Isaiah 59

¹⁷“Oh, Lord God! You have made the heavens and the earth by Your great power and outstretched arm. Nothing is too difficult for You!

²Why was no one there when I arrived? Why did no one answer when I called? Is My hand too short to redeem you? Or do I lack the strength to deliver you? Behold, My rebuke dries up the sea; I turn the rivers into a desert; the fish rot for lack of water and die of thirst.

²³The Lord answered Moses, “Is the Lord’s arm too short? Now you will see whether or not My word will come to pass.”

²⁴Even before they call, I will answer, and while they are still speaking, I will hear.

¹⁴Is anything too difficult for the Lord? At the appointed time I will return to you—in about a year—and Sarah will have a son.”

²⁵Therefore He is able to save completely those who draw near to God through Him, since He always lives to intercede for them.

²⁹The Lord is far from the wicked, but He hears the prayer of the righteous.

²⁵Your iniquities have diverted these from you; your sins have deprived you of My bounty.

⁴Then they will cry out to the Lord, but He will not answer them. At that time He will hide His face from them because of the evil they have done.

¹⁵When you spread out your hands in prayer, I will hide My eyes from you; even though you multiply your prayers, I will not listen. Your hands are covered with blood.

¹⁷On that day My anger will burn against them, and I will abandon them and hide My face from them, so that they will be consumed, and many troubles and afflictions will befall them. On that day they will say, ‘Have not these disasters come upon us because our God is no longer with us?’

¹⁸And on that day I will surely hide My face because of all the evil they have done by turning to other gods.

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.

¹⁵When you spread out your hands in prayer, I will hide My eyes from you; even though you multiply your prayers, I will not listen. Your hands are covered with blood.

⁸Therefore this is what the Lord God says: Because you have uttered vain words and seen false visions, I am against you, declares the Lord God.

³⁴Moreover, your skirts are stained with the blood of the innocent poor, though you did not find them breaking in. But in spite of all these things

²¹See how the faithful city has become a harlot! She once was full of justice; righteousness resided within her, but now only murderers!

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

¹³Woe to them, for they have strayed from Me! Destruction to them, for they have rebelled against Me! Though I would redeem them, they speak lies against Me.

³⁵They conceive trouble and give birth to evil; their womb is pregnant with deceit.”

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.

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.

¹⁵Then after desire has conceived, it gives birth to sin; and sin, when it is full-grown, gives birth to death.

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

⁸But look, you keep trusting in deceptive words to no avail.

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

⁷But when John saw many of the Pharisees and Sadducees coming to his place of baptism, he said to them, “You brood of vipers, who warned you to flee from the coming wrath?

²⁹Do not rejoice, all you Philistines, that the rod that struck you is broken. For a viper will spring from the root of the snake, and a flying serpent from its egg.

³²In the end it bites like a snake and stings like a viper.

³⁴You brood of vipers, how can you who are evil say anything good? For out of the overflow of the heart the mouth speaks.

¹⁴His confidence is fragile; his security is in a spider’s web.

⁷As a well gushes its water, so she pours out her evil. Violence and destruction resound in her; sickness and wounds are ever before Me.

¹⁷You say, ‘I am rich; I have grown wealthy and need nothing.’ But you do not realize that you are wretched, pitiful, poor, blind, and naked.

¹⁸I counsel you to buy from Me gold refined by fire so that you may become rich, white garments so that you may be clothed and your shameful nakedness not exposed, and salve to anoint your eyes so that you may see.

¹²I will expose your righteousness and your works, and they will not profit you.

¹⁴His confidence is fragile; his security is in a spider’s web.

¹⁵He leans on his web, but it gives way; he holds fast, but it does not endure.

²How long, O Lord, must I call for help but You do not hear, or cry out to You, “Violence!” but You do not save?

³Why do You make me see iniquity? Why do You tolerate wrongdoing? Destruction and violence are before me. Strife is ongoing, and conflict abounds.

³You dismiss the day of calamity and bring near a reign of violence.

¹⁵“Their feet are swift to shed blood;

¹⁶ruin and misery lie in their wake,

¹⁷haughty eyes, a lying tongue, hands that shed innocent blood,

²¹For from within the hearts of men come evil thoughts, sexual immorality, theft, murder, adultery,

²²greed, wickedness, deceit, debauchery, envy, slander, arrogance, and foolishness.

¹⁶For their feet run to evil, and they are swift to shed blood.

¹³But this was for the sins of her prophets and the guilt of her priests, who shed the blood of the righteous in her midst.

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.’

²⁰But the wicked are like the storm-tossed sea, for it cannot be still, and its waves churn up mire and muck.

²¹“There is no peace,” says my God, “for the wicked.”

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

⁷For the vineyard of the Lord of Hosts is the house of Israel, and the men of Judah are the plant of His delight. He looked for justice, but saw bloodshed; for righteousness, but heard a cry of distress.

⁷⁹to shine on those who live in darkness and in the shadow of death, to guide our feet into the path of peace.”

¹For the choirmaster. To the tune of “Do Not Destroy.” A Miktam of David. Do you indeed speak justly, O rulers? Do you judge uprightly, O sons of men?

²No, in your hearts you devise injustice; with your hands you mete out violence on the earth.

¹Hear the word of the Lord, O children of Israel, for the Lord has a case against the people of the land: “There is no truth, no loving devotion, and no knowledge of God in the land!

²Cursing and lying, murder and stealing, and adultery are rampant; one act of bloodshed follows another.

³⁰In that day they will roar over it, like the roaring of the sea. If one looks over the land, he will see darkness and distress; even the light will be obscured by clouds.

²⁶But when I hoped for good, evil came; when I looked for light, darkness fell.

¹²For the dwellers of Maroth pined for good, but calamity came down from the Lord, even to the gate of Jerusalem.

¹⁹Have You rejected Judah completely? Do You despise Zion? Why have You stricken us so that we are beyond healing? We hoped for peace, but no good has come, and for the time of healing, but there was only terror.

¹⁶The crown has fallen from our head. Woe to us, for we have sinned!

¹⁷Because of this, our hearts are faint; because of these, our eyes grow dim—

¹⁸Woe to you who long for the Day of the Lord! What will the Day of the Lord be for you? It will be darkness and not light.

¹⁹It will be like a man who flees from a lion, only to encounter a bear, or who enters his house and rests his hand against the wall, only to be bitten by a snake.

²⁹and at noon you will grope about like a blind man in the darkness. You will not prosper in your ways. Day after day you will be oppressed and plundered, with no one to save you.

¹⁴They encounter darkness by day and grope at noon as in the night.

⁶He has made me dwell in darkness like those dead for ages.

⁴⁰“He has blinded their eyes and hardened their hearts, so that they cannot see with their eyes, and understand with their hearts, and turn, and I would heal them.”

¹⁹But the way of the wicked is like the darkest gloom; they do not know what makes them stumble.

¹⁶Give glory to the Lord your God before He brings darkness, before your feet stumble on the dusky mountains. You wait for light, but He turns it into deep gloom and thick darkness.

¹⁴I chirp like a swallow or crane; I moan like a dove. My eyes grow weak as I look upward. O Lord, I am oppressed; be my security.”

¹⁶The survivors will escape and live in the mountains, moaning like doves of the valley, each for his own iniquity.

⁹Therefore justice is far from us, and righteousness does not reach us. We hope for light, but there is darkness; for brightness, but we walk in gloom.

¹Oh, that my head were a spring of water, and my eyes a fountain of tears! I would weep day and night over the slain daughter of my people.

⁹Surely His salvation is near to those who fear Him, that His glory may dwell in our land.

³When I kept silent, my bones became brittle from my groaning all day long.

⁴For day and night Your hand was heavy upon me; my strength was drained as in the summer heat. Selah

⁶and said: “O my God, I am ashamed and embarrassed to lift up my face to You, my God, because our iniquities are higher than our heads, and our guilt has reached the heavens.

⁵Israel’s arrogance testifies against them; Israel and Ephraim stumble in their iniquity; even Judah stumbles with them.

⁷Although our iniquities testify against us, O Lord, act for the sake of Your name. Indeed, our rebellions are many; we have sinned against You.

⁶But she has rebelled against My ordinances more wickedly than the nations, and against My statutes worse than the countries around her. For her people have rejected My ordinances and have not walked in My statutes.’

²Cursing and lying, murder and stealing, and adultery are rampant; one act of bloodshed follows another.

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.

²¹For from within the hearts of men come evil thoughts, sexual immorality, theft, murder, adultery,

²²greed, wickedness, deceit, debauchery, envy, slander, arrogance, and foolishness.

⁶The tongue also is a fire, a world of wickedness among the parts of the body. It pollutes the whole person, sets the course of his life on fire, and is itself set on fire by hell.

¹²See to it, brothers, that none of you has a wicked heart of unbelief that turns away from the living God.

⁷For the vineyard of the Lord of Hosts is the house of Israel, and the men of Judah are the plant of His delight. He looked for justice, but saw bloodshed; for righteousness, but heard a cry of distress.

⁸You have never heard; you have never understood; for a long time your ears have not been open. For I knew how deceitful you are; you have been called a rebel from birth.

⁷But they, like Adam, have transgressed the covenant; there they were unfaithful to Me.

¹⁶Furthermore, I saw under the sun that in the place of judgment there is wickedness, and in the place of righteousness there is wickedness.

⁴Therefore the law is paralyzed, and justice never goes forth. For the wicked hem in the righteous, so that justice is perverted.

⁹Now hear this, O leaders of the house of Jacob and rulers of the house of Israel, who despise justice and pervert all that is right,

¹⁰who build Zion with bloodshed and Jerusalem with iniquity.

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?

²³who acquit the guilty for a bribe and deprive the innocent of justice.

¹Woe to those who enact unjust statutes and issue oppressive decrees,

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.

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.

³⁶Still others endured mocking and flogging, and even chains and imprisonment.

³⁷They were stoned, they were sawed in two, they were put to death by the sword. They went around in sheepskins and goatskins, destitute, oppressed, and mistreated.

²⁸Therefore you must say to them, ‘This is the nation that would not listen to the voice of the Lord their God and would not receive correction. Truth has perished; it has disappeared from their lips.

¹¹This is the message you have heard from the beginning: We should love one another.

¹²Do not be like Cain, who belonged to the evil one and murdered his brother. And why did Cain slay him? Because his own deeds were evil, while those of his brother were righteous.

³⁶As it is written: “For Your sake we face death all day long; we are considered as sheep to be slaughtered.”

⁹For not a word they speak can be trusted; destruction lies within them. Their throats are open graves; their tongues practice deceit.

³⁰I searched for a man among them to repair the wall and stand in the gap before Me on behalf of the land, so that I should not destroy it. But I found no one.

⁷No one calls on Your name or strives to take hold of You. For You have hidden Your face from us and delivered us into the hand of our iniquity.

²³So He said He would destroy them—had not Moses His chosen one stood before Him in the breach to divert His wrath from destroying them.

¹A Psalm. Sing to the Lord a new song, for He has done wonders; His right hand and holy arm have gained Him the victory.

³“I have trodden the winepress alone, and no one from the nations was with Me. I trampled them in My anger and trod them down in My fury; their blood spattered My garments, and all My clothes were stained.

⁴For the day of vengeance was in My heart, and the year of My redemption had come.

¹⁰The Lord has bared His holy arm in the sight of all the nations; all the ends of the earth will see the salvation of our God.

¹⁷And take the helmet of salvation and the sword of the Spirit, which is the word of God.

¹⁴Stand firm then, with the belt of truth buckled around your waist, with the breastplate of righteousness arrayed,

⁸But since we belong to the day, let us be sober, putting on the breastplate of faith and love, and the helmet of our hope of salvation.

¹²The night is nearly over; the day has drawn near. So let us lay aside the deeds of darkness and put on the armor of light.

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

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

³⁰For we know Him who said, “Vengeance is Mine; I will repay,” and again, “The Lord will judge His people.”

¹⁰I, the Lord, search the heart; I examine the mind to reward a man according to his way, by what his deeds deserve.

⁶I trampled the nations in My anger; in My wrath I made them drunk and poured out their blood on the ground.”

⁶God “will repay each one according to his deeds.”

²⁷For the Son of Man will come in His Father’s glory with His angels, and then He will repay each one according to what he has done.

²The Lord is a jealous and avenging God; the Lord is avenging and full of wrath. The Lord takes vengeance on His foes and reserves wrath for His enemies.

⁸Your hand will apprehend all Your enemies; Your right hand will seize those who hate You.

⁹You will place them in a fiery furnace at the time of Your appearing. In His wrath the Lord will engulf them, and the fire will consume them.

²⁷Then the sovereignty, dominion, and greatness of the kingdoms under all of heaven will be given to the people, the saints of the Most High. His kingdom will be an everlasting kingdom, and all rulers will serve and obey Him.’

³From where the sun rises to where it sets, the name of the Lord is praised.

⁶So he said to me, “This is the word of the Lord to Zerubbabel: Not by might nor by power, but by My Spirit, says the Lord of Hosts.

¹⁵Then from his mouth the serpent spewed water like a river to overtake the woman and sweep her away in the torrent.

¹⁶But the earth helped the woman and opened its mouth to swallow up the river that the dragon had poured from his mouth.

²⁷All the ends of the earth will remember and turn to the Lord. All the families of the nations will bow down before Him.

¹⁴They will make war against the Lamb, and the Lamb will triumph over them, because He is Lord of lords and King of kings; and He will be accompanied by His called and chosen and faithful ones.”

¹⁵Then the angel said to me, “The waters you saw, where the prostitute was seated, are peoples and multitudes and nations and tongues.

²⁶And so all Israel will be saved, as it is written: “The Deliverer will come from Zion; He will remove godlessness from Jacob.

²⁷And this is My covenant with them when I take away their sins.”

¹¹For the grace of God has appeared, bringing salvation to everyone.

¹²It instructs us to renounce ungodliness and worldly passions, and to live sensible, upright, and godly lives in the present age,

³⁰Therefore, O house of Israel, I will judge you, each according to his ways, declares the Lord God. Repent and turn from all your transgressions, so that your iniquity will not become your downfall.

³¹Cast away from yourselves all the transgressions you have committed, and fashion for yourselves a new heart and a new spirit. Why should you die, O house of Israel?

¹⁹Repent, then, and turn back, so that your sins may be wiped away,

¹⁴Pursue peace with everyone, as well as holiness, without which no one will see the Lord.

³²And everyone who calls on the name of the Lord will be saved; for on Mount Zion and in Jerusalem there will be deliverance, as the Lord has promised, among the remnant called by the Lord.

³¹Behold, the days are coming, declares the Lord, when I will make a new covenant with the house of Israel and with the house of Judah.

³²It will not be like the covenant I made with their fathers when I took them by the hand to lead them out of the land of Egypt—a covenant they broke, though I was a husband to them,” declares the Lord.

¹⁶“This is the covenant I will make with them after those days, declares the Lord. I will put My laws in their hearts and inscribe them on their minds.”

²⁵I will also sprinkle clean water on you, and you will be clean. I will cleanse you from all your impurities and all your idols.

²⁶I will give you a new heart and put a new spirit within you; I will remove your heart of stone and give you a heart of flesh.

³⁸They will be My people, and I will be their God.

³⁹I will give them one heart and one way, so that they will always fear Me for their own good and for the good of their children after them.

⁶Now, however, Jesus has received a much more excellent ministry, just as the covenant He mediates is better and is founded on better promises.

⁷For if that first covenant had been without fault, no place would have been sought for a second.

¹⁷Now the Lord is the Spirit, and where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is freedom.

¹⁸And we, who with unveiled faces all reflect the glory of the Lord, are being transformed into His image with intensifying glory, which comes from the Lord, who is the Spirit.