Isaiah 30

¹ Woe to those rebellious sons! – it is Yahweh who speaks. They carry out plans that are not mine and make alliances not inspired by me, and so add sin to sin.

² They have left for Egypt, without consulting me, to take refuge in Pharaoh’s protection, to shelter in Egypt’s shadow.

³ Pharaoh’s protection will be your shame, the shelter of Egypt’s shadow your confounding.

⁴ For his ministers have gone to Zoan, his ambassadors have already reached Hanes.[*a]

⁵ All are carrying gifts to a nation that will be of no use to them, that will bring them neither aid, nor help, nothing but shame and disgrace.

⁶ Oracle on the beasts of the Negeb. Through the land of distress and of anguish, of lioness and roaring lion, of viper and flying serpent, they bear their riches on donkeys’ backs, their treasures on camels’ humps, to a nation that is of no use to them,

⁷ to Egypt who will prove futile and empty to them; and so I call her Rahab-do-nothing.

⁸ Now go and inscribe this on a tablet, write it in a book, that it may serve in the time to come as a witness for ever:

⁹ This is a rebellious people, they are lying sons, sons who will not listen to Yahweh’s orders.

¹⁰ To the seers they say, ‘See no visions’; to the prophets, ‘Do not prophesy the truth to us, ‘tell us flattering things; have illusory visions;

¹¹ turn aside from the way, leave the path, take the Holy One out of our sight’.

¹² So the Holy One of Israel says: Since you reject this warning and prefer to trust in wile and guile and to rely on these,

¹³ then your guilt will prove to be for you a breach on the point of collapse, the bulge at the top of the city wall which suddenly and all at once comes crashing down,

¹⁴ irretrievably shattered, smashed like an earthenware pot – so that of the fragments not one shard remains big enough to carry a cinder from the hearth or scoop water from the cistern.

¹⁵ For thus says the Lord Yahweh, the Holy One of Israel: Your salvation lay in conversion and tranquillity, your strength, in complete trust; and you would have none of it.

¹⁶ ‘No,’ you said ‘we will flee on horses.’ So be it, flee then! And you add, ‘In swift chariots’. So be it, your pursuers will be swift too.

¹⁷ A thousand will flee at the threat of one and when five threaten you will flee, until what is left of you will be like a flagstaff on a mountain top, like a signal on a hill.

¹⁸ But Yahweh is waiting to be gracious to you, to rise and take pity on you, for Yahweh is a just God; happy are all who hope in him.

¹⁹ Yes, people of Zion, you will live in Jerusalem and weep no more. He will be gracious to you when he hears your cry; when he hears he will answer.

²⁰ When the Lord has given you the bread of suffering and the water of distress, he who is your teacher will hide no longer, and you will see your teacher with your own eyes.

²¹ Whether you turn to right or left, your ears will hear these words behind you, ‘This is the way, follow it’.

²² You will regard your silvered idols and gilded images as unclean. You will throw them away like the polluted things they are, shouting after them, ‘Good riddance!’

²³ He will send rain for the seed you sow in the ground, and the bread that the ground provides will be rich and nourishing. Your cattle will graze, that day, in wide pastures.

²⁴ Oxen and donkeys that till the ground will eat a salted fodder, winnowed with shovel and fork.

²⁵ On every lofty mountain, on every high hill there will be streams and watercourses, on the day of the great slaughter when the strongholds fall.

²⁶ Then moonlight will be bright as sunlight and sunlight itself be seven times brighter – like the light of seven days in one – on the day Yahweh dresses the wound of his people and heals the bruises his blows have left.

²⁷ See, the name of Yahweh comes from afar, blazing is his anger, heavy his exaction. His lips brim with fury, his tongue is like a devouring fire.

²⁸ His breath is like a river in spate coming up to the neck. He comes to sift the nations with the sieve of destruction, to put the bit of his bridle between the jaws of the nations.

³⁰ Yahweh will make his majestic voice be heard and display his arm falling to strike, in the ferocity of his anger, in the glare of a devouring fire, in cloudburst, downpour, hailstones.

³¹ For at the voice of Yahweh Assyria will be battered and beaten with the rod.

²⁹ The song you sing will be like that on a festal night when hearts are gay, or when to the sound of flute men make a pilgrimage to the mountain of Yahweh, to the rock of Israel,

³³ For in Topheth there has been prepared beforehand,[*b] yes, made ready for Molech, a pit deep and wide with straw and wood in plenty. The breath of Yahweh, like a stream of brimstone, will set fire to it.