Second, while the watchmen are criticized for their laziness, the idolatrous children are condemned as active pursuers of pagan cults in 57:3-5. The use of the idolatrous children image (hnTiw: @aEßn"m. [r;zx]n: in Gen 31:14 and Num 36:3. (Koole, Isaiah III: Isaiah 56-66, 60; Polan, In the Ways of Justice toward Salvation, 137; D. Payne, “Characteristic Word-Play in ‘Second Isaiah’: A Reappraisal,” JSS 12 [1967]: 224). The meaning of “the smooth stones” is ambiguous because the textual critical problems are also involved with the terms. Oswalt says, “It would probably not be wise to make a great deal of precisely what was in the writer’s mind when he used “smooth things.” This word was not out of place, since the stones of the wadi were
Second, while the watchmen are criticized for their laziness, the idolatrous children are condemned as active pursuers of pagan cults in 57:3-5. The use of the idolatrous children image (hnTiw: @aEßn"m. [r;zx]n: in Gen 31:14 and Num 36:3. (Koole, Isaiah III: Isaiah 56-66, 60; Polan, In the Ways of Justice toward Salvation, 137; D. Payne, “Characteristic Word-Play in ‘Second Isaiah’: A Reappraisal,” JSS 12 [1967]: 224). The meaning of “the smooth stones” is ambiguous because the textual critical problems are also involved with the terms. Oswalt says, “It would probably not be wise to make a great deal of precisely what was in the writer’s mind when he used “smooth things.” This word was not out of place, since the stones of the wadi were