Bereishit

This translation was taken from the JPS Tanakh

Isaiah 42:5-43:10

⁵ Thus said God the Lord,
Who created the heavens and stretched them out,
Who spread out the earth and what it brings forth,
Who gave breath to the people upon it
And life to those who walk thereon:
⁶ I the Lord, in My grace, have summoned you,
And I have grasped you by the hand.
I created you, and appointed you
A covenant people, a light of nations —
⁷ Opening eyes deprived of light,
Rescuing prisoners from confinement,
From the dungeon those who sit in darkness.
⁸ I am the Lord, that is My name;
I will not yield My glory to another,
Nor My renown to idols.
⁹ See, the things once predicted have come,
And now I foretell new things,
Announce to you ere they sprout up.
¹⁰ Sing to the Lord a new song,
His praise from the ends of the earth —
You who sail the sea and you creatures in it,
You coastlands and their inhabitants!
¹¹ Let the desert and its towns cry aloud,
The villages where Kedar dwells;
Let Sela’s inhabitants shout,
Call out from the peaks of the mountains.
¹² Let them do honor to the Lord,
And tell His glory in the coastlands.

¹³ The Lord goes forth like a warrior,
Like a fighter He whips up His rage.
He yells, He roars aloud,
He charges upon His enemies.
¹⁴ “I have kept silent far too long,
Kept still and restrained Myself;
Now I will scream like a woman in labor,
I will pant and I will gasp.
¹⁵ Hills and heights will I scorch,
Cause all their green to wither;
I will turn rivers into isles,
And dry the marshes up.
¹⁶ I will lead the blind
By a road they did not know,
And I will make them walk
By paths they never knew.
I will turn darkness before them to light,
Rough places into level ground.
These are the promises —
I will keep them without fail.
¹⁷ Driven back and utterly shamed
Shall be those who trust in an image,
Those who say to idols,
‘You are our gods!'”

¹⁸ Listen, you who are deaf;
You blind ones, look up and see!
¹⁹ Who is so blind as My servant,
So deaf as the messenger I send?
Who is so blind as the chosen one,
So blind as the servant of the Lord?
²⁰ Seeing many things, he gives no heed;
With ears open, he hears nothing.
²¹ The Lord desires His [servant’s] vindication,
That he may magnify and glorify [His] Teaching.
Sepharadim end here

²² Yet it is a people plundered and despoiled:
All of them are trapped in holes,
Imprisoned in dungeons.
They are given over to plunder, with none to rescue them;
To despoilment, with none to say “Give back!”
²³ If only you would listen to this,
Attend and give heed from now on!
²⁴ Who was it gave Jacob over to despoilment
And Israel to plunderers?
Surely, the Lord against whom they sinned
In whose ways they would not walk
And whose Teaching they would not obey.
²⁵ So He poured out wrath upon them,
His anger and the fury of war.
It blazed upon them all about, but they heeded not;
It burned among them, but they gave it no thought.

Chapter 43

¹ But now thus said the Lord —
Who created you, O Jacob,
Who formed you, O Israel:
Fear not, for I will redeem you;
I have singled you out by name,
You are Mine.
² When you pass through water,
I will be with you;
Through streams,
They shall not overwhelm you.
When you walk through fire,
You shall not be scorched;
Through flame,
It shall not burn you.
³ For I the Lord am your God,
The Holy One of Israel, your Savior.
I give Egypt as a ransom for you,
Ethiopia and Saba in exchange for you.
⁴ Because you are precious to Me,
And honored, and I love you,
I give men in exchange for you
And peoples in your stead.

⁵ Fear not, for I am with you:
I will bring your folk from the East,
Will gather you out of the West;
⁶ I will say to the North, “Give back!”
And to the South, “Do not withhold!
Bring My sons from afar,
And My daughters from the end of the earth —
⁷ All who are linked to My name,
Whom I have created,
Formed, and made for My glory —
⁸ Setting free that people,
Blind though it has eyes
And deaf though it has ears.”

⁹ All the nations assemble as one,
The peoples gather.
Who among them declared this,
Foretold to us the things that have happened?
Let them produce their witnesses and be vindicated,
That men, hearing them, may say, “It is true!”
¹⁰ My witnesses are you

My servant, whom I have chosen.
To the end that you may take thought,
And believe in Me,
And understand that I am He:
Before Me no god was formed,
And after Me none shall exist —

Taken from Tanakh, The Holy Scriptures, (Philadelphia, Jerusalem: Jewish Publication Society) 1985.
Used by permission of The Jewish Publication Society. Copyright © 1962, 1992
Third Edition by the Jewish Publication Society.
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