Against every high tower,
Against every fortified wall,

He dug it all around and cleared away its stones,
And planted it with the choicest vine (the people of Judah).
And He built a tower in the center of it;
And also hewed out a wine vat in it.
Then He expected it to produce [the choicest] grapes,
But it produced only worthless ones.

Woe (judgment is coming) to those who drag along wickedness with cords of falsehood,
And sin as if with cart ropes [towing their own punishment];

Who say, “Let Him move speedily, let Him expedite His work [His promised vengeance], so that we may see it;
And let the purpose of the Holy One of Israel approach
And come to pass, so that we may know it!”

“And though a tenth [of the people] remain in the land,
It will again be subject to destruction [consumed and burned],
Like a massive terebinth tree or like an oak
Whose stump remains when it is chopped down.
The holy seed [the elect remnant] is its stump [the substance of Israel].”

Therefore with joy you will draw water
From the springs of salvation.

“Yet gleanings will be left in the land [of Israel] like the shaking of the olive tree,
Two or three olives on the topmost branch,
Four or five on the [outermost] branches of the fruitful tree,”
Declares the Lord, the God of Israel.

The [mournful, inspired] oracle (a burden to be carried) concerning Tyre:

Wail, O ships of Tarshish,
For Tyre is destroyed, without house, without harbor;
It is reported to them from the land of Cyprus (Kittim).

And they were on great waters.
The grain of the Shihor, the harvest of the Nile River, was Tyre’s revenue;
And she was the market of nations.

Be ashamed, O Sidon [mother-city of Tyre, now like a widow bereaved of her children];
For the sea speaks, the stronghold of the sea, saying,
“I have neither labored nor given birth [to children];
I have neither brought up young men nor reared virgins.”

When the report reaches Egypt,
They will be in agony at the report about Tyre.

Cross over to Tarshish [to seek safety as exiles];
Wail, O inhabitants of the coastland [of Tyre].

Who has planned this against Tyre, the bestower of crowns,
Whose merchants were princes, whose traders were the honored of the earth?

Overflow your land like [the overflow of] the Nile, O Daughter of Tarshish;
There is no more restraint [on you to make you pay tribute to Tyre].

He has stretched out His hand over the sea,
He has shaken the kingdoms;
The Lord has given a command concerning Canaan to destroy her strongholds and her fortresses [like Tyre and Sidon].

Now look at the land of the Chaldeans (Babylonia)—this is the people which was not; the Assyrians allocated Tyre for desert creatures—they set up their siege towers, they stripped its palaces, they made it a ruin.

Wail, O ships of Tarshish,
For your stronghold [of Tyre] is destroyed.

Now in that day Tyre will be forgotten for seventy years, like the days of one king. At the end of seventy years it will happen to Tyre as in the prostitute’s song:

It will come to pass at the end of seventy years that the Lord will remember Tyre. Then she will return to her prostitute’s wages and will play the [role of a] prostitute [by trading] with all the kingdoms on the face of the earth.

But her commercial gain and her prostitute’s wages will be dedicated to the Lord; it will not be treasured or stored up, but her commercial gain will become sufficient food and stately clothing for those who dwell (minister) in the presence of the Lord.

For so it will be in the midst of the earth among the peoples,
As the shaking of an olive tree,
As the gleanings when the grape harvest is over [and only a little of the fruit remains].

In the generations to come Jacob will take root;
Israel will blossom and sprout,
And they will fill the surface of the world with fruit.

He who said to them, “This is the place of quiet, give rest to the weary,”
And, “This is the resting place,” yet they would not listen.

Then the Lord said,

“Because this nation approaches [Me only] with their words
And honors Me [only] with their lip service,
But they remove their hearts far from Me,
And their reverence for Me is a tradition that is learned by rote [without any regard for its meaning],

“Get out of the [true] way, turn aside from the path [of God],
Stop bothering us with the Holy One of Israel.”

All the host of heaven will be dissolved,
And the skies will be rolled up like a scroll;
All their hosts [the stars and the planets] will also wither away
As a leaf withers from the vine,
And as a fig withers from the fig tree.

Do not listen to Hezekiah,’ for this is what the king of Assyria says, ‘Make peace with me and come out to me, and each one of you will eat from his own vine and each from his own fig tree and each [one of you] drink from the water of his own cistern,

It is true, O Lord, that the kings of Assyria have laid waste all the countries and their lands,

He who is too impoverished for such an offering [to give to his god]
Chooses a tree that will not rot;
He seeks out for himself a skillful craftsman
To [carve and] set up an idol that will not totter.

The islands and coastlands have seen and they fear;
The ends of the earth tremble;
They have drawn near and have come.

“I will put the cedar in the wilderness,
The acacia, the myrtle and the olive tree;
I will place the juniper in the desert
Together with the box tree and the cypress,

You have seen many things, but you do not observe them;
Your ears are open, but no one hears.

He cuts cedars for himself, and takes a cypress or an oak and lets it grow strong for himself among the trees of the forest. He plants a fir, and the rain nourishes it.

No one remembers, nor has knowledge and understanding [enough] to say [to himself], “I have burned half of this log in the fire, and also baked bread on its coals and have roasted meat and eaten it. Then I make the rest of it into an repulsive thing [to God]; I bow down [to worship] before a block of wood!”

Shout for joy, O heavens, for the Lord has done it!
Shout in triumph, you depths of the earth;
Break forth into jubilant rejoicing, you mountains,
O forest, and every tree in it!
For the Lord has redeemed Jacob,
And He shows His glory in Israel.

“Assemble yourselves and come;
Come together, you survivors of the nations!
They are ignorant,
Who carry around their wooden idols [in religious processions or into battle]
And keep on praying to a god that cannot save them.

“Instead of the thorn bush the cypress tree will grow,
And instead of the nettle the myrtle tree will grow;
And it will be a memorial to the Lord,
For an everlasting sign [of His mercy] which will not be cut off.”

Do not let the foreigner who has joined himself to the Lord say,
“The Lord will most certainly separate me from His people.”
And do not let the eunuch say, “Look, I am a dry tree.”

Who inflame yourselves [with lust in pagan rites] among the oaks (terebinth trees),
Under every green and leafy tree,
Who slaughter the children [in sacrifice] in the ravines
Under the clefts of the rocks?

“Behind the door and the doorpost
You have set up your [pagan] symbol;
Indeed, far removed from Me, you have uncovered yourself,
And have gone up and made your bed wide.
And you have made a [new] agreement for yourself with the adulterers,
You have loved their bed,
You have looked [with passion] on their manhood.

“You were wearied by the length of your road,
Yet you did not say, ‘It is no use.’
You found renewed strength,
Therefore you did not grow weak.

“Yet they seek Me day by day and delight [superficially] to know My ways,
As [if they were in reality] a nation that has done righteousness
And has not abandoned (turned away from) the ordinance of their God.
They ask of Me righteous judgments,
They delight in the nearness of God.

“Is a fast such as this what I have chosen, a day for a man to humble himself [with sorrow in his soul]?
Is it only to bow down his head like a reed
And to make sackcloth and ashes as a bed [pretending to have a repentant heart]?
Do you call this a fast and a day pleasing to the Lord?

“As for Me, this is My covenant with them,” says the Lord: “My Spirit which is upon you [writing the law of God on the heart], and My words which I have put in your mouth shall not depart from your mouth, nor from the mouths of your [true, spiritual] children, nor from the mouth of your children’s children,” says the Lord, “from now and forever.”

“They will not build and another occupy;
They will not plant and another eat [the fruit].
For as the lifetime of a tree, so will be the days of My people,
And My chosen [people] will fully enjoy [and long make use of] the work of their hands.

I will set up a [miraculous] sign among them, and from them I will send survivors to the nations: Tarshish, Pul (Put), Lud, Meshech, Tubal and Javan, to the distant islands and coastlands that have not heard of My fame nor seen My glory. And they will declare and proclaim My glory among the nations.