Isaiah 29:1-16 - Woe To Jerusalem

1 Woe to Ariel, Ariel,
the city where David camped!
Continue year after year;
let the festivals recur.
2 I will oppress Ariel,
and there will be mourning and crying,
and she will be to Me like an Ariel.
3 I will camp in a circle around you;
I will besiege you with earth ramps,
and I will set up my siege towers against you.
4 You will be brought down;
you will speak from the ground,
and your words will come from low in the dust.
Your voice will be like that of a spirit from the ground;
your speech will whisper from the dust.

5 Your many foes will be like fine dust,
and many of the ruthless, like blowing chaff.
Then suddenly, in an instant,
6 you will be visited by the Lord of Hosts
with thunder, earthquake, and loud noise,
storm, tempest, and a flame of consuming fire.
7 All the many nations
going out to battle against Ariel—
all the attackers, the siege works against her,
and those who oppress her—
will then be like a dream, a vision in the night.
8 It will be like a hungry one who dreams he is eating,
then wakes and is still hungry;
and like a thirsty one who dreams he is drinking,
then wakes and is still thirsty, longing for water.
So it will be for all the many nations
who go to battle against Mount Zion.

9 Stop and be astonished;
blind yourselves and be blind!
They are drunk, but not with wine;
they stagger, but not with beer.
10 For the Lord has poured out on you
an overwhelming urge to sleep;
He has shut your eyes—the prophets,
and covered your heads—the seers.

11 For you the entire vision will be like the words of a sealed document. If it is given to one who can read and he is asked to read it, he will say, “I can’t read it, because it is sealed.” 12 And if the document is given to one who cannot read and he is asked to read it, he will say, “I can’t read.”

13 The Lord said:

Because these people approach Me with their mouths
to honor Me with lip-service
yet their hearts are far from Me,
and their worship consists of man-made rules
learned by rote—
14 therefore I will again confound these people
with wonder after wonder.
The wisdom of their wise men will vanish,
and the understanding of the perceptive will be hidden.

15 Woe to those who go to great lengths
to hide their plans from the Lord.
They do their works in darkness,
and say, “Who sees us? Who knows us?”
16 You have turned things around,
as if the potter were the same as the clay.
How can what is made say about its maker,
“He didn’t make me”?
How can what is formed
say about the one who formed it,
“He doesn’t understand what he’s doing”?


Holman Christian Standard Bible®, Copyright © 1999, 2000, 2002, 2003, 2009 by Holman Bible Publishers.