Isaiah
30 Ha, children stubborn, quoth Jehovah, to execute a policy when it is not from me and to weave a web when it is not my spirit, so as to add sin to sin! 2 that go off to go down to Egypt without having asked Jehovah’s voice, to take cover in the Pharaoh’s citadel and take shelter in Egypt’s shadow! 3 and the Pharaoh’s citadel will be a disappointment to you, and the sheltering in Egypt’s shadow a humiliation. 4 Though his generals be at Soʽan and his envoys reach Hanes, 5* everything will come to disappointment over a people that do them no good: not for help and not for usefulness, but for shame and ignominy.
6** Boding of Animals of the South:
In a country of distress and hard straits, lioness and growling lion, sand-adder and flying wildfire-snake, they carry their wealth on jackasses’ shoulders and their hoards on camels’ humps to a people that do them no good. 7** And the help that Egypt gives is air and emptiness; so I call that Bluster-and-Sit. 8 Now go in, write it on a tablet in their presence and inscribe it in a book, to become a perpetual witness for a future day. 9 For it is a disobedient people, disloyal children, children that will not listen to Jehovah’s instructions, 10 such as say to the seers “You shall not see” and to the vision-seers “You shall not have honest visions for us; make slippery predictions to us, see humbug visions; 11 go off course, swerve out of road, get the Holy One of Israel out of our way.”
12 So the Holy One of Israel says “Since you reject this word and trust to a dodger and twister and lean on him, 13 therefore this guilt will be for you like a split piece ready to tumble, bulging out in a towering wall, whose break will come all of a sudden, 14 and its break will be like that of a potters’ crock pounded up remorselessly, among whose poundings there is not to be found a fragment to take up fire from a bed of coals or water from a swampy spot.”
15* For the Lord Jehovah, the Holy One of Israel, says “By turning back and resting you will be saved; in quietness and in trustfulness will be your strength”; but you would not, 16 and said “No, but we will take flight on ponies”—therefore take flight you shall; and “we will ride on a swift beast”—therefore swift shall be your pursuers. 17* A thousand shall be in panic at a threat from one; at a threat from five you shall take flight, till you are left like a flagstaff on a mountaintop, like a signal on a hill.
18* And therefore Jehovah will wait to show you favor, and therefore he will stand aloft to treat you tenderly; for Jehovah is a God of justice—happy are all who wait for him. 19* For, people who live in Sion, in Jerusalem, you shall not weep; he will be gracious to you at the sound of your cry; when he heard he answered you; 20 and the Lord will give you half rations of bread and water. And your teachers will not hide away anymore, but your eyes will see your teachers 21 and your ears will hear a word behind you “This is the road, go by it” when you get off to right or to left. 22 And you will defile your wall-facing of figured silver and your ephodage of modeled gold; you will be sickened at them as you would at a used dressing for a woman’s flow of blood; you will call them filth. 23 And he will give the rain for your seed that you sow the soil with, and, from the produce of the soil, bread that will be fat and rich; your stock will on that day pasture broad uplands, 24 and the oxen and jackasses that work the soil will eat barley mixed with sorrel, the barley winnowed with shovel and with fork; 25 and on every high mountain and on every stately hill there will be canals, streams of water, on a day of great slaughter when towers fall. 26 And the orb of night will have light like that of the orb of day, and the orb of day sevenfold light, on the day of Jehovah’s bandaging his people’s broken limbs and healing its shattering wound.
27* Here is Jehovah’s name coming from afar, his anger burning and heavy-smoking; his lips are full of hostility and his tongue is like a devouring fire; 28*** and his breath is like a torrent in flood neck-deep, to sift nations in a sieve of futility, and a misguiding bridle in the mouths of peoples. 29 You will have singing as in the night in which a feast is inaugurated, and blitheness like that of one who goes with a flute to come on Jehovah’s mountain to the Rock of Israel. 30* And Jehovah will let the majesty of his voice be heard and the descent of his arm seen in angry vexation and a flame of devouring fire, cloudburst and squall and hailstones; 31* for at Jehovah’s voice Assyria will be dismayed. He will be struck with a cudgel; 32* and every sweep of the rod of discipline that Jehovah will lay upon him will be with tambourines and lyres, and with back-and-forth strokes with which he has fought— 33 for a fire-pit is already fueled, it too has been prepared for the king, made deep, wide; its pile is fire and abundance of wood; Jehovah’s breath, like a brook of brimstone, is firing it.