1Woe, you wayward sons,
said the LORD,
devising counsel, and not from Me,
and not to My spirit,
so as to compound
offense with offense.
2Who head down to Egypt,
and have not asked My word,
to shelter in Pharaoh’s stronghold,
and take refuge in Egypt’s shade.
3And Pharaoh’s stronghold shall turn into shame for you,
and the shelter in Egypt’s shade into disgrace.
4Though his commanders were in Zoan,
and his messengers reached Hanes,
5whoever shames a people shall not avail them,
neither for help nor for availing,
but shall be shame and sheer disgrace.
6The portent of the Beasts of the Negeb.
In a land of straits and stress,
a lion and maned beast from among them
viper and flying serpent.
On the back of donkeys their wealth is borne
and on camels’ humps their treasures
to an unavailing people.
7And Egypt’s help shall be useless and void.
Therefore I call this:
8Now, come write it on a tablet with them
and on a scroll its inscription,
and let it stand till the last day
9For it is a rebellious people,
deceitful sons,
sons who did not want to heed
the teaching of the LORD.
10Who said to the seers, “You shall not see,”
and to the visionaries, “You shall not envision for us true things.
Speak smooth talk to us,
envision illusions.
11Swerve from the way,
turn aside from the path.
Rid us of
Israel’s Holy One.”
12Therefore, thus Israel’s Holy One has said:
Inasmuch as you have spurned this word
and placed your trust in oppression and perversion
and leaned on it,
13therefore this crime shall become for you
like a breach spreading down a high wall,
where all of a sudden the breaking point comes.
14And its breaking like the breaking of a potter’s jar,
relentlessly shattered,
and no shard will be found in its fragments
to carry fire from a hearth
or scoop water from a puddle.
15For thus said the Master, the LORD, Israel’s Holy One:
In quiet and stillness you shall be rescued,
in calm and trust shall your valor be,
but you did not want it.
16And you said, “No, on a horse we shall flee.”
Therefore shall you flee.
“And on a swift steed we shall ride.”
Therefore shall your pursuers be swift.
17A thousand before the shout of one,
before the shout of five shall you flee,
till you are left like a flagpole on a mountaintop,
and like a banner on a hill.
18And therefore the LORD shall wait to grant you grace,
and therefore He shall rise to show you mercy,
for a God of justice is the LORD.
happy all who wait for Him.
19For the people shall dwell in Jerusalem,
nevermore shall weep.
He shall surely grant you grace at the sound of your crying,
when He hears it, He shall answer you.
20And the Master shall give you
bread of straits and water of oppression.
But your Teacher shall no longer be concealed,
and your eyes shall see your Teacher,
21and your ears shall hear a word behind you, saying:
This is the way, go upon it,
whether you turn to the right or the left.
22And you shall defile the overlay of your silver idols
and the plating of your molten images of gold.
You shall scatter them like a woman in her uncleanness.
Go out! You shall say to it.
23And He shall give rain for your seed
that you sow in the soil,
and bread, the yield of the soil,
and it shall be rich and fat.
Your cattle shall graze on that day
in a spacious pasture.
24And the oxen and the donkeys that till the soil
shall eat salted fodder
that is winnowed with shovel and fan.
25And there shall be on every high mountain
and on every lofty hill
on the day of the great slaughter
when towers fall.
26And the light of the moon shall be like the light of the sun,
and the light of the sun shall be sevenfold
like the light of the seven days
when the LORD binds up the breaking of His people
and heals its smashing blow.
27The LORD’s name is about to come from afar,
burning His wrath, heavy His burden,
His lips are filled with fury,
28His breath a sweeping stream
to shake nations in a ruinous sieve
and a bridle on the jaws of peoples, leading them astray.
29The song shall be for you
like the night a festival is sanctified
and heart’s joy like one who walks with the flute
to come to the LORD’s mountain, to Israel’s Rock.
30And the LORD shall sound His voice’s majesty
and show the downsweep of His arm
in furious wrath and tongues of consuming fire,
cloudburst and torrent and hailstones.
31For by the LORD’s voice shall Assyria be terrified
as He strikes with the rod.
32And each swing of the club is punishment
that the LORD shall lay down upon him
to the sound of timbrels and with lyres and with dance—
in a swoop He does battle against her.
33For Topheth was laid out long ago,
it, too is readied for Molech,
its fire pit deep and wide,
much fire and firewood.
The LORD’s breath is like a torrent of brimstone
burning within it.
CHAPTER 30 NOTES
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1. clinging to molten images. The literal sense of the Hebrew is “making [or pouring] molten images.”
2. Who head down to Egypt. Although the prophecy begins by inveighing against idolatry, it quickly switches to a political theme, and Isaiah may have associated the pursuit of foreign alliances with the worship of pagan gods. In any case, one should note that the prophet here and elsewhere assumes a vehement stance in a political debate: in the last years of the eighth century B.C.E., there was a party in Jerusalem that advocated an alliance with Egypt against the imminent military threat of the Assyrian empire, and Isaiah viewed this policy as a catastrophic error.
Egypt’s shade. As elsewhere, “shade” has the idiomatic sense of “protection.”
4. Though his commanders were in Zoan, / and his messengers reached Hanes. Both these are Egyptian cities. A Judahite delegation actually traveled to Egypt to discuss a possible anti-Assyrian alliance.
6. The portent of the Beasts of the Negeb. The picturesque title of this prophecy (perhaps an editorial invention) invokes the beasts of the great southern desert through which the emissaries journey in order to reach Egypt. The first animals named are beasts of prey and thus suggest the dangers that the foolish delegates are running in order to conduct negotiations that will lead to nothing good.
their wealth . . . / their treasure. The emissaries are bringing tribute—or perhaps rather a diplomatic bribe—in order to persuade Egypt to provide military assistance to Judah.
7. Arrogance Ended. The Masoretic Text reads rahav hem shevet, which would be literally: “arrogance [or Rahab] they to-sit.” This cannot be right. The translation reads with many scholars rohabam moshbat, which is merely a respacing of the letters and a revocalization. The first word could either mean “arrogance” or be the proper name Rahab, a ferocious Canaanite sea beast, possibly here referring to Egypt.
8. as a witness. The received text reads laʿad, “forever,” the same meaning as the next word in the text, but two Hebrew manuscripts and several ancient versions show laʿed, “as a witness.”
13. like a breach spreading down a high wall. This image mingles metaphor with metonymy: a hidden flaw reaches a point where it suddenly causes a total breakdown, but the wall is also the actual structure that protects the city from invaders, who will now overrun it.
14. like the breaking of a potter’s jar. The shift in metaphor is pointedly effective: the solid stone wall turns into a fragile earthenware jar that is easily broken to pieces. The smashing of the vessel into tiny fragments is vividly represented in the next line.
17. before the shout of one, / before the shout of five. Though it is more spectacular for a thousand to flee before the shout of a single person than five, the line follows the convention of biblical parallelism, where when a number is introduced in the first verset, it has to be increased in the second verset.
20. your Teacher. While other understandings are conceivable, the most likely reference is to God.
concealed. The verb yikanef is anomalous, but it may be related to the noun kanaf, the corner of a garment or a wing, perhaps suggesting a condition of lying under a fold.
21. and your ears shall hear a word behind you. The word coming from behind is a little puzzling, especially since the eyes that see the Teacher imply that He stands in front of the people. Perhaps God is in front and His prophet, to whom at last the people listens, urges them on from behind.
22. And you shall defile. That is, you shall make them unfit for worship.
You shall scatter them like a woman in her uncleanness. The verb “scatter” works better for the destroyed idols than for the menstruant woman, who in biblical law is certainly not “scattered” but rather kept at a distance in order to avoid physical contact with her.
25. streams, brooks of water, / on the day of the great slaughter / when towers fall. In a fusion of two motifs unusual in prophecies of redemption, the people restored to its glory will enjoy an abundance of fructifying freshets of water even as military catastrophe overwhelms the enemies that have dominated them.
26. And the light of the moon shall be like the light of the sun. This spectacular increase of natural light is a motif taken up by Second Isaiah and has led some scholars to conclude that at least this line was composed by him, which is a possible but not necessary inference. In any case, the striking hyperbole has invited eschatological readings, and “the light of the seven days” is clearly a mythological reference to the seven days of creation during which, according to some understandings, the light was more perfect. Creation begins with God’s summoning light to replace the primordial darkness, so national restoration is imagined in cosmic terms as a kind of renewal of creation.
27. The LORD’s name. The phrasing reflects a verbal practice that becomes pronounced in the Late Biblical period of interposing God’s name as the active agent in order to avoid anthropomorphism.
His tongue, consuming fire. These words concretize and intensify the “fury” of the first verset. They also incorporate a pun because of the intimations of tongues of fire.
28. crossing upward to the neck. The verb employed here is usually the one for a person crossing a stream, but here it indicates the water cutting the body in half and moving on upward to the neck.
in a ruinous sieve. Some interpreters, striving to make the parallelism neat, cite a purported Arabic cognate for nefet that means “yoke.” But this noun elsewhere clearly means “sieve,” and the verb “to shake up” scarcely accords with a yoke. Biblical poetry sometimes switches metaphors between the first and second verset of a line.
29. The song shall be for you. This is the song of triumph and celebration when the enemy is destroyed and the people restored.
like one who walks with the flute. This is the joyous procession at a pilgrim festival, in which the celebrants march up to the Temple mount to the accompaniment of musical instruments.
30. tongues of consuming fire. This is not the same Hebrew word as “tongue” in verse 27. The literal sense is “A flame of consuming fire.”
32. to the sound of the timbrels and with lyres. As in verse 25, the joy of national restoration is mingled with a depiction in the second verset here of God’s fearsome destruction of the enemy.
and with dance. The Masoretic Text has ʿuvemilḥamot, “and with battles.” The translation follows a commonly proposed emendation uvemeḥolot, “and with dances” (the plural has been changed to a singular in the translation for reasons of rhythm), a difference of one Hebrew letter. Another possibility would be to move the word as it appears in the Masoretic Text to the second verset and have it read: “and in swooping battles He does battle against it.” That, however, would produce a rhythmic imbalance of two stresses in the first verset and four in the second.
33. Topheth. This is the Valley of Ben-Hinnom in Jerusalem, where human sacrifice was offered. In later Hebrew usage, it became a term for “hell.”
Molech. The Masoretic Text is vocalized to read melekh, “king,” but it almost certainly is Molech, the pagan god to whom human sacrifices (usually children) were made.
The LORD’s breath is like a torrent of brimstone / burning within it. The imagery aptly concludes the prophecy of the destruction of Israel’s enemies: on the altar of Molech, human beings were devoted to the consuming flames; now God’s fiery breath will burn up the Assyrians.