Wednesday, March 6, 2024

David Davage on גליון in Isaiah 8:1 bring "a large cutting of papyrus"

 Davage’s translation of Isa 8:1-2:

 

And YHWH said to me:
“Take a large cutting of papyrus
and write on it with a red pen:
‘Concerning Maher-shalal-hush-baz,’
and I will take as reliable witnesses
Uriah the priest
and Zechariah, son of Jeberechiah.” (David Davage, How Isaiah Became an Author: Prophecy, Authority, and Attribution [Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 2022], 86)

 

Comments on גליון:

 

Although the verse mentions writing, the specifics are quite uncertain. For one, the vocabulary surrounding the writing material and tools are unclear. It is regularly suggested that גליון refers not to a scroll but some kind of stone or metal surface. It is only used twice in the Hebrew Bible, the second time in Isa 3:23, where it is listed among garments of the daughters of Zion. There, it is perhaps to be translated as “mirror,” hence indicating some kind of reflective surface. This would be reasonable in light of the meanings of the root of the word גלה: “to reveal.” The root also means “to remove” and “to exile,” however, and when reading the verse in relation to the papyrus culture in which it belongs, a case has been made to understand גליון as a “cutting”_-that is, a piece removed from a supply roll. Hence the translation “cutting of papyrus” above. Such an understanding then also casts light on the “man’s stylus” (חֶרֶט אֱנוֹשׁ). As regularly noted, it is not straightforward what the notion of “man” indicates. Is it just a way of saying a “common stylus”; should it be amended to “a stylus of sickness” (חרט אָנוּשׁ)—that is, a stylus that writes disaster; or is it a stylus with “indelible script” (חרט אָנוּשׁ). If related once again to scribal habits in papyrus cultures, it has been suggested that it refers to the second of two pens used by scribes, a red pen often used to highlight passages. Last, the preposition ל could be translated as both “concerning” and “[belonging] to.” (Ibid., 86-87)