Stimme in der Wüste – Rufer in der Wüste – Weg in der Wüste: Struktur und Interpretationsgeschichte von Jes 40,3

The first two clauses of Isa 40:3 can be and have been interpreted in different ways. "The desert" can be interpreted as a locative circumstance of the voice, of the one crying, or of the way and its preparing. In a first step, the paper describes the different ways of syntactically parsing these clauses, the semantics of their elements, and the poetical structure of the verse. The semantics and the poetical structures hint to an interpretation of the desert as part of the direct speech.

In a second step, the history of the interpretation is traced, shown by translations and quotations of the expression and by comments on it. In the LXX, the poetic parallelism of the verse is different because of the omission of the word b‘rbh in the second part of the verse. Hence its poetical structure is a clue for the connection of the desert with the introduction of the direct speech. In the New Testament, the voice is referred to John the Baptist, who is located in the desert. This is why in the overwhelming majority of Christian sources, the desert is the place of the voice and not of the way. In Jewish sources, both interpretations are found, the connection of the desert with the introduction to the direct speech being more common. The accents of the Masoretic Text, however, divide after the first two words of the verse.