TheBibleNet

Isaiah 4

Isaiah: 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40 41 42 43 44 45 46 47 48 49 50 51 52 53 54 55 56 57 58 59 60 61 62 63 64 65 66

4:1 VE HECHEZIYKU SHEVA NASHIM BE ISH ECHAD BA YOM HA HU LEMOR LACHAMENU NO'CHEL VE SIMLATENU NILBASH RAK YIKAR'E SHIMCHA ALEYNU ESOPH CHERPATENU

וְהֶחֱזִיקוּ שֶׁבַע נָשִׁים בְּאִישׁ אֶחָד בַּיּוֹם הַהוּא לֵאמֹר לַחְמֵנוּ נֹאכֵל וְשִׂמְלָתֵנוּ נִלְבָּשׁ רַק יִקָּרֵא שִׁמְךָ עָלֵינוּ אֱסֹף חֶרְפָּתֵנוּ

KJ (King James translation): And in that day seven women shall take hold of one man, saying, We will eat our own bread, and wear our own apparel: only let us be called by thy name, to take away our reproach.

BN (BibleNet translation): And on that day seven women shall take hold of one man, saying: "We will eat our own bread, and wear our own clothes ; only let us be called by your name; take away our reproach."

HECHEZIKU: Is Y-Y playing subtle word-games, or am I reading more into this than is actually there? Because this really isn't the obvious and logical verb for what this is saying - that would be LITPHOS, and HECHEZIKU just happens to yield the name of a king. And not just any king... King Chizki-Yah. which in English is rendered as Hezekiah...the very king he will very shortly announce as the, so to speak, David to King Achaz's Sha'ul (see chapter 7).

SHEVA NASHIM: Why seven? It's a sacred number. Prophets don't choose sacred numbers by accident.

LACHAMENU: An untranslateable Yehudit pun; the same root that gives bread (LECHEM), also gives war (MILCHAMAH). Seven women to each man (the scale of the devastation but also the sacred number); the impact of war, when there are no longer enough men to go around. "Called by your name," like Muhammad's marriages, because an unmarried woman in those days was either a virgin waiting for a husband, or a social outcast. So these women will provide for themselves, just so long as the man "gives them his name".

CHERPATENU: I have stayed with the word "reproach", though it isn't really precise; but this is a matter of culture, not lexicon: there really is no equivalent in modern culture. Some translators render it as "sin", but that is even further from the reality A "reproach" infers an insinuation of prostitution or a loose-life, and as per my note above it isn;t necessarily that; but neither is it simply a gossipy tut-tut, or a bitchy "so how come she hasn't managed to find a husband?" The tale of Avi-Gayil and David provides the best comparable - see my rendition of it in the first volume of "City of Peace".

samech break. Why, given that this is clearly a continuation of the last chapter? Or is there a suggestion that the last chapter should have included this verse?

4:2 BA YOM HA HU YIHEYEH TSEMACH YHVH LI TSEVI U LE CHAVOD U PHERI HA ARETS LE GA'ON U LE TIPH'ERET LI PELEYTAH YISRA-EL

בַּיּוֹם הַהוּא יִהְיֶה צֶמַח יְהוָה לִצְבִי וּלְכָבוֹד וּפְרִי הָאָרֶץ לְגָאוֹן וּלְתִפְאֶרֶת לִפְלֵיטַת יִשְׂרָאֵל

KJ: In that day shall the branch of the LORD be beautiful and glorious, and the fruit of the earth shall be excellent and comely for them that are escaped of Israel.

BN: On that day all of YHVH's world will be beautiful and glorious, and the fruit of the land will be of the best quality, and splendidly tasty for the refugees of Yisra-El.

"The branch." The first usage of an image that will become central to the language of the book; though we have had distant reference to the image in "the cedars of Lebanon" and "the oaks of Babylon" in 2:13. Check the Yehudit, but I presume it's Netser, which of course yields Notsri and all manner of interesting debates around Christian terminologies – Nazareth, Genasseret, Notsri, Nazarite etc... "Fruit of the earth" – is this the Gide source or coincidence? Redemption of the survivors will also be a key theme through the latter part of the book.

This was my note based on the Gideon Bible, the only translation I had access to at the time of my first assault upon the mountain of Yesh'a-Yah; but the Gideon turns out be a mistranslation, as is the King James. This is not NETSER at all, but TSEMACH, which could at a pinch be a branch, but only because a branch is a growth on a tree and TSEMACH means any sort of growth, anything that sprouts from the earth, or from something that grows on the earth. It really is problematic when translators make basic mistakes of this kind - because we are left assuming that they are not mistakes at all, but entirely deliberate, because they impact on the ideology most profoundly. Translation as an act of propaganda! The text (rather than those mistranslations) is entirely about YHVH as fertility god.

PELEYTAH: from the root PELET, which signifies a "refugee". Some scholars have argued that the original Pelishtim were Beney Pelet rather than Beney Pelesht, because they were the "refugees" from the destruction of Knossos. Isaiah 14:29 however uses Peleshet for the land of the Pelishtim, so he clearly would not agree with those scholars - and he also spells Peleshet with a Tav (פְלֶשֶׁת), not the Tet used here, further endorsing that disagreement.

4:3 VE HAYAH HA NISH'AR BE TIS'ON VE HA NOTAR BIYRU-SHALA'IM KADOSH YE'AMER LO KOL HA KATUV LA CHAYIM BIYRU-SHALA'IM

וְהָיָה הַנִּשְׁאָר בְּצִיּוֹן וְהַנּוֹתָר בִּירוּשָׁלִַם קָדוֹשׁ יֵאָמֶר לוֹ כָּל הַכָּתוּב לַחַיִּים בִּירוּשָׁלִָם

KJ: And it shall come to pass, that he that is left in Zion, and he that remaineth in Jerusalem, shall be called holy, even every one that is written among the living in Jerusalem:

BN: And it will come to pass that those who are left in Tsi'on, and those who are left in Yeru-Shala'im, shall be called holy, including everyone whose name is written in the Book of Life in Yeru-Shala'im...

"The Book of Life" is not actually stated as such in the text, but this is how it has come to be understood in mainstream Judaism in the three thousand years since.

4:4 IM RACHATS ADONAI ET TSO'AT BENOT TSI'ON VE ET DEMEY YERU-SHALA'IM YADIYACH MI KIRBAH BE RU'ACH MISHPAT U VE RU'ACH BA'ER

אִם רָחַץ אֲדֹנָי אֵת צֹאַת בְּנוֹת צִיּוֹן וְאֶת דְּמֵי יְרוּשָׁלִַם יָדִיחַ מִקִּרְבָּהּ בְּרוּחַ מִשְׁפָּט וּבְרוּחַ בָּעֵר

KJ: When the Lord shall have washed away the filth of the daughters of Zion, and shall have purged the blood of Jerusalem from the midst thereof by the spirit of judgment, and by the spirit of burning.

BN: When the Lord, by the spirit of judgment, and by the spirit of destruction, has washed away the filth of the daughters of Tsi'on, and purged the blood of Yeru-Shala'im to its very core...

But first it requires purgation and purification, which was also true of the Temple and the Levitical priesthood and the sacrifices – think red heifer for example (Numbers 19), and the Chanukah festival, and also the Yom Kippur preparations, and the meaning of sacrifice, which is "making sacred", or "making holy", the giving of permission to eat the animals and fish and fruits and vegetables which are divine creations.

So can we say that Y-Y is rethinking his condemnation of the sacrifices, at least in one regard? That he disapproves of propitiation, because it doesn't work; but yet, if the act of sacrifice is also an act of making sacred, and it is undertaken with full Kavanah - both sincerity and intensity - because the person doing it sees it as essential to the ethical code that they have rationally elaborated for themselves...

And we will see, as the book progresses, that Y-Y has indeed shifted his ground, still anti-propitiation, but now insistent on Kavanah. It is most pleasing to witness a thinking man forming opinions, and then, as contexts change, being ready to go back and rethink, re-assess, re-formulate; and this already the second time in less than four chapters.

TSI'ON...YERU-SHALA'IM: Tsi'on in this sense being the spiritual-religious realm, Yeru-Shala'im the secular, though both are geographically the same city (and see the very last note on this page which expands on the point of this).

4:5 U VARA YHVH AL KOL MECHON HAR TSI'ON VE AL MIKRA'EHA ANAN YOMAM VE ASHAN VE NOGAH EYSH LEHAVAH LAILAH KI AL KOL KAVOD CHUPAH

וּבָרָא יְהוָה עַל כָּל מְכוֹן הַר צִיּוֹן וְעַל מִקְרָאֶהָ עָנָן יוֹמָם וְעָשָׁן וְנֹגַהּ אֵשׁ לֶהָבָה לָיְלָה כִּי עַל כָּל כָּבוֹד חֻפָּה

KJ: And the LORD will create upon every dwelling place of mount Zion, and upon her assemblies, a cloud and smoke by day, and the shining of a flaming fire by night: for upon all the glory shall be a defence.

BN: Then YHVH will create, over the entire habitation of Mount Tsi'on, and over her communities, a cloud and smoke by day, and the gleam of a flaming fire by night; for over all his glory there shall be a canopy.

Reinstatement of the Mosaic symbols (which were also volcanic), though we will shortly see several key Mosaic symbols rejected and destroyed, such as Chizki-Yah (Hezekiah) destroying Nechushtan, the brass serpent which was Mosheh's caduceus pole (Hezekiah? Didn't we just think he got a hidden mention, a prefiguration by subtlety? see the opening word of this chapter). This image of the cloud of smoke by day and the pillar of fire by night is simply one of very many arguments in favour of Yesh'a-Yah as the author of the original Book of Shemot (Exodus); though of course he might just be quoting.

And of course it also endorses the conviction, stated repeatedly in my commentaries at the time, that what was happening at Mount Sinai was what happened at Pompeii in 79 CE, and at Sedom somewhat earlier. YHVH in his earliest known form, the volcano-god: Vulcan, not yet Zeus.

CHUPAH: Irresistible in the context to include the illustration that I have: a wedding ceremony, on one of the hills of Yeru-Shala'im, taking away from the bride any possibility of "reproach" - and yes, I know that this is not Y-Y's intention in this verse, but still irresistible in the context of the chapter, because today the word CHUPAH only has the single meaning, which is the bridal canopy. For him, it was a contrast with that other booth, the SUKAH, which will open the very next verse, both as human imitations of the divine canopy, the heavens themselves; and both forms of "making sacred" in which the Kavanah is self-evident.

4:6 VE SUKAH TIHEYEH LE TSEL YOMAM ME CHOREV U LE MACHSEH U LE MISTOR MI ZEREM U MI MATAR

וְסֻכָּה תִּהְיֶה לְצֵל יוֹמָם מֵחֹרֶב וּלְמַחְסֶה וּלְמִסְתּוֹר מִזֶּרֶם וּמִמָּטָר

KJ: And there shall be a tabernacle for a shadow in the daytime from the heat, and for a place of refuge, and for a covert from storm and from rain.

BN: And there shall be a booth, providing shade from the heat in the day-time, and a refuge and a shelter from both storm and rain. {P}

I think that Y-Y is attempting to describe the "mushroom cloud" that happens when a volcano erupts, sending vast amounts of rock and ash and molten lava into the sky, which then slowly descends, inflicting the kind of damage on people that is summed up in Lot's wife "turning into a pillar of salt" in Genesis 19, or the "plague" that afflicted Mir-Yam in Numbers 12. So in the previous verse he used the image of a canopy - familiar to his listeners as a chupah, the wedding canopy, though originally the chupah was the full "tent of Sarah" of Genesis 24:67. The second image, the Sukah, takes us back to Mosheh in the desert, in the Book of Deuteronomy, for it was at Sukot that the Beney Yisra-El stopped for the second giving of the Law, laws which included the inauguration of the autumn festival of Sukot (Deuteronomy 16:13-22), for which booths made of palm leaves (if available; wood and willow otherwise) are set up; the shape likewise suggesting a tent. And from that suggestion, Y-Y's real intention, which is to hint at YHVH's own habitation, the Mishkan itself, the "Tent of the Tabernacle" (not to be confused with the Ohel Mo'ed) in which he was brought to Yisra-El, and in which he lived until his "Heychal", his palace in the form of the Temple, was built on Mount Tsi'on. So the shadow of the mushroom-cloud becomes the Temple - a rather clever piece of image-development - and YHVH completes the journey from obscure volcano-god of the Sinai desert to the One and Only Deity of the human world, his capital Yeru-Shala'im.

That is all there is, six verses, in this chapter. I am quite certain it is really the conclusion of Chapter 3.

pey break

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Isaiah: 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40 41 42 43 44 45 46 47 48 49 50 51 52 53 54 55 56 57 58 59 60 61 62 63 64 65 66

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Isaiah 3

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Isaiah: 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40 41 42 43 44 45 46 47 48 49 50 51 52 53 54 55 56 57 58 59 60 61 62 63 64 65 66

3:1 KI HINEH HA ADON YHVH TSEVA'OT MESIR MIYRU-SHALA'IM U MIY'HUDAH MASH'EN U MASH'ENAH KOL MISH'AN-LECHEM VE CHOL MISHAN-MAYIM

כִּי הִנֵּה הָאָדוֹן יְהוָה צְבָאוֹת מֵסִיר מִירוּשָׁלִַם וּמִיהוּדָה מַשְׁעֵן וּמַשְׁעֵנָה כֹּל מִשְׁעַן-לֶחֶם וְכֹל מִשְׁעַן-מָיִם

KJ (King James translation): For, behold, the Lord, the LORD of hosts, doth take away from Jerusalem and from Judah the stay and the staff, the whole stay of bread, and the whole stay of water

BN (BibleNet translation): For, behold, the Lord, YHVH the Lord of the Hosts of the Heavens, will remove from Yiru-Shala'im and from Yehudah both silo and store, every stick of bread, and every stash of water...

We need to understand that chapters are a late addition by the Christian translators, where the original Yehudit text was a continuous piece of writing, not even paragraphed. So we can state that this verse is not the start of a new sermon or oracle, but a continuation of the last one, effectively chapter 2 verse23, and needs to be read as such.

Is this an image of a famine, or of a siege, or even both - which is to say, is he predicting the fall of what is left (Yehudah, Bin-Yamin, Shim'on), or describing the fall of what has just been lost (the Northern Kingdom)? The deity is once again YHVH Tseva'ot, the Lord of the Hosts of the Heavens, which is not a concept that would have been understood by anyone from Adam to Yehoshu'a, though it would have been menaingful to King David, whose role as Mashiyach was to represent the Earthly Host; the Hosts were the Civil Service of Angels, so to speak, though angels were a decidedly Zoroastrian concept, and so I am two hundred years too early to be using the term here; "angels" in Hebrewism were "messengers" (mal'achim - מלאכים), the emanations of the light from stars which bring astrological messages to Earth, interpretable by seers and prophets in the pre-Isaiac sense of that word (and presumably, because the Earth too reflects sunlight and thereby illuminates the sky, life-forms on other planets regard Earth as an angel too, and draw horoscopal conclusions from its orbits).

MASHEN U MASHENAH... MISHAN: All three words appear to derive from the same root, though it may be an even more complex word-game than at first appears. If the root is MISH'EN, then we have the notion of "support", and the modern word for "employees" (without whose "support" the businessman cannot operate), which comes from the fact that the man in charge in the ancient world always carried a staff. But that initial Mem may suggest the Pi'el or Hiph'il of a different root, and that would have to be Sheen-Ayin-Nun (שען), which happens to be a "clockmaker", a SHA'AH being an hour of time. I think it probably is not that on this occasion, but the deity as the world's clockmaker (and the reason for Richard Dawkins calling his book "The Blind Watchmaker") is an image that recurs throughout the Tanach, starting with the word-game on its very opening word: Bere'shit, which is not the same as Be HAT'CHALAH...

3:2 GIBOR VE ISH MILCHAMAH SHOPHET VE NAVI VE KOSEM VE ZAKEN

גִּבּוֹר וְאִישׁ מִלְחָמָה שׁוֹפֵט וְנָבִיא וְקֹסֵם וְזָקֵן

KJ: The mighty man, and the man of war, the judge, and the prophet, and the prudent, and the ancient,

BN: The mighty warrior, and the man of war; the judge, and the prophet, and the diviner, and the elder...

Again we have to ask: is Yesh'a-Yah here predicting, or describing events that have already taken place: the captivity of the leadership, civil, judicial, military and spiritual?

NAVI...KOSEM: Note that a clear distinction is made between these two: in Y-Y's usage, he would count himself as a NAVI, a man who uses his intellect to interpret verifiable data rationally, and then Bloom's Taxonomise it into predictions of the future, where a KOSEM is a "seer", a person who reads palms or stars, arranges ouija boards, practices Gematria and sees patterns in the leftover tea-leaves in the bottom of the cup.

3:3 SAR CHAMISHIM U NESU PHANIM VE YO'ETS VA CHACHAM CHARASHIM U NEVON LACHASH

שַׂר חֲמִשִּׁים וּנְשׂוּא פָנִים וְיוֹעֵץ וַחֲכַם חֲרָשִׁים וּנְבוֹן לָחַשׁ

KJ: The captain of fifty, and the honourable man, and the counsellor, and the cunning artificer, and the eloquent orator.

BN: The squadron commander, and the man of rank, and the counsellor, and the seductive charmer, and the clever charismatic ...

And the middle and merchant and artisan classes too, (which of course did not exist in Mosaic times).

I presume he is making this rather tedious and otherwise pointless list as a way of making sure that every one of his listeners understood that he (even she) knew that he was included.

Note the rhythmic and alliterative repetition of the Chet (ח) in this verse, and his ability to do it without needing the Chaf (כ) as well. From verses such as this we can be certain that Y-Y's text were public recitals, not written to be read, and that the emotional power driven by these rhythms and alliterations etc were key to his success (and yes, I am fully aware that Adolf Hitler and Donald Trump, to name but two, used exactly the same rhetorical devices).

3:4 VE NATATI NE'ARIM SAREYHEM VE TA'ALULIM YIMSHELU VAM

וְנָתַתִּי נְעָרִים שָׂרֵיהֶם וְתַעֲלוּלִים יִמְשְׁלוּ בָם

KJ: And I will give children to be their princes, and babes shall rule over them.

BN: "And I will appoint youths to be their princes, and the capricious will rule over them...

The above leaves behind a vacuum of anxiety and opportunism; is this Y-Y actually recognising the catastrophic implications of the divine wrath? Or is this a foreshadowing of 7:14? My next note answers that question.

VE NATATI: Sudden switch to a first person that appears to be the deity, or at least Y-Y surrogating for him, which is an interesting rhetorical device of some arrogance: I know what the deity wants, so take heed of me. So, again, the philosopher turns into the despot.

And where do we close the quotation marks? There is no obvious indicator in the verses that follow, but the text is often self-evidently Y-Y speaking for himself.

TA'ALULIM: The root means something like "capricious", and is an intensive verb created by prefixing a TAV (ת) to the actual root, ALAL: for which see the links at the link, most of which take us back to verse 1 of this chapter. Translating it as "babes", I presume, is KJ wanting to echo it with NE'ARIM, but it is also slightly over-stating that by rendering it as "children". NE'ARIM are youths, teenagers, and yes, still children, but older than the "babes" that follows. The point here is that, just like the basics of bread and water in verse 1, so the disaster will take away all the capable potential potentates, and you will end up with Nero and Caligula when you had hoped for something rather more messianic.

3:5 VE NIGASH HA AM ISH BE ISH VE ISH BE RE'EHU YIRHAVU HA NA'AR BA ZAKEN VE HA NIKLEH BA NICHBAD

וְנִגַּשׂ הָעָם אִישׁ בְּאִישׁ וְאִישׁ בְּרֵעֵהוּ יִרְהֲבוּ הַנַּעַר בַּזָּקֵן וְהַנִּקְלֶה בַּנִּכְבָּד

KJ: And the people shall be oppressed, every one by another, and every one by his neighbour: the child shall behave himself proudly against the ancient, and the base against the honourable.

BN: "And the people will be oppressed, person by person, neighbour against neighbour, and children will be disrespectful of their elders, and the base likewise the honourable...

… a breakdown of values and… and people will do "as they see fit in their own eyes", which was the major complaint of the epoch of the Shoftim (Judges).

Where it was a CHET two verses ago, now it is a Nun (נ) that drives the oratory.

3:6 KI YITPHOS ISH BE ACHIV BEIT AVIV SIMLAH LECHAH KATSIN TIHEYEH LANU VE HA MACHSHELAH HA ZOT TACHAT YADECHA

כִּי יִתְפֹּשׂ אִישׁ בְּאָחִיו בֵּית אָבִיו שִׂמְלָה לְכָה קָצִין תִּהְיֶה לָּנוּ וְהַמַּכְשֵׁלָה הַזֹּאת תַּחַת יָדֶךָ

KJ: When a man shall take hold of his brother of the house of his father, saying, Thou hast clothing, be thou our ruler, and let this ruin be under thy hand:

BN: Then some man will take hold of his brother, someone from his own clan: "You have a robe. You be our ruler. You take responsibility for this dreadful mess."

I have chosen this as the point at which the quotation marks end and Y-Y resumes as himself.

SIMLAH: Means "a robe", which is what the elders wore, everyone else simply wearing tunics; but is something else idiomatic intended?

3:7 YISA VA YOM HA HU LEMOR LO EHEYEH CHOVESH U VE VEITI EYN LECHEM VE EYN SIMLAH LO TESIMUNI KETSIN AM

יִשָּׂא בַיּוֹם הַהוּא לֵאמֹר לֹא אֶהְיֶה חֹבֵשׁ וּבְבֵיתִי אֵין לֶחֶם וְאֵין שִׂמְלָה לֹא תְשִׂימֻנִי קְצִין עָם

KJ: In that day shall he swear, saying, I will not be an healer; for in my house is neither bread nor clothing: make me not a ruler of the people.

BN: On that day he will reply, saying: "I am not taking any responsibility for any of this. In my house there is neither bread nor robe. You will not make me the ruler of a people."

The conditions he is describing could be anywhere in time or history; what matters is not the dating or the specific context, but the ideology behind it: his attribution of the impact to the godlessnesses of the victims rather than to the actions of whoever caused it, Human or Natural. The human is a mere agent or tool or instrument of the deity; and that is fine if the deity is the E of science, but not if he is the E of superstition.

3:8 KI CHASHLAH YERU-SHALA'IM VIY'HUDAH NAPHAL KI LESHONAM U MA'ALELEYHEM EL YHVH LAMROT EYNEY CHEVODO

כִּי כָשְׁלָה יְרוּשָׁלִַם וִיהוּדָה נָפָל כִּי לְשׁוֹנָם וּמַעַלְלֵיהֶם אֶל יְהוָה לַמְרוֹת עֵנֵי כְבוֹדוֹ

KJ: For Jerusalem is ruined, and Judah is fallen: because their tongue and their doings are against the LORD, to provoke the eyes of his glory.

BN: For Yeru-Shala'im is ruined, and Yehudah has fallen; because their tongues and their deeds are pointed towards YHVH, to provoke him to the depths of his honour.

Is this a continuation of the response by the unnamed man in verse 7, or Y-Y again? I have rendered it as the latter, but the semi-colon after "fallen" seems to me just as likely to be the point of change.

It does rather seem, though, as if we have moved forward a long way since the Sennacherib era of the first and second chapters; this verse at least appears to infer the conquest by Nebuchadnezzar in 586 BCE, 140 years after Sennacherib.

CHASHLAH: See the link.

MA'ALELEYHEM: See my note to TA'ALULIM at verse 4; this comes from the same root, and again is one of those occasions when a root is intensified by the prefixing of a Tav. But now we need to jump forward to verse 10, where the same word is used, but now with a decidedly positive intention; this does not impact on the translation here, but it may well do at verse 4, where we now have to wonder if that is not in fact from an entirely different root, and this and verse 10 the puns he is deriving to make a clever point linguistically.

EYNEY: Yes, "eyes". But Ayin is also "a well", and also "nothingness", and Y-Y will play with these multiple meanings throughout the book.

3:9 HAKARAT PENEYHEM ANTAH BAM VE CHATA'TAM KI SEDOM HIGIYDU LO CHICHEDU OY LE NAPHSHAM KI GAMLU LAHEM RA'AH

הַכָּרַת פְּנֵיהֶם עָנְתָה בָּם וְחַטָּאתָם כִּסְדֹם הִגִּידוּ לֹא כִחֵדוּ אוֹי לְנַפְשָׁם כִּי גָמְלוּ לָהֶם רָעָה

KJ: The shew of their countenance doth witness against them; and they declare their sin as Sodom, they hide it not. Woe unto their soul! for they have rewarded evil unto themselves.

BN: The very look on their faces bears witness against them; and they describe their sins like Sedom, not even trying to hide it. Woe unto their souls, for they have brought wickedness upon themselves.

SEDOM: Alluded to throughout chapter 1; it becomes, throughout the writings of all the Prophets, and remains as such in the idoms and colloquialisms of our time, a standard metaphor for human wickedness, though it is fairly clear from both the Genesis and Exodus texts that what happened at Sedom was a volcanic eruption, and blaming that on humans belongs to the Mythological, not the Metaphysical Age.

3:10 IMRU TSADIK KI TOV KI PHERI MA'ALELEYHEM YO'CHELU

אִמְרוּ צַדִּיק כִּי טוֹב כִּי פְרִי מַעַלְלֵיהֶם יֹאכֵלוּ

KJ: Say ye to the righteous, that it shall be well with him: for they shall eat the fruit of their doings.

BN: But say this of the righteous, that it shall be well with them; for they shall eat the fruit of their deeds.

PHERI: see my note on the moles in the previous chapter (verse 20).

MA'ALELEYHEM: See my notes at verse 4 and then verse 10. The second psrt of verse 11 says the same thing, just with a different way of saying it.

3:11 OY LE RASHA RA KI GEMUL YADAV YE'ASEH LO

אוֹי לְרָשָׁע רָע כִּי גְמוּל יָדָיו יֵעָשֶׂה לּוֹ

KJ: Woe unto the wicked! it shall be ill with him: for the reward of his hands shall be given him.

BN: Woe to he who behaves wickedly! He will receive the consequences of his actions.

RASHA RA: Quoted in the Yigdal, a setting of Maimonides' "Thirteen Principles of Faith" which is sung in every Jewish synagogue on Friday evenings: "Gomel le-ish chesed ke-miphalo noten le-rasha ra ke-rishato - He rewards with kindness according to the deed, and evil in equal measure."

3:12 AMI NOGSHAV ME'OLEL VE NASHIM MASHLU VO AMI ME'ASHREYCHA MAT'IM VE DERECH ORCHOTEYCHA BILE'U

עַמִּי נֹגְשָׂיו מְעוֹלֵל וְנָשִׁים מָשְׁלוּ בוֹ עַמִּי מְאַשְּׁרֶיךָ מַתְעִים וְדֶרֶךְ אֹרְחֹתֶיךָ בִּלֵּעוּ

KJ: As for my people, children are their oppressors, and women rule over them. O my people, they which lead thee cause thee to err, and destroy the way of thy paths.

BN: As for my people, a babe is their master, and women rule over them. O my people, they who lead you cause you to err, and destroy the footholds on your paths.

This gives us the first instance of Y-Y's misogyny - and alas it won't be the last. Nor can he be defended, as many have tried to do, by claiming that it is merely "ideological patriarchalism", the belief that men are the stronger sex and women the weaker, and that therefore men should rule; it is, alas, a hint of the same hatred of women that we will find in St Augustine later on: the whited sepulchre, the Whore of Babylon, the whore and the harlot, Original Sin, every one of those disgraceful calumnies.

But at least there is also an appropriate condemnation of the bad leaders among the men, who are are blamed for the plight of the nation.

And let's be honest, when Y-Y is doing one of his negative-misanthropic rants, there is scarcely a form, type, species or genre of humanity that doesn't get spat upon, most catarrhally.

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3:13 NITSAV LARIV YHVH VE OMED LADIN AMIM

נִצָּב לָרִיב יְהוָה וְעֹמֵד לָדִין עַמִּים

KJ: The LORD standeth up to plead, and standeth to judge the people.

BN: YHVH stands up to make his case, then remains standing to pass judgment on the nations.

LARIV is really "to quarrel", but here it is being used in the sense of a trial lawyer prosecuting. And this is important for we who translate and comment on these texts, because, in Y-Y's time, ha-Satan was his "adversary", the lawyer for the defense, and nothing demoniacal in that role.

AMIM is plural: the universal judgment of "that day", rather than just the Yom Kippur of the Yehudim.

3:14 YHVH BE MISHPAT YAVO IM ZIKNEY AMO VE SARAV VE ATEM BI'ARTEM HA KEREM GEZELAT HE ANI BE VATEYCHEM

יְהוָה בְּמִשְׁפָּט יָבוֹא עִם זִקְנֵי עַמּוֹ וְשָׂרָיו וְאַתֶּם בִּעַרְתֶּם הַכֶּרֶם גְּזֵלַת הֶעָנִי בְּבָתֵּיכֶם

KJ: The LORD will enter into judgment with the ancients of his people, and the princes thereof: for ye have eaten up the vineyard; the spoil of the poor is in your houses.

BN: YHVH will pass judgment on the elders of his people, and its princes. "You have devoured the entire vineyard; even the gleanings that belong to the poor are in your houses...

This extends the attack on bad leaders to an accusation of corruption and extgreme selfishness. See for example Leviticus 19:9 ff, but also the famous Hillel triplet in Pirkei Avot - for which click here.

First use of the image of the vineyard that will become one of the dominant images of the book. The vine is significant because the fermented grape is eucharistic, where the juice from any other fruit is merely juice. But the vine is also symbolic: male circumcision is understood to be the equivalent of clipping the vine so that it may run to fruit; in some cultures female circumcision is carried out for the same reason.

BI'ARTEM: Should this be in quotation marks, as per my note to VE NATATI at verse 4? The last phrase of verse 15 appears to confirm it.

3:15 MAH LACHEM TEDAK'U AMI U PHENEY ANIYIM TIT'CHANU NE'UM ADONAI YHVH TSEVA'OT

מלכם (מַה-לָּכֶם) תְּדַכְּאוּ עַמִּי וּפְנֵי עֲנִיִּים תִּטְחָנוּ נְאֻם אֲדֹנָי יְהוִה צְבָאוֹת

KJ: What mean ye that ye beat my people to pieces, and grind the faces of the poor? saith the Lord GOD of hosts.

BN: "How dare you crush my people, and grind the faces of the poor?" says YHVH, the Lord of the Hosts of the Heavens.

This now calls the leaders tyrannical and calls for social justice; it is strange to witness Y-Y in his shifts of mood, at some points an ultra right winger, happy to see the destruction of entire populations as a merited consequence of sin, and then the positive-idealist resurfaces as an ultra left winger, demanding employment rights, justice, economic egalitarianism, a social contract. But I guess that this is how it must be, for a serious philosopher, stepping outside the daily world to observe and comment on it: this fails because it has too much freedom, and so an anti-liberty response, but this fails because it is pinned down too tightly, and so a pro-liberty response.

MAH LACHEM: The parenthesis belongs to the Masoretic text, and is one of those occasions when even the most committed have to acknowledge that scribal error may be involved - easier to do with Yesh'a-Yah than with Mosheh, of course. But we need to ask: what if it were intended to be MELACHEM or MILCHOM or any one of several other permutations which are viable from known roots and regular conjugations? To which the answer is: no one who has done that has yet come up with an alternative that makes sufficient sense in the context to be worthy of further scholarship. So we have done our duty, and asked. So we shall remain content with MAH LACHEM, and then recognise that it also fits the style of Yesh'a-Yah perfectly.

ADONAI YHVH TSEVA'OT: needs its standard explanation (click here); and then see verse 17.

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3:16 VA YOMER YHVH YA'AN KI GAVHU BENOT TSI'ON VA TELACHNAH NETUYOT GARON U MESAKROT EYNAYIM HALOCH VE TAPHOPH TELACHNAH U VE RAGLEYHEM TE'AKASNAH

וַיֹּאמֶר יְהוָה יַעַן כִּי גָבְהוּ בְּנוֹת צִיּוֹן וַתֵּלַכְנָה נטוות (נְטוּיוֹת) גָּרוֹן וּמְשַׂקְּרוֹת עֵינָיִם הָלוֹךְ וְטָפֹף תֵּלַכְנָה וּבְרַגְלֵיהֶם תְּעַכַּסְנָה

KJ: Moreover the LORD saith, Because the daughters of Zion are haughty, and walk with stretched forth necks and wanton eyes, walking and mincing as they go, and making a tinkling with their feet:

BN: And in addition YHVH says: "Because the daughters of Tsi'on are arrogant, and walk with stretched-forth necks and wanton eyes, strutting and mincing as they go, and making a tinkling with their feet."

Immediately after which he returns to the right-wing rant, berating slutty women… see my note to verse 12. Though I suspect that this is also, as with the ASHERIM and ASHTEROT that have been referenced earlier in the book, not just misogyny but Y-Y overtly rejecting the fertility cults in which the women groom themselves like disco-participants in order to arouse their own oestrogen as well as the male response (see Genesis 1:28)... in the Mythological Era, all religious ritual and ceremony reflected the needs of fertility, in the world of food as much as in the world of baby-making: rain please at the right time to make the corn flourish, sun please but not too strong that it causes famine, and the endless tales of barren women having babies, none of whom of course were ever barren, but in this way the goddess can be honoured and thanked. Sacrifice of that first-born male child (or simply his foreskin) is thus no different from sacrifice of the first fruits of the orchard or the vineyard or the corn-field or the dairy: each is a gesture of propitiation towards those gods. But for Y-Y, in the Metaphysical Age, agricultural fertility is about developing intelligent farming strategems which take into account all possible seasonal eventualities (you know the gods are going to send monsoon rains at some point: why haven't you dug ditches around the fields to soak up the excess water? where are you linen shades, ready to erect on poles around the crops when the heat-wave happens, as it will?), and are able to deal with them; and that does not require sacrifice, but only "obedience" - keeping to the agreed strategic plan, the "rules" of engineering etc. Interestingly, the techniques of farming developed by the modedrn state of Israel to "make the desert bloom" and to turn the Hula and Jezreel swamps into agricultural land, would unquestionably meet Y-Y's full approval (well, maybe not "full"; he is bound to find fault in some aspect of it!)

RAGLEYHEM TE'AKASNAH: A matter of custom and fashion: ankle jewelery, worn the same as ear and finger jewelery, where girls today prefer the lip, the nose. But today's "sexually liberated young women" are practically jewel-free, compared with Y-Y's boutique shopping list in the next several verses!

And of course this is as it should be. A hierodule is not a prostitute, even if she is doing what she does in order to end up in bed with a man. She is surrogating for the goddess of fertility, and so she must look like a goddess, in her personal beauty, but also in the enhancements of gold and silver, amber and ruby, silk and retted linen. See Genesis 1:28.

TE'AKASNAH: The phrasing of the next verse makes clear the "message" from the deity has been delivered, but the unfinished opening of the sentence ("KI GAVHU... Because...") suggests that it has not been in full. Is this an error in the text?

3:17 VE SIPACH ADONAI KADKOD BENOT TSI'ON VA YHVH PAT'HEN YE'AREH

וְשִׂפַּח אֲדֹנָי קָדְקֹד בְּנוֹת צִיּוֹן וַיהוָה פָּתְהֵן יְעָרֶה

KJ: Therefore the Lord will smite with a scab the crown of the head of the daughters of Zion, and the LORD will discover their secret parts.

BN: So the Lord will smite with a scab the crowns of the heads of the daughters of Tsi'on, and YHVH will lay bare their secret parts.

ADONAI: see the note above. Adonai means "Lord" in the sense of "Sire" or "Your Majesty" - the addressing of a king. In verse 15 Y-Y used it to address YHVH Yseva'ot, who is unquestionably the father of the pantheon, the sun-god who rules the "cabinet" of twelve constellatory ministers and six planetary co-deities. But here the two are separated, Adonai doing the "smiting" but YHVH doing the "discovering". And Y-Y is telling us what will be at the end of days. So is Adonai now the Messiah, or is ADONAI the earthly king, who will deal with matters at the human level? See the very next verse.

I don't mean to sound anything other than totally serious when I ask this: what kind of a "scab" is intended here? Is he wishing syphillis upon them? And if not, again, what kind of "scab"? Or are we misunderstanding PAT'HEN? Not an easy root to deconstruct, as per the link. Interesting though that the two major options considered by the scholars are the genitalia and the forehead - isn't that precisely the direction in which Y-Y wants the human emphasis to shift!

And then there is the "laying bare", or otherwise "discovering", of their "secret parts". Given that this is precisely what the women are hoping to achieve by dressing in this manner, surely the deity should be covering them up, not discovering them? But if it is indeed the forehead, and not the genitalia...

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3:18 BA YOM HA HU YASIR ADONAI ET TIPH'ERET HA ACHASIM VE HA SHEVIYSIM VE HA SAHARONIM

בַּיּוֹם הַהוּא יָסִיר אֲדֹנָי אֵת תִּפְאֶרֶת הָעֲכָסִים וְהַשְּׁבִיסִים וְהַשַּׂהֲרֹנִים

KJ: In that day the Lord will take away the bravery of their tinkling ornaments about their feet, and their cauls, and their round tires like the moon,

BN: On that day the Lord will remove the splendour of their ankle jewelery, and the fillets, and the crescents...

Again Adonai, and again "on that day" - so this can only be the Messiah. And how intriguing, to find the reborn David, who is addressed as Adoni in the Psalms, "reborn" as Adonai - both of course variations on Adonis, the Tammuz-Osiris-Jesus of the Phoenician world.

ACHASIM: I simply draw your attention to Proverbs 7:22, where the same word is used, and yes they are still a type of ankle-bracelet, but meaning "fetters" (stocks" in the KJ rendition, but "stocks" were specific to its epoch), not "adornments". I presume Y-Y's audience would have been fully aware of the ambivalence.

SHEVIYSIM: Gesenius has an interesting theory on this (under Sheviysim rather than under its root, SHAVAS, if you are looking it up): that it was a word borrowed from one of the pre-Arabic languages of Babylon or Mesopotamia, and meant "little suns"; the idea being that the band itself is circular, making a kind of sun-halo, and that it was supplemented by sun-coloured orbs worn around the neck. He notes that the word that follows here, SAHARONIM, means "little crescents", which would of course be moon-crescents, and the surrogate for the fertility goddess thereby adorned in a manner that conjoins ("to interweave" is the more common usage of the root SHAVAS) both of them in holy harmony.

3:19 HA NETIPHOT VE HA SHEYROT VE HA RE'ALOT

הַנְּטִפוֹת וְהַשֵּׁירוֹת וְהָרְעָלוֹת

KJ: The chains, and the bracelets, and the mufflers,

BN: The pendants, and the bracelets, and the veils...

And the Armani suits, the Coach handbags, the Gucci stilettoes...

3:20 HA PE'ERIM VE HA TSE'ADOT VE HA KISHURIM U VATEY HA NEPHESH VE HA LECHASHIM

הַפְּאֵרִים וְהַצְּעָדוֹת וְהַקִּשֻּׁרִים וּבָתֵּי הַנֶּפֶשׁ וְהַלְּחָשִׁים

KJ: The bonnets, and the ornaments of the legs, and the headbands, and the tablets, and the earrings,

BN: The head-dresses, and the armlets, and the sashes, and the corselets, and the amulets...

And the botox, and the liposuction...

PE'ERIM: This was an age when everyone covered their heads with the same cloth that covered their bodies, the men usually with a burnous, the women with what today would be called the chādor. KJ's "bonnets" again reflects the clothing of its epoch

3:21 HA TABA'OT VE NIZMEY HA APH

הַטַּבָּעוֹת וְנִזְמֵי הָאָף

KJ: The rings, and nose jewels,

BN: The rings, and the nose-jewels...

No Fabergé, no Lagerfeld, no Chanel No 5... no mention of tatoos though; I wonder if they did, or didn't... no, tatoos were officially prohibited in the Mosaic Code (Leviticus 19:28) though it would appear that it was commonplace among the other nations.

3:22 HA MACHALATSOT VE HA MA'ATAPHOT VE HA MITPACHOT VE HA CHARITIM

הַמַּחֲלָצוֹת וְהַמַּעֲטָפוֹת וְהַמִּטְפָּחוֹת וְהָחֲרִיטִים

KJ: The changeable suits of apparel, and the mantles, and the wimples, and the crisping pins,

BN: The aprons, and the mantelets, and the cloaks, and the girdles...

All the boutique stores, GAP, Reiss, H&M, all of them, pffff! gone, replaced by? The biblical equivalents of the burqa, the nun's habit, the chastity belt, the sheitl, I have no doubt.

3:23 VE HA GILYONIM VE HA SEDIYNIM VE HA TSENIYPHOT VE HA REDIYDIM

וְהַגִּלְיֹנִים וְהַסְּדִינִים וְהַצְּנִיפוֹת וְהָרְדִידִים

KJ: The glasses, and the fine linen, and the hoods, and the vails.

BN: And the gauze robes, and the fine linen, and the turbans, and the mantles.

Mind you, there's some lovely poetry in all these lists. The "y" sounds in this verse, the "ma" sounds in the previous one. But replaced by what? And what is left in life, for a woman, if this is taken away? Oh yes, I forgot, the kitchen, and babies. And don't forget the whip!

3:24 VE HAYAH TACHAT BOSEM MAK YIHEYEH VE TACHAT CHAGURAH NIKPAH VE TACHAT MA'ASEH MIKSHEH KARCHAH VE TACHAT PETIYGIL MACHAGORET SAK KI TACHAT YOPHI

וְהָיָה תַחַת בֹּשֶׂם מַק יִהְיֶה וְתַחַת חֲגוֹרָה נִקְפָּה וְתַחַת מַעֲשֶׂה מִקְשֶׁה קָרְחָה וְתַחַת פְּתִיגִיל מַחֲגֹרֶת שָׂק כִּי-תַחַת יֹפִי

KJ: And it shall come to pass, that instead of sweet smell there shall be stink; and instead of a girdle a rent; and instead of well set hair baldness; and instead of a stomacher a girding of sackcloth; and burning instead of beauty.

BN: And it shall come to pass, that instead of sweet spices there shall be rottenness; and instead of a girdle rags; and instead of curled hair baldness; and instead of a linen robe a girding of sackcloth; branding instead of beauty.

Describing their undoing (in the recriminatory sense, but the pun is valid).

PETIYGIL: Another of the much-disputed words for which Gesenius seems to offer the best explanation: that it either conflates PETAG, which is a type of "linen", with PATIYL, which is "a thread" or "a cord", or PETI, which suggests "roundness", with the Chaldean GOL'A, which is "a robe".

KI: I am afraid that I just couldn't resist that ambiguity. Having dismissed all the brands in my previous comments... this is the only form of branding left, and of course, as Heinrich Heine famously pointed out, where they start by branding...

3:25 METAYICH BA CHEREV YIPOLU U GEVURATECH BA MILCHAMAH

מְתַיִךְ בַּחֶרֶב יִפֹּלוּ וּגְבוּרָתֵךְ בַּמִּלְחָמָה

KJ: Thy men shall fall by the sword, and thy mighty in the war.

BN: Your menfolk will fall by the sword, and your mighty heroes in the war.

And yay, roll on global warming, and we can wipe out the entire species in one fell flood! And no Arks this time, eh Yesh'a-Yah, no foolish naiveties of Arks this time, to provide that pathetic mediocrity the human race with yet another chance?YHVH knows they'll only fail again.

3:26 VE ANU VE AVLU PETACHEYHA VE NIKATAH LA ARETS TESHEV

וְאָנוּ וְאָבְלוּ פְּתָחֶיהָ וְנִקָּתָה לָאָרֶץ תֵּשֵׁב

KJ: And her gates shall lament and mourn; and she being desolate shall sit upon the ground.

BN: And her gates shall lament and mourn; and utterly bereft she shall sit upon the ground.

Now he speaks of mourning – all this the consequence of the withdrawal of divine favour as a consequence of unrighteousness. We need again to contrast this with the Mosaic; there it was natural disaster which consequenced (earthquake, drought, general infertility), here it is man-made, but with man simply a tool of the deity. We have to wonder, though, what terrible abuse, or tragedy, or bullying, or experience, could lead to a man hating the world to quite such a degree.

PETACHEYHA: doesn't translate as gates. Well, yes it does, but a PETACH is first and foremost "an opening", and Y-Y has been punning around various sorts of fertility-related openings throughout this chapter.

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Isaiah 2

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2:1 HA DAVAR ASHER CHAZAH YESH'A-YAHU BEN AMOTS AL YEHUDAH VIYRU-SHALA'IM

הַדָּבָר אֲשֶׁר חָזָה יְשַׁעְיָהוּ בֶּן אָמוֹץ עַל יְהוּדָה וִירוּשָׁלִָם

KJ (King James translation): The word that Isaiah the son of Amoz saw concerning Judah and Jerusalem.

BN (BibleNet translation): The vision of Yesh'a-Yah ben Amots concerning Yehudah and Yeru-Shala'im.

HA DAVAR: Can't really be translated as "the word", because the verb that follows is the "seeing of a vision", unless what Y-Y "saw" was written down. But DAVAR YHVH is always understood to be "the Word" of the deity, and not a superhuman voice from heaven pronouncing edicts, but in its Creational form: the deity "speaking" the Cosmos into existence ("Let there be Light"). Like Genesis 1:3, John the Apostle's gospel begins with the same CHAZON, though he uses the Greek word, Logos (
Λόγος): "In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God" (John 1:1).

CHAZAH: Chapter 1 began with CHAZON (see my note there); now it is used as a verb.

2:2 VE HAYAH BE ACHARIT HA YAMIM NACHON YIHEYEH HAR BEIT YHVH BE ROSH HE HARIM VE NISA MI GEVA'OT VE NAHARU ELAV KOL HA GOYIM

וְהָיָה בְּאַחֲרִית הַיָּמִים נָכוֹן יִהְיֶה הַר בֵּית יְהוָה בְּרֹאשׁ הֶהָרִים וְנִשָּׂא מִגְּבָעוֹת וְנָהֲרוּ אֵלָיו כָּל הַגּוֹיִם

KJ: And it shall come to pass in the last days, that the mountain of the LORD'S house shall be established in the top of the mountains, and shall be exalted above the hills; and all nations shall flow unto it.

BN: And it shall come to pass at the end of days, that the mountain of YHVH's house shall be established as the head of the mountains, and shall be exalted above the hills; and all nations shall flow unto it.

BE ACHARIT: A very quick shift from the beginning of the days, in the previous verse, to the end of days in this one. Same Davar though!

"The mountain of the Lord's house… on top of the mountains", is not the Mosaic or the Davidic paradigm, but more like Olympus or Valhalla, though we will see Y-Y in Davidic mode frequently through the later chapters. There is an element of this in the Mosaic, but what we mostly encounter at Sinai is a volcanic deity, the surface of whose mountain is unwalkable for molten lava, whose constant eruptions lead to the famous pillar of smoke by day and pillar of fire by night, though a secondary level of the tale, probably appended in the era of the Prophets, or even later still at the time of Ezra, allows Mosheh to climb to some priestly shrine at the summit of a non-volcanic hill, where he sits in study and meditation for forty days and nights until the writing of the Law is done.

The location of the deity, not in the heavens, but on the summit of a mountain, again like Olympus or Valhalla, or indeed like Chorev or Sinai.

But note that the word for "head" is ROSH, which is lexically accurate, but also symbolically significant, because the "beginning of days" was also a ROSH - BERE'SHIT itself, the opening word (with a lower case w) of the Torah. And ROSH, which also means "source", now comes to mean "outlet" as well, and all the "elements", the primordial "waters" of the Cosmos, will flow like nations into it - helictically, though Y-Y wouldn't have known that. Clever-clever-clever word play! I wonder what Y-Y would think of my modern Einsteinian version of the Kabbalistic Tree of Life (see the illustration above).

2:3 VE HALCHU AMIM RABIM VE AMRU LECHU VE NA'ALEH EL HAR YHVH EL BEIT ELOHEY YA'AKOV VE YORENU MIDRACHAV VE NELCHAH BE ORCHOTAV KI MI TIS'ON TETS'E TORAH U DEVAR YHVH MIYRU-SHALA'IM

וְהָלְכוּ עַמִּים רַבִּים וְאָמְרוּ לְכוּ וְנַעֲלֶה אֶל הַר יְהוָה אֶל בֵּית אֱלֹהֵי יַעֲקֹב וְיֹרֵנוּ מִדְּרָכָיו וְנֵלְכָה בְּאֹרְחֹתָיו כִּי מִצִּיּוֹן תֵּצֵא תוֹרָה וּדְבַר יְהוָה מִירוּשָׁלִָם

KJ: And many people shall go and say, Come ye, and let us go up to the mountain of the LORD, to the house of the God of Jacob; and he will teach us his ways, and we will walk in his paths: for out of Zion shall go forth the law, and the word of the LORD from Jerusalem.

BN: And many peoples shall go, and say: "Come, let us go up to the mountain of YHVH, to the house of the god of Ya'akov; and he will teach us his ways, and we will walk in his paths." For the law shall go forth out of Tsi'on, and the Word of YHVH from Yiru-Shala'im.

Humans are able to go to this mountain alive, as though visiting a temple or a shrine. It is specifically named the "House of Jacob".

The phrase from "Ki mi Tsi'on" to the end of the verse is used at the Torah reading in synagogue. The "it shall come to pass" of verse 2 is now shown to be either the end of days or the Messianic age, which may or may not be the same thing; but only the "what will happen" is stated: a time of universal judgement and peace, with some receiving punishment because they refuse to adhere to the laws - and we will see as we continue whether that means the laws determined by an opinion-driven ruler, or the laws of Nature itself. The final chapters of this book will describe the punishment in detail.

Yet how odd, after such remarkable word-play in the previous verse, the awkward and prolix and ungrammatical VE HALCHU AMIM RABIM VE AMRU that opens this one. Why use the past tense for a future event at all? And if the intention is the Vav Consecutive, then use it: VA YELCHU AMIM RABIM VA YOMRU...

YORENU: The root that also yields "Torah" but which Y-Y will use consistently to mean "enlightenment" in a much boader sense.

MIDRACHAV: What is the difference between this and HALACHAH? (I ask, and not rhetorically, because I honestly do not know). Possibly they are synonymous, as with DIN and TSEDEK in the first chapter; but in travellers' terms, a DERECH is usually a highway rather than any smaller road or path, while LALECHET is much more about the journey itself.

2:4 VE SHAPHAT BEYN HA GOYIM VE HOCHIYACH LE AMIM RABIM VE CHITETU CHARVOTAM LE ITIM VA CHANIYTOTEYHEM LE MAZMEROT LO YISA GO'I EL GO'I CHEREV VE LO YILMEDU OD MILCHAMAH

וְשָׁפַט בֵּין הַגּוֹיִם וְהוֹכִיחַ לְעַמִּים רַבִּים וְכִתְּתוּ חַרְבוֹתָם לְאִתִּים וַחֲנִיתוֹתֵיהֶם לְמַזְמֵרוֹת לֹא יִשָּׂא גוֹי אֶל גּוֹי חֶרֶב וְלֹא יִלְמְדוּ עוֹד מִלְחָמָה

KJ: And he shall judge among the nations, and shall rebuke many people: and they shall beat their swords into plowshares, and their spears into pruninghooks: nation shall not lift up sword against nation, neither shall they learn war any more.

BN: And he shall judge between the nations, and draw conclusions for many peoples; and they will beat their swords into ploughshares, and their spears into pruninghooks; nation will not lift up sword against nation, nor will they study war any more.

YACHACH: Now in the Pa'al form, where it was in the Hiph'il at 1:18.

Wonderful Messianic idealism! This, ultimately, is what differentiates the Prophetic writings from the earlier books of the Tanach: the recognition that humans cannot live up to the terms of the covenant, and therefore we have to place our naive hopes in a fantasy instead. Rather sad really, at one level; but also the only chance of making progress.

The last phrase translatable into country-and-western American English as "and I ain't a-gonna study war no more" - click here to hear it.

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2:5 BEIT YA'AKOV LECHU VE NELCHAH BE OR YHVH

בֵּית יַעֲקֹב לְכוּ וְנֵלְכָה בְּאוֹר יְהוָה

KJ: O house of Jacob, come ye, and let us walk in the light of the LORD.

BN: Go, house of Ya'akov, and we shall walk in the light of YHVH.

This invokes the "Jews" specifically – though we cannot really call this people "Jews" at this epoch; however. My earlier comments suggest that they are no longer insultable as "Habiru - Hebrews", the "Two Kingdoms" having been reduced to the new triplet named Yehudah; but neither will they become "Jews", in the sense that we understand "Jews" to mean the religion Judaism as well as the ethnicity "Jewish", until 70 CE and the fall of the Temple. We could say that they became Jews-by-nationality after the disappearance of the Ten tribes in 722 BCE, but that will only add confusion. I am going to think about coining the term "Isaiac Hebrews" as a descriptor of this transitory stage, post-Mosheh but still pre-Ezra, but that will need some further thought.

LECHU, not BO'U: this is "go", not "come".

OR: The root of TORAH, as with YORENU in verse 3

2:6 KI NATASHTAH AMCHA BEIT YA'AKOV KI MAL'U MI KEDEM VE ONENIM KA PELISHTIM U VE YALDEY NACHRIM YASPIYKU

כִּי נָטַשְׁתָּה עַמְּךָ בֵּית יַעֲקֹב כִּי מָלְאוּ מִקֶּדֶם וְעֹנְנִים כַּפְּלִשְׁתִּים וּבְיַלְדֵי נָכְרִים יַשְׂפִּיקוּ

KJ: Therefore thou hast forsaken thy people the house of Jacob, because they be replenished from the east, and are soothsayers like the Philistines, and they please themselves in the children of strangers.

BN: For you, the house of Ya'akov, you have forsaken your own people. They are replenished from the east, and with soothsayers like the Pelishtim, and they make covenants among the children of foreigners.

No, KJ has this completely wrong, this is not Y-Y addressing the deity, but Y-Y surrogating for the deity in addressing the people; he invoked the House of Ya'akov in the previous verse, and is addressing them again now.

Is this an accusation that they have been adopting "Eastern ways" – the worship of Tammuz, for example, which we know from Ezekiel 8:14 was happening at the north gate of the Temple; or is this a consequence of the conquest of the Northern Kingdom, the Shomronim arriving with both garrisons and settlers (as they would again when Yehudah was conquered and exiled in 586 BCE and it was the same Padan-Aramians who were re-settled there to replace them) bringing their "voodoo" and their "heathenisms" with them? The difficulty is not just dating the text, but the use of the word "KEDEM", which could as well mean "ancient" as "eastern". But if it does mean "eastern", then it could also infer Persian, as in the Zoroastrian ideas that were coming to fruition and predominance in Deutero-Isaiah's time; while KEDEM as "ancient" infers the earlier Assyrian and Babylonian ideas, which were already fully present in Yisra-El in Torah times, as well as the broader Kena'ani culture that preceded all of these? A Hasmonean redactor would want all of these to be included.

MAL'U sounds like marrying out, diminishing the tribe by fathering or mothering children with non-Yehudim; though its use in the following verse is definitely about material rather than biological replenishment.

And YASPIYKU confirms it: the root is SAPHAK, which means "to strike" in the sense of a bargain or a covenant - here, presumably, marriage arrangements. Cf Nechem-Yah 13, verses 23ff especially.

ONENIM: But surely this is a very vulgar pun? ONENIM, rather than ONANIM - for which see ONAN.

PELISHTIM: Philistines, or possibly Palestinians.

2:7 VA TIMAL'E ARTSO KESEPH VE ZAHAV VE EYN KETSEH LE OTSROTAV VA TIMAL'E ARTSO SUSIM VE EYN KETSEH LE MARKEVOTAV

וַתִּמָּלֵא אַרְצוֹ כֶּסֶף וְזָהָב וְאֵין קֵצֶה לְאֹצְרֹתָיו וַתִּמָּלֵא אַרְצוֹ סוּסִים וְאֵין קֵצֶה לְמַרְכְּבֹתָיו

KJ: Their land also is full of silver and gold, neither is there any end of their treasures; their land is also full of horses, neither is there any end of their chariots:

BN: Their land is full of silver and gold, and there is no end to their hordes of treasure. And their land is full of horses, and there is no end to the numbers of their chariots.

ZAHAV... OTSROTAV... MARKEVOTAV: One of the things that we simply don't know about these Prophets is the method and place of delivery of their words. Did they stand on soap-boxes in the street and simply declaim? Were they an official body, the Guild of Prophets, who delivered formal speeches at official lunches, galas, banquets and ceremonial dinners? Were they like the mediaeval monks, who listened to a sermon from a pulpit every time they sat down to eat in what was otherwise obligatory silence? There are times when any of these could apply to Y-Y. But then there is the poetry, and I can easily imagine a precursor to Bob Dylan, on stage at Jerusalem's equivalent of Madison Square Gardens, accompanying himself on accoustic lyre, and with a set of pan-pipes attached by string around his neck, delivering these amazing lines of poetry in the style of "It's Alright Ma, I'm Only Bleeding" and "A Hard Rain's a-Gonna Fall".

2:8 VA TIMAL'E ARTSO ELIYLIM LE MA'ASEH YADAV YISHTACHAVU LA ASHER ASU ETSBE'OTAV

וַתִּמָּלֵא אַרְצוֹ אֱלִילִים לְמַעֲשֵׂה יָדָיו יִשְׁתַּחֲווּ לַאֲשֶׁר עָשׂוּ אֶצְבְּעֹתָיו

KJ: Their land also is full of idols; they worship the work of their own hands, that which their own fingers have made:

BN: And their land is full of idols; every one prostrates himself before the work of his own hands, that which his own fingers have made.

And perhaps one of the reasons for that Bob Dylan parallel is that there is also a second parallel, in this verse as in verse 7: with the Psalms. "Atsabeyhem keseph ve zahav", for example, in Psalm 115:4, which verse ends, just like this one, "ma'asey yedey adam" - "Their idols are silver and gold, the work of men's hands." It is almost as if Y-Y is quoting Psalms, and not only here, but frequently. Or are the Psalms quoting Yesh'a-Yah?

The attack on idol worship is the familiar rhetoric of the missionary: my psychotic delusion is superior to your psychotic delusion, so you need to give yours up and take up mine. And the follow-up, of an attack on the making of graven images, would be expected, as these are prohibited within the Mosaic Laws. But is this also an attack on arts, crafts, engineering per se, which is to say the manifestations of the human mind when it applies its potensis for imagination, thought, reason etc? It goes against his own insistence on the poietikos - or does he want even philosophy and the arts to be driven by the laws of Nature, to serve as endorsements for scientific understanding? I fear that, as with the Catholic Church in its millennial resistance to the development of education and the growth of science, out of a desire, indeed a need, to keep people ignorant so that they could continue to be be manipulated into the subservience of faith, so there is always a sense within Yesh'a-Yah that the General Secretary of the Communist Party was not the first to utilise the methods that he did.

2:9 VA YISHACH ADAM VA YISHPAL ISH VE AL TISA LAHEM

וַיִּשַּׁח אָדָם וַיִּשְׁפַּל אִישׁ וְאַל תִּשָּׂא לָהֶם

KJ: And the mean man boweth down, and the great man humbleth himself: therefore forgive them not.

BN: And the human becomes empty, and the man becomes depressed, and you cannot bear to be with them.

ADAM...ISH: I am intrigued by Y-Y's separation of these two - and he will do it repeatedly throughout the book. Adam is generally the Edomite name, and Ish the Yehudit, but he uses them rather more to mean Humankind (Adam) and individual humans (Ish). This is then given a further variation, as we shall see, when he uses both the plural of ISH - ANASHIM - to mean "people", and also ENOSH, the multiple plural formed from the same root, as a variant of ADAM (or perhaps the different Y-Ys of different epochs had different ways of using language - we must always keep that thought in mind).

YISHACH: where in the previous he used YISHTACHAVU: Pa'al shifting to Hirpa'el, as it shifted to Hiph'il previously. SHETACH, the root of that latter, means "surface", and is therefore understood to mean "floor": so the Hit'pael (reflexive) form of the verb has a person laying himself flat out on the floor - which is prostration. But here Y-Y uses YISHACH, which is translated as "bow down", that being the next level up, so to speak, in the forms of prayer: full prostration, genuflection (bowing down), seated, standing. But YISHACH does not mean "bow down"; the root is YASHACH, which means "void" or "empty", and is used either of desert regions of human stomachs (see Micah 6:14). So false worship becomes a synonym for a vacuous life - the conceit communicated not by argument, but by grammar. Brilliant! Shakespeare could have done it, Dante, James Joyce. Not many others.

Where does KJ find the word "mean"? It is not in the Yehudit text.

And of course, by idol-worship, he doesn't just mean the gods and goddesses and demons; he also means the superstar on stage with his accoustic lyre and a set of pan-pipes attached by string around the neck, and the world archery and stone-slinging champions, and that actor who just got encored playing Shimshon in the revival of the musical.

YISHPAL...AL TISA: I fully acknowledge that my translation requires 20th century psychology, and might not therefore be contextually accurate; I am fairly sure, nevertheless, that this is Y-Y's meaning. Take away the Biblical equivalents of TV, Netflix, Facebook, live sport and pop concerts, throw the individual back on his or her own resources - well, you only have to recall the pandemic of depression that accompanied lockdown during COVID... and Y-Y's entire argument, ultimately, is the need to develop inner resources so that you don't need the vacuous time-fillers and vicarious externals. This, in the end, is the poietikos.

2:10 BO VA TSUR VE HITAMEN BE APHAR MIPNEY PACHAD YHVH U MEY HADAR GE'ONO

בּוֹא בַצּוּר וְהִטָּמֵן בֶּעָפָר מִפְּנֵי פַּחַד יְהוָה וּמֵהֲדַר גְּאֹנוֹ

KJ: Enter into the rock, and hide thee in the dust, for fear of the LORD, and for the glory of his majesty.

BN: Come behind the rock, and hide in the dust, from before the fear of YHVH, and from the glory of his majesty.

BO VA TSUR: Is this a T.S. Eliot source? "Come in under the shadow of this red rock, and I will show you something different from either your shadow at morning..." In "The Wasteland".

HITAMEN: More puns, endless puns. A matter of spelling in the written form, where we have a Tet (ט) and no Aleph (א), but hear that Aleph, as though he were saying Amen; where in fact it is precisely the avoidance of the Amen that is being criticised.

PACHAD: "Terror" overstates the matter. This is PACHAD YITSCHAK, "Isaac's fear", and that fear too was engendered on a rock - in the Akeda, in Genesis 22.

GE'ONO: In the early Talmudic Jewish world of the first millennium CE, "ge'on" will become the adjectival equivalent of today's "genius" - another object of "idol-worship"; replaced in Ashkenazi Europe later on by "ilu'i", from the same root that gives "Aliya"= ascent, elevation, a going upwards. But in both worlds the point is not the "genius" but the "glory": "genius" is about the person who has it, "glory" is about the community which is improved because of him.

2:11 EYNEY GAVHUT ADAM SHAPHEL VE SHACH RUM ANASHIM VE NISGAV YHVH LEVADO BA YOM HA HU

עֵינֵי גַּבְהוּת אָדָם שָׁפֵל וְשַׁח רוּם אֲנָשִׁים וְנִשְׂגַּב יְהוָה לְבַדּוֹ בַּיּוֹם הַהוּא

KJ: The lofty looks of man shall be humbled, and the haughtiness of men shall be bowed down, and the LORD alone shall be exalted in that day.

BN: The arrogance of Humankind shall be reduced to nought, and the haughtiness of humanity shall be humbled; and YHVH alone shall be exalted on that day.

Again the inner contradictions as Humankind is humbled, complaining of his "arrogance" here, where 2:9 complained of his "humility" as being merely his cowardly sycophanting to the bullying despot (this therefore needs more specific details of what is pro and what is con theologically in Yesh'a-Yah's world; we shall have to wait to learn that in later chapters). As in verse 9, note the distinction between ADAM and ANASHIM - the plural of ISH.

SHAPHEL: This meaning too, alongside my note to verse 9.

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2:12 KI YOM LA YHVH TSEVA'OT AL KOL GE'EH VA RAM VE AL KOL NISA VE SHAPHEL

כִּי יוֹם לַיהוָה צְבָאוֹת עַל כָּל גֵּאֶה וָרָם וְעַל כָּל נִשָּׂא וְשָׁפֵל

KJ: For the day of the LORD of hosts shall be upon every one that is proud and lofty, and upon every one that is lifted up; and he shall be brought low:

BN: For YHVH, the Lord of Hosts, has a day in store for all who are proud and lofty, and for all who exalt themselves or are exalted, and they shall be brought low.

Completes the humiliation, but also completes the paradox to which we have to keep returning: "Do as I say: accept no one else's beliefs or opinions until you have worked them out for yourself." And through this, he becomes just as much of a despot as all the others.

2:13 VE AL KOL ARZEY HA LEVANON HA RAMIM VE HA NISA'IM VE AL KOL ALONEY HA BASHAN

וְעַל כָּל אַרְזֵי הַלְּבָנוֹן הָרָמִים וְהַנִּשָּׂאִים וְעַל כָּל אַלּוֹנֵי הַבָּשָׁן

KJ: And upon all the cedars of Lebanon, that are high and lifted up, and upon all the oaks of Bashan,

BN: And upon all the cedars of Levanon that are high and lifted up, and upon all the oaks of Bashan...

Extends it beyond the Beney Yisra-El, and also into Nature – the "cedars of Levanon" probably infers the Temple, which was built with them; but is that also true of "the oaks of Bashan", which were surely used to build other shrines, somewhere, at some time? In Biblical terms (see both link) Bashan is generally synonymous with Mount Chermon, the highest mountain in the region, and very much the Olympus and Valhalla of the Kena'ani and Phoenician people.

2:14 VE AL KOL HE HARIM HA RAMIM VE AL KOL HA GEVA'OT HA NISA'OT

וְעַל כָּל הֶהָרִים הָרָמִים וְעַל כָּל הַגְּבָעוֹת הַנִּשָּׂאוֹת

KJ: And upon all the high mountains, and upon all the hills that are lifted up,

BN: And upon all the high mountains, and upon all the hills that are lifted up.

This appears to contrast with 2:2. Or is the intention to boot all the other gods and goddesses off their mountains, and install YHVH in their place? In which case, Y-Y is already envisaging the transition from YHVH Tseva'ot, as Prime Minister, to YHVH the Omnideity, sole President for life.

GEVA'OT: need to explore the root of this, because it could contain either the Egyptian Geb or the word for a "hill", as in Gev'a, Giv-On, Giv-Yah; and quite probably it means both.

2:15 VE AL KOL MIGDAL GAVO'AH VE AL KOL CHOMAH VETSURAH

וְעַל כָּל מִגְדָּל גָּבֹהַּ וְעַל כָּל חוֹמָה בְצוּרָה

KJ: And upon every high tower, and upon every fenced wall,

BN: And upon every lofty tower, and upon every fortified wall...

2:16 VE AL KOL ANIYOT TARSHISH VE AL KOL SECHIYOT HA CHEMDAH

וְעַל כָּל אֳנִיּוֹת תַּרְשִׁישׁ וְעַל כָּל שְׂכִיּוֹת הַחֶמְדָּה

KJ: And upon all the ships of Tarshish, and upon all pleasant pictures.

BN: And upon all the ships of Tarshish, and upon all delightful sights.

For "Ships of Tarshish" click here. But also Isaiah 23:1, which helps us to understand why the "high towers" and the "fenced walls" are included in this attack on the arrogant amongst humans as well as the false deities.

"Pleasant pictures" can only mean natural sights, given Y-Y's derogation of Art in verse 8, and the prohibition against making graven images in Exodus 20:3 (20:4 in some versions).

"Vanity of vanities; all is vanity, says the preacher" (though I must say I prefer the translation at this link). No one has a clue who the "preacher" was, though it definitely wasn't King Solomon (he was the dedicatee). But hearing Y-Y go on like this, I can't help but wonder if, maybe, it was him.

2:17 VE SHACH GAVHUT HA ADAM VE SHAPHEL RUM ANASHIM VE NISGAV YHVH LEVADO BA YOM HA HU

וְשַׁח גַּבְהוּת הָאָדָם וְשָׁפֵל רוּם אֲנָשִׁים וְנִשְׂגַּב יְהוָה לְבַדּוֹ בַּיּוֹם הַהוּא

KJ: And the loftiness of man shall be bowed down, and the haughtiness of men shall be made low: and the LORD alone shall be exalted in that day.

BN: And the arrogance of Humankind shall be humbled, and the haughtiness of humanity shall be reduced to nought; and YHVH alone shall be exalted on that day.

Repeats the humiliation, and using virtually the same words, as in verse 11 - though oddly the verbs, SHACH and SHAPHEL, are reversed here..

2:18 VE HA ELIYLIM KALIL YACHALOPH

וְהָאֱלִילִים כָּלִיל יַחֲלֹף

KJ: And the idols he shall utterly abolish.

BN: And the idols shall become entirely obsolete.

The two translations are very different: one transitive, the other intransitive. Is this a prophecy of natural disaster, like Pompeii, or a deliberate human act, like Muhammad cleansing Mecca, or ISIS at Palmyra (Blair and Bush at Babylon too, but you can't easily find hyperlinks for that! Try this one), or Cortez in Mexico? The reference to the ships of Tarshish, above, certainly suggests human intervention rather than divine, but the next verse is an earthquake.

YACHALOPH: Multiple occurrences of this root, especially in texts of a Chaldean source, such as Job (4:15, 9:26 et al), where the general Yehudit sense (Genesis 31:7, 1 Samuel 10:3, Psalm 102:27) of something sliding or gliding or changing is applied specifically to the passing of things and time.

2:19 U VA'U BI ME'AROT TSURIM U VIM'CHILOT APHAR MIPNEY PACHAD YHVH U MEY HADAR GE'ONO BE KUMO LA'AROTS HA ARETS

וּבָאוּ בִּמְעָרוֹת צֻרִים וּבִמְחִלּוֹת עָפָר מִפְּנֵי פַּחַד יְהוָה וּמֵהֲדַר גְּאוֹנוֹ בְּקוּמוֹ לַעֲרֹץ הָאָרֶץ

KJ: And they shall go into the holes of the rocks, and into the caves of the earth, for fear of the LORD, and for the glory of his majesty, when he ariseth to shake terribly the earth.

BN: And men shall come into the caves in the rocks, and into the burrows of the earth, from before the fear of YHVH, and from the glory of his majesty, when he rises up to quake the earth.

sheva
2:19 echoes 2:10, even fulfills it. The destruction on this occasion is tectonic, like Mosaic Sinai.

U VIM'CHILOT : Our repeatedly encountered problem of the second-letter sheva, but made more complex by having both a conjunction and a preposition prefixed. U VI MECHILOT in full. BI ME'AROT, on the other hand...

Note the play on words between LA'AROTS and ERETS, and that the end of the world is going to be a consequence of those tectonic plates whose part in "Intelligent Design" is otherwise unclear.

2:20 BA YOM HA HU YASHLIYCH HA ADAM ET ELIYLEY CHASPO VE ET ELIYLEY ZEHAVO ASHER ASU LO LEHISHTACHAVOT LACHPOR PEROT VE LA ATALEPHIM

בַּיּוֹם הַהוּא יַשְׁלִיךְ הָאָדָם אֵת אֱלִילֵי כַסְפּוֹ וְאֵת אֱלִילֵי זְהָבוֹ אֲשֶׁר עָשׂוּ לוֹ לְהִשְׁתַּחֲו‍ֹת לַחְפֹּר פֵּרוֹת וְלָעֲטַלֵּפִים

KJ: In that day a man shall cast his idols of silver, and his idols of gold, which they made each one for himself to worship, to the moles and to the bats;

BN: On that day Humankind will throw away his idols of silver, and his idols of gold, which he made for himself to worship, and give them to the moles and to the bats.

Why "moles" and "bats"? PEROT is the plural of PARAH, and PARAH definitely means "a cow" in Genesis 41, Numbers 19:2, and a dozen other occasions. The root, which means "to bear", also yields PERI, which is "fruit", as in PERI HA GAPHEN, "the fruit of the vine", which is blessed at every Kiddush. Aramaic does indeed have a similar word, for "mouse" though, not for "mole" (they are easily mistaken one for the other!), but the Aramaic word has an internal Aleph (פארה) and is really pronounced PE'ERAH, so it isn't that easily confused... and if you really insist on arguing the case, I shall respond that there is also the Egyptian Pharaoh, written פַרְעֹה, which is likewise quite similar; but I am quite certain that Y-Y dosn't intend the idols to be handed over to the Egyptians.

ATALEPHIM: on the other hand, does indeed mean "bats", and can be found in Leviticus 11:19.

Note that this verse is the response to verse 8. There seems to be a pattern in this chapter, of early statements foreshadowing later ones, so that a logical process of actions and consequences can be described. We shall have to see if this becomes a regular technique throughout the book.

2:21 LAVO BE NIKROT HA TSURIM U VI SE'IPHEY HA SELA'IM MIPNEY PACHAD YHVH U MEY HADAR GE'ONO BE KUMO LA'AROTS HA ARETS

לָבוֹא בְּנִקְרוֹת הַצֻּרִים וּבִסְעִפֵי הַסְּלָעִים מִפְּנֵי פַּחַד יְהוָה וּמֵהֲדַר גְּאוֹנוֹ בְּקוּמוֹ לַעֲרֹץ הָאָרֶץ

KJ: To go into the clefts of the rocks, and into the tops of the ragged rocks, for fear of the LORD, and for the glory of his majesty, when he ariseth to shake terribly the earth.

BN: To bring them into the clefts of the rocks, and into the crevices of the crags, from before the fear of YHVH, and from the glory of his majesty, when he rises up to quake the earth.

Again echoes 2:10 and 2:19

PACHAD: this is now the 3rd time this word has been used. Physical fear, not intellectual credulity, as the cornerstone of faith. And logical enough, well-reasoned, if you regard the gods scientifically, as natural forces such as earthquakes, rather than superstitiously, as bearded old men surrounded by cherubic angels in a wonderland called Heaven.

2:22 CHIDLU LACHEM MIN HA ADAM ASHER NESHAMAH BE APHO KI VA MEH NECHSHAV HU

חִדְלוּ לָכֶם מִן הָאָדָם אֲשֶׁר נְשָׁמָה בְּאַפּוֹ כִּי בַמֶּה נֶחְשָׁב הוּא

KJ: Cease ye from man, whose breath is in his nostrils: for wherein is he to be accounted of?

BN: Cease ye from man, in whose nostrils is a breath; for how little is he to be accounted!

CHIDLU: Who is being addressed here though? It sounds like he is turning to the gods and telling them to give up on Humankind. For the root, CHADAL, click here. Interesting to see the translation at this link.

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