Isaiah 42:5-43:10

Living Bible

⁵ The Lord God who created the heavens and stretched them out, who created the earth and everything in it, who gives life and breath and spirit to everyone in all the world, he is the one who says to his Servant, the Messiah^[a]: ⁶ “I the Lord have called you to demonstrate my righteousness. I will guard and support you, for I have given you to my people as the personal confirmation of my covenant with them.^[b] You shall also be a light to guide the nations unto me. ⁷ You will open the eyes of the blind and release those who sit in prison darkness and despair. ⁸ I am the Lord! That is my name, and I will not give my glory to anyone else; I will not share my praise with carved idols. ⁹ Everything I prophesied came true, and now I will prophesy again. I will tell you the future before it happens.”

¹⁰ Sing a new song to the Lord; sing his praises, all you who live in earth’s remotest corners! Sing, O sea! Sing, all you who live in distant lands beyond the sea! ¹¹ Join in the chorus, you desert cities—Kedar and Sela! And you, too, dwellers in the mountaintops. ¹² Let the western coastlands glorify the Lord and sing his mighty power.

¹³ The Lord will be a mighty warrior, full of fury toward his foes. He will give a great shout and prevail. ¹⁴ Long has he been silent; he has restrained himself. But now he will give full vent to his wrath; he will groan and cry like a woman delivering her child. ¹⁵ He will level the mountains and hills and blight their greenery. He will dry up the rivers and pools. ¹⁶ He will bring blind Israel along a path they have not seen before. He will make the darkness bright before them and smooth and straighten out the road ahead. He will not forsake them. ¹⁷ But those who trust in idols and call them gods will be greatly disappointed; they will be turned away.

¹⁸ Oh, how blind and deaf you are toward God! Why won’t you listen? Why won’t you see? ¹⁹ Who in all the world is as blind as my own people,^[c] who are designed to be my messengers of truth? Who is so blind as my “dedicated one,” the “servant of the Lord”? ²⁰ You see and understand what is right but won’t heed nor do it; you hear, but you won’t listen.

²¹ The Lord has magnified his law and made it truly glorious. Through it he had planned to show the world that he is righteous. ²² But what a sight his people are—these who were to demonstrate to all the world the glory of his law;^[d] for they are robbed, enslaved, imprisoned, trapped, fair game for all, with no one to protect them. ²³ Won’t even one of you apply these lessons from the past and see the ruin that awaits you up ahead? ²⁴ Who let Israel be robbed and hurt? Did not the Lord? It is the Lord they sinned against, for they would not go where he sent them nor listen to his laws. ²⁵ That is why God poured out such fury and wrath on his people and destroyed them in battle. Yet, though set on fire and burned, they will not understand the reason why—that it is God, wanting them to repent.^[e]

43 But now the Lord who created you, O Israel, says: Don’t be afraid, for I have ransomed you; I have called you by name; you are mine. ² When you go through deep waters and great trouble, I will be with you. When you go through rivers of difficulty, you will not drown! When you walk through the fire of oppression, you will not be burned up—the flames will not consume you. ³ For I am the Lord your God, your Savior, the Holy One of Israel. I gave Egypt and Ethiopia and Seba to Cyrus^[f] in exchange for your freedom, as your ransom. ⁴ Others died that you might live; I traded their lives for yours because you are precious to me and honored, and I love you.

⁵ Don’t be afraid, for I am with you. I will gather you from east and west, ⁶ from north and south. I will bring my sons and daughters back to Israel from the farthest corners of the earth. ⁷ All who claim me as their God will come, for I have made them for my glory; I created them. ⁸ Bring them back to me—blind as they are and deaf when I call (although they see and hear!).

⁹ Gather the nations together! Which of all their idols ever has foretold such things? Which can predict a single day ahead? Where are the witnesses of anything they said? If there are no witnesses, then they must confess that only God can prophesy.

¹⁰ But I have witnesses, O Israel, says the Lord! You are my witnesses and my servants, chosen to know and to believe me and to understand that I alone am God. There is no other God; there never was and never will be.