21:8 Then the guard 1 cries out:
“On the watchtower, O sovereign master, 2
I stand all day long;
at my post
I am stationed every night.
27:3 I, the Lord, protect it; 3
I water it regularly. 4
I guard it night and day,
so no one can harm it. 5
34:10 Night and day it will burn; 6
its smoke will ascend continually.
Generation after generation it will be a wasteland
and no one will ever pass through it again.
38:13 I cry out 7 until morning;
like a lion he shatters all my bones;
you turn day into night and end my life. 8
62:6 I 9 post watchmen on your walls, O Jerusalem;
they should keep praying all day and all night. 10
You who pray to 11 the Lord, don’t be silent!
65:4 They sit among the tombs 12
and keep watch all night long. 13
They eat pork, 14
and broth 15 from unclean sacrificial meat is in their pans.
1 tn The Hebrew text has, “the lion,” but this makes little sense here. אַרְיֵה (’aryeh, “lion”) is probably a corruption of an original הָרֹאֶה (haro’eh, “the one who sees”), i.e., the guard mentioned previously in v. 6.
2 tn The Hebrew term translated “sovereign master” here is אֲדֹנָי (’adonay). Some translations take this to refer to the Lord (cf. NAB, NASB, NRSV), while others take it to refer to the guard’s human master (“my lord”; cf. NIV, NLT).
3 tn Heb “her.” Apparently “vineyard” is the antecedent, though normally this noun is understood as masculine (see Lev 25:3, however).
4 tn Or perhaps, “constantly.” Heb “by moments.”
5 tn Heb “lest [someone] visit [harm] upon it, night and day I guard it.”
6 tn Heb “it will not be extinguished.”
7 tn The verb form in the Hebrew text is a Piel from שָׁוַה (shavah). There are two homonyms שָׁוַה, one meaning in the Piel “level, smooth out,” the other “set, place.” Neither fits in v. 13. It is likely that the original reading was שִׁוַּעְתִּי (shivva’ti, “I cry out”) from the verbal root שָׁוַע (shava’), which occurs exclusively in the Piel.
8 tn Heb “from day to night you bring me to an end.”
9 sn The speaker here is probably the prophet.
10 tn Heb “all day and all night continually they do not keep silent.” The following lines suggest that they pray for the Lord’s intervention and restoration of the city.
11 tn Or “invoke”; NIV “call on”; NASB, NRSV “remind.”
12 sn Perhaps the worship of underworld deities or dead spirits is in view.
13 tn The Hebrew text reads literally, “and in the watches they spend the night.” Some understand נְּצוּרִים (nÿtsurim) as referring to “secret places” or “caves,” while others emend the text to וּבֵין צוּרִים (uven tsurim, “between the rocky cliffs”).
14 tn Heb “the flesh of the pig”; KJV, NAB, NASB “swine’s flesh.”
15 tc The marginal reading (Qere), supported by the Qumran scroll 1QIsaa, reads מְרַק (mÿraq, “broth”), while the consonantal text (Kethib) has פְרַק (feraq, “fragment”).