Isaiah

ʾăḏōnāy — the bare divine title “the Lord” — opens the vision, and Isaiah 6 deploys it pointedly against the Tetragrammaton: ʾăḏōnāy here and at the commissioning (v 8) and the lament (v 11), but YHWH ṣᵉḇāʾôṯ in the seraphim's cry (v 3) and Isaiah's confession (v 5). The translation keeps the two distinct — “the Lord” for ʾăḏōnāy, “YHWH” for the Tetragrammaton — where the English “the LORD / the Lord” convention would blur them. The consonantal text reads ʾăḏōnāy, and scribal sensitivity around the divine names in this chapter is noted, but the received text is not emended to “YHWH.”

rām wᵉniśśāʾ “high and lifted up” follows and agrees with kissēʾ “throne,” so the pair is read as attributive to the throne (“a throne, high and lifted up”), with Wildberger (Isaiah 1–12, 1991) and Williamson (ICC Isaiah 6–12, 2018); the same word-pair describes God at Isa 57:15, but that is an independent construction.

šûlāyw — the hem, skirt, or train of the robe — floods the hêḵāl. The image is spatial and anthropomorphic: a mere hem of the seated figure's robe fills the whole hall, implying the immensity of the One enthroned (Blenkinsopp, Isaiah 1–39, AB 19, 2000). hêḵāl means both “temple” and “palace / great hall”; the translation keeps “temple” (the altar of v 6 and the year-of-Uzziah setting fix the Jerusalem sanctuary), while the word also carries the register of a sovereign's audience-hall — the setting in which a throne-court convenes and dispatches its messenger.

śᵉrāp̄îm, from the root śrp “to burn,” are the “burning ones” — six-winged attendants standing above the throne. The translation transliterates “seraphim” (ASV/JPS): the term functions here as the proper name of an order of throne-beings, not as a live adjective, and “burning ones” is reserved for this note.

The rendering “fiery/flying serpents” — the śārāp̄ of Num 21:6, Deut 8:15, Isa 14:29, 30:6, and the winged-uraeus iconography behind the seraph-figure discussed by Joines (JBL 86 [1967] 410–415) and Wildberger — is deliberately declined for the throne-vision: whatever the figure's iconographic prehistory, the beings of Isaiah 6 have faces, hands, feet, and voices and act as courtiers. Two wings cover the face (before the deity), two cover the “feet” (raḡlayim, here most likely the common euphemism), and two are for flight. These winged throne-attendants align cross-corpus with the four living creatures of Ezekiel 1 and Revelation 4, who take up the same threefold “holy” — see the central merkavah-tradition entry.

The seraphim's threefold qādôš qādôš qādôš — the Trisagion — is preserved as the threefold “Holy, holy, holy,” not collapsed to an intensive superlative. Hebrew can mark the superlative by repetition, but the threefold form is the structural feature that carries into the reception tradition and is preserved as such. This is the source-text of the cross-corpus Isa 6:3 → Rev 4:8 → the Jewish Kedushah and the Christian Sanctus; the handling is governed by the central Trisagion entry (see the editorial report for the ISA-6:3 wiring).

YHWH ṣᵉḇāʾôṯ “YHWH of hosts” is kept as the standard title. ṣᵉḇāʾôṯ “armies, hosts” is read by Mullen (The Divine Council in Canaanite and Early Hebrew Literature, 1980) and Cross (Canaanite Myth and Hebrew Epic, 1973) as the heavenly host — the assembled army of divine beings YHWH commands — which is precisely the company attending the throne in this vision; that reading is stated here rather than by altering the fixed epithet.

mᵉlōʾ ḵol-hā-ʾāreṣ kᵉḇôḏô is rendered in its literal word order, “the fullness of the whole earth is his glory,” keeping kᵉḇôḏô as the clause's predicate. kāḇôḏ (root kbd “be heavy”) is the weighty, radiant, quasi-physical presence-manifestation of the deity — the same phenomenon the smoke filling the house dramatizes in v 4 (cf. the kavod-tradition of Exod 40, 1 Kgs 8, Ezek 1). The suffixed form here differs grammatically from the construct kᵉḇôḏ-YHWH of Ezekiel; the shared presence-vocabulary is the point.

niḏmêṯî “I am undone” is a root-crux: from dmh “be cut off, ruined” (hence “I am undone / doomed”) or from dmm “be silenced, struck dumb.” The translation reads dmh, the majority sense, because the ground Isaiah gives is “for my eyes have seen the King” — the lethal danger of seeing the deity (Exod 33:20; Judg 13:22), a fear of destruction rather than of muteness. The “struck dumb” reading would chime with the “unclean lips” motif and is a live alternative, noted here but not placed in the text.

ha-meleḵ “the King,” in apposition to YHWH ṣᵉḇāʾôṯ, titles the enthroned figure — the royal designation the whole scene sustains. Isaiah's “woe” turns on having physically seen the King: the vision presses the tradition that no one sees God and lives (Wildberger; Blenkinsopp), which is why the lips — the organ of a prophet's speech and the seat of his declared uncleanness — must be purged before he can be sent.

One of the śᵉrāp̄îm brings a riṣpāh — a live, glowing coal or hot stone (cf. 1 Kgs 19:6) — lifted from the altar with tongs (melqāḥayim), too hot to hold in the hand. The purgation is enacted with fire drawn from the sanctuary altar: the same burning that names the seraphim (“burning ones”) becomes the agent that cleanses the prophet's mouth.

The coal touches Isaiah's lips and two purgation-verbs follow: sār “your iniquity is removed” and tᵉḵuppār (Pual of kpr) “your sin is atoned for / purged.” The kpr vocabulary is the priestly language of wiping-away or covering sin; here the altar-coal performs on the prophet's lips a cultic purgation the priesthood otherwise effects by blood and fire, consecrating the “unclean lips” for the commission that immediately follows.

Isaiah hears ʾăḏōnāy (“the Lord”) ask “Whom shall I send, and who will go lānû — for us?” The switch from the singular “I send” to the first-person-plural “for us” is the classic divine-council crux, alongside Gen 1:26 (naʿăśeh “let us make”), Gen 3:22 (“like one of us”), and Gen 11:7 (nērᵉḏāh “let us go down”). The translation preserves both numbers literally — “Whom shall I send, and who will go for us?” — without committing the line to a reading; the plural lānû is grammatically explicit and is rendered as such.

On the reading of the plural, the modern scholarly consensus (Mullen, The Divine Council, 1980; Cross, Canaanite Myth and Hebrew Epic, 1973) is that the deity speaks as the enthroned head of the heavenly assembly convened in this very vision — the seraphim and the “hosts” of v 3 — deliberating and dispatching a messenger from within the council; this is the reading the Wheel of Heaven lens develops as the Council of Eternals. The plural is a direct datum of the grammar; the council interpretation is an inferred reading, stated here and governed by the proposed central divine-council entry (see the editorial report), not asserted in the text. Isaiah's hinnēnî šᵉlāḥēnî “Here am I; send me” is the prophetic-response formula (central hineni entry).

The commission opens with the doubled-infinitive intensive — šimʿû šāmôaʿ “hear indeed,” ûrᵉʾû rāʾô “see indeed” — governed by the central doubled-infinitive entry, which already lists ISA-6:9. The paradox is set at once: hear intently, yet do not understand; look hard, yet do not perceive.

The hardening-commission proper: three causative imperatives addressed to the prophet — hašmēn “make the heart of this people fat/dull,” haḵbēḏ “make its ears heavy,” hāšaʿ “smear over / shut its eyes” — with the pen “lest” clause, “lest it see... and turn back and be healed.” Read at face value, the prophet is commissioned to render the people insensible (Wildberger; Blenkinsopp; Williamson).

The offense of the line was felt early, and the softening options are real: the reading may be ironic — a bitter forecast of futile reception cast as a command — or resultative (“so that,” a foreseen outcome rather than an intended purpose). The Old Greek already recasts the imperatives as a statement of fact (“the heart of this people has grown dull”), the form the New Testament citations follow (Matt 13:14–15; Acts 28:26–27), and the Targum paraphrases. The translation keeps the imperatives the Hebrew actually uses; the mitigations are recorded here rather than imposed on the text.

The remnant-image and a textual crux. A “tenth” survives, yet wᵉšāḇāh wᵉhāyᵉṯāh lᵉḇāʿēr “it too shall again be for burning” (bʿr “burn, consume”) — even the remnant is subject to a further purge, “like the terebinth (ʾēlāh) and like the oak (ʾallôn)” whose maṣṣeḇeṯ “stump” remains bᵉšalleḵeṯ “when felled.”

The closing clause zeraʿ qōḏeš maṣṣaḇtāh “the holy seed is its stump” identifies that surviving stump with a consecrated remnant — the seed-line from which the felled people can regrow (Wildberger; Blenkinsopp; Williamson). The clause is textually contested: it is absent from the Old Greek (LXX), which many read as a later, hope-bearing addition to an otherwise unrelieved oracle of devastation. The translation retains the Masoretic clause (the project renders the MT) and discloses the LXX-minus here for the reader's audit; the remnant / holy-seed theology — a preserved seed surviving catastrophe — is developed in the commentary and the wiki, not the line.

The cosmic devastation frame. The oracle opens with two assonant near-synonyms: bôqēq (bqq, “empty out”) and ûḇôlqāh (blq, “lay waste, despoil”), YHWH “emptying” and “laying waste” hā-ʾāreṣ. The sound-pairing carries into v3 with the doubled infinitive-absolute intensives hibbôq tibbôq … hibbôz tibbôz (“utterly emptied … utterly plundered”), the same inf.-abs.+finite construction the corpus tracks at Isa 6:9 (central harbah-arbeh-doubled-infinitive-intensive).

The scope of hā-ʾāreṣ is the chapter’s governing decision. The Genesis-1 corpus entry renders ʾereṣ “land” in a local, durational register; that entry is deliberately NOT applied here. Through the Little Apocalypse (chs. 24–27) hā-ʾāreṣ alternates with tēḇēl “the (whole) world” (v4) and stands parallel to the universal hā-ʾăḏāmāh “the ground” and “the kings of the ground” (v21); the register is cosmic-universal, not the territory of Judah — the reading of ASV (“maketh the earth empty”) and JPS, and of the standard commentators, who read chs. 24–27 as a world-judgment (Wildberger, Isaiah 13–27, Continental, 1997; Blenkinsopp, Isaiah 1–39, AB 19, 2000). ʿiwwāh p̄ānehā is rendered “twists its surface” (ʿwh “bend, twist”), the concrete image of a distorted face of the ground, over against ASV’s “turneth it upside down.” See the overlay eretz-cosmic-scope-isaiah-24.

The broken everlasting covenant. The ground of the devastation is stated in covenantal terms: the inhabitants “have transgressed the teachings (tôrōṯ), overstepped the statute (ḥōq), broken the everlasting covenant (bᵉrîṯ ʿôlām).” bᵉrîṯ ʿôlām is the standard “everlasting covenant,” governed by the central brit-olam entry — whose own forward-reference already names Isa 24:5, and whose appliesTo is extended to ISA-24:5 by orchestrator diff. ʿôlām is durational “far-distant time,” not metaphysical eternity.

The referent of the covenant is disputed and is deliberately left unidentified in the line. Three readings compete: the Noahic covenant of Gen 9:16 (the same bᵉrîṯ ʿôlām, a universal ordinance binding all humanity after the Flood — the reading most at home in a world-judgment, favored by Wildberger and Blenkinsopp); the Sinai covenant / Torah (paired here with tôrōṯ and ḥōq); and a broader cosmic order-of-creation. The universal-Noahic reading is canon-adjacent — a primeval covenant binding all humanity, violated and now avenged on the whole earth — but the Hebrew names no referent and the translation does not resolve it (overlay chanef-broken-everlasting-covenant-isaiah-24). ḥānᵉp̄āh (ḥnp, “be polluted, profaned”) is rendered “lies defiled”: the earth is polluted “under” its inhabitants, the moral pollution of the land a recurring prophetic figure (cf. Num 35:33; Jer 3:1–2).

The covenant-curse devours the earth. ʾālāh is not a generic curse but the specific sworn imprecation attached to a covenant — the self-maledictory oath that falls when the covenant of v5 is broken (BDB, HALOT; cf. Deut 29:19–20). The “therefore” (ʿal-kēn) binds it to that broken bᵉrîṯ, and the translation keeps “a curse has devoured the earth” (ASV/JPS): the covenant-oath now consumes the land it once sanctioned (overlay alah-covenant-curse-isaiah-24).

ḥārû is a form-crux: from ḥrr “be scorched, burned” (ASV/JPS, the majority reading — the inhabitants dried up like the parched earth) or, as some moderns parse, from ḥwr/ḥrh “grow pale, dwindle.” The translation reads “are scorched,” with the “dwindle” reading noted. ʾĕnôš mizʿār — “few mortals are left”: ʾĕnôš is the collective for frail humanity, and the depopulation-remnant note anticipates the gleaning-image of v13 (Kaiser, Isaiah 13–39, OTL).

The city of tōhû. qiryaṯ-tōhû, “city of chaos,” names an unnamed ruined city — the chapter’s recurring anti-city, broken and shut up. tōhû is the same word as the tōhû wā-ḇōhû “wasteland and emptiness” of Gen 1:2 and the post-judgment tōhû of Isa 34:11; the corpus tohu-vavohu entry governs the Genesis pair, not this bare singular, and is deliberately not applied. The translation renders “city of chaos” (JPS/NRSV; ASV “city of confusion”) — the formlessness/nothingness sense — rather than importing the Genesis “wasteland” rendering onto the construct. The cross-corpus resonance is real and canon-salient — the judged city reduced to the pre-ordered tōhû, an ordering-project reversed into wasteland — but it is a matter of the shared lexeme and is carried here, not in the line (Wildberger; overlay qiryat-tohu-city-of-chaos-isaiah-24).

A crux of direction, and the God of Israel. ba-ʾurîm is a genuine textual crux. The consonants bʾrym have been read “in the fires” (ʾûr “fire, flame”), “in the east / the regions of light” (the place of dawning light; JPS 1917 “in the regions of light,” ASV “in the east”), or emended to bā-ʾiyyîm “in the coastlands/isles” to parallel the following ʾiyyê hay-yām “coastlands of the sea.” The translation retains the Masoretic ba-ʾurîm (no emendation) and renders “in the regions of light” (JPS), with the alternatives disclosed (Wildberger; Blenkinsopp; overlay ba-urim-regions-of-light-isaiah-24).

ʾĕlōhê yiśrāʾēl is rendered “the God of Israel” — the standard construct epithet (ASV/JPS). The corpus “the Elohim” convention (the central elohim-as-translation entry, scoped to Genesis 1) is deliberately NOT applied to a construct divine epithet in Isaiah, exactly as at Isa 53:4: the entry’s own wohChoice is “the Elohim,” which cannot govern a bound epithet whose natural English is “God of Israel,” and ISA-24:15 is not added to that central entry (overlay elohei-yisrael-god-of-israel-isaiah-24).

Praise from the ends of the earth, and a doubled cry of distress. ṣᵉḇî la-ṣaddîq, “Glory to the Righteous One” (ASV/JPS), is the song heard “from the edge of the earth.” Against it the prophet sets his own doubled lament rāzî-lî rāzî-lî, a crux: most read it from rāzāh “grow lean” — hence “I waste away, I pine away” (ASV/JPS, the leanness/wasting sense) — while a minority take rāz, the Aramaic-type “secret, mystery” of Daniel 2, giving “my secret is mine.” The translation reads “I waste away, I waste away,” the majority philological reading, with the “secret/mystery” reading noted and declined (Wildberger; Kaiser; overlay razi-li-pining-secret-crux-isaiah-24). The verse closes on the fivefold bgd treachery-paronomasia (bōḡᵉḏîm bāḡāḏû ûḇeḡeḏ bôḡᵉḏîm bāḡāḏû), rendered by repetition rather than reproduced as sound.

The windows on high, and the Flood echo. The escape-is-impossible tricolon of vv17–18 turns on the terror/pit/snare paronomasia paḥaḏ wā-p̄aḥaṯ wā-p̄āḥ (v17) — three near-homonyms rendered “terror and pit and snare.” Then the cosmic cause: “the windows on high (ʾărubbôṯ mimmārôm) are opened, and the foundations of the earth (môsᵉḏê ʾāreṣ) quake.”

ʾărubbôṯ is the same lattice-opening/sluice term as the ʾărubbōṯ haš-šāmayim “windows of the skies” of the Genesis Flood (Gen 7:11), and the opening of the windows above with the shaking of the earth’s foundations below is a deliberate Flood-reversal echo — the sealed cosmos unsealed from above and below (Wildberger; Blenkinsopp). The translation renders “windows on high” (ASV/JPS) and does NOT import the Flood entry’s lens-tilted “floodgates of the skies”: the construct differs (mimmārôm “from on high,” not haš-šāmayim “of the skies”), the rendering differs, and so the central arubot-ha-shamayim entry is deliberately not extended to this verse (the Flood link is documented in the overlay arubot-mimarom-windows-on-high-isaiah-24 and here, not asserted in the line).

The earth’s undoing, in triple intensive. Verse 19 stacks three infinitive-absolute intensives — rōʿāh hiṯrōʿăʿāh … pôr hiṯpôrᵉrāh … môṭ hiṯmôṭāṭāh (“utterly shattered … utterly split … utterly shaken”) — the same emphatic construction as v3, governed by the central harbah-arbeh-doubled-infinitive-intensive entry (extended to ISA-24:19–20 by orchestrator diff). The climax in v20 — the earth reeling “like a drunkard,” swaying “like a night-hut,” its transgression (pešaʿ) heavy upon it so that it “falls, and will not rise again” — reads the cosmic collapse as the weight of accumulated guilt (Kaiser; Wildberger).

TOP lexical-lens site: the host of the height, judged. “In that day YHWH will bring punishment (yip̄qōḏ) upon the host of the height on high (ṣᵉḇāʾ ham-mārôm bam-mārôm), and upon the kings of the ground upon the ground (malḵê hā-ʾăḏāmāh ʿal-hā-ʾăḏāmāh).” The verse pairs a heavenly object of judgment with an earthly one, in a pointed mārôm ↔ ʾăḏāmāh (“height” ↔ “ground”) antithesis.

ṣᵉḇāʾ ham-mārôm, “the host of the height/heaven on high,” is a heavenly host that YHWH judges — grammatically and referentially DISTINCT from the divine title YHWH ṣᵉḇāʾôṯ “YHWH of hosts” of v23 (there YHWH commands the hosts; here a ṣᵉḇāʾ is punished). The translation renders the plain “the host of the height on high” (ASV “the host of the high ones”; JPS “the host of the high heaven”) and commits to no identification. Beyond the line the referent is open and much-discussed, and these readings are set out as hedged, apparatus-only options: (a) rebellious/disloyal heavenly beings — members of the divine council judged by their head (Mullen, The Divine Council in Canaanite and Early Hebrew Literature, HSM 24, 1980; F. M. Cross, Canaanite Myth and Hebrew Epic, 1973); (b) the astral host — sun, moon, and stars worshipped as powers, which chimes with the disgraced moon and sun of v23; (c) the angelic patron-princes of the nations set over the earthly kings (cf. Deut 32:8 LXX; Dan 10). The later Second-Temple tradition read such a heavenly host bound and imprisoned (1 Enoch 18:13–16; 21:1–10, the prison of the stars and the host of heaven — the central fallen-stars-prison-1-enoch-18-21 entry), and v22 continues with exactly that imprisonment; the resonance is noted but the identification is inferred and is NOT imposed on the text, and that central entry is deliberately not extended to ISA-24:21/22 (overlay tzeva-hamarom-host-of-height-isaiah-24). The paqad wordplay — yip̄qōḏ “punish” here, yippāqēḏû “be punished/visited” in v22 — frames the two-verse unit.

Gathered, shut up, and visited after many days. The judged are “gathered as prisoners into a pit (bôr),” “shut up in a dungeon (masgēr),” and “after many days yippāqēḏû.” bôr is the pit/cistern used as a prison (cf. Gen 37:24; Jer 38:6), with an underworld/Sheol resonance the imprisonment-of-cosmic-rebels tradition later develops (1 Enoch 18–21; the central fallen-stars-prison-1-enoch-18-21 entry). yippāqēḏû (Niphal of pqd) closes the paqad inclusio begun in v21 and is genuinely ambiguous: “they shall be punished” (ASV/JPS — the judgment continued) or, neutrally, “they shall be visited / mustered / attended to,” leaving open whether for punishment or for eventual release. The translation reads “they shall be punished” and flags the visitation-ambiguity (Wildberger; Blenkinsopp; overlay yippaqedu-pqd-visitation-imprisonment-isaiah-24).

YHWH reigns, and the luminaries are put to shame. The chapter closes with the moon “abashed” (ḥpr) and the sun “ashamed” (bwš) — lᵉḇānāh “the white one” and ḥammāh “the hot one,” the poetic names for moon and sun, rendered plainly. This is not the darkening-portent of the Day-of-YHWH tradition (Joel 2:10; cf. the central cosmic-signs cluster) but the luminaries outshone: they are shamed because YHWH’s own radiance eclipses them (cf. Isa 60:19–20), the reason given in the kî-clause.

mālaḵ YHWH ṣᵉḇāʾôṯ — “YHWH of hosts reigns” on Mount Zion — uses the divine title governed by the overlay yhwh-tzevaot-hosts-isaiah (its appliesTo extended to ISA-24:23), distinct from the judged ṣᵉḇāʾ ham-mārôm of v21. The closing wᵉneḡeḏ zᵉqēnāyw kāḇôḏ, “and before his elders is glory,” ends on a bare, absolute kāḇôḏ — not the construct kᵉḇôḏ-YHWH of Ezekiel nor the suffixed kᵉḇôḏô of Isa 6:3, and so governed by neither of those entries. The translation keeps the standard “glory”; the weighty, radiant physical-presence register of kāḇôḏ (the kāḇôḏ-tradition of Isa 6:3 and Ezek 1:28) — glory manifest “before his elders,” an enthroned theophany with its attendant assembly — is the canon-salient point and is carried here, not surfaced by re-rendering (overlay kavod-labanah-chammah-isaiah-24).

The chapter turns from the judgment-oracle of chapter 24 to a first-person thanksgiving hymn. YHWH ʾĕlōhay ʾattāh 'YHWH, you are my God' opens the praise; the suffixed ʾĕlōhay ('my God', 1cs) is rendered plainly, and the corpus 'the Elohim' convention is deliberately not applied to a vocative doxology, exactly as at Isa 53:4 (mukkēh ʾĕlōhîm 'struck down by God') and 24:15 (ʾĕlōhê yiśrāʾēl 'the God of Israel'): the entry that renders 'the Elohim' is scoped to the Genesis-1 narrative frame and cannot govern a first-person cry of praise (Blenkinsopp, Isaiah 1-39, AB 19, 2000).

ʿāśîṯā peleʾ 'you have done a wonder' (peleʾ, the extraordinary deed) is glossed 'wonder'; ʿēṣôṯ mē-rāḥôq is rendered 'plans formed long ago' — ʿēṣāh 'counsel, plan' with mē-rāḥôq read temporally ('from of old', JPS 'counsels of old'), a purpose settled in advance and now carried out (Wildberger, Isaiah 13-27, Continental, 1997). The closing ʾĕmûnāh ʾōmen piles two nouns from the same root ʾmn 'be firm, reliable'; ASV/JPS render 'faithfulness and truth', which the translation keeps, noting that the pair is an intensified single notion ('sure, steadfast faithfulness', a hendiadys) rather than two distinct attributes.

zᵉmîr ʿārîṣîm yaʿăneh is a double crux. zᵉmîr may be 'song' (√zmr I, so ASV/JPS 'the song of the terrible ones') or 'pruning / a lopped branch' (√zmr II, a vine-shoot cut down); yaʿăneh may be 'is brought low / humbled' (√ʿnh II) or 'is answered / responds' (√ʿnh I). The translation follows the majority 'the song of the ruthless is brought low' (ASV/JPS) — the tyrants' exultant song subdued as the heat is subdued by a cloud's shadow in the same verse's simile — with the botanical and 'answered/silenced' readings recorded as alternatives (Wildberger; Kaiser, Isaiah 13-39, OTL, 1974). zārîm 'strangers, foreigners' (also 25:2) is rendered 'strangers'.

The hymn opens onto the chapter's canon-salient image: wᵉʿāśāh YHWH ṣᵉḇāʾôṯ lᵉ-ḵol-hā-ʿammîm bā-hār ha-zzeh mišteh — 'YHWH of hosts will make for all the peoples on this mountain a feast'. The divine title YHWH ṣᵉḇāʾôṯ is rendered 'YHWH of hosts' (the overlay entry, its appliesTo extended from Isa 6 to 25:6); the heavenly-host / divine-assembly reading of ṣᵉḇāʾôṯ is confined to that entry's apparatus and not surfaced in the line.

mišteh šᵉmānîm mišteh šᵉmārîm 'a feast of fat things, a feast of wines on the lees' names a lavish banquet — šᵉmānîm rich, fatty foods; šᵉmārîm wine matured on its lees; mᵉmuḥāyim 'full of marrow' and mᵉzuqqāqîm 'well refined'. The point is the inclusive scope: the feast is spread 'for all the peoples' (lᵉ-ḵol-hā-ʿammîm) on 'this mountain', that is, Zion — an eschatological banquet for the nations (Wildberger; Blenkinsopp). The messianic-banquet reception this image feeds — the eschatological feast with Abraham of Matt 8:11, the great-banquet parable of Luke 14:15-24, the marriage-supper of Rev 19:9 — is left to the apparatus as a hedged comparative datum and not committed in the text.

û-ḇillaʿ bā-hār ha-zzeh pᵉnê-hal-lôṭ hal-lôṭ ʿal-kol-hā-ʿammîm — on the same mountain YHWH 'will swallow up (billaʿ, √blʿ) the face of the shroud that shrouds all the peoples'. The verb billaʿ 'swallow up' here means destroy / do away with, and it is the very verb that opens 25:8 (of death) — a deliberate catchword binding the banquet to the abolition of death. The doubled hal-lôṭ hal-lôṭ (with paseq) is from lwṭ 'to wrap, envelop'; it may be a funerary shroud, a mourning-veil, or a blinding covering. The parallel ha-massēḵāh han-nᵉsûḵāh 'the veil that is spread / woven over all the nations' confirms the covering-image. The translation keeps the standard 'shroud … veil' (ASV/JPS), with the funerary reading — the covering as a death-shroud over the nations, tying 25:7 to the death-swallowing of 25:8 — noted as the reading the context favours (Wildberger; Blenkinsopp).

billaʿ ham-māweṯ lā-neṣaḥ 'he has swallowed up death forever' is the chapter's load-bearing line and a major cross-corpus site. The verb is again billaʿ 'swallow up' (from 25:7); its subject is YHWH, and ham-māweṯ 'death' is its object. The translation renders māweṯ as the abstract 'death' (lower-case), not a personified 'Death': the Northwest-Semitic death-god substrate is real but is kept in the apparatus, not imposed on the line (ASV 'He hath swallowed up death for ever'; JPS same).

The Ugaritic Môtu reversal (hedged). Hebrew māweṯ shares the proto-Semitic root √mwt with Ugaritic mt (vocalized Môtu), the Death-god of the Baal Cycle whose standing iconography is a vast throat that swallows gods — in KTU 1.5 Môtu 'the Swallower' swallows Baʿlu himself. Here the verb blʿ 'swallow' is turned against Death: the Swallower is himself swallowed. The reversal of the Ugaritic image is widely noted (J. Day, God's Conflict with the Dragon and the Sea, 1985; the central mot-mavet-death-personified entry, whose appliesTo is extended to this verse). This is a comparative-history resonance, stated as such and not resolved into the line.

Reception and the lā-neṣaḥ variant (hedged). lā-neṣaḥ is rendered 'forever' (the standard MT sense 'in perpetuity'). The Old Greek instead inverts the clause — katépien ho thánatos ischýsas 'Death, having prevailed, swallowed up' (Death as subject) — while 1 Cor 15:54 cites the verse in the MT's direction but reads neṣaḥ as 'victory': katepóthē ho thánatos eis nîkos 'Death is swallowed up in victory' (the later-Hebrew/Aramaic sense of nṣḥ). The next clause, û-māḥāh … dimʿāh mē-ʿal kol-pānîm 'he will wipe away tears from all faces', is echoed at Rev 21:4 ('he will wipe away every tear … death shall be no more'). These are versional and reception data, disclosed for audit and not read back into the MT line (Blenkinsopp, Isaiah 1-39, AB 19, 2000).

Divine name. ʾăḏōnāy YHWH is the compound name (ʾăḏōnāy + the Tetragrammaton pointed with ʾĕlōhîm-vowels), rendered 'the Lord YHWH' — the corpus compound-name convention ('Lord YHWH', per the Ezekiel/Genesis adonai-yhwh entries), kept distinct from the standalone ʾăḏōnāy 'the Lord' of Isa 6.

The answering acclamation hinnēh ʾĕlōhênû zeh 'Behold, this is our God' renders the suffixed ʾĕlōhênû ('our God', 1cp) plainly; as at 25:1, the 'the Elohim' convention is deliberately not applied to a confessional cry of recognition and joy (the Isa 53:4 / 24:15 precedent). qiwwînû lô 'we waited for him' (√qwh 'wait, hope') and bî-šûʿāṯô 'in his salvation' (√yšʿ) are rendered at the standard surface (ASV/JPS).

The oracle turns to judgment on Moab. wᵉnāḏôš môʾāḇ taḥtāyw 'Moab will be trodden down in its place' pictures Moab threshed like straw. The closing phrase carries a ketiv/qere: the consonantal text (ketiv) reads bᵉmê בְּמֵי 'in the water(s) of', the Masoretic reading-tradition (qere) reads bᵉmô בְּמוֹ 'in / within'; per the qere-first rule the line translates the qere, 'in a dung-pit' (madmēnāh, √dmn 'dung'; JPS 'dunghill'), with the ketiv 'in the water of a dunghill' (straw trodden into liquid manure, so ASV) recorded. madmēnāh may also pun on the Moabite place-name Madmēn (Jer 48:2). yaḏ-YHWH 'the hand of YHWH' is rendered plainly (the central yad-yhwh entry is Ezekiel-scoped and not applied).

Moab 'spreads out his hands (û-p̄ēraś yāḏāyw) within it, as a swimmer (haś-śōḥeh) spreads to swim'. The subject of wᵉhišpîl 'he will bring down' is YHWH, carried over from 25:10, read actively; JPS reads the passive 'his pride shall be brought down'. ʾārᵉbôṯ yāḏāyw is a crux: ASV/JPS 'the cunning of his hands' (√ʾrb 'lie in wait, be crafty'), against 'the strokes / spreadings of his hands' (the swimmer's motions); the translation follows 'the cunning of his hands' (Wildberger; Kaiser).

The demolition closes with an apostrophe to Moab's stronghold: ûmiḇṣar miśgaḇ ḥômōṯeḵā 'the high fortress of your walls' — the 2ms 'your' addressed directly to Moab — brought down by three piled verbs: hēšaḥ 'bowed down' (√šwḥ/šḥḥ), hišpîl 'laid low', higgîaʿ lā-ʾāreṣ 'brought to the ground', ending ʿaḏ-ʿāp̄ār 'to the dust'. Standard rendering (ASV/JPS); no lens.

Yᵉšûʿāh 'salvation' is the crux of the opening song. The clause yᵉšûʿāh yāšîṯ ḥômôṯ wā-ḥēl can set salvation AS the city's walls and rampart (ASV 'salvation will he appoint for walls and bulwarks') or appoint walls and rampart FOR salvation (JPS 1917); this translation takes the former — YHWH's salvation is itself the fortification, ḥēl being the outer wall or fore-rampart (BDB, HALOT). The passive yûšar (Hophal of šîr) 'shall be sung' marks an eschatological hymn 'in that day', and the 'strong city' (ʿîr ʿoz-lānû) of salvation stands against the 'lofty city' brought down to the dust at 26:5 (Wildberger, Isaiah 13–27, 1997; Blenkinsopp, Isaiah 1–39, AB 19, 2000).

The doubled šālôm ׀ šālôm is preserved literally on the surface as 'peace, peace' rather than collapsed to the intensive idiom 'perfect peace' (KJV/ASV): the reduplication is an emphatic superlative-by-doubling, and keeping it lets the reader see the Hebrew's own emphasis. Yēṣer sāmûḵ is 'a steadfast / firmly-supported mind or purpose' — yēṣer the noun of formation and inclination (the same word as the yēṣer of Gen 6:5), sāmûḵ 'supported, sustained' — which YHWH keeps (tiṣṣōr) in that peace because it trusts in him (Wildberger; BDB, HALOT s.v. yēṣer).

The short divine name Yāh (יָהּ, the shortened Tetragrammaton, as in hallĕlû-Yāh) is transliterated 'Yah' and kept distinct from the corpus 'YHWH' house-style for the full name, so the source's juxtaposition bᵉ-Yāh YHWH is visible rather than folded into 'the LORD is GOD' (JPS) or a repeated 'Jehovah, even Jehovah' (ASV). Ṣûr ʿôlāmîm 'an everlasting rock' deploys ṣûr 'rock' as a divine epithet (Deut 32:4, 18, 31; Isa 30:29; 2 Sam 22:2–3), rendered lower-case rather than capitalized as a fixed title; ʿôlāmîm (plural of ʿôlām 'far-distant time, age') is durational 'everlasting', not metaphysical eternity (Wildberger; Blenkinsopp).

Yāšār 'upright' is read as a vocative divine epithet — 'O Upright One, you make smooth the path of the righteous' (JPS 'Thou Most Upright') — rather than adjectivally of the path ('the way of the righteous is straight', ASV); the vocative suits the second-person address to YHWH running through 26:8–12, and no divine-identity lens is committed. Tᵉp̄allēs (Piel of pālas 'weigh out, make level') is 'you make level / smooth' — the path made straight and passable for the righteous (Wildberger; Kaiser, Isaiah 13–39, OTL, 1974).

Two decisions. ʾĕlōhênû 'our God' (suffixed ʾĕlōhîm) is rendered plainly; the corpus 'the Elohim' convention (central elohim-as-translation, scoped to Genesis 1) is deliberately NOT applied to a suffixed first-person confession, consistent with the non-applications at Isa 53:4, 24:15, and 25:1/25:9. ʾăḏōnîm zûlāṯeḵā 'other lords besides you' is the plural of ʾāḏôn 'lord, master' naming the human/foreign overlords who have ruled Judah (Assyria, Babylon) — NOT the divine title ʾăḏōnāy 'the Lord' — so no divine referent is imported; bᵉʿālûnû (bʿl 'rule, be master over') is 'have ruled over us' (Wildberger; Blenkinsopp).

Rᵉp̄āʾîm here means 'the shades' — the powerless dead in Sheol (as at Isa 14:9; Ps 88:11; Prov 2:18; Job 26:5), NOT the giant-people Rephaim of Gen 14:5 / Deut 2–3 or the Ugaritic rpʾum (the divinized heroic dead). The lexeme is homonymous with, and etymologically entangled with, that giant-warrior sense — BDB and HALOT track them as one lemma — but the two form 'a separate philological track' (so the central refaim-giant-peoples entry's own rationale, which names 26:14 and 26:19 as the shades-sense); accordingly neither that entry nor the central nephilim-giants-1-enoch-7-gen-6-4-cross-corpus entry is applied here, since the dead 'other lords' of 26:13 are the ordinary dead, not warriors. 'The dead do not live, the shades do not rise' declares those overlords impotent — the deliberate inverse of 26:19, where YHWH's own dead DO rise and the earth gives up its shades alive (Wildberger; L'Heureux, Rank Among the Canaanite Gods, 1979; J. Day, God's Conflict with the Dragon and the Sea, 1985).

The colon ṣāqûn laḥaš is textually hard. Ṣāqûn is an anomalous form best taken from ṣûq 'pour out, be in straits' ('they poured out'), and laḥaš is 'a whisper' — used of a hushed prayer or of a magical charm/incantation (Isa 3:3; Eccl 10:11; Ps 58:6). This translation reads 'they poured out a whispered prayer' (JPS 'silently they poured out a prayer'), the hushed-petition sense fitting Judah seeking YHWH 'in distress' under his chastening (mûsārḵā), against the 'charm/incantation' and 'cried out in a whisper' construals (Wildberger; Blenkinsopp; BDB, HALOT s.v. laḥaš).

The childbirth simile of 26:17 turns to failure: the people 'gave birth to wind' (yāladnû rûaḥ) — labor that produced nothing. Yᵉšûʿōṯ bal-naʿăśeh ʾereṣ is 'we have wrought no deliverance(s) in the earth' (yᵉšûʿōṯ plural). The obscure û-ḇal yippᵉlû yōšᵉḇê ṯēḇēl turns on yippᵉlû (nāp̄al 'fall'): either 'the inhabitants of the world have not fallen / been overthrown' (ASV) or, continuing the birth-metaphor, 'have not come to birth' (JPS); this translation takes the childbirth reading, consistent with the imagery of 26:17–19 and anticipating tappîl 'give birth' at 26:19, with the 'fall/overthrow' alternative noted (Wildberger; Kaiser, Isaiah 13–39, OTL).

Yiḥyû mēṯeḵā … yᵉqûmûn 'Your dead shall live; my corpses shall rise' is the chapter's marquee line and the clearest resurrection-language in Isaiah. The Masoretic surface is rendered plainly — 'your dead shall live' is grammatically explicit — while whether the raising is literal individual bodily resurrection or a national/corporate-restoration metaphor (the dead nation revived, as in Ezekiel's dry bones) is left open, not pre-resolved. The bodily-resurrection reading and the cross-corpus link belong to the interpretive layer: Dan 12:2 (the Hebrew Bible's first unambiguous individual-eschatological resurrection) and Ezek 37 (the corporate dry-bones resurrection) are the companion witnesses, and the central resurrection-dan-12-2-3-foundational-cross-corpus entry — whose own source-note names Isa 26:19 'the prophetic-resurrection fountainhead' — is extended to govern this verse (its lens-discipline keeps the corporate/individual question open).

Nᵉḇēlāṯî is formally 1cs singular 'my corpse' (nᵉḇēlāh 'carcass, corpse') but pairs with the 3mp yᵉqûmûn 'they shall arise'; it is rendered collectively 'my corpses shall rise', retaining the Masoretic text against the widely-proposed emendation nᵉḇēlāṯām 'their bodies' (NRSV/RSV).

Ṭal ʾôrōṯ 'a dew of lights' reads ʾôrōṯ as the plural of ʾôrāh 'light' (a luminous, life-giving dew that quickens those who 'dwell in the dust'), against the homograph ʾôrōṯ 'herbs, mallows' (a dew that revives vegetation, ASV/KJV 'dew of herbs'); the 'lights' reading is kept and the 'herbs' reading disclosed.

Rᵉp̄āʾîm returns from 26:14, again the 'shades' — but here the earth gives them up ALIVE, the exact inverse of 26:14 where 'the shades do not rise'; still the underworld dead, NOT the giant-Rephaim. Tappîl (Hiphil of nāp̄al) is rendered 'the earth will give birth to the shades', tying the verb to the childbirth-imagery of 26:17–18 (so NRSV 'give birth'; JPS 'bring to life'), with the ASV/KJV 'cast forth / cast out' (the earth or Sheol disgorging its dead) as the equal alternative (J. Day, God's Conflict with the Dragon and the Sea, 1985; J. D. Levenson, Resurrection and the Restoration of Israel, 2006; Wildberger, Isaiah 13–27; Blenkinsopp, Isaiah 1–39).

Two ketiv/qere pairs. The consonantal ketiv dᵉlāṯeḵā 'your doors' (plural) is read by the qere as dᵉlāṯḵā 'your door' (singular); the ketiv yaʿăḇôr is read by the qere as yaʿăḇār 'passes'. Per the project's structural-preservation convention the qere is translated ('shut your door behind you … until the indignation passes over') and the ketiv is preserved in the source and noted; the differences are orthographic/morphological and non-substantive. ḥăḇî 'hide yourself' and zaʿam 'indignation, wrath' frame the summons to the people to shelter 'for a little moment' until YHWH's wrath — the wrath that falls on the earth's inhabitants in 26:21 — has passed over (cf. the Passover sheltering, Exod 12:22–23; Wildberger; Blenkinsopp).

The theophany: YHWH yōṣēʾ mimmᵉqômô 'YHWH is coming out from his place' — the deity leaving his dwelling to execute judgment (cf. Mic 1:3). ʿăwōn 'iniquity' is rendered per the central avon-iniquity-cross-corpus-keyword entry (appliesTo extended to ISA-26:21), the corpus's principal sin-vocabulary lexeme; pqd 'visit / punish'. wᵉgillᵉṯāh hā-ʾāreṣ ʾeṯ-dāmehā 'the earth shall disclose her blood(s)' pictures the ground uncovering the shed blood it had absorbed so that the slain (hărûgehā) are no longer hidden and the bloodguilt can be avenged (cf. Gen 4:10–11, the ground opening its mouth for Abel's blood; Job 16:18). Rendered plainly, no lens (Wildberger, Isaiah 13–27; Blenkinsopp, Isaiah 1–39).

Liwyāṯān (Leviathan) at 27:1 is the Hebrew Bible's clearest surviving chaoskampf, and the epithet-pair the verse hangs on it is among the most precise Ugaritic–Hebrew matches in the combat-myth corpus. YHWH, with his 'hard and great and strong sword' (ḥereḇ qāšāh gᵉḏôlāh ḥăzāqāh), 'punishes' (yip̄qōḏ, the pqd verb that returns protectively at 27:3) liwyāṯān nāḥāš bāriaḥ — 'Leviathan the fleeing serpent' — and liwyāṯān nāḥāš ʿăqallāṯôn — 'Leviathan the twisting serpent' — and slays hat-tannîn ʾăšer bay-yām, 'the dragon that is in the sea.' The translation keeps the plain surface: proper-noun 'Leviathan' (central leviathan), bāriaḥ 'fleeing' (over ASV 'swift', JPS 'slant'), ʿăqallāṯôn 'twisting' (over ASV 'crooked', JPS 'tortuous'), and tannîn 'the dragon' (the KJV/JPS dragon-register, over ASV 'monster'; central taninim).

The Ugaritic Baal Cycle names the same monster with the same two epithets. In ʿAnatu's victory-boast (KTU 1.3 III 40–42) and in Môtu's speech (KTU 1.5 I 1–3), Baʿlu's slain adversary is ltn (Lôtanu / Litan) — bṯn brḥ 'fleeing serpent' and bṯn ʿqltn 'twisting serpent', šlyṭ d šbʿt rʾašm 'tyrant with seven heads.' Hebrew nāḥāš bāriaḥ / nāḥāš ʿăqallāṯôn is the word-for-word cognate of Ugaritic bṯn brḥ / bṯn ʿqltn, and liwyāṯān is the cognate of ltn (both from proto-Semitic √lwy 'coil, wind'). J. Day (God's Conflict with the Dragon and the Sea, 1985) makes this the central case that the Hebrew Bible inherited a Northwest-Semitic combat-myth; D. Tsumura (Creation and Destruction, 2005) is the sober counter-voice, reading the Hebrew attestations as rhetorical-poetic redeployment of inherited imagery rather than a live cosmogonic combat. The translation commits to neither: the epithet-parallel is lexical fact, and the surface English carries no comparative freight (the cross-corpus governance is recorded in the central lotanu-leviathan-… and chaoskampf-… cluster entries, whose appliesTo now include this verse; the merely-locative bay-yām 'in the sea' here is the dragon's habitat, so the deified-Sea yamm-… entry is deliberately not applied).

Wheel of Heaven reading (interpretive layer, beyond the text). Isaiah's eschatological sword falls on the same seven-headed serpent that Ugarit (Lôtanu), Babylon (Tiamat in Enūma Eliš), and the wider Indo-European dragon-cycles independently remember. Through the project's lens these convergent combat-myths are read as one node in a cross-cultural Theomachy-convergence — mythic compressions of remembered conflict among the Elohim. This synthesis goes beyond both the verse and the comparative philology; it is offered as the project's interpretive layer, not as the meaning of the Hebrew, and is flagged for human sign-off in the editor report.

The vineyard-song of 27:2–6 is the deliberate redemptive inversion of the Song of the Vineyard at Isa 5:1–7. There YHWH's vineyard (Israel/Judah) yielded wild grapes and was stripped of its hedge, trampled, and laid waste; here YHWH is its keeper who waters it 'every moment' (27:3), disclaims wrath toward it (27:4), and it takes root and fills the world with fruit (27:6). The same kerem lexeme opens both songs (central kerem-vineyard, Gen-9:20-scoped, not extended here). The opening colon carries a text-critical variant: MT kerem ḥemed 'a pleasant vineyard / vineyard of delight' against 1QIsaᵃ (and the tradition behind ASV) kerem ḥemer 'a vineyard of wine' — a near-homograph ד/ר confusion. The translation retains MT ḥemed and discloses the scroll's ḥemer for audit; ʿannû-lāh is the antiphonal 'sing of it,' the feminine suffix pointing to the vineyard (Wildberger, Isaiah 13–27, 1997; Blenkinsopp, AB 19, 2000).

Verses 7–8 turn on measured judgment. The double rhetorical question of 27:7 — 'Has he struck him as he struck the one who struck him? Or was he slain as his slain were slain?' — leaves its pronouns unnamed, but the sense the commentators draw is that YHWH did not strike Israel with the severity he visited on Israel's oppressors (Wildberger; Kaiser, Isaiah 13–39, OTL). Verse 8 is among the hardest in the chapter: bᵉsaʾsᵉʾāh is a hapax, taken here from sᵉʾāh 'measure' ('in measure'; JPS 'In full measure') rather than from a root 'drive away'; bᵉšallᵉḥāh 'by sending her away' carries a possible divorce/exile register; and the text shifts from second person ('you contend with her') to third ('he removed her') mid-verse — a shift the translation preserves rather than normalizing. The 'harsh blast in the day of the east wind' (rûaḥ qāšāh … yôm qāḏîm) is the scorching sirocco.

The measured judgment issues in atonement and cult-purge. Yᵉḵuppar ʿăwōn-yaʿăqōḇ 'the iniquity of Jacob shall be atoned for' pairs the kpr expiation-verb (overlay kupar-atonement-isaiah, now covering 27:9) with ʿăwōn 'iniquity' (central avon-iniquity-cross-corpus-keyword, extended to 27:9). The condition of that atonement is the demolition of the cult: the altar-stones ground 'like crushed chalkstones,' so that 'no ʾăšērîm or ḥammānîm shall stand.' The ʾăšērîm are the wooden poles of the goddess Asherah — the Hebrew reflex of Ugaritic ʾAṯiratu, ʾIlu's consort and mother of the gods (central athirat-asherah-…; deliberately not applied here, since 27:9 names the cult-object, not the goddess). Ḥammānîm are rendered 'sun-pillars' (NJPS 'incense-altars') (Wildberger; Blenkinsopp, AB 19).

The chapter closes on ingathering. YHWH 'beats off the grain' (yaḥbōṭ, the verb for beating olives or grain from the stalk; the object 'grain' supplied, as JPS supplies '[His fruit]') 'from the flowing stream of the River' — the Euphrates — 'to the Wadi of Egypt' (Wadi el-ʿArish), the idealized north-south boundaries of the land, and the exiles are 'gathered up one by one' (tᵉluqqᵉṭû lᵉ-ʾaḥaḏ ʾeḥāḏ). Šibbōleṯ puns: 'flowing stream' here, but also 'ear of grain,' chiming with the threshing-verb (Wildberger; Blenkinsopp, AB 19).

Yittāqaʿ bᵉ-šôp̄ār gāḏôl — 'a great trumpet shall be blown' — summons 'those perishing (hā-ʾōḇᵉḏîm) in the land of Assyria and those driven out (han-niddāḥîm) in the land of Egypt' to bow down to YHWH on the holy mountain in Jerusalem: the eschatological ingathering of the lost and the outcast. Šôp̄ār is the ram's-horn (JPS 'horn'; the transliteration 'shofar' marks the cultic register). Hištaḥăwû 'they shall bow down' is here cultic worship of the deity — a different register from the human-homage 'made obeisance' of the central hishtachavah-bow-down-obeisance-worship entry (Genesis-scoped, deliberately not applied). The great-trumpet ingathering feeds the later gathering-of-the-dispersed tradition (cf. Matt 24:31; Wildberger; Blenkinsopp, AB 19).

The fourth Servant Song proper opens not here but at 52:13–15, whose rām wᵉniśśāʾ “exalted and lifted up” — said of the servant — deliberately echoes the throne “high and lifted up” of the inaugural vision (Isa 6:1; see the overlay entry throne-ram-venissa-isaiah). Chapter 53 is the body of that song, spoken by a “we” who report what they once thought and now confess. This source file segments at 53:1; the 52:13 head is noted here rather than re-segmented.

mî heʾĕmîn li-šmuʿāṯēnû “Who has believed what we have heard?” and ûzᵉrôaʿ YHWH “the arm of YHWH” open the confession. The “arm of YHWH” is the standard anthropomorphic idiom for divine power in action (cf. the Exodus “outstretched arm,” Deut 26:8), rendered literally; the point that the servant is where that power is “laid bare” (niḡlāṯāh) is the song’s opening paradox (Blenkinsopp, Isaiah 40–55, AB 19A, 2002). The verse is taken up in the New Testament reception (John 12:38; Rom 10:16), noted as part of the text’s later history, not its sense.

lᵉpānāyw “before him” is left ambiguous, as in the Hebrew: the servant grew up either before YHWH (in his sight) or before the beholders, and the translation does not resolve it. The plant-imagery — yônēq “sapling / sucker” and šōreš “root” out of ʾereṣ ṣiyyāh “parched ground” — pictures an unpromising, unregarded growth: no tōʾar “form” and no hāḏār “splendor” to draw the eye (Goldingay & Payne, ICC Isaiah 40–55).

wa-ḥăḏal ʾîšîm is a crux: ḥāḏēl “ceasing, lacking” with ʾîšîm “men” can mean “forsaken/rejected by men,” “shunned by men,” or “lacking in men (esteem).” The translation reads “shunned by men,” with the “forsaken/rejected of men” of ASV/JPS an equivalent.

The servant is ʾîš maḵʾōḇôṯ wîḏûaʿ ḥŏlî “a man of pains and acquainted with sickness.” The disease-vocabulary (maḵʾōḇôṯ “pains,” ḥŏlî “sickness”) runs on into v 4 and is rendered plainly as physical affliction; whether literal illness or a metaphor for suffering is a matter of the song’s imagery, not the lexicon (Blenkinsopp; North, The Suffering Servant in Deutero-Isaiah). The figure is unnamed throughout — the governing question of the servant’s identity is treated at 53:11.

ʾāḵēn ḥŏlāyēnû hûʾ nāśāʾ “Surely it was our sicknesses that he bore” turns the confession: the “we” now see that the servant carried what was theirs. nāśāʾ “bore” and sāḇal “carried” are the vicarious-bearing verbs that recur at 53:11–12 (see the overlay entry nasa-sabal-vicarious-bearing-isaiah); the substitutionary sense — one bearing what belongs to others — is developed in the reception but is not overloaded onto the plain verbs here.

The verse’s second half reports a mistaken judgment: wa-ʾănaḥnû ḥăšaḇnuhû nāḡûaʿ mukkēh ʾĕlōhîm ûmᵉʿunneh “yet we ourselves accounted him stricken, struck down by God, and afflicted.” This is what the onlookers wrongly thought — that his suffering marked him as one God had punished — and 53:5 immediately corrects it (“but he was pierced because of our transgressions”).

Because the clause voices a misperception the text overturns, ʾĕlōhîm here is rendered “God” at the standard surface and the corpus convention “the Elohim” is deliberately not applied (see the overlay entry elohim-as-god-observers-53-4-isaiah): to read “struck down by the Elohim” would import a lens-claim onto the one line the poem stages precisely in order to reject it. mukkēh ʾĕlōhîm is best taken as a divine-passive / superlative-of-severity (“God-smitten,” a stricken man), a report of appearance rather than a datum about agency (Goldingay & Payne). The verse is later applied to Jesus’ healings at Matt 8:17, noted as reception.

wᵉhûʾ mᵉḥōlāl mippᵉšāʿēnû mᵉḏukkāʾ mēʿăwōnōṯênû “But he was pierced because of our transgressions, crushed because of our iniquities.” mᵉḥōlāl is a Pual of ḥll I “to pierce, bore through, fatally wound” (hence “pierced,” with ASV “wounded” an equivalent); a minority derives it from ḥll II “profane, defile,” which the translation declines (see the overlay entry mecholal-pierced-isaiah). The prepositional min (mippᵉšāʿēnû, mēʿăwōnōṯênû) is causal — “because of / on account of our transgressions and iniquities” — not agential; the servant suffers for the people’s wrongs, and the sin-pair pešaʿ / ʿāwōn is cross-corpus keyword vocabulary (see avon-iniquity-cross-corpus-keyword).

mûsar šᵉlômēnû ʿālāyw “the discipline that brought us peace was upon him,” and ûḇaḥăḇurāṯô nirpāʾ-lānû “by his wounds we were healed.” The vicarious-atonement reading these lines carry in later interpretation — the servant’s suffering as reparation for others — is the chapter’s most contested theological freight; per the house register it is set out as a reading, hedged, not asserted as the verse’s settled meaning (Blenkinsopp; Baltzer, Deutero-Isaiah, Hermeneia). The half-verse is quoted at 1 Pet 2:24 (“by his wounds you have been healed”).

kullānû kaṣṣōʾn tāʿînû “all of us have strayed like sheep” — the confessing “we” admit the fault was theirs. wa-YHWH hip̄gîaʿ bô ʾēṯ ʿăwōn kullānû “and YHWH has laid upon him the iniquity of us all”: the Hiphil of pāḡaʿ means “cause to fall/strike upon, make [something] meet [someone]” — YHWH makes the people’s iniquity converge on the servant (see the overlay entry paga-lay-on-intercede-isaiah). The same root closes the poem at 53:12 (yap̄gîaʿ “make intercession”), framing the servant’s role between the iniquity laid on him and the intercession he makes — a deliberate inclusio.

ʿāwōn “iniquity” (also 53:5, 53:11) is one of the three principal Hebrew sin-lexemes and is governed by the central keyword entry avon-iniquity-cross-corpus-keyword, whose own rationale names these verses; the standard “iniquity” is retained. The straying-sheep image is picked up at 1 Pet 2:25.

niggaś wᵉhûʾ naʿăneh “he was oppressed, and he was afflicted”: naʿăneh is read as a passive (Niphal of ʿnh, parallel to niggaś “oppressed”), with the reflexive “he humbled himself” of ASV/JPS an equivalent the translation does not take. The servant’s silence — wᵉlōʾ yip̄taḥ pîw “he would not open his mouth” — is doubled around two similes: kaśśeh laṭṭeḇaḥ yûḇāl “like a lamb led to the slaughter,” and ûḵᵉrāḥēl … neʾĕlāmāh “like a ewe fallen silent before her shearers.”

The sacrificial resonance of the lamb-simile is developed in the reception, not asserted here; this is the passage the Ethiopian official is reading (from the Old Greek) when Philip expounds it at Acts 8:32–33 — the New Testament’s most explicit application of the song to Jesus, noted as reception history (North).

A dense crux-verse. mēʿōṣer ûmimmišpāṭ luqqāḥ “by restraint and by judgment he was taken away”: ʿōṣer is coercion / detention / oppression and mišpāṭ a legal judgment, the min most likely instrumental (“through”); some read it privatively (“taken away from oppression,” i.e. released by death). wᵉʾeṯ-dôrô mî yᵉśôḥēaḥ “and as for his generation, who gave it a thought?” turns on śîaḥ “muse, consider, declare.”

kî niḡzar mēʾereṣ ḥayyîm “that he was cut off from the land of the living” states the servant’s death plainly (gzr “cut off, sever”; see the overlay entry nigzar-cut-off-isaiah) — the death the following verse then buries. mippešaʿ ʿammî neḡaʿ lāmô “stricken for the transgression of my people”: lāmô is formally plural (“to them”) but is widely read as a singular (“to him,” the servant), and the translation leaves the number unresolved, as the Hebrew does. The form bears on the identity question — a plural “to them” has been read as evidence for a corporate servant — and is flagged rather than decided (Goldingay & Payne; Blenkinsopp). The Acts 8 citation continues into this verse.

wayyittēn ʾeṯ-rᵉšāʿîm qiḇrô wᵉʾeṯ-ʿāšîr bᵉmōṯāyw “his grave was set with the wicked, and with a rich man in his death.” The impersonal wayyittēn (“one assigned”) is rendered as an English passive. ʿāšîr “a rich man” stands in parallel with rᵉšāʿîm “the wicked” — a dishonorable burial among the guilty; the translation keeps the Masoretic “rich,” though the awkward parallelism has prompted proposed emendations (e.g. to a synonym of “wicked”), which are declined.

bᵉmōṯāyw is formally a plural, “in his deaths,” rendered as a singular “in his death” (a plural of intensity or abstraction; see the overlay entry bemotayw-death-burial-isaiah); the Great Isaiah Scroll (1QIsaᵃ) reads instead bāmāṯô “his burial-mound / high place,” a variant noted for the reader’s audit. The servant’s innocence is asserted — lōʾ-ḥāmās ʿāśāh “he had done no violence,” lōʾ mirmāh bᵉp̄îw “no deceit in his mouth” — the latter quoted at 1 Pet 2:22.

wa-YHWH ḥāp̄ēṣ dakkᵉʾô “yet YHWH was pleased to crush him” — the poem’s hardest line, referring the servant’s suffering to YHWH’s own purpose. heḥĕlî is taken as a Hiphil of ḥlh “he made him sick” (continuing the disease-thread of 53:3–4).

ʾim-tāśîm ʾāšām nap̄šô “if his life is set down as a guilt-offering.” ʾāšām is the Levitical guilt- / reparation-offering (Lev 5–7), governed as a cross-corpus term by the central entry ashem-asham-guilt-bearing-vocabulary; here a human life (nep̄eš) is what is offered, and the subject of tāśîm is uncertain (“if you [YHWH] make…,” or “if his life is made…”). The translation uses an impersonal passive and does not resolve the subject (see the overlay entry asham-nefesh-guilt-offering-53-10-isaiah). The application of the cultic reparation-offering to a person is the interpretive core of the verse and is set out, hedged, in the reception rather than asserted in the line (Blenkinsopp; Baltzer).

yirʾeh zeraʿ yaʾărîḵ yāmîm “he shall see offspring, he shall prolong his days”: vindication beyond the death just described. zeraʿ “seed / offspring” resonates with the zeraʿ qōḏeš “holy seed” remnant of Isa 6:13 (overlay entry zera-qodesh-holy-seed-isaiah) — a surviving seed-line after catastrophe — though the phrase here carries no qōḏeš and the link is thematic, not lexical.

Two cruxes and the governing question of the song. (1) A major text-critical variant: the Masoretic mēʿămal nap̄šô yirʾeh yiśbāʿ “out of the toil of his soul he shall see; he shall be satisfied” has no object for “see,” and both Great Isaiah Scrolls (1QIsaᵃ, 1QIsaᵇ) together with the Old Greek read yirʾeh ʾôr “he shall see light” — an object that materially strengthens the vindication-after-death (resurrection) reading. The translation retains the Masoretic text and discloses the “light” variant here for the reader’s audit (see the overlay entry yireh-or-dss-lxx-variant-53-11-isaiah); the variant is adopted by several modern critical versions (Blenkinsopp; Goldingay & Payne).

(2) bᵉḏaʿtô yaṣdîq ṣaddîq ʿaḇdî lārabbîm — the word order permits “the righteous one, my servant, shall bring the many to righteousness,” or the attributive “my righteous servant shall justify the many” (ASV). The translation reads the former; yaṣdîq is the causative “make/declare righteous, justify,” and ʿăwōnōṯām “their iniquities” he “carries” (sāḇal, the bearing-verb of 53:4).

ʿaḇdî “my servant” — explicit here — is the figure who has run un-named through the whole song, and its referent is the chapter’s governing crux. The mainstream Jewish reading takes the servant as corporate Israel or a faithful remnant (grounded in Isa 49:3 “you are my servant, Israel,” and the medieval commentators). A second reading takes an individual — a suffering prophet, or Deutero-Isaiah himself (Duhm’s isolation of the four Servant Songs). The Christian reading takes the servant as an individual messiah who suffers vicariously, and this is the reading the New Testament develops in its reception of the song (Acts 8:32–35; 1 Pet 2:22–25). Some scholarship also notes a broader comparative resonance with the pattern of a righteous sufferer humiliated and then vindicated. The Hebrew names no referent, and the translation identifies none: per the house register these are set out as comparative and critical readings, all hedged, and no identification is imported into the text (see the overlay entry eved-servant-identity-isaiah; North surveys the history of interpretation).

lāḵēn ʾăḥalleq-lô ḇārabbîm “therefore I will give him a share among the many, and with the ʿăṣûmîm “the mighty” he shall divide spoil” — a victor’s reward, whose exact scope (“a portion among the many/great” vs “the many as his portion”) is debated (Goldingay & Payne). taḥaṯ ʾăšer “because / in return for the fact that” is the substitution-and-recompense formula governed by the central entry tachat-substitution-formula, whose rationale already reaches to Isaiah 53.

The grounds follow: heʿĕrāh lammāweṯ nap̄šô “he poured out his life to death,” wᵉʾeṯ-pōšᵉʿîm nimnāh “and was numbered with transgressors” (quoted at Luke 22:37), wᵉhûʾ ḥēṭʾ-rabbîm nāśāʾ “yet he himself bore the sin of many” (nāśāʾ, the bearing-verb of 53:4), wᵉlappōšᵉʿîm yap̄gîaʿ “and made intercession for the transgressors.” This last is the Hiphil of pāḡaʿ that opened the poem’s central movement at 53:6 (“laid on him the iniquity”): the root that made iniquity strike the servant now has him interposing for the guilty — the closing term of the inclusio (see paga-lay-on-intercede-isaiah).