Isaiah
1
1 The vision of Isaiah the son of Amoz, which he saw concerning Judah and Jerusalem in the days of Uzziah, Jotham, Ahaz, and Hezekiah, the kings of Judah:
2 Hear, O heavens, and hearken, O earth, / For Jehovah has spoken: / I have brought up children, and I have raised them; / And yet they have rebelled against Me.
3 The ox knows his owner, / And the donkey, his master’s manger; / But Israel does not know, / My people do not much consider.
4 Alas, sinful nation, / A people heavy with iniquity, / Seed of evildoers, / Children acting corruptly! / They have forsaken Jehovah; / They have despised the Holy One of Israel; / They have become estranged and have gone backward.
5 Where will you be stricken again? / Will you continue your apostasy? / The whole head has become sick, / And the whole heart faint;
6 From the sole of the foot even to the head, / There is no soundness in it, / Only bruises and blows / And raw wounds — / They have not been pressed out nor bound up / Nor softened with oil.
7 Your land is a desolation; / Your cities are burned with fire; / Your field — in your sight / Strangers devour it; / It is a desolation, like something overthrown by strangers.
8 And the daughter of Zion is left / Like a booth in a vineyard, / Like a hut in a cucumber field, / Like a besieged city.
9 Unless Jehovah of hosts / Had left to us a surviving few, / We would have been like Sodom, / We would have resembled Gomorrah.
10 Hear the word of Jehovah, / You rulers of Sodom; / Hearken to the instruction of our God, / You people of Gomorrah.
11 What is the multitude of your sacrifices to Me? / Says Jehovah. / I have had My fill of burnt offerings of rams / And the fat of fed cattle; / The blood of bulls and lambs / And goats, I do not delight in.
12 When you come to appear before Me, / Who has required this of your hand, / To trample My courts?
13 Bring no more vain offerings; / Incense is an abomination to Me. / New moon and Sabbath, the calling of convocations — / I cannot bear iniquity and the solemn assembly.
14 Your new moons and your appointed feasts / My soul hates; / They have become a burden on Me; / I am weary of bearing them.
15 Thus, when you spread forth your hands, / I will hide My eyes from you; / Even though you multiply your prayers, / I will not hear. / Your hands are full of blood;
16 Wash yourselves; cleanse yourselves. / Turn away the evil of your deeds / From before My eyes. / Cease doing what is evil;
17 Learn to do good. / Seek justice; / Correct the ruthless. / Defend the orphan; / Plead for the widow.
18 Come now and let us reason together, / Says Jehovah. / Though your sins are like scarlet, / They will be as white as snow; / Though they are as red as crimson, / They will be like wool.
19 If you are willing and listen, / You will eat the good of the land;
20 But if you refuse and rebel, / You will be devoured by the sword; / For the mouth of Jehovah has spoken.
21 How the faithful city / Has become a harlot! / She who was full of justice, / She in whom righteousness once lodged, / But now murderers!
22 Your silver has become dross; / Your wine diluted with water;
23 Your rulers are rebellious / And companions of thieves; / They all love bribes / And chase after rewards; / They do not defend the orphan, / Nor does the widow’s plea come before them.
24 Hence, the Lord Jehovah of hosts, / The Mighty One of Israel, declares: / Ah, I will ease Myself of My adversaries, / And I will avenge Myself of My enemies;
25 And I will turn My hand against you. / I will thoroughly purge away your dross as with lye, / And I will remove all your alloy.
26 And I will restore your judges as at the first / And your counselors as at the beginning. / Afterward you will be called the city of righteousness, / The faithful city.
27 Zion will be ransomed with justice, / And her returning ones with righteousness.
28 And there will be the shattering of rebels and sinners together, / And those who forsake Jehovah will meet their end.
29 For you will be ashamed of the terebinths / That you have taken pleasure in; / And you will be embarrassed at the gardens / That you have chosen.
30 For you will be like a terebinth / Whose leaves are falling, / And like a garden / In which there is no water;
31 And the strong man will become tow, / And his work a spark; / And they will both burn together, / And there will be none to extinguish them.
2
1 The word which Isaiah the son of Amoz saw concerning Judah and Jerusalem:
2 But in the last days / The mountain of the house of Jehovah will be established / On the top of the mountains; / And it will be lifted up above the hills; / And all the nations will stream to it,
3 And many peoples will come and say, / Come and let us go up to the mountain of Jehovah, / To the house of the God of Jacob, / That He may instruct us in His ways, / And that we may walk in His paths. / For from Zion will go forth instruction, / And the word of Jehovah from Jerusalem;
4 And He will judge between the nations, / And will decide matters for many peoples. / And they will beat their swords into plowshares, / And their spears into pruning knives; / Nation will not lift up sword against nation, / Nor will they learn war anymore.
5 House of Jacob, come and let us walk in the light of Jehovah.
6 For You have abandoned Your people, / The house of Jacob; / Because they are full of customs from the east, / And they are soothsayers like the Philistines, / And they clasp hands with the children of foreigners.
7 Their land is full of silver and gold, / And their treasures are limitless; / Their land is also full of horses, / And their chariots are limitless.
8 And their land is full of idols; / They bow down to the work of their hands, / To that which their fingers have made.
9 Thus the ordinary man is humbled, and the man of distinction is abased — / But do not forgive them.
10 Enter into the rock, / And hide in the dust, / From the dread of Jehovah, / And from the splendor of His majesty.
11 Man’s haughty look will be abased, / And the loftiness of men will be humbled; / But Jehovah alone will be exalted / In that day.
12 For Jehovah of hosts will have a day / Over everything proud and lofty, / And over everything lifted up that it may be abased;
13 Over all the cedars of Lebanon, / Which are lofty and lifted up, / And over all the oaks of Bashan;
14 Over all the lofty mountains, / And over all the hills that are lifted up;
15 Over every high tower, / And over every fortified wall;
16 Over all the ships of Tarshish, / And over all their pleasant artifacts.
17 And the haughtiness of the ordinary man will be humbled, / And the loftiness of the men of distinction will be abased; / But Jehovah alone will be exalted / In that day.
18 And the idols will vanish completely.
19 And men will go into caves in the rocks / And into holes in the dust, / From the dread of Jehovah, / And from the splendor of His majesty, / When He arises to make the earth tremble.
20 In that day a man will cast / His idols of silver and his idols of gold, / Which they made for themselves to bow down to, / To the moles and to the bats,
21 So that they may go into the crevices of the rocks / And into the clefts of the cliffs, / From the dread of Jehovah, / And from the splendor of His majesty, / When He arises to make the earth tremble.
22 Stop regarding man, / Whose life breath is in his nostrils. / For of what value is he considered to be?
3
1 For now the Lord Jehovah of hosts / Is taking away from Jerusalem and from Judah / Every kind of support — / All the support of bread / And all the support of water;
2 The mighty man and the man of war, / The judge and the prophet, / And the diviner and the elder;
3 The captain of fifty and the highly regarded; / And the counselor, the wise magician, and the knowledgeable enchanter.
4 And I will make youths their rulers, / And capriciousness will rule over them.
5 And the people will be oppressed, each by the other, / And each by his neighbor. / The youth will be arrogant to the elder, / And the contemned one to the one who is honored.
6 When a man takes hold of his brother / In his father’s house and says, / You have clothing, you be our ruler, / And these ruins will be under your hand;
7 He will solemnly say, / I will not be the one who binds your wounds, / For in my house there is no food or clothing; / Do not appoint me as ruler of the people.
8 For Jerusalem stumbles, / And Judah falls, / Because their speech and their actions are against Jehovah, / To rebel against the eyes of His glory.
9 The countenance of their faces witnesses against them, / And they declare their sin like Sodom; / They do not hide it. / Woe to their soul! / For they have brought evil upon themselves.
10 Say to the righteous that it will go well with them, / For they will eat the fruit of their actions.
11 Woe to the wicked man! It will go badly with him; / For the result of his deeds will be done to him.
12 My people — their oppressors are children, / And women rule over them. / O My people, those who lead you are leading you astray; / And the path for your ways they have hidden.
13 Jehovah stands firm to contend, / And He stands to judge the people.
14 Jehovah will enter into judgment / With the elders of His people and their rulers. / It is you who have consumed the vineyard; / The spoil of the poor is in your houses.
15 What do you mean by crushing My people / And grinding the faces of the poor? / Declares the Lord Jehovah of hosts.
16 Moreover Jehovah said, / Because the daughters of Zion are haughty, / And walk around with outstretched necks / And lusting eyes, / And trip along with quick, little steps, / And rattle the anklets on their feet;
17 The Lord will strike the scalp of the daughters of Zion with scabs, / And Jehovah will expose their secret parts.
18 In that day the Lord will remove the beauty of their anklets, headbands, and crescents;
19 The ear pendants, the bracelets, and the costly veils;
20 The headdresses, the ankle chains, the sashes, the bottles of aromas, and the amulets;
21 The finger rings and the nose rings;
22 The formal gowns, the frocks, the wraps, and the purses;
23 The mirrors, the fine linen garments, the turbans, and the veils.
24 And instead of a sweet smell there will be rottenness; / And instead of a belt, an encircling rope; / Instead of well-set hair, baldness; / And instead of fine garments, the girding of oneself with sackcloth; / A brand instead of beauty.
25 Your men will fall by the sword, / And your mighty, in battle;
26 Then her gates will mourn and lament, / And she, being desolated, will sit on the ground.
4
1 And seven women will grasp / One man in that day, / Saying, We will eat our own bread / And wear our own clothes; / Just let us bear your name; / Take away our reproach.
2 In that day the Shoot of Jehovah will be beauty and glory, and the fruit of the earth, excellence and splendor, to those of Israel who have escaped.
3 And he who is left over in Zion and remains in Jerusalem will be called holy, everyone who has been written down in Jerusalem for life;
4 When the Lord has washed away the filth of the daughters of Zion and has cleansed away the bloodstains of Jerusalem from her midst, by the judging Spirit and the burning Spirit.
5 Jehovah will create over the entire region of Mount Zion and over all her convocations a cloud of smoke by day, and the brightness of a fiery flame by night; for the glory will be a canopy over all.
6 And there will be a tabernacle as a daytime shade from the heat and as a refuge and a cover from storm and rain.
5
1 Let me sing of my Beloved, / A song of my Beloved concerning His vineyard. / My Beloved had a vineyard / On a fertile hill.
2 And He dug it up and cleared away its stones, / And He planted it with the choicest vine. / Then He built a tower in the middle of it, / And hewed out a wine vat in it. / And He looked for it to produce grapes, / But it produced only wild grapes.
3 So then, you inhabitants of Jerusalem / And you men of Judah, / Judge between Me / And My vineyard.
4 What more could I have done for My vineyard / That I have not already done for it? / Why then, when I looked for it to produce grapes, / Did it produce only wild grapes?
5 And now I will make known to you / What I will now do to My vineyard: / I will remove its hedge, and it will be consumed; / I will break down its wall, and it will become a trampled place.
6 And I will make it a waste; / It will not be pruned, nor will it be hoed; / But thorns and thistles will come on it. / And I will command the clouds / Not to rain upon it.
7 For the vineyard of Jehovah of hosts is the house of Israel, / And the men of Judah, the plant of His good pleasure; / And He expected justice, but instead, bloodshed! / He expected righteousness, but instead, an outcry of distress!
8 Woe to those who join house to house, / Who lay field to field, / Till there is no place left, / And you dwell alone in the midst of the land!
9 In my ears Jehovah of hosts has sworn: / Many houses shall indeed become desolate; / Great ones and fine ones shall be without inhabitants.
10 For ten acres of vineyard will produce a mere bath of wine, / And a homer of seed will produce an ephah of grain.
11 Woe to those who rise early in the morning / That they may run after liquor, / To those who linger into the evening / That wine may inflame them!
12 Lyre and harp, tambourine and flute, / And wine are the essence of their banquets; / And they do not consider what has been done by Jehovah, / Nor do they regard the work of His hands.
13 Hence, my people go into exile / For lack of knowledge; / Their nobility become famished men, / And their multitudes, parched with thirst.
14 Hence, Sheol enlarges its appetite / And opens its mouth wide, without limit, / And Jerusalem’s splendor descends, and her din / And her uproar and the jubilant within her.
15 Thus the ordinary man is humbled, and the man of distinction is abased; / And the eyes of the haughty are abased;
16 But Jehovah of hosts is exalted in judgment, / And the holy God shows Himself holy in righteousness.
17 Then lambs will graze there as in their pasture, / And strangers will eat the wastelands of fat men.
18 Woe to those who draw iniquity with ropes of vanity, / And sin as with cart ropes;
19 Who say, He should hurry up; / He should hasten His work, / So that we may see it; / And the counsel of the Holy One of Israel / Should draw near and happen, / So that we may know it!
20 Woe to those who call evil good, / And good evil; / Who put darkness for light, / And light for darkness; / Who put bitter for sweet, / And sweet for bitter!
21 Woe to those who are wise in their own eyes, / And prudent in their own sight!
22 Woe to those who are heroes in drinking wine, / And men of valor in mixing liquor;
23 Who acquit the criminal as a result of a bribe, / But refuse righteousness to the righteous!
24 Therefore as a tongue of fire consumes the stubble, / And the chaff sinks in flames, / Their root will be like decay, / And their bud will disappear like dust; / For they have rejected the instruction of Jehovah of hosts / And despised the speaking of the Holy One of Israel.
25 For this reason the anger of Jehovah burns against His people, / And He stretches out His hand over them and strikes them. / And the mountains quake, and their corpses are / Like garbage in the middle of the street. / In spite of all this His anger is not turned away; / Rather, His hand is still stretched out.
26 He also lifts up a standard to a distant nation, / And whistles to it from the ends of the earth; / And indeed it comes with swift speed.
27 None of them is weary, and none stumbles among them; / No one slumbers or sleeps; / And their belts are not loosened at their waists, / Nor are their sandal thongs broken.
28 The arrows of these are sharpened, / And all their bows are drawn; / The hooves of their horses are considered to be like flint, / And their chariot wheels like a whirlwind.
29 Their roar is like a lion’s, / And they roar like young lions; / When they growl and seize prey, / They carry it away safe, and there is none to rescue it.
30 And they will growl over it in that day, / Like the roaring of the sea. / When one will look upon the land, indeed, there will be darkness and distress, / And the light will be darkened with its clouds.
6
1 In the year that King Uzziah died I saw the Lord sitting on a high and lofty throne, and the train of His robe filled the temple.
2 Seraphim hovered over Him, each having six wings: With two he covered his face, and with two he covered his feet, and with two he flew.
3 And one called to the other, saying:Holy, holy, holy, Jehovah of hosts; / The whole earth is filled with His glory.
4 And the foundations of the threshold shook at the voice of him who called, and the house was filled with smoke.
5 Then I said,Woe is me, for I am finished! / For I am a man of unclean lips, / And in the midst of a people of unclean lips I dwell; / Yet my eyes have seen the King, Jehovah of hosts.
6 Then one of the seraphim flew to me with an ember in his hand, which he had taken from the altar with a pair of tongs.
7 And he touched my mouth with it and said,Now that this has touched your lips, / Your iniquity is taken away, and your sin is purged.
8 Then I heard the voice of the Lord, saying, Whom shall I send? Who will go for Us? And I said, Here am I; send me.
9 And He said, Go and say to this people,Hear indeed, but do not perceive; / And see indeed, but do not understand.
10 Make the heart of this people numb; / Dull their ears, / And seal their eyes; / Lest they see with their eyes and hear with their ears, / And their heart perceive and return, and they are healed.
11 And I said, For how long, Lord? And He said, / Until cities lie devastated, / Without inhabitants, / And houses are without people, / And the land is devastated and a waste;
12 And Jehovah has sent men far away from it, / And desolate places abound in the midst of the land.
13 But there will still be a tenth part in it; / And it in turn is to be burned / Like a terebinth or an oak, / Whose stump remains after its felling; / Its stump will be a holy seed.
7
1 In the days of Ahaz the son of Jotham, the son of Uzziah, the king of Judah, Rezin the king of Aram and Pekah the son of Remaliah, the king of Israel, went up to Jerusalem to wage war against it, but they were not able to prevail against it.
2 And it was reported to the house of David that Aram allied with Ephraim, and his heart and the heart of his people quivered as the trees of the forest quiver in the face of a wind.
3 Then Jehovah said to Isaiah, Go out to meet Ahaz, you and Shear-jashub your son, at the end of the conduit of the upper pool, on the road to the Fuller’s Field;
4 And say to him, Be careful and be quiet; do not fear, and do not be fainthearted because of these two smoking firebrand stubs, at the burning anger of Rezin and Aram, and the son of Remaliah.
5 Because Aram and Ephraim and the son of Remaliah have planned evil against you, saying,
6 Let us go up against Judah and make it sick with terror and break it open for ourselves, and let us set the son of Tabel in its midst as king;
7 Thus says the Lord Jehovah, / It shall not stand, and it shall not happen;
8 For the head of Aram is Damascus, / And the head of Damascus is Rezin; / And in another sixty-five years / Ephraim will be shattered as a people.
9 And the head of Ephraim is Samaria, / And the head of Samaria is the son of Remaliah; / If you do not believe, surely you will not remain standing.
10 Then Jehovah spoke further to Ahaz, saying,
11 Ask for a sign from Jehovah your God; make it as deep as Sheol, or make it as high as high can go.
12 And Ahaz said, I will not ask, and I will not try Jehovah.
13 And he said, Hear now, O house of David, is it too small a thing for you to exhaust the patience of men that you will exhaust the patience of my God as well?
14 Therefore the Lord Himself will give you a sign: Behold, the virgin will conceive and will bear a son, and she will call his name Immanuel.
15 He will eat curds and honey until he knows how to refuse evil and choose good.
16 For before this boy knows how to refuse evil and choose good, the land whose two kings you dread will be abandoned.
17 Jehovah will bring upon you and your people and the house of your father such days as have not been since the days when Ephraim turned away from Judah; He will bring upon you the king of Assyria.
18 And in that day Jehovah will whistle for the flies which are at the ends of the rivers of Egypt and for the bees which are in the land of Assyria.
19 And they will all come and settle in the steep ravines and the clefts of the cliffs and on all the thornbushes and on all watering places.
20 In that day the Lord will shave with the razor hired from beyond the River, with the king of Assyria, the head and the hair of the legs; and it will take away the beard as well.
21 And in that day each man will keep alive only a milk cow and two females of the flock.
22 And because of the abundance of milk produced, he will eat curds; for everyone left behind in the midst of the land will eat curds and honey.
23 And in that day every place where there could be a thousand vines, worth a thousand shekels of silver, will become thorns and thistles.
24 Men will come there with arrows and bow, for all the land will be thorns and thistles.
25 And to all the hills that once were hoed with the hoe you will not go for fear of thorns and thistles; but they will become a place for cattle to roam in and for sheep to trample.
8
1 Then Jehovah said to me, Take a large tablet and write on it in plain letters, For Maher-shalal-hash-baz;
2 And I will take faithful witnesses, Urijah the priest and Zechariah the son of Jeberechiah.
3 And I went to the prophetess, and she conceived and bore a son. And Jehovah said to me, Call his name Maher-shalal-hash-baz,
4 For before this boy knows how to call, Father, and, Mother, they will carry off the wealth of Damascus and the spoil of Samaria before the king of Assyria.
5 Then Jehovah spoke further to me, saying,
6 Because these people have rejected / The gently flowing waters of Shiloah, and exult / In Rezin and the son of Remaliah,
7 Now therefore the Lord is bringing up upon them / The mighty and abundant waters of the Euphrates, / The king of Assyria and all his glory; / And it will overflow all its channels, / And go over all its banks.
8 It will sweep through Judah; it will overflow and rise / Until it reaches the neck; / And the spreading out of its wings / Will fill the breadth of Your land, O Immanuel.
9 Be broken, O peoples, and be shattered; / Hearken, all you distant places of the earth: / Gird yourselves, yet be shattered; / Gird yourselves, yet be shattered.
10 Take counsel, yet it will be frustrated; / Speak the word, yet it will not stand; / For God is with us.
11 For Jehovah spoke to me in this way with great force and instructed me not to walk in the way of this people, saying,
12 You shall not call it conspiracy / All that this people calls conspiracy; / And you shall not fear what they fear nor hold it in awe.
13 You shall sanctify Jehovah of hosts; / He shall be the One to fear and He shall be the One to hold in awe.
14 Then He will become a sanctuary, yet a stone to strike against / And a rock of stumbling / To both houses of Israel, / A trap and a snare to the inhabitants of Jerusalem.
15 And many will stumble at these, / And will fall and be broken to pieces, / And will be snared and taken captive.
16 Bind up the testimony; seal the instruction among my disciples;
17 And I will wait on Jehovah, who hides His face from the house of Jacob, and I will look eagerly for Him.
18 See, I and the children whom Jehovah has given me are for signs and wonders in Israel from Jehovah of hosts, who abides on Mount Zion.
19 When they say to you, Inquire of the necromancers and the familiar spirits, who twitter and mutter; say to them, Should not a people inquire of their God? Should they go to the dead on behalf of the living —
20 To the law and to the testimony! If they do not speak according to this word, it is because in them there is no dawn.
21 And they go through it hard-pressed and hungry; and when they are hungry, they rage and curse their king and their God. They turn their faces upward,
22 And they look to the earth, but there is only distress and darkness, the gloom of anguish and being thrust into darkness.
9
1 But gloom does not remain in the place where there was anguish: formerly He treated the land of Zebulun and the land of Naphtali contemptibly, but afterward He treats the way of the sea, across the Jordan, with glory, Galilee of the nations.
2 The people who walked in the darkness / Have seen a great light; / Upon those who dwell in the land of the shadow of death / Light has shined.
3 You have multiplied the nation; / You have increased their gladness; / They are glad before You as with the gladness of harvest, / As men rejoice when they divide the spoil.
4 For You break the yoke of their burden / And the staff on their shoulder, / The rod of their oppressor, / As in the day of Midian.
5 For all the boots / Of those who in boots trample in the battle-quake / And the garments / Rolled in blood / Are for burning; / They are fuel for fire.
6 For a child is born to us, / A Son is given to us; / And the government / Is upon His shoulder; / And His name will be called / Wonderful Counselor, / Mighty God, / Eternal Father, / Prince of Peace.
7 To the increase of His government / And to His peace there is no end, / Upon the throne of David / And over His kingdom, / To establish it / And to uphold it / In justice and righteousness / From now to eternity. / The zeal of Jehovah of hosts / Will accomplish this.
8 The Lord sends out a word against Jacob, / And it descends upon Israel.
9 And all the people know it, / Ephraim and the inhabitants of Samaria, / Saying in pride and haughtiness of heart,
10 The bricks have fallen, but we will build with cut stone; / The sycamores have been felled, but we will put cedars in their place.
11 Then Jehovah exalts the adversaries of Rezin against them / And goads their enemies on.
12 Aram from the east and the Philistines from the west: / They devour Israel with an open mouth. / By all this His anger is not turned; / His hand is still outstretched.
13 Yet the people do not turn to Him who strikes them, / Nor do they seek Jehovah of hosts.
14 Then Jehovah cuts off from Israel head and tail, / Palm branch and marsh reed in one day.
15 The elder and the highly regarded — he is the head; / The prophet and the teacher of falsehood — he is the tail.
16 And those who lead this people are those who mislead them; / And those who are led are those who are confused.
17 Because of this the Lord will not rejoice in their young men, / And He will not have compassion on their orphans and widows; / For all of them are profane and evildoers, / And every mouth speaks foolishness. / By all this His anger is not turned; / His hand is still outstretched.
18 For wickedness burns like a fire; / It devours thorn and thistle, / And burns in the forest thickets; / And they roll up into a column of smoke.
19 At the overflowing wrath of Jehovah of hosts a land is burned up, / And the people are like fuel for fire; / No one spares even his brother.
20 One carves on the right side, but is hungry; / And another eats on the left side, but is not satisfied. / Each eats the flesh of his own arm:
21 Manasseh, Ephraim, and Ephraim, Manasseh; / These together against Judah. / By all this His anger is not turned; / His hand is still outstretched.
10
1 Woe to those who decree decrees of iniquity, / To the busy writers who are busy writing trouble,
2 In order to turn the poor away from judgment, / And to tear justice away from the afflicted among my people; / That widows may be their spoil, / And they may plunder orphans.
3 And what will you do for the day of visitation, / And for the devastation that comes from afar? / To whom will you flee for help? / And where will you leave your glory,
4 Unless one crouches behind prisoners, / And they fall behind the slain? / By all this His anger is not turned; / His hand is still outstretched.
5 Woe to Assyria, the rod of My anger! / The staff which is in their hand is My indignation.
6 Against a profane nation I send them out, / And against the people of My overflowing wrath I command them, / To make spoil of the spoil and to make plunder of the plunder, / To make them a trampling ground, like street mire.
7 But they do not think so, / And their heart does not conceive it so; / For destroying is in their heart, / And the cutting down of no few nations.
8 For they say, / Are not my princes all kings?
9 Is not Calno like Carchemish, / Or Hamath like Arpad, / Or Samaria like Damascus?
10 Since my hand has reached / The kingdoms of the idols, / And their graven images were greater than those of Jerusalem and Samaria,
11 Shall I not do, as I have done / To Samaria and its idols, / The same to Jerusalem and its images?
12 But when the Lord has completed all His work on Mount Zion and on Jerusalem, He says, I will punish the fruit of the king of Assyria’s haughtiness of heart and the glory of his haughty eyes.
13 For he has said, / By the strength of my own hand I have done it, / And by my own wisdom; for I have understanding. / And I have removed the boundaries of the peoples; / And their stored possessions I have plundered. / And like a bull, I brought down those who sit on thrones.
14 And my hand reached in, like in a nest, / For the wealth of the peoples; / And like one who gathers abandoned eggs, / I myself gathered in all the earth; / And none fluttered a wing, / Or opened a beak and chirped.
15 Should the ax glorify itself above him who chops with it? / Or should the saw magnify itself above him who wields it? / It would be like the rod wielding him who lifts it up, / Like the staff lifting up him who is not wood.
16 Therefore the Lord Jehovah of hosts will send / Leanness to his fat ones; / And under his glory He will kindle a kindling, / Like the kindling of fire.
17 And the Light of Israel will become a fire, / And his Holy One a flame; / And it will burn and devour his thorns / And his thistles in one day.
18 The glory of his forest and of his garden land / He will destroy, both soul and body; / And he will be like a sick man wasting away.
19 And what is left of the trees of his forest will be so few in number / That a young boy could record them.
20 Then in that day the remnant of Israel and those of the house of Jacob who have escaped will no longer rely upon him who strikes them, but they will rely upon Jehovah, the Holy One of Israel, in truth.
21 A remnant will return, the remnant of Jacob, to the mighty God.
22 For though your people, O Israel, are like the sand of the sea, only a remnant among them will return. Annihilation is strictly decided, overflowing with righteousness.
23 For utter destruction and a strict decision is the Lord Jehovah of hosts performing in the midst of the whole land.
24 Therefore thus says the Lord Jehovah of hosts, O My people dwelling in Zion, do not fear Assyria, who strike with the rod and lift up their staff against you the way Egypt did.
25 For in a very little while My indignation will be completed, and My anger will be turned toward their destruction.
26 And against them Jehovah of hosts will rouse up a whip like the stroke against Midian at the rock of Oreb; and His staff will be over the sea, and He will lift it up the way He did in Egypt.
27 And in that day their burden will be removed from your shoulders, and their yoke from off your neck; and the yoke will be broken due to the fatness.
28 He comes against Aiath; / He passes through Migron; / At Michmash he deposits his gear.
29 They go through the pass, saying, / Geba will be our lodging overnight. / Ramah is quaking; / Gibeah of Saul flees away.
30 Scream with your voice, O daughter of Gallim! / Listen carefully, Laishah! O poor Anathoth!
31 Madmenah flees; / The inhabitants of Gebim seek refuge.
32 So it is this very day when he halts at Nob. / He swings his hand over the mountain of the daughter of Zion, / Over the hill of Jerusalem.
33 But now the Lord Jehovah of hosts / Is lopping off the boughs with an awful crash: / Those which are tall in height are hewn down, / And those which are lofty are laid low.
34 And He chops away the forest thickets with an iron ax; / And Lebanon falls at the hands of a majestic One.
11
1 Then a sprout will come forth from the stump of Jesse, / And a branch from his roots will bear fruit.
2 And the Spirit of Jehovah will rest upon Him, / The Spirit of wisdom and understanding, / The Spirit of counsel and might, / The Spirit of the knowledge and fear of Jehovah.
3 He will delight in the fear of Jehovah: / He will neither judge by what His eyes see, / Nor decide by what His ears hear.
4 But He will judge the poor in righteousness, / And decide with equity for the afflicted of the land. / And He will strike the land with the rod of His mouth, / And with the breath of His lips He will slay the wicked.
5 Righteousness will be that which girds His loins, / And faithfulness will be that which girds His hips.
6 And the wolf will dwell with the lamb; / And the leopard will lie down with the kid, / And the calf and the young lion and the fatling together; / And a young boy will lead them about.
7 The cow and the bear will graze; / Their young will lie down together; / And the lion will eat straw like the ox.
8 The nursing child will play by the cobra’s hole, / And upon the viper’s den / The weaned child will stretch his hand.
9 They will not harm nor destroy / In all My holy mountain, / For the earth will be filled with the knowledge of Jehovah, / As water covers the sea.
10 And in that day the root of Jesse, / Who stands as a banner to the peoples — / Him will the nations seek, / And His resting place will be the glory.
11 And in that day the Lord, / By His hand for the second time again, / Will recover the remnant of His people / Who remain, from Assyria and from Egypt, / From Pathros, Cush, and Elam, / From Shinar, Hamath, and the islands of the sea.
12 He will lift up a standard to the nations, / And will gather the outcasts of Israel; / And the dispersed of Judah He will assemble / From the four corners of the earth.
13 And Ephraim’s jealousy will depart, / And the adversaries in Judah will be cut off; / Ephraim will not be jealous of Judah, / Nor will Judah be hostile to Ephraim.
14 And they will fly down upon the shoulders of the Philistines on the west; / Together they will plunder the children of the east. / Edom and Moab will come into the grasp of their hand, / And the children of Ammon will submit to them.
15 And Jehovah will utterly destroy the tongue of the sea of Egypt; / And will wave His hand over the River with the scorching of His wind, / And He will strike it into seven streams, / And march men through it dryshod.
16 And there will be a highway from Assyria / For the remnant of His people which remain, / As there was for Israel / In the day that they came up from the land of Egypt.
12
1 And you will say in that day, / I will praise You, O Jehovah. You were angry with me, / But Your anger has turned and You have consoled me.
2 God is now my salvation; / I will trust and not dread; / For Jah Jehovah is my strength and song, / And He has become my salvation.
3 Therefore you will draw water with rejoicing / From the springs of salvation,
4 And you will say in that day, / Give thanks to Jehovah; call upon His name! / Make His deeds known among the peoples; / Remind them that His name is exalted.
5 Sing psalms to Jehovah, for He has done something majestic! / Let it be made known in all the earth!
6 Cry out and give a ringing shout, O inhabitant of Zion, / For great in your midst is the Holy One of Israel.
13
1 The burden concerning Babylon, which Isaiah the son of Amoz saw:
2 Upon a bare mountain raise up a standard; / Lift up your voice to them. / Wave your hand that they may enter / The gates of the nobles.
3 I Myself have commanded My sanctified ones; / I have also called My mighty ones to My wrath, / Those who exult in My majesty.
4 The sound of a tumult in the mountains, / Like that of many peoples! / The sound of an uproar of the kingdoms, / Of nations gathered together! / Jehovah of hosts is mustering / An army for battle.
5 They are coming from a distant land, / From the ends of heaven — / Jehovah and the instruments of His indignation — / To ruin all the land.
6 Howl, for the day of Jehovah has drawn near! / As destruction from the Almighty, it will come.
7 Because of this all the hands will drop, / And every human heart will melt;
8 And people will be dismayed. / Pangs and anguish will seize them; / Like a woman giving birth, they will writhe. / Each man will look toward his neighbor dumbfounded; / Their faces are inflamed.
9 Now the day of Jehovah is coming — / Cruel and with overflowing wrath and burning anger — / To make the land a desolation; / And He will destroy its sinners off of it.
10 For the stars of heaven and their constellations / Will not shine forth their light; / The sun will be dark at its rising, / And the moon will not let its light shine.
11 And I will punish the world for its evil, / And the wicked for their iniquity; / I will stop the arrogance of the proud, / And the haughtiness of the terrible I will abase.
12 I will make mortal man rarer than pure gold, / And mankind rarer than the gold of Ophir.
13 Hence, I will make the heavens shake, / And the earth will quake out of its place, / At the overflowing wrath of Jehovah of hosts, / In the day of His burning anger.
14 And like the hunted gazelle / And sheep without someone to gather them, / Each man will turn to his own people, / And each will flee to his own land.
15 Everyone found will be pierced through, / And everyone caught will fall by the sword.
16 And their little ones will be dashed to pieces / Before their eyes; / Their houses will be plundered, / And their wives will be attacked.
17 Now I rouse up the Medes against them, / Who will not esteem silver highly, / Nor take delight in gold.
18 Their bows will shatter the young men; / And they will not have compassion on the fruit of the womb: / Their eyes will have no pity on children.
19 And Babylon, the beauty of kingdoms, / The glory of the Chaldeans’ majesty, / Will be as when God overthrew / Sodom and Gomorrah:
20 It will not be inhabited forever; / It will not be dwelt in from generation to generation. / And the Arab will not set up his tent there, / Nor will the shepherds make their flocks lie down there.
21 But desert animals will lie down there, / And their houses will be full of wild dogs; / There ostriches will dwell, / And wild goats will prance there;
22 Hyenas will respond in their citadels, / And jackals in their exquisite palaces. / Her time is about to come, / And her days will not be prolonged.
14
1 When Jehovah has compassion on Jacob and again chooses Israel and settles them in their land, the sojourners will join them and attach themselves to the house of Jacob.
2 And nations will take them and bring them to their place, and the house of Israel will take possession of them in the land of Jehovah as male and female servants; and they will lead captive those who were their captors and rule over those who oppressed them.
3 In the day when Jehovah gives you rest from your pain and turmoil and from the hard service that was done by you as slaves,
4 You will lift up this discourse concerning the king of Babylon and you will say:How the oppressor has ceased! / How the raging has ceased!
5 Jehovah has broken the staff of the wicked, / The rod of rulers;
6 That struck the peoples in wrath, / With strikes that would not stop; / That ruled the nations in anger, / With pursuit that would not let up.
7 All the earth rests and is undisturbed; / They break forth with a ringing shout.
8 Even the cypress trees rejoice over you, / And the cedars of Lebanon: / Since you are brought down, no tree cutter / Will come up against us.
9 Sheol beneath is excited because of you, / That it will meet you when you come. / It rouses the dead because of you, / All the great ones of the earth. / It makes all the kings of the nations / Rise from their thrones.
10 All of them will respond / And say to you, / Even you have been weakened, just as we have; / You have become like us.
11 Your majesty has been brought down to Sheol, / Even the sound of your harps. / Beneath you maggots are spread; / Worms are your covering.
12 How you have fallen from heaven, / O Daystar, son of the dawn! / How you have been hewn down to earth, / You who made nations fall prostrate!
13 But you, you said in your heart: / I will ascend to heaven; / Above the stars of God / I will exalt my throne. / And I will sit upon the mount of assembly / In the uttermost parts of the north.
14 I will ascend above the heights of the clouds; / I will make myself like the Most High.
15 But you will be brought down to Sheol, / To the uttermost parts of the pit.
16 Those who see you will gaze at you; / They will ponder concerning you, asking, / Is this the man who made the earth tremble, / The one who shook kingdoms;
17 Who made the world like a wilderness / And tore down its cities; / Who did not release his captives to their homes?
18 All the kings of the nations, / All of them, lie in glory, / Each in his own house.
19 But you have been thrown out away from your tomb, / Like some shoot that is viewed with disgust; / Or like the garments of the slain, of those pierced with the sword, / Who go down to the stones of the pit; / Like a corpse that has been trampled under.
20 You shall not be united with them in burial, / For you have destroyed your land, / You have slain your people; / The seed of evildoers / Will never be renowned.
21 Prepare a slaughterhouse for his children / Because of the iniquity of their fathers, / So that they do not rise up and possess the land, / And fill the surface of the world with cities.
22 And I will rise up against them, / Declares Jehovah of hosts. / And I will cut off from Babylon name and remnant, / And posterity and progeny, declares Jehovah.
23 And I will make it a possession for porcupines / And muddied pools of water, / And I will sweep it with the broom of destruction, / Declares Jehovah of hosts.
24 Jehovah of hosts has sworn, saying, / Surely just as I conceived it, so has it happened; / And just as I have purposed it, so shall this stand,
25 That I will break Assyria in My land, / And upon My mountains I will trample him. / Then his yoke will be taken off of them, / And his burden will be removed from off their shoulders.
26 This is the purpose that I have purposed over all the earth, / And this is the hand that is stretched out over all the nations.
27 For Jehovah of hosts has purposed it, and who will frustrate it? / And thus His hand is stretched out, and who will turn it back?
28 In the year that King Ahaz died this burden came:
29 Do not rejoice, all of you, Philistia, / That the rod that strikes you is broken, / For from the serpent’s root a viper will come forth, / And his fruit will be a flying fiery serpent.
30 And the poorest of the poor will feed, / And the needy will lie down securely. / And I will kill your root by famine, / And he will slay your remnant.
31 Howl, O gate! Cry out, O city! / The whole of you, Philistia, is melted away. / For from the north smoke has come, / And there are no stragglers in his ranks.
32 And what shall one answer this nation’s messengers? / That Jehovah has founded Zion, / And in her the poor of His people take refuge.
15
1 The burden concerning Moab: / Indeed in a night it is devastated — / Ar of Moab is cut off. / Indeed in a night it is devastated — / Kir of Moab is cut off.
2 They have gone up to their temple and to Dibon, / That is, to their high places, to weep. / Over Nebo and over Medeba / Moab howls; / Upon all their heads is baldness; / Every beard is shaved off.
3 In their streets they have girded themselves with sackcloth; / On their roofs / And in their open squares everyone will howl, / Melting in tears.
4 And Heshbon and Elealeh cry out; / Their voice is heard as far as Jahaz. / Because of this the armed men of Moab raise a cry; / Their soul quivers within them.
5 My heart cries out for Moab; / Its fugitives reach as far as Zoar, as far as Eglath-shelishiyah: / By the ascent of Luhith / With weeping they will go up; / On the way that leads to Horonaim / They will raise up a cry of destruction;
6 The waters of Nimrim / Will be a devastation; / The foliage will be dried up, the grass wasted away; / There will be nothing green.
7 As a result, the abundance they have produced / And placed in reserve / Will be carried off / To the poplar brook.
8 For the cry has gone about / The border of Moab; / Their howling goes as far as Eglaim, / Even to Beer-elim their howling reaches.
9 For the waters of Dimon are full of blood, / For I will bring upon Dimon additional things: / Lions upon those in Moab who escape / And upon the remnant of the land.
16
1 Send a lamb of tribute / To the ruler of the land, / From Sela across the wilderness / To the mountain of the daughter of Zion.
2 Like wandering birds, / Like a scattered nest, / Will the daughters of Moab be / At the fords of the Arnon.
3 Give us counsel, / Make a judgment concerning us. / Make your shadow at high noon / Like night to us. / Hide the outcasts; / Do not expose him who wanders.
4 Let the outcasts of Moab / Dwell with you; / Be a hiding place to them / From the destroyer. / When the extortioner finishes / And destruction ends, / When the oppressor is completely gone from the land,
5 Then will a throne be established in lovingkindness, / And upon it One will sit in truth / In the tent of David, / Judging and pursuing justice / And hastening righteousness.
6 We have heard of the pride of Moab — / He is extremely proud — / Of his haughtiness and pride and insolence; / His boastings are all untrue.
7 Therefore Moab will howl for Moab; / They all will howl. / For the raisin cakes of Kir-hareseth / You will mourn, utterly stricken.
8 Because the fields of Heshbon have withered, / And the vine of Sibmah, too. / The lords of the nations / Have trampled under its choicest vines, / Which reached as far as Jazer, / Which meandered into the desert. / Its shoots spread abroad; / They crossed over to the sea.
9 Therefore I will weep bitterly for Jazer, / For the vine of Sibmah; / I will soak you with my tears, / Heshbon and Elealeh. / For the harvest shout is hushed / Over your summer fruit and over your reapings.
10 Rejoicing is taken away, and exultation from the fruited field; / In the vineyards there will be no singing for joy; no shouts will be uttered. / The treader will not tread out wine in the presses — / I have made the harvest shout stop.
11 Therefore for Moab my bowels will moan like a lyre, / And my inward parts for Kir-heres.
12 And when Moab appears, / When they weary themselves at their high place, / And come to their sanctuary to pray, / It will not avail.
13 This is the word which Jehovah spoke concerning Moab long ago.
14 And now Jehovah has spoken, saying, Within three years, like the years of a hired man, the glory of Moab will be disgraced, with all its great multitude, and its remnant will be small — a mere trifle, nothing great.
17
1 The burden concerning Damascus: See, Damascus — turned from being a city, / It will become a heap of ruin.
2 The cities of Aroer will be forsaken; / They will be for flocks / That lie down with no one to frighten them.
3 And fortified cities will cease to be in Ephraim, / As well as the kingdom in Damascus; / And the remnant of Syria / Will be like the glory of the children of Israel, / Declares Jehovah of hosts.
4 In that day the glory of Jacob will fade, / And the fat of his flesh will become lean.
5 And it will be as when the reaper gathers the standing grain, / And his arms reap the ears; / And it will be as when one gleans the ears / In the valley of Rephaim.
6 Yet gleanings will be left in it, / Like at the shaking of an olive tree — / Two or three fruit at the very top, / Four or five in the boughs of the fruiting tree — / Declares Jehovah the God of Israel.
7 In that day man will look to his Maker, / And his eyes will behold the Holy One of Israel.
8 And he will not look to the altars, the works of his hands; / And what his fingers have made he will not regard, / That is, the Asherahs and the images to the sun.
9 In that day his cities of protection will be / Like abandoned places of the forest and like the mountaintop / Which was abandoned before the children of Israel; / And there will be desolation.
10 For you have forgotten the God of your salvation, / And the Rock of your stronghold you have not remembered. / Therefore you plant plants of delight / And set them with plant cuttings to a strange god.
11 On the day that you plant them you fence them in carefully, / And in the morning you bring your seed to blossom; / But the harvest is a heap on a day of sickness / And incurable pain.
12 Woe! The roar of many peoples, / Who roar like the roaring of the seas; / The din of nations, / Who crash like the crashing of mighty waters!
13 The nations crash like the crashing of many waters. / But He will rebuke them; / And they will flee far away, / And will be chased like mountain chaff before the wind / And like a whirlwind of dust before storm wind.
14 At evening time, indeed, there is calamity; / Before the morning they are no more. / This is the portion of those who plunder us, / And the allotment of those who take us as spoil.
18
1 Woe to the land of the whirring of wings, / Which is beyond the rivers of Cush,
2 The land that sends envoys on the sea, / Even in papyrus vessels upon the surface of the water. / Go, swift messengers, / To a nation tall and smooth of skin, / To a people feared from there and beyond, / A nation of command upon command and of treading down others, / Whose land the rivers cut through.
3 All you inhabitants of the world and dwellers on the earth, / When the standard is raised on the mountains, you will see it; / And when the horn is blown, you will hear it.
4 For thus has Jehovah spoken to me, / I will be quiet and observe in My lodging place, / Like glowing heat in the sunshine, / Like a cloud of dew in the heat of harvest.
5 For before the harvest, when the bud is full / And the flower becomes the ripening grape, / He will cut off the sprigs with pruning knives, / And the tendrils He will remove and cut away.
6 They will be left together for the mountain birds / And for the beasts of the earth. / And the birds will spend summer on them, / And all the beasts of the earth will spend harvest time on them.
7 At that time a gift will be brought to Jehovah of hosts from a people tall and smooth of skin, even from a people feared from there and beyond, a nation of command upon command and of treading down others, whose land the rivers cut through, unto the place of the name of Jehovah of hosts, Mount Zion.
19
1 The burden concerning Egypt: / See, Jehovah is riding upon a swift cloud, / And He is coming to Egypt. / And the idols of Egypt will quiver at His presence, / And the heart of the Egyptians will melt within them.
2 Thus I will spur on Egyptian against Egyptian; / And each will fight against his brother, and each against his neighbor, / City against city, and kingdom against kingdom.
3 The spirit of the Egyptians will fail within them, / And their counsel I will swallow up; / Then they will seek after idols and mediums, / And after spirits of the dead and familiar spirits.
4 And I will shut the Egyptians up under the hand of hard masters, / And a mighty king will rule over them, / Declares the Lord Jehovah of hosts.
5 And the waters from the sea will be dried up, / And the river will be desolate and dry.
6 The river canals will stink; / The streams of Egypt’s Nile will diminish and be desolate. / The reeds and rushes will rot;
7 The plants at the Nile, at the mouth of the Nile, / And every place sown by the Nile / Will dry up, be driven away, and be no more.
8 The fishermen will mourn; / And all who cast the hook into the Nile will lament; / And those who spread nets upon the waters will languish.
9 Moreover, those who work with combed flax will be confounded, / As well as those who weave linen.
10 And the pillars of the land will be crushed, / And every wage worker will be sullen in soul.
11 Mere fools are the princes of Zoan; / The counsel of the wisest of Pharaoh’s counselors has become stupidity. / How can you say to Pharaoh, / I am a son of the wise men, a son of ancient kings?
12 Where are they? Where are your wise men? / Let them tell you and let them know / What Jehovah of hosts has purposed against Egypt.
13 The princes of Zoan have become fools; the princes of Memphis are beguiled; / They have misled Egypt, who are the cornerstone of her tribes.
14 Jehovah has mixed within her a spirit of distortings, / And they have misled Egypt in all that it does, / As a drunken man staggers in his vomit.
15 And there will be no work for Egypt, / Which the head or the tail, the palm branch or the marsh reed, may do.
16 In that day the Egyptians will be like women, and they will tremble and be in dread before the waving of the hand of Jehovah of hosts, which He will be waving over them.
17 And the land of Judah will become a source of crazed terror to Egypt — everyone to whom it is mentioned will be in dread of it because of the purpose of Jehovah of hosts, which He purposes against them.
18 In that day five cities in the land of Egypt will be speaking the language of Canaan and swearing to Jehovah of hosts; one will be called the City of Destruction.
19 In that day there will be an altar to Jehovah in the midst of the land of Egypt and a pillar to Jehovah near its border;
20 And it will become a sign and a testimony to Jehovah of hosts in the land of Egypt; for they will cry unto Jehovah because of their oppressors, and He will send them a Savior and Mighty One; and He will deliver them.
21 And Jehovah will make Himself known to the Egyptians, and the Egyptians will know Jehovah in that day; they will worship Him with sacrifice and offering and will vow a vow to Jehovah and accomplish it.
22 And Jehovah will strike Egypt, striking yet healing; and they will turn to Jehovah, and He will be entreated of by them and will heal them.
23 In that day there will be a highway from Egypt to Assyria, and the Assyrians will come to Egypt, and the Egyptians to Assyria; and the Egyptians will worship with the Assyrians.
24 In that day Israel will be the third party with Egypt and Assyria, a blessing in the midst of the land,
25 With which Jehovah of hosts will bless, saying, Blessed be Egypt My people and Assyria the work of My hands and Israel My inheritance.
20
1 In the year that the Tartan came to Ashdod, when Sargon the king of Assyria sent him, and he fought against Ashdod and took it,
2 At that time Jehovah spoke through Isaiah the son of Amoz, saying, Go and loosen the sackcloth from your loins and take your sandals off your feet. And he did so, going about stripped and barefooted.
3 And Jehovah said, Just as My servant Isaiah has gone about stripped and barefoot for three years as a sign and a wonder against Egypt and Cush,
4 So shall the king of Assyria lead away the captives of Egypt and the exiles of Cush, young men and old men, stripped and barefoot, with their buttocks uncovered, to Egypt’s shame.
5 And they will be dismayed and ashamed of Cush, their expectation, and of Egypt, their boast.
6 And the inhabitant of this coastland will say in that day, Such is now our expectation, to whom we fled for help to be delivered from the king of Assyria! And how shall we escape?
21
1 The burden concerning the wilderness of the sea: / Like storm winds / In the Negev passing through, / It comes from the wilderness / From an awesome land.
2 A harsh vision / Has been announced to me; / The unfaithful one deals unfaithfully, / And the destroyer destroys. / Go up, Elam; / Lay siege, Media; / I have put an end / To all her groaning.
3 Therefore my loins / Are full of anguish; / Pangs have taken hold of me / Like the pangs of a woman in labor. / I am bent over at the hearing of it; / I am terrified at the seeing of it.
4 My heart reels; / Shuddering overwhelms me. / The twilight that I love / Has become a source of trembling to me.
5 Setting the table! / Spreading out the rug! / Eating! Drinking! / Rise, princes; / Oil the shields.
6 For thus says / The Lord to me, / Go, set a watchman; / Let him report what he sees.
7 And he saw riders, / A team of horsemen; / Riders of donkeys, / Riders of camels; / And he attends with attention, / With much attention.
8 And he calls out like a lion: / On the watchtower, Lord, / I stand continually by day; / At my guardpost / I am stationed / Every night.
9 And now there come / Riding men, / A team of horsemen. / And one answers and says, / Fallen, fallen is Babylon! / And all the idols of her gods / Has He shattered to the ground.
10 My threshed ones, / And the son of the threshing floor! / What I have heard / From Jehovah of hosts, / The God of Israel, / I have declared to you.
11 The burden concerning Dumah: / Someone is calling to me from Seir: / Guard, what remains of the night? / Guard, what remains of the night?
12 The guard says, / Morning is coming, / But so also is night; / If you will ask, ask; / Return, come.
13 The burden against Arabia: / In the thicket of Arabia you must spend the night, / You nomad clans of the Dedanim.
14 They bring water / To meet the thirsty; / The inhabitants of the land of Tema / Meet with bread those who flee;
15 For they flee from swords — / From the drawn sword, / From the bent bow, / And from the harshness of battle.
16 For thus has the Lord said to me, Within a year, like a wage worker’s year, all the glory of Kedar will end,
17 And the remainder of the number of the archers, the mighty men of the sons of Kedar, will be few; for Jehovah the God of Israel has spoken.
22
1 The burden concerning the valley of vision: / What then troubles you / That all have gone up to the housetops?
2 You who are full of noise, you tumultuous city, / You exultant town, / Your slain were not slain with the sword, / Nor are they dead because of battle.
3 All your rulers have fled together; / Apart from the bow they have been captured. / All of you who were found have been captured together, / Though they had fled far away.
4 Therefore I said, Look away from me! / Let me weep bitterly. / Do not hasten to comfort me / About the destruction of the daughter of my people.
5 For there is a day of turmoil and trampling down and confusion / With the Lord Jehovah of hosts / In the valley of vision, a breaking down of walls / And crying to the mountains.
6 And Elam took up the quiver, / With chariots of men and horsemen; / And Kir uncovered the shield.
7 Then your choicest valleys / Were full of chariots, / And the horsemen firmly fixed themselves at the gate;
8 And he removed the covering of Judah. / And you looked in that day / To the weapons of the Forest House,
9 While the breaches of the city of David / You saw to be many. / So you gathered the water of the lower pool;
10 And the houses of Jerusalem you counted, / And tore down the houses to fortify the wall.
11 Then you made a reservoir between the walls / For the water of the old pool. / But you did not look to its very Maker, / And Him who formed it long ago you did not regard.
12 Therefore the Lord Jehovah of hosts / Called you in that day / To weeping and to mourning, / To head shaving and to wearing sackcloth.
13 But now there is gladness and joy, / The slaying of cattle and the slaughtering of sheep, / The eating of meat and the drinking of wine; / Eating and drinking, for tomorrow we die!
14 But in my ears Jehovah of hosts revealed this: / This iniquity shall by no means be covered for you until you die, / Says the Lord Jehovah of hosts.
15 Thus says the Lord Jehovah of hosts: / Get up, go to this steward, / To Shebna, who is over the king’s house, and say,
16 What are you doing here, and whom do you have here / That you have hewn a tomb for yourself here, / As he who has hewn a tomb on the heights, / As he who has cut out a resting place for himself in the rock?
17 Jehovah soon throws you far away, O mighty one, / And He grasps you firmly;
18 He will wind you up tightly; / Like a ball He will toss you into a wide land. / There you will die; and there the chariots of your glory / Will become the disgrace of the house of your master.
19 And I will drive you from your position, / And from your standing He will pull you down.
20 And in that day / I will call to My servant Eliakim the son of Hilkiah,
21 And I will clothe him with your tunic, / And I will strengthen him with your girding sash, / And I will put your dominion into his hand; / And he will become a father to the inhabitants of Jerusalem / And to the house of Judah.
22 And I will set the key of the house of David upon his shoulder — / When he opens, no one will shut; / When he shuts, no one will open.
23 And I will drive him as a peg into a sure place, / And he will become a throne of glory for his father’s house.
24 And they will hang upon him all the glory of his father’s house, the offspring and the issue, all the smallest vessels, from the bowls to all the jars.
25 In that day, declares Jehovah of hosts, the peg driven into the sure place will be removed, even cut away, and it will fall; and the burden that was upon it will be cut down; for Jehovah has spoken.
23
1 The burden concerning Tyre: / Howl, O ships of Tarshish, / For it is destroyed — lacking house, / Lacking entrance. From as far away as the land of Kittim / It is told to them.
2 Hush, you inhabitants of the coastland, / You, whom the merchants of Sidon, / Who cross the sea, have replenished.
3 And by way of many waters / The grain of Shihor, the harvest of the Nile, was her revenue; / And she was profit to the nations.
4 Be ashamed, O Sidon, for the sea has spoken, / The stronghold of the sea, saying, / I have not been in labor nor given birth; / Neither have I brought up young men, / Nor have I raised virgins.
5 When the report reaches Egypt, / They will writhe in pain at the report concerning Tyre.
6 Cross over to Tarshish; / Howl, you inhabitants of the coastland.
7 Is this your jubilant city, / Whose antiquity is from the days of antiquity, / Whose feet carried her off afar to sojourn?
8 Who has purposed this / Against Tyre, the giver of crowns, / Whose merchants were princes, / Whose traders were the honorable of the earth?
9 Jehovah of hosts has purposed it, / To defile the pride of all beauty, / To bring into contempt all the honorable of the earth.
10 Overflow your land like a river, O daughter of Tarshish; / There is no more restraint.
11 He has stretched out His hand over the sea; / He has shaken kingdoms. / Jehovah has given commandment concerning Canaan / To destroy its strongholds.
12 And He has said, You shall not continue to exult any longer, / O crushed virgin daughter of Sidon. / Arise; cross over to Kittim — / There also you will have no rest.
13 See the land of the Chaldeans, this people! They were not — the Assyrians assigned it to desert animals; they raised their siege towers; they stripped their citadels; they brought it to ruin.
14 Howl, O ships of Tarshish, / For your stronghold is destroyed.
15 In that day Tyre will be forgotten for seventy years, like the days of one king. At the end of the seventy years Tyre will be like her in the harlot’s song:
16 Take a harp; / Compass the city, / Forgotten harlot. / Play well; / Abound in song, / That you may be remembered.
17 And at the end of the seventy years Jehovah will visit Tyre. And she will return to the wages of her harlotry and will be a harlot to all the kingdoms of the earth on land’s surface.
18 And her profit and the wages of her harlotry will be dedicated to Jehovah; it will not be stored up, nor will it be hoarded, for her profit will be for those who dwell before Jehovah, as their sufficient food and their choice clothing.
24
1 Jehovah now makes the earth desolate and lays it waste; He distorts its surface and scatters its inhabitants:
2 As it is with the people, so will it be with the priest; / As it is with the servant, so will it be with the master; / As it is with the maid, so will it be with the mistress; / As it is with the buyer, so will it be with the seller; / As it is with the lender, so will it be with the borrower; / As it is with the creditor, so will it be with him to whom he gives credit.
3 The earth will be utterly desolated / And utterly spoiled, / For Jehovah has spoken this word.
4 The earth dries up and fades away; / The world languishes and fades away; / The exalted of the people of the earth languish.
5 And the earth is polluted under the weight of its inhabitants; / For they have transgressed laws, they have violated statutes, / They have broken an eternal covenant.
6 Therefore a curse devours the earth / And the inhabitants of it are held guilty; / Therefore the inhabitants of the earth are burned, / And few men are left.
7 The new wine mourns; the vine languishes; / All the merryhearted sigh.
8 The mirth of the tambourines ceases; / The noise of those who exult stops; / The mirth of the lyre ceases.
9 Men do not drink wine in song; / Liquor is bitter to those who drink it.
10 The city of chaos is broken down; / Every house is shut up that none may enter.
11 A cry for wine is in the streets; / All joy is darkened; / The mirth of the land is departed.
12 In the city desolation remains, / And the gate is crushed to ruins.
13 For thus will it be in the midst of the earth, / Among the peoples: / Like the shaking of an olive tree, / Like the gleanings when the grape harvest is completed.
14 They will lift up their voice; they will give a ringing shout; / Because of the majesty of Jehovah they will cry out from the west.
15 Therefore in the east glorify Jehovah, / Even the name of Jehovah the God of Israel in the coastlands of the sea.
16 From the ends of the earth we hear songs: / Glory to the righteous One! / But I say, Leanness to me! Leanness to me! Woe to me! / The unfaithful deal unfaithfully! / Indeed the unfaithful deal most unfaithfully!
17 Dread, pit, and snare / Are upon you, O inhabitant of the earth.
18 And he who flees from the sound of dread / Will fall into the pit, / And he who comes up out of the pit / Will be taken in the snare; / For the windows from on high are open, / And the foundations of the earth shake.
19 The earth is broken asunder; / The earth is split through and through; / The earth is shaken violently.
20 The earth staggers back and forth like a drunkard / And sways about like a field hut. / And its transgression weighs heavily upon it; / It will fall and will not rise again.
21 And in that day Jehovah will punish / On high the host on high, / And the kings of the earth on the earth.
22 And they will be gathered together, / Like prisoners gathered in a dungeon; / And will be shut up in prison, / And after many days they will be punished.
23 Then the moon will be abashed, and the sun will be ashamed; / For Jehovah of hosts will reign / In Mount Zion and in Jerusalem, / And His glory will be before His elders.
25
1 O Jehovah, You are my God; / I will exalt You, I will give thanks to Your name, / For You have done wonderful things — / Counsels of old, in faithfulness, perfect faithfulness.
2 For You have made of a city a heap, / Of a fortified town a ruin. / A palace of strangers becomes no city at all; / It will never be rebuilt.
3 Therefore a strong people will glorify You; / The cities of terrifying nations will fear You.
4 For You have been a stronghold to the weak, / A stronghold to the needy in his distress, / A refuge from the storm, a shade from the heat; / For the breath of those who terrify is like a tempest against a wall.
5 Like the heat in a drought, / You will subdue the uproar of strangers; / Like the heat through the shadow of a cloud, / The song of those who terrify will be brought low.
6 And Jehovah of hosts will make on this mountain / For all the peoples / A feast of fat things, / A feast of wine matured on the lees, / Of fat things full of marrow, / And of filtered wine matured on the lees.
7 And on this mountain He will swallow up / The covering that covers up all the peoples, / Even the veil that veils all the nations.
8 He will swallow up death forever; / And the Lord Jehovah will wipe away the tears from all faces; / And the reproach of His people He will remove from all the earth; / For Jehovah has spoken.
9 And it will be said in that day, / Here, this is our God, / For whom we have waited that He may save us. / This is Jehovah, for whom we have waited; / Let us be glad and rejoice in His salvation.
10 For the hand of Jehovah will rest on this mountain, / And Moab will be threshed in his place, / Even as straw is threshed in the water of a dung heap.
11 And he will spread out his hands in the middle of it, / As a swimmer spreads out his hands to swim; / But Jehovah will abase his pride together with the trickery of his hands.
12 And the lofty fortification of your walls He will bring down, / Lay low, and cast to the ground, even to the dust.
26
1 In that day this song will be sung in the land of Judah: / We have a strong city; / He will set up salvation as walls and a rampart.
2 Open the gates / So that the righteous nation may enter, / They who maintain faithfulness.
3 You will keep the steadfast of mind / In perfect peace / Because he trusts in You.
4 Trust in Jehovah forever and ever, / For in Jah Jehovah we have an eternal rock.
5 For He has brought down those who dwell on high, / The lofty city; / He lays it low, He lays it low to the ground; / He casts it into the dust.
6 The foot will trample it, the foot of the poor, / The steps of the weak.
7 The path of the righteous is smoothness; / O You who are upright, You make the path of the righteous level.
8 Indeed in the path of Your judgments, / O Jehovah, we have waited for You. / Your name, that is, Your memorial, / Is the desire of our soul.
9 My soul desires You in the night; / Indeed my spirit within me seeks You at the dawn; / For when Your judgments are in the earth, / The inhabitants of the world learn righteousness.
10 Though the wicked is shown grace, / He does not learn righteousness; / In the land of straightforwardness he deals unjustly / And does not perceive the majesty of Jehovah.
11 O Jehovah, Your hand is lifted up, / But they do not see it. / They will see Your zeal for the people and will be put to shame; / Indeed fire will devour Your adversaries.
12 O Jehovah, You will ordain peace for us, / For You have also performed all our works for us.
13 O Jehovah our God, other lords besides You have been master to us, / But through You alone do we mention Your name.
14 The dead will not live, / The deceased will not rise; / Therefore You have visited and destroyed them, / And You have caused all memory of them to perish.
15 You have increased the nation, O Jehovah; / You have increased the nation — You are glorified; / You have far extended all the edges of the land.
16 O Jehovah, in distress they sought You; / They whispered out a prayer, for Your chastening was upon them.
17 As a pregnant woman draws near to giving birth, / She writhes and cries out in her pain; / So we have been before You, O Jehovah.
18 We were pregnant; we writhed; we gave birth, as it were, to wind. / We have not accomplished deliverance for the earth, / Nor have the inhabitants of the world been born.
19 Your dead will live; my corpses will rise. / Awake and give a ringing shout, you who dwell in dust, / For your dew is like the dew of the dawn, / And the earth will bring forth the deceased.
20 Come, my people, enter your rooms, / And shut your doors behind you; / Hide for a short moment / Until the indignation has passed;
21 For Jehovah is now coming forth from His place / To punish the inhabitants of the earth for their iniquity; / And the earth will reveal her bloodshed / And will no longer conceal her slain.
27
1 In that day Jehovah will punish, / With His harsh, great, and mighty sword, / Leviathan the fleeing serpent, / And leviathan the crooked serpent; / And He will slay the dragon that is in the sea.
2 In that day: / A vineyard of wine, sing of it!
3 I, Jehovah, am its keeper; / Every moment I water it. / Lest anyone visit harm upon it, / By night and by day I guard it.
4 I have no wrath. / Oh that I had thorns and thistles! / In battle I would march against them; / I would burn them completely.
5 Or let him grasp at My strength; / Let him make peace with Me; / Let him make peace with Me.
6 In the days to come Jacob will take root; / Israel will blossom and bud; / And they will fill the surface of the world with their produce.
7 Has He struck them like those who struck them? / Have they been slain like those slain by Him?
8 By expulsion and by banishing them, You contended with them; / He sent them away with His harsh wind in the day of the east wind.
9 Thus by this the iniquity of Jacob will be expiated, / And this is all the fruit of the removal of their sin; / When they make all the stones of their altar / Like chalk stones beaten to powder — / Asherahs and sun images will not stand.
10 For the fortified city is isolated; / The habitation is given up and abandoned like a wilderness. / There the calf will feed, / And there he will lie down and consume its branches.
11 When its boughs are withered, they will be broken off; / Women come and make a fire with them; / For they are not a people of understanding. / Therefore He who made them will not have compassion on them, / And He who formed them will not show favor to them.
12 And in that day Jehovah will beat out the grain from the flowing stream of the River / Unto the brook of Egypt; / And you will be gleaned / One by one, O you children of Israel.
13 And in that day a great trumpet will be blown, / And the ones lost in the land of Assyria will come, / As well as the outcasts in the land of Egypt, / And they will worship Jehovah / On the holy mountain in Jerusalem.
28
1 Woe to the proud crown of the drunkards of Ephraim / And to the fading flower of its glorious beauty, / Which is at the head of the fat valley of those who are overcome by wine.
2 Indeed the Lord has someone strong and mighty; / As a hailstorm and a tempest of destruction, / As a storm of mighty overflowing waters, / He will cast down to the earth with His hand.
3 The proud crown of the drunkards of Ephraim / Will be trodden under foot;
4 And the fading flower of its glorious beauty, / Which is at the head of the fat valley, / Will be like the first-ripe fig before the summer, / Which when someone looks upon it he sees it, / And in an instant it is in his hand, and he swallows it up.
5 In that day Jehovah of hosts / Will become a crown of glory and a diadem of beauty to the remnant of His people,
6 And a spirit of justice for him who sits in judgment / And strength to those who turn away the battle at the gate.
7 But these also reel with wine / And stagger from liquor: / The priest and the prophet reel from liquor; / They are swallowed up with wine; / They stagger from liquor, / They reel in their visions, / They totter in their judgments.
8 For all the tables are full of vomit and filth; / There is no place clean.
9 Whom will he teach knowledge? / And whom will he instruct with the report? / Those weaned from milk? / Those drawn from the breasts?
10 For his words are: Rule upon rule, rule upon rule; / Line upon line, line upon line; / Here a little, there a little.
11 For with stammering lips / And with a foreign tongue / He will speak to this people,
12 He who said to them, / This is rest; give rest to the weary; / And, This is repose. / But they would not hear.
13 Therefore Jehovah’s word to them will be: / Rule upon rule, rule upon rule; / Line upon line, line upon line; / Here a little, there a little; / That they may go and stumble backward, / And be broken, snared, and taken.
14 Therefore hear the word of Jehovah, / You scoffing men, / Who rule this people / Who are in Jerusalem:
15 Because you have said, We have made / A covenant with death, / And with Sheol / We have made an agreement: / When the overflowing scourge passes through, / It will not come upon us; / For we have made falsehood our refuge / And have hidden ourselves in deception.
16 Therefore thus says / The Lord Jehovah: / Indeed I lay a stone in Zion as a foundation, / A tested stone, / A precious cornerstone as a foundation firmly established; / He who believes will not hasten away.
17 And I will make justice the line / And righteousness the plummet; / And the hail will sweep away the refuge of lies, / And the waters will overflow the secret place.
18 And your covenant with death will be annulled, / And your agreement with Sheol will not stand; / When the overflowing scourge passes through, / You will be a trampling ground to it.
19 As often as it passes through, / It will take hold of you. / For morning by morning it will pass through, / By day and by night; / And it will be nothing but terror / To understand the report of it.
20 For the bed is too short for a man to stretch on, / And the sheet is too narrow for him to wrap himself in.
21 For Jehovah will rise as on Mount Perazim, / He will be agitated as in the valley of Gibeon, / To do His deed, His strange deed, / And to do His work, His most different work.
22 Now therefore do not be mockers, / Lest your fetters become stronger; / For I have heard from the Lord Jehovah of hosts / Of complete and decisive destruction upon the whole earth.
23 Hearken and hear my voice; / Attend and hear my speech.
24 Does the plowman plow all day long to sow his seed? / Does he open and harrow his ground continually?
25 Does he not, once he levels the surface, / Scatter dill and broadcast cummin, / And put the wheat in rows and the barley in its appointed place / And the rye where it belongs?
26 For his God instructs him toward such discretion / And teaches him so.
27 For dill is not threshed with a sharp tool, / Nor is the cart wheel turned upon the cummin; / But dill is beaten out with a rod, / And cummin with a stick.
28 Bread grains are ground, / Yet one does not thresh and thresh forever. / And once the wheel of his cart and his horses drive over it, / One does not grind it.
29 This also comes forth from Jehovah of hosts, / He who makes His counsel extraordinary and His sound wisdom great.
29
1 Woe to Ariel, to Ariel, / The city where David camped! / Add year to year; let the feasts run their course.
2 But I will distress Ariel, / And she will become mourning and lamentation / And will be like an Ariel to Me.
3 And I will encamp in a circle against you, / And will besiege you with palisades, / And will raise up siegeworks against you.
4 And you will be brought down; from the ground you will speak, / And your speech will come from low in the dust. / And your voice will be like that of a departed spirit from the ground, / And your speech will twitter from the dust.
5 But the multitude of your enemies will be like fine dust, / And the multitude of those who terrorize will be like chaff that passes away; / And it will happen in an instant, suddenly.
6 From Jehovah of hosts you will be visited, / With thunder and earthquake and great noise, / With whirlwind and tempest and the flame of consuming fire.
7 And the multitude of all the nations that fight against Ariel, / Even all who fight against her and her stronghold and who distress her, / Will be like a dream, like a vision in the night.
8 And as when a hungry man dreams and finds himself eating, / But he awakens and what he desires is not there; / Or as when a thirsty man dreams and finds himself drinking, / But he awakens and is indeed faint and what he desires is far from him; / So will the multitude of all the nations be / That fight against Mount Zion.
9 Linger and be astounded, / Blind yourselves and be blind. / They are drunk, but not with wine; / They stagger, but not with liquor.
10 For Jehovah has poured out upon you / A spirit of deep sleep / And has shut your eyes, the prophets; / And your heads, the seers, He has covered.
11 And all the vision will be to you like the words of a book that has been sealed, which when they give to him who is literate, saying, Please read this, he will say, I am not able to, for it is sealed.
12 Then the book will be given to him who is illiterate, saying, Please read this, and he will say, I am illiterate.
13 And the Lord said, / Because this people draws near with their mouth, / And with their lips they honor Me, / Yet they remove their heart far from Me, / And their fear for Me / Is a commandment of men merely learned;
14 Therefore, indeed, I will once again / Do something wondrous with this people, something wondrously marvelous; / And the wisdom of their wise men will perish, / And the understanding of those who understand will be hidden.
15 Woe to those who hide deeply / Their counsel from Jehovah, / And whose deeds are in the dark / And who say, Who sees us? And, Who knows us?
16 You turn things upside down! / Shall the potter be considered to be like the clay, / That what is made should say of him who made it, He did not make me, / Or what is formed should say of him who formed it, He has no understanding?
17 Is it not yet a little while / Before Lebanon will be turned into a fruitful field, / And the fruitful field will be considered to be a forest.
18 And in that day the deaf will hear the words of the book, / And out of gloom and darkness the eyes of the blind will see,
19 And the afflicted will increase their joy in Jehovah, / And the needy of mankind will exult in the Holy One of Israel.
20 For he who terrorizes will cease to be, and the scorner will be consumed, / And all who watch for iniquity will be cut off,
21 Those who make a man sin by his words / And ensnare him who judges at the gate / And turn aside the righteous with an empty argument.
22 Therefore thus says Jehovah, who redeemed Abraham, concerning the house of Jacob,Jacob will not now be ashamed, / Nor will his face now turn pale;
23 But when he sees his children, the work of My hands, in his midst, / They will sanctify My name / And sanctify the Holy One of Jacob, / And hold the God of Israel in awe.
24 And those who have erred in spirit will come to understand, / And the murmurers will learn teaching.
30
1 Woe to the rebellious children, / Declares Jehovah, / Who devise counsel, but not of Me, / And who make an alliance, but not of My Spirit, / In order to add / Sin upon sin;
2 Who go down to Egypt, / Yet do not ask of My mouth, / To take refuge in the refuge of Pharaoh, / And to take shelter in the shadow of Egypt.
3 Therefore the refuge of Pharaoh will be your shame, / And shelter in the shadow of Egypt, your humiliation.
4 For their princes are at Zoan, / And their ambassadors have come to Hanes.
5 All are ashamed / Of a people that cannot profit them, / Nor be a help or profit to them, / But rather a shame and also a reproach.
6 The burden concerning the beasts of the Negev: / Through the land of distress and anguish, / From which come lioness and lion, / Viper and flying fiery serpent, / They carry their riches upon young donkeys’ backs / And their treasures upon camels’ humps / To a people that cannot profit them;
7 For Egypt helps in a vain and empty way. / Therefore I call her / Rahab, who sits still.
8 Go now; write it on a tablet before them, / And inscribe it on a scroll, / That it may be, for the time to come, / As a witness forever.
9 For this is a rebellious people, / False children, / Children who refuse to hear / The instruction of Jehovah;
10 Who say to those who see, Do not see; / And to those who have visions, Do not give us true visions; / Speak pleasant things to us; / Give us illusions as your visions;
11 Get out of the way; / Turn aside from the path; / Cause the Holy One of Israel / To cease from before us.
12 Therefore thus says the Holy One of Israel, / Because you despise this word / And trust in oppression and guile, / And rely on them,
13 Therefore this iniquity / Will be to you / Like a breach ready to fall, / Sticking out on a high wall, / Whose crashing comes / In an instant, suddenly.
14 And its crashing will be like the crashing of the potters’ vessel: / Crushed — he will not spare; / And there will not be found / Among the crushed pieces a shard / With which to take fire from the hearth / Or to draw water from the cistern.
15 For thus says the Lord Jehovah, the Holy One of Israel, / In returning and rest you will be saved; / In quietness and in trust will be your strength; / But you were not willing,
16 And said, No, for we will flee on horses; / Therefore you will flee. / And, We will ride upon the swift; / Therefore those who chase you will be swift.
17 One thousand will flee at the rebuke of one; / At the rebuke of five you will flee, / Until you are left / Like a bare mast upon a mountaintop / And a standard on a hill.
18 And therefore Jehovah waits to be gracious to you, / And therefore He remains on high to have compassion on you; / For Jehovah is a God of justice; / Blessed are all those who wait for Him.
19 For a people will dwell in Zion at Jerusalem — / You will weep no more; / He will be most gracious to you at the sound of your cry; / When He hears it, He will answer you.
20 And though the Lord has given you / The bread of adversity and the water of oppression, / Your Teacher will no longer hide Himself in a corner, / But your eyes will see your Teacher.
21 And your ears will hear a word behind you, saying, / This is the way, walk in it, / When you turn to the right or turn to the left.
22 And you will defile the silver covering of your graven images / And the gold plating of your molten idols; / You will scatter them like some dirty thing; / You will say to it, Go away!
23 Then He will give rain for your seed, / Which you will sow in the ground, / And the bread of the increase of the ground; / And it will be fat and plenteous. / Your livestock will feed in that day / In a vast pasture.
24 And the oxen and donkeys that work the ground / Will eat salted fodder that has been winnowed with shovel and fork.
25 And upon every high mountain / And upon every prominent hill / There will be brooks and streams of water / In the day of the great slaughter, when the towers fall.
26 And the light of the moon will be like the light of the sun, / And the light of the sun will be sevenfold, like the light of seven days, / On the day when Jehovah binds up the breach of His people / And heals the wound left from His stroke.
27 Behold, the name of Jehovah comes from a distance, / Burning with His anger and heavy with smoke; / His lips are full of indignation, / And His tongue is like a devouring fire;
28 His breath, like an overflowing stream, / Reaches up to the neck, / To sift the nations with the sieve of nothingness; / And a bridle that leads them to err is in the jaws of the peoples.
29 You will have a song / As in the night when the feast is sanctified, / And gladness of heart as when one marches to the flute / To go to the mountain of Jehovah, to the Rock of Israel.
30 And Jehovah will cause the majesty of His voice to be heard / And the descending of His arm to be seen, / With the blasting of anger and the flame of devouring fire, / In cloudburst, downpour, and hailstones.
31 For at the voice of Jehovah, Assyria will be dismayed; / With a staff He will strike.
32 And every pass of the appointed rod, / Which Jehovah will lay upon him, / Will be with tambourines and harps; / And in battles of brandishing weapons He will fight against them.
33 For Topheth has been arranged since long ago; / Indeed it has been prepared for the king; / He made it deep; He made it large. / The pile in it is of fire and much wood; / The breath of Jehovah, like a stream of brimstone, / Sets it on fire.
31
1 Woe to those who go down to Egypt for help; / They rely on horses / And trust in chariots because they are many / And in horsemen because they are very strong; / But they do not look to the Holy One of Israel, / Nor seek Jehovah!
2 But He also is wise and will bring ill upon them; / And He does not turn back His words, / But will rise up against the house of evildoers / And against the help of the workers of iniquity.
3 The Egyptians are mere men and not God, / And their horses are mere flesh and not spirit; / Thus Jehovah will stretch out His hand, / And he who helps will stumble and he who is helped will fall, / And all of them will be consumed together.
4 For Jehovah has spoken thus to me, / As the lion or the lion cub / Roars over its prey / And because of it a crowd of shepherds / Is called out, / But it is not frightened by their voice, / Nor overcome by their noise; / So Jehovah of hosts will descend / To wage war on Mount Zion and on its hill.
5 Like flying birds / So Jehovah of hosts will protect Jerusalem; / He will protect and deliver it; / He will pass over and rescue it.
6 Return to Him from whom men have deeply revolted, O children of Israel.
7 For in that day each man will cast away his idols of silver and his idols of gold, which your hands have made for you as a sin.
8 And the Assyrian will fall by the sword not of a man, / And the sword not of man will devour him. / Thus he will flee from a sword, / And his young men will be forced into labor.
9 And his rock will pass away in terror, / And his princes will be dismayed by the standard, / Declares Jehovah, whose fire is in Zion / And whose furnace is in Jerusalem.
32
1 Indeed a King will reign according to righteousness, / And the rulers will rule according to justice.
2 And a man will be like a refuge from the wind / And a covering from the tempest, / Like streams of water in a dry place, / Like the shadow of a massive rock in a wasted land.
3 And the eyes of those who see will not be dim, / And the ears of those who hear will attend.
4 And the heart of the hasty will understand knowledge, / And the tongue of those who stammer will hasten to speak elegantly.
5 The fool will no longer be called noble, / Nor will the cheat be said to be generous;
6 For the fool will speak foolishness, / And his heart will commit iniquity / By committing profaneness / And by speaking error against Jehovah, / By leaving the soul of the hungry empty / And by causing drink for the thirsty to fail.
7 And as for the cheat, his tools are evil; / He devises wicked schemes / To destroy the poor with false words / Even when the needy speaks rightly.
8 But the noble man devises noble things, / And upon noble things he stands.
9 Rise up, O women who are at ease, / And hear my voice; / O daughters of complacency, / Hearken to my words.
10 In a year and some days / You will be troubled, O complacent ones; / For the vintage is at its end; / The ingathering will not come.
11 Tremble, O women at ease; / Be troubled, O complacent ones. / Strip yourselves and be bare, / And gird your loins with sackcloth.
12 They beat their breasts / For the pleasant fields, / For the fruitful vine.
13 Upon the land of my people / Will come up thorns and briers, / Indeed upon all the jubilant houses / In the exultant city.
14 Because the palace will be abandoned; / The multitude of the city will be forsaken; / The Hill and the watchtower / Will become caves forever, / A joy for wild asses, / A pasture for flocks;
15 Until the Spirit is poured upon us from on high, / And the wilderness becomes a fruitful field, / And the fruitful field is considered to be a forest.
16 Then justice will dwell in the wilderness, / And righteousness will remain in the fruitful field;
17 And the work of righteousness will be peace, / And the result of righteousness, quietness and assurance forever.
18 And my people will live in a peaceful habitation / And in secure dwellings and carefree resting places.
19 And it will hail when the forest comes down, / And the city will be utterly laid low.
20 Blessed are you who sow beside all the water, / Who send there the feet of the ox and the donkey.
33
1 Woe to you who destroy and were not destroyed, / And to him who deals unfaithfully and was not dealt with unfaithfully! / When you have finished destroying, you will be destroyed; / And when you cease to deal unfaithfully, they will deal unfaithfully with you.
2 O Jehovah, be gracious to us; we have waited for You; / Be our arm every morning, / Our salvation also in the time of distress.
3 At the noise of the tumult the peoples flee; / At the lifting up of Yourself the nations were scattered.
4 And your spoil will be gathered as the caterpillar gathers; / As locusts rush to and fro, men will rush to and fro upon it.
5 Jehovah is exalted, for He dwells on high; / He has filled Zion with justice and righteousness.
6 And there will be stability for your times: / A wealth of salvation, wisdom, and knowledge; / The fear of Jehovah is his treasure.
7 Indeed their heroes cry in the streets; / The ambassadors of peace weep bitterly.
8 The highways are desolate; / The traveler ceases to travel. / He has broken the covenant; he despises the cities; / He does not regard man.
9 The land mourns and languishes; / Lebanon is ashamed and withers away; / Sharon is like a desert, / And Bashan and Carmel shake off their leaves.
10 Now I will arise, says Jehovah, / Now I will be exalted; now I will be lifted up.
11 You will conceive chaff; you will give birth to stubble; / Your own breath, like fire, will devour you;
12 And the peoples will be like the burning of lime, / Like cut down thorns that are burned in the fire.
13 Hear, you who are far off, what I have done; / And know, you who are near, My might.
14 The sinners in Zion are terrified; / Trembling has seized the profane: / Who among us can dwell with consuming fire? / Who among us can dwell with everlasting burning?
15 He who walks in righteousness and speaks uprightness; / He who rejects gains seized by extortion; / He who shakes his hands lest they hold on to a bribe, / Who stops his ears so as not to hear of bloodshed / And shuts his eyes so as not to look at evil.
16 This one will dwell on the heights; / His lofty retreat will be the rocky strongholds; / His bread will be given to him; his water will be sure.
17 Your eyes will see the King in His beauty; / They will behold a land that is very far away.
18 Your heart will meditate on terror: / Where is he who counts? Where is he who weighs? / Where is he who counts the towers?
19 You will not see a fierce people, / A people of unintelligible speech, hardly audible, / Of a stammering tongue which cannot be understood.
20 Look upon Zion, the city of our appointed feasts; / Your eyes will see Jerusalem, / A secure habitation, a tent that will not be removed; / Its stakes will never be pulled up, / And none of its cords will be torn apart.
21 But there the Majestic, Jehovah, will be for us / A place of rivers and broad streams, / On which no boat with oars will go / And no majestic ship will pass.
22 For Jehovah is our Judge, / Jehovah is our Lawmaker, / Jehovah is our King; He will save us.
23 Your tackle has been slackened; / It does not support its mast firmly, / Nor does it spread out the sail. / Then the prey of abundant spoil is divided; / The lame take the plunder.
24 And the inhabitant will not say, I am sick; / The people who dwell there will be forgiven their iniquity.
34
1 Draw near, O nations, to hear; / And listen, O peoples! / Let the earth and all that fills it hear, / The world and all that springs forth from it.
2 For Jehovah’s indignation is upon all the nations, / And His wrath is upon all their armies; / He has utterly destroyed them; / He has delivered them unto the slaughter.
3 Thus their slain are cast away, / And from their corpses their stench will come up; / And the mountains will be melted with their blood.
4 And all the armies of heaven will be dissolved, / And the heavens will be rolled up like a scroll, / And all their host will wither away, / As the leaf withers from the vine, / Or like a leaf withering from the fig tree.
5 For My sword has drunk its fill in heaven. / Now it will descend in judgment upon Edom / And upon the people whom I have devoted to judgment.
6 Jehovah’s sword is full of blood; / It has fattened itself with fat, / With the blood of lambs and goats, / With the fat of the kidneys of rams; / For Jehovah has a sacrifice in Bozrah / And a great slaughter in the land of Edom.
7 Wild oxen will also go down with them, / The young bulls with the bulls; / And their land will drink its fill of their blood, / And their dust will become fat with their fat.
8 For Jehovah has a day of vengeance, / A year of recompense for Zion’s contention.
9 And its streams will be turned into pitch, / And its dust into brimstone; / And its land will become burning pitch.
10 It will not be quenched by night or by day; / Its smoke will go up forever; / It will be desolate from generation to generation; / No one will pass through it forever and ever.
11 But the pelican and the porcupine will inherit it, / And the owl and the raven will dwell in it; / And He will stretch over it / The line of nothingness and the plummet weights of emptiness.
12 As for its nobles, there is no one there whom they may call to assume the kingdom, / And all its princes will be nothing.
13 And thorns will come up in its citadels, / Nettles and thistles in its fortified cities; / And it will be a habitation for jackals, / And an abode for ostriches.
14 Desert animals will meet with hyenas; / And the demon will call to his kind, / Indeed there Lilith will settle / And find a resting place for herself.
15 There the owl will make its nest and lay eggs, / And hatch them and gather them under its protection; / Indeed there the vultures will be gathered together, / Each with its kind.
16 Seek from the book of Jehovah and read. / Not one of these will be missing; / Not one will lack her mate; / For His mouth has commanded it, / And it is His Spirit who has gathered them.
17 And He has cast the lot for them, / And His hand has divided it by line unto them; / They will inherit it forever; / From generation to generation they will dwell in it.
35
1 The wilderness and the desert will be glad; / And the desert will exult and blossom / Like the rose.
2 It will blossom and blossom, / And even exult with exultation and a ringing shout. / The glory of Lebanon will be given to it, / The splendor of Carmel and Sharon; / They will see the glory of Jehovah, / The splendor of our God.
3 Strengthen the weak hands, / And confirm the shaking knees.
4 Say to those who are of anxious heart, / Be strong; fear not; / Indeed your God / Will come with vengeance, / With the recompense of God; / He will come and save you.
5 Then the eyes of the blind will be opened, / And the ears of the deaf will be unstopped;
6 Then the lame will leap like a hart, / And the tongue of the dumb will give a ringing shout; / For water will break forth in the wilderness, / And streams in the desert.
7 And the desert mirage will become a pool, / And the thirsty ground, springs of water; / In the habitation of jackals, their resting place, / There will be grass with reeds and rushes.
8 And a highway will be there, and a way, / And it will be called, The Way of Holiness. / The unclean will not pass on it, / But it will be for him who walks on the way; / No fools will err in it.
9 There will be no lion there, / Nor will any ravenous animal go up on it; / They will not be found there; / But the redeemed will walk on it.
10 And the ransomed of Jehovah will return / And will come to Zion with a ringing shout, / And eternal joy will be upon their heads. / They will lay hold on gladness and joy, / And sorrow and sighing will flee away.
36
1 In the fourteenth year of King Hezekiah, Sennacherib the king of Assyria went up against all the fortified cities of Judah and took them.
2 And the king of Assyria sent the Rab-shakeh from Lachish to Jerusalem to King Hezekiah with a great force. And he stood at the conduit of the upper pool, on the road to the Fuller’s Field.
3 Then Eliakim the son of Hilkiah, who was over the household, and Shebna the scribe and Joah the son of Asaph, the recorder, came out to him.
4 And the Rab-shakeh said to them, Say now to Hezekiah, Thus says the great king, the king of Assyria, What is this confidence in which you trust?
5 I say, It is but a vain word that you say, There is counsel and strength for war. Now in whom do you trust, that you rebel against me?
6 You now have put your trust in the staff of this broken reed, in Egypt, which, if a man should lean on it, will go into his hand and pierce it, for so is Pharaoh, the king of Egypt, to all who trust in him.
7 And if you say to me, We trust in Jehovah our God; is it not He whose high places and altars Hezekiah has taken away and has said to Judah and Jerusalem, You shall worship only before this altar?
8 Now therefore give pledges to my master, the king of Assyria, and I will give you two thousand horses, if indeed you are able to set riders on them.
9 How then can you refuse one official of the least of my master’s servants and put your trust in Egypt for chariots and horsemen?
10 And have I now come up apart from Jehovah against this land to destroy it? Jehovah said to me, Go up against this land and destroy it.
11 And Eliakim and Shebna and Joah said to the Rab-shakeh, Please speak to your servants in Aramaic, because we understand it; and do not speak to us in the Jews’ language, in the ears of the people upon the wall.
12 But the Rab-shakeh said, Has my master sent me only to your master and to you to speak these words, and not to the men who sit on the wall, that they may eat their own dung and drink their own urine with you?
13 Then the Rab-shakeh stood and cried out with a loud voice in the Jews’ language, and said, Listen to the words of the great king, the king of Assyria:
14 Thus says the king, Do not let Hezekiah deceive you, because he is not able to deliver you;
15 Neither let Hezekiah cause you to trust in Jehovah, saying, Jehovah will surely deliver us, and this city will not be given into the hand of the king of Assyria.
16 Do not listen to Hezekiah; for thus says the king of Assyria, Make your peace with me, and come out to me, and let each eat from his own vine and each from his own fig tree, and let each drink the waters of his own cistern;
17 Until I come and take you away to a land like your land, a land of grain and new wine, a land of bread and vineyards.
18 Be careful lest Hezekiah persuade you, saying, Jehovah will deliver us. Have any of the gods of the nations delivered their land out of the hand of the king of Assyria?
19 Where are the gods of Hamath and Arpad? Where are the gods of Sepharvaim? And have they delivered Samaria out of my hand?
20 Who among all the gods of these lands have delivered their land out of my hand, that Jehovah should deliver Jerusalem out of my hand?
21 But they were silent and did not answer him a word, because of the commandment of the king that said, You shall not answer him.
22 Then Eliakim the son of Hilkiah, who was over the household, and Shebna the scribe and Joah the son of Asaph, the recorder, came to Hezekiah with their clothes torn and told him the words of the Rab-shakeh.
37
1 And when King Hezekiah heard, he tore his clothes, and covered himself with sackcloth and went into the house of Jehovah.
2 And he sent Eliakim, who was over the household, and Shebna the scribe and the elders of the priests, who had covered themselves in sackcloth, to Isaiah the son of Amoz, the prophet.
3 And they said to him, Thus says Hezekiah, This day is a day of affliction, rebuke, and contempt, for children have come to the point of birth, and there is no strength to bring them forth.
4 It may be that Jehovah your God will hear the words of the Rab-shakeh, whom his master the king of Assyria sent to reproach the living God, and will reprove the words which Jehovah your God has heard. Therefore lift up a prayer for the remnant which is left.
5 So the servants of King Hezekiah came to Isaiah.
6 And Isaiah said to them, Thus you shall say to your master, Thus says Jehovah, Do not be afraid of the words which you have heard, with which the servants of the king of Assyria have blasphemed Me.
7 Indeed I will put a spirit in him, so that he will hear a report and return to his land. And I will cause him to fall by the sword in his own land.
8 And the Rab-shakeh returned and found the king of Assyria fighting against Libnah, because he had heard that the king had departed from Lachish.
9 And he heard a report about Tirhakah the king of Ethiopia which said, He has come forth to make war with you. And when he heard it, he sent messengers to Hezekiah, saying,
10 In this way you shall speak to Hezekiah the king of Judah, saying, Do not let your God in whom you trust deceive you, saying, Jerusalem will not be delivered into the hand of the king of Assyria.
11 Indeed you have heard what the kings of Assyria have done to all the lands, destroying them utterly. And will you be delivered?
12 Have the gods of the nations, whom my fathers destroyed, delivered them: Gozan and Haran and Rezeph and the children of Eden, who were in Telassar?
13 Where are the king of Hamath and the king of Arpad and the king of the city of Sepharvaim, of Hena and Ivvah?
14 And Hezekiah took the letter from the hand of the messengers and read it, and Hezekiah went up to the house of Jehovah and spread it before Jehovah.
15 And Hezekiah prayed to Jehovah, saying,
16 O Jehovah of hosts, God of Israel, You who are enthroned between the cherubim, You alone are God of all the kingdoms of the earth; You made the heavens and the earth.
17 Incline Your ear, O Jehovah, and hear; open Your eyes, O Jehovah, and see; and listen to all the words of Sennacherib, who has sent messengers to reproach the living God.
18 Truly, O Jehovah, the kings of Assyria have laid waste all the countries and their land,
19 And have cast their gods into the fire, because they were not gods, but the work of men’s hands, wood and stone; so they destroyed them.
20 And now, O Jehovah our God, save us from his hand, that all the kingdoms of the earth may know that You alone are Jehovah.
21 Then Isaiah the son of Amoz sent a message to Hezekiah, saying, Thus says Jehovah the God of Israel, Because you have prayed to Me concerning Sennacherib the king of Assyria,
22 This is the word which Jehovah has spoken concerning him: The virgin daughter of Zion / Has despised you and laughed at you; / The daughter of Jerusalem / Has shaken her head behind you.
23 Whom have you reproached and reviled? / Against whom have you lifted up your voice / And lifted up your eyes haughtily? / Against the Holy One of Israel.
24 By your servants you have reproached the Lord, / And you have said, In the multitude of my chariots, / I have come up to the heights of the mountains, / To the sides of Lebanon. / And I will cut down its tall cedars, / And the choicest of its cypresses: / I will enter into its farthest height / And its luxuriant forest.
25 I have dug; / I have drunk water; / With the sole of my foot I have dried up / All the rivers of Egypt.
26 Have you not heard / That long ago I did it; / And from the days of old I had formed it? / Now I have brought it to pass, / That you should destroy fortified cities, / And make them into ruinous heaps.
27 Therefore their inhabitants were short of strength; / They were dismayed and felt ashamed; / And they were like vegetation of the field / And green shoots of tender grass, / Like grass which grows on the housetops / And is scorched before it has grown up.
28 But I know your sitting down, / And your going out and your coming in, / And your raging against Me.
29 Because your raging against Me / And your arrogance has come up into My ears, / I will put My hook in your nose / And My bridle in your lips, / And turn you back on the way by which you came.
30 This shall be the sign to you: This year you shall eat that which grows up of itself, and the second year that which shoots up from the same, and in the third year sow and reap and plant vineyards and eat their fruit.
31 And the remnant of those who have escaped of the house of Judah will again take root downward and bear fruit upward.
32 For a remnant will go forth out of Jerusalem, and from Mount Zion those who have escaped. The zeal of Jehovah of hosts will perform this.
33 Therefore, thus says Jehovah concerning the king of Assyria,He shall not come to this city, / Nor shoot an arrow there; / Neither shall he come against it with shields, / And build up a mound against it.
34 By the way on which he came, / By the same shall he return, / And into this city he shall not come, / Declares Jehovah.
35 And around this city I will put an enclosure / To save it, / For My own sake / And for the sake of David, My servant.
36 Then the angel of Jehovah went out and struck the Assyrians’ camp, a hundred and eighty-five thousand; and when they arose early in the morning, all of them were corpses, dead.
37 Then Sennacherib the king of Assyria departed and went back to dwell in Nineveh.
38 And when he was worshipping in the house of his god Nisroch, Adrammelech and Sharezer his sons slew him with the sword; and they escaped to the land of Ararat. And Esarhaddon his son reigned in his place.
38
1 In those days Hezekiah became mortally ill; and Isaiah the son of Amoz, the prophet, came to him and said to him, Thus says Jehovah, Put your house in order, for you are about to die and will not live.
2 And Hezekiah turned his face to the wall and prayed to Jehovah,
3 And said, Now, O Jehovah, please remember how I have walked before You in truth and with a perfect heart and have done that which is good in Your sight. And Hezekiah wept many tears.
4 Then the word of Jehovah came to Isaiah, saying,
5 Go and speak to Hezekiah, Thus says Jehovah, the God of David your father, I have heard your prayer, I have seen your tears; I will now add to your life fifteen years.
6 And I will deliver you and this city from the hand of the king of Assyria, and I will put an enclosure around this city.
7 And this will be the sign from Jehovah to you, that Jehovah will do this thing which He has spoken.
8 Behold, I will cause the shadow on the steps, which has gone down with the sun on the steps of Ahaz, to go back ten steps. So the sun’s shadow went back ten steps on the steps on which it had gone down.
9 The writing of Hezekiah the king of Judah when he had been sick and had recovered from his sickness:
10 I said, In the middle of my days, / I will go into the gates of Sheol; / I have been deprived of the rest of my years.
11 I said, I will not see Jah, / Jah in the land of the living; / I will not look on man any longer, / While I am with those who dwell where everything has ceased.
12 Like a shepherd’s tent, / My dwelling has been pulled up and removed from me. / Like a weaver, I have rolled up my life. / He will cut me off from the loom; / From day until night You make an end of me.
13 I have stilled myself until the morning; / Like a lion, so He breaks all my bones; / From day until night You make an end of me.
14 Like a swallow and a crane, so I twitter; / Like a dove, I mourn; / My eyes look languishingly above; / O Lord, I am oppressed; be my surety.
15 What shall I say? He has both spoken to me, / And He Himself has done it; / I will walk deliberately all my years, / Because of the bitterness of my soul.
16 O Lord, upon these things men live; / And in all of these things is the life of my spirit; / Therefore may You restore my strength / And make me live.
17 Indeed for peace I had bitterness, yes, bitterness; / But You have lovingly delivered my soul from the pit of destruction, / Because You have cast behind Your back / All my sins.
18 For Sheol cannot thank You, / And Death cannot praise You; / They that go down to the pit / Cannot hope in Your truth.
19 The living, the living, he will praise You, / As I do today; / A father shall make known / Your truth to his children.
20 Jehovah is ready to save me; / Therefore we will sing my songs, / With stringed instruments, / All the days of our life, / In the house of Jehovah.
21 Then Isaiah said, Let them take a cake of figs and rub it upon the boil, and he will live.
22 Hezekiah had also said, What is the sign that I shall go up to the house of Jehovah?
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1 At that time Merodach-baladan the son of Baladan, the king of Babylon, sent letters and a gift to Hezekiah because he had heard that he had been sick and had recovered.
2 And Hezekiah was glad for them and showed them his treasury, the silver and the gold, and the spices and the fine oil, and his whole armory and everything which was found among his treasures; there was nothing in his house or in all his dominion that Hezekiah did not show them.
3 Then Isaiah the prophet came to King Hezekiah and said to him, What did these men say? And from where have they come to you? And Hezekiah said, They have come to me from a distant land, from Babylon.
4 And he said, What have they seen in your house? And Hezekiah said, They have seen everything that is in my house; there is nothing among my treasures that I have not shown them.
5 Then Isaiah said to Hezekiah, Hear the word of Jehovah of hosts:
6 The days are now coming when everything that is in your house and that your fathers have laid up as a treasure unto this day will be carried away to Babylon; nothing will be left, says Jehovah.
7 And they will take away some of your sons who will issue from you, whom you will beget, and they will become eunuchs in the palace of the king of Babylon.
8 And Hezekiah said to Isaiah, The word of Jehovah which you have spoken is good. He said moreover, Indeed there will be peace and truth in my days.
40
1 Comfort, oh, comfort My people, / Says your God.
2 Speak unto the heart of Jerusalem, / And cry out to her, / That her warfare has finished, / That the penalty for her iniquity has been accepted; / For she has received from the hand of Jehovah double / For all her sins.
3 The voice of one who cries / In the wilderness: Make clear / The way of Jehovah; / Make straight in the desert / A highway for our God.
4 Every valley will be lifted up, / And every mountain and hill will be made low, / And the crooked places will become straight, / And the rough places, a broad plain.
5 Then the glory of Jehovah will be revealed, / And all flesh will see it together, / Because the mouth of Jehovah has spoken.
6 A voice said, Cry out. / And he said, What shall I cry? / All flesh is grass / And all its glory is like the flower of the field;
7 The grass withers, the flower fades, / Because the breath of Jehovah blows upon it. / Surely the people are grass.
8 The grass withers and the flower fades, / But the word of our God will stand forever.
9 Go up to a high mountain, / O Zion, who brings glad tidings; / Lift up your voice with power, / O Jerusalem, who brings glad tidings; / Lift it up; do not be afraid. / Say to the cities of Judah, / Behold your God!
10 Behold, the Lord Jehovah will come as a mighty One, / And His arm will rule for Him. / Behold, His reward is with Him, / And His recompense before Him.
11 He will feed His flock as a Shepherd; / In His arm He will gather the lambs; / In His bosom He will carry them. / He will lead those who are nursing the young.
12 Who has measured the waters in the hollow of his hand, / Who has calculated the extent of the heavens with a handspan, / And measured out the dust of the earth by a measure, / And weighed the mountains in scales / And the hills in balances?
13 Who has directed the Spirit of Jehovah, / Or who has made matters known to Him as His counselor?
14 With whom did He consult and who instructed Him, / And taught Him in the path of justice, / And taught Him knowledge, / And caused Him to know the way of understanding?
15 Indeed the nations are like a drop from a bucket, / And are accounted as specks of dust on the scales. / Indeed He takes up the islands as very fine powder.
16 And Lebanon is not sufficient to burn, / Nor are its beasts sufficient for a burnt offering.
17 All the nations are as nothing before Him; / They are counted by Him as less than nothing and vanity.
18 To whom then will you liken God? / Or what likeness will you compare to Him?
19 When the workman has cast an idol, / A goldsmith overlays it with gold / Also refining chains of silver for it.
20 He that is so impoverished that he lacks an offering / Chooses wood that will not rot, / And seeks a skillful craftsman for himself / To prepare an idol that will not be moved.
21 Do you not know? Have you not heard? / Has it not been told to you from the beginning? / Have you not understood from the foundations of the earth?
22 It is He who sits above the circle of the earth, / And its inhabitants are like grasshoppers; / Who stretches out the heavens like a curtain, / And spreads them out like a tent to dwell in;
23 Who brings the princes to nought; / He makes the judges of the earth as nothing.
24 They have scarcely been planted; / They have scarcely been sown; / Their stem has scarcely taken root in the earth; / Nevertheless He blows on them and they are withered, / And the storm wind carries them away like stubble.
25 To whom will you liken Me, / That I should be compared? Says the Holy One.
26 Lift up your eyes on high, / And see who has created these things, / Who brings out their host by number; / He calls all of them by name. / Through the greatness of His might and the strength of His power / Not one of them is missing.
27 Why do you say, O Jacob, / And why do you speak, O Israel, / My way is hidden from Jehovah, / And my judgment has been passed over by my God?
28 Do you not know, / Or have you not heard, / That the eternal God, Jehovah, / The Creator of the ends of the earth, / Does not faint and does not become weary? / There is no searching out of His understanding.
29 He gives power to the faint, / And to those who have no vigor He multiplies strength.
30 Although youths will faint and become weary, / And young men will collapse exhausted;
31 Yet those who wait on Jehovah will renew their strength; / They will mount up with wings like eagles; / They will run and will not become weary; / They will walk and will not faint.
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1 Listen to Me in silence, O coastlands. / Let the people renew their strength; / Let them approach, then let them speak; / Let us come together for judgment.
2 Who has stirred up someone from the east, / Called him in righteousness to His feet? / He gave up the nations before him, / And caused him to have dominion over kings. / He made them like dust with his sword, / Like driven stubble with his bow.
3 He pursues them and passes on in safety, / He will not come on a way known to his feet.
4 Who has wrought this and done this, / Calling the generations from the beginning? / I, Jehovah, am the first, / And with the last, I am He.
5 The coastlands saw it and were afraid; / The ends of the earth trembled; / They drew near and came.
6 Each one helps his neighbor, / And each one says to his brother, Be strong.
7 So the craftsman encourages the goldsmith, / And he who smoothes metal with a hammer encourages him who strikes the anvil, / Saying that the soldering is good; / And he fastens it with nails so that it should not be moved.
8 But you, Israel, My servant, / Jacob, whom I have chosen, / The seed of Abraham My friend;
9 You whom I have taken from the ends of the earth, / And from its extremities have called, / And said to you, You are My servant; / I have chosen you and have not cast you away.
10 Do not be afraid, for I am with you; / Do not be dismayed, for I am your God. / I will strengthen you; surely I will help you; / Surely I will uphold you with the right hand of My righteousness.
11 Indeed all those who were incensed against you / Will be ashamed and confounded; / The men who strive against you / Will be as nothing and will perish.
12 You will seek but not find / The men who contend with you; / The men who war with you / Will be as nothing and as without existence.
13 For I am Jehovah your God, / Who takes hold of your right hand, / Who says to you, Do not be afraid; / I will help you.
14 Do not be afraid, you worm Jacob, / You few men of Israel; / I will help you, declares Jehovah, / Even your Redeemer, the Holy One of Israel.
15 Now I will make you into a sharp threshing instrument, / One that is new and possessing teeth. / You shall thresh the mountains and make them powder, / And you shall make the hills like chaff.
16 You shall winnow them, and the wind will carry them away / And the storm wind will scatter them. / And you will rejoice in Jehovah, / You will glory in the Holy One of Israel.
17 When the poor and needy seek for water, and there is none, / And their tongue is dry from thirst, / I, Jehovah, will answer them; / As the God of Israel I will not forsake them.
18 I will open up rivers on the bare heights, / And in the midst of the valleys, springs. / I will make the wilderness into a pool of water, / And the dry land into springs of water.
19 I will plant in the wilderness the cedar, / The acacia, the myrtle, and the olive tree; / I will place in the desert the fir tree, / The pine tree, and the box tree together;
20 That they may see and know, / And consider and understand together, / That the hand of Jehovah has done this, / And the Holy One of Israel has created it.
21 Present your case, says Jehovah; / Bring forward your arguments, says the King of Jacob.
22 Let them bring forth and declare to us / What will take place; / Let them show what the former things were, / That we may consider them, / And may know the end of them; / Or let us hear the things that are coming.
23 Declare to us the things that are coming afterward, / That we may know that you are gods; / Indeed do good or do evil, / That we may look at one another anxiously and be afraid together.
24 You are indeed nothing, / And your work is of no consequence; / He who chooses you is an abomination.
25 I have raised up one from the north and he has come; / From the rising of the sun he will call upon My name. / He will come upon rulers as upon mortar, / As the potter treads the clay.
26 Who has declared it from the beginning that we may know, / And in advance that we may say, He is right? / Indeed there was no one who declared it; indeed no one who let us hear; / Indeed no one who heard your words.
27 Formerly I said to Zion, Here, here they are; / And to Jerusalem, I will give someone who preaches glad tidings.
28 But I looked and there was no man, / And from among these there was no counselor, / Who, when I asked, would give Me an answer.
29 Indeed all of them are vanity; / Their works are of no consequence; / Their molten images are a wind and a waste.
42
1 Here is My Servant, whom I uphold, / My chosen One in whom My soul delights; / I have put My Spirit upon Him, / And He will bring forth justice to the nations.
2 He will not cry out, nor lift up His voice, / Nor make His voice heard in the street.
3 A bruised reed He will not break; / And a dimly burning flax He will not extinguish; / He will bring forth justice in truth.
4 He will not faint, nor will He be discouraged, / Until He has established justice in the earth; / And the coastlands will wait for His instruction.
5 Thus says God Jehovah, / Who created the heavens and stretched them out, / Who spread forth the earth and what springs up from it, / Who gives breath to the people upon it / And spirit to those who walk on it:
6 I am Jehovah; I have called You in righteousness; / I have held You by the hand; / I have kept You and I have given You / As a covenant for the people, as a light for the nations;
7 To open the eyes of the blind, / To bring the prisoner out from the prison, / Those who dwell in darkness from the prison house.
8 I am Jehovah, that is My name, / And I will not give My glory to another, / Nor My praise to idols.
9 Indeed, the former things have come to pass, / And new things I am telling you; / Before they spring forth / I will let you hear them.
10 Sing a new song to Jehovah; / Sing His praise from the end of the earth; / You who go down to the sea and all that fills it, / You coastlands and their inhabitants.
11 Let the wilderness and its cities, / The villages which Kedar inhabits, lift up their voices; / Let the inhabitants of Sela sing for joy; / Let them shout from the tops of the mountains.
12 Let them give glory to Jehovah, / And declare His praise in the coastlands.
13 Jehovah will go forth as a mighty man, / Like a man of war He will stir up His jealousy; / He will raise a war cry; He will even roar. / He will prevail over His enemies.
14 For a long time I have been silent; / I have kept still, I have restrained Myself. / Now I will cry like a woman in travail; / I will gasp and pant at the same time.
15 I will lay waste the mountains and hills, / And all of their vegetation I will dry up; / And I will make the rivers into islands; / I will dry up the pools.
16 I will bring the blind on a way they do not know; / I will guide them in paths they do not know; / I will make the darkness into light before them, / And crooked things straight. / These are the things / I will do for them and will not forsake them.
17 They who have turned back will be utterly put to shame, / That is, those who trust in graven images, / Those who say to molten images, / You are our gods.
18 You who are deaf, Hear; / And you who are blind, Look, that you may see.
19 Who is blind except My servant, / And as deaf as My messenger, whom I will send? / Who is as blind as the one at peace with Me, / And as blind as the servant of Jehovah?
20 You have seen many things and do not observe them; / His ears are open, but he does not hear.
21 Jehovah is well pleased for His righteousness’ sake; / He will magnify the law and make it honorable.
22 But this is a people plundered and spoiled: / All of them are trapped in holes, / And they are hidden in prison houses; / They have become plunder, and there is no one to deliver; / They have become spoil, and there is no one to say, Restore them.
23 Who among you will give ear to this? / Who will pay attention and listen to the coming things?
24 Who gave Jacob to the plunderers, / And Israel to the robbers? / Was it not Jehovah, against whom we have sinned, / And in whose ways they were not willing to walk, / And whose law they would not obey?
25 Therefore He poured out upon them the heat of His anger / And the strength of battle; / And it set them on fire round about, yet they did not realize it; / And it burned against them, and they did not take it to heart.
43
1 But now thus says Jehovah / Who created you, O Jacob, and who formed you, O Israel: / Do not fear, because I have redeemed you; / I have called you by your name; you are Mine.
2 When you pass through the waters, I will be with you, / And through the rivers, they will not flow over you. / And when you walk through the fire, you will not be burned, / And the flame will not consume you.
3 Because I am Jehovah your God, / The Holy One of Israel, your Savior, / I have given Egypt as your ransom, / Cush and Seba instead of you.
4 Since you were precious in My eyes, / Since you have been honorable and I have loved you, / I will give up men in your place, / And peoples in exchange for your life.
5 Do not fear, because I am with you; / I will bring your seed from the east, / And gather you from the west.
6 I will say to the north, Give them up, / And to the south, Do not keep them back. / Bring My sons from afar, / And My daughters from the end of the earth,
7 Everyone who is called by My name, / Whom I have created, formed, and even made for My glory.
8 Bring out the people who are blind yet have eyes, / And those who are deaf yet have ears.
9 Let all the nations be gathered together, / And let the peoples assemble. / Who among them can declare this / And relate to us the former things? / Let them bring forth their witnesses, that they may be justified, / And let them hear and say, It is true.
10 You are My witnesses, declares Jehovah, / And My servant whom I have chosen, / In order that you may know and believe Me / And understand that I am He. / Before Me there was no God formed, / Neither will there be any after Me.
11 I, even I, am Jehovah; / And there is no Savior besides Me.
12 I have declared, and I have saved, and I have let them hear; / There is no strange god among you. / And you are My witnesses, declares Jehovah, / And I am God.
13 Indeed, before the day was, I am He, / And there is no one who can deliver from My hand. / I will work and who will reverse it?
14 Thus says Jehovah, / Your Redeemer, the Holy One of Israel, / For your sake I have sent to Babylon, / And I will bring down all of them as fugitives, / Even the Chaldeans, whose rejoicing is in the ships.
15 I am Jehovah, your Holy One, / The Creator of Israel, your King.
16 Thus says Jehovah, / Who has made a way in the sea, / And a path in the mighty waters,
17 Who brings forth the chariot and the horse, / The army and the powerful together. / They will lie down, they will not rise; / They are extinct, they are quenched like flax.
18 Do not call to mind the former things, / Nor consider the things of old.
19 Indeed, I am doing a new thing; / It will now spring forth; / Do you not know it? / I will even make a way in the wilderness, / Rivers in the desert.
20 The animals of the field will honor Me, / The jackals and the ostriches, / Because I have given them water in the wilderness, / Rivers in the desert, / To give a drink to My people, My chosen ones.
21 This people I have formed for Myself; / They will show forth My praise.
22 But you have not called upon Me, O Jacob, / But you have grown weary of Me, O Israel.
23 You have not brought Me a sheep for your burnt offerings, / And you have not honored Me with your sacrifices; / I have not made you serve Me with a meal offering, / Nor wearied you with incense.
24 You did not buy calamus for Me with money, / And you did not fill Me with the fat of your sacrifices. / Indeed, you have burdened Me with your sins; / You have wearied Me with your iniquities.
25 I, even I, am He who wipes away your transgressions for My own sake, / And I will not remember your sins.
26 Put Me in remembrance; let us plead in judgment together: / Declare your case that you may be justified.
27 Your first father sinned, / And your mediators transgressed against Me.
28 Therefore I profaned the princes of the sanctuary, / And I delivered up Jacob to destruction, / And Israel to reviling.
44
1 But now hear, O Jacob, My servant, / And Israel, whom I have chosen.
2 Thus says Jehovah your Maker / And the One who formed you from the womb, who will help you, / Do not fear, O Jacob, My servant, / And Jeshurun whom I have chosen,
3 For I will pour water upon the thirsty land, / And streams upon the dry ground; / I will pour out My Spirit upon your seed, / And My blessing upon your offspring.
4 They will spring up among the grass, / Like poplars beside the flowing streams of water.
5 One will say, I am Jehovah’s; / Another will call himself by the name of Jacob; / Another will write with his hand, I am Jehovah’s; / He will name himself with the name Israel.
6 Thus says Jehovah the King of Israel, / And his Redeemer, Jehovah of hosts, / I am the First and I am the Last, / And apart from Me there is no God.
7 And who can proclaim as I can? / Then let him declare it and recount it in order for Me, / Since I set forth the people of ancient times. / Let them declare to them both the coming things / And the things which will take place.
8 Do not tremble and do not be afraid. / Have I not related to you from that time and declared it? / And you are My witnesses. Is there a God besides Me? / Or is there any other Rock? I do not know of any.
9 All those who make idols are a waste. / And the things they delight in will not profit them. / And those who are witnesses for them do not see, / And they do not know, that they may be put to shame.
10 Who has formed a god or cast an idol / That is of no profit?
11 Indeed, all those joined to him will be put to shame, / For the craftsmen are only men. / Let all of them be gathered together, let them stand up; / Let them be afraid and be put to shame together.
12 The ironsmith sharpens a cutting tool, / And works over the coals, / And forms the idol with hammers, / And he works it with the strength of his arm. / Yet he becomes hungry and has no strength; / If he does not drink water, he faints.
13 The carpenter stretches out a line; / He marks it out with a marking tool; / He works it with planes, / And marks it with a compass. / He makes it according to the likeness of a man, / Like the beautiful appearance of man, to dwell in a house.
14 Someone prepares to cut down cedars for himself, / Or he takes a cypress or an oak; / He lets it grow strong among the trees of the forest; / He plants an ash, and the rain nourishes it.
15 It is also something for a man to burn; / He takes one of them and warms himself; / He even kindles a fire and bakes bread. / With the same he also makes a god and worships it; / He makes it into a graven image and bows down before it.
16 Half of it he burns in a fire; / Over this half he eats flesh, / And he roasts a roast and is satisfied. / He also warms himself and says, Ha! / I am warm, I have seen fire.
17 The rest of it he makes into a god, into his idol; / He bows down to it and worships it / And prays to it and says, / Deliver me, for you are my god.
18 They do not know, and they do not understand, / For He has covered their eyes so that they cannot see, / And their minds so that they cannot understand.
19 And no one considers in his heart, / And there is no knowledge or understanding to say, / I have burned half of it in the fire, / And I have even baked bread over its coals; / I have roasted flesh and eaten it. / Then shall I make the rest of it into an abomination? / Shall I fall down before a block of wood?
20 He feeds on ashes; / A deceived heart has led him astray; / And he cannot deliver his soul; / Nor does he say, Is this not a lie in my right hand?
21 Remember these things, O Jacob, / And Israel, for you are My servant. / I have formed you; you are My servant; / O Israel, you will not be forgotten by Me.
22 I have wiped away, like a thick cloud, your transgressions, / And like a cloud, your sins. / Return unto Me, for I have redeemed you.
23 Sing for joy, O heavens, for Jehovah has accomplished it. / Shout, O lower parts of the earth; / Break forth with singing, O mountains, / The forest and every tree in it; / For Jehovah has redeemed Jacob / And is glorified in Israel.
24 Thus says Jehovah who redeemed you / And formed you from the womb, / I am Jehovah who makes all things, / Who alone stretches out the heavens, / Who spread out the earth (Who was with Me?);
25 Who frustrates the signs of liars, / And makes fools of the diviners; / Who turns back the wise men, / And makes their knowledge foolish;
26 Who confirms the word of His servant, / And fulfills the counsel of His messengers; / Who says to Jerusalem, She will be inhabited, / And to the cities of Judah, They will be built, / And I will raise up their ruins;
27 Who says to the depths, Be dried up, / And I will dry up your rivers;
28 Who says to Cyrus, He is My shepherd, / And he will fulfill all My desire, / Even by saying of Jerusalem, She will be built, / And of the temple, Her foundations will be laid.
45
1 Thus says Jehovah to His anointed, / To Cyrus, whose right hand I have grasped, / To subdue the nations before him; / And I will loosen the loins of kings; / To open before him double doors / So that the gates will not be shut:
2 I will go before you / And make level the rough places; / I will shatter the doors of bronze / And cut through the bars of iron,
3 And give to you the treasures of darkness / And the hidden riches of secret places, / That you may know that I am Jehovah, who calls you by your name, / The God of Israel.
4 For the sake of My servant, Jacob, / And Israel, My chosen one, / I have also called you by your name; / I have surnamed you, although you do not know Me.
5 I am Jehovah and there is no one else; / Besides Me there is no God; / I girded you, although you do not know Me;
6 That they might know from the rising of the sun and from the west / That there is no one besides Me. / I am Jehovah and there is no one else;
7 He who forms the light and creates darkness, / He who makes peace and creates evil, / I am Jehovah who makes all these things.
8 Drip down, O heavens, from above, / And let the clouds flow down righteousness; / Let the earth open / And bring forth salvation and righteousness; / Let them spring forth together; / I, Jehovah, have created it.
9 Woe to him who strives with the One who formed him — / A potsherd among the earthen potsherds. / Shall the clay say to the One who forms it, What are You making? / And your work say, He has no hands?
10 Woe to him who says to his father, What are you begetting? / Or to a woman, What are you bringing forth?
11 Thus says Jehovah, / The Holy One of Israel and the One who formed him, / Ask Me about the things to come concerning My sons, / And concerning the work of My hands, command Me.
12 I have made the earth, / And created man upon it; / My own hands stretched out the heavens, / And I commanded all of their host.
13 I raised him up in righteousness, / And will make straight all his ways; / He will build My city, / And send away My captives, / Neither for a price nor for a reward, / Says Jehovah of hosts.
14 Thus says Jehovah, / The wealth of Egypt, and the merchandise of Cush, / And the Sabeans, men of stature, / Will pass to you and will be yours. / They will walk behind you; they will come over in chains / And bow down to you and petition you, saying, / Surely God is with you, and there is no one else; / There is no other God.
15 Surely You are a God who hides Himself, / O God of Israel, the Savior.
16 All of them will be ashamed and even confounded; / Those who make idols go in confusion together.
17 Israel has been saved by Jehovah / With an eternal salvation; / You will not be ashamed or confounded / Forever and ever.
18 For thus says Jehovah, / Who created the heavens — / He is the God / Who formed the earth and made it; / He established it; / He did not create it waste, / But He formed it to be inhabited: / I am Jehovah and there is no one else;
19 I have not spoken in secret, / In a dark place of the earth; / I did not say to the seed of Jacob, / Seek Me in vain. / I, Jehovah, speak righteousness, / Declaring things that are right.
20 Gather yourselves together and come; / Draw near together, / You who have escaped from the nations. / Those who set up their wooden idol / And pray unto a god who cannot save / Have no knowledge.
21 Declare and present your case; / Indeed, let them take counsel together. / Who related this long ago; / Who declared it from that time? / Was it not I, Jehovah? / And there is no other God besides Me; / A righteous God and Savior, / And there is no one except Me.
22 Turn to Me and be saved, / All the ends of the earth, / For I am God and there is no one else.
23 I have sworn by Myself; / A word has gone out of My mouth in righteousness / And will not return, / That every knee shall bow to Me, / And every tongue shall swear.
24 It shall be said of Me, Only in Jehovah / Is there righteousness and strength. / To Him shall men come, / And all those who are burning in anger against Him shall be ashamed.
25 In Jehovah all the seed of Israel / Shall be justified and shall glory.
46
1 Bel has bowed down; Nebo stoops; / Their idols are on beasts and cattle; / The things which you carry are a burden, / A load for a weary beast.
2 They stoop and have bowed down together; / They are not able to escape the burden; / But they themselves have gone into captivity.
3 Listen to Me, O house of Jacob, / And all the remnant of the house of Israel, / You who have been borne from birth, / Who have been carried from the womb,
4 Even unto old age, I am He; / Even unto your gray-haired years, I will bear you. / I have made and I will carry, / And I will bear and deliver.
5 To whom will you liken Me, / And with whom will you make Me equal / And compare Me, that we should be considered alike?
6 Those who lavish gold from the purse / And weigh silver in scales / And hire a goldsmith, and he makes a god — / They bow down and even worship it;
7 They lift it up on their shoulder; they carry it / And set it in its place, and it stands. / It will not move from its place; / Someone even cries out to it, and it does not answer, / Nor save him from his distress.
8 Remember this and stand fast; / Put this in your heart, O transgressors.
9 Remember the former things of old, / That I am God and there is no one else; / I am God and there is no one like Me,
10 Who declares the end from the beginning / And things which have not been done from ancient times, / Saying, My counsel will stand, / And all My desire I will accomplish;
11 Who calls for a bird of prey from the east, / And from a distant land a man to be My counselor. / Indeed, I have spoken; surely I will bring it to pass. / I have purposed; surely I will do it.
12 Listen to Me, O hardhearted ones, / Who are far from righteousness.
13 I will bring My righteousness near — it is not far off; / And My salvation will not delay; / And I will give salvation in Zion, / And to Israel My glory.
47
1 Come down and sit in the dust, / O virgin daughter of Babylon; / Sit on the ground where there is no throne, / O daughter of the Chaldeans; / For you will no longer be called / Tender and delicate.
2 Take millstones and grind meal; / Remove your veil; / Strip off your flowing skirt; uncover your thigh; / Cross over the rivers.
3 Your nakedness will be uncovered; / Your shame will also be seen; / I will take vengeance and will not spare any man.
4 Our Redeemer, Jehovah of hosts is His name, / The Holy One of Israel.
5 Sit in silence and go in darkness, / O daughter of the Chaldeans; / For you will no longer be called / The queen of kingdoms.
6 I was angry with My people; / I profaned My inheritance, / And I have delivered them up into your hand. / You have not shown any mercy to them; / You have made your yoke / Very heavy upon the elderly.
7 You have said, I will be / A queen forever; / You did not put these things into your heart; / You did not remember the end of them.
8 And now hear this, O lover of pleasure, / Who dwells securely / And says in your heart, / I am, and there is none besides me; / I will not dwell as a widow, / And I will not know loss of children.
9 But these two things will come upon you / Suddenly, in one day: / Loss of children and widowhood; / In full measure they will come upon you / In spite of the multitude of your sorceries; / In spite of the great power of your spells.
10 And you felt secure in your wickedness; / You said, No one sees me. / Your wisdom and your knowledge / Have seduced you, / And you said in your heart, / I am, and there is none besides me.
11 But evil will come upon you, / And you will not know its origin; / Disaster will fall upon you / Which you cannot expiate for; / Desolation will come upon you suddenly, / About which you do not know.
12 Stand now with your enchantments / And the multitude of your sorceries, / With which you have labored from your youth; / Perhaps you can profit; / Perhaps you will inspire terror.
13 You are wearied with the multitude of your counsels. / Let the astrologers, who gaze at the stars, / Who predict according to the new moons, / Stand up and save you from what is coming upon you.
14 Indeed, they are like stubble; / Fire consumes them; / They cannot deliver themselves / From the power of the flame; / There is no coal for warming themselves, / Nor the light of a fire to sit before.
15 So will those with whom you have labored be to you, / Those who have traded with you from your youth; / Each one will wander off in his own direction; / There will be no one to save you.
48
1 Hear this, O house of Jacob, / Who are called by the name of Israel; / And who came out from the waters of Judah, / Who swear by the name of Jehovah / And make mention of the God of Israel, / But not in truth nor in righteousness.
2 For they call themselves after the holy city / And lean upon the God of Israel; / Jehovah of hosts is His name.
3 I have declared the former things from the beginning; / And they went out from My mouth, and I let them hear them; / I did them suddenly, and they came to pass.
4 Because I knew that you are obstinate, / And your neck is an iron sinew, / And your forehead bronze;
5 Therefore I declared them to you long ago; / Before things came to pass I let you hear; / Lest you should say, My idol has done them, / And my graven image and my molten image commanded them.
6 You have heard; look at all this. And will you not declare it? / From this time I will let you hear new things / And hidden things which you have not known.
7 They have been created now, and not long ago; / And before this day you have not even heard them; / Lest you should say, Indeed, I knew them.
8 You also have not heard and have not known; / Your ears were not even open from that time; / For I knew that you would deal very treacherously / And would be called a transgressor from the womb.
9 For My name’s sake I will defer My anger, / And for the sake of My praise I will restrain it for you, / In order not to cut you off.
10 Indeed, I have refined you but not like silver; / I have tried you in the furnace of affliction.
11 For My own sake, yes, for My own sake, I will do it, / For how can My name be profaned? / And I will not give My glory to another.
12 Listen to Me, O Jacob, / And Israel, whom I called; / I am He; I am the First, / I am also the Last.
13 Indeed, My hand laid the foundations of the earth, / And My right hand spread out the heavens; / When I call to them, / They stand together.
14 Assemble yourselves, all of you, and hear! / Who among them has declared these things? / Jehovah loves him; he will do His pleasure / On Babylon, and His arm will be upon the Chaldeans.
15 I, even I, have spoken; indeed, I have called him; / I have brought him, and his way will prosper.
16 Draw near to Me and listen to this: / From the beginning I have not spoken in secret; / From the time it took place, I was there. / And now the Lord Jehovah / Has sent me and His Spirit.
17 Thus says Jehovah, your Redeemer, / The Holy One of Israel, / I am Jehovah your God, / Who teaches you to do that which is profitable, / Who leads you in the way that you should go.
18 If only you had hearkened to My commandments! / Then your peace would have been like a river, / And your righteousness like the waves of the sea,
19 And your seed would have been like the sand, / And the offspring of your bowels like the gravel; / His name would not have been cut off / Or destroyed before Me.
20 Come out from Babylon; / Flee from the Chaldeans; / With a voice of shouting declare; / Let them hear this, / Send it out unto the end of the earth; / Say, Jehovah has redeemed / His servant Jacob.
21 And they did not thirst / When He led them through the dry places; / He caused water to flow / From the rock for them; / And He split the rock, / And the waters gushed out.
22 There is no peace, says Jehovah, for the wicked.
49
1 Listen to me, O coastlands, / And hearken, you peoples from afar. / Jehovah has called me from the womb; / From the bowels of my mother He has made mention of my name.
2 And He has made my mouth like a sharp sword; / He has concealed me in the shadow of His hand, / And He has made me a polished arrow; / He has hidden me in His quiver.
3 And He said to me, You are My servant, / Israel, in whom I will be glorified.
4 But I said, I have labored in vain; / I have used up my strength for nothing and vanity; / Yet surely the justice due to me is with Jehovah, / And my recompense with my God.
5 And now says Jehovah, / Who formed Me from the womb to be His Servant, / To bring Jacob back to Him, / So that Israel would be gathered to Him; / And I will be glorified in the sight of Jehovah, / And My God will be My strength.
6 He says, It is too small a thing that You would be My Servant / To raise up the tribes of Jacob / And bring back the preserved of Israel; / I will also set You as a light of the nations / That You may be My salvation unto the ends of the earth.
7 Thus says Jehovah, / The Redeemer of Israel, his Holy One, / To the despised One, the One abhorred by the nation, / The One subjected to tyrants, / Kings will see and arise, / And princes will bow down; / Because of Jehovah, who is faithful, / The Holy One of Israel, who has chosen You.
8 Thus says Jehovah, / In an acceptable time I have answered You, / And in a day of salvation I have helped You; / And I will preserve You and give You for a covenant of the people, / To restore the land, to apportion the desolate inheritances,
9 To say to the prisoners, Come forth, / To say to those who are in darkness, Show yourselves. They will feed along the roads, / And their pasture will be on all the bare heights;
10 They will not hunger or thirst; / Neither the scorching heat nor the sun will strike them; / For He who has compassion on them will lead them / And will guide them beside the springs of water;
11 And I will make all My mountains into a road, / And My highways will be raised up.
12 Indeed, these will come from a distance, / And indeed these will come from the north and the west, / And these from the land of the Sinim.
13 Give a ringing shout, O heavens, and exult, O earth, / And break forth into shouting, O mountains; / For Jehovah has comforted His people / And will have compassion on His afflicted ones.
14 But Zion has said, Jehovah has forsaken me, / And the Lord has forgotten me.
15 Can a woman forget her nursing child, / That she would not have compassion on the son of her womb? / Even though they may forget, / Yet I will not forget you.
16 Indeed, I have engraved you upon the palms of My hands; / Your walls are continually before Me.
17 Your children make haste; / Your destroyers and those who lay you waste / Will go forth from you.
18 Lift up your eyes and look around; / All of these gather themselves together and come to you. / As I live, declares Jehovah, / You will put all of them on like an ornament / And gird yourself with them like a bride.
19 For your waste and desolate places / And your devastated land — / For you will be too constricted now because of its inhabitants, / And those who swallowed you up will be far away.
20 The children of whom you were bereaved / Will yet say in your ears, / This place is too constricted for me; / Make room for me that I may dwell here.
21 Then you will say in your heart, / Who has borne these for me, / Since I have been bereaved of children and am barren, / An exile and driven about? / And who brought these up? / Indeed, I was left alone; / From where did these come?
22 Thus says the Lord Jehovah, / Indeed, I will lift up My hand to the nations, / And unto the peoples I will lift up My banner; / And they will bring your sons in their arms, / And they will carry your daughters on their shoulders.
23 And kings will be your foster fathers; / And their princesses will be those who nurse you; / They will bow down to you with their faces toward the earth / And lick the dust of your feet; / And you will know that I am Jehovah; / Those who wait on Me will not be ashamed.
24 Can the booty be taken from the strong man, / Or the lawful captives be delivered?
25 Surely, thus says Jehovah, / Even the captive may be taken from the strong man, / And the booty may be released from the tyrant; / For I will strive with those who strive with you, / And I will save your children;
26 And I will feed those who oppress you with their own flesh; / And they will be drunk with their own blood as with sweet wine; / Then all flesh will know / That I am Jehovah your Savior / And your Redeemer, the Mighty One of Jacob.
50
1 Thus says Jehovah, / Where is the bill of your mother’s divorce / With which I have put her away? / Or to which of My creditors / Have I sold you? / Indeed, for your iniquities you were sold, / And for your transgressions your mother was put away.
2 Why when I came was there no man? / And when I called why was there no one to answer? / Is My hand so short that it cannot redeem? / Or do I have no power to deliver? / Indeed, at My rebuke I dry up the sea; / I make the rivers a wilderness; / Their fish stink because there is no water, / And die of thirst.
3 I clothe the heavens with blackness, / And make sackcloth their covering.
4 The Lord Jehovah has given me / The tongue of the instructed, / That I should know how to sustain the weary with a word. / He awakens me morning by morning; / He awakens my ear / To hear as an instructed one.
5 The Lord Jehovah has opened my ear; / And I was not rebellious, / Nor did I turn back.
6 I gave my back to those who strike me / And my cheeks to those who pluck out the hair; / I did not hide my face / From humiliation and spitting.
7 The Lord Jehovah helps me; / Therefore I have not been dishonored; / Therefore I have set my face like a flint, / And I know that I will not be put to shame.
8 The One who justifies me is near; who will contend with me? / Let us stand up together! / Who is my adversary in judgment? / Let him come near to me.
9 Indeed, the Lord Jehovah helps me, / Who is the one who condemns me? / Indeed, they will all wear out like a garment; / The moth will consume them.
10 Who among you fears Jehovah; / Who hears the voice of His servant; / Who walks in darkness / And has no light? / Let him trust in the name of Jehovah, / And rely on his God.
11 Indeed, all of you who kindle a fire, / Who surround yourselves with firebrands, / Walk into the light of your fire / And into the firebrands which you have lit. / You will have this from My hand: / You will lie down in torment.
51
1 Listen to Me, you who pursue righteousness, / Who seek after Jehovah, / Look to the rock from which you were hewn, / And to the excavation of the quarry from which you were dug.
2 Look to Abraham your father, / And to Sarah who travailed with you; / For I called him when he was one person, / And blessed him and multiplied him.
3 For Jehovah has comforted Zion; / He has comforted all her waste places, / And made her wilderness like Eden, / And her desert like the garden of Jehovah. / Gladness and joy will be found in her, / Thanksgiving and the voice of song.
4 Hearken to Me, O My people; / Give ear to Me, O My nation; / For instruction will go out from Me; / And I will set My judgment as a light for the peoples.
5 My righteousness is near; My salvation has gone forth; / My arms will judge the peoples; / The coastlands will wait for Me / And place their hope in My arm.
6 Lift up your eyes to the heavens, / And look upon the earth beneath; / For the heavens will vanish away like smoke, / And the earth will wear out like a garment, / And those who dwell there will die in like manner; / But My salvation will be forever, / And My righteousness will not be abolished.
7 Listen to Me, you who know righteousness, / A people in whose heart is My instruction, / Do not fear the reproach of man; / Do not be terrified at their revilings.
8 For the moth will eat them up like a garment, / And the worm will eat them like wool; / But My righteousness will be forever, / And My salvation from generation to generation.
9 Awake, awake! Put on strength, / O arm of Jehovah; / Awake as in the days of old, / As in the generations of past ages. / Was it not You who cut Rahab in pieces, / Who pierced through the dragon?
10 Was it not You who dried up the sea, / The waters of the great deep; / Who made the depths of the sea into a way / For the redeemed to pass through?
11 Therefore the ransomed of Jehovah will return / And will come to Zion with a ringing shout, / And eternal joy will be upon their heads. / They will lay hold on gladness and joy, / And sorrow and sighing will flee away.
12 I, even I, am He who will comfort you. / Who are you that you are afraid of man who will die, / And of the son of man who will be made like grass,
13 That you have forgotten Jehovah who made you, / Who stretched out the heavens / And laid the foundations of the earth, / That you have been continually afraid every day, / Because of the fury of the oppressor / When he sets himself up to destroy you? / But where is the fury of the oppressor?
14 The one who is bowed down will soon be released / And will not die in the pit, / Nor will his bread be lacking.
15 I am Jehovah your God, / Who stirs up the sea so that its waves roar, / Jehovah of hosts is His name.
16 And I have put My words in your mouth, / And I have covered you in the shadow of My hand, / To plant the heavens and lay the foundations of the earth, / And to say to Zion, You are My people.
17 Wake yourself up, wake yourself up; / Stand up, O Jerusalem, / You who have drunk from the hand of Jehovah / The cup of His wrath; / The bowl of the cup of staggering / You have drunk; you have drained it out.
18 There is no one to guide her / Among all the children whom she has brought forth; / There is no one to take her by the hand / Among all the children she has raised up.
19 These two things have happened to you; / Who will lament for you? / Desolation and destruction, and famine and sword. / How will I comfort you?
20 Your sons have fainted; / They lie at the head of every street like an antelope in a net, / Full of the wrath of Jehovah, / The rebuke of your God.
21 Therefore hear this now, O afflicted one, / You who are drunk but not with wine:
22 Thus says your Lord Jehovah and your God / Who pleads the cause of His people, / Indeed, I have taken from your hand / The cup of staggering; / You will no longer need to drink / The bowl of the cup of My wrath anymore;
23 And I will put it into the hand of those who afflict you, / Who have said to your soul, Bow down / That we may walk over you; / And you have made your back like the ground, / Like the street for them to cross over.
52
1 Awake! Awake! Put on / Your strength, O Zion; / Put on your beautiful garments, / O Jerusalem, O holy city; / For the uncircumcised and the unclean / Will no longer come into you.
2 Shake yourself from the dust; arise, / Sit down, O Jerusalem; / Loose yourself from the bonds on your neck, / O captive daughter of Zion.
3 For thus says Jehovah, You are those who have been sold for nothing, and you will be redeemed without money.
4 For thus says the Lord Jehovah, At first My people went down to Egypt to sojourn there; then the Assyrian oppressed them without cause.
5 Now then what do I have here, declares Jehovah, since My people have been taken away for nothing? Those who rule over them howl, declares Jehovah, and My name is continually blasphemed all day long.
6 Therefore My people will know My name; therefore in that day they will know that I am He who speaks; here I am.
7 How beautiful on the mountains / Are the feet of him who brings good news, / Of him who announces peace, who brings news of good things, / Who announces salvation; / Of him who says to Zion, Your God reigns!
8 The voice of your watchmen! They lift up their voice; / They give a ringing shout together; / For they will see with their very own eyes / When Jehovah restores Zion.
9 Break forth, give a ringing shout together, / You wasted places of Jerusalem, / For Jehovah has comforted His people, / He has redeemed Jerusalem.
10 Jehovah has bared His holy arm / In the sight of all the nations, / And all the ends of the earth will see / The salvation of our God.
11 Depart! Depart! Go out from there! / Do not touch any unclean thing! / Go out from the midst of her! Cleanse yourselves, / You who bear the vessels of Jehovah!
12 For you will not go out in haste, / And you will not go in flight; / For Jehovah will go before you, / And the God of Israel will be your rear guard.
13 Indeed, My Servant will act wisely and will prosper; / He will be exalted and lifted up and very high.
14 Even as many were astonished at Him — / His visage was marred more than that of any man, / And His form more than that of the sons of men —
15 So will He surprise many nations; / Kings will shut their mouths because of Him; / For what had not been recounted to them they will see, / And what they had not heard of they will contemplate.
53
1 Who has believed our report? / And to whom has the arm of Jehovah been revealed?
2 For He grew up like a tender plant before Him, / And like a root out of dry ground. / He has no attracting form nor majesty that we should look upon Him, / Nor beautiful appearance that we should desire Him.
3 He was despised and forsaken of men, / A man of sorrows and acquainted with grief; / And like one from whom men hide their faces, / He was despised; and we did not esteem Him.
4 Surely He has borne our sicknesses, / And carried our sorrows; / Yet we ourselves esteemed Him stricken, / Smitten of God and afflicted.
5 But He was wounded because of our transgressions; / He was crushed because of our iniquities; / The chastening for our peace was upon Him, / And by His stripes we have been healed.
6 We all like sheep have gone astray; / Each of us has turned to his own way, / And Jehovah has caused the iniquity of us all / To fall on Him.
7 He was oppressed, and it was He who was afflicted, / Yet He did not open His mouth; / Like a lamb that is led to the slaughter / And like a sheep that is dumb before its shearers, / So He did not open His mouth.
8 By oppression and by judgment He was taken away; / And as for His generation, who among them had the thought / That He was cut off out of the land of the living / For the transgression of my people to whom the stroke was due?
9 And they assigned His grave with the wicked, / But with a rich man in His death, / Although He had done no violence, / Nor was there any deceit in His mouth.
10 But Jehovah was pleased to crush Him, to afflict Him with grief. / When He makes Himself an offering for sin, / He will see a seed, He will extend His days, / And the pleasure of Jehovah will prosper in His hand.
11 He will see the fruit of the travail of His soul, / And He will be satisfied; / By the knowledge of Him, the righteous One, My Servant, will make the many righteous, / And He will bear their iniquities.
12 Therefore I will divide to Him a portion with the Great, / And He will divide the spoil with the Strong; / Because He poured out His life unto death / And was numbered with the transgressors, / Yet He alone bore the sin of many / And interceded for the transgressors.
54
1 Give a ringing shout, O barren one, you who have not borne; / Break forth into joyful shouting and cry out, you who have not been in labor; / For more numerous are the children of the desolate one / Than the children of the married woman, says Jehovah.
2 Enlarge your tent site, / Let them stretch out the curtains of your habitations; / Spare not; / Lengthen your cords, / And strengthen your pegs;
3 For on the right and on the left you will break open, / And your seed will possess the nations / And will cause the desolate cities to be inhabited.
4 Fear not, for you will not be put to shame; / Neither be humiliated, for you will not be ashamed; / But you will forget the shame of your youth, / And the reproach of your widowhood you will no longer remember.
5 For your Maker is your Husband; / Jehovah of hosts is His name. / And the Holy One of Israel is your Redeemer; / He is called the God of all the earth.
6 For Jehovah has called you, / Like a wife who has been forsaken and is grieved in spirit, / Even like a wife of one’s youth when she has been rejected, / Says your God.
7 For a short moment I forsook you, / But with great compassion I will gather you.
8 In a flood of wrath I hid / My face from you for a moment, / But with eternal lovingkindness I will have mercy on you, / Says Jehovah your Redeemer.
9 For this is like the waters of Noah to Me, / When I swore that the waters of Noah / Would not overflow the earth ever again; / So I have sworn that I will not be angry with you, / Nor will I rebuke you.
10 For the mountains may depart, / And the hills may shake, / But My lovingkindness will not depart from you, / And My covenant of peace will not shake, / Says Jehovah who has compassion on you.
11 O afflicted one, storm-tossed and not comforted, / Indeed, I Myself will lay down your stones in dark mortar, / And will lay your foundations with sapphires.
12 And I will make your battlements of rubies, / And your gates of carbuncles, / And all your borders will be precious stones.
13 And all your children will be taught of Jehovah, / And the peace of your children will be great.
14 In righteousness you will be established; / You will be far from oppression, for you will not fear, / And far from terror, for it will not come near you.
15 Indeed, they may fiercely attack you, but it is not of Me; / Whoever attacks you will fall because of you.
16 Indeed, it is I who have created the blacksmith / Who blows the fire of the coals, / And brings out a weapon for its work; / And it is I who have created the destroyer to ruin.
17 No weapon that is formed against you will prosper, / And every tongue that rises up to judge you, you will condemn. / This is the heritage of the servants of Jehovah, / And their righteousness which is of Me, declares Jehovah.
55
1 Ho! Everyone who thirsts, come to the waters, / And you who have no money; / Come, buy and eat; / Yes, come, buy wine and milk / Without money and without price.
2 Why do you spend money for what is not bread, / And the result of your labor for what does not satisfy? / Hear Me attentively, and eat what is good, / And let your soul delight itself in fatness.
3 Incline your ear and come to Me; / Hear, so that your soul may live; / And I will make an eternal covenant with you, / Even the sure mercies shown to David.
4 Indeed, I have given Him as a Witness to the peoples, / A Leader and a Commander to the peoples.
5 Indeed, you will call a nation that you do not know, / And a nation that does not know you will run to you, / Because of Jehovah your God, even the Holy One of Israel, / For He has glorified you.
6 Seek Jehovah while He may be found; / Call upon Him while He is near.
7 Let the wicked forsake his way, / And the evildoer, his thoughts; / And let him return to Jehovah, and He will have compassion on him; / And to our God, for He will pardon abundantly.
8 For My thoughts are not your thoughts, / And your ways are not My ways, declares Jehovah.
9 For as the heavens are higher than the earth, / So My ways are higher than your ways, / And My thoughts higher than your thoughts.
10 For just as the rain comes down / And the snow from heaven, / And does not return there, / Until it waters the earth / And makes it bear and sprout forth, / That it may give seed to the sower and bread to the eater;
11 So will My word be which goes forth from My mouth; / It will not return to Me vainly, / But it will accomplish what I delight in, / And it will prosper in the matter to which I have sent it.
12 For you will go out with rejoicing, / And you will be led forth in peace; / The mountains and the hills / Will break forth before you with a ringing shout, / And all the trees of the field will clap their hands.
13 In place of the thornbush, the fir tree will come up; / In place of the brier, the myrtle will come up; / And it will be to Jehovah as a name, / As an eternal sign that will not be cut off.
56
1 Thus says Jehovah, / Preserve justice and do righteousness, / For My salvation is about to come / And My righteousness is about to be revealed.
2 Blessed is the man who does this, / And the son of man who takes hold of it, / Who keeps the Sabbath so as not to profane it / And keeps his hand from doing any evil.
3 And let not the son of a foreigner / Who has joined himself to Jehovah speak, saying, / Jehovah will surely separate me from His people; / Nor let the eunuch say, / Now I am a dry tree.
4 For thus says Jehovah, / To the eunuchs who keep My Sabbaths / And choose what pleases Me, / And hold fast My covenant,
5 To them I will give in My house and within My walls a memorial and a name / Better than that of sons and daughters; / I will give them an eternal name / Which will not be cut off.
6 Also the children of the foreigner who join themselves to Jehovah, / To minister to Him and to love the name of Jehovah, / To be servants to Him, / Everyone who keeps the Sabbath so as not to profane it / And holds fast My covenant,
7 Even these will I cause to come to My holy mountain / And to rejoice in My house of prayer; / Their burnt offerings and their sacrifices will be acceptable upon My altar; / For My house will be called a house of prayer for all the peoples.
8 The Lord Jehovah, who gathers the outcasts of Israel, declares: / Yet will I gather others to Him besides those gathered to Him already.
9 All you animals of the field, come to eat, / All you animals of the forest.
10 His watchmen are blind; / All of them know nothing; / All of them are dumb dogs, / They cannot bark; / Dreamers who lie down / And love to slumber.
11 And these dogs are greedy; / They know no satisfaction. / And they are shepherds / Who lack understanding. / All of them have turned to their own way, / Each to his own gain, to the last of them.
12 Come, they say, let me get some wine, / And let us drink down some liquor; / And tomorrow will be like today, / Only much more abundant.
57
1 The righteous man perishes, / And no one takes it to heart; / And godly men are being swept away, / While no one considers / That the righteous man is being swept away from evil.
2 He enters into peace; / They rest in their beds, / Each who walks uprightly.
3 But draw near here, / You children of a sorceress, / You seed of an adulterer and of her who prostitutes herself.
4 Whom are you mocking, / And against whom are you opening your mouth wide / And sticking out your tongue? / Are you not children of transgression, / A seed of falsehood,
5 Who inflame yourselves among the terebinths, / Under every flourishing tree, / Who slaughter the children in the valleys / Under the clefts of the rocks?
6 Among the smooth stones of the valley is your portion, / They, yes, they are your lot. / Indeed, to them you have poured out a drink offering, / You have offered a meal offering. / Shall I ease Myself of these?
7 Upon a high and lofty mountain / You have set your bed. / Indeed, you went up there / To offer sacrifice.
8 And behind the door and doorpost / You have put your reminder. / For apart from Me, you have uncovered yourself and gone up; / You have extended your bed; / And you have made an agreement for yourself with them; / You loved their bed; you saw their nakedness.
9 And you went to the king with oil, / And you increased your perfumes; / You sent your envoys far away / And debased yourself even as far as Sheol.
10 You were wearied with the length of your way, / Yet you did not say, It is hopeless; / You found the renewing of your strength, / Therefore you did not weaken.
11 And whom have you been worried about and feared, / That you have lied and not remembered Me, / Nor taken it to heart? / Was I not silent, and that for a long time, / Yet you did not fear Me?
12 I will declare your righteousness / And your works, / Yet they will not profit you.
13 When you cry out, let your heaps of idols deliver you. / But the wind will carry them all away; / A breath will take them away. But he who takes refuge in Me will inherit the land / And possess My holy mountain.
14 And it will be said, / Cast up, cast up; prepare the way; / Take up the obstacle out of the way of My people.
15 For thus says the high and exalted One, / Who inhabits eternity, whose name is Holy: / I will dwell in the high and holy place, / And with the contrite and lowly of spirit, / To revive the spirit of the lowly / And to revive the heart of the contrite.
16 For I will not contend forever, / Nor will I always be angry; / For the spirit would faint before Me, / And the souls which I have made.
17 Because of the iniquity of his unjust gain I was angry, / And I struck him; I hid Myself and was angry; / And he went on, turning away in the way of his heart.
18 I have seen his ways / And will heal him; / And I will lead him and restore comfort to him / And to his mourning ones,
19 Creating the fruit of the lips: / Peace, peace to him who is far off and to him who is near, / Says Jehovah; and I will heal him.
20 But the wicked are like the tossed sea, / For it cannot be calm, / And its waters toss up mire and mud.
21 There is no peace, says my God, for the wicked.
58
1 Cry loudly; do not hold back; / Raise your voice like a trumpet, / And declare to My people their transgression / And to the house of Jacob their sins.
2 Yet they seek Me day by day / And take delight in knowing My ways, / Like a nation that has done righteousness / And has not forsaken the ordinance of their God. / They ask Me for righteous judgments; / They take delight in approaching God.
3 Why have we fasted, and yet You do not see? / Why have we afflicted our soul, and yet You do not acknowledge? / Indeed, on the day of your fast you find delight, / And oppress all your laborers.
4 Indeed, you fast for contention and strife, / And to strike with a fist of wickedness; / You do not fast, in the way you do today, / To make your voice heard on high.
5 Is such the fast that I choose, / The day when a man afflicts his soul? / Is it for bowing his head like a rush / And for spreading out sackcloth and ashes as his bed? / Will you call this a fast, / And an acceptable day to Jehovah?
6 Is this not the fast that I choose, / To loosen the bonds of wickedness, / To undo the bands of the yoke, / And to let the oppressed go free, / And to break every yoke?
7 Is it not to divide your bread to the hungry, / And to bring the wandering poor home; / When you see the naked, to cover him, / And not to hide yourself from your own flesh?
8 Then your light will break forth like the dawn, / And your recovery will speedily spring forth. / And your righteousness will go before you; / The glory of Jehovah will guard you from behind.
9 Then you will call, and Jehovah will answer; / You will cry out, and He will say, Here I am. If you remove the yoke from your midst, / The pointing of the finger and the speaking of wickedness,
10 And if you draw out your soul to the hungry / And satisfy the desires of the afflicted; / Then your light will rise in the darkness, / And your gloom will be like midday;
11 And Jehovah will guide you continually, / And satisfy your soul in the dry times, / And strengthen your bones; / And you will be like a watered garden, / And like a spring of water, / Whose waters do not deceive.
12 And those who are of you will rebuild the ancient ruins; / You will raise up the foundations of generation upon generation; / And you will be called the repairer of the breach, / The restorer of the paths in which to dwell.
13 If you turn back your foot from the Sabbath, / From doing whatever you please on My holy day, / And call the Sabbath a delight, / That which is holy to Jehovah honorable, / And honor it, not doing your own ways, / Nor finding your own pleasure and speaking idle words;
14 Then you will have delight in Jehovah; / And I will cause you to ride upon the heights of the earth, / And I will feed you with the inheritance of Jacob your father; / For the mouth of Jehovah has spoken.
59
1 No, Jehovah’s hand is not so short that it cannot save; / Nor is His ear so heavy that it cannot hear.
2 But your iniquities have become a separation / Between you and your God, / And your sins have hidden His face / From you so that He does not hear.
3 For your hands are defiled with blood, / And your fingers with iniquity; / Your lips have spoken falsehood, / Your tongue has muttered injustice.
4 No one sues righteously, / And no one pleads in truth; / They trust in vanity and speak lies; / They conceive mischief and bring forth iniquity.
5 They hatch adders’ eggs / And weave the spider’s web; / He who eats of their eggs dies, / And that which is crushed breaks forth into a viper.
6 Their webs will not become garments, / Nor will they cover themselves with their works; / Their works are works of iniquity, / And an act of violence is in their palms.
7 Their feet run toward evil, / And they hasten to shed innocent blood; / Their thoughts are thoughts of iniquity; / Desolation and destruction are in their highways.
8 The way of peace they do not know, / And there is no justice in their course; / They have made their paths crooked; / Whoever goes on it does not know peace.
9 Therefore justice is far from us, / And righteousness does not overtake us; / We look eagerly for light, but, ah, darkness, / For brightness, but we walk in gloom.
10 We grope like blind men at the wall; / We grope like those without eyes; / We stumble at midday as we would at dusk; / Among the prospering we are like dead men.
11 All of us roar like bears / And moan incessantly like doves; / We look eagerly for justice, but there is none, / For salvation, but it is far from us.
12 For our transgressions are multiplied before You, / And our sins respond to You against us; / For our transgressions are with us, / And as for our iniquities, we know what they are:
13 Transgressing and denying Jehovah, / And turning away from our God; / Speaking oppression and revolt, / Conceiving and uttering from the heart words of falsehood.
14 And justice is turned back, / And righteousness stands far off; / For truth has stumbled in the street, / And uprightness cannot come in.
15 And truth is lacking, / And he who turns from evil becomes plunder. And Jehovah saw it, and it was evil in His sight / That there was no justice.
16 And He saw that there was no man, / And He was appalled that there was no intercessor. / Therefore His arm accomplished salvation for Him, / And His righteousness sustained Him.
17 Thus He put on righteousness as a breastplate, / And a helmet of salvation upon His head; / And He put on the garments of vengeance for clothing / And wrapped Himself with zeal as a mantle.
18 According to their dealings, so will He repay: / Wrath to His adversaries, recompense to His enemies; / To the coastlands He will repay with recompense.
19 So they will fear the name of Jehovah from the west, / And His glory from the rising of the sun; / When the adversary comes like a flood, / The Spirit of Jehovah will lift up a standard against him.
20 And a Redeemer will come to Zion, / And unto those who turn from transgression in Jacob, / Declares Jehovah.
21 And as for Me, this is My covenant with them, says Jehovah: My Spirit which is upon you and My words which I have put in your mouth shall not depart from your mouth, nor from the mouth of your seed, nor from the mouth of your seed’s seed, says Jehovah, from now and forever.
60
1 Arise! Shine! For your light has come, / And the glory of Jehovah has risen upon you.
2 For, behold, the darkness will cover the earth, / And deep darkness the peoples; / But Jehovah will rise upon you, / And His glory will be seen upon you.
3 And nations will come to your light, / And kings to the brightness of your rising.
4 Lift up your eyes around you and see: / They all gather together; they come to you; / Your sons will come from far away, / And your daughters will be carried on the hip.
5 Then you will see and you will beam, / And your heart will be in awe and will swell with joy, / For the abundance of the sea will be turned to you, / The wealth of the nations will come to you.
6 A multitude of camels will cover you, / The young camels of Midian and Ephah; / All those from Sheba will come; / They will carry gold and frankincense, / And they will bear the good news of Jehovah’s praises.
7 All the flocks of Kedar will be gathered together to you; / The rams of Nebaioth will minister to you; / They will go up acceptably upon My altar, / And I will beautify the house of My beauty.
8 Who are these who fly like a cloud, / And like the doves to their dovecote?
9 Surely the coastlands will look eagerly for Me; / And the ships of Tarshish will come first, / To bring your children from afar, / Their silver and their gold with them, / Unto the name of Jehovah your God / And unto the Holy One of Israel; for He has beautified you.
10 And the children of foreigners will build up your walls, / And their kings will minister to you; / For in My wrath I struck you, / But in My favor I had compassion on you.
11 And your gates will be open continually; / They will not be closed day or night, / So that they may bring to you the wealth of the nations / And their kings being led in procession.
12 For the nation and the kingdom that will not serve you will perish, and the nations will be utterly wasted.
13 The glory of Lebanon will come to you, / The fir tree, the pine tree, and the box tree together, / To beautify the place of My sanctuary; / And I will make the place for My feet glorious.
14 And the sons of those who afflicted you / Will come bowing down to you, / And all those who despised you will bow down / At the soles of your feet; / And they will call you the City of Jehovah, / The Zion of the Holy One of Israel.
15 Whereas you have been forsaken and hated, / So that no one would pass through you, / I will make you an eternal excellency, / A joy from generation to generation.
16 And you will suck the milk of nations / And suck the breast of kings; / Thus you will know that I, Jehovah, am your Savior / And your Redeemer, the Mighty One of Jacob.
17 Instead of bronze I will bring gold, / And instead of iron I will bring silver; / And instead of wood there will be bronze, / And instead of stones there will be iron; / And I will make peace your officers, / And righteousness your rulers.
18 Violence will no longer be heard in your land, / Nor desolation and destruction within your borders; / But you will call your walls Salvation, / And your gates Praise.
19 You will no longer have the sun for your light by day, / Nor for brightness will the moon give you light; / But Jehovah will be an eternal light to you, / And your God your beauty.
20 Your sun will no longer go down, / Nor will your moon withdraw; / For Jehovah will be an eternal light to you, / And the days of your mourning will be ended.
21 Then all your people will be righteous; / They will possess the land forever, / The branch of My planting, / The work of My hands, / That I may be beautified.
22 The least one will become a thousand, / And the smallest a strong nation. / I, Jehovah, will hasten it in its time.
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1 The Spirit of the Lord Jehovah is upon Me, / Because Jehovah has anointed Me / To bring good news to the afflicted; / He has sent Me to bind up the wounds of the brokenhearted, / To proclaim liberty to the captives, / And the opening of the eyes to those who are bound;
2 To proclaim the acceptable year of Jehovah / And the day of vengeance of our God; / To comfort all who mourn;
3 To grant to those who mourn in Zion, / To give to them a headdress instead of ashes, / The oil of gladness instead of mourning, / The mantle of praise instead of a spirit of heaviness; / That they may be called the terebinths of righteousness, / The planting of Jehovah, that He may be glorified.
4 And they will rebuild the ancient ruins; / They will raise up the former desolations; / And they will repair the cities of waste, / The desolations of generation upon generation.
5 And strangers will stand and feed your flocks, / And the sons of the foreigner will be your plowmen and vinedressers.
6 But you will be called the priests of Jehovah; / People will speak of you as the ministers of our God. / You will eat the wealth of nations, / And you will boast in their glory.
7 Instead of your shame there will be a double portion, / And instead of humiliation they will give a ringing shout for their portion. / Therefore in their land they will possess double; / Eternal joy will be theirs.
8 For I, Jehovah, love justice; / I hate robbery with wrong; / And I will faithfully give them their recompense, / And I will make an eternal covenant with them.
9 Then their seed will be known among the nations, / And their offspring in the midst of the peoples; / All who see them will acknowledge them, / That they are the seed whom Jehovah has blessed.
10 I will rejoice greatly in Jehovah, / My soul will exult in my God; / For He has clothed me with the garments of salvation, / He has wrapped me with the robe of righteousness; / I am like a bridegroom who wears the headdress of the priest, / And like a bride who adorns herself with her jewels.
11 For as the earth brings forth its sprout, / And as the garden causes the things sown in it to spring up, / So will the Lord Jehovah cause righteousness and praise / To spring up before all the nations.
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1 For Zion’s sake I will not keep silent, / And for Jerusalem’s sake I will not be quiet, / Until her righteousness goes forth like brightness, / And her salvation like a burning torch.
2 And the nations will see your righteousness, / And all the kings, your glory; / And you will be called by a new name, / Which the mouth of Jehovah will designate.
3 You will also be a crown of beauty in the hand of Jehovah, / And a royal turban in the palm of your God.
4 And it will no longer be said to you, Forsaken! / Nor to your land will it be said any longer, Desolate! / But you will be called, My delight is in her, / And your land, Married; / For Jehovah delights in you, / And your land will be married.
5 For as a young man marries a virgin, / Your sons will marry you; / And with the joy of the bridegroom over the bride / Your God will rejoice over you.
6 Upon your walls, O Jerusalem, / I have appointed watchmen; / All day and all night / They will never keep silent. / You who remind Jehovah, / Do not be dumb;
7 And do not give Him quiet / Until He establishes / And until He makes Jerusalem / A praise in the earth.
8 Jehovah has sworn by His right hand / And by His strong arm: / Surely I will never again give your grain / As food for your enemies, / And surely the children of the foreigner will not drink your new wine / For which you have labored;
9 But they who have gathered it will eat it, / And they will praise Jehovah, / And they who have collected it will drink it / In the courts of My holiness.
10 Go through, go through the gates; / Prepare the way for the people; / Cast up, cast up the highway; / Free it of stones; / Raise up a standard for the peoples.
11 See, Jehovah has announced / To the end of the earth: / Say to the daughter of Zion, / Your salvation is now coming; / Now His reward is with Him / And His recompense before Him.
12 And they will call them, The holy people, / The redeemed of Jehovah; / And you will be called, Sought after! / A city not forsaken!
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1 Who is this who comes from Edom / With red-stained garments, from Bozrah? / This One who is majestic in His apparel, / Marching in the greatness of His strength? / It is I who speak in righteousness, / Mighty to save.
2 Why are You red in apparel, / And Your garments like those of him who treads in the winepress?
3 I have trodden the wine trough alone, / And from the peoples there was no man with Me. / And I trod them in My anger / And trampled them in My wrath; / And their lifeblood is sprinkled on My garments, / And I have stained all My apparel.
4 For the day of recompense was in My heart, / And the year of My redemption had come.
5 And I looked and there was no one to help; / And I was appalled that there was no one to uphold. / Therefore My own arm accomplished salvation for Me, / And My wrath, it upheld Me.
6 And I trod down the peoples in My anger / And made them drunk in My wrath, / And I poured out their lifeblood upon the earth.
7 I will make mention of the lovingkindnesses of Jehovah, / The praises of Jehovah, / According to all that Jehovah has bestowed on us / And the great goodness toward the house of Israel, / Which He has bestowed on them according to His compassions / And according to the multitude of His lovingkindnesses.
8 For He said, Surely, they are My people, / Children who will not deal falsely; / So He became their Savior.
9 In all their affliction He was afflicted, / And the Angel of His presence saved them; / In His love and in His mercy / He redeemed them, / And He bore them up and carried them / All the days of old.
10 But they rebelled and grieved / His Spirit of holiness; / Therefore He turned to become their enemy; / He fought against them.
11 Then He remembered the days of old, Moses and His people: / Where is He who brought them up out of the sea / With the shepherds of His flock? / Where is He who put in their midst / His Spirit of holiness;
12 Who made His glorious arm / Go at the right hand of Moses; / Who divided the waters before them, / To make for Himself a name forever;
13 Who led them through the depths, / Like a horse in the wilderness, / And they did not stumble?
14 Like the cattle which go down into the valley, / The Spirit of Jehovah caused them to rest. / Thus did You lead Your people, / To make for Yourself a glorious name.
15 Look down from heaven, / And see from the habitation of Your holiness and Your beauty: / Where are Your zeal and Your mighty acts? / The stirring of Your inward parts / And Your compassions are restrained toward me.
16 For You are our Father, / Since Abraham does not know us, / And Israel does not acknowledge us. / You, Jehovah, are our Father; / Our Redeemer from eternity is Your name.
17 Why, O Jehovah, do You cause us to wander from Your ways / And harden our hearts so that we do not fear You? / Return for the sake of Your servants, / The tribes of Your inheritance.
18 Your holy people have possessed Your sanctuary for a little while; / Our adversaries have trodden it down.
19 We have become like those over whom You have never ruled, / Like those who have not been called by Your name.
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1 Oh that You would rend the heavens, that You would come down — / That the mountains would shake at Your presence —
2 Like fire that kindles brushwood, / Like fire that causes water to boil, / To make Your name known to Your adversaries, / That the nations may tremble at Your presence!
3 When You did awesome things that we did not expect, / You came down, the mountains shook at Your presence.
4 For from of old, men have not heard, / Nor perceived with the ear, / Neither has eye seen a God besides You, / Who acts for him who waits for Him.
5 You meet him who rejoices and does righteousness, / Those who remember You in Your ways. / Yes, You were angry, for we sinned; / We have been in them for a long time, and shall we be saved?
6 For all of us became like him who is unclean, / And all our righteousnesses are like a soiled garment; / And we all wither like a leaf, / And our iniquities, like the wind, carry us away.
7 And there is no one who calls upon Your name, / Who stirs himself up to lay hold of You; / For You have hidden Your face from us / And have consumed us by our iniquities.
8 But now, Jehovah, You are our Father; / We are the clay; and You, our Potter; / And all of us are the work of Your hand.
9 Do not be angry to an extreme, O Jehovah, / Neither remember iniquity forever; / Look now, we pray: We all are Your people.
10 Your holy cities have become a wilderness; / Zion is a wilderness, / Jerusalem a desolation.
11 Our holy and beautiful house, / Where our fathers praised You, / Is burned with fire; / And all the things that we delighted in have become a ruin.
12 Will You restrain Yourself from these, O Jehovah? / Will You keep silent and afflict us to an extreme?
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1 I let Myself be inquired of by those who did not ask for Me, / And found by those who did not seek Me. / I said, Here I am; here I am; / To a nation that was not called by My name.
2 I have stretched out My hands all day long / To a rebellious people, / Who walk in a way that is not good, / After their own thoughts;
3 A people who provoke Me to anger / To My face continually, / Who sacrifice in gardens / And burn incense upon the bricks;
4 Who sit among the graves / And lodge overnight in the secret places; / Who eat swine’s flesh / And the broth of abominations in their pots;
5 Who say, Keep to yourself, / Do not come near me; for I am holier than you. / These are smoke in My nose, / A fire that burns all day.
6 It is written here before Me: / I will not keep silent without first recompensing; / And I will recompense, into their bosom,
7 Your iniquities and the iniquities of your fathers together, / Says Jehovah, / Who have burned incense upon the mountains / And have scorned Me upon the hills; / Therefore I will measure their work first / Into their bosom.
8 Thus says Jehovah, / As the new wine is found in the cluster, / And someone says, Do not destroy it, / For there is a blessing in it; / So will I do for My servants’ sake, / In order not to destroy them all.
9 And I will bring forth a seed out of Jacob, / And out of Judah one who will possess My mountains; / And My chosen ones will possess it, / And My servants will dwell there.
10 And Sharon will be an abode for the flock, / And the valley of Achor a resting place for the herd, / For My people who have sought Me.
11 But you who forsake Jehovah, / Who forget My holy mountain, / Who prepare a table to Fortune / And fill vessels with drink offerings to Destiny,
12 I will destine you to the sword, / And you all will bow down to the slaughter; / Because I called you, but you did not answer; / I spoke, but you did not listen; / But you did evil in My sight / And chose that in which I did not delight.
13 Therefore thus says the Lord Jehovah, / Indeed, My servants shall eat, / But you shall hunger; / Indeed, My servants shall drink, / But you shall thirst; / Indeed, My servants shall rejoice, / But you shall be put to shame;
14 Indeed, My servants shall give a ringing shout / Because of a heart of joy, / But you shall cry out / Because of a heart of pain, / And because of a broken spirit you shall wail.
15 And you will leave your name as a curse to My chosen ones, / And the Lord Jehovah will slay you; / And He will call His servants by another name,
16 So that he who blesses himself in the earth / Will bless himself in the God of faithfulness, / And he who swears in the earth / Will swear by the God of faithfulness; / Because the former troubles are forgotten / And because they are hidden from My sight.
17 For I am now creating new heavens / And a new earth, / And the former things will not be remembered, / Nor will they come up in the heart.
18 But rejoice and exult forever, / In what I create, / For I am now creating Jerusalem as an exultation / And her people as a rejoicing.
19 And I will exult in Jerusalem / And rejoice in My people; / And there will no longer be heard in her / The voice of weeping and the voice of crying.
20 There will no longer be in her / An infant who reaches the age of only a few days / Nor an old man who does not fill up his days; / For the lad will die at a hundred years of age, / And the sinner, being a hundred years of age, will be cursed.
21 And they will build houses and inhabit them, / And they will plant vineyards and eat their fruit.
22 They will not build and another inhabit; / They will not plant and another eat; / For like the days of a tree are the days of My people, / And My chosen ones will enjoy the work of their hands to the full;
23 They will not labor in vain, / Nor bear children unto turmoil; / For they are the seed of those blessed of Jehovah, / And their offspring with them.
24 And it will be that before they call, I will answer; / Even while they are speaking, I will hear.
25 The wolf and the lamb will feed as one, / And the lion will eat straw like the ox, / And dust will be the serpent’s food; / They will not harm nor destroy / In all My holy mountain, says Jehovah.
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1 Thus says Jehovah, / Heaven is My throne, / And the earth the footstool for My feet. / Where then is the house that you will build for Me, / And where is the place of My rest?
2 For all these things My hand has made, / And so all these things have come into being, declares Jehovah. / But to this kind of man will I look, to him who is poor / And of a contrite spirit, and who trembles at My word.
3 He who kills an ox is like him who slays a man; / He who sacrifices a lamb, like him who breaks a dog’s neck; / He who offers a meal offering is like him who offers the blood of swine; / He who burns incense is like him who blesses an idol. / As surely as they have chosen their own ways, / And their soul delights in their abominations;
4 Just as surely I will choose what will treat them ill, / And I will bring upon them what they dread; / Because I called, but no one answered; / I spoke, but they did not listen; / But they did evil in My sight, / And chose that in which I did not delight.
5 Hear the word of Jehovah, / You who tremble at His word: / Your brothers who hate you, / Who cast you out because of My name, said, / Let Jehovah be glorified / So that we may see your joy. / But they will be put to shame.
6 A voice of tumult from the city! / A voice from the temple! / The voice of Jehovah giving full / Recompense to His enemies.
7 Before she travailed, / She brought forth; / Before her pain came, / She gave birth to a man.
8 Who has heard of such a thing? / Who has seen such things? / Can a land be born in one day? / Or can a nation be brought forth all at once? / For as soon as Zion travailed, / She brought forth her children.
9 Shall I bring to the point of birth and not cause to bring forth? / Says Jehovah. / Or shall I who cause to bring forth shut the womb? / Says your God.
10 Be joyful with Jerusalem and exult for her, / All you who love her; / Rejoice with her in joy, / All you who mourn over her,
11 So that you may nurse and be satisfied / With her breasts of consolations, / So that you may draw out from her and take excellent delight / In the abundance of her glory.
12 For thus says Jehovah, / I now am extending to her / Peace like a river, / And the glory of the nations / Like an overflowing stream; / And you will nurse, you will be carried on the hip, / And you will be bounced on the knees.
13 As one whom his mother comforts, / So will I comfort you; / And you will be comforted in Jerusalem.
14 And you will see this, and your heart will rejoice, / And your bones will flourish like new grass; / And the hand of Jehovah will be made known to His servants, / And He will be indignant toward His enemies.
15 For behold, Jehovah will come with fire, / And His chariots will be like a whirlwind, / To render His anger with fury / And His rebuke with flames of fire.
16 For with fire Jehovah will execute judgment, / And with His sword, upon all flesh; / And those slain by Jehovah will be many.
17 Those who sanctify and purify themselves for the gardens, / Following after one in the midst, / Eating swine’s flesh / And what is abominable and even mice, / Will come to an end together, declares Jehovah.
18 But I — their works and their thoughts I will repay; the time is coming to gather all the nations and tongues; and they will come and see My glory.
19 And I will set a sign among them and will send those who have escaped from them unto the nations: to Tarshish, Put, and Lud, to those who draw the bow; to Tubal and Javan, to the distant coastlands that have not heard My fame nor seen My glory; and they will declare My glory among the nations.
20 And they will bring all your brothers from all the nations as a meal offering to Jehovah, on horses and in chariots and in wagons and on mules and on camels, to My holy mountain, Jerusalem, says Jehovah, just as the children of Israel bring their meal offering in a clean vessel to the house of Jehovah.
21 And I will also take some of them for priests and for Levites, says Jehovah.
22 For as the new heavens / And new earth, which I make, / Remain before Me, declares Jehovah, / So will your seed and your name remain.
23 And from new moon to new moon / And from Sabbath to Sabbath / All flesh will come / To bow down before Me, says Jehovah.
24 Then they will go forth and look / On the carcasses of the men that have transgressed against Me; / For their worm will not die, / Nor will their fire be quenched; / And they will be an abhorrence to all flesh.