Your offspring would have been like the sand, and your descendants like its grains: This second set of comparisons adds to the first set in the previous verse to indicate other blessings that Israel missed out on because it failed to obey God’s laws. As noted in the introductory comments on this subsection [48.17-19], there is chiastic structure in Hebrew here also: like the sand > your offspring > < your descendants < like its grains. The Hebrew noun for offspring is literally “seed,” a common way of referring to descendants (see the comments on 41.8). Your descendants is literally “that which comes out [from] your belly” (see the comments on 44.3). This expression may have been chosen because of a play-on-words: the Hebrew noun for grains (maʿah) sounds like the noun for “belly” (meʿah). Comparing Israel’s people to grains of sand speaks of great fertility (see 10.22; Gen 22.17). The sense of these two lines is that had Israel followed God’s commands they would have been a strong and powerful nation rather than the decimated community they are now. In languages where grains of sand do not suggest abundance, translators may say “Your children would be very numerous, your offspring beyond counting.”

Their name would never be cut off or destroyed from before me: In verse 9 the word name meant “reputation.” If it has that sense here, then these two lines would mean the reputation of Israel was put at risk because of the people’s disobedience. But name has a deeper meaning here. It stands for the people themselves. Good News Translation makes this clear by rendering their name simply as “they.” Cut off refers to the elimination of the people as in 14.22. It is synonymous with the verb destroyed. This potential destruction is the danger being faced by the exiles. The phrase from before me speaks of being removed from God’s presence. Revised English Bible, unlike Good News Translation, keeps both name and from before me by translating these two lines as “their name would never be erased or blotted from my sight.”

Translation examples for this verse are:

• Your children would be as numerous as the sand,
your descendants as many as its grains.
No one [or, enemy] would be able to eliminate them
or destroy them from my presence.”

• Your children would be as abundant as the sand,
your descendants like its grains.
They would never be removed
or destroyed from my sight.”

An example that continues indirect speech here is:

• Your children would be as numerous as the sand,
your descendants like its grains.
They would never be removed
or destroyed from his sight.

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 .