Isaiah 10:5-19
New English Translation
The Lord Turns on Arrogant Assyria
5 “Beware, Assyria, the club I use to vent my anger,[a]
a cudgel with which I angrily punish.[b]
6 I sent him[c] against a godless[d] nation,
I ordered him to attack the people with whom I was angry,[e]
to take plunder and to carry away loot,
to trample them down[f] like dirt in the streets.
7 But he does not agree with this;
his mind does not reason this way,[g]
for his goal is to destroy,
and to eliminate many nations.[h]
8 Indeed,[i] he says:
‘Are not my officials all kings?
9 Is not Calneh like Carchemish?
Hamath like Arpad?
Samaria like Damascus?[j]
10 I overpowered kingdoms ruled by idols,[k]
whose carved images were more impressive than Jerusalem’s or Samaria’s.
11 As I have done to Samaria and its idols,
so I will do to Jerusalem and its idols.”[l]
12 But when[m] the Lord[n] finishes judging[o] Mount Zion and Jerusalem, then he[p] will punish the king of Assyria for what he has proudly planned and for the arrogant attitude he displays.[q] 13 For he says:
“By my strong hand I have accomplished this,
by my strategy that I devised.
I invaded the territory of nations,[r]
and looted their storehouses.
Like a mighty conqueror,[s] I brought down rulers.[t]
14 My hand discovered the wealth of the nations, as if it were in a nest,
as one gathers up abandoned eggs,
I gathered up the whole earth.
There was no wing flapping,
or open mouth chirping.”[u]
15 Does an ax exalt itself over the one who wields it,
or a saw magnify itself over the one who cuts with it?[v]
As if a scepter should brandish the one who raises it,
or a staff should lift up what is not made of wood!
16 For this reason[w] the Sovereign Lord of Heaven’s Armies
will make his healthy ones emaciated.[x]
His majestic glory will go up in smoke.[y]
17 The Light of Israel[z] will become a fire,
their Holy One[aa] will become a flame;
it will burn and consume the Assyrian king’s[ab] briers
and his thorns in one day.
18 The splendor of his forest and his orchard
will be completely destroyed,[ac]
as when a sick man’s life ebbs away.[ad]
19 There will be so few trees left in his forest,
a child will be able to count them.[ae]
Footnotes
- Isaiah 10:5 tn Heb “Woe [to] Assyria, the club of my anger.”
- Isaiah 10:5 tn Heb “a cudgel is he, in their hand is my anger.” It seems likely that the final mem (ם) on בְיָדָם (beyadam) is not a pronominal suffix (“in their hand”), but an enclitic mem. If so, one can translate literally, “a cudgel is he in the hand of my anger.”
- Isaiah 10:6 sn Throughout this section singular forms are used to refer to Assyria; perhaps the king of Assyria is in view (see v. 12).
- Isaiah 10:6 tn Or “defiled”; cf. ASV “profane”; NAB “impious”; NCV “separated from God.”
- Isaiah 10:6 tn Heb “and against the people of my anger I ordered him.”
- Isaiah 10:6 tn Heb “to make it [i.e., the people] a trampled place.”
- Isaiah 10:7 tn Heb “but he, not so does he intend, and his heart, not so does it think.”
- Isaiah 10:7 tn Heb “for to destroy [is] in his heart, and to cut off nations, not a few.”
- Isaiah 10:8 tn Or “For” (KJV, ASV, NASB, NRSV).
- Isaiah 10:9 sn Calneh…Carchemish…Hamath…Arpad…Samaria…Damascus. The city states listed here were conquered by the Assyrians between 740-717 b.c. The point of the rhetorical questions is that no one can stand before Assyria’s might. On the geographical, rather than chronological arrangement of the cities, see J. N. Oswalt, Isaiah (NICOT), 1:264, n. 4.
- Isaiah 10:10 tn Heb “Just as my hand found the kingdoms of the idol[s].” The comparison is expanded in v. 11a (note “as”) and completed in v. 11b (note “so”).
- Isaiah 10:11 tn The statement is constructed as a rhetorical question in the Hebrew text: “Is it not [true that] just as I have done to Samaria and its idols, so I will do to Jerusalem and its idols?’”sn This statement indicates that the prophecy dates sometime between 722-701 b.c.
- Isaiah 10:12 tn The verb that introduces this verse serves as a discourse particle and is untranslated; see note on “in the future” in 2:2.
- Isaiah 10:12 tn The Hebrew term translated “Lord” here and in vv. 16, 23, 24, 33 is אֲדֹנָי (ʾadonay).
- Isaiah 10:12 tn Heb “his work on/against.” Cf. NAB, NASB, NRSV “on”; NIV “against.”
- Isaiah 10:12 tn Heb “I”; The Lord is speaking here, as in vv. 5-6a.
- Isaiah 10:12 tn Heb “I will visit [judgment] on the fruit of the greatness of the heart of the king of Assyria, and on the glory of the height of his eyes.” The proud Assyrian king is likened to a large, beautiful fruit tree.
- Isaiah 10:13 tn Heb “removed the borders of nations”; cf. NAB, NIV, NRSV “boundaries.”
- Isaiah 10:13 tc The consonantal text (Kethib) has כְּאַבִּיר (keʾabbir, “like a strong one”); the marginal reading (Qere) is כַּבִיר (kavir, “mighty one”).
- Isaiah 10:13 tn Heb “and I brought down, like a strong one, ones sitting [or “living”].” The participle יוֹשְׁבִים (yoshevim, “ones sitting”) could refer to the inhabitants of the nations, but the translation assumes that it refers to those who sit on thrones, i.e., rulers. See BDB 442 s.v. יָשַׁב and HALOT 444 s.v. ישׁב.
- Isaiah 10:14 sn The Assyrians’ conquests were relatively unopposed, like robbing a bird’s nest of its eggs when the mother bird is absent.
- Isaiah 10:15 tn Heb “the one who pushes it back and forth”; KJV “him that shaketh it”; ASV “him that wieldeth it.”
- Isaiah 10:16 sn The irrational arrogance of the Assyrians (v. 15) will prompt the judgment about to be described.
- Isaiah 10:16 tn Heb “will send leanness against his healthy ones”; NASB, NIV “will send a wasting disease.”
- Isaiah 10:16 tc Heb “and in the place of his glory burning will burn, like the burning of fire.” The highly repetitive text (יֵקַד יְקֹד כִּיקוֹד אֵשׁ, yeqad yeqod kiqod’esh) may be dittographic; if the second consonantal sequence יקד is omitted, the text would read “and in the place of his glory, it will burn like the burning of fire.”
- Isaiah 10:17 tn In this context the “Light of Israel” is a divine title (note the parallel title “Holy One”). The title points to God’s royal splendor, which overshadows and, when transformed into fire, destroys the “majestic glory” of the king of Assyria (v. 16b).
- Isaiah 10:17 sn See the note on the phrase “the Holy One of Israel” in 1:4.
- Isaiah 10:17 tn Heb “his.” In vv. 17-19 the Assyrian king and his empire are compared to a great forest and orchard that are destroyed by fire (symbolic of the Lord).
- Isaiah 10:18 tn Heb “from breath to flesh it will destroy.” The expression “from breath to flesh” refers to the two basic components of a person, the immaterial (life’s breath) and the material (flesh). Here the phrase is used idiomatically to indicate totality.
- Isaiah 10:18 tn The precise meaning of this line is uncertain. מָסַס (masas), which is used elsewhere of substances dissolving or melting, may here mean “waste away” or “despair.” נָסַס (nasas), which appears only here, may mean “be sick” or “stagger, despair.” See BDB 651 s.v. I נָסַס and HALOT 703 s.v. I נסס. One might translate the line literally, “like the wasting away of one who is sick” (cf. NRSV “as when an invalid wastes away”).
- Isaiah 10:19 tn Heb “and the rest of the trees of his forest will be counted, and a child will record them.”
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