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
9:17 So the sovereign master was not pleased 6 with their young men,
he took no pity 7 on their orphans and widows;
for the whole nation was godless 8 and did wicked things, 9
every mouth was speaking disgraceful words. 10
Despite all this, his anger does not subside,
and his hand is ready to strike again. 11
18:7 At that time
tribute will be brought to the Lord who commands armies,
by a people that are tall and smooth-skinned,
a people that are feared far and wide,
a nation strong and victorious,
whose land rivers divide. 12
The tribute 13 will be brought to the place where the Lord who commands armies has chosen to reside, on Mount Zion. 14
30:6 This is a message 15 about the animals in the Negev:
Through a land of distress and danger,
inhabited by lionesses and roaring lions, 16
by snakes and darting adders, 17
they transport 18 their wealth on the backs of donkeys,
their riches on the humps of camels,
to a nation that cannot help them. 19
58:2 They seek me day after day;
they want to know my requirements, 20
like a nation that does what is right
and does not reject the law of their God.
They ask me for just decrees;
they want to be near God.
66:8 Who has ever heard of such a thing?
Who has ever seen this?
Can a country 21 be brought forth in one day?
Can a nation be born in a single moment?
Yet as soon as Zion goes into labor she gives birth to sons!
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 The Qumran scroll 1QIsaa has לא יחמול (“he did not spare”) which is an obvious attempt to tighten the parallelism (note “he took no pity” in the next line). Instead of taking שָׂמַח (samakh) in one of its well attested senses (“rejoice over, be pleased with”), some propose, with support from Arabic, a rare homonymic root meaning “be merciful.”
7 tn The translation understands the prefixed verbs יִשְׂמַח (yismakh) and יְרַחֵם (yÿrakhem) as preterites without vav (ו) consecutive. (See v. 11 and the note on “he stirred up.”)
8 tn Or “defiled”; cf. ASV “profane”; NAB “profaned”; NIV “ungodly.”
9 tn מֵרַע (mera’) is a Hiphil participle from רָעַע (ra’a’, “be evil”). The intransitive Hiphil has an exhibitive force here, indicating that they exhibited outwardly the evidence of an inward condition by committing evil deeds.
10 tn Or “foolishness” (NASB), here in a moral-ethical sense.
11 tn Heb “in all this his anger is not turned, and still his hand is outstretched.”
sn See the note at 9:12.
12 tn On the interpretive difficulties of this verse, see the notes at v. 2, where the same terminology is used.
13 tn The words “the tribute” are repeated here in the translation for clarity.
14 tn Heb “to the place of the name of the Lord who commands armies [traditionally, the Lord of hosts], Mount Zion.”
15 tn Traditionally, “burden” (so KJV, ASV); NAB, NASB, NIV, NRSV “oracle.”
16 tc Heb “[a land of] a lioness and a lion, from them.” Some emend מֵהֶם (mehem, “from them”) to מֵהֵם (mehem), an otherwise unattested Hiphil participle from הָמַם (hamam, “move noisily”). Perhaps it would be better to take the initial mem (מ) as enclitic and emend the form to הֹמֶה (homeh), a Qal active participle from הָמָה (hamah, “to make a noise”); cf. J. N. Oswalt, Isaiah (NICOT), 1:542, n. 9.
17 tn Heb “flying fiery one.” See the note at 14:29.
18 tn Or “carry” (KJV, NAB, NASB, NIV, NRSV).
19 sn This verse describes messengers from Judah transporting wealth to Egypt in order to buy Pharaoh’s protection through a treaty.
20 tn Heb “ways” (so KJV, NAB, NASB, NIV, NRSV, TEV); NLT “my laws.”
21 tn Heb “land,” but here אֶרֶץ (’erets) stands metonymically for an organized nation (see the following line).