Isaiah 57

²⁰‘Therefore I will indeed gather you to your fathers, and you will be gathered to your grave in peace. Your eyes will not see all the calamity that I will bring on this place.’” So they brought her answer back to the king.

²⁸‘Now I will indeed gather you to your fathers, and you will be gathered to your grave in peace. Your eyes will not see all the calamity that I will bring on this place and on its people.’” So they brought her answer back to the king.

¹For the choirmaster. According to Sheminith. A Psalm of David. Help, O Lord, for the godly are no more; the faithful have vanished from among men.

²The godly man has perished from the earth; there is no one upright among men. They all lie in wait for blood; they hunt one another with a net.

²⁵So He poured out on them His furious anger and the fierceness of battle. It enveloped them in flames, but they did not understand; it consumed them, but they did not take it to heart.

⁷You said, ‘I will be queen forever.’ You did not take these things to heart or consider their outcome.

¹³And I heard a voice from heaven telling me to write, “Blessed are the dead—those who die in the Lord from this moment on.” “Yes,” says the Spirit, “they will rest from their labors, for their deeds will follow them.”

¹For we know that if the earthly tent we live in is dismantled, we have a building from God, an eternal house in heaven, not built by human hands.

¹⁷There the wicked cease from raging, and there the weary find rest.

²⁹“Sovereign Lord, as You have promised, You now dismiss Your servant in peace.

⁸We are confident, then, and would prefer to be away from the body and at home with the Lord.

⁷before the dust returns to the ground from which it came and the spirit returns to God who gave it.

⁴A wicked and adulterous generation demands a sign, but none will be given it except the sign of Jonah.” Then He left them and went away.

¹⁰By this the children of God are distinguished from the children of the devil: Anyone who does not practice righteousness is not of God, nor is anyone who does not love his brother.

⁴You adulteresses! Do you not know that friendship with the world is hostility toward God? Therefore, whoever chooses to be a friend of the world renders himself an enemy of God.

²When the Lord first spoke through Hosea, He told him, “Go, take a prostitute as your wife and have children of adultery, because this land is flagrantly prostituting itself by departing from the Lord.”

¹Then one of the seven angels with the seven bowls came and said to me, “Come, I will show you the punishment of the great prostitute, who sits on many waters.

²The kings of the earth were immoral with her, and those who dwell on the earth were intoxicated with the wine of her immorality.”

³³You snakes! You brood of vipers! How will you escape the sentence of hell?

¹³The harm they will suffer is the wages of their wickedness. They consider it a pleasure to carouse in broad daylight. They are blots and blemishes, reveling in their deception as they feast with you.

²¹They gape at me and say, “Aha, aha! Our eyes have seen!”

¹⁷Still, you lord it over My people and do not allow them to go.

⁴Alas, O sinful nation, a people laden with iniquity, a brood of evildoers, children who act corruptly! They have forsaken the Lord; they have despised the Holy One of Israel and turned their backs on Him.

¹³They open their jaws against me like lions that roar and maul.

³⁸The field is the world, and the good seed represents the sons of the kingdom. The weeds are the sons of the evil one,

³Instead, he walked in the ways of the kings of Israel and even sacrificed his son in the fire, according to the abominations of the nations that the Lord had driven out before the Israelites.

⁴And he sacrificed and burned incense on the high places, on the hills, and under every green tree.

²⁹Surely you will be ashamed of the sacred oaks in which you have delighted; you will be embarrassed by the gardens that you have chosen.

²⁰You even took the sons and daughters you bore to Me and sacrificed them as food to idols. Was your prostitution not enough?

³¹They have built the high places of Topheth in the Valley of Ben-hinnom so they could burn their sons and daughters in the fire—something I never commanded, nor did it even enter My mind.

¹⁰He also desecrated Topheth in the Valley of Ben-hinnom so that no one could sacrifice his son or daughter in the fire to Molech.

²¹You must not give any of your children to be sacrificed to Molech, for you must not profane the name of your God. I am the Lord.

⁹Indifferent to her own infidelity, Israel had defiled the land and committed adultery with stones and trees.

¹⁸The sons gather wood, the fathers light the fire, and the women knead the dough to make cakes for the Queen of Heaven; they pour out drink offerings to other gods to provoke Me to anger.

¹⁹Woe to him who says to wood, ‘Awake!’ or to silent stone, ‘Arise!’ Can it give guidance? Behold, it is overlaid with gold and silver, yet there is no breath in it at all.”

¹³The houses of Jerusalem and the houses of the kings of Judah will be defiled like that place, Topheth—all the houses on whose rooftops they burned incense to all the host of heaven and poured out drink offerings to other gods.”

³Whoever slaughters an ox is like one who slays a man; whoever sacrifices a lamb is like one who breaks a dog’s neck; whoever presents a grain offering is like one who offers pig’s blood; whoever offers frankincense is like one who blesses an idol. Indeed, they have chosen their own ways and delighted in their abominations.

³⁷He will say: “Where are their gods, the rock in which they took refuge,

³⁸which ate the fat of their sacrifices and drank the wine of their drink offerings? Let them rise up and help you; let them give you shelter!

¹⁶You took some of your garments and made colorful high places for yourself, and on them you prostituted yourself. Such things should not have happened; never should they have occurred!

⁴¹You sat on a couch of luxury with a table spread before it, on which you had set My incense and My oil,

²⁰“For long ago you broke your yoke and tore off your chains, saying, ‘I will not serve!’ Indeed, on every high hill and under every green tree you lay down as a prostitute.

²⁵At the head of every street you built your lofty shrines and degraded your beauty. With increasing promiscuity, you spread your legs to all who passed by.

⁶Now in the days of King Josiah, the Lord said to me, “Have you seen what faithless Israel has done? She has gone up on every high hill and under every green tree to prostitute herself there.

²⁸When I brought them into the land that I swore to give them and they saw any high hill or leafy tree, there they offered their sacrifices, presented offerings that provoked Me, sent up their fragrant incense, and poured out their drink offerings.

²⁹So I asked them: ‘What is this high place to which you go?’ (And to this day it is called Bamah.)

⁴¹You sat on a couch of luxury with a table spread before it, on which you had set My incense and My oil,

²“Son of man, there were two women, daughters of the same mother,

³and they played in Egypt, prostituting themselves from their youth. Their breasts were fondled there, and their virgin bosoms caressed.

⁸“Son of man,” He told me, “dig through the wall.” So I dug through the wall and discovered a doorway.

⁹Then He said to me, “Go in and see the wicked abominations they are committing here.”

³²You adulterous wife! You receive strangers instead of your own husband!

²⁵At the head of every street you built your lofty shrines and degraded your beauty. With increasing promiscuity, you spread your legs to all who passed by.

²⁶You prostituted yourself with your lustful neighbors, the Egyptians, and increased your promiscuity to provoke Me to anger.

¹⁶At the sight of them, she lusted for them and sent messengers to them in Chaldea.

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.

²They set out to go down to Egypt without asking My advice, to seek shelter under Pharaoh’s protection and take refuge in Egypt’s shade.

⁴⁰Furthermore, you sisters sent messengers for men who came from afar; and behold, when they arrived, you bathed for them, painted your eyes, and adorned yourself with jewelry.

¹Woe to those who go down to Egypt for help, who rely on horses, who trust in their abundance of chariots and in their multitude of horsemen. They do not look to the Holy One of Israel; they do not seek the Lord.

²Yet He too is wise and brings disaster; He does not call back His words. He will rise up against the house of the wicked and against the allies of evildoers.

¹⁸Do not let anyone who delights in false humility and the worship of angels disqualify you with speculation about what he has seen. Such a person is puffed up without basis by his unspiritual mind.

³³Men give gifts to all their prostitutes, but you gave gifts to all your lovers. You bribed them to come to you from everywhere for your illicit favors.

²⁵You should have kept your feet from going bare and your throat from being thirsty. But you said, ‘It is hopeless! For I love foreign gods, and I must go after them.’

¹²But they will reply, ‘It is hopeless. We will follow our own plans, and each of us will act according to the stubbornness of his evil heart.’”

³O Lord, do not Your eyes look for truth? You struck them, but they felt no pain. You finished them off, but they refused to accept discipline. They have made their faces harder than stone and refused to repent.

¹³You are wearied by your many counselors; let them come forward now and save you—your astrologers who observe the stars, who monthly predict your fate.

²²In the time of his distress, King Ahaz became even more unfaithful to the Lord.

²³He sacrificed to the gods of Damascus, who had defeated him, and he said, “Because the gods of the kings of Aram have helped them, I will sacrifice to them that they may help me.” But these gods were the downfall of Ahaz and of all Israel.

¹³Is it not indeed from the Lord of Hosts that the labor of the people only feeds the fire, and the nations weary themselves in vain?

¹²“I, even I, am He who comforts you. Why should you be afraid of mortal man, of a son of man who withers like grass?

¹³But you have forgotten the Lord, your Maker, who stretched out the heavens and laid the foundations of the earth. You live in terror all day long because of the fury of the oppressor who is bent on destruction. But where is the fury of the oppressor?

²⁵The fear of man is a snare, but whoever trusts in the Lord is set securely on high.

²¹You have done these things, and I kept silent; you thought I was just like you. But now I rebuke you and accuse you to your face.

²¹A voice is heard on the barren heights, the children of Israel weeping and begging for mercy, because they have perverted their ways and forgotten the Lord their God.

³“They bend their tongues like bows; lies prevail over truth in the land. For they proceed from evil to evil, and they do not take Me into account,” declares the Lord.

⁴“Let everyone guard against his neighbor; do not trust any brother, for every brother deals craftily, and every friend spreads slander.

³²Does a maiden forget her jewelry or a bride her wedding sash? Yet My people have forgotten Me for days without number.

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.

¹⁰As it is written: “There is no one righteous, not even one.

¹¹There is no one who understands, no one who seeks God.

²You hate good and love evil. You tear the skin from my people and strip the flesh from their bones.

³You eat the flesh of my people after stripping off their skin and breaking their bones. You chop them up like flesh for the cooking pot, like meat in a cauldron.”

¹¹“What good to Me is your multitude of sacrifices?” says the Lord. “I am full from the burnt offerings of rams and the fat of well-fed cattle; I take no delight in the blood of bulls and lambs and goats.

¹²When you come to appear before Me, who has required this of you—this trampling of My courts?

⁴Do not trust in deceptive words, saying: ‘This is the temple of the Lord, the temple of the Lord, the temple of the Lord.’

⁵For if you really correct your ways and deeds, if you act justly toward one another,

⁵You welcome those who gladly do right, who remember Your ways. Surely You were angry, for we sinned. How can we be saved if we remain in our sins?

⁹For the evildoers will be cut off, but those who hope in the Lord will inherit the land.

³Trust in the Lord and do good; dwell in the land and cultivate faithfulness.

²⁵The wolf and the lamb will feed together, and the lion will eat straw like the ox, but the food of the serpent will be dust. They will neither harm nor destroy on all My holy mountain,” says the Lord.

⁷I will bring them to My holy mountain and make them joyful in My house of prayer. Their burnt offerings and sacrifices will be accepted on My altar, for My house will be called a house of prayer for all the nations.”

⁴⁰For on My holy mountain, the high mountain of Israel, declares the Lord God, there the whole house of Israel, all of them, will serve Me in the land. There I will accept them and will require your offerings and choice gifts, along with all your holy sacrifices.

¹A song of ascents. Those who trust in the Lord are like Mount Zion. It cannot be moved; it abides forever.

¹⁰Go out, go out through the gates; prepare the way for the people! Build it up, build up the highway; clear away the stones; raise a banner for the nations!

⁵Every valley shall be filled in, and every mountain and hill made low. The crooked ways shall be made straight, and the rough ways smooth.

⁶And all humanity will see God’s salvation.’”

⁸And there will be a highway called the Way of Holiness. The unclean will not travel it—only those who walk in the Way—and fools will not stray onto it.

³A voice of one calling: “Prepare the way for the Lord in the wilderness; make a straight highway for our God in the desert.

¹⁵Yet My people have forgotten Me. They burn incense to worthless idols that make them stumble in their ways, leaving the ancient roads to walk on rutted bypaths instead of on the highway.

¹³Therefore let us stop judging one another. Instead, make up your mind not to put any stumbling block or obstacle in your brother’s way.

¹⁸The Lord is near to the brokenhearted; He saves the contrite in spirit.

¹This is what the Lord says: “Heaven is My throne, and earth is My footstool. What kind of house will you build for Me? Or where will My place of repose be?

²Has not My hand made all these things? And so they came into being,” declares the Lord. “This is the one I will esteem: he who is humble and contrite in spirit, who trembles at My word.

⁶Though the Lord is on high, He attends to the lowly; but the proud He knows from afar.

³He heals the brokenhearted and binds up their wounds.

¹¹Who among the gods is like You, O Lord? Who is like You—majestic in holiness, revered with praises, performing wonders?

¹⁷The sacrifices of God are a broken spirit; a broken and a contrite heart, O God, You will not despise.

¹⁸Who is a God like You, who pardons iniquity and passes over the transgression of the remnant of His inheritance—who does not retain His anger forever, because He delights in loving devotion?

²⁴Correct me, O Lord, but only with justice—not in Your anger, or You will bring me to nothing.

⁹He will not always accuse us, nor harbor His anger forever.

¹⁰He has not dealt with us according to our sins or repaid us according to our iniquities.

⁵Will You be angry with us forever? Will You draw out Your anger to all generations?

⁹Furthermore, we have all had earthly fathers who disciplined us, and we respected them. Should we not much more submit to the Father of our spirits and live?

³⁸And yet He was compassionate; He forgave their iniquity and did not destroy them. He often restrained His anger and did not unleash His full wrath.

³⁹He remembered that they were but flesh, a passing breeze that does not return.

¹¹Like ravenous dogs, they are never satisfied. They are shepherds with no discernment; they all turn to their own way, each one seeking his own gain:

⁵Put to death, therefore, the components of your earthly nature: sexual immorality, impurity, lust, evil desires, and greed, which is idolatry.

¹³“For from the least of them to the greatest, all are greedy for gain; from prophet to priest, all practice deceit.

¹⁴Their eyes are full of adultery; their desire for sin is never satisfied; they seduce the unstable. They are accursed children with hearts trained in greed.

³But among you, as is proper among the saints, there must not be even a hint of sexual immorality, or of any kind of impurity, or of greed.

⁴Nor should there be obscenity, foolish talk, or crude joking, which are out of character, but rather thanksgiving.

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

⁶Nevertheless, I will bring to it health and healing, and I will heal its people and reveal to them the abundance of peace and truth.

¹⁷For the Lamb in the center of the throne will be their shepherd. ‘He will lead them to springs of living water,’ and ‘God will wipe away every tear from their eyes.’”

²²“Return, O faithless children, and I will heal your faithlessness.” “Here we are. We come to You, for You are the Lord our God.

⁴I will heal their apostasy; I will freely love them, for My anger has turned away from them.

⁵I will be like the dew to Israel; he will blossom like the lily and take root like the cedars of Lebanon.

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.

¹⁸I have surely heard Ephraim’s moaning: ‘You disciplined me severely, like an untrained calf. Restore me, that I may return, for You are the Lord my God.

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.’

³⁹This promise belongs to you and your children and to all who are far off—to all whom the Lord our God will call to Himself.”

¹⁵Through Jesus, therefore, let us continually offer to God a sacrifice of praise, the fruit of lips that confess His name.

⁵Whatever house you enter, begin by saying, ‘Peace to this house.’

⁶If a man of peace is there, your peace will rest on him; if not, it will return to you.

³⁶He has sent this message to the people of Israel, proclaiming the gospel of peace through Jesus Christ, who is Lord of all.

¹⁹Pray also for me, that whenever I open my mouth, words may be given me so that I will boldly make known the mystery of the gospel,

¹⁴“Glory to God in the highest, and on earth peace to men on whom His favor rests!”

¹¹Woe to the wicked; disaster is upon them! For they will be repaid with what their hands have done.

¹⁶For they cannot sleep unless they do evil; they are deprived of slumber until they make someone fall.

¹⁷For they eat the bread of wickedness and drink the wine of violence.

⁵Indeed, the lamp of the wicked is extinguished; the flame of his fire does not glow.

⁶The light in his tent grows dark, and the lamp beside him goes out.

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.

¹¹The youthful vigor that fills his bones will lie down with him in the dust.

¹²Though evil is sweet in his mouth and he conceals it under his tongue,

²⁰A wicked man writhes in pain all his days; only a few years are reserved for the ruthless.

²¹Sounds of terror fill his ears; in his prosperity the destroyer attacks him.

²²“There is no peace,” says the Lord, “for the wicked.”

¹¹Woe to the wicked; disaster is upon them! For they will be repaid with what their hands have done.

²²When Joram saw Jehu, he asked, “Have you come in peace, Jehu?” “How can there be peace,” he replied, “as long as the idolatry and witchcraft of your mother Jezebel abound?”

⁸The way of peace they have not known, and there is no justice in their tracks. They have turned them into crooked paths; no one who treads on them will know peace.

¹⁶ruin and misery lie in their wake,

¹⁷and the way of peace they have not known.”