²³ Who is it you have ridiculed and blasphemed?^(A)
    Against whom have you raised your voice^(B)
and lifted your eyes in pride?^(C)
    Against the Holy One^(D) of Israel!
²⁴ By your messengers
    you have ridiculed the Lord.
And you have said,
    ‘With my many chariots^(E)
I have ascended the heights of the mountains,
    the utmost heights^(F) of Lebanon.^(G)
I have cut down its tallest cedars,
    the choicest of its junipers.^(H)
I have reached its remotest heights,
    the finest of its forests.
²⁵ I have dug wells in foreign lands^[a]
    and drunk the water there.
With the soles of my feet
    I have dried up^(I) all the streams of Egypt.^(J)’

²⁶ “Have you not heard?
    Long ago I ordained^(K) it.
In days of old I planned^(L) it;
    now I have brought it to pass,
that you have turned fortified cities
    into piles of stone.^(M)
27 Their people, drained of power,
    are dismayed and put to shame.
They are like plants in the field,
    like tender green shoots,
like grass^(N) sprouting on the roof,^(O)
    scorched^[b] before it grows up.

²⁸ “But I know where you are
    and when you come and go^(P)
    and how you rage^(Q) against me.
²⁹ Because you rage against me
    and because your insolence^(R) has reached my ears,
I will put my hook^(S) in your nose^(T)
    and my bit in your mouth,
and I will make you return
    by the way you came.^(U)

¹⁵ Does the ax raise itself above the person who swings it,
    or the saw boast against the one who uses it?^(A)
As if a rod were to wield the person who lifts it up,
    or a club^(B) brandish the one who is not wood!

²⁵ because he shakes his fist^(A) at God
    and vaunts himself against the Almighty,^(B)
26 defiantly charging against him
    with a thick, strong shield.^(C)