Isaiah 49:18-22

49:18 Look all around you! ¹ 

All of them gather to you.

As surely as I live,” says the Lord,

“you will certainly wear all of them like jewelry;

you will put them on as if you were a bride.

49:19 Yes, your land lies in ruins;

it is desolate and devastated. ² 

But now you will be too small to hold your residents,

and those who devoured you will be far away.

49:20 Yet the children born during your time of bereavement

will say within your hearing,

‘This place is too cramped for us, ³ 

make room for us so we can live here.’ ⁴ 

49:21 Then you will think to yourself, ⁵ 

‘Who bore these children for me?

I was bereaved and barren,

dismissed and divorced. ⁶ 

Who raised these children?

Look, I was left all alone;

where did these children come from?’”

49:22 This is what the sovereign Lord says:

“Look I will raise my hand to the nations;

I will raise my signal flag to the peoples.

They will bring your sons in their arms

and carry your daughters on their shoulders.

Psalms 45:11-16

45:11 Then ⁷  the king will be attracted by ⁸  your beauty.

After all, he is your master! Submit ⁹  to him! ¹⁰ 

45:12 Rich people from Tyre ¹¹ 

will seek your favor by bringing a gift. ¹² 

45:13 The princess ¹³  looks absolutely magnificent, ¹⁴ 

decked out in pearls and clothed in a brocade trimmed with gold. ¹⁵ 

45:14 In embroidered robes she is escorted to the king.

Her attendants, the maidens of honor who follow her,

are led before you. ¹⁶ 

45:15 They are bubbling with joy as they walk in procession

and enter the royal palace. ¹⁷ 

45:16 Your ¹⁸  sons will carry ¹⁹  on the dynasty of your ancestors; ²⁰ 

you will make them princes throughout the land.

Jeremiah 32:41

32:41 I will take delight in doing good to them. I will faithfully and wholeheartedly plant them ²¹  firmly in the land.’

[49:18]  ¹ tn Heb “Lift up around your eyes and see.”

[49:19]  ² tn Heb “Indeed your ruins and your desolate places, and the land of your destruction.” This statement is abruptly terminated in the Hebrew text and left incomplete.

[49:20]  ³ tn Heb “me.” The singular is collective.

[49:20]  ⁴ tn Heb “draw near to me so I can dwell.”

[49:21]  ⁵ tn Heb “and you will say in your heart.”

[49:21]  ⁶ tn Or “exiled and thrust away”; NIV “exiled and rejected.”

[45:11]  ⁷ tn After the preceding imperatives, the jussive verbal form with vav (ו) conjunctive is best understood as introducing a purpose (“so that the king might desire your beauty”) or result clause (see the present translation and cf. also NASB). The point seems to be this: The bride might tend to be homesick, which in turn might cause her to mourn and diminish her attractiveness. She needs to overcome this temptation to unhappiness and enter into the marriage with joy. Then the king will be drawn to her natural beauty.

[45:11]  ⁸ tn Or “desire.”

[45:11]  ⁹ tn Or “bow down.”

[45:11]  ¹⁰ sn Submit to him. The poet here makes the point that the young bride is obligated to bring pleasure to her new husband. Though a foreign concept to modern western culture, this was accepted as the cultural norm in the psalmist’s day.

[45:12]  ¹¹ map For location see Map1 A2; Map2 G2; Map4 A1; JP3 F3; JP4 F3.

[45:12]  ¹² tn Heb “and a daughter of Tyre with a gift, your face they will appease, the rich of people.” The phrase “daughter of Tyre” occurs only here in the OT. It could be understood as addressed to the bride, indicating she was a Phoenician (cf. NEB). However, often in the OT the word “daughter,” when collocated with the name of a city or country, is used to personify the referent (see, for example, “Daughter Zion” in Ps 9:14, and “Daughter Babylon” in Ps 137:8). If that is the case here, then “Daughter Tyre” identifies the city-state of Tyre as the place from which the rich people come (cf. NRSV). The idiom “appease the face” refers to seeking one’s favor (see Exod 32:11; 1 Sam 13:12; 1 Kgs 13:6; 2 Kgs 13:4; 2 Chr 33:12; Job 11:19; Ps 119:58; Prov 19:6; Jer 26:19; Dan 9:13; Zech 7:2; 8:21-22; Mal 1:9).

[45:13]  ¹³ tn Heb “[the] daughter of a king.”

[45:13]  ¹⁴ tn Heb “[is] completely glorious.”

[45:13]  ¹⁵ tc Heb “within, from settings of gold, her clothing.” The Hebrew term פְּנִימָה (pÿnimah, “within”), if retained, would go with the preceding line and perhaps refer to the bride being “within” the palace or her bridal chamber (cf. NIV, NRSV). Since the next two lines refer to her attire (see also v. 9b), it is preferable to emend the form to פְּנִינִיהָּ (“her pearls”) or to פְּנִינִים (“pearls”). The mem (מ) prefixed to “settings” is probably dittographic.

[45:14]  ¹⁶ tn Heb “virgins after her, her companions, are led to you.” Some emend לָךְ (lakh, “to you”) to לָהּ (lah, “to her,” i.e., the princess), because the princess is now being spoken of in the third person (vv. 13-14a), rather than being addressed directly (as in vv. 10-12). However, the ambiguous suffixed form לָךְ need not be taken as second feminine singular. The suffix can be understood as a pausal second masculine singular form, addressed to the king. The translation assumes this to be the case; note that the king is addressed once more in vv. 16-17, where the second person pronouns are masculine.

[45:15]  ¹⁷ tn Heb “they are led with joy and happiness, they enter the house of the king.”

[45:16]  ¹⁸ tn The pronoun is second masculine singular, indicating the king is being addressed from this point to the end of the psalm.

[45:16]  ¹⁹ tn The prefixed verbal form could be taken as jussive and the statement interpreted as a prayer, “May your sons carry on the dynasty of your ancestors!” The next line could then be taken as a relative clause, “[your sons] whom you will make princes throughout the land.”

[45:16]  ²⁰ tn Heb “in place of your fathers will be your sons.”

[32:41]  ²¹ tn Heb “will plant them in the land with faithfulness with all my heart and with all my soul.” The latter expressions are, of course, anthropomorphisms (see Deut 6:5).