The Living Bible (226 page)
Authors: Inc. Tyndale House Publishers
Tags: #BIBLES / Other Translations / Text
Woe to the city of Samaria, surrounded by her rich valley—Samaria, the pride and delight of the drunkards of Israel! Woe to her fading beauty, the crowning glory of a nation of men lying drunk in the streets!
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For the Lord will send a mighty army (the Assyrians) against you; like a mighty hailstorm he will burst upon you and dash you to the ground.
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The proud city of Samaria—yes, the joy and delight of the drunkards of Israel—will be hurled to the ground and trampled beneath the enemies’ feet.
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Once glorious, her fading beauty surrounded by a fertile valley will suddenly be gone, greedily snatched away as an early fig is hungrily snatched and gobbled up!
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Then at last the Lord Almighty himself will be their crowning glory, the diadem of beauty to his people who are left.
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He will give a longing for justice to your judges and great courage to your soldiers who are battling to the last before your gates.
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But Jerusalem is now led by drunks! Her priests and prophets reel and stagger, making stupid errors and mistakes.
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Their tables are covered with vomit; filth is everywhere.
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“Who does Isaiah think he is,” the people say, “to speak to us like this! Are we little children, barely old enough to talk?
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He tells us everything over and over again, a line at a time and in such simple words!”
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But they won’t listen; the only language they can understand is punishment! So God will punish them by sending against them foreigners who speak strange gibberish! Only then will they listen to him!
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They could have rest in their own land if they would obey him, if they were kind and good. He told them that, but they wouldn’t listen to him.
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So the Lord will spell it out for them again, repeating it over and over in simple words whenever he can; yet over this simple, straightforward message they will stumble and fall and be broken, trapped and captured.
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Therefore hear the word of the Lord, you scoffing rulers in Jerusalem:
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You have struck a bargain with death, you say, and sold yourselves to the devil
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in exchange for his protection against the Assyrians. “They can never touch us,” you say, “for we are under the care of one who will deceive and fool them.”
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But the Lord God says, “See, I am placing a Foundation Stone in Zion—a firm, tested, precious Cornerstone that is safe to build on. He who believes need never run away again.
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I will take the line and plummet of justice to check the foundation wall you built; it looks so fine, but it is so weak a storm of hail will knock it down! The enemy will come like a flood and sweep it away, and you will be drowned.
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I will cancel your agreement of compromise with death and the devil, so when the terrible enemy floods in, you will be trampled into the ground.
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Again and again that flood will come and carry you off, until at last the unmixed horror of the truth of my warnings will finally dawn on you.”
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The bed you have made is far too short to lie on; the blankets are too narrow to cover you.
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The Lord will come suddenly and in anger, as at Mount Perazim and Gibeon, to do a strange, unusual thing—to destroy his own people!
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So scoff no more, lest your punishment be made even greater, for the Lord God has plainly told me that he is determined to crush you.
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Listen to me, listen as I plead: Does a farmer always plow and never sow? Is he forever harrowing the soil and never planting it?
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Does he not finally plant his many kinds of grain, each in its own section of his land?
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He knows just what to do, for God has made him see and understand.
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He doesn’t thresh all grains the same. A sledge is never used on dill, but it is beaten with a stick. A threshing wheel is never rolled on cummin, but it is beaten softly with a flail.
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Bread grain is easily crushed, so he doesn’t keep on pounding it.
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The Lord Almighty is a wonderful teacher and gives the farmer wisdom.
Woe to Jerusalem,
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the city of David. Year after year you make your many offerings,
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but I will send heavy judgment upon you, and there will be weeping and sorrow. For Jerusalem shall become as her name “Ariel” means—an altar covered with blood.
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I will be your enemy. I will surround Jerusalem and lay siege against it, and build forts around it to destroy it.
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Your voice will whisper like a ghost from the earth where you lie buried.
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But suddenly your ruthless enemies will be driven away like chaff before the wind.
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In an instant, I, the Lord of Hosts, will come upon them with thunder, earthquake, whirlwind, and fire.
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And all the nations fighting Jerusalem will vanish like a dream!
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As a hungry man dreams of eating but is still hungry, and as a thirsty man dreams of drinking but is still faint from thirst when he wakes up, so your enemies will dream of victorious conquest, but all to no avail.
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You are amazed, incredulous? You don’t believe it? Then go ahead and be blind if you must! You are stupid—and not from drinking, either! Stagger, and not from wine!
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For the Lord has poured out upon you a spirit of deep sleep. He has closed the eyes of your prophets and seers,
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so all of these future events are a sealed book to them. When you give it to one who can read, he says, “I can’t, for it’s sealed.”
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When you give it to another, he says, “Sorry, I can’t read.”
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And so the Lord says, “Since these people say they are mine but they do not obey me, and since their worship amounts to mere words learned by rote,
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therefore I will take awesome vengeance on these hypocrites and make their wisest counselors as fools.”
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Woe to those who try to hide their plans from God, who try to keep him in the dark concerning what they do! “God can’t see us,” they say to themselves. “He doesn’t know what is going on!”
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How stupid can they be! Isn’t he, the Potter, greater than you, the jars he makes? Will you say to him, “He didn’t make us”? Does a machine call its inventor dumb?
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Soon—and it will not be very long—the wilderness of Lebanon will be a fruitful field again, a lush and fertile forest.
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In that day the deaf will hear the words of a book, and out of their gloom and darkness the blind will see my plans.
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The meek will be filled with fresh joy from the Lord, and the poor shall exult in the Holy One of Israel.
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Bullies will vanish and scoffers will cease, and all those plotting evil will be killed—
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the violent man who fights at the drop of a hat, the man who waits in hiding to beat up the judge who sentenced him, and the men who use any excuse to be unfair.
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That is why the Lord who redeemed Abraham says: “My people will no longer pale with fear or be ashamed.
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For when they see the surging birthrate and the expanding economy,
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then they will fear and rejoice in my name; they will praise the Holy One of Israel and stand in awe of him.
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Those in error will believe the truth, and complainers will be willing to be taught!
Woe to my rebellious children, says the Lord; you ask advice from everyone but me and decide to do what I don’t want you to do. You yoke yourselves with unbelievers, thus piling up your sins.
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For without consulting me you have gone down to Egypt to find aid and have put your trust in Pharaoh for his protection.
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But in trusting Pharaoh, you will be disappointed, humiliated and disgraced, for he can’t deliver on his promises to save you.
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For though his power extends to Zoan and Hanes,
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yet it will all turn out to your shame—he won’t help one little bit!
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See them moving slowly across the terrible desert to Egypt—donkeys and camels laden down with treasure to pay for Egypt’s aid. On through the badlands they go, where lions and swift venomous snakes live—and Egypt will give you nothing in return!
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For Egypt’s promises are worthless! “The Reluctant Dragon,”
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I call her!
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Now go and write down this word of mine concerning Egypt, so that it will stand until the end of time, forever and forever, as an indictment of Israel’s unbelief.
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For if you don’t write it, they will claim I never warned them. “Oh no,” they’ll say, “you never told us that!”
For they are stubborn rebels.
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They tell my prophets, “Shut up—we don’t want any more of your reports!” Or they say, “Don’t tell us the truth; tell us nice things; tell us lies. Forget all this gloom; we’ve heard more than enough about your ‘Holy One of Israel’ and all he says.”
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This is the reply of the Holy One of Israel:
Because you despise what I tell you and trust instead in frauds and lies and won’t repent,
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therefore calamity will come upon you suddenly, as upon a bulging wall that bursts and falls; in one moment it comes crashing down.
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God will smash you like a broken dish; he will not act sparingly. Not a piece will be left large enough to use for carrying coals from the hearth, or a little water from the well.
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For the Lord God, the Holy One of Israel, says: Only in returning to me and waiting for me will you be saved; in quietness and confidence is your strength; but you’ll have none of this.
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“No,” you say. “We will get our help from Egypt; they will give us swift horses for riding to battle.” But the only swiftness you are going to see is the swiftness of your enemies chasing you!
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One of them will chase a thousand of you! Five of them will scatter you until not two of you are left together. You will be like lonely trees on the distant mountaintops.
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Yet the Lord still waits for you to come to him so he can show you his love; he will conquer you to bless you, just as he said. For the Lord is faithful to his promises. Blessed are all those who wait for him to help them.
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O my people in Jerusalem, you shall weep no more, for he will surely be gracious to you at the sound of your cry. He will answer you.
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Though he give you the bread of adversity and water of affliction, yet he will be with you to teach you—with your own eyes you will see your Teacher.
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And if you leave God’s paths and go astray, you will hear a voice behind you say, “No, this is the way; walk here.”
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And you will destroy all your silver idols and gold images and cast them out like filthy things you hate to touch. “Ugh!” you’ll say to them. “Be gone!”
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Then God will bless you with rain at planting time and with wonderful harvests and with ample pastures for your cows.
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The oxen and young donkeys that till the ground will eat grain, its chaff blown away by the wind.
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In that day when God steps in to destroy your enemies, he will give you streams of water flowing down each mountain and every hill.
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The moon will be as bright as the sun, and the sunlight brighter than seven days! So it will be when the Lord begins to heal his people and to cure the wounds he gave them.
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See, the Lord comes from afar, aflame with wrath, surrounded by thick rising smoke. His lips are filled with fury; his words consume like fire.
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His wrath pours out like floods upon them all, to sweep them all away. He will sift out the proud nations and bridle them and lead them off to their doom.
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But the people of God will sing a song of solemn joy, like songs in the night when holy feasts are held; his people will have gladness of heart, as when a flutist leads a pilgrim band to Jerusalem to the mountain of the Lord, the Rock of Israel.
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And the Lord shall cause his majestic voice to be heard and shall crush down his mighty arm upon his enemies with angry indignation and devouring flames, with tornados, terrible storms, and huge hailstones.
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The voice of the Lord shall punish the Assyrians, who had been his rod of punishment.
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And when the Lord smites them, his people will rejoice with music and song.
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The funeral pyre has long been ready, prepared for Molech, the Assyrian god; it is piled high with wood. The breath of the Lord, like fire from a volcano, will set it all on fire.