Blue Cord

Newsweek has a good on-line article entitled “Mess O’Potamian Art” (presumably with a hat tip to The Daily Show). It provides an update on the Baghdad Museum in the wake of the looting that followed the US invasion five years ago. It also briefly discusses a few new sites that have been explored since the invasion, including one that yielded a previously unknown deity named Shuda, who is mentioned on a stone relief. Unfortunately, the article does not say whether the relief was inscribed with Sumerian, Akkadian, or Aramaic, nor does it give the date of the relief.

Hat tip:  Claude Mariottini for noticing the reference to Shuda.

As part of my writing for International Biblical Studies Writing Month (held over for a second month due to popular demand), I am writing an exegetical essay on Isaiah 65:17-25 for the Feasting on the Word lectionary series. I came across an interesting aspect of the passage that I thought I would discuss.

It is widely recognized that Isaiah 65:25 alludes to Isaiah 11:6-9. Isaiah 65:25a states:

The wolf and the lamb will graze together; the lion will eat straw like the ox; and the serpent will have dust for its food.¹

It occurs to me that this is a rather odd statement. The first two phrases quoted above envision a return to the conditions of the Garden of Eden. The imagery is right at home in this passage, which envisions God creating a new heavens and a new earth (Isaiah 65:17). It also matches the heavenly vision of Isaiah 11:6-9.

But what is going on with the serpent? In Isaiah 11:8, the child will play with the asp and the adder without being hurt. This would make us think that the serpent eating dust is in contrast to its previous predilection. But Genesis 3:14 (which was probably known to Third Isaiah) states that eating dust is the serpent’s punishment. This would suggest that while the other animals are returning to the peaceful existence of the Garden of Eden, the serpent still bears its punishment. This doesn’t match with the thrust of the verse or with the material to which it alludes in Isaiah 11:6-9.

Blenkinsopp offers the following suggestion:

[The author] was apparently convinced that, having been cursed from the very beginning, snakes are the one exception to this ideal scene of harmony in the animal world. The snake is therefore excluded from this transformation of the natural world, this return to the first creation, in which humans and animals are to live in harmony and none will kill for food.²

This explanation leaves me less than satisfied. After all, nothing states that the serpent is not going to live in harmony. It won’t be killing for food, since it will eat dust. And the main animosity in Genesis 3 is between the serpent and humans, not between serpents and other animals.

But I still don’t have a satisfactory explanation for what is going on with the serpent. Does Isaiah 65:25 see this as a positive or negative for the serpent? Is the serpent going to eat dust instead of attacking humans? Or is the serpents fate contrasted with the fate of the other animals through a reiteration of the curse in Genesis 3:14? What is going on?

Anyone have any ideas?

1. My translation. [back]
2. Joseph Blenkinsopp, Isaiah 55-66, Anchor Bible 19B (New York: Doubleday, 2003), 290. [back]

I was disappointed to come into work today and find out that the convocation scheduled for noon has been canceled. The speaker was to have been Renita J. Weems. Dr. Weems was formerly a professor of Hebrew Bible at Vanderbilt University and is the founder of Something Within, a consulting service that helps women balance faith and life. I was really looking forward to hearing her speak. Unfortunately, weather conditions prevented her flying out to the college today.

Now, I understand canceling the convocation because she is not here. After all, you can’t get a speaker at the last minute. But I don’t understand why they had to cancel the free convocation luncheon. I am sure we could have found someone to eat Dr. Weems’s portion. Pooh and bother. Now I have to eat a frozen dinner for lunch.

Congratulations to the New York Giants for winning the Superbowl. It was a pleasure to watch them beat the New England Patriots, even though I am currently sort–of living in New England. My main beef with the Patriots is their fans. I am sure there must be a huge overlap between Boston Red Sox fans and New England Patriot fans. But for some reason, Red Sox fans are by and large decent people, while Patriots fans are some of the most obnoxious people I have ever met.¹

The Patriots themselves, of course, are not the classiest team in the NFL. Running up the score on the other team and trying to steal the other team’s signals are just a few of the things that annoy me about them. Bill Belichick leaving the field tonight before the clock had run out was a perfect example of his lack of unsportsmanlike attitude.

New England played a good game, but the Giants played a better one. Their defense was fantastic. It was a joy to watch Tom Brady get sacked and knocked down repeatedly, something that didn’t happen all season. The part that I enjoyed most was that by the end of the game, it wasn’t easy to identify who the MVP was on the Giants. It really was a team effort. And it couldn’t happen to a nicer guy than Eli Manning.

As always, the commercials were enjoyable, although most of the better ones came in the second half. My favorite was the Underdog and Stewie balloons chasing the Coke balloon, with Charlie Brown ultimately being the one to catch it (Coke had a couple of good ads). The two ads with the talking baby doing stock trades were also a lot of fun, especially the comment about underestimating how creepy the clown was. The fact that I can’t actually remember what company the ad was supposed to get me to support is icing on the cake. The hands–down worst ad was the guy using the Amp energy drink to jump start a car. I wanted to gouge my eyes out after watching him clamp jumper cables onto his nipples. I have only rarely used an energy drink, and this ad is not about to get me to start.

Doritos gets my vote for the classiest commercial. Instead of hawking their product, they had a contest called “Crash the Superbowl.” Doritos bought ad time and gave it to the winner, Kina Grannis, a new singer who will no doubt benefit from the exposure. I’ll purposely go out and grab some Doritos next time I need a snack, and I may even buy Kina’s song on iTunes. Much better than the Cheetos ads that have been airing for the past few weeks, where the Cheetos cheetah encourages a woman to ruin another person’s laundry by dropping Cheetos in the dryer.

Excellent halftime show too. I didn’t know I liked that many songs by Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers.

1. There are exceptions, of course, such as my son. [back]