1 Comfort you*, comfort my people, says your* God.
2 Speak comfortably to Jerusalem and cry to her, that her warfare has been completed, that her iniquity is pardoned, that she has received of Jehovah's hand double for all her sins.
3 The voice of a man crying out in the wilderness, Prepare the way of Jehovah, make straight in the desert a highway for our God.
4 Every valley will be exalted and every mountain and hill will be made low. And the crooked will become straight and the rough places smooth.
5 And the glory of Jehovah will be revealed and all flesh will see it together. For the mouth of Jehovah has spoken it.
6 The voice said, Cry. And he said, What shall I cry? All flesh is grass and all the goodness of it is as the flower of the field.
7 The grass withers, the flower fades, because the breath of Jehovah blows upon it. Surely the people is grass.
8 The grass withers, the flower fades, but the word of our God will stand everlasting.
9 O you who tell good news to Zion, get up on a high mountain. O you who tell good news to Jerusalem, lift up your voice with strength. Lift it up, do not be afraid, say to the cities of Judah, Behold, your* God!
10 Behold, the lord Jehovah will come as a mighty one and his arm will rule for him. Behold, his reward is with him and his recompense before him.
11 He will feed his flock like a shepherd. He will gather the lambs in his arm and carry them in his bosom,
and will gently lead those who have their young.
12 Who has measured the waters in the hollow of his hand and measured out heaven with the span and comprehended the dust of the earth in a measure and weighed the mountains in scales and the hills in a balance?
13 Who has known the mind of Jehovah, or being his counselor has taught him?
14 He took counsel with whom. And who instructed him and taught him in the path of justice. And taught him knowledge and showed to him the way of understanding?
15 Behold, the nations are as a drop of a bucket and are accounted as the small dust of the balance. Behold, he takes up the isles as a very little thing.
16 And Lebanon is not sufficient to burn, nor the beasts of it sufficient for a burnt offering.
17 All the nations are as nothing before him. They are accounted by him as less than nothing and vanity.
18 To whom then will you* liken God? Or what likeness will you* compare to him?
19 The image, a workman has cast
it and the goldsmith overlays it with gold and casts
for it silver chains.
20 He who is too impoverished for
such an oblation chooses a tree that will not rot. He seeks for him a skillful workman to set up a graven image that will not be shaken.
21 Have you* not known? Have yet not heard? Has it not been told you* from the beginning? Have you* not understood from the foundations of the earth?
22 It is he who sits above the circle of the earth and the inhabitants of it are as grasshoppers, who stretches out the heavens as a curtain and spreads them out as a tent to dwell in,
23 who brings rulers to nothing, who makes the judges of the earth as vanity.
24 Yes, they have not been planted. Yes, they have not been sown. Yes, their stock has not taken root in the earth. Moreover he blows upon them and they wither and the whirlwind takes them away as stubble.
25 To whom then will you* liken me, that I should be equal
to him? says the Holy One.
26 Lift up your* eyes on high and see who has created these, who brings out their host by number. He calls them all by name, by the greatness of his might. And because he is strong in power, not one is lacking.
27 Why do you say, O Jacob and speak, O Israel, My way is hid from Jehovah. And the justice
due to me is passed away from my God?
28 Have you not known? Have you not heard? The everlasting God, Jehovah, the Creator of the ends of the earth, faints not, nor is weary. There is no searching of his understanding.
29 He gives power to the faint. And to him who has no might he increases strength.
30 Even the youths will faint and be weary and the young men will utterly fall.
31 But those who wait for Jehovah will renew their strength. They will mount up with pinions like eagles. They will run and not be weary. They will walk and not faint.