With the congregation schedule calling for Isaiah 14-16 to be considered, I was a little bummed to be assigned the 16th chapter for the oral Bible reading. 14 looks more interesting. That’s the one where the Grave is greeting newcomers, as though Mick Jagger, ‘Pleased to meet you. Hope you guess my name. Didn’t you used to be a hotshot back in the day?’ I avoided that song for a long time upon becoming a Jehovah’s Witness. How can a Christian show “sympathy for the devil?” But, in time I discovered it’s not sympathy for him at all—it’s just an expose of his methods.
In the case of Isaiah 14, it is ‘sympathy for Sheol,’ usually translated the Grave—big G because it is not an individual grave but the fate of all humankind. Good or bad, it makes no difference. It is also anthropomorphized. It’s not a place of conscious existence. Isaiah 14 is very much in the spirit of Odysseus popping in on Hades during his long voyage home. ‘Man, it sucks here,’ everyone tells him. But it is only a metaphorical place—the state of the dead.
Ah, well—no use pining away for what isn’t. For me, it is Isaiah 16. Maybe it’s sort of a penance for me for squabbling with my brother when we were both kids. 16, too, is sort of a sibling rivalry on steroids, except it is cousins, not siblings. There is a long, long history of bad blood between Moab and Israel and in 16 it comes to a head. It was Moab who long ago hired a prophet called Balaam and sent him into Israel just to mess with them. As for me, I long ago got over my contentions with my brothers. Though, there are times when I review family photos, like this one, and feel bitter regret that I did not ram his fat head into this cake. I mean, it was a perfect opportunity and I let it slip right through my fingers. It has tormented me my entire life:
Isaiah 16 begins—it’s a missive to Moab: “Send a ram to the ruler of the land, From Sela through the wilderness To the mountain of the daughter of Zion.” Yeah, that’s what I wanted my brother to do for me: send me a tribute! I was the “ruler of land.” I was the firstborn! That means he should kowtow to me. Instead, he did everything in his power to annoy me!”
“Sorry, Tom” he says now, “it was just that you were so easy to annoy.” I was not! And even if I was, wasn’t I the firstborn? Where did I read that the second-born causes major upheaval in a family, since the parents now have to split their attention?
There are some real overtures to Moab in the next few verses, that they will do the right thing in the face of Assyrian onslaught and show mercy to the refugees. “Conceal the dispersed and do not betray those fleeing.” (vs 3) But then, Isaiah has to go talking Jesus to them (vs 5) and it all comes to naught because they already gots their own church—that of Chemoth. (Grumble, grumble—what’s a wannabe Bible scholar to do? When I enter Moab’s god, Chemoth, AI changes it to “chemotherapy.”)
Alas, we come to the real problem with verses 6-7:
“We have heard about the pride of Moab—he is very proud— His haughtiness and his pride and his fury; But his empty talk will come to nothing. So Moab will wail for Moab.” THAT’S who they will be concerned for: themselves.
Why do I take such perverse satisfaction in the fact that Stanley Kubrick, the director of 2001: A Space Odyssey, couldn’t stand Carl Sagan? ‘Keep that supercilious fellow away from me,’ he told his collaborator Arthur C. Clarke, who had thought their initial luncheon date had gone well. I think it is a lifetime of Bible training to the effect that modesty is more befitting in a human than pride. There are enough brilliant people around who are humble (Kubrick was one of them, consistently described as friendly, unassuming, and even a “peasant” in Michael Benton’s book on the making of 2001) that to suffer through an arrogant jerk is simply unnecessary—unless you are unfortunate enough to find yourself working for him.
Cornell, where he hails from as a professor who never showed up to teach class, treats him as a god. The “Sagan Planet Walk,” a scale model of the solar system, characterizes that town, spanning three quarters of a mile, with the sun in the Ithaca Commons. Notwithstanding that Kubrick didn’t like him, he invited him and a few other leading scientists to introduce 2001, because he feared the movie might be too far ahead of its time. Sagan was the only one who wanted payment. He was the only one to demand editorial control. The offer was withdrawn.
If he had ever ordered his wine from Moab, he would have found that offer was withdrawn to. A one-time agricultural powerhouse, though Moab’s vineyards “reached as far as Jazer,” extended “into the wilderness,” and “spread out and gone as far as the sea,” (implying exports) it would all come to nothing when Assyria was through. (vs 8-9)
If he strutted around in life, nonetheless, Sagan was humble in death—I’ll give him that. His gravesite is in Ithaca’s Lakeview Cemetery, a serene and park-like place on the hillside. It features a simply headstone, not the 2001-like monolith that one might expect. As though it was, however, pilgrims will leave blue marbles as tributes referencing his “Pale Blue Dot” characterization of the earth from space. It recalls for me a plea on social media from a scientist to his fellows that they be “intellectually humble.” Is humility such a quality that you can sub-divide it, that as long as you are intellectually humble, you don’t have to worry about being actually humble?
It sort of recalls what I wrote in ‘A Workman’s Theodicy’ about the social benefits of being as scientist: “It’s a good gig to be a scientist. You don’t see poverty. You don’t see dirt. You get to hang out with smart people at the university. Everyone you meet likes to read. To be sure, you do see plenty of proud and stubborn people, but as a fellow scientist, they admit you into the club. What’s not to like? You get to hang up in your lab Far Side cartoons, such as the one of the scientists fleeing the lab like kids in frock coats upon hearing the ting-a-ling of the ice cream man—nobody enjoys those cartoons more than scientists, I am told.”
But enough of bashing scientists. I’m just envious because I missed the boat on that one. It’s Moab’s pride that we’re talking about.* Here it is revealed in the Mesha Stele (Moabite Stone). It’s a black basalt monument erected around 840 BCE by King Mesha of Moab. It stands about 3–4 feet tall, inscribed with 34 lines in the Moabite language, a Canaanite dialect very close to Hebrew, written in a Phoenician-related script. The original was destroyed but not before a paper-mâché impression was made of it, which not sits in Louvre Museum in Paris. On it, Mesha boasts how Chemosh totally crushed Israel. “Israel has perished forever!” it reads. A light dusting, the Bible itself reveals at 2 Kings 3.
These ancient kings were invariably blowhards. Their scribes had no choice but to record victories, if they valued their heads. Typically, the would up the numbers along the way, to keep their bosses happy. Bob Brier, the Egyptologist tells of one pharoah who records stunning victory after victory, each one closer to home, as he was retreating. It is in striking contrast to Bible writers, who recorded not only Israelite victories, but also defeats.
The Mesha Stele is also the earliest known reference to the Tetragrammaton, outside of the Bible itself. There is, arguably an earlier Egyptian reference, but it is in that language and thus is truncated to three consonants, making in a ‘Trigrammaton’—who gives a hoot about one of those?
*(the expression ‘That’s what I’m talkin’ about’ is so dumb that it became an instant hit in our family. Even my 90-year-old dad, upon laying down a Scrabble word, would say, ‘That’s what I’m talkin’ about.’ This is the same dad whom I never knew had a Jersey accent until one day when my daughter took to imitating him.)
****** The bookstore
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