Isaiah 12-17

Isaiah 12

¹And in that day you will say I will give praise to you, O Lord; for though you were angry with me, your wrath is turned away, and I am comforted.

²See, God is my salvation; I will have faith in the Lord, without fear: for the Lord Jah is my strength and song; and he has become my salvation.

³So with joy will you get water out of the springs of salvation.

⁴And in that day you will say, Give praise to the Lord, let his name be honoured, give word of his doings among the peoples, say that his name is lifted up.

⁵Make a song to the Lord; for he has done noble things: give news of them through all the earth.

⁶Let your voice be sounding in a cry of joy, O daughter of Zion, for great is the Holy One of Israel among you.

Isaiah 13

¹The word of the Lord about Babylon which Isaiah, the son of Amoz, saw.

²Put up a flag on a clear mountain-top, make a loud outcry to them, give directions with the hand, so that they may go into the doors of the great ones.

³I have given orders to my holy ones, I have sent out my men of war, those of mine who take pride in their power, to give effect to my wrath.

⁴The noise of great numbers in the mountains, like the noise of a strong people! The noise of the kingdoms of the nations meeting together! The Lord of armies is numbering his forces for war.

⁵They come from a far country, from the farthest part of heaven, even the Lord and the instruments of his wrath, with destruction for all the land.

⁶Send out a cry of grief; for the day of the Lord is near; it comes as destruction from the Most High.

⁷For this cause all hands will be feeble, and every heart of man be turned to water;

⁸Their hearts will be full of fear; pains and sorrows will overcome them; they will be in pain like a woman in childbirth; they will be shocked at one another; their faces will be like flames.

⁹See, the day of the Lord is coming, cruel, with wrath and burning passion: to make the land a waste, driving the sinners in it to destruction.

¹⁰For the stars of heaven and its bright armies will not give their light: the sun will be made dark in his journey through the heaven, and the moon will keep back her light.

¹¹And I will send punishment on the world for its evil, and on the sinners for their wrongdoing; and I will put an end to all pride, and will make low the power of the cruel.

¹²I will make men so small in number, that a man will be harder to get than gold, even the best gold of Ophir.

¹³For this cause the heavens will be shaking, and the earth will be moved out of its place, in the wrath of the Lord of armies, and in the day of his burning passion.

¹⁴And it will be that, like a roe in flight, and like wandering sheep, they will go every man to his people and to his land.

¹⁵Everyone who is overtaken will have a spear put through him, and everyone who goes in flight will be put to the sword.

¹⁶Their young children will be broken up before their eyes; their goods will be taken away, and their wives made the property of others.

¹⁷See, I am driving the Medes against them, who put no value on silver and have no pleasure in gold.

¹⁸In their hands are bows and spears; they are cruel, violently putting the young men to death, and crushing the young women; they have no pity for children, and no mercy for the fruit of the body.

¹⁹And Babylon, the glory of kingdoms, the beautiful town which is the pride of the Chaldaeans, will be like God's destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah.

²⁰People will never be living in it again, and it will have no more men from generation to generation: the Arab will not put up his tent there; and those who keep sheep will not make it a resting-place for their flocks.

²¹But the beasts of the waste land will have their holes there; and the houses will be full of crying jackals, and ostriches will have their place there, and evil spirits will be dancing there.

²²And wolves will be answering one another in their towers, and jackals in their houses of pleasure: her time is near, and her days of power will quickly be ended.

Isaiah 14

¹For the Lord will have mercy on Jacob, and will again make Israel his special people, and will put them in their land; and the man from a strange country will take his place among them and be joined to the family of Jacob.

²And the people will take them with them to their place: and the children of Israel will give them a heritage in the Lord's land as men-servants and women-servants, making them prisoners whose prisoners they were; and they will be rulers over their masters.

³And it will be, in the day when the Lord gives you rest from your sorrow, and from your trouble, and from the hard yoke which they had put on you,

⁴That you will take up this bitter song against the king of Babylon, and say, How has the cruel overseer come to an end! He who was lifted up in pride is cut off;

⁵The stick of the evil-doers, the rod of the rulers, is broken by the Lord;

⁶He whose rod was on the peoples with an unending wrath, ruling the nations in passion, with an uncontrolled rule.

⁷All the earth is at rest and is quiet: they are bursting into song.

⁸Even the trees of the wood are glad over you, the trees of Lebanon, saying, From the time of your fall no wood-cutter has come up against us with an axe.

⁹The underworld is moved at your coming: the shades of the dead are awake before you, even the strong ones of the earth; all the kings of the world have got up from their seats.

¹⁰They all make answer and say to you, Have you become feeble like us? have you been made even as we are?

¹¹Your pride has gone down into the underworld, and the noise of your instruments of music; the worms are under you, and your body is covered with them.

¹²How great is your fall from heaven, O shining one, son of the morning! How are you cut down to the earth, low among the dead bodies!

¹³For you said in your heart, I will go up to heaven, I will make my seat higher than the stars of God; I will take my place on the mountain of the meeting-place of the gods, in the inmost parts of the north.

¹⁴I will go higher than the clouds; I will be like the Most High.

¹⁵But you will come down to the underworld, even to its inmost parts.

¹⁶Those who see you will be looking on you with care, they will be in deep thought, saying, Is this the troubler of the earth, the shaker of kingdoms?

¹⁷Who made the world a waste, overturning its towns; who did not let his prisoners loose from the prison-house.

¹⁸All the kings of the earth are at rest in glory, every man in his house,

¹⁹But you, like a birth before its time, are stretched out with no resting-place in the earth; clothed with the bodies of the dead who have been put to the sword, who go down to the lowest parts of the underworld; a dead body, crushed under foot.

²⁰As for your fathers, you will not be united with them in their resting-place, because you have been the cause of destruction to your land, and of death to your people; the seed of the evil-doer will have no place in the memory of man.

²¹Make ready a place of death for his children, because of the evil-doing of their father; so that they may not come up and take the earth for their heritage, covering the face of the world with waste places.

²²For I will come up against them, says the Lord of armies, cutting off from Babylon name and offspring, son and son's son, says the Lord.

²³And I will make you a heritage for the hedgehog, and pools of water: and I will go through it with the brush of destruction, says the Lord of armies.

²⁴The Lord has taken an oath, saying, My design will certainly come about, and my purpose will be effected:

²⁵To let the Assyrian be broken in my land, and crushed under foot on my mountains: there will his yoke be taken away from them, and his rule over them come to an end.

²⁶This is the purpose for all the earth: and this is the hand stretched out over all nations.

²⁷For it is the purpose of the Lord of armies, and who will make it of no effect? when his hand is stretched out, by whom may it be turned back?

²⁸In the year of the death of King Ahaz this word came to the prophet:

²⁹Be not glad, O Philistia, all of you, because the rod which was on you is broken: for out of the snake's root will come a poison-snake, and its fruit will be a winged poison-snake.

³⁰And the poorest of the land will have food, and those in need will be given a safe resting-place: but your seed will come to an end for need of food, and the rest of you will be put to the sword.

³¹Send out a cry, O door! Make sounds of sorrow, O town! All your land has come to nothing, O Philistia; for there comes a smoke out of the north, and everyone keeps his place in the line.

³²What answer, then, will my people give to the representatives of the nation? That the Lord is the builder of Zion, and she will be a safe place for the poor of his people.

Isaiah 15

¹The word about Moab. For in a night Ar of Moab has become waste, and is seen no longer; for in a night Kir of Moab has become waste, and is seen no longer.

²The daughter of Dibon has gone up to the high places, weeping: Moab is sounding her cry of sorrow over Nebo, and over Medeba: everywhere the hair of the head and of the face is cut off.

³In their streets they are covering themselves with haircloth: on the tops of their houses, and in their public places, there is crying and bitter weeping.

⁴Heshbon is crying out, and Elealeh; their voice is sounding even to Jahaz: for this cause the heart of Moab is shaking; his soul is shaking with fear.

⁵My heart is crying out for Moab; her people go in flight to Zoar, and to Eglath-shelishiyah: for they go up with weeping by the slope of Luhith; on the way to Horonaim they send up a cry of destruction.

⁶The waters of Nimrim will become dry: for the grass is burned up, the young grass is coming to an end, every green thing is dead.

⁷For this cause they will take away their wealth, and the stores they have got together, over the stream of the water-plants.

⁸For the cry has gone round the limits of Moab; as far as to Eglaim and Beer-elim.

⁹For the waters of Dimon are full of blood: and I'm sending even more on Moab, a lion on those of Moab who go in flight, and on the rest of the land.

Isaiah 16

¹And they will send ... to the mountain of the daughter of Zion.

²For the daughters of Moab will be like wandering birds, like a place from which the young birds have gone in flight, at the ways across the Arnon.

³Give wise directions, make a decision; let your shade be as night in full day: keep safe those who are in flight; do not give up the wandering ones.

⁴Let those who have been forced out of Moab have a resting-place with you; be a cover to them from him who is making waste their land: till the cruel ones are cut off, and wasting has come to an end, and those who take pleasure in crushing the poor are gone from the land.

⁵Then a king's seat will be based on mercy, and one will be seated on it in the tent of David for ever; judging uprightly, and quick to do righteousness.

⁶We have had word of the pride of Moab, how great it is; how he is lifted up in pride and passion: his high words about himself are false.

⁷For this cause everyone in Moab will give cries of grief for Moab: crushed to the earth, they will be weeping for the men of Kir-hareseth.

⁸For the fields of Heshbon are waste, the vine of Sibmah is dead; the lords of nations were overcome by the produce of her vines; her vine-plants went as far as Jazer, and came even to the waste land; her branches were stretched out to the sea.

⁹For this cause my sorrow for the vine of Sibmah will be like the weeping for Jazer: my eyes are dropping water on you, O Heshbon and Elealeh! For they are sounding the war-cry over your summer fruits and the getting in of your grain;

¹⁰And all joy is gone; no longer are they glad for the fertile field; and in the vine-gardens there are no songs or sounds of joy: the crushing of grapes has come to an end, and its glad cry has been stopped.

¹¹For this cause the cords of my heart are sounding for Moab, and I am full of sorrow for Kir-heres.

¹²And when Moab goes up to the high place, and makes prayer in the house of his god, it will have no effect.

¹³This is the word which the Lord said about Moab in the past.

¹⁴But now the Lord has said, In three years, the years of a servant working for payment, the glory of Moab, all that great people, will be turned to shame, and the rest of Moab will be very small and without honour.

Isaiah 17

¹The word about Damascus. See, they have made Damascus a town no longer; it has become a waste place.

²Her towns are unpeopled for ever; there the flocks take their rest in peace, without fear.

³The strong tower has gone from Ephraim, and the kingdom from Damascus: the rest of Aram will come to destruction, and be made like the glory of the children of Israel, says the Lord of armies.

⁴And it will be in that day that the glory of Jacob will be made small, and the strength of his body will become feeble.

⁵And it will be like a man cutting the growth of his grain, pulling together the heads of the grain with his arm; even as when they get in the grain in the valley of Rephaim.

⁶But it will be like a man shaking an olive-tree, something will still be there, two or three berries on the top of the highest branch, four or five on the outside branches of a fertile tree, says the Lord, the God of Israel.

⁷In that day a man's heart will be turned to his Maker, and his eyes to the Holy One of Israel.

⁸He will not be looking to the altars, the work of his hands, or to the wood pillars or to the sun-images which his fingers have made.

⁹In that day your towns will be like the waste places of the Hivites and the Amorites which the children of Israel took for a heritage, and they will come to destruction.

¹⁰For you have not given honour to the God of your salvation, and have not kept in mind the Rock of your strength; for this cause you made a garden of Adonis, and put in it the vine-cuttings of a strange god;

¹¹In the day of your planting you were watching its growth, and in the morning your seed was flowering: but its fruit is wasted away in the day of grief and bitter sorrow.

¹²Ah! the voice of peoples, like the loud sounding of the seas, and the thundering of great nations rushing on like the bursting out of waters!

¹³But he will put a stop to them, and make them go in flight far away, driving them like the waste of the grain on the tops of the mountains before the wind, and like the circling dust before the storm.

¹⁴In the evening there is fear, and in the morning they are gone. This is the fate of those who take our goods, and the reward of those who violently take our property for themselves.