Special Issue IOSOT 2013 - Books and Journals

28 H. L. Ginsberg / Vetus Testamentum IOSOT (2013) 25-28
III
At the time when he wrote, however, Palestine Jewry included an element to
which the apocalyptist found no obvious allusion in the Servant Song: namely,
the protagonists of apostasy, whom he styles ‘those who forsake the covenant’
(Dan xi 30), ‘those who act wickedly against the covenant’ (xi 32), or simply ‘the
wicked’ (if xii 10 is still Apoc iii and not rather Apoc iii 4). For a hint as to the
fate of these, therefore, Apoc iii turned to Isa lxvi 24. According to this verse
the corpses of ‘the men that have rebelled’ shall rot and burn for ever apparently
without being consumed) outside Jerusalem ‘and they shall be an abhorrence
(dera’on) for all flesh’. Our apocalyptist adopts this but also adapts it, by making
the completely depraved of his day share with the completely righteous the
experience of resurrection, but for the opposite purpose: ‘some for everlasting
life, and some for everlasting reproach and abhorrence (dera’on).’ (These are the
only two passages where dera’on occurs.)
That the annihilation of Seleucid Syria would be followed by an awakening
of Jewish dead was inferred by our author not alone from the Servant Pericope
(which as a matter of fact does not unambiguously imply even the Servant’s
death; compare Kissane) but also, as a comparison of Dan xii 2a with Isa xxvi
19ba makes clear, from proximity of Isa xxvi 19 to Isa xxvi 20. This juxtaposition
evidently suggested to him a connection between resurrection and the passing
of the Lord’s indignation (end of v. 20)—and of “Assyria,” the staff of the Lord’s
indignation, with it.