Isaiah 37:27

27 Their people, drained of power, are dismayed and put to shame. They are like plants in the field, like tender green shoots, like grass sprouting on the roof, scorched^[a] before it grows up.

Isaiah 37:27 in Other Translations

27 Therefore their inhabitants were of small power, they were dismayed and confounded: they were as the grass of the field, and as the green herb, as the grass on the housetops, and as corn blasted before it be grown up.

27 while their inhabitants, shorn of strength, are dismayed and confounded, and have become like plants of the field and like tender grass, like grass on the housetops, blighted before it is grown.

27 That is why their people have so little power and are so frightened and confused. They are as weak as grass, as easily trampled as tender green shoots. They are like grass sprouting on a housetop, scorched before it can grow lush and tall.

27 and leaving their citizens helpless, bewildered, and confused, drooping like unwatered plants, stunted like withered seedlings.

27 Their inhabitants have become powerless, dismayed, and ashamed. They are plants of the field, tender grass, grass on the rooftops, blasted by the east wind.

Isaiah 37:27 Meaning and Commentary

Isaiah 37:27

Therefore their inhabitants were of small power
Or, "short of hand" ^F21; it was not in the power of their hands to help themselves, because the Lord took away their strength, having determined that they should be destroyed for their sins; otherwise it would not have been in the power of Sennacherib to have subdued them; this takes off greatly from the king of Assyria's triumph, that they were a weak people, whom he had conquered, and were given up into his hands by the Lord, according to his purposes, or he had never been lord over them: they were dismayed and confounded;
not so much at the sight of Sennacherib's army, but because the Lord had dispirited them, and took away their natural courage from them, so that they became an easy prey to him: they were as the grass of the field:
which has no strength to stand before the mower: and as the green herb;
which is easily cropped with the hand of man, or eaten by the beasts of the field: as the grass on the housetops:
which has no matter of root, and is dried up with the heat of the sun: and as corn blasted before it be grown up;
before it rises up into anything of a stalk, and much less into ears; so the Targum,

``which is blasted before it comes to be ears;''

all which represent the feeble condition of the people overcome by him; so that he had not so much to glory of, as having done mighty things.

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FOOTNOTES:

F21 (dy yruq) breviati, "vel breves manu", Forerius; "abbreviati manu", Vatablus, Montanus.

Isaiah 37:27 In-Context

25 I have dug wells in foreign landsand drunk the water there. With the soles of my feet I have dried up all the streams of Egypt.’

26 “Have you not heard? Long ago I ordained it. In days of old I planned it; now I have brought it to pass, that you have turned fortified cities into piles of stone.

27 Their people, drained of power, are dismayed and put to shame. They are like plants in the field, like tender green shoots, like grass sprouting on the roof, scorched before it grows up.

28 “But I know where you are and when you come and go and how you rage against me.

29 Because you rage against me and because your insolence has reached my ears, I will put my hook in your nose and my bit in your mouth, and I will make you return by the way you came.

Cross References

• 1. S Isaiah 15:6
• 2. Psalms 129:6

Footnotes

• [a]. Some manuscripts of the Masoretic Text, Dead Sea Scrolls and some Septuagint manuscripts (see also 2 Kings 19:26); most manuscripts of the Masoretic Text "roof" / "and terraced fields"