Isa 34:14 describes the future
desolation of Edom on the Day of Yahweh’s vengeance. The city lies waste. Amid
thorns, nettles and thistles and a host of unsavory animals, various uncanny
creatures will visit the ruins.
And desert demons shall meet with
jackals,
And satyrs shall greet each
other:
Yea, there shall Lilith make her
bed,
And find herself a resting place.
It would be tedious to enter into
a detailed discussion of the Hebrew terms. The occurrence of Lilith, a demon
well known from Akkadian texts and later Jewish tradition, suggests that the
ancient versions have correctly interpreted the terms as references to demons,
monsters, or spirits.
Despite its difficulties for the
translator, the Isaiah passage allows one to make a few observations that are
relevant to our topic. The author associates demons with monsters. Whereas
Lilith is indubitably a demon, satyrs (śĕᴄîrîm, also rendered
as “hairy ones” or “wild goats”) belong to the class of monsters, i. e., beings
that combine human form with animal traits. It is possible that the author believed
that Lilith, too, combined human form (viz., that of a girl) with animal traits
(viz., the wings of a bird). She keeps the company of eerie animals (such as
desert demons and jackals) and has her habitat in the border zones of the
civilized world, in places humans have abandoned. Though she does not belong to
the orderly world, she can hardly be called an adversary of Yahweh. Her place
is with the misfits of creation that assemble in the breaches of human
civilization. (Karl Van Der Toorn, “The Theology of Demons,” in God in
Context: Selected Essays on Society and Religion in the Early Middle East [Forschungen
zum Alten Testament 123; Tübingen:
Mohr Siebeck, 2018], 252)
