What do you mean…? is literally “What to you…?” or “What is it to you…?” This question is rhetorical. Its purpose is to criticize rather than to ask for information. Good News Translation uses a strong affirmation instead: “You have no right….” This is a valid option. The question has two parts that are synonymous: crushing my people and grinding the face of the poor. Both these clauses are highly poetic expressions for oppressing the poor; the second expression is more gruesome than the first one. The leaders were responsible for ensuring that people treated the poor justly, but instead they were taking advantage of them. Crushing my people is a powerful figure for oppression, while grinding the face of the poor goes even further. It suggests that the poor were lying on the ground, with their faces being pushed hard into the dirt by the leaders who placed their feet on the heads of these poor. Both expressions can probably be rendered literally since these figures will be understood in most languages. Contemporary English Version does it by saying “You have crushed my people and rubbed in the dirt the faces of the poor.” However, Good News Translation takes a cautious approach that favors clarity by rendering the second image nonfiguratively, saying “You have no right to crush my people and take advantage of the poor.”

Says the Lord GOD of hosts is a solemn, fixed form used to close off divine speeches. Here the divine title is longer than usual; it is literally “my Lord Yahweh of hosts.” This title occurs eight times in Isaiah (3.15; 10.23-24; 22.5, 12, 14-15; 28.22). It is almost identical to the title used in verse 1 to open the chapter (see the comments there). Since this title is longer than usual, it adds solemnity here to the charge against the nation’s leaders, and to verses 1-15 as a whole.

Alternative translation models for this verse are:

• What do you mean by crushing my people,
by grinding the faces of the poor [into the ground]?”
demands my Lord, Almighty Yahweh.

• You are guilty of crushing my people,
of grinding the faces of the poor into the dirt.”
This is the charge [against you] made by my Lord, Yahweh of hosts.

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 .