Did the ptolemaic imperial politics influence the language of the septuagint?

Abstract

During the Hellenistic period, the Egyptian Jewish communities were forced to venerate the Ptolemaic rulers as gods with the penalty of martyrdom to those who publicly refused to accept the king as god during the enactment of the imperial cult. It is so narrated in the Second Book of Maccabees where a whole family is tortured and condemned to a cruel death because they want to keep the covenant commitments. In the climax of the story (2 Macc 7:6) a short prayer rises from the lips of one of the martyrs trusting in their future resurrection. The prayer is a quotation of Deut 32:36a, a brief chorus motif that is also repeated in Ps 134:14 LXX) and is the only biblical quotation in the whole book. The Greek version of the chorus adopts a special vocabulary using a passive form of verb παρακαλέω with divine subject even when other lexical options were available. And even more astonishing is that the same translation is kept in other passages as well (Judg 2:18 and 2 Sam 24:16 // 1 Chr 21:15). This option of the Greek writers would probably sound strange to a Greek audience not familiarized with biblical traditions and it literally translates similar forms of the Hebrew root נחם...