Isaiah 32–36

Isaiah 32–36 WEB

^32:1Behold, a king shall reign in righteousness, and princes shall rule in justice. ²A man shall be as a hiding place from the wind, and a covert from the storm, as streams of water in a dry place, as the shade of a large rock in a weary land. ³The eyes of those who see will not be dim, and the ears of those who hear will listen. ⁴The heart of the rash will understand knowledge, and the tongue of the stammerers will be ready to speak plainly. ⁵The fool will no longer be called noble, nor the scoundrel be highly respected. ⁶For the fool will speak folly, and his heart will work iniquity, to practice profanity, and to utter error against the LORD, to make empty the soul of the hungry, and to cause the drink of the thirsty to fail. ⁷The ways of the scoundrel are evil. He devises wicked plans to destroy the humble with lying words, even when the needy speaks right. ⁸But the noble devises noble things, and he will continue in noble things. ⁹Rise up, you women who are at ease! Hear my voice! You careless daughters, give ear to my speech! ¹⁰For days beyond a year you will be troubled, you careless women; for the vintage will fail. The harvest won’t come. ¹¹Tremble, you women who are at ease! Be troubled, you careless ones! Strip yourselves, make yourselves naked, and put sackcloth on your waist. ¹²Beat your breasts for the pleasant fields, for the fruitful vine. ¹³Thorns and briers will come up on my people’s land; yes, on all the houses of joy in the joyous city. ¹⁴For the palace will be forsaken. The populous city will be deserted. The hill and the watchtower will be for dens forever, a delight for wild donkeys, a pasture of flocks, ¹⁵until the Spirit is poured on us from on high, and the wilderness becomes a fruitful field, and the fruitful field is considered a forest. ¹⁶Then justice will dwell in the wilderness; and righteousness will remain in the fruitful field. ¹⁷The work of righteousness will be peace, and the effect of righteousness, quietness and confidence forever. ¹⁸My people will live in a peaceful habitation, in safe dwellings, and in quiet resting places, ¹⁹though hail flattens the forest, and the city is leveled completely. ²⁰Blessed are you who sow beside all waters, who send out the feet of the ox and the donkey.

^33:1Woe to you who destroy, but you weren’t destroyed, and who betray, but nobody betrayed you! When you have finished destroying, you will be destroyed; and when you have finished betrayal, you will be betrayed. ²LORD, be gracious to us. We have waited for you. Be our strength every morning, our salvation also in the time of trouble. ³At the noise of the thunder, the peoples have fled. When you lift yourself up, the nations are scattered. ⁴Your plunder will be gathered as the caterpillar gathers. Men will leap on it as locusts leap. ⁵The LORD is exalted, for he dwells on high. He has filled Zion with justice and righteousness. ⁶There will be stability in your times, abundance of salvation, wisdom, and knowledge. The fear of the LORD is your treasure. ⁷Behold, their valiant ones cry outside; the ambassadors of peace weep bitterly. ⁸The highways are desolate. The traveling man ceases. The covenant is broken. He has despised the cities. He doesn’t respect man. ⁹The land mourns and languishes. Lebanon is confounded and withers away. Sharon is like a desert, and Bashan and Carmel are stripped bare. ¹⁰“Now I will arise,” says the LORD. “Now I will lift myself up. Now I will be exalted. ¹¹You will conceive chaff. You will give birth to stubble. Your breath is a fire that will devour you. ¹²The peoples will be like the burning of lime, like thorns that are cut down and burned in the fire. ¹³Hear, you who are far off, what I have done; and, you who are near, acknowledge my might.” ¹⁴The sinners in Zion are afraid. Trembling has seized the godless ones. Who among us can live with the devouring fire? Who among us can live with everlasting burning? ¹⁵He who walks righteously and speaks blamelessly, he who despises the gain of oppressions, who gestures with his hands, refusing to take a bribe, who stops his ears from hearing of bloodshed, and shuts his eyes from looking at evil— ¹⁶he will dwell on high. His place of defense will be the fortress of rocks. His bread will be supplied. His waters will be sure. ¹⁷Your eyes will see the king in his beauty. They will see a distant land. ¹⁸Your heart will meditate on the terror. Where is he who counted? Where is he who weighed? Where is he who counted the towers? ¹⁹You will no longer see the fierce people, a people of a deep speech that you can’t comprehend, with a strange language that you can’t understand. ²⁰Look at Zion, the city of our appointed festivals. Your eyes will see Jerusalem, a quiet habitation, a tent that won’t be removed. Its stakes will never be plucked up, nor will any of its cords be broken. ²¹But there the LORD will be with us in majesty, a place of wide rivers and streams, in which no galley with oars will go, neither will any gallant ship pass by there. ²²For the LORD is our judge. The LORD is our lawgiver. The LORD is our king. He will save us. ²³Your rigging is untied. They couldn’t strengthen the foot of their mast. They couldn’t spread the sail. Then the prey of a great plunder was divided. The lame took the prey. ²⁴The inhabitant won’t say, “I am sick.” The people who dwell therein will be forgiven their iniquity.

^34:1Come near, you nations, to hear! Listen, you peoples. Let the earth and all it contains hear, the world, and everything that comes from it. ²For the LORD is enraged against all the nations, and angry with all their armies. He has utterly destroyed them. He has given them over for slaughter. ³Their slain will also be cast out, and the stench of their dead bodies will come up. The mountains will melt in their blood. ⁴All of the army of the sky will be dissolved. The sky will be rolled up like a scroll, and all its armies will fade away, as a leaf fades from off a vine or a fig tree. ⁵For my sword has drunk its fill in the sky. Behold, it will come down on Edom, and on the people of my curse, for judgment. ⁶The LORD’s sword is filled with blood. It is covered with fat, with the blood of lambs and goats, with the fat of the kidneys of rams; for the LORD has a sacrifice in Bozrah, and a great slaughter in the land of Edom. ⁷The wild oxen will come down with them, and the young bulls with the mighty bulls; and their land will be drunken with blood, and their dust made greasy with fat. ⁸For the LORD has a day of vengeance, a year of recompense for the cause of Zion. ⁹Its streams will be turned into pitch, its dust into sulfur, and its land will become burning pitch. ¹⁰It won’t be quenched night or day. Its smoke will go up forever. From generation to generation, it will lie waste. No one will pass through it forever and ever. ¹¹But the pelican and the porcupine will possess it. The owl and the raven will dwell in it. He will stretch the line of confusion over it, and the plumb line of emptiness. ¹²They shall call its nobles to the kingdom, but none shall be there; and all its princes shall be nothing. ¹³Thorns will come up in its palaces, nettles and thistles in its fortresses; and it will be a habitation of jackals, a court for ostriches. ¹⁴The wild animals of the desert will meet with the wolves, and the wild goat will cry to his fellow. Yes, the night creature shall settle there, and shall find herself a place of rest. ¹⁵The arrow snake will make her nest there, and lay, hatch, and gather under her shade. Yes, the kites will be gathered there, every one with her mate. ¹⁶Search in the book of the LORD, and read: not one of these will be missing. None will lack her mate. For my mouth has commanded, and his Spirit has gathered them. ¹⁷He has cast the lot for them, and his hand has divided it to them with a measuring line. They shall possess it forever. From generation to generation they will dwell in it.

^35:1The wilderness and the dry land will be glad. The desert will rejoice and blossom like a rose. ²It will blossom abundantly, and rejoice even with joy and singing. Lebanon’s glory will be given to it, the excellence of Carmel and Sharon. They will see the LORD’s glory, the excellence of our God. ³Strengthen the weak hands, and make the feeble knees firm. ⁴Tell those who have a fearful heart, “Be strong! Don’t be afraid! Behold, your God will come with vengeance, God’s retribution. He will come and save you. ⁵Then the eyes of the blind will be opened, and the ears of the deaf will be unstopped. ⁶Then the lame man will leap like a deer, and the tongue of the mute will sing; for waters will break out in the wilderness, and streams in the desert. ⁷The burning sand will become a pool, and the thirsty ground springs of water. Grass with reeds and rushes will be in the habitation of jackals, where they lay. ⁸A highway will be there, a road, and it will be called “The Holy Way”. The unclean shall not pass over it, but it will be for those who walk in the Way. Wicked fools shall not go there. ⁹No lion will be there, nor will any ravenous animal go up on it. They will not be found there; but the redeemed will walk there. ¹⁰Then the LORD’s ransomed ones will return, and come with singing to Zion; and everlasting joy will be on their heads. They will obtain gladness and joy, and sorrow and sighing will flee away.”

^36:1Now in the fourteenth year of King Hezekiah, Sennacherib king of Assyria attacked all of the fortified cities of Judah and captured them. ²The king of Assyria sent Rabshakeh from Lachish to Jerusalem to King Hezekiah with a large army. He stood by the aqueduct from the upper pool in the fuller’s field highway. ³Then Eliakim the son of Hilkiah, who was over the household, and Shebna the scribe, and Joah, the son of Asaph the recorder came out to him. ⁴Rabshakeh said to them, “Now tell Hezekiah, ‘The great king, the king of Assyria, says, “What confidence is this in which you trust? ⁵I say that your counsel and strength for the war are only vain words. Now in whom do you trust, that you have rebelled against me? ⁶Behold, you trust in the staff of this bruised reed, even in Egypt, which if a man leans on it, it will go into his hand and pierce it. So is Pharaoh king of Egypt to all who trust in him. ⁷But if you tell me, ‘We trust in the LORD our God,’ isn’t that he whose high places and whose altars Hezekiah has taken away, and has said to Judah and to Jerusalem, ‘You shall worship before this altar’?” ⁸Now therefore, please make a pledge to my master the king of Assyria, and I will give you two thousand horses, if you are able on your part to set riders on them. ⁹How then can you turn away the face of one captain of the least of my master’s servants, and put your trust in Egypt for chariots and for horsemen? ¹⁰Have I come up now without the LORD against this land to destroy it? The LORD said to me, “Go up against this land, and destroy it.”’” ¹¹Then Eliakim, Shebna and Joah said to Rabshakeh, “Please speak to your servants in Aramaic, for we understand it. Don’t speak to us in the Jews’ language in the hearing of the people who are on the wall.” ¹²But Rabshakeh said, “Has my master sent me only to your master and to you, to speak these words, and not to the men who sit on the wall, who will eat their own dung and drink their own urine with you?” ¹³Then Rabshakeh stood, and called out with a loud voice in the Jews’ language, and said, “Hear the words of the great king, the king of Assyria! ¹⁴The king says, ‘Don’t let Hezekiah deceive you; for he will not be able to deliver you. ¹⁵Don’t let Hezekiah make you trust in the LORD, saying, “The LORD will surely deliver us. This city won’t be given into the hand of the king of Assyria.”’ ¹⁶Don’t listen to Hezekiah, for the king of Assyria says, ‘Make your peace with me, and come out to me; and each of you eat from his vine, and each one from his fig tree, and each one of you drink the waters of his own cistern; ¹⁷until I come and take you away to a land like your own land, a land of grain and new wine, a land of bread and vineyards. ¹⁸Beware lest Hezekiah persuade you, saying, “The LORD will deliver us.” Have any of the gods of the nations delivered their lands from the hand of the king of Assyria? ¹⁹Where are the gods of Hamath and Arpad? Where are the gods of Sepharvaim? Have they delivered Samaria from my hand? ²⁰Who are they among all the gods of these countries that have delivered their country out of my hand, that the LORD should deliver Jerusalem out of my hand?’” ²¹But they remained silent, and said nothing in reply, for the king’s commandment was, “Don’t answer him.” ²²Then Eliakim the son of Hilkiah, who was over the household, and Shebna the scribe, and Joah, the son of Asaph the recorder, came to Hezekiah with their clothes torn, and told him the words of Rabshakeh.