Read the Bible

¹ Keep silence before me, islands; and let the peoples renew [their] strength: let them come near; then let them speak: let us draw near together to judgment.

² Who raised up from the east him whom righteousness calleth to its foot? He gave the nations before him, and caused him to have dominion over kings; he gave them as dust to his sword, as driven stubble to his bow.

³ He pursued them, he passed on in safety, by a way he had never come with his feet.

⁴ Who hath wrought and done [it], calling the generations from the beginning? I, Jehovah, the first; and with the last, I [am] HE.

⁵ The isles saw [it], and feared; the ends of the earth trembled: they drew near, and came.

⁶ They helped every one his neighbour, and [each] said to his brother, Take courage.

⁷ And the artizan encouraged the founder, he that smootheth [with] the hammer him that smiteth on the anvil, saying of the soldering, It is good; and he fasteneth it with nails, that it be not moved.

⁸ But thou, Israel, my servant, Jacob, whom I have chosen, the seed of Abraham, my friend

⁹ —thou whom I have taken from the ends of the earth, and called from the extremities thereof, and to whom I said, Thou art my servant, I have chosen thee and not rejected thee,

¹⁰ —Fear not, for I [am] with thee; be not dismayed, for I [am] thy God: I will strengthen thee, yea, I will help thee, yea, I will uphold thee with the right hand of my righteousness.

¹¹ Lo, all that are incensed against thee shall be ashamed and confounded; they that strive with thee shall be as nothing, and shall perish.

¹² Thou shalt seek them, and shalt not find them—them that contend with thee; they that war against thee shall be as nothing, and as a thing of nought.

¹³ For I, Jehovah, thy God, hold thy right hand, saying unto thee, Fear not; I will help thee.

¹⁴ Fear not, thou worm Jacob, ye men of Israel; I will help thee, saith Jehovah, and thy Redeemer, the Holy One of Israel.

¹⁵ Behold, I have made of thee a new sharp threshing instrument having double teeth: thou shalt thresh and beat small the mountains, and shalt make the hills as chaff;

¹⁶ thou shalt fan them, and the wind shall carry them away, and the whirlwind shall scatter them; and thou shalt rejoice in Jehovah, thou shalt glory in the Holy One of Israel.

¹⁷ The afflicted and the needy seek water, and there is none; their tongue faileth for thirst: I, Jehovah, will answer them, [I], the God of Israel, will not forsake them.

¹⁸ I will open rivers on the bare heights, and fountains in the midst of the valleys; I will make the wilderness into a pool of water, and the dry land into water-springs.

¹⁹ I will give in the wilderness the cedar, acacia, myrtle, and oleaster; I will set in the desert the cypress, pine, and box-tree together;

²⁰ that they may see, and know, and consider, and understand together, that the hand of Jehovah hath done this, and the Holy One of Israel hath created it.

²¹ Produce your cause, saith Jehovah; bring forward your arguments, saith the King of Jacob.

²² Let them bring them forward, and declare to us what shall happen: shew the former things, what they are, that we may give attention to them, and know the end of them;—or let us hear things to come:

²³ declare the things that are to happen hereafter, that we may know that ye are gods; yea, do good, or do evil, that we may be astonished, and behold it together.

²⁴ Behold, ye are less than nothing, and your work is of nought; an abomination is he that chooseth you. …

²⁵ I have raised up one from the north, and he shall come,—from the rising of the sun, he who will call upon my name; and he shall come upon princes as on mortar, and as the potter treadeth clay.

²⁶ Who hath declared [it] from the beginning, that we may know? and beforetime, that we may say, [It is] right? Indeed, there is none that declareth; no, none that sheweth; no, none that heareth your words.

²⁷ The first, [I said] to Zion, Behold, behold them! and to Jerusalem, I will give one that bringeth glad tidings.

²⁸ And I beheld, and there was no man; even among them,—and there was no counsellor, that, when I asked of them, could answer a word.

²⁹ Behold, they are all vanity, their works are nought, their molten images are wind and emptiness.