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, kings of Judah.
2 The Wickedness of Judah Hear, O heavens, and give ear, O earth. For the Lord has spoken: I have nourished and brought up children, and they have rebelled against Me;
3 the ox knows his owner, and the donkey his master’s crib, but Israel does not know; My people do not consider.
4 Alas, sinful nation, a people laden with iniquity, a brood of evildoers, children who deal corruptly! They have forsaken the Lord, they have provoked the Holy One of Israel to anger, they are estranged and backward.
5 Why should you be beaten again, that you revolt more and more? The whole head is sick, and the whole heart faint.
6 From the sole of the foot even to the head there is no soundness in it. Wounds, bruises, and open sores; they have not been closed, nor bandaged, nor soothed with oil.
7 Your country is desolate, your cities are burned with fire; strangers devour your land in your presence; and it is desolate, as overthrown by strangers.
8 The daughter of Zion is left like a shelter in a vineyard, like a hut in a field of melons, like a besieged city.
9 Unless the Lord of Hosts had left to us a very small remnant, we would have been as Sodom; we would have been like Gomorrah.
10 Hear the word of the Lord, you rulers of Sodom; listen to the law of our God, you people of Gomorrah:
11 For what purpose is the multitude of your sacrifices to Me? says the Lord. I am full of the burnt offerings of rams, and the fat of fed animals. I do not delight in the blood of bulls, or of lambs, or of male goats.
12 When you come to appear before Me, who has required this at your hand, to trample My courts?
13 Bring no more vain offerings; incense is an abomination to Me. New Moons, Sabbaths, and convocations— I cannot bear with evil assemblies.
14 My soul hates your New Moons and your appointed feasts; they are a burden to Me; I am weary of bearing them.
15 When you reach out your hands, I will hide My eyes from you; even when you make many prayers, I will not hear. Your hands are full of blood.
16 Wash yourselves, make yourselves clean; put away the evil from your deeds, from before My eyes. Cease to do evil,
17 learn to do good; seek justice, relieve the oppressed; judge the fatherless, plead for the widow.
18 Come now, and let us reason together, says the Lord. Though your sins be as scarlet, they shall be as white as snow; though they be red like crimson, they shall be as wool.
19 If you are willing and obedient, you shall eat the good of the land;
20 but if you refuse and rebel, you shall be devoured with the sword; for the mouth of the Lord has spoken it.
21 The Degenerate City How the faithful city has become a prostitute! She was full of justice; righteousness lodged in her, but now murderers.
22 Your silver has become dross, your wine mixed with water.
23 Your princes are rebellious and companions of thieves; everyone loves a bribe and follows after rewards. They do not defend the fatherless, nor does the cause of the widow come before them.
24 Therefore the Lord, the Lord of Hosts, the Mighty One of Israel, says: Ah, I will get relief from My adversaries, and avenge Myself on My enemies.
25 And I will turn My hand against you, thoroughly purge away your dross, and take away all your impurities.
26 I will restore your judges as at the first, and your counselors as at the beginning. Afterward you shall be called the city of righteousness, a faithful town.
27 Zion shall be redeemed with justice and her converts with righteousness.
28 But the destruction of the transgressors and sinners shall be together, and those who forsake the Lord shall be consumed.
29 For they shall be ashamed of the oaks which you have desired, and you shall be humiliated for the gardens that you have chosen.
30 For you shall be as an oak whose leaf fades, and as a garden that has no water.
31 The strong shall be as tinder, and his work like a spark; they will both burn together, and no one will quench them.
1 The Mountain of the Lord The word that Isaiah the son of Amoz saw concerning Judah and Jerusalem.
2 In the last days, the mountain of the Lord’s house shall be established on the top of the mountains, and shall be exalted above the hills, and all nations shall flow to it.
3 Many people shall go and say, “Come, and let us go up to the mountain of the Lord, to the house of the God of Jacob, and He will teach us of His ways, and we will walk in His paths.” For out of Zion shall go forth the law, and the word of the Lord from Jerusalem.
4 He shall judge among the nations, and shall rebuke many peoples; and they shall beat their swords into plowshares, and their spears into pruning hooks; nation shall not lift up sword against nation, nor shall they learn war any more.
5 O house of Jacob, come, and let us walk in the light of the Lord.
6 The Day of the Lord For You have forsaken Your people, the house of Jacob, because they are replenished from the east, and are soothsayers like the Philistines, and they please themselves with the children of strangers.
7 Their land also is full of silver and gold, and there is no end to their treasures; their land is also full of horses, and there is no end to their chariots.
8 Their land also is full of idols; they worship the work of their own hands, that which their own fingers have made.
9 And the common man bows down, and the great man humbles himself; therefore, do not forgive them.
10 Enter into the rock, and hide in the dust from the fear of the Lord and from the glory of His majesty.
11 The lofty looks of man shall be humbled, and the haughtiness of men shall be bowed down, and the Lord alone shall be exalted in that day.
12 For the day of the Lord of Hosts shall be upon everything that is proud and lofty, and upon everything that is lifted up, and it shall be brought low;
13 and it will be upon all the cedars of Lebanon that are high and lifted up, and upon all the oaks of Bashan,
14 and upon all the high mountains, and upon all the hills that are lifted up,
15 and upon all the high towers, and upon every fenced wall,
16 and upon all the ships of Tarshish, and upon all pleasant sloops.
17 The loftiness of man shall be humbled, and the haughtiness of men shall be brought low; the Lord alone will be exalted in that day;
18 the idols He shall utterly abolish.
19 They shall go into the holes of the rocks, and into the caves of the earth, from the fear of the Lord, and from the glory of His majesty, when He shall arise to shake the earth mightily.
20 In that day a man shall cast away his idols of silver and his idols of gold, which they made for themselves to worship, to the moles and to the bats,
21 to enter the caverns of the rocks, and into the clefts of the cliffs, from the terror of the Lord, and from the glory of His majesty, when He arises to shake the earth mightily.
22 Cease regarding man, whose breath is in his nostrils; for why should he be esteemed?
1 Judgment on Judah and Jerusalem For now the Lord, the Lord of Hosts, takes away from Jerusalem and from Judah the stock and the store, the whole supply of bread, and the whole supply of water;
2 the mighty man and the man of war, the judge and the prophet, and the prudent and the ancient,
3 the captain of fifty and the honorable man, the counselor and the skillful artisan, and the eloquent orator.
4 I will give youths to be their princes, and unweaned children shall rule over them.
5 The people shall be oppressed, every one by another, and every one by his neighbor; the youth shall behave himself proudly against the elder, and the inferior against the honorable.
6 When a man shall take hold of his brother in the house of his father saying, “You have clothing; be our ruler, and let this ruin be under your power,”
7 in that day he shall swear saying, “I will not be a healer. For in my house is neither bread nor clothing; do not make me a ruler of the people.”
8 For Jerusalem is ruined, and Judah is fallen, because their tongue and their deeds are against the Lord, to provoke the eyes of His glory.
9 The expression of their countenance witnesses against them, and they declare their sin as Sodom; they hide it not. Woe to them! For they have brought evil on themselves.
10 Say to the righteous that it shall be well with them, for they shall eat the fruit of their deeds.
11 Woe to the wicked! It shall be ill with him, for the reward of his hands shall be given him.
12 As for My people, children are their oppressors, and women rule over them. O My people, those who lead you cause you to err, and destroy the way of your paths.
13 The Lord stands up to plead and stands to judge the people.
14 The Lord will enter into judgment with the elders and the princes of His people: For you have eaten up the vineyard; the spoil of the poor is in your houses.
15 What do you mean that you beat My people to pieces and grind the faces of the poor? says the Lord God of Hosts.
16 Moreover the Lord says: Because the daughters of Zion are haughty and walk with outstretched necks and wanton eyes, walking and mincing as they go, and making a tinkling with their feet,
17 therefore, the Lord will strike with a scab the crown of the head of the daughters of Zion, and the Lord will make their foreheads bare.
18 In that day the Lord will take away the finery of the ankle ornaments, and the headbands, and the crescent ornaments,
19 the chains, and the bracelets, and the veils,
20 the bonnets, the leg ornaments, the sashes, perfume boxes, amulets,
21 the finger rings, nose rings,
22 festal robes, outer tunics, cloaks, purses,
23 hand mirrors, and undergarments, hoods, and veils.
24 Instead of sweet perfume there shall be a stench; and instead of a belt, a rope; and instead of well-set hair, baldness; and instead of fine clothes, a girding of sackcloth; and branding instead of beauty.
25 Your men shall fall by the sword, and your mighty in the war.
26 Her gates shall lament and mourn, and she, being desolate, shall sit on the ground.
1 And in that day seven women shall take hold of one man, saying, “We will eat our own bread, and wear our own apparel, only let us be called by your name, to take away our reproach.”
2 The Branch of the Lord In that day the branch of the Lord shall be beautiful and glorious, and the fruit of the earth shall be excellent and comely for those of Israel who have escaped.
3 He who is left in Zion and he who remains in Jerusalem shall be called holy, even everyone who is written among the living in Jerusalem.
4 When the Lord has washed away the filth of the daughters of Zion and has purged the blood of Jerusalem from the midst by the spirit of justice and by the spirit of burning,
5 then the Lord will create upon every dwelling place of Mount Zion, and upon her assemblies, a cloud and smoke by day and the shining of a flaming fire by night. For over all the glory shall be a covering.
6 There shall be a tabernacle for a shadow in the daytime from the heat, and for a place of refuge, and for a shelter from storm and from rain.
1 The Song of the Vineyard Now I will sing to my well-beloved a song of my beloved concerning His vineyard: My well-beloved has a vineyard in a very fruitful hill.
2 And He fenced it, and removed its stones, and planted it with the choicest vine. And He built a tower in the midst of it, and also made a winepress in it; and He expected it to bring forth good grapes, but it brought forth wild grapes.
3 Now, O inhabitants of Jerusalem and men of Judah, judge between My vineyard and Me.
4 What more could have been done to My vineyard that I have not done in it? Why, when I expected it to bring forth good grapes, did it bring forth wild grapes?
5 So now I will tell you what I will do to My vineyard: I will take away its hedge, and it shall be consumed; I will break down its wall, and it shall be trodden down.
6 And I will lay it waste: It shall not be pruned or dug, but briers and thorns shall come up. I will also command the clouds that they rain no rain on it.
7 For the vineyard of the Lord of Hosts is the house of Israel, and the men of Judah His pleasant plant. Thus He looked for justice, but saw oppression; for righteousness, but heard a cry.
8 Woes and Judgment Woe to those who join house to house, who add field to field, until there is no more space where they may live alone in the midst of the land!
9 In my ears the Lord of Hosts said: Truly, many houses shall be desolate, even great and beautiful, without inhabitants.
10 For ten acres of vineyard shall yield one bath, and the homer of seed shall yield an ephah.
11 Woe to those who rise up early in the morning that they may pursue strong drink; who continue late in the evening until wine inflames them!
12 The lyre and the harp, the tambourine and pipe, and wine are in their feasts; but they do not regard the deeds of the Lord, or consider the work of His hands.
13 Therefore My people go into captivity because they have no knowledge; and their honorable men are famished, and their multitude dried up with thirst.
14 Therefore Sheol has enlarged itself and opened its mouth without measure; so their glory, and their multitude, and their pomp, and he who rejoices shall descend into it.
15 The common man shall be brought down, and the great man shall be humbled, and the eyes of the lofty shall be humbled.
16 But the Lord of Hosts shall be exalted in judgment, and God who is holy shall be hallowed in righteousness.
17 Then the lambs shall feed in their pasture, and strangers shall eat in the waste places of the wealthy.
18 Woe to those who draw iniquity with cords of falsehood and sin as if with a cart rope,
19 who say, “Let Him make speed and hasten His work, that we may see it; and let the counsel of the Holy One of Israel draw near and come, that we may know it!”
20 Woe to those who call evil good, and good evil; who exchange darkness for light, and light for darkness; who exchange 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 mighty to drink wine, and men of strength to mingle strong drink,
23 who justify the wicked for a reward, and take away the justice of the righteous from him!
24 Therefore, as the fire devours the stubble and the flame consumes the chaff, so their root shall be as rottenness, and their blossom shall go up as dust; because they have cast away the law of the Lord of Hosts and despised the word of the Holy One of Israel.
25 Therefore the anger of the Lord burns against His people, and He has stretched out His hand against them, and has stricken them, and the hills trembled. Their corpses were torn in the midst of the streets. For all this His anger is not turned away, and His hand is still stretched out.
26 He will lift up a banner to the nations from afar and will hiss at them from the ends of the earth; certainly they shall come with speed, swiftly.
27 No one shall be weary or stumble among them; no one shall slumber or sleep; neither shall the girdle of their loins be loosed, nor the strap of their shoes be broken;
28 their arrows are sharp and all their bows bent; their horses’ hooves will seem like flint, and their wheels like a whirlwind.
29 Their roaring shall be like a lion, they shall roar like young lions; they shall roar and lay hold of the prey; and shall carry it away, and no one shall deliver it.
30 In that day they shall roar against them like the roaring of the sea. And if one looks to the land— only darkness and sorrow, and the light is darkened by the clouds.
1 The Commission of Isaiah In the year that King Uzziah died I saw the Lord sitting on a throne, high and lifted up, and His train filled the temple.
2 Above it stood the seraphim. Each one had six wings. With two he covered his face, and with two he covered his feet, and with two he flew.
3 One cried to another and said: “Holy, holy, holy, is the Lord of Hosts; the whole earth is full of His glory.”
4 The posts of the door moved at the voice of him who cried, and the house was filled with smoke.
5 And I said: “Woe is me! For I am undone because I am a man of unclean lips, and I dwell in the midst of a people of unclean lips. For my eyes have seen the King, the Lord of Hosts.”
6 Then one of the seraphim flew to me with a live coal which he had taken with the tongs from off the altar in his hand.
7 And he laid it on my mouth, and said, “This has touched your lips, and your iniquity is taken away, and your sin purged.”
8 Also I heard the voice of the Lord saying, “Whom shall I send, and who will go for us?” Then I said, “Here am I. Send me.”
9 He said, “Go, and tell this people: ‘Keep on hearing, but do not understand; keep on seeing, but do not perceive.’
10 Make the heart of this people dull, and their ears heavy, and shut their eyes; lest they see with their eyes, and hear with their ears, and understand with their heart, and turn and be healed.”
11 Then I said, “Lord, how long?” And He answered: “Until the cities are laid waste without inhabitants, and the houses without man, and the land is utterly desolate,
12 and the Lord has removed men far away, and there is a great forsaking in the midst of the land.
13 But yet in it shall be a tenth, and it shall return, and shall be burned, as a terebinth tree or as an oak, whose stump remains when it is cut down, so the holy seed is its stump.”
1 Isaiah Reassures King Ahaz And it came to pass in the days of Ahaz the son of Jotham, the son of Uzziah, king of Judah, that Rezin the king of Aram, and Pekah the son of Remaliah, king of Israel, went up toward Jerusalem to war against it, but could not prevail against it.
2 It was said to the house of David, “Aram is allied with Ephraim.” Then his heart trembled and the heart of his people, as the trees of the wood tremble with the wind.
3 Then the Lord said to Isaiah: Go out now to meet Ahaz, you, and Shear-Jashub your son, at the end of the conduit of the upper pool in the highway of the fuller’s field,
4 and say to him, Take heed, and be quiet. Do not fear nor be fainthearted because of the two tails of these smoking firebrands, because of the fierce anger of Rezin with Aram and of the son of Remaliah,
5 because Aram, Ephraim, and the son of Remaliah have taken evil counsel against you, saying,
6 Let us go up against Judah, and trouble it, and let us make a breach there for us, and set a king in the midst of it, even the son of Tabeel.
7 Thus says the Lord God: It shall not stand, nor shall it come to pass.
8 For the head of Aram is Damascus, and the head of Damascus is Rezin. Now within sixty-five years Ephraim shall be broken so that it is not a people.
9 The head of Ephraim is Samaria, and the head of Samaria is the son of Remaliah. If you will not believe, surely you shall not be established.
10 The Sign of Immanuel Moreover the Lord spoke again to Ahaz, saying:
11 Ask for a sign from the Lord your God. Make it either as deep as Sheol or as high as heaven.
12 But Ahaz said, I will not ask, nor will I tempt the Lord.
13 Then he said, “Hear now, O house of David. Is it a small thing for you to weary men, but will you weary my God also?
14 Therefore the Lord Himself shall give you a sign: The virgin shall conceive, and bear a son, and shall call his name Immanuel.
15 Curds and honey he shall eat at the time that he knows enough to refuse the evil and choose the good.
16 For before the child shall know to refuse the evil and choose the good, the land that you dread shall be forsaken of both her kings.
17 The Lord shall bring upon you, and upon your people, and upon your father’s house, days that have not come from the day that Ephraim departed from Judah, even the king of Assyria.”
18 In that day the Lord shall whistle for the fly that is in the uttermost part of the rivers of Egypt, and for the bee that is in the land of Assyria.
19 They shall come, and all of them shall rest in the desolate valleys, and in the holes of the rocks, and on all thorns, and on all bushes.
20 In that same day the Lord shall shave with a hired razor, from regions beyond the River, with the king of Assyria, the head, and the hair of the legs, and it shall also remove the beard.
21 In that day a man shall nourish a young cow and two sheep,
22 and because of the abundance of milk that they give, he shall eat curds; for everyone who is left in the land shall eat curds and honey.
23 In that day every place where there were a thousand vines, worth a thousand shekels of silver, shall become briers and thorns.
24 With arrows and with bows shall men come there because all the land shall become briers and thorns.
25 On all hills that used to be cultivated with the hoe, you will not go there for fear of briers and thorns. But it shall be for pasturing oxen and for sheep to tread.
1 The Coming Assyrian Invasion Moreover the Lord said to me, Take for yourself a large book and write in it with a man’s pen: “Swift is the booty, speedy is the prey.”
2 I will take to Myself faithful witnesses for testimony, Uriah the priest and Zechariah the son of Jeberekiah.
3 So I went in to the prophetess, and she conceived and bore a son. Then the Lord said to me, Call his name Maher-Shalal-Hash-Baz.
4 For before the child knows how to cry “My father” and “My mother,” the riches of Damascus and the spoil of Samaria shall be taken away before the king of Assyria.
5 The Lord spoke to me again, saying:
6 Because this people refuses the gently flowing waters of Shiloah and rejoices in Rezin and the son of Remaliah,
7 now therefore the Lord certainly is about to bring upon them the strong and plentiful waters of the River, even the king of Assyria and all his glory; and he shall come up over all his channels and go over all his banks.
8 And he shall pass through Judah, he shall overflow and go over, he shall reach even to the neck, and the stretching out of his wings shall fill the breadth of your land, O Immanuel.
9 Be broken, O you peoples, and be broken in pieces. And give ear, all you from far countries. Gird yourselves, but be broken in pieces; gird yourselves, but be broken in pieces.
10 Take counsel together, but it shall come to nothing; speak the word, but it shall not stand for God is with us.
11 Fear God For the Lord spoke thus to me with a strong hand and instructed me that I should not walk in the way of this people, saying:
12 You should not say, “It is a conspiracy,” concerning all that this people calls a conspiracy, neither fear their threats nor be afraid of them.
13 Sanctify the Lord of Hosts Himself, and let Him be your fear, and let Him be your dread.
14 He shall become a sanctuary, but a stone of stumbling and a rock of offense to both the houses of Israel, and a trap and a snare to the inhabitants of Jerusalem.
15 Many among them shall stumble and fall and be broken and be snared and be taken.
16 Bind up the testimony; seal the law among My disciples.
17 I will wait on the Lord, who hides His face from the house of Jacob, and I will eagerly look for Him.
18 See, I and the children whom the Lord has given me are for signs and for wonders in Israel from the Lord of Hosts who dwells in Mount Zion.
19 When they say to you, “Seek after the mediums and the wizards, who whisper and mutter,” should not a people seek after their God? Should they consult the dead for the living?
20 To the law and to the testimony; if they do not speak according to this word, it is because there is no light in them.
21 They shall pass through the land hard-pressed and hungry; when they are hungry, they shall be furious and curse their king and their God as they look upward.
22 Then they shall look to the earth and see trouble and darkness, gloom of anguish. And they shall be driven away into darkness.
1 The Coming King Nevertheless there shall be no more gloom for her who was in anguish. In the former time He contemptuously treated the land of Zebulun and the land of Naphtali, but in the latter time He shall make it glorious, by the way of the sea, beyond the Jordan, in Galilee of the nations.
2 The people who walked in darkness have seen a great light; those who dwell in the land of the shadow of death, upon them the light has shined.
3 You have multiplied the nation and increased the joy; they rejoice before You according to the joy of harvest and as men rejoice when they divide the spoil.
4 For You have broken the yoke of his burden and the bar of his shoulder, the rod of his oppressor as in the day of Midian’s defeat.
5 For all the sandals of the tramping warriors and all the garments rolled in blood shall be burned as fuel for the fire.
6 For unto us a child is born, unto us a son is given, and the government shall be upon his shoulder. And his name shall be called Wonderful Counselor, Mighty God, Eternal Father, Prince of Peace.
7 Of the increase of his government and peace there shall be no end, upon the throne of David and over his kingdom, to order it and to establish it with justice and with righteousness, from now until forever. The zeal of the Lord of Hosts will perform this.
8 The Message Against Israel The Lord sent a word against Jacob, and it falls upon Israel.
9 All the people shall know, even Ephraim and the inhabitants of Samaria, who say in the pride and stoutness of heart,
10 “The bricks are fallen down, but we will build with hewn stones; the sycamores are cut down, but we will replace them with cedars.”
11 Therefore, the Lord shall set up the adversaries of Rezin against him, and join his enemies together.
12 The Arameans shall be before and the Philistines behind; and they shall devour Israel with open jaws. For all this His anger is not turned away, and His hand is stretched out still.
13 For the people do not turn to Him who struck them, nor do they seek the Lord of Hosts.
14 Therefore the Lord will cut off from Israel head and tail, branch and bulrush, in one day.
15 The elder and honorable man, he is the head; and the prophet that teaches lies, he is the tail.
16 For the leaders of this people cause them to err, and those who are led by them are destroyed.
17 Therefore the Lord shall have no joy in their young men, nor shall He have mercy on their fatherless and widows; for every one of them is a hypocrite and an evildoer, and every mouth speaks folly. For all this His anger is not turned away, and His hand is stretched out still.
18 For wickedness burns as a fire; it shall devour the briers and thorns, and shall ignite in the thickets of the forest, and they shall mount up like rising smoke.
19 Through the wrath of the Lord of Hosts is the land burned up, and the people shall be as fuel for the fire; no man shall spare his brother.
20 They shall snatch on the right hand, but still be hungry; and they shall eat on the left hand, and shall not be satisfied; every man shall eat the flesh of his own arm.
21 Manasseh consumes Ephraim, and Ephraim, Manasseh, and they together shall be against Judah. For all this His anger is not turned away, and His hand is stretched out still.
1 Woe to those who decree unrighteous decrees and who write unjust judgments which they have prescribed
2 to turn aside the needy from justice and to take away the right from the poor of My people, that widows may be their prey, and that they may rob the fatherless!
3 And what will you do in the day of punishment and in the desolation which shall come from afar? To whom will you flee for help, and where will you leave your wealth?
4 Nothing remains but to bow down among the prisoners, and they shall fall among the slain. For all this His anger is not turned away, and His hand is stretched out still.
5 Judgment on Assyria Woe to Assyria, the rod of My anger and the staff in whose hand is My indignation.
6 I will send him against an ungodly nation, and against the people of My wrath I will give him a command, to seize the plunder, to take the prey, and to tread them down like the mire of the streets.
7 However he does not so intend, nor does he plan so in his heart; but his purpose is to destroy and to cut off many nations.
8 For he says, “Are not my princes altogether kings?
9 Is not Kalno as Carchemish? Is not Hamath as Arpad? Is not Samaria as Damascus?
10 As my hand has found the kingdoms of the idols whose graven images were greater than those of Jerusalem and Samaria,
11 shall I not, as I have done to Samaria and her idols, so do to Jerusalem and her idols?”
12 When the Lord has performed all His work on Mount Zion and on Jerusalem, He will say, “I will punish the fruit of the stout heart of the king of Assyria and the glory of his high looks.”
13 For he says: “By the strength of my hand and by my wisdom, I have done it, for I am prudent; and I have removed the bounds of the people, and have robbed their treasures, and I have put down the inhabitants like a valiant man.
14 And my hand has found as a nest the riches of the people, and as one gathers eggs that are left, I have gathered all the earth and there was no one who moved the wing or opened the mouth or peeped.”
15 Shall the axe boast itself against him who hews with it? Or shall the saw magnify itself against him who wields it? That is as if the rod wields itself against those who lift it up, or as if the staff should lift itself up as if it were not wood.
16 Therefore the Lord, God of Hosts, shall send leanness among his stout ones, and under his glory he shall kindle a burning like the burning of a fire.
17 The light of Israel shall be a fire, and his Holy One a flame, and it shall burn and devour his thorns and his briers in one day,
18 and shall consume the glory of his forest, and of his fruitful field, both soul and body; and it shall be as when a sick man faints.
19 The rest of the trees of his forest shall be so few that a child may write them down.
20 The Returning Remnant of Israel In that day the remnant of Israel and those who have escaped of the house of Jacob shall never again depend on him who struck them, but shall depend on the Lord, the Holy One of Israel, in truth.
21 The remnant shall return, even the remnant of Jacob, to the mighty God.
22 For though your people, O Israel, are as the sand of the sea, yet a remnant of them shall return; the destruction is decreed, overflowing with righteousness.
23 For the Lord God of Hosts shall make a complete destruction, as decreed, in the midst of all the land.
24 Therefore, thus says the Lord God of Hosts: O My people who dwell in Zion, do not be afraid of the Assyrian. He shall strike you with a rod and shall lift up his staff against you, after the manner of Egypt.
25 For yet a very little while, and the indignation shall cease, and My anger will be directed to their destruction.
26 The Lord of Hosts shall stir up a scourge for him according to the slaughter of Midian at the rock of Oreb; and as His rod was over the sea, so shall He lift it up after the manner of Egypt.
27 In that day his burden shall be taken away from off your shoulder, and his yoke from off your neck; and the yoke shall be destroyed because of the anointing oil.
28 He has come against Aiath, he has passed through Migron; at Mikmash he has laid up his carriages.
29 They are gone over the pass, they have taken up their lodging at Geba. Ramah is afraid, Gibeah of Saul has fled.
30 Lift up your voice, O daughter of Gallim. Listen, Laishah and poor Anathoth.
31 Madmenah has fled, the inhabitants of Gebim gather themselves to flee.
32 Yet today he shall remain at Nob; he shakes his fist against the mount of the daughter of Zion, the hill of Jerusalem.
33 See, the Lord, the Lord of Hosts, shall lop the bough with terror; and the tall ones of stature shall be hewn down, and the haughty shall be humbled.
34 He shall cut down the thickets of the forest with iron, and Lebanon shall fall by the Mighty One.
1 The Righteous Branch of Jesse And there shall come forth a shoot from the stump of Jesse, and a Branch shall grow out of his roots.
2 The Spirit of the Lord shall rest upon him, the Spirit of wisdom and understanding, the Spirit of counsel and might, the Spirit of knowledge and of the fear of the Lord.
3 He shall delight in the fear of the Lord, and he shall not judge by what his eyes see, nor reprove by what his ears hear;
4 but with righteousness he shall judge the poor, and reprove with fairness for the meek of the earth. He shall strike the earth with the rod of his mouth, and with the breath of his lips he shall slay the wicked.
5 Righteousness shall be the belt of his loins, and faithfulness the belt about his waist.
6 The wolf also shall dwell with the lamb, and the leopard shall lie down with the young goat, and the calf and the young lion and the fatling together; and a little child shall lead them.
7 The cow and the bear shall graze; their young ones shall lie down together; and the lion shall eat straw like the ox.
8 The nursing child shall play by the hole of the asp, and the weaned child shall put his hand in the viper’s den.
9 They shall not hurt or destroy in all My holy mountain, for the earth shall be full of the knowledge of the Lord, as the waters cover the sea.
10 In that day there shall be a Root of Jesse, who shall stand as a banner to the peoples. For him shall the nations seek. And his rest shall be glorious.
11 In that day the Lord shall set His hand again the second time to recover the remnant of His people, who shall be left, from Assyria, from Egypt, from Pathros, from Cush, from Elam, from Shinar, from Hamath, and from the islands of the sea.
12 He shall set up a banner for the nations, and shall assemble the outcasts of Israel, and gather together the dispersed of Judah from the four corners of the earth.
13 The envy also of Ephraim shall depart, and the adversaries of Judah shall be cut off; Ephraim shall not envy Judah, and Judah shall not harass Ephraim.
14 But they shall swoop down on the slopes of the Philistines towards the west; they shall plunder the sons of the east together; they shall lay their hand on Edom and Moab, and the children of Ammon shall obey them.
15 The Lord shall utterly destroy the tongue of the Egyptian sea, and with His mighty wind He shall shake His hand over the River, and shall strike it into seven streams, and make men walk over dry-shod.
16 There shall be a highway for the remnant of His people, who will be left from Assyria, as it was for Israel when he came up from the land of Egypt.
1 Hymns of Praise And in that day you shall say: O Lord, I will praise You; though You were angry with me, Your anger has turned away, and You comforted me.
2 Certainly God is my salvation; I will trust and not be afraid; for the Lord God is my strength and my song; He also has become my salvation.
3 Therefore with joy you shall draw water out of the wells of salvation.
4 In that day you shall say: Praise the Lord, call upon His name, declare His deeds among the peoples, make them remember that His name is exalted.
5 Sing to the Lord, for He has done excellent things; let this be known in all the earth.
6 Cry out and shout for joy, O inhabitant of Zion. For great is the Holy One of Israel in your midst.
1 A Prophecy Against Babylon The burden of Babylon, which Isaiah the son of Amoz saw.
2 Lift up a banner on the high mountain, exalt the voice to them, shake the hand, that they may go into the gates of the nobles.
3 I have commanded My sanctified ones, I have also called My mighty ones for My anger, even those who rejoice in My exaltation.
4 The noise of a multitude in the mountains, like as of a great people! A tumultuous noise of the kingdoms of nations gathered together! The Lord of Hosts musters the army for battle.
5 They come from a far country, from the end of heaven, the Lord and the weapons of His indignation, to destroy the whole land.
6 Wail, for the day of the Lord is at hand! It shall come as destruction from the Almighty.
7 Therefore all hands shall be faint, and every man’s heart shall melt,
8 and they shall be afraid. Pangs and sorrows shall take hold of them; they shall be in pain as a woman who travails; they shall be amazed one at another; their faces shall be as flames.
9 See, the day of the Lord comes, cruel, both with wrath and fierce anger, to lay the land desolate, and He shall destroy its sinners out of it.
10 For the stars of heaven and their constellations shall not give their light; the sun shall be dark when it rises, and the moon shall not cause her light to shine.
11 I will punish the world for its evil, and the wicked for their iniquity; and I will cause the arrogance of the proud to cease, and will lay low the haughtiness of the ruthless.
12 I will make a man more rare than fine gold, and mankind than the golden wedge of Ophir.
13 Therefore, I will shake the heavens, and the earth shall be shaken out of her place at the wrath of the Lord of Hosts and in the day of His fierce anger.
14 It shall be as the chased roe, and as a sheep that no man takes up; every man shall turn to his own people and flee every one into his own land.
15 Every one who is found shall be thrust through, and every one who is joined to them shall fall by the sword.
16 Their children also shall be dashed to pieces before their eyes; their houses shall be devastated and their wives ravished.
17 See, I will stir up the Medes against them, who shall not regard silver; and as for gold, they shall not delight in it.
18 Their bows also shall dash the young men to pieces, and they shall have no pity on the fruit of the womb; their eye shall not spare children.
19 Babylon, the glory of kingdoms, the beauty of the Chaldean’s excellency, shall be as when God overthrew Sodom and Gomorrah.
20 It shall never be inhabited, nor shall it be lived in from generation to generation, nor shall the Arabian pitch a tent there, nor shall the shepherds make their fold there.
21 But wild beasts of the desert shall lie down there, and their houses shall be full of owls, ostriches also shall dwell there, and shaggy goats shall dance there.
22 The wild beasts of the islands shall cry in their desolate houses and jackals in their pleasant palaces. And her time is near to come, and her days shall not be prolonged.
1 The Restoration of Judah For the Lord will have mercy on Jacob, and will yet choose Israel, and set them in their own land. Then the strangers shall be joined with them, and they shall cleave to the house of Jacob.
2 The people shall take them and bring them to their place, and the house of Israel shall possess them in the land of the Lord for servants and handmaids; and they shall take them captive, whose captives they were, and they shall rule over their oppressors.
3 The Fall of Babylon’s King In the day the Lord gives you rest from your sorrow, and from your fear, and from the hard bondage in which you were made to serve,
4 you shall take up this proverb against the king of Babylon, and say: How has the oppressor ceased! The golden city ceased!
5 The Lord has broken the staff of the wicked, and the scepter of the rulers;
6 he who struck the people in wrath with unceasing strokes, he who ruled the nations in anger, is persecuted, and no one hinders.
7 The whole earth is at rest and is quiet; they break forth into singing.
8 Indeed, the fir trees rejoice at you, and the cedars of Lebanon, saying, “Since you are laid down, no tree cutter has come up against us.”
9 Hell from beneath is moved for you to meet you at your coming; it stirs up the dead for you, even all the chief ones of the earth; it has raised up from their thrones all the kings of the nations.
10 They all shall speak and say to you: “Have you also become as weak as we have? Have you become like us?”
11 Your pomp is brought down to Hell, and the noise of your harps; maggots are spread under you, and the worms cover you.
12 How are you fallen from heaven, O Lucifer, son of the morning! How you are cut down to the ground, you who weaken the nations!
13 For you have said in your heart, “I will ascend into heaven, I will exalt my throne above the stars of God; I will sit also on the mount of the congregation, in the recesses of the north;
14 I will ascend above the heights of the clouds, I will be like the Most High.”
15 Yet you shall be brought down to Hell, to the sides of the pit.
16 Those who see you shall stare at you and ponder over you: “Is this the man who made the earth to tremble and shook kingdoms,
17 who made the world as a wilderness and destroyed its cities, who did not open the house of his prisoners?”
18 All the kings of the nations, even all of them, lie in glory, each one in his own tomb;
19 but you are cast out of your grave like an abominable branch and clothed with those who are slain, thrust through with a sword, who go down to the stones of the pit as a corpse trodden underfoot.
20 You shall not be joined with them in burial because you have destroyed your land and slain your people. The seed of evildoers shall never be renowned.
21 Prepare a place of slaughter for his children for the iniquity of their fathers; they must not rise nor possess the land, nor fill the face of the world with cities.
22 For I will rise up against them, says the Lord of Hosts, and cut off from Babylon the name, and remnant, and son, and nephew, says the Lord.
23 I will also make it a possession for the hedgehog and pools of water, and I will sweep it with the broom of destruction, says the Lord of Hosts.
24 An Oracle Concerning Assyria The Lord of Hosts has sworn, saying: Surely as I have thought, so shall it come to pass, and as I have purposed, so shall it stand:
25 that I will break the Assyrian in My land, and on My mountains tread him under foot. Then shall his yoke depart from off them and his burden depart from off their shoulders.
26 This is the purpose that is purposed on the whole earth, and this is the hand that is stretched out on all the nations.
27 For the Lord of Hosts has purposed, and who shall disannul it? And His hand is stretched out, and who shall turn it back?
28 An Oracle Concerning Philistia In the year that King Ahaz died was this oracle:
29 Rejoice not, O Philistia, all of you, because the rod that struck you is broken; for out of the serpent’s root shall come forth a viper, and his fruit shall be a fiery flying serpent.
30 The firstborn of the poor shall feed, and the needy shall lie down in safety: and I will kill your root with famine, and he shall slay your remnant.
31 Wail, O gate. Cry, O city. Melt away, O Philistia, all of you; for smoke shall come from the north, and there is no straggler in his ranks.
32 What shall one then answer the messengers of the nation? That the Lord has founded Zion, and the poor of His people shall trust in it.
1 A Prophecy Against Moab The oracle of Moab. Surely in the night Ar of Moab is laid waste and brought to silence, surely in the night Kir of Moab is laid waste and brought to silence,
2 he has gone up to the temple and to Dibon, the high places, to weep. Moab shall wail over Nebo and over Medeba; on all their heads shall be baldness, and every beard cut off.
3 In their streets they shall clothe themselves with sackcloth; on the tops of their houses and in their streets, everyone shall wail, weeping abundantly.
4 Heshbon shall cry, and Elealeh; their voice shall be heard even to Jahaz; therefore the armed soldiers of Moab shall cry out; his life shall be grievous to him.
5 My heart shall cry out for Moab; his fugitives shall flee to Zoar, like a three-year-old heifer. For by the Ascent of Luhith they shall go up with weeping; for in the way of Horonaim they shall raise up a cry of destruction,
6 for the waters of Nimrim shall be desolate; surely the grass is withered away; the grass fails, there is no green thing.
7 Therefore the abundance they have gained, and that which they have laid up, they shall carry away to the Brook of the Willows.
8 For the cry has gone all around the borders of Moab; its wailing to Eglaim, and its wailing to Beer Elim.
9 For the waters of Dimon shall be full of blood; for I will bring more woes on Dimon, lions on the fugitives of Moab, and on the remnant of the land.
1 Send the lamb to the ruler of the land from Sela by way of the wilderness, to the mount of the daughter of Zion.
2 For it shall be that as a wandering bird cast out of the nest, so the daughters of Moab shall be at the fords of Arnon.
3 “Take counsel, execute justice, make your shadow as the night at the height of noon. Hide the outcasts, do not betray the fugitive.
4 Let my outcasts dwell with you, Moab; be a hiding place to them from the face of the destroyer.” For the extortioner has come to an end; the destroyer ceases; the oppressors are consumed out of the land.
5 In mercy the throne shall be established; and one who judges and seeks justice and is diligent in righteousness shall sit on it in truth in the tabernacle of David, judging.
6 We have heard of the pride of Moab; he is very proud, even of his haughtiness and his pride and his wrath; but his lies shall not be so.
7 Therefore Moab shall wail for Moab; everyone shall wail. For the loss of raisin cakes of Kir Hareseth you shall mourn; surely they are destroyed.
8 For the fields of Heshbon languish, and the vine of Sibmah; the lords of the nations have broken down its choice plants; they have come as far as Jazer and wandered through the wilderness. Her branches are stretched out; they are passed over the sea.
9 Therefore I will weep bitterly for Jazer, the vine of Sibmah; I will water you with my tears, O Heshbon and Elealeh. For the shouting for your summer fruits and for your harvest has fallen away.
10 Gladness and joy are taken away out of the plentiful field, and in the vineyards there shall be no singing, nor shall there be shouting; the treaders shall tread out no wine in their presses. I have made their vintage shouting to cease.
11 Therefore my heart shall sound like a harp for Moab, and my inward parts for Kir Hareseth.
12 When it is seen that Moab is weary on the high place, he shall come to his sanctuary to pray; but he shall not prevail.
13 This is the word that the Lord has spoken earlier concerning Moab.
14 But now the Lord has spoken, saying, Within three years, as the years of a hireling, the glory of Moab shall be brought into contempt with all his great population, and his remnant shall be very small and feeble.
1 An Oracle Concerning Damascus The oracle of Damascus. See, Damascus will cease from being a city; it shall be a ruinous heap.
2 The cities of Aroer are forsaken; they shall be for flocks, which shall lie down, and no one shall make them afraid.
3 The fortress also shall cease from Ephraim, and the kingdom from Damascus, and the remnant of Aram; they shall be as the glory of the sons of Israel, says the Lord of Hosts.
4 In that day the glory of Jacob shall decrease, and the fatness of his flesh shall grow lean.
5 It shall be as when the harvestman gathers the corn and reaps the ears with his arm, and it shall be as he who gathers ears in the Valley of Rephaim.
6 Yet gleaning grapes shall be left in it, as the shaking of an olive tree, two or three berries in the top of the uppermost bough, four or five in its outmost fruitful branches, says the Lord God of Israel.
7 On that day a man shall look to his Maker, and his eyes shall have respect for the Holy One of Israel.
8 He shall not look to the altars, the work of his hands, nor shall he respect what his fingers have made, either the groves or the images.
9 In that day his strong cities shall be as a forsaken bough and an uppermost branch, which they left because of the sons of Israel; and there shall be a desolation.
10 Because you have forgotten the God of your salvation and have not been mindful of the rock of your strength, therefore you plant pleasant plants and set them with vine slips of a strange god;
11 in the day that you plant it, you carefully fence it in, and in the morning you make your seed to flourish; but the harvest shall be a heap of ruins in the day of grief and desperate pain.
12 Woe to the multitude of many people who make a noise like the noise of the seas, and the rushing of many peoples who make a rumble like the rumbling of mighty waters!
13 The nations rumble like the rumbling of many waters; but God shall rebuke them, and they shall flee far off, and shall be chased as the chaff of the mountains before the wind, and like rolling dust before the whirlwind.
14 At evening time, sudden terror! And before the morning, they are no more. This is the portion of those who plunder us, and the lot of those who rob us.
1 An Oracle Concerning Ethiopia Woe to the land vibrating with wings, which is beyond the rivers of Ethiopia,
2 which sends ambassadors by the sea, even in vessels of reeds on the waters, saying, “Go, swift messengers, to a nation tall and smooth, to a people feared far and wide, a nation strong and oppressive, whose land the rivers have divided.”
3 All you inhabitants of the world, and dwellers on the earth: When he lifts up a banner on the mountains, you will see it; and when he blows a trumpet, you will hear it.
4 For so the Lord said to me: I will look from My dwelling place quietly, like dazzling heat in the sunshine, like a cloud of dew in the heat of harvest.
5 For before the harvest, when the bud is perfect and the sour grape is ripening in the flower, then He shall both cut off the sprigs with pruning hooks and take away and cut down the branches.
6 They shall be left together for the fowl of the mountains and for the beasts of the earth; and the fowl shall spend the summer feeding on them, and all the beasts of the earth shall spend the winter on them.
7 In that time a present shall be brought to the Lord of Hosts from a people tall and smooth, and from a people feared far and wide, a nation strong and oppressive, whose land the rivers have divided, to the place of the name of the Lord of Hosts, even Mount Zion.
1 An Oracle Concerning Egypt The oracle of Egypt. See, the Lord is riding on a swift cloud and shall come into Egypt; and the idols of Egypt shall tremble at His presence, and the heart of Egypt shall melt in its midst.
2 I will set the Egyptians against the Egyptians, and they shall fight every one against his brother, and every one against his neighbor, city against city, and kingdom against kingdom.
3 The spirit of Egypt shall be discouraged in their midst, and I will destroy their counsel; then they shall seek for the idols and for the charmers and for the mediums and the sorcerers.
4 The Egyptians I will give over into the hand of a cruel lord, and a fierce king shall rule over them, says the Lord, the Lord of Hosts.
5 The waters from the sea shall dry up, and the river shall be parched and dry.
6 The canals shall emit a stench; the streams of Egypt shall diminish and dry up; the reeds and rushes shall wither.
7 The papyrus reeds by the brooks, by the mouth of the brooks, and everything sown by the brooks, shall wither, be driven away, and be no more.
8 The fishermen also shall mourn, and all those who cast a line into the brooks shall lament, and those who spread nets on the waters shall languish.
9 Moreover those who work with fine flax and those who weave white cloth shall be humiliated;
10 and the pillars of Egypt shall be crushed. All the hired workers shall be grieved in soul.
11 Surely the princes of Zoan are fools; the counsel of the wise counselors of Pharaoh has become stupid. How can you say to Pharaoh, “I am a son of the wise, a son of ancient kings?”
12 Where are they? Where are your wise men? Let them tell you now, and let them understand what the Lord of Hosts has purposed against Egypt.
13 The princes of Zoan have become fools; the princes of Memphis are deceived; they have also seduced Egypt, even those who are the cornerstone of her tribes.
14 The Lord has mingled a perverse spirit in her; so they have caused Egypt to err in her every work, as a drunken man staggers in his vomit.
15 Nor shall there be any work for Egypt, which its head or tail, its branch or bulrush, may do.
16 In that day Egypt shall become like women. And it shall be afraid and be in dread because of the shaking of the hand of the Lord of Hosts which He is about to shake over it.
17 The land of Judah shall become a terror to Egypt. Everyone to whom it is mentioned shall be in dread of it, because of the counsel of the Lord of Hosts which He has determined against it.
18 In that day five cities in the land of Egypt shall speak the language of Canaan and swear to the Lord of Hosts. One shall be called the City of Destruction.
19 In that day there shall be an altar to the Lord in the midst of the land of Egypt, and a pillar to the Lord at its border.
20 It shall be for a sign and for a witness to the Lord of Hosts in the land of Egypt. For they shall cry to the Lord because of the oppressors, and He shall send them a Savior and a Champion. And He shall deliver them.
21 The Lord shall be known to Egypt, and the Egyptians shall know the Lord in that day, and shall worship with sacrifice and offering, they shall make a vow to the Lord and perform it.
22 The Lord shall strike Egypt. He shall strike and heal it. Then they shall return to the Lord, and He shall be entreated by them and shall heal them.
23 In that day there shall be a highway out of Egypt to Assyria, and the Assyrian shall come into Egypt, and the Egyptian into Assyria, and the Egyptians shall worship with the Assyrians.
24 In that day Israel shall be the third group with Egypt and Assyria, even a blessing in the midst of the earth,
25 whom the Lord of Hosts has blessed, saying, “Blessed is Egypt My people, and Assyria the work of My hands, and Israel My inheritance.”
1 A Prophecy Against Egypt and Ethiopia 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 the same time the Lord spoke by Isaiah the son of Amoz saying, “Go and loosen the sackcloth from your waist and take off your shoes from your feet.” And he did so, walking naked and barefoot.
3 The Lord said, “Even as My servant Isaiah has walked naked and barefoot three years for a sign and wonder against Egypt and Ethiopia,
4 so the king of Assyria shall lead away the Egyptians as prisoners and the Ethiopians as captives, young and old, naked and barefoot, even with their buttocks uncovered, to the shame of Egypt.
5 Then they shall be dismayed and ashamed of Ethiopia their hope and Egypt their boast.
6 So the inhabitants of this coastland shall say in that day, ‘Certainly such is our hope, where we flee for help to be delivered from the king of Assyria! And how shall we escape?’ ”
1 A Prophecy Against Babylon The oracle of the desert of the sea. As whirlwinds in the Negev pass through, so it comes from the desert, from a terrible land.
2 A grievous vision is declared to me; the treacherous one still deals treacherously, and the destroyer still destroys. Go up, O Elam. Lay siege, O Media. All her sighing I have made to cease.
3 Therefore, my loins are filled with pain; pangs have taken hold of me as the pangs of a woman who travails. I am so perplexed at the hearing of it; I am so dismayed at the seeing of it.
4 My heart panted, fearfulness overwhelmed me; the night for which I longed has turned into trembling for me.
5 Prepare the table, watch in the watchtower, eat and drink. Arise, you princes, and oil the shields.
6 For thus the Lord has said to me: “Go, station a watchman; let him declare what he sees.
7 When he sees chariots with horsemen in pairs, a chariot of donkeys, and a chariot of camels, then let him pay close attention, very close attention.”
8 Then the watchman called: “O Lord, I stand continually on the watchtower in the daytime, and I am stationed at my guard post every night.
9 Look, here comes a chariot of men, horsemen in pairs.” And he answered and said, “Fallen, fallen is Babylon. And all the graven images of her gods lie shattered on the ground.”
10 O my threshed people and my afflicted of the threshing floor! What I have heard from the Lord of Hosts, the God of Israel, I have declared to you.
11 A Prophecy Against Edom The oracle of Dumah. He calls to me out of Seir, “Watchman, how far gone is the night? Watchman, how far gone is the night?”
12 The watchman says, “The morning comes and also the night. If you would inquire, inquire; return again.”
13 A Prophecy Against Arabia The oracle about Arabia. In the forest of Arabia you shall lodge, O traveling companies of Dedanites.
14 Bring water for the thirsty, O inhabitants of the land of Tema; meet the fugitive with bread.
15 For they fled from the swords, from the drawn sword, and from the bent bow, and from the grievousness of war.
16 For thus the Lord has said to me: Within a year, according to the years of a hireling, all the glory of Kedar shall fail.
17 And the remainder of the number of archers, the mighty men of the children of Kedar, shall be diminished, for the Lord God of Israel has spoken it.
1 An Oracle Concerning Jerusalem The oracle of the Valley of Vision. What ails you now, that you all have gone up to the housetops,
2 you who were full of noise, a tumultuous city, a joyous city? Your slain are not slain with the sword, nor did they die in battle.
3 All your rulers have fled together; they are captured by the archers. All of you who were found were taken captive together, although they had fled from afar.
4 Therefore, I say, “Look away from me, I will weep bitterly; do not try to comfort me because of the destruction of the daughter of my people.”
5 For it is a day of trouble and of treading down and of perplexity by the Lord God of Hosts in the Valley of Vision, a breaking down of the walls and a crying to the mountains.
6 Elam took up the quiver with chariots of men and horsemen, and Kir uncovered the shield.
7 Your choicest valleys shall be full of chariots, and the horsemen shall set themselves in array at the gate.
8 And He shall remove the protection of Judah. You shall depend in that day on the weapons of the house of the forest;
9 you have seen also that the breaches of the City of David are many; and you gathered together the waters of the lower pool.
10 You have numbered the houses of Jerusalem, and the houses you have broken down to fortify the wall.
11 You also made a reservoir between the two walls for the water of the old pool. But you have not looked to its Maker, nor did you respect Him who fashioned it long ago.
12 In that day the Lord God of Hosts called you to weeping and mourning, and to tear your hair and wear sackcloth.
13 Yet, there is joy and gladness, slaying of oxen and killing of sheep, eating of meat and drinking wine: “Let us eat and drink, for tomorrow we may die.”
14 It was revealed in my hearing by the Lord of Hosts: Surely this iniquity shall not be forgiven you until you die, says the Lord God of Hosts.
15 Thus says the Lord God of Hosts: Come, go to this treasurer, even to Shebna, who is over the royal household, and say:
16 What right do you have here? And whom do you have here that you have dug out for yourself a tomb here, as he who hews out for himself a tomb on high, and who cuts a habitation for himself in a rock?
17 Indeed, the Lord is about to hurl you headlong, O man; He is about to seize you firmly.
18 He will surely violently turn and toss you like a ball into a large country; there you shall die, and there the chariots of your glory shall be the shame of your lord’s house.
19 I will drive you from your office and pull you down from your station.
20 In that day I will call My servant Eliakim the son of Hilkiah.
21 And I will clothe him with your robe and tie him securely with your sash. And I will entrust him with your authority, and he shall be a father to the inhabitants of Jerusalem and to the house of Judah.
22 The key of the house of David I will lay on his shoulder. Then he shall open, and no one shall shut. And he shall shut, and no one shall open.
23 I will fasten him as a nail in a firm place, and he shall become a glorious throne to his father’s house.
24 They shall hang on him all the glory of his father’s house, the offspring and the issue, all vessels of small quantity, from the bowls to all the jars.
25 In that day, says the Lord of Hosts, the nail that is fastened in the firm place shall be removed, and be cut down and fall. And the load that was on it shall be cut off, for the Lord has spoken it.
1 An Oracle Concerning Tyre The oracle of Tyre. Wail, O ships of Tarshish, for Tyre is laid waste so that there is no house or harbor; from the land of Cyprus it is reported to them.
2 Be still, you inhabitants of the coastland, you merchants of Sidon; your messengers passed over the sea,
3 and were on many waters; the grain of the Nile, the harvest of the River was her revenue; and she was the market of nations.
4 Be ashamed, O Sidon; for the sea has spoken, even the stronghold of the sea, saying, “I have not travailed nor brought forth children; neither have I brought up young men nor raised virgins.”
5 When the report reaches Egypt, they shall be sorely pained at the report of Tyre.
6 Pass over to Tarshish; wail, O inhabitants of the coastland.
7 Is this your joyous city, whose origin is from ancient days, whose feet used to carry her to sojourn in distant locations?
8 Who has planned this against Tyre, the crowning city, whose merchants are princes, whose traffickers are the honorable of the earth?
9 The Lord of Hosts has purposed it, to stain the pride of all glory and to bring into contempt all the honorable of the earth.
10 Pass through your land as the Nile, O daughter of Tarshish; there is no more restraint.
11 He stretched out His hand over the sea, He shook the kingdoms; the Lord has given a command against the merchant city, to destroy its strongholds.
12 He said: You shall rejoice no more, O oppressed virgin daughter of Sidon. Arise, pass over to Cyprus; there also you shall have no rest.
13 Look at the land of the Chaldeans; this was a people who was not; Assyria founded it for those who dwell in the wilderness. They set up their siege towers, they stripped its palaces, and brought it to ruin.
14 Wail, O ships of Tarshish, for your stronghold is laid waste.
15 In that day Tyre shall be forgotten for seventy years, according to the days of one king. After the end of seventy years Tyre shall sing as a harlot:
16 Take your harp, go about the city, O forgotten harlot; make sweet melody, sing many songs, that you may be remembered.
17 At the end of seventy years, the Lord will punish Tyre. Then she shall turn to her harlot’s wages and shall commit fornication with all the kingdoms on the face of the earth.
18 Her merchandise and her harlot’s wages shall be set apart to the Lord. It shall not be treasured nor stored up, for her merchandise shall be for those who dwell before the Lord, to eat sufficiently, and for choice clothing.
1 Judgment on the Earth Now the Lord makes the earth empty, and makes it waste, and turns it upside down, and scatters its inhabitants abroad.
2 It shall be: as with the people, so with the priest; as with the servant, so with his master; as with the maid, so with her mistress; as with the buyer, so with the seller; as with the lender, so with the borrower; as with the creditor, so with the debtor.
3 The land shall be utterly emptied, and utterly despoiled, for the Lord has spoken this word.
4 The earth mourns and fades away, the world languishes and fades away, the haughty people of the earth languish.
5 The earth also is defiled by its inhabitants because they have transgressed the laws, violated the ordinances, broken the everlasting covenant.
6 Therefore, the curse devours the earth, and those who dwell in it are held guilty. Therefore, the inhabitants of the earth are burned, and few men are left.
7 The new wine fails, the vine languishes, all the merry-hearted sigh.
8 The joy of tambourines ceases, the noise of those who rejoice ends, the joy of the harp ceases.
9 They shall not drink wine with song; strong drink shall be bitter to those who drink it.
10 The city of confusion is broken down; every house is shut up so that no one may come in.
11 There is an outcry for wine in the streets, all joy is turned to gloom, the joyfulness of the earth is gone.
12 Desolation is left in the city, and the gate is battered to destruction.
13 For thus it shall be in the midst of the earth among the peoples, as the shaking of an olive tree, and as the gleaning of grapes when the vintage is done.
14 They lift up their voices; they sing for the majesty of the Lord; they cry aloud from the west.
15 Therefore glorify the Lord in the east, even the name of the Lord God of Israel in the coastlands of the sea.
16 From the uttermost part of the earth we hear songs, that is, “Glory to the Righteous One.” But I say, Woe to me! Woe to me! Alas for me! The treacherous deal treacherously; indeed, the treacherous deal very treacherously.
17 Terror and the pit and the snare are upon you, O inhabitant of the earth.
18 He who flees from the report of disaster shall fall into the pit, and he who comes up out of the midst of the pit shall be taken in the snare. For the windows from on high are open, and the foundations of the earth shake.
19 The earth is utterly broken down, the earth is split through, the earth is shaken violently.
20 The earth reels to and fro like a drunkard, and it totters like a shack, and its transgression is heavy upon it, and it shall fall, never to rise again.
21 In that day the Lord shall punish the host of heaven on high and the kings of the earth on the earth.
22 They shall be gathered together, as prisoners are gathered in the dungeon, and shall be shut up in the prison, and after many days they shall be punished.
23 Then the moon shall be humiliated and the sun ashamed, when the Lord of Hosts reigns in Mount Zion and in Jerusalem, and His glory shall be before His elders.
1 Praise to the Lord O Lord, You are my God. I will exalt You, I will praise Your name, for You have done wonderful things; Your plans formed of old are faithfulness and truth.
2 For You have made a city into a heap, a fortified city into a ruin; a palace of strangers is a city no longer; it shall never be built.
3 Therefore a strong people shall glorify You; cities of ruthless nations shall fear You.
4 For You have been a defense to the poor, a defense to the needy in his distress, a refuge from the storm, a shadow from the heat; for the breath of the ruthless ones is as a storm against the wall.
5 You bring down the noise of strangers, as heat in drought; as the heat by the shadow of a cloud, the song of the ruthless ones shall be brought low.
6 In this mountain the Lord of Hosts shall prepare for all people a lavish feast, a feast of aged wines, choice pieces full of marrow, and refined, aged wines.
7 He will destroy in this mountain the covering which is over all peoples, even the veil that is spread over all nations.
8 He will swallow up death for all time, and the Lord God will wipe away tears from all faces; and the reproach of His people He shall take away from all the earth, for the Lord has spoken it.
9 It shall be said in that day: Look, this is our God for whom we have waited that He might save us. This is the Lord for whom we have waited; we will be glad and rejoice in His salvation.
10 For in this mountain the hand of the Lord shall rest, and Moab shall be trodden down in his place as straw is trodden down in the water for the manure pile.
11 He shall spread out his hands in the midst of it, as a swimmer spreads out his hands to swim, yet the Lord shall bring down his pride together with the trickery of his hands.
12 The unassailable fortresses of your walls He shall bring down, lay low, and bring to the ground, even to the dust.
1 A Song of Victory In that day this song shall be sung in the land of Judah: We have a strong city; He appoints walls and bulwarks for security.
2 Open the gates, that the righteous nation may enter, the one who remains faithful.
3 You will keep him in perfect peace, whose mind is stayed on You, because he trusts in You.
4 Trust in the Lord forever, for in God the Lord we have an everlasting rock.
5 For He brings down those who dwell on high, the lofty city; He lays it low; He lays it low, even to the ground; He brings it even to the dust.
6 The foot shall tread it down, even the feet of the poor and the steps of the needy.
7 The way of the righteous is smooth; O Upright One, make the path of the righteous level.
8 In the way of Your judgments, O Lord, we have waited for You eagerly; the desire of our souls is Your name, even Your memory.
9 With my soul I have desired You in the night; my spirit within me seeks You diligently; for when Your judgments are in the earth, the inhabitants of the world learn righteousness.
10 Though favor is shown to the wicked, yet he will not learn righteousness; in the land of uprightness he deals unjustly and does not perceive the majesty of the Lord.
11 Lord, Your hand is lifted up, but they do not see it. They see Your zeal for the people and are put to shame; the fire of Your enemies shall devour them.
12 Lord, You will ordain peace for us, for You also have done all our works for us.
13 O Lord our God, other lords besides You have had dominion over us, but through You alone we confess Your name.
14 The dead shall not live; the departed spirits shall not rise. Therefore, You have punished and destroyed them and made all remembrance of them to perish.
15 You have increased the nation, O Lord, You have increased the nation; You are glorified; You have extended all the borders of the land.
16 Lord, in trouble they have sought You; they poured out a prayer when Your chastening was on them.
17 Like a woman with child, who is in pain and cries out in her pangs when she draws near the time of her delivery, so have we been in Your sight, O Lord.
18 We have been with child, we have been in pain, we have, as it were, brought forth wind; we have not accomplished any deliverance in the earth, nor were the inhabitants of the world born.
19 Your dead shall live, their corpses shall arise. Awake and sing, you who dwell in dust, for your dew is as the dew of the dawn, and the earth shall give birth to the departed spirits.
20 Come, my people, enter your chambers, and shut your doors behind you; hide for a little while until the indignation is over.
21 For the Lord comes out of His place to punish the inhabitants of the earth for their iniquity; the earth also shall disclose her bloodshed and shall cover her slain no more.
1 The Deliverance of Israel In that day the Lord with His fierce and great and strong sword shall punish Leviathan the fleeing serpent, even Leviathan the twisted serpent; and He shall slay the dragon that is in the sea.
2 In that day: Sing of it! A vineyard of red wine.
3 I, the Lord, am its keeper; I water it every moment; lest anyone damage it, I protect it night and day.
4 I have no fury. Should someone give Me briers and thorns in battle, then I would step on them, I would burn them fully.
5 Or let him rely on My strength; let him make peace with Me; let him make peace with Me.
6 In the days to come Jacob shall take root; Israel shall blossom and bud and shall fill the whole world with fruit.
7 Has He struck them, as He struck those who struck them? Or like the slaughter of His slain, have they been slain?
8 You fought with them by banishing them, by driving them away. He has expelled them on the day of the east wind with His fierce wind.
9 Through this, therefore, the iniquity of Jacob shall be forgiven, and this will be the full price of the removal of his sin: when he makes all the stones of the altar as chalkstones that are pulverized, when the groves and incense altars shall not stand.
10 For the fortified city shall be desolate, a homestead forlorn and forsaken like a wilderness; there the calf shall graze, and there it shall lie down and eat its branches.
11 When its boughs are withered, they are broken off; the women come and make a fire with them, for they are not a people of understanding; therefore, their Maker will not have mercy on them, and their Creator will show them no grace.
12 In that day the Lord shall thresh from the channel of the River to the stream of Egypt, and you shall be gathered one by one, O sons of Israel.
13 And in that day the great trumpet shall be blown, and those who were ready to perish in the land of Assyria and the outcasts in the land of Egypt shall worship the Lord in the holy mount at Jerusalem.
1 Woe to the Leaders of Ephraim and Judah Woe to the proud crown of the drunkards of Ephraim, whose glorious beauty is a fading flower which is at the head of the fertile valley of those who are overcome with wine!
2 See, the Lord has a mighty and strong one, as a tempest of hail and a destroying storm, as a flood of mighty overflowing waters, He has cast it down to the earth with His hand.
3 The proud crown of the drunkards of Ephraim is trodden under foot;
4 and the fading flower of its glorious beauty, which is at the head of the fertile valley, shall be like a first-ripe fig before the summer, which when one sees, while it is yet in his hand, he eats it up.
5 In that day the Lord of Hosts shall become a crown of glory and a diadem of beauty to the remnant of His people,
6 a spirit of justice for him who sits in judgment, and strength to those who turn away the battle at the gate.
7 But they also have erred through wine and stagger from strong drink; the priest and the prophet have erred through strong drink, they are confused by wine, they stagger from strong drink; they err while having visions, they stumble when rendering judgment.
8 For all the tables are full of vomit and filthiness so that there is no clean place.
9 “To whom shall He teach knowledge, and to whom shall He interpret the message? Those just weaned from the milk and drawn from the breasts?
10 For He says, ‘Precept upon precept, precept upon precept, line upon line, line upon line, here a little, there a little.’ ”
11 For with stammering lips and foreign tongue He will speak to this people,
12 He who said to them, “This is the rest. Give rest to the weary,” and, “This is repose,” yet they would not listen.
13 So the word of the Lord will be to them, “Precept upon precept, precept upon precept, line upon line, line upon line, here a little, there a little,” that they might go and fall backward, be broken, snared, and taken captive.
14 Therefore, hear the word of the Lord, O scoffers, who rule this people who are in Jerusalem,
15 because you have said, “We have made a covenant with death, and with hell we are in agreement. The overflowing scourge shall not come to us when it passes through, for we have made lies our refuge and under falsehood we have hid ourselves.”
16 A Cornerstone in Zion Therefore, thus says the Lord God: See, I lay in Zion a stone, a tested stone, a precious cornerstone, firmly placed; he who believes shall not act hastily.
17 I shall make justice the measuring line and righteousness the plummet; then the hail shall sweep away the refuge of lies and the waters shall overflow the hiding place.
18 Your covenant with death shall be annulled, and your agreement with hell shall not stand; when the overflowing scourge passes through, then you shall be trodden down by it.
19 As often as it passes through, it shall seize you; for morning by morning it shall pass through, anytime by day or night. It shall be terror only to understand the report.
20 The bed is too short to stretch out, and the covering is too small to wrap oneself in it.
21 For the Lord shall rise up as at Mount Perazim, He shall be wrathful as in the Valley of Gibeon to do His work, His unusual work, and bring to pass His task, His exceptional task.
22 Now therefore, do not continue as mockers, lest your bonds be made stronger; for I have heard from the Lord God of Hosts of determined destruction upon the whole earth.
23 Give ear and hear my voice; listen and hear my speech.
24 Does the plowman plow all day to sow? Does he continually turn and break the clods of his ground?
25 Does he not level its surface and sow dill and scatter the cumin and plant wheat in rows, barley in its place and the rye within its area?
26 For his God instructs and teaches him appropriately.
27 For the dill is not threshed with a threshing instrument, nor is a cartwheel driven over the cumin; but the dill is beaten out with a staff, and the cumin with a rod.
28 Grain for bread is crushed; so he does not continue to thresh it forever, nor break it with the wheel of his cart, nor crush it with his horsemen.
29 This also comes from the Lord of Hosts, who is wonderful in counsel and excellent in wisdom.
1 Woe to the City of David Woe to Ariel, to Ariel, the city where David lived! Add year to year, observe your feasts on schedule.
2 Yet I will distress Ariel, and she shall be a city of lamenting and sorrow, and she shall be as an Ariel to me.
3 I will encamp against you all around, and will lay siege against you with a mound, and I will raise forts against you.
4 You shall be brought down, and shall speak from the ground, and from the dust where you are prostrate your speech shall come; your voice shall also be as that of a ghost from the ground; and your speech shall whisper from the dust.
5 Moreover the multitude of your enemies shall become like fine dust, and the multitude of the ruthless ones as chaff which blows away; and it shall happen in an instant, suddenly.
6 You shall be punished from the Lord of Hosts with thunder and earthquake and loud noise, with storm and tempest, and the flame of a devouring fire.
7 The multitude of all the nations who fight against Ariel, even all who fight against her and her stronghold, and who distress her, shall be as a dream of a night vision.
8 It shall even be as when a hungry man dreams, and he eats; but when he awakens, his hunger is not satisfied; or as when a thirsty man dreams, and he is drinking; but when he awakens, he is faint, and his thirst is not quenched; so shall the multitude of all the nations be who fight against Mount Zion.
9 Be delayed and wait, blind yourselves and be blind. They are drunk, but not with wine. They stagger, but not with strong drink.
10 For the Lord has poured out on you the spirit of deep sleep and has closed your eyes, the prophets; and He has covered your heads, the seers.
11 The whole vision will be to you as the words of a book that is sealed, which when they deliver it to one who is learned, saying, “Read this, please,” he shall say, “I cannot, for it is sealed.”
12 Then the book shall be delivered to him who is not learned, saying, “Read this, please.” And he shall say, “I cannot read.”
13 Therefore, the Lord said: Because this people draw near with their mouths and honor Me with their lips, but have removed their hearts far from Me, and their fear toward Me is tradition by the precept of men,
14 therefore I will once again do a marvelous work among this people, even a marvelous work and a wonder; for the wisdom of their wise men shall perish, and the understanding of their prudent men shall be hidden.
15 Woe to those who deeply hide their counsel from the Lord and whose works are done in the dark, and they say, “Who sees us?” and “Who knows us?”
16 Surely you turn things upside down! Shall the potter be esteemed as the potter’s clay? Shall what is made say to its maker, “He did not make me”? Or shall the thing formed say to him who formed it, “He has no understanding”?
17 Is it not yet a very little while before Lebanon shall be turned into a fruitful field, and the fruitful field shall be counted as a forest?
18 And on that day the deaf shall hear the words of a book, and the eyes of the blind shall see out of obscurity and darkness.
19 The meek also shall increase their joy in the Lord, and the poor among men shall rejoice in the Holy One of Israel.
20 For the ruthless shall come to nothing, and the scorner will be consumed, and all who are intent on doing iniquity shall be cut off—
21 those who cause a man to be indicted by a word, and lay a snare for him who reproves in the gate, and turn aside the righteous with meaningless arguments.
22 Therefore thus says the Lord, who redeemed Abraham, concerning the house of Jacob: Jacob shall not now be ashamed, nor shall his face now turn pale;
23 but when he sees his children, the work of My hands, in his midst, they shall sanctify My name and sanctify the Holy One of Jacob, and fear the God of Israel.
24 Those also who err in spirit shall know the truth, and those who murmured shall accept instruction.
1 The Warning of Judah Woe to the rebellious children, says the Lord, who take counsel, but not from Me, and make an alliance, but not of My Spirit, in order to add sin to sin;
2 they walk down to Egypt and have not asked from My mouth, to strengthen themselves in the safety of Pharaoh and to trust in the shadow of Egypt!
3 Therefore the safety of Pharaoh shall be your shame and the trust in the shadow of Egypt your humiliation.
4 For their princes were at Zoan, and their ambassadors came to Hanes.
5 They all will be ashamed of a people who cannot profit them, who are not a help or profit, but a shame and also a reproach.
6 The burden of the beasts of the Negev. Through a land of trouble and anguish, from which comes the lioness and lion, the viper and fiery flying serpent, they will carry their riches on the shoulders of young donkeys, and their treasures on the humps of camels, to a people who shall not profit them.
7 For the Egyptians shall help in vain and to no purpose. Therefore, I have called her, “Rahab who has been exterminated.”
8 Now go, write it before them on a tablet, and note it in a book, that it may serve in the time to come as a witness forever;
9 for this is a rebellious people, lying children, children who refuse to listen to the law of the Lord;
10 they say to the seers, “You must not see visions,” and to the prophets, “You must not prophesy to us right things; speak to us pleasant things, prophesy illusions.
11 Get out of the way, turn aside from the path, let us hear no more about the Holy One of Israel.”
12 Therefore, thus says the Holy One of Israel: Because you despise this word and trust in oppression and perverseness, and rely on them,
13 therefore this iniquity shall be to you as a breach ready to fall, swelling up in a high wall, whose collapse comes suddenly, in an instant.
14 He shall break it as the breaking of the potter’s vessel that is broken in pieces; He shall not spare so that there shall not be found in the breaking of it a shard to take fire from the hearth or with which to take water out of a cistern.
15 For thus says the Lord God, the Holy One of Israel: In returning and rest you shall be saved; in quietness and in confidence shall be your strength. Yet you were not willing,
16 and you said, “No, for we will flee on horses”; therefore you shall flee. “And we will ride on swift horses”; therefore those who pursue you shall be swift.
17 One thousand shall flee at the threat of one man; at the threat of five you shall flee until you are left as a flag on the top of a mountain and as a banner on a hill.
18 God’s Promise to Zion Therefore, the Lord longs to be gracious to you, and therefore, He waits on high to have mercy on you; for the Lord is a God of justice; how blessed are all who long for Him.
19 O people in Zion, inhabitants in Jerusalem, you shall weep no more. He will be very gracious to you at the sound of your cry. When He hears it, He will answer you.
20 Though the Lord has given you the bread of adversity and the water of affliction, yet He, your Teacher, will no longer hide Himself, but your eyes shall see your Teacher.
21 Your ears shall hear a word behind you, saying, “This is the way, walk in it,” whenever you turn to the right hand and when you turn to the left.
22 You shall defile also your graven images overlaid with silver, and your molded images ornamented with gold. You shall scatter them as an impure thing, and say to them, “Be gone!”
23 Then He shall give you rain for the seed which you shall sow in the ground and bread of the increase of the earth. And it shall be rich and plentiful. On that day your cattle shall feed in large pastures.
24 The oxen likewise and the young donkeys that work the ground shall eat cured fodder, which has been winnowed with the shovel and fork.
25 There shall be on every high mountain and on every high hill rivers and streams of waters in the day of the great slaughter, when the towers fall.
26 Moreover the light of the moon shall be as the light of the sun, and the light of the sun shall be sevenfold, as the light of seven days, in the day that the Lord binds up the breach of His people and heals the wound from His blow.
27 Judgment on Assyria See, the name of the Lord comes from afar, burning with His anger, and its burden is heavy; His lips are full of indignation, and His tongue as a devouring fire.
28 And His breath is as an overflowing stream which reaches to the middle of the neck, to sift the nations with the sieve of vanity; and there shall be a bridle in the jaws of the people, causing them to err.
29 You shall have songs, as in the night when a festival is kept, and gladness of heart, as when one goes with a flute to come into the mountain of the Lord, to the Mighty One of Israel.
30 The Lord shall cause His glorious voice to be heard, and shall show the descending of His arm with the indignation of His anger, and with the flame of a devouring fire, with scattering, and cloudburst, and hailstones.
31 For through the voice of the Lord the Assyrian shall be beaten down when He strikes with a rod.
32 And every blow of the rod of punishment which the Lord shall lay on him shall be with tambourines and harps; and in battles, brandishing weapons, He will fight them.
33 For Topheth has been long prepared, indeed, for the king it has been prepared. He has made it deep and large, a pile of fire with much wood; the breath of the Lord, like a stream of brimstone, kindles it.
1 Woe to Those Who Trust Egypt Woe to those who go down to Egypt for help, and 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 the Lord!
2 Yet He also is wise and will bring disaster and will not call back His words, but will arise against the house of the evildoers and against the help of those who work iniquity.
3 Now the Egyptians are men and not God; and their horses flesh and not spirit. When the Lord shall stretch out His hand, both he who helps shall fall and he who is helped shall fall down, and they all shall fail together.
4 For thus the Lord has spoken to me: Like the lion, and the young lion, roars over his prey, against which a multitude of shepherds is called out against him, he will not be afraid of their voice, nor disturbed at their noise, so shall the Lord of Hosts come down to fight for Mount Zion, and for its hill.
5 Like flying birds, so the Lord of Hosts will defend Jerusalem. He will defend and deliver it; He will pass over and preserve it.
6 Turn to Him whom you have deeply betrayed, O sons of Israel.
7 For in that day every man shall cast away his idols of silver and his idols of gold which your own hands have made for you as a sin.
8 “Then the Assyrian shall fall by the sword that is not of man, and the sword not of man shall devour him. So he shall not escape the sword, and his young men shall become forced laborers.
9 He shall cross over to his stronghold for fear, and his princes shall be afraid of the banner,” says the Lord, whose fire is in Zion, and whose furnace is in Jerusalem.
1 The Kingdom of Righteousness See, a king shall reign in righteousness, and princes shall rule justly.
2 A man shall be as a hiding place from the wind, and a shelter from the tempest, as rivers of water in a dry place, as the shadow of a great rock in a weary land.
3 The eyes of those who see shall not be blinded, and the ears of those who hear shall listen.
4 The heart also of the hasty shall understand knowledge, and the tongue of the stammerers shall be ready to speak plainly.
5 The vile person shall no more be called noble, nor the rogue be spoken of as generous;
6 for the vile person will speak nonsense, and his heart will work iniquity: to practice hypocrisy and to utter error against the Lord, to keep the hungry unsatisfied and to withhold drink from the thirsty.
7 The instruments also of the rogue are evil; he devises wicked schemes to destroy the poor with lying words, even when the needy speaks right.
8 But the noble devises noble things, and by noble things he stands.
9 The Women of Jerusalem Rise up, you women who are at ease, hear my voice; you careless daughters, give ear to my speech.
10 Within a year and a few days you shall be troubled, you careless daughters; for the vintage is ended and the fruit gathering shall not come.
11 Tremble, you women who are at ease; be troubled, you careless daughters; strip, undress, and put sackcloth on your waist.
12 Beat your breasts for the pleasant fields, for the fruitful vine,
13 for the land of my people in which thorns and briers shall come up, yes, for all the joyful houses and for the jubilant city;
14 because the palaces have been forsaken, the populated city is forsaken. The forts and towers shall be caves forever, a joy of wild donkeys, a pasture of flocks,
15 until the Spirit is poured on us from on high, and the wilderness is a fruitful field, and the fruitful field is counted as a forest.
16 The Peace of God’s Reign Then justice shall dwell in the wilderness, and righteousness will abide in the fruitful field.
17 The work of righteousness shall be peace, and the effect of righteousness, quietness and assurance forever.
18 My people shall dwell in a peaceable habitation and in secure dwellings and in quiet resting places;
19 and it shall hail when the forest comes down, and the city shall be utterly laid low.
20 How blessed are you who sow beside all waters, who send out freely the ox and the donkey.
1 A Prophecy of Deliverance Woe to you, O destroyer, though you were not destroyed, and he who is treacherous, though others did not deal treacherously with you! When you cease destroying, you shall be destroyed; and when you finish dealing treacherously, others shall deal treacherously with you.
2 O Lord, be gracious to us; we have waited for You. Be our strength every morning, our salvation also in the time of trouble.
3 At the noise of the tumult, the people flee; at the lifting up of Yourself, the nations scatter;
4 your spoil is gathered like the caterpillar gathers; as locusts rush about, men rush about on it.
5 The Lord is exalted, for He dwells on high; He has filled Zion with justice and righteousness.
6 He shall be the stability of your times, a wealth of salvation, wisdom, and knowledge; the fear of the Lord is His treasure.
7 Listen! Their valiant ones cry in the streets; the ambassadors of peace weep bitterly.
8 The highways lie waste, the wayfaring man ceases. He has broken the covenant, he has despised the cities, he has no regard for man.
9 The earth mourns and languishes; Lebanon is ashamed and hewn down. Sharon is like a wilderness, and Bashan and Carmel shake off their fruits.
10 Impending Judgment on Israel “Now I will rise,” says the Lord, “now I will be exalted, now I will be lifted up.
11 You have conceived chaff, you shall bring forth stubble; My breath, as fire, shall devour you.
12 The people shall be burned to lime, as thorns cut up are burned in the fire.”
13 Hear what I have done, you who are far away; and you who are near, acknowledge My might.
14 The sinners in Zion are afraid; fearfulness has seized the hypocrites: “Who among us can live with the continual fire? Who among us can live with everlasting burning?”
15 He who walks righteously and speaks uprightly, he who rejects unjust gain and shakes his hands from holding bribes, who stops his ears from hearing of bloodshed, and shuts his eyes from seeing evil:
16 He shall dwell on high; his place of defense shall be the impregnable rock; his bread shall be given him, his waters shall be sure.
17 The Land of the Majestic King Your eyes shall see the King in His beauty; they shall see the land that is very far away.
18 Your heart shall meditate on terror: “Where is he who counts? Where is he who weighs? Where is he who counts the towers?”
19 You shall not see a fierce people any more, a people of unintelligible speech which no one comprehends, of a stammering tongue which no one understands.
20 Look upon Zion, the city of our appointed feasts; your eyes shall see Jerusalem, a quiet habitation, a tabernacle that shall not be taken down; not one of its stakes shall ever be removed, nor shall any of its cords be broken.
21 But there the glorious Lord will be to us a place of broad rivers and streams on which no boat with oars shall go and on which no gallant ship shall pass,
22 for the Lord is our judge, the Lord is our lawgiver, the Lord is our king; He will save us.
23 Your tackle hangs loose; it cannot hold the base of its mast securely, nor spread out the sail. Then the prey of an abundant spoil shall be divided; the lame shall take the prey.
24 The inhabitant shall not say, “I am sick”; the people who dwell there shall be forgiven their iniquity.
1 Judgment on the Nations Come near, O nations, to hear; and listen, O peoples! Let the earth hear, and all that is in it, the world, and all that comes from it.
2 For the indignation of the Lord is upon all nations and His fury upon all their armies; He has utterly destroyed them, He has delivered them to the slaughter.
3 Their slain also shall be cast out, and their corpses shall emit their stench, and the mountains shall be drenched with their blood.
4 All the host of heaven shall be dissolved, and the heavens shall be rolled together as a book; and all their host shall fall down as the leaf falls from the vine, and as a falling fig from the fig tree.
5 For My sword is filled in heaven; see, it shall come down for judgment on Edom, and on the people whom I have devoted to destruction.
6 The sword of the Lord is filled with blood, it is made full with fatness, and with the blood of lambs and goats, with the fat of the kidneys of rams. For the Lord has a sacrifice in Bozrah, and a great slaughter in the land of Edom.
7 The wild oxen shall also fall with them, and the young bulls with the mighty bulls; so their land shall be soaked with blood, and their dust become greasy with fat.
8 For it is the day of the vengeance of the Lord, and the year of recompense for the cause of Zion.
9 Its streams shall be turned into pitch, and its dust into brimstone, and its land shall become burning pitch.
10 It shall not be quenched night or day; its smoke shall go up forever. From generation to generation it shall lie waste; no one shall pass through it forever and ever.
11 But the cormorant and the hedgehog shall possess it, the owl also and the raven shall dwell in it. And He shall stretch out on it the line of desolation, and the plumb line of emptiness.
12 They shall call its nobles to the kingdom, but no one shall be there, and all her princes shall be nothing.
13 Thorns shall come up in her palaces, nettles and brambles in the fortresses; and it shall be a habitation of jackals and a home for owls.
14 The wild beasts of the desert shall also meet with the wolves, and the wild goat shall cry to its kind; the screech owl also shall rest there and find for herself a place of rest.
15 There shall the tree snake make its nest and lay eggs, and it shall hatch and gather them under its protection; yes, there shall the vultures also be gathered, every one with its kind.
16 Seek from the book of the Lord, and read. Not one of these shall be missing, not one shall lack its mate. For His mouth has commanded, and His Spirit has gathered them.
17 He has cast the lot for them, and His hand has divided it to them by line. They shall possess it forever, from generation to generation they shall dwell in it.
1 The Future Glory of Zion The wilderness and the solitary place shall be glad, and the desert shall rejoice and blossom as the rose;
2 it shall blossom abundantly and rejoice even with joy and singing. The glory of Lebanon shall be given to it, the excellency of Carmel and Sharon. They shall see the glory of the Lord and the excellency of our God.
3 Strengthen the weak hands, and support the feeble knees.
4 Say to those who are of a fearful heart, “Be strong, fear not. Your God will come with vengeance, even God with a recompense; He will come and save you.”
5 Then the eyes of the blind shall be opened, and the ears of the deaf shall be unstopped.
6 Then the lame man shall leap as a deer, and the tongue of the mute sing for joy. For in the wilderness waters shall break out and streams in the desert.
7 The parched ground shall become a pool, and the thirsty land springs of water; in the habitation of jackals where each lay, there shall be grass with reeds and rushes.
8 A highway shall be there, a roadway, and it shall be called the Highway of Holiness. The unclean shall not pass on it, but it shall be for the wayfaring men, and fools shall not wander on it.
9 No lion shall be there, nor any ravenous beast shall go up on it; these shall not be found there, but the redeemed shall walk there,
10 and the ransomed of the Lord shall return and come to Zion with songs and everlasting joy upon their heads. They shall obtain joy and gladness, and sorrow and sighing shall flee away.
1 Sennacherib Invades Judah Now it came to pass in the fourteenth year of King Hezekiah that Sennacherib king of Assyria came up against all the fortified cities of Judah and took them.
2 The king of Assyria sent the Rabshakeh from Lachish to Jerusalem to King Hezekiah with a great army. And he stood by the conduit of the upper pool in the highway of the fuller’s field.
3 Then Eliakim came to him, the son of Hilkiah, who was over the household, and Shebna the scribe, and Joah, the son of Asaph, the recorder.
4 The Rabshakeh said to them: “Say now to Hezekiah: Thus says the great king, the king of Assyria: What confidence is this that you have?
5 I say, Your counsel and strength for war are only empty words. Now on whom do you rely that you rebel against me?
6 You rely on the staff of this broken reed, on Egypt, on which if a man leans, it will go into his hand and pierce it. So is Pharaoh king of Egypt to all who rely on him.
7 But if you say to me, ‘We trust in the Lord our God,’ is it not He whose high places and whose altars Hezekiah has taken away, and said to Judah and to Jerusalem, ‘You shall worship before this altar’?
8 “Now therefore, come make a bargain with my master the king of Assyria, and I will give you two thousand horses, if you are able on your part to set riders on them.
9 How then will you turn away one captain of the least of my master’s servants and rely on Egypt for chariots and for horsemen?
10 Have I now come up without the approval of the Lord against this land to destroy it? The Lord said to me, Go up against this land, and destroy it.”
11 Then Eliakim and Shebna and Joah said to the Rabshakeh, “Speak now to your servants in Aramaic, for we understand it. And do not speak to us in Hebrew in the ears of the people who are on the wall.”
12 But the Rabshakeh said, “Has my master sent me only to your master and to you to speak these words? Has he not sent me 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 Rabshakeh stood and cried out with a loud voice in Hebrew, and said, “Hear the words of the great king, the king of Assyria.
14 Thus says the king, ‘Do not let Hezekiah deceive you, for he shall not be able to deliver you;
15 nor let Hezekiah make you trust in the Lord, saying, The Lord will surely deliver us. This city shall not be delivered 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 eat every one of his vine and every one of his fig tree, and drink every one the waters of his own cistern,
17 until I come and take you away to a land like your own land, a land of corn and new wine, a land of bread and vineyards.
18 “ ‘Beware lest Hezekiah persuade you, saying, The Lord will deliver us. Has any one of the gods of the nations delivered his 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 when have they delivered Samaria out of my hand?
20 Who are they among all the gods of these lands that have delivered their land out of my hand, that the Lord should deliver Jerusalem out of my hand?’ ”
21 But they held their peace, and answered him not a word, for the king’s commandment was, “Do 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 Rabshakeh.
1 Isaiah Foretells Deliverance And it came to pass when King Hezekiah heard it that he tore his clothes, and covered himself with sackcloth, and went into the house of the Lord.
2 He sent Eliakim, who was over the household, and Shebna the scribe, and the elders of the priests, covered with sackcloth, to Isaiah the prophet, the son of Amoz.
3 They said to him, “Thus says Hezekiah: This day is a day of trouble, and of rebuke, and of blasphemy. For children have come to birth, and there is no strength to bring them forth.
4 Perhaps the Lord your God will hear the words of the Rabshakeh, whom the king of Assyria his master has sent to reproach the living God, and will reprove the words which the Lord your God has heard. Therefore, lift up a prayer for the remnant that is left.”
5 So the servants of King Hezekiah came to Isaiah.
6 Isaiah said to them, “Thus you shall say to your master, ‘Thus says the Lord: Do not be afraid of the words that you have heard, with which the servants of the king of Assyria have blasphemed Me.
7 Listen! I will put a spirit in him so that he shall hear a rumor, and return to his own land. And I will cause him to fall by the sword in his own land.’ ”
8 So the Rabshakeh returned and found the king of Assyria warring against Libnah. For he had heard that the king had left Lachish.
9 He heard them say concerning Tirhakah king of Ethiopia, “He has come out to make war with you.” And when he heard it, he sent messengers to Hezekiah, saying,
10 “Thus you shall speak to Hezekiah king of Judah, saying: Do not let your God in whom you trust deceive you, saying, ‘Jerusalem shall not be given into the hand of the king of Assyria.’
11 Certainly you have heard what the kings of Assyria have done to all lands by utterly destroying them. So shall you be delivered?
12 Have the gods of the nations delivered them which my fathers have destroyed, even Gozan and Harran and Rezeph and the sons of Eden who were in Tel Assar?
13 Where is the king of Hamath, and the king of Arpad, and the kings of the city of Sepharvaim, Hena, and Ivvah?”
14 The Prayer of Hezekiah And Hezekiah received the letter from the hand of the messengers and read it. Then Hezekiah went up to the house of the Lord, and spread it before the Lord.
15 Hezekiah prayed to the Lord, saying,
16 “O Lord of Hosts, God of Israel, who dwells above the cherubim, You are the God, even You alone, of all the kingdoms of the earth. You have made heaven and earth.
17 Incline Your ear, O Lord, and hear. Open Your eyes, O Lord, and see, and hear all the words of Sennacherib, which he has sent to reproach the living God.
18 “Truly, O Lord, the kings of Assyria have laid waste all the nations and their countries,
19 and have cast their gods into the fire. For they were not gods, but the work of men’s hands, wood and stone. Therefore, they have destroyed them.
20 Now, O Lord our God, save us from his hand that all the kingdoms of the earth may know that You alone, Lord, are God.”
21 The Fall of Sennacherib Then Isaiah the son of Amoz sent to Hezekiah, saying, “Thus says the Lord God of Israel: Because you have prayed to Me about Sennacherib king of Assyria,
22 this is the word which the Lord has spoken against him: The virgin daughter of Zion has despised you and mocked you; the daughter of Jerusalem has shaken her head at you.
23 Whom have you reproached and blasphemed? And against whom have you raised your voice, and lifted up your eyes haughtily? Against the Holy One of Israel!
24 Through your servants you have reproached the Lord and have said, ‘With my many chariots I have come up to the heights of the mountains, to the remotest parts of Lebanon; and I cut down its tall cedars, and its choice fir trees; and I will go to its highest peak, its thickest forest.
25 I have dug wells and drunk water, and with the sole of my feet I have dried up all the rivers of Egypt.’
26 “Have you not heard? Long ago I have done it, from ancient times I have formed it. Now I have brought it to pass, that you should turn fortified cities into ruinous heaps.
27 Therefore, their inhabitants were short of strength; they were dismayed and humiliated; they were as the grass of the field and as the green herb, as the grass on the housetops is scorched before it is grown up.
28 “But I know your abode, and your going out and your coming in, and your rage against Me.
29 Because your rage against Me and your tumult have come up into My ears, therefore I will put My hook in your nose, and My bridle in your lips, and I will turn you back on the way by which you came.
30 “This shall be a sign to you: You shall eat this year what grows of itself, and the second year what springs from the same, and in the third year sow and reap and plant vineyards, and eat their fruit.
31 The surviving remnant of the house of Judah shall again take root downward and bear fruit upward.
32 For from Jerusalem shall go out a remnant, and those who escape out of Mount Zion. The zeal of the Lord of Hosts shall do this.
33 “Therefore, thus says the Lord concerning the king of Assyria: He shall not come into this city, nor shoot an arrow there, nor come before it with shields, nor build a siege ramp against it.
34 By the way that he came, by the same shall he return, and shall not come into this city, says the Lord.
35 For I will defend this city to save it for My own sake and for the sake of My servant David.”
36 Then the angel of the Lord went out and struck one hundred eighty-five thousand in the camp of the Assyrians. When others woke up early in the morning, these were all dead bodies.
37 So Sennacherib king of Assyria departed and returned home and lived in Nineveh.
38 It came to pass as he was worshipping in the house of Nisrok, his god, that Adrammelek and Sharezer, his sons, struck him with the sword, and they escaped into the land of Ararat. And Esarhaddon his son reigned in his stead.
1 Hezekiah’s Illness In those days Hezekiah was mortally ill. And Isaiah the prophet, the son of Amoz, came to him and said to him, “Thus says the Lord: Set your house in order, for you shall die, and not live.”
2 Then Hezekiah turned his face toward the wall, and prayed to the Lord,
3 and said, “Remember now, O Lord, I beseech You, how I have walked before You in truth and with a perfect heart, and have done what is good in Your sight.” And Hezekiah wept bitterly.
4 Then the word of the Lord came to Isaiah, saying:
5 “Go, and say to Hezekiah, Thus says the Lord, the God of David your father: I have heard your prayer, I have seen your tears. Surely I will add to your days fifteen years.
6 I will deliver you and this city out of the hand of the king of Assyria, and I will defend this city.
7 “This shall be a sign to you from the Lord, that the Lord will do this thing that He has spoken:
8 I will cause the shadow on the sundial, which has gone down with the sun on the sundial of Ahaz, to go back ten steps.” So the sun’s shadow returned ten steps on the sundial by which it had gone down.
9 This is the writing of Hezekiah king of Judah after his illness and recovery:
10 I said: In the middle of my days, I shall go to the gates of Sheol; I am to be deprived of the rest of my years.
11 I said, I shall not see the Lord, even the Lord, in the land of the living; I shall see man no more with the inhabitants of the world.
12 My dwelling is pulled up and removed from me as a shepherd’s tent; I rolled up my life like a weaver. He cuts me off from the loom; from day even to night You make an end of me.
13 I composed my soul until morning, like a lion, so He breaks all my bones; from day even to night You make an end of me.
14 Like a crane or a swallow, so I twitter; I mourn as a dove; my eyes look wistfully upward. O Lord, I am oppressed; undertake for me.
15 What shall I say? For He has spoken to me, and He Himself has done it. I shall wander about all my years in the bitterness of my soul.
16 O Lord, by these things men live, and in all these things is the life of my spirit; O restore me to health and make me live!
17 Surely it was for my own peace that I had great bitterness; but You have kept my soul from the pit of corruption, for You have cast all my sins behind Your back.
18 For Sheol cannot thank You, death cannot praise You; those who go down into the pit cannot hope for Your faithfulness.
19 It is the living who give thanks to You, as I do this day; a father explains to his sons about Your faithfulness.
20 The Lord shall surely save me; therefore, we will sing my songs to the stringed instruments all the days of our lives in the house of the Lord.
21 For Isaiah had said, “Let them take a cake of figs and lay it on the boil, and he shall recover.”
22 Hezekiah also had said, “What is the sign that I shall go up to the house of the Lord?”
1 Envoys From Babylon At that time Marduk-Baladan the son of Baladan, king of Babylon, sent letters and a present to Hezekiah, for he had heard that he had been sick and had recovered.
2 Hezekiah was glad and showed them the house of his precious things: the silver, and the gold, and the spices, and the precious ointment, and his whole armory, and all that was found in his treasuries. There was nothing in his house, nor 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 did they come to you?” And Hezekiah said, “They have come to me from a far country, from Babylon.”
4 Then he said, “What have they seen in your house?” And Hezekiah answered, “All that is in my house they have seen. There is nothing among my treasures that I have not shown them.”
5 Then Isaiah said to Hezekiah, “Hear the word of the Lord of Hosts.
6 The days are surely coming when all that is in your house, and that which your fathers have laid up in store until this day, shall be carried to Babylon. Nothing shall be left, says the Lord.
7 And some of your sons who descend from you, whom you shall father, shall be taken away. And they shall become officials in the palace of the king of Babylon.”
8 Then Hezekiah said to Isaiah, “The word of the Lord which you have spoken is good.” For he said, “For there shall be peace and truth in my days.”
1 Comfort for God’s People Comfort, O comfort, My people, says your God.
2 Speak kindly to Jerusalem, and cry to her that her warfare has ended, that her iniquity has been pardoned, that she has received of the hand of the Lord double for all her sins.
3 The voice of him who cries out, “Prepare the way of the Lord in the wilderness, make straight in the desert a highway for our God.
4 Let every valley be lifted up, and every mountain and hill be made low, and let the rough ground become a plain, and the rough places a plain;
5 then the glory of the Lord shall be revealed, and all flesh shall see it together, for the mouth of the Lord has spoken it.”
6 The voice said, “Cry out.” And he said, “What shall I cry out?” All flesh is grass, and all its loveliness is as the flower of the field.
7 The grass withers, the flower fades because the Spirit of the Lord blows upon it; surely the people are grass.
8 The grass withers, the flower fades, but the word of our God shall stand forever.
9 O Zion, bearer of good news, get yourself up onto a high mountain; O Jerusalem, bearer of good news, lift up your voice with strength, lift it up, do not be afraid; say to the cities of Judah, “Here is your God!”
10 See, the Lord God will come with a strong hand, and His arm shall rule for Him; see, His reward is with Him, and His recompense before Him.
11 He shall feed His flock like a shepherd; He shall gather the lambs with His arm, and carry them in His bosom, and shall gently lead those that are with young.
12 Who has measured the waters in the hollow of His hand, and meted out heaven with the span, and calculated the dust of the earth by the measure, and weighed the mountains in scales, and the hills in a balance?
13 Who has directed the Spirit of the Lord, or as His counselor has taught Him?
14 With whom did He take counsel, and who instructed Him, and taught Him in the path of justice, and taught Him knowledge, and showed to Him the way of understanding?
15 Certainly the nations are as a drop in a bucket, and are counted as the small dust of the balance; He takes up the coastlands as a very little thing.
16 Lebanon is not sufficient to burn, nor the beasts sufficient as a burnt offering.
17 All nations before Him are as nothing, and they are counted by Him as less than nothing and meaningless.
18 To whom then will you liken God? Or what likeness will you compare to Him?
19 The workman melts a graven image, and the goldsmith spreads it over with gold, and casts silver chains.
20 He who is too impoverished for such an offering chooses a tree that will not rot; he seeks for himself a skillful workman to prepare a graven image that shall not totter.
21 Have you not known? 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 upon the circle of the earth, and the inhabitants are as grasshoppers, who stretches out the heavens as a curtain, and spreads them out as a tent to dwell in.
23 He brings the princes to nothing; He makes the judges of the earth meaningless.
24 Scarcely shall they be planted; scarcely shall they be sown; scarcely shall their tree take root in the earth, when He will also blow on them, and they will wither, and the whirlwind will take them away as stubble.
25 To whom then will you liken Me, that I should be equal to him? 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 them all by name, by 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 assert, O Israel, “My way is hidden from the Lord, and my justice escapes the notice of my God”?
28 Have you not known? Have you not heard, that the everlasting God, the Lord, the Creator of the ends of the earth, does not faint, nor is He weary? His understanding is inscrutable.
29 He gives power to the faint, and to those who have no might He increases strength.
30 Even the youths shall faint and be weary, and the young men shall utterly fall,
31 but those who wait upon the Lord shall renew their strength; they shall mount up with wings as eagles, they shall run and not be weary, and they shall walk and not faint.
1 The Lord Helps Israel Keep silent before Me, O islands, and let the peoples renew their strength. Let them come near, then let them speak; let us come near together to judgment.
2 Who raised up the righteous man from the east, called him to His foot, gave the nations before him, and made him rule over kings? He makes them as the dust with his sword, and as driven stubble with his bow.
3 He pursued them, and passed safely, by paths his feet have not traveled.
4 Who has performed and done this, calling the generations from the beginning? I, the Lord, am the first, and with the last. I am He.
5 The coastlands saw it and feared, the ends of the earth were afraid; they drew near and came.
6 Every one helped his neighbor, and every one said to his brother, “Be of good courage.”
7 So the carpenter encouraged the goldsmith, and he who smooths metal with the hammer encourages him who strikes the anvil, saying, “It is ready for the soldering”; and he fastened it with nails so that it should not totter.
8 But you, Israel, are 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 called from its remotest parts, and said to you, “You are My servant; I have chosen you and have not rejected you.”
10 Do not fear, for I am with you; do not be dismayed, for I am your God. I will strengthen you, I will help you, yes, I will uphold you with My righteous right hand.
11 Certainly all those who were incensed against you shall be ashamed and humiliated; they shall be as nothing, and those who strive with you shall perish.
12 You shall seek them and shall not find them, even those who contended with you. Those who war against you shall be as nothing, as a thing of nonexistence.
13 For I, the Lord your God, will hold your right hand, saying to you, “Do not fear; I will help you.”
14 Do not fear, you worm Jacob, and you men of Israel. I will help you, says the Lord and your Redeemer, the Holy One of Israel.
15 See, I will make you a new sharp threshing instrument with double edges; you shall thresh the mountains, and beat them small, and shall make the hills as chaff.
16 You shall fan them, and the wind shall carry them away, and the whirlwind shall scatter them; and you shall rejoice in the Lord, and shall glory in the Holy One of Israel.
17 When the poor and needy seek water, and there is none, and their tongues fail for thirst, I, the Lord, will hear them, I, the God of Israel, will not forsake them.
18 I will open rivers in high places, and fountains in the midst of the valleys; I will make the wilderness a pool of water, and the dry land springs of water.
19 I will plant in the wilderness the cedar, the acacia, the myrtle, and the olive tree; I will set in the desert the fir tree, and the pine, and the box tree together,
20 that they may see, and know, and consider, and understand together, that the hand of the Lord has done this, and the Holy One of Israel has created it.
21 The Futility of Idols Present your case, says the Lord. Bring forth your arguments, says the King of Jacob.
22 Let them bring them forth, and show us what shall happen; let them show the former things, what they were, that we may consider them and know their outcome, or declare to us things to come.
23 Show the things that are to come hereafter, that we may know that you are gods; do good, or do evil, that we may be dismayed and see it together.
24 Indeed you are nothing, and your work amounts to nothing; he who chooses you is an abomination.
25 I have raised up one from the north, and he shall come; from the rising of the sun he shall call on My name; and he shall come on princes as on mortar, and as the potter treads clay.
26 Who has declared from the beginning, that we may know? And from former times, that we may say, “He is right!”? There is no one who shows, no one who declares, no one who hears your words.
27 Formerly I said to Zion, “Look, here they are,” and to Jerusalem, “I will give one who brings good news.”
28 But when I look, there is no man, even among them, and there is no counselor who, when I ask of them, could answer a word.
29 See, they all are vanity; their works are nothing; their molded images are wind and emptiness.
1 The Servant of the Lord Here is My servant, whom I uphold, My chosen one, in whom My soul delights. I have put My Spirit upon him; he shall bring forth justice to the nations.
2 He shall not cry out, nor lift up his voice, nor cause his voice to be heard in the street.
3 A bruised reed he shall not break, and the smoking flax he shall not quench; he shall bring forth justice faithfully.
4 He shall not be disheartened nor be discouraged, until he has set justice in the earth; and the coastlands shall wait for his law.
5 Thus says God the Lord, who created the heavens and stretched them out, who spread forth the earth and that which comes out of it, who gives breath to the people on it, and spirit to those who walk in it:
6 I the Lord have called You in righteousness, and will hold Your hand, and will keep You and appoint You for a covenant of the people, for a light of the nations,
7 to open the blind eyes, to bring out the prisoners from the prison, and those who sit in darkness out of the prison house.
8 I am the Lord, that is My name; and My glory I will not give to another, nor My praise to graven images.
9 See, the former things have come to pass, and new things I declare; before they spring forth I tell you of them.
10 A Song of Praise Sing to the Lord a new song, and His praise from the ends of the earth, you who go down to the sea, and all that is in it, the coastlands, and the inhabitants.
11 Let the wilderness and the cities lift up their voices, the villages that Kedar inhabits. Let the inhabitants of Sela sing, let them shout from the top of the mountains.
12 Let them give glory to the Lord, and declare His praise in the islands.
13 The Lord shall go forth like a mighty man; He shall stir up zeal like a man of war. He shall cry out, yes, raise a war cry; He shall prevail against His enemies.
14 The Lord’s Help Is Promised I have for a long time held My peace; I have been still and refrained Myself. Now I will cry like a travailing woman; I will destroy and devour at once.
15 I will lay waste mountains and hills and dry up all their vegetation, and I will make the rivers islands, and I will dry up the pools.
16 I will bring the blind by a way that they did not know; I will lead them in paths that they have not known. I will make darkness light before them and crooked things straight. These things I will do for them and not forsake them.
17 They shall be turned back, they shall be greatly ashamed, who trust in graven images, who say to the molded images, “You are our gods.”
18 Israel’s Disobedience Hear, you deaf; look, you blind, that you may see.
19 Who is blind, but My servant? Or deaf, as My messenger whom I sent? Who is blind as he who is at peace with Me, and blind as the servant of the Lord?
20 You have seen many things, but you do not observe them; your ears are open, but no one hears.
21 The Lord is well pleased for His righteousness’ sake to magnify the law and make it honorable.
22 But this is a people robbed and despoiled; they are all snared in holes, and they are hidden in prison houses; they are for a prey, and no one delivers, for a spoil, and no one says, “Restore them.”
23 Who among you will give ear to this? Who will listen and hear for the time to come?
24 Who gave up Jacob as spoil, and Israel to the robbers? Did not the Lord, against whom we have sinned? For they would not walk in His ways, nor were they obedient to His law.
25 Therefore, He has poured on him the fury of His anger and the strength of battle; and it has set him on fire all around, yet he did not recognize it; and it burned him, yet he laid it not to heart.
1 The Redeemer of Israel But now, thus says the Lord who created you, O Jacob, and He who formed you, O Israel: Do not fear, for I have redeemed you; I have called you by your name; you are Mine.
2 When you pass through waters, I will be with you. And through the rivers, they shall not overflow you. When you walk through the fire, you shall not be burned, nor shall the flame kindle on you.
3 For I am the Lord your God, the Holy One of Israel, your Savior; I gave Egypt for your ransom, Ethiopia and Seba in your place.
4 Since you were precious in My sight, you have been honorable, and I have loved you; therefore, I will give men for you, and people for your life.
5 Do not fear, for I am with you; I will bring your descendants 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 ends of the earth,
7 even everyone who is called by My name, for I have created him for My glory; I have formed him, and I have made him.”
8 Bring forth the blind people who have eyes, and the deaf who have ears.
9 Let all the nations be gathered together, and let the people be assembled. Who among them can declare this, and show us former things? Let them bring their witnesses, that they may be justified; or let them hear and say, “It is true.”
10 You are My witnesses, says the Lord, and My servant whom I have chosen that you may know and believe Me, and understand that I am He. Before Me there was no God formed, nor shall there be after Me.
11 I, even I, am the Lord, and besides Me there is no savior.
12 I have declared, and have saved, and I have shown, when there was no strange god among you; therefore, you are My witnesses, says the Lord, that I am God.
13 Indeed, from eternity I am He; there is no one who can deliver out of My hand; I act, and who can reverse it?
14 Thus says the Lord, your Redeemer, the Holy One of Israel: For your sake I have sent to Babylon, and have brought down all their nobles, and the Chaldeans, into the ships in which they rejoice.
15 I am the Lord, your Holy One, the Creator of Israel, your King.
16 Thus says the Lord, who makes a way in the sea and a path in the mighty waters,
17 who brings forth the chariot and horse, the army and the mighty men (they shall lie down together, they shall not rise; they are extinguished, they are quenched like a wick):
18 Do not remember the former things nor consider the things of old.
19 See, I will do a new thing, now it shall spring forth; shall you not be aware of it? I will even make a way in the wilderness, and rivers in the desert.
20 The beast of the field shall honor Me, the jackals and the owls, because I give waters in the wilderness, and rivers in the desert, to give drink to My people, My chosen ones.
21 This people I have formed for Myself; they shall declare My praise.
22 Pleading With Israel But you have not called upon Me, O Jacob; but you have been weary of Me, O Israel.
23 You have not brought Me the sheep for your burnt offerings, nor have you honored Me with your sacrifices. I have not burdened you with offerings, nor wearied you with incense.
24 You have bought Me no sweet cane with money, nor have you filled Me with the fat of your sacrifices; but you have made Me burdened with your sins; you have wearied Me with your iniquities.
25 I, even I, am He who blots out your transgressions for My own sake, and will not remember your sins.
26 Put Me in remembrance; let us plead together; state your cause, that you may be justified.
27 Your first father has sinned, and your teachers have transgressed against Me.
28 Therefore, I have profaned the princes of the sanctuary, and have given Jacob to the curse, and Israel to reproaches.
1 God’s Blessing on Jacob Yet now listen, O Jacob, My servant, and Israel, whom I have chosen.
2 Thus says the Lord who made you, and formed you from the womb, who will help you: Do not fear, O Jacob, My servant, and you, Jeshurun, whom I have chosen.
3 For I will pour water on him who is thirsty, and floods on the dry ground; I will pour out My Spirit on your descendants, and My blessing on your offspring;
4 and they shall spring up as among the grass, as willows by the water courses.
5 One will say, “I am the Lord’s”; another will call himself by the name of Jacob; and another will write on his hand, “Belonging to the Lord,” and name himself by the name of Israel.
6 Idolatry Condemned Thus says the Lord the King of Israel, and his Redeemer the Lord of Hosts: I am the first, and I am the last; besides Me there is no God.
7 Who is like Me? Let him proclaim and declare it, and recount it in order for Me, since I appointed the ancient people. And let them declare to them the things that are coming, and shall come.
8 Do not fear, nor be afraid; have I not told you from of old, and declared it? You are My witnesses! Is there a God besides Me? There is no Rock; I know not any.
9 Those who make a graven image are, all of them, vain, and their delectable things shall not profit; and they are their own witnesses; they do not see nor know, that they may be ashamed.
10 Who has formed a god or molded a graven image that is profitable for nothing?
11 All his companions shall be ashamed; and the workmen, they are mere men. Let them all be gathered together; let them stand up, yet they shall fear; they shall be ashamed together.
12 The smith with the tongs both works in the coals and fashions it with hammers, and works it with the strength of his arms. He becomes hungry, and his strength fails; He drinks no water and is faint.
13 The carpenter stretches out his measuring line; he marks it out with a line; he fits it with planes, and he marks it out with the compass, and makes it after the figure of a man, according to the beauty of a man, that it may remain in the house.
14 He hews down cedars for himself, and takes the cypress and the oak, which he raises for himself among the trees of the forest. He plants a fir, and the rain makes it grow.
15 Then it shall be for a man to burn, for he will take some of it and warm himself; he kindles it and bakes bread; he also makes a god and worships it; he makes it a graven image and bows down to it.
16 He burns half of it in the fire; over this half he eats meat; he roasts it and is satisfied. Also he warms himself and says, “Aha, I am warm, I have seen the fire.”
17 And the rest he makes into a god, even his carved image. He falls down to it, and worships it, and prays to it, and says, “Deliver me, for you are my god.”
18 They have not known nor understood; for He has shut their eyes so that they cannot see, and their hearts so that they cannot understand.
19 No one considers in his heart, nor is there knowledge nor understanding to say, “I have burned part of it in the fire; I also have baked bread on the coals; I have roasted meat and eaten it; and shall I make the rest into an abomination? Shall I fall down to a block of wood?”
20 He feeds on ashes; a deceived heart has turned him aside so that he cannot deliver his soul, nor say, “Is there not a lie in my right hand?”
21 Israel Not Forgotten Remember these things, O Jacob, and Israel, for you are My servant; I have formed you; you are My servant; O Israel, you shall not be forgotten by Me.
22 I have blotted out, as a thick cloud, your transgressions, and your sins, as a cloud. Return to Me, for I have redeemed you.
23 Sing, O heavens, for the Lord has done it. Shout joyfully, you lower parts of the earth; break forth into singing, you mountains, O forest, and every tree in it. For the Lord has redeemed Jacob, and glorified Himself in Israel.
24 Jerusalem to Be Inhabited Thus says the Lord, your Redeemer, and He who formed you from the womb: I am the Lord who makes all things, who stretches out the heavens alone, who spreads abroad the earth by Myself,
25 who frustrates the omens of the boasters and makes fools out of diviners, who turns wise men backward and makes their knowledge foolish,
26 who confirms the word of His servant and performs the counsel of His messengers, who says to Jerusalem, “You shall be inhabited,” and to the cities of Judah, “You shall be built.” And I will raise up her ruins again;
27 it is I who says to the deep, “Be dried up!” And I will dry up your rivers;
28 it is I who says of Cyrus, “He is My shepherd, and shall perform all My desire”; and he declares to Jerusalem, “You shall be built,” and to the temple, “Your foundation shall be laid.”
1 Cyrus, God’s Anointed Thus says the Lord to Cyrus, His anointed, whose right hand I have held— to subdue nations before him and to loosen the loins of kings, to open doors before him so that the gates will not be shut:
2 I will go before you and make the crooked places straight; I will break in pieces the gates of bronze and shatter the bars of iron.
3 And I will give you the treasures of darkness and hidden riches of secret places so that you may know that I, the Lord, who calls you by your name, am the God of Israel.
4 For Jacob My servant’s sake and Israel My chosen one, I have even called you by your name; I have named you, though you have not known Me.
5 I am the Lord and there is no other; there is no God besides Me. I strengthen you, though you have not known Me,
6 so that they may know from the rising of the sun and from the west that there is no one besides Me. I am the Lord, and there is no other;
7 I form the light and create darkness; I make peace and create calamity; I, the Lord, do all these things.
8 Drip down, O heavens, from above, and let the clouds pour down righteousness; let the earth open up, and let them bring forth salvation, and let righteousness spring up together. I, the Lord, have created it.
9 Woe to him who strives with his Maker, the potsherd with the potsherds of the earth! Shall the clay say to the potter, “What are you making?” Or the thing you are making say, “He has no hands”?
10 Woe to him who says to his father, “What are you begetting?” Or to the woman, “To what are you giving birth?”
11 Thus says the Lord, the Holy One of Israel and his Maker: Ask Me of things to come concerning My sons, and you shall commit to Me the work of My hands.
12 I have made the earth and created man on it. I, even My hands, have stretched out the heavens, and I have ordained all their host.
13 I have raised him up in righteousness, and I will direct all his ways; he shall build My city, and he shall let My captives go, neither for price nor reward, says the Lord of Hosts.
14 The Only Savior Thus says the Lord: The products of Egypt and merchandise of Ethiopia and of the Sabeans—men of stature— shall come over to you, and they shall be yours; they shall come after you; in chains they shall come over, and they shall fall down before you. They shall make supplication to you, saying, “Surely God is with you, and there is no other; there is no other God.”
15 Truly You are a God who hides Yourself, O God of Israel, the Savior.
16 They shall be ashamed and also humiliated, all of them; the craftsmen of idols shall go away in confusion together,
17 but Israel shall be saved by the Lord with an everlasting salvation; you shall not be ashamed nor humiliated to all eternity.
18 For thus says the Lord, who created the heavens, who is God, who formed the earth and made it, who has established it, who did not create it in vain, who formed it to be inhabited: I am the Lord, and there is no other.
19 I have not spoken in secret in a dark place of the earth; I did not say to the descendants of Jacob, “Seek Me in a waste place”; I, the Lord, speak righteousness; I declare things that are right.
20 Assemble yourselves and come; draw near together, you fugitives of the nations. They have no knowledge who set up the wood of their carved image, and pray to a god that cannot save.
21 Declare and set forth your case; let them take counsel together. Who has declared this from ancient times? Who has told it from that time? Have not I, the Lord? And there is no God besides Me, a righteous God and Savior; there is no other besides Me.
22 Turn to Me and be saved, all the ends of the earth. For I am God, and there is no other.
23 I have sworn by Myself, the word has gone out of My mouth in righteousness and shall not return, that to Me every knee shall bow, every tongue shall take an oath.
24 Surely, one shall say, “Only in the Lord are righteousness and strength.” Men shall come to him, and all who are incensed at Him shall be ashamed.
25 In the Lord shall all the seed of Israel be justified and shall glory.
1 The Idols of Babylon Bel bows down, Nebo stoops, their idols are appointed to the beasts and the cattle. The things that you carry are burdensome; they are a burden to the weary beast.
2 They stoop, they bow down together; they could not deliver the burden, but themselves have gone into captivity.
3 Listen to Me, O house of Jacob, and all the remnant of the house of Israel, who are borne by Me from birth and are carried from the womb:
4 And even to your old age I am He, and even to your graying years I will carry you; I have done it, and I will bear you; even I will carry, and will deliver you.
5 To whom will you liken Me, and make Me equal, and compare Me that we may be alike?
6 They lavish gold out of the bag, and weigh silver on the scales; they hire a goldsmith, and he makes it a god; they fall down and worship it.
7 They lift it on the shoulder, they carry it, and they set it in its place, and it stands; from its place it does not move. If one shall cry to it, it cannot answer nor save him out of his trouble.
8 Remember this, and show yourselves men; bring it to mind again, O transgressors.
9 Remember the former things of old, for I am God, and there is no other; I am God, and there is no one like Me,
10 declaring the end from the beginning, and from ancient times the things that are not yet done, saying, “My counsel shall stand, and I will do all My good pleasure,”
11 calling a ravenous bird from the east, the man who executes My counsel from a far country. Indeed, I have spoken it; I will also bring it to pass. I have purposed it; I will also do it.
12 Listen to Me, you stubborn-hearted, who are far from righteousness;
13 I bring My righteousness near; it shall not be far off, and My salvation shall not tarry. And I will grant salvation in Zion, and My glory for Israel.
1 The Fall of Babylon Come down, and sit in the dust, O virgin daughter of Babylon; sit on the ground; there is no throne, O daughter of the Chaldeans. For you shall no more be called tender and delicate.
2 Take the millstones and grind meal. Uncover your veil, strip off the skirt, uncover the leg, pass over the rivers.
3 Your nakedness shall be uncovered, and your shame shall be seen; I will take vengeance, and I will not meet you as a man.
4 As for our Redeemer, the Lord of Hosts is His name, the Holy One of Israel.
5 Sit silently, and go into darkness, O daughter of the Chaldeans; for you shall no more be called the queen of kingdoms.
6 I was angry with My people; I have polluted My inheritance and given them into your hand. You did not show them mercy; on the aged you have laid your yoke very heavily.
7 You said, “I shall be a queen forever,” but you did not take these things to heart, nor remember the outcome of them.
8 Therefore, now hear this, you who are given to pleasures, who dwell carelessly, who say in your heart, “I am, and there is no one besides me; I shall not sit as a widow, nor shall I know the loss of children”;
9 but these two things shall come to you in a moment, in one day, the loss of children and widowhood. They shall come upon you in their fullness because of the multitude of your sorceries and for the great abundance of your enchantments.
10 For you have trusted in your wickedness; you have said, “No one sees me”; your wisdom and your knowledge have perverted you; and you have said in your heart, “I am, and there is no one besides me.”
11 Therefore, evil shall come upon you, which you shall not know from where it rises. And disaster shall fall upon you, for which you shall not be able to atone. And desolation shall come upon you suddenly, which you shall not know.
12 Stand fast now with your enchantments, and with the multitude of your sorceries in which you have labored from your youth. Perhaps you shall be able to profit, perhaps you may cause trembling.
13 You are wearied in the multitude of your counsels; let now the astrologers, the stargazers, the monthly prognosticators stand up and save you from these things that shall come upon you.
14 Surely they shall be as stubble, the fire shall burn them; they shall not deliver themselves from the power of the flame; it shall not be coal to be warmed by nor a fire to sit before.
15 Thus those shall be to you with whom you have labored, even your merchants, from your youth; they shall wander, everyone to his quarter. No one shall save you.
1 Israel Refined for God’s Glory Hear this, O house of Jacob, who are called by the name of Israel, and have come forth from the waters of Judah; who swear by the name of the Lord, and invoke the God of Israel, but not in truth or in righteousness;
2 for they call themselves after the holy city, and lean on the God of Israel; the Lord of Hosts is His name:
3 I have declared the former things from the beginning; and they went forth from My mouth, and I announced them. Suddenly I did them, and they came to pass.
4 Because I knew that you are obstinate, and your neck is an iron sinew, and your brow bronze;
5 I have even from the beginning declared it to you; before it came to pass I announced it to you, lest you should say, “My idol has done them, and my carved image and my molded image has commanded them.”
6 You have heard; see all this. And will you not declare it? I have shown you new things from this time, even hidden things, and you did not know them.
7 They are created now and not from the beginning; even before the day when you did not hear them, lest you should say, “Yes, I knew them.”
8 You have not heard, you have not known, indeed, from long ago your ear has not been open. For I knew that you would deal very treacherously, and that from birth you have been called a rebel.
9 For My name’s sake I will defer My anger, and for My praise I will restrain it for you so that you are not cut off.
10 See, I have refined you, but not with silver; I have chosen you in the furnace of affliction.
11 For My own sake, even for My own sake, I will do it; for how can My name be polluted? And I will not give My glory to another.
12 The Lord’s Call to Israel Listen to Me, O Jacob and Israel, whom I called: I am He; I am the First, and I am the Last.
13 My hand also has laid the foundation of the earth, and My right hand has spanned the heavens; when I call to them, they stand up together.
14 Assemble, all of you, and listen. Who among them has declared these things? The Lord has loved him; he will do His pleasure on Babylon, and His arm shall be against the Chaldeans.
15 I, even I, have spoken, and I have called him; I have brought him, and his way will prosper.
16 Come near to Me, hear this: I have not spoken in secret from the beginning; from the time that it was, there I am. And now the Lord God has sent me and His Spirit.
17 Thus says the Lord, your Redeemer, the Holy One of Israel: I am the Lord your God, who teaches you to profit, who leads you in the way you should go.
18 Oh, that you had listened to My commandments! Then your peace would have been as a river and your righteousness as the waves of the sea.
19 Your descendants also would have been as the sand and your offspring like grains of sand; their name would not have been cut off nor destroyed from before Me.
20 Go forth from Babylon! Flee from the Chaldeans! With a voice of singing declare, proclaim this, utter it even to the ends of the earth; say, “The Lord has redeemed His servant Jacob.”
21 They did not thirst when He led them through the deserts; He caused the waters to flow out of the rock for them; He also split the rock, and the waters gushed out.
22 “There is no peace,” says the Lord, “for the wicked.”
1 The Servant of the Lord Listen to me, O coastlands, and pay attention, you peoples from afar. The Lord called me from the womb; from the body of my mother He named me.
2 He has made my mouth like a sharp sword; in the shadow of His hand He has hidden me and made me a select arrow; in His quiver He has hidden me.
3 He said to me, “You are My servant, Israel, in whom I will be glorified.”
4 Then I said, “I have labored in vain; I have spent my strength for nothing and vanity, yet surely the justice due to me is with the Lord, and my reward with my God.”
5 Now says the Lord, who formed me from the womb to be His servant, to bring Jacob back to Him, so that Israel might be gathered to Him (yet I am honored in the eyes of the Lord, and my God is my strength),
6 He says, “It is a light thing that you should be My servant to raise up the tribes of Jacob and to restore the preserved ones of Israel; I will also make you a light to the nations so that My salvation may reach to the ends of the earth.”
7 Thus says the Lord, the Redeemer of Israel, and his Holy One, to the despised one, to the one whom the nation abhors, to the servant of rulers: “Kings shall see and arise, princes also shall worship, because of the Lord who is faithful and the Holy One of Israel who has chosen you.”
8 The Restoration of Israel Thus says the Lord: In an acceptable time I have heard you, and in a day of salvation I have helped you; and I will preserve you, and give you as a covenant of the people, to restore the earth, to make them inherit the desolate heritages,
9 saying to the prisoners, “Go forth,” to those who are in darkness, “Show yourselves.” They shall feed along the paths, and their pastures shall be in all desolate heights;
10 they shall not hunger nor thirst, neither shall the heat nor sun strike them; for He who has mercy on them shall lead them, even by the springs of water He shall guide them.
11 I will make all My mountains a road, and My highways shall be raised up.
12 See, these shall come from afar; and these will come from the north and from the west, and these from the land of Sinim.
13 Sing, O heavens! And be joyful, O earth! And break forth into singing, O mountains! For the Lord has comforted His people and will have mercy on His afflicted.
14 But Zion said, “The Lord has forsaken me, and the Lord has forgotten me.”
15 Can a woman forget her nursing child, and have no compassion on the son of her womb? Even these may forget, yet I will not forget.
16 See, I have inscribed you on the palms of My hands; your walls are continually before Me;
17 your builders hurry; your destroyers and those who devastated you shall depart from you.
18 Lift up your eyes and look all around; all these gather themselves together and come to you. As I live, says the Lord, you shall surely put on all of them as ornaments and bind them on you as a bride does.
19 For your waste and your desolate places, and the land of your destruction, shall even now be too narrow by reason of the inhabitants, and those who swallowed you up shall be far away.
20 The children whom you shall have, after you have lost the others, shall say again in your ears, “The place is too cramped for me; make room for me that I may dwell here.”
21 Then you shall say in your heart, “Who bore these for me, since I have lost my children and am barren, a captive and a wanderer? And who has brought these up? I was left alone; from where did these come?”
22 Thus says the Lord God: See, I will lift up My hand to the nations and set up My standard to the peoples; and they shall bring your sons in their arms, and your daughters shall be carried on their shoulders;
23 kings shall be your foster fathers and their queens your nursing mothers; they shall bow down to you with their faces toward the ground and lick up the dust of your feet. And you shall know that I am the Lord, for those who wait for Me shall not be ashamed.
24 Can the prey be taken from the mighty or the captives of a tyrant be delivered?
25 For thus says the Lord: Even the captives of the mighty shall be taken away, and the prey of the tyrant shall be delivered; for I will contend with him who contends with you, and I will save your sons.
26 I will feed those who oppress you with their own flesh, and they shall be drunk with their own blood as with sweet wine. And all flesh shall know that I, the Lord, am your Savior and your Redeemer, the Mighty One of Jacob.
1 The Servant, Hope of Israel Thus says the Lord: Where is the certificate of divorce by which I sent your mother away? Or to which of My creditors did I sell you? For your iniquities you were sold, and for your transgressions your mother was sent away.
2 Why, when I came, was there no man? When I called, was there no one to answer? Is My hand so short that it cannot redeem? Or have I 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 for thirst.
3 I clothe the heavens with blackness, and I make sackcloth their covering.
4 The Lord God has given me the tongue of the learned, that I may know how to sustain him who is weary with a word; He awakens me morning by morning; He awakens my ear to listen as the learned.
5 The Lord God has opened my ear, and I was not rebellious, nor did I turn back.
6 I gave my back to those who struck me, and my cheeks to those who plucked out my beard; I did not cover my face from shame and spitting.
7 For the Lord God will help me; therefore, I shall not be disgraced; therefore, I have set my face like a flint, and I know that I shall not be ashamed.
8 He who vindicates me is near; who will contend with me? Let us stand up to each other. Who is my adversary? Let him come near to me.
9 Certainly the Lord God will help me; who is he who condemns me? Indeed they all shall grow old as a garment; the moth shall eat them up.
10 Who among you fears the Lord, who obeys the voice of His servant, who walks in darkness and has no light? Let him trust in the name of the Lord, and rely upon his God.
11 But now, all you who kindle a fire, who encompass yourselves with sparks: Walk in the light of your fire and among the sparks that you have ignited. This you shall have from My hand: You shall lie down in sorrow.
1 The Eternal Salvation of Zion Listen to Me, you who pursue righteousness, you who seek the Lord: Look to the rock from which you were hewn and to the quarry from which you were dug.
2 Look to Abraham your father and to Sarah who bore you; for I called him alone, and blessed him, and multiplied him.
3 For the Lord shall comfort Zion, He will comfort all her waste places; He will make her wilderness like Eden, and her desert like the garden of the Lord; joy and gladness shall be found in it, thanksgiving, and the voice of melody.
4 Listen to Me, O My people; and give ear to Me, O My nation: for a law shall proceed from Me, and I will set My justice as a light of the peoples.
5 My righteousness is near, My salvation has gone forth, and My arms shall judge the peoples; the coastlands shall wait for Me, and for My arm they shall expectantly wait.
6 Lift up your eyes to the heavens, and look on the earth beneath. For the heavens shall vanish away like smoke, and the earth shall grow old like a garment, and those who dwell in it shall die in like manner; but My salvation shall be forever, and My righteousness shall not be abolished.
7 Listen to Me, you who know righteousness, the people in whose heart is My law; do not fear the reproach of men nor be afraid of their revilings.
8 For the moth shall eat them up like a garment, and the worm shall eat them like wool; but My righteousness shall be forever and My salvation from generation to generation.
9 Awake, awake, put on strength, O arm of the Lord. Awake as in the ancient days, in the generations of old. Was it not You who cut Rahab to pieces and wounded 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 a pathway for the ransomed to pass over?
11 Therefore, the redeemed of the Lord shall return and come with singing to Zion, and everlasting joy shall be upon their head. They shall obtain gladness and joy, and sorrow and mourning shall flee away.
12 I, even I, am He who comforts you. Who are you that you should be afraid of a man who shall die, and of the son of man who shall be made as grass,
13 and forget the Lord your maker who has stretched out the heavens and laid the foundations of the earth? And have feared continually every day because of the fury of the oppressor as he makes ready to destroy? Yet where is the fury of the oppressor?
14 The exile shall soon be freed, and shall not die in the dungeon, nor will his bread be lacking.
15 But I am the Lord your God who divided the sea whose waves roared; the Lord of Hosts is His name.
16 I have put My words in your mouth, and I have covered you in the shadow of My hand that I may plant the heavens, and lay the foundations of the earth, and say to Zion, “You are My people.”
17 The Wrath of God Ceases Awake, awake, stand up, O Jerusalem, you who have drunk at the hand of the Lord the cup of His fury; the cup of reeling you have drained to the dregs.
18 There is no one to guide her among all the sons she has brought forth; nor is there anyone to take hold of her hand of all the sons that she has brought up.
19 These two things have befallen you; who shall be mournful for you? Desolation, and destruction, and famine, and sword— how shall I comfort you?
20 Your sons have fainted; they lie at the head of all the streets as an antelope in a net; they are full of the fury of the Lord, the rebuke of your God.
21 Therefore please hear this, you afflicted who are drunk but not with wine.
22 Thus says your Lord, the Lord, and your God who pleads the cause of His people: See, I have taken out of your hand the cup of reeling, even the dregs of the cup of My fury; you will never drink it again.
23 But I will put it into the hand of those who afflict you, who have said to you, “Lie down that we may walk over you.” And you have laid your back as the ground and as the street for those who walk on it.
1 Awake, awake! Put on your strength, O Zion; put on your beautiful garments, O Jerusalem, the holy city. For the uncircumcised and the unclean will no longer enter you.
2 Shake yourself from the dust; arise, O captive Jerusalem. Loose yourself from the bonds of your neck, O captive daughter of Zion.
3 For thus says the Lord: You were sold for nothing, and you shall be redeemed without money.
4 For thus says the Lord God: My people went down at the first into Egypt to sojourn there; then the Assyrian oppressed them without cause.
5 Now therefore, what do I have here, says the Lord, seeing that My people have been taken away for nothing? Those who rule over them make them wail, says the Lord, and My name is continually blasphemed all day long.
6 Therefore, My people shall know My name; therefore, they shall know in that day that I am He who does speak: Here I am.
7 How beautiful upon the mountains are the feet of him who brings good news, who proclaims peace, who brings good news of happiness, who proclaims salvation, who says to Zion, “Your God reigns!”
8 Your watchmen lift up their voices; they sing joyfully together; for they shall see with their own eyes when the Lord brings Zion back.
9 Break forth into joy, sing together, you waste places of Jerusalem. For the Lord has comforted His people; He has redeemed Jerusalem.
10 The Lord has bared His holy arm in the eyes of all the nations, and all the ends of the earth shall see the salvation of our God.
11 Depart, depart, go out from there, touch no unclean thing; go out of the midst of her; be clean, you who bear the vessels of the Lord.
12 For you shall not go out with haste nor go by flight. For the Lord will go before you, and the God of Israel will be your rear guard.
13 The Suffering Servant See, My servant shall deal prudently; he shall be exalted and extolled, and be very high.
14 Just as many were astonished at you, his visage was so marred, more than any man, and his form more than the sons of men;
15 so he shall sprinkle many nations. Kings shall shut their mouths at him; for that which had not been told them they shall see, and that which they had not heard they shall consider.
1 Who has believed our report? And to whom has the arm of the Lord been revealed?
2 For he grew up before Him as a tender plant and as a root out of a dry ground. He has no form or majesty that we should look upon him nor appearance that we should desire him.
3 He was despised and rejected of men, a man of sorrows and acquainted with grief. And we hid, as it were, our faces from him; he was despised, and we did not esteem him.
4 Surely he has borne our grief and carried our sorrows; Yet we esteemed him stricken, smitten of God, and afflicted.
5 But he was wounded for our transgressions, he was bruised for our iniquities; the chastisement of our peace was upon him, and by his stripes we are healed.
6 All of us like sheep have gone astray; each of us has turned to his own way, but the Lord has laid on him the iniquity of us all.
7 He was oppressed, and he was afflicted, yet he opened not his mouth; he was brought as a lamb to the slaughter, and as a sheep before its shearers is silent, so he opened not his mouth.
8 By oppression and judgment he was taken away, and who shall declare his generation? For he was cut off out of the land of the living; for the transgression of my people he was struck.
9 His grave was assigned with the wicked, yet with the rich in his death, because he had done no violence, nor was any deceit in his mouth.
10 Yet it pleased the Lord to bruise him; He has put him to grief. If he made himself as an offering for sin, he shall see his offspring, he shall prolong his days, and the good pleasure of the Lord shall prosper in his hand.
11 He shall see of the anguish of his soul and be satisfied. By his knowledge My righteous servant shall justify the many, for he shall bear their iniquities.
12 Therefore, I will divide him a portion with the great, and he shall divide the spoil with the strong, because he poured out his soul to death, and he was numbered with the transgressors, thus he bore the sin of many and made intercession for the transgressors.
1 The Covenant of Peace Sing, O barren, you who did not bear a child. Break forth into singing and cry aloud, you who did not travail with child. For more are the children of the desolate than the children of the married wife, says the Lord.
2 Enlarge the place of your tent, and let them stretch out the curtains of your habitations; spare not, lengthen your cords, and strengthen your stakes.
3 For you shall spread out to the right hand and to the left, and your descendants shall inherit the nations and make the desolate cities to be inhabited.
4 Do not fear, for you shall not be ashamed nor be humiliated; for you shall not be put to shame, for you shall forget the shame of your youth and shall not remember the reproach of your widowhood anymore.
5 For your Maker is your husband, the Lord of Hosts is His name; and your Redeemer is the Holy One of Israel; He shall be called the God of the whole earth.
6 For the Lord has called you as a woman forsaken and grieved in spirit, and a wife of youth when you were refused, says your God.
7 For a small moment I have forsaken you, but with great mercies I will gather you.
8 In a little wrath I hid My face from you for a moment; but with everlasting kindness I will have mercy on you, says the Lord your Redeemer.
9 For this is as the waters of Noah to Me; for as I have sworn that the waters of Noah should no longer cover the earth, so I have sworn that I would not be wrathful with you nor rebuke you.
10 For the mountains may be removed, and the hills may shake, but My kindness shall not depart from you, nor shall My covenant of peace be removed, says the Lord who has mercy on you.
11 O afflicted one, tossed with tempest and not comforted, I will lay your stones with fair colors and lay your foundations with sapphires.
12 I will make your windows of agates, and your gates of crystal, and all your borders of precious stones.
13 All your sons shall be taught of the Lord, and great shall be the peace of your sons.
14 In righteousness you shall be established; you shall be far from oppression, for you shall not fear, and from terror, for it shall not come near you.
15 Indeed they shall surely assail you fiercely, but not from Me. Whoever assails you shall fall for your sake.
16 See, I have created the smith that blows the coals in the fire and who brings forth an instrument for his work; and I have created the destroyer in order to cause ruin.
17 No weapon that is formed against you shall prosper, and every tongue that shall rise against you in judgment, you shall condemn. This is the heritage of the servants of the Lord, and their vindication is from Me, says the Lord.
1 The Invitation to the Waters Ho! Everyone who thirsts, come to the waters; and you who have no money, come, buy and eat. Come, buy wine and milk without money and without price.
2 Why do you spend money for that which is not bread, and your labor for that which does not satisfy? Listen diligently to Me, and eat what is good, and let your soul delight itself in abundance.
3 Incline your ear, and come to Me. Listen, so that your soul may live, and I will make an everlasting covenant with you, even the sure mercies of David.
4 See, I have given him as a witness to the people, a leader and commander to the people.
5 Surely you shall call a nation that you do not know, and nations that did not know you shall run to you because of the Lord your God, even the Holy One of Israel; for He has glorified you.
6 Seek the Lord while He may be found, call you upon Him while He is near.
7 Let the wicked forsake his way, and the unrighteous man his thoughts; and let him return to the Lord, and He will have mercy upon him, and to our God, for He will abundantly pardon.
8 For My thoughts are not your thoughts, nor are your ways My ways, says the Lord.
9 For as the heavens are higher than the earth, so are My ways higher than your ways, and My thoughts than your thoughts.
10 For as the rain comes down, and the snow from heaven, and do not return there but water the earth and make it bring forth and bud that it may give seed to the sower and bread to the eater,
11 so shall My word be that goes forth from My mouth; it shall not return to Me void, but it shall accomplish that which I please, and it shall prosper in the thing for which I sent it.
12 For you shall go out with joy, and be led out with peace; the mountains and the hills shall break forth into singing before you, and all the trees of the field shall clap their hands.
13 Instead of the thorn shall come up the fir tree, and instead of the brier shall come up the myrtle tree; and it shall be to the Lord for a memorial, for an everlasting sign that shall not be cut off.
1 Salvation for the Nations Thus says the Lord: Preserve justice and do righteousness, for My salvation is about to come and My righteousness to be revealed.
2 Blessed is the man who does this, and the son of man who takes hold of it, who keeps from polluting the Sabbath and keeps his hand from doing any evil.
3 Do not let the son of the foreigner who has joined himself to the Lord speak, saying, “The Lord has utterly separated me from His people”; do not let the eunuch say, “I am only a dry tree.”
4 For thus says the Lord: To the eunuchs who keep My Sabbaths, and choose the things that please Me, and take hold of 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 of daughters; I will give them an everlasting name that shall not be cut off.
6 Also the sons of the foreigner who join themselves to the Lord to serve Him, and to love the name of the Lord, and to be His servants, to everyone who keeps from polluting the Sabbath and takes hold of My covenant,
7 even them I will bring to My holy mountain and make them joyful in My house of prayer. Their burnt offerings and their sacrifices shall be accepted on My altar; for My house shall be called a house of prayer for all people.
8 The Lord God who gathers the outcasts of Israel says, Yet I will gather others to them besides those who already are gathered to him.
9 God Accuses the Wicked All you beasts of the field, all you beasts in the forest, come to devour.
10 His watchmen are blind; they all are ignorant; they all are dumb dogs, unable to bark; sleepers lying down, who love to slumber.
11 They are greedy dogs which can never have enough, and they are shepherds who cannot understand; they all turn to their own way, every one for his gain, from his territory.
12 “Come,” they say, “let us get wine, and let us fill ourselves with strong drink; and tomorrow shall be as today, only more so.”
1 Israel’s Futile Idolatry The righteous man perishes, and no man lays it to heart; and merciful men are taken away while no one understands, for the righteous man is taken away from the evil to come.
2 He shall enter into peace; they shall rest in their beds, each one walking in his uprightness.
3 But draw near to here, you sons of a sorceress, offspring of an adulterer and prostitute.
4 Whom do you mock? Against whom do you open wide your mouth and stick out your tongue? Are you not children of transgression, offspring of falsehood,
5 inflaming yourselves with idols under every green tree, slaying the children in the valleys under the clefts of the rocks?
6 Among the smooth stones of the stream is your portion; they are your lot. Even to them you have poured out a drink offering; you have offered a grain offering. Should I relent concerning these things?
7 On a lofty and high mountain you have set your bed; even there you went up to offer sacrifice.
8 Behind the doors and the doorposts you have set up your memorial; far removed from Me, you have uncovered yourself; you have enlarged your bed and made a covenant with them; you have loved their bed, you have looked on their nakedness.
9 You went to the king with ointment, and increased your perfumes, and sent your messengers far off, and made them go down to Sheol.
10 You were wearied by the length of your road; yet you did not say, “There is no hope.” You have found renewed strength; therefore, you did not faint.
11 Of whom were you afraid or fearful when you lied and you did not remember Me, nor give Me a thought? Have I not held My peace for a long time so that you do not fear Me?
12 I will declare your righteousness, and your works, yet they shall not profit you.
13 When you cry out, let your collection of idols deliver you. But the wind shall carry them all away, a breath shall take them away. But he who puts his trust in Me shall possess the land and shall inherit My holy mountain.
14 Healing for the Contrite And it shall be said, “Build up, build up, prepare the way, take up every stumbling block out of the way of My people.”
15 For thus says the High and Lofty One who inhabits eternity, whose name is Holy: I dwell in the high and holy place and also with him who is of a contrite and humble spirit, to revive the spirit of the humble, and to revive the heart of the contrite ones.
16 For I will not contend forever, nor will I always be angry; for the spirit would grow faint before Me, and the souls whom I have made.
17 For the iniquity of his unjust gain I was angry and struck him; I hid My face and was wrathful, and he went on turning away in the way of his heart.
18 I have seen his ways but will heal him; I will lead him and restore comfort to him and to his mourners,
19 by creating the fruit of the lips. Peace, peace to him who is far off and to him who is near, says the Lord, and I will heal him.
20 But the wicked are like the troubled sea when it cannot rest, whose waters cast up mire and dirt.
21 There is no peace, says my God, for the wicked.
1 The Chosen Fast Cry aloud, do not hold back; lift up your voice like a trumpet, and show My people their transgression and the house of Jacob their sins.
2 Yet they seek Me daily and delight to know My ways, as a nation that has done righteousness and has not forsaken the ordinance of their God. They ask Me for the ordinances of justice; they take delight in approaching God.
3 “Why have we fasted and You do not see? Why have we humbled ourselves and You take no notice?” Certainly, on the day of your fast you find your desire and are exacting on all your laborers.
4 Certainly, you fast for strife and debate and to strike with the fist of wickedness. You do not fast as you do this day, to make your voice to be heard on high.
5 Is it such a fast that I have chosen, a day for a man to humble himself? Is it to bow down his head as a bulrush, and to spread out sackcloth and ashes under him? Will you call this a fast and an acceptable day to the Lord?
6 Is not this the fast that I have chosen: to loose the bonds of wickedness, to undo the heavy burdens, and to let the oppressed go free, and break every yoke?
7 Is it not to divide your bread with the hungry and bring the poor who are outcasts into your house? When you see the naked, to cover him and not hide yourself from your own flesh?
8 Then your light shall break forth as the morning, and your healing shall spring forth quickly, and your righteousness shall go before you; the glory of the Lord shall be your reward.
9 Then you shall call, and the Lord shall answer; you shall cry, and He shall say, Here I am. If you take away the yoke from your midst, the pointing of the finger, and speaking wickedness,
10 and if you give yourself to the hungry and satisfy the afflicted soul, then your light shall rise in obscurity, and your darkness shall become as the noonday.
11 And the Lord shall guide you continually, and satisfy your soul in drought, and strengthen your bones; and you shall be like a watered garden, and like a spring of water, whose waters do not fail.
12 Those from among you shall rebuild the old waste places; you shall raise up the foundations of many generations; and you shall be called, the Repairer of the Breach, the Restorer of Paths in which to Dwell.
13 If because of the Sabbath you turn away your foot from doing your pleasure on My holy day, and call the Sabbath a delight, the holy day of the Lord honorable, and honor it, not doing your own ways, nor finding your own pleasure, nor speaking your own words,
14 then you shall delight yourself in the Lord, and I will cause you to ride upon the high places of the earth, and feed you with the heritage of Jacob your father. For the mouth of the Lord has spoken it.
1 The Consequence of Sin Certainly, the hand of the Lord is not so short that it cannot save, nor is His ear so dull that it cannot hear.
2 But your iniquities have made a separation between you and your God, and your sins have hidden His face from you so that He will not hear.
3 For your hands are defiled with blood and your fingers with iniquity; your lips have spoken lies, your tongue has muttered perverseness.
4 No one calls for justice, nor does anyone plead for 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 out into a viper.
6 Their webs shall not become garments, nor shall they cover themselves with their works; their works are works of iniquity, and an act of violence is in their hands.
7 Their feet run to evil, and they make haste to shed innocent blood; their thoughts are thoughts of iniquity; devastation and destruction are in their paths.
8 The way of peace they do not know, and there is no justice in their ways; they have made their paths crooked; whoever walks in them does not know peace.
9 The Confession of Sin Therefore, justice is far from us, nor does righteousness overtake us; we wait for light, but there is darkness, for brightness, but we walk in gloom.
10 We grope along the wall like the blind, and we grope as if we had no eyes; we stumble at noonday as in the night; among those who are vigorous, we are as dead men.
11 We all roar like bears and mourn sadly like doves; we look 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 testify against us; for our transgressions are with us. And as for our iniquities, we know them:
13 transgressing, and lying against the Lord, and departing away from our God, speaking oppression and revolt, conceiving and uttering from the heart words of falsehood.
14 Justice is turned backward, and righteousness stands far off; for truth is fallen in the street, and equity cannot enter.
15 Truth is lacking, and he who departs from evil makes himself a prey. The Redeemer of Zion Then the Lord saw it, and it displeased Him that there was no justice.
16 He saw that there was no man and was astonished that there was no intercessor; therefore, His own arm brought salvation to Him, and His righteousness sustained Him.
17 For He put on righteousness as a breastplate and a helmet of salvation on His head; He put on the garments of vengeance for clothing and was clad with zeal as a cloak.
18 According to their deeds, accordingly He will repay: fury to His adversaries, recompense to His enemies; to the islands He will make recompense.
19 So shall they fear the name of the Lord from the west and His glory from the rising of the sun; when the enemy shall come in like a flood, the Spirit of the Lord shall lift up a standard against him.
20 The Redeemer shall come to Zion and to those who turn from transgression in Jacob, says the Lord.
21 As for Me, this is My covenant with them, says the Lord: My Spirit who is upon you, and My words which I have put in your mouth shall not depart out of your mouth, nor out of the mouth of your descendants, nor out of the mouth of your descendants’ descendants, says the Lord, from this time forth and forever.
1 The Glory of Zion Arise, shine, for your light has come, and the glory of the Lord has risen upon you.
2 For the darkness shall cover the earth and deep darkness the peoples; but the Lord shall rise upon you, and His glory shall be seen upon you.
3 The nations shall come to your light and kings to the brightness of your rising.
4 Lift up your eyes all around, and see: They all gather themselves together; they come to you; your sons shall come from afar, and your daughters shall be carried at your side.
5 Then you shall see and be radiant, and your heart shall thrill and rejoice because the abundance of the sea shall be converted to you, the wealth of the nations shall come to you.
6 The multitude of camels shall cover your land, the young camels of Midian and Ephah; all those from Sheba shall come; they shall bring gold and incense and shall bear good news of the praises of the Lord.
7 All the flocks of Kedar shall be gathered together to you, the rams of Nebaioth shall minister to you; they shall come up with acceptance on My altar, and I will glorify My glorious house.
8 Who are these who fly as a cloud and as the doves to their roosts?
9 Surely the coastlands shall wait for Me, and the ships of Tarshish shall come first, to bring your sons from afar, their silver and their gold with them, to the name of the Lord your God and to the Holy One of Israel because He has glorified you.
10 The sons of foreigners shall build up your walls, and their kings shall minister to you; for in My wrath I struck you, but in My favor I have had mercy on you.
11 Therefore, your gates shall be open continually; they shall not be shut day nor night, so that men may bring to you the wealth of the nations, and that their kings may be brought.
12 For the nation and kingdom that will not serve you shall perish, and those nations shall be utterly destroyed.
13 The glory of Lebanon shall 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 of My feet glorious.
14 The sons also of those who afflicted you shall come bowing before you, and all those who despised you shall bow themselves down at the soles of your feet; and they shall call you, The City of the Lord, the Zion of the Holy One of Israel.
15 Whereas you have been forsaken and hated so that no man went through you, I will make you an eternal excellency, a joy of many generations.
16 You shall also suck the milk of the nations and suck the breast of kings; then you shall know that I, the Lord, 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, bronze; and instead of stones, iron. I will also make your officers peace and your exactors righteousness.
18 Violence shall no more be heard in your land, nor devastation or destruction within your borders; but you shall call your walls Salvation and your gates Praise.
19 The sun shall no longer be your light by day, nor for brightness shall the moon give light to you; but the Lord shall be an everlasting light to you and your God for your glory.
20 Your sun shall no more go down, nor shall your moon wane; for the Lord shall be your everlasting light, and the days of your mourning shall end.
21 Then all your people shall be righteous; they shall inherit the land forever, the branch of My planting, the work of My hands, that I may be glorified.
22 A little one shall become a thousand, and a small one a strong nation. I, the Lord, will hasten it in its time.
1 The Lord’s Favor The Spirit of the Lord God is upon me because the Lord has anointed me to preach good news to the poor; He has sent me to heal the broken-hearted, to proclaim liberty to the captives, and the opening of the prison to those who are bound;
2 to proclaim the acceptable year of the Lord and the day of vengeance of our God; to comfort all who mourn,
3 to preserve those who mourn in Zion, to give to them beauty for ashes, the oil of joy for mourning, the garment of praise for the spirit of heaviness, that they might be called trees of righteousness, the planting of the Lord, that He might be glorified.
4 They shall build the old ruins; they shall raise up the former desolations, and they shall repair the waste cities, the desolations of many generations.
5 Strangers shall stand and feed your flocks, and the sons of the alien shall be your plowmen and your vinedressers.
6 But you shall be named the priests of the Lord; men shall call you the ministers of our God. You shall eat the riches of the nations, and in their glory you shall boast.
7 Instead of your shame you shall have double honor, and instead of humiliation they shall rejoice over their portion. Therefore, in their land they shall possess a double portion; everlasting joy shall be theirs.
8 For I, the Lord, love justice, I hate robbery in the burnt offering; and I will faithfully give them their recompense and make an everlasting covenant with them.
9 Their descendants shall be known among the nations and their offspring among the peoples. All who see them shall acknowledge them because they are the descendants whom the Lord has blessed.
10 I will greatly rejoice in the Lord, my soul shall be joyful in my God; for He has clothed me with the garments of salvation, He has covered me with the robe of righteousness, as a bridegroom decks himself with ornaments, and as a bride adorns herself with her jewels.
11 For as the earth brings forth her buds, and as the garden causes the things that are sown in it to spring forth, so the Lord God will cause righteousness and praise to spring forth before all the nations.
1 The Salvation of Zion For the sake of Zion I will not keep silent, and for the sake of Jerusalem I will not rest until her righteousness goes forth as brightness and her salvation as a lamp that burns.
2 The nations shall see your righteousness, and all kings your glory. And you shall be called by a new name, which the mouth of the Lord shall name.
3 You shall also be a crown of glory in the hand of the Lord and a royal diadem in the hand of your God.
4 You shall no more be termed Forsaken, nor shall your land be termed Desolate; but you shall be called My Delight Is In Her, and your land Married; for the Lord delights in you, and your land shall be married.
5 For as a young man marries a virgin, so your sons shall marry you; and as the bridegroom rejoices over the bride, so your God shall rejoice over you.
6 I have set watchmen on your walls, O Jerusalem, who shall never hold their peace day nor night. You who remind the Lord, do not keep silent;
7 give Him no rest until He establishes and makes Jerusalem a glory in the earth.
8 The Lord has sworn by His right hand and by His strong arm: Surely I will no longer give your grain as food for your enemies; and the sons of the foreigners shall not drink your wine for which you have labored.
9 But those who have gathered it shall eat it and praise the Lord; and those who have brought it shall drink it in the courts of My sanctuary.
10 Go through, go through the gates. Prepare the way of the people; build up, build up the highway. Remove the stones; lift up a standard over the peoples.
11 The Lord has proclaimed to the ends of the earth: Say to the daughter of Zion, “See, your salvation comes; see, His reward is with Him, and His recompense before Him.”
12 They shall call them The Holy People, the Redeemed of the Lord; and you shall be called Sought Out, a City Not Forsaken.
1 The Revenge of God “Who is this who comes from Edom with dyed garments from Bozrah? This one who is glorious in His apparel, traveling in the greatness of His strength?” “It is I who speak in righteousness, mighty to save.”
2 “Why is Your apparel red, and Your garments like him who treads in the wine vat?”
3 “I have trodden the winepress alone; and from the peoples there was no one with Me. For I will tread them in My anger, and trample them in My fury, and their blood shall be sprinkled upon My garments, and I will stain all My raiment.
4 For the day of vengeance is in My heart, and My year of redemption has come.
5 I looked and there was no one to help, and I was astonished, and there was no one to uphold; therefore, My own arm brought salvation to Me; and My fury upheld Me.
6 I will tread down the peoples in My anger and make them drunk in My fury, and I will pour out their lifeblood on the earth.”
7 The Mercy of God Remembered I will mention the steadfast love of the Lord and the praises of the Lord, according to all that the Lord has bestowed on us, and the great goodness toward the house of Israel, which He has bestowed on them according to His mercy, and according to the multitude of His kindnesses.
8 For He said, “Surely they are My people, sons who will not lie.” 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 lifted them and carried them all the days of old.
10 But they rebelled and grieved His Holy Spirit; therefore, He turned Himself to be their enemy, and He fought against them.
11 Then His people remembered the days of old, of Moses, saying: Where is He who brought them up out of the sea with the shepherds of His flock? Where is He who put His Holy Spirit in their midst,
12 who led them with His glorious arm by the right hand of Moses, dividing the water before them, to make Himself an everlasting name,
13 who led them through the deep, as a horse in the wilderness, that they should not stumble?
14 As the cattle which go down into the valley, the Spirit of the Lord caused them to rest, so You led Your people, to make Yourself a glorious name.
15 A Prayer of Penitence Look down from heaven and see, from Your holy and glorious habitation. Where are Your zeal and Your strength? The stirrings of Your heart and Your mercies toward me are restrained.
16 For You are our Father, though Abraham is ignorant of us and Israel does not recognize us. You, O Lord, are our Father, our Redeemer; Your name is from everlasting.
17 O Lord, why have You made us to err from Your ways and hardened our heart from fearing You? Return for Your servants’ sake, the tribes of Your inheritance.
18 Your holy people possessed Your sanctuary for a little while; our adversaries have trodden it down.
19 We have become as those over whom You have never ruled, as those who were not called by Your name.
1 Oh, that You would rend the heavens and come down, that the mountains might shake at Your presence,
2 as when the melting fire burns, as the fire causes the waters to boil, to make Your name known to Your adversaries, that the nations may tremble at Your presence!
3 When You did awesome things for which we did not look, You came down; the mountains quaked at Your presence.
4 For since the beginning of the world men have not heard, nor perceived by ear, neither has the eye seen a God besides You, who acts for the one who waits for Him.
5 You meet him who rejoices in doing righteousness, those who remember You in Your ways. Indeed, You were angry, for we had sinned; in our sins we remained a long time, and shall we be saved?
6 But we all are as an unclean thing, and all our righteousness is as filthy rags; and we all fade as a leaf, and our iniquities, like the wind, have taken us away.
7 There is no one who calls on Your name, who stirs up himself to take hold of You; for You have hidden Your face from us and have consumed us because of our iniquities.
8 But now, O Lord, You are our Father; we are the clay, and You are our potter; and we all are the work of Your hand.
9 Do not be wrathful beyond measure, O Lord, nor remember iniquity forever; look upon us, we pray, we all are Your people.
10 Your holy cities are a wilderness; Zion is a wilderness, Jerusalem a desolation.
11 Our holy and beautiful house where our fathers praised You is burned up with fire; and all our precious things are laid waste.
12 Will You refrain Yourself from these things, O Lord? Will You hold Your peace and afflict us beyond measure?
1 Judgment and Salvation I was sought by those who did not ask for Me; I was found of those who did not seek Me. I said, “Here I am, here I am,” to a nation that did not call on My name.
2 I have spread out My hands all day to a rebellious people who walk in a way that was not good, after their own thoughts;
3 a people who provoke Me continually to My face, presenting sacrifices in gardens and burning incense on altars of brick;
4 who sit among the graves and lodge in the monuments; who eat swine’s flesh, and the broth of abominable things is in their vessels;
5 who say, “Stand by yourself; do not come near to me, for I am holier than you!” These are smoke in My nose, a fire that burns all day.
6 See, it is written before Me: I will not keep silent, but I will recompense, even recompense into their bosom,
7 your iniquities and the iniquities of your fathers together, says the Lord; because they have burned incense on the mountains and blasphemed Me on the hills, therefore, I will measure their former work into their bosom.
8 Thus says the Lord: As the new wine is found in the cluster, and one says, “Do not destroy it for a blessing is in it,” so I will do for the sake of My servants that I may not destroy them all.
9 I will bring forth descendants from Jacob, and out of Judah an inheritor of My mountains; and My chosen ones shall inherit it, and My servants shall dwell there.
10 Sharon shall be a fold of flocks, and the Valley of Achor a place for the herds to lie down in, for My people who seek Me.
11 But you are those who forsake the Lord, who forget My holy mountain, who prepare a table for Fortune, and who furnish the drink offering for Destiny.
12 I will destine you for the sword, and you all shall bow down to the slaughter; because when I called, you did not answer; when I spoke, you did not hear but did evil before My eyes and chose that in which I did not delight.
13 Therefore, thus says the Lord God: My servants shall eat, but you shall be hungry; My servants shall drink, but you shall be thirsty; My servants shall rejoice, but you shall be ashamed;
14 My servants shall sing for joy with a glad heart, but you shall cry with a heavy heart and shall wail with grief of spirit.
15 You shall leave your name for a curse to My chosen ones; for the Lord God shall slay you, but My servants shall be called by another name;
16 because he who is blessed in the earth shall bless himself in the God of truth; and he who swears in the earth shall swear by the God of truth; because the former troubles are forgotten and because they are hidden from My eyes.
17 The New Creation For I create new heavens and a new earth; the former things shall not be remembered or come to mind.
18 But be glad and rejoice forever in that which I create; for I create Jerusalem for rejoicing and her people for joy.
19 I will rejoice in Jerusalem and be glad in My people; and the voice of weeping shall no longer be heard in her, nor the voice of crying.
20 There shall no longer be an infant who lives only a few days nor an old man who has not filled out his days. For the child shall die a hundred years old, but the sinner being a hundred years old shall be accursed.
21 They shall build houses and inhabit them; and they shall plant vineyards and eat the fruit of them.
22 They shall not build and another inhabit; they shall not plant and another eat; for as the days of a tree are the days of My people, and My chosen ones shall long enjoy the work of their hands.
23 They shall not labor in vain nor bring forth children for trouble; for they are the descendants of the blessed of the Lord and their offspring with them.
24 Before they call, I will answer; and while they are yet speaking, I will hear.
25 The wolf and the lamb shall feed together, and the lion shall eat straw like the bull, and dust shall be the serpent’s food. They shall not hurt nor destroy in all My holy mountain, says the Lord.
1 True Worship Thus says the Lord: Heaven is My throne, and the earth is My footstool. Where then is the house that you could build for Me? And where is the place of My rest?
2 For My hand made all those things, thus all those things have come to be, says the Lord. But to this man I will look, even to him who is poor and of a contrite spirit, and trembles at My word.
3 He who kills a bull is as if he kills a man; he who sacrifices a lamb, as if he breaks a dog’s neck; he who offers a grain offering, as if he offers swine’s blood; he who burns incense, as if he blesses an idol. They have chosen their own ways, and their soul delights in their abominations;
4 I also will choose their punishments and will bring their fears on them, because when I called, no one answered; when I spoke, they did not listen; but they did evil before My eyes and chose that in which I did not delight.
5 The Vindication of Zion Hear the word of the Lord, you who tremble at His word: Your brothers who hate you, who cast you out for My name’s sake, said, “Let the Lord be glorified that we may see your joy.” Yet they shall be ashamed.
6 A voice of noise from the city, a voice from the temple, the voice of the Lord who renders recompense to His enemies.
7 Before she was in labor, she gave birth; before her pain came, she delivered a son.
8 Who has heard such a thing? Who has seen such things? Shall the earth be made to give birth in one day? Shall a nation be born at once? For as soon as Zion was in labor, she brought forth her sons.
9 Shall I bring to the point of birth and not cause delivery? says the Lord. Shall I who cause delivery shut the womb? says your God.
10 Rejoice with Jerusalem and be glad for her, all you who love her; rejoice exceedingly with her, all you who mourn for her,
11 that you may feed and be satisfied with her consoling breasts, that you may feed and be delighted with the abundance of her bosom.
12 For thus says the Lord: I will extend peace to her like a river and the glory of the nations like a flowing stream. Then you shall nurse, you shall be carried on her sides, and dandled on her knees.
13 As one whom his mother comforts, so I will comfort you; and you shall be comforted in Jerusalem.
14 God’s Reign and Final Judgment Then you shall see this, and your heart shall rejoice, and your bones shall flourish like an herb; and the hand of the Lord shall be known toward His servants, and His indignation toward His enemies.
15 For the Lord shall come with fire and with His chariots like a whirlwind, to render His anger with fury and His rebuke with flames of fire.
16 For by fire and by His sword on all flesh, the Lord shall execute judgment; and the slain of the Lord shall be many.
17 Those who sanctify themselves and purify themselves in the gardens behind one tree in the midst, eating swine’s flesh, and abominable things, and mice shall be consumed together, says the Lord.
18 For I know their works and their thoughts. The time shall come to gather all nations and tongues. And they shall come and see My glory.
19 I will set a sign among them, and send from them survivors to the nations: to Tarshish, Pul, and Lud—who draw the bow—to Tubal, and Javan, to the coastlands afar off who have not heard My fame nor seen My glory. And they shall declare My glory among the nations.
20 They shall bring all your brothers out of all nations as an offering to the Lord on horses, and in chariots, and in litters, and on mules, and on swift beasts to My holy mountain Jerusalem, says the Lord, as the sons of Israel bring an offering in a clean vessel into the house of the Lord.
21 I will also take some of them for priests and for Levites, says the Lord.
22 For as the new heavens and the new earth which I will make shall remain before Me, says the Lord, so shall your descendants and your name remain.
23 From one New Moon to another, and from one Sabbath to another, all flesh shall come to worship before Me, says the Lord.
24 And they shall go forth and look on the corpses of the men who have transgressed against Me. For their worm shall not die, nor shall their fire be quenched. And they shall be an abhorrence to all flesh.