Isaiah 29

“Ah, Ariel, Ariel, City where David camped! Add year to year, Let festivals come in their cycles!

And I will harass Ariel, And there shall be sorrow and sighing. She shall be to Me like Ariel.

And I will camp against you round about; I will lay siege to you with a mound, And I will set up siegeworks against you.

And you shall speak from lower than the ground, Your speech shall be humbler than the sod; Your speech shall sound like a ghost’s from the ground, Your voice shall chirp from the sod.

And like fine dust shall be The multitude of your strangers; And like flying chaff, The multitude of tyrants.” And suddenly, in an instant,

She shall be remembered of GOD of Hosts With roaring, and shaking, and deafening noise, Storm, and tempest, and blaze of consuming fire.

Then, like a dream, a vision of the night, Shall be the multitude of nations That war upon Ariel, And all her besiegers, and the siegeworks against her, And those who harass her.

Like someone hungry who dreams of eating, But wakes up still hungry; And like someone thirsty who dreams of drinking, But wakes faint And utterly parched— So shall be all the multitude of nations That war upon Mount Zion.

Act stupid and be stupefied! Act blind and be blinded! (They are drunk, but not from wine, They stagger, but not from liquor.)

For GOD has spread over you A spirit of deep sleep, And has shut your eyes, the prophets, And covered your heads, the seers;

So that all prophecy has been to you Like the words of a sealed document. If it is handed to one who can read with a request to read it, the response will be, “I can’t, because it is sealed”;

and if the document is handed with the same request to one who cannot read, the response will be, “I can’t read.”

My Sovereign said: Because that people has approached [Me] with its mouth And honored Me with its lips, But has kept its heart far from Me, And its worship of Me has been A social obligation, learned by rote—

Truly, I shall further baffle that people With bafflement upon bafflement; And the wisdom of its wise shall fail, And the prudence of its prudent shall vanish.

Ha! Those who would hide their plans Deep from GOD! Who do their work in dark places And say, “Who sees us, who takes note of us?”

How perverse of you! Should the potter be accounted as the clay? Should what is made say of its Maker, “This One did not make me,” And what is formed say of the One who formed it, “That One did not understand”?

Surely, in a little while, Lebanon will be transformed into farmland, And farmland accounted as mere brush.

In that day, the deaf shall hear even written words, And the eyes of the blind shall see Even in darkness and obscurity.

Then the humble shall have increasing joy through GOD, And the neediest of people shall exult In the Holy One of Israel.

For the tyrant shall be no more, The scoffer shall cease to be; And those diligent for evil shall be wiped out,

Who cause people to lose their lawsuits, Laying a snare for the arbiter at the gate, And wronging by falsehood One who was in the right.

Assuredly, thus said GOD to the House of Jacob, Who redeemed Abraham: No more shall Jacob be shamed, No longer his face grow pale.

For when he—that is, his progeny—behold what My hands have wrought in his midst, they will hallow My name. They will hallow the Holy One of Jacob And stand in awe of the God of Israel.

And the confused shall acquire insight And grumblers accept instruction.