Isaiah 37:25

37:25 I dug wells

and drank water. ¹ 

With the soles of my feet I dried up

all the rivers of Egypt.’

Isaiah 22:5

22:5 For the sovereign master, ²  the Lord who commands armies,

has planned a day of panic, defeat, and confusion. ³ 

In the Valley of Vision ⁴  people shout ⁵ 

and cry out to the hill. ⁶ 

[37:25]  ¹ 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.

[22:5]  ² tn The Hebrew term translated “sovereign master” here and in vv. 12, 14, 15 is אֲדֹנָי (’adonay).

[22:5]  ³ tn Heb “For [there is] a day of panic, and trampling, and confusion for the master, the Lord who commands armies [traditionally, the Lord of hosts].”

[22:5]  ⁴ tn The traditional accentuation of the Hebrew text suggests that this phrase goes with what precedes.

[22:5]  ⁵ tn The precise meaning of this statement is unclear. Some take קִר (qir) as “wall” and interpret the verb to mean “tear down.” However, tighter parallelism (note the reference to crying for help in the next line) is achieved if one takes both the verb and noun from a root, attested in Ugaritic and Arabic, meaning “make a sound.” See J. N. Oswalt, Isaiah (NICOT), 1:404, n. 5.

[22:5]  ⁶ sn Perhaps “the hill” refers to the temple mount.