“My Hand Has Found, Like a Nest, the Wealth of the Peoples” (Isa 10:14):

Conceptual and Ideological Blending in the Rhetoric of Isaiah 10

Abstract

Concerning Isa 10:5‒15, and the fictional speeches of an Assyrian king in it, scholars agree that much of this text’s content appears in the Neo-Assyrian royal annals, yet the referenced material is reversed to cast Assyria and its royal representative as the antithesis of everything the imperial discourse sought to uphold and propagate. The focus of this article is on the king’s plunder of the nations’ treasures which is presented through the symbolism of bird hunting and egg robbing (Isa 10:14). Drawing on ANE textual and iconographic material, this article suggests that the bird imagery in v. 14 reflects the Assyrian practice of hunting and collecting ostriches and their eggs, both of which were exotic commodities that signified wealth, prestige, and world domination. Deploying this symbolism, the Judean prophet, however, overlays it with his own Israelite negative understanding of the ostrich. Blending the two “ostrich ideologies,” the prophet satirizes the hubristic claims of the Assyrian king. Subverting the king’s self-aggrandizing claims and making him laughable, the prophet signals the king’s impending demise.