A Comparative Note on the Demand for Witnesses in Isaiah 43:9

(ProQuest: ... denotes non-US-ASCII text omitted.) Recent studies have demonstrated the particular value of Neo-Babylonian litigation records for elucidating matters of law in the Hebrew Bible, both in actual legislative passages and in Job's metaphoric lawsuit.1 The Akkadian records attest to the workings of actual courts of law, and thus furnish a crucial supplement to the relative dearth of Israelite sources on court procedure.2 The purpose of this brief communication is to point to a parallel between the Neo-Babylonian litigation corpus and an apparent legalism in Second Isaiah. The existence of this parallel anchors Isaiah's well-known courtroom scenes in a contemporary legal reality. The imaginary legal situations are known from actual legal texts, and Isaiah's language could well have been language used in an ancient court. Isaiah 43:9-13 forms a court scene that describes the case between God and the foreign nations regarding the question of "proof of prediction."3 In 43:9, the prophet, speaking on behalf of Yhwh, challenges the nations as follows: ... All the nations assemble, let peoples gather! Who among them can proclaim this? Let them foretell us first things! Let them produce their witnesses, so that they may be vindicated, Let them hear, and declare, "It is true." The second half of the verse records a demand for the nations' witnesses, phrased in the third person: ...("Let them produce their witnesses, so that they may be vindicated"). Although one might identify an ironic, dismissive tone in this phrase, Claus Westermann characterizes it as part of an actual, earnestly spoken "summons" (Vorladung); the nations are offered an opportunity to vindicate themselves by producing witnesses.4 In the end, the summons goes unanswered and the nations' cause remains without support.5 Yhwh, on the other hand, is able to support his position by presenting the Israelites, who serve as witnesses (43:10, 12). For parallels to the demand for witnesses in Isa 43:9, one may point to several Neo-Babylonian texts that require the presentation of witnesses to establish a claim. These texts usually begin with the phrase U4 X-kam2 Sa2 ITI Y PN1 mukinnesu ibbakamma ana PN2 ukân . . . ("On day X of month Y, PN1 shall bring his witnesses and prove, against PN2, that . . .").6 This clause ends with a record of the charge that the summoned individual (PN1) must prove against the opposing party (PN2).7 At the level of formulation, one should note the following three parallels between the Hebrew and the Akkadian: (1) the expression of the demand is in the third person (rather than in the imperative); (2) the term for witnesses is followed by a possessive suffix that refers to the named individual (Heb. ..., Akk.-su); and (3) both employ verbs (wnty, ibbakamma)8 that, together with the possessive suffixes just noted, suggest that the summoned individual must arrange for the witnesses to appear before the court. These similarities, however, are not strong enough to point to any inherent connection between the texts. Since courts in all places and at all times rely on witnesses to prove cases, it is entirely possible that Isaiah's heavenly court and its Neo-Babylonian counterparts on earth would have arrived, independently, at similar expressions of the same requirement. If, however, one looks beyond the similarly worded demands, one finds that the Neo-Babylonian records do furnish a situational parallel to Isa 43:9. The Akkadian documents regularly include penalty clauses that govern both success and failure in proving the case. In some texts, failure to prove the case results in a penalty imposed on the summoned individuals themselves. This implies that the summoned individuals have raised the claim against the opposing party in order to clear themselves. If they do not prove their case, they are responsible for the penalty. If they do succeed, the opposing party must make the payment and the summoned individuals are clear. …