9:15 The leaders and the highly respected people 1 are the head,
the prophets who teach lies are the tail.
59:3 For your hands are stained with blood
and your fingers with sin;
your lips speak lies,
your tongue utters malicious words.
32:7 A deceiver’s methods are evil; 2
he dreams up evil plans 3
to ruin the poor with lies,
even when the needy are in the right. 4
44:20 He feeds on ashes; 5
his deceived mind misleads him.
He cannot rescue himself,
nor does he say, ‘Is this not a false god I hold in my right hand?’ 6
57:4 At whom are you laughing?
At whom are you opening your mouth
and sticking out your tongue?
You are the children of rebels,
the offspring of liars, 7
59:13 We have rebelled and tried to deceive the Lord;
we turned back from following our God.
We stir up 8 oppression and rebellion;
we tell lies we concocted in our minds. 9
28:15 For you say,
“We have made a treaty with death,
with Sheol 10 we have made an agreement. 11
When the overwhelming judgment sweeps by 12
it will not reach us.
For we have made a lie our refuge,
we have hidden ourselves in a deceitful word.” 13
1 tn Heb “the elder and the one lifted up with respect to the face.” For another example of the Hebrew idiom, see 2 Kgs 5:1.
2 tn Heb “as for a deceiver, his implements [or “weapons”] are evil.”
3 tn Or “he plans evil things”; NIV “he makes up evil schemes.”
4 tn Heb “to ruin the poor with words of falsehood, even when the needy speak what is just.”
3 tn Or perhaps, “he eats on an ash heap.”
4 tn Heb “Is it not a lie in my right hand?”
4 tn Heb “Are you not children of rebellion, offspring of a lie?” The rhetorical question anticipates the answer, “Of course you are!”
5 tn Heb “speaking.” A new sentence was started here in the translation for stylistic reasons.
6 tn Heb “conceiving and uttering from the heart words of falsehood.”
6 sn Sheol is the underworld, land of the dead, according to the OT world view.
7 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.
8 tn Heb “the overwhelming scourge, when it passes by” (NRSV similar).
9 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.