Comfort for God’s People

¹Comfort, O comfort, My people,[#Isa 51:3, 12]

says your God.

²Speak kindly to Jerusalem,

and cry to her

that her warfare has ended,

that her iniquity has been pardoned,

that she has received of the hand of the Lord

double for all her sins.

³The voice of him who cries out,

“Prepare the way of the Lord

in the wilderness,

make straight in the desert

a highway for our God.

⁴Let every valley be lifted up,

and every mountain and hill be made low,

and let the rough ground become a plain,

and the rough places a plain;

⁵then the glory of the Lord shall be revealed,

and all flesh shall see it together,

for the mouth of the Lord has spoken it.”

⁶The voice said, “Cry out.”

And he said, “What shall I cry out?”

All flesh is grass,

and all its loveliness is as the flower of the field.

⁷The grass withers, the flower fades

because the Spirit of the Lord blows upon it;

surely the people are grass.

⁸The grass withers, the flower fades,

but the word of our God shall stand forever.

⁹O Zion, bearer of good news,

get yourself up onto a high mountain;

O Jerusalem, bearer of good news,

lift up your voice with strength,

lift it up, do not be afraid;

say to the cities of Judah,

“Behold, your God!”

¹⁰Behold, the Lord God will come with a strong hand,

and His arm shall rule for Him;

behold, His reward is with Him,

and His recompense before Him.

¹¹He shall feed His flock like a shepherd;[#Eze 34:23; Mic 5:4]

He shall gather the lambs with His arm,

and carry them in His bosom,

and shall gently lead those that are with young.

¹²Who has measured the waters in the hollow of His hand,[#Pr 30:4]

and meted out heaven with the span,

and calculated the dust of the earth by the measure,

and weighed the mountains in scales,

and the hills in a balance?

¹³Who has directed the Spirit of the Lord ,

or as His counselor has taught Him?

¹⁴With whom did He take counsel, and who instructed Him,

and taught Him in the path of justice,

and taught Him knowledge,

and showed to Him the way of understanding?

¹⁵Behold, the nations are as a drop in a bucket,

and are counted as the small dust of the balance;

behold, He takes up the coastlands like fine dust.

¹⁶Lebanon is not sufficient to burn,

nor the beasts sufficient as a burnt offering.

¹⁷All nations before Him are as nothing,[#Ps 62:9]

and they are counted by Him as less than nothing

and meaningless.

¹⁸To whom then will you liken God?

Or what likeness will you compare to Him?

¹⁹The workman melts a graven image,[#Ps 115:4–8; Hab 2:18–19]

and the goldsmith spreads it over with gold,

and casts silver chains.

²⁰He who is too impoverished for such an offering

chooses a tree that will not rot;

he seeks for himself a skillful workman

to prepare a graven image that shall not totter.

²¹Have you not known?

Have you not heard?

Has it not been told to you from the beginning?

Have you not understood from the foundations of the earth?

²²It is He who sits upon the circle of the earth,

and the inhabitants are as grasshoppers,

who stretches out the heavens as a curtain,

and spreads them out as a tent to dwell in.

²³He brings the princes to nothing;[#Job 12:21; Ps 107:40]

He makes the judges of the earth meaningless.

²⁴Scarcely shall they be planted;

scarcely shall they be sown;

scarcely shall their tree take root in the earth,

when He will also blow on them,

and they will wither,

and the whirlwind will take them away as stubble.

²⁵To whom then will you liken Me,

that I should be equal to him? says the Holy One.

²⁶Lift up your eyes on high,

and see who has created these things,

who brings out their host by number;

He calls them all by name,

by the greatness of His might and the strength of His power;

not one of them is missing.

²⁷Why do you say, O Jacob,

and assert, O Israel,

“My way is hidden from the Lord ,

and my justice escapes the notice of my God”?

²⁸Have you not known?

Have you not heard,

that the everlasting God, the Lord ,

the Creator of the ends of the earth,

does not faint, nor is He weary?

His understanding is inscrutable.

²⁹He gives power to the faint,

and to those who have no might He increases strength.

³⁰Even the youths shall faint and be weary,

and the young men shall utterly fall,

³¹but those who wait upon the Lord

shall renew their strength;

they shall mount up with wings as eagles,

they shall run and not be weary,

and they shall walk and not faint.