Yesaya 37:25

37:25 I dug wells

and drank water. ¹ 

With the soles of my feet I dried up

all the rivers of Egypt.’

Yesaya 38:16

38:16 O sovereign master, your decrees can give men life;

may years of life be restored to me. ² 

Restore my health ³  and preserve my life.’

Yesaya 45:2

45:2 “I will go before you

and level mountains. ⁴ 

Bronze doors I will shatter

and iron bars ⁵  I will hack through.

[37:25]  ¹ tc The Hebrew text has simply, “I dug and drank water.” But the parallel text in 2 Kgs 19:24 has “foreign waters.” זָרִים (zarim, “foreign”) may have accidentally dropped out of the Isaianic text by homoioteleuton (cf. NCV, NIV, NLT). Note that the preceding word, מַיִם (mayim, “water) also ends in mem (ם). The Qumran scroll 1QIsa^a has “foreign waters” for this line. However, in several other passages the 1QIsa^a scroll harmonizes with 2 Kgs 19 against the MT (Isa 36:5; 37:9, 20). Since the addition of “foreign” to this text in Isaiah by a later scribe would be more likely than its deletion, the MT reading should be accepted.

[38:16]  ² tn The translation offered here is purely speculative. The text as it stands is meaningless and probably corrupt. It reads literally, “O lord, on account of them [the suffix is masculine plural], they live, and to all in them [the suffix is feminine plural], life of my spirit.”

[38:16]  ³ tn The prefixed verbal form could be taken as indicative, “you restore my health,” but the following imperatival form suggests it be understood as an imperfect of request.

[45:2]  ⁴ tc The form הֲדוּרִים (hadurim) makes little, if any, sense here. It is probably a corruption of an original הָרָרִים (hararim, “mountains”), the reduplicated form of הָר (har, “mountain”).

[45:2]  ⁵ tn That is, on the gates. Cf. CEV “break the iron bars on bronze gates.”