17:10 For you ignore 1 the God who rescues you;
you pay no attention to your strong protector. 2
So this is what happens:
You cultivate beautiful plants
and plant exotic vines. 3
51:23 I will put it into the hand of your tormentors 4
who said to you, ‘Lie down, so we can walk over you.’
You made your back like the ground,
and like the street for those who walked over you.”
54:4 Don’t be afraid, for you will not be put to shame!
Don’t be intimidated, 5 for you will not be humiliated!
You will forget about the shame you experienced in your youth;
you will no longer remember the disgrace of your abandonment. 6
1 tn Heb “you have forgotten” (so NAB, NIV, NRSV).
2 tn Heb “and the rocky cliff of your strength you do not remember.”
3 tn Heb “a vine, a strange one.” The substantival adjective זָר (zar) functions here as an appositional genitive. It could refer to a cultic plant of some type, associated with a pagan rite. But it is more likely that it refers to an exotic, or imported, type of vine, one that is foreign (i.e., “strange”) to Israel.
4 tn That is, to make them drink it.
5 tn Or “embarrassed”; NASB “humiliated…disgraced.”
6 tn Another option is to translate, “the disgrace of our widowhood” (so NRSV). However, the following context (vv. 6-7) refers to Zion’s husband, the Lord, abandoning her, not dying. This suggests that an אַלְמָנָה (’almanah) was a woman who had lost her husband, whether by death or abandonment.