Saturday, April 22, 2017

Reading Isaiah 65 consistently: "by them who are serving Him, He will be called by a new name..."

There are many reasons to take a second consideration of Isaiah 65:15-16. In the Masoretic Hebrew and Septuagint Greek versions, there are a number of challenges. 

Here is a translation from the Ancient Greek that seeks consistency with the New Testament, especially Matthew 5 (Christ's prohibition of oaths) and Romans 11 (God's promise to save all Israel).

15  Indeed, you will leave behind the name of yours
      unto abundance to My chosen ones,
      then the Lord will take you up.
      Then by them who are serving Him,
      He will be called by a new name,
16  that will be blessed upon the earth.
      Indeed, they will bless the true God,*
      for they will forget their former suffering,
      it will not even arise to them upon the heart. (CFB)

Compare now to the King James Version (oriented primarily to the Hebrew version) of these two verses.

15  And ye shall leave your name for a curse unto my chosen:
      for the Lord God shall slay thee,
      and call his servants by another name:
16  that he who blesseth himself in the earth
      shall bless himself in the God of truth;
      and he that sweareth in the earth
      shall swear by the God of truth;
      because the former troubles are forgotten,
      and because they are hid from mine eyes. (KJV)

And then compare to the NETS (New English Translation of the Septuagint) version:

15  For you shall leave your name for fullness to** my chosen ones, 
      but the Lord will do away with you.
      But to those who are subject to him, a new name shall be called,
16  which shall be blessed on the earth;
      for they shall bless the true God,
      and those who swear on the earth
      shall swear by the true God,
      for they shall forget their first affliction,
      and it shall not come up into their heart. (NETS)


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* The reading of Isaiah 65:15-16 proposed here works with the hypothesis that LXX and Masoretic texts have been subject to an unintended addition in verse 16, a short piece of text that conflicts with Christ's teaching and the quality of Isaiah 65 as prophecy describing the Christian people. The hypothesized interpolation is: καὶ οἱ ὀμνύοντες ἐπὶ τῆς γῆς ὀμοῦνται τὸν θεὸν τὸν ἀληθινόν / "and those who swear on the earth shall swear by the true God" (NETS).
** Or to the disgust of

KJV: KJV reproduced by permission of Cambridge University Press, the Crown’s patentee in the UK.

NETS: Quotations marked NETS are taken from A New English Translation of the Septuagint, ©2007 by the International Organization for Septuagint and Cognate Studies, Inc. Used by permission of Oxford University Press. All rights reserved.

CFB: Scripture quoted from the Christ Family Bible. Copyright © 2017 by J.J. Thomas. Used by permission. All rights reserved.

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