Old/New Testament

43 But now the Lord who created you, O Israel, says: Don’t be afraid, for I have ransomed you; I have called you by name; you are mine. ² When you go through deep waters and great trouble, I will be with you. When you go through rivers of difficulty, you will not drown! When you walk through the fire of oppression, you will not be burned up—the flames will not consume you. ³ For I am the Lord your God, your Savior, the Holy One of Israel. I gave Egypt and Ethiopia and Seba to Cyrus^[a] in exchange for your freedom, as your ransom. ⁴ Others died that you might live; I traded their lives for yours because you are precious to me and honored, and I love you.

⁵ Don’t be afraid, for I am with you. I will gather you from east and west, ⁶ from north and south. I will bring my sons and daughters back to Israel from the farthest corners of the earth. ⁷ All who claim me as their God will come, for I have made them for my glory; I created them. ⁸ Bring them back to me—blind as they are and deaf when I call (although they see and hear!).

⁹ Gather the nations together! Which of all their idols ever has foretold such things? Which can predict a single day ahead? Where are the witnesses of anything they said? If there are no witnesses, then they must confess that only God can prophesy.

¹⁰ But I have witnesses, O Israel, says the Lord! You are my witnesses and my servants, chosen to know and to believe me and to understand that I alone am God. There is no other God; there never was and never will be. ¹¹ I am the Lord, and there is no other Savior. ¹² Whenever you have thrown away your idols, I have shown you my power. With one word I have saved you. You have seen me do it; you are my witnesses that it is true. ¹³ From eternity to eternity I am God. No one can oppose what I do.

¹⁴ The Lord, your Redeemer, the Holy One of Israel, says: For your sakes I will send an invading army against Babylon that will walk in, almost unscathed. The boasts of the Babylonians will turn to cries of fear. ¹⁵ I am the Lord, your Holy One, Israel’s Creator and King. ¹⁶ I am the Lord, who opened a way through the waters, making a path right through the sea. ¹⁷ I called forth the mighty army of Egypt with all its chariots and horses, to lie beneath the waves, dead, their lives snuffed out like candlewicks.

¹⁸ But forget all that—it is nothing compared to what I’m going to do! ¹⁹ For I’m going to do a brand-new thing. See, I have already begun! Don’t you see it? I will make a road through the wilderness of the world for my people to go home, and create rivers for them in the desert! ²⁰ The wild animals in the fields will thank me, the jackals and ostriches too, for giving them water in the wilderness, yes, springs in the desert, so that my people, my chosen ones, can be refreshed. ²¹ I have made Israel for myself, and these my people will some day honor me before the world.

²² But O my people, you won’t ask my help; you have grown tired of me! ²³ You have not brought me the lambs for burnt offerings; you have not honored me with sacrifices. Yet my requests for offerings and incense have been very few! I have not treated you as slaves. ²⁴ You have brought me no sweet-smelling incense nor pleased me with the sacrificial fat. No, you have presented me only with sins and wearied me with all your faults.

²⁵ I, yes, I alone am he who blots away your sins for my own sake and will never think of them again. ²⁶ Oh, remind me of this promise of forgiveness, for we must talk about your sins. Plead your case for my forgiving you. ²⁷ From the very first your ancestors sinned against me—all your forebears transgressed my law. ²⁸ That is why I have deposed your priests and destroyed Israel, leaving her to shame.

44 Listen to me, O my servant Israel, O my chosen ones:

² The Lord who made you, who will help you, says: O servant of mine, don’t be afraid. O Jerusalem, my chosen ones, don’t be afraid. ³ For I will give you abundant water for your thirst and for your parched fields. And I will pour out my Spirit and my blessings on your children. ⁴ They shall thrive like watered grass, like willows on a riverbank. ⁵ “I am the Lord’s,” they’ll proudly^[b] say, or, “I am a Jew,” and tattoo upon their hands the name of God or the honored name of Israel.

⁶ The Lord, the King of Israel, says—yes, it is Israel’s Redeemer, the Lord Almighty, who says it—I am the First and Last; there is no other God. ⁷ Who else can tell you what is going to happen in the days ahead? Let them tell you if they can and prove their power. Let them do as I have done since ancient times. ⁸ Don’t, don’t be afraid. Haven’t I proclaimed from ages past that I would save you^[c]? You are my witnesses—is there any other God? No! None that I know about! There is no other Rock!

⁹ What fools they are who manufacture idols for their gods. Their hopes remain unanswered. They themselves are witnesses that this is so, for their idols neither see nor know. No wonder those who worship them are so ashamed. ¹⁰ Who but a fool would make his own god—an idol that can help him not one whit! ¹¹ All that worship these will stand before the Lord in shame, along with all these carpenters—mere men—who claim that they have made a god. Together they will stand in terror. ¹² The metalsmith stands at his forge to make an ax, pounding on it with all his might. He grows hungry and thirsty, weak and faint. ¹³ Then the wood-carver takes the ax and uses it to make an idol. He measures and marks out a block of wood and carves the figure of a man. Now he has a wonderful idol that can’t so much as move from where it is placed. ¹⁴ He cuts down cedars, he selects the cypress and the oak, he plants the ash in the forest to be nourished by the rain. ¹⁵ And after his care, he uses part of the wood to make a fire to warm himself and bake his bread, and then—he really does—he takes the rest of it and makes himself a god—a god for men to worship! An idol to fall down before and praise! ¹⁶ Part of the tree he burns to roast his meat and to keep him warm and fed and well content, ¹⁷ and with what’s left he makes his god: a carved idol! He falls down before it and worships it and prays to it. “Deliver me,” he says. “You are my god!”

¹⁸ Such stupidity and ignorance! God has shut their eyes so that they cannot see and closed their minds from understanding. ¹⁹ The man never stops to think or figure out, “Why, it’s just a block of wood! I’ve burned it for heat and used it to bake my bread and roast my meat. How can the rest of it be a god? Should I fall down before a chunk of wood?” ²⁰ The poor, deluded fool feeds on ashes; he is trusting what can never give him any help at all. Yet he cannot bring himself to ask, “Is this thing, this idol that I’m holding in my hand, a lie?”

²¹ Pay attention, Israel, for you are my servant; I made you, and I will not forget to help you. ²² I’ve blotted out your sins; they are gone like morning mist at noon! Oh, return to me, for I have paid the price to set you free.

²³ Sing, O heavens, for the Lord has done this wondrous thing. Shout, O earth; break forth into song, O mountains and forests, yes, and every tree; for the Lord redeemed Jacob and is glorified in Israel! ²⁴ The Lord, your Redeemer who made you, says: All things were made by me; I alone stretched out the heavens. By myself I made the earth and everything in it.

²⁵ I am the one who shows what liars all false prophets are, by causing something else to happen than the things they say. I make wise men give opposite advice to what they should and make them into fools. ²⁶ But what my prophets say, I do; when they say Jerusalem will be delivered and the cities of Judah lived in once again—it shall be done! ²⁷ When I speak to the rivers and say, “Be dry!” they shall be dry. ²⁸ When I say of Cyrus,^[d] “He is my shepherd,” he will certainly do as I say; and Jerusalem will be rebuilt and the Temple restored, for I have spoken it.

2 You yourselves know, dear brothers, how worthwhile that visit was. ² You know how badly we had been treated at Philippi just before we came to you and how much we suffered there. Yet God gave us the courage to boldly repeat the same message to you, even though we were surrounded by enemies. ³ So you can see that we were not preaching with any false motives or evil purposes in mind; we were perfectly straightforward and sincere.

⁴ For we speak as messengers from God, trusted by him to tell the truth; we change his message not one bit to suit the taste of those who hear it; for we serve God alone, who examines our hearts’ deepest thoughts. ⁵ Never once did we try to win you with flattery, as you very well know, and God knows we were not just pretending to be your friends so that you would give us money! ⁶ As for praise, we have never asked for it from you or anyone else, although as apostles of Christ we certainly had a right to some honor from you. ⁷ But we were as gentle among you as a mother feeding and caring for her own children. ⁸ We loved you dearly—so dearly that we gave you not only God’s message, but our own lives too.

⁹ Don’t you remember, dear brothers, how hard we worked among you? Night and day we toiled and sweated to earn enough to live on so that our expenses would not be a burden to anyone there, as we preached God’s Good News among you. ¹⁰ You yourselves are our witnesses—as is God—that we have been pure and honest and faultless toward every one of you. ¹¹ We talked to you as a father to his own children—don’t you remember?—pleading with you, encouraging you and even demanding ¹² that your daily lives should not embarrass God but bring joy to him who invited you into his Kingdom to share his glory.

¹³ And we will never stop thanking God for this: that when we preached to you, you didn’t think of the words we spoke as being just our own, but you accepted what we said as the very Word of God—which, of course, it was—and it changed your lives when you believed it.

¹⁴ And then, dear brothers, you suffered what the churches in Judea did, persecution from your own countrymen, just as they suffered from their own people, the Jews. ¹⁵ After they had killed their own prophets, they even executed the Lord Jesus; and now they have brutally persecuted us and driven us out. They are against both God and man, ¹⁶ trying to keep us from preaching to the Gentiles for fear some might be saved; and so their sins continue to grow. But the anger of God has caught up with them at last.

¹⁷ Dear brothers, after we left you and had been away from you but a very little while (though our hearts never left you), we tried hard to come back to see you once more. ¹⁸ We wanted very much to come, and I, Paul, tried again and again, but Satan stopped us. ¹⁹ For what is it we live for, that gives us hope and joy and is our proud reward and crown? It is you! Yes, you will bring us much joy as we stand together before our Lord Jesus Christ when he comes back again. ²⁰ For you are our trophy and joy.