Isaiah 1:22

1:22 Your ¹  silver has become scum, ² 

your beer is diluted with water. ³ 

Isaiah 64:11

64:11 Our holy temple, our pride and joy, ⁴ 

the place where our ancestors praised you,

has been burned with fire;

all our prized possessions have been destroyed. ⁵ 

Isaiah 14:28

The Lord Will Judge the Philistines

14:28 In the year King Ahaz died, ⁶  this message was revealed: ⁷ 

Isaiah 5:1

A Love Song Gone Sour

5:1 I ⁸  will sing to my love –

a song to my lover about his vineyard. ⁹ 

My love had a vineyard

on a fertile hill. ¹⁰ 

Isaiah 33:2

33:2 Lord, be merciful to us! We wait for you.

Give us strength each morning! ¹¹ 

Deliver us when distress comes. ¹² 

Isaiah 33:9

33:9 The land ¹³  dries up ¹⁴  and withers away;

the forest of Lebanon shrivels up ¹⁵  and decays.

Sharon ¹⁶  is like the desert; ¹⁷ 

Bashan and Carmel ¹⁸  are parched. ¹⁹ 

Isaiah 15:6

15:6 For the waters of Nimrim are gone; ²⁰ 

the grass is dried up,

the vegetation has disappeared,

and there are no plants.

Isaiah 23:13

23:13 Look at the land of the Chaldeans,

these people who have lost their identity! ²¹ 

The Assyrians have made it a home for wild animals.

They erected their siege towers, ²² 

demolished ²³  its fortresses,

and turned it into a heap of ruins. ²⁴ 

Isaiah 32:14

32:14 For the fortress is neglected;

the once-crowded ²⁵  city is abandoned.

Hill ²⁶  and watchtower

are permanently uninhabited. ²⁷ 

Wild donkeys love to go there,

and flocks graze there. ²⁸ 

Isaiah 39:4

39:4 Isaiah ²⁹  asked, “What have they seen in your palace?” Hezekiah replied, “They have seen everything in my palace. I showed them everything in my treasuries.”

Isaiah 10:14

10:14 My hand discovered the wealth of the nations, as if it were in a nest,

as one gathers up abandoned eggs,

I gathered up the whole earth.

There was no wing flapping,

or open mouth chirping.” ³⁰ 

Isaiah 49:5

49:5 So now the Lord says,

the one who formed me from birth ³¹  to be his servant –

he did this ³²  to restore Jacob to himself,

so that Israel might be gathered to him;

and I will be honored ³³  in the Lord’s sight,

for my God is my source of strength ³⁴  –

Isaiah 39:2

39:2 Hezekiah welcomed ³⁵  them and showed them his storehouse with its silver, gold, spices, and high-quality olive oil, as well as his whole armory and everything in his treasuries. Hezekiah showed them everything in his palace and in his whole kingdom. ³⁶ 

[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.

[64:11]  ⁴ tn Heb “our source of pride.”

[64:11]  ⁵ tn Or “all that we valued has become a ruin.”

[14:28]  ⁷ sn Perhaps 715 b.c., but the precise date is uncertain.

[14:28]  ⁸ tn Heb “this oracle came.”

[5:1]  ¹⁰ tn It is uncertain who is speaking here. Possibly the prophet, taking the role of best man, composes a love song for his friend on the occasion of his wedding. If so, יָדִיד (yadid) should be translated “my friend.” The present translation assumes that Israel is singing to the Lord. The word דוֹד (dod, “lover”) used in the second line is frequently used by the woman in the Song of Solomon to describe her lover.

[5:1]  ¹¹ sn Israel, viewing herself as the Lord’s lover, refers to herself as his vineyard. The metaphor has sexual connotations, for it pictures her capacity to satisfy his appetite and to produce children. See Song 8:12.

[5:1]  ¹² tn Heb “on a horn, a son of oil.” Apparently קֶרֶן (qeren, “horn”) here refers to the horn-shaped peak of a hill (BDB 902 s.v.) or to a mountain spur, i.e., a ridge that extends laterally from a mountain (HALOT 1145 s.v. קֶרֶן; H. Wildberger, Isaiah, 1:180). The expression “son of oil” pictures this hill as one capable of producing olive trees. Isaiah’s choice of קֶרֶן, a rare word for hill, may have been driven by paronomastic concerns, i.e., because קֶרֶן sounds like כֶּרֶם (kerem, “vineyard”).

[33:2]  ¹³ tn Heb “Be their arm each morning.” “Arm” is a symbol for strength. The mem suffixed to the noun has been traditionally understood as a third person suffix, but this is contrary to the context, where the people speak of themselves in the first person. The mem (מ) is probably enclitic with ellipsis of the pronoun, which can be supplied from the context. See J. N. Oswalt, Isaiah (NICOT), 1:589, n. 1.

[33:2]  ¹⁴ tn Heb “[Be] also our deliverance in the time of distress.”

[33:9]  ¹⁶ tn Or “earth” (KJV); NAB “the country.”

[33:9]  ¹⁷ tn Or “mourns” (BDB 5 s.v. I אָבַל). HALOT 6-7 lists homonyms I אבל (“mourn”) and II אבל (“dry up”). They propose the second here on the basis of parallelism. See 24:4.

[33:9]  ¹⁸ tn Heb “Lebanon is ashamed.” The Hiphil is exhibitive, expressing the idea, “exhibits shame.” In this context the statement alludes to the withering of vegetation.

[33:9]  ¹⁹ sn Sharon was a fertile plain along the Mediterranean coast. See 35:2.

[33:9]  ²⁰ tn Or “the Arabah” (NIV). See 35:1.

[33:9]  ²¹ sn Both of these areas were known for their trees and vegetation. See 2:13; 35:2.

[33:9]  ²² tn Heb “shake off [their leaves]” (so ASV, NRSV); NAB “are stripped bare.”

[15:6]  ¹⁹ tn Heb “are waste places”; cf. NRSV “are a desolation.”

[23:13]  ²² tn Heb “this people [that] is not.”

[23:13]  ²³ tn For the meaning of this word, see HALOT 118 s.v. *בַּחוּן.

[23:13]  ²⁴ tn Or “laid bare.” For the meaning of this word, see HALOT 889 s.v. ערר.

[23:13]  ²⁵ sn This verse probably refers to the Assyrian destruction of Babylon.

[32:14]  ²⁵ tn Or “noisy” (NAB, NIV, NCV).

[32:14]  ²⁶ tn Hebrew עֹפֶל (’ofel), probably refers here to a specific area within the city of Jerusalem. See HALOT 861 s.v. II עֹפֶל.

[32:14]  ²⁷ tn The Hebrew text has בְעַד מְעָרוֹת (vÿ’ad mÿ’arot). The force of בְעַד, which usually means “behind, through, round about,” or “for the benefit of,” is uncertain here. HALOT 616 s.v. *מְעָרָה takes מְעָרוֹת (mÿ’arot) as a homonym of “cave” and define it here as “cleared field.” Despite these lexical problems, the general point of the statement seems clear – the city will be uninhabited.

[32:14]  ²⁸ tn Heb “the joy of wild donkeys, a pasture for flocks.”

[39:4]  ²⁸ tn Heb “he”; the referent (Isaiah) has been specified in the translation for clarity.

[10:14]  ³¹ sn The Assyrians’ conquests were relatively unopposed, like robbing a bird’s nest of its eggs when the mother bird is absent.

[49:5]  ³⁴ tn Heb “from the womb” (so KJV, NASB).

[49:5]  ³⁵ tn The words “he did this” are supplied in the translation for stylistic reasons. In the Hebrew text the infinitive construct of purpose is subordinated to the previous statement.

[49:5]  ³⁶ tn The vav (ו) + imperfect is translated here as a result clause; one might interpret it as indicating purpose, “and so I might be honored.”

[49:5]  ³⁷ tn Heb “and my God is [perhaps, “having been”] my strength.” The disjunctive structure (vav [ו] + subject + verb) is interpreted here as indicating a causal circumstantial clause.

[39:2]  ³⁷ tn Heb “was happy with”; NAB, NASB “was pleased”; NIV “received the envoys gladly.”

[39:2]  ³⁸ tn Heb “there was nothing which Hezekiah did not show them in his house and in all his kingdom.”