Bible in 90 Days

14 But the Lord will have mercy on the Israelis; they are still his special ones. He will bring them back to settle once again in the land of Israel. And many nationalities will come and join them there and be their loyal allies. ² The nations of the world will help them to return, and those coming to live in their land will serve them. Those enslaving Israel will be enslaved—Israel shall rule her enemies!

³ In that wonderful day when the Lord gives his people rest from sorrow and fear, from slavery and chains, ⁴ you will jeer at the king of Babylon and say, “You bully, you! At last you have what was coming to you! ⁵ For the Lord has crushed your wicked power and broken your evil rule.” ⁶ You persecuted my people with unceasing blows of rage and held the nations in your angry grip. You were unrestrained in tyranny. ⁷ But at last the whole earth is at rest and is quiet! All the world begins to sing! ⁸ Even the trees of the woods—the fir trees and cedars of Lebanon—sing out this joyous song: “Your power is broken; no one will bother us now; at last we have peace.”

⁹ The denizens of hell crowd to meet you as you enter their domain. World leaders and earth’s mightiest kings, long dead, are there to see you. ¹⁰ With one voice they all cry out, “Now you are as weak as we are!” ¹¹ Your might and power are gone; they are buried with you. All the pleasant music in your palace has ceased; now maggots are your sheet, worms your blanket!

¹² How you are fallen from heaven, O Lucifer, son of the morning! How you are cut down to the ground—mighty though you were against the nations of the world. ¹³ For you said to yourself, “I will ascend to heaven and rule the angels.^[a] I will take the highest throne. I will preside on the Mount of Assembly far away in the north. ¹⁴ I will climb to the highest heavens and be like the Most High.” ¹⁵ But instead, you will be brought down to the pit of hell, down to its lowest depths. ¹⁶ Everyone there will stare at you and ask, “Can this be the one who shook the earth and the kingdoms of the world? ¹⁷ Can this be the one who destroyed the world and made it into a shambles, who demolished its greatest cities and had no mercy on his prisoners?”

¹⁸ The kings of the nations lie in stately glory in their graves, ¹⁹ but your body is thrown out like a broken branch; it lies in an open grave, covered with the dead bodies of those slain in battle. It lies as a carcass in the road, trampled and mangled by horses’ hoofs. ²⁰ No monument will be given you, for you have destroyed your nation and slain your people. Your son will not succeed you as the king. ²¹ Slay the children of this sinner. Do not let them rise and conquer the land nor rebuild the cities of the world.

²² I, myself, have risen against him, says the Lord of heaven’s armies, and will cut off his children and his children’s children from ever sitting on his throne. ²³ I will make Babylon into a desolate land of porcupines, full of swamps and marshes. I will sweep the land with the broom of destruction, says the Lord of the armies of heaven. ²⁴ He has taken an oath to do it! For this is his purpose and plan. ²⁵ I have decided to break the Assyrian army when they are in Israel and to crush them on my mountains; my people shall no longer be their slaves. ²⁶ This is my plan for the whole earth—I will do it by my mighty power that reaches everywhere around the world. ²⁷ The Lord, the God of battle, has spoken—who can change his plans? When his hand moves, who can stop him?

²⁸ This is the message that came to me the year King Ahaz died:

²⁹ Don’t rejoice, Philistines, that the king who smote you is dead.^[b] That rod is broken, yes; but his son will be a greater scourge to you than his father ever was! From the snake will be born an adder, a fiery serpent to destroy you! ³⁰ I will shepherd the poor of my people; they shall graze in my pasture! The needy shall lie down in peace. But as for you—I will wipe you out with famine and the sword. ³¹ Weep, Philistine cities—you are doomed. All your nation is doomed. For a perfectly trained army^[c] is coming down from the north against you. ³² What then shall we tell the reporters? Tell them that the Lord has founded Jerusalem and is determined that the poor of his people will find a refuge within her walls.

15 Here is God’s message to Moab: In one night your cities of Ar and Kir will be destroyed. ² Your people in Dibon go mourning to their temples to weep for the fate of Nebo and Medeba; they shave their heads in sorrow and cut off their beards. ³ They wear sackcloth through the streets, and from every home comes the sound of weeping. ⁴ The cries from the cities of Heshbon and Elealeh are heard far away, even in Jahaz. The bravest warriors of Moab cry in utter terror.

⁵ My heart weeps for Moab! His people flee to Zoar and Eglath. Weeping, they climb the upward road to Luhith, and their crying will be heard all along the road to Horonaim. ⁶ Even Nimrim River is desolate! The grassy banks are dried up and the tender plants are gone. ⁷ The desperate refugees take only the possessions they can carry and flee across the Brook of Willows. ⁸ The whole land of Moab is a land of weeping from one end to the other. ⁹ The stream near Dibon will run red with blood, but I am not through with Dibon yet! Lions will hunt down the survivors, both those who escape and those who remain.

16 Moab’s refugees at Sela send lambs as a token of alliance with the king of Judah. ² The women of Moab are left at the fords of the Arnon River like homeless birds. ³ The ambassadors, who accompany the gift to Jerusalem^[d] plead for advice and help. “Give us sanctuary. Protect us. Do not turn us over to our foes. ^4-5 Let our outcasts stay among you; hide them from our enemies! God will reward you for your kindness to us. If you let Moab’s fugitives settle among you, then when the terror is past, God will establish David’s throne forever, and on that throne he will place a just and righteous King.”

⁶ Is this proud Moab, concerning which we heard so much? His arrogance and insolence are all gone now! ⁷ Therefore all Moab weeps. Yes, Moab, you will mourn for stricken Kir-hareseth, ⁸ and for the abandoned farms of Heshbon and the vineyards at Sibmah. The enemy warlords have cut down the best of the grapevines; their armies spread out as far as Jazer in the deserts, and even down to the sea. ⁹ So I wail and lament for Jazer and the vineyards of Sibmah. My tears shall flow for Heshbon and Elealeh, for destruction has come upon their summer fruits and harvests. ¹⁰ Gone now is the gladness, gone the joy of harvest. The happy singing in the vineyards will be heard no more; the treading out of the grapes in the winepresses has ceased forever. I have ended all their harvest joys.

¹¹ I will weep, weep, weep, for Moab; and my sorrow for Kir-hareseth will be very great. ¹² The people of Moab will pray in anguish to their idols at the tops of the hills, but it will do no good; they will cry to their gods in their idol temples, but none will come to save them. ^13-14 All this concerning Moab has been said before; but now the Lord says that within three years, without fail, the glory of Moab shall be ended, and few of all its people will be left alive.

17 This is God’s message to Damascus, capital of Syria:

Look, Damascus is gone! It is no longer a city—it has become a heap of ruins! ² The cities of Aroer are deserted. Sheep pasture there, lying quiet and unafraid, with no one to chase them away. ³ The strength of Israel and the power of Damascus will end, and the remnant of Syria shall be destroyed. For as Israel’s glory departed, so theirs, too, will disappear, declares the Lord Almighty. ⁴ Yes, the glory of Israel will be very dim when poverty stalks the land. ⁵ Israel will be as abandoned as the harvested grain fields in the valley of Rephaim. ⁶ Oh, a very few of her people will be left, just as a few stray olives are left on the trees when the harvest is ended, two or three in the highest branches, four or five out on the tips of the limbs. That is how it will be in Damascus and Israel—stripped bare of people except for a few of the poor who remain.

⁷ Then at last they will think of God their Creator and have respect for the Holy One of Israel. ⁸ They will no longer ask their idols for help in that day, neither will they worship what their hands have made! They will no longer have respect for the images of Ashtaroth and the sun idols.

⁹ Their largest cities will be as deserted as the distant wooded hills and mountaintops and become like the abandoned cities of the Amorites, deserted when the Israelites approached (so long ago).^{[e] 10} Why? Because you have turned from the God who can save you—the Rock who can hide you; therefore, even though you plant a wonderful, rare crop of greatest value, ¹¹ and though it grows so well that it will blossom on the very morning that you plant it, yet you will never harvest it—your only harvest will be a pile of grief and incurable pain.

¹² Look, see the armies thundering toward God’s land. ¹³ But though they roar like breakers rolling upon a beach, God will silence them. They will flee, scattered like chaff by the wind, like whirling dust before a storm. ¹⁴ In the evening Israel waits in terror, but by dawn her enemies are dead. This is the just reward of those who plunder and destroy the people of God.

18 Ah, land beyond the upper reaches of the Nile,^[f] where winged sailboats glide along the river! ² Land that sends ambassadors in fast boats down the Nile! Let swift messengers return to you, O strong and supple nation feared far and wide, a conquering, destroying nation whose land the upper Nile divides.^[g] And this is the message sent to you:

³ When I raise my battle flag upon the mountain, let all the world take notice! When I blow the trumpet, listen! ⁴ For the Lord has told me this: Let your mighty army now advance against the land of Israel.^[h] God will watch quietly from his Temple in Jerusalem—serene as on a pleasant summer day or a lovely autumn morning during harvesttime. ⁵ But before you have begun the attack, and while your plans are ripening like grapes, he will cut you off as though with pruning shears. He will snip the spreading tendrils. ⁶ Your mighty army will be left dead on the field for the mountain birds and wild animals to eat; the vultures will tear bodies all summer, and the wild animals will gnaw bones all winter. ⁷ But the time will come when that strong and mighty nation, a terror to all both far and near, that conquering, destroying nation whose land the rivers divide, will bring gifts to the Lord Almighty in Jerusalem, where he has placed his name.

19 This is God’s message concerning Egypt:

Look, the Lord is coming against Egypt, riding on a swift cloud; the idols of Egypt tremble; the hearts of the Egyptians melt with fear. ² I will set them to fighting against each other—brother against brother, neighbor against neighbor, city against city, province against province. ³ Her wise counselors are all at their wits’ end to know what to do; they plead with their idols for wisdom and call upon mediums, wizards, and witches to show them what to do. ⁴ I will hand over Egypt to a hard, cruel master, to a vicious king, says the Lord Almighty.

⁵ And the waters of the Nile will fail to rise and flood the fields; the ditches will be parched and dry, ⁶ their channels fouled with rotting reeds. ⁷ All green things along the riverbank will wither and blow away. All crops will perish; everything will die. ⁸ The fishermen will weep for lack of work; those who fish with hooks and those who use the nets will all be unemployed. ⁹ The weavers will have no flax or cotton, for the crops will fail. ¹⁰ Great men and small—all will be crushed and broken.

¹¹ What fools the counselors of Zoan are! Their best counsel to the king of Egypt is utterly stupid and wrong. Will they still boast of their wisdom? Will they dare tell Pharaoh about the long line of wise men they have come from? ¹² What has happened to your “wise counselors,” O Pharaoh? Where has their wisdom gone? If they are wise, let them tell you what the Lord is going to do to Egypt. ¹³ The “wise men” from Zoan are also fools, and those from Memphis are utterly deluded. They are the best you can find, but they have ruined Egypt with their foolish counsel. ¹⁴ The Lord has sent a spirit of foolishness on them, so that all their suggestions are wrong; they make Egypt stagger like a sick drunkard. ¹⁵ Egypt cannot be saved by anything or anybody—no one can show her the way.

¹⁶ In that day the Egyptians will be as weak as women, cowering in fear beneath the upraised fist of God. ¹⁷ Just to speak the name of Israel will strike deep terror in their hearts, for the Lord Almighty has laid his plans against them.

¹⁸ At that time five of the cities of Egypt will follow the Lord Almighty and will begin to speak the Hebrew language.^[i] One of these will be Heliopolis, “The City of the Sun.” ¹⁹ And there will be an altar to the Lord in the heart of Egypt in those days and a monument to the Lord at its border. ²⁰ This will be for a sign of loyalty to the Lord Almighty; then when they cry to the Lord for help against those who oppress them, he will send them a savior—and he shall deliver them.

²¹ In that day the Lord will make himself known to the Egyptians. Yes, they will know the Lord and give their sacrifices and offerings to him; they will make promises to God and keep them. ²² The Lord will smite Egypt and then restore her! For the Egyptians will turn to the Lord and he will listen to their plea and heal them.

²³ In that day Egypt and Iraq^[j] will be connected by a highway, and the Egyptians and the Iraqis will move freely back and forth between their lands, and they shall worship the same God. ²⁴ And Israel will be their ally; the three will be together, and Israel will be a blessing to them. ²⁵ For the Lord will bless Egypt and Iraq because of their friendship^[k] with Israel. He will say, “Blessed be Egypt, my people; blessed be Iraq, the land I have made; blessed be Israel, my inheritance!”

20 In the year when Sargon, king of Assyria, sent the commander-in-chief of his army against the Philistine city of Ashdod and captured it, ² the Lord told Isaiah, the son of Amoz, to take off his clothing, including his shoes, and to walk around naked and barefoot. And Isaiah did as he was told.

³ Then the Lord said, My servant Isaiah, who has been walking naked and barefoot for the last three years, is a symbol of the terrible troubles I will bring upon Egypt and Ethiopia. ⁴ For the king of Assyria will take away the Egyptians and Ethiopians as prisoners, making them walk naked and barefoot, both young and old, their buttocks uncovered, to the shame of Egypt. ^5-6 Then how dismayed the Philistines^[l] will be, who counted on “Ethiopia’s power” and their “glorious ally,” Egypt! And they will say, “If this can happen to Egypt, what chance have we?”

21 This is God’s message concerning Babylon:^[m]

Disaster is roaring down upon you from the terrible desert, like a whirlwind sweeping from the Negeb. ² I see an awesome vision: oh, the horror of it all! God is telling me what he is going to do. I see you plundered and destroyed. Elamites and Medes will take part in the siege. Babylon will fall, and the groaning of all the nations she enslaved will end. ³ My stomach constricts and burns with pain; sharp pangs of horror are upon me, like the pangs of a woman giving birth to a child. I faint when I hear what God is planning; I am terrified, blinded with dismay. ⁴ My mind reels; my heart races; I am gripped by awful fear. All rest at night—so pleasant once—is gone; I lie awake, trembling.

⁵ Look! They are preparing a great banquet! They load the tables with food; they pull up their chairs^[n] to eat. . . . Quick, quick, grab your shields and prepare for battle! You are being attacked!

^6-7 Meanwhile (in my vision)^[o] the Lord had told me, “Put a watchman on the city wall to shout out what he sees. When he sees riders in pairs on donkeys and camels, tell him, ‘This is it!’”

^8-9 So I put the watchman on the wall, and at last he shouted, “Sir, day after day and night after night I have been here at my post. Now at last—look! Here come riders in pairs!”

Then I heard a voice shout out, “Babylon is fallen, is fallen; and all the idols of Babylon lie broken on the ground.”

¹⁰ O my people, threshed and winnowed, I have told you all that the Lord Almighty, the God of Israel, has said.

¹¹ This is God’s message to Edom:^[p]

Someone from among you keeps calling, calling to me: “Watchman, what of the night? Watchman, what of the night? How much time is left?” ¹² The watchman replies, “Your judgment day is dawning now. Turn again to God, so that I can give you better news. Seek for him, then come and ask again!”

¹³ This is God’s message concerning Arabia:

O caravans from Dedan, you will hide in the deserts of Arabia. ¹⁴ O people of Tema, bring food and water to these weary fugitives! ¹⁵ They have fled from drawn swords and sharp arrows and the terrors of war! ¹⁶ “But a long year from now,”^[q] says the Lord, “the great power of their enemy, the mighty tribe of Kedar, will end. ¹⁷ Only a few of its stalwart archers will survive.” The Lord, the God of Israel, has spoken.

22 This is God’s message concerning Jerusalem:^[r]

What is happening? Where is everyone going? Why are they running to the rooftops? What are they looking at? ² The whole city is in terrible uproar. What’s the trouble in this busy, happy city?^[s] Bodies! Lying everywhere, slain by plague and not by sword. ³ All your leaders flee; they surrender without resistance. The people slip away but they are captured too. ⁴ Leave me alone to weep. Don’t try to comfort me—let me cry for my people as I watch them being destroyed. ⁵ Oh, what a day of crushing trouble! What a day of confusion and terror from the Lord God of heaven’s armies! The walls of Jerusalem are breached, and the cry of death echoes from the mountainsides. ^6-7 Elamites are the archers; Syrians drive the chariots; the men of Kir hold up the shields. They fill your choicest valleys and crowd against your gates.

⁸ God has removed his protecting care. You run to the armory for your weapons! ^9-11 You inspect the walls of Jerusalem to see what needs repair! You check over the houses and tear some down for stone for fixing walls. Between the city walls, you build a reservoir for water from the lower pool! But all your feverish plans will not avail, for you never ask for help from God, who lets this come upon you. He is the one who planned it long ago. ¹² The Lord God called you to repent, to weep and mourn, to shave your heads in sorrow for your sins, and to wear clothes made of sackcloth to show your remorse. ¹³ But instead, you sing and dance and play, and feast and drink. “Let us eat, drink, and be merry,” you say: “What’s the difference, for tomorrow we die.” ¹⁴ The Lord Almighty has revealed to me that this sin will never be forgiven you until the day you die.

^15-16 Furthermore, the same Lord God of the armies of heaven has told me this: Go and say to Shebna, the palace administrator: “And who do you think you are, building this beautiful sepulchre in the rock for yourself? ¹⁷ For the Lord who allowed you to be clothed so gorgeously will hurl you away, sending you into captivity, O strong man! ¹⁸ He will wad you up in his hands like a ball and toss you away into a distant, barren land; there you will die, O glorious one—you who disgrace your nation!

¹⁹ “Yes, I will drive you out of office,” says the Lord, “and pull you down from your high position. ²⁰ And then I will call my servant Eliakim, the son of Hilkiah, to replace you. ²¹ He shall have your uniform and title and authority, and he will be a father to the people of Jerusalem and all Judah. ²² I will give him responsibility over all my people; whatever he says will be done; none will be able to stop him. ^23-24 I will make of him a strong and steady peg to support my people; they will load him with responsibility, and he will be an honor to his family name.” ²⁵ But the Lord will pull out that other peg that seems to be so firmly fastened to the wall! It will come out and fall to the ground, and everything it supports will fall with it, for the Lord has spoken.

23 This is God’s message to Tyre:

Weep, O ships of Tyre,^[t] returning home from distant lands! Weep for your harbor, for it is gone! The rumors that you heard in Cyprus are all true. ^2-3 Deathly silence is everywhere. Stillness reigns where once your hustling port was full of ships from Sidon, bringing merchandise from far across the ocean, from Egypt and along the Nile. You were the merchandise mart of the world. ⁴ Be ashamed, O Sidon, stronghold of the sea. For you are childless now! ⁵ When Egypt hears the news, there will be great sorrow. ⁶ Flee to Tarshish, men of Tyre, weeping as you go. ⁷ This silent ruin is all that’s left of your once joyous land. What a history was yours! Think of all the colonists you sent to distant lands!

⁸ Who has brought this disaster on Tyre, empire builder and top trader of the world? ⁹ The Commander of the armies of heaven has done it to destroy your pride and show his contempt for all the greatness of mankind. ¹⁰ Sail on, O ships of Tarshish, for your harbor is gone. ¹¹ The Lord holds out his hand over the seas; he shakes the kingdoms of the earth; he has spoken out against this great merchant city, to destroy its strength.

¹² He says, “Never again, O dishonored virgin, daughter of Sidon, will you rejoice, will you be strong. Even if you flee to Cyprus, you will find no rest.”

¹³ It will be the Babylonians, not the Assyrians, who consign Tyre to the wild beasts. They will lay siege to it, raze its palaces, and make it a heap of ruins. ¹⁴ Wail, you ships that ply the oceans, for your home port is destroyed!

^15-16 For seventy years Tyre will be forgotten. Then, in the days of another king, the city will come back to life again; she will sing sweet songs as a harlot sings who, long absent from her lovers, walks the streets to look for them again and is remembered. ¹⁷ Yes, after seventy years, the Lord will revive Tyre, but she will be no different than she was before; she will return again to all her evil ways around the world. ¹⁸ Yet the distant time will come when^[u] her businesses will give their profits to the Lord! They will not be hoarded but used for good food and fine clothes for the priests of the Lord!

24 Look! The Lord is overturning the land of Judah and making it a vast wasteland of destruction. See how he is emptying out all its people and scattering them over the face of the earth. ² Priests and people, servants and masters, slave girls and mistresses, buyers and sellers, lenders and borrowers, bankers and debtors—none will be spared. ³ The land will be completely emptied and looted. The Lord has spoken. ^4-5 The land suffers for the sins of its people. The earth languishes, the crops wither, the skies refuse their rain. The land is defiled by crime; the people have twisted the laws of God and broken his everlasting commands. ⁶ Therefore the curse of God is upon them; they are left desolate, destroyed by the drought. Few will be left alive.

⁷ All the joys of life will go: the grape harvest will fail, the wine will be gone, the merrymakers will sigh and mourn. ⁸ The melodious chords of the harp and timbrel are heard no more; the happy days are ended. ⁹ No more are the joys of wine and song; strong drink turns bitter in the mouth.

¹⁰ The city lies in chaos; every home and shop is locked up tight to keep out looters. ¹¹ Mobs form in the streets, crying for wine; joy has reached its lowest ebb; gladness has been banished from the land. ¹² The city is left in ruins; its gates are battered down. ¹³ Throughout the land^[v] the story is the same—only a remnant is left.

¹⁴ But all who are left will shout and sing for joy; those in the west will praise the majesty of God, ^15-16 and those in the east will respond with praise. Hear them singing to the Lord from the ends of the earth, singing glory to the Righteous One!

But my heart is heavy with grief, for evil still prevails and treachery is everywhere. ¹⁷ Terror and the captivity of hell are still your lot, O men of the world. ¹⁸ When you flee in terror, you will fall into a pit, and if you escape from the pit, you will step into a trap, for destruction falls from the heavens upon you; the world is shaken beneath you. ¹⁹ The earth has broken down in utter collapse; everything is lost, abandoned, and confused. ²⁰ The world staggers like a drunkard; it shakes like a tent in a storm. It falls and will not rise again, for the sins of the earth are very great.

²¹ On that day the Lord will punish the fallen angels in the heavens and the proud rulers of the nations on earth. ²² They will be rounded up like prisoners and imprisoned in a dungeon until they are tried and condemned. ²³ Then the Lord of heaven’s armies will mount his throne in Zion and rule gloriously in Jerusalem, in the sight of all the elders of his people. Such glory there will be that all the brightness of the sun and moon will seem to fade away.

25 O Lord, I will honor and praise your name, for you are my God; you do such wonderful things! You planned them long ago, and now you have accomplished them, just as you said! ² You turn mighty cities into heaps of ruins. The strongest forts are turned to rubble. Beautiful palaces in distant lands disappear and will never be rebuilt. ³ Therefore strong nations will shake with fear before you; ruthless nations will obey and glorify your name.

⁴ But to the poor, O Lord, you are a refuge from the storm, a shadow from the heat, a shelter from merciless men who are like a driving rain that melts down an earthen wall. ⁵ As a hot, dry land is cooled by clouds, you will cool the pride of ruthless nations. ⁶ Here on Mount Zion in Jerusalem, the Lord Almighty will spread a wondrous feast for everyone around the world—a delicious feast of good food, with clear, well-aged wine and choice beef. ⁷ At that time he will remove the cloud of gloom, the pall of death that hangs over the earth; ⁸ he will swallow up death forever. The Lord God will wipe away all tears and take away forever all insults and mockery against his land and people. The Lord has spoken—he will surely do it!

⁹ In that day the people will proclaim, “This is our God in whom we trust, for whom we waited. Now at last he is here.” What a day of rejoicing! ¹⁰ For the Lord’s good hand will rest upon Jerusalem, and Moab will be crushed as straw beneath his feet and left to rot. ¹¹ God will push them down just as a swimmer pushes down the water with his hands. He will end their pride and all their evil works. ¹² The high walls of Moab will be demolished and brought to dust.

26 Listen to them singing! In that day the whole land of Judah will sing this song:

“Our city is strong! We are surrounded by the walls of his salvation!” ² Open the gates to everyone, for all may enter in who love the Lord. ³ He will keep in perfect peace all those who trust in him, whose thoughts turn often to the Lord! ⁴ Trust in the Lord God always, for in the Lord Jehovah is your everlasting strength. ⁵ He humbles the proud and brings the haughty city to the dust; its walls come crashing down. ⁶ He presents it to the poor and needy for their use.

⁷ But for good men the path is not uphill and rough! God does not give them a rough and treacherous path, but smooths the road before them. ⁸ O Lord, we love to do your will! Our hearts’ desire is to glorify your name. ⁹ All night long I search for you; earnestly I seek for God; for only when you come in judgment on the earth to punish it will people turn away from wickedness and do what is right.

¹⁰ Your kindness to the wicked doesn’t make them good; they keep on doing wrong and take no notice of your majesty. ¹¹ They do not listen when you threaten; they will not look to see your upraised fist. Show them how much you love your people. Perhaps then they will be ashamed! Yes, let them be burned up by the fire reserved for your enemies.

¹² Lord, grant us peace; for all we have and are has come from you. ¹³ O Lord our God, once we worshiped other gods; but now we worship you alone. ¹⁴ Those we served before are dead and gone; never again will they return. You came against them and destroyed them, and they are long forgotten. ¹⁵ O praise the Lord! He has made our nation very great. He has widened the boundaries of our land!

¹⁶ Lord, in their distress they sought for you. When your punishment was on them, they poured forth a whispered prayer. ¹⁷ How we missed your presence, Lord! We suffered as a woman giving birth who cries and writhes in pain. ¹⁸ We too have writhed in agony, but all to no avail. No deliverance has come from all our efforts. ¹⁹ Yet we have this assurance: Those who belong to God shall live again. Their bodies shall rise again! Those who dwell in the dust shall awake and sing for joy! For God’s light of life will fall like dew upon them!

²⁰ Go home, my people, and lock the doors! Hide for a little while until the Lord’s wrath against your enemies has passed. ²¹ Look! The Lord is coming from the heavens to punish the people of the earth for their sins. The earth will no longer hide the murderers. The guilty will be found.

27 In that day the Lord will take his terrible, swift sword and punish leviathan, the swiftly moving serpent, the coiling, writhing serpent, the dragon of the sea.

² In that day of Israel’s freedom^[w] let this anthem be their song:

³ Israel^[x] is my vineyard; I, the Lord, will tend the fruitful vines; every day I’ll water them, and day and night I’ll watch to keep all enemies away. ^4-5 My anger against Israel is gone. If I find thorns and briars bothering her, I will burn them up, unless these enemies of mine surrender and beg for peace and my protection. ⁶ The time will come when Israel will take root and bud and blossom and fill the whole earth with her fruit!

^7-8 Has God punished Israel as much as he has punished her enemies? No, for he has devastated her enemies,^[y] while he has punished Israel but a little, exiling her far from her own land as though blown away in a storm from the east. ⁹ And why did God do it? It was to purge away^[z] her sins, to rid her of all her idol altars and her idols. They will never be worshiped again. ¹⁰ Her walled cities will be silent and empty, houses abandoned, streets grown up with grass, cows grazing through the city munching on twigs and branches.

¹¹ My people are like the dead branches of a tree, broken off and used to burn beneath the pots. They are a foolish nation, a witless, stupid people, for they turn away from God. Therefore, he who made them will not have pity on them or show them his mercy. ¹² Yet the time will come when the Lord will gather them together one by one like hand-picked grain, selecting them here and there from his great threshing floor that reaches all the way from the Euphrates River to the Egyptian boundary. ¹³ In that day the great trumpet will be blown, and many about to perish among their enemies, Assyria and Egypt, will be rescued and brought back to Jerusalem to worship the Lord in his holy mountain.

28 Woe to the city of Samaria, surrounded by her rich valley—Samaria, the pride and delight of the drunkards of Israel! Woe to her fading beauty, the crowning glory of a nation of men lying drunk in the streets! ² For the Lord will send a mighty army (the Assyrians) against you; like a mighty hailstorm he will burst upon you and dash you to the ground. ³ The proud city of Samaria—yes, the joy and delight of the drunkards of Israel—will be hurled to the ground and trampled beneath the enemies’ feet. ⁴ Once glorious, her fading beauty surrounded by a fertile valley will suddenly be gone, greedily snatched away as an early fig is hungrily snatched and gobbled up!

⁵ Then at last the Lord Almighty himself will be their crowning glory, the diadem of beauty to his people who are left. ⁶ He will give a longing for justice to your judges and great courage to your soldiers who are battling to the last before your gates. ⁷ But Jerusalem is now led by drunks! Her priests and prophets reel and stagger, making stupid errors and mistakes. ⁸ Their tables are covered with vomit; filth is everywhere.

⁹ “Who does Isaiah think he is,” the people say, “to speak to us like this! Are we little children, barely old enough to talk? ¹⁰ He tells us everything over and over again, a line at a time and in such simple words!”

¹¹ But they won’t listen; the only language they can understand is punishment! So God will punish them by sending against them foreigners who speak strange gibberish! Only then will they listen to him! ¹² They could have rest in their own land if they would obey him, if they were kind and good. He told them that, but they wouldn’t listen to him. ¹³ So the Lord will spell it out for them again, repeating it over and over in simple words whenever he can; yet over this simple, straightforward message they will stumble and fall and be broken, trapped and captured.

¹⁴ Therefore hear the word of the Lord, you scoffing rulers in Jerusalem:

¹⁵ You have struck a bargain with death, you say, and sold yourselves to the devil^[aa] in exchange for his protection against the Assyrians. “They can never touch us,” you say, “for we are under the care of one who will deceive and fool them.”

¹⁶ But the Lord God says, “See, I am placing a Foundation Stone in Zion—a firm, tested, precious Cornerstone that is safe to build on. He who believes need never run away again. ¹⁷ I will take the line and plummet of justice to check the foundation wall you built; it looks so fine, but it is so weak a storm of hail will knock it down! The enemy will come like a flood and sweep it away, and you will be drowned. ¹⁸ I will cancel your agreement of compromise with death and the devil, so when the terrible enemy floods in, you will be trampled into the ground. ¹⁹ Again and again that flood will come and carry you off, until at last the unmixed horror of the truth of my warnings will finally dawn on you.”

²⁰ The bed you have made is far too short to lie on; the blankets are too narrow to cover you. ²¹ The Lord will come suddenly and in anger, as at Mount Perazim and Gibeon, to do a strange, unusual thing—to destroy his own people! ²² So scoff no more, lest your punishment be made even greater, for the Lord God has plainly told me that he is determined to crush you.

^23-24 Listen to me, listen as I plead: Does a farmer always plow and never sow? Is he forever harrowing the soil and never planting it? ²⁵ Does he not finally plant his many kinds of grain, each in its own section of his land? ²⁶ He knows just what to do, for God has made him see and understand. ²⁷ He doesn’t thresh all grains the same. A sledge is never used on dill, but it is beaten with a stick. A threshing wheel is never rolled on cummin, but it is beaten softly with a flail. ²⁸ Bread grain is easily crushed, so he doesn’t keep on pounding it. ²⁹ The Lord Almighty is a wonderful teacher and gives the farmer wisdom.