I delayed answering this because of the difficulty (for me) of making sense of this verse.
Michael W Abernathy wrote:… But I think כְּדָבְרָ֑ם is probably the word for field. "The rams will graze as in their field." …
I considered this reading, as in Micah 2:12 דבר is used for feedlot.
But in the Isaiah verse, the “in” is missing. The missing “in” makes a problem for me, which is why I suggested an alternative.
Michael W Abernathy wrote:The second half of the passage וְחָרְב֥וֹת מֵחִ֖ים גָּרִ֥ים יֹאכֵֽלוּlooks like it should read, “and sojourners will eat among the ruins of the rich.” As I read it, it describes a once prosperous land now made desolate by God's judgment.
Michael Abernathy׃
This second half of the verse is a real challenge. The problem is that in this first half of Isaiah, he often uses happax legonemen and words used only two or three times, and when they are also homographs with other words, it can be a real challenge to understand.
I agree with your basic idea, that it describes a once prosperous land now made desolate.
The word חרבות can mean swords, or desolated or dry places, or the act of desolating
The word מחים can mean scrapings, or marrow? or fatlings? The similar use in Psalm 66:15 of מחים (Aleppo has מיחים) seems to lead credence to “fatlings”.
The word גרים means sojourners
The word יאכלו has no question as to its meaning, but which of the nouns is its subject? The verb is masculine which rules out חרבות, but the other two are possible.
From the four words, it appears that the sojourners, who are often strangers from other countries, are doing the eating. But what is being eaten? Is it dry scrapings, i.e. that there’s nothing left of good things? Or is this that what swords scrape out is eaten? Or that the sojourners are eating and in that act desolating the fatlings or fatted places?
LXX has something completely different (thanks Ste for pointing that out):
και βοσκηθησονται οι διηρπασμενοι ως ταυροι και τας ερημους των απειλημμενων αρνες φαγονται
Either the LXX translators had a different text before them, or they were just guessing themselves.
Thanks for the response, this is an interesting problem.
Karl W. Randolph.