Yesaya 5:6

5:6 I will make it a wasteland;

no one will prune its vines or hoe its ground, ¹ 

and thorns and briers will grow there.

I will order the clouds

not to drop any rain on it.

Yesaya 5:8

Disaster is Coming

5:8 Those who accumulate houses are as good as dead, ² 

those who also accumulate landed property ³ 

until there is no land left, ⁴ 

and you are the only landowners remaining within the land. ⁵ 

Yesaya 42:19

42:19 My servant is truly blind,

my messenger is truly deaf.

My covenant partner, ⁶  the servant of the Lord, is truly blind. ⁷ 

[5:6]  ¹ tn Heb “it will not be pruned or hoed” (so NASB); ASV and NRSV both similar.

[5:8]  ² tn Heb “Woe [to] those who make a house touch a house.” The exclamation הוֹי (hoy, “woe, ah”) was used in funeral laments (see 1 Kgs 13:30; Jer 22:18; 34:5) and carries the connotation of death.

[5:8]  ³ tn Heb “[who] bring a field near a field.”

[5:8]  sn This verse does not condemn real estate endeavors per se, but refers to the way in which the rich bureaucrats of Judah accumulated property by exploiting the poor, in violation of the covenantal principle that the land belonged to God and that every family was to have its own portion of land. See the note at 1:23.

[5:8]  ⁴ tn Heb “until the end of the place”; NASB “until there is no more room.”

[5:8]  ⁵ tn Heb “and you are made to dwell alone in the midst of the land.”

[42:19]  ⁶ tc The precise meaning of מְשֻׁלָּם (mÿshullam) in this context is uncertain. In later biblical Hebrew the form (which appears to be a Pual participle from the root שָׁלַם, shalam) occurs as a proper name, Meshullam. The Pual of שָׁלַם (“be complete”) is attested with the meaning “repaid, requited,” but that makes little sense here. BDB 1023 s.v. שָׁלַם relates the form to the denominative verb שָׁלַם (“be at peace”) and paraphrases “one in a covenant of peace” (J. N. Oswalt suggests “the covenanted one”; Isaiah [NICOT], 2:128, n. 59) Some emend the form to מֹשְׁלָם (moshÿlam, “their ruler”) or to מְשֻׁלָּחִי (mÿshullakhi, “my sent [or “commissioned”] one”), which fits nicely in the parallelism (note “my messenger” in the previous line). The translation above assumes an emendation to כְּמוֹ שֹׁלְמִי (kÿmo sholÿmi, “like my ally”). Isaiah uses כְּמוֹ in 30:22 and perhaps 51:5; for שֹׁלְמי (“my ally”) see Ps 7:5 HT (7:4 ET).

[42:19]  ⁷ tn Heb “Who is blind but my servant, and deaf like my messenger I send? Who is blind like my commissioned one, blind like the servant of the Lord?” The point of the rhetorical questions is that no one is as blind/deaf as this servant. In this context the Lord’s “servant” is exiled Israel (cf. 41:8-9), which is spiritually blind and deaf and has failed to fulfill God’s purpose for it. This servant stands in contrast to the ideal “Israel” of the servant songs.