Isaiah 34-36
Complete Jewish Bible
34 Come close, you nations, and listen!
Pay close attention, you peoples!
Let the earth hear, and everything in it;
the world, with all it produces.
2 For Adonai is angry at every nation,
furious with all their armies;
he has completely destroyed them,
handed them over to slaughter.
3 Their slain will be thrown out,
the stench will rise from their corpses,
the mountains will flow with their blood.
4 The whole host of heaven will decompose,
the heavens themselves be rolled up like a scroll;
all their array will wither away
like a withering grape-leaf that falls from a vine
or a withered fig from a fig tree.
5 “For my sword has drunk its fill in heaven;
now it descends on Edom to judge them,
the people I have doomed to destruction.”
6 There is a sword that belongs to Adonai.
It is filled with blood, gorged with fat,
filled with the blood of lambs and goats,
gorged with the fat of the kidneys of rams.
For Adonai has a sacrifice in Botzrah,
a great slaughter in the land of Edom.
7 The wild oxen will fall with them,
the young bulls with the strong, mature ones.
Their land will be drunk with blood
and their dust made greasy with fat.
8 For Adonai has a day of vengeance,
a year of requital for fighting with Tziyon.
9 Its streams will be changed to tar,
its dust to sulfur, its land burning tar
10 that will not be quenched night or day;
its smoke will rise forever.
In all generations it will lie waste;
no one will pass through it ever again.
11 Horned owl and hawk will possess it,
screech owl and raven will live there;
he will stretch over it the measuring line of confusion
and the plumbline of the empty void.
12 Of its nobles, none will be called to be king,
and all its princes will be nothing.
13 Thorns will overgrow its palaces,
nettles and thistles its fortresses;
it will become a lair for jackals,
an enclosure for ostriches.
14 Wildcats and hyenas will meet there;
and billy-goats call to each other;
Lilit [the night monster] will lurk there
and find herself a place to rest.
15 There the hoot owl will nest, lay her eggs,
hatch and gather her young in its shade.
There the vultures will assemble,
every one with its mate.
16 Consult the book of Adonai and read it:
not one of these will be missing,
none will be lacking a mate.
For by his own mouth he gave the order,
and by his Spirit he brought them together.
17 It is he who cast the lot for them,
his hand measured out their shares.
They will possess it forever,
and live there through all generations.
35 The desert and the dry land will be glad;
the ‘Aravah will rejoice and blossom like the lily.
2 It will burst into flower,
will rejoice with joy and singing,
will be given the glory of the L’vanon,
the splendor of Karmel and the Sharon.
They will see the glory of Adonai,
the splendor of our God.
3 Strengthen your drooping arms,
and steady your tottering knees.
4 Say to the fainthearted, “Be strong and unafraid!
Here is your God; he will come with vengeance;
with God’s retribution he will come and save you.”
5 Then the eyes of the blind will be opened,
and the ears of the deaf will be unstopped;
6 then the lame man will leap like a deer,
and the mute person’s tongue will sing.
For in the desert, springs will burst forth,
streams of water in the ‘Aravah;
7 the sandy mirage will become a pool,
the thirsty ground springs of water.
The haunts where jackals lie down will become
a marsh filled with reeds and papyrus.
8 A highway will be there, a way,
called the Way of Holiness.
The unclean will not pass over it,
but it will be for those whom he guides —
fools will not stray along it.
9 No lion or other beast of prey
will be there, traveling on it.
They will not be found there,
but the redeemed will go there.
10 Those ransomed by Adonai will return
and come with singing to Tziyon,
on their heads will be everlasting joy.
They will acquire gladness and joy,
while sorrow and sighing will flee.
36 It was in the fourteenth year of King Hizkiyahu that Sancheriv king of Ashur advanced against all the fortified cities of Y’hudah and captured them. 2 From Lakhish the king of Ashur sent Rav-Shakeh to Hizkiyahu in Yerushalayim with a large army. He positioned himself by the aqueduct from the Upper Pool, which is by the road to the Launderers’ Field. 3 Elyakim the son of Hilkiyahu, who was in charge of the household, Shevnah the general secretary and Yo’ach the son of Asaf the foreign minister went out to meet him.
4 Rav-Shakeh addressed them: “Tell Hizkiyahu: ‘Here is what the great king, the king of Ashur, says: “What makes you so confident? 5 I say: do mere words constitute strategy and strength for battle? In whom, then, are you trusting when you rebel against me like this? 6 Look! Relying on Egypt is like using a broken stick as a staff — when you lean on it, it punctures your hand. That’s what Pharaoh king of Egypt is like for anyone who puts his trust in him. 7 But if you tell me, ‘We trust in Adonai our God,’ then isn’t he the one whose high places and altars Hizkiyahu has removed, telling Y’hudah and Yerushalayim, ‘You must worship before this altar’? 8 All right, then, make a wager with my lord the king of Ashur: I will give you two thousand horses if you can find enough riders for them. 9 How then can you repulse even one of my master’s lowest-ranked army officers? Yet you are relying on Egypt for chariots and riders! 10 Do you think I have come up to this land to destroy it without Adonai’s approval? Adonai said to me, ‘Go up against this land and destroy it!’ ” ’ ”
11 Elyakim, Shevnah and Yo’ach said to Rav-Shakeh, “Please speak to your servants in Aramaic, since we understand it; don’t speak to us in Hebrew while the people on the wall are listening.” 12 But Rav-Shakeh answered, “Did my master send me to deliver my message just to your master and yourselves? Didn’t he send me to address the men sitting on the wall, who, like you, are going to eat their own dung and drink their own urine?” 13 Then Rav-Shakeh stood up and, speaking loudly in Hebrew, said: “Hear what the great king, the king of Ashur, says! 14 This is what the king says: ‘Don’t let Hizkiyahu deceive you, because he won’t be able to save you. 15 And don’t let Hizkiyahu make you trust in Adonai by saying, “Adonai will surely save us; this city will not be given over to the king of Ashur.” 16 Don’t listen to Hizkiyahu.’ For this is what the king says: ‘Make peace with me, surrender to me. Then every one of you can eat from his vine and fig tree and drink the water in his own cistern, 17 until I come and take you away to a land like your own land, a land with grain and wine, a land with bread and vineyards. 18 Beware of Hizkiyahu; he is only deluding you when he says, “Adonai will save us.” Has any god of any nation ever saved his land from the power of the king of Ashur? 19 Where are the gods of Hamat and Arpad? Where are the gods of S’farvayim? Did they save Shomron from my power? 20 Where is the god of any of these countries that has saved its country from my power, so that Adonai might be able to save Yerushalayim from my power?’” 21 But they kept still and didn’t answer him so much as a word, for the king’s order was, “Don’t answer him.”
22 Then Elyakim the son of Hilkiyahu, who was in charge of the household, Shevnah the general secretary and Yo’ach the son of Asaf the foreign minister went to Hizkiyahu with their clothes torn and reported to him what Rav-Shakeh had said.
Copyright © 1998 by David H. Stern. All rights reserved.
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