Bible Browser

5Take off the garment of your sorrow and affliction, O Jerusalem,
   and put on for ever the beauty of the glory from God.
² Put on the robe of the righteousness that comes from God;
   put on your head the diadem of the glory of the Everlasting;
³ for God will show your splendour everywhere under heaven.
⁴ For God will give you evermore the name,
   ‘Righteous Peace, Godly Glory’.

⁵ Arise, O Jerusalem, stand upon the height;
   look towards the east,
and see your children gathered from west and east
   at the word of the Holy One,
   rejoicing that God has remembered them.
⁶ For they went out from you on foot,
   led away by their enemies;
but God will bring them back to you,
   carried in glory, as on a royal throne.
⁷ For God has ordered that every high mountain and the everlasting hills be made low
   and the valleys filled up, to make level ground,
   so that Israel may walk safely in the glory of God.
⁸ The woods and every fragrant tree
   have shaded Israel at God’s command.
⁹ For God will lead Israel with joy,
   in the light of his glory,
   with the mercy and righteousness that come from him.

The Proclamation of John the Baptist

3In the fifteenth year of the reign of Emperor Tiberius, when Pontius Pilate was governor of Judea, and Herod was ruler^* of Galilee, and his brother Philip ruler^* of the region of Ituraea and Trachonitis, and Lysanias ruler^* of Abilene, ²during the high-priesthood of Annas and Caiaphas, the word of God came to John son of Zechariah in the wilderness. ³He went into all the region around the Jordan, proclaiming a baptism of repentance for the forgiveness of sins, ⁴as it is written in the book of the words of the prophet Isaiah,
‘The voice of one crying out in the wilderness:
“Prepare the way of the Lord,
   make his paths straight.
⁵ Every valley shall be filled,
   and every mountain and hill shall be made low,
and the crooked shall be made straight,
   and the rough ways made smooth;
⁶ and all flesh shall see the salvation of God.” ’