Lo, all his companions are ashamed, As to artisans -- they are of men, All of them gather together, they stand up, They fear, they are ashamed together.

As for the smith, with his cutting-tool, - When he hath wrought in the live coals, And, with hammers, hath fashioned it, - And hath wrought it with his strong arm, Anon he is hungry, and hath no strength, He hath drunk no water and so hath become faint!

As for the carpenter, - He hath stretched out a line hath drawn it with a pencil, Hath made it with carving tools, With compasses, hath rounded it, - And so hath made it after the figure of a great man, After the beauty of a son of earth, that it may remain in a house!

He heweth him down cedars, and taketh the cypress and the oak, which he strengtheneth for himself among the trees of the forest: he planteth an ash, and the rain doth nourish it.

It serves as fuel for man.
He takes some of it and warms himself;
also he kindles a fire and bakes bread;
he even makes it into a god and worships it;
he makes an idol from it and bows down to it.

Half of it he burns in the fire -- over that half he cooks meat; he roasts a meal and fills himself. Yes, he warms himself and says, 'Ah! I am warm as I look at the fire.'

They do not know, nor do they understand, for God has muddied their eyes so that they cannot see, and their hearts (minds) as well so that they cannot understand.

That kind of man (the idolater) feeds on ashes [and is satisfied with ashes]! A deceived mind has led him astray, so that he cannot save himself, or ask, “Is this thing [that I am holding] in my right hand not a lie?”

I have blotted out, as a thick cloud, thy transgressions, and, as a cloud, thy sins: return unto me; for I have redeemed thee.

I destroy the tokens of witches, and make the Soothsayers go wrong. As for the wise, I turn them backward, and make their cunning foolishness.

Who is saying of Cyrus, My shepherd, And all my delight He doth perfect, So as to say of Jerusalem, Thou art built, And of the temple, Thou art founded.

This is what the LORD says to his anointed, Cyrus, whose right hand I have grasped to subdue nations before him, as I strip kings of their armor, to open doors before him and gates that cannot keep closed:

“Rain down, O heavens, from above,
Let the clouds pour down righteousness [all the blessings of God];
Let the earth open up, let salvation bear fruit,
And righteousness spring up with it;
I, the Lord, have created it.

Woe to him who strives with his Maker -- a clay pot among the clay pots of the earth! Shall the clay ask him who fashions it, 'What are you making?' or your work, 'He has no hands?'

Thus saith the LORD, the Holy One of Israel, and his Maker, Ask me of things to come concerning my sons, and concerning the work of my hands command ye me.

For thus saith Jehovah who created the heavens, God himself who formed the earth and made it, he who established it, not as waste did he create it: he formed it to be inhabited: I am Jehovah, and there is none else.

Let men draw nigh, let them come hither, and ask counsel one at another, and show forth: "What is he, that told this before?" Or, "Who spake of it, ever since the beginning?" Have not I, the LORD, done it: without whom there is none other God? The true God and Saviour, and there is else none but I.

By myself, have I sworn, Gone forth out of my mouth, is righteousness as a decree And shall not turn back, - That, unto myself, Shall bow every knee, Shall swear every tongue:

Bel has bowed down, Nebo stoops over;
Their idols are on the beasts [of burden] and on the cattle.
Your burdens [of idols] are loaded [on them],
Burdens on the weary animals.

To whom will you liken me, and count as equal, and compare with me, as though we were alike?

Such as lavish gold out of the bag, and weigh silver in the balance, they hire a goldsmith, and he maketh it a god; they fall down, yea, they worship.

I call a bird out of the East, and all that I take in hand, out of far countries, as soon as I command, I bring it hither: as soon as I think to devise a thing, I do it.

But as for thee O daughter, thou virgin Babylon, thou shalt sit in the dust. Thou shalt sit upon the ground, and not in a throne, O thou maiden of Chaldea. Thou shalt no more be called tender and pleasant.

Thy nakedness shall be uncovered, yea, thy shame shall be seen: I will take vengeance, and I will not meet thee as a man.

As for our redeemer, the LORD of hosts is his name, the Holy One of Israel.

You said, 'I will rule forever as permanent queen!' You did not think about these things; you did not consider how it would turn out.

Therefore hear now this, thou that art given to pleasures, that dwellest carelessly, that sayest in thine heart, I am, and none else beside me; I shall not sit as a widow, neither shall I know the loss of children:

And these two shall come to thee suddenly, in one day, bereavement and widowhood: as finished they came upon thee, in the multitude of thy sorceries, and in the great numbers of thy enchantments.

Behold, they shall be as stubble; the fire shall burn them; they shall not deliver themselves from the power of the flame: there shall not be a coal to warm at, nor fire to sit before it.

Which are called free men of the holy city, as they that look for comfort in the God of Israel, whose name is the LORD of Hosts.

The things that I showed you ever since the beginning: Have I not brought them to pass, immediately as they came out of my mouth, and declared them? And they are come?

Hear and consider all these things, whether it was ye that prophesied them: But as for me, I told thee before at the beginning, new and secret things that thou knewest not of.

You have never heard; you have never known;
For a long time your ears have not been open.
For I knew that you were very treacherous,
and were known as a rebel from birth.

For my name's sake I will defer mine anger, and for my praise will I refrain as to thee, that I cut thee not off.

Behold, I have refined thee, but not as silver; I have chosen thee in the furnace of affliction.

My hand is the foundation of the earth, and my right hand spanneth over the heavens. As soon as I called them they were there.

O that thou hadst hearkened to my commandments! then had thy peace been as a river, and thy righteousness as the waves of the sea:

Thy seed also had been as the sand, and the offspring of thy bowels like the gravel thereof; his name should not have been cut off nor destroyed from before me.

Come ye forth out of Babylon, Flee from among the Chaldeans, With triumphant voice, tell ye - let this be heard, Let it go forth as far as the end of the earth, - Say ye - Yahweh hath redeemed his servant Jacob!

They do not thirst as he leads them through dry regions; he makes water flow out of a rock for them; he splits open a rock and water flows out.'

As for the ungodly, they have no peace, sayeth the LORD.

And he maketh my mouth as a sharp sword, In the shadow of His hand He hath hid me, And He maketh me for a clear arrow, In His quiver He hath hid me.

And now Yahweh says, who formed me from [the] womb as a servant for him, to bring Jacob back to him, and that Israel might not be gathered, for I am honored in the eyes of Yahweh, and my God has become my strength.

And he says, "It is trivial {for you to be} a servant for me, to raise up the tribes of Jacob and to bring back the preserved of Israel. I will give you as a light [to the] nations, to be my salvation to the end of the earth."

"This is what my Lord says the LORD your Redeemer, O Israel, and his Holy One to one despised by people, to those abhorred as a nation, to the servant of rulers: "Kings see and arise, and princes will bow down, because of the LORD who is faithful, the Holy One of Israel, the one who has chosen you."

Thus says Yahweh: "I have answered you in a time of favor, and helped you on a day of salvation, and watched over you, and given you as a covenant of [the] people, to raise up [the] land, to give [the] desolate hereditary property as an inheritance,

But Zion (Jerusalem in captivity) said, “The Lord has abandoned me,
And my Lord has forgotten me.”

"Can a woman forget her nursing child, or have no compassion for the child of her womb? Even these mothers may forget; But as for me, I'll never forget you!

Lift up thine eyes round about, and behold: all these gather themselves together, and come to thee. As I live, saith the LORD, thou shalt surely clothe thee with them all, as with an ornament, and bind them on thee, as a bride doeth.

For, as for thy waste and thy desolate places, and thy land that hath been destroyed, surely now shalt thou be too strait for the inhabitants, and they that swallowed thee up shall be far away.

Then you'll ask in your heart, "Who bore these children for me, although I was childless and barren, and an exile and cast aside? Who brought these up? Look! For my part I was left all alone; but as for these, where have they come from?'

And I will feed them that oppress thee with their own flesh; and they shall be drunken with their own blood, as with sweet wine: and all flesh shall know that I the LORD am thy Saviour and thy Redeemer, the mighty One of Jacob.

As for heaven, I clothe it with darkness, and put as it were a sack upon it.

The Lord GOD hath given me the tongue of the learned, that I should know how to speak a word in season to him that is weary: he wakeneth morning by morning, he wakeneth mine ear to hear as the learned.

And the Lord Jehovah giveth help to me, Therefore I have not been ashamed, Therefore I have set my face as a flint, And I know that I am not ashamed.

Behold, the Lord GOD will help me; who is he that shall condemn me? lo, they all shall wax old as a garment; the moth shall eat them up.

For Jehovah hath comforted Zion, He hath comforted all her wastes, And He setteth her wilderness as Eden, And her desert as a garden of Jehovah, Joy, yea, gladness is found in her, Confession, and the voice of song.

Lift ye up to the heavens your eyes, And look attentively unto the earth beneath, For the heavens as smoke have vanished, And the earth as a garment weareth out, And its inhabitants as gnats do die, And My salvation is to the age, And My righteousness is not broken.

For as a garment eat them doth a moth, And as wool eat them doth a worm, And My righteousness is to the age, And My salvation to all generations.

Awake, awake, put on strength, O arm of the LORD; awake, as in the ancient days, in the generations of old. Art thou not it that hath cut Rahab, and wounded the dragon?

I, even I, am he that comforteth you: who art thou, that thou shouldest be afraid of a man that shall die, and of the son of man which shall be made as grass;

And forgettest the LORD thy maker, that hath stretched forth the heavens, and laid the foundations of the earth; and hast feared continually every day because of the fury of the oppressor, as if he were ready to destroy? and where is the fury of the oppressor?

I have put My words in your mouth and have covered you with the shadow of My hand, to establish the [renewed] heavens and lay the foundations of the [renewed] earth, and to say to Zion (Jerusalem), ‘You are My people.’”

Thy sons have fainted, they lie at the head of all the streets, as a wild bull in a net: they are full of the fury of the LORD, the rebuke of thy God.

Thus, saith Thy Lord, Yahweh, Even thy God who pleadeth the cause of his people: - Lo! I have taken, out of thy hand, the cup of confusion, - As for the goblet-cup of mine indignation, Thou shalt not again drink it, any more;

But I will put it into the hand of them that afflict thee; which have said to thy soul, Bow down, that we may go over: and thou hast laid thy body as the ground, and as the street, to them that went over.

For thus says the Lord Yahweh: "My people went down [to] Egypt in the beginning, to dwell as aliens there, and Assyria oppressed him {without cause}.

How delightful on the mountains are the feet of him who brings good news, who announces peace, who brings good news, who announces salvation, who says to Zion, "Your God reigns as a king."

The Lord has bared His holy arm (His infinite power)
Before the eyes of all the nations [revealing Himself as the One by Whom Israel is redeemed from captivity],
That all the ends of the earth may see
The salvation of our God.

For you will not go out in a hurry [as when you left Egypt],
Nor will you go in flight [fleeing, as you did from the Egyptians];
For the Lord will go before you,
And the God of Israel will be your rear guard.

As many were astonied at thee; his visage was so marred more than any man, and his form more than the sons of men:

For he shall grow up before him as a tender plant, and as a root out of a dry ground: he hath no form nor comeliness; and when we shall see him, there is no beauty that we should desire him.

He is despised and rejected of men; a man of sorrows, and acquainted with grief: and we hid as it were our faces from him; he was despised, and we esteemed him not.

But [in fact] He has borne our griefs,
And He has carried our sorrows and pains;
Yet we [ignorantly] assumed that He was stricken,
Struck down by God and degraded and humiliated [by Him].

And we went astray as sheep, and turned every man his way: and the LORD put on him the wickedness of us all.

He was oppressed, and he was afflicted, yet he opened not his mouth: he is brought as a lamb to the slaughter, and as a sheep before her shearers is dumb, so he openeth not his mouth.

By oppression and judgment he was taken away; and as for his generation, who among them considered that he was cut off out of the land of the living for the transgression of my people to whom the stroke was due ?

But the Lord was pleased
To crush Him, putting Him to grief;
If He would render Himself as a guilt offering,
He will see His offspring,
He will prolong His days,
And the good pleasure of the Lord will prosper in His hand.

As a result of the anguish of His soul,
He will see it and be satisfied;
By His knowledge the Righteous One,
My Servant, will justify the many,
As He will bear their iniquities.

Therefore, I will divide and give Him a portion with the great [kings and rulers],
And He shall divide the spoils with the mighty,
Because He [willingly] poured out His life to death,
And was counted among the transgressors;
Yet He Himself bore and took away the sin of many,
And interceded [with the Father] for the transgressors.

For the LORD hath called thee as a woman forsaken and grieved in spirit, and a wife of youth, when thou wast refused, saith thy God.

For this is as the waters of Noah unto me: for as I have sworn that the waters of Noah should no more go over the earth; so have I sworn that I would not be wroth with thee, nor rebuke thee.

“No weapon that is formed against you will succeed;
And every tongue that rises against you in judgment you will condemn.
This [peace, righteousness, security, and triumph over opposition] is the heritage of the servants of the Lord,
And this is their vindication from Me,” says the Lord.

Pay attention to me, come to me; and listen, so that you may live; then I'll make an everlasting covenant with you, as promised by my faithful, sure love for David.

“Listen carefully, I have appointed him [David, representing the Messiah] to be a witness to the nations [regarding salvation],
A leader and commander to the peoples.

For as the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways, and my thoughts than your thoughts.

For as the rain cometh down, and the snow from heaven, and returneth not thither, but watereth the earth, and maketh it bring forth and bud, that it may give seed to the sower, and bread to the eater:

In the same way, the promise that I make does not return to me, having accomplished nothing. No, it is realized as I desire and is fulfilled as I intend."

Instead of the thorn bush, [the] juniper shall go up; instead of the brier, [the] myrtle shall go up, and it shall serve as a memorial to Yahweh, for an everlasting sign [that] shall not be cut off."

“Blessed (happy, fortunate) is the man who does this,
And the son of man who takes hold of it,
Who keeps the Sabbath without profaning it,
And keeps his hand from doing any evil.”

For the Lord says, As for the unsexed who keep my Sabbaths, and give their hearts to pleasing me, and keep their agreement with me:

“Also the foreigners who join themselves to the Lord,
To minister to Him, and to love the name of the Lord,
To be His servants, everyone who keeps the Sabbath without profaning it
And holds fast to My covenant [by conscientious obedience];

I will bring them to my holy mountain; I will make them happy in the temple where people pray to me. Their burnt offerings and sacrifices will be accepted on my altar, for my temple will be known as a temple where all nations may pray."

Meanwhile, the dogs have a mighty appetite they can never get enough. And as for them, they are the shepherds who lack understanding; they have all turned to their own way, each one to his gain, each and every one.

Come ye, say they, I will fetch wine, and we will fill ourselves with strong drink; and to morrow shall be as this day, and much more abundant.

"But as for you, come here, you children of a sorceress, you offspring of adulterers and prostitutes!

Among the smooth stones of the torrent is thy portion; they, they are thy lot: even to them hast thou poured out a drink-offering, thou hast offered an oblation. Shall I be comforted myself as to these things?

“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.

And you went to Melech with oil and much perfume, and you sent your representatives far off, and went as low as the underworld.

For when wilt thou be abashed or fear, seeing thou hast broken thy promise, and rememberest not me, neither hast me in thine heart? Thinkest thou, that I also will hold my peace as afore time, that thou fearest me not?