¹Comfort, comfort my people, says your God.

²Speak to the heart of Jerusalem and proclaim to her that her service is completed, that her guilt has been paid off, that she has received from the hand of Yahweh double for all her sins.

³A voice is calling: "In the wilderness clear the way of Yahweh; make straight in the desert plain a highway for our God."

⁴Every valley will be lifted up, and every mountain and hill will be brought low; the crooked will become level ground, and the rough places a plain.

⁵And the weightiness of Yahweh will be revealed, and all flesh will see it together, for the mouth of Yahweh has spoken.

⁶A voice is saying, "Proclaim!" And he said, "What shall I proclaim?" All flesh is grass, and all its loyal love is like the flower of the field.

⁷Grass dries up, a flower withers, for the breath of Yahweh blows on it. Truly the people are grass.

⁸Grass dries up, a flower withers, but the word of our God will stand forever.

⁹Go up on a high mountain for yourself, bearer of tidings, Zion; lift up your voice with strength, bearer of tidings, Jerusalem; lift it up, do not be afraid. Say to the cities of Judah, "Behold your God!"

¹⁰Behold, the Adonai Yahweh comes as a strong one, and his arm is ruling for him; behold, his reward is with him, and his recompense is before him.

¹¹Like a shepherd he tends his flock; he gathers the lambs in his arm and carries them in his bosom; he gently leads those that give suck.

¹²Who has measured the waters in the hollow of his hand, and meted out the skies with a span, and contained the dust of the land in a three-fold measure, and weighed the mountains in a balance and the hills in scales?

¹³Who has measured out the breath of Yahweh, or, as the man of his counsel, made him know?

¹⁴With whom did he take counsel, that he gave him understanding and taught him in the path of justice, and taught him knowledge, and made him know the way of understanding?

¹⁵Behold, the nations are like a drop from a bucket, and are regarded as dust on the scales; behold, he lifts the coastlands like fine dust.

¹⁶Lebanon is not enough to burn, and its living things are not enough for a burnt offering.

¹⁷All the nations are as nothing before him; they are reckoned by him as less than nothing and emptiness.

¹⁸To whom, then, will you liken God? And what likeness will you arrange for him?

¹⁹The idol: a craftsman casts it, and a smelter overlays it with gold and smelts chains of silver.

²⁰The one too impoverished for a contribution chooses wood that will not rot; he seeks for himself a skilled craftsman to set up an idol that will not be shaken.

²¹Do you not know? Do you not hear? Has it not been told you from the beginning? Have you not understood the foundations of the land?

²²He is the one who sits above the circle of the land, and its inhabitants are like grasshoppers; who stretches out the skies like a curtain and spreads them out like a tent to dwell in.

²³He sets rulers at nothing, and makes the judges of the land like emptiness.

²⁴Hardly are they planted, hardly are they sown, hardly has their stump taken root in the ground; yet he blows on them and they dry up, and a tempest carries them off like chaff.

²⁵To whom, then, will you liken me, that I should be equal? says the Holy One.

²⁶Lift up your eyes on high and see: who created these? The one who brings out their host by number calls all of them by name; because of the greatness of his vigor and strength, he being mighty, not one is missing.

²⁷Why do you say, O Jacob, and declare, O Israel, "My way is hidden from Yahweh, and my justice passes away from my God"?

²⁸Do you not know? Or have you not heard? Yahweh is the God of forever, the one who created the ends of the land; he does not grow weary and does not toil; there is no searching of his understanding.

²⁹He gives strength to the weary, and to those with no vigor he increases might.

³⁰Youths grow weary and become weary, and young men stumble and stumble indeed.

³¹But those who wait for Yahweh will renew strength; they will go up on wings like eagles; they will run and not toil, they will walk and not grow weary.