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 

Isaiah 30:29

30:29 You will sing

as you do in the evening when you are celebrating a festival.

You will be happy like one who plays a flute

as he goes to the mountain of the Lord, the Rock who shelters Israel. ¹⁰ 

Isaiah 10:12

10:12 But when ¹¹  the sovereign master ¹²  finishes judging ¹³  Mount Zion and Jerusalem, then I ¹⁴  will punish the king of Assyria for what he has proudly planned and for the arrogant attitude he displays. ¹⁵ 

[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).

[30:29]  ¹³ tn Heb “[you will have] joy of heart, like the one going with a flute to enter the mountain of the Lord to the Rock of Israel.” The image here is not a foundational rock, but a rocky cliff where people could hide for protection (for example, the fortress of Masada).

[10:12]  ¹⁷ tn The verb that introduces this verse serves as a discourse particle and is untranslated; see note on “in the future” in 2:2.

[10:12]  ¹⁸ tn The Hebrew term translated “sovereign master” here and in vv. 16, 23, 24, 33 is אֲדֹנָי (’adonay).

[10:12]  ¹⁹ tn Heb “his work on/against.” Cf. NAB, NASB, NRSV “on”; NIV “against.”

[10:12]  ²⁰ tn The Lord is speaking here, as in vv. 5-6a.

[10:12]  ²¹ tn Heb “I will visit [judgment] on the fruit of the greatness of the heart of the king of Assyria, and on the glory of the height of his eyes.” The proud Assyrian king is likened to a large, beautiful fruit tree.