The expression “in the midst of the earth” (beqereb haʾarets) most naturally extends the scope of the promised blessing beyond the territory of Israel to the wider world. Although ʾerets can denote a particular land, its use here without a limiting modifier, joined to the extraordinary triad of Israel, Egypt, and Assyria, points to the inhabited earth. Egypt and Assyria represent Israel’s great southern and northern adversaries and, in Isaiah’s historical horizon, major powers whose relations affected the nations around them. Their inclusion with Israel therefore signifies not merely a local rearrangement of political boundaries but an international manifestation of Yahweh’s saving rule. The noun berakhah (“blessing”) is a second predicate after shelishiyyah (“a third”), so that Israel is described both as the third member of the Egypt-Assyria-Israel fellowship and as a blessing among the earth. The wording deliberately recalls the Abrahamic promise that Abraham and his seed would become a blessing and that in him the families of the earth would be blessed (Gen. 12:2–3). Isaiah does not dissolve Israel’s distinctive identity: v. 25 still calls Israel Yahweh’s “inheritance.” Yet Israel’s election reaches its intended end as former enemies are brought under the same divine benediction. Egypt is called Yahweh’s people, Assyria the work of his hands, and Israel his inheritance; the threefold designation establishes a reconciled order under Yahweh rather than Israel’s absorption into the nations. The phrase thus carries both geographical and theological force. Israel stands between Egypt and Assyria in the ancient Near Eastern world, but the blessing generated by their common worship of Yahweh is situated “in the midst of the earth,” with implications for the nations generally. The prophecy anticipates the universal extension of the covenant blessing while preserving the particular historical names and roles of the three peoples.

The phrase “like the days of one king” explains the stated period rather than securely identifying the reign of a particular historical monarch. The comparison כִּימֵי מֶלֶךְ אֶחָד (kîmê melek ʾeḥād), “as the days of one king,” presents the seventy years as a bounded human-political span: Tyre’s eclipse will endure through an entire royal era, but it will not be permanent. The numeral is thus not softened into a vague expression merely because it is qualified by the comparison; rather, the comparison gives the seventy years its character as a complete, divinely delimited period of political decline. Attempts to attach “one king” to a named Assyrian, Babylonian, or Persian ruler exceed what the wording supplies. Had Isaiah intended to designate a particular king, the indefinite expression מֶלֶךְ אֶחָד (melek ʾeḥād) would be unexpectedly obscure. The phrase more naturally evokes the conventional length of a royal life or reign, a period sufficiently extended to make Tyre’s commercial disappearance seem total, yet finite before the Lord. The Niphal form וְנִשְׁכַּחַת (wenishkaḥat), “she will be forgotten,” does not imply literal loss of all memory of the city; Tyre, personified as feminine, will cease to command the recognition, traffic, and international prominence that had marked her. Verse 15 therefore anticipates the reversal described in vv. 16–18: after the appointed seventy years, Tyre will again become conspicuous, though her renewed commerce will finally be placed under the Lord’s judgment and purpose.

The clause לְמַעַן תִּצְדָּק (lemaʿan tiṣdāq), “so that you may be righteous,” employs judicial language and frames a real summons to state a defense, but in context it functions as a challenge that exposes Israel’s inability to establish its righteousness. The Qal imperfect תִּצְדָּק, from צדק (ṣādaq), can denote being shown righteous or vindicated in a legal dispute. Yahweh therefore calls Israel to “remind” him (הַזְכִּירֵנִי, hazkîrēnî), enter judgment together (נִשָּׁפְטָה יָחַד), and set forth its case (סַפֵּר אַתָּה). The idiom does not imply divine forgetfulness, but adopts the forms of forensic dispute: Israel is invited to name any claim that could overturn Yahweh’s accusation or establish its own right. Yet the surrounding verses determine the outcome. Verse 25 has already located forgiveness wholly in Yahweh’s sovereign purpose: he blots out transgressions “for my own sake.” Verses 27–28 immediately answer the challenge by tracing Israel’s guilt from its first father through its mediators and by announcing the profanation of the rulers of the sanctuary. Thus the purpose clause is not a declaration that Israel possesses an independent ground of acquittal; it is a judicial invitation whose irony is made plain by the ensuing indictment. Israel may speak, if it can, “in order that” it may be vindicated, but its history supplies no such defense. The verse nevertheless preserves the seriousness of the legal metaphor. Yahweh’s judgment is not arbitrary, nor is forgiveness a denial of guilt. Israel’s justification cannot arise from a successful counter-case against God; the prior promise of pardon must rest on Yahweh’s own merciful action. In this sequence, the courtroom challenge magnifies both the reality of covenantal sin and the unilateral grace by which Yahweh removes it.

The promise of verse 16 is deliberately limited to the period following Jerusalem’s capitulation and preceding the deportation described in verse 17. The Rabshakeh does not here guarantee that Judah’s inhabitants will retain their land permanently; he offers an immediate, apparently peaceful surrender in which they may continue temporarily to enjoy their households and produce. The sequence of imperatives—“make a blessing with me” (\u02bf\u015b\u00fb \u02beitt\u00ee b\u0259r\u0101k\u00e2), “come out to me” (\u1e63\u0259\u02be\u00fb \u02be\u0113lay), “eat,” and “drink”—sets the terms of submission. They are to leave the city, acknowledge Assyrian authority, and thereby avoid the immediate horrors of siege. The repeated distributive \u02be\u00ee\u0161, “each man,” together with “his vine,” “his fig tree,” and “the water of his cistern,” evokes settled agricultural security. Vine and fig tree are conventional biblical signs of peaceful possession of the land, and a private cistern (b\u00f4r) represents the household’s secure water supply during a threatened siege. Precisely for that reason the rhetoric is deceptive: Assyria appropriates imagery associated with covenantal rest and presents imperial submission as its source. Verse 17 exposes the qualification concealed in the offer: the people will eventually be taken to another land, though one portrayed as agriculturally comparable to Judah. The speech thus reflects a recognizable Assyrian policy. Submission could avert the destruction that followed resistance, while deportation removed a conquered population as a later administrative measure. The Rabshakeh frames this policy as a benevolent alternative to Hezekiah’s resistance, but the promised enjoyment is neither covenantal blessing nor enduring possession. It is a calculated inducement to abandon trust in the Lord and accept the king of Assyria as the apparent giver of peace and plenty.

The two negated expressions exclude human agency and identify Assyria’s overthrow as the work of the Lord. The first clause, “by a sword—not of man” (ḥereb lōʾ-ʾîš), is immediately intensified by the parallel statement, “a sword—not of Adam” (ḥereb lōʾ-ʾādām) “will devour him.” ʾΚ commonly denotes an individual man, while ʾādām can denote mankind more broadly; yet in this tightly balanced poetry the terms are not intended to distinguish two particular classes of soldiers. Their cumulative force is comprehensive: no merely human sword, whether attributed to an individual warrior or to humanity as such, will account for Assyria’s ruin. The context has contrasted Judah’s recourse to Egyptian horses and human strength with trust in the Holy One of Israel (31:1, 3). Since Egypt is “man” (ʾādām) and not God, Assyria’s destruction must equally demonstrate that the decisive power belongs to God rather than to another earthly military force. The “sword” is therefore a figurative designation for Yahweh’s judicial intervention, though it may be executed through an appointed agent. The historical narrative of Sennacherib’s withdrawal supplies the canonical counterpart: the angel of the Lord strikes the Assyrian camp (Isa 37:36; 2 Kgs 19:35). Isaiah 31:8 does not require that account to be read as a natural military defeat, for its deliberate double negation insists on an extraordinary divine deliverance. Assyria, personified in the singular, flees before this sword, and its young men become lamas (“forced labor” or tribute), reversing the empire’s accustomed posture as enslaver and tribute-exactor.

The plural עַמִּים (ʿammîm, “peoples”) presents the LORD as judge over the nations generally, while the immediately following verse identifies Judah’s rulers as the particular defendants presently summoned before him. Isaiah therefore does not limit the divine tribunal to Israel, even though the oracle’s proximate concern is Jerusalem and Judah. The Lord who judges all peoples is neither constrained by Israel’s covenant privileges nor less exacting toward the leaders of his own people. The verse is cast in judicial imagery. נִצָּב (niṣṣāb), a Niphal participle of נצב (nāṣab), depicts the LORD as taking or holding his station for litigation, and עֹמֵד (ʿōmēd), the Qal participle of עמד (ʿāmad), similarly portrays him standing in readiness to judge. The infinitives לָרִיב (lārîb, “to contend”) and לָדִין (lādîn, “to judge”) specify the purpose of this stance. רִיב (rîb) commonly belongs to the language of a legal dispute or covenant lawsuit; it is not merely an expression of divine displeasure. Verse 14 makes the legal setting explicit: “The LORD enters into judgment with the elders and princes of his people.” Accordingly, “the peoples” has a deliberately expansive force, but it should not be read as detaching v. 13 from its context or as a separate prophecy only against foreign nations. The universal Judge now brings covenant judgment upon Judah. This movement from the nations in general to Israel in particular accords with Isaiah’s larger presentation of the LORD as sovereign over all the earth and as one who judges his own covenant people with special moral seriousness.

The “gathering” (qibbûṣayik) denotes the accumulated objects and resources of Judah’s false worship—above all her idols, though the term may include the cultic apparatus and alliances bound up with that apostasy. The opening clause is therefore an ironic challenge: “When you cry out, let your collections deliver you.” The imperfect יַצִּילוּךְ (yaṣṣîlûk, Hiphil imperfect third masculine plural of nāṣal, “deliver”) has a plural subject corresponding to the plural force of qibbûṣayik, “your gathered things.” It is not a promise that God will rescue Zion through her gathering, but a judicial taunt exposing the impotence of the substitutes in which she has trusted. The following clause confirms this identification. “Wind” (rûaḥ) will carry them all away, and “breath/vapor” (hebel) will take them. Hebel commonly denotes what is insubstantial, fleeting, and ineffective; here it describes both the ease with which the idols vanish and the emptiness inherent in them. The image recalls Isaiah’s sustained polemic against manufactured gods that cannot save their worshipers (Isa 44:9–20; 46:1–7). In immediate context, the prophet has charged Judah with pursuing illicit worship on mountains and in ravines (57:5–8) and with multiplying religious and political expedients without returning to the Lord (57:9–12). Her “gathering” is thus the accumulated fruit of that misplaced devotion. Against the plural and perishing deliverers stands the singular participial expression, “the one taking refuge in me” (haḥôseh bî). Refuge in the Lord, rather than dependence on the assembled idols, marks the true covenant loyalist. Such a person “will inherit land” and “possess my holy mountain,” language that includes restoration to the promised land and access to Zion, the place of the Lord’s dwelling. In Isaiah’s larger horizon, this inheritance is not mere territorial security detached from worship, but the covenantal possession granted to those whom the Lord restores to his holy presence.

The clause וְלֹא אֶפְגַּע אָדָם (wĕlōʾ ʾepgaʿ ʾādām) is best understood as declaring that no human agent will stand before the Lord to avert or restrain his vengeance against Babylon. The verb אֶפְגַּע is a Qal imperfect of פגע (pāgaʿ), whose basic sense is “meet” or “encounter,” though in particular contexts it can carry the related senses of confronting, assailing, or interceding. A strictly literal rendering, “I will not meet a man,” preserves the Hebrew wording but is obscure in English; translations such as “I will spare no one” convey the judicial force of the statement rather than its formal idiom. The immediate context favors the sense that Babylon will not encounter God acting with merely human limitation or allow any human intervention to divert the announced judgment. The speaker has already declared, “I will take vengeance”; the negative clause intensifies that resolve. אדם (ʾādām), “man” or “humanity,” is indefinite and collective in force, not a reference to one particular individual. The point is not principally a universal assertion that every Babylonian without exception will perish, but that no human power, representative, or plea will meet God successfully and turn aside the humiliation decreed for the imperial city. Thus the translation “I will spare no one” is defensible as an interpretive rendering, provided it is heard within the oracle’s emphasis on the irresistibility of divine vengeance rather than as a detached statement about the fate of every individual.

The change of voice intensifies the metaphor for the wicked: they are themselves driven and unable to attain quiet, and consequently they actively discharge corruption. The Niphal participle נִגְרָשׁ (nigrash), from גָּרַשׁ (garash, “drive out, expel”), depicts the sea as continually agitated or driven about. Its unrest is not a momentary disturbance but a defining condition, as the participle indicates. The following construction, הַשְׁקֵט לֹא יוּכָל, employs a Hiphil infinitive absolute of שָׁקַט (shaqat, “be quiet”) with יוּכָל (“is able”), expressing incapacity: the sea cannot be made still or settle into calm. The subject then changes from the singular sea to its plural “waters” (מֵימָיו, memayw), which take the active Qal imperfect יִגְרְשׁוּ (yigreshu): they “cast out” or “expel” mire and mud. The same root thus links the sea’s being driven with its casting forth debris. Its inward turbulence becomes outward pollution. In the immediate context, this is the negative counterpart to the peace promised in vv. 19 and 21. The wicked lack the peace that God creates for those whom he heals and restores; their moral condition is instead represented as ceaseless instability that produces רֶפֶשׁ (rephesh, foul mire) and טִיט (tit, mud). The image does not merely describe emotional agitation, but the inevitable outward manifestation of a life alienated from God’s peace.

The verse grounds the preservation and public vindication of Torah in the LORD’s own righteousness, not in Israel’s successful obedience. In 42:18–20 Israel, paradoxically designated the LORD’s servant, is deaf and blind despite having seen much. Verse 21 therefore does not congratulate Israel for keeping the law; it explains why the divine instruction cannot be nullified by Israel’s covenant failure. The LORD remains committed to the righteous order and covenantal purpose expressed in his Torah, and he will establish its honor even through judgment upon the disobedient nation (42:22–25). The expression לְמַעַן צִדְקוֹ (lemaʿan ṣidqô), “for the sake of his righteousness,” identifies the motive as the LORD’s own righteous character. His righteousness includes his faithfulness to his revealed will and to the obligations arising from his covenant. The Qal perfect חָפֵץ (ḥāpēṣ), “has delighted” or “delights,” presents this purpose as settled in God, while the Hiphil imperfects יַגְדִּיל (yagdîl, “he will make great”) and יַאְדִּיר (yaʾdîr, “he will make glorious”) portray the effectual exaltation of Torah. The parallel verbs emphasize not merely an increase in legal detail but the manifest greatness, weight, and authority of God’s instruction. Torah (tôrâ) here denotes the LORD’s authoritative instruction, certainly continuous with the Mosaic covenantal law but not restricted to a bare legal code. In Isaiah, Torah includes the revealed standard by which Israel’s life is judged and through which the nations are to receive divine light (cf. 2:3; 42:4). The immediate context particularly concerns the instruction Israel has heard yet refused (42:24). Thus the verse anticipates neither the abandonment of Torah nor its displacement by Israel’s unfaithfulness. Rather, the LORD’s righteous commitment to his own revelation ensures that its demands are upheld: Israel’s blindness exposes its guilt, and the coming servant’s mission, already associated with bringing forth justice and Torah to the coastlands (42:1–4), displays the ultimate divine purpose of making that instruction glorious.

The expression “virgin daughter of Sidon” addresses the Phoenician commercial power under the name of its related and ancient mother-city, while its immediate force in the oracle falls especially upon Tyre. Isaiah has already named both Tyre and Sidon (vv. 2, 4–5), and the commands to cross to Kittim (Cyprus) suit the maritime flight of the Tyrian-Phoenician trading community. The designation therefore neither abandons Tyre as the principal subject of the chapter nor reduces the prophecy to Sidon alone; it encompasses the closely connected Phoenician cities in the judgment announced against their dominant mercantile center. The construct phrase בְּתוּלַת בַּת־צִידוֹן (betûlat bat-ṣîdôn), “virgin daughter of Sidon,” is a conventional personification of a city as a young woman. “Virgin” signifies her former security and apparent inviolability, not her moral innocence. That status has been overturned: she is הַמְעֻשָּׁקָה (ham25uqqâ), a Pual participle from עשׁק (ʿāšaq), “oppress, crush, exploit,” and thus “the oppressed” or “the ravaged.” The feminine singular imperatives, קוּמִי (qûmî, “arise”) and עֲבֹרִי (ʿăbōrî, “cross over”), continue the address to this personified city. Sidon’s name is particularly fitting because of its antiquity and its close cultural and political relation to Tyre; yet Isaiah’s rhetoric does not require a precise claim that Tyre was merely a colony of Sidon. The oracle’s point is that Phoenicia’s celebrated urban and maritime civilization, whether named Tyre or Sidon, has lost its secure standing. Even Kittim, ordinarily a plausible western refuge and trading destination, will provide no settled escape: “even there there will be no rest for you.”

“The Wilderness of the Sea” is a figurative designation for Babylon and its territory, not the name of a separate nation. The identification is secured by the ensuing vision: the invader is associated with Elam and Media (v. 2), and the watchman announces Babylon’s fall (v. 9). The construct expression מִדְבַּר־יָם (midbar-yam), literally “wilderness of sea,” thus presents Babylonia under a deliberately paradoxical image. Though the region was made fertile by the Euphrates and Tigris and was marked by canals, marshes, and waters connected with the Persian Gulf, it is here portrayed as a wilderness, a place destined for devastation and desolation. “Sea” may evoke both the watery character of lower Babylonia and the tumultuous, overwhelming force that will engulf the imperial city. The comparison introduced by כְּ (ke, “like/as”) supplies the manner of the coming judgment: “like whirlwinds in the Negev sweeping through.” The plural סוּפוֹת (supot, “whirlwinds” or “tempests”) and the Qal infinitive לַחֲלֹף (laḥalop, “to sweep/pass through”) depict the violent desert storms for which the Negev was known. Such storms arrive suddenly, move irresistibly, and leave the landscape altered. The imagery therefore does not describe Babylon’s normal climate so much as the speed and terror of the hostile advance against it. The singular participial or perfect-like form בָּא (baʾ, “one is coming/comes”) introduces the threatening agent, while מֵאֶרֶץ נוֹרָאָה (meʾerets noraʾah) means “from a dreadful land.” The feminine Niphal participle נוֹרָאָה (noraʾah) agrees with אֶרֶץ (ʾerets, “land”) and characterizes the land as fear-inspiring. In context it anticipates the eastern forces named in v. 2 rather than identifying a further oracle recipient. The superscription and simile together announce that Babylon, apparently secure amid its wealth and waters, will be struck by a divinely appointed judgment as sudden and devastating as a desert tempest.

The nouns אָדָם (ʾādām) and אִישׁ (ʾîš) are not personal names in this context but parallel designations for humankind. Although ʾādām can denote the first man in narratives concerning creation and the fall, it commonly functions as a collective singular, “humanity” or “man.” Likewise, ʾîš ordinarily means “man,” often with emphasis on an individual person or man of standing. Their juxtaposition intensifies the comprehensiveness of the judgment: humanity, both collectively and individually, is brought low. No figure named Huram, nor any other particular individual, is present in the Hebrew text. The wording deliberately echoes Isaiah’s recurring announcement that the exalted will be humbled (2:9, 11, 17). The Niphal wayyiqtol וַיִּשַּׁח (wayyiššaḥ, from שׁחה, “bow down/be brought low”) and the Qal wayyiqtol וַיִּשְׁפַּל (wayyišpal, “become low”) portray the outcome of the judgment described in 5:13–14, where exile, famine, and Sheol consume Judah. The final clause identifies the moral center of this abasement: “the eyes of the haughty” are humbled. “Eyes” functions metonymically for proud self-exaltation, while תִּשְׁפַּלְנָה (tišpalnāh), a third feminine plural imperfect agreeing with עֵינֵי (“eyes”), declares their coming humiliation. The verse thus does not describe voluntary worship but the judicial overthrow of human pride before the holiness and sovereignty of the Lord.

The verb “I profaned” does not attribute moral impurity or unfaithfulness to the Lord; it describes his judicial removal of the protected, consecrated status that Israel had enjoyed. The Piel perfect חִלַּלְתִּי (ḥillaltî, “I profaned, desecrated”) is deliberately severe. Israel is called both “my people” and “my inheritance” (נַחֲלָתִי, naḥălātî), covenantal titles that ordinarily emphasize the Lord’s peculiar possession and holy claim upon them. Yet because of his anger against their sin, he gave them into Babylon’s hand. Their conquest, exile, and humiliation therefore appeared as a profanation of what belonged to God, since the nation bearing his name was exposed to the nations and its sanctuary was desolated. The statement must be read with the causal sequence of the verse: the Lord was angry, he gave his inheritance into Babylon’s hand, and Babylon then acted without compassion. God’s act of judgment was real and righteous, but Babylon’s cruelty exceeded the commission implicit in that judgment. The charge that she made her yoke especially heavy upon the aged identifies her as morally accountable even while she served as the instrument of divine chastisement. Thus “I profaned my inheritance” expresses neither the cancellation of Israel’s election nor divine complicity in Babylonian wickedness. It names the dreadful covenant judgment by which the Lord allowed his holy possession to be treated as common and dishonored, while the following indictment announces that Babylon would be judged precisely for exploiting that judgment with merciless pride.

Isaiah 29:10 presents Judah’s blindness as a judicial act of God, not as an excuse for an otherwise innocent people. The opening כִּי (ki, “for”) grounds the summons of v. 9: the people have become intoxicated and blind in their rebellion, and the LORD has handed them over to the stupor that accords with that chosen condition. The perfect נָסַךְ (nasak, “has poured out”) depicts the judgment as accomplished and decisive: Yahweh has poured upon them “a spirit of deep sleep” (רוּחַ תַּרְדֵּמָה, ruaḥ tardemah), an incapacitating torpor rather than literal sleep. The expression recalls the divinely induced deep sleep of Genesis 2:21 and 15:12, but here it functions as a judgment that disables spiritual perception. The relation between vv. 9 and 10 is therefore neither a denial of human agency nor a portrayal of God as the author of moral evil. Verse 9 exposes the people’s self-incurred blindness—imperatives that ironically describe their persistent refusal to perceive—while v. 10 identifies God’s righteous response: he confirms them in the blindness they have embraced. This is the biblical pattern of judicial hardening, in which divine sovereignty and human guilt are jointly maintained. Isaiah later describes the same commission in 6:9–10, where the prophet’s ministry results in hardened hearts, dull ears, and closed eyes; yet the people’s prior alienation and unbelief remain the moral ground of the judgment. The judgment particularly reaches Judah’s recognized guides. The Piel wayyiqtol וַיְעַצֵּם (wayyaʿṣēm, “and he shut tightly”) portrays the closing of “your eyes,” followed by apposition, “the prophets”; likewise, “your heads” is identified as “the seers.” The prophets, who should have served as the people’s eyes, and the seers, who stood as their heads or leaders, are themselves deprived of sight and covered over (כִּסָּה, kissah, Piel perfect, “he has covered”). Verses 11–12 explain the result: divine revelation becomes like a sealed document, inaccessible both to the literate and the illiterate. The nation’s inability to understand is thus not intellectual deficiency but covenantal judgment against a religious community whose leaders and people have estranged themselves from the word of the LORD.

The variation between אֱלִילִים (’elilim) and עֲצַבִּים (ʿaṣabbim) does not identify the God of Jerusalem as an idol. Both nouns can denote idols or cult-images, though ’elilim is a deliberately contemptuous term, often conveying the sense of worthless or powerless “non-gods,” while ʿaṣabbim commonly denotes fashioned images and may carry the association of grief or vexation. The Assyrian king’s rhetorical question treats the religious objects of Samaria and Jerusalem alike as the possessions of conquered cities: what he has “done” (עָשִׂיתִי, ʿāsîtî, Qal perfect, first common singular) to one, he expects to do (אֶעֱשֶׂה, ʾeʿĕśeh, Qal imperfect) to the other. The speech must be read as the arrogant calculation of Assyria, introduced in 10:8–10 as the king’s own boast. He has found the kingdoms of the idols, whose images, in his estimation, exceeded those of Jerusalem and Samaria (v. 10); therefore he assumes that Jerusalem’s God is merely another local deity unable to resist imperial force. His language reveals the theological blindness that the ensuing oracle condemns. Assyria was indeed employed as the rod of the Lord’s anger against a godless people (10:5–6), but the king neither recognizes the Lord’s sovereignty nor distinguishes the Creator from manufactured images (10:12–15). Nevertheless, the comparison is not wholly arbitrary at the level of Judah’s covenant unfaithfulness. Isaiah repeatedly indicts Jerusalem and Judah for actual image worship and syncretism (e.g., Isa 2:8; 30:22; 31:7). Jerusalem possessed the temple of the Lord and was not, in principle, a city devoted to idols as Samaria had become; yet its inhabitants had so compromised their worship that the Assyrian’s taunt exposed a real covenantal disgrace. The verse therefore preserves two truths at once: Assyria falsely reduces the Lord to an idol, while Judah’s idolatry makes the boast a fitting instrument of divine accusation.

The clause does not mean that a “way of jubilation” will no longer be trodden. Rather, it declares that the ordinary shout of those treading the winepress will cease: “in the winepresses no one treads wine; I have caused the vintage shout to cease.” The Qal imperfect יִדְרֹךְ (yidrōk, “he will tread”) is followed by the participle דֹרֵךְ (dōrēk, “one treading”) and הֵידָד (hêdād, “shout”). The compressed Hebrew construction identifies the treader and the characteristic cry connected with his labor. The sense is not that the treader himself is the object of the verb, but that there will be no winepress-treading accompanied by the customary hedad. Although הֵידָד can denote a loud battle cry or hostile shout in other contexts, its setting here requires the harvest or vintage shout. The preceding lines remove joy from the fruitful land and silence singing and jubilant cries in the vineyards; the following reference to the winepresses completes the picture of agricultural devastation. Jeremiah 48:33, in an oracle against Moab substantially parallel to this passage, expressly distinguishes this vintage cry from ordinary jubilation: the shout remains a shout, “but not a shout of joy.” Isaiah therefore portrays the cessation not merely of wine production but of the festal sounds inseparable from a successful harvest. The first-person Hiphil perfect הִשְׁבַּתִּי (hišbattî, “I have made cease”) identifies the Lord as the effective agent of Moab’s desolation. The perfect is prophetic in force, presenting the announced judgment as settled and accomplished because it proceeds from the divine decree. Moab’s vines and presses are not subject merely to natural misfortune; the removal of their abundance and celebration is Yahweh’s judicial act.

The final clause does not retract the preceding report of Moab’s extraordinary pride; it declares that Moab’s proud assertions and self-confident pretensions lack the reality they claim. The prophet has heard of Moab’s arrogance, and the accumulation of terms—“pride” (gaʾôn), “haughtiness” (gaʾăwâ), and “wrath” or insolent rage (ʿebrâ)—presents that arrogance as notorious and excessive. The words lōʾ-kēn baddāyw are best rendered, “but his boastings are not so,” or, more idiomatically, “his boasts amount to nothing.” The negative lōʾ with kēn (“thus,” “so,” “in accordance with reality”) rejects the validity or effectiveness of what Moab has claimed. The noun baddāyw, a plural form with the third masculine singular suffix from bad, denotes empty utterances, boasts, or pretentious claims rather than “sufficiency.” Its sense is clarified by the closely parallel judgment in Jeremiah 48:29–30, which likewise recites Moab’s pride and concludes that “his boastings accomplish nothing.” The point is therefore not that Moab is insufficiently proud, nor that its fury is unreal; its pride is precisely the established fact announced in the verse. Rather, the nation’s grand words, political confidence, and defiant self-exaltation will prove false when subjected to the judgment described throughout Isaiah 15–16. Moab’s reputation for arrogance is real, but the power and security implied by its boasting are not.

The expressions “princes of Sodom” and “people of Gomorrah” are prophetic designations for Judah’s rulers and populace, especially those centered in Jerusalem, not an address to the historical cities destroyed in Genesis 19. Isaiah 1:9 has just compared Zion’s survival to that of Sodom and Gomorrah: had the LORD not preserved a small remnant, Judah would have become like those cities. Verse 10 sharpens that comparison into direct invective. The construct phrases qĕṣînê Sĕdōm (“chiefs/princes of Sodom”) and ʿam ʿĂmōrâ (“people of Gomorrah”) rhetorically rename Judah according to its moral and covenantal resemblance to those paradigmatic objects of divine judgment. The two imperatives establish the judicial seriousness of the address: šimʿû (“hear,” Qal imperative masculine plural) calls the leaders to receive “the word of the LORD,” while haʾăzînû (“give ear,” Hiphil imperative masculine plural) summons the people to attend to “the instruction of our God.” Torah here is not merely a reference to a legal corpus but to God’s authoritative instruction mediated through the prophet, though it necessarily accords with the covenantal demands of the Mosaic Torah. The shift from “the LORD” to “our God” does not soften the accusation; it underscores that those condemned under the names Sodom and Gomorrah remain members of the covenant people and are therefore judged by the God to whom they profess allegiance. The designation prepares for the exposure of their corrupt worship and social injustice in vv. 11–17, the sins that make Jerusalem functionally Sodom-like.

The verse first presents Jerusalem’s conduct as an observed spectacle and then exposes its governing rationale in direct speech. The nouns “joy” (śāśôn) and “gladness” (śimḥâ) are followed by a rapid series of Qal infinitive absolutes: “slaughtering” (hārōg), “butchering” (šāḥōṭ), “eating” (ʾākōl), and “drinking” (šātôt). In this setting the infinitives have a substantival, descriptive force, piling up the visible components of a lavish feast. The accumulation is deliberately set against the divine summons of v. 12 to weeping, mourning, baldness, and sackcloth. The issue is not that oxen, sheep, meat, or wine are intrinsically unlawful, but that celebratory consumption has displaced the penitence demanded by the Lord in the face of judgment. The concluding utterance, “Eat, drink, for tomorrow we die,” interprets the feast as a defiant fatalism. The form ʾākōl is formally a Qal infinitive absolute, but it functions with imperatival force alongside the plural imperative ûšetû (“drink!”); the following nāmût (“we shall die”) makes the corporate sense explicit. The speakers summon one another to present indulgence because death is regarded as imminent and final. This is therefore not faithful confidence in God amid siege, but practical repudiation of his call to return to him. The Greek rendering, “Let us eat and drink, for tomorrow we die,” brings out the collective hortatory sense, and Paul cites that wording in 1 Corinthians 15:32 to characterize the moral logic that follows if there is no resurrection. In Isaiah, however, the saying arises not from a considered denial of resurrection but from hardened refusal to acknowledge that the threatened disaster is the Lord’s summons to repentance.