Isaiah 7:4

7:4 Tell him, ‘Make sure you stay calm! ¹  Don’t be afraid! Don’t be intimidated ²  by these two stubs of smoking logs, ³  or by the raging anger of Rezin, Syria, and the son of Remaliah.

Isaiah 54:4

54:4 Don’t be afraid, for you will not be put to shame!

Don’t be intimidated, ⁴  for you will not be humiliated!

You will forget about the shame you experienced in your youth;

you will no longer remember the disgrace of your abandonment. ⁵ 

Isaiah 56:3

56:3 No foreigner who becomes a follower of ⁶  the Lord should say,

‘The Lord will certainly ⁷  exclude me from his people.’

The eunuch should not say,

‘Look, I am like a dried-up tree.’”

¹ tn Heb “guard yourself and be quiet,” but the two verbs should be coordinated.

² tn Heb “and let not your heart be weak”; ASV “neither let thy heart be faint.”

³ sn The derogatory metaphor indicates that the power of Rezin and Pekah is ready to die out.

⁴ tn Or “embarrassed”; NASB “humiliated…disgraced.”

⁵ tn Another option is to translate, “the disgrace of our widowhood” (so NRSV). However, the following context (vv. 6-7) refers to Zion’s husband, the Lord, abandoning her, not dying. This suggests that an אַלְמָנָה (’almanah) was a woman who had lost her husband, whether by death or abandonment.

⁷ tn Heb “who attaches himself to.”

⁸ tn The infinitive absolute precedes the finite verb for emphasis.