Isaiah 6-8

Isaiah 6

¹In the year of King Uzziah's death I saw the Lord seated in his place, high and lifted up, and the Temple was full of the wide skirts of his robe.

²Over him were the winged ones: every one had six wings; two for covering his face, two for covering his feed, and two for flight.

³And one said in a loud voice to another, Holy, holy, holy, is the Lord of armies: all the earth is full of his glory.

⁴And the bases of the door-pillars were shaking at the sound of his cry, and the house was full of smoke.

⁵Then I said, The curse is on me, and my fate is destruction; for I am a man of unclean lips, living among a people of unclean lips; for my eyes have seen the King, the Lord of armies.

⁶Then a winged one came to me with a burning coal in his hand, which he had taken from off the altar with the fire-spoon.

⁷And after touching my mouth with it, he said, See, your lips have been touched with this; and your evil is taken away, and you are made clean from sin.

⁸And the voice of the Lord came to my ears, saying, Whom am I to send, and who will go for us? Then I said, Here am I, send me.

⁹And he said, Go, and say to this people, You will go on hearing, but learning nothing; you will go on seeing, but without getting wiser.

¹⁰Make the hearts of this people fat, and let their ears be stopped, and their eyes shut; for fear that they may see with their eyes, and be hearing with their ears, and their heart may become wise, and they may be turned to me and made well.

¹¹Then I said, Lord, how long? And he said in answer, Till the towns are waste and unpeopled, and the houses have no men, and the land becomes completely waste,

¹²And the Lord has taken men far away, and there are wide waste places in the land.

¹³And even if there is still a tenth part in it, it will again be burned, like a tree of the woods whose broken end is still in the earth after the tree has been cut down (the holy seed is the broken end).

Isaiah 7

¹Now it came about in the days of Ahaz, the son of Jotham, the son of Uzziah, king of Judah, that Rezin, the king of Aram, and Pekah, the son of Remaliah, the king of Israel, came up to Jerusalem to make war against it, but were not able to overcome it.

²And word came to the family of David that Aram had put up its tents in Ephraim. And the king's heart, and the hearts of his people, were moved, like the trees of the wood shaking in the wind.

³Then the Lord said to Isaiah, Go out now, you and Shear-jashub, your son, and you will come across Ahaz at the end of the stream flowing from the higher pool, in the highway of the washerman's field;

⁴And say to him, Take care and be quiet; have no fear, and do not let your heart be feeble, because of these two ends of smoking fire-wood, because of the bitter wrath of Rezin and Aram, and of the son of Remaliah.

⁵Because Aram has made evil designs against you, saying,

⁶Let us go up against Judah, troubling her, and forcing our way into her, and let us put up a king in her, even the son of Tabeel:

⁷This is the word of the Lord God: This design will not come about or be effected.

⁸For the head of Aram is Damascus, and the head of Damascus is Rezin (and in sixty-five years from now Ephraim will be broken, and will no longer be a people):

⁹And the head of Ephraim is Samaria, and the head of Samaria is Remaliah's son. If you will not have faith, your kingdom will be broken.

¹⁰And Isaiah said again to Ahaz,

¹¹Make a request to the Lord your God for a sign, a sign in the deep places of the underworld, or in the high heavens.

¹²But Ahaz said, I will not put the Lord to the test by making such a request.

¹³And he said, Give ear now, O family of David: is it not enough that you are driving men to disgust? will you do the same to my God?

¹⁴For this cause the Lord himself will give you a sign; a young woman is now with child, and she will give birth to a son, and she will give him the name Immanuel.

¹⁵Butter and honey will be his food, when he is old enough to make a decision between evil and good.

¹⁶For before the child is old enough to make a decision between evil and good, the land whose two kings you are now fearing will have become waste.

¹⁷The Lord is about to send on you, and on your people, and on your father's house, such a time of trouble as there has not been from the days of the separating of Ephraim from Judah; even the coming of the king of Assyria.

¹⁸And it will be in that day that the Lord will make a piping sound for the fly which is in the end of the rivers of Egypt, and for the bee which is in the land of Assyria.

¹⁹And they will come, covering all the waste valleys, and the holes of the rocks, and the thorns, and all the watering-places.

²⁰In that day will the Lord take away the hair of the head and of the feet, as well as the hair of the face, with a blade got for a price from the other side of the River; even with the king of Assyria.

²¹And it will be in that day that a man will give food to a young cow and two sheep;

²²And they will give so much milk that he will be able to have butter for his food: for butter and honey will be the food of all who are still living in the land.

²³And it will be in that day that in every place where before there were a thousand vines valued at a thousand shekels of silver, there will be nothing but blackberries and thorns.

²⁴Men will come there with bows and arrows, because all the land will be full of blackberries and thorns.

²⁵And they will send out the oxen and the sheep on all the hills which before were worked with the spade, ... fear of blackberries and thorns.

Isaiah 8

¹And the Lord said to me, Take a great writing-board, and on it put down in common letters, Maher-shalal-hash-baz;

²And take true witnesses to the writing, Uriah the priest, and Zechariah, the son of Jeberechiah.

³And I went in to my wife, and she became with child, and gave birth to a son. Then the Lord said to me, Give him the name Maher-shalal-hash-baz,

⁴For before the child is able to say, Father, or, Mother, the wealth of Damascus and the goods of Samaria will be taken away by the king of Assyria.

⁵And the Lord said again to me,

⁶Because this people will have nothing to do with the softly-flowing waters of Shiloah, and have fear of Rezin and Remaliah's son;

⁷For this cause the Lord is sending on them the waters of the River, deep and strong, even the king of Assyria and all his glory: and it will come up through all its streams, overflowing all its edges:

⁸And it will come on into Judah; rushing on and overflowing, till the waters are up to the neck; …and his outstretched wings will be covering the land from side to side: for God is with us.

⁹Have knowledge, O peoples, and be in fear; give ear, all you far-off parts of the earth:

¹⁰Let your designs be formed, and they will come to nothing; give your orders, and they will not be effected: for God is with us.

¹¹For the Lord, controlling me with a strong hand, gave me orders not to go in the way of this people, saying,

¹²Do not say, It is holy, about everything of which this people says, It is holy; and do not be in fear of what they go in fear of.

¹³But let the Lord of armies be holy to you, and go in fear of him, giving honour to him.

¹⁴And he will be for a holy place: but for a stone of falling and a rock of trouble to the two houses of Israel, and to the men of Jerusalem, for a net in which they may be taken.

¹⁵And numbers of them, falling on the stone, will be broken, and will be taken in the net.

¹⁶Let my teaching be kept secret: and my words be given to my disciples only.

¹⁷And I will be waiting for the Lord, whose face is veiled from the house of Jacob, and I will be looking for him.

¹⁸See, I and the children whom the Lord has given me, are for signs and for wonders in Israel from the Lord of armies, whose resting-place is in Mount Zion.

¹⁹And when they say to you, Make request for us to those who have control of spirits, and to those wise in secret arts, who make hollow bird-like sounds; is it not right for a people to make request to their gods, to make request for the living to the dead?

²⁰Then say to them, Put your faith in the teaching and the witness. ... If they do not say such things. ... For him there is no dawn. ...

²¹And he will go through the land in bitter trouble and in need of food; and when he is unable to get food, he will become angry, cursing his king and his God, and his eyes will be turned to heaven on high;

²²And he will be looking down on the earth, and there will be trouble and dark clouds, black night where there is no seeing.