Isaiah 42:5

כֹּה־אָמַר הָאֵל יְהוָה בּוֹרֵא הַשָּׁמַיִם וְנוֹטֵיהֶם רֹקַע הָאָרֶץ וְצֶאֱצָאֶיהָ נֹתֵן נְשָׁמָה לָעָם עָלֶיהָ וְרוּחַ לַהֹלְכִים בָּהּ׃

5 This is what God the LORD says, who created the heavens and stretched them out, who hammered out the earth and what comes out of it, who gives breath to the people on it and spirit to those who walk in it.

כֹּה־אָמַר הָאֵל יְהוָה This is what God the LORD says, The article with God's name sets "The God" in contrast with the previous references to idols; the article also governs the attributive participles that follow.

The accented text for "God the LORD" is הָאֵ֣ל ׀ יְהוָ֗ה, and the Mp note observes that this combined name and title of the Lord occurs just twice with paseq (the line dividing the two words). Here the paseq is preceded by munah, which lessens the division of the words and is technically called legarmeh. In the other place (Psalm 85:9) the paseq is preceded by galgal ( הָאֵ֪ל ׀) and is not a legarmeh. It might have been useful if the Mp not had also pointed out that these are the only to occurrences of this form of "God the LORD" in the Bible (הָאֱלֹהִים יְהוָה occurs as a conjoined phrase twice: 1 Chron. 13:6 with paseq and darga, and 2 Chron 30:19 with paseq and merka).

בּוֹרֵא הַשָּׁמַיִם וְנוֹטֵיהֶם who created the heavens and stretched them out, The qal participle בּוֹרֵא takes us back to בְּרֵאשִׁית בָּרָא "In the beginning (God) created..." in Genesis 1:1. וְנוֹטֵיהֶם is another qal participle from נָטָה, "stretch, bend." This is a picture of God pulling the seemingly infinite space of the heavens into the ideal frame for our world and all the other things he would place there three days later.

רֹקַע הָאָרֶץ וְצֶאֱצָאֶיהָ who hammered out the earth and what comes out of it, רֹקַע is another qal participle, still governed by the initial article with "God." רָקַע means to beat out thin, stamp the foot, or spread out as a smith taps out copper or gold into thin sheets with a light hammer. Young suggests that the form is construct, and this corresponds to Holladay's entry on the verb. The English "earth-hammerer" would be an awkward kenning and unnecessarily Wagnerian, so "the one who hammered out the earth" is clear enough. This is a picture of God forming out the surface of the earth, and Isaiah's mind now is probably on the third day of creation when the dry ground appears. The smith's sheet of hammered metal is bumpy as he first begins to work, resembling the rocky hills and valleys of the Shephelah and the other terrain of Judah. צֶאֱצָאֶיהָ is a noun resembling the formation of a pe'al'al verb from the root יצא "come out." Here is a picture of what comes out of the ground; Young (III, 117) envisions the lush carpet of green grass that springs up and covers Palestine's otherwise bare hills during the winter rains.

נֹתֵן נְשָׁמָה לָעָם עָלֶיהָ וְרוּחַ לַהֹלְכִים בָּהּ who gives breath to the people on it and spirit to those who walk in it. נְשָׁמָה is a rare word for "breath," but it occurs in both halves of Isaiah (2:22) and finds itself scattered throughout each section of the Old Testament. It's more or less a synonym for רוּחַ in the second part of the clause.