Isaiah 21

¹ LOAD OF THE WILDERNESSES As sweeping whirlwinds in the south rim pass on, from the wilderness coming, from a fearful land, ² a hard vision is told to me; the treacherous one is treacherous, and the devastator is devastating. Against me is Elam! And against me the agents of Media are coming! Now all sighing through it I cause to cease. ³ Therefore my waist is full with sore travail, and throes hold me as the throes of a bearing woman. I am depraved from hearing, flustered from seeing it. ⁴ My heart has strayed; shuddering frightens me. The soul to which I am attached brings me into trembling. ⁵ Arrange the table! Watch, yea, watch! Eat! Drink! Rise, chiefs! Anoint the shield! ⁶ For thus says my Lord to me, "Go! Install the watchman. What he shall see, he shall tell. ⁷ For he may see a chariot, a pair of men, horsemen, a rider on an ass, a rider on a camel." And he attends attentively with much attention. ⁸ And he is calling, "I am seeing on the watch, my lord! I am standing continually by day, and I am stationed on my charge all the nights. ⁹ And behold this! Coming is a chariot with men, a pair of horsemen! And he is responding and saying, `Fallen! Fallen is Babylon! And all the carvings and her forbidden idols are broken to the earth.'" ¹⁰ My threshed people! And the son of my threshing site! What I hear from Yahweh of hosts, the Elohim of Israel, I tell to you. ¹¹ LOAD OF DUME For me is a call from the gate, "Guard! What of the night? Guard! What of the night, guard of the rampart?" ¹² Says the guard, "The morning has arrived, and, moreover, the night. If you are petitioning, petition, and return with me." ¹³ LOAD IN ARABIA In the wildwood, in Arabia, you are lodging, caravans of Dedanites. ¹⁴ Arrive with water to meet the thirsty, dwellers of the land of Tema. Forestall the wanderer with bread for him. ¹⁵ For from the presence of the swords they wander, from the presence of the sword let go, and from the presence of the bended bow, and from the presence of the heaviness of war. ¹⁶ For thus says my Lord Yahweh to me, "In three years further, as the years of a hireling, vanished will be all the glory of the sons of Kedar, ¹⁷ and the remaining number of bowmen, masters of the sons of Kedar, shall be few, for Yahweh, the Elohim of Israel, speaks."