The Prophet and His Day: Isaiah 1-39 - Free Bible Commentary

BRIEF EXPLANATIONS OF THE TECHNICAL RESOURCESUSED IN THIS OLD TESTAMENT COMMENTARY SERIESI. LexicalThere are several excellent lexicons available for ancient Hebrew.A. Hebrew and English Lexicon of the Old Testament by Francis Brown, S. R. Driver, andCharles A. Briggs. It is based on the German lexicon by William Gesenius. It is known bythe abbreviation BDB.B. The Hebrew and Aramaic Lexicon of the Old Testament by Ludwig Koehler and WalterBaumgartner, translated by M. E. J. Richardson. It is known by the abbreviation KB.C. A Concise Hebrew and Aramaic Lexicon of the Old Testament by William L. Holladay and isbased on the above German lexicon.D. A new five volume theological word study entitled The New International Dictionary of OldTestament Theology and Exegesis, edited by Willem A. Van Gemeren. It is known by theabbreviation NIDOTTE.Where there is significant lexical variety, I have shown several English translations(NASB, NKJV, NRSV, TEV, NJB) from both “word-for-word” and “dynamic equivalent”translations (cf. Gordon Fee & Douglas Stuart, How to Read the Bible For All Its Worth, pp.28-44).II.III.GrammaticalThe grammatical identification is usually based on John Joseph Owens’ Analytical Key to theOld Testament in four volumes. This is cross checked with Benjamin Davidson’s AnalyticalHebrew and Chaldee Lexicon of the Old Testament.Another helpful resource for grammatical and syntactical features which is used in most of theOT volumes of “You Can Understand the Bible” Series is “The Helps for Translators Series” fromthe United Bible Societies. They are entitled “A Handbook on ___________.”TextualI am committed to the inspiration of the consonantal Hebrew text (not the Masoretic vowelpoints and comments). As in all hand-copied, ancient texts, there are some questionable passages.This is usually because of the following:A. hapax legomenon (words used only once in the Hebrew OT)B. idiomatic terms (words and phrases whose literal meanings have been lost)C. historical uncertainties (our lack of information about the ancient world)D. the poly-semitic semantic field of Hebrew’s limited vocabularyE. problems associated with later scribes hand-copying ancient Hebrew textsF. Hebrew scribes trained in Egypt who felt free to update the texts they copied to make themcomplete and understandable to their day (NIDOTTE vol. 1, pp. 52-54).There are several sources of Hebrew words and texts outside the Masoretic textual tradition.1. The Samaritan Pentateuch2. The Dead Sea Scrolls3. Some later coins, letters, and ostraca (broken pieces of unfired pottery used for writing)But for the most part, there are no manuscript families in the OT like those in the Greek NTmanuscripts. For a good brief article on the textual reliability of the Masoretic Text (A.D.900's) see “The Reliability of the Old Testament Text” by Bruce K. Waltke in the NIDOTTE,vol. 1, pp. 51-67.i