Yesaya 1:23

1:23 Your officials are rebels, ¹ 

they associate with ²  thieves.

All of them love bribery,

and look for ³  payoffs. ⁴ 

They do not take up the cause of the orphan, ⁵ 

or defend the rights of the widow. ⁶ 

Yesaya 10:6

10:6 I sent him ⁷  against a godless ⁸  nation,

I ordered him to attack the people with whom I was angry, ⁹ 

to take plunder and to carry away loot,

to trample them down ¹⁰  like dirt in the streets.

Yesaya 30:9

30:9 For these are rebellious people –

they are lying children,

children unwilling to obey the Lord’s law. ¹¹ 

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

[1:23]  ² tn Heb “and companions of” (so KJV, NASB); CEV “friends of crooks.”

[1:23]  ³ tn Heb “pursue”; NIV “chase after gifts.”

[1:23]  ⁴ 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]  ⁵ sn See the note at v. 17.

[1:23]  ⁶ 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.

[10:6]  ⁷ sn Throughout this section singular forms are used to refer to Assyria; perhaps the king of Assyria is in view (see v. 12).

[10:6]  ⁸ tn Or “defiled”; cf. ASV “profane”; NAB “impious”; NCV “separated from God.”

[10:6]  ⁹ tn Heb “and against the people of my anger I ordered him.”

[10:6]  ¹⁰ tn Heb “to make it [i.e., the people] a trampled place.”

[30:9]  ¹¹ tn Or perhaps, “instruction” (so NASB, NIV, NRSV); NCV, TEV “teachings.”