Isaiah 21 ⓘ
21:1 The burden of the wilderness of the sea. As whirlwinds in the South sweep through, it comes from the wilderness, from an awesome land.
21:2 A grievous vision is declared to me. The treacherous man deals treacherously, and the destroyer destroys. Go up, Elam; attack! I have stopped all of Media’s sighing.
21:3 Therefore my thighs are filled with anguish. Pains have seized me, like the pains of a woman in labour. I am in so much pain that I can’t hear. I am so dismayed that I can’t see.
21:4 My heart flutters. Horror has frightened me. The twilight that I desired has been turned into trembling for me.
21:5 They prepare the table. They set the watch. They eat. They drink. Rise up, you princes, oil the shield!
21:6 For the Lord said to me, “Go, set a watchman. Let him declare what he sees.
21:7 When he sees a troop, horsemen in pairs, a troop of donkeys, a troop of camels, he shall listen diligently with great attentiveness.”
21:8 He cried like a lion: “Lord, I stand continually on the watchtower in the daytime, and every night I stay at my post.
21:9 Behold, here comes a troop of men, horsemen in pairs.” He answered, “Fallen, fallen is Babylon; and all the engraved images of her gods are broken to the ground.
21:10 You are my threshing, and the grain of my floor!” That which I have heard from the LORD of Armies, the God of Israel, I have declared to you.
21:11 The burden of Dumah. One calls to me out of Seir, “Watchman, what of the night? Watchman, what of the night?”
21:12 The watchman said, “The morning comes, and also the night. If you will enquire, enquire. Come back again.”
21:13 The burden on Arabia. You will lodge in the thickets in Arabia, you caravans of Dedanites.
21:14 They brought water to him who was thirsty. The inhabitants of the land of Tema met the fugitives with their bread.
21:15 For they fled away from the swords, from the drawn sword, from the bent bow, and from the heat of battle.
21:16 For the Lord said to me, “Within a year, as a worker bound by contract would count it, all the glory of Kedar will fail,
21:17 and the residue of the number of the archers, the mighty men of the children of Kedar, will be few; for the LORD, the God of Israel, has spoken it.”