Isaiah 24–27

Chapter 24

¹Behold, the Lord will lay waste the earth and make it desolate,

and he will twist its surface and scatter its inhabitants.

²And it shall be,

as with the people, so with the priest;

as with the slave, so with his master;

as with the maid, so with her mistress;

as with the buyer, so with the seller;

as with the lender, so with the borrower;

as with the creditor, so with the debtor.

³The earth shall be utterly laid waste and utterly despoiled;

for the Lord has spoken this word.

⁴The earth mourns and withers,

the world languishes and withers;

the heavens languish together with the earth.

⁵The earth lies polluted

under its inhabitants;

for they have transgressed the laws,

violated the statutes,

broken the everlasting covenant.

⁶Therefore a curse devours the earth,

and its inhabitants suffer for their guilt;

therefore the inhabitants of the earth are scorched,

and few men are left.

⁷The wine mourns,

the vine languishes,

all the merry-hearted sigh.

⁸The mirth of the timbrels is stilled,

the noise of the jubilant has ceased,

the mirth of the lyre is stilled.

⁹No more do they drink wine with singing;

strong drink is bitter to those who drink it.

¹⁰The city of chaos is broken down,

every house is shut up so that none can enter.

¹¹There is an outcry in the streets for lack of wine;

all joy has reached its eventide;

the gladness of the earth is banished.

¹²Desolation is left in the city,

the gates are battered into ruins.

¹³For thus it shall be in the midst of the earth

among the nations,

as when an olive tree is beaten,

as at the gleaning when the vintage is done.

¹⁴They lift up their voices, they sing for joy;

over the majesty of the Lord they shout from the west.

¹⁵Therefore in the east give glory to the Lord;

in the coastlands of the sea, to the name of the Lord, the God of Israel.

¹⁶From the ends of the earth we hear songs of praise,

of glory to the Righteous One.

But I say, “I pine away,

I pine away. Woe is me!

For the treacherous deal treacherously,

the treacherous deal very treacherously.”

¹⁷Terror, and the pit, and the snare

are upon you, O inhabitant of the earth!

¹⁸He who flees at the sound of the terror

shall fall into the pit;

and he who climbs out of the pit

shall be caught in the snare.

For the windows of heaven are opened,

and the foundations of the earth tremble.

¹⁹The earth is utterly broken,

the earth is rent asunder,

the earth is violently shaken.

²⁰The earth staggers like a drunken man,

it sways like a hut;

its transgression lies heavy upon it,

and it falls, and will not rise again.

²¹On that day the Lord will punish

the host of heaven, in heaven,

and the kings of the earth, on the earth.

²²They will be gathered together

as prisoners in a pit;

they will be shut up in a prison,

and after many days they will be punished.

²³Then the moon will be confounded,

and the sun ashamed;

for the Lord of hosts will reign

on Mount Zion and in Jerusalem

and before his elders he will manifest his glory.

Chapter 25

¹O Lord, thou art my God;

I will exalt thee, I will praise thy name;

for thou hast done wonderful things,

plans formed of old, faithful and sure.

²For thou hast made the city a heap,

the fortified city a ruin;

the palace of aliens is a city no more,

it will never be rebuilt.

³Therefore strong peoples will glorify thee;

cities of ruthless nations will fear thee.

⁴For thou hast been a stronghold to the poor,

a stronghold to the needy in his distress,

a shelter from the storm and a shade from the heat;

for the blast of the ruthless is like a storm against a wall,

⁵like heat in a dry place.

Thou dost subdue the noise of the aliens;

as heat by the shade of a cloud,

so the song of the ruthless is stilled.

⁶On this mountain the Lord of hosts will make for all peoples a feast of fat things, a feast of wine on the lees, of fat things full of marrow, of wine on the lees well refined. ⁷And he will destroy on this mountain the covering that is cast over all peoples, the veil that is spread over all nations. ⁸He will swallow up death for ever, and the Lord GOD will wipe away tears from all faces, and the reproach of his people he will take away from all the earth; for the Lord has spoken.

⁹It will be said on that day, “Lo, this is our God; we have waited for him, that he might save us. This is the Lord; we have waited for him; let us be glad and rejoice in his salvation.”

¹⁰For the hand of the Lord will rest on this mountain, and Moab shall be trodden down in his place, as straw is trodden down in a dung-pit. ¹¹And he will spread out his hands in the midst of it as a swimmer spreads his hands out to swim; but the Lord will lay low his pride together with the skill of his hands. ¹²And the high fortifications of his walls he will bring down, lay low, and cast to the ground, even to the dust.

Chapter 26

¹In that day this song will be sung in the land of Judah:

“We have a strong city;

he sets up salvation

as walls and bulwarks.

²Open the gates,

that the righteous nation which keeps faith

may enter in.

³Thou dost keep him in perfect peace,

whose mind is stayed on thee,

because he trusts in thee.

⁴Trust in the Lord

for ever, for the Lord GOD

is an everlasting rock.

⁵For he has brought low

the inhabitants of the height,

the lofty city.

He lays it low, lays it low to the ground,

casts it to the dust.

⁶The foot tramples it,

the feet of the poor,

the steps of the needy.”

⁷The way of the righteous is level;

thou dost make smooth the path of the righteous.

⁸In the path of thy judgments,

O Lord, we wait for thee;

thy memorial name

is the desire of our soul.

⁹My soul yearns for thee in the night,

my spirit within me earnestly seeks thee.

For when thy judgments are in the earth,

the inhabitants of the world learn righteousness.

¹⁰If favor is shown to the wicked,

he does not learn righteousness;

in the land of uprightness he deals perversely

and does not see the majesty of the Lord.

¹¹O Lord, thy hand is lifted up,

but they see it not.

Let them see thy zeal for thy people, and be ashamed.

Let the fire for thy adversaries consume them.

¹²O Lord, thou wilt ordain peace for us,

thou hast wrought for us all our works.

¹³O Lord our God,

other lords besides thee have ruled over us,

but thy name alone we acknowledge.

¹⁴They are dead, they will not live;

they are shades, they will not arise;

to that end thou hast visited them with destruction

and wiped out all remembrance of them.

¹⁵But thou hast increased the nation, O Lord,

thou hast increased the nation; thou art glorified;

thou hast enlarged all the borders of the land.

¹⁶O Lord, in distress they sought thee,

they poured out a prayer

when thy chastening was upon them.

¹⁷Like a woman with child,

who writhes and cries out in her pangs,

when she is near her time,

so were we because of thee, O Lord;

¹⁸we were with child, we writhed,

we have as it were brought forth wind.

We have wrought no deliverance in the earth,

and the inhabitants of the world have not fallen.

¹⁹Thy dead shall live, their bodies shall rise.

O dwellers in the dust, awake and sing for joy!

For thy dew is a dew of light,

and on the land of the shades thou wilt let it fall.

²⁰Come, my people, enter your chambers,

and shut your doors behind you;

hide yourselves for a little while

until the wrath is past.

²¹For behold, the Lord is coming forth out of his place

to punish the inhabitants of the earth for their iniquity,

and the earth will disclose the blood shed upon her,

and will no more cover her slain.

Chapter 27

¹In that day the Lord with his hard and great and strong sword will punish Leviathan the fleeing serpent, Leviathan the twisting serpent, and he will slay the dragon that is in the sea.

²In that day:

“A pleasant vineyard, sing of it!

³I, the Lord, am its keeper;

every moment I water it.

Lest any one harm it,

I guard it night and day;

⁴I have no wrath.

Would that I had thorns and briers to battle!

I would set out against them,

I would burn them up together.

⁵Or let them lay hold of my protection,

let them make peace with me,

let them make peace with me.”

⁶In days to come Jacob shall take root,

Israel shall blossom and put forth shoots,

and fill the whole world with fruit.

⁷Has he smitten them as he smote those who smote them?

Or have they been slain as their slayers were slain?

⁸Measure by measure, by exile thou didst contend with them;

he removed them with his fierce blast in the day of the east wind.

⁹Therefore by this the guilt of Jacob will be expiated,

and this will be the full fruit of the removal of his sin:

when he makes all the stones of the altars

like chalkstones crushed to pieces,

no Asherim or incense altars will remain standing.

¹⁰For the fortified city is solitary,

a habitation deserted and forsaken, like the wilderness;

there the calf grazes,

there he lies down, and strips its branches.

¹¹When its boughs are dry, they are broken;

women come and make a fire of them.

For this is a people without discernment;

therefore he who made them will not have compassion on them,

he that formed them will show them no favor.

¹²In that day from the river Euphrates to the Brook of Egypt the Lord will thresh out the grain, and you will be gathered one by one, O people of Israel. ¹³And in that day a great trumpet will be blown, and those who were lost in the land of Assyria and those who were driven out to the land of Egypt will come and worship the Lord on the holy mountain at Jerusalem.