The Lord Will Be Gracious

Isaiah 30

¹⁸ Therefore the Lord waits to be gracious to you;
therefore he will rise up to show mercy to you.
For the Lord is a God of justice;
blessed are all those who wait for him.

¹⁹ Truly, O people in Zion, inhabitants of Jerusalem, you shall weep no more. He will surely be gracious to you at the sound of your cry; when he hears it, he will answer you. ²⁰ Though the Lord may give you the bread of adversity and the water of affliction, yet your Teacher will not hide himself any more, but your eyes shall see your Teacher. ²¹ And when you turn to the right or when you turn to the left, your ears shall hear a word behind you, saying, "This is the way; walk in it." ²² Then you will defile your silver-covered idols and your gold-plated images. You will scatter them like filthy rags; you will say to them, "Away with you!"

²³ He will give rain for the seed with which you sow the ground, and grain, the produce of the ground, which will be rich and plenteous. On that day your cattle will graze in broad pastures; ²⁴ and the oxen and donkeys that till the ground will eat silage, which has been winnowed with shovel and fork. ²⁵ On every lofty mountain and every high hill there will be brooks running with water--on a day of the great slaughter, when the towers fall. ²⁶ Moreover the light of the moon will be like the light of the sun, and the light of the sun will be sevenfold, like the light of seven days, on the day when the Lord binds up the injuries of his people, and heals the wounds inflicted by his blow.

²⁷ See, the name of the Lord comes from far away,
burning with his anger, and in thick rising smoke; ₁
his lips are full of indignation,
and his tongue is like a devouring fire;
²⁸ his breath is like an overflowing stream
that reaches up to the neck--
to sift the nations with the sieve of destruction,
and to place on the jaws of the peoples a bridle that leads them astray.

²⁹ You shall have a song as in the night when a holy festival is kept; and gladness of heart, as when one sets out to the sound of the flute to go to the mountain of the Lord, to the Rock of Israel. ³⁰ And the Lord will cause his majestic voice to be heard and the descending blow of his arm to be seen, in furious anger and a flame of devouring fire, with a cloudburst and tempest and hailstones. ³¹ The Assyrian will be terror-stricken at the voice of the Lord, when he strikes with his rod. ³² And every stroke of the staff of punishment that the Lord lays upon him will be to the sound of timbrels and lyres; battling with brandished arm he will fight with him. ³³ For his burning place ₂ has long been prepared; truly it is made ready for the king, ₃ its pyre made deep and wide, with fire and wood in abundance; the breath of the Lord, like a stream of sulfur, kindles it.