Isaiah 5

¹Then Jesus began to speak to them in parables: “A man planted a vineyard. He put a wall around it, dug a wine vat, and built a watchtower. Then he rented it out to some tenants and went away on a journey.

⁹Then He proceeded to tell the people this parable: “A man planted a vineyard, rented it out to some tenants, and went away for a long time.

¹“I am the true vine, and My Father is the keeper of the vineyard.

²¹I had planted you like a choice vine from the very best seed. How could you turn yourself before Me into a rotten, wild vine?

³³Listen to another parable: There was a landowner who planted a vineyard. He put a wall around it, dug a winepress in it, and built a tower. Then he rented it out to some tenants and went away on a journey.

⁸You uprooted a vine from Egypt; You drove out the nations and transplanted it.

²¹I had planted you like a choice vine from the very best seed. How could you turn yourself before Me into a rotten, wild vine?

³²But their vine is from the vine of Sodom and from the fields of Gomorrah. Their grapes are poisonous; their clusters are bitter.

³³Their wine is the venom of serpents, the deadly poison of cobras.

²Listen, O heavens, and give ear, O earth, for the Lord has spoken: “I have raised children and brought them up, but they have rebelled against Me.

³The ox knows its owner, and the donkey its master’s manger, but Israel does not know; My people do not understand.”

⁷Who serves as a soldier at his own expense? Who plants a vineyard and does not eat of its fruit? Who tends a flock and does not drink of its milk?

¹³Seeing in the distance a fig tree in leaf, He went to see if there was any fruit on it. But when He reached it, He found nothing on it except leaves, since it was not the season for figs.

¹⁸Still another angel, with authority over the fire, came from the altar and called out in a loud voice to the angel with the sharp sickle, “Swing your sharp sickle and gather the clusters of grapes from the vine of the earth, because its grapes are ripe.”

¹⁹So the angel swung his sickle over the earth and gathered the grapes of the earth, and he threw them into the great winepress of God’s wrath.

²Hear, O mountains, the Lord’s indictment, you enduring foundations of the earth. For the Lord has a case against His people, and He will argue it against Israel:

³‘My people, what have I done to you? Testify against Me how I have wearied you!

⁴Hear the word of the Lord, O house of Jacob, and all you families of the house of Israel.

⁵This is what the Lord says: “What fault did your fathers find in Me that they strayed so far from Me? They followed worthless idols, and became worthless themselves.

⁴He summons the heavens above, and the earth, that He may judge His people:

⁵“Gather to Me My saints, who made a covenant with Me by sacrifice.”

⁵But because of your hard and unrepentant heart, you are storing up wrath against yourself for the day of wrath, when God’s righteous judgment will be revealed.

⁴Against You, You only, have I sinned and done what is evil in Your sight, so that You may be proved right when You speak and blameless when You judge.

¹⁵So they threw him out of the vineyard and killed him. What then will the owner of the vineyard do to them?

¹⁶He will come and kill those tenants and give the vineyard to others.” And when the people heard this, they said, “May such a thing never happen!”

³⁷O Jerusalem, Jerusalem, who kills the prophets and stones those sent to her, how often I have longed to gather your children together, as a hen gathers her chicks under her wings, but you were unwilling!

³‘My people, what have I done to you? Testify against Me how I have wearied you!

⁴For I brought you up from the land of Egypt and redeemed you from the house of slavery. I sent Moses before you, as well as Aaron and Miriam.

⁵This is what the Lord says: “What fault did your fathers find in Me that they strayed so far from Me? They followed worthless idols, and became worthless themselves.

⁵¹You stiff-necked people with uncircumcised hearts and ears! You always resist the Holy Spirit, just as your fathers did.

⁵²Which of the prophets did your fathers fail to persecute? They even killed those who foretold the coming of the Righteous One. And now you are His betrayers and murderers—

²⁹The bellows blow fiercely, blasting away the lead with fire. The refining proceeds in vain, for the wicked are not purged.

³⁰They are called rejected silver, because the Lord has rejected them.”

³⁰“I have struck your sons in vain; they accepted no discipline. Your own sword has devoured your prophets like a voracious lion.”

³¹You people of this generation, consider the word of the Lord: “Have I been a wilderness to Israel or a land of dense darkness? Why do My people say, ‘We are free to roam; we will come to You no more’?

²⁴They will fall by the edge of the sword and be led captive into all the nations. And Jerusalem will be trodden down by the Gentiles, until the times of the Gentiles are fulfilled.

¹⁵The Lord has rejected all the mighty men in my midst; He has summoned an army against me to crush my young warriors. Like grapes in a winepress, the Lord has trampled the Virgin Daughter of Judah.

¹⁸Your covenant with death will be dissolved, and your agreement with Sheol will not stand. When the overwhelming scourge passes through, you will be trampled by it.

²But exclude the courtyard outside the temple. Do not measure it, because it has been given over to the nations, and they will trample the holy city for 42 months.

³The majestic crown of Ephraim’s drunkards will be trampled underfoot.

⁷Come, let Us go down and confuse their language, so that they will not understand one another’s speech.”

²³And on that day, in every place that had a thousand vines worth a thousand shekels of silver, only briers and thorns will be found.

²⁴Men will go there with bow and arrow, for the land will be covered with briers and thorns.

¹¹And this whole land will become a desolate wasteland, and these nations will serve the king of Babylon for seventy years.

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

²people and priest alike, servant and master, maid and mistress, buyer and seller, lender and borrower, creditor and debtor.

¹²The city is left in ruins; its gate is reduced to rubble.

²³The sky over your head will be bronze, and the earth beneath you iron.

²⁴The Lord will turn the rain of your land into dust and powder; it will descend on you from the sky until you are destroyed.

²⁴They will fall by the edge of the sword and be led captive into all the nations. And Jerusalem will be trodden down by the Gentiles, until the times of the Gentiles are fulfilled.

⁸You uprooted a vine from Egypt; You drove out the nations and transplanted it.

⁹You cleared the ground for it, and it took root and filled the land.

⁸Produce fruit, then, in keeping with repentance.

⁹And do not presume to say to yourselves, ‘We have Abraham as our father.’ For I tell you that out of these stones God can raise up children for Abraham.

¹⁰Many shepherds have destroyed My vineyard; they have trampled My plot of ground. They have turned My pleasant field into a desolate wasteland.

⁴Look, the wages you withheld from the workmen who mowed your fields are crying out against you. The cries of the harvesters have reached the ears of the Lord of Hosts.

⁹“This is what the Lord of Hosts says: ‘Administer true justice. Show loving devotion and compassion to one another.

¹⁰Do not oppress the widow or the fatherless, the foreigner or the poor. And do not plot evil in your hearts against one another.’

¹³Whoever shuts his ears to the cry of the poor, he too shall cry out and receive no answer.

²They covet fields and seize them; they take away houses. They deprive a man of his home, a fellow man of his inheritance.

⁹Woe to him who builds his house by unjust gain, to place his nest on high and escape the hand of disaster!

¹⁰You have plotted shame for your house by cutting off many peoples and forfeiting your life.

¹³“Woe to him who builds his palace by unrighteousness, and his upper rooms without justice, who makes his countrymen serve without pay, and fails to pay their wages,

¹⁴who says, ‘I will build myself a great palace, with spacious upper rooms.’ So he cuts windows in it, panels it with cedar, and paints it with vermilion.

¹⁶Then He told them a parable: “The ground of a certain rich man produced an abundance.

¹⁷So he thought to himself, ‘What shall I do, since I have nowhere to store my crops?’

¹⁶And when Ahab heard that Naboth was dead, he got up and went down to take possession of the vineyard of Naboth the Jezreelite.

¹⁷Then the word of the Lord came to Elijah the Tishbite, saying,

¹³Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, you hypocrites! You shut the kingdom of heaven in men’s faces. You yourselves do not enter, nor will you let in those who wish to enter.

³⁸Look, your house is left to you desolate.

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.

¹⁴The Lord of Hosts has revealed in my hearing: “Until your dying day, this sin of yours will never be atoned for,” says the Lord God of Hosts.

⁷Surely the Lord God does nothing without revealing His plan to His servants the prophets.

¹¹Then I asked: “How long, O Lord?” And He replied: “Until the cities lie ruined and without inhabitant, until the houses are left unoccupied and the land is desolate and ravaged,

¹²until the Lord has driven men far away and the land is utterly forsaken.

²¹So the land enjoyed its Sabbath rest all the days of the desolation, until seventy years were completed, in fulfillment of the word of the Lord spoken through Jeremiah.

²⁶When I cut off your supply of bread, ten women will bake your bread in a single oven and dole out your bread by weight, so that you will eat but not be satisfied.

¹⁶from that time, when one came expecting a heap of twenty ephahs of grain, there were but ten. When one came to the winepress to draw out fifty baths, there were but twenty.

⁶You have planted much but harvested little. You eat but never have enough. You drink but never have your fill. You put on clothes but never get warm. You earn wages to put into a bag pierced through.”

⁹You expected much, but behold, it amounted to little. And what you brought home, I blew away. Why? declares the Lord of Hosts. Because My house still lies in ruins, while each of you is busy with his own house.

¹⁰Therefore, on account of you the heavens have withheld their dew and the earth has withheld its crops.

¹⁶If a man consecrates to the Lord a parcel of his land, then your valuation shall be proportional to the seed required for it—fifty shekels of silver for every homer of barley seed.

¹⁷The seeds lie shriveled beneath the clods; the storehouses are in ruins; the granaries are broken down, for the grain has withered away.

²⁹Who has woe? Who has sorrow? Who has contentions? Who has complaints? Who has needless wounds? Who has bloodshot eyes?

³⁰Those who linger over wine, who go to taste mixed drinks.

¹³Let us behave decently, as in the daytime, not in carousing and drunkenness, not in sexual immorality and debauchery, not in dissension and jealousy.

¹Wine is a mocker, strong drink is a brawler, and whoever is led astray by them is not wise.

²²Woe to those who are heroes in drinking wine and champions in mixing strong drink,

¹⁶Woe to you, O land whose king is a youth, and whose princes feast in the morning.

¹⁷Blessed are you, O land whose king is a son of nobles, and whose princes feast at the proper time—for strength and not for drunkenness.

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.

⁵Since they show no regard for the works of the Lord or what His hands have done, He will tear them down and never rebuild them.

¹¹They send forth their little ones like a flock; their children skip about,

¹²singing to the tambourine and lyre and making merry at the sound of the flute.

²⁷because they turned aside from Him and had no regard for any of His ways.

⁴You lie on beds inlaid with ivory, and lounge upon your couches. You dine on lambs from the flock and calves from the stall.

⁵You improvise songs on the harp like David and invent your own musical instruments.

¹²These men are hidden reefs in your love feasts, shamelessly feasting with you but shepherding only themselves. They are clouds without water, carried along by the wind; fruitless trees in autumn, twice dead after being uprooted.

²³Instead, you have exalted yourself against the Lord of heaven. The vessels from His house were brought to you, and as you drank wine from them with your nobles, wives, and concubines, you praised your gods of silver and gold, bronze and iron, wood and stone, which cannot see or hear or understand. But you have failed to glorify the God who holds in His hand your very breath and all your ways.

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.

³The ox knows its owner, and the donkey its master’s manger, but Israel does not know; My people do not understand.”

¹¹When its limbs are dry, they are broken off. Women come and use them for kindling; for this is a people without understanding. Therefore their Maker has no compassion on them, and their Creator shows them no favor.

⁷Your land is desolate; your cities are burned with fire. Foreigners devour your fields before you—a desolation demolished by strangers.

²⁸Furthermore, since they did not see fit to acknowledge God, He gave them up to a depraved mind, to do what ought not to be done.

¹⁹And this is the verdict: The Light has come into the world, but men loved the darkness rather than the Light because their deeds were evil.

²⁰Everyone who does evil hates the Light, and does not come into the Light for fear that his deeds will be exposed.

³⁴But watch yourselves, or your hearts will be weighed down by dissipation, drunkenness, and the worries of life—and that day will spring upon you suddenly like a snare.

⁵and wealth indeed betrays him. He is an arrogant man never at rest. He enlarges his appetite like Sheol, and like Death, he is never satisfied. He gathers all the nations to himself and collects all the peoples as his own.

¹⁶Sheol, the barren womb, land never satisfied with water, and fire that never says, ‘Enough!’

¹⁵Let death seize them by surprise; let them go down to Sheol alive, for evil is with them in their homes.

¹³Enter through the narrow gate. For wide is the gate and broad is the way that leads to destruction, and many enter through it.

¹³The sea gave up its dead, and Death and Hades gave up their dead, and each one was judged according to his deeds.

¹⁴Then Death and Hades were thrown into the lake of fire. This is the second death—the lake of fire.

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

⁹So mankind is brought low, and man is humbled—do not forgive them!

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.

⁵I will go to the powerful and speak to them. Surely they know the way of the Lord, the justice of their God.” But they too, with one accord, had broken the yoke and torn off the chains.

⁵Young men, in the same way, submit yourselves to your elders. And all of you, clothe yourselves with humility toward one another, because, “God opposes the proud, but gives grace to the humble.”

²⁹Because your rage and arrogance against Me have reached My ears, I will put My hook in your nose and My bit in your mouth; I will send you back the way you came.’

⁹Should I not punish them for these things?” declares the Lord. “Should I not avenge Myself on such a nation as this?

¹⁰“Be still and know that I am God; I will be exalted among the nations, I will be exalted over the earth.”

¹¹Yours, O Lord, is the greatness and the power and the glory and the splendor and the majesty, for everything in heaven and on earth belongs to You. Yours, O Lord, is the kingdom, and You are exalted as head over all.

⁴and on that day you will say: “Give praise to the Lord; proclaim His name! Make His works known among the peoples; declare that His name is exalted.

²³I will show the holiness of My great name, which has been profaned among the nations—the name you have profaned among them. Then the nations will know that I am the Lord, declares the Lord God, when I show My holiness in you before their eyes.

²³For when he sees his children around him, the work of My hands, they will honor My name, they will sanctify the Holy One of Jacob, and they will stand in awe of the God of Israel.

¹⁵For it is God’s will that by doing good you should silence the ignorance of foolish men.

⁶So the seacoast will become a land of pastures, with wells for shepherds and folds for sheep.

¹⁴Herds will lie down in her midst, creatures of every kind. Both the desert owl and screech owl will roost atop her pillars. Their calls will sound from the window, but desolation will lie on the threshold, for He will expose the beams of cedar.

²⁵For fear of the briers and thorns, you will no longer traverse the hills once tilled by the hoe; they will become places for oxen to graze and sheep to trample.

¹⁶Therefore the Lord God of Hosts will send a wasting disease among Assyria’s stout warriors, and under his pomp will be kindled a fire like a burning flame.

¹⁴from such men, O Lord, by Your hand—from men of the world whose portion is in this life. May You fill the bellies of Your treasured ones and satisfy their sons, so they leave their abundance to their children.

¹Hear this word, you cows of Bashan on Mount Samaria, you women who oppress the poor and crush the needy, who say to your husbands, “Bring us more to drink.”

²The Lord God has sworn by His holiness: “Behold, the days are coming when you will be taken away with hooks, and your posterity with fishhooks.

¹⁴And among the prophets of Jerusalem I have seen a horrible thing: They commit adultery and walk in lies. They strengthen the hands of evildoers, so that no one turns his back on wickedness. They are all like Sodom to Me; the people of Jerusalem are like Gomorrah.”

²For his eyes are too full of conceit to detect or hate his own sin.

³¹The prophets prophesy falsely, and the priests rule by their own authority. My people love it so, but what will you do in the end?

¹⁰For the land is full of adulterers—because of the curse, the land mourns and the pastures of the wilderness have dried up—their course is evil and their power is misused.

²²Because you have disheartened the righteous with your lies, even though I have caused them no grief, and because you have encouraged the wicked not to turn from their evil ways to save their lives,

⁵Now this man Micah had a shrine, and he made an ephod and some household idols, and ordained one of his sons as his priest.

²²“Son of man, what is this proverb that you have in the land of Israel: ‘The days go by, and every vision fails’?

¹⁵Behold, they keep saying to me, “Where is the word of the Lord? Let it come now!”

⁵You who tremble at His word, hear the word of the Lord: “Your brothers who hate you and exclude you because of My name have said, ‘Let the Lord be glorified that we may see your joy!’ But they will be put to shame.”

³⁶But refer no more to the burden of the Lord, for each man’s word becomes the burden, so that you pervert the words of the living God, the Lord of Hosts, our God.

³Most importantly, you must understand that in the last days scoffers will come, scoffing and following their own evil desires.

⁴“Where is the promise of His coming?” they will ask. “Ever since our fathers fell asleep, everything continues as it has from the beginning of creation.”

¹²They have lied about the Lord and said: “He will not do anything; harm will not come to us; we will not see sword or famine.

¹³The prophets are but wind, for the word is not in them. So let their own predictions befall them.”

¹⁵Acquitting the guilty and condemning the righteous—both are detestable to the Lord.

¹But understand this: In the last days terrible times will come.

²For men will be lovers of themselves, lovers of money, boastful, arrogant, abusive, disobedient to their parents, ungrateful, unholy,

¹⁵So He said to them, “You are the ones who justify yourselves before men, but God knows your hearts. For what is prized among men is detestable before God.

¹⁷You have wearied the Lord with your words; yet you ask, “How have we wearied Him?” By saying, “All who do evil are good in the sight of the Lord, and in them He delights,” or, “Where is the God of justice?”

¹²They have turned night into day, making light seem near in the face of darkness.

²²The eye is the lamp of the body. If your eyes are good, your whole body will be full of light.

²³But if your eyes are bad, your whole body will be full of darkness. If then the light within you is darkness, how great is that darkness!

¹⁸Let no one deceive himself. If any of you thinks he is wise in this age, he should become a fool, so that he may become wise.

¹⁹For the wisdom of this world is foolishness in God’s sight. As it is written: “He catches the wise in their craftiness.”

⁷Be not wise in your own eyes; fear the Lord and turn away from evil.

¹⁶Live in harmony with one another. Do not be proud, but associate with the lowly. Do not be conceited.

¹²Do you see a man who is wise in his own eyes? There is more hope for a fool than for him.

¹⁶The slacker is wiser in his own eyes than seven men who answer discreetly.

²²Although they claimed to be wise, they became fools,

¹¹Woe to those who rise early in the morning in pursuit of strong drink, who linger into the evening, to be inflamed by wine.

¹⁵Woe to him who gives drink to his neighbors, pouring it from the wineskin until they are drunk, in order to gaze at their nakedness!

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.

¹²“Come, let me get the wine, let us imbibe the strong drink, and tomorrow will be like today, only far better!”

¹⁹Listen, my son, and be wise, and guide your heart on the right course.

²⁰Do not join those who drink too much wine or gorge themselves on meat.

¹Woe to the majestic crown of Ephraim’s drunkards, to the fading flower of his glorious splendor, set on the summit above the fertile valley, the pride of those overcome by wine.

²Behold, the Lord has one who is strong and mighty. Like a hailstorm or destructive tempest, like a driving rain or flooding downpour, he will smash that crown to the ground.

²to deprive the poor of fair treatment and withhold justice from the oppressed of My people, to make widows their prey and orphans their plunder.

²¹They band together against the righteous and condemn the innocent to death.

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

¹⁵Acquitting the guilty and condemning the righteous—both are detestable to the Lord.

⁴It is not for kings, O Lemuel, it is not for kings to drink wine, or for rulers to crave strong drink,

⁵lest they drink and forget what is decreed, depriving all the oppressed of justice.

³Both hands are skilled at evil; the prince and the judge demand a bribe. When the powerful utters his evil desire, they all conspire together.

¹²Therefore this is what the Holy One of Israel says: “Because you have rejected this message, trusting in oppression and relying on deceit,

¹⁶The roots beneath him dry up, and the branches above him wither away.

⁵With a sound like that of chariots they bound over the mountaintops, like the crackling of fire consuming stubble, like a mighty army deployed for battle.

¹⁷His winnowing fork is in His hand to clear His threshing floor and to gather the wheat into His barn; but He will burn up the chaff with unquenchable fire.”

¹⁴Surely they are like stubble; the fire will burn them up. They cannot deliver themselves from the power of the flame. There will be no coals to warm them or fire to sit beside.

⁹These are rebellious people, deceitful children, children unwilling to obey the Lord’s instruction.

⁴Nothing will remain but to crouch among the captives or fall among the slain. Despite all this, His anger is not turned away; His hand is still upraised.

²¹Manasseh devours Ephraim, and Ephraim Manasseh; together they turn against Judah. Despite all this, His anger is not turned away; His hand is still upraised.

¹⁷Therefore the Lord takes no pleasure in their young men; He has no compassion on their fatherless and widows. For every one of them is godless and wicked, and every mouth speaks folly. Despite all this, His anger is not turned away; His hand is still upraised.

³⁷And Jezebel’s body will lie like dung in the field on the plot of ground at Jezreel, so that no one can say: This is Jezebel.’”

¹⁶O Lord, in keeping with all Your righteous acts, I pray that Your anger and wrath may turn away from Your city Jerusalem, Your holy mountain; for because of our sins and the iniquities of our fathers, Jerusalem and Your people are a reproach to all around us.

²⁴I looked at the mountains, and behold, they were quaking; all the hills were swaying.

⁸I will whistle for them to gather, for I have redeemed them; and they will be as numerous as they once were.

¹⁸On that day the Lord will whistle to the flies at the farthest streams of the Nile and to the bees in the land of Assyria.

⁴⁹The Lord will bring a nation from afar, from the ends of the earth, to swoop down upon you like an eagle—a nation whose language you will not understand,

³All you people of the world and dwellers of the earth, when a banner is raised on the mountains, you will see it; when a ram’s horn sounds, you will hear it.

¹²He will raise a banner for the nations and gather the exiles of Israel; He will collect the scattered of Judah from the four corners of the earth.

¹¹For My name will be great among the nations, from where the sun rises to where it sets. In every place, incense and pure offerings will be presented in My name, because My name will be great among the nations,” says the Lord of Hosts.

¹⁸He loosens the bonds placed by kings and fastens a belt around their waists.

⁷They charge like mighty men; they scale the walls like men of war. Each one marches in formation, not swerving from the course.

⁸They do not jostle one another; each proceeds in his path. They burst through the defenses, never breaking ranks.

²¹He pours out contempt on nobles and disarms the mighty.

¹This is what the Lord says to Cyrus His anointed, whose right hand I have grasped to subdue nations before him, to disarm kings, to open the doors before him, so that the gates will not be shut:

⁵I am the Lord, and there is no other; there is no God but Me. I will equip you for battle, though you have not known Me,

⁵Righteousness will be the belt around His hips, and faithfulness the sash around His waist.

⁵Your arrows pierce the hearts of the king’s foes; the nations fall beneath your feet.

⁹“Son of man, prophesy and tell them that this is what the Lord says: ‘A sword, a sword, sharpened and polished—

¹⁰it is sharpened for the slaughter, polished to flash like lightning! Should we rejoice in the scepter of My son? The sword despises every such stick.

³The shields of his mighty men are red; the valiant warriors are dressed in scarlet. The fittings of the chariots flash like fire on the day they are prepared, and the spears of cypress have been brandished.

⁴The chariots dash through the streets; they rush around the plazas, appearing like torches, darting about like lightning.

¹⁶Their quivers are like open graves; they are all mighty men.

¹²If one does not repent, God will sharpen His sword; He has bent and strung His bow.

¹³He has prepared His deadly weapons; He ordains His arrows with fire.

¹³Rise and thresh, O Daughter of Zion, for I will give you horns of iron and hooves of bronze to break to pieces many peoples. Then you will devote their gain to the Lord, their wealth to the Lord of all the earth.

²²But this is a people plundered and looted, all trapped in caves or imprisoned in dungeons. They have become plunder with no one to rescue them, and loot with no one to say, “Send them back!”

⁸Then the remnant of Jacob will be among the nations, in the midst of many peoples, like a lion among the beasts of the forest, like a young lion among flocks of sheep, which tramples and tears as it passes through, with no one to rescue them.

³Listen to the wailing of the shepherds, for their glory is in ruins. Listen to the roaring of the young lions, for the thickets of the Jordan are destroyed.

²⁴Can the plunder be snatched from the mighty, or the captives of a tyrant be delivered?

²⁵Indeed, this is what the Lord says: “Even the captives of the mighty will be taken away, and the plunder of the tyrant will be retrieved; I will contend with those who contend with you, and I will save your children.

¹⁹Behold, one will come up like a lion from the thickets of the Jordan to the watered pasture. For in an instant I will chase Edom from her land. Who is the chosen one I will appoint for this? For who is like Me, and who can challenge Me? What shepherd can stand against Me?”

⁷A lion has gone up from his thicket, and a destroyer of nations has set out. He has left his lair to lay waste your land. Your cities will be reduced to ruins and lie uninhabited.

²²Then they will look to the earth and see only distress and darkness and the gloom of anguish. And they will be driven into utter darkness.

¹⁰Before them the earth quakes; the heavens tremble. The sun and moon grow dark, and the stars lose their brightness.

²³I looked at the earth, and it was formless and void; I looked to the heavens, and they had no light.

²⁴I looked at the mountains, and behold, they were quaking; all the hills were swaying.

¹⁰And the fifth angel poured out his bowl on the throne of the beast, and its kingdom was plunged into darkness, and men began to gnaw their tongues in anguish

¹¹and curse the God of heaven for their pains and sores. Yet they did not repent of their deeds.

²⁵There will be signs in the sun and moon and stars, and on the earth dismay among the nations, bewildered by the roaring of the sea and the surging of the waves.

²⁶Men will faint from fear and anxiety over what is coming upon the earth, for the powers of the heavens will be shaken.

¹²And I watched as the Lamb opened the sixth seal, and there was a great earthquake, and the sun became black like sackcloth of goat hair, and the whole moon turned blood red,