Isaiah 22 / 66
- 1
(An Oracle Concerning Jerusalem)
The oracle concerning the valley of vision.
What do you mean that you have gone up,
all of you, to the housetops,
- 2
you who are full of shoutings,
tumultuous city, exultant town?
Your slain are not slain with the sword
or dead in battle.
- 3
All your leaders have fled together;
without the bow they were captured.
All of you who were found were captured,
though they had fled far away.
- 4
Therefore I said:
"Look away from me;
let me weep bitter tears;
do not labor to comfort me
concerning the destruction of the daughter of my 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 shouting to the mountains.
- 6
And Elam bore the quiver
with chariots and horsemen,
and Kir uncovered the shield.
- 7
Your choicest valleys were full of chariots,
and the horsemen took their stand at the gates.
- 8
He has taken away the covering of Judah.
In that day you looked to the weapons of the House of the Forest,
- 9
and you saw that the breaches of the city of David were many. You collected the waters of the lower pool,
- 10
and you counted the houses of Jerusalem, and you broke down the houses to fortify the wall.
- 11
You 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 see him who planned it long ago.
- 12
In that day the Lord God of hosts
called for weeping and mourning,
for baldness and wearing sackcloth;
- 13
and behold, joy and gladness,
killing oxen and slaughtering sheep,
eating flesh 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 atoned for 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 over the household, and say to him:
- 16
What have you to do here, and whom have you here, that you have cut out here a tomb for yourself, you who cut out a tomb on the height and carve a dwelling for yourself in the rock?
- 17
Behold, the Lord will hurl you away violently, O you strong man. He will seize firm hold on you
- 18
and whirl you around and around, and throw you like a ball into a wide land. There you shall die, and there shall be your glorious chariots, you shame of your master's house.
- 19
I will thrust you from your office, and you will be pulled down from your station.
- 20
In that day I will call my servant Eliakim the son of Hilkiah,
- 21
and I will clothe him with your robe, and will bind your sash on him, and will commit your authority to his hand. And he shall be a father to the inhabitants of Jerusalem and to the house of Judah.
- 22
And I will place on his shoulder the key of the house of David. He shall open, and none shall shut; and he shall shut, and none shall open.
- 23
And I will fasten him like a peg in a secure place, and he will become a throne of honor to his father's house.
- 24
And they will hang on him the whole honor of his father's house, the offspring and issue, every small vessel, from the cups to all the flagons.
- 25
In that day, declares the Lord of hosts, the peg that was fastened in a secure place will give way, and it will be cut down and fall, and the load that was on it will be cut off, for the Lord has spoken."