Old Testament · 66 chapters

Isaiah

• No. 49 Isaiah 37:14-20

  In 701 BC the Assyrian king Sennacherib swept through Judah, took its fortified towns, and demanded Jerusalem's surrender. His envoy shouted taunts at the city wall in Hebrew so the ordinary people could hear,...

• No. 103 Isaiah 24:14-23

  Isaiah 24 to 27 is sometimes called the Isaiah Apocalypse, a section that widens from oracles about particular nations to the whole earth. This passage sits inside it, and its structure is a collision of two...

• No. 125 Isaiah 29:1-8

  Isaiah addresses Jerusalem by a name used nowhere else: Ariel. The word can mean lion of God, and it can also mean altar hearth, the place on the altar where the fire burns, and the passage plays on both....

• No. 210 Isaiah 65:8-12

  Isaiah 65 comes late in the book, spoken to the community that has returned to the land after exile. That community is split. Some are still seeking the LORD, and some have taken up other cults, and this...

• No. 224 Isaiah 22:1-11

  Isaiah calls Jerusalem the valley of vision, and this oracle falls on the city during a siege, most likely the Assyrian threat under Sennacherib in Hezekiah's day. The city is in an uproar, its people crowded...

• No. 229 Isaiah 6:6-13

  This is the moment right after Isaiah's vision in the temple, where he saw the Lord high and lifted up and cried out that he was a man of unclean lips among a people of unclean lips. These verses are the...

• No. 242 Isaiah 14:18-23

  This is part of a taunt-song, a mocking funeral poem, sung over the king of Babylon. Isaiah pictures the death of the tyrant and takes from him the one thing every king of that world was sure of. All the other...

• No. 323 Isaiah 4:1-6

  Isaiah 4 comes right after a chapter of judgment, and it opens on a bleak image: so many men have fallen in war that seven women take hold of a single man, begging only to bear his name and take away their...

• No. 348 Isaiah 43:14-28

  This passage from Isaiah sits with people in exile, far from home, and it is doing two things at once, holding a promise and a complaint in the same breath. First the promise, and it is one of the most quoted...

• No. 389 Isaiah 28:23-29

  Isaiah turns, unexpectedly, to farming, and tells a little parable about a wise farmer, then says that the farmer's wisdom comes from God. Watch the two things he points out. First, the plowing. Does the...

• No. 574 Isaiah 57:1-16

  This chapter is heavy with judgment against idolaters, but it turns, at the end, to one of the most surprising descriptions of God in all of Scripture. Listen to how he introduces himself: thus says the high...

• No. 610 Isaiah 28:14-22

  Isaiah addresses the scoffing rulers of Jerusalem, and he exposes the strange confidence they are living on. We have made a covenant with death, they boast, and an agreement with the grave; when the...

• No. 654 Isaiah 63:1-19

  This is near the end of Isaiah, in the chapters spoken to a people coming home from exile. The chapter opens with a figure who stops the eye: someone marching up from Edom, from the city of Bozrah, in clothing...

• No. 662 Isaiah 34:1-17

  Isaiah 34 is a summons to the whole earth to hear a sentence, and the sentence falls on Edom. The prophet pictures a sword in heaven that has drunk its fill and now comes down, a slaughter in Bozrah described...

• No. 745 Isaiah 59:1-16

  Isaiah 59 opens by clearing God of a charge people quietly make when heaven seems silent. The LORD's hand is not too short to save, the prophet says, nor his ear too dull to hear. The problem is not on his...

• No. 749 Isaiah 37:1-5

  The Assyrian army is at the walls of Jerusalem, and its field commander has stood outside and mocked not just King Hezekiah but the God of Israel, jeering that no god of any nation has saved its people from...

• No. 750 Isaiah 13:17-22

  Isaiah's oracle against Babylon reaches its climax here, and the target is not a weak city but the strongest one there is. God says he will stir up the Medes against it, and he notes one thing about them: they...

• No. 850 Isaiah 17:1-14

  Isaiah's oracle against Damascus and its ally, the northern kingdom of Israel, describes a stripping-down. The fortresses fall, and the glory of Jacob is made thin, reduced, the prophet says, to what is left...

• No. 892 Isaiah 64:1-12

  This is a prayer from a people in ruins, and it opens with a cry: oh that you would tear open the heavens and come down, that the mountains would quake at your presence. The prophet remembers when God came...

• No. 894 Isaiah 30:1-5

  Isaiah brings a woe against Judah for a specific move: going down to Egypt for help. Threatened by Assyria, the leaders are making an alliance with Pharaoh, sending envoys south to buy protection, and Isaiah...

• No. 896 Isaiah 38:1-8

  King Hezekiah is sick and about to die, and Isaiah brings the kind of word no one wants to hear: set your house in order, for you will die and not live. Hezekiah turns his face to the wall and prays, reminding...

• No. 899 Isaiah 1:17-31

  Isaiah opens his book with a courtroom scene against Judah. God has just said he is sick of their sacrifices while their hands are full of blood, and here comes the summons: learn to do good, seek justice,...

• No. 908 Isaiah 60:17-22

  Isaiah is painting the future glory of restored Zion, and the images keep upgrading. For bronze God will bring gold, for iron silver, for wood bronze; violence will vanish from the land, the walls will be...

• No. 911 Isaiah 9:1-7

  After chapters of gloom and warning, Isaiah breaks into light. The very regions first crushed by invasion, Zebulun and Naphtali, Galilee of the nations, are the ones God will make glorious. The people who...

• No. 930 Isaiah 21:10-17

  This is a set of short, shadowy oracles against the desert peoples around Judah. Buried in the middle is a haunting exchange. Out of Seir a voice keeps calling to the watchman: watchman, what of the night?...

• No. 935 Isaiah 23:8-12

  Isaiah pronounces judgment on Tyre, the great Phoenician trading city whose merchants were like princes and whose traders were the honored of the earth. The question is asked: who planned this downfall against...

• No. 941 Isaiah 15:1-9

  This is an oracle of judgment against Moab, Israel's neighbor and frequent enemy across the Dead Sea. But it does not read like a gloating over a fallen rival. It is a lament. In a single night Moab's cities...

• No. 961 Isaiah 23:1-7

  This is the opening of the oracle against Tyre, the great Phoenician port whose ships and trade reached across the known world. Isaiah calls on the ships of Tarshish to howl, because their home harbor is...

• No. 990 Isaiah 58:1-14

  God tells Isaiah to cry aloud and spare not, to declare the people their sin. And the sin is a surprising one: they are religious. They fast, they seek God daily, they delight to draw near, and they complain...

• No. 1027 Isaiah 7:1-9

  King Ahaz of Judah is terrified. Two enemy kings, Rezin of Syria and Pekah of Israel, have allied and marched on Jerusalem to depose him and install a puppet. The house of David shakes with fear like trees in...

• No. 1038 Isaiah 45:17-25

  God speaks as the sole Creator and Savior. Israel will be saved with an everlasting salvation, never again put to shame. I am the LORD, and there is no other; I did not create the earth to be empty but to be...

• No. 1047 Isaiah 37:21-25

  Hezekiah has spread the Assyrian king's threatening letter before God and prayed, and now Isaiah brings God's answer, aimed straight at Sennacherib. Because you have prayed to me, God says to Hezekiah, here is...

• No. 1118 Isaiah 51:17-23

  God calls the shattered city to wake up. Jerusalem has drunk from the LORD's hand the cup of his wrath, drained the bowl of staggering to its dregs, and now lies helpless, her sons fainting in the streets with...

• No. 1143 Isaiah 31:1-9

  Isaiah pronounces a woe on those in Judah who run to Egypt for help against Assyria, trusting in Egypt's many chariots and strong horsemen, but not looking to the Holy One of Israel or seeking the LORD. He...

• No. 1250 Isaiah 24:1-13

  Isaiah pronounces a sweeping judgment, not on one nation but on the whole earth. The LORD lays it waste and scatters its inhabitants, and the judgment falls on everyone alike: as with the people, so with the...

• No. 1271 Isaiah 22:20-25

  Isaiah announces that God will replace a corrupt official, Shebna, with a faithful servant, Eliakim. God will clothe him with authority, commit the government into his hand, and make him a father to the...

• No. 1325 Isaiah 49:1-16

  This is one of Isaiah's servant songs. The servant, called from the womb, made a sharp sword and a polished arrow hidden in God's quiver, is charged to bring Israel back and, more than that, to be a light to...

• No. 1338 Isaiah 26:1-16

  This is a song sung in the land of Judah, celebrating a strong city whose walls are the salvation God provides. Open the gates, it says, that the righteous nation that keeps faith may enter. And at its center...

• No. 1370 Isaiah 38:9-22

  This is Hezekiah's own writing after he recovered from a sickness that had brought him to the point of death. He records the anguish of it: in the middle of my life I go into the gates of Sheol; my dwelling is...

• No. 1390 Isaiah 7:18-25

  Isaiah describes the judgment coming on Judah in vivid images. In that day, he says, the LORD will whistle for the fly at the streams of Egypt and for the bee in the land of Assyria, and they will come and...

• No. 1434 Isaiah 25:6-12

  Isaiah lifts his eyes to what God will finally do. On this mountain, he says, the LORD will make for all peoples a feast of rich food and well-aged wine. He will destroy the shroud that covers all peoples, the...

• No. 1486 Isaiah 28:7-13

  Isaiah rebukes the leaders of his people, priests and prophets so given to drink that they reel and stagger, erring in vision and stumbling in judgment, their tables covered in filth. They mock his teaching as...

• No. 1513 Isaiah 27:1-5

  After a word of judgment on the fleeing serpent, Isaiah turns to a song about God's vineyard, which is his people. In that day, sing of it: a pleasant vineyard, and I, the LORD, am its keeper. I water it every...

• No. 1550 Isaiah 55:1-13

  God calls out an invitation. Come, everyone who thirsts, come to the waters; come, you who have no money, buy and eat; come, buy wine and milk without money and without price. Why do you spend your money for...

• No. 1569 Isaiah 22:12-19

  God called his people, in a day of threat and danger, to weeping, mourning, and repentance. But instead of heeding the call, they responded with defiant revelry: killing cattle and sheep, eating meat and...

• No. 1574 Isaiah 35:1-10

  Isaiah paints a picture of glorious restoration. The wilderness and dry land will be glad; the desert will blossom and rejoice with singing. Strengthen the weak hands, he says, and make firm the feeble knees;...

• No. 1601 Isaiah 14:12-17

  This taunt is directed at the fallen king of Babylon, and its language has long been heard as describing the deeper pride behind all such fall. How you have fallen from heaven, shining one, son of the dawn,...

• No. 1615 Isaiah 32:1-20

  Isaiah foresees a king who will reign in righteousness, and under his rule a transformation. And of that king, or of the righteous man his reign produces, Isaiah says: he will be as a hiding place from the...

• No. 1633 Isaiah 14:1-11

  Isaiah promises that the LORD will have compassion on his people and give them rest from their sorrow and their hard service. And in that day, he says, they will take up a taunt against the fallen king of...

• No. 1687 Isaiah 18:1-7

  This oracle concerns a distant land beyond the rivers of Cush, a people who send their envoys skimming the waters in vessels of papyrus. In the midst of the world's frantic activity, God speaks a striking word...

• No. 1690 Isaiah 52:1-15

  Isaiah calls the captive city to wake and rise. Awake, awake, put on your strength, Zion; shake yourself from the dust. You were sold for nothing, God says, and you will be redeemed without money. Then comes...

• No. 1721 Isaiah 9:8-21

  Isaiah describes a people struck by disaster but refusing to learn from it. When calamity falls, when the bricks come down and the fig trees are cut, the proud of Ephraim and Samaria respond not with humility...

• No. 1767 Isaiah 11:1-9

  Isaiah sees hope springing from an unlikely place: a shoot will come out of the stump of Jesse, and a branch from his roots will bear fruit. On this branch the Spirit of the LORD will rest, wisdom and...

• No. 1785 Isaiah 5:1-16

  Isaiah sings a love song that turns to sorrow. His beloved had a vineyard on a fertile hill; he dug it, cleared its stones, planted select vines, built a watchtower, cut a winepress, and did everything a...

• No. 1803 Isaiah 45:1-16

  God addresses Cyrus, a pagan king he will use to free his exiles, and declares his own unrivaled sovereignty: I am the LORD, and there is no other; I form light and create darkness, I make peace and create...

• No. 1810 Isaiah 37:33-38

  God gives his verdict on the Assyrian threat to Jerusalem: the king of Assyria will not enter this city, nor shoot an arrow there; he will return the way he came. I will defend this city to save it, God says,...

• No. 1816 Isaiah 36:1-10

  Sennacherib's army has taken the fortified cities of Judah, and now his officer, the Rabshakeh, stands before Jerusalem's walls to break the people's will with words. In whom do you trust, he taunts, that you...

• No. 1823 Isaiah 29:15-24

  Isaiah pronounces woe on those who try to hide their plans from the LORD, whose deeds are done in the dark, and who say to themselves, who sees us? who knows? He rebukes the folly of it: you turn things upside...

• No. 1843 Isaiah 10:12-19

  God had used Assyria as a rod to discipline his people; but Assyria's king, forgetting he was only an instrument, boasted: by the strength of my hand I have done it, and by my wisdom, for I have understanding....

• No. 1888 Isaiah 37:26-32

  God answers the proud Sennacherib, who had raged against him and boasted of destroying nations. Have you not heard, God says, that I planned this long ago and now bring it to pass? The conquests you boast of...

• No. 1920 Isaiah 33:1-16

  Isaiah pictures a day when the sinners in Zion are afraid, when trembling seizes the godless, and they ask: who among us can dwell with the devouring fire? Who can dwell with everlasting burning? It is a...

• No. 1971 Isaiah 29:9-14

  Isaiah describes a people in spiritual stupor, blind and staggering, not with wine but with a deadness God has allowed, so that vision has become to them like a sealed book no one can read. Their religion is...

• No. 2026 Isaiah 30:23-33

  Amid Isaiah's prophecies of judgment come promises of restoration, and one line is especially tender. Speaking of a coming day of blessing, rain for the seed, plentiful bread, streams of water, Isaiah names...

• No. 2051 Isaiah 10:28-34

  Isaiah paints the advance of the Assyrian army toward Jerusalem in vivid, rushing lines: town after town falling, the enemy sweeping through the passes, the people fleeing in panic, until the invader shakes...

• No. 2060 Isaiah 6:1-5

  In the year King Uzziah died, Isaiah is given a vision of the Lord. He sees him seated on a throne, high and lifted up, his robe filling the temple, with seraphim above him calling to one another, Holy, holy,...

• No. 2081 Isaiah 65:13-25

  In his vision of the new heavens and new earth, Isaiah describes a restored world where God's people rejoice, where weeping is heard no more, where they build and inhabit and are not deprived of the fruit of...

• No. 2091 Isaiah 40:17-31

  Isaiah exalts the incomparable Creator, before whom the nations are as nothing, who sits above the circle of the earth, who calls the stars out by name. And then he turns to a discouraged people who feel their...

• No. 2093 Isaiah 47:1-15

  Isaiah pronounces judgment on Babylon, the proud mistress of kingdoms, and exposes the false security at the heart of her pride. She had said in her heart, I am, and there is no one else besides me; I shall be...

• No. 2097 Isaiah 27:6-13

  Amid Isaiah's prophecies comes a promise of gathering. In days to come, Jacob will take root and blossom and fill the world with fruit. And at the end, a great trumpet will be blown, and those who were ready...

• No. 2150 Isaiah 65:1-7

  God speaks of his own persistent, seeking love toward a people who neither sought nor wanted him. I was ready to be found by those who did not seek me, he says; I said, here I am, here I am, to a nation that...

• No. 2154 Isaiah 8:16-22

  In a dark and fearful time, when people are tempted to seek guidance from occult sources, Isaiah calls them back to God. When they tell you to consult the mediums and the wizards who whisper and mutter, he...

• No. 2199 Isaiah 8:9-15

  In a time when Judah is terrified by conspiracies and the threat of invading armies, God gives Isaiah a different orientation. Do not call conspiracy all that this people calls conspiracy, he says; do not fear...

• No. 2232 Isaiah 61:1-11

  Isaiah announces the mission of the Spirit-anointed one, the words Jesus would later read in the synagogue and declare fulfilled in himself. The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, he says, because he has anointed...

• No. 2268 Isaiah 48:16-22

  God speaks to his people as their teacher and guide: I am the LORD your God, who teaches you to profit, who leads you in the way you should go. And then comes a word of grief over what they have missed. Oh...

• No. 2271 Isaiah 8:1-8

  Isaiah delivers a word of judgment with a curious diagnosis. Because this people has refused the waters of Shiloah that flow gently, God says, and rejoices in Rezin and the son of Remaliah, therefore the Lord...

• No. 2353 Isaiah 21:1-9

  Isaiah receives a harsh vision, the burden of the wilderness of the sea, and it costs him. He describes anguish gripping him like labor pains, a twilight he had longed for turned to trembling. The Lord tells...

• No. 2371 Isaiah 37:6-13

  Assyria's army is at the gate, and its spokesman has hurled taunts at Jerusalem and at God. Isaiah sends Hezekiah a word: do not be afraid of the words you have heard, with which the king's servants have...

• No. 2376 Isaiah 16:6-14

  Isaiah delivers an oracle against Moab, and it opens by naming the charge: Moab is very proud, full of arrogance and boasting, and his boastings come to nothing. Judgment is coming; within three years the...

• No. 2386 Isaiah 16:1-5

  In the middle of an oracle about Moab, Isaiah voices a plea for mercy toward the displaced. Make your shade like night at noon, he says; hide the outcasts, do not betray the fugitive; let the refugees dwell...

• No. 2423 Isaiah 59:17-21

  Isaiah has just said that God looked for someone to intervene and found no one, no intercessor, so his own arm brought salvation. Now he pictures God arming himself: righteousness as a breastplate, a helmet of...

• No. 2445 Isaiah 13:6-16

  Isaiah announces the day of the LORD against Babylon, and it is terrible. Hands go limp, hearts melt, the sky goes dark, and the imagery of war is unsparing in its cruelty. It is not a scene to relish; it is...

• No. 2475 Isaiah 51:1-16

  Isaiah calls the discouraged to look back and then to stop being afraid. Look to the rock you were cut from, to Abraham and Sarah, he says; God made a whole people from one old couple, and he can comfort...

• No. 2559 Isaiah 40:1-16

  Isaiah's word of comfort rises to a vision of God so large it staggers the mind. Who has measured the waters in the hollow of his hand, he asks, or marked off the heavens with a span, or weighed the mountains...

• No. 2599 Isaiah 42:17-25

  Isaiah turns on God's own servant with a stinging paradox: hear, you deaf; look, you blind. Who is blind but my servant? Israel had seen many things and observed nothing; their ears were open, but they did not...

• No. 2624 Isaiah 54:1-17

  To a people who felt abandoned, Isaiah brings words of remarkable tenderness. Your Maker is your husband, he says; the God who seemed to cast you off calls you back like a wife of his youth. For a brief moment...

• No. 2626 Isaiah 50:1-11

  Isaiah's chapter about the obedient Servant ends with a stark choice for those in the dark. Who among you fears the LORD and walks in darkness with no light? he asks. Let him trust in the name of the LORD and...

• No. 2627 Isaiah 19:11-18

  Isaiah aims a stinging word at Egypt's famed wise men, the celebrated counselors of Pharaoh. The princes of Zoan are utter fools, he says; the wisest advisers give stupid counsel. Where are your wise men now?...

• No. 2633 Isaiah 13:1-5

  Isaiah announces the coming fall of Babylon, and the striking thing is who does the mustering. God says, I have commanded my consecrated ones; I have summoned my warriors for my anger. The LORD of hosts is...

• No. 2636 Isaiah 56:1-12

  Isaiah opens the doors of God's house wider than anyone expected. To the foreigner who had joined himself to the LORD and feared he would be shut out, and to the eunuch who mourned that he was a dry tree with...

• No. 2685 Isaiah 23:13-18

  This is the close of Isaiah's oracle against Tyre, the great trading port whose ships and wealth reached across the sea. The prophet foretells seventy years of being forgotten, the city sung about like a...

• No. 2828 Isaiah 14:24-32

  God swears an oath: as I have planned, so it shall be; as I have purposed, so it shall stand. I will break Assyria in my land and lift its yoke from my people's shoulders. Then the vision widens beyond one...

• No. 2925 Isaiah 30:15-22

  God speaks to a people who are trusting in Egypt's horses instead of him. In returning and rest you will be saved, he says; in quietness and confidence will be your strength. But you refused, and said, No, we...

• No. 2933 Isaiah 43:1-13

  This is one of the great words of comfort in all of Scripture. Do not fear, for I have redeemed you; I have called you by your name; you are mine. When you pass through the waters, I will be with you, and...

• No. 2974 Isaiah 33:17-24

  This is a vision of restored Zion. Your eyes will see the king in his beauty and a land stretching far; the terror is past, the foreign oppressor who counted your towers and demanded tribute is gone. Look on...

• No. 2980 Isaiah 5:17-30

  Isaiah pronounces a string of woes. Woe to those who drag their sin along like a cart-rope and dare God to hurry his judgment; woe to those who acquit the guilty for a bribe and deny justice to the innocent....

• No. 2999 Isaiah 2:17-22

  Isaiah describes the day of the LORD, when the loftiness of man will be bowed down and the arrogance of men brought low, and the LORD alone will be exalted. The idols will utterly vanish; people will fling...

• No. 3084 Isaiah 19:1-10

  This is the burden of Egypt. The LORD rides on a swift cloud toward Egypt, and its idols tremble and its heart melts within it. He stirs Egyptians against Egyptians, city against city; their spirit fails,...

• No. 3091 Isaiah 19:19-25

  This is one of the surprising promises in all the prophets. In that day, God says, there will be an altar to the LORD in the middle of Egypt; the Egyptians will cry to the LORD and he will send them a savior;...

• No. 3148 Isaiah 30:6-14

  A caravan hauls treasure through dangerous country to buy Egypt's help, but, the LORD says, Egypt's help is worthless and empty. So God tells Isaiah to write it down as a lasting witness: this is a rebellious...

• No. 3201 Isaiah 44:1-16

  God comforts his servant Jacob: do not fear, for I will pour water on the thirsty and streams on the dry ground, and my Spirit on your offspring. And he declares who he is: I am the first and I am the last;...

• No. 3203 Isaiah 26:17-21

  Israel confesses its own helplessness with a vivid image: like a woman in labor who cries out in her pangs, we have been before you, LORD; we were with child, we writhed in pain, but we gave birth only to...

• No. 3205 Isaiah 20:1-6

  God asks a startling thing of Isaiah: to loosen the sackcloth from his waist and take the sandals from his feet and walk stripped and barefoot for three years, as a sign against Egypt and Ethiopia. So the king...

• No. 3221 Isaiah 28:1-6

  Woe to the proud crown of the drunkards of Ephraim, Isaiah cries, to the fading flower of their glorious beauty. The Lord has one who will cast them down like a hailstorm, and the crown of pride will be...

• No. 3251 Isaiah 39:1-8

  Envoys arrive from the rising power of Babylon after Hezekiah's recovery from illness, and Hezekiah, flattered, shows them everything, all his treasures, his silver and gold and armory, holding nothing back....

• No. 3319 Isaiah 41:17-29

  Two things stand side by side. First, God's tender promise to the poor and needy who seek water and find none: I the LORD will answer them; I will open rivers on the bare heights and springs in the valleys; I...

• No. 3360 Isaiah 66:1-16

  God asks a humbling question: heaven is my throne, and the earth is my footstool; what house could you possibly build for me, or where could I rest? He needs nothing we can construct. And then comes the...

• No. 3381 Isaiah 41:1-16

  After challenging the nations and their idols, God turns to speak tenderly to his own: but you, Israel my servant, whom I have chosen, the offspring of Abraham my friend. And then come the words that have...

• No. 3403 Isaiah 12:1-6

  This short song bursts with the joy of salvation. Though God had been angry, his anger has turned away, and now the redeemed sing: behold, God is my salvation; I will trust, and will not be afraid, for the...

• No. 3479 Isaiah 2:1-16

  Isaiah sees two things held together. First, a glorious vision of the last days: the mountain of the LORD lifted high above the hills, all nations streaming to it to learn his ways, and the fruit of it, swords...

• No. 3501 Isaiah 10:20-27

  After warning of Assyria's coming as God's rod of judgment, Isaiah turns to comfort the remnant. A day is coming, he says, when the survivors will no longer lean on the very power that struck them, no longer...

• No. 3523 Isaiah 3:1-16

  Isaiah describes a society coming apart as God removes its steady leaders and everything falls into disorder, the young defying the old, the base defying the honorable. But the heart of his indictment is aimed...

• No. 3544 Isaiah 10:1-11

  Isaiah pronounces woe on those who use the machinery of law itself to oppress: those who decree unjust statutes, writing oppression into law to turn aside the needy from justice and to make widows their...

• No. 3557 Isaiah 3:17-26

  Isaiah pronounces judgment on the proud, self-adorning women of Zion, listing their many ornaments, anklets, headbands, rings, veils, and fine robes, and declaring that all of it will be stripped away. Instead...

• No. 3572 Isaiah 46:1-13

  Isaiah draws a devastating contrast between idols and the true God. The Babylonian gods Bel and Nebo have to be loaded onto animals and hauled away; the idols are a burden their worshipers must carry, dead...

• No. 3602 Isaiah 25:1-5

  Isaiah breaks into praise for God's faithful works, plans formed long ago and carried out in perfect faithfulness and truth. And he celebrates a great reversal: God brings the proud, fortified cities to ruin,...

• No. 3648 Isaiah 53:1-12

  This is the mountain-peak of Old Testament prophecy about the Messiah, written centuries before the cross, yet describing it with astonishing precision. The Servant is despised and rejected, a man of sorrows;...

• No. 3662 Isaiah 62:1-12

  This chapter overflows with God's passionate commitment to his people. For Zion's sake I will not keep silent, and for Jerusalem's sake I will not rest, until her righteousness shines out like the dawn. God is...

• No. 3730 Isaiah 48:1-15

  God speaks to a stubborn people, obstinate, their necks an iron sinew, their brows bronze, and yet he does not cast them off. He explains why he foretold events long in advance: so that when they came to pass,...

• No. 3766 Isaiah 36:11-22

  The Assyrian field commander Rabshakeh stands before the walls of Jerusalem and, in a loud and calculated taunt, tries to break the people's trust in God. His strategy is spiritual as much as military: do not...

• No. 3776 Isaiah 1:1-16

  Through Isaiah, God brings a stunning charge against his people: their worship has become detestable to him. Not because sacrifice was wrong, God had commanded it, but because they offered it while their lives...

• No. 3805 Isaiah 57:17-21

  God speaks of a people he had to discipline, striking them for their greed and hiding his face while they kept turning away. We might expect the next word to be more judgment. Instead comes astonishing grace:...

• No. 3881 Isaiah 44:17-28

  Isaiah exposes the absurdity of idolatry with almost comic clarity: a man takes a block of wood, burns half of it to cook his food and warm himself, and then bows down to the other half, praying, deliver me,...

• No. 3922 Isaiah 66:17-24

  At the close of Isaiah, God unveils a sweeping vision of the future: the time is coming when I will gather all nations and tongues, and they shall come and see my glory. And from among his people he will send...

• No. 3926 Isaiah 60:1-16

  Into a world where darkness covers the earth, Isaiah sounds a call of hope: arise, shine, for your light has come, and the glory of the LORD has risen upon you. God's people are summoned to rise up and reflect...

• No. 4042 Isaiah 11:10-16

  Isaiah looks ahead to the day when the root of Jesse, the Messiah from David's line, shall stand as a banner, a rallying point, for the peoples, and the nations shall seek him. And in that day, God will reach...

• No. 4102 Isaiah 49:17-26

  God speaks tenderly to Zion, pictured as a bereaved and desolate woman, mourning her lost children and her ruined land. And into that grief he speaks a promise of astonishing reversal: her children will come...

• No. 4136 Isaiah 7:10-17

  God, through Isaiah, offers the faithless King Ahaz a sign of any kind he wishes, to strengthen his trust. But Ahaz, feigning piety, refuses to ask. So God gives a sign anyway, a sign that reaches far beyond...

• No. 4172 Isaiah 42:1-16

  Isaiah describes God's chosen Servant, the one in whom his soul delights, on whom he has put his Spirit. And the striking thing about this Servant is his gentleness. He will not cry aloud or make his voice...