Two figures of speech common to Isaiah and the Cyrus cylinder

by Stephen Hewitt | Published 8 November 2024

The ancient cuneiform clay artefact in the British Museum called the Cyrus cylinder [1] and the biblical book of Isaiah use similar phrases or imagery in relation to Cyrus: taking him by the hand, and calling him by name.

A translation [2] of the Cyrus cylinder says of Marduk (“the lord of the gods”):

...“he searched everywhere and then he took a righteous king, his favorite, by the hand, he called out his name: Cyrus, king of Anšan; he pronounced his name to be king all over the world.”

The King James translation of Isaiah chapter 45, verse 1:

“Thus saith the LORD to his anointed, to Cyrus, whose right hand I have holden, to subdue nations before him; and”...

verses 3-4: “And I will give thee the treasures of darkness, and hidden riches of secret places, that thou mayest know that I, the LORD, which call thee by thy name, am the God of Israel. For Jacob my servant's sake, and Israel mine elect, I have even called thee by thy name: I have surnamed thee, though thou hast not known me.”

This observation has been made elsewhere. For example in [3] there is a table “Textual similarities between the Cyrus Cylinder and Isaiah” with five entries, including these two.

References

[1]

“The Cyrus cylinder: clay cylinder; a Babylonian account of the conquest of Babylon by Cyrus in 539 BC, of his restoration to various temples of statues removed by Nabonidus, the previous king of Babylon, and of his own work at Babylon.” This was the first sentence under the heading “Description” on the British Museum's website in 2024, at https://www.britishmuseum.org/collection/object/W_1880-0617-1941

[2]

The translated sentence here was taken from the following web page with h1 heading Cyrus Cylinder Translation and no stated author, in December 2023: https://www.livius.org/sources/content/cyrus-cylinder/cyrus-cylinder-translation/

The page stated that the translation “is based on Mordechai Cogan's, published in W.H. Hallo and K.L. Younger, The Context of Scripture. Vol. II: Monumental Inscriptions from the Biblical World (2003, Leiden and Boston), but has been adapted to Schaudig's edition with the help of Bert van der Spek.”

[3]

The Cyrus Cylinder: A Journey through Translation, Zeinab Amiri and Farzaneh Farahzad, Intralinea volume 25, 2023. This was at https://www.intralinea.org/archive/article/2650 in 2024.

It includes: “Juxtaposing the Cylinder text with Old Testament's texts mentioning the name of Cyrus (e.g., Ezra, Daniel, Deutro Isaiah) reveals significant phraseological and rhetorical similarities (For further discussion see, Razmjou 2020).” The reference is the following, which did not seem to be available on the open web in 2024: The Textual Connections between the Cyrus Cylinder and the Bible, with Particular Reference to Isaiah, Shahrokh Razmjou, 2020, Studies in Ancient Persia and the Achaemenid Period, Terrence Mitchel Memorial Volume, The Lutterworth Press, London.