The Vision Isaiah Saw
1.
The vision of Isaiah son of Amoz, which he saw about Judah and Jerusalem in the days when Uzziah, Jotham, Ahaz, and Hezekiah were kings of Judah
Hear, heavens; earth, lend your ears:
God makes his Proclamation.
‘I made my sons grow, raised them up, and they — they revolted against me.
An ox knows his herdsman; a donkey knows his master’s paddock — Israel doesn’t know. My people don’t understand.
Oh, doom! Sinful nation, population heavy with corruption, offspring of the evil ones, destroyer sons . . . They abandoned God. They disdained Israel’s Sacred One. Their backs are turned.
To what end? You still get pummeled; again and again you mutiny. Your whole head is in a fever; your whole heart is faint.
From pad of heel to crown of head, the whole structure is unsound: gashes and bruises and wounds oozing. They’re not staunched, not bandaged, not eased with oil.
Your land — laid waste. Your cities — burned in fire. Your soil and substance — right in front of you there are invaders eating it, and it’s laid waste – like a ruin toppled by invaders.
But Zion's daughter is left behind: like a tent in a vineyard, like a shack in a patch of cucumbers, like a city under siege.
If the God of Legions hadn’t left stragglers for us – just a few – we would be like Sodom; we would look like Gomorrah.
Hear God’s Proclamation, you elites of Sodom. Lend your ears to our god’s teaching, people of Gomorrah.
What good are all your sacrifices to me?’ says God. ‘I’m stuffed full. Offerings of goats; milk from fat cows; bull’s blood; sheep and rams: I take no pleasure in them.
When you come to show yourselves before me — who asked for that from you? To trample my courtyards?
No more: stop bringing worthless gifts, sweet-smelling incense . . . it’s vile to me. New moons and sabbaths, assemblies called together: I can’t bear corruption and pious congregations.
Your new moons and your meeting days: my soul deplores them; they’re a heavy load on me and I’m tired of carrying it.
So when you stretch out your palms I’ll hide my eyes from you. Even when you multiply your prayers, you’ll get no audience from me. Your hands are full of blood.
Wash. Get pure. Get the evil of the things you do out of my sight. Let go of evil.
Learn how to make good. Hunt after justice. Give relief to victims and justice to orphans. Plead the widow’s case.
Come here,’ says God; ‘let’s talk this out together. If your sins are like scarlet, they’ll turn white like snow. If they flush like crimson, they’ll be like wool.
If you’re content to listen, the goodness of the earth will be your food.
But if you refuse in defiance, then you will be food for the sword. God’s mouth makes this Proclamation.
How did she whore herself out, this city stronghold secure in belief? She was full of justice; righteousness used to spend nights in her. But now killers do.
Your silver’s become trash; your wine’s diluted with water.
Your leaders are mutinous. Accomplices to thieves – all of them relishing bribes, hunting out graft. They give no justice to orphans; the widow’s plea never reaches them.
And so the Master, God of Legions, Israel’s Juggernaut, declares: ‘Oh, I’ll get relief from the persecution pressing on me, get revenge on my enemies.
I’ll put my hand back on you, and like lye I’ll scour your filth away, extract all your impurities.
I’ll put your judges back, like at the beginning, and your mentors, like at the start. After that they’ll call you city of righteousness, stronghold secure in belief.
Zion will be ransomed in justice, her homecomers in righteousness.
But the shattering of the rebels and of the sinners is one and the same: those who desert God will be eaten alive.
The brawny trunks you lusted after will put them to shame in the end. The gardens you chose will bring you reproach,
Because you’ll be like a tree trunk with withering leaves; like a garden with no water.
The powerful are for kindling now, and the things they do become sparks. They’re engulfed, both of them together, with no one to extinguish the flame.
2.
What Isaiah, son of Amoz, Saw Proclaimed about Judah and Jerusalem.
It happens in the final days:
The mountain of God’s house will be established at the head of the mountains, lifted above the hills.
The nations will all come flooding to it.
Then peoples come en masse.
They say, ‘come, and we’ll ascend to God’s mountain, to the house of Jacob’s god –
He’ll teach us his ways and we’ll walk on his paths.
Because what he teaches will emanate from Zion,
and God’s proclamation from Jerusalem.
And he gives justice to the nations, and adjudicates between the many peoples;
They hammer out their swords into blades for their ploughs, and their spears into pruning hooks.
No nation will wield a sword against another, and from then on they won’t teach the art of war.
House of Jacob! Come walk; let’s walk in the light of God.
Because you cast away your people, Jacob's house: they’re filled with the East, with fortune-tellers, like the Philistines. They simper over foreign children.
And their territory is packed full of silver and gold – there’s no end to their treasure troves.
And their territory is packed full of horses – there’s no end to their riding gear.
And their territory is packed full of empty gods. They’re prostrating themselves to things their own hands made – things their fingers did.
Men grovel in the dirt; humanity degrades itself – you shall not bear with them.
Come squeeze into this crevice – get hidden in the dust; keep from facing the terror of God and his awful magnificence.
Men’s arrogant eyes will be cast down; the height of humanity will grovel; then God is set apart in exaltation
On That Day.
Yes: there’s a Day that belongs to the God of Legions, over every self-important and high-minded thing, and over everything exalted: it will be cast down.
And over every cedar from Lebanon, lofty and uplifted,
And over every oak from Bashan.
And over all exalted mountains,
And over all uplifted hills.
And over every towering citadel,
And over every fortressed wall.
And over all the fleets from Tarshish.
And over all the sumptuous artwork.
Men’s arrogance will grovel in the dirt; the height of humanity will be degraded; then God is set apart in exaltation
On That Day.
He will obliterate every one of the empty gods.
And they’ll go into cliffside hollows, into holes they claw in the dust, to keep from facing the terror of God and his awful magnificence, when he stands to rock Earth to its core.
On That Day,
Men will toss their empty gods of silver, their empty gods of gold – which they made for themselves, to grovel in front of – toss them aside to the burrowing rodents and bats,
To go into the cut cliffside, the fissures and crags of the rock. To keep from facing the terror of God and his awful magnificence, when he stands to rock Earth to its core.
Cut yourselves off from men. Their life is exhaled from their nostrils; on what grounds should they be given any thought?
3.
Yes – Look: see the Master, God with his Legions, taking Jerusalem’s sustenance away, taking the staff Judah leans on. All the sustenance of bread and all the sustenance of water.
Taking away the war hero, fighting man, judge and prophet, fortune teller and elder statesman,
Captain of squadrons, man of high rank, mentor, wise man, conjurer, silver-tongued scholar.
I give them boys for rulers, and infants will be sovereign over them.
And then the people tyrannise each other, man against man and neighbor against neighbor. Children will disdain their elders, and lowlifes disdain the men of consequence.
To the point that a man will grab hold of his brother in their father’s house: ‘The mantle is yours — you be our captain, with this crisis on your hands.’
He’ll take up an oath On That Day, saying, ‘I won’t be the one to patch this up: there’s no bread in my house, and no mantle. You won’t appoint me the people’s captain.’
Because Jerusalem has collapsed and Judah is fallen: their tongues and the things they do are against God, to embitter the eyes of his majesty.
The looks on their faces bear witness against them. Their sin! Like Sodom they tell all about it. They don’t keep it hidden. Oh their souls, their souls! They’ve lavished evil upon themselves.
Say this for the righteous: that it is good. That the fruit of the things they do will be their food.
Doom, oh, for the guilty man, this evil: what his own hand accomplishes is what will be done to him.
My people! Infants tyrannise them, and women lord it over them. My people, your guides lead you astray; they destroy the paths you travel on.
God rises to argue his case, then stands to bring judgment upon the nations.
God will advance in justice upon the elder statesmen of his people, and their leaders. ‘You were the ones who devoured the vineyard; the plunder from the poor is in your houses.
What do you get out of beating down my people, and grinding down the faces of the poor?’ declares my Master, the God of Legions,
And God says, ‘because of how Zion's daughters put on airs and strut around with necks outstretched, batting their eyes, sashaying as they go with bangles jangling on their feet,
The Master will disfigure their scalps, these daughters of Zion, and God will lay their cavities bare.
On That Day my Master will sweep away the elegance of the bangles, and the ribbons in their hair, and the gems around their necks,
The chokers and the bracelets and the veils,
The wigs and the anklets and the girdles, the corsets and the charm-stones,
The rings and nose-piercings,
The changes of outfit, and the cloaks, and the capes, and the purses,
And the pocket mirrors, and the linen, and the turbans, and the gauze.
Then it happens: where there were perfumed exhalations a stench will arise,
and a gash where there was a girdle,
and bald heads where there was coiffed hair,
and burlap garments where there was fine attire. Where there was beauty, burn wounds.
Your grown men will fall by the sword, and your war heroes will fall in battle.
Then her gates will wail and weep. Emptied, she'll sit on the earth.
4.
And seven women will clutch at one man
On That Day.
They'll tell him, ‘we’ll eat our own food. We’ll wear our own clothes. Just let us be called by your name! Take away our disgrace!’
On That Day
The Branch of God will unfurl into majesty and splendour
And the fruit of the Earth into excellence and beauty,
For Israel's refugees.
Then it happens: the survivors in Zion,
And the ones still left in Jerusalem,
Will be spoken of as sacred,
Every one of them inscribed into life in Jerusalem,
When my Master scrubs away the grime from Zion's daughters
And the blood from Jerusalem —
Scours it away from her core
With a breath of justice,
With a burning spirit.
Then God creates —
Over the whole structure of Mount Zion,
Over the congregations called together —
Cloud in the daylight, and smoke,
And the brilliance of fire: a flare in the night,
Yes: a canopy above all majesty.
And for shade from the scorching heat in the daylight
There will be a tent:
A place to take shelter and hide
From the downpour,
From the rain.
5.
Let me sing to the one I love a song of him I love, about his vineyard.
The one I love had a vineyard, on the crest of a hill with rich soil.
Now, he fenced it off, and cleared it of stones, and sowed it with select varietals, and built a tower inside it.
Then he hollowed out a winepress in it too, and waited with high hopes for succulent grapes. But it produced rotted berries.
And now, any citizen of Jerusalem or man of Judah — judge between me and my vineyard.
What else was there to do to my vineyard that I didn’t do? Why, when I had high hopes for succulent grapes, should it produce rotted berries?
And now let me tell you what I’ll do to my vineyard: have its hedge removed, so it gets devoured. Smash its wall, so it gets trampled on.
I’m going to lay waste to it: it won’t be weeded or trimmed; thorns and choke-weed will sprout up; I’ll give orders to the clouds to rain no rain upon it.
Because the vineyard of God with his Legions is the household of Israel, and the man of Judah is the crop of his delight. He had high hopes for virtue, but look: see the violence. High hopes for honour, but listen: hear the screams.
Doom, oh, for the people who annex one house to another: they connect field to field until there’s no more space. Until you have to live in isolation in the middle of your own land.
In my ears, the God of Legions: ‘just see if countless houses don’t become wastelands — big ones and good ones, with no one to live in them.
Yes, ten acres of vineyard will produce just one vat of wine; ten bushels of seed will produce just one bushel of grain.
Oh doom for the people who wake up at dawn to hunt for hard liquor; who keep it up until night falls and wine makes them burn.
There are strings and lyres; there are tambourines and pipes; there’s wine at their drinking parties — it’s only God’s miracles they don’t attend to. It’s the things he does with his hands they don’t see.
That’s why my people are driven into captivity: for lack of knowledge. Their noblemen go hungry, and their commoners are parched with thirst.
That’s why the Grave bloats herself and her maw gapes limitlessly open. And down they sink into her, with all their glamour, and their ruckus, and their crowds and giddy celebrants.
Men grovel in the dirt; humanity degrades itself, and the eyes of the arrogant are brought low,
But he is exalted: God with his Legions in justice. The one sacred god will be held sacred in righteousness.
Then lambs will graze the way they do, and nomads will feed on wastelands that had belonged to fatcats.
Doom, yes, for the people that drag corruption along behind them with straps of inanity, and sin like a cart with a rope.
The people who say, ‘let him hurry it up then, and fast-track the work he’s doing. That way we’ll see, and the counsel of Israel’s sacred one will be close — will arrive, and we’ll know it.’
Doom for the people who say evil is good and good evil. Who put the deep dark in place of the light and the light in place of the deep dark. Who put bitter in place of sweet, and sweet in place of bitter.
Doom for the people who are wise in their own eyes, and discerning in their own sight.
Doom for those heroes of wine drinking — the mighty mixers of liquor.
The people who justify evil in return for bribes: they strip the righteous man of his righteousness.
That’s why, like a tongue of flame eats up dry wheat, and a blaze depletes the grass,
Their roots will become like rotten filth, and their blossom will dissipate like dust: they reject what God with his Legions teaches, what Israel’s Sacred One says — they make a mockery of it.
That’s why God’s blazing anger seethes against his people; he’s reaching out his hand towards them, and he’ll smite them so the mountains quake — so their corpses lie like garbage in the middle of the road. In all this his anger doesn’t turn back, and his hand still reaches out.
But he raises a flag for the nations from far away, and whistles for them from the ends of the earth — and look: they rush ahead; they’ll be coming fast.
No fatigue, no stumbling among them: they won’t doze, won’t sleep; their loincloths never come undone, and the strap on their sandal never snaps.
Their arrows are whetted and all their bows pulled taught; you’d think their horses’ hooves were rock, and their wheels roll like a hurricane.
The roar they make is like a lion’s. They’ll snarl like wild cubs, roaring and pouncing on their prey: they’ll carry it off safe and sound, with no one to rescue it.
Then they’ll roar at them On That Day, like the ocean’s roar. Survey the earth, see: pitch black dark. Grief. The light goes black on the horizon.
6.
It was the year King Uzziah died when I saw my Master. He was sitting on his throne: exalted and lifted on high, his mantle folds filling the temple,
The Burning Ones stationed above him — six wings! Six wings on each one. With two they were covering their faces. With two they were covering their feet. With two they were flying.
And they called out, one to another, and said:
‘SACRED SACRED SACRED GOD OF LEGIONS:
The whole earth is filled with his majesty.’
The doorframe was rocked with the voice of them, calling, and the building was filled with smoke.
I wailed, ‘oh, I am dismantled. I, a man of filthy lips within a filthy-lipped nation: my eyes see the King, the God of Legions.’
But then one of the Burning Ones flew to me. In his hand, an ember: he picked it up with tongs from off the altar.
He touched it to my mouth and said, ‘Look: this touches your lips, and takes away your corruption; your sin is scoured away.’
And I heard the voice of my Master. Saying, ‘Whom will I send? Who will go for us?’ And I said, ‘Look: here I am. Send me.’
And He said, ‘go. You shall say to this nation, “listen! Oh you, listen, but comprehend nothing. See! Oh you, see, but never understand.”
‘Fatten these people’s hearts. Weigh down their ears; shut their eyes. Or else they would see with their eyes, and with their ears, listen, and understand in their hearts, and turn, and find healing.’
And I said, ‘Master, for how long?’ And he said, ‘until the cities are ravaged, emptied of anyone living there, houses emptied of human life, and the earth lifeless, desolate.
‘And God will drive humanity miles away, and the deserted territory will yawn wide in the heart of the Earth.
‘And if there’s still a tenth left, then that again will be devoured in flame — like a terebinth tree, like an oak. When they are toppled, their stump remains. Their stump is the sacred seed.’
7.
It happened in the days of Ahaz son of Jotham son of Uzziah, King of Judah: up came Rezin, King of Aram, and Pekah son of Remaliah, king of Israel, to wage war against Jerusalem – but they couldn’t win.
Word reached David's house: they were told, ‘Aram has joined forces with Ephraim.’ Then Ahaz's heart and his people’s heart were rattled, as tree branches in the woods rattle at the breath of the wind.
But God said to Isaiah, ‘go out to meet Ahaz, you and your son Shear-Jashub, at the far end of the waterway from the Upper Pool, on the highway to the Fuller’s Field.
And say to him, “careful now, still your mind, don’t be afraid. Don’t let your heart go limp at the thought of these two lumps of smoldering charcoal — at the thought of the seething rage of Rezin and Aram and Remaliah's son –
Because Aram plotted evil against you, along with Ephraim and Remaliah's son, saying,
‘let’s go up to Judah and assault it, and breach its wall; let’s claim it for our own, and make Tabeel's son king at its city centre.’
So says my Master, God: ‘it won’t stand. It won’t happen.
Aram’s head is Damascus, and Damascus’ head is Rezin. And by sixty-five years from now the nation of Ephraim will be beaten out of existence.
And Ephraim’s head is Samaria, and Samaria’s head is the son of Remaliah. If your belief isn’t secure, then neither are you.’”’
And God proclaimed still more to Ahaz. He said,
‘Ask for a sign from God, your own god — from the pits of the Grave or the lofty heights.’
But Ahaz said, ‘I won’t ask. No, I won’t put God to the test.’
Then Isaiah said, ‘now listen, house of David: is it so minor a thing for you to run men ragged, that you’re going to tire out your god too?
Since that’s so: my Master will give you a sign himself. Look: see a maiden girl conceiving, and bringing forth a son, and calling him by the name GOD-WITH-US.
Curds and honey will be his food when he knows to reject evil and choose good.
Yes, even before the boy knows to reject evil, and choose good, that land — with its two kings who so fill you with horror — will be abandoned.
Upon you, and your people, and your fathers’ house, God will make days come that never came before, not since the day that Ephraim left Judah.
And it happens On That Day: God will whistle for the gadflies at the farthest banks of Egypt’s rivers, and the drone bees in Assyria’s land.
And they’ll swarm, all of them, into desolate valleys and gashes in the rock, and over all the brambles and all the pasture.
On That Day my Master’s going to take a razor hired from across the river — the king of Assyria — and shave your head, your crotch, your toes, even your beard too.
And it happens On That Day: a man will nourish a calf and two sheep.
And it happens: from all the milk they make he’ll eat curds, so curds and honey will be food for everyone still left in the heart of the land.
And it happens On That Day: every place where a thousand grapevines once went for a thousand silver coins, will be good for nothing but thorns and choke-weed.
People will go there carrying bows and arrows, because the whole land will be thorns and choke-weed.
And as for all the mountains furrowed deep with pickaxes: you won’t go there for fear of thorns and choke-weed. They’ll be where you send your oxen and let livestock trample.
8.
Then God spoke to me: ‘get yourself a massive slab, and chisel onto it in words everyone can read words everyone can read — FOR SWIFT-TO-PLUNDER-SPRINT-AT-PREY.
And I’ll call witnesses to testify, secure ones I can trust: Uriah the priest, and Zechariah, Jeberechiah’s son.
I approached the prophetess, and she conceived, and gave birth to a son. God spoke to me: ‘call him by the name Swift-to-Plunder-Sprint-at-Prey.
Because, before the boy knows how to call out ‘father’ and ‘mother,’ the might of Damascus and the plunder of Samaria will be carried off before Assyria’s king.
And again God proclaimed still more to me. He said,
‘Because this nation rejected Shiloah’s water with its gentle current, because they’re delighted with Rezin and the son of Remaliah,
Because of that, look: here is the Master, making waters rise against them from the river. Mighty teeming waters: Assyria’s king and all his majesty. He rises along all his channels and comes up over all his banks.
He washes over Judah. He overflows right up to neck-height, and the unfurling of his wings expands to fill the wideness of your land, God-With-Us.
Scream, nations, and be shattered. Lend your ears, everyone from distant regions of the Earth: strap on your battle gear and be shattered. Strap it on and be shattered.
Plan your plans: they’ll come to nothing. Proclaim your proclamations: they won’t stand, because of God with Us.
Because this is how God spoke to me — like his hand was gripping me, keeping me from walking on this people’s path, and saying:
‘Don’t say it’s treason whenever this nation says something’s treason. Don’t fear what they fear — don’t let it shake you.
The God of Legions is the one you shall hold sacred. He’s what you shall fear; he’s what shall shake you.
He’s what you’ve got for a sacred place, but also for a stone that trips them up, and for a rock that buckles their knees, the two houses of Israel — a snare and a trap for those living in Jerusalem.
Plenty of people among them will trip and fall, and be broken, and captured, and snared.
Stash the testimony away. Seal up what God teaches among those who’ve learned from me:
I hold out for God, the one hiding his face from Jacob's house. I put my high hopes in him.
Here I am, and the children God gave me, as signs and omens in Israel from God with his Legions who dwells on Mount Zion.
Now when they say to you, ‘go consult the psychics and mediums, the ones that mutter and chant under their breath’ — shouldn’t a nation consult its God? Or should they consult the dead on behalf of the living?
As for what’s taught and what’s testified: if what they say isn’t like this Proclamation, then it sheds no daylight.
Harrowed, starved, they'll journey across the land. It happens: in their starvation they'll fume with anger, curse their king and their god, and turn to face upwards,
Or stare at the ground. See: oppression. And pitch black, fearsome darkness — there they are, shoved out into the gloom.
Still, no darkness for her in her miseries. In time gone by he subjected the land of Zebulun to scorn, and the land of Naphtali. He brought heavier burdens on her, by way of the ocean over the Jordan, Galilee of other nations.
9.
The people walking in the pitch black dark saw light, vast
Light: they were living on Earth under death’s shadow when radiance burst over them.
You made our population grow;
made their joy vast.
The way they rejoiced in your sight was like the joy at harvest-time,
like the celebrations when they pass out the plunder from battle.
Because the yoke of his burden and the bar across his shoulder,
the club in the hands that were beating him down —
You shattered them, like back in Midian.
Because every boot stampeding on shaken ground,
every uniform soaked in blood,
Will be for burning now —
fuel for the fire.
Because a baby is delivered to us, a son given, and the rule of law is on his shoulder.
He is called by the name:
MIRACLE MENTOR
HERO GOD
FATHER FOREVER
SOVEREIGN OF PEACE
For expanding the rule of law, My Master sent a Proclamation upon Jacob. It fell upon Israel.
And the people will know, all of them, Ephraim and everyone living in Samaria, with their arrogant and swelling hearts, who say,
‘The baked bricks have fallen, but we’ll rebuild with carved stone. The sycamores have been hewn down, but we’ll replace them with cedars.’
So God raised up Rezin’s oppressors above him, and goaded his enemies on.
Arameans in front, and Philistines behind: they eat Israel by the mouthful. In all this his anger doesn’t turn back, and his hand still reaches out.
And the people don’t turn to the one who’s battering them. And they don’t seek out the God of Legions.
God cuts the head from off of Israel, and the tail too — the palm frond and the bulrush, in one day.
Elders and dignified men: these are the head. Prophets teaching lies: these are the tail.
The ones guiding this nation are the ones leading it astray, and the ones being guided are the ones being devoured.
That’s why my Master takes no joy in their finest men. He has no room in his heart for their orphans and widows, because they’re profane and rotten, all of them; every one of their mouths proclaims gibberish. In all this his anger doesn’t turn back, and his hand still reaches out.
Because depravity blazes like a devouring flame. It eats the thorns and choke-weed, ignites the close-packed forest — smoke coils high.
In the fury of God with his Legions the earth is charred black, and the people are food for the flame. No man shows his brother clemency.
On the right they’re tearing off hunks in their hand, ravenous. On the left they’re eating but they can’t get enough. Each man is eating the flesh of his own arm.
Manasseh eats Ephraim and Ephraim eats Manasseh. They’re united against Judah.
Oh, declaimers of worthless decrees, writers of burdensome writing, oh,
(Which turn the needy away from arbitration and strip justice away from the poor among my people — so widows are their plunder, and they rob orphans blind), What will you do to meet the day of reckoning and the devastation coming from far away? To whom will you run for help, and where will you leave all that abundance of yours? Nothing left for you but humiliation among the subjugated, and downfall among the slaughtered. In all this his anger doesn’t turn back, and his hand still reaches out. Oh, Assyria, oh, sceptre of my fury — in their hand is the club of my rage. It’s a profane nation I’m sending him against: against the people of my wrath I give him his orders — to plunder for plunder and prey upon prey. To squash them underfoot like mud on the roadside. But he's not picturing it that way; and that’s not how his heart plans it: it’s demolition that’s on his heart, to mow down more than a few nations. Yes, he's saying, ‘aren’t my commanders all kings? Isn’t Calno just like Carchemish? And Hamath like Arpad? Samaria like Damascus? Just as my hand found its way to the kingdoms of the empty gods — there were more statues of them there than in all Jerusalem and Samaria — Just as I did to Samaria and their empty gods, won’t I do the same to Jerusalem and her icons?’ And it happens as my Master brings an end to everything he’s doing on Mount Zion, and in Jerusalem: ‘now I bring a reckoning upon Assyria’s king for the over-swollen fruit that his arrogant heart bears, and for the high and haughty look in his eyes. Because he said: ‘in the might of my hand I do it, and in my wisdom, because I understand — I remove the boundaries between nations, looting their treasuries, subduing the people living there, like a mighty bull. My hand finds its way to the wealth of vigorous nations as to a bird’s nest: like arms sweeping up eggs left defenseless, so am I, sweeping up the whole earth in my arms, and there’s not so much as a wing fluttering; not a peep from one opened mouth. Does an axe exalt itself over the one who wields it? Does a saw lift itself up above the one who brandishes it? Like a sceptre brandishing the one who picks it up, or a club lifting someone made of more than wood. And so the Master, God of Legions, will send emaciation on his fatcats, and instead of his abundant majesty he’ll kindle kindling like a kindled flame. And it happens: the light of Israel becomes fire; her Sacred One becomes a flame, and it devours. It eats up its thorns and choke-weed in one day. It will engulf, too, the whole abundant thickness of its forests and cornfields from inside out, from soul to skin: like a disease that devours the diseased. Then there’ll be a countable number of trees still left in the forest — a schoolboy could tally them up. It happens On That Day: those stragglers still left in Israel and the refugees of Jacob's house won’t lean on the one who beats them anymore: they’ll lean on God, Israel’s Sacred One, secure in truth. A few stragglers will come back. Jacob’s stragglers will come back to their own god, their Hero God. Yes. Even if your people, Israel, are like sand by the ocean, only a few will still be left to come back there. This obliteration is set in stone — a righteous deluge. It’s all settled and set in stone: my Master, God of Legions, will do it in the core of the whole Earth. Therefore so says my Master, God of Legions: ‘Don’t be afraid of Assyria — people of mine, living on Zion: when he beats you with a club and brandishes his sceptre over you, the way Egypt did, Then just a little moment longer and the indignation against you will be all spent. Then my fury will turn to demolishing them. Then God of Legions rears up against them with a whip, as in the beating he gave Midian on Oreb’s rock. And his sceptre will be over the sea: he’ll lift it up the way Egypt did. It happens On That Day: his burden will be removed from off your shoulder, and his yoke from off your neck: the yoke is torn apart by the strain of your girth. He comes to Aiath; he passes through Migron; in Michmas he stores away his packs. They pass across the pass: ‘there’s lodging for us at Geba.’ Ramah quakes with fear and Gibeath of Shaul scurries away. Call out and holler, daughter of Gallim. Laish — listen! Alas for Anathoth. Madmenah’s men are made nomads, and everyone living in Gebim is on the run. While it’s still day he’ll take his stand in Nob, shake his fist at the mountain, Zion’s daughter, Jerusalem’s hillside. Look: see the Master, God of Legions, hacking splendid foliage off the treetops with a savage strength. See the ones that stand tall hewn down. See their proud height brought low. Then he slices through the forest thickets with an axe. At a champion’s hands, Lebanon will fall. Then a shoot emerges from Jesse's Stump – a twig from his roots.
And above him will hover the spirit of God: He’ll relish the fear of God. No, he’ll judge the needy in righteousness; Then it happens: righteousness becomes his loincloth, The wolf and the lamb will be fellow travelers; The wild donkey and the bear will share pasture — A tender child will amuse himself by the cobra’s lair, They’ll do no wrong or violence to one another, And it happens On That Day: there is the Root of Jesse, standing firm as a flag for all peoples to see. And it happens On That Day: my Master lifts his hand again a second time, Then he lifts up a flag for the nations, Then Ephraim’s fierce grudge is clean gone, Instead they’ll soar to the sea on the shoulders of Philistines — Then God rips out the tongue from Egypt’s ocean, and with an exhalation of his mighty spirit he shakes his fist over its river — And there is a route forward for the survivors of his people, the stragglers still left, out of Assyria,
Then you'll speak out, On That Day:
Look: this god is my deliverance —
Then you’ll draw water in jubilation
Then you’ll all speak out, On That Day:
Make music for God, because he does high and mighty things.
Burst into whooping and cheers of triumph, you who live on Zion,
Babylon's burden, which Isaiah son of Amoz Saw.
Lift up a flag on the mountain peak. Raise your voice; wave your hand for them, so they’ll come to the noblemen’s gates.
I gave my orders to the ones I made sacred. I even called my war heroes to come to my rage, the ones who take pride in my magnificence.
A voice of uproar on the mountains! A sound like a massive crowd, a fearsome voice of chaos from kingdoms of nations. They’re gathered together — this is God of Legions enlisting a legion for war,
Coming from the farthest regions of earth, from the ends of the heavens — God and the instruments of his fury, to crush the whole earth.
Wail, because of God’s Day drawing near: it’s coming like annihilation from the Almighty.
And so all hands will go limp, and every heart of every man will go slack.
Then they’ll be shaken: suffocation and constriction will pull tight around them, and contractions like a woman giving birth. Each one of them will stare in awe at his fellow man — their faces will flare up like lamplight.
See God’s Day coming, cruel in its fury and its seething rage, to bring earth to its destruction. He will exterminate the sinners from among us.
Yes, the stars of heaven in their constellations won’t radiate their light. The sun will be pitch black as it emerges, and the moon won’t pour forth its light.
I bring a reckoning of evil upon the cosmos, and corruption upon the wicked; I put a stop to the arrogance of self-satisfied men, and I topple the high grandeur of fearsome tyrants.
I’ll make humanity scarcer than pure gold; human bodies will be rarer than golden ore from Ophir.
And so I’ll make the heavens quake, and Earth will be knocked out of its place, in the fury of God with his Legions on the Day of his burning rage.
And it happens: like a hunted deer, or like a sheep with no one to corral it, every man will turn to his own people. Every man will go running to his own territory.
Everyone who can be found will be gored; everyone who can be snatched up will fall by the sword.
And their little babies will be torn to pieces while they watch; their houses will be looted; their wives will be raped.
Look who I’m rousing against them: the Medes, who’ll take no account of silver and won’t be appeased by gold.
Archers will tear their young boys to pieces; they’ll have no tenderness in their heart for the tender fruit of the womb, no mercy in their eyes for any mother’s son.
And Babylon, jewel of kingdoms, resplendent pride of the Chaldeans — it’ll be like when God turned the tables on Sodom and Gomorrah.
It will never be lived in again, or slept in from generation to generation. No Arab will pitch his tent there, and shepherds won’t settle their flocks there.
Then desert wildlings settle there instead, and howling beasts wander in to fill their houses — owls’ broods will sleep in their houses, and goats will caper there.
Then island creatures call to one another through their desolate hallways, and things with tentacles in their pleasure palaces. The moment is drawing right up close. The days will not be delayed.
Yes, God will open his heart in mercy to Jacob, will still choose Israel, and give them guidance back to their own soil. And outsiders will be joined onto them, grafted onto Jacob's household. Then the people will take them in, bring them to the place that belongs to them, and the house of Israel will incorporate them into God’s fatherland as servants and handmaidens — they’ll take their captors captive and dominate the ones who beat them down. And it happens On the Day God lets you find release from the idols’ agony, and from your angst, and from the unrelenting slavery that made you slaves: You’ll brandish that old adage against Babylon’s king — you’ll say, ‘see how tyrants meet their end; how golden cities meet their end.’ God breaks the club of the wicked and the sceptre of the rulers, The one that pounds down nations in fury, an endless pounding; the one that dominates clans in rage; that persecutes with no restraint. The whole earth falls quiet in peace at last . . . a song of triumph bursts out! Even the cypress trees gloat over you, and the cedars of Lebanon: ‘since you were laid flat, no one climbs up on us to cut us down.’ The Grave lurches to meet you from beneath as you come. She rouses up dead bodies to meet you, all the chieftains of the earth: she stands them up from their thrones, all the kings of the nations. They’ll all talk back at you and say to you, ‘you too. Your strength is sapped like ours; you look just like us.’ Your pride is brought down to the Grave and the noise of your instruments. Maggots make their nest under you, and larvae cover you. How fallen you are from the heavens, you morning star, son of the dark before dawn. You’re hewn down to the earth — you, who drained the strength of nations. It was you who said in your heart, ‘I will mount up to the heavens. Up higher than the stars of this god I’ll elevate my throne, and settle on the mountain of assembly on its far northern flanks. I will mount over the crests of the clouds. I shall become akin to the highest power.’ But in fact you’re brought down to the Grave, to the bowels of the abyss. People who see you will narrow their eyes at you, and scrutinise you, asking each other: ‘is this the man that made the earth quake, shook kingdoms, Laid the cosmos flat like a wasteland and razed its cities, never opened the door of his prisons?’ All the kings of the clans — all of them — sleep in their majesty, each in his own house, But you, you’re rejected from your own mausoleum like a loathsome branch, a garment from a slaughtered body, gored with a blade, plummeting to the bedrock of the abyss. Like a trampled corpse. You won’t be united with them in their tomb, because you ravaged your land and slaughtered your people. The seed of the wicked will go unmentioned for the rest of time. Set things in order to massacre his sons for their father’s wickedness, so they never stand tall and take over the earth or occupy the whole surface of the world with cities. ‘I stand against them,’ declares God with his Legions. ‘I cut down Babylon’s sons and her survivors, her sons and her scions too,’ declares God. ‘I lay her out as property for the albatross, as a watery marsh. I sweep across her with sweeping annihilation,’ declares God with his Legions. God committed himself. He promised: ‘just see if it doesn’t happen the way I picture it, and stand firm the way I planned, To crack Assyria apart in my land, and stomp it flat on my mountain, and lift his yoke off of them; his burden will lift off their shoulder. This is the plan planned over all the earth, and this is the hand stretched out over all the nations. As God with his Legions is planning it, who’s going to avert it? His hand is outstretched — who’s going to push it back? It was the year King Ahaz died when this burden came into being. Don’t celebrate, Philistia in your full force, because the club that battered you is broken: out of the serpent’s stump springs forth a viper. Its fruit is a winged snake of flame. The first-born sons of beggars will find food and pasture; the needy will bed down in peace of mind. But your root will die at my hand, and your survivors will be executed. Wail, gate. Howl, city. Melt away, Philistia in all your force, because smoke comes from the far North, and there’ll be no going off alone at the times ordained. What will they say in response to the nation's messengers? That God fixed the foundations of Zion, and his nation’s poor will rely on its protection.
He went up to Baith and Dibon, the high places, to sob. Over Nabo and over Medeba, Moab will wail. And on all their heads is baldness; every venerable beard is shaved off.
In their alleyways they put on burlap clothing, and on their rooftops and in their city streets they’ll wail, breaking down in sobs.
And Heshbon will scream, and Elealeh. Their voice is heard all the way to Jahaz, and so Moab’s armed battalions will lament out loud: his own soul will torment him.
My own heart will lament out loud over Moab. His fugitives will sprint to Zoar, like a three-year-old heifer, by Luhith’s upward pass: they’ll go up it with sobs. On the road through Horonaim, they’ll raise a loud lament for their brokenness.
Because Nimrim’s waters will be left in desolate silence: the meadow is desiccated; the grass is wiped out; there is nothing green.
So all the profit they made, their carefully counted wealth, is what they’ll carry with them to the Riverbed lined with Willows.
Yes, the loud lament reverberates in Moab’s borders. And the wail reaches Eglaim, and the wail reaches Beer-elim.
Yes, Dimon’s waters are saturated with blood: I’ll pile still more onto Dimon — a lion for Moab’s refugees, and for those left behind from the homeland.
Send a ram to the ruler of the land, from the Rock-City in the desert wasteland to the mountain, to Zion's daughter. And it happens: like bird that flails and flutters, expelled from its nest, that’s how Moab’s daughters will be at the crossings of the River Arnon.
Bring us your guidance; make a verdict; cast your shadow like nightfall at high noon. Keep the exiles hidden; don’t expose the fugitives.
Let my exiles lodge with you — cover for them. Be Moab's hiding-place from the destroyer. Then the foundations of a throne are fixed in mercy, and he takes his seat upon it in truth, in David’s tabernacle —
judging and seeking justice, accelerating the onset of righteousness.
We’ve heard about Moab’s arrogance. About how very arrogant he is; his insolence and his arrogance and his furious temper; the things he brags that aren’t so.
That’s why Moab will wail for Moab: the whole of him will wail, for the deep foundations of Kir-Hareseth — you’ll whimper, ‘how broken they are.’
Because Heshbon’s fields are wilted, and Sibmah’s vine;
foreign lords have smashed their first fruits. They’ve reached all the way to Jazer, staggered their way through the desert wastelands.
Her branches are spread abroad; they’re across the ocean now.
That’s why I’ll sob with the sobs of Jazer for Sibmah’s vine. I’ll saturate you with my tears, Heshbon and Elealeh, because battle cries have fallen on your harvest and your farthest borders.
Joy and celebration are gathered up out of the vineyard; in the vineyard no one will sing or shout in triumph; in the wine vats no treader will tread out wine; I’ve broken off the shout of exultation.
And so the very core of me will resound like a harp for Moab, and my insides will moan for Kir-Heres.
And it happens:
It is coming into sight,
How Moab is all worn out on the lofty heights,
and comes to his sacred place to pray, but cannot.
This is the Proclamation God proclaimed to Moab since time past.
And now God proclaims. He says, ‘in three years, like the years of a contract, Moab’s majesty will be held in contempt,
in all its raucous magnitude, what’s left behind will be minuscule and feeble.
The Burden of Damascus Its cities will be abandoned for all time. They’ll belong to livestock; flocks will bed down there with no one to scare them off.
The stronghold at Ephraim will be brought to an end,
and the kingdom of Damascus, and those left behind in Aram, will be like the majesty of Israel’s sons, declares God with his Legions.
And it happens On That Day: Jacob’s majesty will drain from him, and his fleshy girth will waste away.
And it happens, like a reaper gathering up corn, when his arm reaps the yield; it happens like a gleaner gleaning ears of corn in Rephaim Valley.
But a few stray crops will be left behind in it — it’s like shaking an olive tree: two or three olives on the tips of the treetops, five or six on its outermost fruit-bearing boughs, declares God, Israel’s god.
On That Day dust will gaze upon its maker; humanity's eyes will see Israel’s Sacred One.
They won’t gaze upon altars made by their hands, or look at ones their fingers made — the fertility-gods or the sun-gods.
On That Day the sturdy cities will be like abandoned woodlands, like treetops abandoned in the face of Israel’s sons — and there will be desolation.
Because you forgot the god of your salvation, and lost the memory of your sturdy fortress — that’s why you’re planting lovely plants, but sowing them with foreign vines.
On the day you’ll get your plant to grow; at dawn your seed will bring forth fruit: a pile of it on the harvest day of misery and hopeless pain.
Oh doom! A raucous throng of many nations, like thronging waters, and a roaring rush of peoples, like many rushing waters roar.
Nations roar like many waters roar, but God chides them and they sprint back miles away; they’re chased away like hay on mountains in the face of the wind’s breath, like tumbleweed in the face of a hurricane.
The moment of evening comes, and look: disaster. Before the sun rises he’s nothing.
This is what anyone who steals from us gets, the lot that anyone who robs us draws.
Oh, doom! For the land where wings flutter, out past the rivers of Kush,
Sending dispatches by sea in papyrus baskets over the face of the ocean: go, nimble messengers to the people, tall with shining skin — to a nation fearsome from its origins until now, marching regiment by regiment, whose land the rivers split apart. Everyone who lives in the world and sleeps on Earth: he raises his flag on the mountains — look! His trumpet blares — listen! Because so says God to me: ‘I will sit back and survey my edifice — like a white heat in clean light; like a film of dew in the harvest heat. Yes: in advance of the harvest, when the bloom is gone and the bitter grapes are ripening, he cuts the tender twigs with curved knives. He removes the branches; he lops them off. They will all be left out for birds of prey on the mountains, for animals on the ground: In That Moment a procession will carry a tribute to God with his Legions: a people, tall with shining skin — a nation fearsome from its origins until now, marching regiment by regiment, whose land the rivers split apart,
The Burden of Egypt: I will pit Egypt against Egypt. They’ll go to war: every man against his brother, every man against his friend. City against city, kingdom against kingdom. And Egypt’s spirit will be exhausted inside it; I will erase their plans and they’ll go running to their empty gods and cheap conjurers, to their mediums and magicians.
I hand Egypt over to hardened masters: a king will rule them with fierce might,' declares the Master, God with his Legions.
Then the ocean’s waters will run out; the river dry up and slink away;
The rivers falter; the brooks that surround them in safety languish and run dry; the sedges and reeds wither;
The lichen by the Nile — by the Nile’s mouth — and every river crop sown will slink away, be driven out, be nothing.
And the fisherman will moan in lament; everyone who casts hooks into the Nile or spreads nets across the water’s face will waste away.
Labourers who work with flaxen threads will be put to shame; so will those who weave linen,
And everyone who makes sluices and fishponds . . . her bedrock will be left in rubble.
How brainless Zoan’s elites are. Pharaoh’s wisest strategists form a wasted planning committee — how can you say to Pharaoh, ‘I am a son of wise men, a son of venerable Eastern kings?’
Where are your wise men now? Let’s see them tell you, let’s see what they know about what strategies the God of Legions is planning for Egypt.
Zoan’s elites make fools of themselves. Noph’s elites are deluded. They tripped Egypt up, those pillars of her tribes.
God concocted a noxious spirit inside her, and they tripped Egypt up in everything it did, the way a drunk trips in his own sick.
And there won’t be any work done in Egypt that a head or tail does, or a palm frond or a reed.
On That Day Egypt will be like a woman: it will quiver and tremble when faced with the fist God shakes, the shaking fist of the God of Legions.
And the land of Judah’s men will be dizzying terror for Egypt. Everyone who calls it to mind will tremble in the face of the plans God of Legions plans against him.
On That Day five cities in Egyptian territory will be speakers of Canaan’s tongue; they’ll swear themselves to the God of Legions. ‘City of Demolition,’ one of them will be called.
On That Day there’ll be an altar to God in the center of Egypt’s territory, and a column too, right on her border, erected to God.
And it’s meant as a sign, a witness to God with his Legions, in Egypt’s territory, the way they’ll call out to God in the face of those who grind them down. He’ll send them a saviour, a colossus, and he’ll rescue them.
And God will be made known to Egypt; Egypt will know God On That Day. Then they’ll offer service, sacrifice, oblation; they’ll vow vows to God, and keep the peace.
And God will topple Egypt — topple it and lift it back to life, and they’ll come back to God. And he’ll be moved by their pleas, and heal them.
On That Day there will be a thoroughfare from Egypt to Assyria — Assyria will come to Egypt, and Egypt to Assyria. Egypt will offer its service alongside Assyra.
On That Day Israel will make a third with Egypt and Assyria, a blessing in the center of the land.
Which God with his Legions blessed, saying: 'blessed are my people Egypt, and Assyria, and the things my hands have made, and my inheritance, Israel.
In the year when the Tartan came to Ashdod on a mission from Sargon, king of Assyria; when he waged war on Ashdod and conquered it,
In that time God proclaimed a thing by the hand of Isaiah son of Amoz. He said, ‘go, strip the burlap from off your crotch, and unstrap the sandals from your feet. And so he did, going naked and barefoot. And God said, ‘the way my servant Isaiah walked, naked and barefoot — a sign and an omen for three years upon Egypt and Kush, That’s how Assyria’s king will force his Egyptian captives and his exiles from Kush to march, young and old, naked and barefoot, their backsides stripped bare: Egypt’s humiliation. They’ll be scared and ashamed — of Kush, their great white hope; of Egypt, their crown jewel. Anyone who lives on that coast on that day will say, ‘look what’s become of our great white hope, where we fled for help, to be rescued from Assyria’s king. How can we escape?’
The burden of the desert wasteland by the water: A harsh vision is recounted to me — the deceiver deceives and the destroyer destroys. Arise, Elam; Medes, besiege. I’ve brought their sighing to an end.
And so my groin is wracked all over with convulsions — contractions seize me like the contractions of a woman giving birth. I was bent double at the sound; I was panicked at the sight.
My heart palpitated, shudders unsettled me; he turned an evening of pleasure into a horror for me.
They set the table. They keep watch in the watchtower. They eat. They drink. Get up, captains! Anoint the shield with oil!
Because so says my Master to me: ‘go, station someone at the watch. Let him tell what he sees.
When he sees a chariot with a yoked pair of steeds; a chariot of donkeys and a chariot of camels, let him stand at attention. Let him pay close attention.
He called out like a lion: ‘to the watchtower, master! Master, I’m standing still, standing for days, and on my guard; I hold my position for nights on end.
And look: this cavalry of men has come, a yoked pair of steeds. And in response he said, ‘Babylon is fallen, fallen, and all the carvings of their empty gods are broken on the ground.
Oh my trampled husks, young ones on my threshing floor — what I hear from God with his Legions, Israel’s god, I tell you.
Dumah’s Burden: The guard said, ‘dawn comes, and night too. If you’re going to ask, ask. Turn around. Come back.
The burden on Arabia: When you go to meet a thirsty man, bring water. People living in Tema’s territory met a fugitive, and they brought their bread.
Because it’s the teeth of swords they’re fleeing from, from the teeth of swords drawn and bows bent, and from the mouth of a massive war.
Yes, so says my Master, my god, to me: ‘in one more year, like the year of a contract, all the majesty of Kedar will be spent.
And the number of archers still left, those strong sons of Kedar, will dwindle: God, Israel’s god, has proclaimed it.
The burden of the Canyon of Vision: Ruckus fills the city of tumult — the town of joy! Your casualties aren’t casualties of the sword, and they didn’t die in war.
All your captains turned and ran together from the archers. They were tied up; anyone who was found in you was tied up together; they fled from far away.
That’s why I said, ‘look away from me: I’m sobbing bitterly; don’t try to console me for the ruin of my people’s daughter.
Because this day of ruckus and stampeding and chaos belongs to my Master, God with his Legions, in the Canyon of Vision, tearing the town down and hollering up to the mountain.
And Elam carried the quiver, on chariots with men and their steeds, and Kir uncovered the shield.
And it happened when your choicest valleys were full of chariots: the horsemen stood arrayed at the gate in full array. Then he pulled back Judah’s covering, and On That Day you peered at the battle gear in the House of the Woodland.
And you looked hard at the schisms in David’s city — at how many there were. Then you gathered together the waters of the lowest reservoir.
Next you counted the houses in Jerusalem, and dismantled those houses to buttress the wall.
And you made a ditch between the walls, for the water of the older reservoir — but you didn’t look closely at the one who made it, didn’t really see the architect from far away.
And my Master called out, the God of Legions, On That Day: for sobbing and loud grief, for shaved heads and burlap clothes.
Look: pleasure and enjoyment, killing cattle and slaughtering sheep, eating flesh and drinking wine — eat and drink, because tomorrow we die.
And in my ears the God of Legions laid it bare: this travesty will not be purged from you until you die, says my Master, God of Legions.
So says my Master, God of Legions, to me: ‘go, walk up to this steward, over to Shebna, who oversees the house.
What’s with you here — who’s with you here, so that you’ve chiseled out a tomb for yourself, you who chisel a tomb on high and carve a resting place into the rock?
See, God will take you down like a wrestling champion with a takedown, will drape himself over you.
He will roll you around and around, roll you like a ball into a wide expanse of territory: you will die there. Your majestic riding gear will be a disgrace in your Master’s house.
And he’ll shove you out of your position, and tear you down from where you stand.
And it happens On That Day: I call out to my servant, to Eliakim, Hilkiah’s son,
And clothe him in your vestment, and clasp him in your belt, and put your sovereignty into his hand, so he becomes father to anyone living in Jerusalem, and to the household of Judah.
And I put the means of opening David’s house on his shoulder: he opens, and there is no closing; he closes, and there is no opening.
Then I drive him like a nail into a secure spot, right onto the throne of his father’s majesty.
Then all the majesty of his father’s house will hang from him, generations proceeding and being cast forth, all the minor utensils, every last receptacle, from the cups to the pitchers.
On That Day,' declares God with his Legions, the nail driven into a secure spot will be extracted — it will be sliced out, will fall, and the burden on it will be cut apart: God proclaims it. Tyre's Burden: Stand hushed, you island settlers, you, replenished by tradesmen from Sidon who pass through on the ocean —
And on many waters — that seed of the Dark Stream, the river-harvest, is her revenue — the commerce of the nations.
Hang your head in shame, Sidon: the ocean speaks; the ocean’s might speaks, and it says, ‘I suffered no labour pains; I gave no birth; I chose no growing boys to nourish, no maidens to raise.
When news comes to Egypt, the news about Tyre will torment them.
Cross over to Tarshish and wail, you island settlers.
Is this your joy, this ancient city from ancient days? Her feet took her far; she wandered.
Who laid this plot against Tyre, that crown city, whose tradesmen are princes — whose salesmen are revered in their majesty on Earth?
God of Legions. He laid the plot: to disfigure all the beauty of pride; to belittle the majesty of those revered on earth.
Pass across your land like the Nile, daughter of Tarshish: its girdle is no more.
His hand reaches across the ocean; he sets kingdoms quaking: God commands a legion against Canaan, to topple her strongholds.
And he said, ‘you won’t rejoice anymore. You violated maiden, Sidon’s daughter — get up. Pass over to Kittim: even there, no rest for you.
Look. Chaldean land. This is the nation that wasn’t, when Assyria founded it for the wildlings, erected its towers, leveled its peaks, laid waste to it.
Wail, ships from Tarshish: your stronghold is ravaged.
And it happens On That Day: Tyre will be forgotten for seventy years, as many days as a single king’s reign.
And at the end of seventy years there will be a song in Tyre like a whore’s song.
Strum your strings, circle the city, you forgotten whore. Sing well and play long, so you’ll be remembered.
It happens at the end of seventy years: God will remember Tyre, and she’ll go where she gets paid. She’ll whore hreself out to all the world’s kingdoms, right on the face of the earth.
But her trade and her payment will be sanctity for God: it won’t be hoarded and it won’t be amassed. Her payment will be for those who live with eyes facing God — so they’ll have clothes that last and enough to eat.
See God emptying Earth out, effacing it. He turns it on its head; he sends everyone living there scattering.
And it happens to the people like it happens to the priest; to the servant as to the master; to the maid as to the noblewoman; to the customer as to the merchant; to the patron as to the client; to the creditor as to the credited.
The earth will be emptied, emptied. It will be pillaged, pillaged, because God has proclaimed this proclamation.
Earth wails; it wanes away. The world withers; it wanes away. Earth’s exalted people wither.
The Earth is corrupted beneath the people who live on it, because they’ve transgressed against what’s taught, violated what’s ordained, voided the eternal covenant.
And so: a curse consumes the earth, and everyone living there is implicated in it. The fresh vintage laments; the vine withers; every once-delighted heart is moaning.
The glee of tambourines stops short; the ruckus of the celebrators dies down; the glee of strumming strings stops short.
No one’s drinking wine and singing; liquor goes bitter in the drinker’s mouth.
The town in chaos is broken apart; every house is shut tight against entry.
In the streets, someone screams for wine. All delight goes dark; glee recoils from the Earth.
All that’s left in the city is desolation. The gate is struck and destroyed.
This is how it will be in the heart of the Earth, within every community: like an olive tree when it’s shaken; like puny grapes when the grape-harvest is done.
But them . . . they raise their voices. They shout in triumph; they bellow with pride in God across the sea.
And so magnify God in your flashes of light, on islands in the ocean — GOD by name! Israel’s god!
From the farthest wingtips of Earth they sing, and we hear it, legions arrayed in the cause of righteousness. Terror and traps and tripwires are all around you, you who live on the Earth.
And it happens: anyone who runs away from the voice of the terror will fall in the trap, and whoever gets up from inside the trap will catch on the tripwire: the windows swing open in the exalted realms, and the earth’s foundations are rattled.
Earth breaks up into broken pieces; Earth is annihilated into nothing; Earth dissolves in dissolution.
Earth staggers, staggers like a drunk and gets dismantled like a hut, and its defiance weighs heavy upon it, and it falls, and it doesn’t get back up again.
And it happens On That Day: God will bring a reckoning upon the legion of exalted ones in exalted realms, and upon the kings of humankind on human territory.
And they’ll be rounded up, prisoners rounded up into a dungeon pit, and shut off in an enclosure, and visited after many days.
And the moon will flush with shame; the sun will be abashed, because the God of Legions will reign on the mountain, Zion, and in Jerusalem, and before the elders will be majesty.
God! You are my god — I will exalt you; I will praise your name, because you have done miracles, given true guidance from long ago and far away, secure in truth:
You made what was once a town into a pile of rubble; made an armored city into a ruin; made a fortress filled with foreigners into nothing. For the rest of time it won’t be built.
And so a mighty nation will magnify you; a city of ruthless peoples will fear you,
Because you are power for the needy, power for beggars in their oppression; shelter from the deluge; shade from the scorching heat; when even the breath of the ruthless is like a deluge against the city ramparts.
You subdued the roar of foreign crowds like scorching heat in a desert, heat in the shade of a cloud. The song of the ruthless ones will be brought low.
And God with his Legions will make a feast, He will devour, on this mountain,
He will devour death forever, and my Master, God, will wipe tears off of every face.
And it will be said On That Day, ‘Look: our god. This is him, we put our high hopes in him, and he saved us. This is God; we put our high hopes in him — we will celebrate and rejoice in his salvation,
Because God’s hand will hover over this mountain, and Moab will be trampled under him, like straw trampled into a pile of dung.
And he stretches wide his hands in their midst, like a swimmer stretches his hands to swim, and he brings their arrogance low, though their hands are cunning and deft.
He brings low the fortress and the lofty ramparts of your walls, humbles them, wrenches them to the ground, into the dirt.
On That Day this song will be sung in Judah’s land:
Open the gates: You will fence off the mind that fixes on you with peace, peace Trust God forever and ever: Yes: he abased those who live in exalted realms; in the city set on high: A foot will trample it down: the foot of the needy — The righteous travel on a route made straight: Yes indeed, on the path of your judgment, oh God, we’ve put our high hopes in you. In my soul I ache with longing for you at night. My breath itself, in my insides . . . I look for you at dawn, Let the wicked man be granted mercy: he still won’t learn righteousness. God: your hand is on high but they still have no vision; God, you will ordain peace for us, God. Our god . . . masters other than you have held us in their sway; The dead will never live, no, the ghosts will never rise — You’ve gathered together a people, God, gathered a people together: you are magnified. God, in oppression they became aware of you; Like a pregnant woman getting close to giving birth, when she writhes and screams in her labour pains — We were pregnant, we writhed, but we gave birth to something like empty air . . . But the dead who belong to you will live; so will my collapsing body: they will be raised. Onward, my people, go into your chambers and shut your doors around you; Because — look: God, coming forth from his station, to bring a reckoning for the evil of everyone who lives on Earth:
On That Day God will bring a reckoning with his massive sword, harsh and strong, On That Day, sing to her: I am God who guards it; No anger burns in me. Or let him cling to my strength. In the coming days Jacob will put down roots; Israel will bloom and burst forth, and the surface of the world will be filled with its bounty.
Did he strike like the one who struck him? Or murder his murderer like he was murdered?
When she rushes forth he’ll wrangle with her with a battle-cry . . . he grinds her down with his harsh breath in the day of the East wind.
And so, in this, Jacob’s evil is purged. This is all the fruit of clearing his sin away, when he makes all the altar-stones like stones of chalk — pulverised. The statues of Asherah will not be raised, nor will the sun gods.
Because the fortified city is alone; home is rejected and left behind like a desert wasteland. Calves will find pasture there; they will rest their heads there and eat up every one of its branches.
When its crop withers, it will be broken off. Women will come to set it alight: And it happens On That Day: God will knock them out from the rushing of the river up to Egypt’s river valley, and you will all be reaped and gathered into one, you sons of Israel.
It happens On That Day: at a blast from a massive horn they’ll come, they who perished in Assyria’s land, and they who were cast out into Egypt’s land, and they’ll prostrate themselves before God on his sacred mountain, in Jerusalem.
Oh, doom to the garland of pride on the head of Ephraim’s drunks, and the wilting bloom of their doe-eyed beauty, on the head of those engorged gullies, drowsy with wine. See, my Master has someone firm and unrelenting, like hail pouring down in a fearsome tempest of annihilation, like a downpour of voluminous water overflowing — he will let it drop onto the earth with his hand. The garland of pride onEphraim’s drunks will be trampled underfoot, And the wilting bloom of their doe-eyed beauty, on top of those engorged gullies, will be like the first fruit in the final days before summer ends: when the seer sees it, he devours it while it’s still in the palm of his hand. On That Day God with his Legions will be the garland of beauty, and the diadem of loveliness, for those of his people still left behind; He will be the spirit of judgment for anyone who sits on the judgment seat, and the conquering hero for anyone who turns the battle towards the gate. But they too are lost in their wine, they stagger in their liquor — priest and prophet lost in liquor, consumed with wine. They stagger under liquor’s influence; their vision wanders; they go astray in their verdicts — Yes, every table is covered in vomit and feces, with no space left. Whom can he teach to know? Who can be made to understand what he hears? Children weaned off of milk, who have just outgrown breastfeeding — For it comes rule by rule, by rule by rule. Lesson by lesson, by lesson by lesson. A little here, a little there. With sputtering lips and foreign tongue, it will be proclaimed to this people, To whom it was said: ‘this is rest; give this rest to weary. This is tranquility.’ But they didn’t want to hear. God’s Proclamation came to them rule by rule, by rule by rule. Lesson by lesson, by lesson by lesson. A little here, a little there — because they’d go forth, but then stumble back, and be broken, and trapped, and captured. And so: hear God’s Proclamation, men of mockery, rulers of this people in Jerusalem. Because you said, ‘we’ve cut a deal with death, and with the Grave; we’ve laid out our shared vision: Therefore so says God, my Master: ‘watch me lay a foundation stone down on Zion, a stone that’s been tested, cherished; a keystone, a foundation of foundations. No rush; he’s secure. And I lay down justice and righteousness as weights and measures, and hailstones sweep away that shelter of lies; the waters submerge their hiding place. Then your deal with death will be purged from the record. The vision you shared with the Grave won’t stand:
The Whip that whips out over everything will pass through, and you’ll be crushed under it. Whenever it passes through, it will take you. Morning by morning it will pass through, by day and by night, and even just to hear about it, when you really understand, is to shudder with fear. Because the bed is too short to stretch out in, and the blanket too thin when you wrap yourself up. Because like the mountain, Perazim, God will stand; in his rage he will quake like the canyon in Gibeon — to do the things he does, those unfamiliar things, and to serve the way he serves, that outlandish service. Now then: don’t get too snide, or the chains that hold you will be strong: I’ve heard about an annihilation from my Master, God of Legions. It’s being carefully worked out across the whole earth. Lend your ears and listen to my voice. Pay attention: hear what I say. Does the ploughman plough through the whole day planting seeds? Does he break open his clods of soil? When he’s smoothed out its surface, doesn’t he scatter the fennel seeds and throw forth cumin? Doesn’t he put the first-tier grain and the designated barley and the spelt each in the plot where they belong? He disciplines him for the sake of justice. His god teaches him. Because it’s not with a threshing-sledge that he cracks open the seeds. He doesn’t roll a cart’s wheel over the cumin: it’s with a club that he beats the seeds, and the cumin with a sceptre. Is grain ground for bread? He won’t thresh it ceaselessly, or crack it with his cart’s wheel, and his horsemen won’t grind it. This too emerges from God of Legions: he is miraculous in mentorship; he expands his thought.
Oh, Ariel, Ariel, town where David pitched his tent: add year upon year, and let the festival days come around again, Still I press hard on Ariel, and misery and mourning come to pass, come to pass for me like at the altar of Ariel.
And I pitch my tents to surround you, and tighten in against you with barracks, and mount a stronghold against you.
You’re brought low and proclaim from the ground, from the dust — what you say is lowly, and your voice is low like a ghost’s; from the dust your speech whispers.
But then your throng of opponents becomes like fine particles of dust, and your throng of brutal warriors like brittle wheat that slips away: it happens, in an instantaneous instant.
From the God of Legions comes your reckoning, in thunder and in seismic quakes, a huge voice, tempests and cyclones and a blaze of consuming flame.
And it will be like a dream, a vision in the night: the horde of every nation arrayed for battle around Ariel, every one of them arrayed against her and her bulwarks, to hem her in.
It will be like when a man dreams in his hunger, and look — he eats, but then he wakes up and he’s empty to the core. Or when a man dreams in his thirst, and look — he drinks, but then he wakes up and see, he’s faint with thirst, the soul in his core is longing. It will be like that for the horde of every nation in battle array on the mountain, Zion.
Let yourselves be stunned — get stunned. Get smitten with yourselves, you smitten drunks, drunk — but not with wine. Staggering, but not because of liquor.
Because God poured a spirit on you, the heavy breath of exhaustion, and shut your eyes tight. The prophets and your leaders, visionaries: he covered them.
And for you it will be a vision of everything, like the proclamations of a sealed book that they give to someone who knows his letters, saying, ‘read this aloud.’ But he says ‘I cannot; it is sealed.’
Then the book is given to someone who doesn’t know his letters, saying ‘read this aloud.’ But he says, ‘I don’t know my letters.’
Then my Master said, ‘because this nation draws near to me with its mouth and magnifies me with its lips, but its heart is miles away from me, and the fear they have for me is a commandment learned by rote,
Because of that, look: here I am again, making miracles happen to this nation, miracles and marvels. The wisdom of their wise men perishes, and the insight of the insightful among them is hidden.
Oh, doom for anyone who tries to hide his schemes from God in profundity: what they do is in pitch dark, and they say, ‘who sees us? Who knows us?’
Your malleability — one would think you were sculptor’s clay, like a made thing saying about its maker, ‘he didn’t make me.’ Or the sculpture saying to its sculptor, ‘he doesn’t understand.’
Won’t it be just a brief moment before Lebanon is back to being a fertile vineyard, a fertile vineyard you could think was a thick forest?
And the deaf, On That Day, will hear the proclamations of the book. And out of the depth of the pitch black dark, the eyes of the blind will see.
And in God the needy will abound with joy. The destitute among the human race will revel in Israel’s sacred one.
Because the brutaliser is wiped out, and the derider is done for; everyone who waits up all night for trouble is cut down —
Anyone bringing sin upon any person in any instance, or laying a trap for the rebuker at the gate, or turning away a righteous man over nothing.
Therefore so says God, the deity of Jacob’s household, who rescued Abraham: ‘Jacob will not be humiliated now; now his face won’t go white with shame.
No, when he sees his children, made by my hands, in the bosom of his family, they will sanctify my name, and hold sacred Jacob’s Sacred One, and tremble before Israel’s god.
And those who went astray in spirit will come to know real understanding; those who muttered under their breath will learn the received doctrine.
‘Oh, doom for defiant sons,’ declares God, ‘getting advice, but not from me; planning plans to get covered, but not with my spirit, to amass sin upon sin. Going down to walk right into Egypt, without asking for words from my mouth — to strengthen themselves with Pharaoh’s strength, and take refuge under Egypt’s shadow. Pharaoh’s strength will be your disgrace; your refuge under Egypt’s shadow will be your humiliation. Because his elites were at Zoan, and his messengers have drawn near to Chanes. They were all ashamed of the people that couldn’t be profitable to them, couldn’t help or bring profit, but only shame, even loathing. The burden of beasts in the wildlands: And Egypt’s help will be empty, useless. And so I called on them, in all their bluster, to just settle down. Now go: write for them on a slab, set it down on a scroll — it will be until the Day to come, on and on until forever: How this is an embittered nation of dishonest children, sons who don’t want to listen to what God teaches. Who say to those that see, ‘don’t see,’ and to those with vision, ‘don’t show us your vision of what’s wholesome; make your proclamations to us smooth; give us a vision of delusion.’ Get out of the way. Veer off to the side of the road. Get Israel’s Sacred One out of our sight. Therefore, so says Israel’s Sacred One: ‘because you rejected this proclamation, because you rely on calumny and perversity, because you depend on them, Therefore this guilt will be on you, like a fracture ready to descend on you, swelling and bursting through your high levees, whose shattering comes instantaneously, in an instant. He’ll shatter it, the way a potter’s jar is broken to bits. He’ll spare nothing: in its breaking there will not be so much as a shard to be found that could carry a flame from a hearth or water from a puddle. Because so said God, my Master, Israel’s Sacred One: ‘With a change of direction, with a coming to rest, you will be saved.
Your strength will be in serenity and trust.
But you wouldn’t accept. You said, ‘No: we’ll run away on horseback.’ So you’ll run away.
‘We’ll be swift on our chariots.’ So your persecutors will give swift chase. A thousand of you will run from the rebuke of a single one of them, from the reproach of five of them, until you’re left at the peak of the mountain like a beacon, like a flag at the top of the hill. And so God will wait to show you mercy, and so he will rear up to show you spacious compassion, because God is a god of justice — blessed are those who wait for him. Because, people who live on Zion, in Jerusalem, you who have sobbed will sob no more. Merciful God will show mercy at the sound of your wailing voice; as soon as he hears it, he’ll answer you. Now, my master will give you bread of oppression, and water of persecution, but your teacher will no longer be driven away; your own eyes will be the ones that see your teacher. And your ears will hear the proclamation at your back, which says: ‘this is the path. Walk in it, whether you turn to the left or the right. And you will make the casings of your silver idols filthy, and the overlay of your golden sculptures; you’ll toss them out like soiled menstrual cloths — ‘get gone,’ you’ll say to them. And he gives rain to the seed you sow, which you sow in the soil, and bread comes from the soil’s produce, and it’s rich and plump, and your flocks will graze On That Day, in lush pasture. And the oxen, and the colts that work the soil — the provender they eat will be cleansed, winnowed with shovel and fan. And it happens on every lofty mountain, and every elevated hill: streams and tributaries on the day of massive slaughter, when the towers fall. And it happens: the light from the moon becomes like the light from the sun, and the light from the sun will be seven times what it was, like the light of seven days in one — on the Day when God bandages his people’s brokenness, heals the wounds from the beating they took. See: the Name of God comes from far away, blazing with his fury, magnificent and weighty in its burden. His lips are frothing with anger and his tongue is like a flame that devours. His breath is like a river overflowing, reaching up to the throat, to sift through nations with his sieve of nullification, when the halter that misleads is in the people’s jaws. Your song will be like when you consecrate a sacrificial feast in the night; the joy of your heart like when you step in time with pipes and go onto God's mountain, onto Israel’s rock. And God will make his magnificent voice heard; make visible the descent of his arm — in righteous indignation, in a blaze of devouring flame, an expansive downpour, a scattering of hailstones. Yes, out of God’s voice comes devastation for Assyria, that club he used for beating. And it happens: wherever the sceptre of foundation passes by, the sceptre God laid upon him, there will be tambourines and strings, and in convulsions of war he will wage war against them. Yes, in Topheth the hearth was set in order long ago, in preparation for the king himself, made wide and deep, its piling up for conflagration and its abundant lumber — God’s exhalation, like a river of sulphur, sets it all alight. Oh, the doomed go down to Egypt for help; they depend on horses; they trust in chariots, because of how many there are, and in horsemen, because of how very mighty — they have no regard for Israel’s Sacred One. They don’t seek out God. But he himself is wise indeed; he will bring calamity; he will not rescind his proclamations. He stands against the household of the wicked and the assistants of corruption. Now, the Egyptians are human and not divine. Their horses are flesh and not spirit. God will reach forth his hand: then the one bringing aid will falter and the one being aided will fall, and together they will all of them collapse, spent. Because so said God to me: ‘like a lion roaring or a cub growling over its prey, when the full complement of shepherds is summoned against him — he won’t be cowed by their voice or chastened by their ruckus: that’s how God will be, coming down with his Legions in battle formation to fight on the mountain of Zion and on its hillside, Like sparrows fluttering . . . that’s how the God of Legions will mount a defense of Jerusalem — mounting defense and salvation, passing over and bringing rescue. Turn back, sons of Israel, back to the one from whom you defected so far. Because On That Day every man will reject his empty silver gods and his empty gods of gold, which you made for yourselves with your own hands of sin. And Assyria falls at the point of a blade — not a man’s blade. And they will be food for the sword — not a human sword. He flees from the sword, and his chosen sons become tribute-offerings. His fortress of stone will collapse in terror, and his elites will be cowed by the battle-flag, declares God — whose light is on Zion, whose flare burns in Jerusalem.
See: the king will attain his rightful kingship, and the sovereigns their just sovereignty.
And it happens: there comes into being a man like shelter from the wind, and cover from the downpour; like streams of water in the desert; like the shadow of a massive crag in a parched land.
Then the seers’ eyes will not be shut, and the hearers’ ears will listen closely.
Over-hasty hearts will come to understand knowledge, and stuttering tongues will hasten to proclaim in clear tones.
No longer will foul men be called philanthropists, nor petty misers known for liberality.
No, vile men will proclaim their villany. Their hearts will do foul things just for the sake of sacrilege, proclaiming deviance against God, emptying out the starving soul and depriving thirst of its drink.
The instruments of the ungenerous are evil: he plans petty plots to sabotage the poor with lying words, even when the needy make proclamations of justice.
But the generous heart plans generous plans, and will stand on its generosity.
You blithe women — get up! Cocky daughters — hear my voice; lend your ears to the things I say.
A few days more than a year and you’ll be trembling, you cocky women, because the year’s crop will run out, and there’ll be no gathering it in.
Be afraid, tremble, you blithe, you cocky women — strip naked and wrap on burlap loincloths.
Pound at your breasts; mourn for the meadows of delight, for the fruit-bearing vine,
For my people’s soil — thorns and choke-weed will grow up, yes, over the whole house of delight and the town of exultation:
The citadels will be demolished, the thronging city evacuated; fortresses and towers will be craters for the rest of time — a delight for donkeys and a pastureland for flocks.
Until the spirit will be emptied out from the exalted realms onto us, and the desert wasteland becomes a vineyard, a vineyard so thick you’d think it was a forest.
Then justice comes to rest in the desert wasteland, and righteousness will settle in the vineyard.
And it happens: what justice brings about is peace, and what righteousness offers is serenity and trust until forever.
My people make their home in the shelter of peace, and in the resting-place of trust, and in quiet settlements.
But hail falls upon the forest’s downfall, and the city will be brought down into deep depression.
You are blessed who plant seeds beside the waters, you who send forth oxen and mules on foot.
Oh doom for you: you plunder but are not plundered, you betray but they didn’t betray you. When you’ve completed your plunder, you’ll be plundered. When your betrayal is finished, they’ll betray you.
God, have mercy on us: we’ve put our high hopes in you. Be their muscle in the mornings, yes indeed, and save us in our moment of oppression.
The peoples skittered away from the voice of the rabble. The nations fled in all directions from your exaltation.
And your loot gets hoarded up like caterpillars hoarde; like locusts scuttle back and forth he will pace back and forth over them.
God is on high because of his dwelling in exalted realms; he saturates Zion with justice and righteousness.
And it happens: when your moment comes, your security is the riches of salvation, is wisdom and knowledge, is fear of God. This is his stockpile.
See the lionhearted among them on the outside: they scream. The messengers of peace sob bitterly.
The roads are ravaged; the journeyman comes to a halt. He has voided the covenant, rejected the cities, given no thought to men.
Earth wails and wanes; Lebanon is revolted with itself and topples. Sharon is like a wasteland; Bashan and Carmel are rattled.
‘Now I stand, says God; now I am on high; now I am lifted up.
You’re impregnated with straw; you’re giving birth to dry wheat; your own breath will consume you like a flame.
And the nations are inflamed like lime. They are thorns, cut down and burned in the flame.
Listen, you, far away: hear what I’ve done. And you, close by: know my strength.
On Zion the sinners are petrified; a shudder seizes the godless: ‘who among us will dwell in consuming flame? Who among us will dwell in burning forever?
The one who walks in righteousness and proclaims upright things, who rejects ill-gotten gains and yanks his hands away from receiving bribes; who stops up his ears from hearing blood-soaked words and screws his eyes shut from seeing evil:
He, he will rest his head in exalted realms; his fortress will be a barracks of rock; he will be given his bread; his water will be secured for him.
The king in his loveliness: your own eyes will see a vision of him, and behold the land that stretches far and wide.
Your heart will ponder nightmares. Where is the accountant? Where is the manager of funds? Where is the one who tallied up the towers?
You will not see the defiant nation — the nation with a language too deep for you to hear, a tongue that sputters so you understand nothing.
Behold Zion, city of our congregations: your eyes will see Jerusalem, a quiet resting place — a tented tabernacle not to be dismantled. Not one of its nails will ever once be extracted, nor will any of its tackling be torn away.
Because there God will be, magnificent, a place of rivers and of rivulets spreading wide their fingers for us: not one oared ship will go along them, nor magnificent galleys pass through.
Yes: God is our judge, God our lawgiver, God our king; he will save us.
Your tackling is slackened; there was no firming up the mainmast for them, no unfurling a sail — and then the spoils of a massive loot are divvied up; the crippled prey upon the prey.
No, the one who rests his head there won’t say, ‘I’m faint with fever.’ The people living there will have their guilt lifted off of them.
Come close, nations, so you can hear. Peoples, mark my words. Let the Earth hear, and everything that fills it; the world and everything emerging from it.
God has a rankling grudge against all the nations, and a burning rage against all their legions: he has exterminated them, given them up for butchery.
Their casualties will be sent away, and out of their corpses a stench will arise, and mountains will be dripping, awash with their blood.
And all the legions of the heavens will be dissolved, and like a scroll the heavens will be rolled up, and all the legions will wither away like the foliage withers from off the vine; like a fig falling from a fig tree.
Because my blade has slaked its thirst in heaven — look: it will descend upon Edom and upon the people of my prohibition for the sake of justice.
God has a blade which is covered in blood; it is glutted with the fat and with the blood of goats and of lambs, with the kidney-fat of rams: yes, a sacrifice is God’s in Bozrah, and a massive slaughter in the land of Edom.
And the proud bulls will go down with them, and with the bulls, the steers. And their territory will slake its thirst for blood, and their dust will be glutted with fat.
Because the day of revenge belongs to God — the year to settle the score on Zion's lawsuit.
Her waterways will be transformed into molten tar, and her dust into sulfurous resin, and her territory will be blazing tar.
Neither by night nor by day will it be extinguished. Its smoke will float upwards for all time; from generation to generation it will lie in ruin — until forever and forever not one person will pass through.
But pelicans and bitterns will occupy it; owls and ravens will nest in it. He will stretch the boundary of the void around it, and the borderstones of the great nothing.
When they call its nobles to the kingdom there will be none there, and all its elites will come to nothing.
In her citadels, thorns will sprout up. Nettles and briars in her strongholds, and they’ll be a habitat for writhing monsters, a domain for owls.
Desert wildlings will rub shoulders with island creatures; shaggy beasts will call out to their companions; night terrors will make a home for themselves there and find a place of rest.
Arrowsnakes will nest there -- will lay eggs, will hatch, will lurk in the shadows. There too the vultures will be gathered, each female with its mate.
Go look for answers from the pages of God’s book. Read it aloud: not one of them will fail; no female will lack a mate: the order comes from my mouth, and my breath gathers them together.
And he cast their lot, and his hand distributed to each of them measure by measure; for all of time they will occupy it; generation after generation they will rest there.
The desert wilderness and barren lands will rejoice; the wastelands will celebrate. They’ll burst forth into blossoms like saffron.
It will blossom forth, bursting into blossom and celebration, oh, yes, celebration and cheers of triumph. The majesty of Lebanon will be handed over to it; the magnificence of Carmel and Sharon. They will see God’s majesty, the magnificence of our god.
Hold fast those weak hands and steady those buckling knees.
Say to anyone whose heart is racing, hold fast. Don’t be scared. Look: your god is coming with vengeance; the god who brings payback is coming; he will save you.
Then blind eyes will be opened and deaf ears will be unblocked.
Then cripples leap up like stags, and mute tongues shout in triumph, because waterways come crashing forth in the desert wasteland, and streams in the wilderness.
And the scorching sand becomes an oasis, and the parched steppe becomes wellsprings of waterways. In the jackals’ lairs the flocks will lay their heads. It will become grassland with rushes and reeds.
And there comes to be a thoroughfare, a pathway there: the holy pathway, it will be called, and no one defiled will go over it. Rather it will be for him who walks the path — foolish but never stumbling.
No lion will be there, and no ravening creature, no — none will arise or be found there, where the redeemed walk.
God’s ransomed people will come back. They’ll go to Zion with cheers of joy and triumph hymns unceasing to adorn their heads; they’ll attain delight and joy, while sorrow and sighs are sent running.
It happened in the fourteenth year that Hezekiah was king: Sennacherib, King of Assyria, rose up against the fortressed cities of Judah, and he seized them all.
And this king of Assyria sent his Rab-shakeh in might and majesty of forces from Lachish to Jerusalem, to King Hezekiah. And he stood at the channel of the uppermost reservoir on the thoroughfare of the Fuller's Field.
Then Eliakim, Hilkiah’s son, came out to meet him — Eliakim who watched over the household, and Shebna the scribe, and Joah, Asaph’s son, the record keeper.
The Rab-shakeh said to them, ‘say this to Hezekiah: “this is what the great king, Assyria’s king, says: ‘what is this assurance you’re so assured of?
‘“‘I myself say: it's nothing but flapping lips and empty proclamations. I have a battle plan and fighting men — and you, in whom are you so confident that you defy me?
‘“‘Look at you, relying on a crutch, this splintered stalk: on Egypt, which — if anyone leans his weight on it — will go right through his hand and skewer it. That’s how Pharaoh, King of Egypt, is to everyone who relies on him.
‘“‘Now, should you say to me, “it’s on God, our god, that we rely” — isn’t that the god whose lofty heights and altars Hezekiah had removed, then said to Judah and Jerusalem, “at the front of this altar, you will prostrate yourselves.”‘?
’“So now swear fealty to my master, Assyria’s king, and I’ll give you two thousand horses — if you can give them riders.
‘“how can you turn away even one captain, the most minor of my master’s servants, and entrust yourselves to Egypt for their chariots and horsemen?”
‘Now, am I rising up against this land without God? It was God who said to me, “rise up against this land, and lay waste to it.”’
And Eliakim spoke, and Shebna, and Joah, to Rab-shakeh: ‘talk to your servants in Syriac: we understand it, so don’t talk to us in Hebrew — the people are listening on the wall.’
But the Rab-shakeh said, ‘did my master send me to your master, and to you, so I could speak that kind of speech? Didn’t he send me to those people on that wall, eating their own dung and drinking their own piss with you?
Then the Rab-shakeh took his stand and called out loud in a grand voice, in Hebrew, and he said: ‘listen to the proclamations of the great king, the king of Assyria!
‘This is what the king says: “don’t let Hezekiah delude you: he can’t save you.
‘“And don’t let Hezekiah win your trust for God by saying, ‘God who rescues will rescue us — this city won’t be handed over to Assyria’s king.’
‘“Don’t listen to Hezekiah.”
“Until I come and take you to a land like your own land: a land of wheat and winepresses; a land of bread and vineyards.
‘“Watch out that Hezekiah doesn’t mislead when he says, ‘God will rescue us.’ Did any other nations’ gods deliver even one man’s territory from the hand of Assyria’s king?
‘“Where are Hamath’s gods? And Arphad’s? Where are the gods of Sepharvaim? Did they rescue Samaria from my hand?
‘“Which god is there in all these territories that has rescued its territory out of my hand? And God’s going to deliver Jerusalem?”’
But they held their tongues, and didn’t say a word in answer. Because the king’s command was, ‘don’t answer him.’
And Eliakim, Hilkiah’s son, who watched over the household, and Shebna the accountant, and Joah, Asaph’s son, the record-keeper, went to Hezekiah with clothes torn and told him the Rab-shakeh’s pronouncements.
And it happened that when King Hezekiah heard, he tore his clothes, and wrapped himself in burlap, and went to the house of God.
And he sent Eliakim, who watched over the household, and Shebna the scribe, and the elders of the priesthood, wearing burlap, to Isaiah, Amoz’s son, the prophet.
And they said to him, ‘this is what Hezekiah says: today is trouble and chastisement; a day of scorn: the babies are coming to term, and there’s no strength to give them birth.
‘Maybe God, your god, will hear the Rab-shakeh’s proclamations that his master, Assyria’s king, sent to mock the god who lives — and will upbraid him for those proclamations, which God, your god, has heard. So lift up a prayer for the stragglers left behind, those who can still be found.’
So the servants of King Hezekiah came to Isaiah.
And Isaiah said to them, ‘say this to your master: “this is what God says: ‘don’t be afraid of the proclamations you’ve heard, which these boys from Assyria’s king used to blaspheme me.
‘“‘See how I am placing a spirit within him, and he’ll hear something, and when he hears what he hears he’ll go back to his territory, and there in his own territory I will make him fall at the point of a blade.’”’
Then the Rab-shakeh went back and found Assyria’s king at war with Libnah — because he had heard that he had moved out from Lachish.
And he heard this said about the King of Kush, Tirhakah: ‘He marches out to war with you.’ He heard, and he sent messengers to Hezekiah. He said:
‘This is what you say to Hezekiah, king of Judah: say, “don’t allow this god of yours, the one you count on, to delude you when he says ‘Jerusalem will not be handed over to Assyria’s king.’
‘“Look, you’ve heard what Assyria’s kings have done to all the territories: they annihilated them. But you’ll be saved?
‘“Did any of the other nations' gods save them, the nations that my fathers crushed? Gozan and Haran and Rezeph and the sons of Eden who were in Telassar?
‘“Where’s the king of Hamath, or the king of Arphah, or the king of Sepharvaim’s city now? of Hena? of Ivah?”’
But Hezekiah took the letter from the envoys’ hands, and read it. Then Hezekiah went up to the house of God and spread the letter out in front of God.
And Hezekiah prayed to God. He said,
‘God of Legions, Israel’s god, seated among the Cherubim: it is you; you alone are god over all kingdoms of earth; you made the heavens and the earth.
‘Lean your ear towards me, God: listen. Open your eyes, God, and see; hear all the proclamations of Sennacherib: he sent them to mock the god who lives.
‘It is surely true, God: Assyria’s kings have sliced through all the territories with all their land,
‘Thrown their gods into the fire, because they weren’t gods, only things made by human hands — wood and stone, and they destroyed them.
‘And now, God, our god — save us from his hand, so they’ll know — all the kingdoms of the earth will know that you are God, only you.’
And Isaiah son of Amoz sent word to Hezekiah: he said, ‘so says God, the god of Israel: “as you’ve prayed to me against Sennacherib, Assyria’s king,
‘“This is the proclamation that God proclaims about him: ‘Zion's daughter, the maiden, mocks and disdains you; Jerusalem’s daughter tosses her head back and laughs at you.
‘“‘Whom do you revile? Whom do you blaspheme, and against whom do you raise up your voice, raise up the hauteur of your eyes? Against Israel’s Sacred One.
‘“‘By the hand of your servant you reviled my Master, and you said, “with a horde of cavalry I’ll go up on high on the mountains, into the heart of Lebanon, and I’ll hew down its towering cedars and its choicest cypress trees, and I’ll go up on high to the edges of its forest thickets.
‘“‘“I quarried and I drank water, and with the pads of my heels I dried up all the rivers around the bunkers.”
‘“‘Haven’t you heard from a great distance that I did it? From days long gone by that I formed its outline? Now I’m the one who brought it about, for city strongholds to be laid waste, left in desolate ruin.
‘“‘So the people living there, with their puny forces, they were beat down and ashamed; they were like grass in the field and like green moss, like weeds on rooftops and like crops before they sprout.
‘“‘But I know your sitting, and going out, and travelling, and I know your raging against me.
‘“‘Because your raging has come up to my ears, I’m going to put my hook up your nose and my bridle in your jaw, and make you retreat on the same road you came down.’
‘“This is the sign for you: this year you’ll eat what grows on its own; next year you’ll eat what comes out of that; and in the third year you’ll plant and harvest, and sow vineyards, and eat their fruits.
‘“Then once again those left behind, stragglers of the house of Judah, will put down roots and yield up fruit.
‘“Yes, from Jerusalem those left behind will go forth, and stragglers from the mountain, Zion: the fierce desire of God with his Legions will do this.”
‘Therefore so says God about Assyria’s king: “he won’t come to this city. He won’t shoot his arrow here, won’t face it down with a shield or heap up his ramparts against it.
‘“He’ll go back down that same path he came on, and he won’t come to this city,” declares God.
‘“I will guard this city and save it, for my sake and the sake of David, my servant.”’
So God’s angel went out to the Assyrian camp, where he struck down 185,000 of them. Then when people got up at the crack of dawn, look: every one of them was a cadaver, dead.
Then Sennacherib, King of Assyria, set off to go — to return, and to settle in Nineveh.
And it happened: there he was prostrate, worshipping his god Nisroch, when his sons Adrammelech and Sarezer struck him down at the point of a blade — but they themselves slipped away into the land of Ararat, while Sennacherib’s son Esarhaddon reigned in his place.
In those days Hezekiah was deathly ill, and Isaiah the prophet, son of Amoz, came to him. He said to him, ‘so says God: “put your household in order, because you’re dying, and you won’t survive this.”’
But Hezekiah turned his face to the wall and prayed to God.
He said, ‘Oh God, please, remember how I’ve kept walking in your sight, in truth and with a full heart; how I did what was good in your eyes.’ And Hezekiah sobbed heaving sobs.
And it happened: God’s proclamation came to Isaiah. It said,
‘Go and say to Hezekiah, so says God, the god of David your father: “I listened to your prayer. I saw your tears. Look: here I am, adding to your days — adding fifteen years.
‘“I will rescue you from the palm of the hand of Assyria’s king — you and this city. I will mount a defense of this city.
‘“This is your sign, from God to you, that God will do this Thing He Proclaimed:
‘“Watch me send the shadow on the sundial, which has gone down on Ahaz’s dial, backwards by ten degrees.”’
What Hezekiah, King of Judah, wrote when he was sick but survived his sickness:
‘Me, I said, “at the silent noontide of my days I will go to the gates of the Grave. I have been cheated of the years that were left to me.”
‘I said, “I will not see God, God on the earth among living things; I will not gaze on humanity on earth anymore, among those who inhabit this dying world.
‘“My lifetime has fled from me and been dismantled like a shepherd’s tent. I have rolled my life up like a weaver rolls yarn. He will trim me like a stray thread; from day to night you’ll finish me off.
‘“I chewed over things until the dawn — like a lion, he splintered every one of my bones. From day to night, you’ll finish me off.
‘“Like a crane, like a swallow, I wheedle; I moan like a dove. My eyes grew heavy from setting their sights high — my Master, I’m in anguish; fight on my side.
‘“What proclamation can I make? He said it to me, and he did it too: I will slink on tiptoe through all my years in the bitterness of my soul.
‘“My Master, these are the things by which men live; it is in these things that my spirit finds life. You will revive me, and make me live.
‘“Look: in exchange for peace I got bitterness upon bitterness. But you were in love with my soul, loved it out of the ditch of decay, because you tossed all my sins over your shoulder.
‘“Because the Grave will never give you thanks. Death will never celebrate you. The ones who sink into the abyss will never wait in hope for your truth.
‘“Alive! He is alive who praises you. Like me, today. From father to son they pass on knowledge of your truth.
‘“God was there to save me. And so we will strum my songs on our strings every day we are alive, in the house of God.”’
Isaiah had said, ‘have them get a cake made of figs, and apply it to the ulcer, and he will live.’
And Hezekiah had said, ‘what is the sign that I will ascend to the house of God?’
In that period Merdoach-baladan, son of Baladan, king of Babylon, sent a letter and a gift to Hezekiah: he had heard that he had been ill, and had recovered his strength.
And Hezekiah was delighted with them. He showed them the storehouse of his prized possessions — the silver and the gold; the spices and the good oil; the armory with all his gear; and everything he could find in his treasure troves. There was not one thing Hezekiah didn’t show in his household, or in his whole dominion.
Then Isaiah came, the prophet, to King Hezekiah. He said to him, ‘what did these men say? And where did they come to you from?’ And Hezekiah said, ‘from a territory far away — they came to me from Babylon.’
And he said, ‘what did they see in your house?’ Hezekiah said, ‘they saw my entire house — there wasn’t a thing that I didn’t show them in my treasure troves.’
And Isaiah said to Hezekiah, ‘listen to this proclamation from the God of Legions.
‘“Look: see days approaching when everything in your house and everything amassed by your fathers up until this day is carried off to Babylon. Not a thing will be left, says God.
‘“And they will take from the sons which come from you, to whom you give birth. They will be eunuchs in the courts of Babylon’s king.’”
Then Hezekiah said to Isaiah, ‘Good. The proclamation of God, which you have proclaimed, is good,’ he said, ‘because there will be peace and security in my days.’
Console, console my people, says your god.
Speak into the heart of Jerusalem and call out to her. Proclaim that her servitude is finished; that her corruption is absolved; that she has received, from God’s hand, two times all her sins. A voice calling out . . . in the desert . . . clear God’s path. In the wastelands, lay down a straight route for our god. Every gorge will be lifted up. Every mountain, every hillside, laid low. What’s twisted will be straightened out, and the rough rocks will be smoothed into plains. Then God’s majesty will be unveiled, and all flesh will see it as one: God’s mouth has proclaimed this thing. A voice! Saying, 'cry out.' But I said, 'what to cry? All flesh is grass, and all its grace is like a blossom in a field.
Grass withers. Blossoms wilt: God’s spirit blows over them. Yes indeed, the people are grass. Grass withers. Blossoms wilt. But the proclamation of our god will stand fast for eternity.
Get up and go onto the lofty mountain, you, Zion’s bringer of good news. Raise up your voice in might, you, Jerusalem’s bringer of good news. Raise it up, don’t be afraid: say to the cities in Judah, look: see your god. See my Master, God: he will come with a firm grip — his arm will reign for him. See his wages with him; his payback before his eyes. Like a herdsman herds his flocks, he will gather up lambs with his arm and hold them against his chest. He’ll tend to them while they carry their young. Who ever quantified the water cupped in his palm? Or measured the heavens in handspans? Tallied up the dust of Earth with a measuring basket, or weighed mountains on a scale? The hills in a balance? Who ever measured the spirit of God? Was any man his mentor — did anyone teach him? Who gave him mentorship and made him understand, and taught him on the routes of justice? And taught him knowledge, and made him know the pathways of understanding? Look: the world’s peoples are like a drip from a bucket; you’d think they were dust dropped off the scales. See how he picks up the islands like some little speck. All Lebanon is nowhere near enough fuel for the fire; all its living things are nowhere near enough for a burnt-offering. All the peoples of the world are like nothing next to him. To him, they seem like less than zero, like the void. To whom will you analogise this god? What analogy will you use to resemble him? To the artisan’s image, smelted and carved? Overlaid with gold filigree by the smith, with silver chains? Too poor for an offering, he picks out a tree that won’t rot. He goes looking for a wise artisan, to set up an image that won’t be toppled. Don’t you know? Haven’t you heard? Weren’t you told about it from the beginning? Don't you understand the Earth’s foundation? Him: the one sitting astride the circumference of the Earth, while the ones living on it are like gnats. Him: stretching out the heavens like a curtain, and spreading them forth like a tent for living in. The one who turns dignitaries into nothing: he makes the judges of the world like empty space. No sooner are they interred, no sooner planted, no sooner do their stumps take root, than he’ll blow on them, and they’ll shrivel, and a cyclone will carry them off like straw. 'Well then, to whom will you analogise me? Whose equal will I be?' Says the Sacred One. Lift your eyes up on high and see who created all this — who ushers forth legions in their numbers and calls on them all by their names, in his abundant power, awesome in strength, and not a single one of his men comes up short. Jacob, why are you saying, Israel, why are you proclaiming, ‘my path is hidden from God’? and ‘my judgement gets a pass from my god’? Don’t you know? Haven’t you heard? This god is forever, he is God still, who creates the ends of the Earth — he won’t falter; he won’t fail. No calculation can exhaust his insight. It’s he who gives might to others when they falter, and masses up their power when they have no strength. Even strapping young men will falter, and favourite sons will come crashing, crashing down.
But those with high hopes in God will grow strong again; they will rise up on the wing like eagles; they will sprint without faltering; they will walk and never falter.
Fall mute in my presence, you islands. Peoples of the world, grow strong again. Let them come closer and make their proclamation: let us draw near together to each other and to justice.
Who was it that awakened a man from the land of the rising sun? He called him in righteousness to his feet and presented the nations before him, gave him dominion over monarchs. He makes them like dust with his sword; like dry scattered wheat with his bow and arrow.
He hunts them down and passes by in peace, on the road where feet had never traveled. Who did this? Who made it? Him, calling forth from the first generation on down, ‘I, God, am the first. And with each one after till the end, I am he. The islands saw, and they were afraid. The ends of the earth shuddered. They came near. They approached. To a man, every one of them helped his friends, and said to his brother, ‘be strong.’ The artisan strengthened the smith, and the one who pounds things flat with hammers strengthened the one who beats on the anvil — about the soldering they said, ‘it’s good’ — and they strengthened it with bolts, so it wouldn’t slip. And you — Israel, my servant; Jacob, you, the one I choose; offspring of Abraham who loved me, Whom I made strong; whom I grasped and took from the ends of the Earth, whose noblemen I called forth, and said, ‘my service is yours; I chose you. I don’t reject you. ‘Don’t be afraid: I am with you. Don’t be downcast: I am your god. I’ll fortify you, yes, I’ll help you, yes, I’ll support you with the right hand of my righteousness. Look: they’ll all be humiliated and put to shame, inflamed with anger against you as they are. They’ll be practically non-existent; the men who go up against you will perish. You’ll go looking, but you won’t find the ones that fought you: they’ll be practically non-existent; the men who did battle with you will be less than nothing. Because I am God, your god, who clasps your right hand firmly and gives it strength; who says to you, ‘don’t be afraid: I’ll help you. Don’t be afraid, maggot! Jacob, and you little men of Israel — I’ll help you, declares God, your redeemer, Israel’s Sacred One. Look: I am making you a slick new blade — sharp, serrated, with teeth for threshing. You’ll slice through mountains and pulverize them; you’ll make hillsides like brittle wheat. You’ll sift them, and a gust of wind will carry them off — they’ll scatter in swirling dust devils, and you’ll be joyous, delighted in God, exulting in Israel’s Sacred One. When the impoverished, the destitute go hunting for water, and there’s nothing — when their tongues shrivel, dry with thirst — I, God, will respond to them. Israel’s God will not abandon them. I will burst open waterways on the jutting peaks, and wellsprings within valley crevices. I’ll make the desert wasteland into a pool of water, and the parched places into sources where water pours forth. I’ll give trees in the wasteland: cedars, acacias, myrtles, and olives. I’ll put fir trees and cypress and box trees down in the desert, all side by side. So they’ll see, and know, and consider, and come all together to understand — that the hand that did this is God’s. That Israel’s Sacred One created it. ‘Gather your accusations,’ says God, ‘present your arguments for the prosecution,’ says Jacob’s King. Let them present, and tell us what’s going to happen, the origins of it all — what are they? Let them tell us, and we’ll take them to heart, and come to know their final outcome. Or else let us hear what’s coming. Tell what’s coming next, so we’ll know that you’re gods! Oh yes, do something — good or bad, so we can consider it, and see all at once.
See: you’re less than nothing. What you do is less than empty air. Whoever chooses you is a travesty. I’ve riled up someone from the dark North, and he’s coming. From the sunrise at dawn he will call on my name, and he will approach rulers like you approach the mud you use for bricks; like a potter stomps on clay. Who’s told it all from the beginning, so we’ll know? From the time before, so we can call him righteous? No indeed, there’s no one telling that, no, no one hearing it, indeed, no one hears what you’re saying. The beginnings on Zion — look! look, see them. I will give to Jerusalem one who brings good news. I look — not one man. Not one mentor among them, whom I could ask and have the answer proclaimed. See: all of them, nothing but inanity and empty air. Their works, their sculpted gods — wind and void.
Look: see my servant. I am bolstering him, the one I choose — my soul is satisfied with him. I will bestow my spirit upon him, and he’ll make justice go forth among the nations.
He will not scream, won’t lift up his voice or make it heard in the street. He won’t shatter splintered reeds, or extinguish smoldering wicks. He’ll usher justice forth according to the truth. He won’t be extinguished or splintered, until he sets down justice upon the earth. The islands are waiting in high hope for his teaching. So says God, the god who creates the heavens — stretches them taught, unfurls the Earth and the things that come forth from it, giving the people upon it their breath, giving spirit to everyone walking on it. ‘I am God. I called you in righteousness; I clasp hold of your hand, hold it tight, and I strengthen it. To open blind eyes and let prisoners out of their cells; out of the jailhouse where they sit in the pitch dark. I am God. That is my name, and my glory — I will give it to no other, nor my praise to carved idols. The beginnings . . . look: they’ve come and gone. These things I tell about are new things. In the time that’s left before they bloom into full flower, I’m letting you hear them. Sing for God — sing a new song; sing his praise from the outermost boundaries of Earth — you, going down to the ocean, and you, filling it full; you islands, and you inhabiting them. Let the desert wasteland lift its voice high; the outposts too, settlements where Kedar lives. Let those who live in Sela sing in triumph; from the mountain tops let them bellow forth. Let them attribute majesty to God, and tell about his praise on the islands. God will emerge like a war hero; like a man in battle he will stoke his fierce passion; he will holler and shout, yes, against his enemies, he will win a heroic victory. I have kept quiet for ages, stayed silent and held myself back — I will scream, like a woman giving birth; I will gasp and pant all at once. I will annihilate mountains and hillsides, and dry up their grass. I will turn rivers into islands and dry up the ponds. And I will lead the blind to walk down a path they never knew before; down tracks they never knew, I will guide their path. I will turn the pitch black in front of them into light, and the twisted things into the straight and narrow — these are the things I will do, and I will not abandon them. Those who rely on carved idols will get turned around and put to shame. Shame! For anyone who says to metal sculptures, ‘you are our gods.’ Deaf men — hear! Blind men — look hard, until you see. Who is blind if not my servant? Who’s as deaf as the messenger I send? Who’s as blind as him, perfected, blind as the servant of God? You see plenty, but you don’t observe. Your open ears hear nothing. God has rejoiced, because of his righteousness. He will make his teaching magnificent and vast. But this is a plundered and a looted nation — trapped in pits, all of them, and hidden in jailhouses. They are plunder, with no one to recover them. They are loot, with no one to say, ‘give them back.’ Who among you will lend your ears to this? Who will listen close to hear what comes next? Who offered up Jacob as plunder and Israel as loot? Wasn’t it God? He’s the one we sinned against; we had no interest in walking down his paths, and never listened to the things he taught. So he poured forth the molten heat of his rage on him, his might in battle, and it encompassed him in flames. But he didn’t realise: they tore burning through him, and he never took it to heart.
For peace without end,
On David’s throne and in his kingdom,
To ground it and uphold it in justice and in righteousness from now until eternity,
The fierce desire of God with his Legions is doing this.
10.
11.
The spirit of wisdom and inspired understanding;
The mentor's spirit; the hero’s breath;
The spirit of knowledge; the fear of God.
He won’t judge by what his eyes see,
Or make verdicts based on what his ears hear.
He’ll give fair verdicts to those impoverished on Earth.
He’ll pound the earth with a sceptre, his mouth,
And with breath from his lips he’ll bring death to the wicked.
And the cloth of trust is wrapped secure around his waist.
The leopard and the goat will lie side by side;
The calf and the young lion and the fat-fed ox will be together,
With a little boy leading them on.
Their young will nestle together,
And the lion will eat hay like the ox.
And a boy in the flower of youth will reach his hands into the adder’s burrow.
All over my Sacred Mountain,
Because Earth will be filled with the knowledge of God,
Like the waters that that engulf the ocean floor.
Other nations will come to seek him out, and his refuge will be majestic.
Fierce with desire to claim the survivors of his people, the stragglers still left —
From Assyria and from Egypt, from Pathros, from Kush, from Elam, from Shinar, from Hamath, from the islands in the ocean.
And gathers up Israel’s outcasts,
And assembles Judah’s scattered survivors
From the four furthest wingtips of the Earth.
And Judah’s oppressors will be cut down.
Ephraim will bear no grudge against Judah,
And Judah won’t oppress Ephraim.
As one united front they’ll prey upon the sons of the East, sending forth their hands onto Edom and Moab, while the sons of Ammon listen to their commands.
He pounds its seven channels and lets people journey over it with dry shoes.
Just like there was for Israel on the day they rose up out of Egypt’s land.
12.
‘I praise you, God, with hands outstretched.
You burned with rage against me;
Your rage has turned aside,
And you soothe me.
I will trust;
I won’t fear,
For my strength and my music is God, the GOD,
And for me he is deliverance.
From the wellsprings of deliverance.
‘Give praise to God, with hands outstretched.
Call on his name;
Make every nation know the things he does;
Make everyone remember:
His name is lifted high.
This is made known over all the Earth.
Because of him, great in your midst — Israel’s Sacred One.
13.
14.
15.
The Burden of Moab
On the night Ar, City of Moab, is obliterated, left silent — on the night Kir is obliterated, he is left silent.
16.
Yes, the usurper is finished; the destroyer is spent; the boot is through stomping the earth.
17.
Look: Damascus, a city snatched out of existence. It will be a pile of rubble.
18.
The birds of prey will live on them for the summer, and every animal on the ground will live on them for the winter.
To the place of God's name. To Mount Zion.
19.
Look at God astride his chariot of swift clouds: he comes to Egypt. And Egypt’s empty gods will reel in his presence; its heart will dissolve inside it.
20.
21.
Like cyclones pass across the south, it comes: from desert regions, from a fearsome land.
Someone calling out from Seir: ‘Guard! What news from the night? Guard! What news from the night?’
You’ll spend the night in thick Arabian woods, you Dedanite pilgrims.
22.
What is it with you now? You’ve climbed all the way up onto the rooftops!
23.
Wail, ships from Tarshish. It’s emptied: no entry, no access, no homes. From Kittim’s land it’s revealed to them.
24.
And so: everyone living on Earth is inflamed; pitifully few men are left behind.
But I say, ‘Oh, I, I am thin, thin. The deceivers deceived me, they blinded me, oh, they deceived me, they left me blind.’
25.
For all the nations,
On this mountain,
Of fat things.
A feast of fine wine and fat cuts of meat. Fine, sophisticated wine.
The veil that veils over all nations —
The shroud spread across every race.
As for the ignominy of his people: he will banish it from the earth —
For so God proclaimed.
26.
A city of strength is ours.
Salvation: God laid it down as our walls and our reinforcements.
A righteous nation that keeps the faith will come in.
Because it trusts in you.
In GOD WHO IS GOD is a rock for all generations.
He brought it low, he laid it low to the earth,
He wrenched it down into the dust.
The relentless tread of the poor.
Oh You who Stand Straight and Tall, you smooth the path the righteous take.
Our souls have ached with longing for your name and the memory of you.
Because whenever your judgments are on Earth, whoever lives in the world learns righteousness.
In the land of the straight and narrow, he’ll still do wrong, and he won’t see the splendour of God.
They will, though. They’ll see. They’ll be ashamed of their fierce resentment against the people, oh yes,
your oppressors will be food for the flame.
Because you’ve accomplished for us everything we had to do.
But thanks to you we remember your name.
That’s how you’ve reckoned with them, destroyed them and erased their memory.
You had driven them far, all to the ends of the earth.
They poured out their whispered prayer when you disciplined them.
That’s how we’ve been in your sight, God.
We can accomplish no salvation on earth, no, not a single one of those who live in the world has come back to life.
Cut short your sleep, sing in triumph, you who lie in the dirt: the dewdrops upon you shine like dew in the light, and the earth is bringing its ghosts back to life.
Hide just for a moment, until the rage passes you by.
Earth will lay bare her blood. She won’t hide her murder victims anymore.
27.
Upon Leviathan the piercing serpent,
Upon Leviathan the twisted serpent,
And slay the monster in the ocean.
‘a vineyard of pure red wine.
every instant I will water it so no one can come near it;
I will guard it night and day.
Who will meet me in battle with thorns and choke-weed?
I will charge among them;
I will immolate them all at once.
Let him make peace with me,
peace, between him and me.
This nation has no understanding, and so
They will find no pity in the heart of him who made them;
he who sculpted them will show them no mercy.
28.
When the Whip goes whipping out over everything, it’ll pass us by; it won’t come near us, because we made a shelter out of lies, and we are hidden in deceit.’
29.
30.
In a land of pressure and oppression — out of which come lioness and lion, viper and winged serpent of flame — they will carry their wealth on donkeys’ shoulders, their treasures on camels’ haunches, to a people that offers no profit.
31.
32.
33.
34
35.
36.
‘Because this is what Assyria’s king says: “cut a deal with me, and come expose yourselves to me — let every man eat from his own vine, and every man from his own fig tree, and let every man drink water from his own well,
37.
38.
And the sun went back by ten of the degrees it had gone down.
39.
40.
41.
42.
I offer you as the people’s covenant, the light of the nations.
43.
1. And now so says God who created you, Jacob, and shaped you, Israel: ‘Don’t be scared. Because I’ve redeemed you. I've called you by your name. You belong to me.
2. When you cross through oceans, I’m with you. You will not be drowned in the torrents; when you walk into fire, you will not be incinerated; in the flames, you will not be burned.
3. Because I am God — your god, Israel’s Sacred One, who saves you. I handed over Egypt to ransom you, and Kush and Seba in exchange for you.
4. Because of how priceless you are in my eyes, how magnificent — how I loved you. I will give human beings in exchange for you, and nations in exchange for your soul.
5. Don’t be scared: I’m with you. I will bring your offspring out from the Eastern sunrise, and gather you from the sunset in the West.
6. I will say to the darkness of the North, ‘give forth,’ and to the South, ‘you shall imprison no more. Let my sons come back from far away, my daughters from the ends of the Earth —
7. Each one called by my name, for the sake of my majesty: I created him, and sculpted him out of clay, oh yes, I was the one who made him.
8. Send forth the people who are blind, though they have eyes, and the deaf who have ears.
9. The nations are all gathered together, and the peoples are assembled — who among them can tell about this? And let us hear these beginnings? Let them produce their witnesses, so they can be justified, let them hear and say, ‘it is true.’
10. It’s you: you, my witnesses, declares God — my servants, whom I’ve chosen, so you can know and secure your trust in me, and truly understand that I’m him. Before me no god was constructed, and there will be no other after me.
11. I, I am God. Nothing except me can save.
12. I told you, I saved you, I made you hear — it was no stranger among you. You are my witnesses, proclaims God — it is I who am god.
13. Even before there were days, I am he. Nothing can protect against my hand: I act, and who can undo it?
14. So says God, your redeemer, Israel’s sacred one: ‘Because of you I sent to Babel, and took down their choicest men, all of them — the Chaldeans too, who holler on their ships.
15. I. Am. God, your Sacred One, Israel’s creator, your king.
16. So says God, who provides you a path through the ocean and a way through the mighty waters,
17. Who brought out the chariots and cavalry, their brawn and their might, all assembled — they lay flat, and they’ll never get up. They’ll be snuffed out, quenched like a candlewick.
18. You shall not call to mind the beginnings — shall not scrutinise those ancient mysteries.
19. Look: see me making something new, now; it bursts into bloom. Don’t you know? Oh, yes, I lay forth a path in the wasteland; and rivers in the desert.
20. The living things that teem in the field will magnify me: the owls and the jackals, because I give them water in the desert, rivers in the desolate wasteland — to let my chosen people drink.
21. This people, which I formed and shaped for myself — they will make a record of my praise.
22. But Jacob, you didn’t call on me — Israel, you grew tired of me.
23. You didn’t bring me sheep for burnt-offerings; you never magnified me in your sacrificial rites. I never burdened you with making offerings; never tired you out with incense.
24. You never came with sugarcane to sweeten me up, to buy my favour, never filled me full of fat from sacrifices — no, instead you burdened me with your sins; exhausted me with your depravity.
25. I’m the one, I scrubbed away your rebellion, for my own sake, and I will not remember your sins.
26. Call me to mind; let’s fight for justice together; make your record and your recollection, so you can become righteous.
27. Your father sinned at the beginning, and the intercessors among you rebelled against me.
28. So I’ve polluted the sanctimonious nobles — handed over Jacob for extermination, and Israel for rejection.
44.
And now listen, Jacob, my servant. Israel, the one I choose:
So says God, who made you and sculpted you in the womb; God, who will help you. ‘Don’t be scared. Servant, Jacob, and Jeshrun, the one I choose —
Because I’m going to pour water where there is thirst, and send cascades flooding onto dry land. I’ll pour my spirit onto your offspring, and flood your progeny with my blessing.
They’ll blossom forth among the blades of grass, like willows next to rolling streams.
Someone will say, ‘I belong to God.’ And someone will be called by Jacob’s name. And someone will inscribe a pledge of his own hand to God, giving himself the title, ‘Israel.’
So says God — Israel’s king, his redeemer, the God of Legions: ‘I am the beginning, and I am what comes after, and besides me, nothing is god.
Who is like me? Who will call out, and tell, and lay it all out in order for me, from the moment when I set forth my people forever? And the things to come, which are on their way — let them tell all about it.
Stop your trembling and don’t be afraid. Haven’t I told you about it from way back when, and declared it? You are my witnesses: does any god exist besides me? There’s no other rock, no refuge, I know there isn’t.
They sculpt their idols — they’re inanity, all of them. And their fetishes: they’ll get nothing out of them. They are their own witnesses: they don’t see a thing; they know nothing; and because of that they’re put to shame.
Who has sculpted a god? Smelted an idol? they’ll not get one thing out of them.
Look. All their accomplices are humiliated. The artisans too, skilled beyond human skill: let them assemble themselves, all of them, and stand, and tremble. Let them be humiliated all at once.
The blacksmith makes an axe, and works his trade in the cinders, and hammers it into shape, and works at it with his brawny arms — but even he gets hungry, and his strength is gone; he drinks no water, and gets lightheaded.
The woodworker stretches out his measuring line; he traces alongside it with the point of a pencil; he makes it trim with a chisel and makes marks on it with a compass blade, makes it into the image of a man, with the beauty of human form, to dwell in the house.
He chops down cedars for himself — takes cypresses and oaks. He grew one for himself among trees in the forest thickets. He plants a pine tree, and the rain makes it grow.
Then it becomes a man's kindling. He takes material from it to burn. Just as sure as he ignites it and bakes bread, so surely he makes a god out of it and grovels before it. He makes an idol out of it and prostrates himself to it.
He sets half of it ablaze in a fire. With that half he eats meat; he roasts it and has his fill of the roast. For sure — he warms himself and says, ‘ahhh, I’m warm, and I see light.’
Then he makes what’s left over into a god — into an idol. He falls on his face and prostrates himself to it, prays to it — he says, ‘rescue me — you are my god.’
They don’t know. They don’t understand: he has glued their eyes shut, too tight to see, and their hearts too tight to contemplate.
No one’s turning it over in his mind: no one knows, no one understands, no one thinks to say, ‘I burned half of this stuff in the fire, and in fact I baked bread over the ashes, and roasted meat, and ate it. So now I’m going to make the leftovers into a travesty? I’m supposed to prostrate myself in front of pulp from a tree?
He fights over ash: a deluded heart made him swerve from his path; he can’t save his own soul or say, ‘there’s a lie in my own right hand.’
Remember these things, Jacob. Israel: you are my servant. I sculpted a servant for myself, and that’s you. Israel, you won’t slip out of my thoughts.
I’ve wiped away your rebellion like a thick fog, your sins like an overcast sky. Come back to me: I have redeemed you.
Sing triumph songs, you heavens: God has done it. Bellow in joy, you deep underpinnings of the Earth. Break out into triumph hymns, you mountains, you forest thickets — every last tree: God has redeemed Jacob, and adorned himself in Israel.
So says God — who redeems you, who sculpts you from the womb: ‘I am God — who makes everything, who stretches forth the heavens. Only me: I who unfurl the earth out of myself.
I who thwart the liars with their fake signals, and drive those fortune-telling hacks insane; who turn wise men around backwards and make their knowledge into drivel.
Who makes his servant’s proclamation stand firm, and brings his messenger’s plans to their completion. Who says, about Jerusalem, ‘she will be lived in,’ and about Judah’s cities, ‘they will be built — I will make the arid places in you rise and stand firm.’
Who says to the depths, ‘dry up’ and ‘I will shrivel your rivers.’
Who says, about Cyrus, ‘my shepherd — he will bring to completion my every delight.’ Who says about Jerusalem, ‘she shall be built,’ and about the temple, ‘its foundations shall be laid.’
45.
So says God to his anointed — to Cyrus, whom I clasp by his right hand to bring down whole populations in front of him. And I loosen the bowels of kings, loosen the doorways in front of him, and city gates — to leave none of them closed.
I myself will go in front of you and straighten what’s twisted; I’ll shatter brass doorframes and slice through bolts of iron.
I’ll give you treasures from the darkness, and hidden riches from secret places, so you’ll know that I am God who calls you by name — Israel’s god.
Because of my servant Jacob, and Israel whom I’ve chosen: I call out to you by name; I give you a high title, though you don’t know me.
I am God. There is nothing else beyond me; other than me there are no gods. I’m strapping on your gear, though you don’t know me.
It’s so they can know, from the eastern sunrise to its setting: there’s nothing other than me. I am God; nothing else is.
I who shape the light and create the dark, who make peace and create disaster: I am God, who makes all these things.
Cascade down, heavens, from above, and let the clouds pour forth righteousness. Let the earth break open; let it bring forth salvation like fruit; let righteousness blossom forth all at once — I am God; I created it.
Oh, doom, for anyone who fights with the one that sculpted him — he is a shard among shards of clay pottery in the soil. Can mud say to him who shapes it into brick, ‘what do you make?’ Does the work you make say ‘you have no hands?’
Doom for anyone who says to his father, ‘what do you give birth to?’ Or to the woman, ‘what does your labour produce?’
So says God, Israel’s Sacred One, who sculpted him: ‘ask me what’s coming. Give me orders — about my sons and about the things my hands are making.
I made Earth, and created humanity on it. Me. My hand stretched the heavens forth, and I arrayed all their legions in one array.
I’m the one: I lifted him up in righteousness, and straightened out all the paths he walks on. He’s the one who’ll build my city, and send forth my prisoners, and not in exchange for some price or bribe, says the God of Legions.
So says God: ‘Egypt’s capital, the merchandise of Kush and the Sabean men, for all their magnitude — they’ll cross over to your side, and be yours. They’ll walk along behind you; in chains, they’ll cross over and grovel before you — they’ll pray to you: ‘‘in you is the real god; no other idol is any real god.
‘‘Ah, you — you are the god that hides himself. Israel’s god, who saves.’’
They’re humiliated. Put to shame, in fact, all of them at once — they walk on in their humiliation, those artisans of lovely idols.
Israel is saved in God, and that salvation is forever. You will not be humiliated, not put to shame — forever and for all time.
So says God, who created the heavens — he is the god who sculpted the earth and made it, who fixed it firm. And not for nothing — he created it, sculpted it to be lived on: ‘I am God, and nothing else.
It wasn’t in some hiding place that I made my proclamation — in some corner of the deep dark land. I didn’t say, ‘hunt after me for nothing’ to Jacob’s offspring. I am God, who proclaims righteousness and tells about justice.
Gather, come, get close up all together, refugees from every nation. They don’t know, they who raise up wooden idols and pray to them like gods — gods who cannot save.
Tell all about it. Bring them up close, yes, let’s see them scheme together: who’s been speaking up about this from the start, from long ago? Who’ll tell about it from way back when? Am I not God? No one besides me is, there are no gods other than me — the righteous god, the one who saves. No one else.
Turn your face to me, and be saved. All you remote corners of Earth — I am god; no one else is.
By my own self I’ve sworn. The proclamation of righteousness came out from my mouth and will not go back, not until every knee bends to me and every tongue swears allegiance.
What they’ll say about me is, ‘in God alone rests righteousness and might. They’ll all come to him, and everyone with a grudge against him will be put to shame.
In God all the offspring of Israel will be made righteous — will exult.
46.
Bel falls to his knees. Nebo stoops down low. Those idols of theirs are for animals and beasts — a heavy load on the carts they carried, a burden they bear in their exhaustion.They stoop down low; they collapse to their knees, all together — they can’t carry this burden all the way; they’re gone, taken captive themselves.
Listen to me! House of Jacob, and everyone still left from the house of Israel: you, carried from the womb, lifted from the bosom,
And on into your old age: I am he. And on into your grey years, it is I who carry you on my shoulder, me, I who made you will lift you up; I will carry this burden all the way.
To whom will you compare me? What likeness, what analogue will you come up with, to make us comparable?
They dump gold out of their bags and weigh up their silver on scales; they commission a goldsmith, and he makes it into a god. Then they prostrate in front of it; oh yes, they grovel.
It gets carried on their shoulders; they hoist it up and then they set it in its spot; they erect it and it stands. It never leaves its place. Oh sure, they cry out to it, but it never answers — it never saves them from the danger all around them.
Remember this, and man up. You rebels: bring it to mind again.
Remember these eternal beginnings: that I am the only god, and no one else is — god, and no one comes close —
Who tells it all, from the beginning to the days to come, and from time long gone things that have never been done. Who says, my schemes will stand fast, and I will do whatever I like.
Who calls a bird of prey from the sunrise East — the man of my plans from far away. Yes, I proclaim it; yes, I will make it so; yes, I have shaped it; yes, and I’ll do it, too.
Listen to me, with your bullish hearts, you, far away from righteousness:
I’m drawing my righteousness near — it won’t be far, and my salvation will not delay; I will offer my salvation on Zion to Israel, my adornment.
47.
Get down in the dust and sit there. Maiden, daughter of Babylon: sit on the earth. No more throne for you; daughter of the Chaldeans, they won’t call you dainty and tender anymore.
Get millstones and grind out meal. Take off your veil; strip your thighs naked; lift your skirts, cross over the rivers.
Your nudity will be laid bare. Even your indecency will be visible — I will have my revenge. I'll let no human intercede.
Our redeemer — God of Legions is his name, Israel’s Sacred One:
Sit silent and go into the pitch darkness, daughter of the Chaldeans: they won’t call you the royal conqueress anymore.
I seethed with anger at my people, my inheritance — I degraded it and gave it into your hand. You showed them no mercy — you loaded the mighty weight of a massive yoke onto their old age.
You said, ‘for all time, I will be conqueress.’ You didn’t take these things to heart, didn’t remember what comes after.
So now hear this, you hedonist — you who sit in self-assurance, and say in your heart, ‘it’s me, and nobody else — I won’t sit in widowhood or know grief.’
These two things will come to you in one instant, on the same day: grief and widowhood. They’ll come to you complete, in their entirety, for the enormity of your witchcraft and the multitude of your spells.
You were self-assured in your evil; you said, ‘there’s no one around to see me.’ Your wisdom and your knowledge turned you backwards: you said in your heart, ‘it’s me, and nobody else.’
Now evil comes to you, and you won't know how to fend it off with magic. Trouble will fall on you, and you won’t be able to slough it off. Obliteration will come over you in an instant, before you realise.
Get up then, with those spells of yours, and with the enormity of your witchcraft. You’ve laboured over them since you were young — maybe you can get something out of them! Maybe you’ll win!
You’re sick and tired from all your scheming. Let’s see all those stargazers save you, those astronomers and visionaries, those knowledgeable in the monthly cycles — let’s see them save you from what’s coming to you.
Look: they’re like straw — fire immolates them; they won’t rescue their own selves from the grasp of the flame. No embers to keep warm for you; no light to sit beside.
So will it be with you for those who laboured alongside you — those who did business with you since you were young: each of them will wander off to his own private quarters, and you’ll have no one to save you.
48.
Hear this, household of Jacob — you, called by the name of Israel, who come forth from Judah’s waters. You, who swear in God’s name, who call to mind the god of Israel — but not in truth. Not in righteousness.
For they claim to be from the sacred city, and they lean on the god of Israel — God of Legions is his name.
I told all about those beginnings from long ago, from the start. They emerged from my mouth and I made them heard; in an instant I did them, and they came about.
It’s because I knew you: how stiff you are, with sinews of iron in your neck and a steel brow.
I told you, from time past; before it came about I made you hear — so you couldn’t say ‘my idol did that,’ or ‘my smelted image gave those orders.’
You heard — behold! — all this, and will you not tell? I let you hear about new things from now on, hidden things you did not know.
Now they are created — now, and not from time past, before the day when you didn’t hear them, so you couldn’t say, ‘see: I knew them.’
No, you didn’t hear; didn’t even know; from time past your ears weren’t even open — because I knew you would shroud yourself in treachery, concealed and called a rebel from the womb.
For my own name’s sake I will postpone my rage; for my own reputation I will hold back and not cut you down.
Look: I purified you, but not like silver. In the kiln of suffering, I refined you.
For my sake, for my own sake, I am doing it: how could I let my name be degraded? Or my glory? I will not give it to anyone else.
Listen to me, Jacob, and Israel whom I call: I am he. I am the beginning, yes, and I am what comes after.
Yes, my hand laid Earth’s foundations, and my right hand stretched the heavens smooth. I am the one who calls to them, and they rise: all together, they stand.
Gather yourselves, all of you, and listen. Who among them told all about these things? God loved him; he will do what he pleases in Babylon, as will his right arm among the Chaldeans.
I, I have proclaimed it, yes, I called him forth, and he will make the path he walks triumphant.
Come up close to me. Listen, and hear this: I did not make my proclamation in hiding at the beginning. As long as existence and time have been, there I am, and now the Master, God, has sent me — his spirit too.
So says God, who redeems you, Israel’s Sacred One: ‘I am God — your god, who teaches you to rise up; who guides your steps when you step onto the path.
Oh, if you'd only pay attention to my commands! You would have peace like a river, and righteousness like the ocean waves.
Your offspring would be like sand, emerging from inside you like its countless grains — it would never have been cut off, never wiped away from out of my sight.
Come out of Babylon; escape from the Chaldeans. Declare it with the sound of triumph hymns: make them hear this, make it go out to the ends of the Earth — say, ‘God redeemed his servant, Jacob.’
They felt no thirst when he led them through scorched lands; he made water cascade forth from rock for them. He split the rock, and the water gushed forth.
‘No peace,’ says God, ‘for the wicked.’
49.
Listen, islands. Pay attention, nations from far away: God called me from the womb. From my mother’s insides he recalled my name.
He made my mouth like a sword: sharp. In the shadow of his hand he concealed me, and made me as an arrow — whetted, in his quiver he hid me.
And he said to me, ‘you, my servant, Israel — in you I will adorn myself.’
But me, I said, ‘I’ve exhausted myself for nothing; For emptiness and air I spent my strength. For sure, my judgment is with my master; my wages with my God.’
And now God says — The one who molded me out of the womb as a servant for him, to turn Jacob back to him, and Israel; to gather them for him (and I am given majesty in God’s eyes, and my god is my might)
He says, ‘It’s too trifling for you to be my servant to establish the tribes of Jacob and bring back the children of Israel: I will give you as a light to the foreign nations, so that my salvation can come into being at the outermost ends of the world.
So says God, Israel’s Sacred One, who redeems it, to the one despised to his core, to the reject of nations, to the slave of rulers: ‘kings will see, and they’ll stand. Princes will fall on their faces — because of God, who can be trusted: Israel’s sacred one, and he chooses you.
So says God: ‘in a moment of favor I answered you, and on salvation’s day I helped you. I’ll store you up and give you away as a covenant to the people, to secure the world, to make them inherit the desolate inheritance.
To say to the captives, ‘come out’; to the people in pitch dark, ‘be revealed.’ On the paths they will be fed, and on the deserted peaks there will be pasture.
They will not go hungry and they will feel no thirst; no sweltering heat, no sun will beat down on them. He who has mercy on them will show the way, and lead them to wellsprings of water.
And I will turn all my mountains into a path, and I will lift my thoroughfares up on high.
Look at these who come from far away. Look at these from the distant North and from the Western ocean, and these from Sinim’s territory.
Sing in triumph, you heavens; celebrate, earth, and mountains — burst into triumph hymns: God consoled his people and opened his heart in mercy to the impoverished.
Zion said, ‘God has deserted me. My Master forgot about me.’
Does a woman forget the baby from the tenderness of her womb? The son from her bosom? Even they could forget: I won’t forget you.
Look: I’ve carved you into the flesh of my hands. Your walls stand forever in my sight.
Your sons have rushed to you. Your attackers, your destroyers flee.
Lift up your eyes and look around you; see: they’re all assembled; they have come to you; as I live, declares God, you’ll adorn yourself with all of them like jewelry, bind them to yourself the way a new bride does:
Your dried-up deserts and your wastelands, your territory, ravaged, yes: now they’ll be stuffed full of settlers, and the ones who devoured you will be far away.
They’ll whisper in your ears yet, the children of your grief and loss: ‘this place is too cramped for me — make more room for me to settle in!’
And you’ll say, in your heart: ‘who gave me these children? When I was filled with grief, barren and tossed aside? These — who made them grow? Look: I was abandoned, all alone. How are they here?’
So says God, my Master: look. I am raising my hand for the foreigners, for the nations. I am lifting my flag on high, and they’re bringing your sons, enfolded in their arms, and your daughters, carried on their shoulders.
Then kings take care of you, and noblewomen become your nursemaids — they’ll prostrate themselves before you with their nose to the earth; they’ll lick the dust at your feet, and you’ll know that I am God. No one who puts their high hopes in me will be put to shame.
When the war hero takes a prize, does it get taken back? Do captives get carried away?
But so says God: ‘even the war hero’s captive is taken, and the prize that the brutal fighters take will be carried away. I will prosecute your prosecutors and save your sons.
I’ll make the ones who abuse you eat their own flesh. They’ll get drunk on their own blood as if it were muscatel, and they’ll know — all flesh will — that I am god who saves you, who redeems you: Jacob’s juggernaut.
50.
So says God: ‘where is this writ of divorce for your mother, recording how I cast her out? Did I sell you out to my investors? Which one? Look: you were sold for your own evil, and your mother was cast out for your own rebellion.
Why was no one there when I came? I called out, but no one answered — is my hand cut short? Too short to vindicate? Is there no strength left in me to rescue? Look! At one harsh word from me the ocean runs dry, and I turn rivers into deserts. The fish rot without water: they die of thirst.
I clothe the heavens in darkness, and make burlap their covering.
My Master, God, has given to me the tongue of those taught to talk to the weary — to know the right time to sustain and proclaim. He wakes me up morning by morning; he wakes up my ear to hear like those who are taught.
My Master, God, opened my ear for me, and I didn’t rebel. I didn’t turn away.
I gave my back to those who beat me, and my cheeks to those who tore out my hair; I didn’t hide my face from their scorn and their spitting.
But my Master, God, will give me help. And so I am not scorned; and so I set my face like flint — I know I won’t be put to shame.
He is close beside me; he justifies me — who will accuse me? Let us stand together — who is my prosecutor? Let’s see him come near me.
Look: My master, God, will give me help. Who’s going to condemn me? Who is he? Look: all of them will wear out like old clothes. Moths will eat them.
Who among you fears God? Who hears his servant’s voice? Though walks in the pitch black dark, though no radiance shines on him, yet let him rely on God’s name, and lean on his god.
Look, all of you: you light fires; you strap on chains of flame. Go, in the light of your fires, with the flames you set alight. From my hand, this is what you’ll get: you’ll lie down to sleep in anguish.
51.
Listen to me: you who hunt down righteousness, who go searching for God — take a close look at the stone you were carved from, and at the hole in a pit from which you were mined.
Take a close look at Abraham, your father, and at Sarah who delivered you: I called him, alone, and blessed him, and made him multiply.
Because God consoled Zion. He consoled her every dry place, and made her wasteland like Eden — her desert like the garden of God. Glee and delight will be found in her, and gratitude, and the sound of melodies.
Listen closely to me, my people — nation of mine, lend me your ears: teaching emerges from me. In a sudden moment I burst my justice open as a light for the nations.
My righteousness is close by; my salvation emerges — my arms will judge nations, and islands will put their high hopes in me. They’ll put their trust in my arm.
Lift your eyes up to the heavens, and take a close look at the earth beneath them: the heavens will be dissolved like smoke, and the earth will wear out like clothing, and everyone living on it will die in just the same way, but my salvation will be forever. My righteousness won’t be erased.
Listen to me — you who know righteousness, people with my teaching in your heart: don’t be scared of scorn from mankind, or fear rejection from them,
Because moths will eat them like clothing, and vermin will eat them like wool. But my righteousness will be forever, and my salvation from generation to generation.
Arm of God, wake up! Wake up, and clothe yourself in might. Wake up as in days long ago, in ancient generations. Wasn’t it you that sliced through Rahab and skewered the serpent?
Wasn’t it you that dried up the ocean, those waters of the void? Who made a path out of the ocean depths, for the redeemed to pass through?
The ones God ransomed will come back, will go to Zion with triumph hymns — with joy forever upon their heads. They will attain joy and delight; wailing and grief will flee from them.
I, I am he, who consoles you. Who are you to be afraid of mankind, which will die — these sons of the soil, who will be made like grass?
Did you forget God — who makes you, who stretches forth the heavens and lays Earth’s foundations? Have you felt relentless terror, every day, in the face of seething rage from your persecutor — as if he had the wherewithal to destroy? And where is it, this persecutor’s rage?
The captive is bent double, but his release is coming fast. He will not die in the chasm of destruction; his bread will not run out.
I am God, your god, who splits the ocean apart, and its waves roar. God of Legions is his name.
I put my proclamations in your mouth, and hid you in the shadow of my hand — to stretch forth the heavens and lay Earth’s foundations, to say to Zion, ‘you are my people.’
Wake up — get yourself up, Jerusalem, and stand. You who drank the cup of God’s seething rage from his own hand. You sucked down the last dregs from the cup of trembling, drained it dry.
No one is there for her to be a guide. Not one of all the sons she gave birth to — no one to clasp her hand, out of all her full-grown sons.
These two things — look, you’ve come up against them, and who will mourn for you? Annihilation and brokenness, and famine and blades — who will console you for me?
Your sons collapsed — they are splayed out at the intersection of every street like antelopes in nets. Full of God’s seething rage, and of your god’s rebuke.
And so hear this — you, abased and drunk, but not with wine:
So says God — God your Master, God your god, who pleads his people’s cause: ‘see. I have taken the cup of trembling out of your hand — the dregs of the cup of my seething rage, and you won’t ever drink it again.
I will put it into the hand of your persecutors — the ones who said to your soul, ‘bend down so we can go over.’ And you laid out your body like the ground, like a road for them to go over.
52.
Wake up. Wake up, and clothe yourself in might, Zion. Clothe yourself in elegant garments, Jerusalem, holy city — the uncircumcised and the defiled will never come into you again.
Shake the dust off of yourself; rise, sit — Jerusalem! Undo the bonds around your neck, captive daughter of Zion.
Because so says God: ‘you were sold for nothing; you will be redeemed without silver.
Because so says God, my Master: ‘my people went down to Egypt back at the beginning, to settle there. Assyria abused them over nothing.
Now then — what do I have here, declares God. My people, taken away for nothing? Their rulers howl, declares God, and relentlessly, every day, my name is defiled.
And so: my people will know my name. And so: On That Day they’ll know that I am he, the one proclaiming, ‘here I am.’
How beautiful: on the mountains, the feet of the one who brings good news, who brings word of peace, who brings the best of news, who brings word of salvation, who says to Zion, ‘your god is king.’
The voice of the ones who watch for you . . . they lift up their voice! They’ll shout in unison triumph — when God comes back to Zion, they will see eye to eye.
Break out into hymns of triumph in unison! Dry deserts of Jerusalem: God has consoled his people; God who redeems Jerusalem.
God has laid his sacred arm bare before the eyes of the nations. And all the far reaches of Earth see the salvation of our god.
Get out! Get gone, get out of there; don’t touch anything defiled. Get out from within her; get pure, you who carry the vessels of God.
But you won’t escape in a hurry, or go out in a rush, because of God who goes before you. The god of Israel will be your reward.
Look: my servant will be victorious. He will be on high, lifted up, immensely exalted.
Just as many masses were appalled at you — his appearance so disfigured; more than any man, more than all the sons of the soil —
So he will startle many nations. Kings will clamp their mouths shut at him: they’ll see what was never spelled out for them, and contemplate what they never heard.
53.
Who could believe what they heard from us? The arm of God . . . for whom is it uncovered?
He arose before him like a sapling, like a root from parched ground — he cuts no fine figure, has no elegance for us to love or good looks for us to look at.
He was despised — the reject of mankind, a man of agony who knew affliction well. The kind of man to make men hide their faces from him: he was despised. We didn’t give him a second thought.
Oh, but it was our affliction he took upon himself, and our agony he bore. And yet we thought he was being punished — beaten and abased by our god.
He was the one to be maimed for our rebellion and crushed for our corruptions. The harsh correction of our peace fell upon him, and in his lesions we find healing.
All of us wandered like sheep, each turning down his own path. But God put the corruption of us all on him.
He was brought low. He was the one abased, and he never opened his mouth. He was carried like a lamb in solemn procession to the sacrifice — but as a sheep keeps quiet when they shear it, he never opened his mouth.
Out of confinement, out of justice, he was taken. Who will mention his legacy? He was ripped out of the land of the living; for the rebellion of my people to whom the blow was due.
They gave him a grave with the wicked, but with the wealthy in his death — because he never committed any injury; no deceit was in his mouth.
But God’s pleasure was to beat him down with disease — when his soul is laid down as atonement for sin, he will see his legacy. He will stretch out his days, and God’s pleasure will come to fruition at his hand.
When he sees what his soul toiled over, he’ll be satisfied. With his knowledge, my righteous servant will make great crowds of people righteous — he will be the one to bear the burden of their corruptions.
And so I’ll set aside a share for him among the great. He’ll take a share of the loot with the conquerors, because he poured his naked soul out into death and was counted among the rebels — he was the one to bear the sins of those great crowds of people and step in on behalf of the rebels.
54.
Sing triumph hymns, you who were barren and childless; break forth into singing — you never knew labor, for the children of the desolate are more than the children of the married wife,' says God.
Make more room for your tent, and let them stretch out the curtains of your dwelling places. Don’t hold back; lengthen your ropes and fortify your stakes.
For you’ll spread out on the right hand and the left; your offspring will take possession of the nations and occupy the desert.
Don’t be afraid: you won’t be ashamed. Don’t be astounded: you won’t be reviled. You’ll forget the shame of your childhood and the revilement of your widowhood. You won’t remember them ever again.
Yes, your husband is the one who made you: God of Legions is his name, and your redeemer is Israel’s Sacred One — god of the whole earth, he’ll be called.
Yes, like an abandoned wife, grieving in spirit, God called you. And can a wife be abandoned in youth?’ says God.
For a little instant, I left you. But I will gather you in the vast compassion of my heart.
In an moment’s rage I hid my face from you for an instant, but with mercy forever I will show you compassion,’ says your redeemer, God.
Like the waters of Noah, this is to me: I have sworn myself to never let the waters of Noah pass again over the earth, and so I have sworn not let my rage come upon you or chastise you.
For the mountains may be gone and the hills be taken away, but my mercy will never go from you, and my covenant of peace will never be taken away,' says God in the vastness of his compassion upon you.
Oh you laid low, storm-tossed, and not consoled: see how I set your stones in fair colors and build your foundations with sapphires.
I will set your turrets in rubies and your gates in gems, and all you boundaries with precious stones.
And all your children will learn of God, and the peace of your children will be immense.
In righteousness you will be made firm, be far from oppression — for you won’t be afraid — and from devastation, for it won’t come near you.
See: see them gather; they gather together, but not by me — whoever gathers against you will fall because of you.
See me creating the smithy that blows coal-fire and produces a tool for the task: and I create the ravager to bring devastation.
No weapon formed against you will succeed; every tongue that rises up against you to judge you, you will refute. This is the inheritance of God’s servants, and their reward from me,’ announces God.
55.
Oh, come, oh, everyone thirsty: come to these waters. You with no money, come buy and eat. Come! Buy wine and milk without money or price.
Why are you shelling out money for things that aren’t bread? Why toil to get nothing that satisfies? Listen, oh, listen to me and eat good things; let your souls relish fat cuts of meat.
Strain your ears this way and come to me. Listen and your souls will live; I will cut you a deal, a covenant for all time, the secure mercies of David.
Look: I have offered him to the peoples as a witness, to be their leader: the commander of the peoples.
Look: you never knew the nation that you’ll call upon; they never knew you either, but they’ll come running to you thanks to God, your god — to Israel’s Sacred One, because he has adorned you.
Hunt after God when he can be found; call on him when he’s near.
Let evil men abandon the path they’re on, and ungodly men abandon the thoughts they think. Let them come back to God who will open his heart in compassion; to our god who abounds with forgiveness.
Because my thoughts are not your thoughts, and your paths are not my paths, declares God:
As exalted as Heaven is, high above Earth, that’s how high above your paths my paths are, and my thoughts above your thoughts.
Because just as rainfall or snow comes cascading from heaven, and doesn’t go back — not until it has soaked through the earth and made it bear fruit, made it blossom forth, given the seed-sower seed and the hungry man bread to eat:
In the same way my proclamation emerges from out of my mouth: it doesn’t come back to me fruitless; it does what I please and achieves the fruition I sent it for.
Yes: you will emerge in joy and be carried forth in peace to the mountains and hillsides — which burst into song before you, while trees in the field clap their hands.
In place of brambles, cypress trees spring up. In place of thorns, myrtles spring up. This is what God has for a name, his symbol forever — never to be cut down.
56.
So says God: keep watch over justice and do what is righteous, because of how close my salvation is to coming, and my righteousness to being unveiled.
Blessing for a man, for the soil’s son, is doing this and clinging to it: keeping the sabbath from defilement and keeping back his hand from doing any evil.
And let no foreigner’s son who cleaves to God say, ‘God excludes; he will exclude me from his people.’ And let no eunuch say, ‘look — I am a withered tree.’
Because so says God to eunuchs who keep the sabbath, and choose what pleases me, and cling to my covenant:
‘In my house, within my walls, I give them a memorial and a name, better than that of sons or of daughters: I will give them an eternal name, which will not be cut down.
‘And as for the foreigners’ sons, who cleave to God, to be his ministers and love God’s name, to be servants for him — everyone who keeps the sabbath from defilement and clings to my covenant —
I will have them come to my sacred mountain and rejoice in my house of prayer. Their offerings and sacrifices will be graciously accepted at my sacrificial altar, because my house will be called a house of prayer for every nation.
God, my Master, who gathers up Israel’s outcasts, declares: ‘I will gather still more to those already gathered around him.
Every living thing in the field: come eat. Every living thing in the forest thicket.
The ones who watch for him are blind, all of them — they don’t know, they’re mute dogs, every one of them. They can’t bark; they love sleeping; they dream and they doze —
Greedy dogs, who don’t know when they’ve had enough. And they’re shepherds who have no way to understand, all of them turning down his own path, every man with his own prize off in his own corner.
Come. I’ll get some wine, and we’ll fill up on liquor, and tomorrow will be a day just like this, except richer still.
57.
The righteous dies, and no man takes it to heart. Men of mercy are taken away, with no one to consider that the righteous is taken away from the evil.
He comes into peace while they rest on their beds, the one walking in rectitude.
But you: come here, up close. You sons of witches and offspring of adulterers and whores —
Who are you making fun of? Your mouth gaping wide and your tongue sticking out — against whom? Aren’t you the sons of a rebellion and the offspring of a lie?
You, inflaming yourself beneath the terebinths, beneath every green tree, slaughtering children in riverbeds and in rocky crevices —
Among the smooth stones of the riverbed, you’ll get what’s coming to you: them. They are your fate. For them you even poured out libations, brought them gifts. And in all this, I'm supposed to stay calm?
You laid out your bed on a lofty, uplifted mountain — you went right up to that spot to sacrifice your sacrifices.
Behind the door, in back of its frame, you placed your memorial. You disrobed and rose up away from me; you spread out your bedding and cut a deal for yourself with them. You loved their bed; you saw their hand.
You went off to the king with oils; you amassed your ointments and sent envoys far and wide. You went low — all the way down to the Grave.
Though you grew weary with the length of your path, you never said, ‘it’s a lost cause.’ You found life in your hand, and so you did not fall.
Who were you afraid of? Whom did you hold in such reverence that you lied and forgot me, didn’t keep me at heart or in mind? Haven’t I kept silent for ages past, yet you don’t fear me?
I, I will pronounce your righteousness, and the things you do — but you’ll get nothing out of them.
Let’s see them save you when you scream — the ones you gathered around you — a breath of wind will carry them off, all of them. Nothingness will take them. But anyone who takes refuge in me will inherit the earth — will take possession of my sacred mountain,
And say, ‘rear up! Rear up, clear a path, get the stumbling block up out of my people’s way.’
For so says the exalted, the uplifted who dwells in eternity, Sacred by name: ‘I dwell in exaltation and sanctity with him who is crushed — whose spirit is brought low to give life to the spirit of those who are brought low; to give life to the heart of those who are crushed.’
Because I won’t fight forever, and my rage won’t go on relentlessly — because the spirit would expire in my presence, as would the life-breath which I myself made.
It was his greed and corruption that fueled my rage, and I beat him. I hid in my rage, and he went on, his back turned, down the path of his own heart.
I saw his path, and I will heal him. I’ll guide and give comfort, give peace back to him and those who grieve for him.
I create what their lips produce — peace, peace to those far off and close by, says God, and I will heal him.
But the wicked are like a storm-tossed ocean which can’t find stillness — its waters toss up mud and sediment.
No peace, says my god, for the wicked.
58.
Call out loud, don’t hold back — like a trumpet, lift your voice on high and tell my people about their rebellion. Tell Jacob’s house about their sins.
But it’s me they hunt for day by day, and take pleasure in knowing my pathways — just like a nation that does righteousness, and doesn’t abandon the justice of its god. They ask for righteous justice and delight in drawing near to god.
'Why did we fast if you weren’t going to see it? We abased our souls, but you took no notice.' Look: on your fasting day you seek pleasure, and you make your usual claims on your hired hands.
Look: it’s for the sake of accusations and arguments that you fast, so you can beat each other with fists of evil. You don’t fast this day to make your voice heard on high.
Is this the kind of fasting I chose? The day when a man abases his soul, to bow his head like a reed and strew burlap and ashes beneath himself? Is that what you call a fast, the day of God’s gracious acceptance?
Isn’t this the fast I chose? To break apart the fetters of evil; to unstrap the bands of the yoke and bring liberty to those broken down? To lift away every yoke?
Isn’t it sharing your bread with the hungry, and letting the downtrodden poor come into your house? Covering anyone you see naked, and not concealing yourself from your own flesh and blood?
Then your light will burst forth like dawn breaking, the bloom of your health flush swiftly to the full, your righteousness precede you — the majesty of God will be the reward you reap.
Then you’ll call out, and God will answer. You’ll shout out loud and he’ll say, ‘here I am.’ If you clear away the yoke from among you, and finger-pointing, and empty proclamations of depravity;
If you stretch forth your soul to anyone hungry and satisfy the soul of the abased, then in the pitch black dark your light will rise. Your dusk will be like high noon.
Then God will guide you unceasingly, satisfy your soul in the dry heat and put meat on your bones. You’ll be like an irrigated garden, like a source of water whose waters will never fall short.
Those who come forth from within you will build up the deserts of ages past, foundations rising from generation to generation. You’ll be called the mender of broken things, who restores paths to dwell in.
If you turn back your steps on the sabbath from doing whatever you please on my sacred day; if you call the sabbath a luxury, God’s sacred day, majestic; if you choose his majesty above making your own paths and pursuing your own pleasure and proclaiming your own proclamations;
Then you will luxuriate in God. I will give you earth’s high peaks to ride on, and the inheritance of your father Jacob to eat: God’s mouth has proclaimed this thing.
59.
See: God’s hand is not cut too short to save, nor his ears too heavy to hear.
It’s your corruption that separated you from your god, and your sins that hid his face from you — from hearing you.
Because the palms of your hands are dirty, smeared with blood, and your fingers with corruption; your lips proclaimed deceit and your tongue muttered travesties.
No one invokes righteousness and no one pleads the true case for justice. Trusting nothingness, proclaiming inanity — they conceive trickery and give birth to senseless evil.
They hatch vipers’ eggs and weave spiderwebs. Whoever eats from their eggs dies, and whenever they’re cracked they hatch vipers.
Their webs won’t be woven into clothing, and no one will cover himself up with the things they make — things of senseless evil. The violence they do is on their hands.
Their feet run right towards evil; they rush to shed innocent blood. The thoughts they think are thoughts of senseless evil. Injury and destruction line the roads they travel.
They don’t know the way of peace, and there’s no justice on their paths. They’ve made twisted pathways for themselves to walk down, and they don’t know peace.
And so justice is far away from us, and righteousness can’t reach us — we have high hopes for light, but look: pitch black dark. For radiance, but we walk in gloom.
We grope for the wall like blind men — like men without eyes, we grope. We stumble around at high noon as if it were twilight, like dead men in ghost towns.
We snarl like bears, all of us; like doves we sob and sob — we have high hopes for justice but there’s none. For the salvation which is so far from us.
Because our rebellions have multiplied in your presence, and our sins cry out against us; because our rebellions are with us and we know our own corruptions.
Rebelling and forswearing God, turning our backs on our god, proclaiming fraud and apostasy, mulling and muttering the proclamations and fraud we conceive in our hearts.
Justice is turned away and righteousness stands far off, because truth stumbled in the broad plain and honesty can’t come forward.
Truth is found wanting and anyone who abstains from evil makes himself easy prey. God saw it and it was evil in his eyes: there’s no justice.
And god saw that there was no man, and found himself appalled that there was no one to intercede. But his own arm brought him salvation, and it was his righteousness that gave him support.
He strapped on righteousness like chain mail and wore a helmet of salvation on his head. He wore vengeance as clothing and wrapped fierce desire around himself like a cloak.
As their actions deserve, he will repay them: white-hot rage for his oppressors and payback for his enemies. He’ll repay the islands what they deserve.
Then they’ll fear God’s name in the West where the sun sets, and his majesty in the East where it rises: trouble is coming, its pressure building like a river current, God’s breath chasing it on.
The redeemer is coming to Zion, and to anyone who turns back from rebellion in Jacob, declares God.
It is I, and this is my covenant with them — my spirit which is upon you and my proclamations which I placed in your mouth — they won’t slip from your mouth or your offspring’s mouths or the mouths of your offspring’s offspring, says God, from now until eternity.
60.
Get up. Catch the light — your light: it’s here, and God’s majesty has dawned above you.
Look how the pitch dark is veiling earth, gloom lowering over every people. But above you is dawning God, and his majesty, above you coming into sight.
Then nations come to your light, and kings to your shining dawn.
Lift up your eyes; look around you and see — they’re all gathered, they’ve come to you: Sons of yours from far away. They’re coming, and your daughters too, snug against the hip that carries them.
Then you’ll see, and pour forth radiance, and your heart will quiver and swell, Because the ocean’s teeming abundance will be shifting towards you; the wealth of mighty nations coming to you.
Camels in droves will cover you, with dromedaries from Midian and Ephah. Everyone from Sheba will come. They’ll be carrying incense and gold. They will let the world hear their hymns praising God.
Every lamb from Kedar will be gathered to you. Rams from Nebaioth will wait on you. They’ll climb up into the gracious welcome of my altar, and with glory upon glory, I will adorn the house of my splendour.
Who are these? Like clouds they’ve taken wing — just like doves to their nests.
The islands will put their high hopes in me, and the ships of Tarshish first and foremost — to bring your sons from far away, their gold and silver with them, to the name of God, your god and Israel’s Sacred One, because he has adorned you.
Foreign sons will fortify your walls, and foreign kings will wait on you. Because in my fury I bludgeoned you, but in my mercy I welcomed you into my spacious heart.
Your city gates are opened without interruption, night and day; they will never close — so the might of nations can come into you, with their kings in tow.
Those nations will dry up — dry up and decay and be desolate.
Lebanon’s majesty will come to you: firs and juniper and cedars all together to adorn my sacred place. I will give majesty to the place where my feet rest.
Then bowing low before you come the sons of those who abased you. Those who once despised you will grovel at the soles of your feet and call you City of God, Zion of Israel’s Sacred One.
Instead of being abandoned and despised, with no one passing through you, I will set you forever the pride, the delight of generation after generation.
You’ll suckle the nations’ milk, and suckle at royal breasts. You’ll know that I am God who saves you, who redeems you, Jacob’s juggernaut.
I’ll bring gold to replace your brass, bring silver to replace your iron; steel in place of wood and iron in place of stone. I’ll appoint peace as your officer and righteousness as your magistrate.
Violence will never be heard in your territory again, nor demolition and vandalism within your borders. You will call your walls salvation, and your city gates will be called hymns of praise.
The sun won’t be your light by day anymore; the radiance of the moon won’t light you up — God will be your light always, and your god will be your adornment.
Your sun will never set again, and your moon won’t go back down, because God will be your light forever. Your days of grief will reach their end.
Then your people will be righteous, all of them, forever. They’ll take possession of the land — the branch I planted, the work of my hand, to adorn myself.
Even little ones will become thousands, and even tiny troops will become warrior nations. I am God: I hurry it towards its appointed time.
61.
The spirit of God my Master is upon me, because God anointed me to bring good news to the poor. He sent me to bandage broken hearts; to announce liberty for hostages and opened eyes for the blind.
2. To announce a year God’s gracious acceptance, and a day of recompense for our god to console all the bereaved.
To settle the bereaved on Zion. To adorn them with elegance instead of ashes, oil of delight instead of bereavement, garments of praise instead of a spirit weighed down. They’ll be called terebinths, oaks of righteousness, which God planted so he could adorn himself.
They’ll build up the deserts of ages past. They’ll raise up the ruins from the beginning and repair the desert cities that were ruined from generation to generation.
Immigrants will stand and herd your sheep; the sons of foreigners will be your husbandmen and vintners,
But you will be called priests of God — they’ll say that you wait on our god, and you’ll feed on the might of nations. You’ll preen yourself in their majesty,
In exchange for your double helping of shame. They shouted in triumph, ‘disgrace is what they get.’ And so they will take possession of double their territory; eternal joy will be theirs,
Because I am God who loves justice; who detests theft with evil. I pay them back in truth and cut a deal with them forever: the eternal covenant.
Their offspring will be known in the nations, and their descendants among the peoples. Everyone who sees them will hold them in high regard, because they are the offspring God blessed.
I rejoice, and my joy is in God. My soul exults in my god, because he has clothed me in garments of salvation, wrapped me in a cloak of righteousness, the way a groom attires his head with priestly ornaments and his bride bedecks herself with jewelry.
Yes, the way the earth produces blossoms and a garden blossoms forth with seedlings — that’s how my Master, God, makes righteousness and praise-song blossom in the sight of every nation.
62.
For Zion’s sake I will not hold back. For the sake of Jerusalem, I will never rest until her triumph pours forth like radiance, her salvation like a blazing flame.
Then nations will see your triumph. All the kings will see your majesty, and they’ll call you by a new name which God’s mouth will pronounce.
You will be a crown, an adornment in God’s hand, a regal diadem in the palm of your god’s hand. No one will call you abandoned ever again, or ever again call your land devastated. Because they’ll call you ‘My Delight is in her,’ and your territory ‘Wedded Wife’ — because the delight of God is in you, and your land is wedded. Yes: as a chosen son weds a maiden girl, your sons will wed you. And with the joy of a groom in his bride, your god will rejoice in you. On your walls, Jerusalem, I’ve assigned guardians to keep you: every day and every night unceasingly. They will never rest. You who commemorate God — never go silent! And don’t let him have any quiet either, until he plants down firmly. Until he sets Jerusalem up as a praise-song in the Earth. God committed himself. He promised by his right hand and the brawn of his arm: never again will I give your grain to your enemies to eat; never again will foreigners’ sons drink the fresh wine you’ve laboured over. No, the ones that reaped it will eat it, and they’ll praise God. The ones who gathered it in will drink it in the courtyards of my sanctuary. Pass through! Pass through the gates; clear the people’s way; rear up! Rear up and get the rocks out of the roadways; raise a standard above the peoples. Look: God! He makes it heard at the ends of the Earth: ‘say to the daughter of Zion: look, your salvation is coming; look, his reward is with him and his payment is in sight.’ Then they’ll call them ‘Sacred People, God’s Redeemed.’ And they’ll call you ‘Sought After, Undeserted City.’63.
Who is this coming from Edom, his attire steeped in crimson from Bozrah? This traveler clothed in magnificence and trailed by the immensity of his might? It is I, proclaimer of righteousness, mighty to save.
Why these crimson clothes of yours, your garments like someone who tramps in a wine-vat?
I have treaded the winepress on my own; there was not one man with me out of all the peoples. I tread them in my rage and trample them down in my white-hot fury; their gore is spattered blood-red on my garments, and I am defiling all my clothing.
Because the day of revenge is in my heart, and my year of redemption has arrived.
I looked hard, but there was no one to help. I found myself appalled that there was no one to give support. But my own arm brought me salvation, and my white-hot rage was what gave me support.
I trampled down the peoples in my rage and made them drink down my white-hot fury, and shed their gore on the earth.
I will commemorate God’s mercies, and sing God’s praise, in keeping with the bounty God bestowed on us — the immensity of the goodness he bestowed on Israel’s household, in keeping with his heart’s compassion and the vastness of his mercies.
He said, ‘they are my people without question — sons of mine, who will not deceive.’ And he became their saviour.
In all their oppressions, he was oppressed. The angel of his presence saved them. In his love and his empathy, it was he who redeemed them: he lifted them up and he carried them, every day, forever.
But they provoked him bitterly, revolted against his sacred spirit. So he turned into their enemy, and it was he who waged war against them.
Then his people remembered days of antiquity — of Moses. Where is the one to lift them up from the ocean, with the ones who herd his sheep? Where is the one to place his sacred spirit deep within him?
The one to lead them, walking, by the right hand of Moses — the adornment of his arm? To cleave apart the water in front of them and so make an eternal name for himself?
The one to lead them, walking, through the deep depths — like a horse through the desert wasteland — so they never stumble?
As the cattle go down to the valley, God’s spirit brings them to rest. That’s how you guided your people, and so made a name to adorn yourself.
Peer out from heaven and see, from your sacred dwelling, adorned in beauty: where is your fierce desire and your heroic strength? The rumbling of your guts and your heart in compassion for me? Have they been tamped down?
You are our father: though Abraham never knew us, and we were strangers to Israel, you, God, are our father who redeems us. This name of yours is from eternity.
Why, God — why do you make us stagger off of your pathways? Why do you make our hearts grow hard against the fear of you? Come back, for your servants’ sake, for the tribes of your inheritance.
They have nearly driven out your sacred people: our oppressors trampled all over your sanctuary.
We’ve become like people over whom you never reigned from eternity, who were never called by your name.
64.
Oh if you would only tear the Heavens apart and descend. In your presence the mountains would quake as when fire crackles through kindling. The fire makes the waters seethe, so your name is made known to your adversaries, and nations quake in your presence.
You did fearsome things, things we never hoped for. You descended; the mountains quaked in your presence.
From all eternity no one has heard, and no eye has seen any god but you, and the things you do for the ones who wait for you.
You come to meet, in his delight, he who enacts righteousness, who remembers you on your pathways — they remember you. Look! you have burst out in anger, we have sinned, but in these things, forever, we are saved.
And we’re as good as filthy, all of us, all our righteousness as good as a soiled rag. We disintegrate like leaves, all of us, and our corruption carries us off like a breath of wind.
There is no one who calls on your name, who rouses himself to clasp onto you — because you hid your face from us and let us decompose at the hand of our corruption.
But now, God — you are our father. We are clay, and you sculpt us. We are all of us things that your hand makes.
Oh God, don’t burst out in such anger, and don’t remember corruption forever. Look close and see: we’re your people, all of us.
Your sacred cities have become wasteland; Zion has become a wasteland and Jerusalem is devastation.
The house of our sanctity, our adornment, where our fathers praised you — it’s burning, it’s fuel for fire; all our pleasures and desires are a desert.
Are you going to restrain yourself, God? For all these things, will you keep away? Will you impoverish us that much?65.
I was there to be sought; they never asked after me. I was there to be found; they never looked for me. I said, ‘look! Look here, here I am! to a nation not called by my name.
I spread wide my hands all day long towards the people as they slipped away — walking down worthless pathways, following after their own thoughts.
The people: goading me to my face relentlessly, making sacrifices in gardens, lighting incense on altars of brick,
Sitting in graveyards and spending the night in secret vigil; eating pig’s meat, with filthy slop in their bowls.
Saying, ‘go off on your own; don’t come near me — I’m more sacred than you.’ They’re smoke up my nose; a fire smouldering all day long.
See what’s written in front of me: I won’t hold back until I’ve repaid this, and repaid it right back into their cores.
‘Your corruptions,’ says God, ‘and the corruptions of your fathers, who lit up incense on the mountains and blasphemed me on the hillsides: I’ll tally up what they’ve done right into their cores.
So says God: ‘just as fresh wine is found in a cluster of grapes, and someone says, “don’t destroy it: there’s blessing in it” — that’s how I’ll act for my servant’s sake, to keep from destroying the whole thing.
I’ll make seed come out of Jacob, and out of Judah will come someone to possess my mountain. My chosen one will come to possess it, and my servants will find rest there.
Then Sharon becomes a pasture for sheep, and the
But you who abandon God and forget his sacred mountain — who set a table for the goddess of Fortune and fill a goblet of mixed wine full for Fate —
I will make the sword your fate. All of you will kneel and be butchered, because I called and you didn’t answer. I proclaimed, and you didn’t listen. You did evil in my sight: you chose what displeases me.
Therefore so says my Master, God: ‘See. My servants will eat and you will go hungry. See, my servants will drink and you’ll thirst. Look: my servants will rejoice while you’re put to shame.
See, my servants will sing in triumph from the good in their hearts, and you will scream from the brokenness in yours. Out of the brokenness in your spirit, you’ll wail.
You’ll leave behind your name to curse my chosen ones. But my Master, God, will kill you and call his servants by a different name.
So that he who finds blessing for himself on the Earth will find blessing secure in the god of truth. He who swears by the Earth will swear sure by the god of truth. Because the original disasters are forgotten — they’re hidden from my eyes.
But look: see me creating new heavens and a new Earth, and the originals will not be remembered; they’ll never even come to mind,
Yes, celebrate for ever, and for ever delight in what I am creating, indeed see me creating Jerusalem: celebration, and her people: delight.
I will celebrate in Jerusalem and take delight in my people, and never again will the sound of sobbing or of screaming voices be heard within her.
Never again in that place will there be an infant only days old, nor an elder statesman who doesn’t complete his days: young men will die at a hundred years old, and sinners who live to a hundred years old will be cursed.
They’ll build houses and live in them. They’ll plant vineyards and eat their fruits.
They won’t build things for others to live in; they won’t plant things for others to eat, because the days of my people will be like the days of a tree. My chosen ones will savour the things their hands have made.
They won’t toil for nothing. They won’t give birth in horror, because they are the offspring of God’s blessed ones, and so are the offspring that come from them.
And it happens: before they even call out, I will answer them. While they’re still forming their words, I’ll hear.
Wolves and lambs will share one pasture, and lions will eat hay like cattle; serpents will devour the dust. They’ll do no damage and no violence over all my sacred mountain, says God.
66.
So says God: the heavens are my throne and the earth is my footrest — where is this house you’re going to build for me? Where’s the place where I’ll come to settle?
‘My hand made all these things, and all these things came to be,’ declares God, ‘but this is what I’m looking close at: at the abased. At him with the broken spirit who trembles at my proclamations.He who slaughters an ox like he’s beating down a man, and sacrifices a lamb like he’s decapitating a dog, who offers up a gift like pig’s blood and makes remembrance with incense like he’s blessing an empty idol — it’s them, they’re the ones who choose their own pathways and whose souls take pleasure in their own filth.
So I will choose abuse for them and bring their own worst fears to pass — because I called out, and no one answered. I made my proclamation, and no one listened. They did evil in my sight: they made choices that displease me.
Listen to God proclaiming, you who tremble at his proclamations. Your brothers, who despise you and banished you for the sake of my name, they say: ‘magnify God.’ But he will be made visible in your joy, and they’ll be humiliated.
A voice! Roaring up out of the city, a voice from the temple, the voice of God dealing out payback to his enemies.
Before her contractions, she gave birth. Before she went into labour, she delivered a baby boy.
Who ever heard of such a thing? Who ever saw anything like it? Will the earth go through labour in a single day? Will a nation be born all in one moment? The instant Zion went into labour, she gave birth to her sons.
‘Will I make her break water without giving birth?’ says God. ‘Will I, who bring about the birth, shut the birth canal?’ says your god.Rejoice with Jerusalem and celebrate within her if you love her. Everyone who grieves alongside her, rejoice with her in her joy.
And so you will suckle and be sated at her breast of consolation. And so you will suckle and relish the fullness of her majesty.
Because so says God: ‘Look. See me reaching out to her with peace like a river, with the majesty of nations like an overflowing stream. You’ll suckle. You’ll be carried on her hip and bounced on her knees.
Like a man whose mother consoles him: that’s the way I’ll console you, and in Jerusalem you will be consoled.
You’ll see, and your heart will fill with gladness, and your bones will flower forth like grass. God’s hand will be made known to his servants, as will his indignation to his enemies.
Yes: see God coming in flames, riding with cavalry like a hurricane to bring back his anger in a blaze of fury and his reprimand like a glinting flame.
Yes, in flames God will bring justice upon all flesh, and at the point of his sword. The slain of God will be abundant.
‘Those who sanctify themselves and cleanse themselves in gardens, back in one central spot, eating pig’s meat and filth and mice — they will all be devoured at once, declares God.
‘I know the things they do and the thoughts they think. It’s coming: I’ll assemble all the nations with their different tongues, and they’ll come and see my majesty.
‘I will place a symbol upon them, and send the fugitives among them to the nations: Tarshish, Pul, Lud (where they pull back their bowstrings), Tubal, and Javan. The far-off islands where they haven’t heard what I’m making heard or seen my majesty — and they’ll tell about my majesty among those nations.
‘And they’ll bring all your brothers out of all the nations as a gift to God — on horses and chariots and palanquins and mules and dromedaries — up to the sacred mountain of Jerusalem,’ says God, ‘just as Israel’s sons bring gifts in purified vessels to the house of God.
‘And I will even take priests for the order of the Levites from among them,’ says God.
‘Because just as the new heaven and the new earth that I am making, which arise and stand before me,’ declares God, ‘so your offspring will arise before me and your name will stand.
‘And it happens: from new moon to new moon, and from sabbath to sabbath, all flesh will come to prostrate itself before me,’ says God.
‘Then they’ll go forth and see the corpses of the men that rebelled against me. Because the maggots on them will never die, nor their fire be extinguished, and they’ll be a thing abhorrent to all flesh.