Isaiah 28:14-30:11

Good News Translation

A Cornerstone for Zion

¹⁴ Now you arrogant leaders who rule here in Jerusalem over this people, listen to what the Lord is saying. ^15 (A)You boast that you have made a treaty with death and reached an agreement with the world of the dead. You are certain that disaster will spare you when it comes, because you depend on lies and deceit to keep you safe. ^16 (B)This, now, is what the Sovereign Lord says: “I am placing in Zion a foundation that is firm and strong. In it I am putting a solid cornerstone on which are written the words, ‘Faith that is firm is also patient.’ ¹⁷ Justice will be the measuring line for the foundation, and honesty will be its plumb line.”

Hailstorms will sweep away all the lies you depend on, and floods will destroy your security. ¹⁸ The treaty you have made with death will be abolished, and your agreement with the world of the dead will be canceled. When disaster sweeps down, you will be overcome. ¹⁹ It will strike you again and again, morning after morning. You will have to bear it day and night. Each new message from God will bring new terror! ²⁰ You will be like the person in the proverb, who tries to sleep in a bed too short to stretch out on, with a blanket too narrow to wrap himself in. ^21 (C)The Lord will fight as he did at Mount Perazim and in the valley of Gibeon, in order to do what he intends to do—strange as his actions may seem. He will complete his work, his mysterious work.

²² Don't laugh at the warning I am giving you! If you do, it will be even harder for you to escape. I have heard the Lord Almighty's decision to destroy the whole country.

God's Wisdom

²³ Listen to what I am saying; pay attention to what I am telling you. ²⁴ Farmers don't constantly plow their fields and keep getting them ready for planting. ²⁵ Once they have prepared the soil, they plant the seeds of herbs such as dill and cumin. They plant rows of wheat and barley,^[a] and at the edges of their fields they plant other grain. ²⁶ They know how to do their work, because God has taught them. ²⁷ They never use a heavy club to beat out dill seeds or cumin seeds; instead they use light sticks of the proper size. ²⁸ They do not ruin the wheat by threshing it endlessly, and they know how to thresh it by driving a cart over it without bruising the grains. ²⁹ All this wisdom comes from the Lord Almighty. The plans God makes are wise, and they always succeed.

The Fate of Jerusalem

29 God's altar, Jerusalem itself, is doomed! The city where David camped is doomed! Let another year or two come and go, with its feasts and festivals, ² and then God will bring disaster on the city that is called “God's altar.” There will be weeping and wailing, and the whole city will be like an altar covered with blood. ³ God will attack the city, surround it, and besiege it. ⁴ Jerusalem will be like a ghost struggling to speak from under the ground, a muffled voice coming from the dust.

⁵ Jerusalem, all the foreigners who attack you will be blown away like dust, and their terrifying armies will fly away like straw. Suddenly and unexpectedly ⁶ the Lord Almighty will rescue you with violent thunderstorms and earthquakes. He will send windstorms and raging fire; ⁷ then all the armies of the nations attacking the city of God's altar, all their weapons and equipment—everything—will vanish like a dream, like something imagined in the night. ⁸ All the nations that assemble to attack Jerusalem will be like a starving person who dreams he is eating and wakes up hungry, or like someone dying of thirst who dreams he is drinking and wakes with a dry throat.

Disregarded Warnings

⁹ Go ahead and be stupid! Go ahead and be blind! Get drunk without any wine! Stagger without drinking a drop! ^10 (D)The Lord has made you drowsy, ready to fall into a deep sleep. The prophets should be the eyes of the people, but God has blindfolded them. ¹¹ The meaning of every prophetic vision will be hidden from you; it will be like a sealed scroll. If you take it to someone who knows how to read and ask him to read it to you, he will say he can't because it is sealed. ¹² If you give it to someone who can't read and ask him to read it to you, he will answer that he doesn't know how.

^13 (E)The Lord said, “These people claim to worship me, but their words are meaningless, and their hearts are somewhere else. Their religion is nothing but human rules and traditions, which they have simply memorized. ^14 (F)So I will startle them with one unexpected blow after another. Those who are wise will turn out to be fools, and all their cleverness will be useless.”

Hope for the Future

¹⁵ Those who try to hide their plans from the Lord are doomed! They carry out their schemes in secret and think no one will see them or know what they are doing. ^16 (G)They turn everything upside down. Which is more important, the potter or the clay? Can something you have made say, “You didn't make me”? Or can it say, “You don't know what you are doing”?

¹⁷ As the saying goes, before long the dense forest will become farmland, and the farmland will go back to forest.

¹⁸ When that day comes, the deaf will be able to hear a book being read aloud, and the blind, who have been living in darkness, will open their eyes and see. ¹⁹ Poor and humble people will once again find the happiness which the Lord, the holy God of Israel, gives. ²⁰ It will be the end of those who oppress others and show contempt for God. Every sinner will be destroyed. ²¹ God will destroy those who slander others, those who prevent the punishment of criminals, and those who tell lies to keep honest people from getting justice.

²² So now the Lord, the God of Israel, who rescued Abraham from trouble, says, “My people, you will not be disgraced any longer, and your faces will no longer be pale with shame. ²³ When you see the children that I will give you, then you will acknowledge that I am the holy God of Israel. You will honor me and stand in awe of me. ²⁴ Foolish people will learn to understand, and those who are always grumbling will be glad to be taught.”

A Useless Treaty with Egypt

30 The Lord has spoken: “Those who rule Judah are doomed because they rebel against me. They follow plans that I did not make, and sign treaties against my will, piling one sin on another. ² They go to Egypt for help without asking for my advice. They want Egypt to protect them, so they put their trust in Egypt's king. ³ But the king will be powerless to help them, and Egypt's protection will end in disaster. ⁴ Although their ambassadors have already arrived at the Egyptian cities of Zoan and Hanes, ⁵ the people of Judah will regret that they ever trusted that unreliable nation, a nation that fails them when they expect help.”

⁶ This is God's message about the animals of the southern desert: “The ambassadors travel through dangerous country, where lions live and where there are poisonous snakes and flying dragons. They load their donkeys and camels with expensive gifts for a nation that cannot give them any help. ⁷ The help that Egypt gives is useless. So I have nicknamed Egypt, ‘The Harmless Dragon.’”

The Disobedient People

⁸ God told me to write down in a book what the people are like, so that there would be a permanent record of how evil they are. ⁹ They are always rebelling against God, always lying, always refusing to listen to the Lord's teachings. ¹⁰ They tell the prophets to keep quiet. They say, “Don't talk to us about what's right. Tell us what we want to hear. Let us keep our illusions. ¹¹ Get out of our way and stop blocking our path. We don't want to hear about your holy God of Israel.”