Isaiah 56

¹ Thus says Yahweh: Have a care for justice, act with integrity, for soon my salvation will come and my integrity be manifest.

² Blessed is the man who does this and the son of man who clings to it: observing the sabbath, not profaning it, and keeping his hand from every evil deed.

³ Let no foreigner who has attached himself to Yahweh say, ‘Yahweh will surely exclude me from his people’. Let no eunuch say, ‘And I, I am a dried-up tree’.

⁴ For Yahweh says this: To the eunuchs who observe my sabbaths, and resolve to do what pleases me and cling to my covenant,

⁵ I will give, in my house and within my walls, a monument and a name better than sons and daughters; I will give them an everlasting name that shall never be effaced.

⁶ Foreigners who have attached themselves to Yahweh to serve him and to love his name and be his servants – all who observe the sabbath, not profaning it, and cling to my covenant –

⁷ these I will bring to my holy mountain. I will make them joyful in my house of prayer. Their holocausts and their sacrifices will be accepted on my altar, for my house will be called a house of prayer for all the peoples.

⁸ It is the Lord Yahweh who speaks, who gathers the outcasts of Israel: there are others I will gather besides those already gathered.

⁹ Come and gorge, all you wild beasts, all you beasts of the forest.

¹⁰ Our watchmen are all blind, they notice nothing. Dumb watchdogs all, unable to bark, they dream, lie down, and love to sleep.

¹¹ Greedy dogs that are never satisfied. Shepherds who know nothing. They all go their own way, each after his own interest.

¹² ‘Come, let me fetch wine; we will get drunk on strong drink, tomorrow will be just as wonderful as today and even more so!’