Isaiah 5:28

5:28 Their arrows are sharpened,

and all their bows are prepared. ¹ 

The hooves of their horses are hard as flint, ² 

and their chariot wheels are like a windstorm. ³ 

Isaiah 7:24

7:24 With bow and arrow ⁴  men will hunt ⁵  there, for the whole land will be covered ⁶  with thorns and briers.

Isaiah 13:18

13:18 Their arrows will cut young men to ribbons; ⁷ 

they have no compassion on a person’s offspring, ⁸ 

they will not ⁹  look with pity on children.

Isaiah 21:17

21:17 Just a handful of archers, the warriors of Kedar, will be left.” ¹⁰  Indeed, ¹¹  the Lord God of Israel has spoken.

Isaiah 22:3

22:3 ¹² All your leaders ran away together –

they fled to a distant place;

all your refugees ¹³  were captured together –

they were captured without a single arrow being shot. ¹⁴ 

[5:28]  ¹ tn Heb “bent” (so KJV, NAB, NASB, NRSV); NIV “are strung.”

[5:28]  ² tn Heb “regarded like flint.”

[5:28]  ³ sn They are like a windstorm in their swift movement and in the way they kick up dust.

[7:24]  ⁴ tn Heb “with arrows and a bow.” The more common English idiom is “bow[s] and arrow[s].”

[7:24]  ⁵ tn Heb “go” (so NAB, NIV, NRSV); TEV “go hunting.”

[7:24]  ⁶ tn Heb “will be” (so NASB, NRSV).

[13:18]  ⁷ tn Heb “and bows cut to bits young men.” “Bows” stands by metonymy for arrows.

[13:18]  ⁸ tn Heb “the fruit of the womb.”

[13:18]  ⁹ tn Heb “their eye does not.” Here “eye” is a metonymy for the whole person.

[21:17]  ¹⁰ tn Heb “and the remnant of the number of the bow, the mighty men of the sons of Kedar, will be few.”

[21:17]  ¹¹ tn Or “for” (KJV, ASV, NAB, NASB, NRSV).

[22:3]  ¹³ tn Verse 3 reads literally, “All your leaders ran away, apart from a bow they were captured, all your found ones were captured together, to a distant place they fled.” J. N. Oswalt (Isaiah [NICOT], 1:403, n. 3) suggests that the lines of the verse are arranged chiastically; lines 1 and 4 go together, while lines 2 and 3 are parallel. To translate the lines in the order they appear in the Hebrew text is misleading to the English reader, who is likely unfamiliar with, or at least insensitive to, chiastic parallelism. Consequently, the translation above arranges the lines as follows: line 1 (Hebrew) = line 1 (in translation); line 2 (Hebrew) = line 4 (in translation); line 3 (Hebrew) = line 3 (in translation); line 4 (Hebrew) = line 2 (in translation).

[22:3]  ¹⁴ tn Heb “all your found ones.” To achieve tighter parallelism (see “your leaders”) some prefer to emend the form to אַמִּיצַיִךְ (’ammitsayikh, “your strong ones”) or to נֶאֱמָצַיִךְ (ne’ematsayikh, “your strengthened ones”).

[22:3]  ¹⁵ tn Heb “apart from [i.e., without] a bow they were captured”; cf. NAB, NRSV “without the use of a bow.”