23:14 “Look, today I am about to die. 1 You know with all your heart and being 2 that not even one of all the faithful promises the Lord your God made to you is left unfulfilled; every one was realized – not one promise is unfulfilled! 3 23:15 But in the same way every faithful promise the Lord your God made to you has been realized, 4 it is just as certain, if you disobey, that the Lord will bring on you every judgment 5 until he destroys you from this good land which the Lord your God gave you.
44:25 who frustrates the omens of the empty talkers 6
and humiliates 7 the omen readers,
who overturns the counsel of the wise men 8
and makes their advice 9 seem foolish,
44:26 who fulfills the oracles of his prophetic servants 10
and brings to pass the announcements 11 of his messengers,
who says about Jerusalem, 12 ‘She will be inhabited,’
and about the towns of Judah, ‘They will be rebuilt,
her ruins I will raise up,’
48:3 “I announced events beforehand, 13
I issued the decrees and made the predictions; 14
suddenly I acted and they came to pass.
48:4 I did this 15 because I know how stubborn you are.
Your neck muscles are like iron
and your forehead like bronze. 16
48:5 I announced them to you beforehand;
before they happened, I predicted them for you,
so you could never say,
‘My image did these things,
my idol, my cast image, decreed them.’
1 tn Heb “go the way of all the earth.”
2 tn Or “soul.”
3 tn Heb “one word from all these words which the
4 tn Heb “and it will be as every good word which the
5 tn Heb “so the
6 tc The Hebrew text has בַּדִּים (baddim), perhaps meaning “empty talkers” (BDB 95 s.v. III בַּד). In the four other occurrences of this word (Job 11:3; Isa 16:6; Jer 48:30; 50:36) the context does not make the meaning of the term very clear. Its primary point appears to be that the words spoken are meaningless or false. In light of its parallelism with “omen readers,” some have proposed an emendation to בָּרִים (barim, “seers”). The Mesopotamian baru-priests were divination specialists who played an important role in court life. See R. Wilson, Prophecy and Society in Ancient Israel, 93-98. Rather than supporting an emendation, J. N. Oswalt (Isaiah [NICOT], 2:189, n. 79) suggests that Isaiah used בַּדִּים purposively as a derisive wordplay on the Akkadian word baru (in light of the close similarity of the d and r consonants).
7 tn Or “makes fools of” (NIV, NRSV); NAB and NASB both similar.
8 tn Heb “who turns back the wise” (so NRSV); NIV “overthrows the learning of the wise”; TEV “The words of the wise I refute.”
9 tn Heb “their knowledge” (so KJV, NAB, NASB, NRSV).
10 tn Heb “the word of his servant.” The following context indicates that the Lord’s prophets are in view.
11 tn Heb “counsel.” The Hebrew term עֵצָה (’etsah) probably refers here to the divine plan as announced by the prophets. See HALOT 867 s.v. I עֵצָה.
12 map For location see Map5-B1; Map6-F3; Map7-E2; Map8-F2; Map10-B3; JP1-F4; JP2-F4; JP3-F4; JP4-F4.
13 tn Heb “the former things beforehand I declared.”
14 tn Heb “and from my mouth they came forth and I caused them to be heard.”
15 tn The words “I did this” are supplied in the translation for stylistic reasons. In the Hebrew text v. 4 is subordinated to v. 3.
16 sn The image is that of a person who has tensed the muscles of the face and neck as a sign of resolute refusal.
17 tn The words “to other gods” are not in the text but are implicit from the context (cf. v. 17). They are supplied in the translation for clarity. It was not the act of sacrifice that was wrong but the recipient.
18 tn Heb “The sacrifices which you sacrificed in the towns of Judah and in the streets of Jerusalem, you and your fathers, your kings and your leaders and the people of the land, did not the
19 tn Heb “And/Then the
20 tn Heb “Because you have sacrificed and you have sinned against the
21 tc BHS suggests אֶתְכֶם (’etkhem, “you”) for the MT אֲבֹתֵיכֶם (’avotekhem, “your fathers”) to harmonize with v. 4. In v. 4 the ancestors would not turn but in v. 6 they appear to have done so. The subject in v. 6, however, is to be construed as Zechariah’s own listeners.
22 tn Heb “they turned” (so ASV). Many English versions have “they repented” here; cf. CEV “they turned back to me.”
23 sn The words that Jesus predicts here will never pass away. They are more stable and lasting than creation itself. For this kind of image, see Isa 40:8; 55:10-11.