Text and History of 20: Its Development within the Isaianic Tradition

Reinoud Oosting

1 Introduction

In the current composition of Isaiah, the account about the prophet Isaiah in chapter 20 is part of the oracles against the foreign nations (chapters 13–23). The passage distinguishes itself from the surrounding chapters not only by the narrative style in which the account is written but also by its chronologi- מַ ָֺ שּ א cal heading. While in –23 we frequently meet the superscription (‘the oracle concerning’) followed by a reference to a nation1 or a location,2 the heading of Isaiah 20 contains a historical reference to the Assyrian military campaign against . Despite the differences between Isaiah 20 and the bulk of the material in Isaiah 13–23, its current position in the collection of oracles against the nations can easily be explained. Isaiah 20 is linked to the oracles against and in –19 by the references to Egypt and Ethiopia in vv. 3–5. Furthermore, it is worth noting that the highway from Egypt to mentioned in Isa. 19:23 is the same route that the Assyrians in Isaiah 20 take to march against Ashdod and then use to lead the people of Egypt and Ethiopia away as exiles. Though the narrative in chapter 20 fits the current context, the question remains of how this passage became part of the Isaianic tradition. How did this account enter the literary history of the ? In answering that question, current researchers usually concentrate on historical references and redactional layers within –39. Their studies offer a wealth of informa- tion about the cultural and historical background of the narrative, but pay less attention to the linguistic and literary signals within the text itself. In order to gain insight into the development of Isaiah 20, the present paper focuses on textual data rather than on historical processes and redactional history. The linguistic and literary data of the text of the Hebrew in its current form are used as an independent source of research. The starting point for the examination is the text of Isaiah 20 in its final form. The linguistic and literary

1 Cf. Isa. 13:1 ‘’; 15:1 ‘’; 17:1 ‘Damascus’; 19:1 ‘Egypt’; 21:11 ‘Dumah’; 21:13 ‘Arabia’; 23:1 ‘Tyre’. 2 Cf. Isa. 21:1 ‘the wilderness of the sea’; 22:1 ‘the valley of vision’.

© koninklijke brill nv, leiden, ���5 | doi ��.��63/9789004291133_007 Text and History of Isaiah 20 77 features of this passage will be analyzed first and then its relationship to other biblical texts and extra-biblical sources. In giving priority to textual evidence, this paper seeks to gain insight into the development of Isaiah 20 within the Isaianic tradition.

2 Historicity of Isaiah 20

The short narrative about the prophet Isaiah in chapter 20 contains clear his- torical references. Isaiah 20 is the only passage in the in which the Assyrian King Sargon II (722–705 BCE) is explicitly mentioned. Furthermore, this chapter refers to the military campaign of King Sargon against Ashdod. Assyrian inscriptions indicate that Azuri, the king of Ashdod, refused to pay any more tribute and sent messages to the kings of the surrounding countries to rebel against the King of Assyria. On account of that, the Assyrians replaced Azuri by his younger brother Ahimiti. When the Assyrians had turned their back, however, the people of Ashdod deposed Ahimiti and made Yamani ruler over them. In response to that rebellious act, the Assyrian king Sargon marched against the city of Ashdod and conquered it.3 It is widely accepted that the beginning of Isaiah 20 refers to Sargon’s cam- paign against Ashdod. At the same time, it is not entirely clear whether all details of the biblical account are accurate. Isaiah 20 recounts Sargon send- ing his commander-in-chief, the Tartan, to lead the military campaign against Ashdod. In the Assyrian inscriptions, however, Sargon claims that he himself besieged and conquered Ashdod. Furthermore, it appears that, although Egypt and Ethiopia are explicitly mentioned in this passage, they were not involved in the rebellion of Ashdod against Assyria. On the contrary, when the leader of the rebellion, Yamani, fled to Egypt, the Egyptians handed him over to the Assyrians. These observations suggest that the text and the historicity of Isaiah 20 are not fully in line with each other. One gets the impression that the account in Isaiah 20 is not historically accurate. It is worth exploring, therefore, how cur- rent exegetes deal with the discrepancy between the text and historicity of Isaiah 20.

3 The Assyrian accounts concerning the conquest of Ashdod have been confirmed by the find- ing of three fragments of an Assyrian stele at Tell Ashdod, which contain several lines of texts that have parallels in other texts of King Sargon II, cf. Z.J. Kapera, ‘The Ashdod Stele of Sargon II’, Folia Orientalia 17 (1976), 87–99.