Yesaya 5:9

5:9 The Lord who commands armies told me this: ¹ 

“Many houses will certainly become desolate,

large, impressive houses will have no one living in them. ² 

Yesaya 40:28

40:28 Do you not know?

Have you not heard?

The Lord is an eternal God,

the creator of the whole earth. ³ 

He does not get tired or weary;

there is no limit to his wisdom. ⁴ 

Yesaya 42:6

42:6 “I, the Lord, officially commission you; ⁵ 

I take hold of your hand.

I protect you ⁶  and make you a covenant mediator for people, ⁷ 

and a light ⁸  to the nations, ⁹ 

Yesaya 58:10

58:10 You must ¹⁰  actively help the hungry

and feed the oppressed. ¹¹ 

Then your light will dispel the darkness, ¹² 

and your darkness will be transformed into noonday. ¹³ 

[5:9]  ¹ tn Heb “in my ears, the Lord who commands armies [traditionally, the Lord of hosts].”

[5:9]  ² tn Heb “great and good [houses], without a resident.”

[40:28]  ³ tn Heb “the ends of the earth,” but this is a merism, where the earth’s extremities stand for its entirety, i.e., the extremities and everything in between them.

[40:28]  ⁴ sn Exiled Israel’s complaint (v. 27) implies that God might be limited in some way. Perhaps he, like so many of the pagan gods, has died. Or perhaps his jurisdiction is limited to Judah and does not include Babylon. Maybe he is unable to devise an adequate plan to rescue his people, or is unable to execute it. But v. 28 affirms that he is not limited temporally or spatially nor is his power and wisdom restricted in any way. He can and will deliver his people, if they respond in hopeful faith (v. 31a).

[42:6]  ⁵ tn Heb “call you in righteousness.” The pronoun “you” is masculine singular, referring to the servant. See the note at 41:2.

[42:6]  ⁶ tn The translation assumes the verb is derived from the root נָצַר (natsar, “protect”). Some prefer to derive it from the root יָצַר (yatsar, “form”).

[42:6]  ⁷ tn Heb “a covenant of people.” A person cannot literally be a covenant; בְּרִית (bÿrit) is probably metonymic here, indicating a covenant mediator. The precise identity of עָם (’am, “people”) is uncertain. In v. 5 עָם refers to mankind, and the following reference to “nations” also favors this. But in 49:8, where the phrase בְּרִית עָם occurs again, Israel seems to be in view.

[42:6]  ⁸ sn Light here symbolizes deliverance from bondage and oppression; note the parallelism in 49:6b and in 51:4-6.

[42:6]  ⁹ tn Or “the Gentiles” (so KJV, ASV, NIV); the same Hebrew word can be translated “nations” or “Gentiles” depending on the context.

[58:10]  ¹⁰ tn Heb “if you.” See the note on “you must” in v. 9b.

[58:10]  ¹¹ tn Heb “If you furnish for the hungry [with] your being, and the appetite of the oppressed you satisfy.”

[58:10]  ¹² tn Heb “will rise in the darkness.”

[58:10]  ¹³ tn Heb “and your darkness [will be] like noonday.”