Isaiah 22

¹The word about the valley of vision. Why have all your people gone up to the house-tops?

²You, who are full of loud voices, a town of outcries, given up to joy; your dead men have not been put to the sword, or come to their death in war.

³All your rulers ... have gone in flight; all your strong ones have gone far away.

⁴For this cause I have said, Let your eyes be turned away from me in my bitter weeping; I will not be comforted for the wasting of the daughter of my people.

⁵For it is a day of trouble and of crushing down and of destruction from the Lord, the Lord of armies, in the valley of vision; ...

⁶And Elam was armed with arrows, and Aram came on horseback; and the breastplate of Kir was uncovered.

⁷And your most fertile valleys were full of war-carriages, and the horsemen took up their positions in front of the town.

⁸He took away the cover of Judah; and in that day you were looking with care at the store of arms in the house of the woods.

⁹And you saw all the broken places in the wall of the town of David: and you got together the waters of the lower pool.

¹⁰And you had the houses of Jerusalem numbered, pulling down the houses to make the wall stronger.

¹¹And you made a place between the two walls for storing the waters of the old pool: but you gave no thought to him who had done this, and were not looking to him by whom it had been purposed long before.

¹²And in that day the Lord, the Lord of armies, was looking for weeping, and cries of sorrow, cutting off of the hair, and putting on the clothing of grief: