In Isaiah 10:6, Yahweh describes Israel as a “people of wrath” ( ‘am ‘avrati ). Like other phrases that Isaiah uses to describe godless Israel, this one is a pun. ‘avarah puns first with ‘ever , or Eber, the ancestor of the Jews and the source of the name “Hebrews.” Eberites had become Wrathites.
The word also puns, more directly, on the verb ‘avar , “pass over” or “pass through,” a word used both for the Lord “passing through” Egypt at Passover (Exodus 12:12) and for Israel’s passage through the sea (Exodus 15:16). The people of Passover and Exodus have become people of Wrath. Once Yahweh passed by the houses of Israel, but now the Angel will carry out His wrath against Israel; once Israel passed through the sea, but the Lord is bringing an Assyrian flood that will drown them.
YOU MIGHT ALSO LIKE
Rome and the Church in the United States
Archbishop Michael J. Curley of Baltimore, who confirmed my father, was a pugnacious Irishman with a taste…
Marriage Annulment and False Mercy
Pope Leo XIV recently told participants in a juridical-pastoral formation course of the Roman Rota that the…
Undercover in Canada’s Lawless Abortion Industry
On November 27, 2023, thirty-six-year-old Alissa Golob walked through the doors of the Cabbagetown Women’s Clinic in…
