15. I will lay waste the mountains and hills and dry up all their herbage; I will turn the rivers into islands, and I will dry up the pools.
16. And I will bring the blind by a way that they know not; I will lead them in paths that they have not known. I will make darkness into light before them and make uneven places into a plain. These things I have determined to do [for them]; and I will not leave them forsaken.
17. They shall be turned back, they shall be utterly put to shame, who trust in graven images, who say to molten images, You are our gods.
18. Hear, you deaf! And look, you blind, that you may see!
19. Who is blind but My servant [Israel]? Or deaf like My messenger whom I send? Who is blind like the one who is at peace with Me [who has been admitted to covenant relationship with Me]? Yes, who is blind like the Lord's servant?
20. You have seen many things, but you do not observe or apprehend their true meaning. His ears are open, but he hears not!
21. It was the Lord's pleasure for His righteousness' sake [in accordance with a steadfast and consistent purpose] to magnify instruction and revelation and glorify them.
22. But this is a people robbed and plundered; they are all of them snared in holes and hidden in houses of bondage. They have become a prey, with no one to deliver them, a spoil, with no one to say, Restore them! [This shows the condition that will ensue as Israel's punishment for not recognizing the Servant of the Lord and the day of His visit among them.] [Luke19:41-44.]
23. Who is there among you who will give ear to this? Who will listen and hear in the time to come?
24. Who gave up Jacob [the kingdom of Judah] for spoil, and [the kingdom of] Israel to the robbers? Was it not the Lord, He against Whom we [of Judah] have sinned and in Whose ways they [of Israel] would not walk, neither were they obedient to His law or His teaching?
25. Therefore He poured out upon [Israel] the fierceness of His anger and the strength of battle. And it set him on fire round about, yet he knew not [the lesson of repentance which the Assyrian conquest was intended to teach]; it burned him, but he did not lay it to heart.