127:3 Yes, 6 sons 7 are a gift from the Lord,
the fruit of the womb is a reward.
8:18 Look, I and the sons whom the Lord has given me 8 are reminders and object lessons 9 in Israel, sent from the Lord who commands armies, who lives on Mount Zion.
1 tn Heb “from all my sons, for many sons the
2 tn Heb “and he”; the referent (Esau) has been specified in the translation for clarity.
3 tn Heb “lifted up his eyes.”
4 tn Heb “and he”; the referent (Jacob) has been specified in the translation for clarity.
5 tn The Hebrew verb means “to be gracious; to show favor”; here it carries the nuance “to give graciously.”
6 tn or “look.”
7 tn Some prefer to translate this term with the gender neutral “children,” but “sons” are plainly in view here, as the following verses make clear. Daughters are certainly wonderful additions to a family, but in ancient Israelite culture sons were the “arrows” that gave a man security in his old age, for they could defend the family interests at the city gate, where the legal and economic issues of the community were settled.
8 sn This refers to Shear-jashub (7:3) and Maher-Shalal-Hash-Baz (8:1, 3).
9 tn Or “signs and portents” (NAB, NRSV). The names of all three individuals has symbolic value. Isaiah’s name (which meant “the Lord delivers”) was a reminder that the Lord was the nation’s only source of protection; Shear-jashub’s name was meant, at least originally, to encourage Ahaz (see the note at 7:3), and Maher-Shalal-Hash-Baz’s name was a guarantee that God would defeat Israel and Syria (see the note at 8:4). The word מוֹפֶת (mofet, “portent”) can often refer to some miraculous event, but in 20:3 it is used, along with its synonym אוֹת (’ot, “sign”) of Isaiah’s walking around half-naked as an object lesson of what would soon happen to the Egyptians.