In my ears the Lord of hosts said, “Be assured that many houses will become desolate,
Even great and beautiful ones will be unoccupied.

In the year of King Uzziah's death I saw the Lord seated in his place, high and lifted up, and the Temple was full of the wide skirts of his robe.

During the reign of Jotham's son Ahaz, Uzziah's grandson, king of Judah, King Rezin of Aram and Remaliah's son Pekah, king of Israel, approached Jerusalem and waged war against it, but they could not mount an attack against it.

Bind up the testimony, seal the law and the teaching among my (Isaiah’s) disciples.

A remnant will return, a remnant of Jacob, to the mighty God.

Therefore [continues Isaiah] my loins are filled with anguish;
Pains have seized me like the pains of a woman in childbirth;
I am so bent and bewildered that I cannot hear, I am so terrified that I cannot see.

Listen and hear my voice;
Listen carefully and hear my words.

Rise up, you women who are carefree,
And hear my voice,
You confident and unsuspecting daughters!
Listen to what I am saying.

He who is too impoverished for such an offering [to give to his god]
Chooses a tree that will not rot;
He seeks out for himself a skillful craftsman
To [carve and] set up an idol that will not totter.

Let them approach and ask us, "What will happen? As to the former things, what were they? Tell us, so that we may consider them and know. Or the latter things or the things to come let us hear.

Who is blind but My servant,
Or so deaf as My messenger whom I send?
Who is so blind as he that is at peace with Me,
Or so blind as the servant of the Lord?

Yet the children born during your time of bereavement will say within your hearing, 'This place is too cramped for us, make room for us so we can live here.'

After oppression and judgment He was taken away;
And as for His generation [His contemporaries], who [among them] concerned himself with the fact
That He was cut off from the land of the living [by His death]
For the transgression of my people, to whom the stroke [of death] was due?

Happy is the man who does this, and the son of man whose behaviour is so ordered; who keeps the Sabbath holy, and his hand from doing any evil.

And this is the cause that equity is so far from us, and that righteousness cometh not nigh us. We look for light, lo, it is darkness; for the morning shine, see, we walk in the dark.

What is he, this that cometh from Edom, with stained red clothes of Bozrah, which is so costly cloth, and cometh in so nimbly with all his strength? "I am he that teacheth righteousness, and am of power to help."

In view of these things, wilt thou restrain thyself. O Yahweh? Wilt thou hold thy peace and humble us so very greatly?