“Though you smote Litan the wriggling serpent (ltn.bṯn.brḥ), finished off the writhing serpent (bṯn.ʿqltn), Encircler with seven heads” (KTU 1.5 i 1-3; translation from Nick Wyatt’s Religious Texts From Ugarit)
“On that day Yahweh with his cruel and great and strong sword will punish Leviathan the fleeing serpent (lwytn nḥš brḥ), Leviathan the twisting serpent (nḥš ʿqltwn), and he will kill the dragon that is in the sea” (Isaiah 27:1; cf. Psalm 74:14 on Yahweh crushing the “heads” of Leviathan and Revelation 12:3 on combat with the seven-headed dragon)
NSRVue translates “cruel” as well; MT has הַקָּשָׁה; for the meaning of קשׁה featured in Is 27:1 HALOT 1152a has a more generic “hard, difficult”. The Ugaritic equivalent is qš (II), known from KTU 1.16 VI 47: “harsh, severe (with someone)” > “oppressor” (see DULAT3 707). I’d say that in Is 27:1, as in some other biblical passages, the implications of קשׁה do not deal with “cruelty” in relation to moral categories (which would be, in any case, culture specific), but they rather imply the deliberate use of great might and power to win a contest or a fight; cfr. Jdg 4:24, where it said that «Then the hand [יד] of the Israelites bore harder and harder [הָלוֹךְ וְקָשָׁה] on King Jabin of Canaan, until they destroyed King Jabin of Canaan.». Most interestingly, LXX has in Is 27:1 τὴν μάχαιραν τὴν ἁγίαν, “the holy sword”. Three distinct possibilities come to my mind: a conscious censorship of the term, or a translation mistake, either caused by scribal reasons or a different Hebrew Vorlage; see M. van der Vorm-Croughs, The Old Greek of Isaiah. An Analysis of Its Pluses and Minuses (Septuagint and Cognate Studies 61), Atlanta: SBL Press 2014, pp. 471-514.
Other Ugaritic texts in the bible:
https://intertextual.bible/book/ktu
https://www.theology.edu/ugarbib.htm
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