27Behold the i-LORD Himself-i
Comes from afar
In blazing wrath,
j-With a heavy burden-j—
His lips full of fury,
His tongue like devouring fire,
28And his breath like a raging torrent
Reaching halfway up the neck—
To set a misguiding yokek upon nations
And a misleading bridle upon the jaws of peoples,
29For you, there shall be singing
As on a night when a festival is hallowed;
There shall be rejoicing as when they march
With flute, l-with timbrels, and with lyres-l
To the Rock of Israel on the Mount of the LORD.
30For the LORD will make His majestic voice heard
And display the sweep of His arm
In raging wrath,
In a devouring blaze of fire,
In tempest, and rainstorm, and hailstones.
31Truly, Assyria, who beats with the rod,
Shall be cowed by the voice of the LORD;
32d-And each time the appointed staff passes by,
The LORD will bring down [His arm] upon him
And will do battle with him as he waves it.-d
33The Tophethm has long been ready for him;
He too is destined for Melechn—
His firepit has been made both wide and deep,
With plenty of fire and firewood,
And with the breath of the LORD
Burning in it like a stream of sulfur.
31 Ha!
Those who go down to Egypt for help
And rely upon horses!
They have put their trust in abundance of chariots,
In vast numbers of riders,
And they have not turned to the Holy One of Israel,
They have not sought the LORD.
2But He too is wise!
He has brought on misfortune,
And has not canceled His word.
So He shall rise against the house of evildoers,
And the alliesa of the workers of iniquity.
3For the Egyptians are man, not God,
And their horses are flesh, not spirit;
And when the LORD stretches out His arm,
The helper shall trip
And the helped one shall fall,
And both shall perish together.
4For thus the LORD has said to me:
As a lion—a great beast—
Growls over its prey
And, when the shepherds gather
In force against him,
Is not dismayed by their cries
Nor cowed by their noise—
So the LORD of Hosts will descend to make war
Against the mount and the hill of Zion.
5Like the birds that fly, even so will the LORD of Hosts shield Jerusalem, shielding and saving, protecting and rescuing.
6b-Return, O children of Israel,-b to Him to whom they have been so shamefully false; 7for in that day everyone will reject his idols of silver and idols of gold, which your hands have made for your guilt.
8Then Assyria shall fall,
Not by the sword of man;
A sword not of humans shall devour him.
He shall shrivelc before the sword,
And his young men d-pine away.-d
9His rock shall melt with terror,
And his officers shall e-collapse from weakness-e—
Declares the LORD, who has a fire in Zion,
Who has an oven in Jerusalem.f
32 Behold, a king shall reign in righteousness,
And ministers shall govern with justice;
2Every one of them shall be
Like a refuge from gales,
A shelter from rainstorms;
Like brooks of water in a desert,
Like the shade of a massive rock
In a languishing land.
3Then the eyes of those who have sight shall not be sealed,
And the ears of those who have hearing shall listen;
4And the minds of the thoughtless shall attend and note,
And the tongues of mumblers shall speak with fluent eloquence.
5No more shall a villain be called noble,
Nor shall “gentleman” be said of a knave.
6For the villain speaks villainy
And plots treachery;
To act impiously
And to preach disloyalty against the LORD;
To leave the hungry unsatisfied
And deprive the thirsty of drink.
7As for the knave, his tools are knavish.
He forges plots
To destroy the poor with falsehoods
And the needy when they plead their cause.
8But the noble has noble intentions
And is constant in noble acts.
9You carefree women,
Attend, hear my words!
You confident ladies,
Give ear to my speech!
10a-In little more than a year,-a
You shall be troubled, O confident ones,
When the vintage is over
And no ingathering takes place.
11Tremble, you carefree ones!
Quake, O confident ones!
Strip yourselves naked,
Put the cloth about your loins!
12Lament b-upon the breasts,-b
For the pleasant fields,
For the spreading grapevines,
13For my people’s soil—
It shall be overgrown with briers and thistles—
Aye, and for all the houses of delight,
For the city of mirth.
14For the castle shall be abandoned,
The noisy city forsaken;
Citadel and tower shall become
c-Bare places-c forever,
A stamping ground for wild asses,
A pasture for flocksd—
15Till a spirit from on high is poured out on us,
And wilderness is transformed into farm land,
While farm land rates as mere brush.e
16Then justice shall abide in the wilderness
And righteousness shall dwell on the farm land.
17For the work of righteousness shall be peace,
And the effect of righteousness, calm and confidence forever.
18Then my people shall dwell in peaceful homes,
In secure dwellings,
In untroubled places of rest.
19fAnd the brush shall sink and vanish,
Even as the city is laid low.
20Happy shall you be who sow by all waters,
Who g-send out cattle and asses to pasture.-g
33 Ha, you ravager who are not ravaged,
You betrayer who have not been betrayed!
When you have done ravaging, you shall be ravaged;
When you have finished betraying, you shall be betrayed.
2O LORD, be gracious to us!
It is to You we have looked;
a-Be their arm-a every morning,
Also our deliverance in time of stress.
3At [Your] roaring, peoples have fled,
Before Your majesty nations have scattered;
4And spoilb was gathered as locusts are gathered,
Itc was amassedd as grasshoppers are amassed.e
5The LORD is exalted,
He dwells on high!
[Of old] He filled Zion
With justice and righteousness.
6Faithfulness to f-Your charge-f was [her] wealth,
Wisdom and devotion [her] triumph,
Reverence for the LORD—that was herg treasure.
7Hark! The Arielitesh cry aloud;
Shalom’si messengers weep bitterly.
8Highways are desolate,
Wayfarers have ceased.
A covenant has been renounced,
Citiesj rejected
k-Mortal man-k despised.
9The land is wilted and withered;
Lebanon disgraced and moldering,
Sharon is become like a desert,
And Bashan and Carmel are stripped bare.
10“Now I will arise,” says the LORD,
“Now I will exalt Myself, now raise Myself high.
11You shall conceive hay,
Give birth to straw;
Myl breath will devour you like fire.
12Peoples shall be burnings of lime,m
Thorns cut down that are set on fire.
13Hear, you who are far, what I have done;
You who are near, note My might.”
14Sinners in Zion are frightened,
The godless are seized with trembling:
“Who of us can dwell with the devouring fire:
Who of us can dwell with the never-dying blaze?”
15He who walks in righteousness,
Speaks uprightly,
Spurns profit from fraudulent dealings,
Waves away a bribe instead of grasping it,
Stops his ears against listening to infamy,
Shuts his eyes against looking at evil—
16Such a one shall dwell in lofty security,
With inaccessible cliffs for his stronghold,
With his food supplied
And his drink assured.
17When your eyes behold n-a king in his beauty,-n
When they contemplate the land round about,
18Your throato shall murmur in awe,
“Where is one who could count? Where is one who could weigh?
Where is one who could count [all these] towers?”
19No more shall you see the barbarian folk,
The people of speech too obscure to comprehend,
So stammering of tongue that they are not understood.
20When you gaze upon Zion, our city of assembly,
Your eyes shall behold Jerusalem
As a secure homestead,
A tent not to be transported,
Whose pegs shall never be pulled up,
And none of whose ropes shall break.
21For there the LORD in His greatness shall be for us
Like a region of rivers, of broad streams,
Where no floating vessels can sail
And no mighty craft can travel—
p-Theirq ropes are slack,
They cannot steady the sockets of their masts,
They cannot spread a sail.-p
22For the LORD shall be our ruler,
The LORD shall be our prince,
The LORD shall be our king:
He shall deliver us.
23Then r-shall indeed much spoil be divided,-r
Even the lame shall seize booty.
24And none who lives there shall say, “I am sick”;
It shall be inhabited by folk whose sin has been forgiven.
34 Approach, O nations, and listen,
Give heed, O peoples!
Let the earth and those in it hear;
The world, and what it brings forth.
2For the LORD is angry at all the nations,
Furious at all their host;
He has doomed them, consigned them to slaughter.
3Their slain shall be left lying,
And the stench of their corpses shall mount;
And the hills shall be drenched with their blood,
4a-All the host of heaven shall molder.-a
The heavens shall be rolled up like a scroll,
And all their host shall wither
Like a leaf withering on the vine,
Or shriveled fruit on a fig tree.
5For My sword shall b-be drunk-b in the sky;
Lo, it shall come down upon Edom,
Upon the people I have doomed,
To wreak judgment.
6The LORD has a sword; it is sated with blood,
It is gorged with fat—
The blood of lambs and he-goats,
The kidney fat of rams.
For the LORD holds a sacrifice in Bozrah,
A great slaughter in the land of Edom.
7Wild oxen shall fall c-with them,-c
Young bulls with mighty steers;
And their land shall be drunk with blood,
Their soil shall be saturated with fat.
8For it is the LORD’s day of retribution,
The year of vindication for Zion’s cause.
9Itsd streams shall be turned to pitch
And its soil to sulfur.
Its land shall become burning pitch,
10Night and day it shall never go out;
Its smoke shall rise for all time.
Through the ages it shall lie in ruins;
Through the aeons none shall traverse it.
11e-Jackdaws and owls-e shall possess it;
Great owls and ravens shall dwell there.
He shall measure it with a line of chaos
And with weights of emptiness.f
12e-It shall be called, “No kingdom is there,”-e
Its nobles and all its lords shall be nothing.
13Thorns shall grow up in its palaces,
Nettles and briers in its strongholds.
It shall be a home of jackals,
An abode of ostriches.
14gWildcats shall meet hyenas,
Goat-demons shall greet each other;
There too the lilithh shall repose
And find herself a resting place.
15There the arrow-snake shall nest and lay eggs,
And shall brood and hatch in its shade.
There too the buzzards shall gather
With one another.
16Search and read it in the scroll of the LORD:
Not one of these shall be absent,
Not one shall miss its fellow.
For Hisi mouth has spoken,
It is His spirit that has assembled them,
17And it is He who apportioned it to them by lot,
Whose hand divided it for them with the line.
They shall possess it for all time,
They shall dwell there through the ages.
35 The arid desert shall be glad,
The wilderness
