17eThen lambs shall graze
As in their meadows,
And strangers shall feed
On the ruins of the stout.
18Ah,
Those who haul sin with cords of falsehood
And iniquity as with cart ropes!
19Who say,f
“Let Him speed, let Him hasten His purpose,
If we are to give thought;
Let the plans of the Holy One of Israel
Be quickly fulfilled,
If we are to give heed.”
20Ah,
Those who call evil good
And good evil;
Who present darkness as light
And light as darkness;
Who present bitter as sweet
And sweet as bitter!
21Ah,
Those who are so wise—
In their own opinion;
So clever—
In their own judgment!
22Ah,
Those who are so doughty—
As drinkers of wine,
And so valiant—
As mixers of drink!
23Who vindicate him who is in the wrong
In return for a bribe,
And withhold vindication
From him who is in the right.
24Assuredly,
As straw is consumed by a tongue of fire
And hay g-shrivels as it burns, g-
Their stock shall become like rot,
And their buds shall blow away like dust.
For they have rejected the instruction of the LORD of Hosts,
Spurned the word of the Holy One of Israel.
25That is why
The LORD’s anger was roused
Against His people,
Why He stretched out His arm against it
And struck it,
So that the mountains quaked,h
And its corpses lay
Like refuse in the streets.
Yet his anger has not turned back,
And His arm is outstretched still.
26He will raise an ensign to a nationi afar,
Whistle to one at the end of the earth.
There it comes with lightning speed!
27In its ranks, none is weary or stumbles,
They never sleep or slumber;
The belts on their waists do not come loose,
Nor do the thongs of their sandals break.
28Their arrows are sharpened,
And all their bows are drawn.
Their horses’ hoofs are like flint,
Their chariot wheels like the whirlwind.
29Their roaring is like a lion’s,
They roar like the great beasts;
When they growl and seize a prey,
They carry it off and none can recover it.
30But in that day, a roaring shall resound over him like that of the sea;j and then he shall look below and, behold,
Distressing darkness, with light;
Darkness, a-in its lowering clouds. -a
6 In the year that King Uzziah died, I beheld my Lord seated on a high and lofty throne; and the skirts of His robe filled the Temple. 2Seraphs stood in attendance on Him. Each of them had six wings: with two he covered his face, with two he covered his legs, and with two he would fly.
3And one would call to the other,
“Holy, holy, holy!
The LORD of Hosts!
His presence fills all the earth!”
4The doorpostsa would shake at the sound of the one who called, and the House kept filling with smoke. 5I cried,
“Woe is me; I am lost!
For I am a man b-of unclean lipsb-
And I live among a people
Of unclean lips;
Yet my own eyes have beheld
The King LORD of Hosts.”
6Then one of the seraphs flew over to me with a live coal, which he had taken from the altar with a pair of tongs. 7He touched it to my lips and declared,
“Now that this has touched your lips,
Your guilt shall depart
And your sin be purged away.”
8Then I heard the voice of my Lord saying, “Whom shall I send? Who will go for us?” And I said, “Here am I; send me.” 9And He said, “Go, say to that people:
‘Hear, indeed, but do not understand;
See, indeed, but do not grasp.’
10Dull that people’s mind,
Stop its cars,
And seal its eyes—
Lest, seeing with its eyes
And hearing with its ears,
It also grasp with its mind,
And repent and savec itself.”
11I asked, “How long, my Lord?” And He replied:
“Till towns lie waste without inhabitants
And houses without people,
And the ground lies waste and desolate—
12For the LORD will banish the population—
And deserted sites are many
In the midst of the land.
13“But while a tenth part yet remains in it, it shall repent. It shall be ravaged like the terebinth and the oak, of which stumps are left even when they are felled: its stump shall be a holy seed.”
7 In the reign of Ahaz son of Jotham son of Uzziah, king of Judah, King Rezin of Aram and King Pekah son of Remaliah of Israel marched upon Jerusalem to attack it; but they were not able to attack it.
2Now, when it was reported to the House of David that Aram had allied itself with Ephraim, their hearts and the hearts of their people trembled as trees of the forest sway before a wind. 3But the LORD said to Isaiah, “Go out with your son Shear-jashuba to meet Ahaz at the end of the conduit of the Upper Pool, by the road of the Fuller’s Field. 4And say to him: Be firm and be calm. Do not be afraid and do not lose heart on account of those two smoking stubs of firebrands, on account of the raging of Rezin and his Arameans and the son of Remaliah.b 5Because the Arameans—with Ephraim and the son of Remaliah—have plotted against you, saying, 6‘We will march against Judah and invade and conquer it, and we will set up as king in it the son of Tabeel,’b 7thus said my Lord GOD:
It shall not succeed,
It shall not come to pass.
8For the chief city of Aram is Damascus,
And the chief of Damascus is Rezin;
9The chief city of Ephraim is Samaria,
And the chief of Samaria is the son of Remaliah.c
d-And in another sixty-five years,
Ephraim shall be shattered as a people.-d
If you will not believe, for you e-cannot be trusted-e…”
10The LORD spoke further to Ahaz: 11“Ask for a sign from the LORD your God, anywhere down to Sheol or up to the sky.” 12But Ahaz replied, “I will not ask, and I will not test the LORD.” 13“Listen, House of David,” [Isaiah] retorted, “is it not enough for you to treat men as helpless that you also treat my God as helpless?f 14Assuredly, my Lord will give you a sign of His own accord! Look, the young woman is with child and about to give birth to a son. Let her name him Immanuel.g 15(By the time he learns to reject the bad and choose the good, people will be feeding on curds and honey.) 16For before the lad knows to reject the bad and choose the good, the ground whose two kings you dread shall be abandoned. 17The LORD will cause to come upon you and your people and your ancestral house such days as never have come since Ephraim turned away from Judah—that selfsame king of Assyria!h
18“In that day, the LORD will whistle to the flies at the ends of the water channels of Egypt and to the bees in the land of Assyria; 19and they shall all come and alight in the rugged wadis, and in the clefts of the rocks, and in all the thornbrakes, and in all the watering places.
20“In that day, my Lord will cut away with the razor that is hired beyond the Euphrates—with the king of Assyriai—the hair of the head and j-the hair of the legs,-j and it shall clip off the beard as well. 21And in that day, each man shall save alive a heifer of the herd and two animals of the flock. 22(And he shall obtain so much milk that he shall eat curds.) Thus everyone who is left in the land shall feed on curds and honey.
23“For in that day, every spot where there could stand a thousand vines worth a thousand shekels of silverk shall become a wilderness of thornbush and thistle. 24One will have to go there with bow and arrows,l for the country shall be all thornbushes and thistles. 25But the perils of thornbush and thistle shall not spread to any of the hills that could only be tilled with a hoe;m and here cattle shall be let loose, and n-sheep and goats-n shall tramp about.”
8 The LORD said to me, “Get yourself a large sheet and write on it a-in common script-a‘For Maher-shalal-hash-baz’;b 2and call reliable witnesses, the priest Uriah and Zechariah son of Jeberechiah, to witness for Me.” 3I was intimate with the prophetess,c and she conceived and bore a son; and the LORD said to me, “Name him Maher-shalal-hash-baz.b 4For before the boy learns to call ‘Father’ and ‘Mother,’ the wealth of Damascus and the spoils of Samaria, d-and the delights of Rezin and of the son of Remaliah,-d shall be carried off before the king of Assyria.”
5Again the LORD spoke to me, thus:
6“Because that people has spurned
The gently flowing waters of Siloam”e—
7Assuredly,
My Lord will bring up against them
The mighty, massive waters of the Euphrates,
The king of Assyria and all his multitude.
It shall rise above all its channels,
And flow over all its beds,
8And swirl through Judah like a flash flood
Reaching up to the neck.f
gBut with us is God,
Whose wings are spread
As wide as your land is broad!
9Band together, O peoples—you shall be broken!
Listen to this, you remotest parts of the earth:
Gird yourselves—you shall be broken;
Gird yourselves—you shall be broken!
10Hatch a plot—it shall be foiled;
Agree on action—it shall not succeed.
For with us is God!
11For this is what the LORD said to me, when He took me by the handh and charged me not to walk in the path of that people:
12i“You must not call conspiracyj
All that that people calls conspiracy,j
Nor revere what it reveres,
Nor hold it in awe.
13None but the LORD of Hosts
Shall you account holy;
Give reverence to Him alone,
Hold Him alone in awe.
14He shall be k-for a sanctuary,
A stone-k men strike against:
A rock men stumble over
For the two Houses of Israel,
And a trap and a snare for those
Who dwell in Jerusalem.
15The masses shall trip over these
And shall fall and be injured,
Shall be snared and be caught.
16Bind up the message,
Seal the instruction with My disciples.”
17So I will wait for the LORD, who is hiding His face from the House of Jacob, and I will trust in
