An Unnoticed Euphemism in Isaiah Ix 19-20?

Abstract

over the mountains, 6b, now their pride was rebuffed in that they were forced down to the valleys. As all these interpretations either alter the text or do violence to the natural meaning of the words, there is justification for proposing another. The clue is given in the realization that, though the Psalmist is describing the ordering of the world and praising God for the wisdom therein manifested, he does so in terms of his own experience. It is his own land of Palestine that he has before his eyes. He is thinking of its mountains and valleys, plains girt by the sea, springs, rivers, and rain. So when he reflects on the places destined by God for the waters, he thinks not only of the sea, the mountain-torrents, the springs in the lowlands, but also of the remarkable fact that springs are found also in the mountains. He will have had in mind the three sources of the Jordan, that which feeds the Nahr Baniyas at 329 metres, that at the foot of Tell e]-Qadi which gives rise to the Nahr Leddan at 143 metres, and the third from which flows the Nahr el-Hasbani at 520 metres or about 1600 feet 1). Then there are the springs on the Judaean plateau, the two between ed-Darariyeh and Hebron being perhaps Caleb's upper and nether springs, Jos. xv. 19 2). Then there is the famous 'Ain Sitti Maryam which gushes out some 150 feet below the summit of the Temple hill, 2440 ft 3). This thought will have been in the Psalmist's mind, that water which naturally flows downwards, nonetheless gushes out high in mountainous regions; and so he wrote of the primeval waters: