Yesaya 1:5

1:5 ¹ Why do you insist on being battered?

Why do you continue to rebel? ² 

Your head has a massive wound, ³ 

your whole body is weak. ⁴ 

Yesaya 24:20

24:20 The earth will stagger around ⁵  like a drunk;

it will sway back and forth like a hut in a windstorm. ⁶ 

Its sin will weigh it down,

and it will fall and never get up again.

Yesaya 33:8

33:8 Highways are empty, ⁷ 

there are no travelers. ⁸ 

Treaties are broken, ⁹ 

witnesses are despised, ¹⁰ 

human life is treated with disrespect. ¹¹ 

Yesaya 38:4

38:4 The Lord told Isaiah, ¹² 

[1:5]  ¹ sn In vv. 5-9 Isaiah addresses the battered nation (5-8) and speaks as their representative (9).

[1:5]  ² tn Heb “Why are you still beaten? [Why] do you continue rebellion?” The rhetorical questions express the prophet’s disbelief over Israel’s apparent masochism and obsession with sin. The interrogative construction in the first line does double duty in the parallelism. H. Wildberger (Isaiah, 1:18) offers another alternative by translating the two statements with one question: “Why do you still wish to be struck that you persist in revolt?”

[1:5]  ³ tn Heb “all the head is ill”; NRSV “the whole head is sick”; CEV “Your head is badly bruised.”

[1:5]  ⁴ tn Heb “and all the heart is faint.” The “heart” here stands for bodily strength and energy, as suggested by the context and usage elsewhere (see Jer 8:18; Lam 1:22).

[24:20]  ⁵ tn Heb “staggering, staggers.” The Hebrew text uses the infinitive absolute before the finite verb for emphasis and sound play.

[24:20]  ⁶ tn The words “in a windstorm” are supplied in the translation to clarify the metaphor.

[33:8]  ⁷ tn Or “desolate” (NAB, NASB); NIV, NRSV, NLT “deserted.”

[33:8]  ⁸ tn Heb “the one passing by on the road ceases.”

[33:8]  ⁹ tn Heb “one breaks a treaty”; NAB “Covenants are broken.”

[33:8]  ¹⁰ tc The Hebrew text reads literally, “he despises cities.” The term עָרִים (’arim, “cities”) is probably a corruption of an original עֵדִים (’edim, “[legal] witnesses”), a reading that is preserved in the Qumran scroll 1QIsa^a. Confusion of dalet (ד) and resh (ר) is a well-attested scribal error.

[33:8]  ¹¹ tn Heb “he does not regard human beings.”

[38:4]  ¹² tn Heb “and the word of the Lord came to Isaiah, saying.”