Isaiah 29:9–18

Disregarded Warnings

⁹Go ahead and be stupid! Go ahead and be blind! Get drunk without any wine! Stagger without drinking a drop! ^10*The Lord has made you drowsy, ready to fall into a deep sleep. The prophets should be the eyes of the people, but God has blindfolded them. ¹¹The meaning of every prophetic vision will be hidden from you; it will be like a sealed scroll. If you take it to someone who knows how to read and ask him to read it to you, he will say he can’t because it is sealed. ¹²If you give it to someone who can’t read and ask him to read it to you, he will answer that he doesn’t know how.

^13*The Lord said, “These people claim to worship me, but their words are meaningless, and their hearts are somewhere else. Their religion is nothing but human rules and traditions, which they have simply memorized. ^14*So I will startle them with one unexpected blow after another. Those who are wise will turn out to be fools, and all their cleverness will be useless.”

Hope for the Future

¹⁵Those who try to hide their plans from the Lord are doomed! They carry out their schemes in secret and think no one will see them or know what they are doing. ^16*They turn everything upside down. Which is more important, the potter or the clay? Can a thing which someone has made say to its maker, “You didn’t make me”? Or “You don’t know what you are doing”?

¹⁷As the saying goes, before long the dense forest will become farmland, and the farmland will go back to forest.

¹⁸When that day comes, the deaf will be able to hear a book being read aloud, and the blind, who have been living in darkness, will open their eyes and see.