Isaiah 24
24
XXIV
1Behold, Jehovah is about to make the land empty, and to make it waste;
Yea, he will turn it upside down, and scatter abroad the inhabitants thereof.
2And it shall be, as with the people, so with the priest;
As with the servant, so with his master;
As with the handmaid, so with her mistress;
As with the buyer, so with the seller;
As with the lender, so with the borrower;
As with the debtor, so with the creditor.
3The land shall be utterly emptied, and utterly spoiled;
For Jehovah hath spoken this word.
4The land mourneth, it withereth;
The world languisheth, it withereth;
The high people of the land do languish.
5The land is even polluted under the inhabitants thereof;
For they have transgressed the laws, they have changed the decree;
They have broken the everlasting covenant.
6Therefore doth a curse devour the land,
And the inhabitants thereof suffer punishment.
Therefore the inhabitants of the land are burnt up;
And men are left few in number.
7The new wine mourneth; the vine languisheth;
And the merry-hearted do sigh.
8The mirth of tabrets ceaseth,
The noise of them that rejoice endeth,
The joy of the harp ceaseth.
9They shall not drink wine in the song;
Strong drink shall be bitter to them that drink it.
10A desolate city is broken to pieces;
Every house is shut up, so that none can enter.
11There is a crying for wine in the streets,
All gladness hath vanished away;
The mirth of the land is gone.
12In the city is left devastation;
And the gate is battered down with a crash.
13For thus it shall be in the midst of the land, among the people,
As the shaking of an olive tree; as the gleaning when the harvest is finished.
14They shall lift up their voice, they shall shout for joy:
For the majesty of Jehovah they shall rejoice from the sea.
15Wherefore glorify ye Jehovah in the eastern regions,
Even the name of Jehovah, the God of Israel, in the isles of the sea.
16From the extremity of the earth have we heard songs: Glory to the righteous!
But I said: My leanness, my leanness, wo unto me! The plunders plunder; yea, the plunder the plunders plunder.
17The terror, and the pit, and the snare,
Are upon thee, O inhabitant of the land!
18And it shall be, that whoso fleeth from the sound of the terror shall fall into the pit;
And whoso cometh up out of the midst of the pit, shall be taken in the snare;
For the floodgates from on high are opened;
And the foundations of the earth tremble.
19The earth is utterly broken down,
The earth is shattered to pieces;
The earth is moved exceedingly.
20The earth verily reeleth like a drunkard,
And moveth to and fro like a hammock;
For her iniquity lieth heavy upon her;
And she shall fall, and rise no more.
21And it shall come to pass in that day,
That Jehovah shall punish on high the host that is on high;
And on earth the kings of the earth.
22And they shall be gathered together, as prisoners are gathered for the pit;
And shall be shut up in the prison:
And after many days shall they be visited.
23And the moon shall be confounded, and the sun shall be ashamed;
When Jehovah of hosts shall reign
On mount Zion, and in Jerusalem;
And before his ancients in glory.
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Isaiah 24: TEG
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Translated by Rev John Jones (Ioan Tegid).Published at Oxford in 1830, second edition 1842.
Isaiah 24
24
The Landscape Will Be a Moonscape
1-3Danger ahead! God’s about to ravish the earth
and leave it in ruins,
Rip everything out by the roots
and send everyone scurrying:
priests and laypeople alike,
owners and workers alike,
celebrities and nobodies alike,
buyers and sellers alike,
bankers and beggars alike,
the haves and have-nots alike.
The landscape will be a moonscape,
totally wasted.
And why? Because God says so.
He’s issued the orders.
4The earth turns gaunt and gray,
the world silent and sad,
sky and land lifeless, colorless.
Earth Polluted by Its Very Own People
5-13Earth is polluted by its very own people,
who have broken its laws,
Disrupted its order,
violated the sacred and eternal covenant.
Therefore a curse, like a cancer,
ravages the earth.
Its people pay the price of their sacrilege.
They dwindle away, dying out one by one.
No more wine, no more vineyards,
no more songs or singers.
The laughter of castanets is gone,
the shouts of celebrants, gone,
the laughter of fiddles, gone.
No more parties with toasts of champagne.
Serious drinkers gag on their drinks.
The chaotic cities are unlivable. Anarchy reigns.
Every house is boarded up, condemned.
People riot in the streets for wine,
but the good times are gone forever—
no more joy for this old world.
The city is dead and deserted,
bulldozed into piles of rubble.
That’s the way it will be on this earth.
This is the fate of all nations:
An olive tree shaken clean of its olives,
a grapevine picked clean of its grapes.
14-16a But there are some who will break into glad song.
Out of the west they’ll shout of God’s majesty.
Yes, from the east God’s glory will ascend.
Every island of the sea
Will broadcast God’s fame,
the fame of the God of Israel.
From the four winds and the seven seas we hear the singing:
“All praise to the Righteous One!”
16b-20 But I said, “That’s all well and good for somebody,
but all I can see is doom, doom, and more doom.”
All of them at one another’s throats,
yes, all of them at one another’s throats.
Terror and pits and booby traps
are everywhere, whoever you are.
If you run from the terror,
you’ll fall into the pit.
If you climb out of the pit,
you’ll get caught in the trap.
Chaos pours out of the skies.
The foundations of earth are crumbling.
Earth is smashed to pieces,
earth is ripped to shreds,
earth is wobbling out of control,
Earth staggers like a drunk,
sways like a shack in a high wind.
Its piled-up sins are too much for it.
It collapses and won’t get up again.
21-23That’s when God will call on the carpet
rebel powers in the skies and
Rebel kings on earth.
They’ll be rounded up like prisoners in a jail,
Corralled and locked up in a jail,
and then sentenced and put to hard labor.
Shamefaced moon will cower, humiliated,
red-faced sun will skulk, disgraced,
Because God-of-the-Angel-Armies will take over,
ruling from Mount Zion and Jerusalem,
Splendid and glorious
before all his leaders.
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THE MESSAGE: The Bible in Contemporary Language copyright © 1993, 2002, 2018 by Eugene H. Peterson. All rights reserved. Used by permission of NavPress. Represented by Tyndale House Publishers.