Isaiah 24:1-23

24  Here Jehovah is gutting and cutting the earth, and pitting its surface and scattering its inhabitants, 2 * and laity and priest will be alike, slave and master, maid and mistress, seller and buyer, lender and borrower, capitalist and proletarian: 3  the earth is to be gutted and looted, because Jehovah has spoken this word. 4 * The earth is mourning and wilted, the world is forlorn and wilted, the loftiest heights of earth stand forlorn; 5  and the earth is polluted under its inhabitants, because they have overstepped precepts, departed from usage, broken a perpetual covenant. 6 * That is why a curse has eaten up earth and those who live on it are paying the penalty; that is why the inhabitants of earth wane and humanity is left scarce. 7  Grapejuice is mourning, vines forlorn, all the jovial are sighing. 8  The festivity of tambourines has stopped, the hubbub of hilarious men has died out, the festivity of lyres has stopped. 9  With song they will not drink wine; beer will be bitter to its drinkers. 10  Deserted towns are broken down, every house blocked from entrance; 11 * there is clamor over the wine in the streets, all merrymaking has passed, the festivity of the earth has been swept off; 12  there is left in the city desolation, and gates are shattered to ruins. 13  For in the heart of the earth, in the middle of the peoples, it will be like the beatings of an olive-tree, like after-pickings when a vintage is over. 14 * They will raise their voices, they will shout at Jehovah’s proud work; they whoop from the west therefore; 15 * in the lands of light they glorify Jehovah, on the coasts beyond the sea the name of Jehovah Israel’s God. 16  From the margin of the earth we hear hymns, ascriptions of splendor to the Righteous One. But I said “Dwindling I get, dwindling I get! woe is me! faithless men have done faithlessly, faithless men have done faithless things.” 17 * Dread and chasm and trap are at you, inhabitant of the country, and he who takes flight from the sound of the dread will come to fall into the chasm, 18  and he who gets up out of the chasm will come to be caught in the trap. For hatchways are opened aloft, and earth’s foundations quake. Earth is cracking, 19  earth is splitting, earth is slipping; 20  earth swings this way and that like a drunken man and is tottering like a night-platform, and its crime is weighing it down and it will fall and rise no more. 21  And on that day Jehovah will punish on high the celestial legions and on the ground the earthly kings, 22  and they will be brought together as prisoners are to a dungeon and shut into a lockup, and a long time later they will be looked after. 23  And the orb of night will be abashed, and the orb of day put to shame, because Jehovah has become king on Mount Sion and in Jerusalem, and there is glory before his elders.

Footnotes

24:2 (capitalist and proletarian) Lit. interest-taker and interest-payer
24:4 Codd. the loftiest of the populace stand forlorn
24:6 (wane) Unc.
24:11 Codd. all merrymaking is in eclipse (unc.)
24:14-15 Codd.* will carol, at Jehovah’s proud work they whoop from the west, therefore in the lands of light glorify Jehovah
24:15 Lit. in the lights Susp.
24:17-18 (chasm) Lit. sinkhole