A Society Self-Destructing

“Woe to those who suppose what is evil to be good and what is good, evil! They put darkness for light and light for darkness;they make bitterness sweet and the sweet bitter.

“Woe to those who are wise in their own eyes and clever in their own view! Woe to those who are valiant at drinking wine and champions at mixing liquor!

“[Woe to those] who acquit the guilty for a bribe but deny justice to the innocent! As a blazing fire consumes stubble, and as dry weeds wane before the flame, so shall their roots decay away and their blossoms fly up like dust.” (Isaiah 5:20–24)

“Woe to those who contrive to hide their schemes from the Lord! They work in the dark, thinking, Who will see us? Who will know? What a contradiction you are! Shall the Potter be regarded as the clay? Shall what is made say of its Maker, He did not make me, or a work of its designer, He doesn’t understand?” (Isaiah 29:15–16)

“I, [the Lord,] will make adolescents their rulers; delinquents will lord it over them. People will oppress one another, every man his neighbor. The young will be insolent to the elderly, the vile to the honorable.” (Isaiah 3:4–5)

“Their tongue and their actions are contrary to the Lord, an affront to his glory before his very eyes. The look on their faces betrays them: they flaunt their sin like Sodom; they cannot hide it” (Isaiah 3:8–9).

“Mankind is brought low when men thus debase themselves. Forbear them not!” (Isaiah 2:9)

“The haughty eyes of men shall be lowered and man’s pride abased; the Lord alone shall be exalted in that day. The Lord of Hosts has a day in store for all the proud and arrogant and for all who are exalted, that they may be brought low.” (Isaiah 2:11–12)

“The mighty shall be as refuse, and their works a spark; both shall burn up alike, and there shall be none to extinguish.” (Isaiah 1:31)

“Secure in your wickedness, you thought, No one discerns me. By your skill and science you were led astray, thinking to yourself, I exist, and there is none besides me! Catastrophe shall overtake you, which you shall not know how to avert by bribes; disaster shall befall you from which you cannot ransom yourself: there shall come upon you sudden ruin such as you have not imagined.” (Isaiah 47:10–11)

“Wickedness shall be set ablaze like a fire, and briars and thorns shall it consume; it shall ignite the jungle forests, and they shall billow upward in mushrooming clouds of smoke. At the wrathof the Lord of Hosts the earth is scorched, and people are but fuel for the fire. Men will have no compassion for one another. They will snatch on the right, yet remain hungry; they will devour on the left, but not be satisfied: men will eat the flesh of their own offspring.” (Isaiah 9:18–20)

“And they shall go out and look upon the corpses of the people who transgressed against me, whose worms do not die and whose fire shall not be extinguished. They shall be a horror to all flesh.” (Isaiah 66:24)