Isaiah 4
Isaiah 4 NIV
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Isiah 4
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Isaiah 4New International Version
4 1 In that day seven women
will take hold of one man
and say, “We will eat our own food
and provide our own
clothes;
only let us be called by your name.
Take away our disgrace!”
The Branch of the Lord
2 In that day the Branch of the Lord will be beautiful and glorious,
and the fruit of the land will be the pride and glory of the survivors in
Israel. 3 Those who are left in Zion, who remain in Jerusalem, will be called
holy, all who are recorded among the living in Jerusalem. 4 The Lord will
wash away the filth of the women of Zion; he will cleanse the bloodstains
from Jerusalem by a spirit[a] of judgment and a spirit[b] of fire. 5 Then the
Lord will create over all of Mount Zion and over those who assemble there a
cloud of smoke by day and a glow of flaming fire by night; over everything
the glory[c] will be a canopy. 6 It will be a shelter and shade from the heat
of the day, and a refuge and hiding place from the storm and rain.
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Isaiah 4The Message
4 That will be the day when seven women
will gang up on one man,
saying,
“We’ll take care of ourselves,
get our own food and
clothes.
Just give us a child. Make us pregnant
so we’ll have something to
live for!”
God’s Branch
2-4 And that’s when God’s Branch will sprout green and lush. The
produce of the country will give Israel’s survivors something to be proud of
again. Oh, they’ll hold their heads high! Everyone left behind in Zion, all
the discards and rejects in Jerusalem, will be reclassified as “holy”—alive
and therefore precious. God will give Zion’s women a good bath. He’ll scrub
the bloodstained city of its violence and brutality, purge the place with a
firestorm of judgment.
5-6 Then God will bring back the ancient pillar of cloud by day and
the pillar of fire by night and mark Mount Zion and everyone in it with his
glorious presence, his immense, protective presence, shade from the burning
sun and shelter from the driving rain.
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Isaiah 1 The Message (MSG)
Messages of Judgment
Quit Your Worship Charades
1 The vision that Isaiah son of Amoz saw regarding Judah and Jerusalem during the times of the kings of Judah: Uzziah, Jotham, Ahaz, and Hezekiah.
2-4 Heaven and earth, you’re the jury.
Listen to God’s case:
“I had children and raised them well,
and they turned on me.
The ox knows who’s boss,
the mule knows the hand that feeds him,
But not Israel.
My people don’t know up from down.
Shame! Misguided God-dropouts,
staggering under their guilt-baggage,
Gang of miscreants,
band of vandals—
My people have walked out on me, their God,
turned their backs on The Holy of Israel,
walked off and never looked back.
5-9 “Why bother even trying to do anything with you
when you just keep to your bullheaded ways?
You keep beating your heads against brick walls.
Everything within you protests against you.
From the bottom of your feet to the top of your head,
nothing’s working right.
Wounds and bruises and running sores—
untended, unwashed, unbandaged.
Your country is laid waste,
your cities burned down.
Your land is destroyed by outsiders while you watch,
reduced to rubble by barbarians.
Daughter Zion is deserted—
like a tumbledown shack on a dead-end street,
Like a tarpaper shanty on the wrong side of the tracks,
like a sinking ship abandoned by the rats.
If God-of-the-Angel-Armies hadn’t left us a few survivors,
we’d be as desolate as Sodom, doomed just like Gomorrah.
10 “Listen to my Message,
you Sodom-schooled leaders.
Receive God’s revelation,
you Gomorrah-schooled people.
11-12 “Why this frenzy of sacrifices?”
God’s asking.
“Don’t you think I’ve had my fill of burnt sacrifices,
rams and plump grain-fed calves?
Don’t you think I’ve had my fill
of blood from bulls, lambs, and goats?
When you come before me,
whoever gave you the idea of acting like this,
Running here and there, doing this and that—
all this sheer commotion in the place provided for worship?
13-17 “Quit your worship charades.
I can’t stand your trivial religious games:
Monthly conferences, weekly Sabbaths, special meetings—
meetings, meetings, meetings—I can’t stand one more!
Meetings for this, meetings for that. I hate them!
You’ve worn me out!
I’m sick of your religion, religion, religion,
while you go right on sinning.
When you put on your next prayer-performance,
I’ll be looking the other way.
No matter how long or loud or often you pray,
I’ll not be listening.
And do you know why? Because you’ve been tearing
people to pieces, and your hands are bloody.
Go home and wash up.
Clean up your act.
Sweep your lives clean of your evildoings
so I don’t have to look at them any longer.
Say no to wrong.
Learn to do good.
Work for justice.
Help the down-and-out.
Stand up for the homeless.
Go to bat for the defenseless.
Let’s Argue This Out
18-20 “Come. Sit down. Let’s argue this out.”
This is God’s Message:
“If your sins are blood-red,
they’ll be snow-white.
If they’re red like crimson,
they’ll be like wool.
If you’ll willingly obey,
you’ll feast like kings.
But if you’re willful and stubborn,
you’ll die like dogs.”
That’s right. God says so.
Those Who Walk Out on God
21-23 Oh! Can you believe it? The chaste city
has become a whore!
She was once all justice,
everyone living as good neighbors,
And now they’re all
at one another’s throats.
Your coins are all counterfeits.
Your wine is watered down.
Your leaders are turncoats
who keep company with crooks.
They sell themselves to the highest bidder
and grab anything not nailed down.
They never stand up for the homeless,
never stick up for the defenseless.
24-31 This Decree, therefore, of the Master, God-of-the-Angel-Armies,
the Strong One of Israel:
“This is it! I’ll get my oppressors off my back.
I’ll get back at my enemies.
I’ll give you the back of my hand,
purge the junk from your life, clean you up.
I’ll set honest judges and wise counselors among you
just like it was back in the beginning.
Then you’ll be renamed
City-That-Treats-People-Right, the True-Blue City.”
God’s right ways will put Zion right again.
God’s right actions will restore her penitents.
But it’s curtains for rebels and God-traitors,
a dead end for those who walk out on God.
“Your dalliances in those oak grove shrines
will leave you looking mighty foolish,
All that fooling around in god and goddess gardens
that you thought was the latest thing.
You’ll end up like an oak tree
with all its leaves falling off,
Like an unwatered garden,
withered and brown.
‘The Big Man’ will turn out to be dead bark and twigs,
and his ‘work,’ the spark that starts the fire
That exposes man and work both
as nothing but cinders and smoke.”
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