Discovery BoxIsaiah 4:1 
Context4:1 Seven women will grab hold of
one man at that time. 1
They will say, “We will provide 2 our own food,
we will provide 3 our own clothes;
but let us belong to you 4 –
take away our shame!” 5
Isaiah 5:29
Context5:29 Their roar is like a lion’s;
they roar like young lions.
They growl and seize their prey;
they drag it away and no one can come to the rescue.
Isaiah 10:6
Context10:6 I sent him 6 against a godless 7 nation,
I ordered him to attack the people with whom I was angry, 8
to take plunder and to carry away loot,
to trample them down 9 like dirt in the streets.
Isaiah 15:4
Context15:4 The people of 10 Heshbon and Elealeh cry out,
their voices are heard as far away as Jahaz.
For this reason Moab’s soldiers shout in distress;
their courage wavers. 11
Isaiah 20:4
Context20:4 so the king of Assyria will lead away the captives of Egypt and the exiles of Cush, both young and old. They will be in undergarments and barefoot, with the buttocks exposed; the Egyptians will be publicly humiliated. 12
Isaiah 25:8
Context25:8 he will swallow up death permanently. 13
The sovereign Lord will wipe away the tears from every face,
and remove his people’s disgrace from all the earth.
Indeed, the Lord has announced it! 14
Isaiah 30:22
Context30:22 You will desecrate your silver-plated idols 15
and your gold-plated images. 16
You will throw them away as if they were a menstrual rag,
saying to them, “Get out!”
Isaiah 31:8
Context31:8 Assyria will fall by a sword, but not one human-made; 17
a sword not made by humankind will destroy them. 18
They will run away from this sword 19
and their young men will be forced to do hard labor.
Isaiah 34:4
Context34:4 All the stars in the sky will fade away, 20
the sky will roll up like a scroll;
all its stars will wither,
like a leaf withers and falls from a vine
or a fig withers and falls from a tree. 21
Isaiah 37:38
Context37:38 One day, 22 as he was worshiping 23 in the temple of his god Nisroch, 24 his sons Adrammelech and Sharezer struck him down with the sword. 25 They ran away to the land of Ararat; his son Esarhaddon replaced him as king.
Isaiah 39:6
Context39:6 ‘Look, a time is coming when everything in your palace and the things your ancestors 26 have accumulated to this day will be carried away to Babylon; nothing will be left,’ says the Lord.
Isaiah 40:24
Context40:24 Indeed, they are barely planted;
yes, they are barely sown;
yes, they barely take root in the earth,
and then he blows on them, causing them to dry up,
and the wind carries them away like straw.
Isaiah 41:16
Context41:16 You will winnow them and the wind will blow them away;
the wind will scatter them.
You will rejoice in the Lord;
you will boast in the Holy One of Israel.
Isaiah 45:3
Context45:3 I will give you hidden treasures, 27
riches stashed away in secret places,
so you may recognize that I am the Lord,
the one who calls you by name, the God of Israel.
Isaiah 46:13
Context46:13 I am bringing my deliverance near, it is not far away;
I am bringing my salvation near, 28 it does not wait.
I will save Zion; 29
I will adorn Israel with my splendor.” 30
Isaiah 47:11
Context47:11 Disaster will overtake you;
you will not know how to charm it away. 31
Destruction will fall on you;
you will not be able to appease it.
Calamity will strike you suddenly,
before you recognize it. 32
Isaiah 49:1
Context49:1 Listen to me, you coastlands! 33
Pay attention, you people who live far away!
The Lord summoned me from birth; 34
he commissioned me when my mother brought me into the world. 35
Isaiah 49:19
Context49:19 Yes, your land lies in ruins;
it is desolate and devastated. 36
But now you will be too small to hold your residents,
and those who devoured you will be far away.
Isaiah 51:8
Context51:8 For a moth will eat away at them like clothes;
a clothes moth will devour them like wool.
But the vindication I provide 37 will be permanent;
the deliverance I give will last.”
Isaiah 52:5
Context52:5 And now, what do we have here?” 38 says the Lord.
“Indeed my people have been carried away for nothing,
those who rule over them taunt,” 39 says the Lord,
“and my name is constantly slandered 40 all day long.
Isaiah 53:8
Context53:8 He was led away after an unjust trial 41 –
but who even cared? 42
Indeed, he was cut off from the land of the living; 43
because of the rebellion of his own 44 people he was wounded.
Isaiah 57:19
Context57:19 I am the one who gives them reason to celebrate. 45
Complete prosperity 46 is available both to those who are far away and those who are nearby,”
says the Lord, “and I will heal them.
Isaiah 58:6
Context58:6 No, this is the kind of fast I want. 47
I want you 48 to remove the sinful chains,
to tear away the ropes of the burdensome yoke,
to set free the oppressed, 49
and to break every burdensome yoke.
Isaiah 64:6
Context64:6 We are all like one who is unclean,
all our so-called righteous acts are like a menstrual rag in your sight. 50
We all wither like a leaf;
our sins carry us away like the wind.
1 tn Or “in that day” (ASV).
sn The seven to one ratio emphasizes the great disparity that will exist in the population due to the death of so many men in battle.
2 tn Heb “eat” (so NASB, NIV, NRSV); CEV “buy.”
3 tn Heb “wear” (so NASB, NRSV); NCV “make.”
4 tn Heb “only let your name be called over us.” The Hebrew idiom “call the name over” indicates ownership. See 2 Sam 12:28, and BDB 896 s.v. I ָקרָא Niph. 2.d.(4). The language reflects the cultural reality of ancient Israel, where women were legally the property of their husbands.
5 sn This refers to the humiliation of being unmarried and childless. The women’s words reflect the cultural standards of ancient Israel, where a woman’s primary duties were to be a wife and mother.
6 sn Throughout this section singular forms are used to refer to Assyria; perhaps the king of Assyria is in view (see v. 12).
7 tn Or “defiled”; cf. ASV “profane”; NAB “impious”; NCV “separated from God.”
8 tn Heb “and against the people of my anger I ordered him.”
9 tn Heb “to make it [i.e., the people] a trampled place.”
10 tn The words “the people of” are supplied in the translation for clarification.
11 tc The Hebrew text has, “For this reason the soldiers of Moab shout, his inner being quivers for him.” To achieve tighter parallelism, some emend the first line, changing חֲלֻצֵי (khalutse, “soldiers”) to חַלְצֵי (khaltse, “loins”) and יָרִיעוּ (yari’u, “they shout,” from רוּעַ, rua’) to יָרְעוּ (yor’u, “they quiver”), a verb from יָרַע (yara’), which also appears in the next line. One can then translate v. 4b as “For this reason the insides of the Moabites quiver, their whole body shakes” (cf. NAB, NRSV).
12 tn Heb “lightly dressed and barefoot, and bare with respect to the buttocks, the nakedness of Egypt.”
13 sn The image of the Lord “swallowing” death would be especially powerful, for death was viewed in Canaanite mythology and culture as a hungry enemy that swallows its victims. See the note at 5:14.
14 tn Heb “has spoken” (so NAB, NASB, NIV, NRSV, NLT).
15 tn Heb “the platings of your silver idols.”
16 tn Heb “the covering of your gold image.”
17 tn Heb “Assyria will fall by a sword, not of a man.”
18 tn Heb “and a sword not of humankind will devour him.”
19 tn Heb “he will flee for himself from before a sword.”
20 tc Heb “and all the host of heaven will rot.” The Qumran scroll 1QIsaa inserts “and the valleys will be split open,” but this reading may be influenced by Mic 1:4. On the other hand, the statement, if original, could have been omitted by homoioarcton, a scribe’s eye jumping from the conjunction prefixed to “the valleys” to the conjunction prefixed to the verb “rot.”
21 tn Heb “like the withering of a leaf from a vine, and like the withering from a fig tree.”
22 sn The assassination of King Sennacherib probably took place in 681
23 tn The verb that introduces this verse serves as a discourse particle and is untranslated; see note on “in the future” in 2:2.
24 sn No such Mesopotamian god is presently known. Perhaps the name Nisroch is a corruption of Nusku.
25 sn Extra-biblical sources also mention the assassination of Sennacherib, though they refer to only one assassin. See M. Cogan and H. Tadmor, II Kings (AB), 239-40.
26 tn Heb “fathers” (so KJV, NAB, NASB, NIV).
27 tn Heb “treasures of darkness” (KJV, NASB, NIV, NRSV); TEV “treasures from dark, secret places.”
28 tn Heb “my salvation.” The verb “I am bringing near” is understood by ellipsis (note the previous line).
29 tn Heb “I will place in Zion salvation”; NASB “I will grant salvation in Zion.”
30 tn Heb “to Israel my splendor”; KJV, ASV “for Israel my glory.”
31 tc The Hebrew text has שַׁחְרָהּ (shakhrah), which is either a suffixed noun (“its dawning,” i.e., origin) or infinitive (“to look early for it”). Some have suggested an emendation to שַׁחֲדָהּ (shakhadah), a suffixed infinitive from שָׁחַד (shakhad, “[how] to buy it off”; see BDB 1005 s.v. שָׁחַד). This forms a nice parallel with the following couplet. The above translation is based on a different etymology of the verb in question. HALOT 1466 s.v. III שׁחר references a verbal root with these letters (שׁחד) that refers to magical activity.
32 tn Heb “you will not know”; NIV “you cannot foresee.”
33 tn Or “islands” (NASB, NIV); NLT “in far-off lands.”
sn The Lord’s special servant, introduced in chap. 42, speaks here of his commission.
34 tn Heb “called me from the womb.”
35 tn Heb “from the inner parts of my mother he mentioned my name.”
36 tn Heb “Indeed your ruins and your desolate places, and the land of your destruction.” This statement is abruptly terminated in the Hebrew text and left incomplete.
37 tn Heb “my vindication”; many English versions “my righteousness”; NRSV, TEV “my deliverance”; CEV “my victory.”
38 tn Heb “and now what [following the marginal reading (Qere)] to me here?”
39 tn The verb appears to be a Hiphil form from the root יָלַל (yalal, “howl”), perhaps here in the sense of “mock.” Some emend the form to יְהוֹלָּלוֹ (yÿhollalo) and understand a Polel form of the root הָלַל meaning here “mock, taunt.”
40 tn The verb is apparently a Hitpolal form (with assimilated tav, ת) from the root נָאַץ (na’ats), but GKC 151-52 §55.b explains it as a mixed form, combining Pual and Hitpolel readings.
41 tn The precise meaning of this line is uncertain. The present translation assumes that מִן (min) here has an instrumental sense (“by, through”) and understands עֹצֶר וּמִמִּשְׁפָּט (’otser umimmishpat, “coercion and legal decision”) as a hendiadys meaning “coercive legal decision,” thus “an unjust trial.” Other interpretive options include: (1) “without [for this sense of מִן, see BDB 578 s.v. 1.b] hindrance and proper judicial process,” i.e., “unfairly and with no one to defend him,” (2) “from [in the sense of “after,” see BDB 581 s.v. 4.b] arrest and judgment.”
42 tn Heb “and his generation, who considers?” (NASB similar). Some understand “his generation” as a reference to descendants. In this case the question would suggest that he will have none. However, אֶת (’et) may be taken here as specifying a new subject (see BDB 85 s.v. I אֵת 3). If “his generation” refers to the servant’s contemporary generation, one may then translate, “As for his contemporary generation, who took note?” The point would be that few were concerned about the harsh treatment he received.
43 sn The “land of the living” is an idiom for the sphere where people live, in contrast to the underworld realm of the dead. See, for example, Ezek 32:23-27.
44 tn The Hebrew text reads “my people,” a reading followed by most English versions, but this is problematic in a context where the first person plural predominates, and where God does not appear to speak again until v. 11b. Therefore, it is preferable to read with the Qumran scroll 1QIsaa עמו (“his people”). In this case, the group speaking in these verses is identified as the servant’s people (compare פְּשָׁעֵנוּ [pÿsha’enu, “our rebellious deeds”] in v. 5 with פֶּשַׁע עַמִּי [pesha’ ’ammi, “the rebellion of his people”] in v. 8).
45 tc The Hebrew text has literally, “one who creates fruit of lips.” Perhaps the pronoun אֲנִי (’ani) should be inserted after the participle; it may have been accidentally omitted by haplography: נוּב שְׂפָתָיִם[אֲנִי] בּוֹרֵא (bore’ [’ani] nuv sÿfatayim). “Fruit of the lips” is often understood as a metonymy for praise; perhaps it refers more generally to joyful shouts (see v. 18).
46 tn Heb “Peace, peace.” The repetition of the noun emphasizes degree.
47 tn Heb “Is this not a fast I choose?” “No” is supplied in the translation for clarification.
48 tn The words “I want you” are supplied in the translation for stylistic reasons.
49 tn Heb “crushed.”
50 tn Heb “and like a garment of menstruation [are] all our righteous acts”; KJV, NIV “filthy rags”; ASV “a polluted garment.”
