Isaiah 21:1-17
21 * The boding of wildernesses:Like gales over the South as it sweeps by, it comes from a wilderness, from a fearful country;
2 as a hard prospect it is told me: the defrauder defrauds and the marauder marauds. Up, ʽElam; lay siege, Media; I have put a stop to all their moaning.
3 ** Therefore my back is full of cramps, pains like a childbearing woman’s have seized me; I am too dizzy to hear, too dazed to see.
4 My brain wanders, shudders overwhelm me; the twilight I was so fond of he has made a time of panic for me.
5 * The table set, the rug laid out, eating and drinking—up, captains, grease shields!
6 For the Lord says to me “Go station the lookout; he is to report
7 what he sees, and when he sees two-horse chariots, donkey chariots, camel chariots, he is to listen hard, hard.”
8 * And he called out “O, O, I stand always on watch by day, Lord, and I am planted on guard all through the nights,
9 ** and here come chariots, men, paired horses”—and he answered “Babylon is fallen, fallen, and all the bas-reliefs of her gods he has broken up and left on the ground.”
10 * My threshing, grain of my floor, what I have heard from Israel’s God Jehovah of Armies I have reported to you.
11 The boding of Dumah:One calls to me out of Seʽir “Watchman, what time of night? watchman, what time of night?”
12 * Says watchman, “Morning is come and night too; if you are inquiring, inquire; come again.”
13 * The boding “in the desert”:In the badlands in the desert you will spend the night, caravans of Dedanites.
14 Come with water to meet a thirsty one, inhabitants of Tema; offer a fugitive his bread;
15 * for they have taken flight before swords, before whetted swords and strung bows and stress of war.
16 * For the Lord has said to me “In another year, like the years of a hired man’s contract, Kedar’s importance will all be gone
17 * and the remnant of the archer champions of the sons of Kedar will be few; for Israel’s God Jehovah has spoken.”
Footnotes
^ 21:1 Codd.* of sea wilderness or of western wilderness
^ 21:3 (dizzy) Unc.
^ 21:3 (dazed) Or convulsed
^ 21:5 (the rug laid out) Unc.
^ 21:8 Codd. called out “A lion; I Conj. called out “See, I
^ 21:9 Or and one answered Punctuation uncertain
^ 21:9 Lit. broken up onto the ground
^ 21:10 Lit. and son of my threshing-floor
^ 21:12 Half the words of the watchman’s answer are in the Syrian language
^ 21:13 Or in Arabia (twice)
^ 21:15 (whetted) Unc.
^ 21:16 Var. In three years more
^ 21:17 Lit. the remnant of the number of the bows of the champions of
