Discovery BoxIsaiah 10:5-6 
Context10:5 Assyria, the club I use to vent my anger, is as good as dead, 1
a cudgel with which I angrily punish. 2
10:6 I sent him 3 against a godless 4 nation,
I ordered him to attack the people with whom I was angry, 5
to take plunder and to carry away loot,
to trample them down 6 like dirt in the streets.
Isaiah 10:32
Context10:32 This very day, standing in Nob,
they shake their fist at Daughter Zion’s mountain 7 –
at the hill of Jerusalem.
1 tn Heb “Woe [to] Assyria, the club of my anger.” On הוֹי (hoy, “woe, ah”) see the note on the first phrase of 1:4.
2 tn Heb “a cudgel is he, in their hand is my anger.” It seems likely that the final mem (ם) on בְיָדָם (bÿyadam) is not a pronominal suffix (“in their hand”), but an enclitic mem. If so, one can translate literally, “a cudgel is he in the hand of my anger.”
3 sn Throughout this section singular forms are used to refer to Assyria; perhaps the king of Assyria is in view (see v. 12).
4 tn Or “defiled”; cf. ASV “profane”; NAB “impious”; NCV “separated from God.”
5 tn Heb “and against the people of my anger I ordered him.”
6 tn Heb “to make it [i.e., the people] a trampled place.”
7 tc The consonantal text (Kethib) has “a mountain of a house (בֵּית, bet), Zion,” but the marginal reading (Qere) correctly reads “the mountain of the daughter (בַּת, bat) of Zion.” On the phrase “Daughter Zion,” see the note on the same phrase in 1:8.
