26:19 1 Your dead will come back to life;
your corpses will rise up.
Wake up and shout joyfully, you who live in the ground! 2
For you will grow like plants drenched with the morning dew, 3
and the earth will bring forth its dead spirits. 4
29:4 You will fall;
while lying on the ground 5 you will speak;
from the dust where you lie, your words will be heard. 6
Your voice will sound like a spirit speaking from the underworld; 7
from the dust you will chirp as if muttering an incantation. 8
42:16 I will lead the blind along an unfamiliar way; 9
I will guide them down paths they have never traveled. 10
I will turn the darkness in front of them into light,
and level out the rough ground. 11
This is what I will do for them.
I will not abandon them.
45:9 One who argues with his creator is in grave danger, 12
one who is like a mere 13 shard among the other shards on the ground!
The clay should not say to the potter, 14
“What in the world 15 are you doing?
Your work lacks skill!” 16
49:23 Kings will be your children’s 17 guardians;
their princesses will nurse your children. 18
With their faces to the ground they will bow down to you
and they will lick the dirt on 19 your feet.
Then you will recognize that I am the Lord;
those who wait patiently for me are not put to shame.
1 sn At this point the Lord (or prophet) gives the people an encouraging oracle.
2 tn Heb “dust” (so KJV, NAB, NASB, NIV, NRSV).
3 tn Heb “for the dew of lights [is] your dew.” The pronominal suffix on “dew” is masculine singular, like the suffixes on “your dead” and “your corpses” in the first half of the verse. The statement, then, is addressed to collective Israel, the speaker in verse 18. The plural form אוֹרֹת (’orot) is probably a plural of respect or magnitude, meaning “bright light” (i.e., morning’s light). Dew is a symbol of fertility and life. Here Israel’s “dew,” as it were, will soak the dust of the ground and cause the corpses of the dead to spring up to new life, like plants sprouting up from well-watered soil.
4 sn It is not certain whether the resurrection envisioned here is intended to be literal or figurative. A comparison with 25:8 and Dan 12:2 suggests a literal interpretation, but Ezek 37:1-14 uses resurrection as a metaphor for deliverance from exile and the restoration of the nation (see Isa 27:12-13).
5 tn Heb “from the ground” (so NIV, NCV).
6 tn Heb “and from the dust your word will be low.”
7 tn Heb “and your voice will be like a ritual pit from the earth.” The Hebrew אוֹב (’ov, “ritual pit”) refers to a pit used by a magician to conjure up underworld spirits. See the note on “incantations” in 8:19. Here the word is used metonymically for the voice that emerges from such a pit.
8 tn Heb “and from the dust your word will chirp.” The words “as if muttering an incantation” are supplied in the translation for clarification. See the parallelism and 8:19.
9 tn Heb “a way they do not know” (so NASB); NRSV “a road they do not know.”
10 tn Heb “in paths they do not know I will make them walk.”
11 tn Heb “and the rough ground into a level place.”
12 tn Heb “Woe [to] the one who argues with the one who formed him.”
13 tn The words “one who is like a mere” are supplied in the translation for stylistic reasons and clarification.
14 tn Heb “Should the clay say to the one who forms it?” The rhetorical question anticipates a reply, “Of course not!”
15 tn The words “in the world” are supplied in the translation to approximate in English idiom the force of the sarcastic question.
16 tn Heb “your work, there are no hands for it,” i.e., “your work looks like something made by a person who has no hands.”
17 tn Heb “your,” but Zion here stands by metonymy for her children (see v. 22b).
18 tn Heb “you.” See the preceding note.
19 tn Or “at your feet” (NAB, NIV); NLT “from your feet.”