Isaiah 40:18-26

Living Bible

¹⁸ How can we describe God? With what can we compare him? ¹⁹ With an idol? An idol made from a mold, overlaid with gold, and with silver chains around its neck? ²⁰ The man too poor to buy expensive gods like that will find a tree free from rot and hire a man to carve a face on it, and that’s his god—a god that cannot even move!

²¹ Are you so ignorant? Are you so deaf to the words of God—the words he gave before the world began? Have you never heard nor understood? ²² It is God who sits above the circle of the earth. (The people below must seem to him like grasshoppers!) He is the one who stretches out the heavens like a curtain and makes his tent from them. ²³ He dooms the great men of the world and brings them all to naught. ²⁴ They hardly get started, barely take root, when he blows on them and their work withers, and the wind carries them off like straw.

²⁵ “With whom will you compare me? Who is my equal?” asks the Holy One.

²⁶ Look up into the heavens! Who created all these stars? As a shepherd leads his sheep,^[a] calling each by its pet name, and counts them to see that none are lost or strayed, so God does with stars and planets!