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CHAPTER 40
BE comforted, be comforted, my people, said your God.
2 Speak ye to the heart of Jerusalem, and call to her: for her evil is come to an end, her iniquity is forgiven: she has received of the hand of the Lord double for all her sins.
3 The voice of one crying in the desert: Prepare ye the way of the Lord, make straight in the wilderness the paths of our God.
4 Every valley shall be exalted, and every mountain and hill shall be made low, and the crooked shall become straight, and the rough ways plain.
5 And the glory of the Lord shall be revealed, and all flesh together shall see, that the mouth of the Lord has spoken.
6 The voice of one, saying: Cry. And I said: What shall I cry? All flesh is grass, and all the glory thereof as the flower of the held.
7 The grass is withered, and the dower is fallen, because the spirit of the Lord has blown upon it. Indeed the people is grass:
8 The grass is withered, and the flower is fallen: but the word of our Lord endures for ever.
9 Get you up upon a high mountain, you that bring good tidings to Sion: lift up your voice with strength, you that bring good tidings to Jerusalem: lift it up, fear not. Say to the cities of Juda: Behold your God:
10 Behold the Lord God shall come with strength, and his arm shall rule: Behold his reward is with him and his work is before him.
11 He shall feed his flock like a shepherd: he shall gather together the lambs with his arm, and shall take them up in his bosom, and he himself shall carry them that are with young.
12 Who has measured the waters in the hollow of his hand, and weighed the heavens with his palm? who has poised with three fingers the bulk of the earth, and weighed the mountains in scales, and the hills in a balance?
13 Who has forwarded the spirit of the Lord? or who has been his counsellor, and has taught him?
14 With whom has he consulted, and who has instructed him, and taught him the path of justice, and taught him knowledge, and shewed him the way of understanding?
15 Behold the Gentiles are as a drop of a bucket, and are counted as the smallest grain of a balance: behold the islands are as a little dust.
16 And Libanus shall not be enough to burn, nor the beasts thereof sufficient for a burnt offering.
17 All nations are before him as if they had no being at all, and are counted to him as nothing, and vanity.
18 To whom then have you likened God? or what image will you make for him?
19 has the workman cast a graven statue? or has the goldsmith formed it with gold, or the silversmith with plates of silver?
20 He has chosen strong wood, and that will not rot: the skilful workman seeks how he may set up an idol that may not be moved.
21 Do you not know? has it not been heard? has it not been told you from the beginning? have you not understood the foundations of the earth ?
22 It is he that sits upon the globe of the earth, and the inhabitants thereof are as locusts: he that stretches out the heavens as nothing, and spreads them out as a tent to dwell in.
23 He that brings the searchers of secrets to nothing, that has made the judges of the earth as vanity.
24 And surely their stock was neither planted, nor sown, nor rooted in the earth: suddenly he has blown upon them, and they are withered, and a whirlwind shall take them away as stubble.
25 And to whom have ye likened me, or made me equal, said the Holy One?
26 Lift up your eyes on high, and see who has created these things: who brings out their host by number, and calls them all by their names: by the greatness of his might, and strength, and power, not one of them was missing.
27 Why say you, O Jacob, and speak, O Israel: My way is hid from the Lord, and my judgment is passed over from my God?
28 know you not, or have you not heard? the Lord is the everlasting God, who has created the ends of the earth: he shall not faint, nor labour, neither is there any searching out of his wisdom.
29 It is he that gives strength to the weary, and increases force and might to them that are not.
30 Youths shall faint, and labour, and young men shall fall by infirmity.
31 But they that hope in the Lord shall renew their strength, they shall take wings as eagles, they shall run and not be weary, they shall walk and not faint.