5:5 Now I will inform you
what I am about to do to my vineyard:
I will remove its hedge and turn it into pasture, 1
I will break its wall and allow animals to graze there. 2
10:27 At that time 3
the Lord will remove their burden from your shoulders, 4
and their yoke from your neck;
the yoke will be taken off because your neck will be too large. 5
25:8 he will swallow up death permanently. 8
The sovereign Lord will wipe away the tears from every face,
and remove his people’s disgrace from all the earth.
Indeed, the Lord has announced it! 9
44:22 I remove the guilt of your rebellious deeds as if they were a cloud,
the guilt of your sins as if they were a cloud. 10
Come back to me, for I protect 11 you.”
58:6 No, this is the kind of fast I want. 12
I want you 13 to remove the sinful chains,
to tear away the ropes of the burdensome yoke,
to set free the oppressed, 14
and to break every burdensome yoke.
58:9 Then you will call out, and the Lord will respond;
you will cry out, and he will reply, ‘Here I am.’
You must 15 remove the burdensome yoke from among you
and stop pointing fingers and speaking sinfully.
1 tn Heb “and it will become [a place for] grazing.” בָּעַר (ba’ar, “grazing”) is a homonym of the more often used verb “to burn.”
2 tn Heb “and it will become a trampled place” (NASB “trampled ground”).
3 tn Or “in that day” (KJV). The verb that introduces this verse serves as a discourse particle and is untranslated; see note on “in the future” in 2:2.
4 tn Heb “he [i.e., the Lord] will remove his [i.e, Assyria’s] burden from upon your shoulder.”
5 tc The meaning of this line is uncertain. The Hebrew text reads literally, “and the yoke will be destroyed (or perhaps, “pulled down”) because of fatness.” Perhaps this is a bizarre picture of an ox growing so fat that it breaks the yoke around its neck or can no longer fit into its yoke. Fatness would symbolize the Lord’s restored blessings; the removal of the yoke would symbolize the cessation of Assyrian oppression. Because of the difficulty of the metaphor, many prefer to emend the text at this point. Some emend וְחֻבַּל (vÿkhubbal, “and it will be destroyed,” a perfect with prefixed vav), to יִחְבֹּל (yikhbol, “[it] will be destroyed,” an imperfect), and take the verb with what precedes, “and their yoke will be destroyed from your neck.” Proponents of this view (cf. NAB, NRSV) then emend עֹל (’ol, “yoke”) to עָלָה (’alah, “he came up”) and understand this verb as introducing the following description of the Assyrian invasion (vv. 28-32). מִפְּנֵי־שָׁמֶן (mippÿney-shamen, “because of fatness”) is then emended to read “from before Rimmon” (NAB, NRSV), “from before Samaria,” or “from before Jeshimon.” Although this line may present difficulties, it appears best to regard the line as a graphic depiction of God’s abundant blessings on his servant nation.
6 tn Heb “spoke by the hand of.”
7 tn The word used here (עָרוֹם, ’arom) sometimes means “naked,” but here it appears to mean simply “lightly dressed,” i.e., stripped to one’s undergarments. See HALOT 883 s.v. עָרוֹם. The term also occurs in vv. 3, 4.
8 sn The image of the Lord “swallowing” death would be especially powerful, for death was viewed in Canaanite mythology and culture as a hungry enemy that swallows its victims. See the note at 5:14.
9 tn Heb “has spoken” (so NAB, NASB, NIV, NRSV, NLT).
10 tn Heb “I blot out like a cloud your rebellious deeds, and like a cloud your sins.” “Rebellious deeds” and “sins” stand by metonymy for the guilt they produce. Both עָב (’av) and עָנָן (’anan) refer to the clouds in the sky. It is tempting for stylistic purposes to translate the second with “fog” or “mist” (cf. NAB, NRSV “cloud…mist”; NIV “cloud…morning mist”; NLT “morning mists…clouds”), but this distinction between the synonyms is unwarranted here. The point of the simile seems to be this: The Lord forgives their sins, causing them to vanish just as clouds disappear from the sky (see Job 7:9; 30:15).
11 tn Heb “redeem.” See the note at 41:14.
12 tn Heb “Is this not a fast I choose?” “No” is supplied in the translation for clarification.
13 tn The words “I want you” are supplied in the translation for stylistic reasons.
14 tn Heb “crushed.”
15 tn Heb “if you.” In the Hebrew text vv. 9b-10 are one long conditional sentence. The protasis (“if” clauses appear in vv. 9b-10a), with the apodosis (“then” clause) appearing in v. 10b.