Isaiah 41:21

קָרְבוּ רִיבְכֶם יֹאמַר יְהוָה הַגִּישׁוּ עֲצֻמוֹתֵיכֶם יֹאמַר מֶלֶךְ יַעֲקֹב׃

21 "Declare your case," says the LORD. "Bring your proofs," says the King of Jacob.

קָרְבוּ רִיבְכֶם יֹאמַר יְהוָה "Declare your case," says the LORD. קָרְבוּ piel imperative, as God commands the people to put up or shut up. The piel here is causative, "make your case be declared." רִיב "case" is almost always used in a legal sense (cp. Micah 6:1-8). The Mp note for יֹאמַר יְהוָה is about the accent combination munah + atnach, which occurs with this phrase six times: Psalm 12:6; Isaiah 1:18, 33:10; 41:21; and 66:9 are all marked with this Mp note. Isaiah 1:11 is also marked this way (and is the sixth instance), although the second accent is zaqef, not atnach. 1 Kings 1:36 is also accented with zaqef in BHS; perhaps this is an indication that the variant in the BHS apparatus in that place has some additional merit.

הַגִּישׁוּ עֲצֻמוֹתֵיכֶם יֹאמַר מֶלֶךְ יַעֲקֹב "Bring your proofs," says the King of Jacob. עֲצֻמוֹתֵיכֶם (the hapax Mp note is about the form) is either a plural of עֲצֻמָה "mighty things," עֶצֶם "bones" (i.e., "strong things"), or עַצְמָה "evil deeds." The idea behind any of these things is either the strongest / best you have to offer or else sins. This is the only place that מֶלֶךְ יַעֲקֹב occurs, although there is no Mp note about this.

In this chapter we are in God's courtroom. Notice that the two lines of this verse say the same thing in two very similar ways. This a kind of poetry called synonymous parallelism. The Hebrew language sometimes makes a point more clearly by saying it more than one way. There will be several more examples of this kind of poetry in the verses to come as we finish out the chapter.