Isaiah 37:25–30

¹⁰And Ben-hadad sent unto him, and said, The gods do so unto me, and more also, if the dust of Samaria shall suffice for handfuls for all the people that follow me.

²³By thy messengers thou hast reproached the Lord, and hast said, With the multitude of my chariots I am come up to the height of the mountains, to the sides of Lebanon, and will cut down the tall cedar trees thereof, and the choice fir trees thereof: and I will enter into the lodgings of his borders, and into the forest of his Carmel.

²⁴I have digged and drunk strange waters, and with the sole of my feet have I dried up all the rivers of besieged places.

¹⁰¶ For the land, whither thou goest in to possess it, is not as the land of Egypt, from whence ye came out, where thou sowedst thy seed, and wateredst it with thy foot, as a garden of herbs:

¹²¶ But Rabshakeh said, Hath my master sent me to thy master and to thee to speak these words? hath he not sent me to the men that sit upon the wall, that they may eat their own dung, and drink their own piss with you?

²⁷For of a truth against thy holy child Jesus, whom thou hast anointed, both Herod, and Pontius Pilate, with the Gentiles, and the people of Israel, were gathered together,

²⁸For to do whatsoever thy hand and thy counsel determined before to be done.

²³Him, being delivered by the determinate counsel and foreknowledge of God, ye have taken, and by wicked hands have crucified and slain:

⁸And a stone of stumbling, and a rock of offence, even to them which stumble at the word, being disobedient: whereunto also they were appointed.

¹⁵Shall the axe boast itself against him that heweth therewith? or shall the saw magnify itself against him that shaketh it? as if the rod should shake itself against them that lift it up, or as if the staff should lift up itself, as if it were no wood.

¹⁰Declaring the end from the beginning, and from ancient times the things that are not yet done, saying, My counsel shall stand, and I will do all my pleasure:

¹¹Calling a ravenous bird from the east, the man that executeth my counsel from a far country: yea, I have spoken it, I will also bring it to pass; I have purposed it, I will also do it.

⁵¶ O Assyrian, the rod of mine anger, and the staff in their hand is mine indignation.

⁶I will send him against an hypocritical nation, and against the people of my wrath will I give him a charge, to take the spoil, and to take the prey, and to tread them down like the mire of the streets.

⁶Shall a trumpet be blown in the city, and the people not be afraid? shall there be evil in a city, and the Lord hath not done it?

²⁰But as for you, ye thought evil against me; but God meant it unto good, to bring to pass, as it is this day, to save much people alive.

⁴For there are certain men crept in unawares, who were before of old ordained to this condemnation, ungodly men, turning the grace of our God into lasciviousness, and denying the only Lord God, and our Lord Jesus Christ.

¹O LORD, thou art my God; I will exalt thee, I will praise thy name; for thou hast done wonderful things; thy counsels of old are faithfulness and truth.

²For thou hast made of a city an heap; of a defenced city a ruin: a palace of strangers to be no city; it shall never be built.

⁷I form the light, and create darkness: I make peace, and create evil: I the Lord do all these things.

¹³Arise, O Lord, disappoint him, cast him down: deliver my soul from the wicked, which is thy sword:

¹⁰Surely the wrath of man shall praise thee: the remainder of wrath shalt thou restrain.

⁶Let them be as the grass upon the housetops, which withereth afore it groweth up:

²⁴For all flesh is as grass, and all the glory of man as the flower of grass. The grass withereth, and the flower thereof falleth away:

²⁶Therefore their inhabitants were of small power, they were dismayed and confounded; they were as the grass of the field, and as the green herb, as the grass on the housetops, and as corn blasted before it be grown up.

¹⁶In that day shall Egypt be like unto women: and it shall be afraid and fear because of the shaking of the hand of the Lord of hosts, which he shaketh over it.

⁶The voice said, Cry. And he said, What shall I cry? All flesh is grass, and all the goodliness thereof is as the flower of the field:

⁷The grass withereth, the flower fadeth: because the spirit of the Lord bloweth upon it: surely the people is grass.

⁸The grass withereth, the flower fadeth: but the word of our God shall stand for ever.

¹⁰But the rich, in that he is made low: because as the flower of the grass he shall pass away.

¹¹For the sun is no sooner risen with a burning heat, but it withereth the grass, and the flower thereof falleth, and the grace of the fashion of it perisheth: so also shall the rich man fade away in his ways.

¹⁰For though ye had smitten the whole army of the Chaldeans that fight against you, and there remained but wounded men among them, yet should they rise up every man in his tent, and burn this city with fire.

¹⁰¶ Go ye up upon her walls, and destroy; but make not a full end: take away her battlements; for they are not the Lord’s.

⁹Only rebel not ye against the Lord, neither fear ye the people of the land; for they are bread for us: their defence is departed from them, and the Lord is with us: fear them not.

¹⁵As for man, his days are as grass: as a flower of the field, so he flourisheth.

¹EXCEPT the Lord build the house, they labour in vain that build it: except the Lord keep the city, the watchman waketh but in vain.

²It is vain for you to rise up early, to sit up late, to eat the bread of sorrows: for so he giveth his beloved sleep.

²For they shall soon be cut down like the grass, and wither as the green herb.

⁵Thou carriest them away as with a flood; they are as a sleep: in the morning they are like grass which groweth up.

⁶In the morning it flourisheth, and groweth up; in the evening it is cut down, and withereth.

⁷When the wicked spring as the grass, and when all the workers of iniquity do flourish; it is that they shall be destroyed for ever:

¹O LORD, thou hast searched me, and known me.

²Thou knowest my downsitting and mine uprising, thou understandest my thought afar off.

³Thou compassest my path and my lying down, and art acquainted with all my ways.

⁴For there is not a word in my tongue, but, lo, O Lord, thou knowest it altogether.

⁵Thou hast beset me behind and before, and laid thine hand upon me.

⁶Such knowledge is too wonderful for me; it is high, I cannot attain unto it.

⁷Whither shall I go from thy spirit? or whither shall I flee from thy presence?

⁸If I ascend up into heaven, thou art there: if I make my bed in hell, behold, thou art there.

⁹If I take the wings of the morning, and dwell in the uttermost parts of the sea;

¹⁰Even there shall thy hand lead me, and thy right hand shall hold me.

¹¹If I say, Surely the darkness shall cover me; even the night shall be light about me.

¹³I know thy works, and where thou dwellest, even where Satan’s seat is: and thou holdest fast my name, and hast not denied my faith, even in those days wherein Antipas was my faithful martyr, who was slain among you, where Satan dwelleth.

²³Am I a God at hand, saith the Lord, and not a God afar off?

²⁴Can any hide himself in secret places that I shall not see him? saith the Lord. Do not I fill heaven and earth? saith the Lord.

³The eyes of the Lord are in every place, beholding the evil and the good.

²¹For the ways of man are before the eyes of the Lord, and he pondereth all his goings.

⁴And I will turn thee back, and put hooks into thy jaws, and I will bring thee forth, and all thine army, horses and horsemen, all of them clothed with all sorts of armour, even a great company with bucklers and shields, all of them handling swords:

¹²Wherefore it shall come to pass, that when the Lord hath performed his whole work upon mount Zion and on Jerusalem, I will punish the fruit of the stout heart of the king of Assyria, and the glory of his high looks.

²⁸And his breath, as an overflowing stream, shall reach to the midst of the neck, to sift the nations with the sieve of vanity: and there shall be a bridle in the jaws of the people, causing them to err.

³⁴By the way that he came, by the same shall he return, and shall not come into this city, saith the Lord.

⁴But I will put hooks in thy jaws, and I will cause the fish of thy rivers to stick unto thy scales, and I will bring thee up out of the midst of thy rivers, and all the fish of thy rivers shall stick unto thy scales.

²⁷But I know thy abode, and thy going out, and thy coming in, and thy rage against me.

²⁸Because thy rage against me and thy tumult is come up into mine ears, therefore I will put my hook in thy nose, and my bridle in thy lips, and I will turn thee back by the way by which thou camest.

²²And they gave him audience unto this word, and then lifted up their voices, and said, Away with such a fellow from the earth: for it is not fit that he should live.

⁴And he fell to the earth, and heard a voice saying unto him, Saul, Saul, why persecutest thou me?

²The Lord God hath sworn by his holiness, that, lo, the days shall come upon you, that he will take you away with hooks, and your posterity with fishhooks.

¹⁰And am I now come up without the Lord against this land to destroy it? the Lord said unto me, Go up against this land, and destroy it.

⁴¶ And Rabshakeh said unto them, Say ye now to Hezekiah, Thus saith the great king, the king of Assyria, What confidence is this wherein thou trustest?

¹⁰Thus shall ye speak to Hezekiah king of Judah, saying, Let not thy God, in whom thou trustest, deceive thee, saying, Jerusalem shall not be given into the hand of the king of Assyria.

²⁵For he stretcheth out his hand against God, and strengtheneth himself against the Almighty.

²⁶He runneth upon him, even on his neck, upon the thick bosses of his bucklers:

²Canst thou put an hook into his nose? or bore his jaw through with a thorn?

²⁴¶ When Pilate saw that he could prevail nothing, but that rather a tumult was made, he took water, and washed his hands before the multitude, saying, I am innocent of the blood of this just person: see ye to it.

⁹What do ye imagine against the Lord? he will make an utter end: affliction shall not rise up the second time.

¹⁰For while they be folden together as thorns, and while they are drunken as drunkards, they shall be devoured as stubble fully dry.

¹¹There is one come out of thee, that imagineth evil against the Lord, a wicked counseller.

¹WHY do the heathen rage, and the people imagine a vain thing?

²The kings of the earth set themselves, and the rulers take counsel together, against the Lord, and against his anointed, saying,

³Let us break their bands asunder, and cast away their cords from us.

⁹Be ye not as the horse, or as the mule, which have no understanding: whose mouth must be held in with bit and bridle, lest they come near unto thee.

⁶The heathen raged, the kingdoms were moved: he uttered his voice, the earth melted.

²³Forget not the voice of thine enemies: the tumult of those that rise up against thee increaseth continually.

⁴Thine enemies roar in the midst of thy congregations; they set up their ensigns for signs.

²For, lo, thine enemies make a tumult: and they that hate thee have lifted up the head.

³The floods have lifted up, O Lord, the floods have lifted up their voice; the floods lift up their waves.

⁴The Lord on high is mightier than the noise of many waters, yea, than the mighty waves of the sea.

²²If I had not come and spoken unto them, they had not had sin: but now they have no cloke for their sin.

²³He that hateth me hateth my Father also.

²⁹And this shall be a sign unto thee, Ye shall eat this year such things as grow of themselves, and in the second year that which springeth of the same; and in the third year sow ye, and reap, and plant vineyards, and eat the fruits thereof.

³And he gave a sign the same day, saying, This is the sign which the Lord hath spoken; Behold, the altar shall be rent, and the ashes that are upon it shall be poured out.

⁴And it came to pass, when king Jeroboam heard the saying of the man of God, which had cried against the altar in Beth-el, that he put forth his hand from the altar, saying, Lay hold on him. And his hand, which he put forth against him, dried up, so that he could not pull it in again to him.

⁵The altar also was rent, and the ashes poured out from the altar, according to the sign which the man of God had given by the word of the Lord.

⁹And Isaiah said, This sign shalt thou have of the Lord, that the Lord will do the thing that he hath spoken: shall the shadow go forward ten degrees, or go back ten degrees?

¹²And he said, Certainly I will be with thee; and this shall be a token unto thee, that I have sent thee: When thou hast brought forth the people out of Egypt, ye shall serve God upon this mountain.

¹⁴Therefore the Lord himself shall give you a sign; Behold, a virgin shall conceive, and bear a son, and shall call his name Immanuel.

⁴But in the seventh year shall be a sabbath of rest unto the land, a sabbath for the Lord: thou shalt neither sow thy field, nor prune thy vineyard.

⁵That which groweth of its own accord of thy harvest thou shalt not reap, neither gather the grapes of thy vine undressed: for it is a year of rest unto the land.

⁷And this shall be a sign unto thee from the Lord, that the Lord will do this thing that he hath spoken;

²¹And it shall come to pass in that day, that a man shall nourish a young cow, and two sheep;

²²And it shall come to pass, for the abundance of milk that they shall give he shall eat butter: for butter and honey shall every one eat that is left in the land.

²³And it shall come to pass in that day, that every place shall be, where there were a thousand vines at a thousand silverlings, it shall even be for briers and thorns.

²⁴With arrows and with bows shall men come thither; because all the land shall become briers and thorns.

²⁵And on all hills that shall be digged with the mattock, there shall not come thither the fear of briers and thorns: but it shall be for the sending forth of oxen, and for the treading of lesser cattle.

²⁰And if ye shall say, What shall we eat the seventh year? behold, we shall not sow, nor gather in our increase:

²¹Then I will command my blessing upon you in the sixth year, and it shall bring forth fruit for three years.

²²And ye shall sow the eighth year, and eat yet of old fruit until the ninth year; until her fruits come in ye shall eat of the old store.