And his delight shall be in the fear of the LORD: This line has two important rhetorical features, indicating a close link with the previous verse. First, the phrase his delight (literally “his delighting in”) comes from a Hebrew root that is very close in sound to the keyword ruach (“spirit”) in verse 2. Second, it repeats the closing phrase of that verse, the fear of the LORD. This line says the new king delights to live in awe of Yahweh. The cause of his greatest joy is his respect for Yahweh. In this verse both Good News Translation and Contemporary English Version choose not to repeat the way they rendered the fear of the LORD in verse 2. Here they use the verb “obey” instead of the verb “honor” in the previous verse. They probably do this so the lines do not sound heavy in English. However, by doing this the close link between the verses is lost. For this line Bible en français courant has “To honor the Lord will be his entire delight,” but it notes that the Hebrew text is obscure, so its translation is uncertain. For his delight, New Jerusalem Bible and New Jewish Publication Society’s Tanakh speak of “his inspiration” and “He shall sense the truth,” respectively. Hebrew Old Testament Text Project sees no textual problem here.

He shall not judge by what his eyes see, or decide by what his ears hear: After the list of the new king’s qualities in verses 2-3a, these two parallel lines tells us what the king will not do. These negative statements lead into the contrasting statements about what he really will do. These two lines in the negative convey the same message: he will not make (court) decisions on the basis of outward appearances. The new Davidic ruler will make all his judgments impartially. These lines do not mean the king will not consider the evidence presented to him when judging a case. The sense is rather that he will not judge simply on the basis of what he sees, for example, on the basis of a person’s outward appearance. Poor persons could never expect justice if it was based on how they dressed or looked. Similarly, the king will not simply take a person’s opinion as the basis for his judgments since that person could be giving false information. A good model in English is “He will not judge by appearances, nor will he judge on the basis of rumor [or, hearsay].”

RSV/NRSV, Contemporary English Version, and New International Version have a stanza break after the first line in this verse. This is helpful since it separates the positive qualities of the new king from how he will not judge.

We suggest the following models for the translation of this verse:

• His great delight will be in respecting Yahweh. He will not judge on the basis of appearances, nor will he make decisions based on rumor.

• His greatest pleasure will be in respecting Yahweh.
He will not base his judgments on a person’s appearance; he will not base his decisions on hearsay.

Quoted with permission from Ogden, Graham S. and Sterk, Jan. A Handbook on Isaiah. (UBS Helps for Translators). New York: UBS, 2011. For this and other handbooks for translators see here .