6:5 I said, “Too bad for me! I am destroyed, 1 for my lips are contaminated by sin, 2 and I live among people whose lips are contaminated by sin. 3 My eyes have seen the king, the Lord who commands armies.” 4
14:13 You said to yourself, 5
“I will climb up to the sky.
Above the stars of El 6
I will set up my throne.
I will rule on the mountain of assembly
on the remote slopes of Zaphon. 7
28:12 In the past he said to them, 8
“This is where security can be found.
Provide security for the one who is exhausted!
This is where rest can be found.” 9
But they refused to listen.
36:11 Eliakim, Shebna, and Joah said to the chief adviser, “Speak to your servants in Aramaic, 10 for we understand it. Don’t speak with us in the Judahite dialect 11 in the hearing of the people who are on the wall.”
36:22 Eliakim son of Hilkiah, the palace supervisor, accompanied by Shebna the scribe and Joah son of Asaph, the secretary, went to Hezekiah with their clothes torn in grief 12 and reported to him what the chief adviser had said.
51:23 I will put it into the hand of your tormentors 14
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.”
65:1 “I made myself available to those who did not ask for me; 15
I appeared to those who did not look for me. 16
I said, ‘Here I am! Here I am!’
to a nation that did not invoke 17 my name.
1 tn Isaiah uses the suffixed (perfect) form of the verb for rhetorical purposes. In this way his destruction is described as occurring or as already completed. Rather than understanding the verb as derived from דָּמַה (damah, “be destroyed”), some take it from a proposed homonymic root דמה, which would mean “be silent.” In this case, one might translate, “I must be silent.”
2 tn Heb “a man unclean of lips am I.” Isaiah is not qualified to praise the king. His lips (the instruments of praise) are “unclean” because he has been contaminated by sin.
3 tn Heb “and among a nation unclean of lips I live.”
4 tn Perhaps in this context, the title has a less militaristic connotation and pictures the Lord as the ruler of the heavenly assembly. See the note at 1:9.
5 tn Heb “you, you said in your heart.”
6 sn In Canaanite mythology the stars of El were astral deities under the authority of the high god El.
7 sn Zaphon, the Canaanite version of Olympus, was the “mountain of assembly” where the gods met.
8 tn Heb “who said to them.”
9 sn This message encapsulates the Lord’s invitation to his people to find security in his protection and blessing.
10 sn Aramaic was the diplomatic language of the Assyrian empire.
11 tn Or “in Hebrew” (NIV, NCV, NLT); NAB, NASB “in Judean.”
12 tn Heb “with their clothes torn”; the words “in grief” have been supplied in the translation to indicate that this was done as a sign of grief and mourning.
13 tn Heb “by which the servants of the king of Assyria have insulted me.”
14 tn That is, to make them drink it.
15 tn Heb “I allowed myself to be sought by those who did not ask.”
16 tn Heb “I allowed myself to be found by those who did not seek.”
17 tn Heb “call out in”; NASB, NIV, NRSV “call on.”