Now the Egyptians are men, and not God, and their horses flesh, and not spirit. And as soon as the LORD stretcheth out his hand: then shall the helper fall, and he that should have been helped, and they shall all together be destroyed.

Return ye unto him against whom the sons of Israel have deeply revolted,

For in that day they shall cast away every man his idols of silver, and his idols of gold, which your own hands have made unto you for a sin.

And to his rock from fear he passeth on, And affrighted by the ensign have been his princes -- an affirmation of Jehovah, Who hath a light in Zion, And who hath a furnace in Jerusalem!

And the eyes of those who see will not be shut, and those who have hearing will give ear to the word.

The heart (mind) of those who act impulsively will discern the truth,
And the tongue of the stammerers will hurry to speak clearly.

Give ear to my voice, you women who are living in comfort; give attention to my words, you daughters who have no fear of danger.

Be shaking with fear, you women who are living in comfort; be troubled, you who have no fear of danger: take off your robes and put on clothing of grief.

Have sorrow for the fields, the pleasing fields, the fertile vine;

For the fair houses will have no man living in them; the town which was full of noise will become a waste; the hill and the watchtower will be unpeopled for ever, a joy for the asses of the woods, a place of food for the flocks;

Then in the waste land there will be an upright rule, and righteousness will have its place in the fertile field.

Ho! you who make waste those who did not make you waste; acting falsely to those who were not false to you. When you have come to an end of wasting, you will be made waste, and after your false acts, they will do the same to you.

O Yahweh! shew us favour, - For thee, have we waited, - Be thou their arm every morning, Yea our salvation in the time of distress.

At the loud noise the peoples have gone in flight; at your coming up the nations have gone in all directions.

Your plunder is gathered as when grasshoppers gather; just like locusts pounce, people have pounced on it.

And she will have no more fear of change, being full of salvation, wisdom, and knowledge: the fear of the Lord is her wealth.

Lo! their heroes, have cried out openly, - the messengers of peace, in bitterness, continue weeping they say :

The highways are deserted; travelers have quit the road. The enemy has broken treaties; he despises their witnesses, and respects no one.

“You have conceived chaff, you will give birth to stubble;
My breath will consume you like a fire.

And peoples have been as burnings of lime, Thorns, as sweepings, with fire they burn.

Hear - ye that are far off. what I have done, And know - ye that are near my might:

Afraid in Zion have been sinners, Seized hath trembling the profane: Who doth dwell for us -- consuming fire, Who doth dwell for us -- burnings of the age?

He whose ways are true, and whose words are upright; he who gives no thought to the profits of false acts, whose hands have not taken rewards, who will have no part in putting men to death, and whose eyes are shut against evil;

He, the heights, shall inhabit, A stronghold of crags, shall be his refuge, - His bread, hath been delivered, His waters, have been made sure,

Of a king, in his beauty, shall thine eyes have vision: They shall see a land that stretcheth afar.

There shalt thou not see a people of a strange tongue to have so diffused a language, that it may not be understood: neither so strange a speech but it shall be perceived.

Loosed are thy ropes, - They cannot strengthen the socket of their mast They have not unfurled a sail Now, can be apportioned spoil, in abundance, The lame, have captured prey!

Neither shall the inhabitant say. I am sick, - the people who dwell therein, have been forgiven iniquity.

And their wounded are cast out, And their carcases cause their stench to ascend, And melted have been mountains from their blood.

And consumed have been all the host of the heavens, And rolled together as a book have been the heavens, And all their hosts do fade, As the fading of a leaf of a vine, And as the fading one of a fig-tree.

For my sword hath been sated in the heavens, - Lo! upon Edom, shall it descend, Even on the people whom I have devoted to justice.

And come down have reems with them, And bullocks with bulls, And soaked hath been their land from blood, And their dust from fatness is made fat.

And turned have been her streams to pitch, And her dust to brimstone, And her land hath become burning pitch.

But the birds of the waste land will have their place there; it will be a heritage for the bittern and the raven: and it will be measured out with line and weight as a waste land.

The jackals will be there, and her great ones will be gone; they will say, There is no longer a kingdom there, and all her chiefs will have come to an end.

Thorns shall grow in their palaces, nettles and thistles in their strongholds; that the dragons may have their pleasure therein, and that they may be a court for Ostriches.

There shall strange visures and monstrous beasts meet one another, and the wild keep company together. There shall the llama lie, and have her lodging.

There made her nest hath the bittern, Yea, she layeth, and hath hatched, And hath gathered under her shadow, Only there gathered have been vultures, Each with its companion.

Search ye in the book of Jehovah and read: not one of these shall fail, one shall not have to seek for the other; for my mouth, it hath commanded, and his Spirit, it hath gathered them.

The waste land and the dry places will be glad; the lowland will have joy and be full of flowers.

Strengthen the hands that have gone limp, steady the knees that shake!

Tell those who have a fearful heart, "Be strong. Don't be afraid. Behold, your God will come with vengeance, God's retribution. He will come and save you.

Then, shall leap as a hart the lame, Then shall shout the tongue of the dumb, For, there have broken forth - In the desert - waters, And streams, in the waste plain:

No lion is there, yea, a destructive beast Ascendeth it not, it is not found there, And walked have the redeemed,

And the redeemed of the LORD shall convert, and come to Zion with thanksgiving. Everlasting joy shall they have, pleasure and gladness shall be among them. And as for all sorrow and heaviness, it shall vanish away.

Then Rabshakeh said to them, “Say now to Hezekiah, ‘Thus says the great king, the king of Assyria, “What is this confidence that you have?

I have said sayest thou - they are only words of the lips - Counsel and might have I for the war, - Now, upon whom dost thou trust, that thou hast rebelled against me?

'And dost thou say unto me, Unto Jehovah our God we have trusted? is it not He, whose high places and whose altars Hezekiah hath turned aside, and saith to Judah and to Jerusalem, Before this altar ye do bow yourselves?

How then may you put to shame the least of my master's servants? and you have put your hope in Egypt for war-carriages and horsemen:

But, now, is it, without Yahweh, that I have come up against this land to destroy it? Yahweh himself, said unto me, Go thou up against this land and destroy it!

But the field commander asked, "Was it only to all of you and to your master that my master sent me to speak these things? Wasn't it also to the men sitting on the wall who, like you, will have to eat their own excrement and drink their own urine?"

till my coming in, and I have taken you unto a land like your own land, a land of corn and wine, a land of bread and vineyards;

Lest Hezekiah, persuade you, saying, Yahweh will deliver us! Have the gods of the nations, delivered, - any one of them - his country, out of the hand of the king of Assyria?

Where are the gods of Hamath and of Arpad? where are the gods of Sepharvaim? and have they delivered Samaria out of my hand?

Who are they, among all the gods of these countries that have delivered their country out of my hand? That, Yahweh, should deliver, Jerusalem, out of my hand!

And they keep silent, and have not answered him a word, for a command of the king is, saying, 'Do not answer him.'

They said to him, “Thus says Hezekiah, ‘This day is a day of distress, rebuke and rejection; for children have come to birth, and there is no strength to deliver.

And Isaiah said unto them, Thus, shall ye, surely say, unto your lord, - Thus, saith Yahweh - Be not thou afraid because of the words which thou hast heard, wherewith the servants of the king of Assyria have reviled, Me.

See, I will put a spirit into him, and bad news will come to his ears, and he will go back to his land; and there I will have him put to death.

Lo! thou, thyself, hast heard what the kings of Assyria have done to all the lands in devoting them to destruction, - and shalt, thou, be delivered?

Have the gods of the nations which my fathers have destroyed delivered them, Gozan, and Haran, and Rezeph, and the children of Eden that were in Thelassar?

O Lord of armies, the God of Israel, seated between the winged ones, you only are the God of all the kingdoms of the earth; you have made heaven and earth.

who hath sent - to reproach a Living God. Of a truth, O Yahweh, - the kings of Assyria have devoted to destruction all the countries, and their land;

and have put their gods in the fire, - for, no-gods, were they, but the work of the hands of men wood and stone and so they destroyed them.

Then Isaiah, the son of Amoz, sent to Hezekiah, saying, The Lord, the God of Israel, says, The prayer you have made to me against Sennacherib, king of Assyria, has come to my ears.

Against whom have you said evil and bitter things? and against whom has your voice been loud and your eyes lifted up? even against the Holy One of Israel.

Through thy servants, thou hast reproached My Lord and hast said, - With my multitude of chariots, have I ascended The height of the mountains The recesses of Lebanon, That I may cut down Its tallest cedars Its choicest firs, That I may enter Its highest summit, Its thick garden forest:

I, have digged, and drunk waters, - That I may dry up, with the soles of my feet, all the Nile-streams of Egypt.

Hast thou not heard - That, long ago, that, is what I appointed, And from days of old, devised? Now, have I brought it to pass, That thou mightest Serve to lay waste, in desolate ruins, fortified cities;

And their inhabitants are feeble-handed, They were broken down, and are dried up. They have been the herb of the field, And the greenness of the tender grass, Grass of the roofs, And blasted corn, before it hath risen up.

But I have knowledge of your getting up and your resting, of your going out and your coming in.

Because, thy raging against me, and thy contempt, have come up into mine ears, Therefore will I put My ring in thy nose, and My bit in thy lips, And will turn thee back, by the way by which thou earnest.

"This will be your reminder that I have spoken the truth: This year you will eat what grows wild, and next year what grows on its own. But the year after that you will plant seed and harvest crops; you will plant vines and consume their produce.

Then the ones belonging to the house of Judah who have escaped will gather, and those who are found will take root downward and bear fruit upward.

For from Jerusalem those who have been kept safe will go out, and those who are still living will go out of Mount Zion: by the fixed purpose of the Lord of armies this will be done.

And I have covered over this city, To save it, for Mine own sake, And for the sake of David My servant.'

And it cometh to pass, he is bowing himself in the house of Nisroch his god, and Adrammelech and Sharezer his sons have smitten him with the sword, and they have escaped to the land of Ararat, and Esar-Haddon his son reigneth in his stead.

and said, - I beseech thee, O Yahweh, remember, I pray thee, how I have walked before thee in faithfulness and with an undivided heart, and, that which is good in thine eyes, have I done. And Hezekiah wept aloud.

Go, and say unto Hezekiah - Thus, saith Yahweh, the God of David thy father: I have heard thy prayer, I have seen thy tears, - Behold me! about to add unto thy days, fifteen years;

and out of the hand of the king of Asshur I deliver thee and this city, and have covered over this city.

"I thought I should have gone to the gates of hell in my best age, and have wanted the residue of my years.

My dwelling, hath been broken up. And is stripped from me, like a shepherds tent, - I have roiled up - as a weaver - my life From the loom, doth he cut me off, From day until night, I said - Thou wilt finish me.

I thought I would have lived unto the morrow, but he bruised my bones like a lion, and made an end of me in one day.

As a crane -- a swallow -- so I chatter, I mourn as a dove, Drawn up have been mine eyes on high, O Jehovah, oppression is on me, be my surety.

"My Lord is against them, yet they live, and among all of them who live is his spirit. Now you have restored me to health, so let me live!

See, in place of peace my soul had bitter sorrow. but you have kept back my soul from the underworld; for you have put all my sins out of your memory.

Then Isaiah the prophet came to King Hezekiah and said to him, “What did these men say, and from where have they come to you?” And Hezekiah said, “They have come to me from a far country, from Babylon.”

And he said, What have they seen in thy house? Then said Hezekiah, - All that is in my house, have they seen, there is nothing which I shewed them not among my treasures.

Lo! days are coming, when all that is in thy house, and that which thy fathers have treasured up until this day, shall be carried away unto Babylon, - nothing, shall be left, Saith Yahweh.

and of thy sons who come forth from thee, whom thou begettest, they take, and they have been eunuchs in a palace of the king of Babylon.'

Then said Hezekiah to Isaiah, Good is the word of the Lord which you have said. And he said in his heart, There will be peace and quiet in my days.

And revealed hath been the honour of Jehovah, And seen it have all flesh together, For the mouth of Jehovah hath spoken.

He will feed his flock like a shepherd, he will gather the lambs in his arm, and carry them in his bosom, and will gently lead those that have their young.

In the hollow of whose hand have the waters been measured? and who is able to take the heavens in his stretched-out fingers? who has got together the dust of the earth in a measure? who has taken the weight of the mountains, or put the hills into the scales?

Lo, nations as a drop from a bucket, And as small dust of the balance, have been reckoned, Lo, isles as a small thing He taketh up.

All the nations are as nothing before Him, Less than nothing and emptiness, They have been reckoned to Him.

Moreover, shall the image maker, that the poor man which is disposed may have something to set up also, seek out and choose a tree, that is not rotten, and carve thereout an image, that moveth not?

Have ye never taken note? Have ye never heard? Hath it not from the beginning, been told you? Have ye not been led to discern, from the foundations of the earth?

Scarcely have they been planted, Scarcely have they been sown, Scarcely hath their stock, begun to take root in the earth, When he hath just blown upon them and they have withered, And, a whirlwind, as though they haft been chaff, carrieth them away.

Have you no knowledge of it? has it not come to your ears? The eternal God, the Lord, the Maker of the ends of the earth, is never feeble or tired; there is no searching out of his wisdom.