Donald W. Parry on Isaiah 9:3 (Hebrew 9:2)

  

לא MT^ket 1QIsa^a (לוא) | MT^qere לו

 

הַגּ֔וֹי לֹא—It is sometimes impossible to know if 1QISa^a’s לוא signifies “to him” or “no, not”; . . . Multiple medieval Hebrew Bibles (93 150 [pm], KR) read לו in this verse (HUB—Isaiah). Condamin, Kissane, Ginsburg, (and others) propose that the original reading of הגוי לא was הגילא = הגילא (“the rejoicing”); this word experienced an improper division of words, and subsequently the wāw was incorrectly  added. הגילא fits the context and also corresponds with ‎‎הַשִּׂמְחָ֑ה in the parallelism: “You have increased the rejoicing, you have magnified the joy.” (Donald W. Parry, Exploring the Isaiah Scrolls and Their Textual Variants ([Supplements to the Textual History of the Bible 3; Leiden: Brill, 2020], 94-95)