Study Desk

This is what your Lord, the LORD, your God Who contends for His people says: "Behold, I have taken from your hand the cup of staggering, The chalice of My anger; You will never drink it again.

"I will put it into the hand of your tormentors, Who have said to you, 'Lie down so that we may walk over you.' You have also made your back like the ground, And like the street for those who walk over it."

Awake, awake, Clothe yourself in your strength, Zion; Clothe yourself with your beautiful garments, Jerusalem, the holy city; For the uncircumcised and the unclean Will no longer come into you.

For this is what the LORD says: "You were sold for nothing, and you will be redeemed without money."

For this is what the Lord GOD says: "My people went down to Egypt first to reside there; then the Assyrian oppressed them without reason.

Listen! Your watchmen raise their voices, They shout joyfully together; For they will see with their own eyes When the LORD restores Zion.

Be cheerful, shout joyfully together, You ruins of Jerusalem; For the LORD has comforted His people, He has redeemed Jerusalem.

But you will not go out in a hurry, Nor will you go as fugitives; For the LORD will go before you, And the God of Israel will be your rear guard.

So He will sprinkle many nations, Kings will shut their mouths on account of Him; For what they had not been told, they will see, And what they had not heard, they will understand.

For He grew up before Him like a tender shoot, And like a root out of dry ground; He has no stately form or majesty That we would look at Him, Nor an appearance that we would take pleasure in Him.

He was despised and abandoned by men, A man of great pain and familiar with sickness; And like one from whom people hide their faces, He was despised, and we had no regard for Him.

But He was pierced for our offenses, He was crushed for our wrongdoings; The punishment for our well-being was laid upon Him, And by His wounds we are healed.

By oppression and judgment He was taken away; And as for His generation, who considered That He was cut off from the land of the living For the wrongdoing of my people, to whom the blow was due?

As a result of the anguish of His soul, He will see it and be satisfied; By His knowledge the Righteous One, My Servant, will justify the many, For He will bear their wrongdoings.

Therefore, I will allot Him a portion with the great, And He will divide the plunder with the strong, Because He poured out His life unto death, And was counted with wrongdoers; Yet He Himself bore the sin of many, And interceded for the wrongdoers.

"Shout for joy, infertile one, you who have not given birth to any child; Break forth into joyful shouting and cry aloud, you who have not been in labor; For the sons of the desolate one will be more numerous Than the sons of the married woman," says the LORD.

"For you will spread out to the right and to the left. And your descendants will possess nations And will resettle the desolate cities.

"Fear not, for you will not be put to shame; And do not feel humiliated, for you will not be disgraced; But you will forget the shame of your youth, And no longer remember the disgrace of your widowhood.

"For your husband is your Maker, Whose name is the LORD of armies; And your Redeemer is the Holy One of Israel, Who is called the God of all the earth.

"For the LORD has called you, Like a wife forsaken and grieved in spirit, Even like a wife of one's youth when she is rejected," Says your God.