Isaiah 1:5

1:5 ¹ Why do you insist on being battered?

Why do you continue to rebel? ² 

Your head has a massive wound, ³ 

your whole body is weak. ⁴ 

Isaiah 5:28

5:28 Their arrows are sharpened,

and all their bows are prepared. ⁵ 

The hooves of their horses are hard as flint, ⁶ 

and their chariot wheels are like a windstorm. ⁷ 

Isaiah 13:7

13:7 For this reason all hands hang limp, ⁸ 

every human heart loses its courage. ⁹ 

Isaiah 19:7

19:7 along with the plants by the mouth of the river. ¹⁰ 

All the cultivated land near the river

will turn to dust and be blown away. ¹¹ 

Isaiah 34:1

The Lord Will Judge Edom

34:1 Come near, you nations, and listen!

Pay attention, you people!

The earth and everything it contains must listen,

the world and everything that lives in it. ¹² 

Isaiah 34:12

34:12 Her nobles will have nothing left to call a kingdom

and all her officials will disappear. ¹³ 

Isaiah 40:4

40:4 Every valley must be elevated,

and every mountain and hill leveled.

The rough terrain will become a level plain,

the rugged landscape a wide valley.

Isaiah 42:15

42:15 I will make the trees on the mountains and hills wither up; ¹⁴ 

I will dry up all their vegetation.

I will turn streams into islands, ¹⁵ 

and dry up pools of water. ¹⁶ 

Isaiah 44:28

44:28 who commissions ¹⁷  Cyrus, the one I appointed as shepherd ¹⁸ 

to carry out all my wishes ¹⁹ 

and to decree concerning Jerusalem, ‘She will be rebuilt,’

and concerning the temple, ‘It will be reconstructed.’” ²⁰ 

Isaiah 54:12

54:12 I will make your pinnacles out of gems, ²¹ 

your gates out of beryl, ²² 

and your outer wall ²³  out of beautiful ²⁴  stones.

[1:5]  ¹ sn In vv. 5-9 Isaiah addresses the battered nation (5-8) and speaks as their representative (9).

[1:5]  ² tn Heb “Why are you still beaten? [Why] do you continue rebellion?” The rhetorical questions express the prophet’s disbelief over Israel’s apparent masochism and obsession with sin. The interrogative construction in the first line does double duty in the parallelism. H. Wildberger (Isaiah, 1:18) offers another alternative by translating the two statements with one question: “Why do you still wish to be struck that you persist in revolt?”

[1:5]  ³ tn Heb “all the head is ill”; NRSV “the whole head is sick”; CEV “Your head is badly bruised.”

[1:5]  ⁴ tn Heb “and all the heart is faint.” The “heart” here stands for bodily strength and energy, as suggested by the context and usage elsewhere (see Jer 8:18; Lam 1:22).

[5:28]  ⁵ tn Heb “bent” (so KJV, NAB, NASB, NRSV); NIV “are strung.”

[5:28]  ⁶ tn Heb “regarded like flint.”

[5:28]  ⁷ sn They are like a windstorm in their swift movement and in the way they kick up dust.

[13:7]  ⁹ tn Heb “drop”; KJV “be faint”; ASV “be feeble”; NAB “fall helpless.”

[13:7]  ¹⁰ tn Heb “melts” (so NAB).

[19:7]  ¹³ tn Heb “the plants by the river, by the mouth of the river.”

[19:7]  ¹⁴ tn Heb “will dry up, [being] scattered, and it will vanish.”

[34:1]  ¹⁷ tn Heb “the world and its offspring”; NASB “the world and all that springs from it.”

[34:12]  ²¹ tn Heb “will be nothing”; NCV, TEV, NLT “will all be gone.”

[42:15]  ²⁵ tn Heb “I will dry up the mountains and hills.” The “mountains and hills” stand by synecdoche for the trees that grow on them. Some prefer to derive the verb from a homonymic root and translate, “I will lay waste.”

[42:15]  ²⁶ tc The Hebrew text reads, “I will turn streams into coastlands [or “islands”].” Scholars who believe that this reading makes little sense have proposed an emendation of אִיִּים (’iyyim, “islands”) to צִיּוֹת (tsiyyot, “dry places”; cf. NCV, NLT, TEV). However, since all the versions support the MT reading, there is insufficient grounds for an emendation here. Although the imagery of changing rivers into islands is somewhat strange, J. N. Oswalt describes this imagery against the backdrop of rivers of the Near East. The receding of these rivers at times occasioned the appearance of previously submerged islands (Isaiah [NICOT], 2:126).

[42:15]  ²⁷ sn The imagery of this verse, which depicts the Lord bringing a curse of infertility to the earth, metaphorically describes how the Lord will destroy his enemies.

[44:28]  ²⁹ tn Heb “says to.” It is possible that the sentence is not completed, as the description of Cyrus and his God-given role is developed in the rest of the verse. 45:1 picks up where 44:28a leaves off with the Lord’s actual words to Cyrus finally being quoted in 45:2.

[44:28]  ³⁰ tn Heb “my shepherd.” The shepherd motif is sometimes applied, as here, to a royal figure who is responsible for the well-being of the people whom he rules.

[44:28]  ³¹ tn Heb “that he might bring to completion all my desire.”

[44:28]  ³² tn Heb “and [concerning the] temple, you will be founded.” The preposition -לְ (lÿ) is understood by ellipsis at the beginning of the second line. The verb תִּוָּסֵד (tivvased, “you will be founded”) is second masculine singular and is probably addressed to the personified temple (הֵיכָל [hekhal, “temple”] is masculine).

[54:12]  ³³ tn Perhaps, “rubies” (so ASV, NAB, NIV, NRSV, NLT).

[54:12]  ³⁴ tn On the meaning of אֶקְדָּח (’eqdakh), which occurs only here, see HALOT 82 s.v.

[54:12]  ³⁵ tn Heb “border” (so ASV); NASB “your entire wall.”

[54:12]  ³⁶ tn Heb “delightful”; KJV “pleasant.”