Yesaya 27:11

27:11 When its branches get brittle, ¹  they break;

women come and use them for kindling. ² 

For these people lack understanding, ³ 

therefore the one who made them has no compassion on them;

the one who formed them has no mercy on them.

Yesaya 28:7

28:7 Even these men ⁴  stagger because of wine,

they stumble around because of beer –

priests and prophets stagger because of beer,

they are confused ⁵  because of wine,

they stumble around because of beer;

they stagger while seeing prophetic visions, ⁶ 

they totter while making legal decisions. ⁷ 

Yesaya 29:16

29:16 Your thinking is perverse! ⁸ 

Should the potter be regarded as clay? ⁹ 

Should the thing made say ¹⁰  about its maker, “He didn’t make me”?

Or should the pottery say about the potter, “He doesn’t understand”?

[27:11]  ¹ tn Heb “are dry” (so NASB, NIV, NRSV).

[27:11]  ² tn Heb “women come [and] light it.” The city is likened to a dead tree with dried up branches that is only good for firewood.

[27:11]  ³ tn Heb “for not a people of understanding [is] he.”

[28:7]  ⁴ tn Heb “these.” The demonstrative pronoun anticipates “priests and prophets” two lines later.

[28:7]  ⁵ tn According to HALOT 135 s.v. III בלע, the verb form is derived from בָּלַע (bala’, “confuse”), not the more common בָּלַע (“swallow”). See earlier notes at 3:12 and 9:16.

[28:7]  ⁶ tn Heb “in the seeing.”

[28:7]  ⁷ tn Heb “[in] giving a decision.”

[29:16]  ⁸ tn Heb “your overturning.” The predicate is suppressed in this exclamation. The idea is, “O your perversity! How great it is!” See GKC 470 §147.c. The people “overturn” all logic by thinking their authority supersedes God’s.

[29:16]  ⁹ tn The expected answer to this rhetorical question is “of course not.” On the interrogative use of אִם (’im), see BDB 50 s.v.

[29:16]  ¹⁰ tn Heb “that the thing made should say.”