Isaiah 1-2
Modern English Version
1 The vision of Isaiah the son of Amoz, which he saw concerning Judah and Jerusalem in the days of Uzziah, Jotham, Ahaz, and Hezekiah, kings of Judah.
The Wickedness of Judah
2 Hear, O heavens, and give ear, O earth.
For the Lord has spoken:
I have nourished and brought up children,
and they have rebelled against Me;
3 the ox knows his owner,
and the donkey his master’s crib,
but Israel does not know;
My people do not consider.
4 Alas, sinful nation,
a people laden with iniquity,
a brood of evildoers,
children who deal corruptly!
They have forsaken the Lord,
they have provoked the Holy One of Israel to anger,
they are estranged and backward.
5 Why should you be beaten again,
that you revolt more and more?
The whole head is sick,
and the whole heart faint.
6 From the sole of the foot even to the head
there is no soundness in it.
Wounds, bruises,
and open sores;
they have not been closed,
nor bandaged, nor soothed with oil.
7 Your country is desolate,
your cities are burned with fire;
strangers devour your land
in your presence;
and it is desolate, as overthrown by strangers.
8 The daughter of Zion is left
like a shelter in a vineyard,
like a hut in a field of melons,
like a besieged city.
9 Unless the Lord of Hosts
had left to us a very small remnant,
we would have been as Sodom;
we would have been like Gomorrah.
10 Hear the word of the Lord,
you rulers of Sodom;
listen to the law of our God,
you people of Gomorrah:
11 For what purpose is the multitude
of your sacrifices to Me? says the Lord.
I am full of the burnt offerings of rams,
and the fat of fed animals.
I do not delight in the blood of bulls,
or of lambs, or of male goats.
12 When you come to appear before Me,
who has required this at your hand,
to trample My courts?
13 Bring no more vain offerings;
incense is an abomination to Me.
New Moons, Sabbaths, and convocations—
I cannot bear with evil assemblies.
14 My soul hates
your New Moons and your appointed feasts;
they are a burden to Me;
I am weary of bearing them.
15 When you reach out your hands,
I will hide My eyes from you;
even when you make many prayers,
I will not hear.
Your hands are full of blood.
16 Wash yourselves, make yourselves clean;
put away the evil from your deeds, from before My eyes.
Cease to do evil,
17 learn to do good; seek justice,
relieve the oppressed;
judge the fatherless,
plead for the widow.
18 Come now, and let us reason together,
says the Lord.
Though your sins be as scarlet,
they shall be as white as snow;
though they be red like crimson,
they shall be as wool.
19 If you are willing and obedient,
you shall eat the good of the land;
20 but if you refuse and rebel,
you shall be devoured with the sword;
for the mouth of the Lord has spoken it.
The Degenerate City
21 How the faithful city
has become a prostitute!
She was full of justice;
righteousness lodged in her,
but now murderers.
22 Your silver has become dross,
your wine mixed with water.
23 Your princes are rebellious
and companions of thieves;
everyone loves a bribe
and follows after rewards.
They do not defend the fatherless,
nor does the cause of the widow come before them.
24 Therefore the Lord, the Lord of Hosts,
the Mighty One of Israel, says:
Ah, I will get relief from My adversaries,
and avenge Myself on My enemies.
25 And I will turn My hand against you,
thoroughly purge away your dross,
and take away all your impurities.
26 I will restore your judges as at the first,
and your counselors as at the beginning.
Afterward you shall be called
the city of righteousness,
a faithful town.
27 Zion shall be redeemed with justice
and her converts with righteousness.
28 But the destruction of the transgressors and sinners shall be together,
and those who forsake the Lord shall be consumed.
29 For they shall be ashamed of the oaks
which you have desired,
and you shall be humiliated for the gardens
that you have chosen.
30 For you shall be as an oak whose leaf fades,
and as a garden that has no water.
31 The strong shall be as tinder,
and his work like a spark;
they will both burn together,
and no one will quench them.
The Mountain of the Lord(A)
2 The word that Isaiah the son of Amoz saw concerning Judah and Jerusalem.
2 In the last days,
the mountain of the Lord’s house shall be established
on the top of the mountains,
and shall be exalted above the hills,
and all nations shall flow to it.
3 Many people shall go and say,
“Come, and let us go up to the mountain of the Lord,
to the house of the God of Jacob,
and He will teach us of His ways,
and we will walk in His paths.”
For out of Zion shall go forth the law,
and the word of the Lord from Jerusalem.
4 He shall judge among the nations,
and shall rebuke many peoples;
and they shall beat their swords into plowshares,
and their spears into pruning hooks;
nation shall not lift up sword against nation,
nor shall they learn war any more.
5 O house of Jacob, come,
and let us walk in the light of the Lord.
The Day of the Lord
6 For You have forsaken Your people,
the house of Jacob,
because they are replenished from the east,
and are soothsayers like the Philistines,
and they please themselves with the children of strangers.
7 Their land also is full of silver and gold,
and there is no end to their treasures;
their land is also full of horses,
and there is no end to their chariots.
8 Their land also is full of idols;
they worship the work of their own hands,
that which their own fingers have made.
9 And the common man bows down,
and the great man humbles himself;
therefore, do not forgive them.
10 Enter into the rock,
and hide in the dust
from the fear of the Lord
and from the glory of His majesty.
11 The lofty looks of man shall be humbled,
and the haughtiness of men shall be bowed down,
and the Lord alone shall be exalted in that day.
12 For the day of the Lord of Hosts shall be
upon everything that is proud and lofty,
and upon everything that is lifted up,
and it shall be brought low;
13 and it will be upon all the cedars of Lebanon that are high and lifted up,
and upon all the oaks of Bashan,
14 and upon all the high mountains,
and upon all the hills that are lifted up,
15 and upon all the high towers,
and upon every fenced wall,
16 and upon all the ships of Tarshish,
and upon all pleasant sloops.
17 The loftiness of man shall be humbled,
and the haughtiness of men shall be brought low;
the Lord alone will be exalted in that day;
18 the idols He shall utterly abolish.
19 They shall go into the holes of the rocks,
and into the caves of the earth,
from the fear of the Lord,
and from the glory of His majesty,
when He shall arise to shake the earth mightily.
20 In that day a man shall cast away
his idols of silver and his idols of gold,
which they made for themselves to worship,
to the moles and to the bats,
21 to enter the caverns of the rocks,
and into the clefts of the cliffs,
from the terror of the Lord,
and from the glory of His majesty,
when He arises to shake the earth mightily.
22 Cease regarding man,
whose breath is in his nostrils;
for why should he be esteemed?
Isaiah 6
Modern English Version
The Commission of Isaiah
6 In the year that King Uzziah died I saw the Lord sitting on a throne, high and lifted up, and His train filled the temple. 2 Above it stood the seraphim. Each one had six wings. With two he covered his face, and with two he covered his feet, and with two he flew. 3 One cried to another and said:
“Holy, holy, holy, is the Lord of Hosts;
the whole earth is full of His glory.”
4 The posts of the door moved at the voice of him who cried, and the house was filled with smoke.
5 And I said: “Woe is me! For I am undone because I am a man of unclean lips, and I dwell in the midst of a people of unclean lips. For my eyes have seen the King, the Lord of Hosts.”
6 Then one of the seraphim flew to me with a live coal which he had taken with the tongs from off the altar in his hand. 7 And he laid it on my mouth, and said, “This has touched your lips, and your iniquity is taken away, and your sin purged.”
8 Also I heard the voice of the Lord saying, “Whom shall I send, and who will go for us?”
Then I said, “Here am I. Send me.”
9 He said, “Go, and tell this people:
‘Keep on hearing, but do not understand;
keep on seeing, but do not perceive.’
10 Make the heart of this people dull,
and their ears heavy,
and shut their eyes;
lest they see with their eyes,
and hear with their ears,
and understand with their heart,
and turn and be healed.”
11 Then I said, “Lord, how long?”
And He answered:
“Until the cities are laid waste
without inhabitants,
and the houses without man,
and the land is utterly desolate,
12 and the Lord has removed men far away,
and there is a great forsaking in the midst of the land.
13 But yet in it shall be a tenth,
and it shall return, and shall be burned,
as a terebinth tree or as an oak,
whose stump remains when it is cut down,
so the holy seed is its stump.”
Isaiah 40
Modern English Version
Comfort for God’s People
40 Comfort, O comfort, My people,
says your God.
2 Speak kindly to Jerusalem,
and cry to her
that her warfare has ended,
that her iniquity has been pardoned,
that she has received of the hand of the Lord
double for all her sins.
3 The voice of him who cries out,
“Prepare the way of the Lord
in the wilderness,
make straight in the desert
a highway for our God.
4 Let every valley be lifted up,
and every mountain and hill be made low,
and let the rough ground become a plain,
and the rough places a plain;
5 then the glory of the Lord shall be revealed,
and all flesh shall see it together,
for the mouth of the Lord has spoken it.”
6 The voice said, “Cry out.”
And he said, “What shall I cry out?”
All flesh is grass,
and all its loveliness is as the flower of the field.
7 The grass withers, the flower fades
because the Spirit of the Lord blows upon it;
surely the people are grass.
8 The grass withers, the flower fades,
but the word of our God shall stand forever.
9 O Zion, bearer of good news,
get yourself up onto a high mountain;
O Jerusalem, bearer of good news,
lift up your voice with strength,
lift it up, do not be afraid;
say to the cities of Judah,
“Here is your God!”
10 See, the Lord God will come with a strong hand,
and His arm shall rule for Him;
see, His reward is with Him,
and His recompense before Him.
11 He shall feed His flock like a shepherd;
He shall gather the lambs with His arm,
and carry them in His bosom,
and shall gently lead those that are with young.
12 Who has measured the waters in the hollow of His hand,
and meted out heaven with the span,
and calculated the dust of the earth by the measure,
and weighed the mountains in scales,
and the hills in a balance?
13 Who has directed the Spirit of the Lord,
or as His counselor has taught Him?
14 With whom did He take counsel, and who instructed Him,
and taught Him in the path of justice,
and taught Him knowledge,
and showed to Him the way of understanding?
15 Certainly the nations are as a drop in a bucket,
and are counted as the small dust of the balance;
He takes up the coastlands as a very little thing.
16 Lebanon is not sufficient to burn,
nor the beasts sufficient as a burnt offering.
17 All nations before Him are as nothing,
and they are counted by Him as less than nothing
and meaningless.
18 To whom then will you liken God?
Or what likeness will you compare to Him?
19 The workman melts a graven image,
and the goldsmith spreads it over with gold,
and casts silver chains.
20 He who is too impoverished for such an offering
chooses a tree that will not rot;
he seeks for himself a skillful workman
to prepare a graven image that shall not totter.
21 Have you not known?
Have you not heard?
Has it not been told to you from the beginning?
Have you not understood from the foundations of the earth?
22 It is He who sits upon the circle of the earth,
and the inhabitants are as grasshoppers,
who stretches out the heavens as a curtain,
and spreads them out as a tent to dwell in.
23 He brings the princes to nothing;
He makes the judges of the earth meaningless.
24 Scarcely shall they be planted;
scarcely shall they be sown;
scarcely shall their tree take root in the earth,
when He will also blow on them,
and they will wither,
and the whirlwind will take them away as stubble.
25 To whom then will you liken Me,
that I should be equal to him? says the Holy One.
26 Lift up your eyes on high,
and see who has created these things,
who brings out their host by number;
He calls them all by name,
by the greatness of His might and the strength of His power;
not one of them is missing.
27 Why do you say, O Jacob,
and assert, O Israel,
“My way is hidden from the Lord,
and my justice escapes the notice of my God”?
28 Have you not known?
Have you not heard,
that the everlasting God, the Lord,
the Creator of the ends of the earth,
does not faint, nor is He weary?
His understanding is inscrutable.
29 He gives power to the faint,
and to those who have no might He increases strength.
30 Even the youths shall faint and be weary,
and the young men shall utterly fall,
31 but those who wait upon the Lord
shall renew their strength;
they shall mount up with wings as eagles,
they shall run and not be weary,
and they shall walk and not faint.
Isaiah 52-55
Modern English Version
52 Awake, awake!
Put on your strength, O Zion;
put on your beautiful garments,
O Jerusalem, the holy city.
For the uncircumcised and the unclean
will no longer enter you.
2 Shake yourself from the dust;
arise, O captive Jerusalem.
Loose yourself from the bonds of your neck,
O captive daughter of Zion.
3 For thus says the Lord:
You were sold for nothing,
and you shall be redeemed without money.
4 For thus says the Lord God:
My people went down at the first into Egypt to sojourn there;
then the Assyrian oppressed them without cause.
5 Now therefore, what do I have here, says the Lord,
seeing that My people have been taken away for nothing?
Those who rule over them make them wail,
says the Lord,
and My name is continually blasphemed
all day long.
6 Therefore, My people shall know My name;
therefore, they shall know in that day
that I am He who does speak:
Here I am.
7 How beautiful upon the mountains
are the feet of him who brings good news,
who proclaims peace,
who brings good news of happiness,
who proclaims salvation,
who says to Zion,
“Your God reigns!”
8 Your watchmen lift up their voices;
they sing joyfully together;
for they shall see with their own eyes
when the Lord brings Zion back.
9 Break forth into joy, sing together,
you waste places of Jerusalem.
For the Lord has comforted His people;
He has redeemed Jerusalem.
10 The Lord has bared His holy arm
in the eyes of all the nations,
and all the ends of the earth shall see
the salvation of our God.
11 Depart, depart, go out from there,
touch no unclean thing;
go out of the midst of her; be clean,
you who bear the vessels of the Lord.
12 For you shall not go out with haste
nor go by flight.
For the Lord will go before you,
and the God of Israel will be your rear guard.
The Suffering Servant
13 See, My servant shall deal prudently;
he shall be exalted and extolled, and be very high.
14 Just as many were astonished at you,
his visage was so marred, more than any man,
and his form more than the sons of men;
15 so he shall sprinkle many nations.
Kings shall shut their mouths at him;
for that which had not been told them they shall see,
and that which they had not heard they shall consider.
53 Who has believed our report?
And to whom has the arm of the Lord been revealed?
2 For he grew up before Him as a tender plant
and as a root out of a dry ground.
He has no form or majesty that we should look upon him
nor appearance that we should desire him.
3 He was despised and rejected of men,
a man of sorrows and acquainted with grief.
And we hid, as it were, our faces from him;
he was despised, and we did not esteem him.
4 Surely he has borne our grief
and carried our sorrows;
Yet we esteemed him stricken,
smitten of God, and afflicted.
5 But he was wounded for our transgressions,
he was bruised for our iniquities;
the chastisement of our peace was upon him,
and by his stripes we are healed.
6 All of us like sheep have gone astray;
each of us has turned to his own way,
but the Lord has laid on him
the iniquity of us all.
7 He was oppressed, and he was afflicted,
yet he opened not his mouth;
he was brought as a lamb to the slaughter,
and as a sheep before its shearers is silent,
so he opened not his mouth.
8 By oppression and judgment he was taken away,
and who shall declare his generation?
For he was cut off out of the land of the living;
for the transgression of my people he was struck.
9 His grave was assigned with the wicked,
yet with the rich in his death,
because he had done no violence,
nor was any deceit in his mouth.
10 Yet it pleased the Lord to bruise him; He has put him to grief.
If he made himself as an offering for sin,
he shall see his offspring, he shall prolong his days,
and the good pleasure of the Lord shall prosper in his hand.
11 He shall see of the anguish of his soul
and be satisfied.
By his knowledge My righteous servant shall justify the many,
for he shall bear their iniquities.
12 Therefore, I will divide him a portion with the great,
and he shall divide the spoil with the strong,
because he poured out his soul to death,
and he was numbered with the transgressors,
thus he bore the sin of many
and made intercession for the transgressors.
The Covenant of Peace
54 Sing, O barren,
you who did not bear a child.
Break forth into singing and cry aloud,
you who did not travail with child.
For more are the children of the desolate
than the children of the married wife,
says the Lord.
2 Enlarge the place of your tent,
and let them stretch out the curtains of your habitations;
spare not,
lengthen your cords,
and strengthen your stakes.
3 For you shall spread out to the right hand and to the left,
and your descendants shall inherit the nations
and make the desolate cities to be inhabited.
4 Do not fear, for you shall not be ashamed nor be humiliated;
for you shall not be put to shame,
for you shall forget the shame of your youth
and shall not remember the reproach of your widowhood anymore.
5 For your Maker is your husband,
the Lord of Hosts is His name;
and your Redeemer is the Holy One of Israel;
He shall be called the God of the whole earth.
6 For the Lord has called you
as a woman forsaken and grieved in spirit,
and a wife of youth
when you were refused, says your God.
7 For a small moment I have forsaken you,
but with great mercies I will gather you.
8 In a little wrath
I hid My face from you for a moment;
but with everlasting kindness
I will have mercy on you,
says the Lord your Redeemer.
9 For this is as the waters of Noah to Me;
for as I have sworn that the waters of Noah should no longer cover the earth,
so I have sworn that I would not be wrathful with you
nor rebuke you.
10 For the mountains may be removed,
and the hills may shake,
but My kindness shall not depart from you,
nor shall My covenant of peace be removed,
says the Lord who has mercy on you.
11 O afflicted one, tossed with tempest and not comforted,
I will lay your stones with fair colors
and lay your foundations with sapphires.
12 I will make your windows of agates,
and your gates of crystal,
and all your borders of precious stones.
13 All your sons shall be taught of the Lord,
and great shall be the peace of your sons.
14 In righteousness you shall be established;
you shall be far from oppression,
for you shall not fear,
and from terror,
for it shall not come near you.
15 Indeed they shall surely assail you fiercely, but not from Me.
Whoever assails you shall fall for your sake.
16 See, I have created the smith
that blows the coals in the fire
and who brings forth an instrument for his work;
and I have created the destroyer in order to cause ruin.
17 No weapon that is formed against you shall prosper,
and every tongue that shall rise against you in judgment, you shall condemn.
This is the heritage of the servants of the Lord,
and their vindication is from Me,
says the Lord.
The Invitation to the Waters
55 Ho! Everyone who thirsts,
come to the waters;
and you who have no money,
come, buy and eat.
Come, buy wine and milk
without money and without price.
2 Why do you spend money for that which is not bread,
and your labor for that which does not satisfy?
Listen diligently to Me, and eat what is good,
and let your soul delight itself in abundance.
3 Incline your ear, and come to Me.
Listen, so that your soul may live,
and I will make an everlasting covenant with you,
even the sure mercies of David.
4 See, I have given him as a witness to the people,
a leader and commander to the people.
5 Surely you shall call a nation that you do not know,
and nations that did not know you shall run to you
because of the Lord your God,
even the Holy One of Israel;
for He has glorified you.
6 Seek the Lord while He may be found,
call you upon Him while He is near.
7 Let the wicked forsake his way,
and the unrighteous man his thoughts;
and let him return to the Lord, and He will have mercy upon him,
and to our God, for He will abundantly pardon.
8 For My thoughts are not your thoughts,
nor are your ways My ways,
says the Lord.
9 For as the heavens are higher than the earth,
so are My ways higher than your ways,
and My thoughts than your thoughts.
10 For as the rain comes down,
and the snow from heaven,
and do not return there
but water the earth
and make it bring forth and bud
that it may give seed to the sower and bread to the eater,
11 so shall My word be that goes forth from My mouth;
it shall not return to Me void,
but it shall accomplish that which I please,
and it shall prosper in the thing for which I sent it.
12 For you shall go out with joy,
and be led out with peace;
the mountains and the hills
shall break forth into singing before you,
and all the trees of the field
shall clap their hands.
13 Instead of the thorn shall come up the fir tree,
and instead of the brier shall come up the myrtle tree;
and it shall be to the Lord for a memorial,
for an everlasting sign
that shall not be cut off.
The Holy Bible, Modern English Version. Copyright © 2014 by Military Bible Association. Published and distributed by Charisma House.