6:5 I said, “Too bad for me! I am destroyed, 1 for my lips are contaminated by sin, 2 and I live among people whose lips are contaminated by sin. 3 My eyes have seen the king, the Lord who commands armies.” 4
14:13 You said to yourself, 5
“I will climb up to the sky.
Above the stars of El 6
I will set up my throne.
I will rule on the mountain of assembly
on the remote slopes of Zaphon. 7
44:2 This is what the Lord, the one who made you, says –
the one who formed you in the womb and helps you:
“Don’t be afraid, my servant Jacob,
Jeshurun, 8 whom I have chosen!
44:8 Don’t panic! Don’t be afraid! 9
Did I not tell you beforehand and decree it?
You are my witnesses! Is there any God but me?
There is no other sheltering rock; 10 I know of none.
44:17 With the rest of it he makes a god, his idol;
he bows down to it and worships it.
He prays to it, saying,
‘Rescue me, for you are my god!’
46:11 who summons an eagle 11 from the east,
from a distant land, one who carries out my plan.
Yes, I have decreed, 12
yes, I will bring it to pass;
I have formulated a plan,
yes, I will carry it out.
1 tn Isaiah uses the suffixed (perfect) form of the verb for rhetorical purposes. In this way his destruction is described as occurring or as already completed. Rather than understanding the verb as derived from דָּמַה (damah, “be destroyed”), some take it from a proposed homonymic root דמה, which would mean “be silent.” In this case, one might translate, “I must be silent.”
2 tn Heb “a man unclean of lips am I.” Isaiah is not qualified to praise the king. His lips (the instruments of praise) are “unclean” because he has been contaminated by sin.
3 tn Heb “and among a nation unclean of lips I live.”
4 tn Perhaps in this context, the title has a less militaristic connotation and pictures the Lord as the ruler of the heavenly assembly. See the note at 1:9.
5 tn Heb “you, you said in your heart.”
6 sn In Canaanite mythology the stars of El were astral deities under the authority of the high god El.
7 sn Zaphon, the Canaanite version of Olympus, was the “mountain of assembly” where the gods met.
9 sn Jeshurun is a poetic name for Israel; it occurs here and in Deut 32:15; 33:5, 26.
13 tn BDB 923 s.v. רָהָה derives this verb from an otherwise unattested root, while HALOT 403 s.v. יָרָה defines it as “be stupefied” on the basis of an Arabic cognate. The form is likely a corruption of תיראו, the reading attested in the Qumran scroll 1QIsaa.
14 tn Heb “rock” or “rocky cliff,” a title that depicts God as a protective refuge in his role as sovereign king; thus the translation “sheltering rock.”
17 tn Or, more generally, “a bird of prey” (so NAB, NASB, NIV, NRSV; see 18:6).
18 tn Heb “spoken”; KJV “I have spoken it.”