Isaiah 37:25-27

New English Translation

Footnotes

1. Isaiah 37:25 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.
2. Isaiah 37:26 tn Having quoted the Assyrian king’s arrogant words in vv. 23-24, the Lord now speaks to the king.
3. Isaiah 37:26 tn Heb “Have you not heard?” The rhetorical question expresses the Lord’s amazement that anyone might be ignorant of what he is about to say.
4. Isaiah 37:26 tn Heb “formed” (so KJV, ASV).
5. Isaiah 37:26 tn Heb “and it is to cause to crash into heaps of ruins fortified cities.” The subject of the third feminine singular verb תְהִי (t^ehi) is the implied plan, referred to in the preceding lines with third feminine singular pronominal suffixes.
6. Isaiah 37:27 tn Heb “short of hand”; KJV, ASV “of small power”; NASB “short of strength.”
7. Isaiah 37:27 tn Heb “they are plants in the field and green vegetation.” The metaphor emphasizes how short-lived these seemingly powerful cities really were. See Ps 90:5-6; Isa 40:6-8, 24.
8. Isaiah 37:27 tn Heb “[they are] grass on the rooftops.” See the preceding note.
9. Isaiah 37:27 tc The Hebrew text has “scorched before the standing grain” (perhaps meaning “before it reaches maturity”), but it is preferable to emend קָמָה (qamah, “standing grain”) to קָדִים (qadim, “east wind”) with the support of 1Q Isa^a; cf. J. N. Oswalt, Isaiah (NICOT), 1:657, n. 8.