This verse continues to focus on the fact that people cannot celebrate anymore.

No more do they drink wine with singing: The pronoun they refers to people in general. The Hebrew word rendered wine is the normal term for fermented wine (see verse 7 and 5.11; see also the comments on 1.22, where a different word for wine is used). The adverbial phrase with singing paints a picture of people joyfully singing as they drink. This sound is no longer heard.

Strong drink is bitter to those who drink it: For strong drink, see the comments at 5.11. Both New International Version and Die Bibel im heutigen Deutsch say “beer,” which is a good rendering. Good News Translation has only “wine” in this verse. The Hebrew verb rendered is bitter can refer to the beer’s taste or its aftertaste.

Although wine and strong drink are referred to separately here, this verse is an example of all-inclusive parallelism. The comments about each one apply to both of them. People may still drink wine and beer, but they never do it with joyful singing, and the taste is always bitter. The two main verbs in this verse (drink and is bitter) have an imperfect form in Hebrew, which is significant since most of the other verbs in this subsection are perfect in form. The imperfect form is used for actions that occur frequently. This is expressed clearly in the examples below.

Translation examples for this verse are:

• Nobody drinks wine and sings anymore,
those who drink beer find it always bitter.

• People no longer drink wine and sing,
beer is always bitter to those who drink it.

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 .