Isaiah 9:9

9:9 All the people were aware ¹  of it,

the people of Ephraim and those living in Samaria. ² 

Yet with pride and an arrogant attitude, they said, ³ 

Isaiah 1:23

1:23 Your officials are rebels, ⁴ 

they associate with ⁵  thieves.

All of them love bribery,

and look for ⁶  payoffs. ⁷ 

They do not take up the cause of the orphan, ⁸ 

or defend the rights of the widow. ⁹ 

Isaiah 9:17

9:17 So the sovereign master was not pleased ¹⁰  with their young men,

he took no pity ¹¹  on their orphans and widows;

for the whole nation was godless ¹²  and did wicked things, ¹³ 

every mouth was speaking disgraceful words. ¹⁴ 

Despite all this, his anger does not subside,

and his hand is ready to strike again. ¹⁵ 

[9:9]  ¹ tn The translation assumes that vv. 9-10 describe the people’s response to a past judgment (v. 8). The perfect is understood as indicating simple past and the vav (ו) is taken as conjunctive. Another option is to take the vav on the perfect as consecutive and translate, “all the people will know.”

[9:9]  ² tn Heb “and the people, all of them, knew; Ephraim and the residents of Samaria.”

[9:9]  ³ tn Heb “with pride and arrogance of heart, saying.”

[1:23]  ⁴ tn Or “stubborn”; CEV “have rejected me.”

[1:23]  ⁵ tn Heb “and companions of” (so KJV, NASB); CEV “friends of crooks.”

[1:23]  ⁶ tn Heb “pursue”; NIV “chase after gifts.”

[1:23]  ⁷ sn Isaiah may have chosen the word for gifts (שַׁלְמוֹנִים, shalmonim; a hapax legomena here), as a sarcastic pun on what these rulers should have been doing. Instead of attending to peace and wholeness (שָׁלוֹם, shalom), they sought after payoffs (שַׁלְמוֹנִים).

[1:23]  ⁸ sn See the note at v. 17.

[1:23]  ⁹ sn The rich oppressors referred to in Isaiah and the other eighth century prophets were not rich capitalists in the modern sense of the word. They were members of the royal military and judicial bureaucracies in Israel and Judah. As these bureaucracies grew, they acquired more and more land and gradually commandeered the economy and legal system. At various administrative levels bribery and graft become commonplace. The common people outside the urban administrative centers were vulnerable to exploitation in such a system, especially those, like widows and orphans, who had lost their family provider through death. Through confiscatory taxation, conscription, excessive interest rates, and other oppressive governmental measures and policies, they were gradually disenfranchised and lost their landed property, and with it, their rights as citizens. The socio-economic equilibrium envisioned in the law of Moses was radically disturbed.

[9:17]  ⁷ tn The Qumran scroll 1QIsa^a has לא יחמול (“he did not spare”) which is an obvious attempt to tighten the parallelism (note “he took no pity” in the next line). Instead of taking שָׂמַח (samakh) in one of its well attested senses (“rejoice over, be pleased with”), some propose, with support from Arabic, a rare homonymic root meaning “be merciful.”

[9:17]  ⁸ tn The translation understands the prefixed verbs יִשְׂמַח (yismakh) and יְרַחֵם (yÿrakhem) as preterites without vav (ו) consecutive. (See v. 11 and the note on “he stirred up.”)

[9:17]  ⁹ tn Or “defiled”; cf. ASV “profane”; NAB “profaned”; NIV “ungodly.”

[9:17]  ¹⁰ tn מֵרַע (mera’) is a Hiphil participle from רָעַע (ra’a’, “be evil”). The intransitive Hiphil has an exhibitive force here, indicating that they exhibited outwardly the evidence of an inward condition by committing evil deeds.

[9:17]  ¹¹ tn Or “foolishness” (NASB), here in a moral-ethical sense.

[9:17]  ¹² tn Heb “in all this his anger is not turned, and still his hand is outstretched.”