Isaiah / Rebuke for Seeking Egypt's Help; Call to Trust the Lord

Rebuke for Seeking Egypt's Help; Call to Trust the Lord

Isaiah 30:1-33

Chapter 30

¹ Alas for rebellious sons, declares the LORD, who make a plan but not from me, and pour a libation on a molten image but not my spirit, in order to add sin offering upon sin offering. ² the ones walking to go down to Egypt, and they did not ask at his mouth for strength in the stronghold of Pharaoh, and to seek refuge in the shade of Egypt ³ And it will be to you a stronghold of Pharaoh for shame, and the refuge in the shadow of Egypt for shame. ⁴ For his princes are in Tsaan, and his messengers will arrive at Hanes. ⁵ All have shamed the people—they will not profit them, not to help nor to profit, for you have shamed and also been a reproach. ⁶ The burden of beasts of the Negeb. Through a land of distress and anguish, from them lion and roaring lion, viper and fiery flying serpent, they bear upon shoulders of cities their young and upon humps of camels their treasures, to a people that will not profit. ⁷ And Egypt—vanity and emptiness—they will help. Therefore I have called her Rahab-they-sitting-still. ⁸ Now go, write it on a tablet before them and engrave it in a book, and it will be for a witness forever until eternity. ⁹ For they are a rebellious people, lying sons, sons who are not willing to hear the Torah of the LORD. ¹⁰ who said to the seers, "Do not see," and to the visionaries, "Do not envision right things for us. Speak smooth things to us; envision delusion." ¹¹ Turn aside from us—the way, bend from us—the path, cause to cease from before us the Holy One of Israel. ¹² Therefore the Holy One of Israel says this: Because you have rejected this word and trusted in oppression and crookedness and leaned on it, ¹³ Therefore this iniquity of yours will be like a breach falling, bulging out in a high wall whose breach comes suddenly, in a moment. ¹⁴ And he breaks it like the breaking of a potter's jar, fragments—no one pities them, and no one finds among its fragments a craftsman to take fire from a furnace or to draw water from a cistern. ¹⁵ For thus says the Lord GOD, the Holy One of Israel: In return and rest you will be saved; in quietness and in trust will be your strength, but you refused. ¹⁶ And you said, "No! For on horses we will flee; on that you will flee, and on a swift one we will ride; on that your pursuers will be swifter." ¹⁷ A thousand will flee from the face of one, from the face of five you will flee until you are left like a mast on the head of the mountain, and a banner on the hill. ¹⁸ Therefore the LORD waits to show you favor, and therefore he exalts himself to have mercy on you; for the LORD is a God of justice. Blessed are all who wait for him. ¹⁹ For a people dwells in Zion, in Jerusalem: you shall not weep; the Gracious One will have grace on you at the voice of your cry; as he hears you, he answers you. ²⁰ And the Lord will give you bread of distress and water of oppression, and your teachers will no longer hide, and your eyes will be seeing your teachers. ²¹ And your ears will hear a word behind you saying, "This is the way, go in it; when you turn right and when you turn left." ²² And you shall defile the overlay of your silver idols, and the ephod of your gold mask you shall scatter like the menses' flow. You shall say to it: ²³ And he will give rain for your seed which you sow in the ground, and bread of the produce of the ground, and it will be fat and oil; and your livestock will graze in that day in a broad meadow. ²⁴ And the oxen and the donkeys, servants of the land, will eat at night the leaven which she winnowed in the runway and in the sifting fork. ²⁵ And there will be upon every high mountain and upon every lifted-up hill streams of waters that flow on the day of great slaughter, when towers fall. ²⁶ And 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 the seven days, on the day the LORD binds up the fracture of his people and heals the blow of their wound. ²⁷ Behold, the name of the LORD comes from afar, his anger burning and his glory a heavy burden, his lips full of indignation and his tongue like a devouring fire. ²⁸ And his Spirit like a flooding stream up to the neck—he will divide it to the sifting of nations in a sifting of worthlessness, and a bridle that causes to err upon the jaws of peoples. ²⁹ A song will be to you as a whole consecration-of-a-festival and joy-of-heart, like one walking with flute to come in the mountain of the LORD to the Rock of Israel. ³⁰ And the LORD will make them hear the majesty of his voice, and he will make them see his arm descending, with indignation, anger, and flame of devouring fire; scattering and downpour and hailstones. ³¹ For from the voice of the LORD, Assyria will be shattered; with a staff he will strike. ³² And it will be that every passage of the staff founded, which the LORD will lay upon him, with tambourines and lyres and in wars of waving, he will fight against them. ³³ For Topheth has been arranged from yesterday; even it for the king. It has been prepared; he has deepened it, he has widened its fuel bed of fire and much wood; the breath of the LORD, like a stream of brimstone, blazes in it.