Chapter 40

 Comfort you, comfort you my people, says your God. 

 Speak comfortably to Jerusalem; and cry to her, that her warfare is accomplished, that her iniquity is pardoned, that she has received of Yahweh's hand double for all her sins. 

 The voice of one who cries, Prepare you in the wilderness the way of Yahweh; make level in the desert a highway for our God. 

 Every valley shall be exalted, and every mountain and hill shall be made low; and the uneven shall be made level, and the rough places a plain: 

 and the glory of Yahweh shall be revealed, and all flesh shall see it together; for the mouth of Yahweh has spoken it. 

 The voice of one saying, Cry. One said, What shall I cry? All flesh is grass, and all the glory of it is as the flower of the field. 

 The grass withers, the flower fades, because the breath of Yahweh blows on it; surely the people is grass. 

 The grass withers, the flower fades; but the word of our God shall stand forever. 

 You who tell good news to Zion, get you up on a high mountain; you who tell good news to Jerusalem, lift up your voice with strength; lift it up, don't be afraid; say to the cities of Judah, Behold, your God! 

 Behold, the Lord Yahweh will come as a mighty one, and his arm will rule for him: Behold, his reward is with him, and his recompense before him. 

 He will feed his flock like a shepherd, he will gather the lambs in his arm, and carry them in his bosom, [and] will gently lead those who have their young. 

 Who has measured the waters in the hollow of his hand, and meted out the sky 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? 

 Who has directed the Spirit of Yahweh, or being his counselor has taught him? 

 With whom took he counsel, and who instructed him, and taught him in the path of justice, and taught him knowledge, and showed to him the way of understanding? 

 Behold, the nations are as a drop of a bucket, and are accounted as the small dust of the balance: Behold, he takes up the isles as a very little thing. 

 Lebanon is not sufficient to burn, nor the animals of it sufficient for a burnt offering. 

 All the nations are as nothing before him; they are accounted by him as less than nothing, and vanity. 

 To whom then will you liken God? or what likeness will you compare to him? 

 The image, a workman has cast [it], and the goldsmith overlays it with gold, and casts [for it] silver chains. 

 He who is too impoverished for [such] an offering chooses a tree that will not rot; he seeks to him a skillful workman to set up an engraved image, that shall not be moved. 

 Have you not known? have yet not heard? has it not been told you from the beginning? have you not understood from the foundations of the earth? 

 [It is] he who sits above the circle of the earth, and the inhabitants of it are as grasshoppers; who stretches out the heavens as a curtain, and spreads them out as a tent to dwell in; 

 who brings princes to nothing; who makes the judges of the earth as vanity. 

 Yes, they have not been planted; yes, they have not been sown; yes, their stock has not taken root in the earth: moreover he blows on them, and they wither, and the whirlwind takes them away as stubble. 

 To whom then will you liken me, that I should be equal [to him]? says the Holy One. 

 Lift up your eyes on high, and see who has created these, who brings out their host by number; he calls them all by name; by the greatness of his might, and because he is strong in power, not one is lacking. 

 Why say you, Jacob, and speak, Israel, My way is hid from Yahweh, and the justice [due] to me is passed away from my God? 

 Have you not known? have you not heard? The everlasting God, Yahweh, the Creator of the ends of the earth, doesn't faint, neither is weary; there is no searching of his understanding. 

 He gives power to the faint; and to him who has no might he increases strength. 

 Even the youths shall faint and be weary, and the young men shall utterly fall: 

 but those who wait for Yahweh shall renew their strength; they shall mount up with wings as eagles; they shall run, and not be weary; they shall walk, and not faint.