1:5 1 Why do you insist on being battered?
Why do you continue to rebel? 2
Your head has a massive wound, 3
your whole body is weak. 4
33:19 You will no longer see a defiant 5 people
whose language you do not comprehend, 6
whose derisive speech you do not understand. 7
58:4 Look, your fasting is accompanied by 8 arguments, brawls,
and fistfights. 9
Do not fast as you do today,
trying to make your voice heard in heaven.
64:9 Lord, do not be too angry!
Do not hold our sins against us continually! 10
Take a good look at your people, at all of us! 11
1 sn In vv. 5-9 Isaiah addresses the battered nation (5-8) and speaks as their representative (9).
2 tn Heb “Why are you still beaten? [Why] do you continue rebellion?” The rhetorical questions express the prophet’s disbelief over Israel’s apparent masochism and obsession with sin. The interrogative construction in the first line does double duty in the parallelism. H. Wildberger (Isaiah, 1:18) offers another alternative by translating the two statements with one question: “Why do you still wish to be struck that you persist in revolt?”
3 tn Heb “all the head is ill”; NRSV “the whole head is sick”; CEV “Your head is badly bruised.”
4 tn Heb “and all the heart is faint.” The “heart” here stands for bodily strength and energy, as suggested by the context and usage elsewhere (see Jer 8:18; Lam 1:22).
5 tn The Hebrew form נוֹעָז (no’az) is a Niphal participle derived from יָעַז (ya’az, an otherwise unattested verb) or from עָזָז (’azaz, “be strong,” unattested elsewhere in the Niphal). Some prefer to emend the form to לוֹעֵז (lo’ez) which occurs in Ps 114:1 with the meaning “speak a foreign language.” See HALOT 809 s.v. עזז, 533 s.v. לעז. In this case, one might translate “people who speak a foreign language.”
6 tn Heb “a people too deep of lip to hear.” The phrase “deep of lip” must be an idiom meaning “lips that speak words that are unfathomable [i.e., incomprehensible].”
7 tn Heb “derision of tongue there is no understanding.” The Niphal of לָעַג (la’ag) occurs only here. In the Qal and Hiphil the verb means “to deride, mock.” A related noun is used in 28:11.
8 tn Heb “you fast for” (so NASB); NRSV “you fast only to quarrel.”
9 tn Heb “and for striking with a sinful fist.”
10 tn Heb “do not remember sin continually.”
11 tn Heb “Look, gaze at your people, all of us.” Another option is to translate, “Take a good look! We are all your people.”