1:4 1 The sinful nation is as good as dead, 2
the people weighed down by evil deeds.
They are offspring who do wrong,
children 3 who do wicked things.
They have abandoned the Lord,
and rejected the Holy One of Israel. 4
They are alienated from him. 5
5:24 Therefore, as flaming fire 6 devours straw,
and dry grass disintegrates in the flames,
so their root will rot,
and their flower will blow away like dust. 7
For they have rejected the law of the Lord who commands armies,
they have spurned the commands 8 of the Holy One of Israel. 9
49:7 This is what the Lord,
the protector 10 of Israel, their Holy One, 11 says
to the one who is despised 12 and rejected 13 by nations, 14
a servant of rulers:
“Kings will see and rise in respect, 15
princes will bow down,
because of the faithful Lord,
the Holy One of Israel who has chosen you.”
1 sn Having summoned the witnesses and announced the Lord’s accusation against Israel, Isaiah mourns the nation’s impending doom. The third person references to the Lord in the second half of the verse suggest that the quotation from the Lord (cf. vv. 2-3) has concluded.
2 tn Heb “Woe [to the] sinful nation.” The Hebrew term הוֹי, (hoy, “woe, ah”) was used in funeral laments (see 1 Kgs 13:30; Jer 22:18; 34:5) and carries the connotation of death. In highly dramatic fashion the prophet acts out Israel’s funeral in advance, emphasizing that their demise is inevitable if they do not repent soon.
3 tn Or “sons” (NASB). The prophet contrasts four terms of privilege – nation, people, offspring, children – with four terms that depict Israel’s sinful condition in Isaiah’s day – sinful, evil, wrong, wicked (see J. A. Motyer, The Prophecy of Isaiah, 43).
4 sn Holy One of Israel is one of Isaiah’s favorite divine titles for God. It pictures the Lord as the sovereign king who rules over his covenant people and exercises moral authority over them.
5 tn Heb “they are estranged backward.” The LXX omits this statement, which presents syntactical problems and seems to be outside the synonymous parallelistic structure of the verse.
6 tn Heb “a tongue of fire” (so NASB), referring to a tongue-shaped flame.
7 sn They are compared to a flowering plant that withers quickly in a hot, arid climate.
8 tn Heb “the word.”
9 sn See the note on the phrase “the Holy One of Israel” in 1:4.
10 tn Heb “redeemer.” See the note at 41:14.
11 sn See the note on the phrase “the Holy One of Israel” in 1:4.
12 tc The Hebrew text reads literally “to [one who] despises life.” It is preferable to read with the Qumran scroll 1QIsaa לבזוי, which should be vocalized as a passive participle, לִבְזוּי (livzuy, “to the one despised with respect to life” [נֶפֶשׁ is a genitive of specification]). The consonantal sequence וי was probably misread as ה in the MT tradition. The contextual argument favors the 1QIsaa reading. As J. N. Oswalt (Isaiah [NICOT], 2:294) points out, the three terse phrases “convey a picture of lowliness, worthlessness, and helplessness.”
13 tn MT’s Piel participle (“to the one who rejects”) does not fit contextually. The form should be revocalized as a Pual, “to the one rejected.”
14 tn Parallelism (see “rulers,” “kings,” “princes”) suggests that the singular גּוֹי (goy) be emended to a plural or understood in a collective sense (see 55:5).
15 tn For this sense of קוּם (qum), see Gen 19:1; 23:7; 33:10; Lev 19:32; 1 Sam 20:41; 25:41; 1 Kgs 2:19; Job 29:8.