The city of Jerusalem will need to contain its larger population, predicted in the previous verse. So God calls on the city to expand, using the tent as a metaphor for the city. The imagery of the tent recalls the time of Israel’s early nomadic life when its people were living in tents.

Enlarge the place of your tent is the first of five commands in this verse. God first tells Jerusalem to expand the area its tent covers. With this imagery he orders the city to expand its size. For tent see the comments on 13.20 and 33.20. In some versions it is not the place or the area of the tent that is to expand, but the tent itself; for example, Bible en français courant renders this line as “Enlarge the tent where you live” (similarly Good News Translation, Contemporary English Version, Die Bibel im heutigen Deutsch). Since enlarging the area occupied by the tent implies making the tent bigger, renderings with or without a specific reference to the place of the tent mean the same thing.

And let the curtains of your habitations be stretched out: This second command is parallel and synonymous in meaning with the first one. The Hebrew word for curtains refers to the soft sides/walls of a tent made out of cloth and/or animals skins. Ancient tents were generally rectangular structures, unlike many modern tents. Their curtains hung down straight from their supporting beams. Your habitations refers to the tent as a dwelling place. The Hebrew word for habitations is plural, but translators may use singular since it is parallel to tent. Revised English Bible has “tent” here, and “dwelling” in the previous line. New International Version uses “tent” in both lines. God tells Jerusalem to let the curtains … be stretched out, which means they must be moved further apart in order to make the tent bigger. A different Hebrew word for “curtain” occurred in 40.22, but translators may be able to use the same term in this context of a tent. For some languages “walls” will be a natural choice; it also is an inappropriate one since the curtains here are a metaphor for the city walls of Jerusalem. God calls on the people of Jerusalem to extend the area of the city by building new outer walls. In that way the city will be able to cope with its growing population. New Jewish Publication Society’s Tanakh chooses not to mention the metaphor of curtains but gives the meaning of the line by saying “Extend the size of your dwelling.”

Hold not back renders a Hebrew verb that means “to restrain oneself, to place limits on what one does.” So with this negative command God tells the people of Jerusalem to expand the city to the fullest extent possible. New Jewish Publication Society’s Tanakh says “Do not stint!” Revised English Bible combines this command with the previous one, saying “extend the curtains of your tent to the full,” and so does New American Bible with “spread out your tent cloths unsparingly.”

Lengthen your cords is the fourth imperative. The people have to make the ropes of the tent longer, so that they can set up the enlarged structure adequately. Your cords refers to “the ropes of your tent” (Bible en français courant). Good News Translation says “its ropes.” For the cords of a tent, see the comments on 33.20.

And strengthen your stakes is the fifth imperative. The people also have to make sure that the pegs anchoring the ropes of the tent poles to the ground are strong and secure enough for the enlarged tent. For stakes see the comments on 33.20.

Good News Translation omits the central part of this verse, thus reducing the number of imperatives to three. As a result, some of the emphasis is lost.

In some languages the tent metaphor and its specialized vocabulary may present a challenge. References to tents and what they represent are extremely common throughout the Old Testament (see, for example, 16.5; 38.12; 40.22). Therefore translators need to be very careful if they decide to replace the tent imagery by other figures of speech, or to spell out each time what the imagery represents. It might be better to create an appropriate vocabulary and to explain it in footnotes and in the glossary. If translators abandon the tent metaphor here, it might be best to refer directly to the city and its walls, as in the third example below. Another approach would be to use the alternative metaphor of a house as follows: “Enlarge [the area of] your house! Move its walls further out and do not hold back; extend its foundations and make them stronger.” Other possible models for this verse are:

• Extend the area of your tent,
stretch out wider the sides of your tent;
do not scrimp!
Make your tent ropes longer,
and make your tent pegs stronger!

• Increase the size of your tent,
make its sides extend further;
do not be sparing!
Lengthen the tent ropes,
and make the tent pegs firmer!

• Widen the area of the city,
extend the city walls;
be generous!
Increase the extent of the city,
and make firm its foundations!

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 .