1. The LORD is about to sap the earth and strip it. After the series of prophetic pronouncements on the sundry foreign nations that began in chapter 13, these words mark the beginning of a new large unit that runs to the end of chapter 27. In the judgment of most scholars it is at the very least a century and a half later than Isaiah son of Amoz, but this prophet is also a strong poet. His perspective at points is incipiently apocalyptic but lacks some of the features of full-fledged apocalypse that one finds in the very late Daniel. Yet in keeping with this prophet’s cosmic outlook, ʾerets here means “earth” rather than “land.” This is a poet who exhibits a vigorous inventiveness in emphatic sound-play. Thus, “sap” and “strip” in this translation are only a pale approximation of boqeq and bolqah in the Hebrew.

2. And the plain people shall be like the priest. As the catastrophe descends, all social and economic distinctions are erased.

4. the earth . . . / the world. The poetic parallelism of haʾarets and tevel (the latter term designates all the inhabited world) is linguistic evidence that the former term is used by this poet to mean “earth,” not “land.”

5. the earth is tainted beneath its dwellers. This is a recurrent biblical notion—that corrupt behavior pollutes the earth. It is perhaps because of this that the earth must be broken to pieces (verses 19–20).

6. earth’s dwellers turn pale. The received text appears to say “are incensed” (ḥaru), but turning pale in terror is the appropriate response here, not anger. This translation reads, with the Qumran Isaiah, ḥawru, which means “to turn pale.”

10. The futile city. The qualifier of “city” here, tohu, can mean “chaos,” but its meaning extends to formlessness, pointlessness, futility; and something like “futile city” seems the most likely sense. Attempts to identify this place with a particular historical city have themselves proved futile, and it may be rather a paradigmatic or symbolic city where the earth’s dwellers are engulfed by the catastrophe their actions have brought upon them.

11. A scream over wine in the streets. Wine is supposed to gladden the heart, but in this dire moment, it has turned bitter in the mouth and instead of rejoicing, there is terror.

14. It is they who shall raise their voice, sing gladly. This line initiates a new prophecy: there will be another landscape of doom (verses 17ff.), but there is also a group in this scene that celebrates God’s greatness.

16. I have a secret. While the meaning of this line is in dispute, the least strained construction is that razi is possessive declension of the Late Biblical raz, “secret.” The secret would be the prophecy that follows.

Traitors betrayed. The wording is a little obscure, but apparently the reference is to the reprehensible behavior of all those subject to divine retribution in the lines that follow.

17. Terror and pitfall and trap. The rich sound-play of the Hebrew is paḥad wafaḥat wafaḥ. One could come closer to this in the English with “terror and trip wire and trap,” but the middle term has to be something one falls into, as is evident in the next line.

18. And who flees from the sound of terror. The prophet now turns the three alliterative nouns of the previous line into a miniature narrative in which all attempts to escape fail.

21. the LORD shall punish the heavenly hosts . . . / and the kings of earth. Here the incipient apocalyptic perspective is especially clear. There is no logical reason that the heavenly hosts should be punished but perhaps a poetic reason: the global catastrophe will engulf heaven and earth alike.

23. And the moon shall be shamed / and the sun disgraced. This may be part of the scenario of punishing the heavenly host. Alternately, when the LORD of Armies is enthroned in all His glory in Jerusalem, the refulgence of His presence will put the sun and the moon to shame.

on Mount Zion and in Jerusalem. This entire verset is metrically too long (with five or six stresses, depending on how one scans the Hebrew for “Mount Zion”). If one drops “Mount Zion,” an acceptable four-stress verset emerges, and it could be that those two words were scribally inserted as a synonymous duplication of “Jerusalem.”