Discovery BoxIsaiah 29:4 
Context29:4 You will fall;
while lying on the ground 1 you will speak;
from the dust where you lie, your words will be heard. 2
Your voice will sound like a spirit speaking from the underworld; 3
from the dust you will chirp as if muttering an incantation. 4
Isaiah 36:12
Context36:12 But the chief adviser said, “My master did not send me to speak these words only to your master and to you. 5 His message is also for the men who sit on the wall, for they will eat their own excrement and drink their own urine along with you!” 6
1 tn Heb “from the ground” (so NIV, NCV).
2 tn Heb “and from the dust your word will be low.”
3 tn Heb “and your voice will be like a ritual pit from the earth.” The Hebrew אוֹב (’ov, “ritual pit”) refers to a pit used by a magician to conjure up underworld spirits. See the note on “incantations” in 8:19. Here the word is used metonymically for the voice that emerges from such a pit.
4 tn Heb “and from the dust your word will chirp.” The words “as if muttering an incantation” are supplied in the translation for clarification. See the parallelism and 8:19.
5 tn Heb “To your master and to you did my master send me to speak these words?” The rhetorical question expects a negative answer.
6 tn Heb “[Is it] not [also] to the men…?” The rhetorical question expects the answer, “Yes, it is.”
sn The chief adviser alludes to the horrible reality of siege warfare, when the starving people in the besieged city would resort to eating and drinking anything to stay alive.
