Isaiah 22

¹The oracle concerning the valley of vision.

What do you mean that you have gone up,

all of you, to the housetops,

²you who are full of shoutings,

tumultuous city, exultant town?

Your slain are not slain with the sword

or dead in battle.

³All your rulers have fled together,

without the bow they were captured.

All of you who were found were captured,

though they had fled far away.

⁴Therefore I said:

“Look away from me,

let me weep bitter tears;

do not labor to comfort me

for the destruction of the daughter of my people.”

⁵For the Lord God of hosts has a day

of tumult and trampling and confusion

in the valley of vision,

a battering down of walls

and a shouting to the mountains.

⁶And Elam bore the quiver

with chariots and horsemen,

and Kir uncovered the shield.

⁷Your choicest valleys were full of chariots,

and the horsemen took their stand at the gates.

⁸He has taken away the covering of Judah.

In that day you looked to the weapons of the House of the Forest, ⁹and you saw that the breaches of the city of David were many, and you collected the waters of the lower pool, ¹⁰and you counted the houses of Jerusalem, and you broke down the houses to fortify the wall. ¹¹You made a reservoir between the two walls for the water of the old pool. But you did not look to him who did it, or have regard for him who planned it long ago.

¹²In that day the Lord God of hosts

called to weeping and mourning,

to baldness and girding with sackcloth;

¹³and behold, joy and gladness,

slaying oxen and killing sheep,

eating flesh and drinking wine.

“Let us eat and drink,

for tomorrow we die.”

¹⁴The Lord of hosts has revealed himself in my ears:

“Surely this iniquity will not be forgiven you

till you die,”

says the Lord God of hosts.

¹⁵Thus says the Lord God of hosts, “Come, go to this steward, to Shebna, who is over the household, and say to him: ¹⁶What have you to do here and whom have you here, that you have hewn here a tomb for yourself, you who hew a tomb on the height, and carve a habitation for yourself in the rock? ¹⁷Behold, the Lord will hurl you away violently, O you strong man. He will seize firm hold on you, ¹⁸and whirl you round and round, and throw you like a ball into a wide land; there you shall die, and there shall be your splendid chariots, you shame of your master’s house. ¹⁹I will thrust you from your office, and you will be cast down from your station. ²⁰In that day I will call my servant Eliʹakim the son of Hilkiʹah, ²¹and I will clothe him with your robe, and will bind your girdle on him, and will commit your authority to his hand; and he shall be a father to the inhabitants of Jerusalem and to the house of Judah. ²²And I will place on his shoulder the key of the house of David; he shall open, and none shall shut; and he shall shut, and none shall open. ²³And I will fasten him like a peg in a sure place, and he will become a throne of honor to his father’s house. ²⁴And they will hang on him the whole weight of his father’s house, the offspring and issue, every small vessel, from the cups to all the flagons. ²⁵In that day, says the Lord of hosts, the peg that was fastened in a sure place will give way; and it will be cut down and fall, and the burden that was upon it will be cut off, for the Lord has spoken.”