HELEL BEN SHAijAR (ISAIAH 14:12-15)

IN BIBLE AND TRADITION

Joseph Jensen

The present study deals mainly with Isa 14: 12-15, the ,nrz.;-p t,t,'i1
figure, its origin and later history. These verses are part of a longer
composition, identified as a taunt-song against the king of Babylon
(Isa 14:3-23), which itself is part of the section of Isaiah usually
labeled "oracles against the nations" (chaps. 13-23). The taunt-song
is a magnificent composition, rich in imagination and allusive force.!
It falls into four parts: the peace that prevails with the death of the
tyrant (vv. 4b-8), the nether world's reaction to his coming (vv. 9-
11), description of his (former) pretensions and fall (vv. 12-15),
reflections of the living over his body (vv. 16-21); not part of the
taunt-song itself is a prose introduction (vv. 3-4a) and a prose
conclusion that relates to the tyrant's progeny and homeland (vv. 22-
23).2
The passage presents a series of fascinating problems; indeed, one
could say with little fear of contradiction, that virtually every aspect
of the piece presents a problem, and that none of them has found a
sure solution. Disputes rage over the authorship, the time of compo-
sition, the figure depicted in the piece, and the background from
which the traits of the figure of are drawn. The time of composition,
to choose one of the disputed areas, is placed anywhere from the
time of Isaiah to as late as Alexander the Great or later.
The question of Isaian authenticity is closely bound up with the

O. Kaiser (Isaiah 13-39: A Commentary [OTL; Philadelphia: Westminster,

1974] 29) offers this extraordinary praise of the piece: "This taunt, in the form of a
lament, upon the death of a world ruler and the fall of his empire, is one of the most
powerful poems not only of the Old Testament, but of the whole literature of the
world."
2 See the literary and structural analysis of R. H. O'Connell, "Isaiah XIV 4B-
23: Ironic Reversal through Concentric Structure and Mythic Allusion," VT 38
(1988) 407-18. He notes (p. 407) that the poem is primarily in the qina meter and
its combination with "the sardonic tone of the miisal genre the poem jeers with all
the irony one would expect of a funerary taunt song."
340 JOSEPH JENSEN

identity of the figure against whom the taunt is directed. Although

the text identifies him as the king of Babylon, in fact it is only the
prose introduction and conclusion (i.e. not the taunt-song proper)
that provide this information. If this identity is correct, Isaiah's
authorship would seem to be excluded, because Assyria was the great
enemy during his ministry, and Babylon was an ally of sorts of
Judah. However, Isaian authorship is sometimes defended by suggest-
ing that an editor has adapted a taunt-song, composed by Isaiah for
an Assyrian king, to a later situation.3 This editor would then have
been responsible for the identification of the figure as the king of
Babylon in the prose reference to him in v. 4a and for the reference
to Babylon in v. 22. Support for this position can be found in the fact
that the hybris the figure of the taunt-song is guilty of is just the sort
of pride that Isaiah finds so damnable in Assyria. 4 This finds
expression especially, though not exclusively, in Isa 10:5-15, Isaiah's
condemnation of the Mesopotamian ruler who exceeds the
commission given him by Yahweh and has been (or is about to be)
punished for it.5 The casting down of the figure in this taunt-song
accords with the message of Isaiah's "day of the Lord" oracle in 2:6-
22, which speaks repeatedly of the humbling of all human pride,
along with the exaltation of Yahweh alone (cf. esp. 2:9,11-12,17).
However, the greater weight of scholarly opinion holds that the
oracle comes from a later period. But again, those who hold this go
off in different directions. Some would hold that the identification in
the prose sections, that a king of Babylon is at issue, is correct; of
these, some would identify the king as Nebuchadnezzar, Jerusalem's

By way of exception, J. H. Hayes and S. A. Irvine (Isaiah the Eighth-

century Prophet: His Times & His Preaching [Nashville: Abingdon, 1987] 227-34)
defend Isaian authorship by identifying the king as Tiglath-pileser III and citing the
Babylonian Chronicles to the effect that he was also king of Babylon in 729-727,
the period within which they would date this oracle.
4 See J. Barton, "Ethics in Isaiah of Jerusalem," ITS 32 (1981) 1-18; the
author sees pride as the origin of all the evils Isaiah condemns.
5 In 14:5 there is reference to "rod" (i1~~) and "staff' (t!l~rq), the same terms
which were applied to Assyria in 10:5, 15. M. A. Sweeney (Isaiah 1-39, with an
Introduction to Prophetic Literature [FOTL 16; Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1966]
233) does in fact allude to Isa 10:5-34 in arguing that the subject of the piece is
Sargon II. Another relatively recent article that argues for an Assyrian king, Sargon
II, is M. Koszeghy, "Hybris und Prophetie: Erwligungen zum Hintergrund von
Jesaja xiv 12-15," VT 44 (1994) 549-54.