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12 Beat your breasts in sorrow for your bountiful farms
    and your fruitful grapevines.
13 For your land will be overgrown with thorns and briers.
    Your joyful homes and happy towns will be gone.
14 The palace and the city will be deserted,
    and busy towns will be empty.
Wild donkeys will frolic and flocks will graze
    in the empty forts[a] and watchtowers
15 until at last the Spirit is poured out
    on us from heaven.
Then the wilderness will become a fertile field,
    and the fertile field will yield bountiful crops.

16 Justice will rule in the wilderness
    and righteousness in the fertile field.
17 And this righteousness will bring peace.
    Yes, it will bring quietness and confidence forever.
18 My people will live in safety, quietly at home.
    They will be at rest.
19 Even if the forest should be destroyed
    and the city torn down,
20 the Lord will greatly bless his people.
    Wherever they plant seed, bountiful crops will spring up.
    Their cattle and donkeys will graze freely.

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Footnotes

  1. 32:14 Hebrew the Ophel.

12 For people will be beating their breasts
    in mourning[a] over the pleasant fields,
        over the fruitful vines,
13 and over the land of my people
    overgrown with thorns and[b] briers—
yes, over all the houses of merriment
    and over this city of revelry.

14 “For the palace will be abandoned,
    the noisy city deserted;
the citadel and watchtower
    will become barren wastes forever,
the delight of wild donkeys,
    and a pasture for[c] flocks,
15 until the Spirit from on high is poured upon us,
    and the desert becomes a fertile field,
        and the fertile field seems like a forest.”

Restoration of God’s Reign

16 “Then justice will live in the wilderness,
    and righteousness will dwell in the fertile field.
17 The effect of righteousness will be peace,
    and the result of righteousness will be quietness and confidence forever.
18 My people will live in peaceful dwellings,
    in secure homes and in undisturbed resting places.
19 But it will hail when the forest comes down,
    and the wood[d] will be leveled completely.
20 How happy you will be, sowing your seed beside every stream,
    and[e] letting your[f] cattle and donkeys range freely!”

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Footnotes

  1. Isaiah 32:12 1QIsaa MT lack mourning
  2. Isaiah 32:13 So 1QIsaa LXX; the Heb. lacks and
  3. Isaiah 32:14 So 1QIsaa; MT reads of; cf. LXX
  4. Isaiah 32:19 So 1QIsaa; MT reads the city; LXX lacks the wood
  5. Isaiah 32:20 So 1QIsaa; the Heb. lacks and
  6. Isaiah 32:20 Lit. letting the feet of your