Isaiah 41:1-9 ▼

1 Keep silence before me, islands; and let the peoples renew [their] strength: let them come near; then let them speak: let us draw near together to judgment.

2 Who raised up from the east him whom righteousness calleth to its foot? He gave the nations before him, and caused him to have dominion over kings; he gave them as dust to his sword, as driven stubble to his bow.

3 He pursued them, he passed on in safety, by a way he had never come with his feet.

4 Who hath wrought and done [it], calling the generations from the beginning? I, Jehovah, the first; and with the last, I [am] HE.

5 The isles saw [it], and feared; the ends of the earth trembled: they drew near, and came.

6 They helped every one his neighbour, and [each] said to his brother, Take courage.

7 And the artizan encouraged the founder, he that smootheth [with] the hammer him that smiteth on the anvil, saying of the soldering, It is good; and he fasteneth it with nails, that it be not moved.

8 But thou, Israel, my servant, Jacob, whom I have chosen, the seed of Abraham, my friend

9 -- thou whom I have taken from the ends of the earth, and called from the extremities thereof, and to whom I said, Thou art my servant, I have chosen thee and not rejected thee,