28:24 Does a farmer just keep on plowing at planting time? 1
Does he keep breaking up and harrowing his ground?
41:1 “Listen to me in silence, you coastlands! 2
Let the nations find renewed strength!
Let them approach and then speak;
let us come together for debate! 3
42:14 “I have been inactive 4 for a long time;
I kept quiet and held back.
Like a woman in labor I groan;
I pant and gasp. 5
44:13 A carpenter takes measurements; 6
he marks out an outline of its form; 7
he scrapes 8 it with chisels,
and marks it with a compass.
He patterns it after the human form, 9
like a well-built human being,
and puts it in a shrine. 10
1 tn Heb “All the day does the plowman plow in order to plant?” The phrase “all the day” here has the sense of “continually, always.” See BDB 400 s.v. יוֹם.
2 tn Or “islands” (KJV, NIV, CEV); TEV “distant lands”; NLT “lands beyond the sea.”
3 tn The Hebrew term מִשְׁפָּט (mishpat) could be translated “judgment,” but here it seems to refer to the dispute or debate between the Lord and the nations.
3 tn Heb “silent” (so NASB, NIV, TEV, NLT); CEV “have held my temper.”
4 sn The imagery depicts the Lord as a warrior who is eager to fight and can no longer hold himself back from the attack.
4 tn Heb “stretches out a line” (ASV similar); NIV “measures with a line.”
5 tn Heb “he makes an outline with the [?].” The noun שֶׂרֶד (shered) occurs only here; it apparently refers to some type of tool or marker. Cf. KJV “with a line”; ASV “with a pencil”; NAB, NRSV “with a stylus”; NASB “with red chalk”; NIV “with a marker.”
6 tn Heb “works” (so NASB) or “fashions” (so NRSV); NIV “he roughs it out.”
7 tn Heb “he makes it like the pattern of a man”; NAB “like a man in appearance.”
8 tn Heb “like the glory of man to sit [in] a house”; NIV “that it may dwell in a shrine.”