Discovery BoxIsaiah 1:5 
Context1:5 1 Why do you insist on being battered?
Why do you continue to rebel? 2
Your head has a massive wound, 3
your whole body is weak. 4
Isaiah 1:7
Context1:7 Your land is devastated,
your cities burned with fire.
Right before your eyes your crops
are being destroyed by foreign invaders. 5
They leave behind devastation and destruction. 6
Isaiah 22:3
Context22:3 7 All your leaders ran away together –
they fled to a distant place;
all your refugees 8 were captured together –
they were captured without a single arrow being shot. 9
Isaiah 48:7
Context48:7 Now they come into being, 10 not in the past;
before today you did not hear about them,
so you could not say,
‘Yes, 11 I know about them.’
Isaiah 53:4
Context53:4 But he lifted up our illnesses,
he carried our pain; 12
even though we thought he was being punished,
attacked by God, and afflicted for something he had done. 13
1 sn In vv. 5-9 Isaiah addresses the battered nation (5-8) and speaks as their representative (9).
2 tn Heb “Why are you still beaten? [Why] do you continue rebellion?” The rhetorical questions express the prophet’s disbelief over Israel’s apparent masochism and obsession with sin. The interrogative construction in the first line does double duty in the parallelism. H. Wildberger (Isaiah, 1:18) offers another alternative by translating the two statements with one question: “Why do you still wish to be struck that you persist in revolt?”
3 tn Heb “all the head is ill”; NRSV “the whole head is sick”; CEV “Your head is badly bruised.”
4 tn Heb “and all the heart is faint.” The “heart” here stands for bodily strength and energy, as suggested by the context and usage elsewhere (see Jer 8:18; Lam 1:22).
5 tn Heb “As for your land, before you foreigners are devouring it.”
6 tn Heb “and [there is] devastation like an overthrow by foreigners.” The comparative preposition כְּ (kÿ, “like, as”) has here the rhetorical nuance, “in every way like.” The point is that the land has all the earmarks of a destructive foreign invasion because that is what has indeed happened. One could paraphrase, “it is desolate as it can only be when foreigners destroy.” On this use of the preposition in general, see GKC 376 §118.x. Many also prefer to emend “foreigners” here to “Sodom,” though there is no external attestation for such a reading in the
7 tn Verse 3 reads literally, “All your leaders ran away, apart from a bow they were captured, all your found ones were captured together, to a distant place they fled.” J. N. Oswalt (Isaiah [NICOT], 1:403, n. 3) suggests that the lines of the verse are arranged chiastically; lines 1 and 4 go together, while lines 2 and 3 are parallel. To translate the lines in the order they appear in the Hebrew text is misleading to the English reader, who is likely unfamiliar with, or at least insensitive to, chiastic parallelism. Consequently, the translation above arranges the lines as follows: line 1 (Hebrew) = line 1 (in translation); line 2 (Hebrew) = line 4 (in translation); line 3 (Hebrew) = line 3 (in translation); line 4 (Hebrew) = line 2 (in translation).
8 tn Heb “all your found ones.” To achieve tighter parallelism (see “your leaders”) some prefer to emend the form to אַמִּיצַיִךְ (’ammitsayikh, “your strong ones”) or to נֶאֱמָצַיִךְ (ne’ematsayikh, “your strengthened ones”).
9 tn Heb “apart from [i.e., without] a bow they were captured”; cf. NAB, NRSV “without the use of a bow.”
10 tn Heb “are created” (so KJV, NASB, NIV, NRSV); NLT “They are brand new.”
11 tn Heb “look”; KJV, NASB “Behold.”
12 sn Illness and pain stand by metonymy (or perhaps as metaphors) for sin and its effects, as vv. 11-12 make clear.
13 tn The words “for something he had done” are supplied in the translation for clarification. The group now realizes he suffered because of his identification with them, not simply because he was a special target of divine anger.
