Isaiah 29:1-14

Woe to David’s City 1Woe to you, Ariel, Ariel, the city where David settled! Add year to year and let your cycle of festivals go on.

2Yet I will besiege Ariel; she will mourn and lament, she will be to me like an altar hearth. The Hebrew for altar hearth sounds like the Hebrew for Ariel.

3I will encamp against you on all sides; I will encircle you with towers and set up my siege works against you.

4Brought low, you will speak from the ground; your speech will mumble out of the dust. Your voice will come ghostlike from the earth; out of the dust your speech will whisper.

5But your many enemies will become like fine dust, the ruthless hordes like blown chaff. Suddenly, in an instant,

6the LORD Almighty will come with thunder and earthquake and great noise, with windstorm and tempest and flames of a devouring fire.

7Then the hordes of all the nations that fight against Ariel, that attack her and her fortress and besiege her, will be as it is with a dream, with a vision in the night—

8as when a hungry person dreams of eating, but awakens hungry still; as when a thirsty person dreams of drinking, but awakens faint and thirsty still. So will it be with the hordes of all the nations that fight against Mount Zion.

9Be stunned and amazed, blind yourselves and be sightless; be drunk, but not from wine, stagger, but not from beer.

10The LORD has brought over you a deep sleep: He has sealed your eyes (the prophets); he has covered your heads (the seers). 11For you this whole vision is nothing but words sealed in a scroll. And if you give the scroll to someone who can read, and say, “Read this, please,” they will answer, “I can’t; it is sealed.”

12Or if you give the scroll to someone who cannot read, and say, “Read this, please,” they will answer, “I don’t know how to read.”

13The Lord says: “These people come near to me with their mouth and honor me with their lips, but their hearts are far from me. Their worship of me is based on merely human rules they have been taught. Hebrew; Septuagint They worship me in vain; / their teachings are merely human rules

14Therefore once more I will astound these people with wonder upon wonder; the wisdom of the wise will perish, the intelligence of the intelligent will vanish.”