The Book of Isaiah
1 The visions of Isaiah the son of Amos, which he beheld about Judah and Jerusalem in the time of Kings ʽUzzijah, Jotham, Ahaz, and Hezekiah of Judah.
2 Listen, sky, and give ear, earth, because Jehovah has spoken: I raised children, kept them till they grew tall, and they have rebelled against me. 3 A bull knows its owner, a donkey its master’s manger; Israel does not know, my people does not notice.
4 Ah sinful nation, people heavy with guilt, progeny of evil-doers, vicious children! they have left Jehovah, been contemptuous to the Holy One of Israel, backed away as strangers. 5 What should you be beaten again for? you would go further out of the way. Every head is cankered, every heart unstrung, 6* from foot to head not a sound spot: torn skin and bruises and raw wounds that have not, been squeezed out nor bandaged nor softened with oil. 7* Your country is a desolation, your cities are burned down; your land aliens eat up in your presence, and it is a desolation like an overthrow of aliens; 8* and the daughter of Sion is left like a booth in a vineyard, like a night-platform in a melon-patch, like a besieged city. 9 If Jehovah of Armies had not caused the merest survivors of us to be left, we should have been like Sodom, a parallel to Ghomorrah.
10 Listen to Jehovah’s word, chieftains of Sodom; give ear to our God’s instructions, people of Ghomorrah. 11 “What do I want of the multiplicity of your sacrifices?” Jehovah is saying; “I have had my fill of burnt-offerings of rams and fat of stall-fed calves, and for blood of steers and sheep and he-goats I have no fancy; 12* when you come to appear before me, who has demanded this of you? You shall do no more trampling my courts. 13 Bringing offerings is futile; incense is an abomination to me. New moon and sabbath, proclaiming a meeting, I cannot bear; fasting and compulsory holiday, 14 your new moons and your dates, my soul hates; they have come to be a dead weight on me, I am tired out with carrying it. 15 And when you spread out your hands I will ignore you; even when you offer great quantities of prayer I am not going to listen: your hands are full of blood. 16 Take a bath, clean up; get the badness of your practices away from before my eyes; leave off doing the bad, learn to do the good; 17* aim at justice, correct injustice; do justice for an orphan, battle for a widow’s cause.”
18 Come and let us have it out, Jehovah is saying. If your sins get to be like scarlet they are to be white as snow, if they get red as crimson they are to be like wool— 19 if you are willing and obedient you shall eat the best in the country, 20 but if you refuse and are disobedient you shall be fed swords, because Jehovah’s mouth has spoken.
21 How has she become a prostitute that was a faithful town, full of justice, in which honesty harbored—but now murderers! 22 Your silver has become dross, your liquor is watered. 23 Your generals are incorrigibles, confederates of thieves, every one a bribe-lover and fee-chaser; they do not do justice for an orphan and a widow’s cause does not reach them. 24 So ha, quoth the Lord, Jehovah of Armies, the Mighty One of Israel: I will have satisfaction from my foes and have revenge on my enemies, 25* and bring my hand back against you; and I will smelt away your dross in a furnace and remove all your tin, 26 and restore your judges as at first and your councillors as at the beginning. After that you shall be called the city of honesty, a faithful town.
27 Sion shall be redeemed by justice, and those of her who come back by righteousness. 28 And the crash of rebels and sinners shall be all together, and those who leave Jehovah shall be exterminated.
29** For you shall be disappointed in the oaks you wanted, and abashed over the gardens you chose; 30* for you shall be like an oak dropping its leaves and like a garden that has no water. 31 And the sturdy shall become tow and his work a spark, and both shall burn up together and have nobody to quench them.
2 The word that Isaiah the son of Amos beheld about Judah and Jerusalem.
2* And in the future days the mountain of Jehovah’s house shall be set at the head of the mountains and lifted above hills, and all the nations shall stream to it. 3 And many peoples shall go and say “Come and let us go up to Jehovah’s mountain, to the house of the God of Jacob, to have him instruct us in ways of his that we may go in his paths,” because from Sion instruction shall go out and Jehovah’s word from Jerusalem. 4 And he shall give judgment between the nations and pronounce verdicts for many peoples, and they shall pound their swords into hoes and their spears into pruning-hooks; nation shall not take up sword against nation, and they shall never again learn war. 5 House of Jacob, come and let us walk in Jehovah’s light.
6*** Because you have abandoned your people the house of Jacob because they are full of Beduin soothsaying methods and tell fortunes like the Philistines and mesmerize foreign children, 7 and their country is full of silver and gold and there is no end to their hoards, and their country is full of ponies and there is no end to their chariots, 8 and their country is full of trumpery gods, they do reverence to the work of their hands, to what their fingers have made, 9** therefore humanity is abased and men brought low; 10 —— 11 the eyes of human highness shall be brought low, and abased the loftiness of men, and Jehovah alone shall tower high on that day. 12* For Jehovah of Armies has a day against everything proud and lofty and against everything stately and high, 13 and against all the lofty and stately cedars of the Lebanon and against all the oaks of the Bashan, 14 and against all the lofty mountains and against all the stately hills, 15 and against every high tower and against every battlemented wall, 16* and against all Spain-ships and against all pleasure-barges; 17 and human highness shall be abased and the loftiness of men shall be brought low, and Jehovah alone shall tower high on that day, 18 and the trumpery gods shall pass out completely. 19 And they shall go into caves in the rocks and burrows in the ground from the dread of Jehovah and from the stateliness of his pride at his standing up to flutter the earth. 20 On that day men shall throw their trumpery gods of silver and of gold, that their fingers made to do reverence to, to the moles and the bats 21 to go into the cavities of the rocks and the clefts of the crags from the dread of Jehovah and from the stateliness of his pride at his standing up to flutter the earth. 22* ——
3 For here is the Lord Jehovah of Armies taking away from Jerusalem and from Judah stay and staff, every stay of bread and every stay of water, 2 champion and soldier, judge and prophet and soothsayer and elder, 3 captain of fifty and man of influence and counselor and ingenious artisan and expert charm-singer, 4 and I will make boys their generals, and pestering shall rule them; 5 and the people shall ill-treat each other, man against man, the boy hectoring the old man and the nobody the aristocrat. 6 When a man seizes his brother in his father’s house with “You have a mantle, we will have you for chieftain and this muddle shall be under your hands,” 7 that day he will vociferate “I will not be surgeon; there is no bread and no mantle in my house; you shall not make me chieftain of a people,” 8 because Jerusalem has stumbled, Judah has fallen, because their tongues and their practices confront Jehovah disregarding his glorious eyes. 9 The recognition of their persons indicts them; they announce their sin like Sodom’s, they make no concealment of it. Woe to their hearts! for they have done themselves mischief. 10* Happy an honest man, because he is kind; for they shall eat the fruit of their practices. 11 Woe to a vicious rascal; for the dealing of his hands shall come back to him. 12* My people’s commandants are high-handed, and women rule it; my people, your directors misdirect, and have dropped from their memory the course for your travel.
13 Jehovah has taken his stand to contend, and is standing to bring peoples to justice. 14 Jehovah will prosecute the elders of his people and its generals; it is you that have eaten down the vineyard, the goods stolen from the penniless man are in your houses. 15* What are you about, beating down my people and grinding up poor men’s faces?
16 And Jehovah says “Inasmuch as the daughters of Sion are haughty and go with tilted neck and ogling eyes, go tripping along and making the anklets sound on their legs, 17 the Lord will bring out eruptions on the crowns of the daughters of Sion and Jehovah will denude their crotches. 18 On that day the Lord will remove the magnificence of the anklets and net-bands and crescents, 19 the pendants and bracelets and veils, 20** the caps and armlets and ribbons and smelling-bottles and charms, 21 the rings and nose-rings, 22 the full dresses and jackets and shawls and bags, 23 the gauzes and cambrics and the tiaras and mantles. 24 And instead of spice there shall be putridity, and instead of a belt a halter, and instead of curls baldness, and instead of formal dress a sackcloth tied round; branding instead of beauty. 25 Your citizens have fallen by the sword, your manhood by war; 26* and her gateways grieve and mourn, and she sits despoiled on the ground.
4 And seven women shall take hold of one man on that day, saying “We will eat our own bread and wear our own garments; only let us be called by your name, take the dishonor off us.”
2 On that day Jehovah’s verdure will be splendor and glory, and the fruit of the ground pride and magnificence, for the survivors of Israel; 3* and those that remain in Sion, and those that are left over in Jerusalem, shall be called holy, everyone in Jerusalem who is written down for life, 4 if Jehovah washes off the filth from the daughters of Sion and rinses out the blood from Jerusalem by a spirit of judgment and of cleaning out. 5* And Jehovah will create over every abode on Mount Sion and over its meetings a cloud by day and a smoke and a glare of flaming fire by night, because over every fit of glory there shall be a canopy 6 and a booth for shade by day from parching and for a refuge and screen from squall and rain.
5* I would sing of my dearest my love-song of his vineyard. My dearest had a vineyard on the side of a hill of richest soil; 2 and he dug it over and picked out the stones and planted it with Sorek vines and built a tower in the middle and cut out a winepress in it and all, and expected it to bear grapes, and it bore nubbins. 3 And now, residents of Jerusalem and men of Judah, give judgment between my vineyard and me. 4 What more was to be done for my vineyard that I did not do in it? how comes it I expected it to bear grapes and it bore nubbins?
5 Now let me give you notice what I am going to do to my vineyard: remove its thorn-fence and have it eaten down; break its wall and have it trampled. 6* And I will render it a glen-side, unpruned, unhoed, grown up to brambles and briers; and I will order the clouds not to drop any rain on it. 7 For the house of Israel is the vineyard of Jehovah of Armies, and the men of Judah his labor of love; and he expected justice and found butcheries, expected integrity and found outcry.
8 Ha, you that add house to house, annex field to field, till there is no place at all and you are seated by yourselves in the heart of the country! 9 in my ears is Jehovah of Armies, “many houses shall be desolate, great fine ones, without inhabitant,” 10** for a five-acre vineyard shall make ten gallons, and sowing a peck shall produce a quart.
11* Ha, you that are chasing after beer the first thing in the morning, that have wine dogging you the last thing in the evening! 12 and your banquets are lyre and harp, tambourine and flute and wine, but you do not look at Jehovah’s activity nor see the work of his hands. 13* So my people is deported because of not knowing, and its glory is starving men and its host parched with thirst. 14* So the realm of death has expanded its appetite and opened its mouth monstrously, and down goes her stateliness and her activity and her hubbub and her hilarity, 15 and humanity is abased and men brought low, and high society’s eyes are brought low, 16 and Jehovah of Armies rises high in judgment and the holy Deity hallows himself in righteousness; 17** and sheep shall pasture where they will, and tegs shall eat on devastated sites.
18 Ha, you that draw guilt with lines of futility, and sin as if with a cart-rope, 19 that say “Let him be quick and hurry up his work that we may see it; let the purpose of the Holy One of Israel come on and come to something, that we may know it!”
20 Ha, you that call bad good and good bad, that make darkness light and light darkness, that make bitter sweet and sweet bitter!
21 Ha, you that look upon yourselves as wise and envisage yourselves as sensible!
22 Ha, you that are champions at drinking wine and stalwart at mixing drinks, 23 that give a wrong-doer a verdict in return for a bribe and deprive a man who is in the right of his deserts! 24 So, as a tongue of fire eats up stubble and dry grass in a flame sinks down, your root shall go rotten and your budding go up like dust, because you rejected the instructions of Jehovah of Armies and treated the say of the Holy One of Israel with contempt. 25 On this account Jehovah is angry with his people and has stretched out his hand over it and struck it, and the mountains quivered, and their bodies were like offal out in the streets. With all this his anger has not gone back, his hand is still stretched out.
26 And he will signal for a nation from far away and whistle for it from the end of the earth, and forthwith it comes at full speed, 27 in which there is no one faint and no one stumbling; which never grows drowsy nor sleeps; whose loincloth never comes undone and its shoestring never breaks; 28* whose arrows are sharpened and all its bows strung, whose ponies’ hoofs seem like flint and the running of its wheels like a gale of wind; 29 it has a roar like a lioness, it roars like two-year-old lions, and it growls and seizes a prey and carries it to safety and there is no rescuer. 30 And it will growl over it that day like the growling of a sea, and one will look at the country and find distressful darkness, and light turned dark by its thick clouds.
6 In the year of King ʽUzzijah’s death I saw the Lord sitting on a high and high-placed throne with his trailing robes filling the temple. 2 Seraphs were standing above him: each one had six wings: with two he covered his face, and with two he covered his legs, and with two he flew; 3 and this one called to that one “Holy, holy, holy is Jehovah of Armies; there is a whole worldful of his glory,” 4* and the foundations of the thresholds tossed at the caller’s voice, and the house was filled with smoke.
5 And I said “Woe to me, I am a dead man, because I am a man of unclean lips and I live among a people of unclean lips; for my eyes have seen the King, Jehovah of Armies.” 6* And one of the seraphs flew to me with an ember which he had taken off the altar with the tongs, 7 and touched it to my mouth and said “Here, this has touched your lips, and your guilt shall pass away and your sin be purged.” 8 And I heard the voice of the Lord as he said “Whom shall I send, and who will go for us?” and I said “Here I am, send me.”
9 And he said “Go say to this people ‘Hear, but do not understand; see, but do not know.’ 10 Make this people’s brains fat, make its ears dull, gum over its eyes, for fear it should see with its eyes and hear with its ears and its brains should understand and it should turn back and be cured.”
11 And I said “How long, Lord?” And he said “Till cities tumble down to have no inhabitant, and houses to have no humankind, and the soil is a forlorn desolation, 12* and Jehovah sends mankind far away, and the deserted areas in the heart of the country are many, 13 and it has a tenth left in it, and goes back to being for beasts to eat down, like a terebinth or an oak which have suckers on them when they have been felled; its stock are a sacred seed.”
7 And in the time of Ahaz the son of Jotham the son of ʽUzzijah, king of Judah, King Rason of Syria and King Pekah the son of Remaliah of Israel came up to Jerusalem to attack it; but they were not able to. 2 And the house of David were told “Syria is resting on Ephraim,” and their hearts and their people’s hearts rocked as small trees rock in a wind. 3* And Jehovah said to Isaiah “Go out to meet Ahaz, you and your son Shear-jashub, to the end of the aqueduct of the upper reservoir, the one that is on the highway to the Fuller’s Field, 4 and say to him ‘Take care and be quiet: do not be afraid nor discouraged at these two last ends of smoldering firebrands, with the anger of Rason and Syria and the son of Remaliah. 5* Whereas Syria has proposed mischief against you, Ephraim and the son of Remaliah, saying 6 “We will go up into Judah and terrorize it and take it by storm and set up a king in it, the son of Tabeel,” 7 the Lord Jehovah says “It shall not get on foot, it shall not be. 8* For Damascus is the head of Syria and Rason is the head of Damascus; and in sixty-five years more Ephraim shall be shivered and lose its nationality; 9 and Samaria is the head of Ephraim and the son of Remaliah is the head of Samaria. If you do not have confidence you shall not have permanence.”’”
10 And Jehovah went further by saying to Ahaz 11 “Ask for a token from your God Jehovah: go deep to the realm of death or high aloft.” 12 But Ahaz said “I will not ask, I will not put Jehovah on trial.”
13 And he said “Listen, house of David; are you not satisfied with tiring men out, that you would tire out my God too? 14 So the Lord himself will give you a token: there is a lass pregnant, she is going to have a son and name him God-Is-With-Us; 15 clabber and honey he shall eat at his knowing how to reject what is bad and choose, what is good; 16 for before the child knows how to reject what is bad and choose what is good the land of whose two kings you are in terror shall be deserted. 17 Jehovah will bring upon you and your people and your family days that have not come since Ephraim seceded from Judah—the king of Assyria.
18 “And on that day Jehovah will whistle for the flies at the end of the Egyptian Nile and for the bees in Assyria, 19* and they will all come and rest in the arroyos and the crag-fissures and in all the thorntrees and all the brakes.
20 “On that day the Lord will shave with the razor hired on the other side of the River, the king of Assyria, the head and the hair of the legs, and the beard too it will take off.
21 “And on that day a man will keep a heifer and two sheep, 22 and because of the quantity of the production of milk he shall feed on clabber; for everyone that is left in the heart of the country shall feed on clabber and honey.
23 “And on that day every place where there are a thousand grapevines worth a thousand shekels will become brambles and briers; 24 one shall go in there with bow and arrows; for all the country shall be brambles and briers. 25 And on all the mountains that are hoed with the two-tined hoe you shall not go in for fear of brambles and briers, because it shall become a place for a bull to go loose and a sheep to tread its paths.”
8** And Jehovah said to me “Take a great bulletin-board and write on it in cut-in letters ‘For Maher-Shalal-Hash-Baz,’ 2* and have it attested for me by authoritative witnesses, Priest Urijah and Zecariah the son of Jeberekiah.” 3* And I had intercourse with the prophetess, and she became pregnant and had a son; and Jehovah said to me “Name him Maher-Shalal-Hash-Baz, 4 because before the child knows how to call ‘papa’ and ‘mamma’ they shall carry the wealth of Damascus and the booty of Samaria before the king of Assyria.”
5 And Jehovah spoke to me yet again, saying 6* “Since this people do not care for the soft-flowing water of Shiloah but admire the hubbub of Rason and the son of Remaliah, 7 therefore here is the Lord bringing up on them the vast and voluminous water of the River, the king of Assyria and all his masses, and it shall rise in all its channels and go over all its banks 8 and off into Judah, washing everything away and passing off; it shall reach to the neck, and its spread of wing shall be the full breadth of your country, God-Is-With-Us.”
9** Know, peoples, and be dismayed; give ear, all remotest parts of the earth; mobilize and be dismayed, mobilize and be dismayed. 10* Get up a plan and have it baffled, draw up a program and it will not come off, because God is with us.
11 For Jehovah said to me in the grip of his hand, and warned me from going on this people’s road, 12 “You are not to say ‘A plot’ on every occasion on which this people says ‘A plot,’ nor fear their object of fear nor be overawed: 13 Jehovah of Armies you are to revere as holy, and he is your object of fear and of awe. 14* And he shall become a stone to strike against and a rock to stumble over for the two houses of Israel, a trap and a snare for the inhabitants of Jerusalem, 15 and many among them shall stumble and fall and break their bones, and be snared and caught.”
16 Pack up admonition, seal up instruction, among my learners, 17 and I will wait for Jehovah, who veils his face from the house of Jacob, and count on him. 18 Here I and the children God has given me are for tokens and portents in Israel from Jehovah of Armies who makes his abode on Mount Sion. 19 And when they say to you “Consult this and that sort of chirping and moaning mediums; should not each people consult its gods, on behalf of the living the dead, 20* for instruction and admonitions?”—if they do not speak by this formula that has no magic, . . . that he has no daybreak. 21** And he will pass along it in hardship and hunger; and when he is hungry he will lose his temper and abuse his king and his God, and turn his face upward 22 and look toward the earth, and find scanty room and darkness to fly in, narrow limits and murkiness to stray in.
9 . . . because not in dusk is she who is now in straits. The first underrated the country of Zebulun and of Naphtali, but the last made much of the sea road, the other side of the Jordan, the marchland of the nations.
2 The people that were walking in the dark have seen a great light; on those who were sitting in a country of gloom a radiance has shone. 3* You have made the jubilation great, the gladness huge; they are glad before you like gladness at harvest, as they jubilate when they divide booty, 4* because you have shivered the yoke of his load, the stick of his shoulder, his driver’s cudgel, as on the day of Midian. 5* For every shoe worn in melee, and cloak rolled in blood, shall become cinders, food of the fire. 6* For we have a child born to us, a son given to us,—and dominion rests on his shoulder, and he is named Wonder-Counselor, Divine Champion, Father Ever, Captain of Peace, 7* for ample dominion and for endless peace,—on David’s throne and over his kingdom, to settle it and brace it with justice and right henceforth forever; the jealousy of Jehovah of Armies will do this.
8* The Lord sent a word upon Jacob and it landed on Israel. 9 And the people all shouted, Ephraim and the inhabitants of Samaria, in pride and self-sufficiency, 10 “Bricks have fallen down, but we will build dressed stone; sycamores have been cut down, but we will substitute cedars”; 11 but Jehovah reared their foe aloft against them and went to spurring their enemies, 12* Syria in front and the Philistines behind, and they ate off Israel as fast as they could bite. With all this his anger has not gone back, his hand is still stretched out.
13 And the people did not go back to him who dealt them the blows, they did not resort to Jehovah of Armies; 14 and Jehovah cut off from Israel head and tail, palm-leaf and rush, in one day. 15 (An elder or influential man is the head, and a prophet who preaches untruth is the tail.) 16 And this people’s directors have become misdirectors, and the directed helpless. 17* Therefore the Lord will not be glad over its young men nor have pity for its orphans and widows; for all of it is irreligious and criminal, and every mouth talks rascality. With all this his anger has not gone back, his hand is still stretched out.
18 For foul play burned like a fire that is eating up brambles and briers and has caught to the thickets of the rocks and they go up in eddying columns of smoke. 19* By the wrath of Jehovah of Armies earth is scorched and the people are like the fuel of a fire, no one sparing the next, 20* and it slices off on the right and is hungry, and on the left and does not feel full, each eating another’s flesh, 21* Manasseh Ephraim and Ephraim Manasseh, both of them together against Judah. With all this his anger has not gone back, his hand is still stretched out.
10 Ha, you that establish usages of villainy and write troublemaking documents 2 to sidetrack poor men’s claims and steal the rights of the downtrodden of my people, that you may make booty of widows and plunder orphans! 3* And what will you do for a day of punishment and for a storm that comes from far away? to whom will you flee for help and where will you leave your fortunes, 4* except to crouch under prisoners and fall under killed men? With all this his anger has not gone back, his hand is still stretched out.
5* Ha, the Assyrian, rod of my anger and stick of my hostility! 6 I send him upon an irreligious nation and commission him against the people of my wrath to carry off booty and lift plunder and reduce them to a trampled mass like street clay. 7 But he is not thinking of that and his mind is not planning for that; what he has in mind is to deal destruction, and stamp out nations not a few. 8 For he thinks “Are not my generals one and all kings? 9 Is Calno not like Carkemish or is Hamath not like Arpad or is Samaria not like Damascus? 10 As I laid hands on the kingdoms of the trumpery gods, when their carvings surpassed Jerusalem’s and Samaria’s, 11 shall I not do to Jerusalem and its idols the same as I did to Samaria and its trumperies?”
12** And when the Lord finishes off all his work on Mount Sion and in Jerusalem, he will punish the outgrowth of the Assyrian king’s self-sufficiency and the bravado of his arrogance, 13* because he thinks “By my strength of hand I did it and by my wisdom, because I am sagacious; and I have put boundaries of peoples out of the way and pillaged their reserves, and sent settled populations down to the pit; 14 and I laid hands on the wealth of the peoples as if it were a bird’s nest, as one gathers abandoned eggs I gathered all the earth, and there was no one to flutter a wing or open a mouth or chirp.”
15 Is an ax to brag against the one who chops with it, or a saw to put on airs against the one who saws with it? as if a baton waved the one who lifts it, or a stick lifted the one who is not wood. 16* So the Lord Jehovah of Armies will send dwindling to his fattest parts, and under his glory will be lighted a combustion like that of fire; 17 and Israel’s Light will become a fire and his Holy One a flame, and it will burn and eat up his brambles and briers in one day. 18* And to the glory of his bush and his garden-land, soul and body, he will put an end; and it will be like a diseased man’s wasting away; 19 and the remnant of the trees of his bush shall be few, a boy may list them.
20 And on that day the remnant of Israel and the survivors of the house of Jacob shall never again lean on him who struck them, but shall lean on Jehovah, Israel’s Holy One, in good faith. 21* A remnant shall come back, 22 the remnant of Israel, to a divine champion. For if your people, Israel, be like the sand of the sea, a remnant shall come back; there is in it a decisive shrinkage, a washing-out flood of rightness. 23* For the Lord is bringing a crisis and a finish in the middle of all the earth.
24 So the Lord Jehovah says “My people that live in Sion, do not be afraid of Assyria that is beating you with a cudgel and lifting its stick over you in Egyptian fashion; 25* for in a very little bit longer, hostility will be finished and my anger against the world will be spent.” 26 And Jehovah will brandish a whip over him as in the beating of Midian at Raven Rock, and his stick over the sea, lifting it in the Egyptian fashion. 27* And on that day his load will come off from your shoulder and his yoke be left off from your neck.
28 He has taken ʽOphni by surprise, has come to Ghaijath, has passed through Migron, has deposited his baggage at Micmas, 29* has gone over the crossing, Gebaʽ is his place for the night; Ramah is in a panic, Gibeah of Saul has taken flight. 30 Shriek, daughter of Gallim; listen, Laishah; answer her, Anathoth. 31 Madmenah has flitted; the inhabitants of Gebim have taken to cover. 32 This very day at Nob, for halting, he swings his hand toward the mountain of the house of Sion, the hill of Jerusalem.
33* Lo, the Lord Jehovah of Armies is clearing off timber in an awful scene, and the tall are chopped down and the high brought low, 34* and the thickets of the rocks are cut back with iron and the Lebanon falls by the ax.
11* But a twig will come out of Jesse’s stump and a sprout will shoot from his roots; 2 and Jehovah’s spirit will rest on him, a spirit of wisdom and discernment, a spirit of resourcefulness and vigor, a spirit of knowledge and fear of Jehovah; 3* and he will scent by fear of Jehovah, and not judge by what he sees with his eyes nor pronounce his verdict by what he hears with his ears, 4* but will judge poor men honestly and pronounce verdicts fairly for the humblest of earth; and he will beat down an arrogant man with the cudgel of his mouth and bring death to a lawless man with the breath of his lips. 5 And honesty will be the belt round his waist and faithfulness the loincloth on his hips.
6 And wolf will be sheep’s tenant, and leopard will lie down with kid, and calf and two-year-old lion will feed together, with a little child as driver among them; 7 and cow and bear will make friends, their young will lie down together, and lion will eat straw like ox. 8** And sucking babe will play on viper’s hole, and child newly weaned will toddle over cobra’s crevice. 9* They will not do harm nor havoc in all my sacred highland, because the country has grown full of knowledge of Jehovah as water covers the sea.
10* And on that day Jesse’s root, that stands for a signal to peoples, will have nations resorting to it, and its rest will be in glory.
11** And on that day the Lord will once more lift his hand to get the remnant of his people, that remains out of Assyria and out of Egypt and out of Nubia and out of ʽElam and out of Shinear and out of Hamath, 12 and he will raise a signal to the nations and bring together the exiled men of Israel and gather the scattered women of Judah from the four sides of the earth. 13** And Ephraim’s jealousy shall disappear and Judah’s heartburnings come to an end; Ephraim shall not be jealous of Judah nor Judah feel heartburning toward Ephraim; 14 and they shall swoop upon the Philistines’ frontier to the west, together they shall plunder the eastern Beduins, they shall have Edom and Moab at their disposal and the Bene-ʽAmmon obeying their orders. 15** And Jehovah will dry off the tongue of the Egyptian sea, and wave his hand over the River with his parching wind and strike it into seven streams and let people go there in sandals. 16 And there shall be a highway for the remnant of my people that remain out of Assyria, like the one there was for Israel on the day of their coming up out of Egypt.
12 And on that day you shall say “I will thank you, Jehovah: when you have been angry at me, your anger goes back and you comfort me. 2 Lo, Deity is my salvation; I will be confident and have no alarm; for my strength and hymn is Jehovah and he has been salvation to me.”
3 And you shall draw water with rejoicing out of the springs of salvation, 4 and say on that day “Thank Jehovah, proclaim his name, make known among the peoples his deeds, commemorate it that his name towers high. 5 Make music to Jehovah because he has done proudly; this is made known throughout the earth.” 6 Whoop and shout, dame of Sion, because great in your midst is the Holy One of Israel.
13 The boding for Babylon, which Isaiah the son of Amos beheld.
2* On a scalped mountain raise a signal, sound for them a powerful call, wave a hand that they may come to nobles’ gates. 3 I myself have given orders to the men I have consecrated, have summoned my champions too for my anger, my men hilarious in pride. 4 Hark, the sound of an uproar on the mountains, the seeming of a great body of people! hark, the sound of a hubbub of kingdoms, nations coming together! Jehovah of Armies is mustering a war-expedition. 5 From a faraway country, from the end of the sky, come Jehovah and the instruments of his hostility to ruin all the earth. 6 Howl, because Jehovah’s day is near, like a shattering from Shaddai it comes. 7 Therefore all hands shall be unstrung and every heart of man shall melt down, 8 and they shall be in consternation, seized with throes and pains and feeling the pangs of a woman in childbirth, appealing to each other in bewilderment, their faces faces of flame.
9 Here is Jehovah’s day coming, a cruel one, and wrath and anger, to make the earth a desolation and root out its sinners out of it; 10* for the stars of the sky and its great starry shapes shall not beam; the sun darkens as it comes out, and the moon shall not shed its rays. 11 And I will punish the world for viciousness and wicked men for their crimes, and put a stop to the pride of audacious men and bring down the pretensions of arrogant men, 12 and make a human being more of a rarity than red gold, and mankind than nuggets from Ophir. 13 Therefore I will set the sky to trembling, and the earth shall shake loose from its place in the wrath of Jehovah of Armies and in the day of his anger; 14 and like a broken-up troop of gazelles, like sheep that have no one to round them up, they shall turn each toward his own people and take flight each to his own country. 15 Everyone that is found shall be run through, and everyone that is caught in the sweep shall fall by the sword, 16 and their children’s brains shall be dashed out before their eyes; their houses shall be pillaged and their wives ravished.
17 Here I am stirring up against them the Medes, who think nothing of silver and care nothing for gold; 18* and bows shall dash out young men’s brains, and they will have no regard for the fruit of bodies, and their eyes will have no mercy on sons. 19 And Babylon, most splendid of capitals, magnificence of the Chaldeans’ pride, shall become like God’s overthrow of Sodom and Ghomorrah: 20 it shall nevermore be inhabited, it shall be unoccupied generation after generation, no Arab shall tent there, no shepherds rest their flocks there. 21** And wildcats shall stretch themselves there, and their houses shall be full of polecats, and ostriches shall dwell there and satyrs shall dance there; 22* and hyenas shall howl in its palaces, and jackals in its dainty halls. And its time is nearly come, its days will not be prolonged.
14 For Jehovah will be tender toward Jacob, and again choose Israel, and will set them down on their own soil; and the immigrants shall unite with them and attach themselves to the house of Jacob. 2* And peoples shall take them and bring them to their place, and the house of Israel shall have them on Jehovah’s soil as an estate of slaves and shall become captors of their captors and have the mastery over their bosses. 3 And on the day when Jehovah gives you rest from your woes and vicissitudes and from the hard work you have been kept at, 4* you shall strike up this lay against the king of Babylon:
How slave-driving has left off,
browbeating left off!
5 Jehovah has broken malefactors’ batons,
rulers’ scepters,
6 What beat peoples in wrath,
a belaboring that never shifted,
What lorded it over nations in anger,
a domineering that never checked.
7 All the earth is at rest and quiet,
it breaks out in shouting.
8 The very cypresses rejoice over you,
the cedars of Lebanon,
“Since you are down, no cutter
is coming up against us.”
9 The realm of death below stirs for you,
to meet your coming,
Rouses shades for you,
all magnates of earth,
Makes all kings of nations
stand up from their thrones.
11 Your pride is brought down to the grave,
the din of your harps,
The bed made under you is maggots,
your coverlet worms.
12* How you have fallen from the sky,
morning star, child of the dawn!
You are chopped to the earth,
lifeless over nations.
13 And you had said to yourself
“I will go up to the sky,
Above God’s stars
I will uplift my throne,
I will sit on the Council Mount
deep in the north;
14 I will go up on the heights of cloud,
be the same as the Most High”—
15 Only you were to be sent down to the realm of death,
deep into the pit.
16 Those who see you shall observe
and take note of you:
“Is this the man that set the earth to trembling,
that shook kingdoms,
17 That made the world like the wilderness
and demolished its cities,
never unfastened his prisoners to go home?”
19 But you are thrown out graveless
like a repulsive abortion,
Clad with slaughtered men transfixed with swords
that go down among the stones of a pit like a trampled corpse;
20 You are not to be united with them in burial
because you have ruined your country,
slaughtered your people;
The posterity of harmers
shall forever not be named.
21* Get ready a slaughtering-place for his sons
on account of their fathers’ guilt,
That they may not stand up and take possession of earth
and fill the face of the world with awe.
22 And I will stand up against them, quoth Jehovah of Armies, and bereave Babylon of name and remnant, quoth Jehovah. 23** And I will make her into a domain of porcupines, and pools of water, and I will sweep it with a scraping broom, quoth Jehovah of Armies.
24 Jehovah of Armies swears “As I had thought of having it, so it came; and as I have planned, so it shall be made good: 25 to wreck Assyria in my country and trample it on my mountains, and have its yoke off from them and its load off his shoulder; 26 this is the plan laid out for all the earth, and this the hand stretched out over all the nations. 27 For Jehovah of Armies has planned, and who shall thwart? and his hand is stretched out, and who shall turn it back?
28 In the year of King Ahaz’s death there was this boding:
29* Do not be all elated, Philistia, because a cudgel that beat you is broken; for out of a snake’s stock will come out a cobra, and its fruit will be a flying wildfire-snake. 30***** And poor men shall pasture in the Cretan country, and needy men have their flocks lie down unafraid; and I will bring your stock to starvation, and it shall kill your remnant. 31* Howl, gate; cry out, city; come and go all of you, Philistia; for out of the north comes a smoke, and no one is by himself at their rendezvous. 32** And what answer shall they give the messengers of a heathen nation? that Jehovah has laid Sion’s foundations and in him the downtrodden of his people shall take refuge.
Because in a night ʽAr is sacked, all is over with Moab; because in a night Kir is sacked, all is over with Moab. 2** The daughter of Dibon has gone up to the heights to weep; Moab is howling on Nebo and on Medeba; on all their heads is baldness, every beard is cut off. 3** On its streets they have sackcloths tied round them; on its roofs and in its squares it is all howling, dissolved in tears. 4 And Heshbon cries out, and Elealeh; the sound is heard to Jahas; therefore Moab’s armed men shout, it has its soul cowed. 5* My heart cries out for Moab; its refugees have sent their voice through to Soghar, “Up Luhith slope they go in tears,” “On the Horonaim road they wake a cry of catastrophe,” 6 “Leopard Water will be a desolation,” “Grass is dried up, vegetation is all gone, no green starts.” 7** Therefore he comes off with leavings, and they carry their savings off to Poplar Arroyo. 8* For the outcry has circled the territory of Moab; the howl of it reaches to Eglaim, the howl of it is at Beer-Elim; 9 for Dimon Water is full of blood; for I will decree additional things against Dimon, for Moab’s fugitives a lion and for the remnant of Admah.
16 Send a liege lord’s lamb from Wilderness Cliff to the mountain of the daughter of Sion; 2* for like birds flying wildly about, like a turned-out nest, shall Moab’s daughters on the other side of the Arnon be. 3 “Offer counsel; make interposition; set your shadow like the night in the midst of broad day; conceal strayers, do not disclose a wanderer. 4* Let Moab’s estrays find a home with you; be for them a screen from havoc-makers; for injustice is over with, havoc is finished, bullies are all gone from the country, 5 and a throne shall be planted by friendliness and on it shall sit in loyalty, in David’s tent, a judge and justice-seeker and a pusher for the right.” 6 We have heard of Moab’s pride, very proud, his pride and conceit and aggressiveness—his fine words are not reliable. 7* So let Moab howl for Moab, let him all howl; for Kir-Hareseth’s cakes of raisins you shall moan, altogether beaten down. 8** For Heshbon’s terraces stand forlorn, wielders of nations have pounded Sibmah’s vine, whose sprays reached to touch Jaʽzer, rambled to the wilderness, its canes ran wild, went over the sea.
9 Therefore with Jaʽzer’s weeping I will weep Sibmah’s vine; I will water you with my tears, Heshbon, and Elealeh; for on your summer fruit and harvest the picker’s whoop has fallen, 10* and gladness and glee are to be gathered off out of the orchard. And in the vineyards there is to be no shouting, no cheering; the treader is not to tread wine in the presses, the whoop is abolished. 11 Therefore my heart rings like a lyre for Moab, and my bosom for Kir-Heres.
12* And when Moab makes his appearance at the height, tires himself out going there, and comes to his sanctuary to pray, he will have no success.
13 This was the prediction Jehovah made about Moab once; 14 and now Jehovah predicts “In three years, like the years of a hired man’s contract, Moab’s glory will fall into contempt for all the great host; and there will remain a little bit, nothing big.”
There is Damascus being shifted from cityhood to be a wreck; 2** its cities are abandoned forevermore, a covert for flocks, which shall lie down with no one to alarm them. 3 And fortification shall come to an end out of Ephraim, and sovereignty out of Damascus; and the remnant of Syria shall be like the glory of the sons of Israel, quoth Jehovah of Armies. 4 And on that day Jacob’s glory will be brought low and the fat parts in his flesh will dwindle, 5 and it will be like a reaper’s gathering stalks, his arm reaping off ears, and it will be like one gleaning ears in Ghost Hollow, 6 and there will be after-pickings left in it like the beatings of an olive-tree, two or three berries in the tip of a treetop, four or five in the recesses of a heavy bearer, quoth Israel’s God Jehovah.
7 On that day man shall turn his mind to his Maker, and his eyes shall look toward the Holy One of Israel; 8* and he shall not turn his mind to the altars, his own handiwork, nor look at what his fingers have made and the asherahs and the hammans.
9 On that day your cities shall be deserted like the deserted sites of the Hivvites and Amorites, which they deserted before the sons of Israel, and it shall be a desolation, 10* because you have forgotten the God of your salvation and not remembered your citadel Rock. 11 Therefore you shall set out winsome plantings and sow it to exotic climbers, get growth on the day you set them out and sprouts on the morning after your sowing; harvest flits away on a day of disease and desperate suffering.
12* Ha, the uproar of many peoples roaring like the roar of seas, and the hubbub of many a folk tossing like the tossing of a vast water! 13 Folks will toss like the hubbub of a great water, but he will rebuke it and it will flee afar and be driven along like mountain chaff before a wind and like a tumbleweed before a gale. 14 At evening time dissolution is there, and before morning he does not exist. This is the portion of our pillagers, a lot for our plunderers.
18* Ha, country of buzzing wings, beyond the African rivers! 2** people who send couriers by sea, and in papyrus craft over the top of water: “Go, swift messengers, to a nation stretched and smoothed, to a people dreaded from itself onward, a nation of thew and trampling, whose country rivers cleave: 3 All inhabitants of the world and denizens of the earth, as at the raising of a mountaintop signal you are to see, and as at the blast of a ram-horn you are to hear. 4* For Jehovah has said to me ‘I will be quiet and look in my abode, like glaring heat over light, like a dew-cloud in the heat of harvest.’ 5* For before harvest, when bloom is done and a flower becomes a growing grape, he will cut the tendrils with pruning-knives and slash off the canes; 6* they will all together be left for the birds of the mountains and the beasts of the earth, and the birds shall summer on them and all beasts of the earth winter on them. 7** At that time a tribute will be brought to Jehovah of Armies from a people stretched and smoothed and from a people dreaded from itself onward, a nation of thew and trampling, whose country rivers cleave, to the place of the name of Jehovah of Armies, Mount Sion.”
19 The boding for Egypt:
There is Jehovah riding a swift cloud; and he comes to Egypt and Egypt’s trumpery gods sway about before him, and the Egyptians’ hearts melt down within them. 2 And I will spur Egyptians against Egyptians, and they shall fight against brothers and against friends, city against city, kingdom against kingdom; 3* and the Egyptians’ wits will be flustered and I will make their policy a bungle; and they will resort to the trumpery gods and the conjurers and the different kinds of mediums. 4* And I will hand Egypt over to a hard master, and a stern king shall rule them, quoth Jehovah of Armies. 5 And water will be dried up from the sea, and a river will be dried off and out, 6 and rivers will stink; the branches of Egypt’s Nile dwindle and are drying off; reeds and weeds are yellowed; 7* there are bare places by the Nile, by the Nile bank, and all the Nile sowings are dried out, blown away and missing. 8* And the fishermen grieve and mourn; all who throw hooks into the Nile and who spread seines over the water stand forlorn; 9* and flax-workers are disappointed, combing women and weavers turn white; 10* and boatmen are disconsolate, all who ply for fares downhearted. 11 Soan’s generals are mere ignoramuses, the Pharaoh’s wisest counselors are idiotic counsel; how are you to say to the Pharaoh “I am a son of wise men, a son of Eastern kings”! 12* Where are your wise men, to inform you and make known what purpose Jehovah of Armies has formed against Egypt? 13 Soan’s generals have made fools of themselves, Memphis’s generals are deluded; the headmen of Egypt’s tribes have misled her. 14 Jehovah has mixed within her a spirit of warped thoughts that will set Egypt blundering about with all her business as a drunken man blunders about with his vomit; 15 and Egypt will have no business that head and tail, palm-leaf and rush, will do.
16 On that day the Egyptians will be like women, in panic and dread at the waving of the hand of Jehovah of Armies which he is waving over them; 17 and the soil of Judah will be a nightmare to the Egyptians, everyone to whom one mentions it will be in dread, because of the purpose of Jehovah of Armies that he has formed against them.
18** On that day there will be five cities in Egypt speaking the tongue of Canaan and swearing to Jehovah of Armies; one will be called City of the Sun. 19 On that day there will be an altar to Jehovah in the middle of Egypt, and beside its boundary an obelisk to Jehovah; 20 and it will be for a token and witness to Jehovah of Armies in Egypt, because they will cry to Jehovah because of invaders and he will send them a savior and defender who will deliver them; 21 and Jehovah will become known to the Egyptians, and the Egyptians will know Jehovah on that day and worship with sacrifice and grain-offering and make vows to Jehovah and pay them. 22 And Jehovah will smite the Egyptians, smiting and curing; and they will come back to Jehovah and he will let himself be invoked for them and will cure them.
23* On that day there will be a causeway from Egypt to Assyria, and the Assyrians will come into Egypt and the Egyptians into Assyria, and the Egyptians will be subject to the Assyrians. 24 On that day Israel will be a third to Egypt and Assyria, a blessing at the heart of the earth, 25 inasmuch as Jehovah of Armies will have blessed it, saying “Blessed is my people Egypt, and Assyria my handiwork, and Israel my estate.”
20 In the year of the Tartan’s coming to Ashdod, sent by King Sargon of Assyria, and attacking Ashdod and taking it, 2 at that time Jehovah spoke by Isaiah the son of Amos, saying “Go and undo the sackcloth off your waist and take off your shoes from your feet”; and he did so, going naked and barefoot. 3 And Jehovah said “As my servant Isaiah has gone naked and barefoot three years as token and portent regarding Egypt and Nubia, 4* so the king of Assyria will drive along the Egyptian prisoners and the Nubian deportees, naked and barefoot and bare-breeched; 5 and they will be dismayed and put to shame for Nubia their cynosure and for Egypt their vaunt, 6* and the inhabitant of this coast will say “There in that condition is our cynosure to whom we took flight for help, to be delivered from the king of Assyria, and how are we to escape?”
21* The boding of wildernesses:
Like gales over the South as it sweeps by, it comes from a wilderness, from a fearful country; 2 as a hard prospect it is told me: the defrauder defrauds and the marauder marauds. Up, ʽElam; lay siege, Media; I have put a stop to all their moaning. 3** Therefore my back is full of cramps, pains like a childbearing woman’s have seized me; I am too dizzy to hear, too dazed to see. 4 My brain wanders, shudders overwhelm me; the twilight I was so fond of he has made a time of panic for me. 5* The table set, the rug laid out, eating and drinking—up, captains, grease shields! 6 For the Lord says to me “Go station the lookout; he is to report 7 what he sees, and when he sees two-horse chariots, donkey chariots, camel chariots, he is to listen hard, hard.” 8* And he called out “O, O, I stand always on watch by day, Lord, and I am planted on guard all through the nights, 9** and here come chariots, men, paired horses”—and he answered “Babylon is fallen, fallen, and all the bas-reliefs of her gods he has broken up and left on the ground.” 10* My threshing, grain of my floor, what I have heard from Israel’s God Jehovah of Armies I have reported to you.
11 The boding of Dumah:
One calls to me out of Seʽir “Watchman, what time of night? watchman, what time of night?” 12* Says watchman, “Morning is come and night too; if you are inquiring, inquire; come again.”
13* The boding “in the desert”:
In the badlands in the desert you will spend the night, caravans of Dedanites. 14 Come with water to meet a thirsty one, inhabitants of Tema; offer a fugitive his bread; 15* for they have taken flight before swords, before whetted swords and strung bows and stress of war.
16* For the Lord has said to me “In another year, like the years of a hired man’s contract, Kedar’s importance will all be gone 17* and the remnant of the archer champions of the sons of Kedar will be few; for Israel’s God Jehovah has spoken.”
22 The boding “valley of vision”:
What is the matter that you are all gone up on the roofs, 2 you full of hubbub, uproarious city, hilarious town? Your slain are not slain with swords nor dead in battle. 3*** All your chieftains have taken fight together, they are imprisoned by bows; all your stoutest are imprisoned together, have taken refuge afar. 4 Therefore I say “Pay no attention to me, let me have the bitterness of my weeping; do not be in a hurry to comfort me for the wrecking of the daughter of my people.[”] 5* For the Lord Jehovah of Armies has a day of jumbling and trampling and fumbling in the valley of vision. From Karkar they have mobilized against the highland, 6* and ʽElam has taken up quivers and Syria mounted horses and Kir bared shields, 7* and the choicest of your vales are full of chariots, and the horsemen have beset the gate; 8 and he has taken off Judah’s shelter. And on that day you looked at the arms in the Forest house, 9 and saw how many the breaches of David’s City were, and gathered together the water of the lower reservoir, 10 and counted the houses in Jerusalem, and pulled down the houses to fortify the wall, 11* and made a basin between the two walls for the water of the old reservoir, but you did not look to him who made it nor see him who shaped it. 12 And on that day the Lord Jehovah of Armies called to weeping and wailing and shaved head and sackcloth tied round, 13 and here was rejoicing and merrymaking, killing cattle and slaughtering sheep, eating meat and drinking wine, “to eat and to drink, because tomorrow we shall die.” 14* And Jehovah of Armies is revealed in my ears, “you will not have this guilt purged till you die.”
15 Says the Lord Jehovah of Armies “Go and go in to this caretaker, Steward Shebna: 16 What have you here and whom have you here, that you have cut yourself out a grave here, you that cut your grave high, that mark off in the crag an abode for yourself! 17* Here is Jehovah going to shake you loose, man, 18* and wrap you up, wind you right up like a ball, and fling you into a distant country; there you shall die and there your grand chariots shall go, disgrace of your sovereign’s house.
19 “And I will push you off your footing and break you up from your stand, 20 and on that day I will call my servant Eljakim the son of Hilkijah 21 and dress him in your coat and brace him with your sash and put your authority in his hands, and he shall become a father to the inhabitants of Jerusalem and the house of Judah; 22 and I will put the key of David’s house on his shoulder, and he shall open and nobody will shut, and shut and nobody will open. 23* And I will drive him as a peg in a sure place, and he shall become a seat of state for his family.
24* “And they will hang on him all the accumulations of his family, the offspring and the offscouring, every sort of small ware from flat ware to every sort of hollow ware. 25 On that day, quoth Jehovah of Armies, the peg driven in a sure place will give, will be cut through and fall, and the load on it will be gone, because Jehovah has spoken.”
The Spain-ships howled because it was sacked; upon coming from Cyprus they had it disclosed to them; 2** the inhabitants of Phenicia’s coast of trade were struck dumb. Your messengers went over sea; 3 and on vast waters the crop of the Delta River, the harvest of the Nile, were her garnerings; and she became a mart of nations. 4 Wince with shame, Phenicia, because the sea says, the citadel of the sea, “I have felt no birth-pangs, given no birth; I have not raised youths, had no maidens grow up.” 5 When Egypt has news, they shall be unmanned upon the news from Tyre. 6 Go over to Spain, howl, islanders; 7* is this what you call a hilarious town whose date is from primeval days, whose feet take her to colonize afar? 8 Who has proposed this against Tyre the crown-giver, whose traders were generals, her merchants magnates of earth? 9 Jehovah of Armies has proposed it, to desecrate the pride of all splendor, to make nothing of all magnates of earth. 10* (Go through your country like the Nile, daughter of Spain; you no longer have a girdle.) 11 He has stretched out his hand over the sea, has shaken kingdoms; Jehovah has given orders against Phenicia to destroy her citadels, 12 and has said “Never again shall you be gleeful, wronged maiden daughter of Sidon; to Cyprus be off and over, not even there shall you be at rest.” 13*** (Here is the country of the Chaldeans; there was not the people; Assyria founded it for wildcats; they set up its watchtowers, raised its palaces; he has made it a wreck.) 14 Howl, Spain-ships, because your citadel is sacked.
15 And on that day Tyre will be forgotten seventy years, like the days of one king. At the end of seventy years Tyre’s case will be as in the song of the prostitute:
16 Take a lyre, go round town,
you forgotten whore;
Play your best, sing hard,
to be remembered once more.
17 And at the end of seventy years Jehovah will attend to Tyre, ant she will go back to taking tips and will prostitute herself with all the kingdoms on earth over the world. 18 And her trade and her tips will be sacred to Jehovah, will not be hoarded nor funded; for her trade will accrue to those who live before Jehovah for unstinted eating and for stately wear.
24 Here Jehovah is gutting and cutting the earth, and pitting its surface and scattering its inhabitants, 2* and laity and priest will be alike, slave and master, maid and mistress, seller and buyer, lender and borrower, capitalist and proletarian: 3 the earth is to be gutted and looted, because Jehovah has spoken this word. 4* The earth is mourning and wilted, the world is forlorn and wilted, the loftiest heights of earth stand forlorn; 5 and the earth is polluted under its inhabitants, because they have overstepped precepts, departed from usage, broken a perpetual covenant. 6* That is why a curse has eaten up earth and those who live on it are paying the penalty; that is why the inhabitants of earth wane and humanity is left scarce. 7 Grapejuice is mourning, vines forlorn, all the jovial are sighing. 8 The festivity of tambourines has stopped, the hubbub of hilarious men has died out, the festivity of lyres has stopped. 9 With song they will not drink wine; beer will be bitter to its drinkers. 10 Deserted towns are broken down, every house blocked from entrance; 11* there is clamor over the wine in the streets, all merrymaking has passed, the festivity of the earth has been swept off; 12 there is left in the city desolation, and gates are shattered to ruins.
13 For in the heart of the earth, in the middle of the peoples, it will be like the beatings of an olive-tree, like after-pickings when a vintage is over. 14* They will raise their voices, they will shout at Jehovah’s proud work; they whoop from the west therefore; 15* in the lands of light they glorify Jehovah, on the coasts beyond the sea the name of Jehovah Israel’s God. 16 From the margin of the earth we hear hymns, ascriptions of splendor to the Righteous One.
But I said “Dwindling I get, dwindling I get! woe is me! faithless men have done faithlessly, faithless men have done faithless things.” 17* Dread and chasm and trap are at you, inhabitant of the country, and he who takes flight from the sound of the dread will come to fall into the chasm, 18 and he who gets up out of the chasm will come to be caught in the trap. For hatchways are opened aloft, and earth’s foundations quake. Earth is cracking, 19 earth is splitting, earth is slipping; 20 earth swings this way and that like a drunken man and is tottering like a night-platform, and its crime is weighing it down and it will fall and rise no more. 21 And on that day Jehovah will punish on high the celestial legions and on the ground the earthly kings, 22 and they will be brought together as prisoners are to a dungeon and shut into a lockup, and a long time later they will be looked after. 23 And the orb of night will be abashed, and the orb of day put to shame, because Jehovah has become king on Mount Sion and in Jerusalem, and there is glory before his elders.
25 Jehovah, you are my God; I exalt you, I praise your name, because you have done wonders, things purposed far back, in steadfast constancy. 2* For you have made a city into a heap, a fortified town into a wreck, put a capital of audacious men out of cityhood, not to be rebuilt forever. 3 Therefore a mighty people shall glorify you, a town of arrogant nations shall fear you, 4** because you have been a citadel to the poor, a citadel to the needy in his distress, a refuge from squalls, 5** a shade from parching, because arrogant men’s breath is like a cold-weather squall, like parching in an arid waste. Audacious men’s hubbub you will bring low; parching, by the shade of a cloud; arrogant men’s music shall sing low.
6 And Jehovah of Armies will on this mountain make all the peoples a banquet of fats, a banquet of ripened wines, marrowy fats, filtered ripened wines, 7* and on this mountain he will dissolve the face of the wrapping that wraps over all the peoples and the web woven over all the nations. 8 He has dissolved death forevermore; and the Lord Jehovah will wipe off tears from all faces and clear off the ignominy of his people from all the earth, because Jehovah has spoken. 9 And on that day it will be said “Here, this is our God; we were looking for him, to save us; this is Jehovah, we were looking for him; let us jubilate and make merry in his salvation.” 10 For Jehovah’s hand will rest on this mountain; and Moab will be trodden down where it stands, as a heap of straw is trodden down in the water of a dung-pit, 11* and will spread its arms in the midst of it all as a swimmer spreads them to swim; and he will bring its pride low, with lopping off of its arms. 12 And the beetling battlements of your walls he fells, brings low, lays on the ground in the clay.
26 On that day this song will be sung in the land of Judah:
A strong city is ours;
he will set salvation
for walls and rampart.
5 For he has sent down
dwellers aloft,
a towering city;
He brings it low,
low to the ground,
lays it in the clay.
7 Level ground is a path for the honest; you steer the honest man’s run. 8* Give a course to your justice too, Jehovah; we have hoped for you, at your name and at the thought of you, with heart’s desire. 9 Heartily I have desired you in the night, yes, with my inmost spirit I quest after you; for when earth has your judgments the inhabitants of the world learn righteousness. 10 Be grace showed to a wicked man, he has not learned righteousness; in a country of fair play he will play foul, and he shall not see Jehovah’s pride.
11* Jehovah, your hand has gone high—they do not see; let them see and be ashamed; let an unenlightened people’s jealousy run into a trap, yes, let your foes’ fire consume them. 12* Jehovah, you will do justice so as to give us peace; for so did you achieve all our history for us. 13* Jehovah our God, masters other than you have had us; you alone we mention, your name. 14 Dead men do not come to life; shades do not stand up; so you have taken them in hand and rooted them out and destroyed all memory of them. 15 You have added to the nation, Jehovah, added to the nation, shown yourself glorious; you have driven far off all the ends of the earth.
16* Jehovah, in distress we resorted to you; your discipline was a hard pressure on us. 17* Like a pregnant woman approaching childbirth, taken with pangs and crying out at her pains, such have we been under your hand, Jehovah: 18* we have been pregnant, we have been taken with pangs, have, as it were, given birth to air; salvations of the earth we have not been achieving, and inhabitants of the world have not been dropping.
19** Your dead men shall rise, and those who dwell in the clay shall wake and carol; for your dew is healing to them, and you will bestow the land of shades.
20 Come, my people, go into your chambers and shut yourself in; hide for the least moment, till unfriendliness passes by; 21** for here is Jehovah coming out of his place to punish the inhabitants of the earth for their guilt, and the earth shall lay bare all the blood in it and no longer cover the killed.
27**** On that day Jehovah will with his great strong hard sword punish Leviathan, elusive snake, and Leviathan, sinuous snake, and will kill the monster in the sea.
2 On that day—A dainty vineyard! sing for it! 3 I Jehovah watch over it; moment by moment I water it; for fear they should molest it, night and day I watch over it. I have no resentment. 4 Would that I had bramble briers to fight! I would stride into them, would set them afire together. 5 Or let him lay hold of my bulwark, make peace with me; peace let him make with me. 6* In the days that are coming Judah shall root, Israel shall blossom and bud, and they shall fill the face of the world with crops.
7 Has he struck him as those that struck him were struck; has he been killed as were those that had killed him? 8** With chasing out, with sending away, you contend with her; he has dislodged her with his hard blast on a day of east wind. 9 So by this Jacob’s guilt shall be purged, and this is all the fruit of removing his sin, when he makes all altar-stones like smashed chalk; asherahs and hammans shall not rise again. 10* For a fortified city is in solitude, ground untended and forsaken like the wilderness; there calves shall graze and there lie down; and it shall be all brushwood that gets broken 11 when the twigs dry up; women that come in set it ablaze. For it is not a people of sense; therefore its Maker will have no tenderness for it and its Framer will show it no favor.
12 And on that day Jehovah will beat out grain from the tide of the River to Egypt Arroyo, and you shall be gleaned up one by one, sons of Israel. 13 And on that day a great ram-horn will be blown, and in will come those who were lost in Assyria and those who were exiled in Egypt, and do reverence to Jehovah at the sacred mountain, in Jerusalem.
28** Ha, crown of the pride of Ephraim’s drunkards and fading flower of his magnificent splendor, that is on the head of a fat valley, of men stupefied with wine! 2*** Here, Jehovah has strength and vigor like a squall of hail, a baneful tempest, like a big squall of flooding water; he has laid on the earth with his hand— 3 they shall be trodden underfoot—the crown of the pride of Ephraim’s drunkards 4* and the fading flower of his magnificent splendor that is on the head of a fat valley; and it shall be like a rareripe fig before summer, which the one who sees it gulps down while he still has it in his hand. 5 On that day the remnant of his people will have Jehovah of Armies for a crown of splendor and a garland of magnificence, 6 and for a spirit of judgment to him who sits in judgment, and for prowess to men who drive the fighting back to the gate.
7 And these too have gone wrong by wine and missed their way by beer; priest and prophet have been going wrong by beer, getting muddled with wine, missing their way because of beer, going wrong in vision-seeing, wobbling in adjudication. 8* For all tables are full of filthy vomit so that there is no place clean.
9 “Whom is he instructing in knowledge? whom is he tutoring in information? people weaned from milk, just beyond breasts? 10* that he tells us well, tells us well, he aims to claim, aims to claim, a bit here, a bit here”—
11 —Because it is with jabber of lip and with a different language he will speak to this people! 12 to whom he has said “This is the rest, give rest to the exhausted man” and “This is the chance to relax” and they would not listen. 13* And to them Jehovah’s word will be “he tells [us] well, tells [us] well, [he] aims to claim, aims to claim, a bit here, a bit here” in order that they may go stumbling backward and break their bones and be snared and caught.
14 So hear Jehovah’s word, cynicism-mongers, rulers of this people in Jerusalem: 15** because you say “We have struck a bargain with death and made terms with the world below; when a flooding scourge goes by it will not come to us, because we have arranged lies for our refuge and screened ourselves with falsehood,” 16 therefore the Lord Jehovah says “Here I am laying for a foundation in Sion a stone, a select stone, a well-based superfine cornerstone; he who believes will not be hasty; 17 and I will lay justice as line and honesty as level. And hail will sweep down a refuge of lies, and water will wash out a screen. 18 And your bargain with death will be canceled, and your terms with the world below will not hold good; when a flooding scourge goes by, you will be for its trampling. 19 As often as it goes by, it will get you; for it will go by morning after morning, day and night, and taking in things that you hear will be sheer torment. 20 For the bedstead is too short for lying stretched out and the coverlet is too narrow for lying drawn up.”
21* For Jehovah will stand up as he did at Perasim Mountain, will thrill as he did at Gibeon, to do his deed—an unnatural deed is his! and his work—incongruous work! 22* Now do not play the cynics, for fear your bonds should be too strong; for I have heard from Jehovah of Armies of a crisis and a finish to come upon all the earth.
23 Give ear and hear my voice; listen and hear my say. 24 Does a man that plows take all day plowing to sow, loosening and harrowing his soil? 25* does he not, if he has leveled its surface, scatter nutmeg-flower and toss in cummin and lay wheat in rows and barley in hills and spelt along his boundary line, 26* his God schooling him to method and Jehovah instructing him? 27 For nutmeg-flower seed is not threshed with a drag, nor is a cart-wheel run around over cummin; for nutmeg-flower seed is beaten out with a stick and cummin with a club. 28* Is breadstuff pulverized? for he does not endlessly thresh it, and his horses and the trundling of his cart churn it about without pulverizing it. 29 This too came from Jehovah of Armies, matchless in guidance, great in sense.
29 Ha, Ariel, Ariel, town where David camped! Add year to year, let feasts go their round; 2* and I will press Ariel hard, and there will be grievance and grieving, and she will be like an altar-hearth to me; 3* and I will camp against you as David did, and beset you with a containing force, and raise siege-works against you. 4 And you will go low, speak from the ground, and your say will come from down in the clay, and your voice will be like a spirit’s at a seance, out of the ground, and your say will chirp out of the clay.
5* But the host of strangers will become like fine dust, the host of invaders like chaff blowing past; and all of a sudden you will be visited 6 from Jehovah of Armies in thunder and earthquake and loud noise, gale and tempest and flame of devouring fire; 7 and the host of all the nations that campaigned against Ariel will be like a dream, a night vision, and all her assailers and her investment, and those that are pressing her so hard. 8* And as a hungry man dreams that he is eating, and wakes up with his stomach empty, and as a thirsty man dreams that he is drinking, and wakes up and finds he is faint and his throat is hankering, so will be the host of all the nations that campaigned against Mount Sion.
9 Be mystified, be mazed, be blindfolded, be blinded; be drunk but not with wine; be tipsy but not with beer. 10 For Jehovah has poured upon you a spirit of trance and has shut your eyes (the prophets) tight and covered your heads (the seers); 11 and the vision of everything has become to you like the words of a sealed document, which they give to one who knows how to read and write, with the request “Read us this,” and he says “I cannot, because it is sealed,” 12 and it is given to one who does not know how to read and write with the request “Read us this,” and he says “I do not know how to read.”
13* And the Lord said “Whereas this people has been approaching me with its mouth and glorifying me with its lips but its heart was far off from me, and their fearing me has been a commandment of men that has been taught them, 14 therefore here I am going on to give this people extraordinary treatment, extraordinary and exceptional; and their wise men’s wisdom will be lost, and their experts’ expertness will hide away.”
15 Ha, you who dig deep away from Jehovah to conceal a policy, and keep your doings in the dark, and say “Who sees us and who knows of us?” 16* Such upside-downness! or is the potter to be rated like the clay, that a work says of its maker “He did not make me” and a dish has said of its potter “He did not know what he was doing”?
17 In a little bit longer will not Lebanon go back to garden-land and garden-land be classed as bush? 18 And deaf men will on that day hear words from books, and out of gloom and darkness blind men’s eyes will see, 19 and humble men will have enhanced joy in Jehovah, and the neediest of mankind will jubilate in the Holy One of Israel, 20 because arrogant men are gone, cynics are done for, all who have their minds set on villainy are extirpated; 21** those who convict a man for talk, and lay traps in the gate for a corrector, and put an honest man out of court for a nothing. 22* So Jehovah says to the house of Jacob, he who redeemed Abraham, “Jacob shall not be put to shame now, and his face shall not now turn pale; 23* for when his children shall see the work of my hands in his midst they shall recognize the sanctity of my name, recognize the sanctity of the Holy One of Jacob and stand in awe of the God of Israel, 24 and men who go astray in spirit shall have good sense and faultfinders learn lessons.”
30 Ha, children stubborn, quoth Jehovah, to execute a policy when it is not from me and to weave a web when it is not my spirit, so as to add sin to sin! 2 that go off to go down to Egypt without having asked Jehovah’s voice, to take cover in the Pharaoh’s citadel and take shelter in Egypt’s shadow! 3 and the Pharaoh’s citadel will be a disappointment to you, and the sheltering in Egypt’s shadow a humiliation. 4 Though his generals be at Soʽan and his envoys reach Hanes, 5* everything will come to disappointment over a people that do them no good: not for help and not for usefulness, but for shame and ignominy.
6** Boding of Animals of the South:
In a country of distress and hard straits, lioness and growling lion, sand-adder and flying wildfire-snake, they carry their wealth on jackasses’ shoulders and their hoards on camels’ humps to a people that do them no good. 7** And the help that Egypt gives is air and emptiness; so I call that Bluster-and-Sit. 8 Now go in, write it on a tablet in their presence and inscribe it in a book, to become a perpetual witness for a future day. 9 For it is a disobedient people, disloyal children, children that will not listen to Jehovah’s instructions, 10 such as say to the seers “You shall not see” and to the vision-seers “You shall not have honest visions for us; make slippery predictions to us, see humbug visions; 11 go off course, swerve out of road, get the Holy One of Israel out of our way.”
12 So the Holy One of Israel says “Since you reject this word and trust to a dodger and twister and lean on him, 13 therefore this guilt will be for you like a split piece ready to tumble, bulging out in a towering wall, whose break will come all of a sudden, 14 and its break will be like that of a potters’ crock pounded up remorselessly, among whose poundings there is not to be found a fragment to take up fire from a bed of coals or water from a swampy spot.”
15* For the Lord Jehovah, the Holy One of Israel, says “By turning back and resting you will be saved; in quietness and in trustfulness will be your strength”; but you would not, 16 and said “No, but we will take flight on ponies”—therefore take flight you shall; and “we will ride on a swift beast”—therefore swift shall be your pursuers. 17* A thousand shall be in panic at a threat from one; at a threat from five you shall take flight, till you are left like a flagstaff on a mountaintop, like a signal on a hill.
18* And therefore Jehovah will wait to show you favor, and therefore he will stand aloft to treat you tenderly; for Jehovah is a God of justice—happy are all who wait for him. 19* For, people who live in Sion, in Jerusalem, you shall not weep; he will be gracious to you at the sound of your cry; when he heard he answered you; 20 and the Lord will give you half rations of bread and water. And your teachers will not hide away anymore, but your eyes will see your teachers 21 and your ears will hear a word behind you “This is the road, go by it” when you get off to right or to left. 22 And you will defile your wall-facing of figured silver and your ephodage of modeled gold; you will be sickened at them as you would at a used dressing for a woman’s flow of blood; you will call them filth. 23 And he will give the rain for your seed that you sow the soil with, and, from the produce of the soil, bread that will be fat and rich; your stock will on that day pasture broad uplands, 24 and the oxen and jackasses that work the soil will eat barley mixed with sorrel, the barley winnowed with shovel and with fork; 25 and on every high mountain and on every stately hill there will be canals, streams of water, on a day of great slaughter when towers fall. 26 And the orb of night will have light like that of the orb of day, and the orb of day sevenfold light, on the day of Jehovah’s bandaging his people’s broken limbs and healing its shattering wound.
27* Here is Jehovah’s name coming from afar, his anger burning and heavy-smoking; his lips are full of hostility and his tongue is like a devouring fire; 28*** and his breath is like a torrent in flood neck-deep, to sift nations in a sieve of futility, and a misguiding bridle in the mouths of peoples. 29 You will have singing as in the night in which a feast is inaugurated, and blitheness like that of one who goes with a flute to come on Jehovah’s mountain to the Rock of Israel. 30* And Jehovah will let the majesty of his voice be heard and the descent of his arm seen in angry vexation and a flame of devouring fire, cloudburst and squall and hailstones; 31* for at Jehovah’s voice Assyria will be dismayed. He will be struck with a cudgel; 32* and every sweep of the rod of discipline that Jehovah will lay upon him will be with tambourines and lyres, and with back-and-forth strokes with which he has fought— 33 for a fire-pit is already fueled, it too has been prepared for the king, made deep, wide; its pile is fire and abundance of wood; Jehovah’s breath, like a brook of brimstone, is firing it.
31 Ha, men that go down to Egypt for help, that lean on ponies and rely on chariots because there are many of them and on horsemen because they are very numerous, but do not take notice of the Holy One of Israel nor inquire of Jehovah! 2 yet he too is wise, and has brought disaster and not set aside his words, and will stand up against wrong-doers’ house and against the help of men that commit villainy. 3 And the Egyptians are human beings and not deity, and their ponies are flesh and not spirit; and Jehovah will turn his hand and helper will stumble and helped man will fall, and they will all come to an end together.
4 For Jehovah has said to me “As growls the lion, the old or the young, over its kill, who, when a posse of shepherds meets with him, is not dismayed at their voices nor cowed at their noise, so will Jehovah of Armies come down to campaign on Sion’s mountain and on its hill. 5 Like birds flying, so will Jehovah of Armies shield Jerusalem, shield and rescue, patrol and safeguard. 6 Come back to him from whom the children of Israel have deeply swerved; 7* for on that day they will man by man discard their gold and silver trumperies that their hands have made for them, 8 and Assyria will fall by swords not of man, and swords not human will devour it, and it will take flight from swords, and its young men will come to serfdom, 9** and its crag will pass away for terror, and its captains will be dismayed at a standard, quoth Jehovah who has a fire in Sion and a furnace in Jerusalem.”
32 Lo, a king will reign rightly and generals command justly, 2 and each will be like a hiding-place from wind and a screen from squalls, like streams of water in a desert, like the shadow of a massive rock in a parched country. 3 And the eyes of men who see will not be gummed over, and the ears of men who hear will be alert, 4 and the brains of reckless men will have sense to know, and the tongues of stammering men will be quick to speak clearly. 5* Not again will a rascal be called noble, nor will a schemer be called prominent. 6 For a rascal talks rascality and his brain works up villainy, doing ungodly things and talking fallacies about Jehovah, keeping a hungry man’s stomach empty and cutting down a thirsty man’s drink; 7* and a schemer’s skill is bad, he plans infamies, to ruin poverty-stricken men with his lying words when a needy man pleads for right; 8 but a noble man plans for noble things, and in noble things engage he will.
9 Untroubled women, stand up, listen to my voice; fearless daughters, give ear to my say. 10 Days over a year, you fearless ones will quaver, because vintage is done with, grape-picking will not come. 11 Be in panic, you who are untroubled; quaver, you who are fearless; undress, strip naked, wear a belt round your hips; 12 there is wailing with beaten breasts for choice fields, for fruitful vines, 13* for my people’s soil growing up to thorns and brambles, for all clubhouses in a hilarious town; 14* because a palace is abandoned, a city’s uproar is deserted, castle hill and watchtower will be over caves forever, a playground for wild asses, a pasture for flocks— 15 till a spirit is discharged upon us from on high, and wilderness will become garden-land and garden-land will be rated as brush-grown rocks, 16 and justice will take up its abode in the wilderness and right will settle in the garden-land; and the effect of right will be peace, 17 and the work of right tranquillity and fearlessness forever. 18 And my people will live on peaceful ground, in fearless dwellings, in untroubled resting-places. 19* But it will hail when the brushwood goes down, and in prostration the city will be laid low. 20 Happy you that sow by every water, that turn loose the feet of cow and donkey.
33 Ha, you that do violence though you have not had violence done to you, and break faith though they have not broken faith with you! when you have done all your violence you shall have violence done to you; when you have finished breaking faith they will break faith with you. 2* Jehovah, be gracious to us; we hope in you; be our arm morning by morning, our salvation withal in time of distress. 3* At a sound of uproar peoples have taken flight; at your exaltation nations scatter. 4** And booty will be taken in as fall grasshoppers do, there is a turmoil like that of young grasshoppers over it. 5 Jehovah towers high, because he dwells aloft; he fills Sion with justice and right. 6* And a fund of victories of wisdom and knowledge shall be the security of your times; the fear of Jehovah is his treasury.
7* There are arels making an outcry in the street; envoys sent for peace are weeping bitterly. 8* Highways are desolate; wayfarers have left off; he has broken treaty, he despises cities, he thinks nothing of a human being. 9 Earth mourns, stands forlorn; Lebanon is abashed, it has turned yellow; the Sharon has become like the Rift Valley, and Bashan and Carmel are dropping their leaves. 10 I will now stand up, says Jehovah; I will now mount on high, I will now uplift myself. 11 You shall go pregnant with hay, you shall give birth to stubble; your passion is a fire that will consume you, 12 and peoples will be like the burning in limekilns, mowed thorns blazing up in fire.
13 Men far away have heard what I have done, men nearby have known my exploits. 14 Sinners in Sion are terrified; quaking has seized irreligious men. Who of ours can find a home in consuming fire? who of ours can find a home in perpetual flame? 15 He who walks honestly and speaks straightforwardly, who despises the profits of rapacity, who shakes his hands clean from grasping a bribe, who stops his ears from hearing of bloodshed and shuts his eyes tight from gazing at wickedness, 16 he shall dwell on lofty heights; craggy fastnesses shall be his keep; he shall have his bread given, his water reliable. 17 Your eyes shall behold a king in his beauty; they shall see a country far away. 18* Your heart will think over the terror: where is there a counter, where a weigher, where a counter of the towers? 19* You shall not see an imperious people, a people too strange-tongued to be understood, a people of meaningless and quizzical talk. 20 Gaze on Sion, town of our sacramental congresses: your eyes shall see Jerusalem tranquil ground, a tent not to be struck, whose pegs will not be shifted forevermore, and not any of whose ropes will break, 21* but we shall there have a parkland, a place of rivers, of roomy Niles, one in which no oared galley will go and no gallant ship will pass through it; 22** for Jehovah our judge, Jehovah our lawgiver, Jehovah our king, he will save us. 23* Your ropes are slack, they do not contribute to the steadying of their mast, do not spread a sail. Then a prey of much booty was divided, lame men gathering plunder. 24 And no resident will say “I am sick”; the people that lives in it has its guilt pardoned.
34 Come near, nations, to hear; and, races, listen. Let the earth and what it holds hear, the world and all that comes of it; 2 for Jehovah has wrath against all the nations and ire against all their legions, he has doomed them to extinction, given them for slaughtering. 3 And their fallen will be thrown about, and the stench of their corpses will go up, and the mountains will be washed down with their blood. 4 And all the legions of the sky will waste down, and the skies will curl back like a roll of paper and all their legions will drop off as withered leaves drop from a grapevine and as shriveled fruit drops from a fig-tree, 5* because my sword will be seen in the heavens. Down it will come on Edom, on the people I have doomed, for judgment. 6 Jehovah has a sword that is filled with blood, greased with fat, with the blood of lambs and goats, with the kidney-fat of rams, because Jehovah has a sacrifice at Bosrah and a great slaughtering in Edom; 7* and ures will go down with them, and steers with bulls, and their land will be bedewed with blood and their earth greased with fat. 8 For Jehovah has a day of vengeance, a year of settlement for Sion’s quarrel.
9 And her arroyos will be turned to pitch and her soil to sulfur, and her land will become burning pitch. 10 Night and day it will not be quenched; forever the smoke of her will go up.
From generation to generation she will lie waste, ever and evermore no one will pass through her, 11* and barn-owl and porcupine will take possession of her, and great owl and raven perch in her. And he will stretch over her the line of chaos, and her holes will be tenantless stones; 12 and there will be no kingship there to proclaim, and all her generals will come to nothing. 13 And her palaces will grow up to brambles, nettles and briers will stand in her fortifications, and she will become a home of jackals, a yard of ostriches. 14** And wildcats will come upon hyenas, and satyr will call to satyr; that will be the spot where liliths will take their ease and will find themselves a place to rest in. 15** There a screech-owl nests and lays, and will hatch and brood in its shadow; that was the spot where falcons gathered, each looking up its mate. 16* Read out of Jehovah’s book: not one of those is lacking, not any misses its mate, for it was his mouth that gave the order and it was his spirit that gathered them, 17* it was he that cast lots for them and his hand that measured and marked their shares. Forever they will hold possession of her; generation after generation they will dwell in her.
35 Wilderness and arid land shall rejoice; desert shall jubilate and bloom. 2 Like narcissus bloom it shall, and jubilate too it shall, and carol; it is given the majesty of the Lebanon, the glory of the Carmel and the Sharon; these shall see Jehovah’s majesty, our God’s glory.
3 Strengthen unstrung hands and invigorate stumbling knees; 4* say to excited souls “Courage, have no fear: here is your God! vengeance is coming, your God’s retribution; he himself is coming to save you.” 5 Then blind men’s eyes will be opened and deaf men’s ears unlocked. 6* Then a lame man will leap like a deer and a dumb man’s tongue will carol because water has broken out in the wilderness and freshets are running in the desert, 7** and the parching sands will become a pool and thirsty ground springs of water, jackals’ home a marsh, grass reeds and papyrus; 8* and there will be an embankment there and a road, and it will be called the Sacred Road. Nothing unclean or profane will pass along it, stroller and fools will not stray; 9* there will be no lion there, nor will savage beast come up on it; one will not be found there, but rescued men will go. 10 And Jehovah’s ransomed will come back and come to Sion with caroling, with eternal gladness on their heads; gladness and rejoicing will arrive, and sorrow and moaning will take flight.
36 And in the year fourteen of King Hezekiah King Sennacherib of Assyria came up against all the fortified cities in Judah and captured them. 2 And the king of Assyria sent the Rabshakeh from Lakish to King Hezekiah at Jerusalem with a formidable force; and he stood on the aqueduct of the upper reservoir, the one that is on the highway to the Fuller’s Field, 3 and Eljakim the son of Hilkijah, the steward of the palace, and Shebna, the secretary for documents, and Joah the son of Asaph, the king’s private secretary, went out to him. 4 And the Rabshakeh said to them “Say to Hezekiah ‘Says the Great King, the king of Assyria, What confidence is this that you are feeling? 5 you think policy and strength for war is just a matter of talk. Now in whom are you trusting, that you have broken your allegiance to me? 6 trusting to this cracked bamboo cane Egypt, which, when a man leans his weight on it, will run into his hand and transfix it—that is what the Pharaoh, the king of Egypt, is like for everybody who trusts to him. 7 And as for your saying to me “We are trusting on our God Jehovah,” is not he the one whose heights and altars Hezekiah has made away with, and has told Judah and Jerusalem “You shall do reverence before this altar”? 8 Now make a bet with my sovereign the king of Assyria, that I am to give you two thousand ponies if you can furnish riders for them; 9* and how are you to repel one of my sovereign’s minor officers? and you are trusting to Egypt for chariotry and cavalry. 10 And then, have I come up against this country independently of Jehovah to ravage it? Jehovah said to me “Go up to this country and ravage it.”’”
11* And Eljakim and Shebna and Joah said to the Rabshakeh “Speak to your servants in Aramaic, for we understand it; do not speak to us in Judaic in the hearing of the people on the wall.” 12 But the Rabshakeh said “Was it to your sovereign and you that my sovereign sent me to tell these things? was it not to the men that are sitting on the wall to eat their own dung and drink their own urine with you?” 13 And the Rabshakeh stood and called out in a loud voice in Judaic “Listen to the words of the Great King, the king of Assyria! 14 Says the king, Do not let Hezekiah delude you, because he will not be able to deliver you. 15 Do not let Hezekiah get you to trusting on Jehovah, with his ‘Jehovah will deliver us, and this city shall not be given into the hands of the king of Assyria.’ 16 Do not listen to Hezekiah; for the king of Assyria says ‘Have an understanding with me and come out to me, and eat from your home vines and fig-trees and drink the water of your home cisterns 17 till I come and take you to a country like your own, a country of grain and grape-juice, of bread and vineyards, 18 so that Hezekiah will not influence you with his “Jehovah will deliver us.” Have the gods of the different nations delivered their countries out of the hands of the king of Assyria? 19* Where are the gods of Hamath and Arpad? where are the gods of Sepharvaim? where are the gods of Samaria, did they deliver Samaria out of my hands? 20 Who are there among all the gods of these different countries that have delivered their countries out of my hands, that Jehovah should deliver Jerusalem out of my hands?’”
21 But they kept still and made no answer to him; for the king’s order was “Do not answer him.”
22 And Eljakim the son of Hilkijah, the steward of the palace, and Shebna, the secretary for documents, and Joah the son of Asaph, the king’s private secretary, came to Hezekiah with their clothes torn, and told him the Rabshakeh’s words.
37 And when King Hezekiah heard them he tore his clothes and put a sackcloth about him and went into Jehovah’s house, 2 and sent Eljakim the steward of the palace and Shebna the secretary for documents and the elders of the priests, with sackcloths about them, to the prophet Isaiah the son of Amos; 3 and they said to him “Says Hezekiah, This is a day of distress and castigation and contempt, because children have come to the mouth of the womb and we have not strength to complete a birth. 4 Perhaps your God Jehovah will listen to the Rabshakeh’s words with which his sovereign the king of Assyria has sent him to taunt a living God, and will chastise the words that your God Jehovah hears; and you shall put up a prayer for the remnant that still exists.”
5 And King Hezekiah’s officers came to Isaiah; 6 and Isaiah said to them “You shall say to your sovereign, ‘Says Jehovah, Do not be afraid of the words you have heard, in which the king of Assyria’s servants have blasphemed me; 7 I am going to put a spirit in him, and he shall hear a report and go back to his own country, and I will have him fall by the sword in his own country.’”
8 And the Rabshakeh went back, and found the king of Assyria attacking Libnah; for he had heard that he had moved away from Lakish.
9* And he heard say about King Tirhakah of Nubia “He has come out to fight you”; and, hearing it, he again sent envoys to Hezekiah with the message 10 “You shall say to King Hezekiah of Judah ‘Do not let your God in whom you trust delude you with the thought “Jerusalem shall not be given into the hands of the king of Assyria.” 11 You have heard what the kings of Assyria have done to all the countries, destroying them without quarter; and are you to be delivered? 12 Did the gods of the nations my fathers ravaged deliver them, Gozan and Haran and Reseph and the Bene-ʽEden at Telassar? 13 where is the king of Hamath, where the king of Arpad and the king of Sepharvaim city, of Henaʽ and ʽIvvah?’” 14 And Hezekiah received the letter from the envoys’ hands and read it; and he went up to Jehovah’s house.
And Hezekiah spread it out before Jehovah; 15* and Hezekiah prayed before Jehovah, 16 “Jehovah, God of Israel, sitter upon the cherubs, you are God alone for all the kingdoms of the earth: it was you who made the heavens and the earth. 17 Bend down your ear, Jehovah, and listen; open your eyes, Jehovah, and see; and hear Sennacherib’s words which he has sent, taunting a living God. 18 The kings of Assyria have indeed, Jehovah, laid waste the nations and their countries, 19 and put their gods in the fire, because they are not gods but work of human hands, wood and stone, and destroyed them; 20 but now, Jehovah our God, save us out of his hands and let all the kingdoms on earth know that you, Jehovah, alone are God.”
21 And Isaiah the son of Amos sent word to Hezekiah “Says Israel’s God Jehovah, Whereas you have prayed to me as to King Sennacherib of Assyria, 22 this is the word Jehovah has spoken against him: Sion’s maiden daughter despises and derides you; Jerusalem’s daughter shakes her head after you. 23 Whom have you taunted and blasphemed, and against whom have you clamored at the top of your voice and lifted your eyes high? against the Holy One of Israel. 24 By your servants you have taunted the Lord, and have said ‘With chariots, my chariots, I have gone up to the tops of the mountains, the recesses of Lebanon, and have cut down the tallest of its cedars, the choicest of its cypresses, and have come to its final lodgment, its wildwood of garden-land. 25 I have dug and drunk unknown waters, have dried off with my marching feet all the streams of Egypt’s Nile.’ 26* Do you not hear? far back I acted, shaped it from days of old, have now brought it in, and you have been for crashing down fortified cities into ruined heaps; 27 and their puny-handed inhabitants were dismayed and abashed, became field herbage and greensward, roof-grass blighted before the east wind. 28 Your standing up and sitting down, your going out and coming in I know, and your raging against me. 29* Since your raging against me and your hubbub have come up to my ears, I will put my hook in your nose and my bridle between your lips, and take you back the way you came.
30 “And this is the token you are to have, eating the self-sown crop this year and the crop run wild next year; and in the third year sow and reap, and set out vineyards and eat their fruit. 31 And the remaining survivors of the house of Judah shall more and more take root downward and bear fruit upward; 32 for out of Jerusalem shall a remnant come forth, and survivors out of Mount Sion; the championship of Jehovah of Armies will do this.
33 “So Jehovah says of the king of Assyria, He shall never come to this city nor shoot an arrow there nor push a shield up to it nor throw up a ramp against it: 34 by the road he came on he shall go back, and not come to this city, quoth Jehovah. 35 And I will shield this city, saving it on my own account and on my servant David’s.”
36 And Jehovah’s angel went out and killed a hundred and eighty-five thousand men in the Assyrian camp: the first thing in the morning they were all found dead corpses. 37 And King Sennacherib of Assyria broke camp and went back and stayed at Nineveh; 38** and as he was doing reverence in the house of his god Nisroc his sons Adrammelec and Sareser stabbed him; and they made their escape to Armenia, and his son Esar-Haddon succeeded him.
38 In those days Hezekiah fell sick and was at the point of death, and the prophet Isaiah the son of Amos came to him and said to him “Says Jehovah, Make your will, because you are a dead man and are not to recover.” 2 And Hezekiah turned his face to the wall and prayed to Jehovah, 3 and said “Ah, Jehovah, remember how I have walked before you in wholehearted loyalty and done what pleased you”—and Hezekiah wept copiously. 4 And Jehovah’s word came to Isaiah 5 “Go and say to Hezekiah ‘Says Jehovah, your father David’s God, I have heard your prayer, I have seen your tears; I will add to your days fifteen years, 6 and will deliver you and this city out of the hands of the king of Assyria, and will shield this city. 7 And this is the token you are to have from Jehovah that Jehovah will do this thing that he said he would: 8* here, I will have the shadow on the steps, where the sun has moved down on Ahaz’s steps, recede ten steps backward.’”
9 (A mictam of King Hezekiah of Judah’s when he had been sick and had recovered from his sickness.)
10* I thought “With broken-off days I shall go through the gates of the realm of death;
I miss the rest of my years.”
11** I thought “I shall not see Jehovah in the land of the living,
I shall not again look at men
with those who live above ground.
12* My existence is pulled up and away from me
like a shepherds’ tent;
I have done my life up like a web,
you cut it off from the thrum.
From day to night you finish me off,
13** I lie helpless till morning.
Just like a lion he breaks all my bones;
from day to night you finish me off.
14*** Just like a crane-swallow I twitter;
I sigh like a dove.
My eyes droop with looking on high;
Lord, I am denied justice; be my bail!
All my years I am led on
with the ache in my heart.
and in them everyone has the life of his spirit;
Bring me to health and life.”
from utter desolation
Because you had thrown all my sins
behind your back.
18 For the grave will not thank you,
death praise you,
Those who are down in the Pit will not report
your faithfulness.
19 A living man, a living man will thank you,
like me today.
Father to children will make known
your faithfulness.
21 And Isaiah said “Let them fetch a cake of figs to spread over the abscess that he may recover.” 22 And Hezekiah said “What is the token that I shall go up to Jehovah’s house?”
39 At that time Merodac Baladan the son of Baladan, the king of Babylon, sent letters and a present to Hezekiah, because he had heard that Hezekiah had been sick. 2 And Hezekiah was glad to see them, and showed them all his treasury, the silver and the gold and the spices and the fine oil, and his arsenal, and everything that was to be found in his hoards: there was not a thing that Hezekiah did not show them, in his palace and in all his dominions. 3 And the prophet Isaiah came to King Hezekiah and said to him “What did these men say, and where do they come to you from?” and Hezekiah said “They have come to me from a distant country, Babylon.” 4 And he said “What did they see in your palace?” and Hezekiah said “They saw everything that there was in my palace: there was not a thing that I did not show them in my hoards.” 5 And Isaiah said to Hezekiah “Listen to the word of Jehovah of Armies: 6 there are days coming when everything there is in your palace, and that your fathers have hoarded down to this day, will be carried away to Babylon: there will not be a thing left, says Jehovah. 7 And sons of yours, out of your body, of your begetting, will be taken and become eunuchs in the palace of the king of Babylon.” 8 And Hezekiah said to Isaiah “Jehovah’s word that you speak is good,” and said “because there is to be peace and faithfulness in my time.”
40 Comfort, comfort my people, says your God. 2 Speak warmly to Jerusalem, and call out to her that her time has expired, that her guilt is taken into favor, that she had from Jehovah’s hand double for all her sins.
3 Hark, a voice calling out “Clear Jehovah’s road in the wilderness, level in the desert a street for our God! 4 let every valley be raised and every mountain and hill taken down, and the hilly surface become level and the broken ground a plain! 5 and Jehovah’s glory will be disclosed, and all mortals will see it together, for Jehovah’s mouth has spoken.”
6* Hark, a voice saying “Call out!” and one saying “What shall I call out?” “All flesh is grass, and all its winsomeness like field flowers: 7* grass dries up, flowers fade, because Jehovah’s wind blows on them; the people is grass after all. 8 Grass dries up, flowers fade, but the word of our God will last forever.”
9 Up with you to a high mountain, bringer of good news to Sion; lift your voice strongly, bringer of good news to Jerusalem; lift it up, do not be afraid; say to the cities of Judah “Here is your God!” 10 Here is the Lord Jehovah coming with strength, his arm ruling for him; here comes his pay with him, his result before him. 11 He will tend his flock like a shepherd, gather lambs in his arms and carry them in his bosom, and guide those that have sucking young.
12** Who has measured the water of the sea in his hollowed hand and gauged the sky by his span, and packed the soil of the earth into a half-bushel measure, and weighed mountains with a steelyard and hills with a balance? 13 who has gauged Jehovah’s spirit, or been coaching him as adviser? 14 whom did he consult with, who tutored him, and taught him of the correct course, and taught him intelligence and directed him to the road of good judgment? 15 Here nations count for a drop hanging on a bucket and for the dust blown off a balance, here he lifts islands like a powder, 16 and Lebanon is not adequate to make a fire nor its beasts for a burnt-offering, 17* all the nations are like nothing in his presence and count like a nothing and a blank to him,— 18 and to whom will you compare Deity, and what likeness will you set up for him? 19 The statue an artisan has cast, and a goldsmith coats it with gold and works silver chains. 20 The man impoverished with contributions chooses wood that will not rot, looks out a skilled artisan to get up a statue that will not totter. 21 Will you not know? have you never from the first been told? do you not understand about the laying of the foundations of the earth? 22 He who sits over the circle of the earth, and its inhabitants are like grasshoppers; who stretches out the sky like a gauze and spreads it like a tent to live in; 23 who reduces potentates to nothingness and makes judges of earth equal to zero,— 24 they have not even been planted, the seed has not even been sown for them, the cuttings for them have not even rooted, and he has blown on them too and they have dried out; and a tempest carries them off like straw. 25 And to whom will you compare me and have me parallel? says the Holy One. 26* Lift your eyes on high and see who created these: he who brings out their legions by number, summons them all by name; of great in powers and mighty in strength not one is truant.
27* Why do you say, Jacob, and talk, Israel, “My path is unseen by Jehovah; my God passes by my rights”? 28 Do you not know, or have you not heard? the eternal God Jehovah, the creator of the ends of the earth, does not faint or tire; his understanding is inscrutable; 29 he gives strength to the faint one and plentiful vigor to the powerless. 30 And young men will faint and tire and men in their youthful prime will stumble down, 31 but those who hope in Jehovah will have freshening strength, take wing like eagles, run without tiring, walk without fainting.
41* Attend to me in silence, foreign coasts, and let this and that folk take fresh strength. Let them approach, then speak; together let us come up for judgment. 2** Who roused from the east one at whose heels right follows, gives nations to be defeated before him and worsts kings, make their swords like clay and their bows like straw on the wind? 3 He pursues them, passes on safe and sound, does not set foot on a road. 4* Who did it and wrought it, called the cycles from the beginning? I Jehovah am first, and with the last I am the one.
5 Continents saw it and are afraid; the ends of the earth are in panic. They neared and came, 6 helping each other and brother saying to brother “Brace up!” 7* and carpenter encouraged goldsmith, and smooth-hammerer riveter; one declares the gluing “all right” and fastens it with nails, not to totter.
8 But as for you, Israel my servant, Jacob whom I chose, offspring of the Abraham that loved me, 9 whom I fastened on from the ends of the earth and called from its outer horizons, and said to you “You are my servant,” chose you and have not repudiated you: do not be afraid, because I am with you; 10 do not be alarmed, because I am your God; I have been invigorating you, yes, helping you, yes, holding you up with my fair-dealing right hand. 11** Put to shame and humiliated shall be all that are spiteful toward you; those shall come to nothing, shall perish, who are at odds with you. 12 You shall look for them and not find them, the men that match themselves against you; they shall be the same as nobody and nothing, the men that make war on you; 13 for it is I your God Jehovah who hold your right hand, who say to you “Do not be afraid, I help you.”
14* Do not be afraid, worm Jacob, maggot Israel; it is I help you, quoth Jehovah, and the Holy One of Israel is your friend in need. 15* Here I make you a new full-toothed threshing-drag: you shall thresh mountains and pulverize them, and make hills like chaff. 16 You shall winnow them and a wind will carry them off, a tempest will scatter them; but you shall exult in Jehovah, shall boast of the Holy One of Israel.
17* The needy and miserable look for water and there is none; their tongues are dried up with thirst. I am Jehovah who will answer them, Israel’s God who will not abandon them. 18* I will open rivers on rock-scalps and springs in the middles of plains; I will make a wilderness into pools, and an arid country into fountainheads of water. 19* In the wilderness I will put cedar, acacia, and myrtle and wild olive; I will place in the desert cypress, elm, and great savin together; 20 in order that together they may see and know and take notice and realize that Jehovah’s hand has done this and the Holy One of Israel created it.
21 Bring on your case, says Jehovah; bring up your evidence, says the King of Jacob. 22 Let them come up and tell us the things that are to befall! What was the past? tell it, that we may put our minds on it and know its consequences; or let us hear the things that are coming in. 23* Tell the things that are to come after, that we may know that you are gods—yes, will do good and harm—and may all together be alarmed and stand in fear. 24* There, you are pieces of nothing and your performance a zero; all astray is he who chooses you.
25** I roused one from the north and he came from the sunrise to call on my name and to tread down viceroys like clay and like a potter trampling mud. 26 Who told from the first that we might know, and beforehand that we might say “Right!” no, there was no one that told, no one that let us hear; no, there was no one that heard your say. 27* I am the first who give to Sion “There, there they are!” and to Jerusalem a bringer of good news. 28 And I see, and there is not a man, among these no adviser, that I should ask them and they reply; 29* all of them, I find their works a nothing and a zero, their bronzes air and vacuum.
42** Here is my servant whom I use, my chosen in whom I take satisfaction: I have put my spirit on him; he shall bring out judgment for the nations. 2 He will not cry out nor raise his voice nor let it be heard in the street; 3 a cracked reed he will not break, a smoldering wick he will not put out. He will bring out judgment reliably: 4* he will not smolder down nor crack till he sets up justice in the earth and commonwealths await his instructions.
5 Says the Deity, Jehovah, creator and spreader of the skies, forger of the earth and its growths, giver of breath to the people on it and spirit to those who walk over it: 6* I Jehovah have called you in good faith and held your hand and kept you and given you for a people’s charter, for a light of nations, 7 to open blind eyes, to bring prisoners out of lockup, inmates of the darkness out of jail; 8 I am Jehovah, that is my name, and I will not give my glory to another and my praise to sculptures. 9 The first things have come true, and I am telling new things: before they have started growth I let you hear of them.
10 Sing a new song for Jehovah, from the end of the earth his praise, seafarers and all that fills the sea, strange countries and their inhabitants; 11* let wilderness and its cities lift their voices, villages the Kedarites live in; let crag-dwellers shout, let them yodel from mountaintops; 12 let them give glory to Jehovah and tell his praise in strange countries. 13 Jehovah goes out like a champion, rouses his fierceness like a fighting man, cheers, yells, battles hardily with his enemies.
14* I have been quiet since ancient times, keeping silence, holding myself in. Like a childbearing woman I will groan, gasp, and pant together. 15* I will dry off mountains and hills and dry up their herbage, and make rivers into pools and dry pools out. 16 And I will have blind men walk on a road they did not know, along paths they did not know I will take them; I will make a dark place into a patch of light before them and a tortuous piece into smooth going; these things I have done and not left them. 17 Those that put confidence in statues fall back, admit their disappointment—those who say to bronzes “You are our gods!”
18 Listen, deaf and dumb men; blind men, look to see. 19* Who is blind but my servant, or so deaf and dumb as my messenger that I send? who is so blind as Meshullam and so deaf and dumb as Jehovah’s servant? 20* It is a case of seeing much and not fixing attention on it, having ears open and not hearing. 21 It was Jehovah’s pleasure for his righteousness’ sake to give a great and grand Code; 22 but that is a people plundered and pillaged, all trapped in holes and hidden in jails; they have become plunder that there is nobody to rescue, pillage for which there is nobody to say “Give it back.” 23 Who among you will give ear to this, listen and hear for afterward? 24 Who gave Jacob up to pillage and Israel to plunderers? was it not Jehovah, against whom they had sinned? they not been willing to go his way nor listened to his instructions, 25* and he poured out on them his hot anger and the force of war which has blazed round them and they do not know it, has burned spots on them and they pay no attention.
43 Says Jehovah now,—your Creator, Jacob; your Framer, Israel,—Do not be afraid, for I have undertaken to be responsible for you; I have named you, you are mine. 2 When you cross through water I am with you; through rivers, they shall not sweep you away. When you walk in fire you shall not be seared and no flame shall catch to you. 3** For I am your God Jehovah, your Savior the Holy One of Israel; I have given Egypt to get you clear, Nubia and the Sudan in your place, 4 inasmuch as I hold you precious, esteem you highly, and love you, so that I give mankind for you and folk after folk for your life. 5 Do not be afraid, because I am with you; from the east I will bring your descendants, and gather them from the west, 6 will say to the north “Give here!” and to the south “No holding out! bring my sons from far away and my daughters from the ends of the earth, 7 everyone who is called by my name and whom I have created for my glory, have shaped and made.”
8* Bring out a blind people with eyes and deaf men that have ears. 9 All nations at once gather, and folk comes together with folk: who among them will tell this and let us hear ancient things? let them offer their witnesses to prove them right, and let them hear and say “True!” 10* You are my witnesses, quoth Jehovah, my servants that I have chosen, in order that you may know and trust to me and understand that I am the one: no deity was shaped before me, and after me there will not be any. 11 I, I am Jehovah, and there is no savior aside from me. 12 I have told and saved and let you hear, and there was no stranger among you. And you are my witnesses, quoth Jehovah, and I am Deity, 13* even today I am that, and there is nobody that delivers out of my hands; I do a thing and who will turn it back?
14* Says your friend in need Jehovah, the Holy One of Israel, On your account I have sent to Babylon and will bring them all down as fugitives, and the Chaldeans, whose shout is on the ships. 15 I am Jehovah, your Holy One, Israel’s Creator, your King.
16 Says Jehovah who gives a road in the sea and a path through a mighty water, 17* who brings out chariots and ponies, great troops and strong sinews together,—they lie down, not to rise, they are extinguished, blown out like a wick,— 18 Do not recall beginnings nor pay attention to ancient things; 19* here I am doing a new thing, it springs up now—do you not recognize it? I will also lay a road through the wilderness, thoroughfares in desert land. 20 The wild creatures, jackals and ostriches, shall pay honor to me because I have put water in the wilderness, rivers in desert land, to give drink to my chosen people, 21 a people that I built for myself to tell my praise.
22 But you have not been calling me, Jacob, because you, Israel, felt worn down over me. 23* You had not brought me a sheep for a burnt-offering, nor honored me with your sacrifices, I had not driven you to work for grain-offerings and worn you down for frankincense, 24 you had not bought me sweet flag for money nor refreshed me with the fat of your sacrifices; you had only driven me to work over your sins and worn me down with your guilt. 25** It is I, I, am canceling your crime on my own account and will not remember your sins any longer. 26 Remind me; let us bring our case against each other to trial; tell the story yourself so as to be in the right. 27 Your first father sinned, and your representatives committed crimes against me; 28 and I profaned sacred dignitaries, and gave Jacob up to proscription and Israel to insults.
44 But now listen, my servant Jacob, Israel that I have chosen. 2* Says Jehovah your Maker, your Framer in your mother’s body, he who helps you: Do not be afraid, my servant Jacob, Jeshurun whom I have chosen. 3 For I will pour water on him who is thirsty, wetness on that which is dry. I will pour my spirit on your descendants and my blessing on your offspring, 4* and they will shoot up like grass in mud, like poplars by watercourses. 5* This one will say “I am Jehovah’s,” and this one will announce the name of Jacob, and this one will mark his arm as Jehovah’s and will put into his name the name of Israel.
6* Says the King of Israel and its friend in need, Jehovah of Armies, I am first and I am last, and besides me there is no god. 7*** And who is like me? let him stand up and proclaim, and tell of it and give me his statement, who from of old has announced coming things; and the things that are to be let them tell them. 8* Do not be in dread, do not be stampeded; have I not announced it to you and told of it in the past? are not you my witnesses? Is there a god besides me? no Rock there is, I know of none. 9 Shapers of statues all amount to nothing, and their charming works are of no use; and the witnesses they have do not see nor know so as to be ashamed.
10 Who has shaped a deity and cast a statue to be of no use? 11 here will all his partners be put to shame; they are human mechanics, they will all gather, come to a stand, be startled, be put to shame together. 12* A blacksmith takes a chunk of metal and works it with coals and shapes it with hammers, has worked it up with his strong arm, gone hungry and lost strength, not had a drink of water and grown faint. 13* A carpenter stretches a line, outlines his job with a pencil, does it with chisels and contours it with compasses, and has made it in the figure of a man, in the elegance of human form, to sit still in a house. 14** One has cut himself cedars, and taken an oak, a live-oak, seized it for himself among the trees in the badlands, has planted a stone-pine and showers grow it; 15 and men have it to burn, and they have taken parts and warmed themselves—also heat a baking-crock and bake bread—also cut out deities and do reverence, make statues and kowtow to them. 16 Half of it they have burned up, off half of it they are eating meat, are cooking a roast and filling their stomachs, also warm themselves and say “Ah there, I am warm, I have seen a fire,” 17 and the remainder of it they make into deities, statues, to kowtow to and do reverence and pray to and say “Deliver me, because you are my God.” 18 They do not know nor realize, because their eyes are sealed up from seeing, their hearts from reasoning. 19 And they do not take it in, and have no knowledge or sense to say “Half of it I burned up, also baked bread over its coals, roasted meat and ate it, and shall I make the rest of it into an abomination? kowtow to a remnant of wood?” 20* Feeder on ashes, a befooled heart has put him off the track, and he will not deliver his soul nor think “Have I not a falsification in my right hand?”
21** Remember these things, Jacob; and, Israel, that you are my servant. I shaped you for servant of mine; you, Israel, are not to forget me. 22 I have cleared your crimes off like a cloud, your sins like a vapor; come back to me, because I claim you. 23 Shout, skies, because Jehovah has acted; cheer, subterranean depths; break out in shouting, mountains, bush and every tree in it, because Jehovah claims Jacob and makes his boast of Israel.
24* Says Jehovah your friend in need, your Framer in your mother’s body: I Jehovah, maker of everything, single-handed stretcher of the sky, unaccompanied spreader of the earth, 25 who foil diviners’ signs and make soothsayers go wild, who reverse wise men and make their knowledge foolish, 26 who make good my servant’s word and execute my messengers’ plan, am he who says of Jerusalem “it shall be inhabited” and of the cities of Judah “they shall be rebuilt and I will rehabilitate her wastes”; 27 who say to the morass “Dry up; I will dry off your rivers”; 28* who say of Cyrus “my servant, and he shall execute everything I want, saying of Jerusalem ‘it shall be rebuilt’ and the temple ‘it shall be refounded.’”
45** Says Jehovah to his anointed one Cyrus, whom I hold by his right hand to have nations trodden down before him, and I unbelt kings’ waists; to open doors before him, and gates shall not be locked: 2* I will go before you and level off knolls and smash bronze doors and chop through iron bars, 3 and give you treasures stored in darkness and buried in screened places, in order that you may know that I am Jehovah, he who names you is Israel’s God; 4 on account of my servant Jacob, and Israel my chosen—and I called you by your name, gave you a title when you did not know me. 5* I am Jehovah, and there is no other; except me there is no God; I will be fastening your girdle when you are not conscious of me, 6* in order that from farthest east to farthest west they may know there is nobody besides me: I am Jehovah, and there is no other. 7 Framer of light and creator of darkness, maker of welfare and creator of calamity, I Jehovah am the doer of all these things.
8* Pour, skies, from above, and let the ether drip down right; let earth open and salvation start its growth, and right shoot up withal—I Jehovah have created it.
9** Ha, man that wrangles with his Framer! a broken dish with the crockery-makers! will clay say to its potter “What are you doing, your work is a botch”? 10 Ha, man that says to a father “What are you begetting?” and to a woman “What are you in labor with?” 11* Says Jehovah, Israel’s Holy One and its Framer, Will you ask me questions about my sons and give me orders about the work of my hands? 12 It was I made earth and created man on it; it was I whose hands stretched the sky and who gave orders to all its legions. 13 It is I that have called him out in good faith and will level all his road; he shall rebuild my city and release my deportees, not for price nor for pelf, says Jehovah of Armies.
14* Says Jehovah, Egypt’s earnings and Nubia’s profits, and the Sudanese, tall men that they are, shall come across to you and belong to you; they shall follow you in fetters; they shall come across and to you make prayers: “only in you is there a deity, and there is no other, not a god. 15* With you there was a veiled Deity! Israel’s God is a savior!” 16 They are crestfallen, downright humiliated, all of them together; figure-sculptors go off in humiliation. 17 Israel is saved in Jehovah with eternal salvation; you shall not be crestfallen nor humiliated forever and aye.
18 For this is what Jehovah says, the Creator of the heavens—he is God! the Shaper and Maker of the earth—it was he set it in order, he did not create it as a chaos, he shaped it to be inhabited—: I am Jehovah and there is nobody to be added. I have not spoken in secret, 19 in a place in a land of darkness; I have not said to Jacob’s descendants “Look for me at random”; I Jehovah speak right, I make straightforward statements.
20* Gather and come on, throng up and come in, my survivors! The nations do not know, those who bear along the wood of their statues and pray to a deity that does not save. 21 Tell and bring them on; yes, let them put their heads together; who uttered this in ancient times, announced it already? was it not I, Jehovah? and there is no other God outside me; honest, saving Deity there is none except me. 22 Face toward me and be saved, all ends of earth! for I am Deity and there is no other. 23* By myself I have sworn, a word has gone out of my mouth in good faith and will never go back, that to me every knee shall bend, by me every tongue shall swear. 24* Only in Jehovah, it is said of me, is fair dealing and might; to him all that are spiteful toward him shall come and be ashamed. 25 In Jehovah shall all the descendants of Israel have their vindication and their boast.
46** Bel sinks, Nebo is bent; their idols have become beasts, cattle; the things that were to carry them are loaded with burdens to the fainting-point; 2 together they have bent, sunk, have not been able to bring a load to safety but their own selves have gone into foreign slavery. 3 Listen to me, house of Jacob, all you remnant of the house of Israel, you that have been taken as a load since you came out of your mothers’ bodies, carried since you came from the womb— 4 and to old age I am the one, till your hair is white I will bear you along; I made and I will carry, I will bear along and bring to safety. 5 To whom will you compare and equalize me, and parallel me so that we shall be comparable? 6 you that deal out gold from a bag and weigh out silver with a scale, hire a goldsmith to make it into a deity, kowtow and do reverence too, 7 take it up, bear it along on your shoulders, and set it down on the floor and have it stand there, not budge from its place; one may cry to it, it will not answer, will not save him out of his distress. 8* Remember this and anchor yourselves; rebels, take it to heart. 9 Remember facts of the ancient past; for I am Deity and there is no other, God and no being is like me, 10* who announced the future in the past, in olden time things not yet done; who said “My purpose shall come true, and all my wishes shall be executed”; 11* who called birds of prey from the east, from a far-off country the man for my plan; I who spoke the word will make it true, I who drew the pattern will do the work. 12 Listen to me, men of defiant heart, far from right: 13 I have brought my right-doing near, it shall not be far off, and my salvation shall not delay; and I will give salvation in Sion, my majesty to Israel.
47 Come down and sit on the earth, maiden daughter of Babylon; sit chairless on the ground, daughter of Chaldea; for they shall no longer call you delicate and dainty. 2 Take a quern and grind meal; doff your veil, strip off long skirts, uncover legs, ford rivers. 3* Your nudity shall be uncovered, yes, your ignominy shall be visible; I will have my revenge and not take my ease, 4 says the champion of our rights, whose name is Jehovah of Armies, Israel’s Holy One. 5 Sit silent and go into the dark, daughter of Chaldea; for they will no longer call you mistress of kingdoms. 6 I was incensed against my people, I let my estate be desecrated and gave them into your hands; you accorded them no kindness, you laid a very heavy yoke on an old man. 7 And you said “I shall be mistress forever”; you did not set your mind to these things, did not remember their sequel. 8 Now hear this, luxurious one, you that sit confident of your security, that say to yourself “There’s me and that’s all! I shall never sit in a widow’s seat nor experience the loss of my children”; 9* you shall have these two things come at a stroke, on one day, the loss of your children and widowhood; to the utmost they will have come upon you for your wholesale witchcraft, for your multitudinous incantations. 10* But you put confidence in your science; you said “nobody sees me”; your culture and science turned your head, and you said to yourself “There’s me and that’s all.” 11* But there will come upon you a calamity that you do not know the spell for, and there will fall upon you a ruin that you cannot buy off, and an unexpected storm will come suddenly upon you. 12 Stand there with your incantations and your wholesale witchcrafts that you have toiled over from your girlhood; perhaps you can accomplish something, perhaps you will overawe somebody. 13 You are tired with your elaborate policy: let the astronomers stand there and save you, those who gaze at the stars and prognosticate the moons, from the things that are to come upon you. 14* There they have turned to straw, fire has burned them; they will not deliver their own selves from the hands of flame; there is not a bed of coals to warm one’s self by, a campfire to sit before. 15* Such you find those become for whom you have toiled, your spell-casters from your girlhood; they are wandering each to a different quarter, there is nobody to save you.
48 Listen to this, house of Jacob, you who are called by Israel’s name and have come of Judah’s germs, you who swear by Jehovah’s name and cite the God of Israel,—not in good faith and not with honest intent,— 2 because you are called after the holy city and prop yourselves upon the God of Israel, whose name is Jehovah of Armies. 3 The prior events I announced in the past, they came out of my mouth and I let them be heard of; suddenly I did them and they came true; 4* because I knew that you were a stiff one, and your neck was strap-iron and your forehead solid bronze, 5 I told you in the past, let you hear before it came about, for fear you should think “my idol did the things” or “my statue, my metal image, gave the order for them.” 6 You hear? look at it all! And you yourselves, will you not tell? I am letting you hear of new things from now on, and recondite things that you did not know. 7 They are created now and not in the past, and before the right day you did not any of you hear, for fear you should say “There, I knew about them.”
8 You have neither heard nor known, nor has your ear been opened in the past, because I knew you would be breaking faith, and you had been called a rebel since you came out of your mother’s body. 9* On account of my reputation I will be patient and bridle my resentment toward you, not stamping you out. 10* Here I have been smelting you, but not for silver; I have been testing you in the furnace of hardship. 11* On my own account, my own, I will act, because I am being profaned and I will not give my glory to another.
12* Listen to me, Jacob, and Israel whom I have called: I am the one; I am first, I am last too. 13* It was my hand, too, that laid the foundations of earth, and my right hand that spread the sky; I call to them, they stand there together.
14*** Let them all gather and have us hear who among them has announced these things! He whom I love shall do my pleasure at Babylon, his arm among the Chaldeans. 15* I, I spoke, I called him too, I brought him, and he shall be successful in his enterprises. 16 Come near to me, listen to this: I did not from the first speak in private; ever since it was, there was I.
17 And now the Lord Jehovah has sent me, and his spirit. Says Jehovah your Friend in need, the Holy One of Israel: I am your God Jehovah, he who teaches you to make good, who sets you on the road you should go by. 18 If you had listened to my commandments, then your prosperity would have been like the River and your record of rightness like the waves of the sea; 19 and your issue would have been like the sand and the offspring of your body like the grains of it; their name would never become extinct nor be stamped out from before me.
20 Come out of Babylon! get away from the Chaldeans! Tell this with sounding cheers, make all hear it, publish it to the end of the earth; say “Jehovah has vindicated his servant Jacob! 21 they did not go thirsty; he took them through the wastes, made water spirt from a rock for them; he split a rock and water ran and his people drank!”
22 There is no peace, says Jehovah, for the wicked!
49 Hear me, coasts; listen, every folk afar. Jehovah called me ever since my birth; since I was in my mother’s body he has been speaking my name; 2 and he has made my mouth like a sharp sword, has hid me in the shadow of his hand, and made of me a whetted arrow, screened me in his quiver; 3 and he has said to me “You are my servant, the Israel of whom I make my boast.” 4 But I thought “I have toiled in vain, used up my strength for a nothing and an illusion”; but in fact my rights were with Jehovah and my dues with my God, 5* and now Jehovah says, he who framed me in my mother’s body for servant of his to bring Jacob back to him and to take up Israel, and I was honored in Jehovah’s sight and my God was my strength,— 6** he says “When you are servant of mine it is too little to set the tribes of Jacob on their feet and to bring back the tight-held sons of Israel; I will give you for a light of nations, for my salvation to reach to the end of the earth.”
7 Says Jehovah, Israel’s friend in need, his Holy One, to one despised by men’s propensities, detested by a nation, a slave of rulers: Kings shall see, and stand up; generals, and do reverence; on Jehovah’s account, that he is reliable, Israel’s Holy One, and has chosen you. 8 Says Jehovah, At a time of graciousness I gave you your answer, on a day of salvation I gave you my help, and kept you and gave you for a people’s charter, to set a country on its feet, to assign desolate estates; 9* to say to the prisoners “Come out,” to those who are in darkness “Come into the open.” On all mountains they shall graze, have their pasture on all scalps of rock; 10 they shall not go hungry or thirsty, nor shall desert heat nor sun strike them down, because it is he who feels for them that is driving them, and he will take them by springs of water. 11* And I will make all my mountains a road, and my turnpikes shall run high. 12* Here will these come in from far away, and here these from the north and the west, and these from the Sinite country. 13* Shout, sky, and jubilate, earth! let mountains break out in shouting! for Jehovah has comforted his people and will have compassion on his unfortunates.
14* But Sion says “Jehovah has left me; my Lord has forgotten me.” 15 Will a woman forget her baby, so as to have no feeling about the child of her own body? even they may forget and I will not forget you. 16 Here I have drawn your picture on my hands; I have your walls before me always. 17 Those that build you up work faster than did those who demolished you, and those who laid you waste have gone out of you. 18 Lift your eyes in every direction and see! they all gather, they are coming to you! by my life, quoth Jehovah, you shall wear them all as jewels and tie them on like a bride’s ribbons. 19 Whereas I had laid you waste and desolate, demolished you to the ground, now you shall be too scanty for the population, and those that wrecked you will be far away; 20 you shall yet hear the sons born during your childlessness saying “The place is too scanty for me; move out of my way so I can settle down.” 21 And you will say to yourself “Who gave birth to these for me, when I was childless and beyond hope, who raised these? there was I left alone, where were these?”
22 Says the Lord Jehovah, Here, I will lift my hand to nations and raise my signal to peoples, and they shall bring your sons in the folds of cloaks, and your daughters shall be carried on sides, 23 and kings shall be your foster-fathers and their queens your nurses; they shall do reverence to you with their faces to the ground and lick the dust off your feet; and you shall know that I am Jehovah who do not disappoint those who put their hope in me.
24 Will his captures be taken from a champion, or will a tyrant’s prisoners get away? 25 For Jehovah says “Even a champion’s prisoners will be taken from him and a tyrant’s captures will get away; and I will combat those who combat you, I will save your sons, 26 and will set those who ill-treat you to eating their own flesh; they shall fuddle themselves with their own blood as if it were pomegranate-wine; and all mortals shall know that I Jehovah am your savior, and your friend in need is the Mighty One of Jacob.”
50 Says Jehovah, Where are your mother’s divorce papers to show that I turned her off? or what creditor of mine is it that I have sold you to? it was for your guilt you were sold, and for your crimes you were turned off. 2 How was it I came and there was not a man, I called and there was nobody to answer? Has my arm grown too short to redeem, or is there no strength in me to deliver? lo, by my rebuke I dry up a sea, I make rivers a wilderness, their fish stink for lack of water and die of thirst; 3 I clothe sky with black and give it a sackcloth for covering.
4** The Lord Jehovah has given me a well-taught tongue to know how to give a drooping man a helpful word; morning by morning he makes my ear alert to hear like learners. 5 The Lord Jehovah has opened my ear, and I was not disobedient, did not shrink back: 6 I gave my back to beaters and my cheeks to beard-pullers plucking the skin bare, I did not screen myself from insult and spitting. 7 But the Lord Jehovah will help me, therefore I am not humiliated; therefore I have made my face like a pyrite stone and know I shall not be put to shame. 8 My vindicator is at hand; who will prosecute me? let us stand up together; who has a case against me? let him come on. 9 Here is the Lord Jehovah to help me, who is there to get me condemned? here are all of them going to wear out like blankets, to be eaten by moths.
10* Who among you fears Jehovah, obeys his servant? Let him who walks in the dark and has never a ray put his trust in Jehovah and lean on his God. 11* There you are kindling fires and lighting firebrands, all of you; walk by the light of your fires and by the firebrands you have set blazing! At my hands you get this—you shall lie down in pain.
51 Listen to me, you that are aiming at rectitude, trying to find Jehovah: look at the rock you were quarried from and at the hollow of the pit you were dug out of; 2* look at your father Abraham and at Sarah who gave you birth, that I called him when he was one man and I blessed him and made many of him. 3* For Jehovah has brought cheer to Sion, cheer to all her waste places, and has made her wilderness like ʽEden and her desert part like Jehovah’s garden: rejoicing and merrymaking shall be found in it, thanksgivings and the sound of music.
4 Listen for what I say, my people; my folk, turn your ear to me. For instructions will come out from me, and my law, for a light of peoples. 5 A moment, and my equity is at hand; my salvation goes out, and my arms do justice for peoples; foreign coasts are hoping for me and waiting for my arm. 6 Raise your eyes to the sky, and look at the earth below: for skies will break up like smoke and the earth will wear out like a blanket, but my salvation will last forever, and my equity will never break down. 7 Listen to me, you who know the right, people who have my instructions in your hearts: do not be afraid of men’s slurs nor dismayed at their insults; 8 for moths will eat them off like a blanket and grubs will eat them off like wool, but my equity will last forever and my salvation for generation after generation.
9* Rouse up, rouse up, put on strength, arm of Jehovah! rouse as in ancient days, in olden generations! was it not you that mangled Rahab, that pierced Dragon? 10 was it not you that dried off the sea, the water of the great deep; that made ocean depths a road to let rescued men pass? 11 And Jehovah’s ransomed shall come back and come to Sion with caroling, with eternal gladness on their heads; gladness and rejoicing shall arrive, sorrow and moaning shall take flight.
12* I, I am the one that is comforting you; who are you that you are afraid of a man who is to die, and a human being who is to be made hay of, 13 and have forgotten Jehovah your Maker, stretcher of skies and founder of earth, and are all day in constant terror of the oppressor’s rage? when he has made ready to ravage, where is the oppressor’s rage? 14* a man tied down has speedily been unfastened, and shall not die for perdition nor find his bread running short. 15 But I your God Jehovah am he who stirs the sea and its waves roar, whose name is Jehovah of Armies, 16 and have placed my words in your mouth and covered you in the shadow of my hand, planting heavens and founding earth and saying to Sion “You are my people.”
17 Rouse, rouse yourself, stand up, Jerusalem, you who at Jehovah’s hand have drunk the cup of his ire, have drunk dry the staggering-goblet, 18 you that of all the children you bore have nobody to show you the way, of all the children you reared have nobody to take you by the hand; 19 two things there are that have befallen you—who shall lament for you? rapine and ruin, and starvation and sword—who shall comfort you? 20 Your sons have collapsed, they are lying at the tops of all the streets like an antelope in a net, full as they are of Jehovah’s ire, of your God’s rebuke.
21 So hear this, wretched one, drunken but not with wine: 22 says your Lord Jehovah, your God who takes up his people’s cause, Here I have taken out of your hands the staggering-cup, and you shall never again drink the goblet of my ire; 23* and I will place it in the hands of those who made you trouble and ground you down, who said to your form “Down, let us through” and you made your back like the earth and like the street for those who were to pass over.
52 Rouse up, rouse up, put on your strength, Sion! put on your garments of magnificence, Jerusalem, hallowed city! for never again shall one uncircumcised and unclean enter you. 2* Shake yourself clear of dirt, stand up, take your seat, Jerusalem; your slave-collar is unfastened, captive daughter of Sion. 3 For Jehovah says, It was for nothing you were sold, and it will not be with money you shall be rehabilitated. 4 For the Lord Jehovah says, To Egypt my people went down in the first place to live there as immigrants, and Assyria victimized them over nothing; 5* and now what have I to do here, quoth Jehovah, when my people is seized unnecessarily? their rulers run mad, quoth Jehovah, and my name is treated with constant contempt all day long. 6 So my people shall know my name on that day, that it was I that spoke; here I am
7 What a glorious sight on the mountains are the feet of a messenger of good news, a herald of peace, a messenger that all is well, a herald of salvation, one who says to Sion “Your God is king now!” 8* Hark to your watchmen! they raise their voices, they shout together, because eye to eye they look upon Jehovah’s coming back to Sion with tenderness. 9* Break out in a shout together, waste sites in Jerusalem, because Jehovah has given comfort to his people, has been friend in need to Jerusalem. 10 Jehovah has bared his holy arm before the eyes of all the nations, and all the ends of earth have seen our God’s salvation. 11* Stand clear, stand clear! come out of there, touch nothing unclean! come out from within it, be by yourselves, you who carry Jehovah’s things. 12 For not hurriedly will you come out nor go in flight; for Jehovah will be going before you and the God of Israel bringing up your rear.
13 Ah, well will my servant do, will tower up and stand aloft and be high indeed. 14* As many had been aghast at him because his form was too much disfigured to be a man, his features too much to be humankind, 15* so will he draw the gaze of many nations; kings will shut their mouths at him, because they see what they had never been told of and realize what they had never heard.
53 Who believes our news? and to whom is Jehovah’s arm disclosed? 2 there came up before him a thing like an accidental shoot, like a root-sprout out of dry ground, that had no shape or stateliness that we should see it, no sightliness that we should want it. 3* He was despised and avoided by men, a man of pains and familiar with sickness; like one from whom people screen their faces we despised him and did not count him for anything. 4 But in fact it was our sicknesses he was carrying, our pains he was loaded with—while we all the time thought he was a smitten one, struck by God and disciplined. 5 But he was being stabbed by our crimes, felled by our guilt; the chastisement to give us soundness came on him, and by his stripes we got healing. 6 We had all strayed like sheep, each headed a different way, and Jehovah made him answer for the guilt of all of us. 7 He was bullied while he was submissive and did not open his mouth, like a sheep led to slaughtering or like a ewe dumb before her shearers—and did not open his mouth. 8* He was taken out of law and order; and in his generation who would give thought to it that he was cut away from the land of the living? For my people’s crime he was smitten, 9* and his grave was put with malefactors and with a rich man at his death, for no violence that he had committed nor any fraud that was in his mouth, 10* but Jehovah was pleased to fell him, he gave him a disease.
If his life pays an indemnity, he will see posterity, will last long, and Jehovah’s pleasure will prosper in his hands. 11** He will see the thing his soul was in torment for, will have his fill; by his evil my servant will clear many, their load of guilt he will carry. 12** So I will give him a share among great ones and he shall share booty with powerful ones, for his having poured his soul out for death and been counted with criminals, when he had taken up the sins of many and was intervening on account of their crimes.
54 Shout, barren one that has given no birth; break out into shouting and whooping, you that have felt no birth-pains; for here are more children of the desolate mother than of the husbanded mother, says Jehovah. 2 Broaden the site for your tent and have them stretch out the cords of your abode; do not set a limit; make your ropes long and your pegs strong; 3 for you shall break out to right and to left, and your offspring shall take possession of nations and bring population to desolate cities. 4** Do not be afraid, because you will not be disappointed; nor feel humiliation, because you will not be abashed; for you shall forget the disappointments of your youth, and no longer remember the taunts of your widowhood. 5 For it is your Maker that is husband to you, whose name is Jehovah of Armies, and your friend in need is the Holy One of Israel, who shall be called the God of all the earth. 6** For like a forsaken and heart-wrung wife Jehovah has called you, and a first wife when she was being despised, says Jehovah your God. 7* In a little irritation I left you, but in great tenderness I will take you home; 8 in a rush of wrath I hid my face from you for a moment, but in eternal friendship I will tenderly cherish you, says your restorer Jehovah. 9* This is like Noah’s times to me: as I swore not to let Noah’s water go over the earth again, so I have sworn not to be incensed at you nor scold you. 10 For the mountains will shift and the hills be unsettled, but my friendship will never shift away from you nor my covenant of peace be unsettled, says your tender protector Jehovah.
11 Wretched town, storm-wrecked, unrelieved, here I am bedding your stones in asphalt and laying your foundations in sapphire, 12** and I will make your battlements fire-opal and your gateposts carnelian, and all your boundary posts precious stones. 13** And all your sons shall be learners under Jehovah, and the health of your sons shall be perfect. 14 You shall be kept in condition by right; live far from tyranny, for you shall not be afraid, and from dismay, for it shall not come near you. 15* Suppose they do start quarrels, it will not be my doing; whoever starts a quarrel with you will come to his fall over you. 16* It was I that created a smith who blows a charcoal fire and brings out a weapon for its work, and it was I that created a ravager to ruin. 17 No weapon forged against you shall be a success, and every tongue that takes the stand against you before a court you shall convict of wrong. This is the heritage of Jehovah’s servants, and the vindication they have from me, quoth Jehovah.
55* Ho, every thirsty man, come to the water, and you who have no money, come buy provisions and eat; come buy them for no money, wine and milk for no pay; 2 why should you spend money for no bread and your earnings for no satisfaction? Listen to me and eat good things, and let your cravings be delighted with fat things; 3* turn your ears and come to me, listen that your souls may live and I may make with you an eternal covenant, the faithful friendship I pledged to David. 4* Here I make him a witness to peoples, warden and dictator of many a folk. 5* Here, you shall call a nation you do not know, and a nation that never knew you shall run to you, on account of your God Jehovah, and for Israel’s Holy One because he has adorned you with magnificence.
6 Betake yourselves to Jehovah while he is to be found; call on him while he is near; 7 let a wicked man leave his course and a villain his schemes, and come back to Jehovah who will take pity on him, to our God because he will amply forgive; 8 for my plans are not yours and your courses are not mine, quoth Jehovah. 9 For sky is higher than earth; by so much are my courses higher than yours and my plans than yours. 10 For as the shower and the snowstorm come down out of the sky and do not go back without having watered the earth and set it to hatching and sprouting, and it gives seed to the sower and bread to the eater, 11 so shall be my word that goes out of my mouth: it shall not come back to me empty-handed, but do what I please that it should and succeed in what I sent it for. 12 For you shall go out in gladness and be led along in safety; the mountains and hills shall break out into shouting before you, and all the trees of the wilds shall clap their hands. 13 Instead of the thorn-tree there shall come up a cypress, and instead of the elecampane there shall come up a myrtle; and Jehovah shall have it for an honor, a perpetual never-failing trophy.
56 Says Jehovah, Keep the law and do the right thing; for the time is almost here for my salvation to come and my right-doing to be manifested. 2 Happy is the person who does this, and the man who holds fast to it; who keeps sabbath without profaning it and keeps his hands from doing anything bad. 3* And let the foreigner who has taken Jehovah’s side not say “Jehovah will exclude me from his people”; and let the eunuch not say “Well, I am a dead tree”; 4 for Jehovah says to the eunuchs that keep my sabbaths and choose what I like and hold to my covenant, 5* I will give them in my house and within my walls a better monument and name than sons and daughters give; a perpetual, never-failing name I will give them. 6 And the foreigners who have taken Jehovah’s side to serve him and love Jehovah’s name, to become worshipers of his, everyone that keeps sabbath without profaning it and those that hold to my covenant, 7 I will bring to my sacred mountain and give them joy in my house of prayer; their burnt-offerings and sacrifices shall be acceptable on my altar; for my house shall be called a house of prayer for all the peoples, 8** quoth Jehovah who is gathering the exiles of Israel; I will further gather to him those whom he is to have gathered to him.
9 All you wild beasts, come to eat, all you beasts in the thickets! 10 her lookouts are blind, they all of them do not know; they are all dumb dogs that cannot bark, dreamy, lying flat, fond of sleeping. 11** And the dogs have mighty appetites; they do not know when they have had enough; and the shepherds themselves do not know what is what, they have all turned to their own errands, every single one to his own profits: 12 “Come, I will fetch wine and we will swig beer, and tomorrow will be like today, a very special great time.”
57* The honest one perishes, and there is not a man who thinks it over; and friendly men are taken home, with nobody seeing the point, that the honest man is taken home out of harm’s way: 2 he goes into peace; they are at rest in their beds, whoever went straight. 3 But as for you, come this way, sons of a fortune-telling mother, offspring of an adulterer and a wanton. 4 Toward whom are you so daintily supercilious? toward whom do you open your mouths wide and put out your tongues? Are not you yourselves children of crime, an offspring of falsehood? 5 you who heat yourselves up at the oaks, under every verdant tree, and slaughter children in the arroyos, under the clefts of the ledges. 6 Your portion is in smoothed arroyo-rocks; they, they are your lot; to them too you have poured a libation, brought up a grain-offering—am I to put up with things like these? 7 On a high and upthrust mountain you have placed your bed; there too you have gone up to offer sacrifice. 8* And behind the door and the post you have placed your reminder, because out from me you uncovered and climbed, broadened out your bed; and you cut out some of those for yourself, you loved their bed. You saw a hand, 9 and you took the road to the King with oil and used plenty of perfume, and sent your envoys to distant places and down to the world of the dead. 10* You were spent with the length of your road, you did not say “I am done”; you found you had life of hand, therefore you did not flag.
11* Of whom are you apprehensive and afraid, that you are lying and do not remember me, do not give me a thought? I have been keeping myself still and ignoring matters, have I not? and of me you are not afraid. 12 I will be the one to declare your rightness; as for your work, it will do you no good. 13* When you cry out let your collections deliver you! but a wind will pick them all up, a puff will take them along, and he who takes refuge in me shall inherit a land and shall take possession of my sacred mountain. 14 And I shall say “Level up, level up, clear a road, heave up obstacles out of my people’s way!”
15* For a lofty and exalted one says, who dwells in eternity and whose name is sacred, “I dwell in a place lofty and sacred, and with a man abashed and lowly in spirit, to give life to the spirits of the lowly and invigorate the hearts of the abashed. 16* For I will not keep up a contention forever nor be permanently incensed; for it is from me that spirit puts on a wrapping, and it was I who made breath. 17** For the foulness of his moneymaking I was incensed and beat him, veiled and grim; but he went off backward on the course of his own choice. 18* I saw his courses, and I healed him and let him rest, and made it up to him in truehearted comforting. 19 I create peace with my lips, peace to the one who is far and peace to the one who is near,” says Jehovah, “and I heal him. 20 But the wicked are like the driving sea, in that it cannot be quiet and its water drives up sludge and mud; 21 there is no peace for wicked men,” says my God.
58 Call at the top of your voice, do not hold in, lift your voice like a ram-horn, and tell my people of their crimes and the house of Jacob of their sins. 2 And they resort to me day by day and like to know my courses; like a nation that had done the right thing and not deserted its God’s law, they ask me for judgments for the right, they like to feel that God is near. 3* “How was it we fasted and you did not see it, we denied ourselves the gratification of appetites and you did not know it?” Here on your fast day you engage in business and drive all your hands; 4 here you fast wrangling and tussling and striking with lawless fist—you do not fast at present to make your voice heard on high. 5 Is the fast that I choose like this, a day for men to deny themselves the gratification of appetites? is it to bend one’s head over like a rush and make a bed of a sackcloth and ashes? will you call this a fast, and a day acceptable to Jehovah? 6 Would not this be a fast I would choose: to open up unlawful durance and undo the ties of yoke-bows, and let men held on trumped-up charges go free and snap the bows of every yoke? 7** would it not be to share your piece of bread with a hungry man and take homeless wretches into your house, when you see a naked man to cover him and not be unregardful of your flesh and blood? 8* Then your light would break like the dawn and your wounds would quickly grow whole, and the rightness of your cause would go before you and Jehovah’s glory would bring up your rear; 9* then you would call and Jehovah would answer, you would shout and he would say “Here I am.” If you eliminate crooked dealing, pointing fingers, and talking up villainy, 10 and feel for yourself the appetite of the starving man and feed up famished appetites, then your light will rise in the darkness and your murkiest gloom be like noon sunshine, 11* and Jehovah will guide you always and feed you your own appetite among dry stones and brace your bones, and you will be like a well-moistened garden and like a water-spring whose water never disappoints; 12** and sites lying waste from of old will be built up by you, on foundations of generations far back you shall erect walls; and you shall be called fencer-up of breaches, restorer of paths for settlement. 13 If you turn back your feet from sabbath, the doing of your business on my holy day, and call the sabbath a treat, Jehovah’s sacred time glorious, and glorify it so as not to do your own ways nor engage in your business, 14 then you shall have Jehovah to treat you, and I will mount you on earth’s heights and feed you with your father Jacob’s inheritance; for it is Jehovah’s mouth that has spoken.
59 Here, Jehovah’s hand is not too short to save nor his ear too heavy to hear, 2 but your guilts have been making a separation between you and your God and your sins have veiled his face from you to keep him from hearing. 3 For your hands are polluted with blood and your fingers with villainy, your lips speak falsely, your tongues whisper dishonesty; 4 there is no one who argues a case fairly and no one who comes into court in good faith; there is trust in nothings and talk of futilities, there is breeding of trouble and giving birth to villainy. 5 They hatch cobra eggs and weave spider webs: he who eats any of their eggs will die, and any that is stepped on cracks open to let out a sand-adder; 6 their webs will not make a garment, and they will not cover themselves with their work. Their work is work of villainy, and they have in hand jobs of ruffianism; 7 their feet race to anything bad, and they are quick at shedding innocent blood; their thoughts are thoughts of villainy; rapine and ruin are on their thoroughfares, 8 they do not know the road to peace and there is no law and order on their routes, they have twisted their paths; anyone who travels thereon does not know what peace is. 9 That is why justice keeps at a distance from us and right does not get to us, we hope for light and find darkness, for radiance and we walk in murky gloom; 10 we feel along walls like blind men, feel our way as if eyeless, we stumble at noon as if it were dusk; we have a smell like dead men; 11* we are all growling like bears and making moan like doves; we hope for justice and there is none, for salvation when it is far away from us, 12 because our crimes are many before you and our sins testify against us.
13* For we have our crimes with us, and our guilt we know: insubordination and insincerity toward Jehovah and falling back from following our God, talking to suppress the truth and make false insinuations; evolving and emitting lying words, 14 justice being pushed back and right standing at a distance, because truth stumbles in the city square and fair dealing cannot get in; 15 truth has become a rarity, one who avoids evil is a mark for depredations.
16 And Jehovah saw and was displeased that there was no justice, and he saw there was not a man, and was shocked that there was no one who intervened; and his own arm made good his cause, and the rightness of his stand held him up. 17 And he put on right like a hauberk, with a helmet of salvation on his head, and dressed himself in garments of vengeance and wrapped himself in jealousy like a robe; 18* the like deeds for the like he will pay back, ire to his foes, requital to his enemies, 19*** and on the west they shall see Jehovah’s fame, and toward the sunrise his glory, when a foe comes in like a river, with Jehovah’s spirit carrying the standard for him. 20* And there will come from Sion a friend in need, and for those in Jacob who turn back from crime, quoth Jehovah.
21 And for my part this is my covenant with them, says Jehovah: my spirit that is on you and my words that I have placed in your mouth shall not move from your mouth and from the mouths of your offspring and of your offspring’s offspring, says Jehovah, from now on, forever.
60 Stand out, shine! for your glow has come and Jehovah’s glory has risen over you; 2 here darkness will cover earth, and thick air folk after folk, but over you Jehovah will rise, and his glory will be seen over you; 3 and nations shall walk by your light, and kings by your rising beams. 4 Raise your eyes in all directions and see: they have all gathered, they are come! your sons are coming from far away and your daughters carried on their nurses’ sides. 5* Then, seeing it, you will brighten and your heart will thrill and expand, because the affluence of the West will swing to you, the wealth of nations will come to you; 6 the dust-cloud of camels will cover you, the dromedaries of Midian and Ghephah will all come from Sheba carrying gold and frankincense and reporting Jehovah’s praises. 7 All the sheep and goats of Kedar will be gathered to you; the rams of Nebajoth will do service to you; they will become acceptable burnt-offerings on my altar, and I will heighten the magnificence of my magnificent house. 8 Who are these flying like a cloud and like pigeons coming to their windows? 9 for I have foreign coasts waiting, and the Spain-ships first, to bring my sons from far away, their silver and gold with them, for the name of your God Jehovah and for Israel’s Holy One because he has raised you to magnificence. 10 And aliens’ sons will build your walls, and their kings will do service to you; for in my wrath I struck you blows, but in my goodwill I have done you kindnesses. 11* And your gates will stand always open, never be shut by day nor by night, for bringing in to you the wealth of nations with their kings brought along; 12 for the nation or kingdom that will not be subject to you shall perish; the nation shall be literally laid waste. 13* The glory of the Lebanon will be given to you; to you will come cypress, elm, and great savin together to give magnificence to the place of my sanctuary; and I will make the place of my feet glorious. 14* And the sons of your oppressors will go to you in abasement, and all your despisers will do reverence at your feet, and call you Jehovah’s city, Israel’s Holy One’s Sion. 15* Instead of your being deserted and hated, with nobody passing through, I will make you the pride of an eon, a joy to generation after generation. 16 And you shall suck the milk of nations, kings’ breasts you shall suck; and you shall know that I Jehovah am your savior, and your friend in need is the Mighty One of Jacob. 17* Instead of bronze I will bring in gold, and instead of iron I will bring in silver, and instead of wood bronze, and instead of stones iron; and I will install as your government Peace and as your officers Right. 18 No more shall be heard of outrage in your country, rapine and ruin in your domain; and you shall call your walls Salvation and your gates Praise. 19 You shall no more have the sun for light by day, and in radiance the moon shall not shine for you, but Jehovah shall be an eternal light for you, and your God your splendor. 20 No more shall your sun go down nor your moon wane, for Jehovah shall be an eternal light for you and your time of mourning is done. 21** And your people shall all be upright; they shall possess the land forever, the slips of his planting, the work of his hands to make a magnificent display. 22 The smallest shall become a thousand and the tiniest a strong nation. I Jehovah will speed it up at the due time.
61 The Lord Jehovah’s spirit is upon me, since Jehovah has anointed me. To bring good news to humble men he has sent me, to bandage men broken at the heart, to proclaim liberty to men in foreign slavery and jail-delivery to men in prison, 2* to proclaim a year of graciousness on Jehovah’s part and a day of vengeance on the part of our God, to comfort all mourners, 3 to bring on for the mourners of Sion, to give to them, high hats instead of ashes, oil of rejoicing instead of mourning, a vestment of praise instead of a benumbed spirit; and they shall be called the trees of right, Jehovah’s planting for a display of magnificence. 4 And they shall rebuild sites immemorially lying waste, re-erect the desolations of the past, and renew the waste cities, the desolations of generation upon generation. 5 And strangers shall stand tending your sheep, and foreigners’ sons be your plowmen and your vineyard hands, 6* but you shall be called Jehovah’s priests, shall be spoken of as our God’s ministrants; you shall eat the wealth of nations, and in their opulence you shall be substituted. 7* In place of your shame twofold and humiliation, they shall carol of their portion; therefore in their country they shall possess twofold, they shall have perpetual gladness. 8* For I Jehovah love justice, hate thieving by crooked work; and I will give their due faithfully, and make a perpetual covenant for them. 9 And their stock shall be noted among the nations and their offspring amid the peoples: everybody who sees them shall recognize them as a stock that Jehovah has blessed.
10* I will be joyous in Jehovah, my soul shall exult in my God, because he has dressed me in garments of salvation, wrapped me in a robe of right, as a bridegroom dons a sacramental cap and a bride bejewels herself with her belongings. 11 For like earth putting forth growth, and like a garden germinating its beds of seed, so the Lord Jehovah will bring up before all the nations a growth of right and praise.
62 On Sion’s behalf I will not be silent, and on Jerusalem’s I will not be quiet, till her rightness comes out like a radiance and her salvation like a burning torch. 2 And nations shall see your rightness, and all kings your glory; and you shall be called by a new name which Jehovah’s mouth will designate; 3 and you shall be a magnificent coronet in Jehovah’s hand and a royal tiara in the hand of your God. 4 You shall not again be spoken of as deserted nor your country as desolate, but you shall be called My-Dear and your country Husbanded; for Jehovah holds you dear, and your country shall have a husband. 5* For as a young man weds with a maiden your sons shall wed with you, and as a bridegroom rejoices over a bride your God will rejoice over you.
6 Over your walls, Jerusalem, I have set watchers; all day and all night they will never drop to silence. Have no repose, reminders of Jehovah, 7 and give him none, till he establishes and makes Jerusalem a praise in the earth. 8 Jehovah has sworn by his right hand and his mighty arm “I will not again give your grain as food to your enemies, nor shall foreigners drink your grape-juice that you toiled for, 9 but those who bring it home shall eat it and praise Jehovah, and those who gather it shall drink it in my sacred courts.”
10* Pass, pass the gates! clear the people’s road! level up, level up the street! pick out the stones that catch one’s feet! 11* Say among the peoples “Here is Jehovah!” give out the word to the edge of the earth! say to the daughter of Sion “Here has come your Savior! here comes his pay with him, his result before him!” 12 And they shall call them a sacred people, Jehovah’s rescued men; and you shall be called “Wanted,” “Undeserted City.”
63* Who is this that comes reddened, more crimson in clothing than a vintager, this one so striking for his clothing, pacing on in his abundant strength?
I who speak for the right, who abundantly save.
2 How comes it there is red on your clothing and your garments are like a grape-treader’s?
3* I trod a winepress alone, and of peoples not a man was with me; and I trod them in my anger and trampled them in my ire, and their juice spurted on my garments and I bespattered all my clothing; 4 for I had a day of vengeance in mind, and my year of redress had come. 5 And I looked and there was no helper, stood aghast and there was nobody to keep me up; and my own arm saved me and my ire kept me up, 6 and I stamped peoples down in my anger and broke them up in my ire and sent their juice down to the ground.
7* I will commemorate Jehovah’s friendlinesses, Jehovah’s praises, as befits all that Jehovah, abundant in kindness toward Israel’s house, has done to us, that he has done by us such things as were like his tenderness and abundant friendliness. 8** And he said “They really are my people, sons that will not belie their birth”; and he became savior of theirs 9 in all their distress. No delegate nor angel, his presence saved them; in his love and mercy he stood by them, and lifted and carried them all through the olden days. 10 And they were disobedient and pained his holy Spirit, and he turned to be enemy to them and fought against them himself; 11** but he remembered olden days, Moses, his people.
Where is he who brought up out of water the shepherd of his sheep? where is he who put his holy Spirit into him? 12 who caused his glorious arm to go at Moses’s right hand, who split waters apart before them to make himself an eternal name, 13* who took them through the deeps like ponies in the wilderness, never stumbling, 14 like cattle going down on the bottom-lands, Jehovah’s spirit leading them; it was so you guided your people, to make yourself a glorious name. 15* Look from the skies and see, from your sacred and glorious abode: where are your jealousy and your exploits? do not keep down your emotions and sympathies. 16 For you are our Father: when Abraham does not know us nor Israel recognize us, you, Jehovah, are our Father, your name has from of old been “Our Next of Kin.” 17 Why, Jehovah, do you have us stray from your paths, make our hearts too unfeeling to fear you? come back for the sake of your servants, the tribes of your estate. 18* Why have miscreants dishonored your sacred things, our foes trampled your sanctuary underfoot, 19 and we from of old been such as you did not rule over, such as were not named as yours?
64* If only you tore the skies apart, came down with mountains streaming at your presence, 2* like the kindling of a fire of grass where fire makes water boil over, making known your name to your foes, for nations to quake at your presence! 3 When you did terrible, unhoped-for things, you came down with mountains streaming at your presence. 4* And from of old men have not heard of, nor bent an ear to, eyes have not seen, a God besides you, who acts for those who wait for him; 5** you are in touch with one who joyously does what is right.
Let them call you to mind by the ways you took: there you were incensed and we sinned, against the men of foul play and we went wrong, 6 and we all became like a contaminating thing, everything that is right about us like a garment soiled with a woman’s uncleanness; and we are all withered like leaves, and our guilt is like a wind carrying us off. 7 And there is nobody that calls on your name, that is wide enough awake to take hold of you, because you have veiled your face from us and handed us over to our guilt. 8 But now, Jehovah, you are our Father; we are the clay and you our potter, and we are all of us the work of your hands. 9 Do not be utterly incensed; do not remember guilt forevermore; ah, look, we are all of us your people. 10 Your sacred cities have become a wilderness: Sion is a wilderness, Jerusalem a desolation; 11 our sacred house, our magnificent place where our fathers praised you, is laid in ashes, and all that we admired has become a waste. 12 At this will you hold in, Jehovah, sit still and break our spirits utterly?
65 I have consented to answer those who had not asked; I have let myself be found by those who had not looked for me; I have said “Here, here I am” to a nation that had not called my name; 2* I have spread out my hands all day to a stubborn and disobedient people, those who go on a course that is not good, following their own notions— 3 the people that provoke me to my face all the time, sacrificing in the gardens and making burnings on the bricks; 4*** those who sit in the graves and spend nights in the crypts, those who eat hogs’ flesh and their dishes hold broth of stale offerings, 5* those who say “Keep to yourself, do not come near me, because I should consecrate you”: these are a smoke in my nostrils, a fire burning all day. 6* I have it written down before me that I will not sit still but will pay back, right back into their laps, 7* your guilt and the guilt of your fathers together, quoth Jehovah, who made burnings on the mountains and flouted me on the hills, and I in the past measured out their earnings into their laps.
8 Says Jehovah, As the juice is found in the cluster of grapes, and one says “Do not break it off, because it has a blessing in it,” so I will do for my servants’ sake, not breaking all off. 9 And I will bring a stock out of Jacob and a possessor of my highlands out of Judah, and my chosen shall possess it and my servants shall reside there; 10 and the Sharon shall become a sheep-pasture and Trouble Vale a sleeping-place for cattle for my people who look to me.
11 But you, you that leave Jehovah, you that forget my sacred mountain, you that set a table for Lady Luck and fill mixed bowls for Destiny, 12 I will destine you to the sword and you shall all stoop for slaughtering. Since I called and you did not answer, I spoke and you did not listen, and you did what I disapproved and chose what I disliked, 13 therefore the Lord Jehovah says “Here will my servants be eating and you going hungry; here will my servants be drinking and you going thirsty; here will my servants be gladdened and you disappointed; 14* here will my servants be caroling in jollity of heart and you crying out for misery of heart and howling for agony of spirit; 15 and you shall leave your name to my chosen for an oath, ‘and Jehovah bring you to your death,’ and my servants shall be called by a different name, 16 whereas he who blesses himself in the country shall bless himself by the God of faithfulness, and he who swears in the country, shall swear by the God of faithfulness, because the past distresses are forgotten and because they are shrouded from my eyes.
17 “For here I am creating a new sky and a new earth, and the past shall not be remembered nor thought of, 18 but they shall be joyous and gleeful forevermore over what I create, for here I am creating a Jerusalem that is a glee and her people a joy. 19 And I will be gleeful over Jerusalem and joyous over my people; and there shall never again be heard in her the sound of weeping or of crying out. 20* Not again shall there be found there one who is a child in years and has grown old, who does not fill out his time; for a boy shall die a hundred years old, and a sinner get a curse when he is a hundred years old. 21 And they shall build houses and live there, and plant vineyards and eat the fruit of them. 22* They shall not build and another live there, they shall not plant and another eat, for my people’s lifetime shall be like that of a tree, and my chosen shall wear out the work of their hands. 23 They shall not toil bootlessly nor bear children for sudden death; for they are the stock of Jehovah’s blessed ones, and have their offspring with them. 24 Before they call, I will answer; while they are still speaking, I will hear. 25* Wolf and lamb shall pasture in unity, and lion shall eat straw like ox and snake have dust for its food; they shall not do harm nor havoc in all my sacred highland,” says Jehovah.
66 Says Jehovah, The sky is my throne and the earth my footstool: what house is there that you should build for me, and what place that should be my resting-place? 2 and all these things my hand made and these things all came to be, quoth Jehovah. But at this I look, at one who is submissive and dashed in spirit, and is alarmed at a word of mine. 3* The one who slaughters a bull is killing a man; the one who sacrifices a sheep is breaking a dog’s neck; the one who makes an offering puts on hog’s blood; the one who presents a memorial of frankincense blesses mythical beings. They have chosen their own ways, and their fancy takes to those disgusting objects of theirs; 4 so will I choose ways to pester them and will bring them the objects of their terror, since I called and there was nobody that answered, I spoke and they did not listen, and they did what I disliked and chose what I had no fancy for.
5 Listen to Jehovah’s word, you who are alarmed at a word of his: your brothers who hate you, who excommunicate you because of my name, say “Let Jehovah be something glorious and let us have a sight of your gladness”—but they will be brought to shame. 6* A sound of hubbub in the city, a sound from the temple—the sound of Jehovah paying off his enemies!
7 Before she felt her pangs she gave birth; before pains came to her she was delivered of a male child. 8 Who had heard the like of this? who had seen such things? is a country to pass through birth-pangs in one day, or a nation to be born at one time, that Sion has both had her pangs and given birth to her sons? 9 Should I start a birth and not have it finished? says Jehovah; or should I who generated the children bar the womb? says your God.
10 Be glad with Jerusalem and be gay over her, all you that love her; rejoice most gleefully with her, all you that were mourning on her account, 11 since you are to suck and have your fill out of the breast of her comforts, since you are to nurse with enjoyment out of the nipples of her fortune. 12 For Jehovah says, Here to her I am going to deal out welfare like a river and the fortunes of nations like an arroyo in flood; and their babies shall be carried at the side and dandled on the knees. 13 Like a man whom his mother comforts, so will I comfort you; and at Jerusalem you shall be comforted and see, 14** and your hearts shall be joyous and your bones shall freshen like green herbage, and Jehovah’s hand with his servants shall be known, and he will confront his enemies with hostility.
15 For here will Jehovah come with fire, his chariots like a gale, to wreak his anger in heat and his indignation in a flame of fire; 16 for it is with fire that Jehovah is trying his case, and with his sword, against all mortals, and of Jehovah’s killed there will be many— 17* those who consecrate and purify themselves for the gardens, behind one in the middle, who eat flesh of hog and disgusting reptile and mouse—their deeds and their thoughts shall come to an end together, quoth Jehovah. 18* For the time is coming to gather all the nations and languages, and they shall come and see my glory, 19** and I will exhibit tokens among them. And I will send survivors of them to the nations, Spain, Put, and Lud, Moshk and Rosh, Tubal and Greece, the distant coasts that have never heard a report of me nor seen my glory, and they shall tell my glory among the nations, 20** and they shall bring all your brothers from all the nations as an offering to Jehovah by ponies and chariots and litters and mules and dromedaries to my sacred mountain, Jerusalem, says Jehovah, as the sons of Israel bring the offering in a clean container to Jehovah’s house; 21 and of them too I will take some for priests and Levites, says Jehovah.
22 For as the new sky and earth that I am going to make are to last before me, quoth Jehovah, so are your blood and name to last. 23 And duly for each new moon and duly for each sabbath all mortals shall come to do reverence before me, says Jehovah; 24 and they shall go out and see the corpses of the men that rebelled against me; for their worm shall never die and their fire shall never go out, and they shall be an object of repugnance to all mortals.
MARGINAL NOTES TO ISAIAH
1:6 Lit. sound spot on him
1:7 Conj. the overthrow of Sodom; Conj. that the words from and to aliens did not originally belong to the text
1:8 (besieged) Unc.
1:12 Conj.* come to see my face
1:17 (injustice) Unc.
1:25 Codd. your dross like alkali and
1:29 Var. they shall
1:29 Or shall be ashamed of
1:30 Or a terebinth dropping
2:2 Var. Jehovah’s mountain shall
2:6 (abandoned) Unc.; susp.
2:6 Codd. are full from the east and tell
2:6 (mesmerize) Unc.
2:9 Or made; and humanity
2:9-10 Var. adds do not uplift them (or do not pardon them). (10) Go into the rock and bury yourself in the ground from the dread of Jehovah and from the stateliness of his pride;
2:12 (stately and high) Susp.; var. stately, and it shall be brought low Var. stately and low
2:16 (last word) Unc.
2:22 Var. adds verse 22 Leave off from man, who has a breath in his nostrils; for what is he to be rated at?
3:10 Codd. Say, an honest Susp.
3:12 Lit. and have swallowed the course
3:15 Var. adds quoth the Lord Jehovah of Armies
3:20 (armlets) Or ankle-chains
3:20 (smelling-bottles) Lit. soul-cases
3:26 Lit. she is cleared (unc.), sits on
4:3 Lit. he that remains in Sion, and he that is
4:5 Lit. every glory
5:1 Or of an olive-crowned hill; and
5:6 (glen-side) Unc.
5:10 More exactly nine gallons
5:10 Lit. sowing a homer (ten bushels) shall produce a bushel
5:11 Or wine firing you up
5:13 Conj. its glory is wasted with hunger
5:14 Lit. and one who is hilarious in her
5:17 (hoggets) Codd. immigrants
5:17 (last words) Unc.
5:28 Or are expected to be like flint
6:4 (foundations) Unc.
6:6 (ember) Lit. a red-hot stone
6:12 Or deserted sites Or deserted area and is great
7:3 Shear-jashub means a remnant shall come back
7:5 Var. omits Ephraim and the son of Remaliah
7:8 Lit. be shivered from nation
7:19 (brakes) Unc.
8:1 (in cut-in letters) Lit. with a cutting or indelible writing-tool Codd.* with a wight’s writing-tool
8:1 Maher-Shalal-Hash-Baz means Booty-Quick-Plunder-Hurrying
8:2 Var. and I will have Conj.* and I had
8:3 Lit. I came near the prophetess
8:6 (admire) Unc.; codd.* rejoice with
8:9 (Know) Var. Break or Be wicked
8:9 (be dismayed) Or be shivered (three times)
8:10 Lit. to have it baffled
8:14 Codd. become a sanctuary and a stone
8:20 that has no magic and that he has no daybreak are two translations of the same Hebrew words; it is not clear whether the words mean one thing and belong with verse 20 or mean the other thing and belong with verse 21, nor whether there was originally any connection between verse 20 and verse 21 at all
8:21 Or curse by his king and
8:21 Or and his god Or and his gods
9:3 Codd. made the nation numerous, not made gladness huge Var. made the nation numerous, made huge gladness for it
9:4 Conj. the yoke-bow of his shoulder
9:5 Conj. cloak soiled in blood
9:6 (Divine Champion) Or Invincible Deity
9:7 Or infinite peace
9:8-9 Var. The Lord has sent a word upon Jacob and it shall land on Israel, and the people shall all know, Ephraim and the inhabitants of Samaria. In pride and self-sufficiency to say
9:12 Lit. ate off Israel with every mouth
9:17 Conj. have mercy on its young men
9:19 (scorched) Unc.; susp.
9:20 Var. eating the flesh of his arm
9:21 Or Manasseh with Ephraim and Ephraim with Manasseh
10:3 Or leave your glory
10:4 Codd. he crouches (or they crouch) under prisoners and they will fall
10:5 Codd. and tribe in whose hands is my hostility
10:12 Var. I will punish
10:12 Lit. the fruit of the greatness of the Assyrian king’s heart Susp.
10:13 Codd. down like a slaughterer (unc.); and
10:16 Conj. under his liver
10:18 (a diseased man’s wasting away) Unc.
10:21 Or to an invincible deity
10:23 Lit. a finish and a decided
10:25 Codd.* and my anger at their wearing out (without the words shall be spent)
10:27 Codd. and his yoke from your neck, and a yoke shall be ruined because of fat. He has come to Ghaiath
10:29 Codd. Micmas; he has gone over a crossing, Gebaʽ is our
10:33 (clearing off timber) Unc.
10:34 Codd. falls by a hero
11:1 Var. a sprout from his roots will bear; and
11:3 Lit. his scenting shall be by the fear of Jehovah Conj. that these words do not belong in the text
11:4 Codd. beat down earth with
11:8 (toddle) Codd. guide (unc.) his hand
11:8 (crevice) Unc.
11:9 Or the earth has
11:10 Lit. its resting-place shall be glory
11:11 Codd. will a second time add his hand
11:11 Var. Hamath and out of the seacoast countries
11:13 Codd.* Judah’s antagonists
11:13 Or feel antagonism
11:15 (parching wind) Unc.
11:15 Lit. let people go in sandals
13:2 Or go in at nobles’ gateways
13:10 Lit. and its Orions
13:18 (first words) Susp.
13:21-22 Unc.
13:21 (wildcats) Or jinns
13:22 (hyenas) or ghouls
14:2 Var. many peoples shall take them and bring them to their soil and to their place
14:4 Codd. a slave-driver
14:10 Lit. assimilated with
14:12 (lifeless) Unc. Conj. slaughterer of all nations
14:21 Codd. with cities
14:23 Var. of screech-owls, pools
14:23 Or with the broom of destruction
14:29 Lit. a snake’s root
14:30 Codd. poor men’s firstborn shall pasture, and needy men
14:30 Codd.* needy men lie down (in beasts’ fashion)
14:30 Var. he will bring
14:30 (stock) Lit. root Var. seed
14:30 Var. I will kill
14:31 Or you are all in collapse, Philistia
14:32 (first part) Susp.
14:32 Var. in her
15:1 Codd.* (twice) in the night that (with comma at end of verse)
15:2 Codd. The House and Dibon have
15:2 Or over Nebo and over
15:3 Lit. a sackcloth
15:3 (last words) Lit. running down in weeping
15:5 Codd. her bolts are a third heifer down to Soghar
15:7 Lit. has made leavings
15:7 Conj. Rift Valley Wadi
15:8 Conj. is at Arelaim
16:2 Codd. at fords of the Arnon’s
16:4 Lit. a bully are
16:7 (last words) Unc.
16:8 Susp.
16:8 (sprays) Unc.
16:10 Var. the whoop I have abolished
16:12 Conj. when Moab tires himself out going to the height
17:1 Lit. being removed from a city and is to be
17:2 Var. ʽAroʽer’s cities are a covert
17:2 Var. forevermore, they shall be for flocks
17:8 hammans means perhaps pillars sacred to the sun
17:10 (climbers) Unc.
17:12 Or raging like the raging of a vast water! Folks will rage Lit. hubbubing like the hubbub of a vast water! Folks will hubbub
18:1 (buzzing) Unc.
18:2 Lit. he who sends
18:2 (thew) Unc.
18:4 Var. on a day of harvest
18:5 (slash) Unc.
18:6 The Hebrew word here used for birds means properly birds of prey
18:7 Var. of Armies, a people
18:7 (thew) Unc.
19:3 Lit. the Egyptians’ spirits will be emptied out within them
19:4 Var. quoth the Lord Jehovah of Armies
19:7 (first words) Susp.
19:8 (hooks) Or spears
19:9 Codd. workers in combed flax (ungrammatical in the Hebrew) and weavers of white goods (unc.) are disappointed
19:10 (boatmen) Unc.; susp.
19:12 Var.* and know
19:18 Or swearing by
19:18 Var. City of Demolition Var. City of Right
19:23 Or work with the Assyrians
20:4 Var. and bare-breeched, Egypt’s nudity; and
20:6 Var. will on that day say
21:1 Codd.* of sea wilderness or of western wilderness
21:3 (dizzy) Unc.
21:3 (dazed) Or convulsed
21:5 (the rug laid out) Unc.
21:8 Codd. called out “A lion; I Conj. called out “See, I
21:9 Or and one answered Punctuation uncertain
21:9 Lit. broken up onto the ground
21:10 Lit. and son of my threshing-floor
21:12 Half the words of the watchman’s answer are in the Syrian language
21:13 Or in Arabia (twice)
21:15 (whetted) Unc.
21:16 Var. In three years more
21:17 Lit. the remnant of the number of the bows of the champions of
22:3 (imprisoned, twice) Susp.
22:3 Var. all that are found of you are imprisoned
22:3 Conj. have taken flight together, taken refuge afar; all your stoutest are imprisoned together, imprisoned by bows
22:5 Var. has words of uncertain meaning; possibly and fumbling; in the valley of vision is breaking up of walls and clamoring to the highland
22:6 Codd. quivers, with chariots of man, cavalry, and Kir
22:7 (last part) Unc.; susp.
22:11 Or see him who did it
22:14 (fast part) Susp.
22:17 (shake you loose) Unc.
22:18 Codd. right up like a ball into a spacious country
22:23-24 The word translated state and the word translated accumulations are exactly the same in the Hebrew
22:24 (offscouring) Unc.
23:1 Var. it was sacked out of house, out of coming in; out of Cyprus Conj. your citadel was sacked; upon coming
23:2 Codd.* Be silent, islanders, traders of Phenicia
23:2 Var. seafarers have filled you
23:7 (first words) Unc.
23:10 Susp.
23:13 Susp.
23:13 Or this was the people, it was not Assyria, that founded
23:13 (wildcats) Or shipmen Or jinns
24:2 (capitalist and proletarian) Lit. interest-taker and interest-payer
24:4 Codd. the loftiest of the populace stand forlorn
24:6 (wane) Unc.
24:11 Codd. all merrymaking is in eclipse (unc.)
24:14-15 Codd.* will carol, at Jehovah’s proud work they whoop from the west, therefore in the lands of light glorify Jehovah
24:15 Lit. in the lights Susp.
24:17-18 (chasm) Lit. sinkhole
25:2 Var. capital of strangers
25:4-5 Conj. that some part, perhaps from because to waste, does not belong here
25:4 Codd. a wall-squall
25:5 Var. strangers’ hubbub
25:5 Or parching in the shade of
25:7 Or the web that shrouds all the
25:11 (lopping) Unc.
26:3 Lit. a character that rests (on something for support)
26:8 Codd.* On the course of your justice too, Jehovah, we
26:11 Codd. jealousy shall take an unenlightened people
26:12 Lit. will judge (var. install) peace for us
26:13 (last part) Unc.
26:16 Var. was the constraint of a spell laid on us
26:17 Var. omits taken with pangs
26:18 (last half) Unc.
26:19 (is healing) Var. is dew of lights or is dew of vegetables
26:19 (last part) Unc.
26:21 Lit. all its bloods
26:21 Lit. its killed
27:1 (elusive) Or rushing
27:1 (sinuous) Or coiling
27:1 (monster) Or dragon
27:1-2 Or in the sea on that day and begin new paragraph with A dainty
27:6 Codd. do not have in and days
27:8 (chasing out) Unc.
27:8 (dislodged) Unc.
27:10-11 Codd. lie down, and shall use up its brushwood; when its twigs dry up it shall get broken
28:1 Conj. on the heads of men stupefied Conj.* on the head of a valley of men of standing stupefied Conj. on the heads of men proud of fat living, stupefied
28:1 (stupefied) Lit. stunned
28:2 Codd.* Here is a strong and strenuous one of Jehovah’s or Here, Jehovah has a strong and strenuous one
28:2 Lit. a squall of big flooding water
28:2 Lit. by hand
28:4 Codd. drunkards; and the fading flower of his magnificent splendor that is on the head of a fat valley shall be like
28:8 Lit. without the word clean
28:10 Unc.; or that he will come and command, come and command, deem and demand, deem and demand Or in verse 8 full of expectoration, ordure so that and in verse 10 that he orders ordure, orders ordure, expects expectoration, expects expectoration
28:13 Unc. like verse 10
28:15 (terms) Unc.
28:21 Lit. his deed—alien is his deed! and his work—foreign is his work!
28:22 Lit. without the words to come
28:25 (rows, hills) Unc.
28:26 Codd. line, and trains it duly, his God instructing him
28:28 Susp.
29:2 Heb. like an ariel Conj.* that the name for the city and the word for altar-hearth should have different vowels, Uriel and arial
29:3 Unc.
29:5 Codd. your strangers
29:8 Lit. with his appetite empty . . . and his appetite is hankering
29:13 Var.* but has taken its heart far off
29:16 Lit. Your upside-downness Conj. Is God the like of you
29:21 (for talk) Unc.
29:21 Or lay traps for one who demonstrates the right in the gate
29:22 Conj.* says, the Deity of the house of
29:23 Lit. when he, his children, shall see the work or when he shall see his children, the work Conj. when he shall see the work
30:5 (first part) Susp.
30:6 Susp.
30:6 Codd. straits, of which are lioness and lion Var. straits, lioness and lion and no water
30:7 Lit. the Egyptians help air and emptiness
30:7 Lit. a blustering that are a sitting Unc.; susp.
30:15 Conj. By sitting and resting
30:17 Codd. One thousand at a threat from one, at a threat from five you shall
30:18 (stand aloft) Var. be silent
30:19 (first words) Susp.
30:27 Conj.* There, there comes Jehovah from afar
30:28 Conj. is a torrent
30:28 Conj. to sift nations a sieve
30:28 Lit. on the cheeks of peoples
30:30 (cloudburst) Unc.
30:31 (first words) Unc.; susp.
30:32 Lit. fightings of a swinging with which
31:7 Var. have sinfully made for them
31:9 (first words) Unc.; susp.
31:9 (furnace) Lit. baking-crock
32:5 (schemer) Unc.
32:7 Codd.* with lying words and with a needy man’s pleading
32:13 Lit. joy-houses
32:14 (watchtower) Unc.
32:19 Var. and it will be in an overthrow that the brushwood is laid low
33:2 Var. their arm
33:3 Or the sound of a host
33:4 Var. your booty
33:4 Or grasshoppers are
33:6 Unc.; susp.
33:7 Var.* their arels
33:8 Var. despises witnesses
33:18 (counter) Or lister (twice)
33:19 (imperious) Unc.
33:21 Codd. but Jehovah is there a parkland for us Conj.* but Jehovah has set a parkland for us
33:22 Or Jehovah is our (three times)
33:22 (lawgiver) Or marshal
33:23 Susp.
34:5 Var. my sword is bedewed (or refreshed)
34:7 Or will be watered
34:11 (barn-owl) Or pelican
34:14 Or And jinns will encounter ghouls, and
34:14 Var. that is the spot where Lilith takes her ease and will find herself
34:15 Var. was just the spot
34:15-16 Codd. gathered, each its mate. Look up and read
34:16 Var. omits of those
34:17 Lit. his hand that divided it to them by measuring-line
35:4 Or have no fear: here comes your God taking vengeance; your God’s reward, that will come to save you
35:6 Var. omits are running
35:7 Or the mirage will
35:7 Codd. in jackals’ home, its lying down, grass to reeds and
35:8 Codd. Nothing unclean will pass along it, but he is for them; a wayfarer and fools or Nothing unclean will pass along it, but He goes journeying for them, and fools
35:9 Conj. on it; there rescued men will go
36:9 Lit. repel a governor, one of
36:11 Var. omits in Judaic
36:19 Var. omits where are the gods of Samaria
37:9 Conj. Taharkah
37:15 Var. Jehovah of Armies, God of Israel
37:26 Codd.* that you be for
37:29 (hubbub) Codd. tranquillity
37:38 Conj. his god Merodac or his god Nusku
37:38 Conj. his son Adadmelec and Nebosareser
38:8 Susp.
38:10 Lit. With the breaking off of my days
38:11 Var. see Jehovah; Jehovah is in
38:11 Var. who live no more
38:12 Lit. and uncovered from me
38:13 (lie helpless) Unc.
38:13 Conj. that the last line does not belong to the text
38:14 (a crane-swallow) Unc.; var. a swallow
38:14 (droop) Conj. are exhausted
38:14 with looking is not in the Hebrew
38:15 Codd. and say for myself Var. and say to him
38:16 It is probable that at the beginning of this verse a line or more is lost
38:17 At the beginning of the verse var. adds Here has bitterness changed to well-being for me
38:20 Codd. Jehovah is for saving me
40:6 (winsomeness) Susp.
40:7 Var. when a wind
40:12 Var. by span
40:12 Size of measure uncertain
40:17 Var. presence, they count for a piece of nothing and
40:26 Codd.* from greatness in powers and mighty
40:27 Lit. is screened from Jehovah, and my right passes by my God
41:1 (take fresh strength) Susp.
41:2 (follows) Lit. comes to him Unc.
41:2 (like clay) Susp.
41:4 Lit. calls
41:7 (and smooth-hammerer riveter) Unc.
41:11 Lit. be like nothing (or become like nothing)
41:11-12 Var. toward you; those shall perish who are at odds with you. And the men that match themselves against you shall be the same as nobody, and the same as nothing the men that make war on you
41:14 Codd. worm Jacob, men of Israel
41:15 (full-toothed) Unc.
41:17 Var. The needy, the miserable, who look for water and there is none, their tongues are dried up with thirst, I Jehovah will answer; God of Israel, I will not abandon them
41:18 Codd. into a pool of water
41:19 (elm, and great savin) Unc.
41:23 Var. may all together hear and see
41:24 Codd. detestable is he
41:25 Susp.
41:25 Codd. to come upon viceroys
41:27 Conj. give to Sion a comforter and to Jerusalem a
41:29 Var. reply; I find them all a fraud, their works zero,
42:1 Lit. whom I wield
42:1 Var. bring out my judgment
42:4 Lit. and coasts await
42:6 Var.* will hold your hand and keep you and give
42:11 Var. cities rejoice, villages
42:14 Or will wheeze
42:15 Codd. into strands
42:19 The name Meshullam may mean repaid or kept safe or made perfect
42:20 Var. You see much but are not paying attention; ears are open but you do not hear
42:25 Or which has set them ablaze all over and
43:3 Or I your God Jehovah, the Holy One of Israel, am your savior
43:3 (Sudan) Unc.
43:8 Or made,—excluding a blind people with eyes and deaf men that have ears.” (begin paragraph after this)
43:10 Var. and my servant
43:13 Codd. (unc.) even henceforth Var. even from of old
43:14 (last part) Susp.; unc.
43:17 Or takes off chariots
43:19 (thoroughfares) Var. rivers
43:23 Var. brought me your burnt-offerings of a sheep
43:25 Var. crimes
43:25 Var. omits any longer
44:2 Lit. ever since your mother’s body
44:4 Codd. as among grass, like Var. in among grass, like Var. like a son of grass, like
44:5 Or invoke the name of Jacob
44:6 Var. whose name is Jehovah of Armies
44:7 Conj.* put in his appearance and proclaim
44:7 Codd. statement, ever since I set up an old-time people; and coming things, and the things that are to be, let
44:7 Var. tell us
44:8 (stampeded) Susp.
44:12 (takes a chunk) Unc.; susp.
44:13 Lit. outlines it
44:14 Lit. a live-oak and an oak
44:14 (seized) Unc.
44:20 Or deliver himself
44:21 Codd.* shaped you; you are servant to me
44:21 Var. shall not be forgotten by me
44:24 Lit. of the sky, spreader of the earth—who with me?—who foil
44:28 Conj. that this verse does not belong to the book
45:1 Conj. that the name Cyrus does not belong in the text
45:1 Codd.* have nations go down
45:2 Or I go
45:5 Or girdle, though you did not know me
45:6 Lit. from the place where the sun rises and from the place where it sets
45:8 Var. and let them be fruitful of salvation
45:9 (crockery-makers) Lit. earthwrights Var.* fragments in the ground
45:9 Lit. your work has no hands Or doing” and your work “He has no skill (lit. no hands)” Conj. doing” and his work “You have no skill”
45:11 Codd. The things that are coming, they asked me questions
45:14 (first part) Susp.
45:15 Var. not a god.” You were a (and no quotation mark at end of verse)
45:20 Var. come on, approach together, survivors of the nations! They do not know
45:23 Lit. without by me Perhaps translate so
45:24 Or Only in Jehovah have I, one says, rightness and might Susp.; conj. shall bend, every tongue shall swear only by me. In Jehovah, one shall say
46:1 Or beasts, cattle have got their idols
46:1 Codd.* the things that were carried by you are loaded up as a burden on a jade
46:8 (anchor yourselves) Unc.
46:10 Var. I will execute
46:11 Susp.
47:3 Codd. and will not meet a human being. The champion of our rights is named Var. and will not meet (conj. listen to intercession Conj. be negligent), says the champion
47:9 Or with all your wholesale witchcraft, your multitudinous
47:10 Var. put confidence (or felt secure) in your wickedness
47:11 (last part) Unc.
47:14 Var. they did not
47:15 Codd. your merchants from Susp.
48:4 Lit. your neck was iron sinew and your forehead bronze
48:9 Codd. be patient, and my praise I will muzzle for you, not
48:10 (last part) Susp.
48:11 Codd. because my name has been profaned Var. that I may not be profaned Var. for how should it be profaned Var. for how should I wait
48:12 Var. my servant Jacob
48:13 Var. It was my hand
48:14 Var. Gather, all of you, and listen; who
48:14 Var. Jehovah loves him; he shall do his pleasure Susp.
48:14 Codd. omit among Conj. at Babylon and among the stock of the Chaldeans
48:15 Var. and will make his enterprises successful
49:5 Codd.* was to be honored
49:6 Lit. It is too little for your being servant of mine to set
49:6 (reach) Lit. be
49:9 Var. By all roadsides they Var. By roadsides they
49:11 Var. all mountains a road, and turnpikes
49:12 (Sinite) Susp.
49:13 Var. is comforting
49:14 Var. my God has forgotten me
50:4 Susp.
50:4 Lit. a tongue of learners or of (received) instruction
50:10 Var. Whoever among you fears Jehovah, let him obey his servant;
50:11 Var. donning firebrands
51:2 Lit. I called (summoned) him one and
51:3 Var. adds sorrow and moaning have taken flight
51:9 Or dragons
51:12 Conj. of whom are you afraid? of a man who is to die, and a human being who is to be made hay of! and you have
51:14 (first part) Unc., susp.
51:23 Var. omits and ground you down
52:2 Var. unfasten your slave-collar
52:5 Codd. their rulers howl Var. they rule and run mad
52:8 Var. omits with tenderness
52:9 Var. Break out and shout
52:11 (be by yourselves) Lit. sort yourselves out
52:14 Codd. at him (var. at you), so his
52:15 (draw the gaze of) Unc.; susp.
53:3 Var. he was despised and we did
53:8 (end) Var. was led to death Conj. was smitten to death
53:9 (a rich man) Susp.
53:10 Or If you make his life an indemnity-sacrifice Var. If he makes his life an indemnity-sacrifice or If he pays his life as an indemnity
53:11 Var. Out of the torment of his soul he will see light and have
53:11 Nearly all codd. by his knowledge or by the knowledge of him
53:12 Var. sin
53:12 Var. Intervening on criminals’ behalf
54:4 Or be put to shame; nor
54:4 Or forget the shames
54:6 Lit. and a wife of youth when
54:6 Var. omits Jehovah after says
54:7 Var. For a little moment I
54:9 Var.* For this is to me what Noah’s water was
54:12 Var. all your territory or all your boundary
54:12 Or semiprecious stones
54:13 Or the peace of Or the welfare of
54:13 Lit. shall be much
54:15 Unc.; susp.
54:16 Or brings out a tool
55:1 Var. buy provisions and eat wine and milk for no money and for no pay
55:3 Lit. faithful friendlinesses of David
55:4 Or made
55:5 Conj. and those that
56:3 Lit. a dry tree
56:5 Or a monument and a name better than sons and daughters; a
56:8 Or peoples. Quoth Jehovah who is gathering the exiles of Israel, I
56:8 (last part) Unc.; susp.
56:11 Lit. and those, the shepherds, do Codd.* and they are shepherds who do Susp.
56:11 Lit. each to his profits universally
57:1-2 Var. And the honest one . . . and the friendly men . . . out of harm’s way and has gone
57:8-10 Unc.; susp.
57:10 (life of hand) The meaning of this phrase is unknown
57:11 Var. give these things a
57:13 Conj. your fetishes
57:15 (abashed, twice) Lit. pulverized
57:16 (last half) Unc.
57:17 (moneymaking) Susp.
57:17 Lit. his own heart
57:18 Codd. in comforting to him and his mourners Var. and gave him true comfort
58:3 (drive all your hands) Unc.
58:7 Lit. into house
58:7 Lit. without and blood
58:8 Lit. your new flesh would grow quickly, and
58:9 (crooked dealing) Codd. oxbow
58:11 Conj. and freshen your vigor, and
58:12 Codd. out of you they will build up sites lying waste from of old
58:12 Lit. on foundations of generation and generation you
59:11 Codd. dusk, over (or among) burly (unc.) men like dead men Var.
59:13 (last half) Unc.; susp.
59:18 Var. enemies; to the foreign coasts he will pay back requital; and
59:19 Var. shall fear
59:19 Or Jehovah’s name
59:19 (last part) Unc.
59:20 Var. and he will turn back crime from Jacob
60:5 Conj.* the wealth of nations they will bring to you
60:11 Conj. with their kings leading the caravans
60:13 Var. The glory of the Lebanon will come to you, cypress, elm, and great savin together, to
60:14 Var. all your despisers at your feet
60:15 Var. with nobody to help
60:17 Or will make your administration peace and your officers honesty
60:21 Var. of my planting Conj. of Jehovah’s planting
60:21 Var. of my hands
61:2-3 Conj. that either to comfort all mourners or to bring on for the mourners of Sion has been wrongly inserted
61:6 Var. in their opulence you shall be admired Susp.
61:7 (first part) Susp.
61:8 Or hate stolen goods in a burnt-offering
61:10 Lit. a bridegroom priests a cap Susp.
62:5 Conj. your Builder will wed Conj. your Lord will wed
62:10-11 Var. stones! hoist a signal for the peoples! Here has Jehovah given . . . earth, “Say to the daughter of Sion, Here
62:11 Var. Here has come your salvation
63:1 Codd. Who is this coming out of Edom, crimsoned in clothing out of Bosrah
63:3 Var. and of my people
63:7 Var. by them
63:8 Lit. belie”; and
63:8-9 Var.* of theirs. In all their distress he was distressed, and the angel of his presence
63:11 (Moses, his people) Susp.
63:11 Codd. brought them up from the sea with the shepherd Var. brought up from the sea the shepherd
63:13 Lit. leading him Var. giving him rest
63:15 Codd. your emotions and sympathies toward us are repressed
63:18 Codd. estate. For a little while they had possession of your holy people, our . . . from of old have been . . . as yours.
64:1 Var.* trembling at your presence
64:2 (fire of grass) Unc.; susp.
64:4 Lit. they have not heard of
64:5 (first part) Unc.; susp.
64:5 Codd. and we sinned, in them for an age, that we may be saved, and we all Var. and we sinned; for this reason we went wrong; and we all
65:2 Var. to a stubborn people
65:4 Conj. spend nights between rocks
65:4 Lit. their dishes are
65:4 (broth) Var. pieces
65:5 Var.* because you have to hold me sacred
65:6 Conj. your laps
65:7 Var. their guilt and the guilt of their fathers
65:14 Var. for jollity
65:20 Lit. a child in days
65:22 Lit. days shall be like those
65:25 Lit. shall pasture like one
66:3 Lit. the one who makes an offering, hog’s blood
66:6 Var. from the city
66:14 Lit. shall sprout like
66:14 Conj. be known, and his hostility to his enemies
66:17-18 Codd. they shall come to an end together, quoth Jehovah, and I—their deeds and their thoughts—it is coming to gather
66:18 Or has come to gather
66:19 Var. a token
66:19 Codd. do not have the name Rosh, but some of them appear to have had a name ending in sh or sht, with two letters preceding
66:20 (litters) Unc.
66:20 (dromedaries) Unc.