Isaiah 1

Hebrew Audio

Transliteration

hôy#1945 הוֹי howy {hoh"ee}ah!, alas!, ha!, ho!, O!, woe!
In Isaiah 29:1, the Hebrew interjection "howy" is used, which is an onomatopoetic expression reflecting dissatisfaction, pain, or lament. This term is comparable to the Aramaic "ú hú" used in laments. While it can convey a sense of "Ah" or "Alas", it is distinct from "Woe!", which is expressed as "אוֺי" in Hebrew. In biblical contexts, "howy" often precedes a declaration of judgment or mourning, serving to underscore the gravity or emotional weight of the following message. In Isaiah 29:1, it emphasizes the seriousness of the prophecy being declared. áriyël áriyël qir'yat chänäh däwid š'fû shänäh al-shänäh chaGiym yin'qofû

Hebrew BibleHub

[This is] the vision
חֲזוֹן֙ (ḥă·zō·wn)
Noun - masculine singular construct
Strong's 2377: A sight, a dream, revelation, oracle

concerning
עַל־ (‘al-)
Preposition
Strong's 5921: Above, over, upon, against

Judah
יְהוּדָ֖ה (yə·hū·ḏāh)
Noun - proper - masculine singular
Strong's 3063: Judah -- 'praised', a son of Jacob, also the southern kingdom, also four Israelites

and Jerusalem
וִירוּשָׁלִָ֑ם (wî·rū·šā·lim)
Conjunctive waw | Noun - proper - feminine singular
Strong's 3389: Jerusalem -- probably 'foundation of peace', capital city of all Israel

that
אֲשֶׁ֣ר (’ă·šer)
Pronoun - relative
Strong's 834: Who, which, what, that, when, where, how, because, in order that

Isaiah
יְשַֽׁעְיָ֣הוּ (yə·ša‘·yā·hū)
Noun - proper - masculine singular
Strong's 3470: Isaiah -- 'salvation of Yah', four Israelites

son
בֶן־ (ḇen-)
Noun - masculine singular construct
Strong's 1121: A son

of Amoz
אָמ֔וֹץ (’ā·mō·wṣ)
Noun - proper - masculine singular
Strong's 531: Amoz -- 'strong', the father of Isaiah

saw
חָזָ֔ה (ḥā·zāh)
Verb - Qal - Perfect - third person masculine singular
Strong's 2372: To gaze at, to perceive, contemplate, to have a, vision of

during the reigns
בִּימֵ֨י (bî·mê)
Preposition-b | Noun - masculine plural construct
Strong's 3117: A day

of Uzziah,
עֻזִּיָּ֧הוּ (‘uz·zî·yā·hū)
Noun - proper - masculine singular
Strong's 5818: Uzziah -- 'my strength is Yah', the name of several Israelites

Jotham,
יוֹתָ֛ם (yō·w·ṯām)
Noun - proper - masculine singular
Strong's 3147: Jotham -- 'the LORD is perfect', three Israelites

Ahaz,
אָחָ֥ז (’ā·ḥāz)
Noun - proper - masculine singular
Strong's 271: Ahaz -- 'he has grasped', two Israelites

and Hezekiah,
יְחִזְקִיָּ֖הוּ (yə·ḥiz·qî·yā·hū)
Noun - proper - masculine singular
Strong's 2396: Hezekiah -- 'Yah has strengthened', a king of Judah, also several other Israelites

kings
מַלְכֵ֥י (mal·ḵê)
Noun - masculine plural construct
Strong's 4428: A king

of Judah.
יְהוּדָֽה׃ (yə·hū·ḏāh)
Noun - proper - masculine singular
Strong's 3063: Judah -- 'praised', a son of Jacob, also the southern kingdom, also four Israelites

KJV The vision of Isaiah the son of Amoz, which he saw concerning Judah and Jerusalem in the days of Uzziah, Jotham, Ahaz, and Hezekiah, kings of Judah.

NIV The vision concerning Judah and Jerusalem that Isaiah son of Amoz saw during the reigns of Uzziah, Jotham, Ahaz and Hezekiah, kings of Judah.

ESV The vision of Isaiah the son of Amoz, which he saw concerning Judah and Jerusalem in the days of Uzziah, Jotham, Ahaz, and Hezekiah, kings of Judah.

BSB This is the vision concerning Judah and Jerusalem that Isaiah son of Amoz saw during the reigns of Uzziah, Jotham, Ahaz, and Hezekiah, kings of Judah.

NASB The vision of Isaiah the son of Amoz concerning Judah and Jerusalem, which he saw during the reigns of Uzziah, Jotham, Ahaz, and Hezekiah, kings of Judah.

BST The vision which Esaias the son of Amos saw, which he saw against Juda, and against Jerusalem, in the reign of Ozias, and Joatham, and Achaz, and Ezekias, who reigned over Judea.

Alter The vision of Isaiah son of Amoz that he saw concerning Judah and Jerusalem in the days of Uzziah, Jotham, Ahaz, Hezekiah, kings of Judah.

Chabad The vision of Isaiah the son of Amoz, which he saw concerning Judah and Jerusalem, in the days of Uzziah, Jotham, Ahaz, [and] Hezekiah, kings of Judah.

Dead Sea Scrolls - Isaiah English Bible

1Q Isaiah - (The Great Isaiah Scroll)
The vision of Isaiah the son of Amoz, which he saw concerning Judah and Jerusalem, in the days of Uzziah, Jotham, Ahaz, and Hezekiah, kings of Judah.

Hebrew Transliteration Isaiah 1:1

[This is] the vision concerning Judah and Jerusalem that Isaiah the son of Amos saw during the reigns of Uzziah, Jotham, Ahaz and Hezekiah, kings of Judah.  

Parallel
A. Vision - Saw

The parallel defines what a vision is, "seeing" something in this case for the future of Jerusalem and Judah.  

In Isaiah
Vision חָזוֹן (chazon)
All the many nations going out to battle against Ariel—even all who war against her, laying siege and attacking her—will be like a dream, like a vision in the night, (Isa 29:7 BSB)

Tanakh
Then the LORD answered me: “Write down this vision (חָזוֹן֙) and clearly inscribe it on tablets, so that a herald may run with it
For the vision (חָזוֹן֙) awaits an appointed time; it testifies of the end and does not lie. Though it lingers, wait for it, since it will surely come and will not delay. (Habakkuk 2:1-2) 

Tanakh
Then the LORD answered me: “Write down this vision (חָזוֹן֙) and clearly inscribe it on tablets, so that a herald may run with it
For the vision (חָזוֹן֙) awaits an appointed time; it testifies of the end and does not lie. Though it lingers, wait for it, since it will surely come and will not delay. (Habakkuk 2:1-2) 

Peshat (פְּשָׁט "simple"): The first verse of Isaiah's book. Introduces Isaiah as a "visionary" who he is going to prophesy during the reign of four kings, Uzziah, Jotham, Ahaz, and Hezekiah. The verse application, "what has been", applies directly to the southern kingdom of Judah.

Remez (רֶמֶז "hint"): In Isaiah's vision people and places can be types of spiritual motifs or end-time events. The four kings can represent the spiritual conditions of the people. 

Avraham Gileadi 
Isaiah mentions four successive kings during whose reigns he prophesies, of whom Ahaz and Hezekiah feature most prominently in the Book of Isaiah, one for evil, the other for good. A fifth goes unmentioned—Manasseh, the son of Hezekiah, who slays Isaiah by sawing him in half (Ascension of Isaiah, 11:41). On account of the sins of Manasseh, the people of the Southern Kingdom of Judah are ultimately exiled and taken captive by the Babylonians (2 Kings 24:3-4). Manasseh’s reign becomes a point of no return for the Jewish nation because of the king’s corrupting influence on the people.
As the preface of the Book of Isaiah, Chapter 1 dates from about 701 B.C., the fourteenth year of the reign of King Hezekiah. At that time, Assyria invaded the Southern Kingdom of Judah. Israel’s God Jehovah, however, thwarted Assyria’s designs because of the righteousness of the king and his people. Earlier, in 722 B.C., Assyria had conquered the ten-tribed Northern Kingdom of Israel and taken its people captive into Mesopotamia. The first chapter of the Book of Isaiah chronologically is chapter 6, which describes Isaiah’s calling as a prophet in the year of King Uzziah’s death in 742 B.C.

The vision. Although Isaiah’s prophetic ministry may have spanned fifty years, the singular term “vision” (hazon) defines Isaiah’s writings as one conceptually from beginning to end. That is evident in the Book of Isaiah’s multi-layered structuring, through which Isaiah integrates his early oracles and later written discourses into a single prophecy that spells out an end-time scenario. Without taking away from the historical origins of Isaiah’s writings, historical events now serve as an allegory of the end-time, in which “Judea” and “Jerusalem” are codenames that designate Jehovah’s end-time people.

Alter
The vision of Isaiah. The true beginning of Isaiah’s prophecies is chapter 6, the visionary scene in the Temple where he is first commissioned as a prophet. The prophecy that immediately follows here may have been set at the beginning of the book by its editors because of the invocation of heaven and earth as the formal beginning of a long poem—compare Deuteronomy 32, the Song of Moses, which begins with similar language.(Alter, Robert. The Hebrew Bible: A Translation with Commentary: Three-Volume Set (p. 1700). W. W. Norton & Company. Kindle Edition).

Rashi
the vision of Isaiah the son of Amoz: Said Rabbi Levi: We have a tradition from our ancestors that Amoz and Amaziah, king of Judah, were brothers.

which he saw concerning Judah and Jerusalem: Now, did he not prophesy concerning many nations, viz. the prophecy of Babylonia (ch. 13), the prophecy of Moab (ch. 15)? Thus you learn that this is not the beginning of the Book, and that the Book is not given its name for this prophecy. So we learned in the Baraitha of the Mechilta (Exod. 15:9,10): “In the year of King Uzziah’s death” (6:1) is the beginning of the Book, but there is no early and late in the order [i.e., the order of the chapters is no indication of the chronological order. (Others read: There is no early and late in the Book Parshandatha.) The context proves this point, for, on the day of the earthquake (see Zech. 14:5), the day Uzziah became a metzora (see 2 Chron. 26:19), it was said: “Whom shall I send and who will go for us?” And I said, “Here I am; send me” (6:8). We learn that this was the beginning of his mission, and this prophecy was said afterwards. And concerning this alone, it is stated: which he saw concerning Judah and Jerusalem, just as Scripture says concerning each nation, “the prophecy of such and such a nation.” Here too, Scripture writes: “which he saw concerning Judah and Jerusalem.” Since they are harsh reproofs, he calls them “chazon,” which is the harshest of the ten expressions by which prophecy is called, as is stated in Gen. Rabbah (44:7), and proof of this is the verse (infra 21:2), “A harsh prophecy (חָזוּת) was told to me.”

in the days of Uzziah, Jotham, Ahaz, [and] Hezekiah, kings of Judah: These four kings he buried, [i.e. he outlived,] in his lifetime. On the day Uzziah became a metzora, the Shechinah rested upon him, and he prophesied all the days of these kings, until Manasseh arose and killed him. (And this prophecy was said in the days of Hezekiah after the ten tribes were exiled.)

Ellicott's Commentary for English Readers
(1) The vision of Isaiah the son of Amoz . . .--The term "vision," as descriptive of a prophet's work (1Samuel 3:1), is the correlative of the old term "seer," as applied to the prophet himself (1Samuel 9:9). The latter fell into disuse, probably because the pretenders to the clairvoyance which it implied brought it into discredit. The prophet, however, did not cease to be a "seer;" and to see visions was still one of the highest forms of the gift of the spirit of Jehovah (Joel 2:28). It describes the state, more or less ecstatic, in which the prophet sees what others do not see, the things that are yet to come, the unseen working of the eternal laws of God. As compared with "the word of the Lord," it indicates a higher intensity of the ecstatic state; but the two terms were closely associated, and, as in Isaiah 2:1, a man was said to see "the word of the Lord." Judah and Jerusalem are named as the centre, though not the limit, of the prophet's work.