A Theology of Confusion:
	A literary/theological study of Isaiah 21:1-10

Moreover, something is or seems
That touches me with mystic gleams,
Like glimpses of forgotten dreams--

Of something felt, like something here;
Of something done, I know not where;
Such as no language may declare. 
--A Tennyson

	The oracle of the Destruction of Babylon (Isa 21:1-10) can perhaps best be described as entirely enigmatic.  To which destruction of Babylon does Isaiah prophecy:  that in 709, by Sargon?  Or perhaps the first part refers to the events of 709, while the second half refers to the sacking of Babylon in 689 by Sennacherib, who was the only conqueror to go so far as to smash her idols.  Or perhaps the first half actually refers to an impending siege of Jerusalem.   Or perhaps this is actually a deutero-Isaianic prophecy, foretelling the conquering of Babylon by Cyrus, in 520.   Or could it have been written after these events, interpreting them apocalyptically?  Or perhaps is it the result of two oracles, redacted into one?  Or is it intentionally vague, referring to both destructions of Babylonia? 
	It is not just the subject which is unclear: practically every line is unclear.  What is Midbar-Yam?  Who is the “traitor” who “acts treacherously”?  What is this oracle about? 
	While there are those who try to answer these questions, I would like to pose a different question.  Might the prophet have made the prophecy intentionally ambiguous?  Assuming that the author does not want to reveal the historical referent of the prophecies, how can we read this text?  I propose to read it as a piece of literature, the structure of which creates a unique experience in the ear and mind of the reader.
	Scott calls the first half (vv 1-5) excited; Wildberger calls it intentionally vague and secretive.  The author creates growing sensations, expectations of a revelation:  mimidbar ba, me’eretz noraah.  What is coming?  A prophecy?  An army?   The judgment itself?   Which desert?  It is something terrifying, and as yet unidentified.  The desert is the place of danger, of revelation, and of sandstorms: there is some storm growing, but it is unclear what.  And the prophet tells us more, but still tells us nothing. hazot kasha hugad li.  What is the vision?  Why is it so horrible?   Some commentators have wondered how Isaiah could be sympathetic with the Babylonians   It seems, however, to be the scene itself, the imagery of destruction, which is terrifying: we are set up to be scared.    
	The next line is very odd.  Haboged boged-- the traitor acts treacherously.  From the common use of ironic twists in Isaiah, one would have expected haboged mitbaged-- the traitor is acted treacherously wiith.  And, in fact, this is how Targum Yonathan reads it.  Rashi, too, wants to read an ironic meaning, but does so with less textual emendation: haboged, boged bo-- someone acts treacherously with the ttraitor.    If we do not make such an emendation, we are left with an entirely enigmatic nursery rhyme:  who is the traitor who acts treacherously?  Is it Babylon, or Babylon’s enemies?  Without any irony, the verse is still enigmatic, still drives us to want to know more.
	Isaiah now reveals (finally) a specific detail.  It is not clear whether this is the vision, or this is the interpretation of the vision which was in the first half of the verse.  But we are given a concrete detail:  a cry to Elam and Media , to arise for war, and an ominous promise:  “all of her arrogance will I stop.”  Whose arrogance?  The text leaves us in the dark, but upon reflection we realize, with awe, that the anonymous voice must be God’s.  These are God’s words, perhaps comprising an ancient oracle, typically brief and enigmatic .  It is in the nature of oracles to leave us to guess its meaning, and even (especially) to allow for contradictory meanings.  We see a war mechanism, hear a cry for the armies to arise, and our terrifying experience is accentuated by our curiosity, our terrifying experience of not knowing the meaning, but of being compelled nonetheless.  Our ignorance as readers is itself a terrifying, a taste of the terror of witnessing the war mechanism.  Berrigan  adds to the line, in parenthesis, “But for Y-H-W-H, it were all up for us!”-- the terror is experienced as that of  the Judeans, as that of the readers.  The form of the prophecy, and its literary context, encourage us to suspect that this war mechanism is aimed at us.
	And this is exactly how the prophet reacts: he is seized by pain like a woman in labor.  He is seized so much that he cannot look further: it is unclear how to translate this passage into English, but we must, if only to create the same evocations.  “I am agitated from hearing, I am aghast from seeing.”  Hearing and seeing, which are central to Isaiah’s conception of responsibility in religious life, are here immensely painful . 
	Verse 4 continues with a description of the prophet’s internal reaction to the vision: the normally pleasant twilight hours  are made horrific.  The end trails off, without conclusion: twilight, which might with a cool breeze transition us into sleep, does not transition us at all.  The reader is left with “trembling” as the last word, still ringing in the ear after the verse is read.
	And suddenly a new vision comes, as if from nowhere, as enigmatic as any other vision in this oracle.  It seems to be a banquet scene, in which the festivities are interrupted by the call to battle. Whether or not this is the case, it is clearly ironic: we shift from horror, to a calm scene, spreading the table, spreading cushions, eating, and drinking.  We still have the horror in the back of our minds, but what is this image of tranquility?  Are the people deaf, ignoring the sound of war?  Then the call comes, still in 2-beat meter, without breaking pace.  The warriors anoint their shields, an act which is not now clear, but seems to be in preparation for the upcoming battle.  The metre seems, however, to take its time: there is no rush in this verse, only the deliberateness of matched pairs of 2-beat lines.  The first half of the verse is a triplet, dragging its feet with an extra line, but the second half resumes the pulse, leading us marching toward something which is as yet unidentified.
	Verse 6 announces itself as the transition into revealing to us, the reader, something of what is going on.  Ki does not seem to be a logical connective, because the two halves of the oracle (vv 1-5 and 6-10) are are altogether separate experiences, neither ‘causing’ the other.   It is, rather, a marker, an article which gets one attention for something important:  God (in the Qumran text, he is named by the tetragrammeton)  who is about to speak.
	With this shift, we seem to be on entirely different grounds: there is something of a coherent story.  Images are no longer flying by.  But what are they replaced by?  There are some  who read the watchman as a metaphor for Isaiah waiting, from 710 until 689, for the final destruction of Babylon   The watchman seems to be Isaiah, leading some to suggest that Isaiah here also experiences a split identity, sending his prophetic consciousness off to the watchtower in what may be regarded as a spirit journey, but not a real shamanic trance. Or perhaps it was a full shamanic trance, a dream or hallucination in which the seer imagined a period of several days .  
	As a literary piece, these verses are similar to other instances of symbolic action taken by the prophets.  In Is 8, for example, God tells Isaiah to write an inscription on a tablet.  The text then slides into the prophet’s narrative of the events that transpired.  Here, too, the prophet is ordered to set a watchman and give him instructions; according to the narrative, the watchman (we are not told of his watching) reports back, with a report of the fall of Babylon.  But if it is a symbolic action, it is surreal:  Isaiah appoints himself to be a watchman, watches, and has a vision which surely is a prophetic one.  We cannot believe that a watchman, appointed by Isaiah, actually witnessed troops returning from the destruction of Babylon; rather, Isaiah’s entire prophecy predicts the fall of Babylon.
	 The language used by the watchman is very similar to that it Hab 2:1, in which a prophet takes up his lookout spot to wait for a vision from God.   Prophets to a ‘lookout’ spot (mishmeret) and wait to receive a vision.  If this actually happened, we seem to be suggesting that the watchman was the prophet himself, who sent his prophetic ego off to receive a vision.  
	I would like to suggest, instead, that what we have is a combination of two typical prophetic activities.  We have a vision, (nafla nafla bavel), witnessed while waiting on a prophetic-outpost.  And this seems to be inserted into the framework of symbolic action, the prophet now appointing instead of being the watchman.  In this new context, it is unclear why Isaiah has to ‘appoint’ anybody.  What does it symbolize?  Why does God not just tell Isaiah himself to go to the lookout spot?
	The new, symbolic-action context, provides a literary environment for us to hear the report.  We, the reader, witness God’s order, and also witness the watchman’s report.  As a literary conceit, it incorporates both God’s command and Isaiah’s words, and to compare the prophetic activity to that of the watchman.  The symbolic act, and the prophecy, were both performed by Isaiah (at least according to the text).  These two actions were combined together, either by an author or redactor, into a single, inconsistent whole.  This would explain the confusion surrounding Isaiah’s split identity, without resorting to complex psychological interpretations.
	But it is so confusing!  As a literary conceit, this combination of genres intentionally confuses us, by switching images and referents rapidly, much like the first half of the oracle.  The identity of the prophet shifts between verses: first he appoints the watchman, then he is the watchman.  The genre shifts: first we are witnessing some symbolic act of the prophet, then we are witnessing a vision.  We are drawn into Isaiah’s confusion.
	What does the watchman say?  He kept vigilant watch, every night.  Why is he telling us this? Are we led, in the moment, to suspect that he has seen nothing, perhaps that he missed something?  We are led to worry: is he coming back empty handed?  V’hinei Zeh Ba-- we are plunged, again, into the scene of war, into history.  The words are sudden, short, gripping.    We see, in slightly modified form (no camels or donkeys) exactly what we were waiting for.  And we listen carefully, as the watchman was instructed: Nafla, Nafla, Bavel.  It is a powerful line: the repetition pushes the iambic trimiter.  The line rings of the triumphant line in the Song of Devorah: Uri, Uri Dvorah.   But here it is a lament, the empire dead, its gods smashed, using the language of tragedy. Nafal is the same word used by David in mourning the deaths of Saul and Jonathan.   
	 If the subject of the oracle is Sargon's campaign in 709, then Judah has lost a possible ally in her struggle against Assyria.  This would be consistent with Isaiah’s isolationist ideology which runs throughout the first part of the book:  Israel cannot make pacts with neighbors, for she should only depend on God.  This supports the view that the oracles, in general, are aimed at Judah and meant to dissuade her from making pacts with foreign nations.   If this is the case, the lament is ironic:  Judah is sad that Babylon fell, because having lost a potential ally, she is unable to make one such pact.  One can imagine the prophet gloating over the Judeans’ tears.
	If, however, the subject is the Babylonian empire of 540, which was a world empire which kept the Jews in captivity, it may be truly exultant:  the end of Babylonian reign is coming, the end of captivity is near! The sadness here is in the same category as the terror earlier: one feels feels shocked when witnessing destruction, even though it is the destruction of one’s enemies.  Ultimately, however, one is truly relieved.
	Verse 10 starts with an enigmatic reference to medushati, my trampled one, the son of my threshing-floor.  Is it a conciliatory reference to Judah, who has been trampled by foreign nations?  Or does it refer to Babylon, which is now trampled?  This is unclear. The verse then ‘signs off’, with an assurance from the prophet that this is exactly what he heard.  We are not told any more, only assured that we have been told the literal word of God in his heavenly court. 
	As a whole, the unit with which we are dealing is driving and enigmatic.  It seems to be built around certain core lines, which remain enigmatic despite their narrative context.  The narrative context merely accentuates the force of the oracles; it does not try to explain them at all.  It seems interested in the impact, in the suddenness of the images, in the poetic meter, in setting scenes which make the reader inquisitive.
	What is the meaning of such a prophetic oracle to a reader of the Bible as a canonical text?  Isaiah was included in the Biblical corpus not because of its meaning or theology, but because of its antiquity and divine inspiration.  It is thus an ancient, enigmatic oracle, and holds a place among the sancta of the Jewish religion.  It gives the reader the impression that there is a greater knowledge to be found in the universe, knowledge beyond us and perhaps even standing outside of history, but that knowledge is difficult, and even painful, for us to try to grasp.  A reader may also experience awe, born of a recognition of her own ignorance, like Job’s awe and humility in the face of the whirlwind.  We admit, in an act of spiritual surrender, that we do not know God’s workings.  Meister Eckard (going much farther) writes, “Whoever is to be poor in spirit must be poor of all his own knowing, so that he knows nothing of God or of creatures or of himself.”  For Eckard, unknowing is one aspect of ‘poverty’, a central goal of the religious life.   William James categorizes as mystical the phenomenon of ‘dreamy-states’ which “bring a sense of mystery and of the metaphysical duality of things, and the feeling of an enlargement of perception which seems imminent but which never completes itself.” While Isaiah (unlike Eckard) would advocate a quest for God’s truth, feelings of confusion and awe, humility and ignorance, can themselves be legitimately considered religious experiences.
	‘Babylon’ has traditionally been read as symbolic of the evils of any major world power, and its downfall is the end of the corrupt values of human institutions.  Babylon is all human government, and its end is the end of the world  Thus, in Revelations 14:7, an angel says: “Fear God, and praise his greatness!  For the time has come for him to judge mankind.  Bow in worship, then, before God, who made heaven, earth, sea, and the springs of water!”  A second angel says: “She has fallen!  She has fallen, Babylon the great!  She gave her wines to all people and made them drink it -- the strong wine of her immoral lust!”  In 18:2, another angel adds to this charge, “The kings of earth committed immorality with her, and the businessmen of the world grew rich from her unrestrained lust.”
	This image of Babylon as representing all the evils of human institutions, is incredibly evocative and effective.  Babylon does not just represent galut, exile, but is the embodiment of human sins.  In the Rainbow Family, for example,  which tries to maintain a utopian vision of society and to embody that vision at its gatherings, all nations are called “Babylon”, capitalism is considered to stem from “Babylon”, and all social ills, rightly or not, are blamed on “Babylon”.
	Thus, Daniel Berrigan reads the chapter as promising the possibility of the end of the empire:
Where you are, who you are, in what circumstance of sorrow or deprivation or anger or resignation: stop looking for change, embrace the system that is your plight, your destiny, even if it is the foreclosure of your humanity.

	These would be the words of the contrary, imperial proclamation; the anti-gospel.  Yet Isaiah and his like offer the bracing air of truth.  Believe, penetrate awful events, hope against hope, pray to see!  

The possibility of the fall of Babylon shows that any empire can fall, and that we must trust only  in God’s order.  This fits beautifully with Isaiah’s overall theology.  Political systems, built by human hands, are not the ultimate truth: the ultimate truth is greater than humanity.  Isaiah is seen as a political radical: human institutions are merely human.  We should conform to God’s order, not to human order.  
	The enigmatic form of our text, encouraging the prophet’s and our own constant, ungratified desire for clear revelation, encourages such a theology.  We, like the prophet, yearn for the truth.  We suffer the pain of witnessing horrific events, but we are encouraged to witness nonetheless, to try to ‘see’ and ‘hear’ all that God is doing in the world, so that we can realize the ultimate truth underlying the universe, and see and conform to the divine order of things.   Or perhaps the struggle, the confusion, the jarringly painful experience of not knowing, is itself a religious experience.

David B. Siff
Reconstructionist Rabbinical College
The fifteenth of Shvat, 5760
January 21, 2000