Category: Isaiah

[1:2] Hear, O heavens, and give ear, O earth; for the Lord has spoken: “Children have I reared and brought up, but they have rebelled against me.

[1:3] The ox knows its owner, and the donkey its master’s crib, but Israel does not know, my people do not understand.”

[1:4] Ah, sinful nation, a people laden with iniquity, offspring of evildoers, children who deal corruptly! They have forsaken the Lord, they have despised the Holy One of Israel, they are utterly estranged.

[1:5] Why will you still be struck down? Why will you continue to rebel? The whole head is sick, and the whole heart faint.

[1:6] From the sole of the foot even to the head, there is no soundness in it, but bruises and sores and raw wounds; they are not pressed out or bound up or softened with oil.

[1:7] Your country lies desolate; your cities are burned with fire; in your very presence foreigners devour your land; it is desolate, as overthrown by foreigners.

[1:8] And the daughter of Zion is left like a booth in a vineyard, like a lodge in a cucumber field, like a besieged city.

[1:9] If the Lord of hosts had not left us a few survivors, we should have been like Sodom, and become like Gomorrah.

[1:10] Hear the word of the Lord, you rulers of Sodom! Give ear to the teaching of our God, you people of Gomorrah!

[1:11] “What to me is the multitude of your sacrifices? says the Lord; I have had enough of burnt offerings of rams and the fat of well-fed beasts; I do not delight in the blood of bulls, or of lambs, or of goats.

[1:12] “When you come to appear before me, who has required of you this trampling of my courts?

[1:13] Bring no more vain offerings; incense is an abomination to me. New moon and Sabbath and the calling of convocations— I cannot endure iniquity and solemn assembly.

[1:14] Your new moons and your appointed feasts my soul hates; they have become a burden to me; I am weary of bearing them.

[1:15] When you spread out your hands, I will hide my eyes from you; even though you make many prayers, I will not listen; your hands are full of blood.

[1:16] Wash yourselves; make yourselves clean; remove the evil of your deeds from before my eyes; cease to do evil,

[1:17] learn to do good; seek justice, correct oppression; bring justice to the fatherless, plead the widow’s cause.

[1:18] “Come now, let us reason together, says the Lord: though your sins are like scarlet, they shall be as white as snow; though they are red like crimson, they shall become like wool.

[1:19] If you are willing and obedient, you shall eat the good of the land;

[1:20] but if you refuse and rebel, you shall be eaten by the sword; for the mouth of the Lord has spoken.”

[1:21] How the faithful city has become a whore, she who was full of justice! Righteousness lodged in her, but now murderers.

[1:22] Your silver has become dross, your best wine mixed with water.

[1:23] Your princes are rebels and companions of thieves. Everyone loves a bribe and runs after gifts. They do not bring justice to the fatherless, and the widow’s cause does not come to them.

[1:24] Therefore the Lord declares, the Lord of hosts, the Mighty One of Israel: “Ah, I will get relief from my enemies and avenge myself on my foes.

[1:25] I will turn my hand against you and will smelt away your dross as with lye and remove all your alloy.

[1:26] And I will restore your judges as at the first, and your counselors as at the beginning. Afterward you shall be called the city of righteousness, the faithful city.”

[1:27] Zion shall be redeemed by justice, and those in her who repent, by righteousness.

[1:28] But rebels and sinners shall be broken together, and those who forsake the Lord shall be consumed.

[1:29] For they shall be ashamed of the oaks that you desired; and you shall blush for the gardens that you have chosen.

[1:30] For you shall be like an oak whose leaf withers, and like a garden without water.

[1:31] And the strong shall become tinder, and his work a spark, and both of them shall burn together, with none to quench them.

[2:1] The word that Isaiah the son of Amoz saw concerning Judah and Jerusalem.

[2:2] It shall come to pass in the latter days that the mountain of the house of the Lord shall be established as the highest of the mountains, and shall be lifted up above the hills; and all the nations shall flow to it,

[2:3] and many peoples shall come, and say: “Come, let us go up to the mountain of the Lord, to the house of the God of Jacob, that he may teach us his ways and that we may walk in his paths.” For out of Zion shall go the law, and the word of the Lord from Jerusalem.

[2:4] He shall judge between the nations, and shall decide disputes for many peoples; and they shall beat their swords into plowshares, and their spears into pruning hooks; nation shall not lift up sword against nation, neither shall they learn war anymore.

[2:5] O house of Jacob, come, let us walk in the light of the Lord.

[2:6] For you have rejected your people, the house of Jacob, because they are full of things from the east and of fortune-tellers like the Philistines, and they strike hands with the children of foreigners.

[2:7] Their land is filled with silver and gold, and there is no end to their treasures; their land is filled with horses, and there is no end to their chariots.

[2:8] Their land is filled with idols; they bow down to the work of their hands, to what their own fingers have made.

[2:9] So man is humbled, and each one is brought low— do not forgive them!

[2:10] Enter into the rock and hide in the dust from before the terror of the Lord, and from the splendor of his majesty.

[2:11] The haughty looks of man shall be brought low, and the lofty pride of men shall be humbled, and the Lord alone will be exalted in that day.

[2:12] For the Lord of hosts has a day against all that is proud and lofty, against all that is lifted up—and it shall be brought low;

[2:13] against all the cedars of Lebanon, lofty and lifted up; and against all the oaks of Bashan;

[2:14] against all the lofty mountains, and against all the uplifted hills;

[2:15] against every high tower, and against every fortified wall;

[2:16] against all the ships of Tarshish, and against all the beautiful craft.

[2:17] And the haughtiness of man shall be humbled, and the lofty pride of men shall be brought low, and the Lord alone will be exalted in that day.

[2:18] And the idols shall utterly pass away.

[2:19] And people shall enter the caves of the rocks and the holes of the ground, from before the terror of the Lord, and from the splendor of his majesty, when he rises to terrify the earth.

[2:20] In that day mankind will cast away their idols of silver and their idols of gold, which they made for themselves to worship, to the moles and to the bats,

[2:21] to enter the caverns of the rocks and the clefts of the cliffs, from before the terror of the Lord, and from the splendor of his majesty, when he rises to terrify the earth.

[2:22] Stop regarding man in whose nostrils is breath, for of what account is he?

[4:2] In that day the branch of the Lord shall be beautiful and glorious, and the fruit of the land shall be the pride and honor of the survivors of Israel.

[4:3] And he who is left in Zion and remains in Jerusalem will be called holy, everyone who has been recorded for life in Jerusalem,

[4:4] when the Lord shall have washed away the filth of the daughters of Zion and cleansed the bloodstains of Jerusalem from its midst by a spirit of judgment and by a spirit of burning.

[4:5] Then the Lord will create over the whole site of Mount Zion and over her assemblies a cloud by day, and smoke and the shining of a flaming fire by night; for over all the glory there will be a canopy.

[4:6] There will be a booth for shade by day from the heat, and for a refuge and a shelter from the storm and rain.

[5:1] Let me sing for my beloved my love song concerning his vineyard: My beloved had a vineyard on a very fertile hill.

[5:2] He dug it and cleared it of stones, and planted it with choice vines; he built a watchtower in the midst of it, and hewed out a wine vat in it; and he looked for it to yield grapes, but it yielded wild grapes.

[5:3] And now, O inhabitants of Jerusalem and men of Judah, judge between me and my vineyard.

[5:4] What more was there to do for my vineyard, that I have not done in it? When I looked for it to yield grapes, why did it yield wild grapes?

[5:5] And now I will tell you what I will do to my vineyard. I will remove its hedge, and it shall be devoured; I will break down its wall, and it shall be trampled down.

[5:6] I will make it a waste; it shall not be pruned or hoed, and briers and thorns shall grow up; I will also command the clouds that they rain no rain upon it.

[5:7] For the vineyard of the Lord of hosts is the house of Israel, and the men of Judah are his pleasant planting; and he looked for justice, but behold, bloodshed; for righteousness, but behold, an outcry!

[5:8] Woe to those who join house to house, who add field to field, until there is no more room, and you are made to dwell alone in the midst of the land.

[5:9] The Lord of hosts has sworn in my hearing: “Surely many houses shall be desolate, large and beautiful houses, without inhabitant.

[5:10] For ten acres of vineyard shall yield but one bath, and a homer of seed shall yield but an ephah.”

[5:11] Woe to those who rise early in the morning, that they may run after strong drink, who tarry late into the evening as wine inflames them!

[5:12] They have lyre and harp, tambourine and flute and wine at their feasts, but they do not regard the deeds of the Lord, or see the work of his hands.

[5:13] Therefore my people go into exile for lack of knowledge; their honored men go hungry, and their multitude is parched with thirst.

[5:14] Therefore Sheol has enlarged its appetite and opened its mouth beyond measure, and the nobility of Jerusalem and her multitude will go down, her revelers and he who exults in her.

[5:15] Man is humbled, and each one is brought low, and the eyes of the haughty are brought low.

[5:16] But the Lord of hosts is exalted in justice, and the Holy God shows himself holy in righteousness.

[5:17] Then shall the lambs graze as in their pasture, and nomads shall eat among the ruins of the rich.

[5:18] Woe to those who draw iniquity with cords of falsehood, who draw sin as with cart ropes,

[5:19] who say: “Let him be quick, let him speed his work that we may see it; let the counsel of the Holy One of Israel draw near, and let it come, that we may know it!”

[5:20] Woe to those who call evil good and good evil, who put darkness for light and light for darkness, who put bitter for sweet and sweet for bitter!

[5:21] Woe to those who are wise in their own eyes, and shrewd in their own sight!

[5:22] Woe to those who are heroes at drinking wine, and valiant men in mixing strong drink,

[5:23] who acquit the guilty for a bribe, and deprive the innocent of his right!

[5:24] Therefore, as the tongue of fire devours the stubble, and as dry grass sinks down in the flame, so their root will be as rottenness, and their blossom go up like dust; for they have rejected the law of the Lord of hosts, and have despised the word of the Holy One of Israel.

[5:25] Therefore the anger of the Lord was kindled against his people, and he stretched out his hand against them and struck them, and the mountains quaked; and their corpses were as refuse in the midst of the streets. For all this his anger has not turned away, and his hand is stretched out still.

[5:26] He will raise a signal for nations far away, and whistle for them from the ends of the earth; and behold, quickly, speedily they come!

[5:27] None is weary, none stumbles, none slumbers or sleeps, not a waistband is loose, not a sandal strap broken;

[5:28] their arrows are sharp, all their bows bent, their horses’ hoofs seem like flint, and their wheels like the whirlwind.

[5:29] Their roaring is like a lion, like young lions they roar; they growl and seize their prey; they carry it off, and none can rescue.

[5:30] They will growl over it on that day, like the growling of the sea. And if one looks to the land, behold, darkness and distress; and the light is darkened by its clouds.

[6:1] In the year that King Uzziah died I saw the Lord sitting upon a throne, high and lifted up; and the train of his robe filled the temple.

[6:2] Above him stood the seraphim. Each had six wings: with two he covered his face, and with two he covered his feet, and with two he flew.

[6:3] And one called to another and said: “Holy, holy, holy is the Lord of hosts; the whole earth is full of his glory!”

[6:4] And the foundations of the thresholds shook at the voice of him who called, and the house was filled with smoke.

[6:5] And I said: “Woe is me! For I am lost; for I am a man of unclean lips, and I dwell in the midst of a people of unclean lips; for my eyes have seen the King, the Lord of hosts!”

[6:6] Then one of the seraphim flew to me, having in his hand a burning coal that he had taken with tongs from the altar.

[6:7] And he touched my mouth and said: “Behold, this has touched your lips; your guilt is taken away, and your sin atoned for.”