What of the Land with Bows? Archers of “Meshech” and the Allusion to Genesis in Isaiah 66:19
What of the Land with Bows? Archers of “Meshech” and the Allusion to Genesis in Isaiah 66:19

Summary/Abstract: This paper seeks to interpret the term "Meshech of the bow", a unique gentilic in the Book of Isaiah. Placed within a part of the Book of Isaiah referred to in redactional methodology as Trito-Isaiah, Isaiah 66:19 lists several gentilic names: “I will set a “sign” among them and will send survivors from them to the nations: Tarshish, Put, Lud, Meshech of the bow, Tubal, and Yavan, to the distant coastlands that have neither heard my fame nor seen my glory. They will declare my glory among the nations.” Among them is a certain Môšḵê qešet, translated as "Meshech of the bow". Meshech is a reference to Phrygia between Lydia and Tubal/Tabal in Central Anatolia. The term "Meshech of the bow" is not a recognized ancient Near Eastern gentilic name. The reference to the "bow" in Isaiah 66:19 can be understood as a marker for a literary allusion to Genesis 9:13: “I have set My “bow” in the cloud, and it shall be for a “sign” of a covenant between Me and the earth”. The use of another marker in the Masoretic text, the word "sign" (ôt) in both Isaiah 66:19 and Genesis 9:13 further strengthens this interpretation.

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