Beginning
45 The Lord says this to Cyrus, the king that he has chosen to serve him:
‘I hold your right hand.
I give you power over other nations,
to take away the weapons of their kings.
I will open the gates of cities in front of you,
and they will stay open.
2 I will go in front of you,
and I will make the mountains flat.
I will break bronze gates into pieces,
and I will cut through iron bars.[a]
3 I will take valuable things that people have stored in secret places,
and I will give them to you.
Then you will know that I am the Lord, Israel's God.
I am the one who calls you by your name.
4 I have called you on behalf of my people,
to help my servant, Jacob's descendants.
They are Israel's people, that I have chosen for myself.
You do not know me as your God,
but I have given to you an important name.
5 I am the Lord and there is nobody else like me.
There is no other God, except me.
You do not know me as your God,
but I will make you strong to fight battles.
6 Then all over the world, from east to west,
people will know that there is no other God.
Yes, I am the Lord
and there is nobody else like me.
7 I make light and I also make darkness.
I make peace as well as trouble.
I am the Lord.
I do all these things.
8 Let justice pour down from the sky like rain!
Let the earth be ready to receive it!
Then salvation and righteousness will grow together,
like strong plants.
I am the Lord,
and I will cause it to happen.’
9 It will be very bad for people who quarrel with their Maker. They are like pieces of a pot that are lying on the ground among all the other pieces. The clay does not say to the potter, ‘What do you think you are you making?’ The pot does not say to the potter, ‘Your work is useless!’
10 It will be very bad for people who say to their fathers, ‘What kind of child have you become a father to?’ And it will be bad for people who say to their mothers, ‘What kind of baby are you giving birth to?’
11 The Lord is Israel's Holy God. He is the one who created Israel. He says this about the things that will happen:
‘You should not ask me questions about my children.
You should not tell me what to do
with the people that I have made
12 It is I who made the earth.
I created the people who live on it.
I hung up the sky like a curtain.
I did that with my own hands!
I put all the stars in their places.
13 Now I have woken up Cyrus
to do for me things that are right.
I will make all his paths easy to travel on.
He will build again my city,
and he will make my people free to return home.
Nobody will have to pay him any money
or give him a bribe to do that.’
That is what the Lord Almighty says.
14 This is what the Lord says to his people:
‘I promise you that you will rule Egypt and Ethiopia,
and also those tall people from Seba.
They will bring to you the things that they buy and sell.
Those valuable things will belong to you.
They will walk behind you in chains,
as your slaves.
They will bend down low in front of you,
and they will even pray to you.
They will agree, “Surely God is with you.
There is nobody else like him. There is no other God.” ’
15 Yes, you are a God who hides yourself!
You are Israel's God, our Saviour!
16 People who make idols will all become ashamed.
People will insult them as they leave together.
17 The Lord will make Israel safe.
Israel will be safe and free for ever.
You will never be ashamed again.
People will never insult you again.
18 The Lord created the heavens. He is the true God. He created the earth and he put it in its place. He built it to be strong. He did not create it as an empty place. He made it for people to live there. He says,
‘I am the Lord.
There is nobody else who is like me.
19 I have not spoken secretly,
as I hid in a dark place.
I did not say to Jacob's descendants,
“Look for me, but you will not find me.”
I am the Lord. I speak what is right.
My message is true.
20 So come, you people of the nations,
you who have escaped from war.
Bring yourselves in front of me together!
People who carry wooden idols are fools!
They pray to gods who cannot rescue them.
21 Now decide together what you will say in court!
Tell me what you think!
Who said a long time ago what would happen?
Who spoke about it long before it happened?
It was I, the Lord!
There is nobody else like me.
There is no other God, except me.
I am a righteous God and I save my people.
There is no other God.
22 So turn to me and I will make you safe.
I say that to everybody all over the world.
Turn to me, because I am God.
There is nobody else like me.
23 This is my promise that I say is true.
I have spoken it honestly and I will not change it.
I promise this:
Everybody will go down on their knees in front of me.
Everybody will promise to serve me.
24 They will all say this about me:
“The Lord alone is true and strong.” ’
Everybody who has been angry with God will come to him.
They will be ashamed that they were angry.
25 The Lord will bring justice
for all the descendants of Israel.
They will say that the Lord is great!
Babylon's false gods have no power
46 Bel bends down to the ground.
Nebo lies down low.[b]
Their images are heavy loads on the backs of animals.
The animals become tired and weak as they carry them away.
2 Those gods fall down and they lie together on the ground!
They have no power to rescue their images.
The gods themselves go as prisoners to a foreign land,
together with their images.
3 The Lord says,
‘Listen to me, you family of Jacob.
Yes, listen to me, all you Israelites who are still alive.
I have taken care of you since you first became a nation.
I have carried you since you were born.
4 I will continue to take care of you until you are old,
until your hair becomes grey.
I made you who you are,
and I will supply everything that you need.
I will carry you,
and I will save you.
5 You know that there is no God like me!
You cannot say about any god,
that he is the same as me.
6 Some people make idols for themselves.
They pour out gold coins from their purse.
They weigh silver on their scales.
They pay a worker with special skill to use the silver and the gold
to make a god.
Then they bend down low in front of it,
and they worship it!
7 They lift the idol onto their shoulders
and they carry it home.
They put it in its place and it stands there.
It cannot move anywhere else.
If someone calls out to it for help,
it does not answer.
It cannot save anyone from their trouble.
8 Remember this, you people who do not obey me.
Think about it carefully.
9 Remember all the things that I did a long time ago.
I am God. There is nobody else like me.
There is no other God, except me.
10 From the beginning, I say what will happen at the end.
Long ago, I spoke about future things that have not yet happened.
I say this: “My purpose will not change.
I will do everything that I want to do.”
11 Now I will call somebody to come from the east.
He will come down quickly,
like an eagle that catches small birds to eat.
He will come from a country that is far away.
He will do for me what I want to do.
Yes, I will surely do what I have decided to do.
I have given the command,
and I will cause it to happen.
12 Listen to me, you people who refuse to obey me.
You choose not to do anything that is right.
13 But now I am ready to rescue you,
and I will show you what is right.
This will soon happen!
I will save the people in Zion.
I will make Israel great and beautiful.’
God's message to Babylon
47 ‘Babylon, get down on the ground, and sit in the dirt!
Come down off your throne, young lady!
In the past, nobody has touched you,
but people will no longer say that you are so pretty.
2 Use heavy stones to make grain into flour.
Take the veil off your face.
Lift up your skirt.
Walk through streams of water with bare legs.
3 Stand there with your body completely bare!
Everybody will see your great shame.
I will punish you for your sins,
and nobody will escape.’
4 This is what the Lord Almighty says. He is our Redeemer, Israel's Holy God.
5 ‘You city of the Babylonians, sit there quietly!
Go and hide in a dark place.
People will no longer call you the queen of all kingdoms.
6 I was angry with my own people.
They belonged to me as my special people,
but I punished them like ordinary people.
I gave you the power to hurt them,
and you were not kind to them.
You were very cruel to old people.
7 You boasted,
“I will rule other nations as queen for ever!”
But you did not think about what you were doing.
You did not think about what would happen in the end.
8 So listen to me, Babylon!
You love to enjoy expensive things.
You think that you are strong and safe.
You say to yourself, “Here I am!
There is nobody as good as I am.
I will never be alone as a widow.
I will never lose my children.”
9 But both of those things will happen to you!
They will happen suddenly, in only one day.
You will lose your children
and you will become a widow.
All these troubles will come to hurt you.
You can use all your powerful magic
but you will not stop this trouble!
10 You thought that your evil deeds would keep you safe.
You said, “Nobody sees me!”
You think that you are very wise
and that you know everything.
But your wisdom has deceived you.
You say, “Here I am!
There is nobody as good as I am.”
11 But trouble will suddenly come to you.
Your magic words will not stop it.
Trouble will come and destroy you.
You cannot pay anyone to take it away.
It will suddenly hit you,
before you even recognize it.
12 So continue with your magic, if you want to.
Say your magic words.
You have always used that magic,
since you were young.
Perhaps your magic will help you.
Perhaps you will frighten your enemies!
13 You receive a lot of advice,
and it has made you become tired.
Let your advisors come and stand there.
They study the sky and the stars to decide what will happen.
They say what will happen each month.
So let them come and help you!
See if they can rescue you from the trouble that is coming!
14 But they are as useless as straw
that quickly burns in a fire.
They cannot save themselves,
because the fire is too hot!
This is not a nice fire to sit beside and enjoy the heat.
15 You have worked with those magicians since you were young,
but you will have no help from them now.
They have gone their own separate ways.
There is nobody left who can save you.’
The Lord warns his people
48 Listen to this, family of Jacob. You are called ‘Israel’, and you are Judah's descendants.[c] You use the name of the Lord when you make promises. You pray to Israel's God. But you do not do those things honestly and fairly. 2 Your people are proud to say that they live in the holy city. They trust in Israel's God, whose name is the Lord Almighty.
3 The Lord says to his people,
‘I already spoke about things that would happen at a future time.
A long time ago I told you what would happen.
Then I suddenly did my work,
and I caused those things to happen!
4 I did it because I know what you are like.
You refuse to obey me.
You do not want to change the way that you live.
Your neck is like iron and it will not bend!
Your head is as hard as bronze!
5 So I told you about these things a long time ago.
Before they happened, I told you about them.
Then you could not say, “My idol did them.
Yes, my wooden image and my idol made of metal
decided that these things would happen.”
6 You heard what I said would happen,
and now you have seen it happen.
Agree that what I say is true!
Now I will tell you about new things that will happen.
They are secret things that you do not yet know about.
7 They are not things that started long ago.
I am causing them to happen now.
You did not hear about them before today.
So you cannot say, “Yes, I already knew about them.”
8 You have not heard about them before.
You know nothing about them.
From long ago you refused to listen to me.
I know that you are never honest.
Since you first became a nation,
you have refused to obey me.
9 Because of who I am,
I will keep my anger until later.
I will not destroy you now,
so that people will praise my name.
10 Listen! I have made you pure.
But I have not done it in the way that people make silver pure.
Instead, I have sent pain and trouble to you.
That is how I make you pure.
11 I do these things to show who I am.
That is why I do it!
I will not let people insult my good name.
I will not let anyone else share my glory.
12 So listen to me, descendants of Jacob!
I called you to belong to me, you Israelite people.
I am the only One.
I am the first, and I am also the last.
13 I created the earth with my own hand.
With my right hand, I hung up the sky like a curtain.
When I call to the stars,
they all appear in their places.
14 All of you, come together and listen to me.
Not one of your idols has said
what will happen now.
I, the Lord, have chosen a friend to attack Babylon.
He will do what I want.
He will have the power to punish the Babylonians.
15 Yes, that is what I have commanded.
I have called him to do this work.
I have shown him what he must do,
and he will do it!
16 Come near to me! Listen to my message!
From the beginning, I have not spoken secretly.
When these things happen, I will already be there.’
Now the Almighty Lord has sent me, with the power of his Spirit.[d]
17 The Lord is your Redeemer, Israel's Holy God. He says,
‘I am the Lord your God.
I teach you what will be good for you.
I lead you along a good path in life.
18 You should have obeyed my commands.
Then you would have had peace in your lives,
like a river that runs quietly.
You would have been safe and well,
like the strong waves in the sea.
19 You would have had many descendants,
as much as the sand on the shore of the sea.
I would not need to destroy them.
Their family name would continue for ever.’
20 Now leave Babylon as free people!
No longer serve the Babylonians!
Shout the news with joy!
Tell everyone about it, all over the world.
Tell them that the Lord has redeemed his people,
his servants, the Israelites.
21 When he led them through the desert,
they did not become thirsty.
He broke open a rock for them,
so that water poured out.
They could drink as much as they needed.
22 But the Lord says, ‘Wicked people will have no peace in their lives.’
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