The Lord’s spirit will rest on him ¹  – a spirit that gives extraordinary wisdom, ²  a spirit that provides the ability to execute plans, ³  a spirit that produces absolute loyalty to the Lord. ⁴ 

Those who stray morally will gain understanding; ¹  those who complain will acquire insight. ² 

Who comprehends ¹  the mind ²  of the Lord, or gives him instruction as his counselor? ³ 

Look, all of them are nothing, ¹  their accomplishments are nonexistent; their metal images lack any real substance. ² 

This desolation will continue until new life is poured out on us from heaven. ¹  Then the desert will become an orchard and the orchard will be considered a forest. ² 

Look, I will take control of his mind; ¹  he will receive a report and return to his own land. I will cut him down ²  with a sword in his own land.”’”

The grass dries up, the flowers wither, when the wind sent by the Lord ¹  blows on them. Surely humanity ²  is like grass.

But they rebelled and offended ¹  his holy Spirit, ²  so he turned into an enemy and fought against them.

Look, my servants will shout for joy as happiness fills their hearts! ¹  But you will cry out as sorrow fills your hearts; ²  you will wail because your spirits will be crushed. ³ 

For this is what the high and exalted one says, the one who rules ¹  forever, whose name is holy: “I dwell in an exalted and holy place, but also with the discouraged and humiliated, ²  in order to cheer up the humiliated and to encourage the discouraged. ³ 

It was reported to the family ¹  of David, “Syria has allied with ²  Ephraim.” They and their people were emotionally shaken, just as the trees of the forest shake before the wind. ³ 

Though these people make an uproar as loud as the roaring of powerful waves, ¹  when he shouts at ²  them, they will flee to a distant land, driven before the wind like dead weeds on the hills, or like dead thistles ³  before a strong gale.

The Egyptians will panic, ¹  and I will confuse their strategy. ²  They will seek guidance from the idols and from the spirits of the dead, from the pits used to conjure up underworld spirits, and from the magicians. ³ 

The Lord has made them undiscerning; ¹  they lead Egypt astray in all she does, so that she is like a drunk sliding around in his own vomit. ² 

For you are a protector for the poor, a protector for the needy in their distress, a shelter from the rainstorm, a shade from the heat. Though the breath of tyrants ¹  is like a winter rainstorm, ² 

We were pregnant, we strained, we gave birth, as it were, to wind. ¹  We cannot produce deliverance on the earth; people to populate the world are not born. ² 

For the Lord has poured out on you a strong urge to sleep deeply. ¹  He has shut your eyes (the prophets), and covered your heads (the seers).

The Egyptians are mere humans, not God; their horses are made of flesh, not spirit. The Lord will strike with ¹  his hand; the one who helps will stumble and the one being helped will fall. Together they will perish. ² 

Each of them ¹  will be like a shelter from the wind and a refuge from a rainstorm; like streams of water in a dry region and like the shade of a large cliff in a parched land.

“Indeed, the Lord will call you back like a wife who has been abandoned and suffers from depression, ¹  like a young wife when she has been rejected,” says your God.