“I Have Made an Engraving of You …” (Isa 49:16a): An Echo of an ANE Adoption Practice in Deutero-Isaiah

Abstract

This essay considers Isa 49:16, where the image of Zion appears to be inscribed on YHWH’s hands. Since the formulation על־כפים חקתיך is missing the suffix “my” on כפים in the MT and given the specifics of Zion’s lament in v. 14 (i.e., YHWH, Zion’s parent, abandons her in infancy), it will be suggested that the word כפים could refer not to the palms of YHWH’s hands but to the soles of Zion’s feet (with the unusual form כפים underscoring Zion’s age—i.e., she is a young child still crawling on “its fours”; cf. Lev 11:27). Read as “around the soles [of your, namely Zion’s, feet], I have made an engraving of you,” v. 16 echoes a symbolic ANE gesture: that is, the foot-printing of foundlings for adoption. Thus, Isa 49:16 models YHWH’s reestablishment of Zion as daughter on ANE adoption contracts, which in turn is part of Deutero-Isaiah’s wider theology of restoration after the exile.