Espinosa 1

AJ Espinosa
Dr. Mark Hoehner
EO441 Isaiah 4066
15 November 2013

Isaiah 60:17
Translation and Notes
1
2

3
4a
4b
5

Get up! Shine, because your lights about to come,1

and on you Yahwehs glorys about to dawn!
Because look: Darkness2 will cover [the] earth,
and a black cloud3 [will cover the] peoples.
But on you will dawn Yahweh,
and his glory will be seen on you.4
5
So the nations will come to your light,
and kings [will come] to your bright dawn.6
Raise your eyes[; look] around and see:
Theyre all about to come to you together.7
Your sons will come from far away,
and your daughters will be nursed8 on the hip.
Then youll see,9 so youll become radiant,
and your heart will throb10 and swell [with joy],

Translating the tenses is difficult. See Appendix A for discussion.

The strong consensus is that the article is due to dittography (Oswalt 532).
3
BDB gives the basic sense cloud, heavy cloud, and most of the examples have to do with the cloud(s) and
darkness associated with theophanies.
4
The syntactic inversion of subject and predicate reflects a nice Hebrew chiasm here.
5
See Appendix B for discussion on the topic of translating waw consecutive perfects.
6
Koole translates these two nouns as a single noun phrase or a hendiad of sorts (225), and Oswalt notes that
LXX and the Targum may be making a similar translational move (533).
7
Oswalt takes this as verbal hendiadys (533).
8
Oswalt prefers the harder MT reading, translating it as supported, not far from the usual meaning
(533). Koole also prefers the MT but understands the verb as nursed (226). BDB supports this translational
possibility with two close nominal examples and two arguable verbal examples. Koole calls BHSs suggestion
superfluous. Blenkinsopp also calls the suggestion unnecessary, similarly pointing to a meaning of
nurse, take care of analogous to Esther 2:7 (206). Indeed, BHSs suggestion is tenuously based on a
2

hypothetical Hebrew root (), and its unclear how the Vulgate supports the suggestion. To its credit, the
suggestion adds a yod and is therefore a more suitable common ancestor for Qa and MT.
9
Oswalt makes no mention of this, but a large number of manuscripts have the form you will be afraid.
Koole remarks that, although this was how it was taken in earlier exegesis, this view has now generally been
abandoned since see fits so much better (228).
10
This verb almost always refers to trembling with fear, but Jeremiah has a similar usage of awestruck
excitement in 33:9 (Oswalt 540, Koole 228). Throb is the choice of the NIV.

Espinosa 2

because [the] seas abundance will be turned over to you,11

and [the] nations wealth will come to you.
Countless camels will cover youMidian and Ephahs young camels
all those from Sheba will come.
Gold and frankincense theyll bring,
and Yahwehs praises they will sing.12
All Kedars flocks will be gathered to you;
Nebaioths rams will be at your disposal.
They will be offered at the pleasure of my altar,13
and I will adorn my splendorous house.

Text, Form, and Theme

Get up! Shine, because your lights about to come,
and on you Yahwehs glorys about to dawn!

Because look: Darkness will cover [the] earth, and

a black cloud [will cover the] peoples.

But on you will dawn Yahweh,

and his glory will be seen on you.

So the nations will come to your light,

and kings [will come] to your bright dawn.

Raise your eyes[; look] around and see:

4a

11

Koole translates, The roaring waves of the sea will turn towards you, but doesnt explain why sea cant
be metonomy for the sea-faring nations (228229). Either way, it means that ships are headed towards
Jerusalem bearing boatloads of booty.
12
The verbs are more precisely denote carry and herald as good news, but this translation into trochaic
rhyme is meant to reflect these highly consonant and assonant Hebrew verbs in parallel.
13
The text of the MT literally means, They shall go up at the pleasure of my altar (Blenkinsopp 206).
Eschewing the harder reading, BHS sides with Qa which is closer to in acceptance on my altar. Either way,
the real difficulty is located in the prior verb minister [as priest], which BHS deletes in view of its
presence in v 10, though dittography lacks motivation. The priestly overtones of the verb could
metaphorically signify the animals willingly offering themselves, but Blenkinsopp takes it in the weaker
sense of be at your disposal, supported by the non-cultic sense described in BDBs first definition of the
verb. This more neutral sense is ultimately favored by the bicolic parallelism which conveys no cultic sense in
gathering the flocks. Thus rather than a middle/reflexive sense, here conveys the
passive/non-causative sense be offered.

Espinosa 3
Theyre all about to come to you together.

Your sons will come from far away,

and your daughters will be nursed
on the hip.

4b

Then you will see, and so youll

become radiant, and your heart will
throb and swell [with joy],

because [the] seas abundance will

be turned over to you, and [the]
nations wealth will come to you.
Countless camels will cover
youMidian and Ephahs young
camelsall those from Sheba will
come.

Gold and frankincense theyll bring,

and Yahwehs praises they will sing.

All Kedars flocks will be gathered

to you; Nebaioths rams will be at
your disposal.
They will be offered at the pleasure
of my altar, and I will adorn my
splendorous house.

That there is some kind of broad chiastic or concentric structure here can be detected
on the basis of themes, particularly light, dawn, and coming.14 But so that we dont find a

14

Koole 225

Espinosa 4
chiasm in every pretty piece of imagery, this structure is proven on the basis of
syntactosemantic features.
At the core of the first strophe sits v 2b, a very nice chiasm with the same number of
orthographic words on each side, with each sides meaning synonymous with the other, and
each side even has a common prepositional phrase. Moving outward then, the chiasm of v 2b
is surrounded by a pattern consisting of a clause followed by a clause with an elided verb in v
2a and v 3. Finally, all this is bracketed by v 1 and v4a, which both begin with imperatives and
end with immediate futureperfects.15 Vv 4b7 represents the second strophe of this pericope,
which extends through v 22, and another line can be drawn after v 9,16 and even after v 16 and
v 20.17
Having established the concentric structure of the first strophe, the key words that
emerge are come and dawn. In terms of theme, the very heart of the strophe is
the chiasm about Yahwehs light, which is His glory. Although analyzing the form of vv 4b6
lies beyond the scope of this investigation of our short pericope (lacking v 7 ff), we can still see
confirmation of this core theme in the striking parallelism of v 6b, which also conveys the idea
of coming to glorify God.
Now, it might be argued that there are a few more chiasms to be detected in this
pericope. The other arguable chiasms are in v 1 and v 5b. I havent marked them as chiasms
because the word order in these verses is regular; although the word order in each of the first

15

Most translations including that of Koole divide the strophes before v 4a rather than after it, since it also
can make good sense to see v 4a as starting a new strophe in parallel to vv 13. Im inclined to see it as part
of the chiastic/concentric structure of the first strophe however because of the rest of the pattern and
because these are the only immediate futureperfects in the chapter that Im aware of. Although
Blenkinsopp accepts the usual break before and v 4a, his description actually supports a break after v 4a:
The next stanza (Isa 60:47) takes over and develops one of the major themes of chs. 4055, namely, the
repatriation of diaspora Jews (212).
16
Koole 215 and Oswalt 533
17
Blenkinsopp 205

Espinosa 5
clauses in question might appear deliberately inverted, each is really an example of triggered
inversion, due to the conjunction
.18 Of course, this doesnt preclude the possibility that the
author perhaps deliberately used a clause with
i n order to invert the word order for the
sake of a chiasm, but to the best of my knowledge, no study has taken up this question of
triggered inversion in poetry, and it is well beyond the scope of this paper. As a working
hypothesis, I would suggest that because triggered inversion was a natural linguistic
phenomenon, the word order in v 1 and v 5b would have sounded normal or unmarked to a
native speaker of ancient Hebrew, unlike v 2b whose irregular or marked word order which
would have signaled something to the listener.
Aside from triggered inversion, one should also note a finer structural difference: v 2b
exhibits object-verb-subjectsubject-object-verb word order, whereas v 1 and v 5b exhibit
verb-[object]-subject word order in the first clause and then vary with respect to the object in
the second clause. This might simply be a function of prepositional phrasefronting, but it
may also point to a difference between more deliberately structured poetic word order and
more naturally structured prosaic word order. Finally, in v 7b there is another chiasm-like
structure with the pattern verb-object-[prepositional phrase]object-verb. The lack of
symmetry with regards to the prepositional phrase weakens the argument for it, as well as the
lack of explicit subjects: v 7bB might simply have a fronted object, and since the object is the
Temple itself, this is not at all unlikely.
In the absence of any chiasms, what can be said of the structure of this second strophe
in vv 4b7? For one, there is good reason to separate it from vv 89, since v 8 changes up the
poetic flow with a question,19 leading into v 9, which abandons the former bicolic parallelism

18
19

See Appendix Bs discussion on word order.

Blenkinsopp 213

Espinosa 6
for a new and rather unique pattern. In fact, it is this bicolic parallelism that gives structural
unity to the second strophe. This is verified syntactically because the first colon of each
bicolon has an imperfect verb in regular or unmarked word order. Semantically, each of these
verbs functions straight-forwardly indicating indicative mood and future tense.
Establishing our proposed structure on these syntactosemantic features, its clear that
the first verb which establishes the theme of the strophe is come, one of the key words
from the first strophe. Whereas in the first strophe the ones coming are Yahweh and the
rulers of the nations, in this second strophe the ones coming are the diaspora Israelites and
the wealth of the nations. Furthermore, several of the other verbs from the first strophe
appear in these head cola of the second strophe, including see, cover,
raise/carry, and gather. Even the remaining head-colic verbs ( turn into and

go up have a semantic connection to dawn). Thus the imagery of the second

strophe presents a well-balanced development from the imagery of the first.

Context
Literary
Isaiah 60 occurs in the middle of the last major section of Isaiah, which spans chapters
56 through 66.20 This last section of Isaiah develops the salvation theme of the previous
section (chapters 4055). There are many thematic connections to chapters 39, 51, 52, and 54,
including a near-verbatim recapitulation of 49:12, 18, 22 in v 4.21
This section also serves as an answer to the very first section (chapters 112); Gods
will for His people is finally realized, whereas before He expressed only disappointment.22 In

20

Provan 12, 31
Blenkinsopp 212
22
Provan 29
21

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light of the thematic discussion of Gods glory above, its appropriate that the middle of each
of Isaiahs bookend sections, chapters 6 and 60, would deal so prominently with the theme of
Gods glory, which is programmatic for the entire book.
The last major sections subunit of 60:163:6 is addressed to Zion as a restored whole,
and although there is in view something spiritual and larger than Jerusalem in the plainest
sense, the vision still includes the ordinary city.23 The servant speaks in 61 and 62 with
undertones of messiah and liberation, and 61 is famously quoted by the Lord in Luke to
describe the purpose of His ministry.

Historical
In a section titled The Poverty of Our Knowledge, Blenkinsopp admits that we have
little to go on towards establishing the historical context of Isaiah 5666, yet most scholars
today would, nevertheless, agree that the bulk of 5666 reflects the situation in the province
of Judah (Yehud) during the first century of Persian rule, corresponding more or less to the
reigns of Darius I (522486), Xerxes I (486465), and Artaxerxes I (465424).24
To this Provan adds that, although Isaiahs final section clearly conveys spiritual
meaning through its idyllic language, the previous section as well as a few warnings and
criticisms (especially in 56 and 58) suggest a situation similar to that of Ezra and Nehemiah;
there is a passionate concern that those who have been saved should not only worship rightly,
but behave well ethically.25 If this is the case, then this section is aimed at the returned exiles
under their leadership who are in the process of rebuilding Jerusalem and returning to
normalcy (516440 BC).
Closely related to the subject of historical context is the subject of authorship. We

23

Ibid., 31
Blenkinsopp 4243
25
Provan 29
24

Espinosa 8
would usually assume the author to be a part of a works immediate historical context, and
thus the author of Isaiah 5666 would naturally be someone who lived in the timeframe
described above, long after Isaiah ben Amoz who lived mostly in the 8th century BC. Lessing
acknowledges that this is the majority position, even accepted by conservatives who liken
Isaiah 4066 to Deuteronomy 34, a later addition which could not have possibly been written
by the author of the larger work. 26 Lessing however rejects this position, saying, The texts
importance evaporates if it is fictitious, since its power to comfort the exilic and post-exilic
Israelites with predictions of blessing rests on the accuracy of its prediction of their plight.27
Commenting more narrowly on the situation of the exile described in 4055, Lessing says,
Isaiah anticipated this crisis. Writing in the eighth and early seventh centuries BC, the
prophet sought to reconstitute the exilic community around Yahwehs new exodus.28
Lessing is right that the categorical elimination of predictive prophecy undercuts
Isaiahs message. It does not necessarily follow from this fact, however, that Isaiah 4066 has
to be predictive prophecy flowing directly from the pen of Isaiah ben Amoz (forgive the
anachronistic expression). It is ironic that Lessing cites the examples of the evangelists,29 since
even though the gospel accounts are partially based on the prophetic predictions of the Lord
Jesus, no one assumes that the gospel accounts were written by the Lord directly. The Lords
disciples heard these predictive prophecies, but it wasnt until years after things were
understood in light of the Lords resurrection that someone put pen to paper to address the
situations of particular Christian communities, and this in no way makes the gospel accounts
fictitious. Similarly, it isnt difficult to imagine Isaiah prophetically predicting things in the
8th century that are ultimately understood later in light of the exile and subsequently written

Isaiah 1213
Ibid., 1417
28
Ibild., 35
29
Ibid., 17
26
27

Espinosa 9
down and interpreted by Isaiahs own disciples.
In any case, the easiest reflection on all this might simply be that, regardless of how
directly Isaiah 4066 comes from Isaiah himself, there is truly widespread agreement that
Isaiah 5666 is at least addressed to the Israelite community living in Persian Yehud. That
this section of Isaiah still has return-from-exile language should be no surprise since, as
Lessing helpfully reminds us, there was no one single return from exile, since even after
Cyruss decree in 537 BC, there were several subsequent returns, not the least of which was
the one led by Ezra who guided about fifty thousand people back to Judah in 458 BC.30

History of Interpretation
Theodoret (c. AD 393 c. 457) interprets the first strophe in light of the Biblical notion
of partial fulfillment, or better yet, inaugurated eschatology. He draws analogy to Christs own
prophetic teaching pertaining to the Temple: He simultaneously in one sense refers to the
imminent destruction of the physical temple, and in another He refers to the Eschaton.31
Theodoret draws a similar analogy to Pauls discussion of the kingdom of grace and the
kingdom of glory. He then concludes, In the same way here again, the prediction
simultaneously comprises three subjects: it prophesies, as in outline, the construction of
Jerusalem, which took place under Cyrus and Darius, [...] the splendor of the holy Church, [...
and] the future life and the celestial city.32 He explains this tripartite typology by comparison
to an image being painted, starting with an outline, moving to colors and finer contours, and
finally to the true image.
Eusebius (c. AD 260/265 339/340) interprets the passage according to a bipartite
typology between Christs first and second comings, and one might expect, Cyril (c. 376 444)

30

Ibid., 46
Manley, 886
32
Ibid.
31

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draws a straight line between Isaiahs prophecy and the light of Christ. John of Damascus (c.
AD 675/676 749) also goes directly to Christ, but sees the dawn as the Lords resurrection,
and celebratory Jerusalem as the pure one, the Mother of God.33
Chrysostom (c. 347407) argues in no uncertain terms that the true fulfillment of the
passage belongs to Christians, not the Jews. He concedes of course that the Jews were
released from exile to rebuild Jerusalem, but Chrysostom taunts, Let the Jews say which
kings have embraced worship according to the Law, which nations have been guided, thanks
to them, towards the God of the universe.34

Didactics and Homiletics

If the Church Fathers are any indication, then there will be people in our pews who
struggle to make sense of how to connect the dots between past, present, and future. The
themes and imagery here are so potent that its hard not to pull a Cyril and go straight to
John chapter 1, where the key themes of coming and light are played in spades, and perhaps
ultimately thats the move youll want to make. But first lets challenge our people though to
stay a while on the immediate context of Isaiah first and to let the text work on them.
Like much of Isaiah, the return from exile is envisioned as a second Exodus. The thick
darkness of v 2a, and light in the midst of it, is reminiscent of Yahwehs ninth mighty act
against Pharaoh during which Egypt was plagued with a supernatural darkness, yet in Goshen
the Israelites enjoyed light from their God.35 Continuing on from the ten mighty acts, we also
see a connection to the massive wealth that Isaiah envisions as flowing to Jerusalem. Before
the Israelites left Egypt, they also plundered Egypt of its riches, and text says that God made
the Egyptians favorably disposed so that they gave the Israelites what[ever] they asked for.

33

Ibid., 887
Ibid., 888.
35
Oswalt 538
34

Espinosa 11
36

Finally, the strongest connection is in the Red Sea encounter itself, since its there that we

get the most vivid OT connection between the dawn of the morning and Yahweh salvifically
revealing His glory.37 After a long night of Yahwehs cloud producing darkness for the
Egyptians and light for the Israelites, we read this: During the last watch of the night the
Lord looked down from the pillar of fire and cloud at the Egyptian army and threw it into
confusion.38 Because of our unfamiliarity with ancient watches of the night this imagery is
often lost on us, but the point here is that dawn is approaching.39 In the next four verses, God
gives Moses the command and the Egyptians are wiped out, and you can picture the sunrise
happening just as the Egyptians were defeated because were told in v 30, Israel saw the
Egyptians lying dead on the seashore.
This is the kind of vivid teaching and storytelling that will be necessary to really put
our hearers into the life of our passage from Isaiah 60. Once they appreciate the rich imagery
that Isaiah is drawing upon, with the intimately linked themes weve discussed above, then the
hearers will be ready for you to move on to the Israelites return from exile, and then to our
second Exodus in the darkness of the Cross and the dawn of Easter morning, and then finally
to our second return from exile at the dawn of the Resurrection.

Appendix A: Translation of Tenses

Translators vary greatly in their interpretation of the tenses of Isaiah 60s first four
verses (the first strophe and the first bicolon of the second strophe). The chart below gives the
tense-aspect forms of the English translations of all the verbs other than the imperatives.

36

Exodus 12:3536 NIV

Were reminded again and again in the text that the Exodus is about God gaining glory through His defeat
of the Egyptians, most recently at this point of the story in 14:4, 14:17, and 14:18.
38
Exodus 14:24 NIV
39
This is another great reason to recommend the GODS WORD Translation, which translates the phrase as
Just before dawn.
37

Espinosa 12
Translatio
n

v 1b

v 2a

v 2bA

v 2bB

v 3a

v 4aB

v 4bA

v 4bB

ESV

perfect

perfect

future

future

future

present

future

future

Koole

perfect

perfect

future

future

future

present

future

future

Oswalt

perfect

perfect

present

present

future

present

present

present

NIV

perfect

present

present

present

future

present

present

present

Blenkinsopp

perfect

present

present

present

future

present
progressive

future

future

All the translations surveyed agree on two verbs: the perfect in v 1b and the waw
consecutive perfect in v 3a. All the other verbs yield a variety of English translations. Its in the
face of such confusion that Lessing invokes the category of instantaneous perfect,
translating many perfects in Isaiah as present-tense performatives.40 Cook however proposes
other possibilities, including immediate future and contingent modality, for which he presents
compelling cross-linguistic evidence.41
The basic difficulty that the above translations have is with the perfects in v 1b and v
4aB. As plain perfects that lack the waw conjunction, traditional grammars would exclude a
future tense translation from consideration. Thus all the translations surveyed translate with
an English perfect or present, though its a questionable translational move to translate a
Hebrew perfect as an English present outside of very specific cases such as performatives and
statives.
The basic thrust of the argument for translating these verbs with immediate future
tense is aspectual. Aspectually, the Hebrew perfect is a perfective verb form (as opposed to an
imperfective one), and Cook cites Bybee, Perkings, and Pagliuca as finding two modern
languages which use perfective verb forms to convey an immediate future meaning in future
40
41

Translating 134
Cook 223226

Espinosa 13
contexts, as opposed to imperfective verbs which may be used to convey general future
meaning.42 Whats particularly compelling about Cooks argument is that the perfective form
of one of these languages, Abkhaz, a Northwest Caucasian language, seems to mirror the
perfective form of Hebrew on multiple other levels, strengthening the case that Hebrews
perfective form would also have an analogous immediate future use.43 Because this meaning
derives from the aspectual semantics of the form itself, this usage can occur regardless of the
verbs position in a clause and regardless of whatever conjunctions may occur in said clause.
Thus a Hebrew perfect can convey immediate future meaning regardless of whether it is a
waw consecutive or not.

Appendix B: Waw Consecutive Perfects

I explained in Appendix A that the Hebrew perfect may convey immediate future
meaning on the basis of the forms aspect, regardless of syntagms such as the waw consecutive
perfect. The question then still remains: how do we deal with waw consecutive perfects? I
translate the waw consecutive perfect forms in this pericope as expressing implicated result
contingent modality as described by Cook.44
Whereas immediate future meaning derives from the verb forms inherent aspect
(grammatical aspect), contingent modality is a semantic phenomenon expressed by a
combination of syntax and morphology. The pertinent syntactic feature, however, isnt the
waw conjunction, but word order. 45 The default word order (unmarked word order) of
Biblical Hebrew is SV (subject-verb), and VS (verb-subject) is the marked word order which
may indicate a number of things, but particularly triggered inversion and non-indicative

42

Ibid., 223
Ibid., 232
44
Ibid., 225226
45
Ibid., 273
43

Espinosa 14
modality.46 One will note that, due to Hebrews proclivity for conjunctions, most clauses with a
perfect verb in VS word order will thus have a waw consecutive perfect form, but the
description of waw consecutive perfect description actually masks the more important
syntactic feature operating in these clauses.
Triggered inversion refers to the change of word order that occurs in clauses with
certain functional words such as then,
because, or the old functional word which has
become absorbed into the so-called waw consecutive imperfect verb form. This is
phenomenon is similar to the well-attested cross-linguistic phenomenon of inverted word
order in subordinate clauses, attested even in familiar languages such as modern German.47
Non-indicative modality refers to categories such as deontic, epistemic, and contingent
modality, expressions roughly indicating how things should be, must be, or might be. Cook
finds that different kinds of modality are expressed by the different Hebrew verb forms, and
the perfective verb form indicates, among other things, implicated result, a subcategory of
contingent modality. Implicated result indicates, as the name suggests, an actuality which
arises in close connection to another, typically in sequence. Thus, rather than upending
previous work, this actually accounts for prior observations such as the wild card effect
described by Bartelt, especially his observation that a string of waw consecutive perfects
usually follows an imperfect: these perfect forms would naturally indicate a series of
actualities resulting from a future actuality indicated by an imperfect form.48

Works Cited
Bartelt, Andrew H., and Andrew Steinmann. Fundamental Biblical Hebrew. St. Louis, MO:
Concordia Academic Press, 2004. Print.

46

Ibid., 272274
Ibid., 273
48
Bartelt 66, cf. Cook 303304
47

Espinosa 15
Blenkinsopp, Joseph. Isaiah 56-66: A New Translation with Introduction and Commentary.
New York: Doubleday, 2003. Print.
Brown, Francis, Edward Robinson, S. R. Driver, Charles A. Briggs, and Wilhelm Gesenius. The
New Brown, Driver, and Briggs Hebrew and English Lexicon of the Old Testament.
Lafayette, IN: Associated Publishers and Authors, 1981. Logos edition.
Cook, John A. The Biblical Hebrew Verbal System: A Grammaticalization Approach. Ph.D.
dissertation, Department of Hebrew and Semitic Studies, University of
WisconsinMadison, 2002.
Elliger, Kurt and Rudolph, Wilhelm, et al. (eds.). Biblia Hebraica Stuttgartensia. Edition
Quarta. Stuttgart: Deutsche Bibelgesellschaft, 1990. Logos edition.
Koole, Jan L. Isaiah III. Kampen: Kok Pharos, 1997. Print. Historical Commentary on the Old
Testament. Trans. Antony P. Runia. Gen. Eds. Cornelis Houtman, Gert T. M. Prinsloo,
Wilfred G. E. Watson, and Al Wolters.
Lessing, Reed R. Isaiah 40-55. Saint Louis: Concordia Publishing, 2011. Print.
---. Translating Instantaneous Perfect Verbs. Concordia Journal (Spring 2012), 134140.
http://www.csl.edu/wp-content/uploads/2011/03/CJspring12.pdf (accessed 15
November 2013).
Manley, Johanna. Isaiah Through the Ages. Menlo Park, CA: Monastery Books, 1995. Print.
Oswalt, John. The Book of Isaiah: Chapters 4066. Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1998.
Print. New International Commentary on the Old Testament. Gen. Eds. R. K.
Harrison and Robert L. Hubbard, Jr.
Wenham, Gordon J. Exploring the Old Testament: The Prophets. Downers Grove, IL:
InterVarsity Press, 2002. Print.