3:26 Her gates will mourn and lament;
deprived of her people, she will sit on the ground. 1
32:16 Justice will settle down in the desert
and fairness will live in the orchard. 2
42:11 Let the desert and its cities shout out,
the towns where the nomads of Kedar live!
Let the residents of Sela shout joyfully;
let them shout loudly from the mountaintops.
13:20 No one will live there again;
no one will ever reside there again. 3
No bedouin 4 will camp 5 there,
no shepherds will rest their flocks 6 there.
1 tn Heb “she will be empty, on the ground she will sit.” Jerusalem is personified as a destitute woman who sits mourning the empty city.
2 sn This new era of divine blessing will also include a moral/ethical transformation, as justice and fairness fill the land and replace the social injustice so prevalent in Isaiah’s time.
3 tn Heb “she will not be inhabited forever, and she will not be dwelt in to generation and generation (i.e., forever).” The Lord declares that Babylon, personified as a woman, will not be inhabited. In other words, her people will be destroyed and the Chaldean empire will come to a permanent end.
4 tn Or “Arab” (NAB, NASB, NIV); cf. CEV, NLT “nomads.”
5 tn יַהֵל (yahel) is probably a corrupted form of יֶאֱהַל (ye’ehal). See GKC 186 §68.k.
6 tn The words “their flocks” are supplied in the translation for clarification. The Hebrew text does not supply the object here, but see Jer 33:12.