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10Ah, you who make iniquitous decrees, who write oppressive statutes, ²to turn aside the needy from justice and to rob the poor of my people of their right, that widows may be your spoil, and that you may make the orphans your prey! ³What will you do on the day of punishment, in the calamity that will come from far away? To whom will you flee for help, and where will you leave your wealth, ⁴so as not to crouch among the prisoners or fall among the slain? For all this his anger has not turned away; his hand is stretched out still.

⁵Ah, Assyria, the rod of my anger— the club in their hands is my fury! ⁶Against a godless nation I send him, and against the people of my wrath I command him, to take spoil and seize plunder, and to tread them down like the mire of the streets. ⁷But this is not what he intends, nor does he have this in mind; but it is in his heart to destroy, and to cut off nations not a few. ⁸For he says: “Are not my commanders all kings? ⁹Is not Calno like Carchemish? Is not Hamath like Arpad? Is not Samaria like Damascus? ¹⁰As my hand has reached to the kingdoms of the idols whose images were greater than those of Jerusalem and Samaria, ¹¹shall I not do to Jerusalem and her idols what I have done to Samaria and her images?” ¹²When the Lord has finished all his work on Mount Zion and on Jerusalem, he will punish the arrogant boasting of the king of Assyria and his haughty pride. ¹³For he says: “By the strength of my hand I have done it, and by my wisdom, for I have understanding; I have removed the boundaries of peoples, and have plundered their treasures; like a bull I have brought down those who sat on thrones. ¹⁴My hand has found, like a nest, the wealth of the peoples; and as one gathers eggs that have been forsaken, so I have gathered all the earth; and there was none that moved a wing, or opened its mouth, or chirped.” ¹⁵Shall the ax vaunt itself over the one who wields it, or the saw magnify itself against the one who handles it? As if a rod should raise the one who lifts it up, or as if a staff should lift the one who is not wood! ¹⁶Therefore the Sovereign, the Lord of hosts, will send wasting sickness among his stout warriors, and under his glory a burning will be kindled, like the burning of fire. ¹⁷The light of Israel will become a fire, and his Holy One a flame; and it will burn and devour his thorns and briers in one day. ¹⁸The glory of his forest and his fruitful land the Lord will destroy, both soul and body, and it will be as when an invalid wastes away. ¹⁹The remnant of the trees of his forest will be so few that a child can write them down.

²⁰On that day the remnant of Israel and the survivors of the house of Jacob will no more lean on the one who struck them, but will lean on the Lord, the Holy One of Israel, in truth. ²¹A remnant will return, the remnant of Jacob, to the mighty God. ²²For though your people Israel were like the sand of the sea, only a remnant of them will return. Destruction is decreed, overflowing with righteousness. ²³For the Lord God of hosts will make a full end, as decreed, in all the earth.

²⁴Therefore thus says the Lord God of hosts: O my people, who live in Zion, do not be afraid of the Assyrians when they beat you with a rod and lift up their staff against you as the Egyptians did. ²⁵For in a very little while my indignation will come to an end, and my anger will be directed to their destruction. ²⁶The Lord of hosts will wield a whip against them, as when he struck Midian at the rock of Oreb; his staff will be over the sea, and he will lift it as he did in Egypt. ²⁷On that day his burden will be removed from your shoulder, and his yoke will be destroyed from your neck. He has gone up from Rimmon, ²⁸he has come to Aiath; he has passed through Migron, at Michmash he stores his baggage; ²⁹they have crossed over the pass, at Geba they lodge for the night; Ramah trembles, Gibeah of Saul has fled. ³⁰Cry aloud, O daughter Gallim! Listen, O Laishah! Answer her, O Anathoth! ³¹Madmenah is in flight, the inhabitants of Gebim flee for safety. ³²This very day he will halt at Nob, he will shake his fist at the mount of daughter Zion, the hill of Jerusalem. ³³Look, the Sovereign, the Lord of hosts, will lop the boughs with terrifying power; the tallest trees will be cut down, and the lofty will be brought low. ³⁴He will hack down the thickets of the forest with an ax, and Lebanon with its majestic trees will fall.

11A shoot shall come out from the stump of Jesse, and a branch shall grow out of his roots. ²The spirit of the Lord shall rest on him, the spirit of wisdom and understanding, the spirit of counsel and might, the spirit of knowledge and the fear of the Lord. ³His delight shall be in the fear of the Lord. He shall not judge by what his eyes see, or decide by what his ears hear; ⁴but with righteousness he shall judge the poor, and decide with equity for the meek of the earth; he shall strike the earth with the rod of his mouth, and with the breath of his lips he shall kill the wicked. ⁵Righteousness shall be the belt around his waist, and faithfulness the belt around his loins. ⁶The wolf shall live with the lamb, the leopard shall lie down with the kid, the calf and the lion and the fatling together, and a little child shall lead them. ⁷The cow and the bear shall graze, their young shall lie down together; and the lion shall eat straw like the ox. ⁸The nursing child shall play over the hole of the asp, and the weaned child shall put its hand on the adder’s den. ⁹They will not hurt or destroy on all my holy mountain; for the earth will be full of the knowledge of the Lord as the waters cover the sea.

¹⁰On that day the root of Jesse shall stand as a signal to the peoples; the nations shall inquire of him, and his dwelling shall be glorious. ¹¹On that day the Lord will extend his hand yet a second time to recover the remnant that is left of his people, from Assyria, from Egypt, from Pathros, from Ethiopia, from Elam, from Shinar, from Hamath, and from the coastlands of the sea. ¹²He will raise a signal for the nations, and will assemble the outcasts of Israel, and gather the dispersed of Judah from the four corners of the earth. ¹³The jealousy of Ephraim shall depart, the hostility of Judah shall be cut off; Ephraim shall not be jealous of Judah, and Judah shall not be hostile towards Ephraim. ¹⁴But they shall swoop down on the backs of the Philistines in the west, together they shall plunder the people of the east. They shall put forth their hand against Edom and Moab, and the Ammonites shall obey them. ¹⁵And the Lord will utterly destroy the tongue of the sea of Egypt; and will wave his hand over the River with his scorching wind; and will split it into seven channels, and make a way to cross on foot; ¹⁶so there shall be a highway from Assyria for the remnant that is left of his people, as there was for Israel when they came up from the land of Egypt.

12You will say in that day: I will give thanks to you, O Lord, for though you were angry with me, your anger turned away, and you comforted me. ²Surely God is my salvation; I will trust, and will not be afraid, for the Lord God is my strength and my might; he has become my salvation. ³With joy you will draw water from the wells of salvation.

⁴And you will say in that day: Give thanks to the Lord, call on his name; make known his deeds among the nations; proclaim that his name is exalted. ⁵Sing praises to the Lord, for he has done gloriously; let this be known in all the earth. ⁶Shout aloud and sing for joy, O royal Zion, for great in your midst is the Holy One of Israel.

13The oracle concerning Babylon that Isaiah son of Amoz saw. ²On a bare hill raise a signal, cry aloud to them; wave the hand for them to enter the gates of the nobles. ³I myself have commanded my consecrated ones, have summoned my warriors, my proudly exulting ones, to execute my anger. ⁴Listen, a tumult on the mountains as of a great multitude! Listen, an uproar of kingdoms, of nations gathering together! The Lord of hosts is mustering an army for battle. ⁵They come from a distant land, from the end of the heavens, the Lord and the weapons of his indignation, to destroy the whole earth.

⁶Wail, for the day of the Lord is near; it will come like destruction from the Almighty! ⁷Therefore all hands will be feeble, and every human heart will melt, ⁸and they will be dismayed. Pangs and agony will seize them; they will be in anguish like a woman in labor. They will look aghast at one another; their faces will be aflame. ⁹See, the day of the Lord comes, cruel, with wrath and fierce anger, to make the earth a desolation, and to destroy its sinners from it. ¹⁰For the stars of the heavens and their constellations will not give their light; the sun will be dark at its rising, and the moon will not shed its light. ¹¹I will punish the world for its evil, and the wicked for their iniquity; I will put an end to the pride of the arrogant, and lay low the insolence of tyrants. ¹²I will make mortals more rare than fine gold, and humans than the gold of Ophir. ¹³Therefore I will make the heavens tremble, and the earth will be shaken out of its place, at the wrath of the Lord of hosts in the day of his fierce anger. ¹⁴Like a hunted gazelle, or like sheep with no one to gather them, all will turn to their own people, and all will flee to their own lands. ¹⁵Whoever is found will be thrust through, and whoever is caught will fall by the sword. ¹⁶Their infants will be dashed to pieces before their eyes; their houses will be plundered, and their wives ravished. ¹⁷See, I am stirring up the Medes against them, who have no regard for silver and do not delight in gold. ¹⁸Their bows will slaughter the young men; they will have no mercy on the fruit of the womb; their eyes will not pity children.

¹⁹And Babylon, the glory of kingdoms, the splendor and pride of the Chaldeans, will be like Sodom and Gomorrah when God overthrew them. ²⁰It will never be inhabited or lived in for all generations; Arabs will not pitch their tents there, shepherds will not make their flocks lie down there. ²¹But wild animals will lie down there, and its houses will be full of howling creatures; there ostriches will live, and there goat-demons will dance. ²²Hyenas will cry in its towers, and jackals in the pleasant palaces; its time is close at hand, and its days will not be prolonged.

14But the Lord will have compassion on Jacob and will again choose Israel, and will set them in their own land; and aliens will join them and attach themselves to the house of Jacob. ²And the nations will take them and bring them to their place, and the house of Israel will possess the nations as male and female slaves in the Lord’s land; they will take captive those who were their captors, and rule over those who oppressed them. ³When the Lord has given you rest from your pain and turmoil and the hard service with which you were made to serve,

⁴you will take up this taunt against the king of Babylon: How the oppressor has ceased! How his insolence has ceased! ⁵The Lord has broken the staff of the wicked, the scepter of rulers, ⁶that struck down the peoples in wrath with unceasing blows, that ruled the nations in anger with unrelenting persecution. ⁷The whole earth is at rest and quiet; they break forth into singing. ⁸The cypresses exult over you, the cedars of Lebanon, saying, “Since you were laid low, no one comes to cut us down.” ⁹Sheol beneath is stirred up to meet you when you come; it rouses the shades to greet you, all who were leaders of the earth; it raises from their thrones all who were kings of the nations. ¹⁰All of them will speak and say to you: “You too have become as weak as we! You have become like us!” ¹¹Your pomp is brought down to Sheol, and the sound of your harps; maggots are the bed beneath you, and worms are your covering. ¹²How you are fallen from heaven, O Day Star, son of Dawn! How you are cut down to the ground, you who laid the nations low! ¹³You said in your heart, “I will ascend to heaven; I will raise my throne above the stars of God; I will sit on the mount of assembly on the heights of Zaphon; ¹⁴I will ascend to the tops of the clouds, I will make myself like the Most High.” ¹⁵But you are brought down to Sheol, to the depths of the Pit. ¹⁶Those who see you will stare at you, and ponder over you: “Is this the man who made the earth tremble, who shook kingdoms, ¹⁷who made the world like a desert and overthrew its cities, who would not let his prisoners go home?” ¹⁸All the kings of the nations lie in glory, each in his own tomb; ¹⁹but you are cast out, away from your grave, like loathsome carrion, clothed with the dead, those pierced by the sword, who go down to the stones of the Pit, like a corpse trampled underfoot. ²⁰You will not be joined with them in burial, because you have destroyed your land, you have killed your people. May the descendants of evildoers nevermore be named! ²¹Prepare slaughter for his sons because of the guilt of their father. Let them never rise to possess the earth or cover the face of the world with cities. ²²I will rise up against them, says the Lord of hosts, and will cut off from Babylon name and remnant, offspring and posterity, says the Lord. ²³And I will make it a possession of the hedgehog, and pools of water, and I will sweep it with the broom of destruction, says the Lord of hosts.

²⁴The Lord of hosts has sworn: As I have designed, so shall it be; and as I have planned, so shall it come to pass: ²⁵I will break the Assyrian in my land, and on my mountains trample him under foot; his yoke shall be removed from them, and his burden from their shoulders. ²⁶This is the plan that is planned concerning the whole earth; and this is the hand that is stretched out over all the nations. ²⁷For the Lord of hosts has planned, and who will annul it? His hand is stretched out, and who will turn it back? ²⁸In the year that King Ahaz died this oracle came: ²⁹Do not rejoice, all you Philistines, that the rod that struck you is broken, for from the root of the snake will come forth an adder, and its fruit will be a flying fiery serpent. ³⁰The firstborn of the poor will graze, and the needy lie down in safety; but I will make your root die of famine, and your remnant I will kill. ³¹Wail, O gate; cry, O city; melt in fear, O Philistia, all of you! For smoke comes out of the north, and there is no straggler in its ranks. ³²What will one answer the messengers of the nation? “The Lord has founded Zion, and the needy among his people will find refuge in her.”