Isaiah 33

1Woe to you, destroyer, never yet destroyed yourself, and you who deal falsely, though no one has dealt falsely with you! Once your destroying is done, you will be destroyed; once you finish your treachery, others will deal treacherously with you.

2LORD, show us grace; we have waited for you. Be their strong arm morning by morning, and our salvation when trouble comes. 3At the roar of the uproar the peoples run; when you rise up, the nations scatter. 4Your spoil is swept up as caterpillars strip a field; like a swarm of locusts people rush upon it. 5The LORD is exalted, for he lives on high; he will fill Zion with justice and righteousness. 6He will be the firm foundation of your times, a rich store of salvation, of wisdom and knowledge; the fear of the LORD is his treasure.

7Listen! Their brave warriors cry out in the streets; the envoys sent for peace weep bitter tears. 8The highways lie empty; no traveler walks the road. He has broken the treaty and scorned the cities; he has no regard for human life. 9The land dries up and wastes away; Lebanon is put to shame and withers. Sharon is like the desert plain, and Bashan and Carmel drop their leaves. 10Now I will rise up, says the LORD; now I will show myself high and mighty; now I will lift myself up. 11You are pregnant with chaff, and you give birth to straw; your own breath is a fire that will burn you up. 12The peoples will be burned to lime, like thorns that are cut and set on fire.

13You who are far away, hear what I have done; you who are near, acknowledge my strength. 14The sinners in Zion are terrified; the godless are gripped by trembling: “Which of us can live as a guest beside the devouring fire? Which of us can stay where the burning lasts forever?” 15Whoever lives by what is right and speaks honestly, whoever turns down profit squeezed from others, whose hands shake off a bribe instead of grasping it, whose ears are closed to talk of bloodshed, and whose eyes are shut against gazing at evil, 16that one will make a home on the heights, with fortresses of rock for refuge, with bread supplied and water that never fails. 17Your eyes will see a king in his splendor; they will look on a land that stretches far away. 18Your mind will think back on the terror: “Where is the clerk who counted? Where is the one who weighed out the tribute? Where is the officer who counted the towers?” 19You will no longer see that fierce nation, a people whose speech is too strange to follow, whose stammering tongue makes no sense to you. 20Look at Zion, the city where we keep our festivals! Your eyes will see Jerusalem, a home at rest, a tent that will never be taken down. Its pegs will never be pulled up, and not one of its ropes will snap. 21Instead, there the LORD in majesty will be ours, a place of rivers and wide streams, where no galley with oars will sail and no mighty ship will pass through. 22For our judge is the LORD, our lawgiver is the LORD, our king is the LORD; he himself will save us. 23Your ropes hang slack; they cannot hold the mast firm in its socket or spread out the sail. Then plunder will be shared out in heaps, and even the lame will carry off spoil. 24No one who lives there will say, “I am sick”; the people who dwell in it will have their guilt forgiven.