Study Desk

"Open up, O heavens, and pour out your righteousness. Let the earth open wide so salvation and righteousness can sprout up together. I, the Lord , created them.

Consult together, argue your case. Get together and decide what to say. Who made these things known so long ago? What idol ever told you they would happen? Was it not I, the Lord ? For there is no other God but me, a righteous God and Savior. There is none but me.

"Listen to me, you stubborn people who are so far from doing right.

So disaster will overtake you, and you won't be able to charm it away. Calamity will fall upon you, and you won't be able to buy your way out. A catastrophe will strike you suddenly, one for which you are not prepared.

They are brand new, not things from the past. So you cannot say, ‘We knew that all the time!'

"Yes, I will tell you of things that are entirely new, things you never heard of before. For I know so well what traitors you are. You have been rebels from birth.

I replied, "But my work seems so useless! I have spent my strength for nothing and to no purpose. Yet I leave it all in the Lord 's hand; I will trust God for my reward."

The Sovereign Lord has given me his words of wisdom, so that I know how to comfort the weary. Morning by morning he wakens me and opens my understanding to his will.

Are you not the same today, the one who dried up the sea, making a path of escape through the depths so that your people could cross over?

"I, yes I, am the one who comforts you. So why are you afraid of mere humans, who wither like the grass and disappear?

But many were amazed when they saw him. His face was so disfigured he seemed hardly human, and from his appearance, one would scarcely know he was a man.

But he was pierced for our rebellion, crushed for our sins. He was beaten so we could be whole. He was whipped so we could be healed.

"Just as I swore in the time of Noah that I would never again let a flood cover the earth, so now I swear that I will never again be angry and punish you.

For just as the heavens are higher than the earth, so my ways are higher than your ways and my thoughts higher than your thoughts.

Now I will expose your so-called good deeds. None of them will help you.

God says, "Rebuild the road! Clear away the rocks and stones so my people can return from captivity."

I was angry, so I punished these greedy people. I withdrew from them, but they kept going on their own stubborn way.

Yet they act so pious! They come to the Temple every day and seem delighted to learn all about me. They act like a righteous nation that would never abandon the laws of its God. They ask me to take action on their behalf, pretending they want to be near me.

So there is no justice among us, and we know nothing about right living. We look for light but find only darkness. We look for bright skies but walk in gloom.

He was amazed to see that no one intervened to help the oppressed. So he himself stepped in to save them with his strong arm, and his justice sustained him.