 1 Listen to me, pursuers of righteousness, seekers of the Lord. Look to the rock from which you were cut and to the hole of the pit from which you were dug. 2 Look to Abraham your father and to Sarah who bore you. For I alone called him and blessed him and increased him. 3 The Lord will comfort Zion. He will comfort all her waste places. He will make her wilderness like Eden and her desert like the garden of the Lord. Joy and gladness will be found in it, thanksgiving and the voice of melody. 4 Listen to me, my people. Give ear to me, my nation. For a law will go out from me and I will make my judgment to rest for a light of people. 5 My righteousness is near. My salvation has gone out and my arms will judge people. The coast lands will wait on me and on my arm they will trust. 6 Lift up your eyes to the heavens and look at the earth beneath. For the heavens will vanish away like smoke and the earth will become old like a garment. Its inhabitants will die in the same way. But my salvation will be forever. My righteousness will not be broken. 7 Listen to me you who know righteousness. The people in whose heart is my law do not fear the reproach of men. Do not be afraid of their revelings. 8 For the moth will eat them up like a garment and the worm will eat them like wool. But my righteousness will be forever and my salvation from generation to generation. 9 Awake. Awake. Put on strength, O arm of the Lord. Awake as in the days of old, in the generations of old. Was it not you who cut Rahab into pieces, piercing the sea monster? 10 Was it not you who dried up the sea, the waters of the great deep and made the depths of the sea a way for the ransomed to pass over? 11 Therefore the redeemed of the Lord will return and come with singing into Zion. Everlasting joy will be on their head. Gladness and joy will overtake them. Sorrow and mourning will flee away. 12 I, I, am the one who comforts you. Who are you that you should fear a man who will die, or from the son of man? He will be made like grass? 13 You forget the Lord your maker who has stretched out the heavens and laid the foundations of the earth. You dread continually every day, because of the fury of the oppressor as if he were ready to destroy. But where is the fury of the oppressor? 14 Bowed, he hurries to be freed, and not that he should die in the pit, nor that he lack his bread. 15 But I am the Lord your God who divided the sea and its waves roared. The Lord of hosts is His name. 16 I have put my words in your mouth and I have covered you in the shadow of my hand so that I may plant the heavens and lay the foundations of the earth and say to Zion, You are my people. 17 Awake. Awake. Rise up, O Jerusalem. You drank the cup of His fury from the hand of the Lord. You have drunk the cup of reeling to the dregs and wrung them out. 18 No guide is for her among all the sons she has borne. None of all the sons that she made to grow take her by the hand. 19 These two things have come to you. Who will be sorry for you? Desolation, and ruin and the famine and the sword. By whom shall I comfort you? 20 Your sons have fainted. They lie at the head of all the street like a wild antelope in a net, filled with the fury of the Lord, the rebuke of your God. 21 So hear this, afflicted one and drunken, but not with wine. 22 Thus says your Lord God, your God who strives for His people. Behold. I have taken the cup of reeling from your hand. Even the dregs of the cup of my fury. You will never drink it again. 23 But I will put it into the hand of those who afflict you, who have said to your soul, Bow down so that we may cross and put your back as the ground, even as the street to those who cross.
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