Isaiah 8:16-9:1

English Standard Version

¹⁶Bind up ^(A)the testimony; ^(B)seal the teaching^[a] among my disciples. ¹⁷I will ^(C)wait for the Lord, who is ^(D)hiding his face from the house of Jacob, and I will hope in him. ¹⁸^(E)Behold, I and ^(F)the children whom the Lord has given me are signs and portents in Israel from the Lord of hosts, who dwells on Mount Zion. ¹⁹And when they say to you, “Inquire of the ^(G)mediums and the necromancers who chirp and mutter,” should not a people inquire of their God? Should they inquire of ^(H)the dead on behalf of the living? ²⁰^(I)To the teaching and to the testimony! If they will not speak according to this word, it is because they have no ^(J)dawn. ²¹They will pass through the land,^[b] greatly distressed and hungry. And when they are hungry, they will be enraged and will speak contemptuously against^[c] their king and their God, and turn their faces upward. ²²^(K)And they will look to the earth, but behold, distress and darkness, the gloom of anguish. And they will be thrust into ^(L)thick darkness.

For to Us a Child Is Born

9 ^[d] But there will be no ^(M)gloom for her who was in anguish. In the former time he ^(N)brought into contempt the land of ^(O)Zebulun and the land of Naphtali, but in the latter time he ^(P)has made glorious the way of the sea, the land beyond the Jordan, Galilee of the nations.^[e]