Isaiah 41:11

הֵן יֵבֹשׁוּ וְיִכָּלְמוּ כֹּל הַנֶּחֱרִים בָּךְ יִהְיוּ כְאַיִן וְיֹאבְדוּ אַנְשֵׁי רִיבֶךָ׃

11 See, they will be shamed and disgraced, all who are angry against you. Those men who are in dispute with you will be like nothing, and they will perish.

הֵן יֵבֹשׁוּ וְיִכָּלְמוּ See, they will be shamed and disgraced, God is talking in the strongest possible language here. הֵן "see" calls our attention very closely to a detail that is about to be revealed. The root of "disgraced" (יֵבֹשׁוּ) is בּוֹשׁ as in Ish-Bosheth ("man of disgrace," 2 Samuel 2:8; 4:1). "The force of bôsh is somewhat in contrast to the primary meaning of the English 'to be ashamed,' in that the English stresses the inner attitude, the state of mind, while the Hebrew means 'to come to shame' and stresses the sense of public disgrace, a physical state" (TWOT). וְיִכָּלְמוּ nifal imperfect, 3 m pl כָּלָם "be disgraced." These two words are often paired together.

כֹּל הַנֶּחֱרִים בָּךְ all who are angry against you. הַנֶּחֱרִים nifal participle m. plural from חָרָהה "burn, burn with anger." The pronominal בָּךְ is prefixed with adversative or associative -בְּ, like a dative of association in Greek. It is pointed this way instead of בְּךָ because it is in pause due to the atnach. The Mp note points out that הַנֶּחֱרִים occurs twice, here and in Isaiah 45:24, which would seem to silence the proposed alteration in the BHS apparatus.

יִהְיוּ כְאַיִן וְיֹאבְדוּ [they] will be like nothing, and they will perish. -כְ sends us into a comparison; here "like nothing," another way of saying "they will perish" (qal imperfect from אָבַד). Another Mp note says that וְיֹאבְדוּ occurs twice, Isaiah 41:11 and Psalm 9:4.

An interesting and compelling textual variant is found here in the second Isaiah scroll from Qumran (1QIsᵇ, the Dead Sea Scrolls of the Hebrew University, 1955). The reading for the second parallel term וְיֹאבְדוּ is ויבשו, which could be pointed either וַיֵּבשׁוּ (qal wc imf בּוֹשׁ) "and they will be ashamed," or וְיִבָשׁוּ (qal imf יָבֵשׁ) "and they will wither." Both would be appropriate, and the second form in particular would bring an aspect of wordplay to the passage. Unfortunately there are no manuscripts of versions to back this reading up (the LXX has ἀπoλοῦνται, "perish").

אַנְשֵׁי רִיבֶךָ Those men who are in dispute with you, This is actually the subject of the previous two phrases, governing them both. The sequence is exactly parallel rather than chiastic, and this draws another nuance of emphasis to the verse. אַנְשֵׁי is the familiar plural construct of אִישׁ. Because there is a construct-genitive relationship, there is no need for a verb (this is a nominal clause), but the verbal idea is there nevertheless. The men are men of "dispute" רִיב, the dispute of the courtroom; men who think that they have a moral or legal claim against God himself. Those who oppose God's people are in opposition to God. They will be "as nothing." The perishing described here is eternal damnation. They will perish. To "cause" someone to perish is what the Lord describes in Deuteronomy 12:2 when he says "destroy completely." But here, the people are not annihilated; they suffer eternally in hell. They are "always perishing," forever.