Text -- Isaiah 10:1-7 (NET)

10:1 Those who enact unjust policies are as good as dead, those who are always instituting unfair regulations, 10:2 to keep the poor from getting fair treatment, and to deprive the oppressed among my people of justice, so they can steal what widows own, and loot what belongs to orphans. 10:3 What will you do on judgment day, when destruction arrives from a distant place? To whom will you run for help? Where will you leave your wealth? 10:4 You will have no place to go, except to kneel with the prisoners, or to fall among those who have been killed. Despite all this, his anger does not subside, and his hand is ready to strike again.

The Lord Turns on Arrogant Assyria

10:5 Assyria, the club I use to vent my anger, is as good as dead, a cudgel with which I angrily punish. 10:6 I sent him against a godless nation, I ordered him to attack the people with whom I was angry, to take plunder and to carry away loot, to trample them down like dirt in the streets. 10:7 But he does not agree with this, his mind does not reason this way, for his goal is to destroy, and to eliminate many nations.

Commentary -- Verse Notes / Footnotes

NET Notes: Isa 10:1

¹ tn Heb “Woe [to] those who decree evil decrees.” On הוֹי (hoy, “woe, ah”) see the note on the first phrase of 1:4.

² tn Heb “[to] the writers who write out harm.” The participle and verb are in the Piel, suggesting repetitive action.

NET Notes: Isa 10:2

¹ tn Or “rob” (ASV, NASB, NCV, NRSV); KJV “take away the right from the poor.”

² tn Heb “so that widows are their plunder, and they can loot orphans.”

sn On the socio-economic background of vv. 1-2, see the note at 1:23.

NET Notes: Isa 10:3

¹ tn Heb “the day of visitation” (so KJV, ASV), that is, the day when God arrives to execute justice on the oppressors.

NET Notes: Isa 10:4

¹ tn Heb “except one kneels in the place of the prisoner, and in the place of the slain [who] fall.” On the force of בִּלְתִּי (bilti, “except”) and its logical connection to what precedes, see BDB 116 s.v. בֵלֶת. On the force of תַּחַת (takhat, “in the place of”) here, see J. N. Oswalt, Isaiah (NICOT), 1:258, n. 6.

² tn Heb “in all this his anger was not turned, and still his hand was outstretched”; KJV, ASV, NRSV “his had is stretched out still.”

sn See the note at 9:12.

NET Notes: Isa 10:5

¹ tn Heb “Woe [to] Assyria, the club of my anger.” On הוֹי (hoy, “woe, ah”) see the note on the first phrase of 1:4.

² tn Heb “a cudgel is he, in their hand is my anger.” It seems likely that the final mem (ם) on בְיָדָם (bÿyadam) is not a pronominal suffix (“in their hand”), but an enclitic mem. If so, one can translate literally, “a cudgel is he in the hand of my anger.”

NET Notes: Isa 10:6

¹ sn Throughout this section singular forms are used to refer to Assyria; perhaps the king of Assyria is in view (see v. 12).

² tn Or “defiled”; cf. ASV “profane”; NAB “impious”; NCV “separated from God.”

³ tn Heb “and against the people of my anger I ordered him.”

⁴ tn Heb “to make it [i.e., the people] a trampled place.”

NET Notes: Isa 10:7

¹ tn Heb “but he, not so does he intend, and his heart, not so does it think.”

² tn Heb “for to destroy [is] in his heart, and to cut off nations, not a few.”