Isaiah 17-21

New King James Version

“Behold, Damascus will cease from being a city,
And it will be a ruinous heap.
^2 [b]The cities of ^(B)Aroer are forsaken;
They will be for flocks
Which lie down, and ^(C)no one will make them afraid.
^3 (D)The fortress also will cease from Ephraim,
The kingdom from Damascus,
And the remnant of Syria;
They will be as the glory of the children of Israel,”
Says the Lord of hosts.

⁴ “In that day it shall come to pass
That the glory of Jacob will ^[c]wane,
And ^(E)the fatness of his flesh grow lean.
^5 (F)It shall be as when the harvester gathers the grain,
And reaps the heads with his arm;
It shall be as he who gathers heads of grain
In the Valley of Rephaim.
^6 (G)Yet gleaning grapes will be left in it,
Like the shaking of an olive tree,
Two or three olives at the top of the uppermost bough,
Four or five in its most fruitful branches,”
Says the Lord God of Israel.

⁷ In that day a man will ^(H)look to his Maker,
And his eyes will have respect for the Holy One of Israel.
⁸ He will not look to the altars,
The work of his hands;
He will not respect what his ^(I)fingers have made,
Nor the ^[d]wooden images nor the incense altars.

⁹ In that day his strong cities will be as a forsaken ^[e]bough
And ^[f]an uppermost branch,
Which they left because of the children of Israel;
And there will be desolation.

¹⁰ Because you have forgotten ^(J)the God of your salvation,
And have not been mindful of the Rock of your ^[g]stronghold,
Therefore you will plant pleasant plants
And set out foreign seedlings;
¹¹ In the day you will make your plant to grow,
And in the morning you will make your seed to flourish;
But the harvest will be a heap of ruins
In the day of grief and desperate sorrow.

¹² Woe to the multitude of many people
Who make a noise ^(K)like the roar of the seas,
And to the rushing of nations
That make a rushing like the rushing of mighty waters!
¹³ The nations will rush like the rushing of many waters;
But God will ^(L)rebuke them and they will flee far away,
And ^(M)be chased like the chaff of the mountains before the wind,
Like a rolling thing before the whirlwind.
¹⁴ Then behold, at eventide, trouble!
And before the morning, he is no more.
This is the portion of those who plunder us,
And the lot of those who rob us.

³ All inhabitants of the world and dwellers on the earth:
^(O)When he lifts up a banner on the mountains, you see it;
And when he blows a trumpet, you hear it.
⁴ For so the Lord said to me,
“I will take My rest,
And I will ^[i]look from My dwelling place
Like clear heat in sunshine,
Like a cloud of dew in the heat of harvest.”
⁵ For before the harvest, when the bud is perfect
And the sour grape is ripening in the flower,
He will both cut off the sprigs with pruning hooks
And take away and cut down the branches.
⁶ They will be left together for the mountain birds of prey
And for the beasts of the earth;
The birds of prey will summer on them,
And all the beasts of the earth will winter on them.

⁷ In that time ^(P)a present will be brought to the Lord of hosts
^[j]From a people tall and smooth of skin,
And from a people terrible from their beginning onward,
A nation powerful and treading down,
Whose land the rivers divide—
To the place of the name of the Lord of hosts,
To Mount Zion.

Behold, the Lord ^(R)rides on a swift cloud,
And will come into Egypt;
^(S)The idols of Egypt will ^[l]totter at His presence,
And the heart of Egypt will melt in its midst.

² “I will ^(T)set Egyptians against Egyptians;
Everyone will fight against his brother,
And everyone against his neighbor,
City against city, kingdom against kingdom.
³ The spirit of Egypt will fail in its midst;
I will destroy their counsel,
And they will ^(U)consult the idols and the charmers,
The mediums and the sorcerers.
⁴ And the Egyptians I will give
^(V)Into the hand of a cruel master,
And a fierce king will rule over them,”
Says the Lord, the Lord of hosts.

^5 (W)The waters will fail from the sea,
And the river will be wasted and dried up.
⁶ The rivers will turn foul;
The brooks ^(X)of defense will be emptied and dried up;
The reeds and rushes will wither.
⁷ The papyrus reeds by ^[m]the River, by the mouth of the River,
And everything sown by the River,
Will wither, be driven away, and be no more.
⁸ The fishermen also will mourn;
All those will lament who cast hooks into the River,
And they will languish who spread nets on the waters.
⁹ Moreover those who work in ^(Y)fine flax
And those who weave fine fabric will be ashamed;
¹⁰ And its foundations will be broken.
All who make wages will be troubled of soul.

¹¹ Surely the princes of ^(Z)Zoan are fools;
Pharaoh’s wise counselors give foolish counsel.
^(AA)How do you say to Pharaoh, “I am the son of the wise,
The son of ancient kings?”
^12 (AB)Where are they?
Where are your wise men?
Let them tell you now,
And let them know what the Lord of hosts has ^(AC)purposed against Egypt.
¹³ The princes of Zoan have become fools;
^(AD)The princes of ^[n]Noph are deceived;
They have also ^[o]deluded Egypt,
Those who are the ^[p]mainstay of its tribes.
¹⁴ The Lord has mingled ^(AE)a perverse spirit in her midst;
And they have caused Egypt to err in all her work,
As a drunken man staggers in his vomit.
¹⁵ Neither will there be any work for Egypt,
Which ^(AF)the head or tail,
Palm branch or bulrush, may do.

As ^(BD)whirlwinds in the South pass through,
So it comes from the desert, from a terrible land.
² A distressing vision is declared to me;
^(BE)The treacherous dealer deals treacherously,
And the plunderer plunders.
^(BF)Go up, O Elam!
Besiege, O Media!
All its sighing I have made to cease.

³ Therefore ^(BG)my loins are filled with pain;
^(BH)Pangs have taken hold of me, like the pangs of a woman in labor.
I was ^[u]distressed when I heard it;
I was dismayed when I saw it.
⁴ My heart wavered, fearfulness frightened me;
^(BI)The night for which I longed He turned into fear for me.
^5 (BJ)Prepare the table,
Set a watchman in the tower,
Eat and drink.
Arise, you princes,
Anoint the shield!

⁶ For thus has the Lord said to me:
“Go, set a watchman,
Let him declare what he sees.”
⁷ And he saw a chariot with a pair of horsemen,
A chariot of donkeys, and a chariot of camels,
And he listened earnestly with great care.
^8 [v]Then he cried, “A lion, my Lord!
I stand continually on the ^(BK)watchtower in the daytime;
I have sat at my post every night.
⁹ And look, here comes a chariot of men with a pair of horsemen!”
Then he answered and said,
^(BL)“Babylon is fallen, is fallen!
And ^(BM)all the carved images of her gods
He has broken to the ground.”

^10 (BN)Oh, my threshing and the grain of my floor!
That which I have heard from the Lord of hosts,
The God of Israel,
I have declared to you.

He calls to me out of ^(BP)Seir,
“Watchman, what of the night?
Watchman, what of the night?”
¹² The watchman said,
“The morning comes, and also the night.
If you will inquire, inquire;
Return! Come back!”

In the forest in Arabia you will lodge,
O you traveling companies ^(BR)of Dedanites.
¹⁴ O inhabitants of the land of Tema,
Bring water to him who is thirsty;
With their bread they met him who fled.
¹⁵ For they fled from the swords, from the drawn sword,
From the bent bow, and from the distress of war.