Isaiah 10

¹ Woe to those who enact unjust statutes and who write oppressive decrees,

² Depriving the needy of judgment and robbing my people's poor of their rights, Making widows their plunder, and orphans their prey!

³ What will you do on the day of punishment, when ruin comes from afar? To whom will you flee for help? Where will you leave your wealth,

⁴ Lest it sink beneath the captive or fall beneath the slain? For all this, his wrath is not turned back, his hand is still outstretched!

⁵ Woe to Assyria! My rod in anger, my staff in wrath.

⁶ Against an impious nation I send him, and against a people under my wrath I order him To seize plunder, carry off loot, and tread them down like the mud of the streets.

⁷ But this is not what he intends, nor does he have this in mind; Rather, it is in his heart to destroy, to make an end of nations not a few.

⁸ "Are not my commanders all kings?" he says,

⁹ "Is not Calno like Carchemish, Or Hamath like Arpad, or Samaria like Damascus?

¹⁰ Just as my hand reached out to idolatrous kingdoms that had more images than Jerusalem and Samaria,

¹¹ Just as I treated Samaria and her idols, shall I not do to Jerusalem and her graven images?"

¹² (But when the LORD has brought to an end all his work on Mount Zion and in Jerusalem, I will punish the utterance of the king of Assyria's proud heart,

¹³ and the boastfulness of his haughty eyes. For he says:) "By my own power I have done it, and by my wisdom, for I am shrewd. I have moved the boundaries of peoples, their treasures I have pillaged, and, like a giant, I have put down the enthroned.

¹⁴ My hand has seized like a nest the riches of nations; As one takes eggs left alone, so I took in all the earth; No one fluttered a wing, or opened a mouth, or chirped!"

¹⁵ Will the axe boast against him who hews with it? Will the saw exalt itself above him who wields it? As if a rod could sway him who lifts it, or a staff him who is not wood!

¹⁶ Therefore the Lord, the LORD of hosts, will send among his fat ones leanness, And instead of his glory there will be kindling like the kindling of fire.

¹⁷ The Light of Israel will become a fire, Israel's Holy One a flame, That burns and consumes his briers and his thorns in a single day.

¹⁸ His splendid forests and orchards will be consumed, soul and body;

¹⁹ And the remnant of the trees in his forest will be so few, Like poles set up for signals, that any boy can record them.

²⁰ On that day The remnant of Israel, the survivors of the house of Jacob, will no more lean upon him who struck them; But they lean upon the LORD, the Holy One of Israel, in truth.

²¹ A remnant will return, the remnant of Jacob, to the mighty God.

²² For though your people, O Israel, were like the sand of the sea, Only a remnant of them will return; their destruction is decreed as overwhelming justice demands.

²³ Yes, the destruction he has decreed, the Lord, the GOD of hosts, will carry out within the whole land.

²⁴ Therefore thus says the Lord, the GOD of hosts: O my people, who dwell in Zion, do not fear the Assyrian, though he strikes you with a rod, and raises his staff against you.

²⁵ For only a brief moment more, and my anger shall be over; but them I will destroy in wrath.

²⁶ Then the LORD of hosts will raise against them a scourge such as struck Midian at the rock of Oreb; and he will raise his staff over the sea as he did against Egypt.

²⁷ On that day, His burden shall be taken from your shoulder, and his yoke shattered from your neck. He has come up from the direction of Rimmon,

²⁸ he has reached Aiath, passed through Migron, at Michmash his supplies are stored.

²⁹ They cross the ravine: "We will spend the night at Geba." Ramah is in terror, Gibeah of Saul has fled.

³⁰ Cry and shriek, O daughter of Gallim! Hearken, Laishah! Answer her, Anathoth!

³¹ Madmenah is in flight, the inhabitants of Gebim seek refuge.

³² Even today he will halt at Nob, he will shake his fist at the mount of daughter Zion, the hill of Jerusalem!

³³ Behold, the Lord, the LORD of hosts, lops off the boughs with terrible violence; The tall of stature are felled, and the lofty ones brought low;

³⁴ The forest thickets are felled with the axe, and Lebanon in its splendor falls.