Discovery BoxIsaiah 24:5
Context24:5 The earth is defiled by 1 its inhabitants, 2
for they have violated laws,
disregarded the regulation, 3
and broken the permanent treaty. 4
Isaiah 33:8
Contextthere are no travelers. 6
Treaties are broken, 7
witnesses are despised, 8
human life is treated with disrespect. 9
Isaiah 55:3
Context55:3 Pay attention and come to me!
Listen, so you can live! 10
Then I will make an unconditional covenantal promise to 11 you,
just like the reliable covenantal promises I made to David. 12
Isaiah 28:15
Context28:15 For you say,
“We have made a treaty with death,
with Sheol 13 we have made an agreement. 14
When the overwhelming judgment sweeps by 15
it will not reach us.
For we have made a lie our refuge,
we have hidden ourselves in a deceitful word.” 16
[24:5] 1 tn Heb “beneath”; cf. KJV, ASV, NRSV “under”; NAB “because of.”
[24:5] 2 sn Isa 26:21 suggests that the earth’s inhabitants defiled the earth by shedding the blood of their fellow human beings. See also Num 35:33-34, which assumes that bloodshed defiles a land.
[24:5] 3 tn Heb “moved past [the?] regulation.”
[24:5] 4 tn Or “everlasting covenant” (KJV, NASB, NIV, NRSV, NLT); NAB “the ancient covenant”; CEV “their agreement that was to last forever.”
[33:8] 5 tn Or “desolate” (NAB, NASB); NIV, NRSV, NLT “deserted.”
[33:8] 6 tn Heb “the one passing by on the road ceases.”
[33:8] 7 tn Heb “one breaks a treaty”; NAB “Covenants are broken.”
[33:8] 8 tc The Hebrew text reads literally, “he despises cities.” The term עָרִים (’arim, “cities”) is probably a corruption of an original עֵדִים (’edim, “[legal] witnesses”), a reading that is preserved in the Qumran scroll 1QIsaa. Confusion of dalet (ד) and resh (ר) is a well-attested scribal error.
[33:8] 9 tn Heb “he does not regard human beings.”
[55:3] 9 tn The jussive with vav (ו) conjunctive following the imperative indicates purpose/result.
[55:3] 10 tn Or “an eternal covenant with.”
[55:3] 11 tn Heb “the reliable expressions of loyalty of David.” The syntactical relationship of חַסְדֵי (khasde, “expressions of loyalty”) to the preceding line is unclear. If the term is appositional to בְּרִית (bÿrit, “covenant”), then the Lord here transfers the promises of the Davidic covenant to the entire nation. Another option is to take חַסְדֵי (khasde) as an adverbial accusative and to translate “according to the reliable covenantal promises.” In this case the new covenantal arrangement proposed here is viewed as an extension or perhaps fulfillment of the Davidic promises. A third option, the one reflected in the above translation, is to take the last line as comparative. In this case the new covenant being proposed is analogous to the Davidic covenant. Verses 4-5, which compare David’s international prominence to what Israel will experience, favors this view. In all three of these interpretations, “David” is an objective genitive; he is the recipient of covenantal promises. A fourth option would be to take David as a subjective genitive and understand the line as giving the basis for the preceding promise: “Then I will make an unconditional covenantal promise to you, because of David’s faithful acts of covenantal loyalty.”
[28:15] 13 sn Sheol is the underworld, land of the dead, according to the OT world view.
[28:15] 14 tn Elsewhere the noun חֹזֶה (khozeh) refers to a prophet who sees visions. In v. 18 the related term חָזוּת (khazut, “vision”) is used. The parallelism in both verses (note “treaty”) seems to demand a meaning “agreement” for both nouns. Perhaps חֹזֶה and חזוּת are used in a metonymic sense in vv. 15 and 18. Another option is to propose a homonymic root. See J. N. Oswalt, Isaiah (NICOT), 1:514, and HALOT 301 s.v. II חֹזֶה.
[28:15] 15 tn Heb “the overwhelming scourge, when it passes by” (NRSV similar).
[28:15] 16 sn “Lie” and “deceitful word” would not be the terms used by the people. They would likely use the words “promise” and “reliable word,” but the prophet substitutes “lie” and “deceitful word” to emphasize that this treaty with death will really prove to be disappointing.
