Isaiah

¹ Woe to you, Ariel, Ariel, the city where David settled! Add year to year and let your cycle of festivals go on.

² she will mourn and lament, she will be to me like an altar hearth.

³ I will encircle you with towers and set up my siege works against you.

⁴ your speech will mumble out of the dust. Your voice will come ghostlike from the earth; out of the dust your speech will whisper.

⁵ the ruthless hordes like blown chaff. Suddenly, in an instant,

⁶ with thunder and earthquake and great noise, with windstorm and tempest and flames of a devouring fire.

⁷ that attack her and her fortress and besiege her, will be as it is with a dream, with a vision in the night—

⁸ but he awakens, and his hunger remains; as when a thirsty man dreams that he is drinking, but he awakens faint, with his thirst unquenched. So will it be with the hordes of all the nations that fight against Mount Zion.

⁹ blind yourselves and be sightless; be drunk, but not from wine, stagger, but not from beer.

¹⁰ He has sealed your eyes (the prophets); he has covered your heads (the seers).

¹¹ For you this whole vision is nothing but words sealed in a scroll. And if you give the scroll to someone who can read, and say to him, “Read this, please,” he will answer, “I can’t; it is sealed.”

¹² Or if you give the scroll to someone who cannot read, and say, “Read this, please,” he will answer, “I don’t know how to read.”

¹³ “These people come near to me with their mouth and honor me with their lips, but their hearts are far from me. Their worship of me is made up only of rules taught by men.

¹⁴ with wonder upon wonder; the wisdom of the wise will perish, the intelligence of the intelligent will vanish.”

¹⁵ to hide their plans from the Lord, who do their work in darkness and think, “Who sees us? Who will know?”

¹⁶ as if the potter were thought to be like the clay! Shall what is formed say to him who formed it, “He did not make me”? Can the pot say of the potter, “He knows nothing”?

¹⁷ and the fertile field seem like a forest?

¹⁸ and out of gloom and darkness the eyes of the blind will see.

¹⁹ the needy will rejoice in the Holy One of Israel.

²⁰ the mockers will disappear, and all who have an eye for evil will be cut down—

²¹ who ensnare the defender in court and with false testimony deprive the innocent of justice.

²² “No longer will Jacob be ashamed; no longer will their faces grow pale.

²³ the work of my hands, they will keep my name holy; they will acknowledge the holiness of the Holy One of Jacob, and will stand in awe of the God of Israel.

²⁴ those who complain will accept instruction.”