³ sn God’s justice/fairness is firm and reliable like the highest mountains and as abundant as the water in the deepest sea. The psalmist uses a legal metaphor to describe God’s preservation of his creation. Like a just judge who vindicates the innocent, God protects his creation from destructive forces.

³ tn The form in the MT is the 3fsg imperfect verb, “[though] it be dark.” Most commentators revocalize the word to make it a noun (תְּעֻפָה, t^eʿufah), giving the meaning “the darkness [of your life] will be like the morning.” The contrast is with Job 10:22; here the darkness will shine like the morning.

¹ tn The clause seems to go naturally with v. 4: do you have eyes of flesh…that you have to investigate? For that reason some like Duhm would delete v. 5. But v. 5 adds to the premise: are you also like a human running out of time that you must try to find out my sin?

⁵ tn The expression is literally “sons of the east.” The use of the genitive after “sons” in this construction may emphasize their nature (like “sons of belial”); it would refer to them as easterners (like “sons of the south” in contemporary American English). BDB 869 s.v. קֶדֶם says “dwellers in the east.”

¹ tn Heb “and like him there was not a king before him who returned to the Lord with all his heart, and with all his soul, and with all his being according to all the law of Moses, and after him none arose like him.”

³ tn Heb “he called them the land of Cabul to this day.” The significance of the name is unclear, though it appears to be disparaging. The name may be derived from a root, attested in Akkadian and Arabic, meaning “bound” or “restricted.” Some propose a wordplay, pointing out that the name “Cabul” sounds like a Hebrew phrase meaning, “like not,” or “as good as nothing.”

² tn The LXX has “and there is none righteous like our God.” The Hebrew term translated “rock” refers to a rocky cliff where one can seek refuge from enemies. Here the metaphor depicts God as a protector of his people. Cf. TEV “no protector like our God”; CEV “We’re safer with you than on a high mountain.”

² sn Fasten them as symbols on your forehead. These were also known later as tefillin (see previous note) or phylacteries (from the Greek term). These box-like containers, like those on the forearms, held the same scraps of the Torah. It was the hypocritical practice of wearing these without heartfelt sincerity that caused Jesus to speak scathingly about them (cf. Matt 23:5).

² sn The phrase “like the first one” at the end of the verse refers back to the sin offering for the priests described in vv. 8-11 above. The blood of the sin offering of the common people was applied to the burnt offering altar just like that of the priests.

² sn Aaron first tried to blame the people, and then he tried to make it sound like a miracle—was it to sound like one of the plagues where out of the furnace came life? This text does not mention it, but Deut 9:20 tells how angry God was with Aaron. Only intercession saved his life.

¹ sn This refers to a band of linen wrapped around the head, forming something like a brimless convex cap, resembling something like a half egg. It refers to the headgear of ordinary priests only (see S. R. Driver, Exodus, 310-11).

⁴ tn Heb “and like the body of heaven for clearness.” The Hebrew term שָׁמַיִם (shamayim) may be translated “heaven” or “sky” depending on the context; here, where sapphire is mentioned (a blue stone) “sky” seems more appropriate, since the transparent blueness of the sapphire would appear like the blueness of the cloudless sky.

¹ tn Heb “And Pharaoh said.” This is not the kind of thing that Pharaoh is likely to have said to Moses, and so it probably is what he thought or reasoned within himself. Other passages (like Exod 2:14; 3:3) show that the verb “said” can do this. (See U. Cassuto, Exodus, 67.)

² sn Sarah. The name change seems to be a dialectical variation, both spellings meaning “princess” or “queen.” Like the name Abram, the name Sarai symbolized the past. The new name Sarah, like the name Abraham, would be a reminder of what God intended to do for Sarah in the future.

² tn The translation follows the majority of scholars, who think that the address of brother and sister are the address of the mourners to one another, lamenting their loss. Some scholars feel that all four terms are parallel and represent the relation that the king had metaphorically to his subjects; i.e., he was not only Lord and Majesty to them but like a sister or a brother. In that case it would be something like, “How sad it is for the one who was like a brother to us! How sad it is for the one who was like a sister to us.” This makes for poor poetry and is not very likely. The lover can call his bride sister in Song 4:9, 10, but there are no documented examples of a subject ever speaking of a king in this way in Israel or the ancient Near East.

¹ tn Or “Like Adam”; or “Like [sinful] men.” The MT reads כְּאָדָם (k^eʾadam, “like Adam” or “as [sinful] men”); however, the editors of BHS suggest this reflects an orthographic confusion of בְּאָדָם (b^eʾadam, “at Adam”), as suggested by the locative adverb שָׁם (sham, “there”) in the following line. However, שָׁם sometimes functions in a nonlocative sense similar to the deictic particle הִנֵּה (hinneh, “Behold!”). The singular noun אָדָם (ʾadam) has been taken in several different ways: (1) proper name: “like Adam” (כְּאָדָם), (2) collective singular: “like [sinful] men” (כְּאָדָם), and (3) proper location: “at Adam,” referring to a city in the Jordan Valley (Josh 3:16), emending comparative כְּ (kaf) to locative בְּ (bet, “at”): “at Adam” (בְּאָדָם). BDB 9 s.v. אָדָם 2 suggests the collective sense, referring to sinful men (Num 5:6; 1 Kgs 8:46; 2 Chr 6:36; Jer 10:14; Job 31:33; Hos 6:7). The English versions are divided: KJV margin, ASV, RSV margin, NASB, NIV, TEV margin, NLT “like Adam”; RSV, NRSV, TEV “at Adam”; and KJV “like men.”

¹ tn Or “Egypt will rustle away like a snake”; Heb “her sound goes like the snake,” or “her sound [is] like the snake [when] it goes.” The meaning of the simile is debated. Some see a reference to the impotent hiss of a fleeing serpent (F. B. Huey, Jeremiah, Lamentations [NAC], 382), others the sound of a serpent stealthily crawling away when it is disturbed (H. Freedman, Jeremiah [SoBB], 297-98). The translation follows the former interpretation because of the irony involved.

² tn Heb “Who is blind but my servant, and deaf like my messenger I send? Who is blind like my commissioned one, blind like the servant of the Lord?” The point of the rhetorical questions is that no one is as blind/deaf as this servant. In this context the Lord’s “servant” is exiled Israel (cf. 41:8-9), which is spiritually blind and deaf and has failed to fulfill God’s purpose for it. This servant stands in contrast to the ideal “Israel” of the servant songs.

³ tc The translation accepts the emendation in BHS, reading אֲשֵׁרָה (ʾasherah) rather than אֲשֶׁר (ʾasher, “which”). The term אֲשֵׁרָה may refer to the goddess Asherah or a sacred pole which presumably represented the goddess at worship sites. The translation also treats the Asherah as the third in a series of items, as if וְכַאֲשֵׁרָה (vekaʾasherah, “and like an Asherah”). But it may just as well be modifying the previous noun so that the whole phrase reads “like a terebinth and like the oak of an Asherah.” See J. D. W. Watts, Isaiah 1-33 (WBC), 101, 103.

² tc The translation assumes that כִּמְעָט (kimʿat, “quickly,” literally, “like a little”) goes with what follows, contrary to the MT accents, which take it with what precedes. In this case, one could translate the preceding line, “If the Lord who commands armies had not left us a few survivors.” If כִּמְעָט goes with the preceding line (following the MT accents), this expression highlights the idea that there would only be a few survivors (H. Wildberger, Isaiah, 1:20; H. Zobel, TDOT 8:456). Israel would not be almost like Sodom but exactly like Sodom.