Beat upon your breasts: Professional female mourners did this at funerals to express grief. Good News Translation provides a helpful model since it brings out the significance of this gesture by adding “in grief.” However, there is some question about the meaning of this phrase in Hebrew, which is literally “Upon breasts mourning.” It says nothing about beating, and the verb for mourning is masculine instead of feminine. A copyist may have confused the Hebrew word for “fields” (sedey) with the word for breasts (shadayim). If so, a better reading is “Mourn for the fields.” However, the Dead Sea Scrolls text of Isaiah confirms Masoretic Text, so translators should follow it as closely as possible. They may add a footnote to indicate that the Hebrew text is difficult here (so New Jewish Publication Society’s Tanakh).

For the pleasant fields, for the fruitful vine: The pleasant fields refers to fertile fields (so Good News Translation), while the fruitful vine points to grapevines that produce abundant grapes. For the Hebrew word rendered pleasant, see the comments on 27.2; for vine see 7.23. The prophet tells the women to lament for what is about to happen to their fertile fields and fruitful vineyards. They will become infertile and fruitless. In some languages it may be helpful to make this clear, as in the examples below.

Translation examples for this verse are:

• Beat your breasts [in grief] for the fields that have been so fertile,
for the grapevines that have been so fruitful….

• Beat your breasts [in mourning] because the fields will no longer be fertile,
the grapevines will no longer be fruitful….

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 .