A Cornerstone in Zion

Isaiah calls the scoffing rulers of Jerusalem to hear the LORD because they boast that they have made a covenant with death and hidden themselves in falsehood against the coming scourge. God answers by declaring that He has laid in Zion a tested and precious cornerstone, and by announcing that justice and righteousness will sweep away every refuge of lies until their imagined pact with death is dissolved.

T¹⁴herefore hear the word of the LORD, O scoffers ¹⁵For you said, “We have made a covenant with death; ¹⁶So this is what the Lord GOD says: ¹⁷I will make justice the measuring line ¹⁸Your covenant with death will be dissolved,

The overflowing scourge will pass through often enough to turn mere report into terror, and every human arrangement meant to provide comfort will prove too small and too thin, like a short bed and narrow blanket. The LORD will rise for His strange and alien work as He once did in historic acts of judgment, so the mockers are urged to stop scoffing before their bonds become stronger, because a decreed destruction has already gone out over the whole land.

¹⁹As often as it passes through, ²⁰Indeed, the bed is too short to stretch out on, ²¹For the LORD will rise up as at Mount Perazim. ²²So now, do not mock,