Isaiah 59
Common English Bible
Alienation from God
59 Look! The Lord does not lack the power to save,
nor are his ears too dull to hear,
2 but your misdeeds have separated you from your God.
Your sins have hidden his face from you
so that you aren’t heard.
3 Your hands are stained with blood,
and your fingers with guilt.
Your lips speak lies;
your tongues mutter malice.
4 No one sues honestly;
no one pleads truthfully.
By trusting in emptiness and speaking deceit,
they conceive harm and give birth to malice.
5 They hatch adders’ eggs,
and weave spiderwebs.
Whoever eats their eggs will die.
Moreover, the crushed egg hatches a viper.
6 Their webs can’t serve as clothing;
they can’t cover themselves with their deeds.
Their deeds are deeds of malice,
and the work of violence is in their hands.
7 Their feet run to evil;
they rush to shed innocent blood.
Their thoughts are thoughts of malice;
desolation and destruction litter their highways.
8 They don’t know the way of peace;
there’s no justice in their paths.
They make their roads crooked;
no one who walks in them knows peace.
Injustice obscures vision
9 Because of all this, justice is far from us,
and righteousness beyond our reach.
We expect light, and there is darkness;
we await a gleam of light, but walk about in gloom.
10 We grope along the wall like the blind;
like those without eyes we grope.
We stumble at noonday as if it were twilight,
and among the strong as if we were dying.
11 All of us growl like bears,
and like doves we moan.
We expect justice, but there is none;
we await salvation, but it is far from us.
12 Our rebellions are numerous in your presence;
our sins testify against us.
Our rebellions are with us;
we’re aware of our guilt:
13 defying and denying the Lord,
turning away from our God,
planning oppression and revolt,
muttering lying words conceived in our minds.
14 Justice is pushed aside;
righteousness stands far off,
because truth has stumbled in the public square,
and honesty can’t enter.
15 Truth is missing;
anyone turning from evil is plundered.
God will intervene
The Lord looked and was upset at the absence of justice.
16 Seeing that there was no one,
and astonished that no one would intervene,
God’s arm brought victory,
upheld by righteousness,
17 putting on righteousness as armor
and a helmet of salvation on his head,
putting on garments of vengeance,
and wrapping himself in a cloak of zeal.
18 God will repay according to their actions:
wrath to his foes, retribution to enemies,
retribution to the coastlands,
19 so those in the west will fear the Lord’s name,
and those in the east will fear God’s glory.
It will come like a rushing river
that the Lord’s wind drives on.
20 A redeemer will come to Zion
and to those in Jacob who stop rebelling,
says the Lord.
21 As for me, this is my covenant with them, says the Lord.
My spirit, which is upon you,
and my words, which I have placed in your mouth
won’t depart from your mouth,
nor from the mouths of your descendants,
nor from the mouths of your descendants’ children,
says the Lord,
forever and always.
Isaiah 59
EasyEnglish Bible
The Lord accuses his people
59 Listen! The Lord's hand is not too weak to save you.
His ear is not too deaf to hear you.
2 But the wrong things that you have done
have made you separate from your God.
Your sins have caused him to turn away from you,
so that he does not listen to your prayers.
3 Your hands are dirty with the blood of murder.
They are dirty with all the bad things that you do.
Your mouth tells lies,
and it says wicked things about other people.
4 When people accuse somebody in court,
the truth is not important.
They tell lies and they deceive the judge,
so that they will win.
They decide how they can cause trouble,
and then they do wicked things.
5 Their thoughts are like the eggs of a snake.
If anyone eats those eggs, they will die!
When an egg breaks open,
a dangerous snake is born!
They like to catch people,
like a spider that makes a web.[a]
6 Their webs are useless to make clothes.
They cannot cover themselves with them.
The things that they do are useless like that.
They do only wicked things.
They use their strength only to hurt people.
7 They rush to do evil things.
They hurry to kill people who have not done anything wrong.
They think only about sin.
They only want to be cruel and to hurt people.
8 They do not know how to live in peace.
They cannot be honest and fair.
Their way of life is all wrong.
Nobody who lives like that will have peace.
The people agree
9 Because of that, God's justice is far away from us.
He has not come to save us.
We look for light to come to us,
but everything is dark.
We need some light in our lives,
but all we have is darkness.
10 Like blind people,
we touch the wall to find our way.
It seems that we have no eyes to see with.
Even at midday, we trip and we fall down,
as if it was dark.
We are like dead people
who live among strong people.
11 We all make a noise, like hungry bears.
We make sad noises, like doves.
We are waiting for God to bring justice to us,
but nothing is happening.
We look for his salvation,
but it is still far away.
12 Lord, you see all the bad things that we have done.
Our many sins show that we are wrong.
We know about the wrong things that we have done.
We agree that our sins are many.
13 We have turned against the Lord.
We have refused to obey him.
We have chosen to be cruel to other people,
and we have turned against the truth.
We think about the lies that we can tell,
and we use them to deceive people.
14 Judges do not decide in a fair way.
Nobody tries to do what is right.
There is no place for truth on the streets of our towns.
Honest people have to leave.
15 Nobody can speak the truth.
If anyone tries to stop doing evil things,
other people will attack him.
The Lord comes to save his people
The Lord saw how his people were living.
He saw that there was no justice.
It made him very sad.
16 He saw that there was nobody who would help,
and he was very upset.
So he used his own strength to help.
Because he had to do what was right,
he made his people safe.
17 He always does what is right,
like a soldier who always puts on his armour.
His power to save people
is like the helmet that he wears.
He is angry against people who do evil things,
and he works hard to punish them.
That is like the clothes that he wears.
18 He will punish his enemies
for the bad things that they have done.
He will be very angry with them.
He will punish all his enemies,
even those who live in lands far away.
19 Then people who live in the west
will respect the Lord's name.
And people who live in the east
will see how great he is.
The Lord will attack them like a fast river.
He will blow them away with a strong wind.
20 The Lord says,
‘A Redeemer will come to Zion.
He will come to save Jacob's people
who turn away from their sins.’
21 The Lord says, ‘This is the covenant that I make with those people. My Spirit is now with you, and he will not leave you. I have put my words into your mouth, and they will always be with you. They will continue to be in the mouths of your children, and your descendants for ever.’
That is what the Lord says.
Footnotes
- 59:5 A spider is small, like an insect. It uses very thin strings (threads) to make a web. It catches insects in the web for its food.
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