Yesaya 3:6

3:6 Indeed, a man will grab his brother

right in his father’s house ¹  and say, ² 

‘You own a coat –

you be our leader!

This heap of ruins will be under your control.’ ³ 

Yesaya 5:1

A Love Song Gone Sour

5:1 I ⁴  will sing to my love –

a song to my lover about his vineyard. ⁵ 

My love had a vineyard

on a fertile hill. ⁶ 

Yesaya 19:12

19:12 But where, oh where, are your wise men? ⁷ 

Let them tell you, let them find out

what the Lord who commands armies has planned for Egypt.

Yesaya 36:18

36:18 Hezekiah is misleading you when he says, “The Lord will rescue us.” Has any of the gods of the nations rescued his land from the power of the king of Assyria? ⁸ 

Yesaya 38:14

38:14 Like a swallow or a thrush I chirp,

I coo ⁹  like a dove;

my eyes grow tired from looking up to the sky. ¹⁰ 

O sovereign master, ¹¹  I am oppressed;

help me! ¹² 

Yesaya 48:6

48:6 You have heard; now look at all the evidence! ¹³ 

Will you not admit that what I say is true? ¹⁴ 

From this point on I am announcing to you new events

that are previously unrevealed and you do not know about. ¹⁵ 

Yesaya 48:18

48:18 If only you had obeyed my ¹⁶  commandments,

prosperity would have flowed to you like a river, ¹⁷ 

deliverance would have come to you like the waves of the sea. ¹⁸ 

Yesaya 49:15

49:15 Can a woman forget her baby who nurses at her breast? ¹⁹ 

Can she withhold compassion from the child she has borne? ²⁰ 

Even if mothers ²¹  were to forget,

I could never forget you! ²² 

Yesaya 55:3

55:3 Pay attention and come to me!

Listen, so you can live! ²³ 

Then I will make an unconditional covenantal promise to ²⁴  you,

just like the reliable covenantal promises I made to David. ²⁵ 

Yesaya 56:2

56:2 The people who do this will be blessed, ²⁶ 

the people who commit themselves to obedience, ²⁷ 

who observe the Sabbath and do not defile it,

who refrain from doing anything that is wrong. ²⁸ 

Yesaya 57:19

57:19 I am the one who gives them reason to celebrate. ²⁹ 

Complete prosperity ³⁰  is available both to those who are far away and those who are nearby,”

says the Lord, “and I will heal them.

Yesaya 65:15

65:15 Your names will live on in the curse formulas of my chosen ones. ³¹ 

The sovereign Lord will kill you,

but he will give his servants another name.

[3:6]  ¹ tn Heb “[in] the house of his father” (so ASV); NIV “at his father’s home.”

[3:6]  ² tn The words “and say” are supplied for stylistic reasons.

[3:6]  ³ tn Heb “your hand”; NASB “under your charge.”

[3:6]  sn The man’s motives are selfish. He tells his brother to assume leadership because he thinks he has some wealth to give away.

[5:1]  ⁴ tn It is uncertain who is speaking here. Possibly the prophet, taking the role of best man, composes a love song for his friend on the occasion of his wedding. If so, יָדִיד (yadid) should be translated “my friend.” The present translation assumes that Israel is singing to the Lord. The word דוֹד (dod, “lover”) used in the second line is frequently used by the woman in the Song of Solomon to describe her lover.

[5:1]  ⁵ sn Israel, viewing herself as the Lord’s lover, refers to herself as his vineyard. The metaphor has sexual connotations, for it pictures her capacity to satisfy his appetite and to produce children. See Song 8:12.

[5:1]  ⁶ tn Heb “on a horn, a son of oil.” Apparently קֶרֶן (qeren, “horn”) here refers to the horn-shaped peak of a hill (BDB 902 s.v.) or to a mountain spur, i.e., a ridge that extends laterally from a mountain (HALOT 1145 s.v. קֶרֶן; H. Wildberger, Isaiah, 1:180). The expression “son of oil” pictures this hill as one capable of producing olive trees. Isaiah’s choice of קֶרֶן, a rare word for hill, may have been driven by paronomastic concerns, i.e., because קֶרֶן sounds like כֶּרֶם (kerem, “vineyard”).

[19:12]  ⁷ tn Heb “Where are they? Where are your wise men?” The juxtaposition of the interrogative pronouns is emphatic. See HALOT 38 s.v. אֶי.

[36:18]  ⁸ tn Heb “Have the gods of the nations rescued, each his land, from the hand of the king of Assyria?” The rhetorical question expects the answer, “Of course not!”

[38:14]  ⁹ tn Or “moan” (ASV, NAB, NASB, NRSV); KJV, CEV “mourn.”

[38:14]  ¹⁰ tn Heb “my eyes become weak, toward the height.”

[38:14]  ¹¹ tn The Hebrew term translated “sovereign master” here and in v. 16 is אֲדֹנָי (’adonay).

[38:14]  ¹² tn Heb “stand surety for me.” Hezekiah seems to be picturing himself as a debtor who is being exploited; he asks that the Lord might relieve his debt and deliver him from the oppressive creditor.

[48:6]  ¹³ tn Heb “gaze [at] all of it”; KJV “see all this.”

[48:6]  ¹⁴ tn Heb “[as for] you, will you not declare?”

[48:6]  ¹⁵ tn Heb “and hidden things, and you do not know them.”

[48:18]  ¹⁶ tn Heb “paid attention to” (so NASB, NIV, NRSV); TEV “had listened to.”

[48:18]  ¹⁷ tn Heb “like a river your peace would have been.” שָׁלוֹם (shalom) probably refers here to the peace and prosperity which God promised in return for obedience to the covenant.

[48:18]  ¹⁸ tn Heb “and your righteousness like the waves of the sea.” צְדָקָה (tsÿdaqah) probably refers here to divine deliverance from enemies. See v. 19.

[49:15]  ¹⁹ tn Heb “her suckling”; NASB “her nursing child.”

[49:15]  ²⁰ tn Heb “so as not to have compassion on the son of her womb?”

[49:15]  ²¹ tn Heb “these” (so ASV, NASB).

[49:15]  ²² sn The argument of v. 15 seems to develop as follows: The Lord has an innate attachment to Zion, just like a mother does for her infant child. But even if mothers were to suddenly abandon their children, the Lord would never forsake Zion. In other words, the Lord’s attachment to Zion is like a mother’s attachment to her infant child, but even stronger.

[55:3]  ²³ tn The jussive with vav (ו) conjunctive following the imperative indicates purpose/result.

[55:3]  sn To live here refers to covenantal blessing, primarily material prosperity and national security (see vv. 4-5, 13, and Deut 30:6, 15, 19-20).

[55:3]  ²⁴ tn Or “an eternal covenant with.”

[55:3]  ²⁵ tn Heb “the reliable expressions of loyalty of David.” The syntactical relationship of חַסְדֵי (khasde, “expressions of loyalty”) to the preceding line is unclear. If the term is appositional to בְּרִית (bÿrit, “covenant”), then the Lord here transfers the promises of the Davidic covenant to the entire nation. Another option is to take חַסְדֵי (khasde) as an adverbial accusative and to translate “according to the reliable covenantal promises.” In this case the new covenantal arrangement proposed here is viewed as an extension or perhaps fulfillment of the Davidic promises. A third option, the one reflected in the above translation, is to take the last line as comparative. In this case the new covenant being proposed is analogous to the Davidic covenant. Verses 4-5, which compare David’s international prominence to what Israel will experience, favors this view. In all three of these interpretations, “David” is an objective genitive; he is the recipient of covenantal promises. A fourth option would be to take David as a subjective genitive and understand the line as giving the basis for the preceding promise: “Then I will make an unconditional covenantal promise to you, because of David’s faithful acts of covenantal loyalty.”

[56:2]  ²⁶ tn Heb “blessed is the man who does this.”

[56:2]  ²⁷ tn Heb “the son of mankind who takes hold of it.”

[56:2]  ²⁸ tn Heb and who keeps his hand from doing any evil.”

[57:19]  ²⁹ tc The Hebrew text has literally, “one who creates fruit of lips.” Perhaps the pronoun אֲנִי (’ani) should be inserted after the participle; it may have been accidentally omitted by haplography: נוּב שְׂפָתָיִם[אֲנִי] בּוֹרֵא (bore’ [’ani] nuv sÿfatayim). “Fruit of the lips” is often understood as a metonymy for praise; perhaps it refers more generally to joyful shouts (see v. 18).

[57:19]  ³⁰ tn Heb “Peace, peace.” The repetition of the noun emphasizes degree.

[65:15]  ³¹ tn Heb “you will leave your name for an oath to my chosen ones.”

[65:15]  sn For an example of such a curse formula see Jer 29:22.