ESV - Isaiah Chapter 33 to 36

33 O Lord, Be Gracious to Us

33:1 Ah, you destroyer, who yourself have not been destroyed, you traitor, whom none has betrayed! When you have ceased to destroy, you will be destroyed; and when you have finished betraying, they will betray you.

²O Lord, be gracious to us; we wait for you. Be our arm every morning, our salvation in the time of trouble. ³At the tumultuous noise peoples flee; when you lift yourself up, nations are scattered, ⁴and your spoil is gathered as the caterpillar gathers; as locusts leap, it is leapt upon.

⁵The Lord is exalted, for he dwells on high; he will fill Zion with justice and righteousness, ⁶and he will be the stability of your times, abundance of salvation, wisdom, and knowledge; the fear of the Lord is Zion’s[1] treasure.

⁷Behold, their heroes cry in the streets; the envoys of peace weep bitterly. ⁸The highways lie waste; the traveler ceases. Covenants are broken; cities[2] are despised; there is no regard for man. ⁹The land mourns and languishes; Lebanon is confounded and withers away; Sharon is like a desert, and Bashan and Carmel shake off their leaves.

¹⁰“Now I will arise,” says the Lord, “now I will lift myself up; now I will be exalted. ¹¹You conceive chaff; you give birth to stubble; your breath is a fire that will consume you. ¹²And the peoples will be as if burned to lime, like thorns cut down, that are burned in the fire.”

¹³Hear, you who are far off, what I have done; and you who are near, acknowledge my might. ¹⁴The sinners in Zion are afraid; trembling has seized the godless: “Who among us can dwell with the consuming fire? Who among us can dwell with everlasting burnings?” ¹⁵He who walks righteously and speaks uprightly, who despises the gain of oppressions, who shakes his hands, lest they hold a bribe, who stops his ears from hearing of bloodshed and shuts his eyes from looking on evil, ¹⁶he will dwell on the heights; his place of defense will be the fortresses of rocks; his bread will be given him; his water will be sure.

¹⁷Your eyes will behold the king in his beauty; they will see a land that stretches afar. ¹⁸Your heart will muse on the terror: “Where is he who counted, where is he who weighed the tribute? Where is he who counted the towers?” ¹⁹You will see no more the insolent people, the people of an obscure speech that you cannot comprehend, stammering in a tongue that you cannot understand. ²⁰Behold Zion, the city of our appointed feasts! Your eyes will see Jerusalem, an untroubled habitation, an immovable tent, whose stakes will never be plucked up, nor will any of its cords be broken. ²¹But there the Lord in majesty will be for us a place of broad rivers and streams, where no galley with oars can go, nor majestic ship can pass. ²²For the Lord is our judge; the Lord is our lawgiver; the Lord is our king; he will save us.

²³Your cords hang loose; they cannot hold the mast firm in its place or keep the sail spread out. Then prey and spoil in abundance will be divided; even the lame will take the prey. ²⁴And no inhabitant will say, “I am sick”; the people who dwell there will be forgiven their iniquity.

[1] Hebrew his [2] Masoretic Text; Dead Sea Scroll witnesses

34 Judgment on the Nations

34:1 Draw near, O nations, to hear, and give attention, O peoples! Let the earth hear, and all that fills it; the world, and all that comes from it. ²For the Lord is enraged against all the nations, and furious against all their host; he has devoted them to destruction,[3] has given them over for slaughter. ³Their slain shall be cast out, and the stench of their corpses shall rise; the mountains shall flow with their blood. ⁴All the host of heaven shall rot away, and the skies roll up like a scroll. All their host shall fall, as leaves fall from the vine, like leaves falling from the fig tree.

⁵For my sword has drunk its fill in the heavens; behold, it descends for judgment upon Edom, upon the people I have devoted to destruction. ⁶The Lord has a sword; it is sated with blood; it is gorged 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, a great slaughter in the land of Edom. ⁷Wild oxen shall fall with them, and young steers with the mighty bulls. Their land shall drink its fill of blood, and their soil shall be gorged with fat.

⁸For the Lord has a day of vengeance, a year of recompense for the cause of Zion. ⁹And the streams of Edom[4] shall be turned into pitch, and her soil into sulfur; her land shall become burning pitch. ¹⁰Night and day it shall not be quenched; its smoke shall go up forever. From generation to generation it shall lie waste; none shall pass through it forever and ever. ¹¹But the hawk and the porcupine[5] shall possess it, the owl and the raven shall dwell in it. He shall stretch the line of confusion[6] over it, and the plumb line of emptiness. ¹²Its nobles—there is no one there to call it a kingdom, and all its princes shall be nothing.

¹³Thorns shall grow over its strongholds, nettles and thistles in its fortresses. It shall be the haunt of jackals, an abode for ostriches.^[7]¹⁴And wild animals shall meet with hyenas; the wild goat shall cry to his fellow; indeed, there the night bird[8] settles and finds for herself a resting place.

¹⁵There the owl nests and lays and hatches and gathers her young in her shadow; indeed, there the hawks are gathered, each one with her mate. ¹⁶Seek and read from the book of the Lord: Not one of these shall be missing; none shall be without her mate. For the mouth of the Lord has commanded, and his Spirit has gathered them. ¹⁷He has cast the lot for them; his hand has portioned it out to them with the line; they shall possess it forever; from generation to generation they shall dwell in it.

[3] That is, set apart (devoted) as an offering to the Lord (for destruction); also verse 5 [4] Hebrew her streams [5] The identity of the animals rendered hawk and porcupine is uncertain [6] Hebrew formlessness [7] Or owls [8] Identity uncertain

35 The Ransomed Shall Return

35:1 The wilderness and the dry land shall be glad; the desert shall rejoice and blossom like the crocus; ²it shall blossom abundantly and rejoice with joy and singing. The glory of Lebanon shall be given to it, the majesty of Carmel and Sharon. They shall see the glory of the Lord, the majesty of our God.

³Strengthen the weak hands, and make firm the feeble knees. ⁴Say to those who have an anxious heart, “Be strong; fear not! Behold, your God will come with vengeance, with the recompense of God. He will come and save you.”

⁵Then the eyes of the blind shall be opened, and the ears of the deaf unstopped; ⁶then shall the lame man leap like a deer, and the tongue of the mute sing for joy. For waters break forth in the wilderness, and streams in the desert; ⁷the burning sand shall become a pool, and the thirsty ground springs of water; in the haunt of jackals, where they lie down, the grass shall become reeds and rushes.

⁸And a highway shall be there, and it shall be called the Way of Holiness; the unclean shall not pass over it. It shall belong to those who walk on the way; even if they are fools, they shall not go astray.^[9]⁹No lion shall be there, nor shall any ravenous beast come up on it; they shall not be found there, but the redeemed shall walk there. ¹⁰And the ransomed of the Lord shall return and come to Zion with singing; everlasting joy shall be upon their heads; they shall obtain gladness and joy, and sorrow and sighing shall flee away.

[9] Or if they are fools, they shall not wander in it

36 Sennacherib Invades Judah

36:1 In the fourteenth year of King Hezekiah, Sennacherib king of Assyria came up against all the fortified cities of Judah and took them. ²And the king of Assyria sent the Rabshakeh[10] from Lachish to King Hezekiah at Jerusalem, with a great army. And he stood by the conduit of the upper pool on the highway to the Washer’s Field. ³And there came out to him Eliakim the son of Hilkiah, who was over the household, and Shebna the secretary, and Joah the son of Asaph, the recorder.

⁴And the Rabshakeh said to them, “Say to Hezekiah, ‘Thus says the great king, the king of Assyria: On what do you rest this trust of yours? ⁵Do you think that mere words are strategy and power for war? In whom do you now trust, that you have rebelled against me? ⁶Behold, you are trusting in Egypt, that broken reed of a staff, which will pierce the hand of any man who leans on it. Such is Pharaoh king of Egypt to all who trust in him. ⁷But if you say to me, “We trust in the Lord our God,” is it not he whose high places and altars Hezekiah has removed, saying to Judah and to Jerusalem, “You shall worship before this altar”? ⁸Come now, make a wager with my master the king of Assyria: I will give you two thousand horses, if you are able on your part to set riders on them. ⁹How then can you repulse a single captain among the least of my master’s servants, when you trust in Egypt for chariots and for horsemen? ¹⁰Moreover, is it without the Lord that I have come up against this land to destroy it? The Lord said to me, Go up against this land and destroy it.’”

¹¹Then Eliakim, Shebna, and Joah said to the Rabshakeh, “Please speak to your servants in Aramaic, for we understand it. Do not speak to us in the language of Judah within the hearing of the people who are on the wall.” ¹²But the Rabshakeh said, “Has my master sent me to speak these words to your master and to you, and not to the men sitting on the wall, who are doomed with you to eat their own dung and drink their own urine?”

¹³Then the Rabshakeh stood and called out in a loud voice in the language of Judah: “Hear the words of the great king, the king of Assyria! ¹⁴Thus says the king: ‘Do not let Hezekiah deceive you, for he will not be able to deliver you. ¹⁵Do not let Hezekiah make you trust in the Lord by saying, “The Lord will surely deliver us. This city will not be given into the hand of the king of Assyria.” ¹⁶Do not listen to Hezekiah. For thus says the king of Assyria: Make your peace with me[11] and come out to me. Then each one of you will eat of his own vine, and each one of his own fig tree, and each one of you will drink the water of his own cistern, ¹⁷until I come and take you away to a land like your own land, a land of grain and wine, a land of bread and vineyards. ¹⁸Beware lest Hezekiah mislead you by saying, “The Lord will deliver us.” Has any of the gods of the nations delivered his land out of the hand of the king of Assyria? ¹⁹Where are the gods of Hamath and Arpad? Where are the gods of Sepharvaim? Have they delivered Samaria out of my hand? ²⁰Who among all the gods of these lands have delivered their lands out of my hand, that the Lord should deliver Jerusalem out of my hand?’”

²¹But they were silent and answered him not a word, for the king’s command was, “Do not answer him.” ²²Then Eliakim the son of Hilkiah, who was over the household, and Shebna the secretary, and Joah the son of Asaph, the recorder, came to Hezekiah with their clothes torn, and told him the words of the Rabshakeh.

[10]Rabshakeh is the title of a high-ranking Assyrian military officer [11] Hebrew Make a blessing with me