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 

Yesaya 10:17

10:17 The light of Israel ³  will become a fire,

their Holy One ⁴  will become a flame;

it will burn and consume the Assyrian king’s ⁵  briers

and his thorns in one day.

Yesaya 21:10

21:10 O my downtrodden people, crushed like stalks on the threshing floor, ⁶ 

what I have heard

from the Lord who commands armies,

the God of Israel,

I have reported to you.

Yesaya 22:13

22:13 But look, there is outright celebration! ⁷ 

You say, “Kill the ox and slaughter the sheep,

eat meat and drink wine.

Eat and drink, for tomorrow we die!” ⁸ 

Yesaya 34:1

The Lord Will Judge Edom

34:1 Come near, you nations, and listen!

Pay attention, you people!

The earth and everything it contains must listen,

the world and everything that lives in it. ⁹ 

Yesaya 35:9

35:9 No lions will be there,

no ferocious wild animals will be on it ¹⁰  –

they will not be found there.

Those delivered from bondage will travel on it,

Yesaya 36:18

36:18 Hezekiah is misleading you when he says, “The Lord will rescue us.” Has any of the gods of the nations rescued his land from the power of the king of Assyria? ¹¹ 

Yesaya 41:4

41:4 Who acts and carries out decrees? ¹² 

Who ¹³  summons the successive generations from the beginning?

I, the Lord, am present at the very beginning,

and at the very end – I am the one. ¹⁴ 

Yesaya 43:12-13

43:12 I decreed and delivered and proclaimed,

and there was no other god among you.

You are my witnesses,” says the Lord, “that I am God.

43:13 From this day forward I am he;

no one can deliver from my power; ¹⁵ 

I will act, and who can prevent it?”

Yesaya 44:20

44:20 He feeds on ashes; ¹⁶ 

his deceived mind misleads him.

He cannot rescue himself,

nor does he say, ‘Is this not a false god I hold in my right hand?’ ¹⁷ 

Yesaya 45:11

45:11 This is what the Lord says,

the Holy One of Israel, ¹⁸  the one who formed him,

concerning things to come: ¹⁹ 

“How dare you question me ²⁰  about my children!

How dare you tell me what to do with ²¹  the work of my own hands!

Yesaya 46:1

The Lord Carries His People

46:1 Bel ²²  kneels down,

Nebo ²³  bends low.

Their images weigh down animals and beasts. ²⁴ 

Your heavy images are burdensome to tired animals. ²⁵ 

Yesaya 46:9

46:9 Remember what I accomplished in antiquity! ²⁶ 

Truly I am God, I have no peer; ²⁷ 

I am God, and there is none like me,

Yesaya 52:11

52:11 Leave! Leave! Get out of there!

Don’t touch anything unclean!

Get out of it!

Stay pure, you who carry the Lord’s holy items! ²⁸ 

Yesaya 53:9

53:9 They intended to bury him with criminals, ²⁹ 

but he ended up in a rich man’s tomb, ³⁰ 

because ³¹  he had committed no violent deeds,

nor had he spoken deceitfully.

Yesaya 59:8

59:8 They are unfamiliar with peace;

their deeds are unjust. ³² 

They use deceitful methods,

and whoever deals with them is unfamiliar with peace. ³³ 

[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.”

[10:17]  ³ tn In this context the “Light of Israel” is a divine title (note the parallel title “his holy one”). The title points to God’s royal splendor, which overshadows and, when transformed into fire, destroys the “majestic glory” of the king of Assyria (v. 16b).

[10:17]  ⁴ sn See the note on the phrase “the Holy One of Israel” in 1:4.

[10:17]  ⁵ tn Heb “his.” In vv. 17-19 the Assyrian king and his empire is compared to a great forest and orchard that are destroyed by fire (symbolic of the Lord).

[21:10]  ⁶ tn Heb “My trampled one, and the son of the threshing floor.”

[22:13]  ⁷ tn Heb “happiness and joy.”

[22:13]  ⁸ tn The prophet here quotes what the fatalistic people are saying. The introductory “you say” is supplied in the translation for clarification; the concluding verb “we die” makes it clear the people are speaking. The six verbs translated as imperatives are actually infinitives absolute, functioning here as finite verbs.

[34:1]  ⁹ tn Heb “the world and its offspring”; NASB “the world and all that springs from it.”

[35:9]  ¹⁰ tn Heb “will go up on it”; TEV “will pass that way.”

[36:18]  ¹¹ tn Heb “Have the gods of the nations rescued, each his land, from the hand of the king of Assyria?” The rhetorical question expects the answer, “Of course not!”

[41:4]  ¹² tn Heb “Who acts and accomplishes?”; NASB “Who has performed and accomplished it.”

[41:4]  ¹³ tn The interrogative particle is understood by ellipsis (note the preceding line).

[41:4]  ¹⁴ tn Heb “I, the Lord, [am with] the first, and with the last ones I [am] he.”

[43:13]  ¹⁵ tn Heb “hand” (so KJV, NASB, NIV, NRSV); NLT “No one can oppose what I do.”

[44:20]  ¹⁶ tn Or perhaps, “he eats on an ash heap.”

[44:20]  ¹⁷ tn Heb “Is it not a lie in my right hand?”

[45:11]  ¹⁸ sn See the note on the phrase “the Holy One of Israel” in 1:4.

[45:11]  ¹⁹ tc The Hebrew text reads “the one who formed him, the coming things.” Among various suggestions, some have proposed an emendation of יֹצְרוֹ (yotsÿro, “the one who formed him”) to יֹצֵר (yotser, “the one who forms”; the suffixed form in the Hebrew text may be influenced by vv. 9-10, where the same form appears twice) and takes “coming things” as the object of the participle (either objective genitive or accusative): “the one who brings the future into being.”

[45:11]  ²⁰ tn Heb “Ask me” The rhetorical command sarcastically expresses the Lord’s disgust with those who question his ways.

[45:11]  ²¹ tn Heb “Do you command me about…?” The rhetorical question sarcastically expresses the Lord’s disgust with those who question his ways.

[46:1]  ²² sn Bel was the name of a Babylonian god. The name was originally associated with Enlil, but later was applied to Marduk. See HALOT 132 s.v. בֵּל.

[46:1]  ²³ sn Nebo is a variation of the name of the Babylonian god Nabu.

[46:1]  ²⁴ tn Heb “their images belong to animals and beasts”; NIV “their idols are borne by beasts of burden”; NLT “are being hauled away.”

[46:1]  ²⁵ tn Heb “your loads are carried [as] a burden by a weary [animal].”

[46:9]  ²⁶ tn Heb “remember the former things, from antiquity”; KJV, ASV “the former things of old.”

[46:9]  ²⁷ tn Heb “and there is no other” (so NASB, NIV, NRSV).

[52:11]  ²⁸ tn Heb “the vessels of the Lord” (so KJV, NAB).

[53:9]  ²⁹ tn Heb “one assigned his grave with criminals.” The subject of the singular is impersonal; English typically uses “they” in such constructions.

[53:9]  ³⁰ tn This line reads literally, “and with the rich in his death.” בְּמֹתָיו (bÿmotayv) combines a preposition, a plural form of the noun מוֹת (mot), and a third masculine singular suffix. The plural of the noun is problematic and the יו may be the result of virtual dittography. The form should probably be emended to בָּמָתוֹ (bamato, singular noun). The relationship between this line and the preceding one is uncertain. The parallelism appears to be synonymous (note “his grave” and “in his death”), but “criminals” and “the rich” hardly make a compatible pair in this context, for they would not be buried in the same kind of tomb. Some emend עָשִׁיר (’ashir, “rich”) to עָשֵׂי רָע (’ase ra’, “doers of evil”) but the absence of the ayin (ע) is not readily explained in this graphic environment. Others suggest an emendation to שְׂעִירִים (sÿ’irim, “he-goats, demons”), but the meaning in this case is not entirely transparent and the proposal assumes that the form suffered from both transposition and the inexplicable loss of a final mem. Still others relate עָשִׁיר (’ashir) to an alleged Arabic cognate meaning “mob.” See HALOT 896 s.v. עָשִׁיר. Perhaps the parallelism is antithetical, rather than synonymous. In this case, the point is made that the servant’s burial in a rich man’s tomb, in contrast to a criminal’s burial, was appropriate, for he had done nothing wrong.

[53:9]  ³¹ tn If the second line is antithetical, then עַל (’al) is probably causal here, explaining why the servant was buried in a rich man’s tomb, rather than that of criminal. If the first two lines are synonymous, then עַל is probably concessive: “even though….”

[59:8]  ³² tn Heb “a way of peace they do not know, and there is no justice in their pathways.”

[59:8]  ³³ tn Heb “their paths they make crooked, everyone who walks in it does not know peace.”