Chapter 40

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

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  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.  

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  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.  

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  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:  

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

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  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.  

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

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

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  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!  

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  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.  

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  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.  

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  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?  

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

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  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?  

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  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.  

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

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

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

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

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  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.  

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  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?  

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  [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;  

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

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  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.  

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

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  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.  

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  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?  

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  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.  

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

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

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  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.  

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