Discovery BoxIsaiah 29:16 
Context29:16 Your thinking is perverse! 1
Should the potter be regarded as clay? 2
Should the thing made say 3 about its maker, “He didn’t make me”?
Or should the pottery say about the potter, “He doesn’t understand”?
Isaiah 30:6
Context30:6 This is a message 4 about the animals in the Negev:
Through a land of distress and danger,
inhabited by lionesses and roaring lions, 5
by snakes and darting adders, 6
they transport 7 their wealth on the backs of donkeys,
their riches on the humps of camels,
to a nation that cannot help them. 8
1 tn Heb “your overturning.” The predicate is suppressed in this exclamation. The idea is, “O your perversity! How great it is!” See GKC 470 §147.c. The people “overturn” all logic by thinking their authority supersedes God’s.
2 tn The expected answer to this rhetorical question is “of course not.” On the interrogative use of אִם (’im), see BDB 50 s.v.
3 tn Heb “that the thing made should say.”
4 tn Traditionally, “burden” (so KJV, ASV); NAB, NASB, NIV, NRSV “oracle.”
5 tc Heb “[a land of] a lioness and a lion, from them.” Some emend מֵהֶם (mehem, “from them”) to מֵהֵם (mehem), an otherwise unattested Hiphil participle from הָמַם (hamam, “move noisily”). Perhaps it would be better to take the initial mem (מ) as enclitic and emend the form to הֹמֶה (homeh), a Qal active participle from הָמָה (hamah, “to make a noise”); cf. J. N. Oswalt, Isaiah (NICOT), 1:542, n. 9.
6 tn Heb “flying fiery one.” See the note at 14:29.
7 tn Or “carry” (KJV, NAB, NASB, NIV, NRSV).
8 sn This verse describes messengers from Judah transporting wealth to Egypt in order to buy Pharaoh’s protection through a treaty.
