The scoffers of Jerusalem threatened

Isaiah’s solemn warning to the drunken priests and prophets

7 But here also men reel with wine

and stagger under drink;

yea, with drink reel prophet and priest,

with wine they are utterly dazed.

They reel in the hour of vision,

they totter in giving of judgment;

8 all tables are full of vomit,

and filth is everywhere.

9 ‘To whom does he mean to teach knowledge,

and impart his revelation?

To children weaned from the milk,

to babes just drawn from the breast –

10 with his law upon law, law upon law,

saw upon saw, saw upon saw,

here a little and there a little?’

11 (Well! Thus I answer your mocking.)

Through barbarous lips and a foreign tongue

will (the Lord now) speak to this people.

12 For once had his message to you been this:

‘The true rest in this – let the weary enjoy it:

and this is repose.’ But you turned a deaf ear.

13 So on this wise the Lord will speak to you now:

‘Law upon law, law upon law,

saw upon saw, saw upon saw,

here a little, and there a little’ –

to the end that you trip on your way and fall backward,

shattered and snared and taken.

The folly of the Egyptian alliance

14 Hear therefore the word of the Lord, you scoffers,

who rule this folk in Jerusalem.

15 Because you have said, ‘We are leagued with death,

and with Sheol we are compact;

so the flood, though it passes in whelming torrents,

will never reach unto us;

for a lie we have made our refuge,

we have sheltered ourselves behind falsehood.’

16 Therefore thus says the Lord the Lord,

behold! I am laying in Zion a stone,

a tried and precious foundation stone,

and he who believes will not give way.

17 And I will make justice the measuring-line,

and righteousness the plummet.

Then the refuge of lies will swept by hail,

and the shelter deluged by water.

18 Your league with death will be clean disannulled,

and your compact with Sheol will no wise stand.

When the flood swept on, it will trample you down;

each time that it passes, ’twill bear you away.

19 It will pass every morning – by day and by night –

and the word, grasped at last, will bring nothing but terror.

20 For the bed is too short for a man to stretch out in,

the cover too narrow to wrap himself round.

21 For the Lord will rise as he rose on Mount Perazim,

blazing with wrath as in Gibeon’s vale,

to perform his task – that task so strange,

to accomplish his work – that work so.

22 Now scoff you no more, lest your bands become tighter;

for this have I heard from the Lord of Hosts –

a decree of destruction o’er all the earth.