50:13 Do I eat the flesh of bulls?
Do I drink the blood of goats? 1
60:3 You have made your people experience hard times; 2
you have made us drink intoxicating wine. 3
78:44 He turned their rivers into blood,
and they could not drink from their streams.
80:5 You have given them tears as food; 4
you have made them drink tears by the measure. 5
102:9 For I eat ashes as if they were bread, 6
and mix my drink with my tears, 7
1 tn The rhetorical questions assume an emphatic negative response, “Of course not!”
2 tn Heb “you have caused your people to see [what is] hard.”
3 tn Heb “wine of staggering,” that is, intoxicating wine that makes one stagger in drunkenness. Intoxicating wine is here an image of divine judgment that makes its victims stagger like drunkards. See Isa 51:17-23.
4 tn Heb “you have fed them the food of tears.”
5 tn Heb “[by] the third part [of a measure].” The Hebrew term שָׁלִישׁ (shalish, “third part [of a measure]”) occurs only here and in Isa 40:12.
6 sn Mourners would sometimes put ashes on their head or roll in ashes as a sign of mourning (see 2 Sam 13:19; Job 2:8; Isa 58:5).
7 tn Heb “weeping.”