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Isaiah 16
Send the lambs for the ruler of the land from Sela to the wilderness, to the mount of the daughter of Zion. 2 For it shall be that, as wandering birds, as a scattered nest, so shall the daughters of Moab be at the fords of the Arnon. 3 Give counsel, execute justice; make your shade as the night in the mist of the day; hide the outcasts; betray not the fugitive. 4 Let my outcasts dwell with you; as for Moab, be a covert to him from the face of the destroyer. For the extortioner is brought to nothing, destruction ceases, the oppressors are consumed out of the land. 5 And a throne shall be established in lovingkindness; and one shall sit on it in truth, in the tent of David, judging, and seeking justice, and swift to do righteousness.
6 We have heard of the pride of Moab, that he is very proud; even of his arrogancy, and his pride, and his wrath; his boastings are nothing. 7 Therefore shall Moab wail for Moab, every one shall wail: for the raisin cakes of Kir-hareseth shall you mourn, utterly stricken. 8 For the fields of Heshbon languish, and the vine of Sibmah; the rulers of the nations have broken down the choice branches of it, which reached even to Jazer, which wandered into the wilderness; its shoots were spread abroad, they passed over the sea. 9 Therefore I will weep with the weeping of Jazer for the vine of Sibmah; I will water you with my tears, O Heshbon, and Elealeh: for upon your summer fruits and upon your harvest the battle shout has fallen. 10 And gladness has been taken away, and joy out of the fruitful field; and in the vineyards there shall be no singing, neither joyful noise: no treader shall tread out wine in the presses; I have made the vintage shout to cease. 11 Therefore my heart sounds like a harp for Moab, and my inward parts for Kir-heres. 12 And it shall come to pass, when Moab presents himself, when he wearies himself upon the high place, and shall come to his sanctuary to pray, that he shall not prevail.
13 This is the word that Yahweh spoke concerning Moab in time past. 14 But now Yahweh has spoken, saying, Within three years, as the years of a hireling, the glory of Moab shall be brought into contempt, with all his great multitude; and the remnant shall be very small and of no account.
Isaiah 17
The burden of Damascus. Behold, Damascus is taken away from being a city, and it shall be a ruined heap. 2 The cities of Aroer are forsaken; they shall be for flocks, which shall he down, and none shall make them afraid. 3 And the fortress shall cease from Ephraim, and the kingdom from Damascus, and the remnant of Syria; they shall be as the glory of the children of Israel, says Yahweh of hosts.
4 And it shall come to pass in that day, that the glory of Jacob shall be made thin, and the fatness of his flesh shall grow lean. 5 And it shall be as when the harvestman gathers the standing grain, and his arm reaps the ears; yes, it shall be as when one gleans ears in the valley of Rephaim. 6 Yet there shall be left in it gleanings, as the shaking of an olive tree, two or three berries in the top of the uppermost bough, four or five in the topmost branches of a fruitful tree, says Yahweh, the Elohim of Israel. 7 In that day shall men look to their Maker, and their eyes shall have respect to the Holy One of Israel. 8 And they shall not look to the altars, the work of their hands; neither shall they have respect to that which their fingers have made, either the Asherim, or the sun-images. 9 In that day shall their strong cities be as the forsaken places in the wood and on the mountain top, which were forsaken from before the children of Israel; and it shall be a desolation. 10 For you have forgotten the Elohim of your salvation, and have not been mindful of the rock of your strength; therefore you plant pleasant plants, and set it with strange slips: 11 in the day of your planting you hedge it in, and in the morning you make your seed to blossom; but the harvest flees away in the day of grief and of desperate sorrow.
12 Ah, the uproar of many peoples, that roar like the roaring of the seas; and the rushing of nations, that rush like the rushing of mighty waters! 13 The nations shall rush like the rushing of many waters: but he shall rebuke them, and they shall flee far off, and shall be chased as the chaff of the mountains before the wind, and like the whirling dust before the storm. 14 At evening behold, terror; and before the morning they are not. This is the portion of them that plunder us, and the lot of them that rob us.
Isaiah 18
Ah, the land of the rustling of wings, which is beyond the rivers Of Ethiopia; 2 that sends ambassadors by the sea, even in vessels of papyrus upon the waters, saying, Go, you swift messengers, to a nation tall and smooth, to a people terrible from their beginning onward, a nation that measures out and treads down, whose land the rivers divide! 3 All you inhabitants of the world, and you dwellers on the earth, when an ensign is lifted up on the mountains, see; and when the trumpet is blown, hear.
4 For thus has Yahweh said to me, I will be still, and I will behold in my dwelling place, like clear heat in sunshine, like a cloud of dew in the heat of harvest. 5 For before the harvest, when the blossom is over, and the flower becomes a ripening grape, he will cut off the sprigs with pruning-hooks, and the spreading branches will he take away and cut down. 6 They shall be left together to the ravenous birds of the mountains, and to the beasts of the earth; and the ravenous birds shall summer upon them, and all the beasts of the earth shall winter upon them. 7 In that time shall a present be brought to Yahweh of hosts from a people tall and smooth, even from a people terrible from their beginning onward, a nation that measures out and treads down, whose land the rivers divide, to the place of the name of Yahweh of hosts, the mount Zion.
