Isaiah 27:11

27:11 When its branches get brittle, ¹  they break;

women come and use them for kindling. ² 

For these people lack understanding, ³ 

therefore the one who made them has no compassion on them;

the one who formed them has no mercy on them.

Isaiah 29:16

29:16 Your thinking is perverse! ⁴ 

Should the potter be regarded as clay? ⁵ 

Should the thing made say ⁶  about its maker, “He didn’t make me”?

Or should the pottery say about the potter, “He doesn’t understand”?

Isaiah 45:18

45:18 For this is what the Lord says,

the one who created the sky –

he is the true God, ⁷ 

the one who formed the earth and made it;

he established it,

he did not create it without order, ⁸ 

he formed it to be inhabited –

“I am the Lord, I have no peer.

Isaiah 45:21

45:21 Tell me! Present the evidence! ⁹ 

Let them consult with one another!

Who predicted this in the past?

Who announced it beforehand?

Was it not I, the Lord?

I have no peer, there is no God but me,

a God who vindicates and delivers; ¹⁰ 

there is none but me.

Isaiah 51:13

51:13 Why do you forget ¹¹  the Lord, who made you,

who stretched out the sky ¹² 

and founded the earth?

Why do you constantly tremble all day long ¹³ 

at the anger of the oppressor,

when he makes plans to destroy?

Where is the anger of the oppressor? ¹⁴ 

[27:11]  ¹ tn Heb “are dry” (so NASB, NIV, NRSV).

[27:11]  ² tn Heb “women come [and] light it.” The city is likened to a dead tree with dried up branches that is only good for firewood.

[27:11]  ³ tn Heb “for not a people of understanding [is] he.”

[29:16]  ⁴ tn Heb “your overturning.” The predicate is suppressed in this exclamation. The idea is, “O your perversity! How great it is!” See GKC 470 §147.c. The people “overturn” all logic by thinking their authority supersedes God’s.

[29:16]  ⁵ tn The expected answer to this rhetorical question is “of course not.” On the interrogative use of אִם (’im), see BDB 50 s.v.

[29:16]  ⁶ tn Heb “that the thing made should say.”

[45:18]  ⁷ tn Heb “he [is] the God.” The article here indicates uniqueness.

[45:18]  ⁸ tn Or “unformed.” Gen 1:2 describes the world as “unformed” (תֹהוּ, tohu) prior to God’s creative work, but God then formed the world and made it fit for habitation.

[45:21]  ¹⁰ tn Heb “Declare! Bring near!”; NASB “Declare and set forth your case.” See 41:21.

[45:21]  ¹¹ tn Or “a righteous God and deliverer”; NASB, NIV, NRSV “a righteous God and a Savior.”

[51:13]  ¹³ tn Heb “and that you forget.”

[51:13]  ¹⁴ tn Or “the heavens” (also in v. 16). The Hebrew term שָׁמַיִם (shamayim) may be translated “heavens” or “sky” depending on the context.

[51:13]  ¹⁵ tn Heb “and that you tremble constantly all the day.”

[51:13]  ¹⁶ tn The question anticipates the answer, “Ready to disappear!” See v. 14.