Yesaya 28:23

28:23 Pay attention and listen to my message! ¹ 

Be attentive and listen to what I have to say! ² 

Yesaya 42:23

42:23 Who among you will pay attention to this?

Who will listen attentively in the future? ³ 

Yesaya 51:4

51:4 Pay attention to me, my people!

Listen to me, my people!

For ⁴  I will issue a decree, ⁵ 

I will make my justice a light to the nations. ⁶ 

Yesaya 55:3

55:3 Pay attention and come to me!

Listen, so you can live! ⁷ 

Then I will make an unconditional covenantal promise to ⁸  you,

just like the reliable covenantal promises I made to David. ⁹ 

[28:23]  ¹ tn Heb “to my voice.”

[28:23]  ² tn Heb “to my word”; cf. KJV, ASV, NRSV “hear my speech.”

[42:23]  ³ tn The interrogative particle is understood in the second line by ellipsis (note the preceding line).

[51:4]  ⁴ tn Or “certainly.”

[51:4]  ⁵ tn Heb “instruction [or “a law”] will go out from me.”

[51:4]  ⁶ tn Heb “and my justice for a light to the nations I will cause to rest.”

[55:3]  ⁷ tn The jussive with vav (ו) conjunctive following the imperative indicates purpose/result.

[55:3]  sn To live here refers to covenantal blessing, primarily material prosperity and national security (see vv. 4-5, 13, and Deut 30:6, 15, 19-20).

[55:3]  ⁸ tn Or “an eternal covenant with.”

[55:3]  ⁹ tn Heb “the reliable expressions of loyalty of David.” The syntactical relationship of חַסְדֵי (khasde, “expressions of loyalty”) to the preceding line is unclear. If the term is appositional to בְּרִית (bÿrit, “covenant”), then the Lord here transfers the promises of the Davidic covenant to the entire nation. Another option is to take חַסְדֵי (khasde) as an adverbial accusative and to translate “according to the reliable covenantal promises.” In this case the new covenantal arrangement proposed here is viewed as an extension or perhaps fulfillment of the Davidic promises. A third option, the one reflected in the above translation, is to take the last line as comparative. In this case the new covenant being proposed is analogous to the Davidic covenant. Verses 4-5, which compare David’s international prominence to what Israel will experience, favors this view. In all three of these interpretations, “David” is an objective genitive; he is the recipient of covenantal promises. A fourth option would be to take David as a subjective genitive and understand the line as giving the basis for the preceding promise: “Then I will make an unconditional covenantal promise to you, because of David’s faithful acts of covenantal loyalty.”