Isaiah 51:9-10

These verses are addressed to Jehovah, either by the prophet himself, or by the community of true Israelites. It is difficult to decide between these two views, but the dramatic unity of the passage is best preserved if we adopt the latter, taking Isaiah 51:9 as a prayer called forth by the previous exhortation, and Isaiah 51:12 ff. as the Divine answer to this prayer.

The imagery of the verses is obviously mythological. It rests on the conception of a conflict in days long past between Jehovah and the monsters called Rahab and the Dragon. Now both these names came to be used as symbols of Egypt (see on ch. Isaiah 30:7, and Isaiah 27:1); and most commentators have thought that this is the case here, the historic reference being to the humiliation of Egypt, and the dividing of the Red Sea in the days of Moses. But it is doubtful if this interpretation exhauststhe significance of the passage. The prophet seems to make direct use of current mythological representations, as is frequently done by the author of the Book of Job (see the notes on Isaiah 3:8; Isaiah 9:13; Isaiah 26:13 in Davidson's Book of Job). And if this be so there cannot be much doubt as to the nature of the myth in question. It is most probably a Hebrew variation of the Babylonian creation-hymn, according to which the creation of the world was preceded by a conflict between the God of light and order and the monsters that symbolise the dark powers of Chaos (so Duhm; see also Gunkel, Schöpfung und Chaos, pp. 30 ff.). The fundamental idea of the verses would therefore seem to lie in the analogy between the original creation of the material world, and the restoration of the moral order of the universe, which has been disturbed by the reign of brute force in the Babylonian empire (cf. Isaiah 51:16). At the same time, the undoubted allusion to the Exodus in 10 b, shows that the historical application of the imagery was present to the mind of the prophet (see below).