A comparative note on the demand for witnesses in Isaiah 43:9

Abstract

Recent studies have demonstrated the particular value of Neo-Babylonian litigation records for elucidating matters of law in the Hebrew Bible, both in actual legislative passages and in Job’s metaphoric lawsuit.1 The Akkadian records attest to the workings of actual courts of law, and thus furnish a crucial supplement to the relative dearth of Israelite sources on court procedure.2 The purpose of this brief communication is to point to a parallel between the Neo-Babylonian litigation corpus and an apparent legalism in Second Isaiah. The existence of this parallel anchors Isaiah’s well-known courtroom scenes in a contemporary legal reality. The imaginary legal situations are known from actual legal texts, and Isaiah’s language could well have been language used in an ancient court.