Isaiah 29-31

1Woe to you, O Ariel, the city of Ariel where David camped! Year upon year let your festivals recur.

2And I will constrain Ariel, and there will be mourning and lamentation; she will be like an altar hearth before Me.

3I will camp in a circle around you; I will besiege you with towers and set up siege works against you.

4You will be brought low, you will speak from the ground, and out of the dust your words will be muffled. Your voice will be like a spirit from the ground; your speech will whisper out of the dust.

5But your many foes will be like fine dust, the multitude of the ruthless like blowing chaff. Then suddenly, in an instant,

6you will be visited by the LORD of Hosts with thunder and earthquake and loud noise, with windstorm and tempest and consuming flame of fire.

7All the many nations going out to battle against Ariel— even all who war against her, laying siege and attacking her— will be like a dream, like a vision in the night,

8as when a hungry man dreams he is eating, then awakens still hungry; as when a thirsty man dreams he is drinking, then awakens faint and parched. So will it be for all the many nations who go to battle against Mount Zion.

9Stop and be astonished; blind yourselves and be sightless; be drunk, but not with wine; stagger, but not from strong drink.

10For the LORD has poured out on you a spirit of deep sleep. He has shut your eyes, O prophets; He has covered your heads, O seers.

11And the entire vision will be to you like the words sealed in a scroll. If it is handed to someone to read, he will say, “I cannot, because it is sealed.”

12Or if the scroll is handed to one unable to read, he will say, “I cannot read.”

13Therefore the Lord said: “These people draw near to Me with their mouths and honor Me with their lips, but their hearts are far from Me. Their worship of Me is but rules taught by men.

14Therefore I will again confound these people with wonder upon wonder. The wisdom of the wise will vanish, and the intelligence of the intelligent will be hidden.”

15Woe to those who dig deep to hide their plans from the LORD. In darkness they do their works and say, “Who sees us, and who will know?”

16You have turned things upside down, as if the potter were regarded as clay. Shall what is formed say to him who formed it, “He did not make me”? Can the pottery say of the potter, “He has no understanding”?

17In a very short time, will not Lebanon become an orchard, and the orchard seem like a forest?

18On that day the deaf will hear the words of the scroll, and out of the deep darkness the eyes of the blind will see.

19The humble will increase their joy in the LORD, and the poor among men will rejoice in the Holy One of Israel.

20For the ruthless will vanish, the mockers will disappear, and all who look for evil will be cut down—

21those who indict a man with a word, who ensnare the mediator at the gate, and who with false charges deprive the innocent of justice.

22Therefore the LORD who redeemed Abraham says of the house of Jacob: “No longer will Jacob be ashamed and no more will his face grow pale.

23For when he sees his children around him, the work of My hands, they will honor My name, they will sanctify the Holy One of Jacob, and they will stand in awe of the God of Israel.

24Then the wayward in spirit will come to understanding, and those who grumble will accept instruction.”

1“Woe to the rebellious children,” declares the LORD, “to those who carry out a plan that is not Mine, who form an alliance, but against My will, heaping up sin upon sin.

2They set out to go down to Egypt without asking My advice, to seek shelter under Pharaoh’s protection and take refuge in Egypt’s shade.

3But Pharaoh’s protection will become your shame, and the refuge of Egypt’s shade your disgrace.

4For though their princes are at Zoan and their envoys have arrived in Hanes,

5everyone will be put to shame because of a people useless to them. They bring neither help nor benefit, but only shame and disgrace.”

6This is the burden against the beasts of the Negev: Through a land of hardship and distress, of lioness and lion, of viper and flying serpent, they carry their wealth on the backs of donkeys and their treasures on the humps of camels, to a people of no profit to them.

7Egypt’s help is futile and empty; therefore I have called her Rahab Who Sits Still.

8Go now, write it on a tablet in their presence and inscribe it on a scroll; it will be for the days to come, a witness forever and ever.

9These are rebellious people, deceitful children, children unwilling to obey the LORD’s instruction.

10They say to the seers, “Stop seeing visions!” and to the prophets, “Do not prophesy to us the truth! Speak to us pleasant words; prophesy illusions.

11Get out of the way; turn off the road. Rid us of the Holy One of Israel!”

12Therefore this is what the Holy One of Israel says: “Because you have rejected this message, trusting in oppression and relying on deceit,

13this iniquity of yours is like a breach about to fail, a bulge in a high wall, whose collapse will come suddenly— in an instant!

14It will break in pieces like a potter’s jar, shattered so that no fragment can be found. Not a shard will be found in the dust large enough to scoop the coals from a hearth or to skim the water from a cistern.”

15For the Lord GOD, the Holy One of Israel, has said: “By repentance and rest you would be saved; your strength would lie in quiet confidence— but you were not willing.”

16“No,” you say, “we will flee on horses.” Therefore you will flee! “We will ride swift horses,” but your pursuers will be faster.

17A thousand will flee at the threat of one; at the threat of five you will all flee, until you are left alone like a pole on a mountaintop, like a banner on a hill.

18Therefore the LORD longs to be gracious to you; therefore He rises to show you compassion, for the LORD is a just God. Blessed are all who wait for Him.

19O people in Zion who dwell in Jerusalem, you will weep no more. He will surely be gracious when you cry for help; when He hears, He will answer you.

20The Lord will give you the bread of adversity and the water of affliction, but your Teacher will no longer hide Himself—with your own eyes you will see Him.

21And whether you turn to the right or to the left, your ears will hear this command behind you: “This is the way. Walk in it.”

22So you will desecrate your silver-plated idols and your gold-plated images. You will throw them away like menstrual cloths, saying to them, “Be gone!”

23Then He will send rain for the seed that you have sown in the ground, and the food that comes from your land will be rich and plentiful. On that day your cattle will graze in open pastures.

24The oxen and donkeys that work the ground will eat salted fodder, winnowed with shovel and pitchfork.

25And from every high mountain and every raised hill, streams of water will flow in the day of great slaughter, when the towers fall.

26The light of the moon will be as bright as the sun, and the light of the sun will be seven times brighter—like the light of seven days—on the day that the LORD binds up the brokenness of His people and heals the wounds He has inflicted.

27Behold, the Name of the LORD comes from afar, with burning anger and dense smoke. His lips are full of fury, and His tongue is like a consuming fire.

28His breath is like a rushing torrent that rises to the neck. He comes to sift the nations in a sieve of destruction; He bridles the jaws of the peoples to lead them astray.

29You will sing as on the night of a holy festival, and your heart will rejoice like one who walks to the music of a flute, going up to the mountain of the LORD, to the Rock of Israel.

30And the LORD will cause His majestic voice to be heard and His mighty arm to be revealed, striking in angry wrath with a flame of consuming fire, and with cloudburst, storm, and hailstones.

31For Assyria will be shattered at the voice of the LORD; He will strike them with His scepter.

32And with every stroke of the rod of punishment that the LORD brings down on them, the tambourines and lyres will sound as He battles with weapons brandished.

33For Topheth has long been prepared; it has been made ready for the king. Its funeral pyre is deep and wide, with plenty of fire and wood. The breath of the LORD, like a torrent of burning sulfur, sets it ablaze.

1Woe to those who go down to Egypt for help, who rely on horses, who trust in their abundance of chariots and in their multitude of horsemen. They do not look to the Holy One of Israel; they do not seek the LORD.

2Yet He too is wise and brings disaster; He does not call back His words. He will rise up against the house of the wicked and against the allies of evildoers.

3But the Egyptians are men, not God; their horses are flesh, not spirit. When the LORD stretches out His hand, the helper will stumble, and the one he helps will fall; both will perish together.

4For this is what the LORD has said to me: “Like a lion roaring or a young lion over its prey— and though a band of shepherds is called out against it, it is not terrified by their shouting or subdued by their clamor— so the LORD of Hosts will come down to do battle on Mount Zion and its heights.

5Like birds hovering overhead, so the LORD of Hosts will protect Jerusalem. He will shield it and deliver it; He will pass over it and preserve it.”

6Return to the One against whom you have so blatantly rebelled, O children of Israel.

7For on that day, every one of you will reject the idols of silver and gold that your own hands have sinfully made.

8“Then Assyria will fall, but not by the sword of man; a sword will devour them, but not one made by mortals. They will flee before the sword, and their young men will be put to forced labor.

9Their rock will pass away for fear, and their princes will panic at the sight of the battle standard,” declares the LORD, whose fire is in Zion, whose furnace is in Jerusalem.