A NOTE ON THIS RENDERING

THE WITNESS — THE GREEK SETS THE FLOW

This Yeshayahu stands on the SEPTUAGINT in the English of Sir Lancelot Brenton (1851), and the Greek governs the page — its words, its order, its versification. Yeshayahu is a special case among the prophets. The Greek is not markedly shorter than the Hebrew, as it is in Yirmeyahu; it is a freer and more interpretive translation, made by a hand that was already reading the prophet as well as rendering him. The divergences are therefore mostly matters of READING rather than of presence and absence — and the traffic runs in both directions. Sixty-six chapters, 1,289 verses. THE SUPPLIED HEBREW Under the Supply Rule of this House, where the Greek is silent and the Masoretic carries matter, that matter is set on the same page inside visible brackets, naming the verse and quoting the Hebrew. It is never dropped, and it is never absorbed into the verse as though the Greek had said it. THE BRACKETS PRINT, so that the reader always sees where the House speaks and where the prophet does. Twenty-one places are supplied in this volume. They were not chosen from memory: the whole book was collated verse by verse against the Hebrew, and every place where the Hebrew carries substantial matter the Greek lacks was weighed. Where the difference is one of wording only, the Greek simply stands and the note speaks; where the Hebrew holds substance the Greek has lost, it is supplied. THE GREAT SUPPLY — 9:5, AND THE NAME HELD IN RESERVE This is the supply for which the rule was made. At the birth-verse the Greek names the child only as THE MESSENGER OF GREAT COUNSEL. The four names the whole world knows from this verse — Wonderful Counsellor, the Mighty El, the Everlasting Father, the Prince of Peace — are simply not in the Greek. They are supplied here in full, because weight-bearing Messianic matter is never summarised. And there is a second thing to say. From the founding of this House, EL GIBBOR has been held in reserve: it was never spent on the ordinary titles of the Father, but kept against the one verse that gives it to the Messiah. That verse is this one. The reservation is now discharged — and it is discharged inside a bracket, because the Greek did not say it. THE VIRGIN — 7:14, AND THE OTHER DIRECTION The traffic does not run one way. Here the GREEK is the stronger witness, reading PARTHENOS, a virgin, where the Masoretic reads almah, a young woman — and it is the Greek that Mattityahu quotes. In Yeshayahu the two editorial hands worked in opposite directions within a single book, and a Bible that followed only one of them would lose something either way. THIS IS THE WHOLE ARGUMENT FOR A GREEK BASE WITH A SUPPLIED HEBREW. LET US BIND THE JUST — 3:10 Again the Greek keeps what the Hebrew does not. Where the Masoretic reads simply that it shall be well with the righteous, the Septuagint reads, LET US BIND THE JUST, FOR HE IS BURDENSOME TO US — the conspiracy of the wicked against the righteous man, the same stone that stands in Chokmat Shelomoh 2:12–20 and is echoed at the cross. It is printed as the Greek gives it. No supply is needed; the note names the divergence. THE BRANCH — 4:2 Where the Hebrew says THE BRANCH OF YAHUAH — tzemach Yahuah, one of the great Messianic titles of the prophets, kin to Yirmeyahu 23:5 and Zekharyah 3:8 and 6:12 — the Greek reads only that Elohim shall shine gloriously in counsel. The title is simply not there in the Greek. Under the older practice it would have been lost to the page and named only in a note. It now stands where it belongs, bracketed and declared. THE TWO SEAMS — AND A CONCORDANCE Twice the versification of this volume parts from the English Bibles, and the reader must never be left to discover it alone. FIRST: the Greek carries the Galilee-of-the-goyim oracle as 8:23, where the Hebrew also sets it; English Bibles number it 9:1. From that point to the end of chapter nine this volume runs ONE VERSE BEHIND the English — so the birth-verse, 9:6 in an English Bible, is 9:5 here. SECOND: the cry that the heavens be rent stands at the close of chapter sixty-three (63:19b), where the Hebrew also sets it; English Bibles open chapter sixty-four with it, so from there to the end of sixty-four this volume again runs ONE VERSE BEHIND. Everywhere else the numbering agrees. Both seams are also marked in brackets on the page where they fall. THE MORNING STAR — 14:12 Brenton prints LUCIFER here, but that word is Latin and belongs to the Vulgate; it is not what the Greek says, and this House renders the Greek. The Septuagint reads HEOSPHOROS — the dawn-bringer, the star that rises before the sun — answering the Hebrew HEILEL BEN SHACHAR, the shining one, son of the morning. The word is therefore left standing in its own dress, on the pattern by which Tannin and Phoenix are left standing elsewhere in this Bible, and glossed once. The House does not smuggle a Latin name into a Greek book and call it restoration. RECOVERY OF SIGHT — 61:1 Where the Hebrew proclaims the opening of the prison to them that are bound, the Greek reads RECOVERY OF SIGHT TO THE BLIND. This is not a small divergence: it is the Greek reading, not the Hebrew, that is on the Messiah's lips when He stands up in the synagogue at Netzeret and reads this scroll. The Greek stands as the page. The Hebrew is named here. TO SHEW HIM LIGHT — 53:11 The Greek of the fourth Servant song says of the Servant's travail that Yahuah is pleased TO SHEW HIM LIGHT — three words the Masoretic does not carry. They are not an invention of the translators: the great Yeshayahu scroll from the caves by the Salt Sea, a thousand years older than the Masoretic manuscripts, reads them too. Here the Greek and the oldest Hebrew agree together against the received Hebrew, and the page keeps them. THE SERVANT, AND A PRONOUN NOT CAPITALISED Through the four Servant songs, and above all through chapter fifty-three, the pronouns of the Servant are printed lowercase — he, him, his — while the pronouns of Yahuah are capitalised throughout this volume. This is not doubt; it is Rule X.4. To capitalise the Servant's pronouns would be to write the House's confession into the verse itself, and the verse is not the place for it. The reader who knows whom the prophet is describing will not be helped by typography, and the reader who does not should meet the text as it stands and be brought to the question honestly. The confession belongs here, in the note, where it is made plainly: we hold that this is Yeshua HaMashiach. THE DEAD SHALL RISE — 26:19 The Greek is bolder here than the Hebrew: THE DEAD SHALL RISE, AND THEY THAT ARE IN THE TOMBS SHALL BE RAISED. It is among the plainest resurrection sentences in the prophets, and it stands in the Bible the Shilachim carried and quoted. KORESH, HIS ANOINTED — 45:1 The text calls a Persian king MASHIACH — the anointed of Yahuah. The House prints it. It is not softened to 'chosen', and it is not fenced with explanation in the verse. Yahuah names His instruments as He pleases, and a word given here to Koresh is not thereby taken from the One to whom it belongs in fullness. YAHUAH TZEVA'OT Brenton's 'Lord of hosts' and 'Lord of Sabaoth' both stand here as YAHUAH TZEVA'OT, per the House's divine-title ruling: Pantokrator restores to Tzeva'ot in the prophetic register, to Shaddai in the patriarchal. The title is the drumbeat of this book, and it carries the weight of the vineyard song at 5:7 and of the throne-vision at 6:3. RUACH HAKODESH — 63:10–11 Twice in the prayer of the remnant the prophet speaks of the Holy Spirit of Yahuah, grieved and then remembered. The House restores RUACH HAKODESH at both places. Elsewhere the ordinary ruach carries the spirit of counsel, of might, of judgement and of burning; here the full title stands, because the text gives the full title. THE TONGUE The names stand in the House manner — Yeshayahu ben Amotz, Yehudah, Yerushalayim, Tziyon, Yisra'el, Ya'akov, Chizkiyahu, Achaz, Efrayim, Shomron, Bavel, Ashur, Mitzrayim, Kush, Mo'av, Edom, Tzor, Tzidon, Dameshek, Levanon, Karmel, Koresh, Sancheriv, Ravshakeh. Brenton's Greek spellings are restored to their Hebrew: Esaias to Yeshayahu, Sion to Tziyon, Libanus to Levanon, Rasin to Retzin, Romelias to Remalyahu, Azotus to Ashdod, Tanis to Tzo'an, Suphir to Ofir, Somnas to Shevna. YAHUAH stands for the divine Lord and is never glossed; ELOHIM for God; the Kadosh Yisra'el is the Holy One of Israel; Elyon the Most High; Moshia the Saviour. The am is the people, Ami My people. Torah, ruach, Kavod, She'ol, navi, zekenim, goyim, brit, serafim, mizbeach, Heichal, ger, the Roshei Chodashim and Shabbatot and mo'adim all take the green gloss at first appearance and stand bare thereafter — one hundred and twenty-four terms in all. Measuring counts are left in English per the House's numbers rule. RULE X.4 The text is rendered as it stands. The scorn of the first chapter is not softened, nor the ruin of the daughters of Tziyon, nor the woes, nor the burdens laid on the goyim, nor the worm that does not die in the last verse of the book. Where the Greek and the Hebrew part, both are shown and neither is mended: the Greek holds the page, the Hebrew is supplied in brackets, and the reader is told which is which. Interpretation belongs to this note. The verse keeps the prophet's own voice.