¹ Comfort you, comfort you my people, says your God. ² Speak you comfortably to Jerusalem, and cry to her, that her warfare is accomplished, that her iniquity is pardoned: for she has received of the LORD'S hand double for all her sins. ³ The voice of him that cries in the wilderness, Prepare you the way of the LORD, make straight in the desert a highway for our God. ⁴ Every valley will be exalted, and every mountain and hill will be made low: and the crooked will be made straight, and the rough places plain ⁵ And the glory of the LORD will be revealed, and all flesh will see it together: for the mouth of the LORD has spoken [it]. ⁶ The voice said, Cry. And he said, What will I cry ? All flesh is grass, and all the goodliness of it is as the flower of the field ⁷ The grass withers, the flower fades: because the spirit of the LORD blows on it: surely the people is grass. ⁸ The grass withers, the flower fades: but the word of our God will stand forever. ⁹ O Zion, that brings good tidings, go up into the high mountain; O Jerusalem, that brings good tidings, lift up your voice with strength; lift it up, be not afraid; say to the cities of Judah, See your God! ¹⁰ See, the Lord GOD will come with strong hand, and his arm will rule for him: See, his reward is with him, and his work before him. ¹¹ He will feed his flock like a shepherd: he will gather the lambs with his arm, and carry them in his bosom, and will gently lead those that are with young. ¹² Who has measured the waters in the hollow of his hand, and meted out heaven with the span, and comprehended the dust of the earth in a measure, and weighed the mountains in scales, and the hills in a balance? ¹³ Who has directed the Spirit of the LORD, or being his counsellor has taught him? ¹⁴ With who took he counsel, and who instructed him, and taught him in the path of judgment, and taught him knowledge, and showed to him the way of understanding? ¹⁵ See, the nations are as a drop of a bucket, and are counted as the small dust of the balance: See, he takes up the isles as a very little thing. ¹⁶ And Lebanon is not sufficient to burn, nor the beasts of it sufficient for a burnt offering. ¹⁷ All nations before him are as nothing; and they are counted to him less than nothing, and vanity. ¹⁸ To who then will you liken God? or what likeness will you compare to him? ¹⁹ The workman melts a graven image, and the goldsmith spreads it over with gold, and casts silver chains. ²⁰ He that is so impoverished that he has no oblation chooses a tree that will not rot; he seeks to him a cunning workman to prepare a graven image, that will not be moved. ²¹ Have you not known ? have you not heard ? has it not been told you from the beginning? have you not understood from the foundations of the earth? ²² It is he that sits on the circle of the earth, and the inhabitants of it are as grasshoppers; that stretches out the heavens as a curtain, and spreads them out as a tent to dwell in ²³ That brings the princes to nothing he makes the judges of the earth as vanity. ²⁴ Yes, they will not be planted; Yes, they will not be sown: Yes, their stock will not take root in the earth: and he will also blow on them, and they will wither, and the whirlwind will take them away as stubble. ²⁵ To who then will you liken me, or will I be equal ? says the Holy One. ²⁶ Lift up your eyes on high, and see who has created these things, that brings out their host by number: he calls them all by names by the greatness of his might, for that he is strong in power; not one fails. ²⁷ Why say you, O Jacob, and speaks, O Israel, My way is hid from the LORD, and my judgment is passed over from my God? ²⁸ have you not known ? have you not heard, that the everlasting God, the LORD, the Creator of the ends of the earth, faints not, neither is weary ? there is no searching of his understanding. ²⁹ He gives power to the faint and to them that have no might he increases strength. ³⁰ Even the youths will faint and be weary, and the young men will utterly fall ³¹ But those wait on the LORD will renew their strength; they will mount up with wings as eagles; they will run, and not be weary; and they will walk, and not faint.