4. Without me. בִּלְתִּי. There has been a
great variety of interpretation affixed to this expression. The sense in which
our translators understood it was, evidently, that they should be forsaken of
God; and that, as the effect of this, they should bow down under the condition
of captives, or among the slain. The Vulgate and the LXX, however, and many
interpreters understand the word here as a simple negative. ‘Where will you
flee for refuge? Where will you deposit your wealth so as not to bow down under a chain?’ Vulgate, Ne incurvemini sub vinculo. LXX. Τοῦ μὴ ἐμπεσεῖν εἰς ἀπαγωνήν—‘Not
to fall into captivity.’ The Hebrew will bear either mode of construction.
Vitringa and Lowth understand it as our translators have done, as meaning that
God would forsake them, and that without him, that is, deprived of his aid,
they would be destroyed. (Albert Barnes, Notes on the Old
Testament: Isaiah, 2 vols. [London: Blackie & Son, 1851], 1:202)
