Beginning

¹ Woe to those who go down to Egypt for help
    and who rely on horses,
who place their trust in a large number of chariots
    and in the great strength of their horsemen,
but do not look to the Holy One of Israel
    or seek the Lord’s guidance.
² Yet he, too, is wise and can bring disaster,
    and he does not take back his threats.
He will rise up against the house of the wicked
    and against those who come to the support of evildoers.
³ The Egyptians are mortal, not divine;
    their horses are flesh, not spirit.
When the Lord stretches out his hand,
    the helper will stumble and the one helped will fall;
    all of them will perish together.

As a lion or a lion cub
    growls over its prey,
and when a band of shepherds
    gather together to drive it off,
it is not frightened by their shouting
    or daunted by their clamor,
so the Lord of hosts will come down
    to do battle on the heights of Mount Zion.
⁵ Like a hovering bird
    the Lord of hosts will protect Jerusalem;
he will protect and deliver it,
    he will spare and rescue it.
⁶ Come back to the one
    whom you have completely deserted,
    O children of Israel.
⁷ For on that day
    all of you will cast away
your idols of silver and your false gods of gold
    which your own sinful hands have made.

⁸ Then Assyria will fall by a sword not brandished by a man
    and be devoured by a sword that no human yields;
he will flee before the sword,
    and his young warriors will endure forced labor.
⁹ His stronghold will be abandoned in terror,
    and his commanders will panic and desert him.
Thus says the Lord whose fire is in Zion
    and whose furnace burns in Jerusalem.

¹ Behold, a king will reign with righteousness
    and princes will rule with justice.
² Each of them will be like a shelter from the wind
    and a refuge from the storm,
like streams of water in arid land,
    like the shade of a great rock in a desolate area.
³ Then the eyes of those who see will not be closed,
    and the ears of those who hear will listen attentively.
⁴ The minds of the rash will show good judgment,
    and those who stutter will speak promptly and clearly.
⁵ No longer will a fool be called noble,
    nor will a villain be considered to be honorable.
⁶ For the fool speaks foolishly
    while his heart is planning evil.
He practices ungodliness
    and spreads malicious untruths about the Lord.
He starves the hungry by withholding their food
    and deprives the thirsty of anything to drink.
⁷ The methods of the scoundrel are wicked,
    and he devises infamous schemes
to destroy the poor with his lies
    even when the pleas of the needy are just.
⁸ But the man who is noble plans noble deeds,
    and in that respect he stands firm.

⁹ Listen carefully to what I have to say,
    you women who are so complacent.
Pay attention to my words,
    you who feel so secure.
¹⁰ In little more than a year from now
    you complacent ones will be shaken.
For the vintage will fail
    and there will be no harvest.
¹¹ Tremble, you complacent women;
    shudder, you who feel secure.
Strip yourselves bare,
    with only a loincloth to cover you.
¹² Beat your breasts in mourning
    for the pleasant fields and the fruitful vines,
¹³ for the soil of my people
    overgrown with thorns and briars,
and for all the joyful houses
    in this city of revelry.
¹⁴ The citadel^[a] will be abandoned
    and the crowded streets will be deserted;
the hill and the watchtower will become wasteland forever,
    in which wild asses may frolic and flocks may pasture,
¹⁵ until a spirit from on high
    is poured out upon us,
and the wilderness becomes an orchard
    and the fruitful field becomes a forest.
¹⁶ Then justice will dwell in the wilderness,
    and righteousness will abide in the orchard.
¹⁷ The effect of righteousness will be peace,
    and its result will be quiet and security forever.
¹⁸ My people will abide in a peaceful land,
    in secure dwellings and peaceful resting places.
¹⁹ Even if the forest were to be totally destroyed
    and the city were to be completely leveled,
²⁰ how blessed you will be
    to sow your seed beside every stream
    and to have your cattle and your donkeys roam freely.

¹ Woe to you, O destroyer,
    who yourself have not been destroyed!
Woe to you, O traitor,
    who yourself have not been betrayed!
When you have finished destroying,
    you yourself will be destroyed;
when you have ceased betraying,
    you yourself will be betrayed.
² O Lord, be merciful to us,
    for we have placed our hope in you.
Be our strength every morning,
    our salvation in times of trouble.
³ At the sound of tumult, peoples flee;
    nations scatter when they behold your majesty.
⁴ Your spoil is gathered as if by caterpillars;
    like a swarm of locusts men descend upon it.
⁵ The Lord is exalted, for he dwells on high;
    he has filled Zion with justice and righteousness.
⁶ Her strength will derive from the Lord’s unchanging stability;
    her deliverance will result from wisdom and knowledge;
    her treasure is the fear of the Lord.
⁷ Listen to the valiant cry aloud in the streets for help;
    the ambassadors who seek peace weep bitterly.
⁸ The highways are deserted;
    no longer are there any travelers on the road.
Treaties are broken and their terms are ignored;
    no one is deemed worthy of respect.
⁹ The land languishes in mourning;
    Lebanon withers in its shame.
Sharon has become a desert;
    Bashan and Carmel are stripped bare.^[b]
10 Now I will rise up, says the Lord.
    Now I will be exalted,
    now I will be lifted up.
¹¹ You conceive chaff and give birth to stubble;
    like fire my Spirit will devour you.
¹² The peoples will be burned as though by lime,
    like thorns that have been cut
    and consumed in the fire.
¹³ You who are far away,
    listen to what I have done,
and you who are near,
    acknowledge my strength.
¹⁴ The sinners in Zion are filled with terror;
    trembling has seized the godless.
“Can any of us survive the devouring fire?
    Can any of us survive the everlasting flames?”
¹⁵ Those who walk righteously and speak honestly,
    who refuse to enrich themselves by extortion,
who reject any bribes offered to them
    and stop their ears from listening to plans for murder
    and shut their eyes from looking on evil—
¹⁶ these people will dwell on the heights;
    their refuge will be rocky cliffs,
where they will have an abundance of food and water.

¹⁷ Your eyes will behold the king in his splendor
    and gaze upon a land that stretches far and wide.
¹⁸ Your mind will then meditate on the terror.
    “Where is the man who did the counting?
Where is the man who weighed the tribute?
    Where is the man who counted the towers?”
¹⁹ No longer will you encounter the insolent people,
    those who employ an obscure speech
    that you cannot understand
and who stammer in a language
    that you are unable to comprehend.
²⁰ Gaze upon Zion,
    the city of our sacred feasts.
Your eyes will behold Jerusalem as a quiet abode,
    as a tent that will not be moved,
whose stakes will never be pulled up
    and none of whose ropes will be broken.
²¹ There we will behold the Lord in all his majesty,
    in a place of rivers and broad streams,
upon which no enemy galleys with oars can go
    or a majestic ship can sail.
²² For the Lord is our judge,
    the Lord is our lawgiver.
The Lord is our king;
    he is the one who will save us.
²³ If the rigging of an enemy ship is loose,
    unable to hold the mast in place
    or to keep the sails spread out,
then abundant spoils will be divided;
    even the lame will carry off the plunder.
²⁴ No inhabitant will say, “I am sick,”
    for the people who live there
    will be forgiven for their sins.

¹ Draw near, you nations, and listen;
    pay attention, you peoples.
Let the earth and everything in it listen,
    the world and all that issues forth from it.
² For the Lord is angry with all the nations
    and enraged against all their armies;
he has decreed their doom
    and given them over to slaughter.
³ Their slain will be cast out,
    and their corpses will emit a stench;
    the mountains will flow with their blood.
⁴ All the host of heaven will crumble into nothing,
    and the heavens will be rolled up like a scroll.
All their host will wither away
    as the leaves wither on a vine
    or as the fruit withers on a fig tree.
⁵ When my sword has drunk its fill in the heavens,
    lo, it will descend upon Edom,
    upon a people I have doomed to destruction.
⁶ The Lord has a sword sated with blood;
    it is greasy with fat,
with the blood of lambs and goats,
    with the fat of the kidneys of rams.
For the Lord has a sacrifice in Bozrah
    and a great slaughter in the land of Edom.
⁷ Wild oxen will also be struck down alongside them
    as will the bullocks with the bulls.
Their land will be drenched with blood
    and their soil will be greasy with fat.
⁸ For the Lord has a day of vengeance,
    a year of reprisal by Zion’s defenders.
⁹ The streams of Edom will be turned into pitch
    and her soil into sulfur;
    her land will become burning pitch.^[d]
10 Night or day it will never be quenched;
    its smoke will rise forever.
From generation to generation it will lie waste;
    never again will anyone pass through it.
¹¹ But the hawk and the hedgehog will possess it;
    the owl and the raven will dwell in it.
The Lord will stretch out over it
    the measuring line of chaos
    and the plumb line of desolation.
¹² There will be no more nobles there
    to proclaim the king;
    all of its princes will have vanished.
¹³ Its citadels will be overgrown with thorns,
    and nettles and briars will cover its fortresses.
It will become an abode for jackals
    and a haunt for ostriches.
¹⁴ Desert creatures will frolic with hyenas,
    and wild goats will call out to each other;
there, too, the nightjar will return to rest
    and find a place for repose.
¹⁵ There will the owl nest and lay eggs,
    and hatch and gather its young under her wings;
there, too, the buzzards will gather,
    each one with its mate.
¹⁶ Consult the book^[e] of the Lord and read it.
    Not one of these will be missing,
    not one will be without its mate.
For the mouth of the Lord has commanded this,
    and his Spirit has gathered them together.
¹⁷ He has allotted the portion for each;
    his hand has measured out their shares.
They will possess it forever
    and dwell there from generation to generation.

¹ The desert and the parched land will be glad.
    The wilderness will rejoice and blossom.
² Like the crocus it will bloom with abundant flowers
    and rejoice with songs of joy.
The glory of Lebanon will be given to it,
    the splendor of Carmel and Sharon.
They will behold the glory of the Lord,
    the splendor of our God.
³ Strengthen the hands that are weak,
    and make firm the knees that give way.
⁴ Say to those who are faint-hearted,
    “Be strong! Do not be afraid!
Here is your God;
    he will come with vengeance.
With divine retribution
    he is coming to save you.”
⁵ Then the eyes of the blind will be opened
    and the ears of the deaf will no longer be sealed.
⁶ Then the lame will leap like a stag
    and the tongue of the dumb will shout joyfully.
For waters will spring up in the wilderness
    and rivers in the desert.
⁷ The burning sand will evolve into a pool,
    and the thirsty ground will become springs of water.
The haunts where jackals used to live
    will bring forth grass and reeds and papyrus.
⁸ A highway will be there
    that will be called the Way of Holiness.
No one who is unclean may pass over it;
    it will serve as a path for pilgrims
    and no fool will be able to use it.
⁹ No lion will be there;
    no ravenous beast will be encountered along it.
Such animals will not be seen there;
    only the redeemed will be allowed to use it.
¹⁰ Those whom the Lord has ransomed will return
    and come to Zion with songs of happiness,
    their heads crowned with everlasting joy.
Gladness and joy will accompany them,
    while sorrow and mourning will flee away.