Isaiah 65 in plain modern English. New Ground English Translation.
Time Period
Addressed to the era around 520 to 480 BC, the restoration period when the returned community was divided over worship and leadership
Location
Judah and Jerusalem, including the hilltop shrines and burial caves in the surrounding countryside where irregular worship continued
Audience
Judean Jews of the restored community, split between those who kept to the temple worship and those practicing other rites
Situation
God answers the previous chapter's prayer by distinguishing between those who sought him and those who provoked him with forbidden rituals. He announces judgment on the second group and then promises a new heavens and a new earth, with a rebuilt Jerusalem where infants do not die and builders keep what they build.
Key Background
The condemned practices - sitting among graves, spending nights in secret places, and eating pig meat - point to consulting the dead and to food forbidden by the law of Moses, both attractive during hard times because they promised contact with ancestors and access to nearby cults. The named figures Fortune and Destiny were deities of luck honored in the wider region with a spread table and a bowl of mixed wine, a shrine meal that some Judeans evidently kept up alongside temple worship. The closing promises answer specific fears of a subsistence farming society under foreign rule: high infant mortality, houses seized by others, and crops taken as tribute before the grower could eat them.
I let be found by people who weren't even looking for me. I to those who never asked for me. I said, 'Here I am, here I am,' to a that didn't call on my name.
All day long I out my to a people, who walk down a path that leads nowhere good — chasing their own ideas.
A people who constantly me — right to my face — offering sacrifices in and burning incense on of
the spending the night in hidden places, eating with broth from unclean things in their bowls.
who say, 'Keep your distance, don't come near me, because I'm too for you.' These people are in my a fire that burns all day long.
Look — it's in of me: I will not keep silent. I will them I will them in full —
for your and your ancestors' together, says Yahweh — because they on the and mocked me on the hills, I will measure out their full payment first.
This is what Yahweh says: When there's still in the grape cluster, someone says, 'Don't destroy it — there's something good in it.' That's what I'll do for the sake of those who me: I won't destroy everyone.
I will bring descendants from Jacob, and from Judah — people who will inherit my My will possess the land, and those who serve me will live there.
The plain will become pasture for flocks, and the a resting place for herds — for my people who have looked for me.
But you who abandon Yahweh, who forget the that to me, who set a table for and pour out mixed wine for
I will you for the sword, and all of you will kneel down to be slaughtered. Because I called and you didn't answer. I spoke and you didn't listen. You did what I consider wrong and chose what I take no pleasure in.
So this is what the says: Look — those who serve me will eat, but you will go hungry. Those who serve me will drink, but you will go thirsty. Those who serve me will celebrate, but you will be put to shame.
Those who serve me will shout out of a but you will cry out from heartbreak, wailing from a
You will leave behind your as a curse word for my chosen ones. Yahweh, the Lord, will put you to death — but he will give his servants a
So whoever asks for good things in the land will ask by the of and whoever makes a promise in the land will swear by the of Because the old troubles will be forgotten — hidden from my sight.
Because look — I am and a The former things won't be remembered; they won't even cross your mind.
Instead, be glad and celebrate forever in what I am creating. Because look — I am creating as a joy, and her people as a delight.
I will celebrate over Jerusalem and take in my people. The sound of and will never be heard in her again.
Never again will there be an infant who lives only a few days, or an old person who doesn't live out their full years. A person who dies at a hundred will be considered young, and anyone who falls short of a hundred will be considered
They will and in them. They will plant vineyards and eat their fruit.
They won't build for someone else to in. They won't plant for someone else to eat. My people will as as and my will fully enjoy the work of their hands.
They won't work for nothing. They won't have to They are the offspring that Yahweh has — they and their descendants with them.
Before they even call, I will answer. While they are still speaking, I will hear.
The and the will and the lion will eat straw like the ox. And the snake will eat Nothing will cause harm or destruction anywhere on the that to me, says Yahweh.