Unsettling Jewish Knowledge by Anne C. Dailey

Author:Anne C. Dailey [Dailey, Anne C.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: University of Pennsylvania Press, Inc.

This crucial passage presents complex translation challenges (mainly in the last verse). It marks the dramatic transition from the first set of haftarot to the second, and the difference is striking. Isaiah 50:1 speaks of the sins of Israel: “You were only sold off for your sins.” Suffering has a cause, a reason. God is the master of the world, he rules, he administers. In Isaiah 52:3–6, the whole structure collapses: “Ye were sold for nought.” The opposition is flagrant: “because of your sins you were sold” (hen ba‘ovonoteykhem nimkartem; Isaiah 50:1) versus “Ye were sold for nothing” (ḥinam nimkartem; Isaiah 52:3). The latter phrase articulates a useless suffering, a gratuitous suffering—ḥinam in Hebrew, without cause.29 In fact, this idea of suffering without cause is no less than an aberration or a heresy with respect to theology. The incredible thing here is that God Himself proclaims it. God, the heretic.30

And the prophet-poet continues, conveying God’s word, and insisting, “My people is taken away [lukaḥ] for nought [ḥinam].” My people have been taken without cause, without my consent. Lukaḥ is usually used in the context of theft (Judges 17:2; 2 Kings 2:10; Isaiah 53:8). Israel, says God, has been stolen from Me—as if God had lost control over the world, over history, and is passively looking at the world, lamenting his fate. And the description continues: “And My name continually all the day is blasphemed.” “All the day,” “constantly”—the synonymic repetition corresponds to the style of lament: God’s name is sullied, and God cannot do anything. God admits that suffering has no cause, and he acknowledges his own impotency. This is a terrible moment, a moment of mysterium tremendum, caused not by God’s overwhelming power, as in Rudolf Otto’s The Holy, but by God’s helplessness. It is terrible to see a father cry. Yet, fathers cry.31 This is not a theology of the eclipse of God but a testimony of God’s vulnerability, of God’s weakness, of his impotency. Those verses are a true earthquake, fissuring the scripture from the inside, threatening to swallow its theology and reduce its logos to nothingness. God does not hide anymore. For as Isaiah 52:6 claims, God’s impotence exists alongside with God’s refusal to hide. He is here, as who he truly is. He is close.

The sequence of verses I am commenting on (52:3–6) culminates with one that is very difficult to decipher and almost impossible to translate. Let us, nevertheless, try the impossible:

Therefore My people shall know My name

Therefore they shall know in that day

That I, even He that spoke, behold, here I am.

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