Isaiah 54

²⁷For it is written: “Rejoice, O barren woman, who bears no children; break forth and cry aloud, you who have never travailed; because more are the children of the desolate woman than of her who has a husband.”

⁴No longer will you be called Forsaken, nor your land named Desolate; but you will be called Hephzibah, and your land Beulah; for the Lord will take delight in you, and your land will be His bride.

⁵The well-fed hire themselves out for food, but the starving hunger no more. The barren woman gives birth to seven, but she who has many sons pines away.

¹¹By faith Sarah, even though she was barren and beyond the proper age, was enabled to conceive a child, because she considered Him faithful who had promised.

¹²And so from one man, and he as good as dead, came descendants as numerous as the stars in the sky and as countless as the sand on the seashore.

⁹He settles the barren woman in her home as a joyful mother to her children. Hallelujah!

⁹Rejoice greatly, O Daughter of Zion! Shout in triumph, O Daughter of Jerusalem! See, your King comes to you, righteous and victorious, humble and riding on a donkey, on a colt, the foal of a donkey.

²⁰Look upon Zion, the city of our appointed feasts. Your eyes will see Jerusalem, a peaceful pasture, a tent that does not wander; its tent pegs will not be pulled up, nor will any of its cords be broken.

¹⁹For your ruined and desolate places and your ravaged land will now indeed be too small for your people, and those who devoured you will be far away.

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.’

²⁰My tent is destroyed, and all its ropes are snapped. My sons have departed from me and are no more. I have no one left to pitch my tent or set up my curtains.

⁴⁰the curtains of the courtyard with its posts and bases; the curtain for the gate of the courtyard, its ropes and tent pegs, and all the equipment for the service of the tabernacle, the Tent of Meeting;

¹⁸the tent pegs for the tabernacle and for the courtyard, along with their ropes;

⁵Do not be afraid, for I am with you; I will bring your offspring from the east and gather you from the west.

⁶I will say to the north, ‘Give them up!’ and to the south, ‘Do not hold them back!’ Bring My sons from afar, and My daughters from the ends of the earth—

¹⁴Your descendants will be like the dust of the earth, and you will spread out to the west and east and north and south. All the families of the earth will be blessed through you and your offspring.

³Nations will come to your light, and kings to the brightness of your dawn.

⁴Lift up your eyes and look around: They all gather and come to you; your sons will come from afar, and your daughters will be carried on the arm.

¹⁸Lift up your eyes and look around. They all gather together; they come to you. As surely as I live,” declares the Lord, “you will wear them all as jewelry and put them on like a bride.

¹⁹For your ruined and desolate places and your ravaged land will now indeed be too small for your people, and those who devoured you will be far away.

³⁵Then they will say, ‘This land that was desolate has become like the garden of Eden. The cities that were once ruined, desolate, and destroyed are now fortified and inhabited.’

³⁶Then the nations around you that remain will know that I, the Lord, have rebuilt what was destroyed, and I have replanted what was desolate. I, the Lord, have spoken, and I will do it.

⁸May he rule from sea to sea, and from the Euphrates to the ends of the earth.

⁹May the nomads bow before him, and his enemies lick the dust.

¹⁰Do not fear, for I am with you; do not be afraid, for I am your God. I will strengthen you; I will surely help you; I will uphold you with My righteous right hand.

⁶For it stands in Scripture: “See, I lay in Zion a stone, a chosen and precious cornerstone; and the one who believes in Him will never be put to shame.”

⁷Instead of shame, My people will have a double portion, and instead of humiliation, they will rejoice in their share; and so they will inherit a double portion in their land, and everlasting joy will be theirs.

¹⁹After I returned, I repented; and after I was instructed, I struck my thigh in grief. I was ashamed and humiliated because I bore the disgrace of my youth.’

¹⁶They will all be put to shame and humiliated; the makers of idols will depart together in disgrace.

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

⁷Listen to Me, you who know what is right, you people with My law in your hearts: Do not fear the scorn of men; do not be broken by their insults.

²⁵Husbands, love your wives, just as Christ loved the church and gave Himself up for her

²⁶to sanctify her, cleansing her by the washing with water through the word,

¹⁹So I will betroth you to Me forever; I will betroth you in righteousness and justice, in loving devotion and compassion.

²⁰And I will betroth you in faithfulness, and you will know the Lord.”

²I am jealous for you with a godly jealousy. For I promised you to one husband, to present you as a pure virgin to Christ.

³I am afraid, however, that just as Eve was deceived by the serpent’s cunning, your minds may be led astray from your simple and pure devotion to Christ.

¹⁷Thus says the Lord your Redeemer, the Holy One of Israel: “I am the Lord your God, who teaches you for your benefit, who directs you in the way you should go.

⁸Then I passed by and saw you, and you were indeed old enough for love. So I spread My cloak over you and covered your nakedness. I pledged Myself to you, entered into a covenant with you, and you became Mine, declares the Lord God.

²⁹Is God the God of Jews only? Is He not the God of Gentiles too? Yes, of Gentiles too,

³⁰since there is only one God, who will justify the circumcised by faith and the uncircumcised through that same faith.

⁴No longer will you be called Forsaken, nor your land named Desolate; but you will be called Hephzibah, and your land Beulah; for the Lord will take delight in you, and your land will be His bride.

¹⁴“Therefore, behold, I will allure her and lead her to the wilderness, and speak to her tenderly.

¹⁵There I will give back her vineyards and make the Valley of Achor into a gateway of hope. There she will respond as she did in the days of her youth, as in the day she came up out of Egypt.

¹⁸May your fountain be blessed, and may you rejoice in the wife of your youth:

¹“Say of your brothers, ‘My people,’ and of your sisters, ‘My loved one.’

²Rebuke your mother, rebuke her, for she is not My wife, and I am not her husband. Let her remove the adultery from her face and the unfaithfulness from between her breasts.

⁹Enjoy life with your beloved wife all the days of the fleeting life that God has given you under the sun—all your fleeting days. For this is your portion in life and in your labor under the sun.

¹⁴But Zion said, “The Lord has forsaken me; the Lord has forgotten me!”

¹⁵“Can a woman forget her nursing child, or lack compassion for the son of her womb? Even if she could forget, I will not forget you!

⁵For His anger is fleeting, but His favor lasts a lifetime. Weeping may stay the night, but joy comes in the morning.

⁸Beloved, do not let this one thing escape your notice: With the Lord a day is like a thousand years, and a thousand years are like a day.

⁶“On that day,” declares the Lord, “I will gather the lame; I will assemble the outcast, even those whom I have afflicted.

²⁰Go, my people, enter your rooms and shut your doors behind you. Hide yourselves a little while until the wrath has passed.

³then He will restore you from captivity and have compassion on you and gather you from all the nations to which the Lord your God has scattered you.

⁴Lift up your eyes and look around: They all gather and come to you; your sons will come from afar, and your daughters will be carried on the arm.

³The Lord appeared to us in the past, saying: “I have loved you with an everlasting love; therefore I have drawn you with loving devotion.

¹⁰Foreigners will rebuild your walls, and their kings will serve you. Although I struck you in anger, yet in favor I will show you mercy.

¹⁶But for this very reason I was shown mercy, so that in me, the worst of sinners, Christ Jesus might display His perfect patience as an example to those who would believe in Him for eternal life.

²³And the nations will know that the house of Israel went into exile for their iniquity, because they were unfaithful to Me. So I hid My face from them and delivered them into the hands of their enemies, so that they all fell by the sword.

²⁴I dealt with them according to their uncleanness and transgressions, and I hid My face from them.

¹⁰Though the mountains may be removed and the hills may be shaken, My loving devotion will not depart from you, and My covenant of peace will not be broken,” says the Lord, who has compassion on you.

¹⁵but I am fiercely angry with the nations that are at ease. For I was a little angry, but they have added to the calamity.’

¹In that day you will say: “O Lord, I will praise You. Although You were angry with me, Your anger has turned away, and You have comforted me.

²¹When the Lord smelled the pleasing aroma, He said in His heart, “Never again will I curse the ground because of man, even though every inclination of his heart is evil from his youth. And never again will I destroy all living creatures as I have done.

¹¹And I establish My covenant with you: Never again will all life be cut off by the waters of a flood; never again will there be a flood to destroy the earth.”

¹²And God said, “This is the sign of the covenant I am making between Me and you and every living creature with you, a covenant for all generations to come:

¹⁶Men swear by someone greater than themselves, and their oath serves as a confirmation to end all argument.

¹⁷So when God wanted to make the unchanging nature of His purpose very clear to the heirs of the promise, He guaranteed it with an oath.

¹¹so My word that proceeds from My mouth will not return to Me empty, but it will accomplish what I please, and it will prosper where I send it.

⁹You set a boundary they cannot cross, that they may never again cover the earth.

³³But I will not withdraw My loving devotion from him, nor ever betray My faithfulness.

³⁴I will not violate My covenant or alter the utterance of My lips.

²Therefore we will not fear, though the earth is transformed and the mountains are toppled into the depths of the seas,

⁴But because of His great love for us, God, who is rich in mercy,

⁵made us alive with Christ even when we were dead in our trespasses. It is by grace you have been saved!

³⁵Heaven and earth will pass away, but My words will never pass away.

²⁹For God’s gifts and His call are irrevocable.

³Incline your ear and come to Me; listen, so that your soul may live. I will make with you an everlasting covenant—My loving devotion promised to David.

⁴As you come to Him, the living stone, rejected by men but chosen and precious in God’s sight,

⁵you also, like living stones, are being built into a spiritual house to be a holy priesthood, offering spiritual sacrifices acceptable to God through Jesus Christ.

²²strengthening the souls of the disciples and encouraging them to continue in the faith. “We must endure many hardships to enter the kingdom of God,” they said.

¹⁷But I will restore your health and heal your wounds, declares the Lord, because they call you an outcast, Zion, for whom no one cares.”

⁶For the Lord has called you back, like a wife deserted and wounded in spirit, like the rejected wife of one’s youth,” says your God.

²Now with all my ability I have made provision for the house of my God—gold for the gold articles, silver for the silver, bronze for the bronze, iron for the iron, and wood for the wood, as well as onyx for the settings, turquoise, stones of various colors, all kinds of precious stones, and slabs of marble—all in abundance.

¹⁹Many are the afflictions of the righteous, but the Lord delivers him from them all.

⁴⁵It is written in the Prophets: ‘And they will all be taught by God.’ Everyone who has heard the Father and learned from Him comes to Me—

⁷And the peace of God, which surpasses all understanding, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus.

¹⁶⁵Abundant peace belongs to those who love Your law; nothing can make them stumble.

³⁴No longer will each man teach his neighbor or his brother, saying, ‘Know the Lord,’ because they will all know Me, from the least of them to the greatest, declares the Lord. For I will forgive their iniquities and will remember their sins no more.”

¹⁰For this is the covenant I will make with the house of Israel after those days, declares the Lord. I will put My laws in their minds and inscribe them on their hearts. And I will be their God, and they will be My people.

²⁶But the Advocate, the Holy Spirit, whom the Father will send in My name, will teach you all things and will remind you of everything I have told you.

²⁷Peace I leave with you; My peace I give to you. I do not give to you as the world gives. Do not let your hearts be troubled; do not be afraid.

²⁵Do not fear sudden danger or the ruin that overtakes the wicked,

²⁶for the Lord will be your confidence and will keep your foot from the snare.

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.

⁸But I will camp around My house because of an army, because of those who march to and fro, and never again will an oppressor overrun My people, for now I keep watch with My own eyes.

²⁷And I will put My Spirit within you and cause you to walk in My statutes and to carefully observe My ordinances.

²⁸Then you will live in the land that I gave your forefathers; you will be My people, and I will be your God.

⁴and said to him, “Run and tell that young man: ‘Jerusalem will be a city without walls because of the multitude of men and livestock within it.

⁵For I will be a wall of fire around it, declares the Lord, and I will be the glory within it.’”

³This is what the Lord says: “I will return to Zion and dwell in Jerusalem. Then Jerusalem will be called the City of Truth, and the mountain of the Lord of Hosts will be called the Holy Mountain.”

¹¹Behold, all who rage against you will be ashamed and disgraced; those who contend with you will be reduced to nothing and will perish.

¹²You will seek them but will not find them. Those who wage war against you will come to nothing.

¹²The wicked scheme against the righteous and gnash their teeth at them,

¹³but the Lord laughs, seeing that their day is coming.

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

⁸For this is what the Lord of Hosts says: “After His Glory has sent Me against the nations that have plundered you—for whoever touches you touches the apple of His eye—

³For I am the Lord your God, the Holy One of Israel, your Savior; I give Egypt for your ransom, Cush and Seba in your place.

⁴Because you are precious and honored in My sight, and because I love you, I will give men in exchange for you and nations in place of your life.

⁸and will go out to deceive the nations in the four corners of the earth—Gog and Magog—to assemble them for battle. Their number is like the sand of the seashore.

⁹And they marched across the broad expanse of the earth and surrounded the camp of the saints and the beloved city. But fire came down from heaven and consumed them.

⁴The Lord has made everything for His purpose—even the wicked for the day of disaster.

¹⁶But I have raised you up for this very purpose, that I might display My power to you, and that My name might be proclaimed in all the earth.

¹¹I summon a bird of prey from the east, a man for My purpose from a far-off land. Truly I have spoken, and truly I will bring it to pass. I have planned it, and I will surely do it.

⁵Woe to Assyria, the rod of My anger; the staff in their hands is My wrath.

⁶I will send him against a godless nation; I will dispatch him against a people destined for My rage, to take spoils and seize plunder, and to trample them down like clay in the streets.

¹⁵Does an axe raise itself above the one who swings it? Does a saw boast over him who saws with it? It would be like a rod waving the one who lifts it, or a staff lifting him who is not wood!

²⁶Have you not heard? Long ago I ordained it; in days of old I planned it. Now I have brought it to pass, that you should crush fortified cities into piles of rubble.

²⁸And we know that God works all things together for the good of those who love Him, who are called according to His purpose.

²⁹For those God foreknew, He also predestined to be conformed to the image of His Son, so that He would be the firstborn among many brothers.

¹⁵If anyone attacks you, it is not from Me; whoever assails you will fall before you.

²⁸I give them eternal life, and they will never perish. No one can snatch them out of My hand.

²⁹My Father who has given them to Me is greater than all. No one can snatch them out of My Father’s hand.

⁸The One who vindicates Me is near. Who will dare to contend with Me? Let us confront each other! Who has a case against Me? Let him approach Me!

¹Therefore, there is now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus.

⁶Therefore let all the godly pray to You while You may be found. Surely when great waters rise, they will not come near.