HOLY BIBLE: Isaiah 52 (original) (raw)

1 ἐξεγείρου ἐξεγείρου Σιων ἔνδυσαι τὴν ἰσχύν σου Σιων καὶ ἔνδυσαι τὴν δόξαν σου Ιερουσαλημ πόλις ἡ ἁγία οὐκέτι προστεθήσεται διελθεῖν διὰ σοῦ ἀπερίτμητος καὶ ἀκάθαρτος 2 ἐκτίναξαι τὸν χοῦν καὶ ἀνάστηθι κάθισον Ιερουσαλημ ἔκδυσαι τὸν δεσμὸν τοῦ τραχήλου σου ἡ αἰχμάλωτος θυγάτηρ Σιων 3 ὅτι τάδε λέγει κύριος δωρεὰν ἐπράθητε καὶ οὐ μετὰ ἀργυρίου λυτρωθήσεσθε 4 οὕτως λέγει κύριος εἰς Αἴγυπτον κατέβη ὁ λαός μου τὸ πρότερον παροικῆσαι ἐκεῖ καὶ εἰς Ἀσσυρίους βίᾳ ἤχθησαν 5 καὶ νῦν τί ὧδέ ἐστε τάδε λέγει κύριος ὅτι ἐλήμφθη ὁ λαός μου δωρεάν θαυμάζετε καὶ ὀλολύζετε τάδε λέγει κύριος δ{I'} ὑμᾶς διὰ παντὸς τὸ ὄνομά μου βλασφημεῖται ἐν τοῖς ἔθνεσιν 6 διὰ τοῦτο γνώσεται ὁ λαός μου τὸ ὄνομά μου ἐν τῇ ἡμέρᾳ ἐκείνῃ ὅτι ἐγώ εἰμι αὐτὸς ὁ λαλῶν πάρειμι

1 Up, up, array thyself, Sion, in all thy strength; clothe thyself as befits thy new glory, Jerusalem, city of the Holy One! The uncircumcised, the unclean, shall enter thee no more. 2 Shake the dust from thee, Jerusalem, rise up and take thy throne; rid thy neck of the chains that bound it, Sion, once captive queen! 3 This is the Lord’s promise, You were bartered away for nothing, and you shall be ransomed without cost.[1] 4 Time was, the Lord God says, long ago, when my people went down into Egypt and dwelt among strangers there; time was, since then, they were oppressed, beyond all reason, by the Assyrians; 5 what needs it,[2] the Lord says, then or now, my people should be carried off thus wantonly into exile? Their new masters sin defiantly, bring my name continually into reproach. 6 The day comes when my own people my own name will recognize, nor doubt that I, who promised to be with them, am with them now.

1

Consurge, consurge, induere fortitudine tua, Sion!
induere vestimentis gloriæ tuæ,
Jerusalem, civitas Sancti,
quia non adjiciet ultra ut pertranseat per te
incircumcisus et immundus.

2
Excutere de pulvere, consurge;
sede, Jerusalem!
solve vincula colli tui,
captiva filia Sion. 3
Quia hæc dicit Dominus:
Gratis venundati estis,
et sine argento redimemini. 4
Quia hæc dicit Dominus Deus:
In Ægyptum descendit populus meus in principio, ut colonus esset ibi,
et Assur absque ulla causa calumniatus est eum. 5
Et nunc quid mihi est hic, dicit Dominus,
quoniam ablatus est populus meus gratis?
Dominatores ejus inique agunt, dicit Dominus,
et jugiter tota die nomen meum blasphematur. 6
Propter hoc sciet populus meus nomen meum
in die illa:
quia ego ipse qui loquebar, ecce adsum.

[1] The sense is probably, ‘I gained nothing in return when I sent you into exile at Babylon’ (cf. 50.1 above, Ps. 43.13); ‘I did not engage the gratitude of the Chaldeans, who remain idolaters; I am free therefore, to remit your sentence of exile whenever I will’. The interpretation, ‘You were sent into exile for no fault of your own, and you shall be reprieved for no merits of your own’ is neither probable in itself nor suited to the context.

[2] ‘What needs it, then or now?’ Literally, ‘And now, what is to me here?’—though this is less accurate as a rendering of the Hebrew text. The idiomatic sense which this phrase commonly has (cf. 22.16 above, and many other passages) would be ‘And what business have I to interfere here?’ But this is evidently inappropriate, and it is best to take the words literally, as in Gen. 19.12. Cf. note on verse 3.

[3] ‘Purify’; literally ‘sprinkle’, but wherever this word occurs elsewhere, the thing, not the person, is its object (i.e. you sprinkle something on a person), and various attempts have been made to amend the Hebrew text, e.g. ‘startle’. The end of this verse, in the Hebrew text, will equally well yield the sense, ‘they shall see that of which they had no tidings, that which they had never heard shall be made known to them’. But the other sense, which is given by the Latin version, is clearly assumed by St Paul in Rom. 15.21.

Knox Translation Copyright © 2013 Westminster Diocese
Nihil Obstat. Father Anton Cowan, Censor.
Imprimatur. +Most Rev. Vincent Nichols, Archbishop of Westminster. 8th January 2012.
Re-typeset and published in 2012 by Baronius Press Ltd