Isaiah 24

¹ See how Yahweh lays the earth waste, makes it a desert, buckles its surface, scatters its inhabitants,

² priest and people alike, master and slave, mistress and maid, seller and buyer, lender and borrower, creditor and debtor.

³ Ravaged, ravaged the earth, despoiled, despoiled, as Yahweh has said.

⁴ The earth is mourning, withering, the world is pining, withering, the heavens are pining away with the earth.

⁵ The earth is defiled under its inhabitants’ feet, for they have transgressed the law, violated the precept, broken the everlasting covenant.

⁶ So a curse consumes the earth and its inhabitants suffer the penalty, that is why the inhabitants of the earth are burnt up and few men are left.

⁷ The wine is mourning, the vine is pining away, all glad hearts are sighing.

⁸ The merry tambourines are silent, the sound of revelling is over, the merry lyre is silent.

⁹ They no longer sing over their wine, the drunkard finds strong drink revolting.

¹⁰ The city of emptiness is in ruins, the entrance to every house is shut.

¹¹ There is lamentation in the streets: no wine, joy quite gone, gladness banished from the country.

¹² Nothing but rubble in the city, the gate smashed to pieces;

¹³ and so it will be on earth, among the peoples, as at the beating of the olive trees, as at the gleaning of the grapes when the grape harvest is over.

¹⁴ They lift up their voices, singing for joy; they acclaim the majesty of Yahweh from the sea.

¹⁵ Therefore in the islands they give glory to Yahweh, in the islands of the sea, to the name of Yahweh, the God of Israel.

¹⁶ From remotest earth we hear songs, ‘Honour to the upright one’. But ‘Enough, enough!’ I say. ‘Woe to the traitors who betray, to the traitors who treacherously betray!’

¹⁷ Terror, the pit, the snare for you, inhabitants of the earth:

¹⁸ the man who runs away at the cry of terror shall fall into the pit, and the man who climbs out of the pit shall be caught in the snare.

¹⁹ and the foundations of the earth will rock. The earth will split into fragments, the earth will be riven and rent.

²⁰ The earth will shiver and shake, the earth will stagger like a drunkard, sway like a shanty; so heavy will be its sin on it, it will fall

²¹ never to rise again. That day, Yahweh will punish above, the armies of the sky, below, the kings of the earth;

²² they will be herded together, shut up in a dungeon, confined in a prison and, after long years, punished.

²³ The moon will hide her face, the sun be ashamed, for Yahweh Sabaoth will be king on Mount Zion, in Jerusalem, and his glory will shine in the presence of his elders.