Isaiah - Chapter 29

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

² then I shall inflict trouble on Ariel, and there will be sighing and sobbing, and I shall make it truly Ariel.

³ I shall encamp all round you, I shall lay siege to you and mount siege-works against you.

⁴ You will be laid low, will speak from the underworld, your words will rise like a murmur from the dust. Your voice from the earth will be like a ghost's, it will whisper as though coming from the dust.

⁵ The horde of your enemies will be like fine dust, the horde of the warriors like flying chaff. And suddenly, in an instant,

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

⁷ It will be like a dream, like a vision at night: the horde of all the nations at war with Ariel, all those fighting, besieging and troubling it.

⁸ It will be like the dream of a hungry man: he eats, then wakes up with an empty belly; or like the dream of a thirsty man: he drinks, then wakes up exhausted with a parched throat. So will 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 Yahweh has infused you with a spirit of lethargy, he has closed your eyes (the prophets), he has veiled your heads (the seers).

¹¹ For to 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 it is sealed.'

¹² You then give the book to someone who cannot read, and say, 'Read that.' He replies, 'I cannot read.'

¹³ The Lord then said: Because this people approaches me only in words, honours me only with lip-service while their hearts are far from me, and reverence for me, as far as they are concerned, is nothing but human commandment, a lesson memorised,

¹⁴ very well, I shall have to go on astounding this people with prodigies and wonders: for the wisdom of its wise men is doomed, the understanding of any who understand will vanish.

¹⁵ Woe to those who burrow down to conceal their plans from Yahweh, who scheme in the dark and say, 'Who can see us? Who knows who we are?'

¹⁶ How perverse you are! Is the potter no better than the clay? Something that was made, can it say of its maker, 'He did not make me'? Or a pot say of the potter, 'He does not know his job'?

¹⁷ Is it not true that in a very short time the Lebanon will become productive ground, so productive you might take it for a forest?

¹⁸ That day the deaf will hear the words of the book and, delivered from shadow and darkness, the eyes of the blind will see.

¹⁹ The lowly will find ever more joy in Yahweh and the poorest of people will delight in the Holy One of Israel;

²⁰ for the tyrant will be no more, the scoffer has vanished and all those on the look-out for evil have been destroyed:

²¹ those who incriminate others by their words, those who lay traps for the arbitrator at the gate and groundlessly deprive the upright of fair judgement.

²² That is why Yahweh, God of the House of Jacob, Abraham's redeemer, says this, 'No longer shall Jacob be disappointed, no more shall his face grow pale,

²³ for when he sees his children, my creatures, home again with him, he will acknowledge my name as holy, he will acknowledge the Holy One of Jacob to be holy and will hold the God of Israel in awe.

²⁴ Erring spirits will learn to understand and murmurers accept instruction.'

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