Isaiah 10

¹ Woe to those who enact unjust decrees, who compose oppressive legislation

² to deny justice to the weak and to cheat the humblest of my people of fair judgement, to make widowstheir prey and to rob the orphan.

³ What wil you do on the day of punishment, when disaster comes from far away? To whom wil you runfor help and where wil you leave your riches,

⁴ to avoid squatting among the captives or fal ing among the slain? After all this, his anger is not spent.No, his hand is still raised!

⁵ Woe to Assyria, rod of my anger, the club in their hands is my fury!

⁶ I was sending him against a godless nation, commissioning him against the people who enraged me, topil age and plunder at will and trample on them like the mud in the streets.

⁷ But this was not his intention nor did his heart plan it so, for he dreamed of putting an end to them, ofliquidating nations without number!

⁸ For he thought, 'Are not my officers al kings?

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

¹⁰ As my hand has found the kingdoms of the false gods, where there were more images than inJerusalem and Samaria,

¹¹ as I have treated Samaria and her false gods shal I not treat Jerusalem and her statues too?'

¹² When the Lord has completed al his work on Mount Zion and in Jerusalem, he wil punish the fruit ofthe king of Assyria's boastful heart and the insolence of his haughty looks.

¹³ For he thinks: 'By the strength of my own arm I have done this and by my own wisdom: how intel igentI have been! I have abolished the frontiers between peoples, I have plundered their treasures, like a hero, I havesubjugated their inhabitants.

¹⁴ My hand has found, as though a bird's nest, the riches of the peoples. Like someone col ectingdeserted eggs, I have col ected the whole world while no one has fluttered a wing or opened a beak to squawk.'

¹⁵ Does the axe claim more credit than the man who wields it, or the saw more strength than the manwho handles it? As though a staff controlled those who raise it, or the club could raise what is not made of wood!

¹⁶ That is why Yahweh Sabaoth is going to inflict leanness on his stout men, and beneath his glorykindle a fever burning like a fire.

¹⁷ The light of Israel wil become a fire and its Holy One a flame burning and devouring his thorn-bushesand brambles in a day.

¹⁸ He wil consume his luxuriant forest and productive ground, he will ravage body and soul: it wil be likea consumptive wasting away;

¹⁹ and what remain of the trees of his forest will be so few that a child could write their number.

²⁰ When that day comes, the remnant of Israel and the survivors of the House of Jacob will stop relyingon the man who strikes them and wil truly rely on Yahweh, the Holy One of Israel.

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

²² Israel, though your people are like the sand of the sea, only a remnant of them wil return: adestruction has been decreed which wil make justice overflow,

²³ for, throughout the country, the Lord Yahweh Sabaoth wil enforce the destruction now decreed.

²⁴ That is why the Lord Yahweh Sabaoth says this: My people who live in Zion, do not be afraid ofAssyria! He may strike you with the rod, he may raise the club against you (on the way from Egypt),

²⁵ but in a very short time the retribution will come to an end, and my anger wil destroy them.

²⁶ Yahweh Sabaoth wil brandish a whip at him as he struck Midian at Oreb's Rock, wil brandish his rodat the Sea as he raised it on the way from Egypt.

²⁷ When that day comes, his burden will fal from your shoulder, and his yoke from your neck, and theyoke wil be destroyed . . .

²⁸ He has reached Aiath, he has moved on to Migron, he has left his baggage train at Michmash.

²⁹ They have passed through the defile, they have bivouacked at Geba. Ramah quaked, Gibeah of Saulhas fled.

³⁰ Cry your loudest, Bath-Gal im! Pay attention, Laish! Answer her, Anathoth!

³¹ Madmenah has run away, the inhabitants of Gebim have taken cover.

³² This very day, as he halts at Nob, he wil shake his fist at the mountain of the daughter of Zion, the hilof Jerusalem.

³³ See how the Lord Yahweh Sabaoth violently lops off the foliage! The ones standing highest are cutdown, the proudest are laid low!

³⁴ The forest thickets fal beneath the axe, and the Lebanon fal s to the blows of a Mighty One.