Ronald L. Troxel, «Economic Plunder as a Leitmotif in LXX-Isaiah», Vol. 83 (2002) 375-391
The translator of LXX-Isaiah is known to have perceived in the prophet’s words presages of events in his day and to have expressed those in his translation. Some such themes recur often enough to merit designating them leitmotifs. Such is the case with the description of the people’s plunder through taxation as portrayed in 3,12-15; 5,5.17; 6,13; 9,3-4. Each of these descriptions arises through a unique construal of Hebrew syntax or an assumption of novel semantic ranges for Hebrew lexemes. The appearance of this theme in each of these otherwise unrelated passages merits designating it a leitmotif.
antonym to kri/sin || +p#m because he thereby could designate Israel’s culpability for violating the no/moj 69. This is consistent with the perspective of 6,9-13, which interprets the "plundering" of the people as punishment for their obduracy.
The fact that a)nomi/a is the crime that occasions the "plunder" of the vineyard supports the conclusion that the translator chose ei)j diarpagh/n in v. 5 based on his predilection for the theme of the economic plunder of the people, already described in 3,14 as the burning of "my vineyard" (= "my people") and as a(rpagh/.
VI. Conclusion
The detection of a leitmotif within a translation requires establishing that it influenced the rendering of multiple, otherwise disconnected passages whose Hebrew provides inadequate basis for that theme. The detailed portrayal of the rulers as plundering the people in 3,12-15 correlates with the similar sketch of the problem besetting Israel in 6,11-13, where such plundering is portrayed as punishment for the people’s obduracy (cf. 5,5). Moreover, the fate of those plundering the people in 3,12-15 and 6,11-13 corresponds to the way deliverance is described as freedom from economic oppressors in 9,3-4 and 5,16-17.
This leitmotif accords with the broad consensus that LXX–Isa was translated in the second quarter of the second century B.C.E., when Seleucid domination of Jerusalem and Judea was being thrown off 70. The level of taxes under the Hellenistis had become repressive 71, making relief from Seleucid taxation a significant consequence of the revolt. That seems a likely explanation for the translator’s preoccupation with economic plunder as the supreme crime of the