Yesaya 1:15

1:15 When you spread out your hands in prayer,

I look the other way; ¹ 

when you offer your many prayers,

I do not listen,

because your hands are covered with blood. ² 

Yesaya 38:8

38:8 Look, I will make the shadow go back ten steps on the stairs of Ahaz.” ³  And then the shadow went back ten steps. ⁴ 

[1:15]  ¹ tn Heb “I close my eyes from you.”

[1:15]  ² sn This does not just refer to the blood of sacrificial animals, but also the blood, as it were, of their innocent victims. By depriving the poor and destitute of proper legal recourse and adequate access to the economic system, the oppressors have, for all intents and purposes, “killed” their victims.

[38:8]  ³ tn Heb “the shadow on the steps which [the sun] had gone down, on the steps of Ahaz, with the sun, back ten steps.”

[38:8]  sn These steps probably functioned as a type of sundial. See HALOT 614 s.v. מַעֲלָה and M. Cogan and H. Tadmor, II Kings (AB), 256.

[38:8]  ⁴ tn Heb “and the sun returned ten steps on the steps which it had gone down.”