Isaiah
41* Attend to me in silence, foreign coasts, and let this and that folk take fresh strength. Let them approach, then speak; together let us come up for judgment. 2** Who roused from the east one at whose heels right follows, gives nations to be defeated before him and worsts kings, make their swords like clay and their bows like straw on the wind? 3 He pursues them, passes on safe and sound, does not set foot on a road. 4* Who did it and wrought it, called the cycles from the beginning? I Jehovah am first, and with the last I am the one.
5 Continents saw it and are afraid; the ends of the earth are in panic. They neared and came, 6 helping each other and brother saying to brother “Brace up!” 7* and carpenter encouraged goldsmith, and smooth-hammerer riveter; one declares the gluing “all right” and fastens it with nails, not to totter.
8 But as for you, Israel my servant, Jacob whom I chose, offspring of the Abraham that loved me, 9 whom I fastened on from the ends of the earth and called from its outer horizons, and said to you “You are my servant,” chose you and have not repudiated you: do not be afraid, because I am with you; 10 do not be alarmed, because I am your God; I have been invigorating you, yes, helping you, yes, holding you up with my fair-dealing right hand. 11** Put to shame and humiliated shall be all that are spiteful toward you; those shall come to nothing, shall perish, who are at odds with you. 12 You shall look for them and not find them, the men that match themselves against you; they shall be the same as nobody and nothing, the men that make war on you; 13 for it is I your God Jehovah who hold your right hand, who say to you “Do not be afraid, I help you.”
14* Do not be afraid, worm Jacob, maggot Israel; it is I help you, quoth Jehovah, and the Holy One of Israel is your friend in need. 15* Here I make you a new full-toothed threshing-drag: you shall thresh mountains and pulverize them, and make hills like chaff. 16 You shall winnow them and a wind will carry them off, a tempest will scatter them; but you shall exult in Jehovah, shall boast of the Holy One of Israel.
17* The needy and miserable look for water and there is none; their tongues are dried up with thirst. I am Jehovah who will answer them, Israel’s God who will not abandon them. 18* I will open rivers on rock-scalps and springs in the middles of plains; I will make a wilderness into pools, and an arid country into fountainheads of water. 19* In the wilderness I will put cedar, acacia, and myrtle and wild olive; I will place in the desert cypress, elm, and great savin together; 20 in order that together they may see and know and take notice and realize that Jehovah’s hand has done this and the Holy One of Israel created it.
21 Bring on your case, says Jehovah; bring up your evidence, says the King of Jacob. 22 Let them come up and tell us the things that are to befall! What was the past? tell it, that we may put our minds on it and know its consequences; or let us hear the things that are coming in. 23* Tell the things that are to come after, that we may know that you are gods—yes, will do good and harm—and may all together be alarmed and stand in fear. 24* There, you are pieces of nothing and your performance a zero; all astray is he who chooses you.
25** I roused one from the north and he came from the sunrise to call on my name and to tread down viceroys like clay and like a potter trampling mud. 26 Who told from the first that we might know, and beforehand that we might say “Right!” no, there was no one that told, no one that let us hear; no, there was no one that heard your say. 27* I am the first who give to Sion “There, there they are!” and to Jerusalem a bringer of good news. 28 And I see, and there is not a man, among these no adviser, that I should ask them and they reply; 29* all of them, I find their works a nothing and a zero, their bronzes air and vacuum.