Bible Strands
Isaiah 42:22
But this is a people plundered and looted, all trapped in caves or imprisoned in dungeons. They have become plunder with no one to rescue them, and loot with no one to say, “Send them back!”
Berean Standard Bible
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Study note
Setting — The prophet addresses Israel directly, positioning their current state of captivity immediately after Yahweh’s declaration to magnify His law and just before His call for attentive obedience.
The words — בָּז֣וּז (ba.Zuz) and וְ/שָׁסוּי֒ (ve./sha.Sui) denote despoiled and plundered, establishing the people’s condition as systematically stripped of possessions and autonomy.
The thread — This motif of trapped, plundered people recurs in Psalms 102:20, Jeremiah 50:17, and Isaiah 51:23, where captivity and divine judgment frame the nation’s displacement.
Why it lands — The text demands recognition of the people’s helpless state as a direct consequence of ignoring the law, requiring the reader to confront the reality of unaddressed captivity before considering restoration.
Drafted by a language model from the text, its original words and its cross-references, then checked against them. It can still be wrong: open the verse in the app to report it.
The Hebrew words
King James Version
But this is a people robbed and spoiled; they are all of them snared in holes, and they are hid in prison houses: they are for a prey, and none delivereth; for a spoil, and none saith, Restore.
Cross-references
- Psalms 102:20 to hear a prisoner’s groaning, to release those condemned to death,
- Jeremiah 50:17 Israel is a scattered flock, chased away by lions. The first to devour him was the king of Assyria; the last to crush his bones was Nebuchadnezzar king of Babylon.”
- Isaiah 51:23 I will place it in the hands of your tormentors, who told you: ‘Lie down, so we can walk over you,’ so that you made your back like the ground, like a street to be traversed.”
- Psalms 50:22 Now consider this, you who forget God, lest I tear you to pieces, with no one to rescue you:
- Isaiah 24:22 They will be gathered together like prisoners in a pit. They will be confined to a dungeon and punished after many days.
- Isaiah 42:7 to open the eyes of the blind, to bring prisoners out of the dungeon and those sitting in darkness out from the prison house.
- Isaiah 52:4 For this is what the Lord GOD says: “At first My people went down to Egypt to live, then Assyria oppressed them without cause.
- Jeremiah 51:34 “Nebuchadnezzar king of Babylon has devoured me; he has crushed me. He has set me aside like an empty vessel; he has swallowed me like a monster; he filled his belly with my delicacies and vomited me out.
- Luke 19:41 As Jesus approached Jerusalem and saw the city, He wept over it
- Isaiah 18:2 which sends couriers by sea, in papyrus vessels on the waters. Go, swift messengers, to a people tall and smooth-skinned, to a people widely feared, to a powerful nation of strange speech, whose land is divided by rivers.