Isaiah 14:25

14:25 I will break Assyria ¹  in my land,

I will trample them ²  underfoot on my hills.

Their yoke will be removed from my people,

the burden will be lifted from their shoulders. ³ 

Isaiah 37:25

37:25 I dug wells

and drank water. ⁴ 

With the soles of my feet I dried up

all the rivers of Egypt.’

[14:25]  ¹ tn Heb “to break Assyria.”

[14:25]  ² tn Heb “him.” This is a collective singular referring to the nation, or a reference to the king of Assyria who by metonymy stands for the entire nation.

[14:25]  ³ tn Heb “and his [i.e., Assyria’s] yoke will be removed from them [the people?], and his [Assyria’s] burden from his [the nation’s?] shoulder will be removed.” There are no antecedents in this oracle for the suffixes in the phrases “from them” and “from his shoulder.” Since the Lord’s land and hills are referred to in the preceding line and the statement seems to echo 10:27, it is likely that God’s people are the referents of the suffixes; the translation uses “my people” to indicate this.

[37:25]  ⁴ tc The Hebrew text has simply, “I dug and drank water.” But the parallel text in 2 Kgs 19:24 has “foreign waters.” זָרִים (zarim, “foreign”) may have accidentally dropped out of the Isaianic text by homoioteleuton (cf. NCV, NIV, NLT). Note that the preceding word, מַיִם (mayim, “water) also ends in mem (ם). The Qumran scroll 1QIsa^a has “foreign waters” for this line. However, in several other passages the 1QIsa^a scroll harmonizes with 2 Kgs 19 against the MT (Isa 36:5; 37:9, 20). Since the addition of “foreign” to this text in Isaiah by a later scribe would be more likely than its deletion, the MT reading should be accepted.