A road will be there and a way;
it will be called the Holy Way.
The unclean will not travel on it,
but it will be for the one who walks the path.
Even the fool will not go astray.

There will be no lion there,
and no vicious beast will go up on it;
they will not be found there.
But the redeemed will walk on it,

They said to him, “This is what Hezekiah says: ‘Today is a day of distress, rebuke, and disgrace, for children have come to the point of birth, and there is no strength to deliver them.

“Therefore, this is what the Lord says about the king of Assyria:

He will not enter this city
or shoot an arrow there
or come before it with a shield
or build up an assault ramp against it.

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

Hezekiah was pleased with them, and showed them his treasure house—the silver, the gold, the spices, and the precious oil—and all his armory, and everything that was found in his treasuries. There was nothing in his palace and in all his realm that Hezekiah did not show them.

Isaiah asked, “What have they seen in your palace?”

Hezekiah answered, “They have seen everything in my palace. There isn’t anything in my treasuries that I didn’t show them.”

Then Hezekiah said to Isaiah, “The word of the Lord that you have spoken is good,” for he thought: There will be peace and security during my lifetime.

Do you not know?
Have you not heard?
Yahweh is the everlasting God,
the Creator of the whole earth.
He never grows faint or weary;
there is no limit to His understanding.

The poor and the needy seek water, but there is none;
their tongues are parched with thirst.
I, Yahweh, will answer them;
I, the God of Israel, will not forsake them.

When I look, there is no one;
there is no counselor among them;
when I ask them, they have nothing to say.

“You are My witnesses”—
this is the Lord’s declaration—
“and My servant whom I have chosen,
so that you may know and believe Me
and understand that I am He.
No god was formed before Me,
and there will be none after Me.

I, I am Yahweh,
and there is no other Savior but Me.

This is what the Lord, the King of Israel and its Redeemer, the Lord of Hosts, says:

I am the first and I am the last.
There is no God but Me.

Do not be startled or afraid.
Have I not told you and declared it long ago?
You are my witnesses!
Is there any God but Me?
There is no other Rock; I do not know any.

He feeds on ashes.
His deceived mind has led him astray,
and he cannot deliver himself,
or say, “Isn’t there a lie in my right hand?”

I am Yahweh, and there is no other;
there is no God but Me.
I will strengthen you,
though you do not know Me,

so that all may know from the rising of the sun to its setting
that there is no one but Me.
I am Yahweh, and there is no other.

This is what the Lord says:

The products of Egypt and the merchandise of Cush
and the Sabeans, men of stature,
will come over to you
and will be yours;
they will follow you,
they will come over in chains
and bow down to you.
They will confess to you:
God is indeed with you, and there is no other;
there is no other God.

For this is what the Lord says—
God is the Creator of the heavens.
He formed the earth and made it.
He established it;
He did not create it to be empty,
but formed it to be inhabited—
“I am Yahweh,
and there is no other.

Speak up and present your case—
yes, let them take counsel together.
Who predicted this long ago?
Who announced it from ancient times?
Was it not I, Yahweh?
There is no other God but Me,
a righteous God and Savior;
there is no one except Me.

Turn to Me and be saved,
all the ends of the earth.
For I am God,
and there is no other.

They lift it to their shoulder and bear it along;
they set it in its place, and there it stands;
it does not budge from its place.
They cry out to it but it doesn’t answer;
it saves no one from his trouble.

Remember what happened long ago,
for I am God, and there is no other;
I am God, and no one is like Me.

Approach Me and listen to this.
From the beginning I have not spoken in secret;
from the time anything existed, I was there.”
And now the Lord God
has sent me and His Spirit.

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

Why was no one there when I came?
Why was there no one to answer when I called?
Is My hand too short to redeem?
Or do I have no power to deliver?
Look, I dry up the sea by My rebuke;
I turn the rivers into a wilderness;
their fish rot because of lack of water
and die of thirst.

There is no one to guide her
among all the children she has raised;
there is no one to take hold of her hand
among all the offspring she has brought up.

For this is what the Lord God says:
“At first My people went down to Egypt to live there,
then Assyria oppressed them without cause.

Leave, leave, go out from there!
Do not touch anything unclean;
go out from her, purify yourselves,
you who carry the vessels of the Lord.

For just as rain and snow fall from heaven
and do not return there
without saturating the earth
and making it germinate and sprout,
and providing seed to sow
and food to eat,

You have placed your bed
on a high and lofty mountain;
you also went up there to offer sacrifice.

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

They have not known the path of peace,
and there is no justice in their ways.
They have made their roads crooked;
no one who walks on them will know peace.

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

We all growl like bears
and moan like doves.
We hope for justice, but there is none;
for salvation, but it is far from us.

Truth is missing,
and whoever turns from evil is plundered.

The Lord saw that there was no justice,
and He was offended.

He saw that there was no man—
He was amazed that there was no one interceding;
so His own arm brought salvation,
and His own righteousness supported Him.

I looked, but there was no one to help,
and I was amazed that no one assisted;
so My arm accomplished victory for Me,
and My wrath assisted Me.

The Lord says this:

As the new wine is found in a bunch of grapes,
and one says, ‘Don’t destroy it,
for there’s some good in it,’
so I will act because of My servants
and not destroy them all.

I will produce descendants from Jacob,
and heirs to My mountains from Judah;
My chosen ones will possess it,
and My servants will dwell there.

Cross over to Cyprus and take a look.
Send someone to Kedar and consider carefully;
see if there has ever been anything like this:

This is why the showers haven’t come—
why there has been no spring rain.
You have the brazen look of a prostitute
and refuse to be ashamed.

In the days of King Josiah the Lord asked me, “Have you seen what unfaithful Israel has done? She has ascended every high hill and gone under every green tree to prostitute herself there.

For this is what the Lord of Hosts says:

Cut down the trees;
raise a siege ramp against Jerusalem.
This city must be punished.
There is nothing but oppression within her.

They have treated My people’s brokenness superficially,
claiming, “Peace, peace,”
when there is no peace.

“Stand in the gate of the house of the Lord and there call out this word: Hear the word of the Lord, all you people of Judah who enter through these gates to worship the Lord.

“Therefore, take note! Days are coming”—the Lord’s declaration—“when this place will no longer be called Topheth and the Valley of Hinnom, but the Valley of Slaughter. Topheth will become a cemetery, because there will be no other burial place.

They have treated superficially the brokenness
of My dear people,
claiming, ‘Peace, peace,’
when there is no peace.

I will gather them and bring them to an end.
This is the Lord’s declaration.
There will be no grapes on the vine,
no figs on the fig tree,
and even the leaf will wither.
Whatever I have given them will be lost to them.

Why are we just sitting here?
Gather together; let us enter the fortified cities
and perish there,
for the Lord our God has destroyed us.
He has given us poisoned water to drink,
because we have sinned against the Lord.

We hoped for peace, but there was nothing good;
for a time of healing, but there was only terror.

Is there no balm in Gilead?
Is there no physician there?
So why has the healing of my dear people
not come about?

>

Yahweh, there is no one like You.
You are great;
Your name is great in power.

Who should not fear You,
King of the nations?
It is what You deserve.
For among all the wise people of the nations
and among all their kingdoms,
there is no one like You.

Everyone is stupid and ignorant.
Every goldsmith is put to shame
by his carved image,
for his cast images are a lie;
there is no breath in them.

A long time later the Lord said to me, “Go at once to the Euphrates and get the underwear that I commanded you to hide there.”

Even the doe in the field
gives birth and abandons her fawn
since there is no grass.

Wild donkeys stand on the barren heights
panting for air like jackals.
Their eyes fail
because there are no green plants.

“Therefore, this is what the Lord says concerning the prophets who prophesy in My name, though I did not send them, and who say, ‘There will never be sword or famine in this land.’ By sword and famine these prophets will meet their end.

The people they are prophesying to will be thrown into the streets of Jerusalem because of the famine and the sword. There will be no one to bury them—they, their wives, their sons, and their daughters. I will pour out their own evil on them.”

Have You completely rejected Judah?
Do You detest Zion?
Why do You strike us
with no hope of healing for us?
We hoped for peace,
but there was nothing good;
for a time of healing,
but there was only terror.

So I will hurl you from this land into a land that you and your fathers are not familiar with. There you will worship other gods both day and night, for I will not grant you grace.

“Go down at once to the potter’s house; there I will reveal My words to you.”

So I went down to the potter’s house, and there he was, working away at the wheel.

and go out to the Valley of Hinnom near the entrance of the Potsherd Gate. Proclaim there the words I speak to you.

and you are to proclaim to them: This is what the Lord of Hosts says: I will shatter these people and this city, like one shatters a potter’s jar that can never again be mended. They will bury the dead in Topheth because there is no other place for burials.

As for you, Pashhur, and all who live in your house, you will go into captivity. You will go to Babylon. There you will die, and there you will be buried, you and all your friends that you prophesied falsely to.’”

This is what the Lord says: “Go down to the palace of the king of Judah and announce this word there.

I will hurl you and the mother who gave birth to you into another land, where neither of you were born, and there you will both die.

Therefore, their way will be to them
like slippery paths in the gloom.
They will be driven away and fall down there,
for I will bring disaster on them,
the year of their punishment.
This is the Lord’s declaration.

“This is what the Lord says: Stand in the courtyard of the Lord’s temple and speak all the words I have commanded you to speak to all Judah’s cities that are coming to worship there. Do not hold back a word.

‘They will be brought to Babylon and will remain there until I attend to them again.’ This is the Lord’s declaration. ‘Then I will bring them up and restore them to this place.’”

Take wives and have sons and daughters. Take wives for your sons and give your daughters to men in marriage so that they may bear sons and daughters. Multiply there; do not decrease.

this is what the Lord says: I am about to punish Shemaiah the Nehelamite and his descendants. There will not be even one of his descendants living among these people, nor will any ever see the good that I will bring to My people”—this is the Lord’s declaration—“for he has preached rebellion against the Lord.”

Yes, this is what the Lord says:

We have heard a cry of terror,
of dread—there is no peace.

How awful that day will be!
There will be none like it!
It will be a time of trouble for Jacob,
but he will be delivered out of it.

For there will be a day when watchmen will call out
in the hill country of Ephraim,
“Get up, let’s go up to Zion,
to Yahweh our God!”

There is hope for your future—
this is the Lord’s declaration—
and your children will return to their own territory.

How long will you turn here and there,
faithless daughter?
For the Lord creates something new in the land—
a female will shelter a man.

“This is what the Lord says: In this place, which you say is a ruin, without man or beast—that is, in Judah’s cities and Jerusalem’s streets that are a desolation without man, without inhabitant, and without beast—there will be heard again

“This is what the Lord of Hosts says: In this desolate place—without man or beast—and in all its cities there will once more be a grazing land where shepherds may rest flocks.

you will die peacefully. There will be a burning ceremony for you just like the burning ceremonies for your fathers, the former kings who preceded you. ‘Our king is dead!’ will be the lament for you, for I have spoken this word.” This is the Lord’s declaration.

he went down to the scribe’s chamber in the king’s palace. All the officials were sitting there—Elishama the scribe, Delaiah son of Shemaiah, Elnathan son of Achbor, Gemariah son of Shaphan, Zedekiah son of Hananiah, and all the other officials.

Indeed, if you were to strike down the entire Chaldean army that is fighting with you, and there remained among them only the badly wounded men, each in his tent, they would get up and burn this city down.”

Jeremiah started to leave Jerusalem to go to the land of Benjamin to claim his portion there among the people.

But when he was at the Benjamin Gate, an officer of the guard was there, whose name was Irijah son of Shelemiah, son of Hananiah, and he apprehended Jeremiah the prophet, saying, “You are deserting to the Chaldeans.”

So Jeremiah went into a cell in the dungeon and stayed there many days.

King Zedekiah later sent for him and received him, and in his house privately asked him, “Is there a word from the Lord?”

“There is,” Jeremiah responded, and he continued, “You will be handed over to the king of Babylon.”

So now please listen, my lord the king. May my petition come before you. Don’t send me back to the house of Jonathan the scribe, or I will die there.”

So they took Jeremiah and dropped him into the cistern of Malchiah the king’s son, which was in the guard’s courtyard, lowering Jeremiah with ropes. There was no water in the cistern, only mud, and Jeremiah sank in the mud.

“My lord the king, these men have been evil in all they have done to Jeremiah the prophet. They have dropped him into the cistern where he will die from hunger, because there is no more bread in the city.”

So Ebed-melech took the men under his authority and went to the king’s palace to a place below the storehouse. From there he took old rags and worn-out clothes and lowered them by ropes to Jeremiah in the cistern.

then you will tell them, ‘I was bringing before the king my petition that he not return me to the house of Jonathan to die there.’”

Jeremiah remained in the guard’s courtyard until the day Jerusalem was captured, and he was there when it happened.

However, the Chaldean army pursued them and overtook Zedekiah in the plains of Jericho, arrested him, and brought him to Nebuchadnezzar, Babylon’s king, at Riblah in the land of Hamath. The king passed sentence on him there.

Now pay attention: Today I am setting you free from the chains that were on your hands. If it pleases you to come with me to Babylon, come, and I will take care of you. But if it seems wrong to you to come with me to Babylon, go no farther. Look—the whole land is in front of you. Wherever it seems good and right for you to go, go there.”

In the seventh month, Ishmael son of Nethaniah, son of Elishama, of the royal family and one of the king’s chief officers, came with 10 men to Gedaliah son of Ahikam at Mizpah. They ate a meal together there in Mizpah,

Ishmael also struck down all the Judeans who were with Gedaliah at Mizpah, as well as the Chaldean soldiers who were there.

However, there were 10 men among them who said to Ishmael, “Don’t kill us, for we have hidden treasure in the field—wheat, barley, oil, and honey!” So he stopped and did not kill them along with their companions.