The prophet continues his description of the troubles that the people of Jerusalem and Judah have experienced.

These two things have befallen you … devastation and destruction, famine and sword: The Hebrew verb rendered befallen usually means “call,” but it can also mean “befall” in the sense of something bad or unfortunate happening, as it does here. For befallen you, Good News Translation has “fallen on you,” Revised English Bible says “overtaken you,” and New International Version translates “come upon you.” All these are good models. Another possibility is “has struck you.”

The prophet says two things have happened to the people, but then he gives a list of four disasters. They are all linked by the conjunction “and.” Devastation and destruction, famine and sword is literally “the devastation and the destruction and the famine and the sword.” Good News Translation solves the counting problem by speaking of a “double disaster” and by reducing the list of four items to two: “your land has been devastated by war, and your people have starved.” Good News Translation‘s first item combines devastation, destruction, and sword (war), while its second one only refers to famine. Die Bibel im heutigen Deutsch combines the first two, but keeps the last two separate, saying “A double misfortune has hit you … city and land are destroyed, and the people have been brought to that by hunger and sword!” But other solutions, where the form of the Hebrew is better preserved, are possible. Revised English Bible offers a meaningful solution. In it the mention of the “twofold disaster” is followed by two misfortunes and the first of the two rhetorical questions; then the other pair of misfortunes is given with the second rhetorical question. Revised English Bible presents two parallel structures, and not a list of four disasters where the reader should expect only two. For the whole verse it has “This twofold disaster has overtaken you: havoc and ruin—who can condole with you? Famine and sword—who can comfort you?” Bible en français courant uses a different approach. Instead of referring to two things, it says the disasters come two-by-two by beginning the verse with “The disasters have hit you by duos: ruin and disaster, war and famine.” Each of these renderings is an attempt to “correct” what is seen as a problem. However, since there is no textual evidence to support such reconstructions, we advise translators to translate what is in the text rather than try to solve an apparent mathematical problem.

Who will condole with you? … who will comfort you?: These two rhetorical questions function as emphatic statements. Who will condole with you? implies that nobody can or will offer sympathy for what has happened to Judah. This is because Judah’s punishment was fully deserved. Condole may be rendered “console” (New Jewish Publication Society’s Tanakh), “sympathize” (New Jerusalem Bible), “comfort” (New International Version), or “grieve” (New Revised Standard Version).

Who will comfort you? picks up the important theme of “comfort” from verses 3 and 12 as well as 40.1. However, there is a textual problem here, because the Hebrew text of Masoretic Text is literally “who [am I that] I should comfort you?” Most commentators change the first person pronoun to third person, as in Revised Standard Version, but Hebrew Old Testament Text Project gives cautious support to Masoretic Text. De~Waard offers this model that follows Masoretic Text: “By whom could I comfort you?” However, most versions see this question as parallel and synonymous with the previous one, so they use third person here. Comfort is synonymous with condole, so translators should choose two verbs that are very similar in meaning. They may render both rhetorical questions as strong statements (see the second example below). Good News Translation combines them into one statement, saying “There is no one to show you sympathy.”

Translation examples for this verse are:

• Two disasters have overcome you:
devastation and destruction—
who consoled you?
famine and sword/war—
who comforted you?

• Twin calamities struck you,
and no one could console you.
Devastation and destruction,
famine and the sword,
and no one could comfort you.

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 .