ISAIAH

Isaiah 1

The vision of Isaiah son of Amoz, which he saw concerning Judah and Jerusalem in the days of Uzziah, Jotham, Ahaz, and Hezekiah, kings of Judah.

² Hear, O heavens, and listen, O earth;

for the LORD has spoken:

I reared children and brought them up,

but they have rebelled against me.

³ The ox knows its owner,

and the donkey its master’s crib;

but Israel does not know,

my people do not understand.

⁴ Ah, sinful nation,

people laden with iniquity,

offspring who do evil,

children who deal corruptly,

who have forsaken the LORD,

who have despised the Holy One of Israel,

who are utterly estranged!

⁵ Why do you seek further beatings?

Why do you continue to rebel?

The whole head is sick,

and the whole heart faint.

⁶ From the sole of the foot even to the head,

there is no soundness in it,

but bruises and sores

and bleeding wounds;

they have not been drained, or bound up,

or softened with oil.

⁷ Your country lies desolate,

your cities are burned with fire;

in your very presence

aliens devour your land;

it is desolate, as overthrown by foreigners.

⁸ And daughter Zion is left

like a booth in a vineyard,

like a shelter in a cucumber field,

like a besieged city.

⁹ If the LORD of hosts

had not left us a few survivors,

we would have been like Sodom,

and become like Gomorrah.

¹⁰ Hear the word of the LORD,

you rulers of Sodom!

Listen to the teaching of our God,

you people of Gomorrah!

¹¹ What to me is the multitude of your sacrifices?

says the LORD;

I have had enough of burnt offerings of rams

and the fat of fed beasts;

I do not delight in the blood of bulls,

or of lambs, or of goats.

¹² When you come to appear before me,[1]

who asked this from your hand?

Trample my courts no more;

¹³ bringing offerings is futile;

incense is an abomination to me.

New moon and sabbath and calling of convocation—

I cannot endure solemn assemblies with iniquity.

¹⁴ Your new moons and your appointed festivals

my soul hates;

they have become a burden to me,

I am weary of bearing them.

¹⁵ When you stretch out your hands,

I will hide my eyes from you;

even though you make many prayers,

I will not listen;

your hands are full of blood.

¹⁶ Wash yourselves; make yourselves clean;

remove the evil of your doings

from before my eyes;

cease to do evil,

¹⁷ learn to do good;

seek justice,

rescue the oppressed,

We have a strange illusion that mere time cancels sin. I have heard others, and I have heard myself, recounting cruelties and falsehoods committed in boyhood as if they were no concern of the present speaker’s, and even with laughter. But mere time does nothing either to the fact or to the guilt of a sin. The guilt is washed out not by time but by repentance and the blood of Christ: if we have repented these early sins we should remember the price of our forgiveness and be humble. As for the fact of a sin, is it probable that anything cancels it? All times are eternally present to God. Is it not at least possible that along some one line of His multi-dimensional eternity He sees you forever in the nursery pulling the wings off a fly, forever toadying, lying, and lusting as a schoolboy, forever in that moment of cowardice or insolence as a subaltern? It may be that salvation consists not in the cancelling of these eternal moments but in the perfected humanity that bears the shame forever, rejoicing in the occasion which it furnished to God’s compassion and glad that it should be common knowledge to the universe. Perhaps in that eternal moment St. Peter—he will forgive me if I am wrong—forever denies his Master. If so, it would indeed be true that the joys of Heaven are for most of us, in our present condition, “an acquired taste”—and certain ways of life may render the taste impossible of acquisition. Perhaps the lost are those who dare not go to such a public place. Of course I do not know that this is true; but I think the possibility is worth keeping in mind. That is the first and greatest commandment.

—from The Problem of Pain

For reflection Isaiah 1:1–31

defend the orphan,

plead for the widow.

¹⁸ Come now, let us argue it out,

says the LORD:

though your sins are like scarlet,

they shall be like snow;

though they are red like crimson,

they shall become like wool.

For reflection: Isaiah 1:18

It costs God nothing, so far as we know, to create nice things: but to convert rebellious wills cost His crucifixion.

—from Mere Christianity

¹⁹ If you are willing and obedient,

you shall eat the good of the land;

²⁰ but if you refuse and rebel,

you shall be devoured by the sword;

for the mouth of the LORD has spoken.

²¹ How the faithful city

has become a whore!

She that was full of justice,

righteousness lodged in her—

but now murderers!

²² Your silver has become dross,

your wine is mixed with water.

²³ Your princes are rebels

and companions of thieves.

Everyone loves a bribe

and runs after gifts.

They do not defend the orphan,

and the widow’s cause does not come before them.

²⁴ Therefore says the Sovereign, the LORD of hosts, the Mighty One of Israel:

Ah, I will pour out my wrath on my enemies,

and avenge myself on my foes!

²⁵ I will turn my hand against you;

I will smelt away your dross as with lye

and remove all your alloy.

²⁶ And I will restore your judges as at the first,

and your counselors as at the beginning.

Afterward you shall be called the city of righteousness,

the faithful city.

²⁷ Zion shall be redeemed by justice,

and those in her who repent, by righteousness.

²⁸ But rebels and sinners shall be destroyed together,

and those who forsake the LORD shall be consumed.

²⁹ For you shall be ashamed of the oaks

in which you delighted;

and you shall blush for the gardens

that you have chosen.

³⁰ For you shall be like an oak

whose leaf withers,

and like a garden without water.

³¹ The strong shall become like tinder,

and their work[2] like a spark;

they and their work shall burn together,

with no one to quench them.

Isaiah 2

The word that Isaiah son of Amoz saw concerning Judah and Jerusalem.

² In days to come

the mountain of the LORD’s house

shall be established as the highest of the mountains,

and shall be raised above the hills;

all the nations shall stream to it.

³ Many peoples shall come and say,

“Come, let us go up to the mountain of the LORD,

to the house of the God of Jacob;

that he may teach us his ways

and that we may walk in his paths.”

For out of Zion shall go forth instruction,

and the word of the LORD from Jerusalem.

⁴ He shall judge between the nations,

and shall arbitrate for many peoples;

they shall beat their swords into plowshares,

and their spears into pruning hooks;

nation shall not lift up sword against nation,

neither shall they learn war any more.

⁵ O house of Jacob,

come, let us walk

in the light of the LORD!

⁶ For you have forsaken the ways of[3] your people,

O house of Jacob.

Indeed they are full of diviners[4] from the east

and of soothsayers like the Philistines,

and they clasp hands with foreigners.

⁷ Their land is filled with silver and gold,

and there is no end to their treasures;

their land is filled with horses,

and there is no end to their chariots.

⁸ Their land is filled with idols;

they bow down to the work of their hands,

to what their own fingers have made.

⁹ And so people are humbled,

and everyone is brought low—

do not forgive them!

¹⁰ Enter into the rock,

and hide in the dust

from the terror of the LORD,

and from the glory of his majesty.

¹¹ The haughty eyes of people shall be brought low,

and the pride of everyone shall be humbled;

and the LORD alone will be exalted on that day.

¹² For the LORD of hosts has a day

against all that is proud and lofty,

against all that is lifted up and high;[5]

¹³ against all the cedars of Lebanon,

lofty and lifted up;

and against all the oaks of Bashan;

¹⁴ against all the high mountains,

and against all the lofty hills;

¹⁵ against every high tower,

and against every fortified wall;

¹⁶ against all the ships of Tarshish,

and against all the beautiful craft.[6]

¹⁷ The haughtiness of people shall be humbled,

and the pride of everyone shall be brought low;

and the LORD alone will be exalted on that day.

¹⁸ The idols shall utterly pass away.

¹⁹ Enter the caves of the rocks

and the holes of the ground,

from the terror of the LORD,

and from the glory of his majesty,

when he rises to terrify the earth.

²⁰ On that day people will throw away

to the moles and to the bats

their idols of silver and their idols of gold,

which they made for themselves to worship,

²¹ to enter the caverns of the rocks

and the clefts in the crags,

from the terror of the LORD,

and from the glory of his majesty,

when he rises to terrify the earth.

²² Turn away from mortals,

who have only breath in their nostrils,

for of what account are they?

Isaiah 3

For now the Sovereign, the LORD of hosts,

is taking away from Jerusalem and from Judah

support and staff—

all support of bread,

and all support of water—

² warrior and soldier,

judge and prophet,

diviner and elder,

³ captain of fifty

and dignitary,

counselor and skillful magician

and expert enchanter.

⁴ And I will make boys their princes,

and babes shall rule over them.

⁵ The people will be oppressed,

everyone by another

and everyone by a neighbor;

the youth will be insolent to the elder,

and the base to the honorable.

⁶ Someone will even seize a relative,

a member of the clan, saying,

“You have a cloak;

you shall be our leader,

and this heap of ruins

shall be under your rule.”

⁷ But the other will cry out on that day, saying,

“I will not be a healer;

in my house there is neither bread nor cloak;

you shall not make me

leader of the people.”

⁸ For Jerusalem has stumbled

and Judah has fallen,

because their speech and their deeds are against the LORD,

defying his glorious presence.

⁹ The look on their faces bears witness against them;

they proclaim their sin like Sodom,

they do not hide it.

Woe to them!

For they have brought evil on themselves.

¹⁰ Tell the innocent how fortunate they are,

for they shall eat the fruit of their labors.

¹¹ Woe to the guilty! How unfortunate they are,

for what their hands have done shall be done to them.

¹² My people—children are their oppressors,

and women rule over them.

O my people, your leaders mislead you,

and confuse the course of your paths.

¹³ The LORD rises to argue his case;

he stands to judge the peoples.

¹⁴ The LORD enters into judgment

with the elders and princes of his people:

It is you who have devoured the vineyard;

the spoil of the poor is in your houses.

¹⁵ What do you mean by crushing my people,

by grinding the face of the poor? says the Lord GOD of hosts.

¹⁶ The LORD said:

Because the daughters of Zion are haughty

and walk with outstretched necks,

glancing wantonly with their eyes,

mincing along as they go,

tinkling with their feet;

¹⁷ the Lord will afflict with scabs

the heads of the daughters of Zion,

and the LORD will lay bare their secret parts.

18 In that day the Lord will take away the finery of the anklets, the headbands, and the crescents; ¹⁹the pendants, the bracelets, and the scarfs; ²⁰the headdresses, the armlets, the sashes, the perfume boxes, and the amulets; ²¹the signet rings and nose rings; ²²the festal robes, the mantles, the cloaks, and the handbags; ²³the garments of gauze, the linen garments, the turbans, and the veils.

²⁴ Instead of perfume there will be a stench;

and instead of a sash, a rope;

and instead of well-set hair, baldness;

and instead of a rich robe, a binding of sackcloth;

instead of beauty, shame.[7]

²⁵ Your men shall fall by the sword

and your warriors in battle.

²⁶ And her gates shall lament and mourn;

ravaged, she shall sit upon the ground.

Isaiah 4

Seven women shall take hold of one man in that day, saying,

“We will eat our own bread and wear our own clothes;

just let us be called by your name;

take away our disgrace.”

2 On that day the branch of the LORD shall be beautiful and glorious, and the fruit of the land shall be the pride and glory of the survivors of Israel. ³Whoever is left in Zion and remains in Jerusalem will be called holy, everyone who has been recorded for life in Jerusalem, ⁴once the Lord has washed away the filth of the daughters of Zion and cleansed the bloodstains of Jerusalem from its midst by a spirit of judgment and by a spirit of burning. ⁵Then the LORD will create over the whole site of Mount Zion and over its places of assembly a cloud by day and smoke and the shining of a flaming fire by night. Indeed over all the glory there will be a canopy. ⁶It will serve as a pavilion, a shade by day from the heat, and a refuge and a shelter from the storm and rain.

Isaiah 5

Let me sing for my beloved

my love-song concerning his vineyard:

My beloved had a vineyard

on a very fertile hill.

² He dug it and cleared it of stones,

and planted it with choice vines;

he built a watchtower in the midst of it,

and hewed out a wine vat in it;

he expected it to yield grapes,

but it yielded wild grapes.

³ And now, inhabitants of Jerusalem

and people of Judah,

judge between me

and my vineyard.

⁴ What more was there to do for my vineyard

that I have not done in it?

When I expected it to yield grapes,

why did it yield wild grapes?

⁵ And now I will tell you

what I will do to my vineyard.

I will remove its hedge,

and it shall be devoured;

I will break down its wall,

and it shall be trampled down.

⁶ I will make it a waste;

it shall not be pruned or hoed,

and it shall be overgrown with briers and thorns;

I will also command the clouds

that they rain no rain upon it.

⁷ For the vineyard of the LORD of hosts

is the house of Israel,

and the people of Judah

are his pleasant planting;

he expected justice,

but saw bloodshed;

righteousness,

but heard a cry!

⁸ Ah, you who join house to house,

who add field to field,

until there is room for no one but you,

and you are left to live alone

in the midst of the land!

⁹ The LORD of hosts has sworn in my hearing:

Surely many houses shall be desolate,

large and beautiful houses, without inhabitant.

¹⁰ For ten acres of vineyard shall yield but one bath,

and a homer of seed shall yield a mere ephah.[8]

¹¹ Ah, you who rise early in the morning

in pursuit of strong drink,

who linger in the evening

to be inflamed by wine,

¹² whose feasts consist of lyre and harp,

tambourine and flute and wine,

but who do not regard the deeds of the LORD,

or see the work of his hands!

¹³ Therefore my people go into exile without knowledge;

their nobles are dying of hunger,

and their multitude is parched with thirst.

¹⁴ Therefore Sheol has enlarged its appetite

and opened its mouth beyond measure;

the nobility of Jerusalem[9] and her multitude go down,

her throng and all who exult in her.

¹⁵ People are bowed down, everyone is brought low,

and the eyes of the haughty are humbled.

¹⁶ But the LORD of hosts is exalted by justice,

and the Holy God shows himself holy by righteousness.

¹⁷ Then the lambs shall graze as in their pasture,

fatlings and kids[10] shall feed among the ruins.

¹⁸ Ah, you who drag iniquity along with cords of falsehood,

who drag sin along as with cart ropes,

¹⁹ who say, “Let him make haste,

let him speed his work

that we may see it;

let the plan of the Holy One of Israel hasten to fulfillment,

that we may know it!”

²⁰ Ah, you who call evil good

and good evil,

who put darkness for light

and light for darkness,

who put bitter for sweet

and sweet for bitter!

²¹ Ah, you who are wise in your own eyes,

and shrewd in your own sight!

²² Ah, you who are heroes in drinking wine

and valiant at mixing drink,

²³ who acquit the guilty for a bribe,

and deprive the innocent of their rights!

²⁴ Therefore, as the tongue of fire devours the stubble,

and as dry grass sinks down in the flame,

so their root will become rotten,

and their blossom go up like dust;

for they have rejected the instruction of the LORD of hosts,

and have despised the word of the Holy One of Israel.

²⁵ Therefore the anger of the LORD was kindled against his people,

and he stretched out his hand against them and struck them;

the mountains quaked,

and their corpses were like refuse

in the streets.

For all this his anger has not turned away,

and his hand is stretched out still.

²⁶ He will raise a signal for a nation far away,

and whistle for a people at the ends of the earth;

Here they come, swiftly, speedily!

²⁷ None of them is weary, none stumbles,

none slumbers or sleeps,

not a loincloth is loose,

not a sandal-thong broken;

²⁸ their arrows are sharp,

all their bows bent,

their horses’ hoofs seem like flint,

and their wheels like the whirlwind.

²⁹ Their roaring is like a lion,

like young lions they roar;

they growl and seize their prey,

they carry it off, and no one can rescue.

³⁰ They will roar over it on that day,

like the roaring of the sea.

And if one look to the land—

only darkness and distress;

and the light grows dark with clouds.

Isaiah 6

In the year that King Uzziah died, I saw the Lord sitting on a throne, high and lofty; and the hem of his robe filled the temple. ²Seraphs were in attendance above him; each had six wings: with two they covered their faces, and with two they covered their feet, and with two they flew. ³And one called to another and said:

“Holy, holy, holy is the LORD of hosts;

the whole earth is full of his glory.”

⁴The pivots[11] on the thresholds shook at the voices of those who called, and the house filled with smoke. ⁵And I said: “Woe is me! I am lost, for I am a man of unclean lips, and I live among a people of unclean lips; yet my eyes have seen the King, the LORD of hosts!”

THE MAKING OF A SCOUNDREL

To nine out of ten of you the choice which could lead to scoundrelism will come, when it does come, in no very dramatic colours. Obviously bad men, obviously threatening or bribing, will almost certainly not appear. Over a drink or a cup of coffee, disguised as a triviality and sandwiched between two jokes, from the lips of a man, or woman, whom you have recently been getting to know rather better and whom you hope to know better still—just at the moment when you are most anxious not to appear crude, or naïf or a prig—the hint will come. It will be the hint of something which is not quite in accordance with the technical rules of fair play; something which the public, the ignorant, romantic public, would never understand; something which even the outsiders in your own profession are apt to make a fuss about, but something, says your new friend, which “we”—and at the word “we” you try not to blush for mere pleasure—something “we always do.” And you will be drawn in, if you are drawn in, not by desire for gain or ease, but simply because at that moment, when the cup was so near your lips, you cannot bear to be thrust back again into the cold outer world. It would be so terrible to see the other man’s face—that genial, confidential, delightfully sophisticated face—turn suddenly cold and contemptuous, to know that you had been tried for the Inner Ring and rejected. And then, if you are drawn in, next week it will be something a little further from the rules, and next year something further still, but all in the jolliest, friendliest spirit. It may end in a crash, a scandal, and penal servitude; it may end in millions, a peerage, and giving the prizes at your old school. But you will be a scoundrel. . . . Of all passions the passion for the Inner Ring is most skillful in making a man who is not yet a very bad man do very bad things.

—from “The Inner Ring,” The Weight of Glory

For reflection Isaiah 5:20

6 Then one of the seraphs flew to me, holding a live coal that had been taken from the altar with a pair of tongs. ⁷The seraph[12] touched my mouth with it and said: “Now that this has touched your lips, your guilt has departed and your sin is blotted out.” ⁸Then I heard the voice of the Lord saying, “Whom shall I send, and who will go for us?” And I said, “Here am I; send me!” ⁹And he said, “Go and say to this people:

When any man comes into the presence of God he will find, whether he wishes it or not, that all those things which seemed to make him so different from the men of other times, or even from his earlier self, have fallen off him. He is back where he always was, where every man always is. Eadem sunt omnia semper [“Everything is always the same”]. Do not let us deceive ourselves. No possible complexity which we can give to our picture of the universe can hide us from God: there is no copse, no forest, no jungle thick enough to provide cover. We read in Revelation of Him that sat on the throne “from whose face the earth and heaven fled away.” It may happen to any of us at any moment. In the twinkling of an eye, in a time too small to be measured, and in any place, all that seems to divide us from God can flee away, vanish, leaving us naked before Him, like the first man, like the only man, as if nothing but He and I existed. And since that contact cannot be avoided for long, and since it means either bliss or horror, the business of life is to learn to like it.

—from “Dogma and the Universe,” God in the Dock

For reflection Isaiah 6:1–6

‘Keep listening, but do not comprehend;

keep looking, but do not understand.’

¹⁰ Make the mind of this people dull,

and stop their ears,

and shut their eyes,

so that they may not look with their eyes,

and listen with their ears,

and comprehend with their minds,

and turn and be healed.”

¹¹ Then I said, “How long, O Lord?” And he said:

“Until cities lie waste

without inhabitant,

and houses without people,

and the land is utterly desolate;

¹² until the LORD sends everyone far away,

and vast is the emptiness in the midst of the land.

¹³ Even if a tenth part remain in it,

it will be burned again,

like a terebinth or an oak

whose stump remains standing

when it is felled.”[13]

The holy seed is its stump.

Isaiah 7

In the days of Ahaz son of Jotham son of Uzziah, king of Judah, King Rezin of Aram and King Pekah son of Remaliah of Israel went up to attack Jerusalem, but could not mount an attack against it. ²When the house of David heard that Aram had allied itself with Ephraim, the heart of Ahaz[14] and the heart of his people shook as the trees of the forest shake before the wind.

3 Then the LORD said to Isaiah, Go out to meet Ahaz, you and your son Shear-jashub,[15] at the end of the conduit of the upper pool on the highway to the Fuller’s Field, ⁴and say to him, Take heed, be quiet, do not fear, and do not let your heart be faint because of these two smoldering stumps of firebrands, because of the fierce anger of Rezin and Aram and the son of Remaliah. ⁵Because Aram—with Ephraim and the son of Remaliah—has plotted evil against you, saying, ⁶Let us go up against Judah and cut off Jerusalem[16] and conquer it for ourselves and make the son of Tabeel king in it; ⁷therefore thus says the Lord GOD:

It shall not stand,

and it shall not come to pass.

⁸ For the head of Aram is Damascus,

and the head of Damascus is Rezin.

(Within sixty-five years Ephraim will be shattered, no longer a people.)

⁹ The head of Ephraim is Samaria,

and the head of Samaria is the son of Remaliah.

If you do not stand firm in faith,

you shall not stand at all.

10 Again the LORD spoke to Ahaz, saying, ¹¹Ask a sign of the LORD your God; let it be deep as Sheol or high as heaven. ¹²But Ahaz said, I will not ask, and I will not put the LORD to the test. ¹³Then Isaiah[17] said: “Hear then, O house of David! Is it too little for you to weary mortals, that you weary my God also? ¹⁴Therefore the Lord himself will give you a sign. Look, the young woman[18] is with child and shall bear a son, and shall name him Immanuel.[19] ¹⁵He shall eat curds and honey by the time he knows how to refuse the evil and choose the good. ¹⁶For before the child knows how to refuse the evil and choose the good, the land before whose two kings you are in dread will be deserted. ¹⁷The LORD will bring on you and on your people and on your ancestral house such days as have not come since the day that Ephraim departed from Judah—the king of Assyria.”

18 On that day the LORD will whistle for the fly that is at the sources of the streams of Egypt, and for the bee that is in the land of Assyria. ¹⁹And they will all come and settle in the steep ravines, and in the clefts of the rocks, and on all the thornbushes, and on all the pastures.

20 On that day the Lord will shave with a razor hired beyond the River—with the king of Assyria—the head and the hair of the feet, and it will take off the beard as well.

21 On that day one will keep alive a young cow and two sheep, ²²and will eat curds because of the abundance of milk that they give; for everyone that is left in the land shall eat curds and honey.

23 On that day every place where there used to be a thousand vines, worth a thousand shekels of silver, will become briers and thorns. ²⁴With bow and arrows one will go there, for all the land will be briers and thorns; ²⁵and as for all the hills that used to be hoed with a hoe, you will not go there for fear of briers and thorns; but they will become a place where cattle are let loose and where sheep tread.

Isaiah 8

Then the LORD said to me, Take a large tablet and write on it in common characters, “Belonging to Maher-shalal-hash-baz,”[20] ²and have it attested[21] for me by reliable witnesses, the priest Uriah and Zechariah son of Jeberechiah. ³And I went to the prophetess, and she conceived and bore a son. Then the LORD said to me, Name him Maher-shalal-hash-baz; ⁴for before the child knows how to call “My father” or “My mother,” the wealth of Damascus and the spoil of Samaria will be carried away by the king of Assyria.

5 The LORD spoke to me again: ⁶Because this people has refused the waters of Shiloah that flow gently, and melt in fear before[22] Rezin and the son of Remaliah; ⁷therefore, the Lord is bringing up against it the mighty flood waters of the River, the king of Assyria and all his glory; it will rise above all its channels and overflow all its banks; ⁸it will sweep on into Judah as a flood, and, pouring over, it will reach up to the neck; and its outspread wings will fill the breadth of your land, O Immanuel.

⁹ Band together, you peoples, and be dismayed;

listen, all you far countries;

gird yourselves and be dismayed;

THE WONDER OF MIRACLES

You will hear people say, “The early Christians believed that Christ was the son of a virgin, but we know that this is a scientific impossibility.” Such people seem to have an idea that belief in miracles arose at a period when men were so ignorant of the course of nature that they did not perceive a miracle to be contrary to it. A moment’s thought shows this to be nonsense: and the story of the Virgin Birth is a particularly striking example. When St. Joseph discovered that his fiancée was going to have a baby, he not unnaturally decided to repudiate her. Why? Because he knew just as well as any modern gynaecologist that in the ordinary course of nature women do not have babies unless they have lain with men. No doubt the modern gynaecologist knows several things about birth and begetting which St. Joseph did not know. But those things do not concern the main point—that a virgin birth is contrary to the course of nature. And St. Joseph obviously knew that. In any sense in which it is true to say now, “The thing is scientifically impossible,” he would have said the same: the thing always was, and was always known to be, impossible unless the regular processes of nature were, in this particular case, being over-ruled or supplemented by something from beyond nature. When St. Joseph finally accepted the view that his fiancée’s pregnancy was due not to unchastity but to a miracle, he accepted the miracle as something contrary to the known order of nature. All records of miracles teach the same thing. In such stories the miracles excite fear and wonder (that is what the very word miracle implies) among the spectators, and are taken as evidence of supernatural power. If they were not known to be contrary to the laws of nature how could they suggest the presence of the supernatural? How could they be surprising unless they were seen to be exceptions to the rules? And how can anything be seen to be an exception till the rules are known? . . . Nothing can seem extraordinary until you have discovered what is ordinary. Belief in miracles, far from depending on an ignorance of the laws of nature, is only possible in so far as those laws are known.

—from Miracles

For reflection Isaiah 7:14

gird yourselves and be dismayed!

¹⁰ Take counsel together, but it shall be brought to naught;

speak a word, but it will not stand,

for God is with us.[23]

11 For the LORD spoke thus to me while his hand was strong upon me, and warned me not to walk in the way of this people, saying: ¹²Do not call conspiracy all that this people calls conspiracy, and do not fear what it fears, or be in dread. ¹³But the LORD of hosts, him you shall regard as holy; let him be your fear, and let him be your dread. ¹⁴He will become a sanctuary, a stone one strikes against; for both houses of Israel he will become a rock one stumbles over—a trap and a snare for the inhabitants of Jerusalem. ¹⁵And many among them shall stumble; they shall fall and be broken; they shall be snared and taken.

16 Bind up the testimony, seal the teaching among my disciples. ¹⁷I will wait for the LORD, who is hiding his face from the house of Jacob, and I will hope in him. ¹⁸See, I and the children whom the LORD has given me are signs and portents in Israel from the LORD of hosts, who dwells on Mount Zion. ¹⁹Now if people say to you, “Consult the ghosts and the familiar spirits that chirp and mutter; should not a people consult their gods, the dead on behalf of the living, ²⁰for teaching and for instruction?” surely, those who speak like this will have no dawn! ²¹They will pass through the land,[24] greatly distressed and hungry; when they are hungry, they will be enraged and will curse[25] their king and their gods. They will turn their faces upward, ²²or they will look to the earth, but will see only distress and darkness, the gloom of anguish; and they will be thrust into thick darkness.[26]

Isaiah 9

[27] But there will be no gloom for those who were in anguish. In the former time he brought into contempt the land of Zebulun and the land of Naphtali, but in the latter time he will make glorious the way of the sea, the land beyond the Jordan, Galilee of the nations.

²[28] The people who walked in darkness

have seen a great light;

those who lived in a land of deep darkness—

on them light has shined.

³ You have multiplied the nation,

you have increased its joy;

they rejoice before you

as with joy at the harvest,

as people exult when dividing plunder.

⁴ For the yoke of their burden,

and the bar across their shoulders,

the rod of their oppressor,

you have broken as on the day of Midian.

⁵ For all the boots of the tramping warriors

and all the garments rolled in blood

shall be burned as fuel for the fire.

⁶ For a child has been born for us,

a son given to us;

authority rests upon his shoulders;

and he is named

Wonderful Counselor, Mighty God,

Everlasting Father, Prince of Peace.

⁷ His authority shall grow continually,

and there shall be endless peace

for the throne of David and his kingdom.

He will establish and uphold it

with justice and with righteousness

from this time onward and forevermore.

The zeal of the LORD of hosts will do this.

⁸ The Lord sent a word against Jacob,

and it fell on Israel;

⁹ and all the people knew it—

Ephraim and the inhabitants of Samaria—

but in pride and arrogance of heart they said:

¹⁰ “The bricks have fallen,

but we will build with dressed stones;

the sycamores have been cut down,

but we will put cedars in their place.”

¹¹ So the LORD raised adversaries[29] against them,

and stirred up their enemies,

¹² the Arameans on the east and the Philistines on the west,

HE HUMBLED HIMSELF

Did you ever think, when you were a child, what fun it would be if your toys could come to life? Well suppose you could really have brought them to life. Imagine turning a tin soldier into a real little man. It would involve turning the tin into flesh. And suppose the tin soldier did not like it. He is not interested in flesh: all he sees is that the tin is being spoilt. He thinks you are killing him. He will do everything he can to prevent you. He will not be made into a man if he can help it.

What you would have done about that tin soldier I do not know. But what God did about us was this. The Second Person in God, the Son, became human Himself: was born into the world as an actual man—a real man of a particular height, with hair of a particular colour, speaking a particular language, weighing so many stone. The Eternal Being, who knows everything and who created the whole universe, became not only a man but (before that) a baby, and before that a foetus inside a Woman’s body. If you want to get the hang of it, think how you would like to become a slug or a crab.

—from Mere Christianity

For reflection Isaiah 9:6

and they devoured Israel with open mouth.

For all this his anger has not turned away;

his hand is stretched out still.

¹³ The people did not turn to him who struck them,

or seek the LORD of hosts.

¹⁴ So the LORD cut off from Israel head and tail,

palm branch and reed in one day—

¹⁵ elders and dignitaries are the head,

and prophets who teach lies are the tail;

¹⁶ for those who led this people led them astray,

and those who were led by them were left in confusion.

¹⁷ That is why the Lord did not have pity on[30] their young people,

or compassion on their orphans and widows;

for everyone was godless and an evildoer,

and every mouth spoke folly.

For all this his anger has not turned away;

his hand is stretched out still.

¹⁸ For wickedness burned like a fire,

consuming briers and thorns;

it kindled the thickets of the forest,

and they swirled upward in a column of smoke.

¹⁹ Through the wrath of the LORD of hosts

the land was burned,

and the people became like fuel for the fire;

no one spared another.

²⁰ They gorged on the right, but still were hungry,

and they devoured on the left, but were not satisfied;

they devoured the flesh of their own kindred;[31]

²¹ Manasseh devoured Ephraim, and Ephraim Manasseh,

and together they were against Judah.

For all this his anger has not turned away;

his hand is stretched out still.

Isaiah 10

Ah, you who make iniquitous decrees,

who write oppressive statutes,

² to turn aside the needy from justice

and to rob the poor of my people of their right,

that widows may be your spoil,

and that you may make the orphans your prey!

³ What will you do on the day of punishment,

in the calamity that will come from far away?

To whom will you flee for help,

and where will you leave your wealth,

⁴ so as not to crouch among the prisoners

or fall among the slain?

For all this his anger has not turned away;

his hand is stretched out still.

⁵ Ah, Assyria, the rod of my anger—

the club in their hands is my fury!

⁶ Against a godless nation I send him,

and against the people of my wrath I command him,

to take spoil and seize plunder,

and to tread them down like the mire of the streets.

⁷ But this is not what he intends,

nor does he have this in mind;

but it is in his heart to destroy,

and to cut off nations not a few.

⁸ For he says:

“Are not my commanders all kings?

⁹ Is not Calno like Carchemish?

Is not Hamath like Arpad?

Is not Samaria like Damascus?

¹⁰ As my hand has reached to the kingdoms of the idols

whose images were greater than those of Jerusalem and Samaria,

¹¹ shall I not do to Jerusalem and her idols

what I have done to Samaria and her images?”

12 When the Lord has finished all his work on Mount Zion and on Jerusalem, he[32] will punish the arrogant boasting of the king of Assyria and his haughty pride. ¹³For he says:

“By the strength of my hand I have done it,

and by my wisdom, for I have understanding;

I have removed the boundaries of peoples,

and have plundered their treasures;

like a bull I have brought down those who sat on thrones.

¹⁴ My hand has found, like a nest,

the wealth of the peoples;

and as one gathers eggs that have been forsaken,

so I have gathered all the earth;

and there was none that moved a wing,

or opened its mouth, or chirped.”

¹⁵ Shall the ax vaunt itself over the one who wields it,

or the saw magnify itself against the one who handles it?

As if a rod should raise the one who lifts it up,

or as if a staff should lift the one who is not wood!

¹⁶ Therefore the Sovereign, the LORD of hosts,

will send wasting sickness among his stout warriors,

and under his glory a burning will be kindled,

like the burning of fire.

¹⁷ The light of Israel will become a fire,

and his Holy One a flame;

and it will burn and devour

his thorns and briers in one day.

¹⁸ The glory of his forest and his fruitful land

the LORD will destroy, both soul and body,

and it will be as when an invalid wastes away.

¹⁹ The remnant of the trees of his forest will be so few

that a child can write them down.

20 On that day the remnant of Israel and the survivors of the house of Jacob will no more lean on the one who struck them, but will lean on the LORD, the Holy One of Israel, in truth. ²¹A remnant will return, the remnant of Jacob, to the mighty God. ²²For though your people Israel were like the sand of the sea, only a remnant of them will return. Destruction is decreed, overflowing with righteousness. ²³For the Lord GOD of hosts will make a full end, as decreed, in all the earth.[33]

24 Therefore thus says the Lord GOD of hosts: O my people, who live in Zion, do not be afraid of the Assyrians when they beat you with a rod and lift up their staff against you as the Egyptians did. ²⁵For in a very little while my indignation will come to an end, and my anger will be directed to their destruction. ²⁶The LORD of hosts will wield a whip against them, as when he struck Midian at the rock of Oreb; his staff will be over the sea, and he will lift it as he did in Egypt. ²⁷On that day his burden will be removed from your shoulder, and his yoke will be destroyed from your neck.

He has gone up from Rimmon,[34]

²⁸ he has come to Aiath;

he has passed through Migron,

at Michmash he stores his baggage;

²⁹ they have crossed over the pass,

at Geba they lodge for the night;

Ramah trembles,

Gibeah of Saul has fled.

³⁰ Cry aloud, O daughter Gallim!

Listen, O Laishah!

Answer her, O Anathoth!

³¹ Madmenah is in flight,

the inhabitants of Gebim flee for safety.

³² This very day he will halt at Nob,

he will shake his fist

at the mount of daughter Zion,

the hill of Jerusalem.

³³ Look, the Sovereign, the LORD of hosts,

will lop the boughs with terrifying power;

the tallest trees will be cut down,

and the lofty will be brought low.

³⁴ He will hack down the thickets of the forest with an ax,

and Lebanon with its majestic trees[35] will fall.

Isaiah 11

A shoot shall come out from the stump of Jesse,

and a branch shall grow out of his roots.

² The spirit of the LORD shall rest on him,

the spirit of wisdom and understanding,

the spirit of counsel and might,

the spirit of knowledge and the fear of the LORD.

³ His delight shall be in the fear of the LORD.

He shall not judge by what his eyes see,

or decide by what his ears hear;

⁴ but with righteousness he shall judge the poor,

and decide with equity for the meek of the earth;

he shall strike the earth with the rod of his mouth,

and with the breath of his lips he shall kill the wicked.

⁵ Righteousness shall be the belt around his waist,

and faithfulness the belt around his loins.

⁶ The wolf shall live with the lamb,

the leopard shall lie down with the kid,

the calf and the lion and the fatling together,

and a little child shall lead them.

⁷ The cow and the bear shall graze,

their young shall lie down together;

and the lion shall eat straw like the ox.

⁸ The nursing child shall play over the hole of the asp,

and the weaned child shall put its hand on the adder’s den.

⁹ They will not hurt or destroy

on all my holy mountain;

for the earth will be full of the knowledge of the LORD

as the waters cover the sea.

10 On that day the root of Jesse shall stand as a signal to the peoples; the nations shall inquire of him, and his dwelling shall be glorious.

11 On that day the Lord will extend his hand yet a second time to recover the remnant that is left of his people, from Assyria, from Egypt, from Pathros, from Ethiopia,[36] from Elam, from Shinar, from Hamath, and from the coastlands of the sea.

¹² He will raise a signal for the nations,

and will assemble the outcasts of Israel,

and gather the dispersed of Judah

from the four corners of the earth.

¹³ The jealousy of Ephraim shall depart,

the hostility of Judah shall be cut off;

Ephraim shall not be jealous of Judah,

and Judah shall not be hostile towards Ephraim.

¹⁴ But they shall swoop down on the backs of the Philistines in the west,

together they shall plunder the people of the east.

They shall put forth their hand against Edom and Moab,

and the Ammonites shall obey them.

¹⁵ And the LORD will utterly destroy

the tongue of the sea of Egypt;

and will wave his hand over the River

with his scorching wind;

and will split it into seven channels,

and make a way to cross on foot;

¹⁶ so there shall be a highway from Assyria

for the remnant that is left of his people,

as there was for Israel

when they came up from the land of Egypt.

Isaiah 12

You will say in that day:

I will give thanks to you, O LORD,

for though you were angry with me,

your anger turned away,

and you comforted me.

² Surely God is my salvation;

I will trust, and will not be afraid,

for the LORD GOD[37] is my strength and my might;

he has become my salvation.

3 With joy you will draw water from the wells of salvation. ⁴And you will say in that day:

Give thanks to the LORD,

call on his name;

make known his deeds among the nations;

proclaim that his name is exalted.

⁵ Sing praises to the LORD, for he has done gloriously;

let this be known[38] in all the earth.

⁶ Shout aloud and sing for joy, O royal[39] Zion,

for great in your midst is the Holy One of Israel.

Isaiah 13

The oracle concerning Babylon that Isaiah son of Amoz saw.

² On a bare hill raise a signal,

cry aloud to them;

wave the hand for them to enter

the gates of the nobles.

³ I myself have commanded my consecrated ones,

have summoned my warriors, my proudly exulting ones,

to execute my anger.

⁴ Listen, a tumult on the mountains

as of a great multitude!

Listen, an uproar of kingdoms,

of nations gathering together!

The LORD of hosts is mustering

an army for battle.

⁵ They come from a distant land,

from the end of the heavens,

the LORD and the weapons of his indignation,

to destroy the whole earth.

⁶ Wail, for the day of the LORD is near;

it will come like destruction from the Almighty![40]

⁷ Therefore all hands will be feeble,

and every human heart will melt,

⁸ and they will be dismayed.

Pangs and agony will seize them;

they will be in anguish like a woman in labor.

They will look aghast at one another;

their faces will be aflame.

⁹ See, the day of the LORD comes,

cruel, with wrath and fierce anger,

to make the earth a desolation,

and to destroy its sinners from it.

¹⁰ For the stars of the heavens and their constellations

will not give their light;

the sun will be dark at its rising,

and the moon will not shed its light.

¹¹ I will punish the world for its evil,

and the wicked for their iniquity;

I will put an end to the pride of the arrogant,

and lay low the insolence of tyrants.

¹² I will make mortals more rare than fine gold,

and humans than the gold of Ophir.

¹³ Therefore I will make the heavens tremble,

and the earth will be shaken out of its place,

at the wrath of the LORD of hosts

in the day of his fierce anger.

¹⁴ Like a hunted gazelle,

or like sheep with no one to gather them,

all will turn to their own people,

and all will flee to their own lands.

¹⁵ Whoever is found will be thrust through,

and whoever is caught will fall by the sword.

¹⁶ Their infants will be dashed to pieces

before their eyes;

their houses will be plundered,

and their wives ravished.

¹⁷ See, I am stirring up the Medes against them,

who have no regard for silver

and do not delight in gold.

¹⁸ Their bows will slaughter the young men;

they will have no mercy on the fruit of the womb;

their eyes will not pity children.

¹⁹ And Babylon, the glory of kingdoms,

the splendor and pride of the Chaldeans,

will be like Sodom and Gomorrah

when God overthrew them.

²⁰ It will never be inhabited

or lived in for all generations;

Arabs will not pitch their tents there,

shepherds will not make their flocks lie down there.

²¹ But wild animals will lie down there,

and its houses will be full of howling creatures;

there ostriches will live,

and there goat-demons will dance.

²² Hyenas will cry in its towers,

and jackals in the pleasant palaces;

its time is close at hand,

and its days will not be prolonged.

Isaiah 14

But the LORD will have compassion on Jacob and will again choose Israel, and will set them in their own land; and aliens will join them and attach themselves to the house of Jacob. ²And the nations will take them and bring them to their place, and the house of Israel will possess the nations[41] as male and female slaves in the LORD’s land; they will take captive those who were their captors, and rule over those who oppressed them.

3 When the LORD has given you rest from your pain and turmoil and the hard service with which you were made to serve, ⁴you will take up this taunt against the king of Babylon:

How the oppressor has ceased!

How his insolence[42] has ceased!

⁵ The LORD has broken the staff of the wicked,

the scepter of rulers,

⁶ that struck down the peoples in wrath

with unceasing blows,

that ruled the nations in anger

with unrelenting persecution.

⁷ The whole earth is at rest and quiet;

they break forth into singing.

⁸ The cypresses exult over you,

the cedars of Lebanon, saying,

“Since you were laid low,

no one comes to cut us down.”

⁹ Sheol beneath is stirred up

to meet you when you come;

it rouses the shades to greet you,

all who were leaders of the earth;

it raises from their thrones

all who were kings of the nations.

¹⁰ All of them will speak

and say to you:

“You too have become as weak as we!

You have become like us!”

¹¹ Your pomp is brought down to Sheol,

and the sound of your harps;

But the doctrine of Satan’s existence and fall is not among the things we know to be untrue: it contradicts not the facts discovered by scientists but the mere, vague “climate of opinion” that we happen to be living in. Now I take a very low view of “climates of opinion.” In his own subject every man knows that all discoveries are made and all errors corrected by those who ignore the “climate of opinion.”

It seems to me, therefore, a reasonable supposition, that some mighty created power had already been at work for ill on the material universe, or the solar system, or, at least, the planet Earth, before ever man came on the scene: and that when man fell, someone had, indeed, tempted him. This hypothesis is not introduced as a general “explanation of evil”: it only gives a wider application to the principle that evil comes from the abuse of free will. If there is such a power, as I myself believe, it may well have corrupted the animal creation before man appeared. The intrinsic evil of the animal world lies in the fact that animals, or some animals, live by destroying each other. That plants do the same I will not admit to be an evil. The Satanic corruption of the beasts would therefore be analogous, in one respect, with the Satanic corruption of man.

—from The Problem of Pain

For reflection Isaiah 14:12–14

maggots are the bed beneath you,

and worms are your covering.

¹² How you are fallen from heaven,

O Day Star, son of Dawn!

How you are cut down to the ground,

you who laid the nations low!

¹³ You said in your heart,

“I will ascend to heaven;

I will raise my throne

above the stars of God;

I will sit on the mount of assembly

on the heights of Zaphon;[43]

¹⁴ I will ascend to the tops of the clouds,

I will make myself like the Most High.”

¹⁵ But you are brought down to Sheol,

to the depths of the Pit.

¹⁶ Those who see you will stare at you,

and ponder over you:

“Is this the man who made the earth tremble,

who shook kingdoms,

¹⁷ who made the world like a desert

and overthrew its cities,

who would not let his prisoners go home?”

¹⁸ All the kings of the nations lie in glory,

each in his own tomb;

¹⁹ but you are cast out, away from your grave,

like loathsome carrion,[44]

clothed with the dead, those pierced by the sword,

who go down to the stones of the Pit,

like a corpse trampled underfoot.

²⁰ You will not be joined with them in burial,

because you have destroyed your land,

you have killed your people.

May the descendants of evildoers

nevermore be named!

²¹ Prepare slaughter for his sons

because of the guilt of their father.[45]

Let them never rise to possess the earth

or cover the face of the world with cities.

22 I will rise up against them, says the LORD of hosts, and will cut off from Babylon name and remnant, offspring and posterity, says the LORD. ²³And I will make it a possession of the hedgehog, and pools of water, and I will sweep it with the broom of destruction, says the LORD of hosts.

²⁴ The LORD of hosts has sworn:

As I have designed,

so shall it be;

and as I have planned,

so shall it come to pass:

²⁵ I will break the Assyrian in my land,

and on my mountains trample him under foot;

his yoke shall be removed from them,

and his burden from their shoulders.

²⁶ This is the plan that is planned

concerning the whole earth;

and this is the hand that is stretched out

over all the nations.

²⁷ For the LORD of hosts has planned,

and who will annul it?

His hand is stretched out,

and who will turn it back?

²⁸In the year that King Ahaz died this oracle came:

²⁹ Do not rejoice, all you Philistines,

that the rod that struck you is broken,

for from the root of the snake will come forth an adder,

and its fruit will be a flying fiery serpent.

³⁰ The firstborn of the poor will graze,

and the needy lie down in safety;

but I will make your root die of famine,

and your remnant I[46] will kill.

³¹ Wail, O gate; cry, O city;

melt in fear, O Philistia, all of you!

For smoke comes out of the north,

and there is no straggler in its ranks.

³² What will one answer the messengers of the nation?

“The LORD has founded Zion,

and the needy among his people

will find refuge in her.”

Isaiah 15

An oracle concerning Moab.

Because Ar is laid waste in a night,

Moab is undone;

because Kir is laid waste in a night,

Moab is undone.

² Dibon[47] has gone up to the temple,

to the high places to weep;

over Nebo and over Medeba

Moab wails.

On every head is baldness,

every beard is shorn;

³ in the streets they bind on sackcloth;

on the housetops and in the squares

everyone wails and melts in tears.

⁴ Heshbon and Elealeh cry out,

their voices are heard as far as Jahaz;

therefore the loins of Moab quiver;[48]

his soul trembles.

⁵ My heart cries out for Moab;

his fugitives flee to Zoar,

to Eglath-shelishiyah.

For at the ascent of Luhith

they go up weeping;

on the road to Horonaim

they raise a cry of destruction;

⁶ the waters of Nimrim

are a desolation;

the grass is withered, the new growth fails,

the verdure is no more.

⁷ Therefore the abundance they have gained

and what they have laid up

they carry away

over the Wadi of the Willows.

⁸ For a cry has gone

around the land of Moab;

the wailing reaches to Eglaim,

the wailing reaches to Beer-elim.

⁹ For the waters of Dibon[49] are full of blood;

yet I will bring upon Dibon[49] even more—

a lion for those of Moab who escape,

for the remnant of the land.

Isaiah 16

Send lambs

to the ruler of the land,

from Sela, by way of the desert,

to the mount of daughter Zion.

² Like fluttering birds,

like scattered nestlings,

so are the daughters of Moab

at the fords of the Arnon.

³ “Give counsel,

grant justice;

make your shade like night

at the height of noon;

hide the outcasts,

do not betray the fugitive;

⁴ let the outcasts of Moab

settle among you;

be a refuge to them

from the destroyer.”

When the oppressor is no more,

and destruction has ceased,

and marauders have vanished from the land,

⁵ then a throne shall be established in steadfast love

in the tent of David,

and on it shall sit in faithfulness

a ruler who seeks justice

and is swift to do what is right.

⁶ We have heard of the pride of Moab

—how proud he is!—

of his arrogance, his pride, and his insolence;

his boasts are false.

⁷ Therefore let Moab wail,

let everyone wail for Moab.

Mourn, utterly stricken,

for the raisin cakes of Kir-hareseth.

⁸ For the fields of Heshbon languish,

and the vines of Sibmah,

whose clusters once made drunk

the lords of the nations,

reached to Jazer

and strayed to the desert;

their shoots once spread abroad

and crossed over the sea.

⁹ Therefore I weep with the weeping of Jazer

for the vines of Sibmah;

I drench you with my tears,

O Heshbon and Elealeh;

for the shout over your fruit harvest

and your grain harvest has ceased.

¹⁰ Joy and gladness are taken away

from the fruitful field;

and in the vineyards no songs are sung,

no shouts are raised;

no treader treads out wine in the presses;

the vintage-shout is hushed.[50]

¹¹ Therefore my heart throbs like a harp for Moab,

and my very soul for Kir-heres.

12 When Moab presents himself, when he wearies himself upon the high place, when he comes to his sanctuary to pray, he will not prevail.

13 This was the word that the LORD spoke concerning Moab in the past. ¹⁴But now the LORD says, In three years, like the years of a hired worker, the glory of Moab will be brought into contempt, in spite of all its great multitude; and those who survive will be very few and feeble.

Isaiah 17

An oracle concerning Damascus.

See, Damascus will cease to be a city,

and will become a heap of ruins.

² Her towns will be deserted forever;[51]

they will be places for flocks,

which will lie down, and no one will make them afraid.

³ The fortress will disappear from Ephraim,

and the kingdom from Damascus;

and the remnant of Aram will be

like the glory of the children of Israel,

says the LORD of hosts.

⁴ On that day

the glory of Jacob will be brought low,

and the fat of his flesh will grow lean.

⁵ And it shall be as when reapers gather standing grain

and their arms harvest the ears,

and as when one gleans the ears of grain

in the Valley of Rephaim.

⁶ Gleanings will be left in it,

as when an olive tree is beaten—

two or three berries

in the top of the highest bough,

four or five

on the branches of a fruit tree,

says the LORD God of Israel.

7 On that day people will regard their Maker, and their eyes will look to the Holy One of Israel; ⁸they will not have regard for the altars, the work of their hands, and they will not look to what their own fingers have made, either the sacred poles[52] or the altars of incense.

9 On that day their strong cities will be like the deserted places of the Hivites and the Amorites,[53] which they deserted because of the children of Israel, and there will be desolation.

¹⁰ For you have forgotten the God of your salvation,

and have not remembered the Rock of your refuge;

therefore, though you plant pleasant plants

and set out slips of an alien god,

¹¹ though you make them grow on the day that you plant them,

and make them blossom in the morning that you sow;

yet the harvest will flee away

in a day of grief and incurable pain.

¹² Ah, the thunder of many peoples,

they thunder like the thundering of the sea!

Ah, the roar of nations,

they roar like the roaring of mighty waters!

¹³ The nations roar like the roaring of many waters,

but he will rebuke them, and they will flee far away,

chased like chaff on the mountains before the wind

and whirling dust before the storm.

¹⁴ At evening time, lo, terror!

Before morning, they are no more.

This is the fate of those who despoil us,

and the lot of those who plunder us.

Isaiah 18

Ah, land of whirring wings

beyond the rivers of Ethiopia,[54]

² sending ambassadors by the Nile

in vessels of papyrus on the waters!

Go, you swift messengers,

to a nation tall and smooth,

to a people feared near and far,

a nation mighty and conquering,

whose land the rivers divide.

³ All you inhabitants of the world,

you who live on the earth,

when a signal is raised on the mountains, look!

When a trumpet is blown, listen!

⁴ For thus the LORD said to me:

I will quietly look from my dwelling

like clear heat in sunshine,

like a cloud of dew in the heat of harvest.

⁵ For before the harvest, when the blossom is over

and the flower becomes a ripening grape,

he will cut off the shoots with pruning hooks,

and the spreading branches he will hew away.

⁶ They shall all be left

to the birds of prey of the mountains

and to the animals of the earth.

And the birds of prey will summer on them,

and all the animals of the earth will winter on them.

7 At that time gifts will be brought to the LORD of hosts from[55] a people tall and smooth, from a people feared near and far, a nation mighty and conquering, whose land the rivers divide, to Mount Zion, the place of the name of the LORD of hosts.

Isaiah 19

An oracle concerning Egypt.

See, the LORD is riding on a swift cloud

and comes to Egypt;

the idols of Egypt will tremble at his presence,

and the heart of the Egyptians will melt within them.

² I will stir up Egyptians against Egyptians,

and they will fight, one against the other,

neighbor against neighbor,

city against city, kingdom against kingdom;

³ the spirit of the Egyptians within them will be emptied out,

and I will confound their plans;

they will consult the idols and the spirits of the dead

and the ghosts and the familiar spirits;

⁴ I will deliver the Egyptians

into the hand of a hard master;

a fierce king will rule over them,

says the Sovereign, the LORD of hosts.

⁵ The waters of the Nile will be dried up,

and the river will be parched and dry;

⁶ its canals will become foul,

and the branches of Egypt’s Nile will diminish and dry up,

reeds and rushes will rot away.

⁷ There will be bare places by the Nile,

on the brink of the Nile;

and all that is sown by the Nile will dry up,

be driven away, and be no more.

⁸ Those who fish will mourn;

all who cast hooks in the Nile will lament,

and those who spread nets on the water will languish.

⁹ The workers in flax will be in despair,

and the carders and those at the loom will grow pale.

¹⁰ Its weavers will be dismayed,

and all who work for wages will be grieved.

¹¹ The princes of Zoan are utterly foolish;

the wise counselors of Pharaoh give stupid counsel.

How can you say to Pharaoh,

“I am one of the sages,

a descendant of ancient kings”?

¹² Where now are your sages?

Let them tell you and make known

what the LORD of hosts has planned against Egypt.

¹³ The princes of Zoan have become fools,

and the princes of Memphis are deluded;

those who are the cornerstones of its tribes

have led Egypt astray.

¹⁴ The LORD has poured into them[56]

a spirit of confusion;

and they have made Egypt stagger in all its doings

as a drunkard staggers around in vomit.

¹⁵ Neither head nor tail, palm branch or reed,

will be able to do anything for Egypt.

16 On that day the Egyptians will be like women, and tremble with fear before the hand that the LORD of hosts raises against them. ¹⁷And the land of Judah will become a terror to the Egyptians; everyone to whom it is mentioned will fear because of the plan that the LORD of hosts is planning against them.

18 On that day there will be five cities in the land of Egypt that speak the language of Canaan and swear allegiance to the LORD of hosts. One of these will be called the City of the Sun.

19 On that day there will be an altar to the LORD in the center of the land of Egypt, and a pillar to the LORD at its border. ²⁰It will be a sign and a witness to the LORD of hosts in the land of Egypt; when they cry to the LORD because of oppressors, he will send them a savior, and will defend and deliver them. ²¹The LORD will make himself known to the Egyptians; and the Egyptians will know the LORD on that day, and will worship with sacrifice and burnt offering, and they will make vows to the LORD and perform them. ²²The LORD will strike Egypt, striking and healing; they will return to the LORD, and he will listen to their supplications and heal them.

23 On that day there will be a highway from Egypt to Assyria, and the Assyrian will come into Egypt, and the Egyptian into Assyria, and the Egyptians will worship with the Assyrians.

24 On that day Israel will be the third with Egypt and Assyria, a blessing in the midst of the earth, ²⁵whom the LORD of hosts has blessed, saying, “Blessed be Egypt my people, and Assyria the work of my hands, and Israel my heritage.”

Isaiah 20

In the year that the commander-in-chief, who was sent by King Sargon of Assyria, came to Ashdod and fought against it and took it— ²at that time the LORD had spoken to Isaiah son of Amoz, saying, “Go, and loose the sackcloth from your loins and take your sandals off your feet,” and he had done so, walking naked and barefoot. ³Then the LORD said, “Just as my servant Isaiah has walked naked and barefoot for three years as a sign and a portent against Egypt and Ethiopia,[57] ⁴so shall the king of Assyria lead away the Egyptians as captives and the Ethiopians[58] as exiles, both the young and the old, naked and barefoot, with buttocks uncovered, to the shame of Egypt. ⁵And they shall be dismayed and confounded because of Ethiopia[57] their hope and of Egypt their boast. ⁶In that day the inhabitants of this coastland will say, ‘See, this is what has happened to those in whom we hoped and to whom we fled for help and deliverance from the king of Assyria! And we, how shall we escape?’”

Isaiah 21

The oracle concerning the wilderness of the sea.

As whirlwinds in the Negeb sweep on,

it comes from the desert,

from a terrible land.

² A stern vision is told to me;

the betrayer betrays,

and the destroyer destroys.

Go up, O Elam,

lay siege, O Media;

all the sighing she has caused

I bring to an end.

³ Therefore my loins are filled with anguish;

pangs have seized me,

like the pangs of a woman in labor;

I am bowed down so that I cannot hear,

I am dismayed so that I cannot see.

⁴ My mind reels, horror has appalled me;

the twilight I longed for

has been turned for me into trembling.

⁵ They prepare the table,

they spread the rugs,

they eat, they drink.

Rise up, commanders,

oil the shield!

⁶ For thus the Lord said to me:

“Go, post a lookout,

let him announce what he sees.

⁷ When he sees riders, horsemen in pairs,

riders on donkeys, riders on camels,

let him listen diligently,

very diligently.”

⁸ Then the watcher[59] called out:

“Upon a watchtower I stand, O Lord,

continually by day,

and at my post I am stationed

throughout the night.

⁹ Look, there they come, riders,

horsemen in pairs!”

Then he responded,

“Fallen, fallen is Babylon;

and all the images of her gods

lie shattered on the ground.”

¹⁰ O my threshed and winnowed one,

what I have heard from the LORD of hosts,

the God of Israel, I announce to you.

11 The oracle concerning Dumah.

One is calling to me from Seir,

“Sentinel, what of the night?

Sentinel, what of the night?”

¹² The sentinel says:

“Morning comes, and also the night.

If you will inquire, inquire;

come back again.”

13 The oracle concerning the desert plain.

In the scrub of the desert plain you will lodge,

O caravans of Dedanites.

¹⁴ Bring water to the thirsty,

meet the fugitive with bread,

O inhabitants of the land of Tema.

¹⁵ For they have fled from the swords,

from the drawn sword,

from the bent bow,

and from the stress of battle.

16 For thus the Lord said to me: Within a year, according to the years of a hired worker, all the glory of Kedar will come to an end; ¹⁷and the remaining bows of Kedar’s warriors will be few; for the LORD, the God of Israel, has spoken.

Isaiah 22

The oracle concerning the valley of vision.

What do you mean that you have gone up,

all of you, to the housetops,

² you that are full of shoutings,

tumultuous city, exultant town?

Your slain are not slain by the sword,

nor are they dead in battle.

³ Your rulers have all fled together;

they were captured without the use of a bow.[60]

All of you who were found were captured,

though they had fled far away.[61]

⁴ Therefore I said:

Look away from me,

let me weep bitter tears;

do not try to comfort me

for the destruction of my beloved people.

⁵ For the Lord GOD of hosts has a day

of tumult and trampling and confusion

in the valley of vision,

a battering down of walls

and a cry for help to the mountains.

⁶ Elam bore the quiver

with chariots and cavalry,[62]

and Kir uncovered the shield.

⁷ Your choicest valleys were full of chariots,

and the cavalry took their stand at the gates.

⁸ He has taken away the covering of Judah.

On that day you looked to the weapons of the House of the Forest, ⁹and you saw that there were many breaches in the city of David, and you collected the waters of the lower pool. ¹⁰You counted the houses of Jerusalem, and you broke down the houses to fortify the wall. ¹¹You made a reservoir between the two walls for the water of the old pool. But you did not look to him who did it, or have regard for him who planned it long ago.

For reflection: Isaiah 22:11

Everyone has noticed how hard it is to turn our thoughts to God when everything is going well with us. We “have all we want” is a terrible saying when “all” does not include God. We find God an interruption.

—from The Problem of Pain

¹² In that day the Lord GOD of hosts

called to weeping and mourning,

to baldness and putting on sackcloth;

¹³ but instead there was joy and festivity,

killing oxen and slaughtering sheep,

eating meat and drinking wine.

“Let us eat and drink,

for tomorrow we die.”

¹⁴ The LORD of hosts has revealed himself in my ears:

Surely this iniquity will not be forgiven you until you die,

says the Lord GOD of hosts.

15 Thus says the Lord GOD of hosts: Come, go to this steward, to Shebna, who is master of the household, and say to him: ¹⁶What right do you have here? Who are your relatives here, that you have cut out a tomb here for yourself, cutting a tomb on the height, and carving a habitation for yourself in the rock? ¹⁷The LORD is about to hurl you away violently, my fellow. He will seize firm hold on you, ¹⁸whirl you round and round, and throw you like a ball into a wide land; there you shall die, and there your splendid chariots shall lie, O you disgrace to your master’s house! ¹⁹I will thrust you from your office, and you will be pulled down from your post.

20 On that day I will call my servant Eliakim son of Hilkiah, ²¹and will clothe him with your robe and bind your sash on him. I will commit your authority to his hand, and he shall be a father to the inhabitants of Jerusalem and to the house of Judah. ²²I will place on his shoulder the key of the house of David; he shall open, and no one shall shut; he shall shut, and no one shall open. ²³I will fasten him like a peg in a secure place, and he will become a throne of honor to his ancestral house. ²⁴And they will hang on him the whole weight of his ancestral house, the offspring and issue, every small vessel, from the cups to all the flagons. ²⁵On that day, says the LORD of hosts, the peg that was fastened in a secure place will give way; it will be cut down and fall, and the load that was on it will perish, for the LORD has spoken.

Isaiah 23

The oracle concerning Tyre.

Wail, O ships of Tarshish,

for your fortress is destroyed.[63]

When they came in from Cyprus

they learned of it.

² Be still, O inhabitants of the coast,

O merchants of Sidon,

your messengers crossed over the sea[64]

³ and were on the mighty waters;

your revenue was the grain of Shihor,

the harvest of the Nile;

you were the merchant of the nations.

⁴ Be ashamed, O Sidon, for the sea has spoken,

the fortress of the sea, saying:

“I have neither labored nor given birth,

I have neither reared young men

nor brought up young women.”

⁵ When the report comes to Egypt,

they will be in anguish over the report about Tyre.

⁶ Cross over to Tarshish—

wail, O inhabitants of the coast!

⁷ Is this your exultant city

whose origin is from days of old,

whose feet carried her

to settle far away?

⁸ Who has planned this

against Tyre, the bestower of crowns,

whose merchants were princes,

whose traders were the honored of the earth?

⁹ The LORD of hosts has planned it—

to defile the pride of all glory,

to shame all the honored of the earth.

¹⁰ Cross over to your own land,

O ships of[65] Tarshish;

this is a harbor[66] no more.

¹¹ He has stretched out his hand over the sea,

he has shaken the kingdoms;

the LORD has given command concerning Canaan

to destroy its fortresses.

¹² He said:

You will exult no longer,

O oppressed virgin daughter Sidon;

rise, cross over to Cyprus—

even there you will have no rest.

13 Look at the land of the Chaldeans! This is the people; it was not Assyria. They destined Tyre for wild animals. They erected their siege towers, they tore down her palaces, they made her a ruin.[67]

¹⁴ Wail, O ships of Tarshish,

for your fortress is destroyed.

¹⁵From that day Tyre will be forgotten for seventy years, the lifetime of one king. At the end of seventy years, it will happen to Tyre as in the song about the prostitute:

¹⁶ Take a harp,

go about the city,

you forgotten prostitute!

Make sweet melody,

sing many songs,

that you may be remembered.

¹⁷At the end of seventy years, the LORD will visit Tyre, and she will return to her trade, and will prostitute herself with all the kingdoms of the world on the face of the earth. ¹⁸Her merchandise and her wages will be dedicated to the LORD; her profits[68] will not be stored or hoarded, but her merchandise will supply abundant food and fine clothing for those who live in the presence of the LORD.

Isaiah 24

Now the LORD is about to lay waste the earth and make it desolate,

and he will twist its surface and scatter its inhabitants.

² And it shall be, as with the people, so with the priest;

as with the slave, so with his master;

as with the maid, so with her mistress;

as with the buyer, so with the seller;

as with the lender, so with the borrower;

as with the creditor, so with the debtor.

³ The earth shall be utterly laid waste and utterly despoiled;

for the LORD has spoken this word.

⁴ The earth dries up and withers,

the world languishes and withers;

the heavens languish together with the earth.

⁵ The earth lies polluted

under its inhabitants;

for they have transgressed laws,

violated the statutes,

broken the everlasting covenant.

⁶ Therefore a curse devours the earth,

and its inhabitants suffer for their guilt;

therefore the inhabitants of the earth dwindled,

and few people are left.

⁷ The wine dries up,

the vine languishes,

all the merry-hearted sigh.

⁸ The mirth of the timbrels is stilled,

the noise of the jubilant has ceased,

the mirth of the lyre is stilled.

⁹ No longer do they drink wine with singing;

strong drink is bitter to those who drink it.

¹⁰ The city of chaos is broken down,

every house is shut up so that no one can enter.

¹¹ There is an outcry in the streets for lack of wine;

all joy has reached its eventide;

the gladness of the earth is banished.

¹² Desolation is left in the city,

the gates are battered into ruins.

¹³ For thus it shall be on the earth

and among the nations,

as when an olive tree is beaten,

as at the gleaning when the grape harvest is ended.

GOD’S JUDGEMENT

The Day of Judgement is an idea very familiar, and very dreadful, to Christians. “In all times of our tribulation, in all time of our wealth, in the hour of death, and in the day of judgement, Good LORD deliver us.” If there is any concept which cannot by any conjuring be removed from the teaching of Our Lord, it is that of the great separation; the sheep and the goats, the broad way and the narrow, the wheat and the tares, the winnowing fan, the wise and the foolish virgins, the good fish and the refuse, the door closed on the marriage feast, with some inside and some outside in the dark. We may dare to hope—some dare to hope—that this is not the whole story, that, as Julian of Norwich said, “All will be well and all manner of things will be well.” But it is no use going to Our Lord’s own words for that hope. Something we may get from St. Paul: nothing, of that kind, from Jesus. It is from His own words that the picture of “Doomsday” has come into Christianity.

—from “The Psalms,” Christian Reflections

For reflection Isaiah 24:1–23

¹⁴ They lift up their voices, they sing for joy;

they shout from the west over the majesty of the LORD.

¹⁵ Therefore in the east give glory to the LORD;

in the coastlands of the sea glorify the name of the LORD, the God of Israel.

¹⁶ From the ends of the earth we hear songs of praise,

of glory to the Righteous One.

But I say, I pine away,

I pine away. Woe is me!

For the treacherous deal treacherously,

the treacherous deal very treacherously.

¹⁷ Terror, and the pit, and the snare

are upon you, O inhabitant of the earth!

¹⁸ Whoever flees at the sound of the terror

shall fall into the pit;

and whoever climbs out of the pit

shall be caught in the snare.

For the windows of heaven are opened,

and the foundations of the earth tremble.

¹⁹ The earth is utterly broken,

the earth is torn asunder,

the earth is violently shaken.

²⁰ The earth staggers like a drunkard,

it sways like a hut;

its transgression lies heavy upon it,

and it falls, and will not rise again.

²¹ On that day the LORD will punish

the host of heaven in heaven,

and on earth the kings of the earth.

²² They will be gathered together

like prisoners in a pit;

they will be shut up in a prison,

and after many days they will be punished.

²³ Then the moon will be abashed,

and the sun ashamed;

for the LORD of hosts will reign

on Mount Zion and in Jerusalem,

and before his elders he will manifest his glory.

Isaiah 25

O LORD, you are my God;

I will exalt you, I will praise your name;

for you have done wonderful things,

plans formed of old, faithful and sure.

² For you have made the city a heap,

the fortified city a ruin;

the palace of aliens is a city no more,

it will never be rebuilt.

³ Therefore strong peoples will glorify you;

cities of ruthless nations will fear you.

⁴ For you have been a refuge to the poor,

a refuge to the needy in their distress,

a shelter from the rainstorm and a shade from the heat.

When the blast of the ruthless was like a winter rainstorm,

⁵ the noise of aliens like heat in a dry place,

you subdued the heat with the shade of clouds;

the song of the ruthless was stilled.

⁶ On this mountain the LORD of hosts will make for all peoples

a feast of rich food, a feast of well-aged wines,

of rich food filled with marrow, of well-aged wines strained clear.

⁷ And he will destroy on this mountain

the shroud that is cast over all peoples,

the sheet that is spread over all nations;

⁸ he will swallow up death forever.

Then the Lord GOD will wipe away the tears from all faces,

and the disgrace of his people he will take away from all the earth,

for the LORD has spoken.

⁹ It will be said on that day,

Lo, this is our God; we have waited for him, so that he might save us.

This is the LORD for whom we have waited;

let us be glad and rejoice in his salvation.

¹⁰ For the hand of the LORD will rest on this mountain.

The Moabites shall be trodden down in their place

THE REMEDY FOR THE FALL

On the one hand Death is the triumph of Satan, the punishment of the Fall, and the last enemy. Christ shed tears at the grave of Lazarus and sweated blood in Gethsemane: the Life of Lives that was in Him detested this penal obscenity not less than we do, but more. On the other hand, only he who loses his life will save it. We are baptised into the death of Christ, and it is the remedy for the Fall. Death is, in fact, what some modern people call “ambivalent.” It is Satan’s great weapon and also God’s great weapon: it is holy and unholy; our supreme disgrace and our only hope; the thing Christ came to conquer and the means by which He conquered.

—from Miracles

For reflection Isaiah 25:6–9

as straw is trodden down in a dung-pit.

¹¹ Though they spread out their hands in the midst of it,

as swimmers spread out their hands to swim,

their pride will be laid low despite the struggle[69] of their hands.

¹² The high fortifications of his walls will be brought down,

laid low, cast to the ground, even to the dust.

Isaiah 26

On that day this song will be sung in the land of Judah:

We have a strong city;

he sets up victory

like walls and bulwarks.

² Open the gates,

so that the righteous nation that keeps faith

may enter in.

³ Those of steadfast mind you keep in peace—

in peace because they trust in you.

⁴ Trust in the LORD forever,

for in the LORD GOD[70]

you have an everlasting rock.

⁵ For he has brought low

the inhabitants of the height;

the lofty city he lays low.

He lays it low to the ground,

casts it to the dust.

⁶ The foot tramples it,

the feet of the poor,

the steps of the needy.

⁷ The way of the righteous is level;

O Just One, you make smooth the path of the righteous.

⁸ In the path of your judgments,

O LORD, we wait for you;

your name and your renown

are the soul’s desire.

⁹ My soul yearns for you in the night,

my spirit within me earnestly seeks you.

For when your judgments are in the earth,

the inhabitants of the world learn righteousness.

¹⁰ If favor is shown to the wicked,

they do not learn righteousness;

in the land of uprightness they deal perversely

and do not see the majesty of the LORD.

¹¹ O LORD, your hand is lifted up,

but they do not see it.

Let them see your zeal for your people, and be ashamed.

Let the fire for your adversaries consume them.

¹² O LORD, you will ordain peace for us,

for indeed, all that we have done, you have done for us.

¹³ O LORD our God,

other lords besides you have ruled over us,

but we acknowledge your name alone.

¹⁴ The dead do not live;

shades do not rise—

because you have punished and destroyed them,

and wiped out all memory of them.

¹⁵ But you have increased the nation, O LORD,

you have increased the nation; you are glorified;

you have enlarged all the borders of the land.

¹⁶ O LORD, in distress they sought you,

they poured out a prayer[71]

when your chastening was on them.

¹⁷ Like a woman with child,

who writhes and cries out in her pangs

when she is near her time,

so were we because of you, O LORD;

¹⁸ we were with child, we writhed,

but we gave birth only to wind.

We have won no victories on earth,

and no one is born to inhabit the world.

¹⁹ Your dead shall live, their corpses[72] shall rise.

O dwellers in the dust, awake and sing for joy!

For your dew is a radiant dew,

and the earth will give birth to those long dead.[73]

²⁰ Come, my people, enter your chambers,

and shut your doors behind you;

hide yourselves for a little while

until the wrath is past.

²¹ For the LORD comes out from his place

to punish the inhabitants of the earth for their iniquity;

the earth will disclose the blood shed on it,

and will no longer cover its slain.

Isaiah 27

On that day the LORD with his cruel and great and strong sword will punish Leviathan the fleeing serpent, Leviathan the twisting serpent, and he will kill the dragon that is in the sea.

² On that day:

A pleasant vineyard, sing about it!

³ I, the LORD, am its keeper;

every moment I water it.

I guard it night and day

so that no one can harm it;

⁴ I have no wrath.

If it gives me thorns and briers,

I will march to battle against it.

I will burn it up.

⁵ Or else let it cling to me for protection,

let it make peace with me,

let it make peace with me.

⁶ In days to come[74] Jacob shall take root,

Israel shall blossom and put forth shoots,

and fill the whole world with fruit.

⁷ Has he struck them down as he struck down those who struck them?

THE IMMORTALITY OF THE SOUL

From the earliest times the Jews, like many other nations, had believed that man possessed a “soul” or Nephesh separable from the body, which went at death into the shadowy world called Sheol: a land of forgetfulness and imbecility where none called upon Jehovah any more, a land half unreal and melancholy like the Hades of the Greeks or the Niflheim of the Norsemen. From it shades could return and appear to the living, as Samuel’s shade had done at the command of the Witch of Endor. In much more recent times there had arisen a more cheerful belief that the righteous passed at death to “heaven.” Both doctrines are doctrines of “the immortality of the soul” as a Greek or modern Englishman understands it: and both are quite irrelevant to the story of the Resurrection. The writers look upon this event as an absolute novelty. Quite clearly they do not think they have been haunted by a ghost from Sheol, nor even that they have had a vision of a “soul” in “heaven”. . . . What the apostles claimed to have seen did not corroborate, nor exclude, and had indeed nothing to do with, either the doctrine of “heaven” or the doctrine of Sheol. Insofar as it corroborated anything it corroborated a third Jewish belief which is quite distinct from both these. This third doctrine taught that in “the day of Jahweh” peace would be restored and world dominion given to Israel under a righteous King: and that when this happened the righteous dead, or some of them, would come back to earth—not as floating wraiths but as solid men who cast shadows in the sunlight and made a noise when they tramped the floors. “Awake and sing, ye that dwell in the dust,” said Isaiah, “And the earth shall cast out the dead” (26:19). What the apostles thought they had seen was, if not that, at any rate a lonely first instance of that: the first movement of a great wheel beginning to turn in the direction opposite to that which all men hitherto had observed. Of all the ideas entertained by man about death it is this one, and this one only, which the story of the Resurrection tends to confirm. If the story is false then it is this Hebrew myth of resurrection which begot it. If the story is true then the hint and anticipation of the truth is to be found not in popular ideas about ghosts nor in eastern doctrines of reincarnation nor in philosophical speculations about the immortality of the soul, but exclusively in the Hebrew prophecies of the return, the restoration, the great reversal. Immortality simply as immortality is irrelevant to the Christian claim.

—from Miracles

For reflection Isaiah 26:19

Or have they been killed as their killers were killed?

⁸ By expulsion,[75] by exile you struggled against them;

with his fierce blast he removed them in the day of the east wind.

⁹ Therefore by this the guilt of Jacob will be expiated,

and this will be the full fruit of the removal of his sin:

when he makes all the stones of the altars

like chalkstones crushed to pieces,

no sacred poles[76] or incense altars will remain standing.

¹⁰ For the fortified city is solitary,

a habitation deserted and forsaken, like the wilderness;

the calves graze there,

there they lie down, and strip its branches.

¹¹ When its boughs are dry, they are broken;

women come and make a fire of them.

For this is a people without understanding;

therefore he that made them will not have compassion on them,

he that formed them will show them no favor.

12 On that day the LORD will thresh from the channel of the Euphrates to the Wadi of Egypt, and you will be gathered one by one, O people of Israel. ¹³And on that day a great trumpet will be blown, and those who were lost in the land of Assyria and those who were driven out to the land of Egypt will come and worship the LORD on the holy mountain at Jerusalem.

Isaiah 28

Ah, the proud garland of the drunkards of Ephraim,

and the fading flower of its glorious beauty,

which is on the head of those bloated with rich food, of those overcome with wine!

² See, the Lord has one who is mighty and strong;

like a storm of hail, a destroying tempest,

like a storm of mighty, overflowing waters;

with his hand he will hurl them down to the earth.

³ Trampled under foot will be

the proud garland of the drunkards of Ephraim.

⁴ And the fading flower of its glorious beauty,

which is on the head of those bloated with rich food,

will be like a first-ripe fig before the summer;

whoever sees it, eats it up

as soon as it comes to hand.

⁵ In that day the LORD of hosts will be a garland of glory,

and a diadem of beauty, to the remnant of his people;

⁶ and a spirit of justice to the one who sits in judgment,

and strength to those who turn back the battle at the gate.

⁷ These also reel with wine

and stagger with strong drink;

the priest and the prophet reel with strong drink,

they are confused with wine,

they stagger with strong drink;

they err in vision,

they stumble in giving judgment.

⁸ All tables are covered with filthy vomit;

no place is clean.

⁹ “Whom will he teach knowledge,

and to whom will he explain the message?

Those who are weaned from milk,

those taken from the breast?

¹⁰ For it is precept upon precept, precept upon precept,

line upon line, line upon line,

here a little, there a little.”[77]

¹¹ Truly, with stammering lip

and with alien tongue

he will speak to this people,

¹² to whom he has said,

“This is rest;

give rest to the weary;

and this is repose”;

yet they would not hear.

¹³ Therefore the word of the LORD will be to them,

“Precept upon precept, precept upon precept,

line upon line, line upon line,

here a little, there a little;”[78]

in order that they may go, and fall backward,

and be broken, and snared, and taken.

¹⁴ Therefore hear the word of the LORD, you scoffers

who rule this people in Jerusalem.

¹⁵ Because you have said, “We have made a covenant with death,

and with Sheol we have an agreement;

when the overwhelming scourge passes through

it will not come to us;

for we have made lies our refuge,

and in falsehood we have taken shelter”;

¹⁶ therefore thus says the Lord GOD,

See, I am laying in Zion a foundation stone,

a tested stone,

a precious cornerstone, a sure foundation:

“One who trusts will not panic.”

¹⁷ And I will make justice the line,

and righteousness the plummet;

hail will sweep away the refuge of lies,

and waters will overwhelm the shelter.

¹⁸ Then your covenant with death will be annulled,

and your agreement with Sheol will not stand;

when the overwhelming scourge passes through

you will be beaten down by it.

¹⁹ As often as it passes through, it will take you;

for morning by morning it will pass through,

by day and by night;

and it will be sheer terror to understand the message.

²⁰ For the bed is too short to stretch oneself on it,

and the covering too narrow to wrap oneself in it.

²¹ For the LORD will rise up as on Mount Perazim,

he will rage as in the valley of Gibeon

to do his deed—strange is his deed!—

and to work his work—alien is his work!

²² Now therefore do not scoff,

or your bonds will be made stronger;

for I have heard a decree of destruction

from the Lord GOD of hosts upon the whole land.

²³ Listen, and hear my voice;

Pay attention, and hear my speech.

²⁴ Do those who plow for sowing plow continually?

Do they continually open and harrow their ground?

²⁵ When they have leveled its surface,

do they not scatter dill, sow cummin,

and plant wheat in rows

and barley in its proper place,

and spelt as the border?

²⁶ For they are well instructed;

their God teaches them.

²⁷ Dill is not threshed with a threshing sledge,

nor is a cart wheel rolled over cummin;

but dill is beaten out with a stick,

and cummin with a rod.

²⁸ Grain is crushed for bread,

but one does not thresh it forever;

one drives the cart wheel and horses over it,

but does not pulverize it.

²⁹ This also comes from the LORD of hosts;

he is wonderful in counsel,

and excellent in wisdom.

Isaiah 29

Ah, Ariel, Ariel,

the city where David encamped!

Add year to year;

let the festivals run their round.

² Yet I will distress Ariel,

and there shall be moaning and lamentation,

and Jerusalem[79] shall be to me like an Ariel.[80]

³ And like David[81] I will encamp against you;

I will besiege you with towers

and raise siegeworks against you.

⁴ Then deep from the earth you shall speak,

from low in the dust your words shall come;

your voice shall come from the ground like the voice of a ghost,

and your speech shall whisper out of the dust.

⁵ But the multitude of your foes[82] shall be like small dust,

and the multitude of tyrants like flying chaff.

And in an instant, suddenly,

⁶ you will be visited by the LORD of hosts

with thunder and earthquake and great noise,

with whirlwind and tempest, and the flame of a devouring fire.

⁷ And the multitude of all the nations that fight against Ariel,

all that fight against her and her stronghold, and who distress her,

shall be like a dream, a vision of the night.

⁸ Just as when a hungry person dreams of eating

and wakes up still hungry,

or a thirsty person dreams of drinking

and wakes up faint, still thirsty,

so shall the multitude of all the nations be

that fight against Mount Zion.

⁹ Stupefy yourselves and be in a stupor,

blind yourselves and be blind!

Be drunk, but not from wine;

stagger, but not from strong drink!

¹⁰ For the LORD has poured out upon you

a spirit of deep sleep;

he has closed your eyes, you prophets,

and covered your heads, you seers.

11 The vision of all this has become for you like the words of a sealed document. If it is given to those who can read, with the command, “Read this,” they say, “We cannot, for it is sealed.” ¹²And if it is given to those who cannot read, saying, “Read this,” they say, “We cannot read.”

¹³ The Lord said:

Because these people draw near with their mouths

and honor me with their lips,

while their hearts are far from me,

and their worship of me is a human commandment learned by rote;

¹⁴ so I will again do

amazing things with this people,

shocking and amazing.

The wisdom of their wise shall perish,

and the discernment of the discerning shall be hidden.

¹⁵ Ha! You who hide a plan too deep for the LORD,

whose deeds are in the dark,

and who say, “Who sees us? Who knows us?”

¹⁶ You turn things upside down!

Shall the potter be regarded as the clay?

Shall the thing made say of its maker,

“He did not make me”;

or the thing formed say of the one who formed it,

“He has no understanding”?

¹⁷ Shall not Lebanon in a very little while

become a fruitful field,

and the fruitful field be regarded as a forest?

¹⁸ On that day the deaf shall hear

the words of a scroll,

and out of their gloom and darkness

the eyes of the blind shall see.

¹⁹ The meek shall obtain fresh joy in the LORD,

and the neediest people shall exult in the Holy One of Israel.

²⁰ For the tyrant shall be no more,

and the scoffer shall cease to be;

all those alert to do evil shall be cut off—

²¹ those who cause a person to lose a lawsuit,

who set a trap for the arbiter in the gate,

and without grounds deny justice to the one in the right.

22 Therefore thus says the LORD, who redeemed Abraham, concerning the house of Jacob:

No longer shall Jacob be ashamed,

no longer shall his face grow pale.

²³ For when he sees his children,

the work of my hands, in his midst,

they will sanctify my name;

they will sanctify the Holy One of Jacob,

and will stand in awe of the God of Israel.

²⁴ And those who err in spirit will come to understanding,

and those who grumble will accept instruction.

Isaiah 30

Oh, rebellious children, says the LORD,

who carry out a plan, but not mine;

who make an alliance, but against my will,

adding sin to sin;

² who set out to go down to Egypt

without asking for my counsel,

to take refuge in the protection of Pharaoh,

and to seek shelter in the shadow of Egypt;

³ Therefore the protection of Pharaoh shall become your shame,

and the shelter in the shadow of Egypt your humiliation.

⁴ For though his officials are at Zoan

and his envoys reach Hanes,

⁵ everyone comes to shame

through a people that cannot profit them,

that brings neither help nor profit,

but shame and disgrace.

6 An oracle concerning the animals of the Negeb.

Through a land of trouble and distress,

of lioness and roaring[83] lion,

of viper and flying serpent,

they carry their riches on the backs of donkeys,

and their treasures on the humps of camels,

to a people that cannot profit them.

⁷ For Egypt’s help is worthless and empty,

therefore I have called her,

“Rahab who sits still.”[84]

⁸ Go now, write it before them on a tablet,

and inscribe it in a book,

so that it may be for the time to come

as a witness forever.

⁹ For they are a rebellious people,

faithless children,

children who will not hear

the instruction of the LORD;

¹⁰ who say to the seers, “Do not see”;

and to the prophets, “Do not prophesy to us what is right;

speak to us smooth things,

prophesy illusions,

¹¹ leave the way, turn aside from the path,

let us hear no more about the Holy One of Israel.”

¹² Therefore thus says the Holy One of Israel:

Because you reject this word,

and put your trust in oppression and deceit,

and rely on them;

¹³ therefore this iniquity shall become for you

like a break in a high wall, bulging out, and about to collapse,

whose crash comes suddenly, in an instant;

¹⁴ its breaking is like that of a potter’s vessel

that is smashed so ruthlessly

that among its fragments not a sherd is found

for taking fire from the hearth,

or dipping water out of the cistern.

¹⁵ For thus said the Lord GOD, the Holy One of Israel:

In returning and rest you shall be saved;

in quietness and in trust shall be your strength.

But you refused ¹⁶and said,

“No! We will flee upon horses”—

therefore you shall flee!

and, “We will ride upon swift steeds”—

therefore your pursuers shall be swift!

¹⁷ A thousand shall flee at the threat of one,

at the threat of five you shall flee,

until you are left

like a flagstaff on the top of a mountain,

like a signal on a hill.

¹⁸ Therefore the LORD waits to be gracious to you;

therefore he will rise up to show mercy to you.

For the LORD is a God of justice;

blessed are all those who wait for him.

19 Truly, O people in Zion, inhabitants of Jerusalem, you shall weep no more. He will surely be gracious to you at the sound of your cry; when he hears it, he will answer you. ²⁰Though the Lord may give you the bread of adversity and the water of affliction, yet your Teacher will not hide himself any more, but your eyes shall see your Teacher. ²¹And when you turn to the right or when you turn to the left, your ears shall hear a word behind you, saying, “This is the way; walk in it.” ²²Then you will defile your silver-covered idols and your gold-plated images. You will scatter them like filthy rags; you will say to them, “Away with you!”

The real difficulty is, isn’t it, to adapt ones steady beliefs about tribulation to this particular tribulation; for the particular, when it arrives, always seems so peculiarly intolerable. I find it helpful to keep it very particular—to stop thinking about the ruin of the world etc, for no one is going to experience that, and to see it as each individual’s personal sufferings, which never can be more than those of one man, or more than one man, if he were very unlucky, might have suffered in peacetime. Do you get sudden lucid intervals? islands of profound peace? I do: and though they don’t last, I think one brings something away from them.

—from a letter to Owen Barfield, June 2, 1940

For reflection Isaiah 30:15

23 He will give rain for the seed with which you sow the ground, and grain, the produce of the ground, which will be rich and plenteous. On that day your cattle will graze in broad pastures; ²⁴and the oxen and donkeys that till the ground will eat silage, which has been winnowed with shovel and fork. ²⁵On every lofty mountain and every high hill there will be brooks running with water—on a day of the great slaughter, when the towers fall. ²⁶Moreover the light of the moon will be like the light of the sun, and the light of the sun will be sevenfold, like the light of seven days, on the day when the LORD binds up the injuries of his people, and heals the wounds inflicted by his blow.

²⁷ See, the name of the LORD comes from far away,

burning with his anger, and in thick rising smoke;[85]

his lips are full of indignation,

and his tongue is like a devouring fire;

²⁸ his breath is like an overflowing stream

that reaches up to the neck—

to sift the nations with the sieve of destruction,

and to place on the jaws of the peoples a bridle that leads them astray.

29 You shall have a song as in the night when a holy festival is kept; and gladness of heart, as when one sets out to the sound of the flute to go to the mountain of the LORD, to the Rock of Israel. ³⁰And the LORD will cause his majestic voice to be heard and the descending blow of his arm to be seen, in furious anger and a flame of devouring fire, with a cloudburst and tempest and hailstones. ³¹The Assyrian will be terror-stricken at the voice of the LORD, when he strikes with his rod. ³²And every stroke of the staff of punishment that the LORD lays upon him will be to the sound of timbrels and lyres; battling with brandished arm he will fight with him. ³³For his burning place[86] has long been prepared; truly it is made ready for the king,[87] its pyre made deep and wide, with fire and wood in abundance; the breath of the LORD, like a stream of sulfur, kindles it.

Isaiah 31

Alas for those who go down to Egypt for help

and who rely on horses,

who trust in chariots because they are many

and in horsemen because they are very strong,

but do not look to the Holy One of Israel

or consult the LORD!

² Yet he too is wise and brings disaster;

he does not call back his words,

but will rise against the house of the evildoers,

and against the helpers of those who work iniquity.

³ The Egyptians are human, and not God;

their horses are flesh, and not spirit.

When the LORD stretches out his hand,

the helper will stumble, and the one helped will fall,

and they will all perish together.

⁴ For thus the LORD said to me,

As a lion or a young lion growls over its prey,

and—when a band of shepherds is called out against it—

is not terrified by their shouting

or daunted at their noise,

so the LORD of hosts will come down

to fight upon Mount Zion and upon its hill.

⁵ Like birds hovering overhead, so the LORD of hosts

will protect Jerusalem;

he will protect and deliver it,

he will spare and rescue it.

6 Turn back to him whom you[88] have deeply betrayed, O people of Israel. ⁷For on that day all of you shall throw away your idols of silver and idols of gold, which your hands have sinfully made for you.

⁸ “Then the Assyrian shall fall by a sword, not of mortals;

and a sword, not of humans, shall devour him;

he shall flee from the sword,

and his young men shall be put to forced labor.

⁹ His rock shall pass away in terror,

and his officers desert the standard in panic,”

says the LORD, whose fire is in Zion,

and whose furnace is in Jerusalem.

Isaiah 32

See, a king will reign in righteousness,

and princes will rule with justice.

² Each will be like a hiding place from the wind,

a covert from the tempest,

like streams of water in a dry place,

like the shade of a great rock in a weary land.

³ Then the eyes of those who have sight will not be closed,

and the ears of those who have hearing will listen.

⁴ The minds of the rash will have good judgment,

and the tongues of stammerers will speak readily and distinctly.

⁵ A fool will no longer be called noble,

nor a villain said to be honorable.

⁶ For fools speak folly,

and their minds plot iniquity:

to practice ungodliness,

to utter error concerning the LORD,

to leave the craving of the hungry unsatisfied,

and to deprive the thirsty of drink.

⁷ The villainies of villains are evil;

they devise wicked devices

to ruin the poor with lying words,

even when the plea of the needy is right.

⁸ But those who are noble plan noble things,

and by noble things they stand.

⁹ Rise up, you women who are at ease, hear my voice;

you complacent daughters, listen to my speech.

¹⁰ In little more than a year

you will shudder, you complacent ones;

for the vintage will fail,

the fruit harvest will not come.

¹¹ Tremble, you women who are at ease,

shudder, you complacent ones;

strip, and make yourselves bare,

and put sackcloth on your loins.

¹² Beat your breasts for the pleasant fields,

for the fruitful vine,

¹³ for the soil of my people

growing up in thorns and briers;

yes, for all the joyous houses

in the jubilant city.

¹⁴ For the palace will be forsaken,

the populous city deserted;

the hill and the watchtower

will become dens forever,

the joy of wild asses,

a pasture for flocks;

¹⁵ until a spirit from on high is poured out on us,

and the wilderness becomes a fruitful field,

and the fruitful field is deemed a forest.

¹⁶ Then justice will dwell in the wilderness,

and righteousness abide in the fruitful field.

¹⁷ The effect of righteousness will be peace,

and the result of righteousness, quietness and trust forever.

¹⁸ My people will abide in a peaceful habitation,

in secure dwellings, and in quiet resting places.

¹⁹ The forest will disappear completely,[89]

and the city will be utterly laid low.

²⁰ Happy will you be who sow beside every stream,

who let the ox and the donkey range freely.

Isaiah 33

Ah, you destroyer,

who yourself have not been destroyed;

you treacherous one,

with whom no one has dealt treacherously!

When you have ceased to destroy,

you will be destroyed;

and when you have stopped dealing treacherously,

you will be dealt with treacherously.

² O LORD, be gracious to us; we wait for you.

Be our arm every morning,

our salvation in the time of trouble.

³ At the sound of tumult, peoples fled;

before your majesty, nations scattered.

⁴ Spoil was gathered as the caterpillar gathers;

as locusts leap, they leaped[90] upon it.

⁵ The LORD is exalted, he dwells on high;

he filled Zion with justice and righteousness;

⁶ he will be the stability of your times,

abundance of salvation, wisdom, and knowledge;

the fear of the LORD is Zion’s treasure.[91]

⁷ Listen! the valiant[90] cry in the streets;

the envoys of peace weep bitterly.

⁸ The highways are deserted,

travelers have quit the road.

The treaty is broken,

its oaths[92] are despised,

its obligation[93] is disregarded.

⁹ The land mourns and languishes;

Lebanon is confounded and withers away;

Sharon is like a desert;

and Bashan and Carmel shake off their leaves.

¹⁰ “Now I will arise,” says the LORD,

“now I will lift myself up;

now I will be exalted.

¹¹ You conceive chaff, you bring forth stubble;

your breath is a fire that will consume you.

¹² And the peoples will be as if burned to lime,

like thorns cut down, that are burned in the fire.”

¹³ Hear, you who are far away, what I have done;

and you who are near, acknowledge my might.

¹⁴ The sinners in Zion are afraid;

trembling has seized the godless:

“Who among us can live with the devouring fire?

Who among us can live with everlasting flames?”

¹⁵ Those who walk righteously and speak uprightly,

who despise the gain of oppression,

who wave away a bribe instead of accepting it,

Good and evil both increase at compound interest. That is why the little decisions you and I make every day are of such infinite importance. The smallest good act today is the capture of a strategic point from which, a few months later, you may be able to go on to victories you never dreamed of. An apparently trivial indulgence in lust or anger today is the loss of a ridge or railway line or bridgehead from which the enemy may launch an attack otherwise impossible.

—from Mere Christianity

For reflection Isaiah 33:15–16

who stop their ears from hearing of bloodshed

and shut their eyes from looking on evil,

¹⁶ they will live on the heights;

their refuge will be the fortresses of rocks;

their food will be supplied, their water assured.

¹⁷ Your eyes will see the king in his beauty;

they will behold a land that stretches far away.

¹⁸ Your mind will muse on the terror:

“Where is the one who counted?

Where is the one who weighed the tribute?

Where is the one who counted the towers?”

¹⁹ No longer will you see the insolent people,

the people of an obscure speech that you cannot comprehend,

stammering in a language that you cannot understand.

²⁰ Look on Zion, the city of our appointed festivals!

Your eyes will see Jerusalem,

a quiet habitation, an immovable tent,

whose stakes will never be pulled up,

and none of whose ropes will be broken.

²¹ But there the LORD in majesty will be for us

a place of broad rivers and streams,

where no galley with oars can go,

nor stately ship can pass.

²² For the LORD is our judge, the LORD is our ruler,

the LORD is our king; he will save us.

²³ Your rigging hangs loose;

it cannot hold the mast firm in its place,

or keep the sail spread out.

Then prey and spoil in abundance will be divided;

even the lame will fall to plundering.

²⁴ And no inhabitant will say, “I am sick”;

the people who live there will be forgiven their iniquity.

Isaiah 34

Draw near, O nations, to hear;

O peoples, give heed!

Let the earth hear, and all that fills it;

the world, and all that comes from it.

² For the LORD is enraged against all the nations,

and furious against all their hordes;

he has doomed them, has given them over for slaughter.

³ Their slain shall be cast out,

and the stench of their corpses shall rise;

the mountains shall flow with their blood.

⁴ All the host of heaven shall rot away,

and the skies roll up like a scroll.

All their host shall wither

like a leaf withering on a vine,

or fruit withering on a fig tree.

⁵ When my sword has drunk its fill in the heavens,

lo, it will descend upon Edom,

upon the people I have doomed to judgment.

⁶ The LORD has a sword; it is sated with blood,

it is gorged with fat,

with the blood of lambs and goats,

with the fat of the kidneys of rams.

For the LORD has a sacrifice in Bozrah,

a great slaughter in the land of Edom.

⁷ Wild oxen shall fall with them,

and young steers with the mighty bulls.

Their land shall be soaked with blood,

and their soil made rich with fat.

⁸ For the LORD has a day of vengeance,

a year of vindication by Zion’s cause.[94]

⁹ And the streams of Edom[95] shall be turned into pitch,

and her soil into sulfur;

her land shall become burning pitch.

¹⁰ Night and day it shall not be quenched;

its smoke shall go up forever.

From generation to generation it shall lie waste;

no one shall pass through it forever and ever.

¹¹ But the hawk[96] and the hedgehog[96] shall possess it;

the owl[96] and the raven shall live in it.

He shall stretch the line of confusion over it,

and the plummet of chaos over[97] its nobles.

¹² They shall name it No Kingdom There,

and all its princes shall be nothing.

¹³ Thorns shall grow over its strongholds,

nettles and thistles in its fortresses.

It shall be the haunt of jackals,

an abode for ostriches.

¹⁴ Wildcats shall meet with hyenas,

goat-demons shall call to each other;

there too Lilith shall repose,

and find a place to rest.

¹⁵ There shall the owl nest

and lay and hatch and brood in its shadow;

there too the buzzards shall gather,

each one with its mate.

¹⁶ Seek and read from the book of the LORD:

Not one of these shall be missing;

none shall be without its mate.

For the mouth of the LORD has commanded,

and his spirit has gathered them.

¹⁷ He has cast the lot for them,

his hand has portioned it out to them with the line;

they shall possess it forever,

from generation to generation they shall live in it.

Isaiah 35

The wilderness and the dry land shall be glad,

the desert shall rejoice and blossom;

like the crocus ²it shall blossom abundantly,

and rejoice with joy and singing.

The glory of Lebanon shall be given to it,

the majesty of Carmel and Sharon.

They shall see the glory of the LORD,

the majesty of our God.

³ Strengthen the weak hands,

and make firm the feeble knees.

⁴ Say to those who are of a fearful heart,

“Be strong, do not fear!

Here is your God.

He will come with vengeance,

with terrible recompense.

He will come and save you.”

⁵ Then the eyes of the blind shall be opened,

and the ears of the deaf unstopped;

⁶ then the lame shall leap like a deer,

and the tongue of the speechless sing for joy.

For waters shall break forth in the wilderness,

and streams in the desert;

For reflection: Isaiah 35:1–10

For God is not merely mending, not simply restoring a status quo. Redeemed humanity is to be something more glorious than unfallen humanity would have been, more glorious than any unfallen race now is.

—from Miracles

⁷ the burning sand shall become a pool,

and the thirsty ground springs of water;

the haunt of jackals shall become a swamp,[98]

the grass shall become reeds and rushes.

⁸ A highway shall be there,

and it shall be called the Holy Way;

the unclean shall not travel on it,[99]

but it shall be for God’s people;[100]

no traveler, not even fools, shall go astray.

⁹ No lion shall be there,

nor shall any ravenous beast come up on it;

they shall not be found there,

but the redeemed shall walk there.

¹⁰ And the ransomed of the LORD shall return,

and come to Zion with singing;

everlasting joy shall be upon their heads;

they shall obtain joy and gladness,

and sorrow and sighing shall flee away.

Isaiah 36

In the fourteenth year of King Hezekiah, King Sennacherib of Assyria came up against all the fortified cities of Judah and captured them. ²The king of Assyria sent the Rabshakeh from Lachish to King Hezekiah at Jerusalem, with a great army. He stood by the conduit of the upper pool on the highway to the Fuller’s Field. ³And there came out to him Eliakim son of Hilkiah, who was in charge of the palace, and Shebna the secretary, and Joah son of Asaph, the recorder.

4 The Rabshakeh said to them, “Say to Hezekiah: Thus says the great king, the king of Assyria: On what do you base this confidence of yours? ⁵Do you think that mere words are strategy and power for war? On whom do you now rely, that you have rebelled against me? ⁶See, you are relying on Egypt, that broken reed of a staff, which will pierce the hand of anyone who leans on it. Such is Pharaoh king of Egypt to all who rely on him. ⁷But if you say to me, ‘We rely on the LORD our God,’ is it not he whose high places and altars Hezekiah has removed, saying to Judah and to Jerusalem, ‘You shall worship before this altar’? ⁸Come now, make a wager with my master the king of Assyria: I will give you two thousand horses, if you are able on your part to set riders on them. ⁹How then can you repulse a single captain among the least of my master’s servants, when you rely on Egypt for chariots and for horsemen? ¹⁰Moreover, is it without the LORD that I have come up against this land to destroy it? The LORD said to me, Go up against this land, and destroy it.”

11 Then Eliakim, Shebna, and Joah said to the Rabshakeh, “Please speak to your servants in Aramaic, for we understand it; do not speak to us in the language of Judah within the hearing of the people who are on the wall.” ¹²But the Rabshakeh said, “Has my master sent me to speak these words to your master and to you, and not to the people sitting on the wall, who are doomed with you to eat their own dung and drink their own urine?”

13 Then the Rabshakeh stood and called out in a loud voice in the language of Judah, “Hear the words of the great king, the king of Assyria! ¹⁴Thus says the king: ‘Do not let Hezekiah deceive you, for he will not be able to deliver you. ¹⁵Do not let Hezekiah make you rely on the LORD by saying, The LORD will surely deliver us; this city will not be given into the hand of the king of Assyria.’ ¹⁶Do not listen to Hezekiah; for thus says the king of Assyria: ‘Make your peace with me and come out to me; then every one of you will eat from your own vine and your own fig tree and drink water from your own cistern, ¹⁷until I come and take you away to a land like your own land, a land of grain and wine, a land of bread and vineyards. ¹⁸Do not let Hezekiah mislead you by saying, The LORD will save us. Has any of the gods of the nations saved their land out of the hand of the king of Assyria? ¹⁹Where are the gods of Hamath and Arpad? Where are the gods of Sepharvaim? Have they delivered Samaria out of my hand? ²⁰Who among all the gods of these countries have saved their countries out of my hand, that the LORD should save Jerusalem out of my hand?’”

21 But they were silent and answered him not a word, for the king’s command was, “Do not answer him.” ²²Then Eliakim son of Hilkiah, who was in charge of the palace, and Shebna the secretary, and Joah son of Asaph, the recorder, came to Hezekiah with their clothes torn, and told him the words of the Rabshakeh.

WHAT CANCELS SIN

THE MAKING OF A SCOUNDREL

NAKED BEFORE HIM

THE WONDER OF MIRACLES

HE HUMBLED HIMSELF

COMPETING POWERS WITH GOD

GOD’S JUDGEMENT

THE REMEDY FOR THE FALL

THE IMMORTALITY OF THE SOUL

RETURNING AND REST

THE WEIGHT OF OUR DECISIONS