rapprochement and reconciliation with Yahweh-loving goyim, who are mentioned now by the names of their cities and islands, not their states and empires (Isa. 66:19). It is no longer important to know who they are but only where they come from, for “all flesh shall come to worship before Me, says the Lord” (Isa. 66:23). The universalizing message encompasses everyone; no one will be ejected from the Temple. In fact, some will be invited to join the service of God:

 

I am coming to gather all nations and tongues; and they shall come and shall see my glory, and I will set a sign among them. From them I will send survivors to the nations, to Tarshish, Put, and Lud-which draw the bow—to Tubal, and Javan, to the coastlands far away that have not heard of my fame or seen my glory; and they shall declare my glory among the nations . . . And I will also take some of them as priests and as Levites, says the Lord.

(Isa. 66:18-21)

 

What would keep the nations separate now that they are no longer enemies of Israel or of God, when other gods are not even an option (e.g., Isa. 44:6; 45:5, 21) and access to the holy is open to all nations? What is the basis of Israel’s separation in the time of redemption, when God promises: “At that time I will change the speech of the peoples to a pure speech (safa berura), that all of them may call on the name of the Lord and serve Him with one accord?” (Zeph. 3:9)? How would Israel be distinguished from these nations, and why should it say distinct? In other words, how could Israel’s separation be articulated, let alone justified, when all existing reasons for Israel’s separation become untenable—both in their original form in the Pentateuchal sources and certainly in their xenophobic rendition offered by Ezra-Nehemiah?

 

The texts do not answer these questions. All we know is that the prophets never being their eschatological vision to its universalist conclusion: undoing Israel’s exceptional status among the nations that accept Yahweh as their god and completing the image of a universal humanity that seems to come forth form their vision. The fact is that even at that brief moment when the remnants of Israel and God’s loving nations become close, serving in the same Temple, they are kept apart. This separation is expressed in the eschatological prophecies as a fact, part of the legacy of God’s election, a trace and mark of God’s victory over the nations and the redemption of Israel from their oppression. When it is not promised in terms of political mastery and submission (e.g., Isa. 60:10-16), that persistence of Israel’s distinction and separation in a world in which one God, one form of worship, and one language is simply reiterated: “At that time I will bring you back, even at the time I gather you; for I will give you fame and praise among all the peoples of the earth, when I return your captives before your eyes, says the Lord” (Zeph. 3:20). Third Isaiah, perhaps sensing the problem, reassures his audience, right after opening the ranks of Levites and priests to all peoples (Isa. 66:21), that “as the new heavens and the new earth which I will make shall remain before Me, says the Lord, so shall your seed and your name remain (zarakhaen veshimkhem)” (Isa. 66:21). The invocation of Israel’s “seed” reiterates and explicit message in an earlier passage: “their seed shall be known among the nations, and their offspring among the peoples; all who see them shall acknowledge that they are a seed whom the Lord has blessed” (61:19).

 

The question of the remnant takes on a new meaning now, for it does not concern merely the survival of the catastrophe of destruction, exile, or the transgression of exogamy. It is now also about Israel’s distinction and exclusivity in times of peace when Yahweh is a universally recognized sovereign. Nonetheless, Israel’s continuous presence is proclaimed as a genealogical fact (seed) and political distinction (name or fame). The distinction is well exemplified in the illustrative episode of the nations bringing with them to Jerusalem scattered Israelites “as an offering to Yahweh” (Isa. 66:20). Even the most radical, inclusive, and welcoming attitude toward the Gentiles in the Hebrew Bible does not entertain—or perhaps actively suppresses—the possibility, which Pual would later proclaim, to do away with the wall separating Is real and the nations. Isaiah’s inclusive ideology is still confined by the triangular discussion structure and expressed through it. (Adi Ophir and Isay Rosen-Zvi, Goy: Israel’s Multiple Others and the Birth of the Gentile [Oxford Studies in the Abrahamic Religions; Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2018], 78-80)