Isaiah 29

⁴“Go to Bethel and transgress; rebel even more at Gilgal! Bring your sacrifices every morning, your tithes every three days.

⁵Offer leavened bread as a thank offering, and loudly proclaim your freewill offerings. For that is what you children of Israel love to do,” declares the Lord God.

⁹So David took up residence in the fortress and called it the City of David. He built it up all the way around, from the supporting terraces inward.

⁶With what shall I come before the Lord when I bow before the God on high? Should I come to Him with burnt offerings, with year-old calves?

⁷Would the Lord be pleased with thousands of rams, with ten thousand rivers of oil? Shall I present my firstborn for my transgression, the fruit of my body for the sin of my soul?

⁶They go with their flocks and herds to seek the Lord, but they do not find Him; He has withdrawn Himself from them.

¹⁵The altar hearth shall be four cubits high, and four horns shall project upward from the hearth.

¹⁶The altar hearth shall be square at its four corners, twelve cubits long and twelve cubits wide.

¹³Though they offer sacrifices as gifts to Me, and though they eat the meat, the Lord does not accept them. Now He will remember their iniquity and punish their sins: They will return to Egypt.

²⁵Therefore the anger of the Lord burns against His people; His hand is raised against them to strike them down. The mountains quake, and the corpses lie like refuse in the streets. Despite all this, His anger is not turned away; His hand is still upraised.

²⁶He lifts a banner for the distant nations and whistles for those at the ends of the earth. Behold—how speedily and swiftly they come!

¹⁷Then I saw an angel standing in the sun, and he cried out in a loud voice to all the birds flying overhead, “Come, gather together for the great supper of God,

¹⁸so that you may eat the flesh of kings and commanders and mighty men, of horses and riders, of everyone slave and free, small and great.”

⁷Be silent in the presence of the Lord God, for the Day of the Lord is near. Indeed, the Lord has prepared a sacrifice; He has consecrated His guests.

⁸“On the Day of the Lord’s sacrifice I will punish the princes, the sons of the king, and all who are dressed in foreign apparel.

¹⁷And as for you, son of man, this is what the Lord God says: Call out to every kind of bird and to every beast of the field: ‘Assemble and come together from all around to the sacrificial feast that I am preparing for you, a great feast on the mountains of Israel. There you will eat flesh and drink blood.

⁶The sword of the Lord is bathed in blood. It drips 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.

⁵The Lord is like an enemy; He has swallowed up Israel. He has swallowed up all her palaces and destroyed her strongholds. He has multiplied mourning and lamentation for the Daughter of Judah.

⁴³For the days will come upon you when your enemies will barricade you and surround you and hem you in on every side.

⁴⁴They will level you to the ground—you and the children within your walls. They will not leave one stone on another, because you did not recognize the time of your visitation from God.”

²²In his right hand appears the portent for Jerusalem, where he is to set up battering rams, to call for the slaughter, to lift a battle cry, to direct the battering rams against the gates, to build a ramp, and to erect a siege wall.

¹¹And Nebuchadnezzar king of Babylon came to the city while his servants were besieging it.

¹²Jehoiachin king of Judah, his mother, his servants, his commanders, and his officials all surrendered to the king of Babylon. So in the eighth year of his reign, the king of Babylon took him captive.

¹⁷Nevertheless, the king of Assyria sent the Tartan, the Rabsaris, and the Rabshakeh, along with a great army, from Lachish to King Hezekiah at Jerusalem. They advanced up to Jerusalem and stationed themselves by the aqueduct of the upper pool, on the road to the Launderer’s Field.

⁷The king was enraged, and he sent his troops to destroy those murderers and burn their city.

¹So in the ninth year of Zedekiah’s reign, on the tenth day of the tenth month, Nebuchadnezzar king of Babylon marched against Jerusalem with his entire army. They encamped outside the city and built a siege wall all around it.

²And the city was kept under siege until King Zedekiah’s eleventh year.

¹⁹When men tell you to consult mediums and spiritists who whisper and mutter, shouldn’t a people consult their God instead? Why consult the dead on behalf of the living?

²⁵For our soul has sunk to the dust; our bodies cling to the earth.

⁸For Jerusalem has stumbled and Judah has fallen because they spoke and acted against the Lord, defying His glorious presence.

²³I will place it in the hands of your tormentors, who told you: ‘Lie down, so we can walk over you,’ so that you made your back like the ground, like a street to be traversed.”

¹¹The proud look of man will be humbled, and the loftiness of men brought low; the Lord alone will be exalted in that day.

¹²For the Day of the Lord of Hosts will come against all the proud and lofty, against all that is exalted—it will be humbled—

⁹Her uncleanness stains her skirts; she did not consider her end. Her downfall was astounding; there was no one to comfort her. Look, O Lord, on my affliction, for the enemy has triumphed!

³While people are saying, “Peace and security,” destruction will come upon them suddenly, like labor pains on a pregnant woman, and they will not escape.

³⁶Then the angel of the Lord went out and struck down 185,000 men in the camp of the Assyrians. When the people got up the next morning, there were all the dead bodies!

¹³this iniquity of yours is like a breach about to fail, a bulge in a high wall, whose collapse will come suddenly—in an instant!

³But the Egyptians are men, not God; their horses are flesh, not spirit. When the Lord stretches out His hand, the helper will stumble, and the one he helps will fall; both will perish together.

¹³The nations rage like the rush of many waters. He rebukes them, and they flee far away, driven before the wind like chaff on the hills, like tumbleweeds before a gale.

¹⁴In the evening, there is sudden terror! Before morning, they are no more! This is the portion of those who loot us and the lot of those who plunder us.

⁵like heat in a dry land. You subdue the uproar of foreigners. As the shade of a cloud cools the heat, so the song of the ruthless is silenced.

⁸Nation will rise against nation, and kingdom against kingdom. There will be earthquakes in various places, as well as famines. These are the beginning of birth pains.

⁷Nation will rise against nation, and kingdom against kingdom. There will be famines and earthquakes in various places.

¹⁹Then the temple of God in heaven was opened, and the ark of His covenant appeared in His temple. And there were flashes of lightning, rumblings, peals of thunder, an earthquake, and a great hailstorm.

¹⁸And there were flashes of lightning, rumblings, peals of thunder, and a great earthquake the likes of which had not occurred since men were upon the earth—so mighty was the great quake.

¹⁰Those who oppose the Lord will be shattered. He will thunder from heaven against them. The Lord will judge the ends of the earth and will give power to His king. He will exalt the horn of His anointed.”

²⁶He lifts a banner for the distant nations and whistles for those at the ends of the earth. Behold—how speedily and swiftly they come!

²⁷None of them grows weary or stumbles; no one slumbers or sleeps. No belt is loose and no sandal strap is broken.

⁸He will fly away like a dream, never to be found; he will be chased away like a vision in the night.

⁹So on that day I will set out to destroy all the nations that come against Jerusalem.

¹¹But now many nations have assembled against you, saying, “Let her be defiled, and let us feast our eyes on Zion.”

¹²But they do not know the thoughts of the Lord or understand His plan, for He has gathered them like sheaves to the threshing floor.

²⁰Like one waking from a dream, so You, O Lord, awaken and despise their form.

¹²And this will be the plague with which the Lord strikes all the peoples who have warred against Jerusalem: Their flesh will rot while they stand on their feet, their eyes will rot in their sockets, and their tongues will rot in their mouths.

¹³On that day a great panic from the Lord will come upon them, so that each will seize the hand of another, and the hand of one will rise against the other.

¹⁴In the evening, there is sudden terror! Before morning, they are no more! This is the portion of those who loot us and the lot of those who plunder us.

¹²The blacksmith takes a tool and labors over the coals; he fashions an idol with hammers and forges it with his strong arms. Yet he grows hungry and loses his strength; he fails to drink water and grows faint.

²⁰Like one waking from a dream, so You, O Lord, awaken and despise their form.

⁷But this is not his intention; this is not his plan. For it is in his heart to destroy and cut off many nations.

⁸“Are not all my commanders kings?” he says.

²¹and the Lord sent an angel who annihilated every mighty man of valor and every leader and commander in the camp of the king of Assyria. So he withdrew to his own land in disgrace. And when he entered the temple of his god, some of his own sons struck him down with the sword.

²¹Therefore now hear this, you afflicted one, drunken, but not with wine.

²²Thus says your Lord, the Lord, even your God, who defends His people: “See, I have removed from your hand the cup of staggering. From that goblet, the cup of My fury, you will never drink again.

⁶I could see that the woman was drunk with the blood of the saints and witnesses for Jesus. And I was utterly amazed at the sight of her.

¹⁴The Lord has poured into her a spirit of confusion. Egypt has been led astray in all she does, as a drunkard staggers through his own vomit.

¹³You who are far off, hear what I have done; you who are near, acknowledge My might.”

¹⁴The sinners in Zion are afraid; trembling grips the ungodly: “Who of us can dwell with a consuming fire? Who of us can dwell with everlasting flames?”

²⁶I will make your oppressors eat their own flesh; they will be drunk on their own blood, as with wine. Then all mankind will know that I, the Lord, am your Savior and your Redeemer, the Mighty One of Jacob.”

⁷These also stagger from wine and stumble from strong drink: Priests and prophets reel from strong drink and are befuddled by wine. They stumble because of strong drink, muddled in their visions and stumbling in their judgments.

⁸For all their tables are covered with vomit; there is not a place without filth.

⁸as it is written: “God gave them a spirit of stupor, eyes that could not see, and ears that could not hear, to this very day.”

¹⁸They do not comprehend or discern, for He has shut their eyes so they cannot see and closed their minds so they cannot understand.

⁹The coming of the lawless one will be accompanied by the working of Satan, with every kind of power, sign, and false wonder,

¹⁰and with every wicked deception directed against those who are perishing, because they refused the love of the truth that would have saved them.

⁹And He replied: “Go and tell this people, ‘Be ever hearing, but never understanding; be ever seeing, but never perceiving.’

¹⁰Make the hearts of this people calloused; deafen their ears and close their eyes. Otherwise they might see with their eyes, hear with their ears, understand with their hearts, and turn and be healed.”

²⁶‘Go to this people and say, “You will be ever hearing but never understanding; you will be ever seeing but never perceiving.”

²⁷For this people’s heart has grown callous; they hardly hear with their ears, and they have closed their eyes. Otherwise they might see with their eyes, hear with their ears, understand with their hearts, and turn, and I would heal them.’

¹⁰They say to the seers, “Stop seeing visions!” and to the prophets, “Do not prophesy to us the truth! Speak to us pleasant words; prophesy illusions.

¹¹He replied, “The knowledge of the mysteries of the kingdom of heaven has been given to you, but not to them.

⁴But you, Daniel, shut up these words and seal the book until the time of the end. Many will roam to and fro, and knowledge will increase.”

¹⁶Bind up the testimony and seal the law among my disciples.

⁹“Go on your way, Daniel,” he replied, “for the words are closed up and sealed until the time of the end.

²⁵At that time Jesus declared, “I praise You, Father, Lord of heaven and earth, because You have hidden these things from the wise and learned, and revealed them to little children.

¹Then I saw a scroll in the right hand of the One seated on the throne. It had writing on both sides and was sealed with seven seals.

²And I saw a mighty angel proclaiming in a loud voice, “Who is worthy to break the seals and open the scroll?”

¹⁵The Jews were amazed and asked, “How did this man attain such learning without having studied?”

¹⁶“My teaching is not My own,” Jesus replied. “It comes from Him who sent Me.

¹⁸On that day the deaf will hear the words of the scroll, and out of the deep darkness the eyes of the blind will see.

⁶My people are destroyed for lack of knowledge. Because you have rejected knowledge, I will also reject you as My priests. Since you have forgotten the law of your God, I will also forget your children.

¹²to whom He has said: “This is the place of rest, let the weary rest; this is the place of repose.” But they would not listen.

¹³Then the word of the Lord to them will become: “Order on order, order on order, line on line, line on line; a little here, a little there,” so that they will go stumbling backward and will be injured, ensnared, and captured.

⁴Then I said, “They are only the poor; they have played the fool, for they do not know the way of the Lord, the justice of their God.

²You planted them, and they have taken root. They have grown and produced fruit. You are ever on their lips, but far from their hearts.

³¹So My people come to you as usual, sit before you, and hear your words; but they do not put them into practice. Although they express love with their mouths, their hearts pursue dishonest gain.

³²Indeed, you are to them like a singer of love songs with a beautiful voice, who skillfully plays an instrument. They hear your words but do not put them into practice.

²and they saw some of His disciples eating with hands that were defiled—that is, unwashed.

³Now in holding to the tradition of the elders, the Pharisees and all the Jews do not eat until they wash their hands ceremonially.

²“Why do Your disciples break the tradition of the elders? They do not wash their hands before they eat.”

³Jesus replied, “And why do you break the command of God for the sake of your tradition?

¹⁰Yet in spite of all this, her unfaithful sister Judah did not return to Me with all her heart, but only in pretense,” declares the Lord.

²For day after day they seek Me and delight to know My ways, like a nation that does what is right and does not forsake the justice of their God. They ask Me for righteous judgments; they delight in the nearness of God.”

³“Why have we fasted, and You have not seen? Why have we humbled ourselves, and You have not noticed?” “Behold, on the day of your fast, you do as you please, and you oppress all your workers.

⁵“Look at the nations and observe—be utterly astounded! For I am doing a work in your days that you would never believe even if someone told you.

¹⁹For it is written: “I will destroy the wisdom of the wise; the intelligence of the intelligent I will frustrate.”

²⁰Where is the wise man? Where is the scribe? Where is the philosopher of this age? Has not God made foolish the wisdom of the world?

²¹For the Lord will rise up as at Mount Perazim. He will rouse Himself as in the Valley of Gibeon, to do His work, His strange work, and to perform His task, His disturbing task.

⁷Concerning Edom, this is what the Lord of Hosts says: “Is there no longer wisdom in Teman? Has counsel perished from the prudent? Has their wisdom decayed?

³⁹Then Jesus declared, “For judgment I have come into this world, so that the blind may see and those who see may become blind.”

⁴⁰Some of the Pharisees who were with Him heard this, and they asked Him, “Are we blind too?”

⁹And He replied: “Go and tell this people, ‘Be ever hearing, but never understanding; be ever seeing, but never perceiving.’

¹⁰Make the hearts of this people calloused; deafen their ears and close their eyes. Otherwise they might see with their eyes, hear with their ears, understand with their hearts, and turn and be healed.”

¹²“Son of man,” He said to me, “do you see what the elders of the house of Israel are doing in the darkness, each at the shrine of his own idol? For they are saying, ‘The Lord does not see us; the Lord has forsaken the land.’”

¹⁰You were secure in your wickedness; you said, ‘No one sees me.’ Your wisdom and knowledge led you astray; you told yourself, ‘I am, and there is none besides me.’

¹“Woe to the rebellious children,” declares the Lord, “to those who carry out a plan that is not Mine, who form an alliance, but against My will, heaping up sin upon sin.

⁷They say, “The Lord does not see; the God of Jacob pays no heed.”

⁸Take notice, O senseless among the people! O fools, when will you be wise?

¹²And at that time I will search Jerusalem with lamps and punish the men settled in complacency, who say to themselves, ‘The Lord will do nothing, either good or bad.’

⁹He replied, “The iniquity of the house of Israel and Judah is exceedingly great. The land is full of bloodshed, and the city is full of perversity. For they say, ‘The Lord has forsaken the land; the Lord does not see.’

¹⁹One of you will say to me, “Then why does God still find fault? For who can resist His will?”

²⁰But who are you, O man, to talk back to God? Shall what is formed say to Him who formed it, “Why did You make me like this?”

⁸But now, O Lord, You are our Father; we are the clay, and You are the potter; we are all the work of Your hand.

⁹Woe to him who quarrels with his Maker—one clay pot among many. Does the clay ask the potter, ‘What are you making?’ Does your work say, ‘He has no hands’?

¹⁰Woe to him who says to his father, ‘What have you begotten?’ or to his mother, ‘What have you brought forth?’”

⁸Take notice, O senseless among the people! O fools, when will you be wise?

⁹He who affixed the ear, can He not hear? He who formed the eye, can He not see?

¹This is the word that came to Jeremiah from the Lord:

²“Go down at once to the potter’s house, and there I will give you My message.”

¹Behold, the Lord lays waste the earth and leaves it in ruins. He will twist its surface and scatter its inhabitants—

¹⁵until the Spirit is poured out upon us from on high. Then the desert will be an orchard, and the orchard will seem like a forest.

³⁰But many who are first will be last, and the last will be first.

³⁷For, “In just a little while, He who is coming will come and will not delay.

⁴⁶“Son of man, set your face toward the south, preach against it, and prophesy against the forest of the Negev.

⁴⁷Say to the forest of the Negev: Hear the word of the Lord! This is what the Lord God says: I am about to ignite in you a fire, and it will devour all your trees, both green and dry. The blazing flame will not be quenched, and by it every face from south to north will be scorched.

⁶As they pass through the Valley of Baca, they make it a place of springs; even the autumn rain covers it with pools.

⁴For the Israelites must live many days without king or prince, without sacrifice or sacred pillar, and without ephod or idol.

⁵The blind receive sight, the lame walk, the lepers are cleansed, the deaf hear, the dead are raised, and the good news is preached to the poor.

⁵Then the eyes of the blind will be opened and the ears of the deaf unstopped.

¹²Ears that hear and eyes that see—the Lord has made them both.

¹⁷that the God of our Lord Jesus Christ, the glorious Father, may give you a spirit of wisdom and revelation in your knowledge of Him.

¹⁸I ask that the eyes of your heart may be enlightened, so that you may know the hope of His calling, the riches of His glorious inheritance in the saints,

¹⁸Open my eyes that I may see wondrous things from Your law.

³⁷The people were utterly astonished and said, “He has done all things well! He makes even the deaf hear and the mute speak!”

⁵Listen, my beloved brothers: Has not God chosen the poor of this world to be rich in faith and to inherit the kingdom He promised those who love Him?

¹The Spirit of the Lord God is on Me, because the Lord has anointed Me to preach good news to the poor. He has sent Me to bind up the brokenhearted, to proclaim liberty to the captives and freedom to the prisoners,

²⁹Take My yoke upon you and learn from Me, for I am gentle and humble in heart, and you will find rest for your souls.

⁵Blessed are the meek, for they will inherit the earth.

⁹He guides the humble in what is right and teaches them His way.

⁵The blind receive sight, the lame walk, the lepers are cleansed, the deaf hear, the dead are raised, and the good news is preached to the poor.

¹Woe to those who devise iniquity and plot evil on their beds! At morning’s light they accomplish it because the power is in their hands.

¹⁴Therefore hear the word of the Lord, O scoffers who rule this people in Jerusalem.

¹⁵For you said, “We have made a covenant with death; we have fashioned an agreement with Sheol. When the overwhelming scourge passes through it will not touch us, because we have made lies our refuge and falsehood our hiding place.”

¹⁴The Pharisees, who were lovers of money, heard all of this and were scoffing at Jesus.

⁵But your many foes will be like fine dust, the multitude of the ruthless like blowing chaff. Then suddenly, in an instant,

⁴No one calls for justice; no one pleads his case honestly. They rely on empty pleas; they tell lies; they conceive mischief and give birth to iniquity.

³I have commanded My sanctified ones; I have even summoned My warriors to execute My wrath and exult in My triumph.

¹⁰There are those who hate the one who reproves in the gate and despise him who speaks with integrity.

¹¹Therefore, because you trample on the poor and exact from him a tax of grain, you will never live in the stone houses you have built; you will never drink the wine from the lush vineyards you have planted.

⁶You have condemned and murdered the righteous, who did not resist you.

¹⁴You rejected the Holy and Righteous One and asked that a murderer be released to you.

²“This is what the Lord says: Stand in the courtyard of the house of the Lord and speak all the words I have commanded you to speak to all the cities of Judah who come to worship there. Do not omit a word.

³Perhaps they will listen and turn—each from his evil way of life—so that I may relent of the disaster I am planning to bring upon them because of the evil of their deeds.

⁵³As Jesus went on from there, the scribes and Pharisees began to oppose Him bitterly and to ply Him with questions about many things,

⁵⁴waiting to catch Him in something He might say.

¹⁵and asked, “What are you willing to give me if I hand Him over to you?” And they set out for him thirty pieces of silver.

¹⁷But Israel will be saved by the Lord with an everlasting salvation; you will not be put to shame or humiliated, to ages everlasting.

¹⁰As for you, O Jacob My servant, do not be afraid, declares the Lord, and do not be dismayed, O Israel. For I will surely save you out of a distant place, your descendants from the land of their captivity! Jacob will return to quiet and ease, with no one to make him afraid.

²Look to Abraham your father, and to Sarah who gave you birth. When I called him, he was but one; then I blessed him and multiplied him.

¹⁸For you know that it was not with perishable things such as silver or gold that you were redeemed from the empty way of life you inherited from your forefathers,

¹⁹but with the precious blood of Christ, a lamb without blemish or spot.

²⁷Then you will know that I am present in Israel and that I am the Lord your God, and there is no other. My people will never again be put to shame.

⁴Do not be afraid, for you will not be put to shame; do not be intimidated, for you will not be humiliated. For you will forget the shame of your youth and will remember no more the reproach of your widowhood.

²⁵The Lord of Hosts will bless them, saying, “Blessed be Egypt My people, Assyria My handiwork, and Israel My inheritance.”

¹⁰For we are God’s workmanship, created in Christ Jesus to do good works, which God prepared in advance as our way of life.

¹¹Thus says the Lord, the Holy One of Israel, and its Maker: “Concerning things to come, do you question Me about My sons, or instruct Me in the work of My hands?

¹³The Lord of Hosts is the One you shall regard as holy. Only He should be feared; only He should be dreaded.

¹⁶But the Lord of Hosts will be exalted by His justice, and the holy God will show Himself holy in righteousness.

²⁰Yet the children of your bereavement will say in your hearing, ‘This place is too small for us; make room for us to live here.’

²¹Then you will say in your heart, ‘Who has begotten these for me? I was bereaved and barren; I was exiled and rejected. So who has reared them? Look, I was left all alone, so where did they come from?’”

⁷These also stagger from wine and stumble from strong drink: Priests and prophets reel from strong drink and are befuddled by wine. They stumble because of strong drink, muddled in their visions and stumbling in their judgments.

²He is able to deal gently with those who are ignorant and misguided, since he himself is subject to weakness.

¹⁷Finally he came to his senses and said, ‘How many of my father’s hired servants have plenty of food, but here I am, starving to death!

¹⁸I will get up and go back to my father and say to him, “Father, I have sinned against heaven and against you.

²He seized the dragon, that ancient serpent who is the devil and Satan, and bound him for a thousand years.

³And he threw him into the Abyss, shut it, and sealed it over him, so that he could not deceive the nations until the thousand years were complete. After that, he must be released for a brief period of time.

¹³I was formerly a blasphemer, a persecutor, and a violent man; yet because I had acted in ignorance and unbelief, I was shown mercy.

¹⁴And the grace of our Lord overflowed to me, along with the faith and love that are in Christ Jesus.

¹⁶You will drink the milk of nations and nurse at the breasts of royalty; you will know that I, the Lord, am your Savior and your Redeemer, the Mighty One of Jacob.