²¹ Produce your cause, saith Jehovah; bring forward your arguments, saith the King of Jacob. ²² Let them bring them forward, and declare to us what shall happen: shew the former things, what they are, that we may give attention to them, and know the end of them; or let us hear things to come: ²³ declare the things that are to happen hereafter, that we may know that ye are gods; yea, do good, or do evil, that we may be astonished, and behold it together. ²⁴ Behold, ye are less than nothing, and your work is of nought; an abomination is he that chooseth you. ...

²⁵ I have raised up one from the north, and he shall come, from the rising of the sun, he who will call upon my name; and he shall come upon princes as on mortar, and as the potter treadeth clay. ²⁶ Who hath declared it from the beginning, that we may know? and beforetime, that we may say, It is right? Indeed, there is none that declareth; no, none that sheweth; no, none that heareth your words. ²⁷ The first, I said to Zion, Behold, behold them! and to Jerusalem, I will give one that bringeth glad tidings. ²⁸ And I beheld, and there was no man; even among them, and there was no counsellor, that, when I asked of them, could answer a word. ²⁹ Behold, they are all vanity, their works are nought, their molten images are wind and emptiness.