542 Wilson de Angelo Cunha suggestion. First, as it has been noted by several scholars, qydxl never functions as a divine title in the Hebrew Bible. And, second, qydxl appears in Isa 26,7, where it clearly refers to a “righteous people:” “the way of the righteous (qydxl) is smooth; you will straighten the path of the righteous (qydx)”. As Isa 24-27 form a literary unit, it seems correct to take qydxl in 24,16a in the same sense of qydxl in 26,7. The implication of taking qydxl ybx as directed to a “righteous people” is that v. 16a does not continue the praise in vv. 14-15; it, rather, functions as the proclamation of salvation to a “righteous people”. The LXX interpretation was helpful and confirmed our interpretation of qydxl as “righteous people” in light of qydxl in 26,7. It should be clarified, however, that reading qydxl as “righteous people” in conjunction with 26,7 is not dependent on the LXX; the latter only shows that we arrived at a similar reading as the LXX translator and offers support for our interpretation of MT. c) The Function of the “I” Statement The previous section has shown that LXX Isa 24,16 is a different text from MT 24,16 because the translator read his Vorlage in an interpretative way. For the translator, v. 16 functions as a proclamation of hope for the eujsebhv" (v. 16a) whereas v. 16b is a proclamation of doom for the “ones rejecting the law” (v. 16b). In LXX Isa 24, the latter group must be identified with the ajsebw'n in v. 8. Although our interpretation of MT below is not dependent on the LXX, the latter does offer a helpful insight to not read the “I” statement in v. 16b as a “counter-assertion” to the praise in vv. 14-15. The question whether the “I” statement in MT v. 16b should be interpreted as a contrastive clause to what preceded it needs to be answered. As the first section of this paper has shown, some scholars take v. 16b as the “prophet’s counter-assertion” to the praise in vv. 14- 16a. Syntactically speaking, this interpretation is problematic as v. 16b lacks the independent personal pronoun “I”. Although some scholars have argued that it would still be possible to take v. 16b as a contrastive clause even without the personal pronoun “I”, it appears that they have a stronger case to make. As discussed above, in LXX Isa 24, the “ones rejecting the law” in v. 16 are the ajsebw'n of v. 8. This is not the case in MT as v. 8 does not refer to the “ungodly” but to the “jubilant”. Instead, the “ones acting faithlessly” in MT v. 16 are best identified with the “breakers of the law” referred to in v. 5. As such, v. 16b represents the prophet’s