Discovery BoxIsaiah 1:19 
Context1:19 If you have a willing attitude and obey, 1
then you will again eat the good crops of the land.
Isaiah 7:24
Context7:24 With bow and arrow 2 men will hunt 3 there, for the whole land will be covered 4 with thorns and briers.
Isaiah 10:23
Context10:23 The sovereign master, the Lord who commands armies, is certainly ready to carry out the decreed destruction throughout the land. 5
Isaiah 18:1
Context18:1 The land of buzzing wings is as good as dead, 6
the one beyond the rivers of Cush,
Isaiah 23:10
Context23:10 Daughter Tarshish, travel back to your land, as one crosses the Nile;
there is no longer any marketplace in Tyre. 7
Isaiah 34:9
Context34:9 Edom’s 8 streams will be turned into pitch
and her soil into brimstone;
her land will become burning pitch.
Isaiah 63:13
Context63:13 who led them through the deep water?
Like a horse running on flat land 9 they did not stumble.
Isaiah 63:18
Context63:18 For a short time your special 10 nation possessed a land, 11
but then our adversaries knocked down 12 your holy sanctuary.
1 tn Heb “listen”; KJV “obedient”; NASB “If you consent and obey.”
2 tn Heb “with arrows and a bow.” The more common English idiom is “bow[s] and arrow[s].”
3 tn Heb “go” (so NAB, NIV, NRSV); TEV “go hunting.”
4 tn Heb “will be” (so NASB, NRSV).
5 tn Heb “Indeed (or perhaps “for”) destruction and what is decreed the sovereign master, the Lord who commands armies, is about to accomplish in the middle of all the land.” The phrase כָלָא וְנֶחֱרָצָה (khala’ venekheratsah, “destruction and what is decreed”) is a hendiadys; the two terms express one idea, with the second qualifying the first.
6 tn Heb “Woe [to] the land of buzzing wings.” On הוֹי (hoy, “woe, ah”) see the note on the first phrase of 1:4.
sn The significance of the qualifying phrase “buzzing wings” is uncertain. Some suggest that the designation points to Cush as a land with many insects. Another possibility is that it refers to the swiftness with which this land’s messengers travel (v. 2a); they move over the sea as swiftly as an insect flies through the air. For a discussion of the options, see J. N. Oswalt, Isaiah (NICOT), 1:359-60.
7 tc This meaning of this verse is unclear. The Hebrew text reads literally, “Cross over your land, like the Nile, daughter of Tarshish, there is no more waistband.” The translation assumes an emendation of מֵזַח (mezakh, “waistband”) to מָחֹז (makhoz, “harbor, marketplace”; see Ps 107:30). The term עָבַר (’avar, “cross over”) is probably used here of traveling over the water (as in v. 6). The command is addressed to personified Tarshish, who here represents her merchants. The Qumran scroll 1QIsaa has עבדי (“work, cultivate”) instead of עִבְרִי (’ivri, “cross over”). In this case one might translate “Cultivate your land, like they do the Nile region” (cf. NIV, CEV). The point would be that the people of Tarshish should turn to agriculture because they will no longer be able to get what they need through the marketplace in Tyre.
8 tn Heb “her”; the referent (Edom) has been specified in the translation for clarity.
9 tn Heb “in the desert [or “steppe”].”
10 tn Or “holy” (ASV, NASB, NRSV, TEV, NLT).
11 tn Heb “for a short time they had a possession, the people of your holiness.”
12 tn Heb “your adversaries trampled on.”
