34:7 Wild oxen will be slaughtered 1 along with them,
as well as strong bulls. 2
Their land is drenched with blood,
their soil is covered with fat.
11:6 A wolf will reside 3 with a lamb,
and a leopard will lie down with a young goat;
an ox and a young lion will graze together, 4
as a small child leads them along.
8:10 Devise your strategy, but it will be thwarted!
Issue your orders, but they will not be executed! 6
For God is with us! 7
25:11 Moab 8 will spread out its hands in the middle of it, 9
just as a swimmer spreads his hands to swim;
the Lord 10 will bring down Moab’s 11 pride as it spreads its hands. 12
28:29 This also comes from the Lord who commands armies,
who gives supernatural guidance and imparts great wisdom. 13
3:14 The Lord comes to pronounce judgment
on the leaders of his people and their officials.
He says, 14 “It is you 15 who have ruined 16 the vineyard! 17
You have stashed in your houses what you have stolen from the poor. 18
8:18 Look, I and the sons whom the Lord has given me 19 are reminders and object lessons 20 in Israel, sent from the Lord who commands armies, who lives on Mount Zion.
29:6 Judgment will come from the Lord who commands armies, 21
accompanied by thunder, earthquake, and a loud noise,
by a strong gale, a windstorm, and a consuming flame of fire.
38:11 “I thought,
‘I will no longer see the Lord 22 in the land of the living,
I will no longer look on humankind with the inhabitants of the world. 23
41:10 Don’t be afraid, for I am with you!
Don’t be frightened, for I am your God! 24
I strengthen you –
yes, I help you –
yes, I uphold you with my saving right hand! 25
28:15 For you say,
“We have made a treaty with death,
with Sheol 26 we have made an agreement. 27
When the overwhelming judgment sweeps by 28
it will not reach us.
For we have made a lie our refuge,
we have hidden ourselves in a deceitful word.” 29
1 tn Heb “will go down”; NAB “shall be struck down.”
2 tn Heb “and bulls along with strong ones.” Perhaps this refers to the leaders.
3 tn The verb גּוּר (gur) normally refers to living as a dependent, resident alien in another society.
4 tc The Hebrew text reads, “and an ox, and a young lion, and a fatling together.” Since the preceding lines refer to two animals and include a verb, many emend וּמְרִיא (umÿri’, “and the fatling”) to an otherwise unattested verb יִמְרְאוּ (yimrÿ’u, “they will graze”); cf. NAB, TEV, CEV. One of the Qumran copies of Isaiah confirms this suggestion (1QIsaa). The present translation assumes this change.
5 tn Heb “Make it as deep as Sheol or make it high upwards.” These words suggest that Ahaz can feel free to go beyond the bounds of ordinary human experience.
7 tn Heb “speak a word, but it will not stand.”
8 sn In these vv. 9-10 the tone shifts abruptly from judgment to hope. Hostile nations like Assyria may attack God’s people, but eventually they will be destroyed, for God is with his people, sometimes to punish, but ultimately to vindicate. In addition to being a reminder of God’s presence in the immediate crisis faced by Ahaz and Judah, Immanuel (whose name is echoed in this concluding statement) was a guarantee of the nation’s future greatness in fulfillment of God’s covenantal promises. Eventually God would deliver his people from the hostile nations (vv. 9-10) through another child, an ideal Davidic ruler who would embody God’s presence in a special way (see 9:6-7). Jesus the Messiah is the fulfillment of the Davidic ideal prophesied by Isaiah, the one whom Immanuel foreshadowed. Through the miracle of the incarnation he is literally “God with us.” Matthew realized this and applied Isaiah’s ancient prophecy of Immanuel’s birth to Jesus (Matt 1:22-23). The first Immanuel was a reminder to the people of God’s presence and a guarantee of a greater child to come who would manifest God’s presence in an even greater way. The second Immanuel is “God with us” in a heightened and infinitely superior sense. He “fulfills” Isaiah’s Immanuel prophecy by bringing the typology intended by God to realization and by filling out or completing the pattern designed by God. Of course, in the ultimate fulfillment of the type, the incarnate Immanuel’s mother must be a virgin, so Matthew uses a Greek term (παρθένος, parqenos), which carries that technical meaning (in contrast to the Hebrew word עַלְמָה [’almah], which has the more general meaning “young woman”). Matthew draws similar analogies between NT and OT events in 2:15, 18. The linking of these passages by analogy is termed “fulfillment.” In 2:15 God calls Jesus, his perfect Son, out of Egypt, just as he did his son Israel in the days of Moses, an historical event referred to in Hos 11:1. In so doing he makes it clear that Jesus is the ideal Israel prophesied by Isaiah (see Isa 49:3), sent to restore wayward Israel (see Isa 49:5, cf. Matt 1:21). In 2:18 Herod’s slaughter of the infants is another illustration of the oppressive treatment of God’s people by foreign tyrants. Herod’s actions are analogous to those of the Assyrians, who deported the Israelites, causing the personified land to lament as inconsolably as a mother robbed of her little ones (Jer 31:15).
9 tn Heb “he”; the referent (Moab) has been specified in the translation for clarity.
10 tn The antecedent of the third masculine singular pronominal suffix is probably the masculine noun מַתְבֵּן (matben, “heap of straw”) in v. 10 rather than the feminine noun מַדְמֵנָה (madmenah, “manure pile”), also in v. 10.
11 tn Heb “he”; the referent (the Lord) has been specified in the translation for clarity.
12 tn Heb “his”; the referent (Moab) has been specified in the translation for clarity.
13 tn The Hebrew text has, “he will bring down his pride along with the [?] of his hands.” The meaning of אָרְבּוֹת (’arbot), which occurs only here in the OT, is unknown. Some (see BDB 70 s.v. אָרְבָּה) translate “artifice, cleverness,” relating the form to the verbal root אָרָב (’arav, “to lie in wait, ambush”), but this requires some convoluted semantic reasoning. HALOT 83 s.v. *אָרְבָּה suggests the meaning “[nimble] movements.” The translation above, which attempts to relate the form to the preceding context, is purely speculative.
11 sn Verses 23-29 emphasize that God possesses great wisdom and has established a natural order. Evidence of this can be seen in the way farmers utilize divinely imparted wisdom to grow and harvest crops. God’s dealings with his people will exhibit this same kind of wisdom and order. Judgment will be accomplished according to a divinely ordered timetable and, while severe enough, will not be excessive. Judgment must come, just as planting inevitably follows plowing. God will, as it were, thresh his people, but he will not crush them to the point where they will be of no use to him.
13 tn The words “he says” are supplied in the translation for stylistic reasons.
14 tn The pronominal element is masculine plural; the leaders are addressed.
15 tn The verb בָּעַר (ba’ar, “graze, ruin”; HALOT 146 s.v. II בער) is a homonym of the more common בָּעַר (ba’ar, “burn”; see HALOT 145 s.v. I בער).
16 sn The vineyard is a metaphor for the nation here. See 5:1-7.
17 tn Heb “the plunder of the poor [is] in your houses” (so NASB).
15 sn This refers to Shear-jashub (7:3) and Maher-Shalal-Hash-Baz (8:1, 3).
16 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.
17 tn Heb “from the Lord who commands armies [traditionally, the Lord of hosts] there will be visitation.” The third feminine singular passive verb form תִּפָּקֵד (tippaqed, “she/it will be visited”) is used here in an impersonal sense. See GKC 459 §144.b.
19 tn The Hebrew text has יָהּ יָהּ (yah yah, the abbreviated form of יְהוָה [yÿhvah] repeated), but this is probably a corruption of יְהוָה.
20 tc The Hebrew text has חָדֶל (khadel), which appears to be derived from a verbal root meaning “to cease, refrain.” But the form has probably suffered an error of transmission; the original form (attested in a few medieval Hebrew
21 tn According to BDB (1043 s.v. שָׁעָה), the verb תִּשְׁתָּע (tishta’) in the second line of the poetic couplet is a Hitpael form from the root שָׁעָה (sha’ah, “gaze,” with metathesis of the stem prefix and the first root letter). Taking the Hitpael as iterative, one may then translate “do not anxiously look about.” However, the alleged Hitpael form of שָׁעָה (sha’ah) only occurs here and in verse 23. HALOT 1671 s.v. שׁתע proposes that the verb is instead a Qal form from the root שׁתע (“fear”) which is attested in cognate Semitic languages, including Ugaritic (discovered after the publishing of BDB), suggests the existence of this root. The poetic structure of v. 10 also supports the proposal, for the form in question is in synonymous parallelism to יָרֵא (yare’, “fear”).
22 tn The “right hand” is a symbol of the Lord’s power to deliver (Exod 15:6, 12) and protect (Ps 63:9 HT [63:8 ET]). Here צֶדֶק (tsedeq) has its well-attested nuance of “vindicated righteousness,” i.e., “victory, deliverance” (see 45:8; 51:5, and BDB 841-42 s.v.).
23 sn Sheol is the underworld, land of the dead, according to the OT world view.
24 tn Elsewhere the noun חֹזֶה (khozeh) refers to a prophet who sees visions. In v. 18 the related term חָזוּת (khazut, “vision”) is used. The parallelism in both verses (note “treaty”) seems to demand a meaning “agreement” for both nouns. Perhaps חֹזֶה and חזוּת are used in a metonymic sense in vv. 15 and 18. Another option is to propose a homonymic root. See J. N. Oswalt, Isaiah (NICOT), 1:514, and HALOT 301 s.v. II חֹזֶה.
25 tn Heb “the overwhelming scourge, when it passes by” (NRSV similar).
26 sn “Lie” and “deceitful word” would not be the terms used by the people. They would likely use the words “promise” and “reliable word,” but the prophet substitutes “lie” and “deceitful word” to emphasize that this treaty with death will really prove to be disappointing.
25 tn Heb “To your master and to you did my master send me to speak these words?” The rhetorical question expects a negative answer.
26 tn Heb “[Is it] not [also] to the men…?” The rhetorical question expects the answer, “Yes, it is.”