Special Issue IOSOT 2013 - Books and Journals

30 P. Winter / Vetus Testamentum IOSOT (2013) 29-31
entrusted to save the Jewish race. The text on which the Greek reading is
based expresses a different idea: no subaltern being of the supernatural world,
however high in rank, but God Himself has made it His concern to watch over
Israel. While other nations are ruled by angels, the people of Israel, God’s own
portion, a people for God’s possession (“For YHWH’s portion is His people—
Jacob is the lot of His inheritance”, Deut xxxii 9; compare Ben Sira xvii 17),
are subject to Him alone—dealings between God and Israel could be no other
but direct. The Greek Text, so strongly emphasising the distinction of Israel,
belongs to an era when angelology had become widely known and accepted
by the Jews of the diaspora and Palestine alike; while admitting as true that
all nations were governed by one God, the stipulation was made that this was
done, in the case of non-Jewish nations, through the intermediary of angelic
powers, but as far as Israel was concerned without those intermediaries. No
μεσίτης comes in between God and His people.
Jubilees xv 30-32 expresses this idea in powerful language:
. . . He has chosen Israel to be His people
And He sanctified and gathered them from amongst all the sons of men—For
there are many nations and many peoples, and all they are His, But over each one
He has placed spirits as rulers who will lead them away from Him—
Yet over Israel He has appointed no angel nor spirit,
For He Alone is their Ruler, and He will preserve them . . . that they may be His and
He may be theirs from henceforth for ever and ever.
The Greek reading of the Isaian passage obviously belongs to an era of intimate
intercourse between Jews and neighbouring nations. Yet there is no reason to
think that the translator made the change himself. He followed a Hebrew text
that has not survived, but of which a parallel exists in a midrashic expansion to
a passage from Deuteronomy. This midrash is recited at the passover service:
And YHWH brought us out of Miṣrayim:
Not by the hands of an angel
And not by the hands of a seraph
וַ‏ פִ‏ יּצִ‏ אֵ‏ מִּנּויְ‏ יָ‏ צְ‏ רַ‏ יִ‏ ם :
‏א עַ‏ ל־יְדֵ‏ י מַ‏ לְ‏ אָ‏
וְ‏ ‏א עַ‏ ל־יְדֵ‏ י שָׂ‏ רָ‏ ף
וְ‏ ‏א עַ‏ ל־יְדֵ‏ י שָׁ‏ לִ‏ יחַ‏
אֶ‏ לָּ‏ א הַ‏ קָּ‏ דוֺשׁ בָּ‏ רּו‏ הּוא בִּ‏ כְ‏ בוֺדוֺ‏ ‏ּובְ‏ עַ‏ צְ‏ מ‏ . . . .