CHAPTER 29

                 ¹Woe, Ariel, Ariel,

                     the city where David camped.

                 Add year upon year,

                     let festivals make their round.

                 ²And I shall cause distress to Ariel,

                     and it shall turn into keening and crying,

                         and it shall be to me as Ariel.

                 ³And I shall camp like David against it,

                     and besiege it with a mound

                         and lay siege-works against it.

                 ⁴And you shall be brought down, from the ground you shall speak,

                     lower than the dust shall your utterance be,

                 and your voice shall be like a ghost from the ground,

                     and from the dust your speaking shall chirp.

                 ⁵And the crowd of your strangers shall be like fine dust

                     and like chaff blowing past the oppressors’ crowd.

                         And it shall happen at once, in a moment,

                 ⁶she shall be singled out by the LORD of Armies

                     in thunder and earthquake and a great sound,

                         tempest and whirlwind and tongues of consuming fire.

                 ⁷And it shall be like a dream, a night-vision—

                     the crowd of all the nations arrayed against Ariel

                 and all her foes and the siege-works against her

                     and those who distressed her.

                 ⁸And it shall be as the hungry man dreams he is eating,

                     and wakes with an empty throat,

                 and as the thirsty man dreams he is drinking

                     and wakes and is faint and his throat is parched,

                 so the crowd of all the nations shall be,

                     arrayed against Mount Zion.

                 ⁹Be dumbfounded, yes, dumbfounded,

                     be blinded, yes, be blinded.

                 They are drunk and not from wine,

                     stagger, and not from strong drink.

                 ¹⁰For the LORD has poured over you

                     a spirit of deep slumber,

                 and closed your eyes—the prophets,

                     and covered your heads—the seers.

¹¹And the vision of all things shall become to you like the words of a sealed book that is given to one who can read, saying, “Pray, read this,” and he says, “I cannot, for it is sealed,” ¹²and the book is given to one who cannot read, saying, “Pray, read this,” and he says, “I cannot read.”

                 ¹³And the Master said,

                 Inasmuch as this people approached with its mouth

                     and with its lips honored Me

                         but kept its heart far from Me,

                 and their reverence for Me

                     was a commandment of men learned by rote,

                 ¹⁴therefore will I continue

                     to strike this people with wonder upon wonder,

                 and the wisdom of its wise men shall vanish

                     and the discernment of its discerners disappear.

                 ¹⁵Woe to those who burrow deep from the LORD

                     to hide their counsel,

                 and their deeds are done in darkness,

                     and they say, “Who sees us, who knows of us?”

                 ¹⁶You are perverse!

                     Should the potter be reckoned as his clay,

                         should the thing he made say of its maker, “He did not make me,”

                             and the thing fashioned say of its fashioner, “He has no skill”?

                 ¹⁷Surely in just a while,

                     Lebanon shall turn back into farmland

                         and the farmland be reckoned as forest.

                 ¹⁸And the deaf on that day shall hear the book’s words,

                     and from darkness and gloom the eyes of the blind shall see.

                 ¹⁹Once more shall the lowly have joy in the LORD,

                     and the needy exult in Israel’s Holy One.

                 ²⁰For the oppressor shall vanish,

                     the mocker shall cease,

                         and all those devoted to crime be cut off.

                 ²¹Who led people to offend through a word,

                     ensnared the arbiter in the gate,

                         perverted the innocent man’s cause with lies.

                 ²²Therefore thus said the LORD Who redeemed Abraham to the house of Jacob:

                 Not now shall Jacob be shamed,

                     and not now shall his face turn pale.

                 ²³For when he sees his children,

                     My handiwork, in his midst,

                 they shall hallow My name

                     and hallow Jacob’s Holy One,

                         and the God of Israel they shall hold in awe.

                 ²⁴And those whose spirit strayed shall know discernment,

                     and the grumblers shall learn their lesson.