Discovery BoxIsaiah 49:23-26 
Context49:23 Kings will be your children’s 1 guardians;
their princesses will nurse your children. 2
With their faces to the ground they will bow down to you
and they will lick the dirt on 3 your feet.
Then you will recognize that I am the Lord;
those who wait patiently for me are not put to shame.
49:24 Can spoils be taken from a warrior,
or captives be rescued from a conqueror? 4
49:25 Indeed,” says the Lord,
“captives will be taken from a warrior;
spoils will be rescued from a conqueror.
I will oppose your adversary
and I will rescue your children.
49:26 I will make your oppressors eat their own flesh;
they will get drunk on their own blood, as if it were wine. 5
Then all humankind 6 will recognize that
I am the Lord, your deliverer,
1 tn Heb “your,” but Zion here stands by metonymy for her children (see v. 22b).
2 tn Heb “you.” See the preceding note.
3 tn Or “at your feet” (NAB, NIV); NLT “from your feet.”
4 tc The Hebrew text has צָדִיק (tsadiq, “a righteous [one]”), but this makes no sense in the parallelism. The Qumran scroll 1QIsaa reads correctly עריץ (“violent [one], tyrant”; see v. 25).
5 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.
6 tn Heb “flesh” (so KJV, NASB).
