Study Desk

So the Lord cut off Israel's head and tail, palm branch and reed in a single day.

For wickedness burns like a fire that consumes thorns and briers and kindles the forest thickets so that they go up in a column of smoke.

to keep the poor from getting a fair trial and to deprive the afflicted among my people of justice, so that widows can be their spoil and they can plunder the fatherless.

The remaining trees of its forest will be so few in number that a child could count them.

The Lord of Hosts has sworn: As I have purposed, so it will be; as I have planned it, so it will happen.

The Lord of Hosts Himself has planned it; therefore, who can stand in its way? It is His hand that is outstretched, so who can turn it back?

So they carry their wealth and belongings over the Wadi of the Willows.

So I join with Jazer to weep for the vines of Sibmah; I drench Heshbon and Elealeh with my tears. Triumphant shouts have fallen silent over your summer fruit and your harvest.

during that time the Lord had spoken through Isaiah son of Amoz, saying, "Go, take off your sackcloth and remove the sandals from your feet," and he did so, going naked and barefoot—

so the king of Assyria will lead the captives of Egypt and the exiles of Cush, young and old alike, naked and barefoot, with bared buttocks—to Egypt's shame.

You counted the houses of Jerusalem so that you could tear them down to fortify the wall.

like heat in a dry land, You subdue the uproar of barbarians. As the shade of a cloud cools the heat of the day, so He silences the song of the violent.

Open the gates so a righteous nation can come in— one that remains faithful.

As a pregnant woman about to give birth writhes and cries out in her pains, so we were before You, Lord .

I, Yahweh, watch over it; I water it regularly. I guard it night and day so that no one disturbs it.

So He will speak to this people with stammering speech and in a foreign language.

Then the word of the Lord came to them: "Law after law, law after law, line after line, line after line, a little here, a little there," so they go stumbling backward, to be broken, trapped, and captured.

So now, do not mock, or your shackles will become stronger. Indeed, I have heard from the Lord God of Hosts a decree of destruction for the whole land.

It will be like a hungry one who dreams he is eating, then wakes and is still hungry; and like a thirsty one who dreams he is drinking, then wakes and is still thirsty, longing for water. So it will be for all the many nations who go to battle against Mount Zion.

Its collapse will be like the shattering of a potter's jar, crushed to pieces, so that not even a fragment of pottery will be found among its shattered remains— no fragment large enough to take fire from a hearth or scoop water from a cistern."