Isaiah 51:17-23

The Voice

¹⁷     Get up. Get up, and get moving! Stand up, Jerusalem,
        you who have experienced firsthand the punishing anger of God.
    You have drunk that terrible cup to the last gritty drop,
        and it left you reeling, drunk on distress.
¹⁸     Ah, poor Jerusalem! No one comes to guide her along.
        Of all her people, all the ones whom the city nurtured and raised to adulthood,
    None take her hand now in her stupor of pain.
¹⁹     Twin disasters have befallen you:
        devastation and destruction, famine and war.
    Who can relieve your anguish and pain?
        Who is left to provide comfort?
²⁰     Her people are lying around on every corner,
        weary and faint, like an antelope trapped in a net.
    Each is overcome with the Eternal’s anger; each suffers His rebuke.

²¹ But now, listen! Listen, you who are miserable,
    you who are intoxicated, but not on wine.
²² The Lord, your God, the Eternal, who pleads for His people, has this to say:

Eternal One: Look! I have taken away the cup that left you reeling—the cup of My anger—
        and sobered you up; I will never make you drink it again.
²³     And I will give that drink to those who abused and oppressed you—
        who ordered you, “Get down so we can walk all over you.”
    And your backs became the ground they walked on, the streets they passed by.