First Reading Isaiah 37:21-35 © Then Isaiah son of Amoz sent to Hezekiah. ‘This’ he said ‘is what the Lord, the God of Israel, says in answer to the prayer you have addressed to me about Sennacherib king of Assyria. Here is the oracle that the Lord has pronounced against him: “She despises you, she scorns you, the virgin, daughter of Zion; she tosses her head behind you, the daughter of Jerusalem. Whom have you insulted, whom did you blaspheme? Against whom raised your voice and lifted your insolent eyes? Against the Holy One of Israel. Through your minions you have insulted the Lord; you have said: With my many chariots I have climbed the tops of mountains, the utmost peaks of Lebanon. I have felled its tall forest of cedars, its finest cypresses. I have reached its furthest recesses, its forest garden. Yes I have dug wells and drunk of alien waters; I have put down my feet, and have dried up all the rivers of Egypt. “Do you hear? Long ago I planned for it, from days of old I designed it, now I carry it out. Your part was to bring down in heaps of ruins fortified cities. Their inhabitants, hands feeble, dismayed, discomfited, were like plants of the field, like tender grass, like grass of housetop and meadow, under the east wind. I know whenever you rise and whenever you sit, your going out, your coming in. Because you have raved against me and your insolence has come to my ears, I will put my ring through your nostrils, my bit between your lips, to make you return by the road on which you came. “This shall be the sign for you: This year will be eaten the self-sown grain, next year what sprouts in the fallow, but in the third year sow and reap, plant vineyards and eat their fruit. The surviving remnant of the House of Judah shall bring forth new roots below and fruits above. For a remnant shall go out from Jerusalem, and survivors from Mount Zion. The jealous love of the Lord of Hosts will accomplish this. ‘This, then, is what the Lord says about the king of Assyria: “He will not enter this city, he will let fly no arrow against it, confront it with no shield, throw up no earthwork against it. By the road that he came on he will return; he shall not enter this city. It is the Lord who speaks. I will protect this city and save it for my own sake and for the sake of my servant David.”’ Responsory The Lord has comforted his people: he has redeemed Jerusalem, and all the ends of the earth shall see the salvation of our God. The Lord has bared his holy arm before the eyes of all the nations, and all the ends of the earth shall see the salvation of our God.
Posted on: Sat, 23 Aug 2014 11:57:14 +0000
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