Isaiah 10:12–19

^12*But the Lord says, “When I finish what I am doing on Mount Zion and in Jerusalem, I will punish the emperor of Assyria for all his boasting and all his pride.”

^13*The emperor of Assyria boasts, “I have done it all myself. I am strong and wise and clever. I wiped out the boundaries between nations and took the supplies they had stored. Like a bull I have trampled on the people who live there. ^14*The nations of the world were like a bird’s nest, and I gathered their wealth as easily as gathering eggs. Not a wing fluttered to scare me off; no beak opened to scream at me!”

^15*But the Lord says, “Can an axe claim to be greater than the man who uses it? Is a saw more important than the man who saws with it? A club doesn’t lift up a man; a man lifts up a club.”

^16*The Lord Almighty is going to send disease to punish those who are now well fed. In their bodies there will be a fire that burns and burns. ^17*God, the light of Israel, will become a fire. Israel’s holy God will become a flame, which in a single day will burn up everything, even the thorns and thistles. ^18*The rich forests and farmlands will be totally destroyed, in the same way that a fatal sickness destroys a person. ^19*There will be so few trees left that even a child will be able to count them.