Discovery BoxIsaiah 51:10 
Context51:10 Did you not dry up the sea,
the waters of the great deep?
Did you not make 1 a path through the depths of the sea,
so those delivered from bondage 2 could cross over?
Isaiah 53:6
Context53:6 All of us had wandered off like sheep;
each of us had strayed off on his own path,
but the Lord caused the sin of all of us to attack him. 3
1 tn The Hebrew text reads literally, “Are you not the one who dried up the sea, the waters of the great deep, who made…?”
2 tn Heb “the redeemed” (so ASV, NASB, NIV, NRSV); KJV “the ransomed.”
3 tn Elsewhere the Hiphil of פָגַע (paga’) means “to intercede verbally” (Jer 15:11; 36:25) or “to intervene militarily” (Isa 59:16), but neither nuance fits here. Apparently here the Hiphil is the causative of the normal Qal meaning, “encounter, meet, touch.” The Qal sometimes refers to a hostile encounter or attack; when used in this way the object is normally introduced by the preposition -בְּ (bet, see Josh 2:16; Judg 8:21; 15:12, etc.). Here the causative Hiphil has a double object – the Lord makes “sin” attack “him” (note that the object attacked is introduced by the preposition -בְּ. In their sin the group was like sheep who had wandered from God’s path. They were vulnerable to attack; the guilt of their sin was ready to attack and destroy them. But then the servant stepped in and took the full force of the attack.
