Read the Bible

¹ Give ear to this, O family of Jacob, you who are named by the name of Israel, and have come out of the body of Judah; who take oaths by the name of the Lord, and make use of the name of the God of Israel, but not truly and not in good faith.² For they say that they are of the holy town, and put their faith in the God of Israel: the Lord of armies is his name.³ I gave word in the past of the things which came about; they came from my mouth, and I made them clear: suddenly I did them, and they came about.⁴ Because I saw that your heart was hard, and that your neck was an iron cord, and your brow brass;⁵ For this reason I made it clear to you in the past, before it came I gave you word of it: for fear that you might say, My god did these things, and my pictured and metal images made them come about.⁶ All this has come to your ears and you have seen it; will you not give witness to it? I am now making clear new things, even secret things, of which you had no knowledge.⁷ They have only now been effected, and not in the past: and before this day they had not come to your ears; for fear that you might say, I had knowledge of them.⁸ Truly you had no word of them, no knowledge of them; no news of them in the past had come to your ears; because I saw how false was your behaviour, and that your heart was turned against me from your earliest days.

⁹ Because of my name I will put away my wrath, and for my praise I will keep myself from cutting you off.¹⁰ See, I have been testing you for myself like silver; I have put you through the fire of trouble.¹¹ For myself, even because of my name, I will do it; for I will not let my name be shamed; and my glory I will not give to another.¹² Give ear to me, Jacob, and Israel, my loved one; I am he, I am the first and I am the last.¹³ Yes, by my hand was the earth placed on its base, and by my right hand the heavens were stretched out; at my word they take up their places.¹⁴ Come together, all of you, and give ear; who among you has given news of these things? the Lord's loved one will do his pleasure with Babylon, and with the seed of the Chaldaeans.¹⁵ I, even I, have given the word; I have sent for him: I have made him come, and have given effect to his undertakings.

¹⁶ Come near to me, and give ear to this; from the start I did not keep it secret; from the time of its coming into existence I was there: and now the Lord God has sent me, and given me his spirit.¹⁷ The Lord who takes up your cause, the Holy One of Israel, says, I am the Lord your God, who is teaching you for your profit, guiding you by the way in which you are to go.¹⁸ If only you had given ear to my orders, then your peace would have been like a river, and your righteousness as the waves of the sea:¹⁹ Your seed would have been like the sand, and your offspring like the dust: your name would not be cut off or come to an end before me.²⁰ Go out of Babylon, go in flight from the Chaldaeans; with the sound of song make it clear, give the news, let the word go out even to the end of the earth: say, The Lord has taken up the cause of his servant Jacob.²¹ They had no need of water when he was guiding them through the waste lands: he made water come out of the rock for them: the rock was parted and the waters came flowing out.²² There is no peace, says the Lord, for the evil-doers.