BI 151 The Journal Article Review on Old Testament

Title of Article: Isaiah 40:13, The Masoretes, Syntax and Literary Structure: A Rejoinder to Reinound Oosting

About the Author: Raymond De Hoop

Raymond de Hoop, D.D. (1998), Theological University of Kampen, Netherlands, is Lecturer of Hebrew and Old Testament at Theological Seminary I.S. Klijne, Jayapura (Indonesia) and Research Fellow of the University of Pretoria. He is Associate Professor of Old Testament at Utrecht University. Stanley E. Porter, Ph.D. (1988) in Biblical Studies and Linguistics, the University of Sheffield, is President, Dean and Professor of New Testament at McMaster Divinity College, Hamilton, Ontario, Canada. He has published extensively in New Testament and related subjects. He has also edited the first three volumes in the ‹Pauline Studies› series, The Pauline Canon (Brill, 2004), Paul and His Opponents (Brill, 2005), and Paul and His Theology (Brill, 2006).

Bibliographic Data: Journal for the Study of the Old Testament 33. 4 (2009)

Outline of Article:

1) Introduction
2) The Masoretic Interpretation
3) The Parallelism of qatal and yiqtol
4) The Literary Structure
5) Conclusion

Te Article all about:

The article focus on especially the Isaiah 40:13. The writer interpreted a new interpretation on the Isaiah text, arguing that the emphasis of the verse suggests that the Masoretes misinterpreted the text as a question and Answer.

The text Isaiah 40:13 is discussed by the writer as follows: Who has directed the spirit of the Lord or as his counselor has instructed him? The Masoretic accentuation of Isaiah 40:13 makes it clear that the content of the verse appeared troubles to the Masoretes. They seem to have had difficulties with the rhetorical question in the first part of Isaiah 40:13. ‘who has directed the spirit of Yhwh?’ In their opinion, no one was able to do such a thing. To prevent any misunderstanding, the Masoretes indicated that the first stich should be read as a question and answer: “Who has directed the spirit? Yhwh’…. By taking the stich as rhetorical question. Therefore, the Masoretic emphasis of the first part 40:13 sheds no light on the interpretation f the verse as a whole, because by this reading the relationship between the two parts is disturbed.

There are four main the problems of the interpretation on Isaiah 40:13. The first one is the syntax level (the relationship between the first and the second part is hard to understand. The second one is on the discourse level (what answer is expected to the rhetorical question in verse 13), the third one is on the participants level (who is meant by ‘his counselor’ in verse 13 (b) how is this participant related to the other participants within the immediate context? The Last on is he discerns problem on the literary composition level (how should the expression ‘his counselor’ in 40:13 be understood in the wider contest. There is the two words in Hebrew qatal and yiqtol which is hard to interpret easily. The yiqtol is interpreted as an attributive clause: ‘that makes him know.’

In the last part it can be said that Oostin’s study does not present a realistic option to the recent translations of Isaiah 40:13. Even the Masoretes might have understood the text differently; this cannot be ascertained on the basis of the masoretic accentuation.