Yesaya 1:7

1:7 Your land is devastated,

your cities burned with fire.

Right before your eyes your crops

are being destroyed by foreign invaders. ¹ 

They leave behind devastation and destruction. ² 

Mikha 1:9

1:9 For Samaria’s ³  disease ⁴  is incurable.

It has infected ⁵  Judah;

it has spread to ⁶  the leadership ⁷  of my people

and has even contaminated Jerusalem! ⁸ 

[1:7]  ¹ tn Heb “As for your land, before you foreigners are devouring it.”

[1:7]  ² tn Heb “and [there is] devastation like an overthrow by foreigners.” The comparative preposition כְּ (kÿ, “like, as”) has here the rhetorical nuance, “in every way like.” The point is that the land has all the earmarks of a destructive foreign invasion because that is what has indeed happened. One could paraphrase, “it is desolate as it can only be when foreigners destroy.” On this use of the preposition in general, see GKC 376 §118.x. Many also prefer to emend “foreigners” here to “Sodom,” though there is no external attestation for such a reading in the mss or ancient versions. Such an emendation finds support from the following context (vv. 9-10) and usage of the preceding noun מַהְפֵּכָה (mahpekhah, “overthrow”). In its five other uses, this noun is associated with the destruction of Sodom. If one accepts the emendation, then one might translate, “the devastation resembles the destruction of Sodom.”

[1:9]  ³ tn Heb “her”; the referent (Samaria) has been specified in the translation for clarity.

[1:9]  ⁴ tc The MT reads the plural “wounds”; the singular is read by the LXX, Syriac, and Vg.

[1:9]  tn Or “wound.”

[1:9]  ⁵ tn Heb “come to.”

[1:9]  ⁶ tn Or “reached.”

[1:9]  ⁷ tn Heb “the gate.” Kings and civic leaders typically conducted important business at the city gate (see 1 Kgs 22:10 for an example), and the term is understood here to refer by metonymy to the leadership who would be present at the gate.

[1:9]  ⁸ tn Heb “to Jerusalem.” The expression “it has contaminated” do not appear in the Hebrew text, but have been supplied to fill out the parallelism with the preceding line.

[1:9]  map For location see Map5 B1; Map6 F3; Map7 E2; Map8 F2; Map10 B3; JP1 F4; JP2 F4; JP3 F4; JP4 F4.