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 9:9

9:9 All the people were aware ⁵  of it,

the people of Ephraim and those living in Samaria. ⁶ 

Yet with pride and an arrogant attitude, they said, ⁷ 

Isaiah 13:7

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

every human heart loses its courage. ⁹ 

[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).

[9:9]  ⁵ tn The translation assumes that vv. 9-10 describe the people’s response to a past judgment (v. 8). The perfect is understood as indicating simple past and the vav (ו) is taken as conjunctive. Another option is to take the vav on the perfect as consecutive and translate, “all the people will know.”

[9:9]  ⁶ tn Heb “and the people, all of them, knew; Ephraim and the residents of Samaria.”

[9:9]  ⁷ tn Heb “with pride and arrogance of heart, saying.”

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

[13:7]  ¹⁰ tn Heb “melts” (so NAB).