NRSV

[21] How the faithful city has become a whore!

She that was full of justice, righteousness lodged in her–but now murderers!

[22] Your silver has become dross, your wine is mixed with water.

[23] Your princes are rebels, and companions of thieves.

Everyone loves a bribe and runs after gifts.

They do not defend the orphan, 

And the widow’s cause does not come before them.

[24] Therefore says the Sovereign, the LORD of hosts, the Mighty One of Israel;

Ah, I will pour out my wrath on my enemies,

And avenge myself on my foes!

[25] I will turn my hand against you;

I will smelt away your dross as with lye

And remove all your alloy.

[26] And I will restore your judges as the first,

And your counselors as at the beginning.

Afterward you shall be called the city of righteousness,

The faithful city.

[27] Zion shall be redeemed by justice,

And those in her who repent, by righteousness.

[28] But rebels and sinners shall be destroyed together,

And those who forsake the LORD shall be consumed.

[29] For you shall be ashamed of the oaks in which you delighted;

And you shall blush for the gardens you have chosen.

[30] For you shall be like an oak whose leaf withers, and like a garden without water.

[31] The strong shall become like tinder, and their work like a spark

They and their work shall burn together, with no one to quench them.

LXX

[21] How the faithful city Zion has become a prostitute,

In it righteousness has slept, but now it is a murderer.

[22] Your silver is without value; your innkeepers mix wine and water.

[23] Your rulers are disobedient, companions of thieves,

Loving gifts, pursuing rewards,

For orphans they are not judges and the judgment of widows they do not attend.

[24] Because of this, this is what the despot, Lord of the Sabbath says

Woe, the strong ones of Israel

For my wrath shall not cease against the ones who oppose 

And I shall make a judgment from my enemies. 

[25] And I shall bring my hands upon you and I shall burn you into purity,

But the disobedient I shall destroy

And I shall remove all the lawless from you

And all the arrogant I shall humble.

[26] And I shall appoint judges for you as at the first,

And counselors for you as from the beginning.

And with these it shall be called

A city of righteousness, a metropolis of faith, Zion.

[27] For with judgment her captives shall be saved, and with mercy;

[28] And the lawless shall be shattered and at the same time the sinners,

And the ones who forsake shall be finished by the Lord.

[29] Since they are dishonored by their idols, which they choose

And they are ashamed by their gardens, which they long for.

[30] For they shall be as a terebinth tree shedding its leaves 

And as a garden not having water. 

[31] And their strength shall be as a stalk of flax

And their works as a spark of fire,

And the lawless shall be burned up at the same time as the sinners, 

And there shall not be anyone to extinguish them. 

Notes on Text

Now let us turn our attention to the nature of God’s judgment. This judgment is described with a series of wonderful images involving fire.  In the NRSV text, dross and alloy are smelted away to purify Israel, whereas in the LXX God burns “you” into purity, destroying the disobedient and humbling the arrogant. This imagery of purifying fire is fairly common in the Hebrew Bible, and here the community as a whole seems to be purified of lawless thieving greedy rulers. Immediately after this purification, we find the verses in which a counsel of judges are promised to replace the rulers of Zion and establish it as a city of faith and righteousness.  

In verse 27 we see an interesting divergence between the NRSV text and the LXX text.  The NRSV text seems to promise relative permissiveness to those who repent, and reads:

Zion shall be redeemed by justice,

And those in her who repent, by righteousness.

The implication here seems to be that those who repent and turn to righteousness will be saved by doing so.  The LXX text, on the other hand, reads much more modestly:

For with judgment her captives shall be saved, and with mercy;

Here, the promise of salvation seems like it is perhaps confined to the victims of injustice, rather than to anyone who repents.  In both versions of the text, we see some lovely continuity of imagery.  In the NRSV, the fire and smelting metaphor of vv. 25 is modified and tied into an extended botanical metaphor.  Presumably referring to the rebels and sinners of vv. 28, “you” is described as being ashamed of oaks and garden in which they had delighted, then is described as being liked a withered oak or parched garden, then “the strong” become like tinder and are burned up by the spark of their (presumably wicked) works.  There is an illustrious tradition in the Hebrew Bible of describing the mighty using the metaphor of trees like “proud oaks” and “the cedars of Lebanon,” and this passage certainly continues that tradition.

The LXX text has a much less unified series of metaphors but it uses the repetition of the phrase “the lawless and at the same time the sinners” in vv. 28 and vv. 31 to tie the imagery in the intervening verses together more strongly.  The key difference with the LXX text is that rather than referring to oaks, it refers to idols in vv. 29 and terebinth trees in vv. 30.  The pairing of “the lawless and the sinners” is also an interesting pairing, since the criticism through this first chapter of Isaiah has been in particular that justice has been abandoned, and because it has been abandoned God is turning away from the sacrifices that are meant to expiate transgressions for the people of Israel.  This pairing reads to me as two faces of the same coin: because they have have abandoned justice and fair legal judgment, they are both lawless and sinners.  We shall see how well this assessment holds up as we turn our attention to the next chapter.