Chapter 56

¹Thus saith the Lord : Keep ye judgment, and do justice: for my salvation is near to come, and my justice to be revealed. ²Blessed is the man that doth this, and the son of man that shall lay hold on this: that keepeth the sabbath from profaning it, that keepeth his hands from doing any evil. ³And let not the son of the stranger, that adhereth to the Lord, speak, saying: The Lord will divide and separate me from his people. And let not the eunuch say: Behold I am a dry tree. ⁴For thus saith the Lord to the eunuchs, They that shall keep my sabbaths, and shall choose the things that please me, and shall hold fast my covenant: ⁵I will give to them in my house, and within my walls, a place, and a name better than sons and daughters: I will give them an everlasting name which shall never perish. ⁶And the children of the stranger that adhere to the Lord, to worship him, and to love his name, to be his servants: every one that keepeth the sabbath from profaning it, and that holdeth fast my covenant: ⁷I will bring them into my holy mount, and will make them joyful in my house of prayer: their holocausts, and their victims shall please me upon my altar: for my house shall be called the house of prayer, for all nations. ⁸The Lord God, who gathereth the scattered of Israel, saith: I will still gather unto him his congregation. ⁹All ye beasts of the field come to devour, all ye beasts of the forest. ¹⁰His watchmen are all blind, they are all ignorant: dumb dogs not able to bark, seeing vain things, sleeping and loving dreams. ¹¹And meet impudent dogs, they never had enough: the shepherds themselves knew no understanding: all have turned aside into their own way, every one after his own gain, from the first even to the last. ¹²Come, let us take wine, and be filled with drunkenness: and it shall be as to day, so also to morrow, and much more.