Isaiah 17–20

CHAPTER 17

An Oracle Concerning Damascus

¹The ^1aoracle concerning ^bDamascus.

“Behold, Damascus is about to be ^cremoved from being a city

And will become a ^dfallen ruin.

²“The cities ¹of ^aAroer are forsaken;

They will be for ^bflocks, and they will lie down in them;

And there will be ^cno one to cause them to tremble.

³“And the ^1afortified city will cease from Ephraim,

And ²sovereignty from Damascus

And the remnant of Aram;

They will be like the ^bglory of the sons of Israel,”

Declares Yahweh of hosts.

⁴Now it will be in that day, that the ^aglory of Jacob will ¹wane,

And ^bthe fatness of his flesh will become lean.

⁵And it will be ^aeven like the ¹reaper gathering the standing grain,

As his arm harvests the ears of grain,

Or it will be like one gleaning ears of grain

In the ^bvalley of Rephaim.

⁶Yet ^agleanings will remain in it like the ¹shaking of an olive tree,

Two or three olives on the topmost branch,

Four or five on the twigs of a fruitful tree,

Declares Yahweh, the God of Israel.

⁷In that day man will ^ahave regard for his Maker

And his eyes will look to the Holy One of Israel.

⁸He will not have regard for the ^aaltars, the work of his hands,

Nor will he look to that which his ^bfingers have made,

Even the ^1cAsherim and ²incense stands.

⁹In that day ¹their strong cities will be like ²forsaken places in the forest,

Or like ³branches which they forsook before the sons of Israel;

And ⁴the land will be a desolation.

¹⁰For ^ayou have forgotten the ^bGod of your salvation

And have not remembered the ^crock of your strong defense.

Therefore you plant delightful plants

And set them with vine branches of a strange god.

¹¹In the day that you plant it you carefully fence it in,

And in the ^amorning you cause your seed to flourish;

But the harvest will ^bbe a heap

In a day of sickliness and incurable pain.

¹²Alas, the uproar of many peoples

^aWho roar like the roaring of the seas,

And the rumbling of nations

Who rumble on like the ^brumbling of mighty waters!

¹³The ^anations rumble on like the rumbling of many waters,

But He will ^brebuke them, and they will flee far away,

And be pursued ^clike chaff in the mountains before the wind,

Or like whirling dust before a whirlwind.

¹⁴At evening time, behold, there is terror!

Before morning ^athey are no more.

¹Such will be the portion of those who pillage us

And the lot of those who plunder us.

CHAPTER 18

A Message to Ethiopia

¹Alas, O land of whirring wings

Which lies beyond the rivers of ^1aEthiopia,

²Which sends envoys by the sea,

Even in ^apapyrus vessels on the surface of the waters.

Go, swift messengers, to a nation ^1btall and smooth,

To a people ^cfeared ²far and wide,

A powerful and oppressive nation

Whose land the rivers divide.

^3aAll you inhabitants of the world and dwellers on earth,

As soon as a standard is raised on the mountains, ^byou will see it,

And as soon as the trumpet is blown, you will hear it.

⁴For thus Yahweh has told me,

“I will look ¹from My ^adwelling place quietly

Like dazzling heat in the ^2bsunshine,

Like a cloud of ^cdew in the heat of harvest.”

⁵For ^abefore the harvest, as soon as the bud ¹blossoms

And the flower becomes a ripening grape,

Then He will cut off the sprigs with pruning knives

And remove and cut away the spreading branches.

⁶They will be left together for mountain birds ^aof prey,

And for the beasts of the earth;

And the birds of prey will spend the summer feeding on them,

And all the beasts of the earth will spend harvest time on them.

⁷At that time a gift of homage will be brought to Yahweh of hosts

¹From a ^apeople ²tall and smooth,

Even from a people feared ³far and wide,

A powerful and oppressive nation,

Whose land the rivers divide—

To the ^bplace of the name of Yahweh of hosts, even Mount Zion.

CHAPTER 19

An Oracle Concerning Egypt

¹The ^1aoracle concerning ^bEgypt.

Behold, Yahweh is ^criding on a swift cloud and is about to come to Egypt;

The ^didols of Egypt will shake at His presence,

And the ^eheart of the Egyptians will melt within them.

²“So I will incite Egyptians against Egyptians;

And they will ^aeach fight against his brother and each against his neighbor,

City against city and kingdom against kingdom.

³“Then the spirit of the Egyptians will be emptied to destruction within them;

And I will confuse their counsel,

So that ^athey will seek idols and ghosts of the dead

And to ¹mediums and spiritists.

⁴“Moreover, I will deliver the Egyptians into the hand of a ^acruel master,

And a ¹strong king will rule over them,” declares the Lord, Yahweh of hosts.

^5aThe waters from the sea will dry up,

And the river will be parched and dry.

⁶The ^arivers will emit a stench,

The ^1bstreams of Egypt will thin out and dry up;

^cThe reeds and rushes will rot away.

⁷The bulrushes by the ^aNile, by the ¹edge of the Nile

And all the sown fields by the Nile

Will become dry, be driven away, and be no more.

⁸And the ^afishermen will lament,

And all those who cast a ¹line into the Nile will mourn,

And those who spread nets on the waters will ²languish.

⁹Moreover, the manufacturers of linen made from combed flax

And the weavers of white ^acloth will be ashamed.

¹⁰And ¹the ^apillars of Egypt will be crushed;

All the hired laborers will be grieved in soul.

¹¹The princes of ^1aZoan are merely ignorant fools;

The counsel of Pharaoh’s wisest counselors has become ²senseless.

How can you men say to Pharaoh,

“I am a son of the ^bwise, a son of the kings of old”?

¹²Well then, where are your wise men?

Please let them tell you,

And let them ¹understand what Yahweh of hosts

Has ^acounseled against Egypt.

¹³The princes of ¹Zoan have acted as ignorant fools,

The princes of ^aMemphis are deluded;

Those who are the ^bcornerstone of her tribes

²Have led Egypt astray.

¹⁴Yahweh has mixed within her a spirit of ^adistortion;

^bThey have led Egypt astray in all ¹that it does,

As a ^cdrunken man ²strays into his vomit.

¹⁵There will be no work for Egypt

^aWhich its head or tail, its palm branch or bulrush, may do.

Yahweh Will Bless Egypt, Assyria, and Israel

¹⁶In that day the Egyptians will become like women, and they will tremble and be in ^adread because of the ^bwaving of the hand of Yahweh of hosts, which He is going to wave over them.

¹⁷And the land of Judah will become a ¹terror to Egypt; everyone ²to whom it is mentioned will be in dread of it because of the ^acounsel of Yahweh of hosts which He is counseling against them.

¹⁸In that day five cities in the land of Egypt will be speaking the language of Canaan and ^aswearing allegiance to Yahweh of hosts; one will be called the City of ¹Destruction.

¹⁹In that day there will be an ^aaltar to Yahweh in the midst of the land of Egypt, and a ^bpillar to Yahweh near its border.

²⁰And it will become a sign and a witness to Yahweh of hosts in the land of Egypt; for they will cry to Yahweh because of oppressors, and He will send them a ^aSavior and a ^1bChampion, and He will deliver them.

²¹Thus Yahweh will make Himself known to Egypt, and the Egyptians will know Yahweh in that day. They will even worship with ^asacrifice and offering, and they will make a vow to Yahweh and pay it.

²²And Yahweh will smite Egypt, smiting but ^ahealing; so they will ^breturn to Yahweh, and He will be moved by their entreaty and will heal them.

²³In that day there will be a ^ahighway from Egypt to Assyria, and the Assyrians will come into Egypt and the Egyptians into Assyria, and the Egyptians will ^bworship with the Assyrians.

²⁴In that day Israel will be the third party with Egypt and Assyria, a blessing in the midst of the earth,

²⁵whom Yahweh of hosts has blessed, saying, “Blessed is ^aEgypt My people, and Assyria ^bthe work of My hands, and Israel My inheritance.”

CHAPTER 20

A Prophecy About Egypt and Ethiopia

¹In the year that the ^1acommander came to ^bAshdod, when Sargon the king of Assyria sent him and he fought against Ashdod and captured it,

²at that time Yahweh spoke by the hand of ^aIsaiah the son of Amoz, saying, “Go and loosen the ^bsackcloth from your hips and take your ^cshoes off your feet.” And he did so, going ^dnaked and barefoot.

³And Yahweh said, “Even as My servant Isaiah has gone naked and barefoot three years as a ^asign and wonder against Egypt and ^1bEthiopia,

⁴so the ^aking of Assyria will lead away the captives of Egypt and the exiles of Ethiopia, ^byoung and old, naked and barefoot with buttocks uncovered, to the ¹shame of Egypt.

⁵“Then they will be ^adismayed and ashamed because of Ethiopia their hope and Egypt their ^bboast.

⁶“So the inhabitants of this coastland will say in that day, ‘Behold, such is our hope, where we fled ^afor help to be delivered from the king of Assyria; and we, ^bhow shall we escape?’”