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Commentary Index | Return to PrayerRequest.comKeil and Delitzsch Commentary - Isaiah 57:5 - 57:5
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The participles which follow in the next v. are in apposition to אַתֶּ, and confirm the predicates already applied to them. They soon give place, however, to independent sentences. “Ye that inflame yourselves by the terebinths, under every green tree, ye slayers of children in the valleys under the clefts of the rocks. By the smooth ones of the brook was thy portion; they, they were thy lot: thou also pouredst out libations to them, thou laidst meat-offerings upon them. Shall I be contented with this?” The people of the captivity are addressed, and the idolatry handed down to them from their ancestors depicted. The prophet looks back from the standpoint of the captivity, and takes his colours from the time in which he himself lived, possibly from the commencement of Manasseh's reign, when the heathenism that had for a long time been suppressed burst forth again in all its force, and the measure of iniquity became full. The part. niphal הַנֵּחָמִים is formed like נֵחַן in Jer 22:23, if the latter signifies miserandum esse. The primary form is נִחַם, which is doubled like נִגָּר from גָּרַר in Job 20:28, and from which נֵחַם is formed by the resolution of the latent reduplication. Stier derives it from hsilgnE:egaugnaL}; but even if formed from this, נֵחַם would still have to be explained from נִחַם, after the form נִצַּת. 'Elı̄m signifies either gods or terebinths. But although it might certainly mean idols, according to Exo 15:11; Dan 11:36 (lxx, Targ., and Jerome), it is never used directly in this sense, and Isaiah always uses the word as the name of a tree (Isa 1:29; Isa 61:3). The terebinths are introduced here, exactly as in Isa 1:29, as an object of idolatrous lust: “who inflame themselves with the terebinths;” בְ denotes the object with which the lust is excited and inf Lamed. The terebinth ('ēlâh) held the chief place in tree-worship (hence אלנם, lit., oak-trees, together with אלם, is the name of one of the Phoenician gods),
(Note: See Levy, Phönizische Studien, i. 19.)
possibly as being the tree sacred to Astarte; just as the Samura Acacia among the heathen Arabs was the tree sacred to the goddess 'Uzza.
(Note: Krehl, Religioin der vorisl. Araber, p. 74ff.)
The following expression, “under every green tree,” is simply a permutative of the words “with the terebinths” in the sense of “with the terebinths, yea, under every green tree” (a standing expression from Deu 12:2 downwards) - one tree being regarded as the abode and favourite of this deity, and another of that, and all alluring you to your carnal worship.
From the tree-worship with its orgies, which was so widely spread in antiquity generally, the prophet passes to the leading Canaanitish abomination, viz., human sacrifices, which had been adopted by the Israelites (along with שׁחטי we find the false reading שׂחטי, which is interpreted as signifying self-abuse). Judging from the locality named, “under the clefts of the rocks,” the reference is not to the slaying of children sacrificed to Moloch in the valley of Hinnom, but to those offered to Baal upon his bâmōth or high places (Jer 19:5; Eze 16:20-21; Hos 13:2; Psa 106:37-38). As we learn from the chronique scandaleuse many things connected with the religious history of Israel, which cannot be found in its historical books, there is nothing to surprise us in the stone-worship condemned in Isa 57:6. The dagesh of חַלְּקֵי is in any case dagesh dirimens. The singular is wither חָלָק after the form חַכְמֵי (cf., עַצְבֵי, Isa 58:3), or חֶלֶק after the form יַלְדֵי. But חֶלֶק, smoothness, never occurs; and the explanation, “in the smoothnesses, i.e., the smooth places of the valley, is thy portion,” has this also against it, that it does not do justice to the connection בְּ חֵלֶק, in which the preposition is not used in a local sense, and that it leaves the emphatic הֵם הֵם quite unexplained. The latter does not point to places, but to objects of worship for which they had exchanged Jehovah, of whom the true Israelite could say ה חֶלְקִי, Psa 119:57, etc., or בְה לִי חֵלֶק, Jos 22:25, and גּוֹרָלִי תּוֹמִיךְ אַתָּה (Thou art He that maintaineth my lot), Psa 16:5. The prophet had such expressions as these in his mind, and possibly also the primary meaning of גורל = κλῆρος, which may be gathered from the rare Arabic word 'garal, gravel, stones worn smooth by rolling, when he said, “In the smooth ones of the valley is thy portion; they, they are thy lot.” In the Arabic also, achlaq (equilvaent to châlâq, smooth, which forms here a play upon the word with חֵלֶק, châlâq) is a favourite word for stones and rocks. חַלְּקֵי־נַחַל, however, according to 1Sa 17:40 (where the intensive form חַלּוּק, like שַׁכּוּל, is used), are stones which the stream in the valley has washed smooth with time, and rounded into a pleasing shape. The mode of the worship, the pouring out of libations,
(Note: Compare the remarks made in the Comm. on the Pentateuch, at Gen 29:20, on the heathen worship of anointed stones, and the Baetulian worship.)
and the laying of meat-offerings upon them, confirm this view. In Carthage such stones were called abbadires (= אדיר, אבן); and among the ancient Arabs, the asnâm or idols consisted for the most part of rude blocks of stone of this description. Herodotus (3:8) speaks of seven stones which the Arabs anointed, calling upon the god Orotal. Suidas (s.v. Θεῦς ἄρης) states that the idol of Ares in Petra was a black square stone; and the black stone of the Ka'aba was, according to a very inconvenient tradition for the Mohammedans, an idol of Saturn (zuhal).
(Note: See Krehl, p. 72. In the East Indies also we find stone-worship not only among the Vindya tribes (Lassen, A.K. i. 376), but also among the Vaishnavas, who worship Vishnu in the form of a stone, viz., the sâlagrâm, a kind of stone from the river Gandak (see Wilson's Sanscrit Lexicon s.h.v. and Vishnu-Purân, p. 163). The fact of the great antiquity of stone and tree worship has been used in the most ridiculous manner by Dozy in his work on the Israelites at Mecca (1864). He draws the following conclusion from Deu 32:18 : “Thus the Israelites sprang from a divine block of stone; and this is, in reality, the true old version of the origin of the nation.” From Isa 51:1-2, he infers that Abraham and Sara were not historical persons at all, but that the former was a block of stone, and the latter a hollow; and that the two together were a block of stone in a hollow, to which divine worship was paid. “This fact,” he says, “viz. that Abraham and Sarah in the second Isaiah are not historical persons, but a block of stone and a hollow, is one of great worth, as enabling us to determine the time at which the stories of Abraham in Genesis were written, and to form a correct idea of the spirit of those stories.”)
Stone-worship of this kind had been practised by the Israelites before the captivity, and their heathenish practices had been transmitted to the exiles in Babylon. The meaning of the question, Shall I comfort myself concerning such things? - i.e., Shall I be contented with them (אֶנָּחֵם niphal, not hithpael)? - is, that it was impossible that descendants who so resembled their fathers should remain unpunished.