A well-known verse in Isaiah 54:13 reads as follows:
וְכָל בָּנַיִךְ לִמּוּדֵי יְהוָה וְרַב שְׁלוֹם בָּנָיִךְ
"And all your children [will be] students of G-d, and great [will be] the peace of your children."
The Septuagint here gives a pretty straightforward translation:
Καὶ πάντας τοὺς υἱούς σου διδακτοὺς θεοῦ καὶ ἐν πολλῇ εἰρήνῃ τὰ τέκνα σου
This is equivalent to the English translation above, and the only noticeable deviation from the Hebrew is the rendering of ורב שלום with the adverbial phrase ἐν πολλη εἰρήνῃ, giving "and in great peace [will be] your children." But there is a curious feature of this translation which doesn't seem to affect the meaning, and that is the use of two different Greek words to translate the same Hebrew word בניך, children:
Καὶ πάντας τοὺς υἱούς σου διδακτοὺς θεοῦ καὶ ἐν πολλῇ εἰρήνῃ τὰ τέκνα σου
There are a couple of natural moves here. One is to see whether there might have been an alternative Hebrew text before the translators of the LXX--perhaps they had a version of the Hebrew that read בניך in the first half of the verse and ילדיך in another, or something like that? A consultation of the Biblia Hebraica Stuttgartensia reveals no such variants, however, and the use of nearly identical Greek synonyms is far from sufficient grounds to conjecture a variant into existence.
The next thing to do would be to examine the instances in which the LXX uses υἱὸς (pl. υἱούς) vs. those in which it uses τέκνον (pl. τέκνα) to see how it differentiates between the two--perhaps there is some shading to each that makes it appropriate for the first and second halves of the verse, respectively? υἱὸς is by far the more common usage, so we might expect some clear reasons to emerge for the use of τέκνον, but a look through the material yields only a couple of interesting but not entirely consistent patterns. From Genesis until 2 Samuel (2 Regnorum, in the LXX), the LXX prefers τέκνον in vocative settings (when a character is calling out "my son/child"), with three exceptions (Gen 27:1, 27:8, 49:9), and from 2 Samuel and on--with the exception of Prov 31:2--this distinction disappears altogether and υἱὸς (voc. υἱέ) always appears (a good indication that the translators from 2 Samuel and on were not those of the earlier volumes). Both words can be used to refer to sons or to children in general, although when both sons and daughters are mentioned υἱὸς is always used, such as Gen 31:43 and Isa 60:4, in which υἱὸς is used to refer to sons as opposed daughters, and τέκνον is used to refer to both. All in all, it's hard to see any environment in which the LXX systematically prefers τέκνον outside of the vocative use mentioned earlier, which anyhow disappears after 2 Samuel and is not relevant for our verse.
Finally, we might conjecture a stylistic motive for the translation of our verse--maybe it was considered distasteful to repeat the same word when a synonym was available? Parallelism, or repeating the same idea using synonyms, is a common device in much ancient poetry from Akkadian to Greek, and is known in traditional commentaries as כפל הענין במילים שונות, which translates roughly to "same idea, different words". It would be novel here, where the Hebrew text does not vary the words, for the Greek translation (which generally keeps fairly close to the Hebrew) to do so out of a sense of style, and indeed the LXX does not, to my knowledge, generally alternate synonyms for verses with repeating Hebrew words. [An unexpected exception to this rule is the translation of the verb אכל in פרשת בא; I have not yet had a chance to investigate that instance.] And yet, looking into this possibility specifically with regards to בן yields an interesting result. We must exclude verses in which one of the two instances of בן is vocative, one of the two instances refers to male children while the other refers to children in general (see above), or one of the instances is part of an appellation such as "sons of Israel" or "son of Hadad" (which would remain stable across contexts). Having done that, we are left with four instances in which the LXX does the same thing it does for our verse: Deut 24:16, Isa 51:18, Hos 13:13, and 2 Chr 25:4 quoting Deut 24:16. The fact that 2 Chr 25:4 preserves the variation of the Greek at Deut 24:16 shows that the translator understood it to be a significant feature of the text. Indeed, the translator of the parallel verse in 2 Kngs 14:6, also quoting Deut 24:16, does not do this, using υἱὸς for both instances. It seems that something is afoot.
Just to sharpen the contrast before we dive in, we should ask: are there other verses that contain בן in both halves of a parallelism where the LXX does not alternate its translation? The answer is yes! In Prov 17:6 and Ezek 5:10, the LXX uses τέκνα to translate both instances of בנים. (Two other verses that could've been helpful here unfortunately are not: Mal 3:24 is translated metaphorically, while in Isa 30:9 the second instance of בן is omitted in the translation.) This is even more reason to scrutinize the five verses where the LXX does alternate the translation to see if we can make some sense of the matter.
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Of the verses in question, the one with the most pressing interpretive issue is Deut 24:16 and its quotation in 2 Chr 25:4. The verse reads:
לֹא יוּמְתוּ אָבוֹת עַל בָּנִים וּבָנִים לֹא יוּמְתוּ עַל אָבוֹת אִישׁ בְּחֶטְאוֹ יוּמָתוּ
"Fathers shall not be killed for sons and sons shall not be killed for fathers; each man shall be killed for his sin."
The traditional commentators are divided on the sense of killing a father "for a son" and a son "for a father". Targum Onkelos, following the Talmud in Sanhedrin 27b, translates this to mean that son and father may not testify against one another in court, a midrashic approach that is not intended to reflect the pshuto shel mikra. Targum Neofiti translates the verse as saying that fathers and sons do not die for one another's sins through Divine punishment. Targum Yerushalmi translates the verse to reflect both of the approaches. Shadal reads the verse as forbidding the switching of a father for a son and vice versa in the application of the death penalty and suggests that there might've been an ancient custom to this effect, citing Zaleucus, whose son was to have both his eyes put out and who volunteered one of his own eyes for one of his son's (Gesta Romanum 50). R. Shnayer Leiman once told me in a similar vein that he saw in this verse a repudiation of the law in Hammurabi's Code that if a house collapses and kills the child of the owner, the penalty is death for the child of the builder (Hammurabi's Code 230).
We may divide these approaches into two groups: the "Divine Punishment" group (Targum Neofiti) and the "Legal Punishment" group (Shadal, R. Leiman; we leave out Targum Onkelos for the moment as not reflecting pshuto shel mikra). The problem facing the LP group is finding a potential precedent for such a punishment, such that our verse would need to repudiate it. Shadal's example is conjectured, and while R. Leiman's example may be the target of our verse, it is a very specific point in Hammurabi's Code (which does not generally allow the punishment of fathers for sons and vice versa), and it is difficult to show that the Torah's text has it in mind. More compelling in this regard is the approach of Seforno, who sees our verse as discussing the punishment of rebels. Whereas the expected reaction of a king is to put to death both the rebel and his offspring, our verse warns against it. This approach finds support in Tanach itself, for as Seforno points out, 2 Kngs 14:6/2 Chr 25:4 invokes our verse for just this case: Amatziah declines to execute the children of conspirators because "fathers shall not be killed for sons, etc". But this approach, too, requires that we see in our verse something far more specific than it seems to have in mind. It is just as reasonable to say that Amatziah saw the case of the conspirators as also covered by our verse, not as its specific intent.
The problem facing the DP group is that our verse would seem to flatly contradict a different verse in the Torah (Ex 20:4):
לֹא תִשְׁתַּחֲוֶה לָהֶם וְלֹא תׇעׇבְדֵם כִּי אָנֹכִי יְהֹוָה אֱלֹהֶיךָ אֵל קַנָּא פֹּקֵד עֲוֺן אָבֹת עַל בָּנִים עַל שִׁלֵּשִׁים וְעַל רִבֵּעִים לְשֹׂנְאָי
"Do not bow down to them and do not worship them, for I, Hashem your God, am a jealous God, visiting the sins of fathers upon sons up to the third and fourth generation for those who despise Me."
For commentators in the LP group, this verse from the Decalogue, which refers to divine punishment, is naturally no contradiction to ours. Whereas a human court may not hold children accountable for the sins of their parents and vice versa, a divine court may. Commentators in the DP group deal with the difficulty by pointing out the end of the verse, which speaks of children who continue to "despise Me"--if the children continue in the ways of their parents, then God will visit the sins of the fathers upon the sons, but if not, then "each man will die for his sin." This is an effective way of taking care of the contradiction and also provides a backdrop for our verse, but only for the second half, which discusses children being punished on account of their fathers. What is the reasoning by which Divine punishment might have been meted out to fathers on account of their sinful children? Further difficulties with DP include the use of the verb יומתו, "they shall be killed", which seems to indicate a court setting, and the greater context of the verse, which deals strictly with human-to-human laws. (Very interestingly, Plato maintains in his Laws, IX, that no punishment should be visited upon a child on account of his ancestors unless his father, grandfather, and great-grandfather had all been put to death; in that case, the fourth generation must be exiled back to their place of origin.)
On the other hand, the DP approach also has clear echoes in Tanach. Indeed, it seems that the accepted approach to exile was that sons were carrying the punishments of their fathers regardless of their own actions, and that the novelty of the period of redemption is that this will no longer be the case (Jer 31:28-29):
בַּיָּמִים הָהֵם לֹא יֹאמְרוּ עוֹד אָבוֹת אָכְלוּ בֹסֶר וְשִׁנֵּי בָנִים תִּקְהֶינָה
כִּי אִם אִישׁ בַּעֲוֹנוֹ יָמוּת כָּל הָאָדָם הָאֹכֵל הַבֹּסֶר תִּקְהֶינָה שִׁנָּיו
"In those days they will no longer say, 'the fathers have eaten unripe grapes, and the teeth of the children are set on edge.' For each man will die for his sin; whoever eats the unripe grapes, his teeth will be set on edge."
The entirety of Ezek 18 is devoted to this question. There, Ezekiel tells the people that they should no longer use the abovementioned parable, and that each person will be dealt with according to his deeds, regardless of the deeds of his ancestors or descendants, or even his own deeds from an earlier period (18:2-4): "Why should you use this parable about the land of Israel, 'the fathers have eaten unripe grapes, and the teeth of the children are set on edge'? As I live!--the word of G-d--if you will use this parable again in Israel! For all souls belong to Me--just as the soul of the father, so the soul of the son belongs to me; the soul that sins shall die!" Modern readers might be surprised to find that the people's reaction to this development is one of astonishment (Ezek 18:19, 25, 29): "And you will say, 'Why shouldn't the son suffer for the sin of the father?'... And you will say, 'The way of G-d makes no sense!'... And the House of Israel will say, 'The way of G-d makes no sense!'" As is implied in the passage in Jer 31, this is a deviation from the norm. While Ezekiel does not specify when it will no longer be the case that sons suffer for the sins of the fathers, it is clearly a new and counterintuitive idea.
In fact, the modern reader's assumption that the situation in Ezek 18 ought to be the norm is rooted in the modern conception of the self. In this conception, made popular by Rousseau and his circle, a person is in possession of a unique, individual self from an early age, and needs only the opportunity for that self to flourish. The customs and prejudices of the age, passed down through institutions and families, stymie the growth of this self. But this is not at all how the ancients saw it! The person was largely seen as formed by his or her family and environment, and only very exceptional individuals could lay claim to a uniqueness of self. Indeed, until they reached adulthood, children were seen as extensions of their parents. This view of children is to be found in the simple meaning of the laws of the recalcitrant child in Deut. 21:18-21, which allow the father and mother to take a son who "does not listen to [their] voice" and "indulges in food and drink" to the elders of the city for corporal, even capital punishment (Philo, explaining the fifth commandment of the Decalogue in his Special Laws, II, 224-236, seems to understand that it is the parents themselves who inflict these penalties), though it is doubtful that this was ever put into practice, and the entire paragraph was confined to an unreachable legislative corner by the times of the Talmud (Sanhedrin 68b-69a). This view finds echoes in, among other places, the memory of ancient legislation that gave parents the right of life and death over their children (this law is said to date back to Solon's Twelve Tables, see e.g. Corpus Iuris Civilis, Code, 8:47:10; but see also Brent D. Shaw's article on the subject, Raising and killing children: Two Roman myths; Mnemosyne 54 (1):31-77, which argues against a historical reading of this law), in the legal treatment of outrage done to children as outrage done to their parents (Institutes of Gaius, 3, 221), and in Aristotle's equating young children with possessions not subject to justice (Ethics 5:6). Rambam adopts Aristotle's position (Hil. Teshuva 6:1):
יש חטא שהדין נותן שנפרעים ממנו על חטאו בעולם הזה בגופו או בממונו או בבניו הקטנים שבניו של אדם הקטנים שאין בהם דעת ולא הגיעו לכלל מצות כקניינו הן וכתיב איש בחטאו ימות עד שיעשה איש
"There are sins for which a person must be [Divinely] punished in this world, whether through his body, his possessions, or his small children; for a person's small children, who have no independent reason and have not arrived at the age of responsibility for commandments, are like his possessions. And the verse says, 'a man shall die for his own sin', i.e. only when he becomes a man."
Dovetailing with children's status under the law is the understanding, discussed in Plato's Apology, Laches, Meno, and other dialogues, that they ought to be sent to tutors who can train them into virtue (though how virtue is taught remains unclear, as Socrates shows his interlocutors). Plato further likens the child to a slave, writing that all are obligated to reproach him, and even reproach his tutors if they neglect their duty to educate (Laws, 7, 808c-809a). A Talmudic anecdote takes this approach to its logical end. The entire priestly family of Bilga is excluded from the temple service because a young girl from the family has blasphemed and violated the altar, striking it with her shoe and crying out "Lukos! Lukos! [Greek for "wolf"] How long will you consume Israel's possessions, and yet not stand by them in their hour of need?" The Talmud asks why the entire family should be punished on her account, and answers with the proverb, "a child's market speech is either from his father or his mother" (Sukkah 56b).
With such an outlook, it is only natural to consider parents largely responsible for the behavior of their children, whether for good or for bad, and therefore worthy of punishment for the latter. Though a human court cannot effectively determine the role of the parents in any given behavior and carry out such punishments, a Divine court most certainly can. Thus, the people cannot help but wonder at the strange pronouncements of Jeremiah and Ezekiel that one day the Divine court will cease meting out such punishments. Is there no justice even there?
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As mentioned earlier, υἱὸς and τέκνον can both be used to render the Hebrew בן, "child". But τέκνον shares a linguistic feature with בן that is significant for this discussion. The syllable τεκ is common to τέκνον and to τεκτονικός, "builder", τέκτων, "carpenter, craftsman" (whence our architect, or αρχιτέκτων, "chief/master builder"), and various other construction words (though it seems they do not emerge from the same root). Similarly, בן is very close to the root בנה, "build", a similarity which the Torah exploits in describing Sarah's appeal to Abraham to cohabit with Hagar (Gen. 16:2):
בֹּא נָא אֶל שִׁפְחָתִי אוּלַי אִבָּנֶה מִמֶּנָּה
"Please go unto my maidservant; perhaps I will be built (אִבָּנֶה) from her."
Of course, the "being built" here refers to the child (בן) that this cohabitation will produce. Indeed, ibn Ezra considers the plain meaning of the verb אִבָּנֶה to be "I will have a child", and he is not the first to read the verse this way. LXX renders it as τεκνοποιήσῃς, "you will have children" (which suggests a vorlage of תבנה). It does so again for Rachel's similar appeal to Jacob (Gen. 30:3) to cohabit with her maidservant, Bilha, translating אִבָּנֶה as τεκνοποιήσομαι, "I will have children". The Greek translators of the LXX either agreed with ibn Ezra or were sensitive to the overlap of the two Hebrew roots and to the connotation of "be built" here. We suggest that, owing to the sound common to "child" and "build" in their own language, they would have been uniquely equipped to preserve any Hebrew puns exploiting בן-בנה in their translation.
The LXX in Deut 24:16/2 Chr 25:4 translates only the first instance of "child" using τέκνον:
לֹא יוּמְתוּ אָבוֹת עַל בָּנִים וּבָנִים לֹא יוּמְתוּ עַל אָבוֹת אִישׁ בְּחֶטְאוֹ יוּמָתוּ
Οὐκ ἀποθανοῦνται πατέρες ὑπὲρ τέκνων καὶ υἱοὶ οὐκ ἀποθανοῦνται ὑπὲρ πατέρων
"Fathers shall not die on account of children (τέκνων), and children (υἱοὶ) shall not die on account of fathers."
As we've suggested above, the rationale for punishing a parent on account of a child is that the child is really a product of the parent--it absorbs the ideas, morals, and standards of behavior it observes in its parents, as Plato and Philo note, and so its criminal behavior is ultimately the doing of its parents. One might say that the parent has, in this sense, "built" the child. The LXX thus uses the word for "child" that echoes the verb "build" to convey precisely this point in the first half of the verse: "fathers shall not be killed on account of their children [i.e. what they have built]", even though there exists a rationale to hold them accountable, even in a human court, for what they have built. The LXX switches to the word for "child" without any echoes of building in the second half of the verse--"and children shall not be killed on account of their fathers"--as a child might be punished on account of its parents not because they have built it, but because it is considered their possession, and any affliction dealt to it is really a punishment directed at its parents. The LXX has chosen to vary its translation of the word to highlight the difference of rationale in the two halves of this verse.
We are now in a better position to understand the LXX's choice in Isa. 54:13:
וְכָל בָּנַיִךְ לִמּוּדֵי יְהוָה וְרַב שְׁלוֹם בָּנָיִךְ
Καὶ πάντας τοὺς υἱούς σου διδακτοὺς θεοῦ καὶ ἐν πολλῇ εἰρήνῃ τὰ τέκνα σου
"And all your children (υἱούς) [will be] students of G-d, and great [will be] the peace of your children (τέκνα)."
The broader context of the verse is a chapter foretelling Israel's redemption, beginning with the imagery of new construction for returning children: "Widen the place of your tent, and let them stretch forth the curtains of your dwellings. Do not be frugal; lengthen your cords and strengthen your stakes" (53:2). The verses immediately preceding ours continue on this theme: "Behold, I will set your stones with antimony [an expensive cosmetic, here used as plaster], and lay your foundations with sapphires. And I will make your towers of rubies, and your gates of carbuncles, and all your border of precious stones" (53:11-12). Finally, the verse immediately after ours begins, "Through righteousness, you will be firmly established" (53:14).
Thus, the promise of learned children interjected into the construction metaphor begs to be interpreted along those lines: your sons will all be learned of G-d, and will thus contribute to the redemptive building process. This very interpretation is well-known throughout the Jewish world, as it can be found in a passage of Talmud inserted into the prayer service for Friday nights:
"R. Elazar said in the name of R. Chanina, Torah scholars increase peace in the world, as the verse says (Isa. 53:14), 'And all your children [will be] students of G-d, and great [will be] the peace of your children.' Read not 'your children' [בניך] but 'your builders' [בוניך]."
The Talmud understands that the "children" here are to be seen as builders, per the imagery of the chapter, and that these builders are those who are the "students of G-d", i.e. Torah scholars. It is clear that the Talmud applies this reading to the second instance of בניך, as it connects the Torah scholars to increasing peace.
We suggest that this exegesis, which is really just a careful reading of the verse in context, was a popular and rather old one, known to the Jewish translators who produced the LXX. Here, too, much like in Deut. 24:16, the LXX wishes to highlight the difference between the children before and after they have received the instruction of G-d. Thus, it chooses the word τέκνον with its building connotations to translate the second instance of "children". These children, once they have spent time as students of G-d, will be your builders, and, as the verse immediately after continues, "you will be firmly established through righteousness". Indeed, this understanding of children as builders was so popular that a second hand inserted a vav into the word בניך in the Great Isaiah Scroll at Qumran!
We do not, at the moment, have an explanation of the LXX at Hosea 13:13. While certain ideas naturally suggest themselves, we defer treatment of that verse until such time as we are able offer a robust theory.
***
In light of the above, we return to the promises of the prophets that the parable of the unripe grapes will one day no longer apply.
The messianic nature of Ezekiel's promise is the broad emergence of a new kind of self. People will come to acquire a consciousness that recognizes the self as ultimately independent of the fetters of past experience, a self capable of making choices which are truly its own, for which it will be rewarded and punished as an independent actor. This promise of self is both exhilarating and terrifying. On the one hand, people will no longer be doomed to become whatever it is that their parents were; on the other hand, they cannot take refuge in their ancestry or shift blame to their upbringing. The righteous soul shall live, the soul that sins shall die.
The messianic nature of Jeremiah's promise is a step further towards the breaking of the wheel. In the pre-messianic period, children still naturally inherit their parents' traits, beliefs, and attitudes, and it takes extraordinary effort to correct such mistakes as human upbringing naturally brings about. But in the messianic period, children--even small children--will no longer simply be the chattel of their parents. Their natural state will be virtuous, they will naturally choose to do good and know G-d, as Jeremiah continues, describing the new covenant (Jer. 31:32-33):
"For this is the covenant that I will seal with the House of Israel after those days--the word of God!--I will place my teaching in their midst and inscribe it upon their hearts; I will be God for them, and they will be a nation for Me. A man will no longer teach his fellow and brother, saying, 'Know God', for all of them will know Me, from their smallest to their greatest."
This, too, is the import of the children-builders in Isa 54:13. Your children will no longer have to be students of men, who teach their fellows and brothers to know God; your children will be students of God directly. And, far from being children that you build, they will be your builders--the builders of the new society, of the rebuilt Zion that enters into a new covenant with God.
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והיא טענת הבן למי שיש לו דעת להבין, ולא כדברי הטפשים, אלא מובן שהכוונה בלידת הבן אשר ידע מאוס ברע ובחור בטוב בטבעו, והעלמה היולדת היא האשה העצובת הרוח אשת הנעורים כי אז יאמר ה' כי בעליך עושיך ועוד אבנך ונבנית שהיא ג"כ לשון בן וזוהי כוונת טענתו שברוה"ק היה ר"ל כי בקרבו הוא ואינו צריך ללמוד מפי מלמדים וע"כ יש בו כח לטהר ולטמא כרצונו והחזיקוהו לתחילת אותה הלידה ואין להאריך אלא שנתקלקל הדבר ולא הצליח וריחקו את הענין כי ראו כי באש היאור.
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