Isaiah 21:5

21:5 Arrange the table,

lay out ¹  the carpet,

eat and drink! ² 

Get up, you officers,

smear oil on the shields! 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.’

Isaiah 62:9

62:9 But those who harvest the grain ⁵  will eat it,

and will praise the Lord.

Those who pick the grapes will drink the wine ⁶ 

in the courts of my holy sanctuary.”

[21:5]  ¹ tn The precise meaning of the verb in this line is debated. Some prefer to derive the form from the homonymic צָפֹה (tsafoh, “keep watch”) and translate “post a guard” (cf. KJV “watch in the watchtower”; ASV “set the watch”).

[21:5]  ² tn The verbal forms in the first three lines are infinitives absolute, which are functioning here as finite verbs. It is uncertain if the forms should have an imperatival or indicative/descriptive force here.

[21:5]  ³ sn Smearing the shields with oil would make them more flexible and effective in battle. See J. N. Oswalt, Isaiah (NICOT), 1:394.

[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.

[62:9]  ⁷ tn Heb “it,” the grain mentioned in v. 8a.

[62:9]  ⁸ tn Heb “and those who gather it will drink it.” The masculine singular pronominal suffixes attached to “gather” and “drink” refer back to the masculine noun תִּירוֹשׁ (tirosh, “wine”) in v. 8b.