AB - Isaiah - 51

51:1  Hearken to Me, you that follow after righteousness, and seek the Lord; look to the solid rock, which you have hewn, and to the hole of the pit which you have dug.

51:2  Look to Abraham your father, and to Sarah who bore you; for he was alone when I called him, and blessed him, and loved him, and multiplied him.

51:3  And now I will comfort you, O Zion; and I have comforted all her desert places; and I will make her desert places as a garden, and her western places as the garden of the Lord; they shall find in her gladness and exaltation, thanksgiving and the voice of praise.

51:4  Hear Me, hear Me, My people; and you kings, hearken to Me; for a law shall proceed from Me, and My judgment shall be for a light of the nations.

51:5  My righteousness speedily draws near, and My salvation shall go forth as light, and on My arm shall the Gentiles trust; the isles shall wait for Me, and on My arm shall they trust.

51:6  Lift up your eyes to the sky, and look on the earth beneath; for the sky was darkened like smoke, and the earth shall grow old like a garment, and the inhabitants shall die in like manner; but My righteousness shall not fail.

51:7  Hear Me, you that know judgment, the people in whose heart is My law; fear not the reproach of men, and be not overcome by their contempt.

51:8  For as a garment will be devoured by time, and as wool will be devoured by a moth, so shall they be consumed; but My righteousness shall be forever, and My salvation for all generations.

51:9  Awake, awake, O Jerusalem, and put on the strength of your arm; awake as in the early time, as the ancient generation.

51:10  Are you not the One that dried the sea, the water, even the abundance of the deep; that made the depths of the sea a way of passage for the delivered and redeemed?

51:11  For by the help of the Lord they shall return, and come to Zion with joy and everlasting exaltation, for praise and joy shall come upon their head; pain, grief, and groaning have fled away.

51:12  I, even I, am He that comforts you; consider who you are, that you were afraid of mortal man, and of the son of man, who have withered as grass.

51:13  And you have forgotten God who made you, who made the sky and founded the earth; and you were continually afraid because of the wrath of him that afflicted you; for whereas he counseled to take you away, yet now where is the wrath of him that afflicted you?

51:14  For in your deliverance he shall not halt, nor tarry;

51:15  for I am your God, that troubles the sea, and causes its waves to roar; the Lord of hosts is My name.

51:16  I will put My words into your mouth, and I will shelter you under the shadow of My hand, with which I fixed the sky, and founded the earth; and the Lord shall say to Zion, You are My people.

51:17  Awake, awake, stand up, O Jerusalem, that have drunk at the hand of the Lord the cup of His fury; for you have drunk out and drained the cup of calamity, the cup of wrath;

51:18  and there was none to comfort you of all the children whom you bore; and there was none to take hold of your hand, not even of all the children whom you have reared.

51:19  Wherefore these things are against you; who shall sympathize with you in your grief? Downfall and destruction, famine and sword; who shall comfort you?

51:20  Your sons are the perplexed ones, that sleep at the top of every street as a half-boiled beet; they that are full of the anger of the Lord, caused to faint by the Lord God.

51:21  Therefore hear, you afflicted one, and drunken, but not with wine;

51:22  thus says the Lord God that judges His people: Behold, I have taken out of your hand the cup of calamity, the cup of My wrath; and you shall not drink it anymore.

51:23  And I will give it into the hands of them that injured you, and them that afflicted you; who said to your soul, Bow down, that we may pass over; and you laid your body to the ground to them passing by outside.