Isaiah 1:22

1:22 Your ¹  silver has become scum, ² 

your beer is diluted with water. ³ 

Isaiah 26:19

26:19 ⁴ Your dead will come back to life;

your corpses will rise up.

Wake up and shout joyfully, you who live in the ground! ⁵ 

For you will grow like plants drenched with the morning dew, ⁶ 

and the earth will bring forth its dead spirits. ⁷ 

Isaiah 36:16

36:16 Don’t listen to Hezekiah!’ For this is what the king of Assyria says, ‘Send me a token of your submission and surrender to me. ⁸  Then each of you may eat from his own vine and fig tree and drink water from his own cistern,

[1:22]  ¹ tn The pronoun is feminine singular; personified Jerusalem (see v. 21) is addressed.

[1:22]  ² tn Or “dross.” The word refers to the scum or impurites floating on the top of melted metal.

[1:22]  ³ sn The metaphors of silver becoming impure and beer being watered down picture the moral and ethical degeneration that had occurred in Jerusalem.

[26:19]  ⁴ sn At this point the Lord (or prophet) gives the people an encouraging oracle.

[26:19]  ⁵ tn Heb “dust” (so KJV, NAB, NASB, NIV, NRSV).

[26:19]  ⁶ tn Heb “for the dew of lights [is] your dew.” The pronominal suffix on “dew” is masculine singular, like the suffixes on “your dead” and “your corpses” in the first half of the verse. The statement, then, is addressed to collective Israel, the speaker in verse 18. The plural form אוֹרֹת (’orot) is probably a plural of respect or magnitude, meaning “bright light” (i.e., morning’s light). Dew is a symbol of fertility and life. Here Israel’s “dew,” as it were, will soak the dust of the ground and cause the corpses of the dead to spring up to new life, like plants sprouting up from well-watered soil.

[26:19]  ⁷ sn It is not certain whether the resurrection envisioned here is intended to be literal or figurative. A comparison with 25:8 and Dan 12:2 suggests a literal interpretation, but Ezek 37:1-14 uses resurrection as a metaphor for deliverance from exile and the restoration of the nation (see Isa 27:12-13).

[36:16]  ⁷ tn Heb “make with me a blessing and come out to me.”