This book examines the remarkable phenomenon of allusions to the Song Ha’azinu (Deut 32) throughout book of Isaiah. It draws attention to allusions which add to our understanding and appreciation of the particular passage in which they are found while also revealing a literary strategy which runs through the whole of Isaiah, a strategy by which the Song of Deut 32 was used as a kind of foundational text.
The book is divided into four parts, the first dealing with the Song Ha’azinu and the other three with the allusions to the Song in the book of Isaiah.
Part one is a close reading of the Song Ha’azinu which proceeds verse by verse while also discussing the message of the Song as a whole. The poem deals with the relationship between the LORD and His people Israel in the past, the present, and the future and tells a story that awaits its final fulfillment. Two things become apparent from the close reading: the unity of the Song and the literary and semantic connections between its parts; a clear polemic against the Canaanite gods, including the head of the Canaanite pantheon ‘El’, which points to the very early provenance of the Song.
The three additional parts of the book follow the allusions to the Song Ha’azinu in Isaiah chapters 1–39, 40–55, 56–66. At the end of each part, there is a summary that includes an analysis of the allusions to the Song in that part of Isaiah. At the end of the book, a final chapter draws overall conclusions.
Throughout the book of Isaiah, there are allusions to the Song which are important to the context in which they are found and add levels of meaning to the text. No less impressive is the overall picture. One aspect of this picture is that various literary units throughout the book of Isaiah are linked by inner literary and semantic connections and at the same time have allusions to the same verses in the Song which in each case have their own individual allusive markers. This fascinating phenomenon reveals a literary strategy in the book of Isaiah as a whole. What appears, therefore, is that all the allusions to the Song Ha’azinu in different parts of the book taken together are markers of a ‘book-wide allusion’. The Song, therefore, was used as a kind of blueprint text. This phenomenon has many important implications for our understanding of the book of Isaiah, among which is the conclusion that the book had one author with a literary strategy for the book as a whole.
Publisher: Magnes Press (with the help of The Tsur Institute of Biblical Research), 2024
If you would like a copy:
Listen to the Song: The Sounds of the Song Ha’azinu (Deut 32) in the Book of Isaiah
