Author Correction

In my article “Rephaim, Whisperers, and the Dead in Isaiah 26:13–19: A Ugaritic Parallel,” published in the previous issue of JBL (135 [2016]: 77–94), I inadvertently misrepresented a key point in Christopher B. Hays’s Death in the Iron Age II and in First Isaiah, FAT 79 (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2011). My quotation (see 89 n. 53) of his work was accurate (“לחשׁ is simply the last gasp of the enemies”) but incomplete, in that I overlooked the further explanation: “what did they squeeze out with their last breath? A ‘foreign’ magic spell. They meet their end not with a bang but with a whimper” (see Hays, Death in the Iron Age II, 324). I very much regret this error, which led me to group Professor Hays with those who understand לחשׁ as a distressed whisperer, when clearly he takes the term to be an incantation. I apologize to Professor Hays for this mistake.

I would also like to take this opportunity to clarify one other statement in my article, namely, that Professor Hays “has offered a more extensive interpretation of Isa 26 in light of the Ugaritic Rapa’ūma that corroborates many of the interpretive points of my own study.” My use of the term “corroborates” should not be taken to imply that my work was prior to Hays’s, only that Hays and I, working independently, arrived at many of the same conclusions. I apologize if my statement has been taken to minimize Hays’s contribution in any way. In fact, as the rest of the sentence in question shows, as well as the balance of my article, I highly recommend Hays’s work to those who wish to investigate the Isaiah passage further.