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. 1 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!” 2
Isaiah 36:16
Context36:16 Don’t listen to Hezekiah!’ For this is what the king of Assyria says, ‘Send me a token of your submission and surrender to me. 3 Then each of you may eat from his own vine and fig tree and drink water from his own cistern,
Isaiah 49:26
Context49:26 I will make your oppressors eat their own flesh;
they will get drunk on their own blood, as if it were wine. 4
Then all humankind 5 will recognize that
I am the Lord, your deliverer,
1 tn Heb “To your master and to you did my master send me to speak these words?” The rhetorical question expects a negative answer.
2 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.
3 tn Heb “make with me a blessing and come out to me.”
4 sn Verse 26a depicts siege warfare and bloody defeat. The besieged enemy will be so starved they will their own flesh. The bloodstained bodies lying on the blood-soaked battle site will look as if they collapsed in drunkenness.
5 tn Heb “flesh” (so KJV, NASB).