1I yielded oracles when they did not inquire,
I was found when they did not seek Me.
I said, “Here I am, here I am”
to a nation not called by My name.
2I spread out My hands all day long
to a wayward people
that walked on a way not good
after its own devisings.
3The people that vexes Me
to My face perpetually,
offering sacrifice in the gardens,
burning incense on the bricks,
4sitting among the graves,
in vigil stations passing the nights,
and broth of foulness in their pots,
5saying, “Keep off,
do not approach me, for I am not to be touched by you.”
These are smoke in my nostrils,
smoldering fire all day long.
6Look, it is written before Me:
I will not be still
till I have paid back,
paid back into their laps,
7their crimes and their fathers’ crimes together—
said the LORD—
that they burned incense on the mountains
and on the hills reviled Me,
I will measure out their wages
8Thus said the LORD:
As new wine is found in the cluster,
and they say, “Do not destroy it
for there is blessing in it,”
not destroying everything.
9And I will bring out seed from Jacob
and from Judah as heir to My mountains,
and My chosen ones shall take hold of it,
and My servants shall dwell there.
10And Sharon shall become a pasture for flocks
and the Achor Valley a bedding-down for cattle—
11As for you, who forsake the LORD,
who lay out a table for the good luck god
and fill bowls of mixed wine for the god of fate.
12I have destined you for the sword,
and you all shall kneel to be slaughtered,
since I called and you did not answer,
I spoke and you did not hear,
and you did what was evil in My eyes,
and what I did not desire you chose.
13Therefore, thus said the LORD:
and you shall hunger.
Look, My servants shall drink
and you shall thirst.
Look, My servants shall rejoice
and you shall be shamed.
14Look, My servants shall sing gladly
with a cheerful heart,
and you shall cry out for heart’s pain
and from a broken spirit howl.
15And you shall leave your name as an oath to My chosen ones:
“May the Master, the LORD, put you to death!”
And My servants He shall call by another name.
16Who blesses himself in the land
shall bless himself by the God of trust,
and who vows in the land
shall vow by the God of trust,
for the former troubles have been forgotten
and are hidden from My eyes.
17For I am about to create new heavens
and a new earth,
and the former things shall not be recalled
and shall not come to mind.
18But rejoice and exalt for all times,
that I am creating,
for I am about to create in Jerusalem
exultation and with it rejoicing.
19And I will exult in Jerusalem
and rejoice in My people,
and no longer shall be heard within it
the sound of weeping and the sound of screams.
20There shall not be there a tender babe or elder
who will not live out his days.
For like a lad he shall die at a hundred,
and who misses a hundred shall be thought accursed.
21And they shall build houses and dwell in them
and plant vineyards and eat their fruit.
22They shall not build for another to dwell
and shall not plant for another to eat,
for like the days of a tree My people’s days,
and the work of their hands shall My chosen outlive.
23They shall not toil for naught
nor give birth in panic,
for they are the seed blessed of the LORD,
and their offspring are with them.
24And it shall be, before they call, I will answer,
while they still speak, I will hear.
25The wolf and the lamb shall graze as one,
and the lion like cattle eat hay
and the serpent—dust, its food.
They shall do no evil and do no harm
on all My holy mountain, said the LORD.
CHAPTER 65 NOTES
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1. I yielded oracles. The literal sense of the passive verb nidrashti is “I was sought out.” But darash is the verb that has the technical sense of “inquire of an oracle,” and that appears to be the meaning here: even though the people did not seek Me in any sense, including inquiry of My oracles, I was ready to vouchsafe them revelation.
2. I spread out My hands. This phrase continues the paradox of the previous verse because spreading out the hands is a gesture of prayer, and it is as though God, not the people, were praying.
3. offering sacrifice in the gardens. These are sacred gardens where nature gods, or fertility goddesses such as Asherah, were worshipped.
burning incense on the bricks. We have no specific information about this cultic practice, although setting out incense on bricks for burning sounds plausible, and thus emending the received text seems unwarranted.
4. sitting among the graves. This looks like some sort of ancestor worship.
vigil stations. The Hebrew netsurim is opaque, but it derives from a verbal stem that means to watch, or guard, hence this conjectural translation. What appears to be invoked is a practice of waiting through the night for some sort of epiphany of a god, perhaps a chthonic god because of the nocturnal setting.
eating the flesh of pigs. This is, of course, prohibited, but the point is probably not just the dietary restriction but the consumption of pork in a pagan ritual.
broth. The Masoretic Text shows peraq, a term not attested elsewhere, and this translation reads instead meraq. The vehement inveighing against a whole set of paganizing practices does not appear in the previous chapters, and pagan or syncretistic worship does not seem to have been an urgent issue either in Babylonian exile or in fifth-century B.C.E. Judah. One is led to the tentative inference that this is a prophecy dating from the last years of the Judahite monarchy, a time when, as other sources show, pagan practices were widespread.
5. I am not to be touched by you. The Hebrew qedashtikha is problematic. The reasoning behind this translation is: to be qadosh, “holy,” is to be unapproachable except by designated priests. The speaker may be saying that I have assumed a condition of qedushah, holiness, by my participation in these rites, and so no profane person is allowed to come near me.
6. Look, it is written before Me. These introductory words are extrametrical. In the next verse, “said the LORD” is also extrametrical.
7. on the mountains / . . . on the hills. Though these terms are a formulaic word-pairing in the parallel structure of biblical poetry, their use here again points to nature worship, like the gardens in verse 3.
first. The meaning of the Hebrew riʾshonah is unclear, and the translation mirrors that opaqueness.
8. so will I do for My servants. Here and in what follows, there is a distinction between those who are God’s “servants” or His “chosen ones” and the rest of the people. Presumably, the servants are those who have not been spending their time burning incense in sacred gardens and sitting among graves. They are thus like the cluster of healthy grapes on the vine that also bears rotten fruit. Blenkinsopp sees in all this the beginnings of a sectarian perspective. Later, both the Book of Daniel and a good many of the Dead Sea Scrolls exhibit this division between those who will be saved and those who are irrevocably lost.
10. for My people who seek Me. This qualification is important: the splendidly restored countryside will not be for everyone but for those who seek God.
11. neglecting My holy mountain. The holy mountain is the site of the Temple. “Neglecting” (or, more literally, “forgetting”) it means going to sacred gardens and graveyards to worship there.
the good luck god. The Hebrew refers to him by name, Gad. The worship of Gad is attested in inscriptions in Phoenicia and in its North African colonies over many centuries.
the god of fate. Again, a name is given in the Hebrew, Meni, and variations of this name for a god of fate or destiny appear in many extrabiblical sources.
12. destined. The Hebrew verb maniti plays sardonically on the just mentioned “Meni.”
I called and you did not answer. Normally, it is man’s place to call out to God, but this reversal of roles is in keeping with the reversal in verses 1–2.
13. Therefore, thus said the LORD. This introduction is again extrametrical.
My servants shall eat / and you shall hunger. This sharp antithesis between the fate of God’s servants and the audience of paganizers that is rebuked vividly illustrates the split between those in the people who will be saved and those destined to come to a disastrous end.
15. And you shall leave your name as an oath. What the miscreants will leave behind them is a name that will become the byword of a curse (in contrast to what is said in Genesis of Abraham, whose name is to be a blessing invoked by all). The words that follow here, “May the Master, the LORD, put you to death!,” are the words of the curse, and they may have been completed by a name, “like So-and-so.”
My servants He shall call by another name. Either there is a collective name for this group of paganizers that now must be replaced, or the individual paganizers bear names in general currency, and so new names are required.
16. the God of trust. This could be rendered as “the God of amen,” but the word ʾamen derives from a root that suggests trust, dependability, confirmation.
17. I am about to create new heavens / and a new earth. Many interpreters read this literally as an eschatological statement, but it may be more plausible to understand it as poetic hyperbole: it is not that the order of nature will be radically transformed but that, in this Jerusalem now filled with joy and exultation, there will be a general sense of sweeping renewal.
20. like a lad he shall die at a hundred. Not only will a person have an extravagantly long life span (easily two or three times the actual average longevity in ancient society), but he will come to his end after a century in all the vigor of his youth.
22. They shall not build for another to dwell. This of course would happen when the land was conquered. It is not, however, an inevitable inference that this prophecy is post-586 B.C.E., because the imminent prospect of being conquered and dispossessed was ominously evident through the last century and a half of the Judahite monarchy as Assyrian and then Babylonian armies threatened Jerusalem and other Judahite cities.
and the work of their hands shall My chosen outlive. The verb used here means to “wear out,” but the obvious sense is that they will live beyond the point where the things they make have fallen apart. Based on the formulation here, this verb would become idiomatic precisely in this sense in later Hebrew.
25. The wolf and the lamb shall graze as one. This entire verse is an obvious abbreviated reprise of Isaiah 11:6–9. Many scholars assume it is an editorial addition, though it is perfectly plausible that the prophet could choose to quote the earlier prophecy in order to round out his own picture of the ideal age.
and the serpent—dust, its food. The serpent will no longer sink its fangs into human flesh or that of other animals. But these words also recall the curse on the primordial serpent, “and dust shall you eat” (Genesis 3:14).