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¹But there will be no more gloom for her who was in anguish. In earlier times He treated the land of Zebulun and the land of Naphtali with contempt, but later on He will make it glorious, by the way of the sea, on the other side of the Jordan, Galilee of the Gentiles.

²The people who walk in darkness Will see a great light; Those who live in a dark land, The light will shine on them.

³You will multiply the nation, You will increase their joy; They will rejoice in Your presence As with the joy of harvest, As people rejoice when they divide the spoils.

⁴For You will break the yoke of their burden and the staff on their shoulders, The rod of their oppressor, as at the battle of Midian.

⁵For every boot of the marching warrior in the roar of battle, And cloak rolled in blood, will be for burning, fuel for the fire.

⁶For a Child will be born to us, a Son will be given to us; And the government will rest on His shoulders; And His name will be called Wonderful Counselor, Mighty God, Eternal Father, Prince of Peace.

⁷There will be no end to the increase of His government or of peace On the throne of David and over his kingdom, To establish it and to uphold it with justice and righteousness From then on and forevermore. The zeal of the LORD of armies will accomplish this.

⁸The Lord sends a message against Jacob, And it falls on Israel.

⁹And all the people know it, That is, Ephraim and the inhabitants of Samaria, Asserting in pride and in arrogance of heart:

¹⁰“The bricks have fallen down, But we will rebuild with smooth stones; The sycamores have been cut down, But we will replace them with cedars.”

¹¹Therefore the LORD raises superior adversaries against them from Rezin And provokes their enemies,

¹²The Arameans from the east and the Philistines from the west; And they devour Israel with gaping jaws. In spite of all this, His anger does not turn away, And His hand is still stretched out.

¹³Yet the people do not turn back to Him who struck them, Nor do they seek the LORD of armies.

¹⁴So the LORD cuts off head and tail from Israel, Both palm branch and bulrush in a single day.

¹⁵The head is the elder and esteemed man, And the prophet who teaches falsehood is the tail.

¹⁶For those who guide this people are leading them astray; And those who are guided by them are confused.

¹⁷Therefore the Lord does not rejoice over their young men, Nor does He have compassion on their orphans or their widows; For every one of them is godless and an evildoer, And every mouth is speaking foolishness. In spite of all this, His anger does not turn away, And His hand is still stretched out.

¹⁸For wickedness burns like a fire; It consumes briars and thorns; It also sets the thickets of the forest aflame And they roll upward in a column of smoke.

¹⁹By the wrath of the LORD of armies the land is burned, And the people are like fuel for the fire; No one spares his brother.

²⁰They devour what is on the right hand but are still hungry, And they eat what is on the left hand, but they are not satisfied; Each of them eats the flesh of his own arm.

²¹Manasseh devours Ephraim, and Ephraim Manasseh, And together they are against Judah. In spite of all this, His anger does not turn away And His hand is still stretched out.

¹Woe to those who enact unjust statutes And to those who constantly record harmful decisions,

²So as to deprive the needy of justice And rob the poor among My people of their rights, So that widows may be their spoil And that they may plunder the orphans.

³Now what will you do in the day of punishment, And in the devastation which will come from afar? To whom will you flee for help? And where will you leave your wealth?

⁴Nothing remains but to crouch among the captives Or fall among those killed. In spite of all this, His anger does not turn away And His hand is still stretched out.

⁵Woe to Assyria, the rod of My anger And the staff in whose hands is My indignation,

⁶I send it against a godless nation And commission it against the people of My fury To capture spoils and to seize plunder, And to trample them down like mud in the streets.

⁷Yet it does not so intend, Nor does it plan so in its heart, But rather it is its purpose to destroy And to eliminate many nations.

⁸For it says, “Are not my officers all kings?

⁹Is not Calno like Carchemish, Or Hamath like Arpad, Or Samaria like Damascus?

¹⁰As my hand has reached to the kingdoms of the idols, Whose carved images were greater than those of Jerusalem and Samaria,

¹¹Shall I not do the same to Jerusalem and her images Just as I have done to Samaria and her idols?”

¹²So it will be that when the Lord has completed all His work on Mount Zion and on Jerusalem, He will say, “I will punish the fruit of the arrogant heart of the king of Assyria and the arrogant pride of his eyes.”

¹³For he has said, “By the power of my hand and by my wisdom I did this, Because I have understanding; And I removed the boundaries of the peoples And plundered their treasures, And like a powerful man I brought down their inhabitants,

¹⁴And my hand reached to the riches of the peoples like a nest, And as one gathers abandoned eggs, I gathered all the earth; And there was not one that flapped its wing, opened its beak, or chirped.”

¹⁵Is the axe to boast itself over the one who chops with it? Is the saw to exalt itself over the one who wields it? That would be like a club wielding those who lift it, Or like a rod lifting the one who is not wood.

¹⁶Therefore the Lord, the GOD of armies, will send a wasting disease among his stout warriors; And under his glory a fire will be kindled like a burning flame.

¹⁷And the Light of Israel will become a fire and Israel’s Holy One a flame, And it will burn and devour his thorns and his briars in a single day.

¹⁸And He will destroy the glory of his forest and of his fruitful garden, both soul and body, And it will be as when a sick person wastes away.

¹⁹And the rest of the trees of his forest will be so small in number That a child could write them down.

²⁰Now on that day the remnant of Israel, and those of the house of Jacob who have escaped, will no longer rely on the one who struck them, but will truly rely on the LORD, the Holy One of Israel.

²¹A remnant will return, the remnant of Jacob, to the mighty God.

²²For though your people, Israel, may be like the sand of the sea, Only a remnant within them will return; A destruction is determined, overflowing with righteousness.

²³For a complete destruction, one that is determined, the Lord GOD of armies will execute in the midst of the whole land.

²⁴Therefore this is what the Lord GOD of armies says: “My people, you who dwell in Zion, do not fear the Assyrian who strikes you with the rod, and lifts up his staff against you the way Egypt did.

²⁵For in a very little while My indignation against you will be ended and My anger will be directed toward their destruction.”

²⁶The LORD of armies will wield a whip against him like the defeat of Midian at the rock of Oreb; and His staff will be over the sea, and He will lift it up the way He did in Egypt.

²⁷So it will be on that day, that his burden will be removed from your shoulders, and his yoke from your neck; and the yoke will be broken because of fatness.

²⁸He has come against Aiath, He has passed through Migron; At Michmash he deposited his baggage.

²⁹They have gone through the pass, saying, “Geba will be our encampment for the night.” Ramah is terrified, and Gibeah of Saul has fled.

³⁰Cry aloud with your voice, daughter of Gallim! Pay attention, Laishah and wretched Anathoth!

³¹Madmenah has fled. The inhabitants of Gebim have sought refuge.

³²Yet today he will halt at Nob; He shakes his fist at the mountain of the daughter of Zion, the hill of Jerusalem.

³³Behold, the Lord, the GOD of armies, will lop off the branches with terrifying power; Those also who are tall in stature will be cut down, And those who are lofty will be brought low.

³⁴He will cut down the thickets of the forest with an iron axe, And Lebanon will fall by the Mighty One.

¹Then a shoot will spring from the stem of Jesse, And a Branch from his roots will bear fruit.

²The Spirit of the LORD will rest on Him, The spirit of wisdom and understanding, The spirit of counsel and strength, The spirit of knowledge and the fear of the LORD.

³And He will delight in the fear of the LORD, And He will not judge by what His eyes see, Nor make decisions by what His ears hear;

⁴But with righteousness He will judge the poor, And decide with fairness for the humble of the earth; And He will strike the earth with the rod of His mouth, And with the breath of His lips He will slay the wicked.

⁵Also righteousness will be the belt around His hips, And faithfulness the belt around His waist.

⁶And the wolf will dwell with the lamb, And the leopard will lie down with the young goat, And the calf and the young lion and the fattened steer will be together; And a little boy will lead them.

⁷Also the cow and the bear will graze, Their young will lie down together, And the lion will eat straw like the ox.

⁸The nursing child will play by the hole of the cobra, And the weaned child will put his hand on the viper’s den.

⁹They will not hurt or destroy in all My holy mountain, For the earth will be full of the knowledge of the LORD As the waters cover the sea.

¹⁰Then on that day The nations will resort to the root of Jesse, Who will stand as a signal flag for the peoples; And His resting place will be glorious.

¹¹Then it will happen on that day that the Lord Will again recover with His hand the second time The remnant of His people who will remain, From Assyria, Egypt, Pathros, Cush, Elam, Shinar, Hamath, And from the islands of the sea.

¹²And He will lift up a flag for the nations And assemble the banished ones of Israel, And will gather the dispersed of Judah From the four corners of the earth.

¹³Then the jealousy of Ephraim will depart, And those who harass Judah will be eliminated; Ephraim will not be jealous of Judah, And Judah will not harass Ephraim.

¹⁴They will swoop down on the slopes of the Philistines on the west; Together they will plunder the people of the east; They will possess Edom and Moab, And the sons of Ammon will be subject to them.

¹⁵And the LORD will utterly destroy The tongue of the Sea of Egypt; And He will wave His hand over the Euphrates River With His scorching wind; And He will strike it into seven streams And make people walk over in dry sandals.

¹⁶And there will be a highway from Assyria For the remnant of His people who will be left, Just as there was for Israel On the day that they came up out of the land of Egypt.