Special Issue IOSOT 2013 - Books and Journals

H. L. Ginsberg / Vetus Testamentum IOSOT (2013) 25-28 27
certainly applies (Dan xii 3). And the ultimate glory of these martyrs (Dan xii 3)
is so reminiscent of that of the Servant! Undoubtedly our author has identified
the Many of Isa lii 13-liii 12 with the masses in the time of the Antiochan
religious persecution, and the Servant with the minority of steadfast antihellenizers.
Not that the masses were eager to become hellenistic pagans, but
that Judaism seemed to them a lost cause. Only a minority—among them, our
author—thought otherwise. They were convinced that so far from being the
wave of the future, Seleucid Syria was the tail end of the past. They knew their
Bible, and it was obvious to them that Antiochus Epiphanes was the king of
Assyria about whom Isaiah had said (Isa x 12): ‘And it shall come to pass that
when the Lord has achieved all his work upon the mount of Zion and in Jerusalem,
he will visit upon the majesty3 of the king of Assyria’s pride (cf. Dan xi 37)
and upon the grandeur of his haughtiness.’ And Seleucid Syria was clearly the
Assyria of which Isaiah had said (Isa xiv 24): ‘The Lord of hosts has sworn saying,
Indeed, what I have planned shall come to pass, and what I have intended shall
materialize: to break Assyria in my land, and to crush him upon my hills. (Cf.
Dan xi 45.) Then shall his yoke depart from (you), and his burden (be lifted)
from (your) backs.’ It was only a question of waiting until the Lord’s indignation
was spent (Isa x 24 ff.; xxvi 20-21); see above, I. These men were not content to
be merely Maskilim in the sense of Enlightened and to keep their knowledge to
themselves, but became Enlighteners and instructed the Many (Dan xi 33a); and
many of the Many joined them (xi 34b). The persecution continued, and many
fell; but the Maskilim knew that they were the Servant of the Lord of whom
Isaiah (they of course knew of no “Second Isaiah”) had spoken in Isa lii-liii,
and that even if they died they would live again in order to be glorified.
But why, then, doesn’t our author call the Maskilim ‘Servants’ or ‘Servants of
God’? Because he doesn’t need to, since the Servant himself is called a Maskil
right at the beginning of the Servant Pericope (Isa lii 13), if one will but look at
it closely: ‘Behold my Servant yaskil.’ Of the various possible meanings of yaskil,
the one that seems to me most probable in this verse is ‘will prosper’ (as e.g.
in 1 Sam xviii 14-15), but a modern scholar of the stature of Torrey interprets it
as an epithat of the Servant with the sense of ‘the Wise One’. Consequently it is
no cause for blame or wonder if the apocalyptist of Dan xi-xii understood it in
very much the same way.
3) See Mordecai M. Kaplan Jubilee Volume (1953), English Section, 1 pp. 245-6.