Isaiah 29

¹ Woe, Ariel, Ariel, city where David encamped. Let a year or two pass, let the feasts make their full round

² then I will lay siege to Ariel, and there will be moaning and bemoaning. You will be an Ariel for me, like David I will encamp against you, I will blockade you with palisades, and mount siege-works against you.

⁴ Thrown down – you will speak from the ground, your words will come muffled by dust. Your voice will rise from the earth like a ghost’s, you will speak from the dust in a whisper.

⁶ you shall be visited by Yahweh Sabaoth with thunder, earthquake, mighty din, hurricane, tempest, flame of devouring fire.

⁷ shall vanish like a dream, like a vision at night. And all those fighting against her, the entrenchments besieging her,

⁸ shall be like the hungry man who dreams he eats, and wakes with an empty belly, like the thirsty man who dreams he drinks and wakes exhausted, his throat parched; so shall it be with the horde of all the nations making war on Mount Zion.

⁹ Be stupefied and stunned, go blind, unseeing, drunk but not on wine, staggering but not through liquor.

¹⁰ For on you has Yahweh poured a spirit of lethargy, he has closed your eyes (the prophets), he has veiled your heads (the seers).

¹¹ For you every vision has become like the words of a sealed book. You give it to someone able to read and say, ‘Read that’. He replies, ‘I cannot, because the book is sealed’.

¹² Or else you give the book to someone who cannot read, and say, ‘Read that’. He replies, ‘I cannot read’.

¹³ Yahweh has said: Because this people approaches me only in words, honours me only with lip-service while its heart is far from me, and my religion, as far as it is concerned, is nothing but human commandment, a lesson memorised,

¹⁴ very well, I shall have to go on being prodigal of prodigious prodigies with this people. The wisdom of its sages shall decay, the intelligence of its intelligent men shall be shrouded.

¹⁵ Woe to those who hide from Yahweh to conceal their plans, who scheme in the dark and say, ‘Who can see us? Who can recognise us?’

¹⁶ What perversity this is! Is the potter no better than the clay? Can something that was made say of its maker, ‘He did not make me’? Or a pot say of the potter, ‘He is a fool’?

¹⁷ In a short time, a very short time, shall not Lebanon become fertile land and fertile land turn into forest?

¹⁸ The deaf, that day, will hear the words of a book and, after shadow and darkness, the eyes of the blind will see.

¹⁹ But the lowly will rejoice in Yahweh even more and the poorest exult in the Holy One of Israel;

²⁰ for tyrants shall be no more, and scoffers vanish, and all be destroyed who are disposed to do evil:

²¹ those who gossip to incriminate others, those who try at the gate to trip the arbitrator and get the upright man’s case dismissed for groundless reasons.

²² Therefore Yahweh speaks, the God of the House of Jacob, Abraham’s redeemer: No longer shall Jacob be ashamed, no more shall his face grow pale,

²³ for he shall see what my hands have done in his midst, he shall hold my name holy. They will hallow the Holy One of Jacob, stand in awe of the God of Israel.

²⁴ Erring spirits will learn wisdom and murmurers accept instruction.