Isaiah chapter 51 has a few notes of interest and there may be some things that I noticed myself when I read it. The majority of the SAB notes are absurdity. Verse one has some interesting imagery of Israel being hewn from a rock and "digged" from a pit that I guess does sound strange, and I'm not at all sure what the meaning may be. There is also the supposed absurdity in berse nine of God defeating "Rahab" (some sort of sea monster) and "the dragon" (almost certainly not the meaning of the Hebrew word as I discussed in Isaiah chapter 27); I don't know whether we're intended to take this literally, or if it's just a poetic way of talking about God's power.
The SAB marks verse six with violence, injustice, and science, which I find a little strange. I mean, science tells us that the earth won't last forever, and that has nothing to do with God being cruel, but rather the sun will either go supernova or burn out, and either way, the earth will either be destroyed or not fit for supporting life. I suppose we're meant to take this as an act of God sometime before the death of our sun, but even so, it's inevitable. The SAB asks What is God's name? which I answered in Isaiah chapter 42.
The thing I found interesting in this chapter was the comparison of verses eight and 17. God says in the former, "but my righteousness shall be for ever, and my salvation from generation to generation." In the latter, we hear, "Awake, awake, stand up, O Jerusalem, which hast drunk at the hand of the LORD the cup of his fury; thou hast drunken the dregs of the cup of trembling, and wrung them out." Do you see it? God's fury is limited, because Jerusalem finished it all, but God's salvation is limitless. I think that's the real point of this chapter, and a recurring theme throughout the Bible.
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