3:14 The Lord comes to pronounce judgment
on the leaders of his people and their officials.
He says, 1 “It is you 2 who have ruined 3 the vineyard! 4
You have stashed in your houses what you have stolen from the poor. 5
5:8 Those who accumulate houses are as good as dead, 6
those who also accumulate landed property 7
until there is no land left, 8
and you are the only landowners remaining within the land. 9
8:14 He will become a sanctuary, 10
but a stone that makes a person trip,
and a rock that makes one stumble –
to the two houses of Israel. 11
He will become 12 a trap and a snare
to the residents of Jerusalem. 13
1 tn The words “he says” are supplied in the translation for stylistic reasons.
2 tn The pronominal element is masculine plural; the leaders are addressed.
3 tn The verb בָּעַר (ba’ar, “graze, ruin”; HALOT 146 s.v. II בער) is a homonym of the more common בָּעַר (ba’ar, “burn”; see HALOT 145 s.v. I בער).
4 sn The vineyard is a metaphor for the nation here. See 5:1-7.
5 tn Heb “the plunder of the poor [is] in your houses” (so NASB).
6 tn Heb “Woe [to] those who make a house touch a house.” The exclamation הוֹי (hoy, “woe, ah”) was used in funeral laments (see 1 Kgs 13:30; Jer 22:18; 34:5) and carries the connotation of death.
7 tn Heb “[who] bring a field near a field.”
sn This verse does not condemn real estate endeavors per se, but refers to the way in which the rich bureaucrats of Judah accumulated property by exploiting the poor, in violation of the covenantal principle that the land belonged to God and that every family was to have its own portion of land. See the note at 1:23.
8 tn Heb “until the end of the place”; NASB “until there is no more room.”
9 tn Heb “and you are made to dwell alone in the midst of the land.”
10 tn Because the metaphor of protection (“sanctuary”) does not fit the negative mood that follows in vv. 14b-15, some contend that מִקְדָּשׁ (miqdash, “sanctuary”) is probably a corruption of an original מוֹקֵשׁ (moqesh, “snare”), a word that appears in the next line (cf. NAB and H. Wildberger, Isaiah, 1:355-56). If the MT reading is retained (as in the above translation), the fact that Yahweh is a sanctuary wraps up the point of v. 13 and stands in contrast to God’s treatment of those who rebel against him (the rest of v. 14).
11 sn The two “houses” of Israel (= the patriarch Jacob) are the northern kingdom of Israel and the southern kingdom of Judah.
12 tn These words are supplied in the translation for stylistic reasons. וְהָיָה (vÿhayah, “and he will be”) does double duty in the parallel structure of the verse.
13 map For location see Map5-B1; Map6-F3; Map7-E2; Map8-F2; Map10-B3; JP1-F4; JP2-F4; JP3-F4; JP4-F4.