How Beautiful Upon the Mountains: Jewish Interpretations of Isaiah 52, Pt. 1

After Sunday School yesterday, I decided it would be interesting to do a series of blog posts on Jewish interpretations of Isaiah 52. Walker Wright has already posted on both the Dead Sea Scrolls and LDS interpretations of the same chapter, so I'm going to refer the reader there rather than going over it again.
http://walkstar.blogspot.com/2010/12/isaiah-according-to-abinadi-qumran.html
The first interpretation I'll discuss is less an interpretation than it is a use of Isa. 52:7. In the Babylonian Talmud there is a long list of various dream symbols and their range of meanings. A word on the psychology of dreams might be helpful. Carl Jung wrote that dream symbols, subliminal aspects of our daily lives, are "the almost invisible roots of our conscious thoughts." As a result, they play a crucial role in the interpretation of dreams. "That is why commonplace objects or ideas can assume such powerful psychic significance in a dream that we may awake seriously disturbed, in spite of having dreamed of nothing worse than a locked room or a missed train." Jung goes on to say that the reason dream symbols are so vivid is due to the dissimilarity between them and our conscious thoughts in which we "restrain ourselves within the limits of rational statements."[1]
Granted, my dream where I approached someone at night and began running past them as soon as I felt something wrong, too late though as a knife flashed in the dark, that dream disturbed me more than I ever was by any door, but Jung does have a point. Things we see in dreams can stand for something deeper. That being said, Trachtenberg, in his classic study of Jewish "magic," pointed out a different approach to dreams. I might as well mention that this approach is still favoured by many people around the world. Not everyone puts stock in Western psychological paradigms.

In the long pre-Freudian centuries, before the mystery of the dream was reduced to all too human terms, when men still listened for the voice of God in the still of the night, dreams played a greater role in shaping ideas and actions and careers than it is easy for us today to believe. If we have come to look upon these nocturnal visions as the products of experience, we have simply reversed the older, though not yet altogether discarded, view which made of them initiators of experience. The supernatural world communicated with man through the dream, and spoke words of counsel and command which he felt impelled to heed.[2]

There were many different approaches to dreams and their sources. Whether they be 1/60th of prophecy, or revelations to the soul in its nightly journey, dreams (though not all) were considered another form of interraction between this world and those beyond it, conveying information impacting the future.

Since unfavorable as well as favorable dreams come true, and the event therefore came to be regarded as the consequence of the dream, it was believed that if one could somehow nullify the dream itself in advance its effects would be obviated.[3]

Using much the same idea behind the Western scientific process, events were observed and the cause deduced from the effect. It seemed to work in many cases.

Once the dream has been experienced, however, other means must be adopted to forestall its consequences.[4]

Nothing, of course, is infallible. Very few people rely solely upon Plan A, without also having Plans B, C, and so on. Jewish dream interpreters had various methods in place for when the dream couldn't be avoided.

Still a third method is to recite, immediately upon waking, a Biblical verse suggested by the dream, which contains a promise of good.[5]

Here, then, is the talmudic passage.

One who dreams of a mountain should arise and recite, "How beautiful upon the mountains are the feet of the messenger of good tidings (Is. 52:7),"  before he is overtaken by another verse, "For the mountains will I take up a weeping and wailing (Jer. 9:9)."[6]

This use of the Bible to ensure a favourable outcome to the future, not to mention that it also controls the negative outcome, underscores both the centrality and the power of the Bible in early Judaism. Howard Schwarz's Tree of Souls expands on those themes. The Torah not only was the means for creating the world, but sustains its very existence.

Thus not only was the Torah created prior to the creation of the world, it was the vessel by which the world was created. Thus the universe was created through the letters of the Torah. So too did God declare, at the time of man’s creation, that the world was created only for the sake of the Torah, and that as long as the Jewish people occupy themselves with the Torah, the world will continue to exist. But if the Jewish people abandon the Torah, God will return all of creation to a state of chaos.[7]

Perhaps unsurprisingly, this method of assigning biblical verses to symbols in order to affect a dream's outcome doesn't appear to be a part of Christian dream-lore. At least, I was unable to find anything similar.

[1]Carl G. Jung, "Man and His Symbols," p. 43.

[2]Joshua Trachtenberg, "Jewish Magic and Superstition," p. 230.

[3]Ibid, p. 244.

[4]Ibid.

[5]Ibid, p. 245.

[6]Babylonian Talmud, t. Berachot 56b. Further examples of the positive verses are found on p. 245 of Trachtenberg. " If one dreams of a well, he should say, "And there Isaac's servants digged a well" (Gen. 26:25); of a river, "Behold I will extend peace to her like a river" (Is. 66:12); of a bird, "As birds flying so will the Lord of hosts protect Jerusalem" (Is. 31:5); of a dog, "Against any of the children of Israel shall not a dog whet his tongue" (Ex. 11:7); of a mountain, "How beautiful upon the mountains are the feet of the messenger of good tidings" (Is. 52:7); of a shofar, "In that day a great shofar shall be blown" (Is. 27:13); of a bullock, "His firstling bullock, majesty is his" (Deut. 33:17); of a lion, "The lion hath roared, who will not fear?" (Amos 3:8); of shaving, "Joseph shaved himself and changed his raiment and came in unto Pharaoh" (Gen. 41:14); and so on. "

[7]Howard Schwartz, "Tree of Souls," p. 249.

An Early Redaction of Isaiah

This quote by Michael Fishbane is absolutely essential in gaining an understanding of the biblical tradition and its interpretation.

Even in the language of the prophets, speaking under divine revelation, we can detect inner biblical exegesis. In Isaiah 29, the prophet is denouncing the people of Judah; they have been the object of his scorn throughout the preceding oracles and no new subject has been introduced. In Isaiah 29:9–11 we would expect to find that it is the people of Judah who are referred to as drunk and who totter and who cannot fathom the prophetic visions given to them. But by the addition of a few words the oracle becomes—by inner biblical exegesis—a rebuke of false prophets. The passage is not easy and requires a close reading; the inner biblical exegesis—the words added by an interpreter—are italicized in the following quotation from Isaiah 29:9–11:
“9. Be astonished and dazed, revel and be, blinded: you have drunk, but not from wine; totter, but not from drink;
10. For YHWHa has poured over you a spirit of stupefaction: He has closed your eyes—namely, the prophets—and your heads he has cloaked—the seers;
11. All prophetic visions shall be sealed from you ….”
Without inclusion of the italicized words it is YHWH who has closed your eyes and cloaked your heads. The object of the denunciation is unspecified. Because of what preceded, however, it would seem that the object was the people of Judah. By the addition of the italicized words—“namely, the prophets” and “the seers”—the object of Isaiah’s scorn has shifted from the people to (false) prophets and seers who do not speak with the true word of God.
Moreover, by the addition of the italicized words, a common biblical literary construction called chiasmus has been disrupted. Here is another clue that we are in the presence of inner biblical exegesis. Chiasmus derives etymologically from the Greek letter chi, which looks like an x; chiasmus refers to a rhetorical construction of an a, b; b’, a’ type. In such a construction, the linguistic features of a second line invert (usually by means of synonyms) those of the preceding one.
In Isaiah 29, without the words added by inner biblical exegesis, we have a perfect chiasmus in which a second line is inversely parallel to a first line, literally:
“He has closed your eyes;
Your heads he has cloaked.”
Here—in the original—it is the people who do not see. In this quotation of Isaiah 29:10, without the inner biblical exegesis, we can identify the preserved original oracle. By the explicatory addition “the (false) prophets” and “the seers,” they—the false prophets and the seers—become the cause of the people’s blindness. The result is that an oracle condemning the people is transformed into a rebuke of false prophets.
Without going into further detail (but relating to this same example), we simply observe that in the Septuagint, an early Greek translation of the Bible, parts of which may date from the third century B.C., this process of exegesis within the text of Isaiah was taken further, for there the abruptness of the intrusion was smoothed over. And a later Greek version, known as the Lucianic recension, went still further in an effort to improve on the Septuagint version without (apparently) ever consulting the Masoretic Hebrew version.
From the viewpoint of the exegetical process, the textual strata represented by the Masoretic text and by the Septuagint and its Lucianic recension reflect continuous rereadings of the original oracle. Moreover, this example represents the most invasive exegetical procedure, which, in the final Hebrew text, transforms the meaning of the passage and disturbs its syntactic balance—a matter later translators into Greek tried to rectify.
Moreover, this striking transformation of an oracle against the people into one against false prophets shows the extent to which the interpretive tradition might introduce a new authority into a received tradition, so that these human comments compete with and ultimately transform the focus of the ancient, divine words. The privileged voice of divine revelation and the human voice of instruction have become one. That this paradox not always perceived is a measure of the scribes’ success in subordinating their voice to that of the tradition. Even more paradoxically, in the end it is their interpretations that have become the received tradition; their oral traditions are the written text given to the community.

Fishbane, Micheal. “The Earliest Biblical Exegesis is in the Bible Itself.” Bible Review, Fall 1986, 42-45.

Perceptions of Deity

Most of the information contained in the Hebrew Bible on idols and their worshippers is polemic. Isaiah 44:10-21, where the idol worshipper uses the same block of wood for fire and for bowing down to, is a classic example. It is worth noting that polemic rarely takes into account the meaning of the thing targeted to its devotees or adherents. In other words, the attitude of an idol worshipper to his idol might differ substantially from the portrait painted by Isaiah.

The Babylonian might have pointed out that for several centuries Yahweh, after emerging from the obscurity of a remote desert, had lived inside, or at the least in close association with, a decorated chest made of acacia wood. He was of rather uncertain temper, but in the main could be kept good-humoured by regular offerings of the smoke of burnt beef fat, of which he was inordinately fond. In contrast, Marduk was a spiritual being, creator of heaven and earth, and so transcendent that it was impossible to see or to comprehend him

H.W.F. Saggs, The Encounter with the Divine in Mesopotamia and Israel (London: Athlone Press, 1978), p. 15.

Monotheistic Declarations

Hear, O Israel: The LORD our God is one LORD:
-Deutoronomy 6:4.

Let all the nations be gathered together, and let the people be assembled: who among them can declare this, and shew us former things? let them bring forth their witnesses, that they may be justified: or let them hear, and say, It is truth.
Ye are my witnesses, saith the LORD, and my servant whom I have chosen: that ye may know and believe me, and understand that I am he: before me there was no God formed, neither shall there be after me.
-Isaiah 43:9-10.

The above are two oft-used prooftexts for monotheism.
Before concluding that they are absolutes, it is worth taking a look at similar statements from the ancient world. As these come from avowed polytheistic sourcs they make for most interesting reading indeed.

From the Sumerian world.

From the mountain of sunrise to the mountain of sunset,
There is no (other) lord in the land, you alone are king,
Enlil, in all the lands there is no queen, your wife alone is queen.

-Hymn to Enlil as the Ruling Deity of the Universe. Pritchard, Ancient Near Eastern Texts Relating to the Old Testament (ANET), 3rd ed. with supplement, pg. 576.

Heaven - he [Enlil] alone is its prince, earth - he alone is its great one,
The Anunna - he is their exalted god,
When in his awesomeness he decrees the fates, no god dares look at him...

-Hymn to Enlil, the All-Beneficent. ANET, pg. 575.

From the Ugaritic corpus.

I alone am the one who can be king over the gods,
Who can fatten gods and men,
Who can satisfy the multitudes of the earth!

-Baal IV. vii 50-53.

From the Egyptian Magical Papyrii.

This is the Consecration for All Purposes: Spell to Helios

"I invoke You, the Greatest God, Eternal Lord, World Ruler, who are over the World and under the World, Mighty Ruler of the Sea, rising at Dawn, shining from the East for the Whole World, setting in the West. Come to me, Thou who risest from the Four Winds, benevolent and lucky Agathos Daimon, for whom Heaven has become the Processional Way. I call upon Your Holy and Great and Hidden Names which You rejoice to hear. The Earth flourished when You shone forth, and the Plants became fruitful when you laughed; the Animals begat their Young when You permitted. Give Glory and Honor and Favor and Fortune and Power to this, NN, Stone which I consecrate today (or to the Phylactery [charm] being consecrated) for [or in relation to] NN. I invoke You, the greatest in Heaven, E'I LANCHYCH AKARE'N BAL MISTHRE'N MARTA MATHATH LAILAM MOUSOUTHI SIETHO' BATHABATHI IATMO'N ALEI IABATH ABAO'TH SABAO'TH ADO'NAI, the Great God, ORSENOPHRE' ORGEATE'S TOTHORNATE'SA KRITHI BIO'THI IADMO' IATMO'MI METHIE'I LONCHOO' AKARE' BAL MINTHRE' BANE BAI(N)CHCHYCHCH OUPHRI NOTHEOUSI THRAI ARSIOUTH ERO'NERTHER, the Shining Helios, giving Light throughout the Whole World. You are the Great Serpent, Leader of all the Gods, who control the Beginning of Egypt and the End of the Whole Inhabited World, who mate in the Ocean, PSOI PHNOUTHI NINTHE'R. You are He who becomes Visible each Day and Sets in the Northwest of Heaven, and Rises in the Southeast.

In the 1st Hour You have the Form of a Cat; Your Name is PHARAKOUNE'TH. Give Glory and Favor to this Phylactery.

In the 2nd Hour You have the Form of a Dog; Your Name is SOUPHI. Give Strength and Honor to this Phylactery, or to this Stone, and to NN.

In the 3rd Hour You have the Form of a Serpent; Your Name is AMEKRANEBECHEO THO'YTH. Give Honor to the God NN.

In the 4th Hour You have the Form of a Scarab; Your Name is SENTHENIPS. Mightily strengthen this Phylactery in this Night, for the Work for which it is consecrated.

In the 5th Hour You have the Form of a Donkey; Your Name is ENPHANCHOUPH. Give Strength and Courage and Power to the God, NN.

In the 6th Hour You have the Form of a Lion; Your Name is BAI SOLBAI, the Ruler of Time. Give Success to this Phylactery and Glorious Victory.

In the 7th Hour You have the Form of a Goat; Your Name is OUMESTHO'TH. Give Sexual Charm to this Ring (or to this Phylactery, or to this Engraving).

In the 8th Hour You have the Form of a Bull; Your Name is DIATIPHE', who becomes visible everywhere. Let all Things done by the use of this Stone be accomplished.

In the 9th Hour You have the Form of a Falcon; Your Name is PHE'OUS PHO'OUTH, the Lotus Emerged From the Abyss. Give Success and Good Luck to this Phylactery.

In the 10th Hour You have the Form of a Baboon; Your Name is BESBYKI. [Prayer for gift omitted?]

In the 11th Hour You have the Form of an Ibis; Your Name is MOU RO'PH. Protect this great Phylactery for Lucky Use by NN, from this Present Day for All Time.

In the 12th Hour You have the Form of a Crocodile; Your Name is AERTHOE'. [Prayer for gift omitted?]

You who have set at Evening as an Old Man, who are over the World and under the World, Mighty Ruler of the Sea, hear my Voice in this Present Day, in this Night, in these Holy Hours, and let all done by this Stone, or for this Phylactery, be brought to fulfillment, and especially NN matter for which I consecrate It. Please, Lord KME'PH LOUTHEOUTH ORPHOICHE ORTILIBECHOUCH IERCHE ROUM IPERITAO' YAI! I conjure Earth and Heaven and Light and Darkness and the Great God who created All, SAROUSIN, You, Agathon Daimonion the Helper, to accomplish for me everything done by the Use of this Ring or Stone!"

When you complete the Consecration, say, "The one Zeus is Serapis!"

-PGM IV.1596-1715

Moshe Weinfeld, in his book The Decalogue and the Recitation of "Shema": The Development of the Confessions, points out (pg. 128) that all these texts are hymnodal-liturgical, and that the Shema is confessional-liturgical.
On page 130 Weinfeld states that "there appears to be a deep connection between the definition of God as 'one'and the obligation to love him." He provides two passages from the Hebrew Bible which make the connection obvious.

And he said, Take now thy son, thine only son Isaac, whom thou lovest...
-Genesis 22:2.

My dove, my undefiled is but one; she is the only one of her mother, she is the choice one of her that bare her...
-Song of Solomon 6:9.

If people know of other, similar statements, please share!