“The virgin daughter Zion 2
despises you, she makes fun of you;
Daughter Jerusalem
shakes her head after you. 3
48:2 It is lofty and pleasing to look at, 4
a source of joy to the whole earth. 5
Mount Zion resembles the peaks of Zaphon; 6
it is the city of the great king.
48:3 God is in its fortresses;
he reveals himself as its defender. 7
1:21 How tragic that the once-faithful city
has become a prostitute! 8
She was once a center of 9 justice,
fairness resided in her,
but now only murderers. 10
4:5 Then the Lord will create
over all of Mount Zion 11
and over its convocations
a cloud and smoke by day
and a bright flame of fire by night; 12
indeed a canopy will accompany the Lord’s glorious presence. 13
12:6 Cry out and shout for joy, O citizens of Zion,
for the Holy One of Israel 14 acts mightily 15 among you!”
3:14 Shout for joy, Daughter Zion! 16
Shout out, Israel!
Be happy and boast with all your heart, Daughter Jerusalem!
3:15 The Lord has removed the judgment against you; 17
he has turned back your enemy.
Israel’s king, the Lord, is in your midst!
You no longer need to fear disaster.
3:16 On that day they will say 18 to Jerusalem,
“Don’t be afraid, Zion!
Your hands must not be paralyzed from panic! 19
3:17 The Lord your God is in your midst;
he is a warrior who can deliver.
He takes great delight in you; 20
he renews you by his love; 21
he shouts for joy over you.” 22
1 tn Heb “this is the word which the
2 sn Zion (Jerusalem) is pictured here as a young, vulnerable daughter whose purity is being threatened by the would-be Assyrian rapist. The personification hints at the reality which the young girls of the city would face if the Assyrians conquer it.
3 sn Shaking the head was a mocking gesture of derision.
4 tn Heb “beautiful of height.” The Hebrew term נוֹף (nof, “height”) is a genitive of specification after the qualitative noun “beautiful.” The idea seems to be that Mount Zion, because of its lofty appearance, is pleasing to the sight.
5 sn A source of joy to the whole earth. The language is hyperbolic. Zion, as the dwelling place of the universal king, is pictured as the world’s capital. The prophets anticipated this idealized picture becoming a reality in the eschaton (see Isa 2:1-4).
6 tn Heb “Mount Zion, the peaks of Zaphon.” Like all the preceding phrases in v. 2, both phrases are appositional to “city of our God, his holy hill” in v. 1, suggesting an identification in the poet’s mind between Mount Zion and Zaphon. “Zaphon” usually refers to the “north” in a general sense (see Pss 89:12; 107:3), but here, where it is collocated with “peaks,” it refers specifically to Mount Zaphon, located in the vicinity of ancient Ugarit and viewed as the mountain where the gods assembled (see Isa 14:13). By alluding to West Semitic mythology in this way, the psalm affirms that Mount Zion is the real divine mountain, for it is here that the
7 tn Heb “he is known for an elevated place.”
8 tn Heb “How she has become a prostitute, the faithful city!” The exclamatory אֵיכָה (’ekhah, “how!”) is used several times as the beginning of a lament (see Lam 1:1; 2;1; 4:1-2). Unlike a number of other OT passages that link references to Israel’s harlotry to idolatry, Isaiah here makes the connection with social and moral violations.
9 tn Heb “filled with.”
10 tn Or “assassins.” This refers to the oppressive rich and/or their henchmen. R. Ortlund (Whoredom, 78) posits that it serves as a synecdoche for all varieties of criminals, the worst being mentioned to imply all lesser ones. Since Isaiah often addressed his strongest rebuke to the rulers and leaders of Israel, he may have in mind the officials who bore the responsibility to uphold justice and righteousness.
11 tn Heb “over all the place, Mount Zion.” Cf. NLT “Jerusalem”; CEV “the whole city.”
12 tn Heb “a cloud by day, and smoke, and brightness of fire, a flame by night.” Though the accents in the Hebrew text suggest otherwise, it might be preferable to take “smoke” with what follows, since one would expect smoke to accompany fire.
13 tn Heb “indeed (or “for”) over all the glory, a canopy.” This may allude to Exod 40:34-35, where a cloud overshadows the meeting tent as it is filled with God’s glory.
14 sn See the note on the phrase “the Holy One of Israel” in 1:4.
15 tn Or “is great” (TEV). However, the context emphasizes his mighty acts of deliverance (cf. NCV), not some general or vague character quality.
16 sn This phrase is used as an epithet for the city and the nation. “Daughter” may seem extraneous in English but consciously joins the various epithets and metaphors of Israel and Jerusalem as a woman, a device used to evoke sympathy from the reader.
17 tn Heb “your judgments,” that is, “the judgments directed against you.” The translation reflects the implications of the parallelism.
18 tn Heb “it will be said.” The passive construction has been translated as active for stylistic reasons.
19 tn Heb “your hands must not go limp.”
20 tn Heb “he rejoices over you with joy.”
21 tc The MT reads, “he is silent in his love,” but this makes no sense in light of the immediately preceding and following lines. Some take the Hiphil verb form as causative (see Job 11:3) rather than intransitive and translate, “he causes [you] to be silent by his love,” that is, “he soothes [you] by his love.” The present translation follows the LXX and assumes an original reading יְחַדֵּשׁ (yÿkhaddesh, “he renews”) with ellipsis of the object (“you”).
22 tn Heb “he rejoices over you with a shout of joy.”