1:6 From the soles of your feet to your head,
there is no spot that is unharmed. 1
There are only bruises, cuts,
and open wounds.
They have not been cleansed 2 or bandaged,
nor have they been treated 3 with olive oil. 4
9:3 You 5 have enlarged the nation;
you give them great joy. 6
They rejoice in your presence
as harvesters rejoice;
as warriors celebrate 7 when they divide up the plunder.
14:32 How will they respond to the messengers of this nation? 8
Indeed, the Lord has made Zion secure;
the oppressed among his people will find safety in her.
25:11 Moab 12 will spread out its hands in the middle of it, 13
just as a swimmer spreads his hands to swim;
the Lord 14 will bring down Moab’s 15 pride as it spreads its hands. 16
28:20 For the bed is too short to stretch out on,
and the blanket is too narrow to wrap around oneself. 17
30:32 Every blow from his punishing cudgel, 18
with which the Lord will beat them, 19
will be accompanied by music from the 20 tambourine and harp,
and he will attack them with his weapons. 21
33:8 Highways are empty, 22
there are no travelers. 23
Treaties are broken, 24
witnesses are despised, 25
human life is treated with disrespect. 26
34:17 He assigns them their allotment; 27
he measures out their assigned place. 28
They will live there 29 permanently;
they will settle in it through successive generations.
48:11 For my sake alone 30 I will act,
for how can I allow my name to be defiled? 31
I will not share my glory with anyone else! 32
48:19 Your descendants would have been as numerous as sand, 33
and your children 34 like its granules.
Their name would not have been cut off
and eliminated from my presence. 35
54:16 Look, I create the craftsman,
who fans the coals into a fire
and forges a weapon. 36
I create the destroyer so he might devastate.
1 tn Heb “there is not in it health”; NAB “there is no sound spot.”
2 tn Heb “pressed out.”
3 tn Heb “softened” (so NASB, NRSV); NIV “soothed.”
4 sn This verse describes wounds like those one would receive in battle. These wounds are comprehensive and without remedy.
5 sn The Lord is addressed directly in vv. 3-4.
6 tc The Hebrew consonantal text reads “You multiply the nation, you do not make great the joy.” The particle לֹא (lo’, “not”) is obviously incorrect; the marginal reading has לוֹ (lo, “to him”). In this case, one should translate, “You multiply the nation, you increase his (i.e., their) joy.” However, the parallelism is tighter if one emends הַגּוֹי לוֹ (hagoy lo, “the nation, to him”) to הַגִּילָה (haggilah, “the joy,” a noun attested in Isa 65:18), which corresponds to הַשִּׂמְחָה (hasimkhah, “the joy”) later in the verse (H. Wildberger, Isaiah, 1:386). As attractive as this reading is, it has not textual evidence supporting it. The MT reading (accepting the marginal reading “to him” for the negative particle “not”) affirms that Yahweh caused the nation to grow in population and increased their joy.
7 tn Heb “as they are happy.” The word “warriors” is supplied in the translation to clarify the word picture. This last simile comes close to reality, for vv. 4-5 indicate that the people have won a great military victory over their oppressors.
8 sn The question forces the Philistines to consider the dilemma they will face – surrender and oppression, or battle and death.
9 tn Heb “Egypt.” For stylistic reasons, to avoid redundancy, the present translation uses the pronoun (“they”) here.
10 tn Heb “will know the Lord.”
11 tn Heb “in that day” (so KJV), likewise at the beginning of vv. 23 and 24.
12 tn Heb “he”; the referent (Moab) has been specified in the translation for clarity.
13 tn The antecedent of the third masculine singular pronominal suffix is probably the masculine noun מַתְבֵּן (matben, “heap of straw”) in v. 10 rather than the feminine noun מַדְמֵנָה (madmenah, “manure pile”), also in v. 10.
14 tn Heb “he”; the referent (the Lord) has been specified in the translation for clarity.
15 tn Heb “his”; the referent (Moab) has been specified in the translation for clarity.
16 tn The Hebrew text has, “he will bring down his pride along with the [?] of his hands.” The meaning of אָרְבּוֹת (’arbot), which occurs only here in the OT, is unknown. Some (see BDB 70 s.v. אָרְבָּה) translate “artifice, cleverness,” relating the form to the verbal root אָרָב (’arav, “to lie in wait, ambush”), but this requires some convoluted semantic reasoning. HALOT 83 s.v. *אָרְבָּה suggests the meaning “[nimble] movements.” The translation above, which attempts to relate the form to the preceding context, is purely speculative.
17 sn The bed and blanket probably symbolize their false sense of security. A bed that is too short and a blanket that is too narrow may promise rest and protection from the cold, but in the end they are useless and disappointing. In the same way, their supposed treaty with death will prove useless and disappointing.
18 tc The Hebrew text has “every blow from a founded [i.e., “appointed”?] cudgel.” The translation above, with support from a few medieval Hebrew
19 tn Heb “which the Lord lays on him.”
20 tn Heb “will be with” (KJV similar).
21 tn The Hebrew text reads literally, “and with battles of brandishing [weapons?] he will fight against him.” Some prefer to emend וּבְמִלְחֲמוֹת (uvÿmilkhamot, “and with battles of”) to וּבִמְחֹלוֹת (uvimkholot, “and with dancing”). Note the immediately preceding references to musical instruments.
22 tn Or “desolate” (NAB, NASB); NIV, NRSV, NLT “deserted.”
23 tn Heb “the one passing by on the road ceases.”
24 tn Heb “one breaks a treaty”; NAB “Covenants are broken.”
25 tc The Hebrew text reads literally, “he despises cities.” The term עָרִים (’arim, “cities”) is probably a corruption of an original עֵדִים (’edim, “[legal] witnesses”), a reading that is preserved in the Qumran scroll 1QIsaa. Confusion of dalet (ד) and resh (ר) is a well-attested scribal error.
26 tn Heb “he does not regard human beings.”
27 tn Heb “and he causes the lot to fall for them.” Once again the pronominal suffix (“them”) is feminine plural, referring to the birds mentioned in v. 15b or to all of the creatures listed in vv. 14b-15 (all of which are identified with feminine nouns).
28 tn Heb “and his hand divides for them with a measuring line.” The pronominal suffix (“them”) now switches to masculine plural, referring to all the animals and birds mentioned in vv. 11-15, some of which were identified with masculine nouns. This signals closure for this portion of the speech, which began in v. 11. The following couplet (v. 17b) forms an inclusio with v. 11a through verbal repetition.
29 tn Heb “will possess it” (so NIV); NCV “they will own that land forever.”
30 tn The Hebrew text repeats לְמַעֲנִי (lÿma’ani, “for my sake”) for emphasis.
31 tn The Hebrew text reads literally, “for how can it be defiled?” The subject of the verb is probably “name” (v. 9).
32 sn See 42:8.
33 tn Heb “like sand”; NCV “as many as the grains of sand.”
34 tn Heb “and the issue from your inner parts.”
35 tn Heb “and his name would not be cut off and would not be destroyed from before me.”
36 tn Heb “who brings out an implement for his work.”