Isaiah 29:1-24
29 Ha, Ariel, Ariel, town where David camped! Add year to year, let feasts go their round;
2 * and I will press Ariel hard, and there will be grievance and grieving, and she will be like an altar-hearth to me;
3 * and I will camp against you as David did, and beset you with a containing force, and raise siege-works against you.
4 And you will go low, speak from the ground, and your say will come from down in the clay, and your voice will be like a spirit’s at a seance, out of the ground, and your say will chirp out of the clay.
5 * But the host of strangers will become like fine dust, the host of invaders like chaff blowing past; and all of a sudden you will be visited
6 from Jehovah of Armies in thunder and earthquake and loud noise, gale and tempest and flame of devouring fire;
7 and the host of all the nations that campaigned against Ariel will be like a dream, a night vision, and all her assailers and her investment, and those that are pressing her so hard.
8 * And as a hungry man dreams that he is eating, and wakes up with his stomach empty, and as a thirsty man dreams that he is drinking, and wakes up and finds he is faint and his throat is hankering, so will be the host of all the nations that campaigned against Mount Sion.
9 Be mystified, be mazed, be blindfolded, be blinded; be drunk but not with wine; be tipsy but not with beer.
10 For Jehovah has poured upon you a spirit of trance and has shut your eyes (the prophets) tight and covered your heads (the seers);
11 and the vision of everything has become to you like the words of a sealed document, which they give to one who knows how to read and write, with the request “Read us this,” and he says “I cannot, because it is sealed,”
12 and it is given to one who does not know how to read and write with the request “Read us this,” and he says “I do not know how to read.”
13 * And the Lord said “Whereas this people has been approaching me with its mouth and glorifying me with its lips but its heart was far off from me, and their fearing me has been a commandment of men that has been taught them,
14 therefore here I am going on to give this people extraordinary treatment, extraordinary and exceptional; and their wise men’s wisdom will be lost, and their experts’ expertness will hide away.”
15 Ha, you who dig deep away from Jehovah to conceal a policy, and keep your doings in the dark, and say “Who sees us and who knows of us?”
16 * Such upside-downness! or is the potter to be rated like the clay, that a work says of its maker “He did not make me” and a dish has said of its potter “He did not know what he was doing”?
17 In a little bit longer will not Lebanon go back to garden-land and garden-land be classed as bush?
18 And deaf men will on that day hear words from books, and out of gloom and darkness blind men’s eyes will see,
19 and humble men will have enhanced joy in Jehovah, and the neediest of mankind will jubilate in the Holy One of Israel,
20 because arrogant men are gone, cynics are done for, all who have their minds set on villainy are extirpated;
21 ** those who convict a man for talk, and lay traps in the gate for a corrector, and put an honest man out of court for a nothing.
22 * So Jehovah says to the house of Jacob, he who redeemed Abraham, “Jacob shall not be put to shame now, and his face shall not now turn pale;
23 * for when his children shall see the work of my hands in his midst they shall recognize the sanctity of my name, recognize the sanctity of the Holy One of Jacob and stand in awe of the God of Israel,
24 and men who go astray in spirit shall have good sense and faultfinders learn lessons.”
Footnotes
^ 29:2 Heb. like an ariel Conj.* that the name for the city and the word for altar-hearth should have different vowels, Uriel and arial
^ 29:3 Unc.
^ 29:5 Codd. your strangers
^ 29:8 Lit. with his appetite empty . . . and his appetite is hankering
^ 29:13 Var.* but has taken its heart far off
^ 29:16 Lit. Your upside-downness Conj. Is God the like of you
^ 29:21 (for talk) Unc.
^ 29:21 Or lay traps for one who demonstrates the right in the gate
^ 29:22 Conj.* says, the Deity of the house of
^ 29:23 Lit. when he, his children, shall see the work or when he shall see his children, the work Conj. when he shall see the work
