And the work of righteousness will be peace; and the effect of an upright rule will be to take away fear for ever.

And my people will be living in peace, in houses where there is no fear, and in quiet resting-places.

But the tall trees will come down with a great fall, and the town will be low in a low place.

Happy are you who are planting seed by all the waters, and sending out the ox and the ass.

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 Lord, have mercy on us; for we have been waiting for your help: be our strength every morning, our salvation in time of trouble.

And the goods taken in war will be got together like the massing of young locusts; men will be rushing on them like the rushing of locusts.

Now will I come forward, says the Lord; now will I be lifted up; now will my power be seen.

Your designs will be without profit, and their effect will be nothing: you will be burned up by the fire of my breath.

And the peoples will be like the burning of chalk: as thorns cut down, which are burned in the fire.

He will have a place on high: he will be safely shut in by the high rocks: his bread will be given to him; his waters will be certain.

Your eyes will see the king in his glory: they will be looking on a far-stretching land.

Your heart will give thought to the cause of your fear: where is the scribe, where is he who made a record of the payments, where is he by whom the towers were numbered?

Let your eyes be resting on Zion, the town of our holy feasts: you will see Jerusalem, a quiet resting-place, a tent which will not be moved, whose tent-pins will never be pulled up, and whose cords will never be broken.

But there the Lord will be with us in his glory, ... wide rivers and streams; where no boat will go with blades, and no fair ship will be sailing.

For the Lord is our judge, the Lord is our law-giver, the Lord is our king; he will be our saviour.

Their dead bodies will be thick on the face of the earth, and their smell will come up, and the mountains will be flowing with their blood, and all the hills will come to nothing.

And the heavens will be rolled together like the roll of a book: and all their army will be gone, like a dead leaf from the vine, or a dry fruit from the fig-tree.

The sword of the Lord is full of blood, it is fat with the best of the meat, with the blood of lambs and goats, with the best parts of the sheep: for the Lord has a feast in Bozrah, and much cattle will be put to death in the land of Edom.

And its streams will be turned into boiling oil, and its dust into burning stone, and all the land will be on fire.

It will not be put out day or night; its smoke will go up for ever: it will be waste from generation to generation; no one will go through it for ever.

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.

And thorns will come up in her fair houses, and waste plants in her strong towers: and foxes will make their holes there, and it will be a meeting-place for ostriches.

And the beasts of the waste places will come together with the jackals, and the evil spirits will be crying to one another, even the night-spirit will come and make her resting-place there.

The arrowsnake will make her hole and put her eggs there, and get her young together under her shade: there the hawks will come together by twos.

See what is recorded in the book of the Lord: all these will be there, not one without the other: the mouth of the Lord has given the order, and his spirit has made them come together.

And he has given them their heritage, and by his hand it has been measured out to them: it will be theirs for ever, their resting-place from generation to generation.

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

It will be flowering like the rose; it will be full of delight and songs; the glory of Lebanon will be given to it; the pride of Carmel and Sharon: they will see the glory of the Lord, the power of our God.

Say to those who are full of fear, Be strong and take heart: see, your God will give punishment; the reward of God will come; he himself will come to be your saviour.

Then the eyes of the blind will see, and the ears which are stopped will be open.

Then will the feeble-footed be jumping like a roe, and the voice which was stopped will be loud in song: for in the waste land streams will be bursting out, and waters in the dry places.

And a highway will be there; its name will be, The Holy Way; the unclean and the sinner may not go over it, and those who go on it will not be turned out of the way by the foolish.

No lion will be there, or any cruel beast; they will not be seen there; but those for whom the Lord has given a price,

Even those whom he has made free, will come back again; they will come with songs to Zion; on their heads will be eternal joy; delight and joy will be theirs, and sorrow and sounds of grief will be gone for ever.

And the king of Assyria sent the Rab-shakeh from Lachish to Jerusalem to King Hezekiah with a strong force, and he took up his position by the stream of the higher pool, by the highway of the washerman's

And if you say to me, Our hope is in the Lord our God; is it not he whose high places and altars Hezekiah has taken away, saying to Judah and Jerusalem that worship may only be given before this altar?

But the Rab-shakeh said, Is it to your master or to you that my master has sent me to say these words? has he not sent me to the men seated on the wall? for they are the people who will be short of food with you when the town is shut in.

This is what the king says: Do not be tricked by Hezekiah, for there is no salvation for you in him.

And do not let Hezekiah make you put your faith in the Lord, saying, The Lord will certainly keep us safe, and this town will not be given into the hands of the king of Assyria.

Do not give ear to Hezekiah, for this is what the king of Assyria says, Make peace with me, and come out to me; and everyone will be free to take the fruit of his vine and of his fig-tree, and the water of his spring;

It may be that the Lord your God will give ear to the words of the Rab-shakeh, whom the king of Assyria, his master, has sent to say evil things against the living God, and will make his words come to nothing: so make your prayer for the rest of the people.

And Isaiah said to them, This is what you are to say to your master: The Lord says, Be not troubled by the words which the servants of the king of Assyria have said against me in your hearing.

This is what you are to say to Hezekiah, king of Judah: Let not your God, in whom is your faith, give you a false hope, saying, Jerusalem will not be given into the hands of the king of Assyria.

No doubt the story has come to your ears of what the kings of Assyria have done to all lands, putting them to the curse: and will you be kept safe from their fate?

Let your ear be turned to us, O Lord; let your eyes be open, O Lord, and see: take note of all the words of Sennacherib who has sent men to say evil against the living God.

But now, O Lord our God, give us salvation from his hand, so that it may be clear to all the kingdoms of the earth that you, and you only, are the Lord.

You have sent your servants with evil words against the Lord, and have said, With all my war-carriages I have come up to the top of the mountains, to the inmost parts of Lebanon; and its tall cedars will be cut down, and the best trees of its woods: I will come up into his highest places, into his thick woods.

Has it not come to your ears how I did it long before, purposing it in times long past? Now I have given effect to my design, so that by you strong towns might be turned into masses of broken walls.

Because your wrath against me and your pride have come to my ears, I will put my hook in your nose and my cord in your lips, and I will make you go back by the way you came.

And this will be the sign to you: you will get your food this year from what comes up of itself, and in the second year from the produce of the same; and in the third year you will put in your seed, and get in the grain, and make vine-gardens, and take of their fruit.

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.

By the way he came he will go back, and he will not get into this town.

And the angel of the Lord went out and put to death in the army of the Assyrians a hundred and eighty-five thousand men: and when the people got up early in the morning, there was nothing to be seen but dead bodies.

See, I will make the shade which has gone down on the steps of Ahaz with the sun, go back ten steps. So the shade went back the ten steps by which it had gone down.

O Lord, quickly be my saviour; so we will make my songs to corded instruments all the days of our lives in the house of the Lord.

Truly, the days are coming when everything in your house, and whatever your fathers have put in store till this day, will be taken away to Babylon: all will be gone.

And your sons, even your offspring, will they take away to be unsexed servants in the house 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.

Say kind words to the heart of Jerusalem, crying out to her that her time of trouble is ended, that her punishment is complete; that she has been rewarded by the Lord's hand twice over for all her sins.

Let every valley be lifted up, and every mountain and hill be made low, and let the rough places become level, and the hilltops become a valley,

And the glory of the Lord will be made clear, and all flesh will see it together, for the mouth of the Lord has said it.

A voice of one saying, Give a cry! And I said, What is my cry to be? All flesh is grass, and all its strength like the flower of the field.

You who give good news to Zion, get up into the high mountain; you who give good news to Jerusalem, let your voice be strong; let it be sounding without fear; say to the towns of Judah, See, your God!

See, the Lord God will come as a strong one, ruling in power: see, those made free by him are with him, and those whom he has made safe go before him.

By whom has the spirit of the Lord been guided, or who has been his teacher?

The wise workman makes selection of the mulberry-tree of the offering, a wood which will not become soft; so that the image may be fixed to it and not be moved.

It is he who is seated over the arch of the earth, and the people in it are as small as locusts; by him the heavens are stretched out like an arch, and made ready like a tent for a living-place.

Who then seems to you to be my equal? says the Holy One.

Let your eyes be lifted up on high, and see: who has made these? He who sends out their numbered army: who has knowledge of all their names: by whose great strength, because he is strong in power, all of them are in their places.

But those who are waiting for the Lord will have new strength; they will get wings like eagles: running, they will not be tired, and walking, they will have no weariness.

Who sent out from the east one who is right wherever he goes? he gives the nations into his hands, and makes him ruler over kings; he gives them as the dust to his sword, as dry stems before the wind to his bow.

So the metal-worker put heart into the gold-worker, and he who was hammering the metal smooth said kind words to the iron-worker, saying of the plate, It is ready: and he put it together with nails, so that there might be no slipping.

Have no fear, for I am with you; do not be looking about in trouble, for I am your God; I will give you strength, yes, I will be your helper; yes, my true right hand will be your support.

Truly, all those who are angry with you will be made low and put to shame: those desiring to do you wrong will come to nothing and never again be seen.

You will make search for your haters but they will not be there; those who make war against you will be as nothing and will come to destruction.

For I, the Lord your God, have taken your right hand in mine, saying to you, Have no fear; I will be your helper.

Have no fear, you worm Jacob, and you men of Israel; I will be your helper, says the Lord, even he who takes up your cause, the Holy One of Israel.

You will send the wind over them, and it will take them away; they will go in all directions before the storm-wind: you will have joy in the Lord, and be glad in the Holy One of Israel.

I will put in the waste land the cedar, the acacia, the myrtle, and the olive-tree; and in the lowland will be planted the fir-tree, the plane, and the cypress together:

So that they may see and be wise and give their mind to it, and that it may be clear to them all that the hand of the Lord has done this, and that the Holy One of Israel has made it.

Let the future be made clear to us: give us news of the past things, so that we may give thought to them; or of the things to come, so that we may see if they are true.

Give us word of what will be after this, so that we may be certain that you are gods: yes, do good or do evil, so that we may all see it and be surprised.

I have sent for one from the north, and from the dawn he has come; in my name he will get rulers together and go against them; they will be like dust, even as the wet earth is stamped on by the feet of the potter.

Who has given knowledge of it from the first, so that we may be certain of it? and from the start, so that we may say, His word is true? There is no one who gives news, or says anything, or who gives ear to your words.

He will make no cry, his voice will not be loud: his words will not come to men's ears in the streets.

He will not let a crushed stem be quite broken, and he will not let a feebly burning light be put out: he will go on sending out the true word to the peoples.

His light will not be put out, and he will not be crushed, till he has given the knowledge of the true God to the earth, and the sea-lands will be waiting for his teaching.

I the Lord have made you the vessel of my purpose, I have taken you by the hand, and kept you safe, and I have given you to be an agreement to the people, and a light to the nations:

Make a new song to the Lord, and let his praise be sounded from the end of the earth; you who go down to the sea, and everything in it, the sea-lands and their people.

Let the waste land and its flocks be glad, the tent-circles of Kedar; let the people of the rock give a glad cry, from the top of the mountains let them make a sound of joy.

The Lord will go out as a man of war, he will be moved to wrath like a fighting-man: his voice will be strong, he will give a loud cry; he will go against his attackers like a man of war.

And I will take the blind by a way of which they had no knowledge, guiding them by roads strange to them: I will make the dark places light before them, and the rough places level. These things will I do and will not give them up.

They will be turned back and be greatly shamed who put their hope in pictured images, who say to metal images, You are our gods.

Give ear, you whose ears are shut; and let your eyes be open, you blind, so that you may see.

But this is a people whose property has been taken away from them by force; they are all taken in holes, and shut up in prisons: they are made prisoners, and no one makes them free; they are taken by force and no one says, Give them back.

But now, says the Lord your Maker, O Jacob, and your life-giver, O Israel: have no fear, for I have taken up your cause; naming you by your name, I have made you mine.

When you go through the waters, I will be with you; and through the rivers, they will not go over you: when you go through the fire, you will not be burned; and the flame will have no power over you.

Because of your value in my eyes, you have been honoured, and loved by me; so I will give men for you, and peoples for your life.