A Warning to the Northern Kingdom

¹The kingdom of Israel is doomed! Its glory is fading like the crowns of flowers on the heads of its drunken leaders. Their proud heads are well perfumed, but there they lie, dead drunk.

²The Lord has someone strong and powerful ready to attack them, someone who will come like a hailstorm, like a torrent of rain, like a rushing, overpowering flood, and will overwhelm the land.

³The pride of those drunken leaders will be trampled underfoot.

⁴The fading glory of those proud leaders will disappear like the first figs of the season, picked and eaten as soon as they are ripe.

⁵A day is coming when the Lord Almighty will be like a glorious crown of flowers for his people who survive.

⁶He will give a sense of justice to those who serve as judges, and courage to those who defend the city gates from attack.

Isaiah and the Drunken Prophets of Judah

⁷Even the prophets and the priests are so drunk that they stagger. They have drunk so much wine and liquor that they stumble in confusion. The prophets are too drunk to understand the visions that God sends, and the priests are too drunk to decide the cases that are brought to them.

⁸The tables where they sit are all covered with vomit, and not a clean spot is left.

⁹They complain about me. They say, “Who does that man think he's teaching? Who needs his message? It's only good for babies that have just stopped nursing!

¹⁰He is trying to teach us letter by letter, line by line, lesson by lesson.”

¹¹If you won't listen to me, then God will use foreigners speaking some strange-sounding language to teach you a lesson.

¹²He offered rest and comfort to all of you, but you refused to listen to him.

¹³That is why the Lord is going to teach you letter by letter, line by line, lesson by lesson. Then you will stumble with every step you take. You will be wounded, trapped, and taken prisoner.

A Cornerstone for Zion

¹⁴Now you arrogant leaders who rule here in Jerusalem over this people, listen to what the Lord is saying.

¹⁵You boast that you have made a treaty with death and reached an agreement with the world of the dead. You are certain that disaster will spare you when it comes, because you depend on lies and deceit to keep you safe.

¹⁶This, now, is what the Sovereign Lord says: “I am placing in Zion a foundation that is firm and strong. In it I am putting a solid cornerstone on which are written the words, ‘Faith that is firm is also patient.’

¹⁷Justice will be the measuring line for the foundation, and honesty will be its plumb line.” Hailstorms will sweep away all the lies you depend on, and floods will destroy your security.

¹⁸The treaty you have made with death will be abolished, and your agreement with the world of the dead will be canceled. When disaster sweeps down, you will be overcome.

¹⁹It will strike you again and again, morning after morning. You will have to bear it day and night. Each new message from God will bring new terror!

²⁰You will be like the person in the proverb, who tries to sleep in a bed too short to stretch out on, with a blanket too narrow to wrap himself in.

²¹The Lord will fight as he did at Mount Perazim and in the valley of Gibeon, in order to do what he intends to do—strange as his actions may seem. He will complete his work, his mysterious work.

²²Don't laugh at the warning I am giving you! If you do, it will be even harder for you to escape. I have heard the Lord Almighty's decision to destroy the whole country.

God's Wisdom

²³Listen to what I am saying; pay attention to what I am telling you.

²⁴Farmers don't constantly plow their fields and keep getting them ready for planting.

²⁵Once they have prepared the soil, they plant the seeds of herbs such as dill and cumin. They plant rows of wheat and barley, and at the edges of their fields they plant other grain.

²⁶They know how to do their work, because God has taught them.

²⁷They never use a heavy club to beat out dill seeds or cumin seeds; instead they use light sticks of the proper size.

²⁸They do not ruin the wheat by threshing it endlessly, and they know how to thresh it by driving a cart over it without bruising the grains.

²⁹All this wisdom comes from the Lord Almighty. The plans God makes are wise, and they always succeed.

The Fate of Jerusalem

¹God's altar, Jerusalem itself, is doomed! The city where David camped is doomed! Let another year or two come and go, with its feasts and festivals,

²and then God will bring disaster on the city that is called “God's altar.” There will be weeping and wailing, and the whole city will be like an altar covered with blood.

³God will attack the city, surround it, and besiege it.

⁴Jerusalem will be like a ghost struggling to speak from under the ground, a muffled voice coming from the dust.

⁵Jerusalem, all the foreigners who attack you will be blown away like dust, and their terrifying armies will fly away like straw. Suddenly and unexpectedly

⁶the Lord Almighty will rescue you with violent thunderstorms and earthquakes. He will send windstorms and raging fire;

⁷then all the armies of the nations attacking the city of God's altar, all their weapons and equipment—everything—will vanish like a dream, like something imagined in the night.

⁸All the nations that assemble to attack Jerusalem will be like a starving person who dreams he is eating and wakes up hungry, or like someone dying of thirst who dreams he is drinking and wakes with a dry throat.

Disregarded Warnings

⁹Go ahead and be stupid! Go ahead and be blind! Get drunk without any wine! Stagger without drinking a drop!

¹⁰The Lord has made you drowsy, ready to fall into a deep sleep. The prophets should be the eyes of the people, but God has blindfolded them.

¹¹The meaning of every prophetic vision will be hidden from you; it will be like a sealed scroll. If you take it to someone who knows how to read and ask him to read it to you, he will say he can't because it is sealed.

¹²If you give it to someone who can't read and ask him to read it to you, he will answer that he doesn't know how.

¹³The Lord said, “These people claim to worship me, but their words are meaningless, and their hearts are somewhere else. Their religion is nothing but human rules and traditions, which they have simply memorized.

¹⁴So I will startle them with one unexpected blow after another. Those who are wise will turn out to be fools, and all their cleverness will be useless.”

Hope for the Future

¹⁵Those who try to hide their plans from the Lord are doomed! They carry out their schemes in secret and think no one will see them or know what they are doing.

¹⁶They turn everything upside down. Which is more important, the potter or the clay? Can something you have made say, “You didn't make me”? Or can it say, “You don't know what you are doing”?

¹⁷As the saying goes, before long the dense forest will become farmland, and the farmland will go back to forest.

¹⁸When that day comes, the deaf will be able to hear a book being read aloud, and the blind, who have been living in darkness, will open their eyes and see.

¹⁹Poor and humble people will once again find the happiness which the Lord, the holy God of Israel, gives.

²⁰It will be the end of those who oppress others and show contempt for God. Every sinner will be destroyed.

²¹God will destroy those who slander others, those who prevent the punishment of criminals, and those who tell lies to keep honest people from getting justice.

²²So now the Lord, the God of Israel, who rescued Abraham from trouble, says, “My people, you will not be disgraced any longer, and your faces will no longer be pale with shame.

²³When you see the children that I will give you, then you will acknowledge that I am the holy God of Israel. You will honor me and stand in awe of me.

²⁴Foolish people will learn to understand, and those who are always grumbling will be glad to be taught.”

¹This is the message that the Lord gave to Zephaniah during the time that Josiah son of Amon was king of Judah. (Zephaniah was descended from King Hezekiah through Amariah, Gedaliah, and Cushi.)

The Day of the Lord's Judgment

²The Lord said, “I am going to destroy everything on earth,

³all human beings and animals, birds and fish. I will bring about the downfall of the wicked. I will destroy everyone, and no survivors will be left. I, the Lord, have spoken.

⁴“I will punish the people of Jerusalem and of all Judah. I will destroy the last trace of the worship of Baal there, and no one will even remember the pagan priests who serve him.

⁵I will destroy anyone who goes up on the roof and worships the sun, the moon, and the stars. I will also destroy those who worship me and swear loyalty to me, but then take oaths in the name of the god Molech.

⁶I will destroy those who have turned back and no longer follow me, those who do not come to me or ask me to guide them.”

⁷The day is near when the Lord will sit in judgment; so be silent in his presence. The Lord is preparing to sacrifice his people and has invited enemies to plunder Judah.

⁸“On that day of slaughter,” says the Lord, “I will punish the officials, the king's sons, and all who practice foreign customs.

⁹I will punish all who worship like pagans and who steal and kill in order to fill their master's house with loot.

¹⁰“On that day,” says the Lord, “you will hear the sound of crying at the Fish Gate in Jerusalem. You will hear wailing in the newer part of the city and a great crashing sound in the hills.

¹¹Wail and cry when you hear this, you that live in the lower part of the city, because all the merchants will be dead!

¹²“At that time I will take a lamp and search Jerusalem. I will punish the people who are self-satisfied and confident, who say to themselves, ‘The Lord never does anything, one way or the other.’

¹³Their wealth will be looted and their houses destroyed. They will never live in the houses they are building or drink wine from the vineyards they are planting.”

¹⁴The great day of the Lord is near—very near and coming fast! That day will be bitter, for even the bravest soldiers will cry out in despair!

¹⁵It will be a day of fury, a day of trouble and distress, a day of ruin and destruction, a day of darkness and gloom, a black and cloudy day,

¹⁶a day filled with the sound of war trumpets and the battle cry of soldiers attacking fortified cities and high towers.

¹⁷The Lord says, “I will bring such disasters on the human race that everyone will grope about like someone blind. They have sinned against me, and now their blood will be poured out like water, and their dead bodies will lie rotting on the ground.”

¹⁸On the day when the Lord shows his fury, not even all their silver and gold will save them. The whole earth will be destroyed by the fire of his anger. He will put an end—a sudden end—to everyone who lives on earth.

A Plea for Repentance

¹Shameless nation, come to your senses

²before you are driven away like chaff blown by the wind, before the burning anger of the Lord comes upon you, before the day when he shows his fury.

³Turn to the Lord, all you humble people of the land, who obey his commands. Do what is right, and humble yourselves before the Lord. Perhaps you will escape punishment on the day when the Lord shows his anger.

The Doom of the Nations around Israel

⁴No one will be left in the city of Gaza. Ashkelon will be deserted. The people of Ashdod will be driven out in half a day, and the people of Ekron will be driven from their city.

⁵You Philistines are doomed, you people who live along the coast. The Lord has passed sentence on you. He will destroy you, and not one of you will be left.

⁶Your land by the sea will become open fields with shepherd's huts and sheep pens.

⁷The people of Judah who survive will occupy your land. They will pasture their flocks there and sleep in the houses of Ashkelon. The Lord their God will be with them and make them prosper again.

⁸The Lord Almighty says, “I have heard the people of Moab and Ammon insulting and taunting my people, and boasting that they would seize their land.

⁹As surely as I am the living Lord, the God of Israel, I swear that Moab and Ammon are going to be destroyed like Sodom and Gomorrah. They will become a place of salt pits and everlasting ruin, overgrown with weeds. Those of my people who survive will plunder them and take their land.”

¹⁰That is how the people of Moab and Ammon will be punished for their pride and arrogance and for insulting the people of the Lord Almighty.

¹¹The Lord will terrify them. He will reduce the gods of the earth to nothing, and then every nation will worship him, each in its own land.

¹²The Lord will also put the people of Ethiopia to death.

¹³The Lord will use his power to destroy Assyria. He will make the city of Nineveh a deserted ruin, a waterless desert.

¹⁴It will be a place where flocks, herds, and animals of every kind will lie down. Owls will live among its ruins and hoot from the windows. Crows will caw on the doorsteps. The cedar wood of her buildings will be stripped away.

¹⁵That is what will happen to the city that is so proud of its own power and thinks it is safe. Its people think that their city is the greatest in the world. What a desolate place it will become, a place where wild animals will rest! Everyone who passes by will shrink back in horror.

⁹You can be ruined by the talk of godless people, but the wisdom of the righteous can save you.

¹⁰A city is happy when honest people have good fortune, and there are joyful shouts when the wicked die.

¹¹A city becomes great when the righteous give it their blessing; but a city is brought to ruin by the words of the wicked.

¹²It is foolish to speak scornfully of others. If you are smart, you will keep quiet.