Isaiah Devotionals
One for each chapter. Want to test what you read? Take the Isaiah quizzes.
- Isaiah 1: The Wronged One Offers Cleansing
Isaiah's vision opens like a courtroom, with the LORD laying out his case: he raised children, and they turned against him (1:2). The people are still busy with religion, bringing…
- Isaiah 2: When Every Tall Thing Bows
In the first of two pictures, the mountain of the LORD's house is raised above every hill, and the nations stream toward it to learn his ways, until weapons are reshaped into farm…
- Isaiah 3: Heaven's Advocate for the Poor
Isaiah 3 describes a society coming apart. The LORD announces that he will remove food and water, soldiers and judges, prophets and counselors, until inexperienced youths are in…
- Isaiah 4: Washed Through the Fire
Chapter 4 opens on a bleak scene. So few men are left that seven women plead with one man to let them carry his name and take away their disgrace (4:1). Then, abruptly, the tone…
- Isaiah 5: Lavish Care, Sour Fruit
Isaiah sings a love song that turns into a lament. A man clears a fertile hillside, plants choice vines, and builds a watchtower and winepress, then waits for good grapes. The…
- Isaiah 6: Undone, Then Cleansed and Sent
In the year King Uzziah dies, Isaiah sees the King who does not die. The Lord sits enthroned, high and exalted, his robe filling the temple, while seraphim cover their faces and…
- Isaiah 7: The Sign God Gave Anyway
When word arrives that Aram and Ephraim have joined forces, the hearts of King Ahaz and his people shake like trees in the wind (7:2). Isaiah brings him God's message: stay calm…
- Isaiah 8: Holy Fear Instead of Dread
Assyria is coming like a river in flood, rising until it reaches Judah's neck (8:7-8). The people around Isaiah see conspiracy everywhere and live in dread. God firmly tells his…
- Isaiah 9: Peace on a Child's Shoulders
The chapter opens on people in deep darkness who see light dawn over them (9:2). Galilee, once humbled, will be honored, and the oppressor's yoke will be shattered as in the day…
- Isaiah 10: The Axe in God's Hand
Assyria thinks it is building an empire. God says it is a tool. He calls Assyria the rod of his anger, sent against a godless people, but Assyria intends to destroy many nations…
- Isaiah 11: Life from a Cut Stump
Chapter 10 ended with a forest cut down. Chapter 11 begins with something growing from a stump. From the cut-off family line of Jesse, a shoot will sprout and bear fruit (11:1).…
- Isaiah 12: When Wrath Gives Way to Comfort
After the promise of the coming King, Isaiah gives God's people a song for the day of rescue. It begins by admitting that God was angry, and then marvels that his anger is gone…
- Isaiah 13: No Kingdom Too Glorious to Fall
Isaiah's first message against the nations is aimed at Babylon, the most glorious of kingdoms (13:19). The LORD musters an army from distant lands, and his day arrives with…
- Isaiah 14: The Climber Brought Low
Before the taunt over Babylon's king, the chapter opens with mercy. The LORD will show Jacob compassion, choose Israel again, and even bring foreigners to join them (14:1). Then…
- Isaiah 15: Tears over an Enemy's Ruin
Moab is ruined overnight (15:1). Every town seems to be weeping. People climb to their shrines to mourn, heads shaved and beards cut off, wearing sackcloth in the streets and…
- Isaiah 16: Shelter Pride Would Not Seek
Moab's refugees reach the border of Judah with a plea for shelter, asking to be hidden from the destroyer (16:3-4). In answer, the prophet looks past the crisis to a coming throne…
- Isaiah 17: Forgetting the God Who Saves
Damascus becomes a heap of ruins, and Israel's northern kingdom fades like a field after harvest, with only a few olives left at the top of a beaten tree (17:1-6). The reason is…
- Isaiah 18: Still Above the Commotion
Chapter 18 addresses Cush, a distant, widely feared nation whose envoys travel by boat (18:1-2). The whole world is told to watch for a signal on the mountains (18:3). Amid the…
- Isaiah 19: Enemies Named as His Own
The LORD comes to Egypt riding a swift cloud, and everything Egypt trusts begins to fail. Its idols tremble, its people turn on each other, the Nile dries up, and its famous wise…
- Isaiah 20: Hope Borrowed and Lost
For three years the LORD has Isaiah walk barefoot and stripped, a strange and humiliating sign (20:2-3). It is a living picture of what Assyria will do to Egypt and Cush, leading…
- Isaiah 21: Still Time to Ask
Isaiah sees Babylon's fall coming, and the vision does not make him triumphant. It doubles him over like labor pains and fills him with dread (21:3-4). While Babylon's princes are…
- Isaiah 22: Planning Without the Planner
Jerusalem is celebrating on its rooftops while the prophet weeps (22:1-4). Enemies gather, and the city scrambles: inspecting the weapons, counting houses to tear down for the…
- Isaiah 23: Wealth Set Apart for God
Tyre is the great merchant city of this chapter, the trader of the nations whose merchants are treated like princes (23:3, 23:8). When it falls, ships wail, Sidon is ashamed, and…
- Isaiah 24: The Last Word Is His Reign
Chapter 24 widens the view to the whole earth. The LORD lays it waste, and no one is exempt: priest and people, master and servant, lender and borrower all stand on the same…
- Isaiah 25: A Table Spread for Every People
After judgment comes praise. God has faithfully carried out what he planned long ago, bringing down a fortified city and sheltering the poor and needy like shade in the heat…
- Isaiah 26: Peace Kept by God Himself
Judah's song begins with a strong city whose walls and ramparts are salvation itself (26:1). Its central promise is that God guards the peace of those whose minds stay fixed on…
- Isaiah 27: The Vineyard He Now Guards
In that day the LORD takes up his great sword against Leviathan, the twisting serpent and dragon of the sea (27:1). Nothing that opposes God will survive his judgment. Then a new…
- Isaiah 28: Built on a Tested Stone
Ephraim's leaders wear their pride like a fading wreath, and Jerusalem's priests and prophets stagger from wine (28:1-7). They mock Isaiah's teaching as baby talk, so God will…
- Isaiah 29: Honor That Stops at the Lips
Jerusalem, called Ariel here, keeps its festivals year after year, yet God announces he will lay siege to it himself (29:1-3). Then, suddenly, the nations attacking it vanish like…
- Isaiah 30: A God Eager to Show Grace
Judah is in danger and makes a plan, but it is not God's plan. Envoys haul treasure through lion country to buy Egypt's help, which God mocks as a power that only sits still…
- Isaiah 31: A Better Helper Than Horses
Once again Judah looks to Egypt's horses and chariots. The problem is not only poor strategy. They never turn to the Holy One of Israel or seek the LORD (31:1). Isaiah states the…
- Isaiah 32: Renewal Sent from Above
Isaiah looks ahead to a king who will reign in righteousness, with rulers who protect rather than prey (32:1). Each will be like shelter in a storm, streams in a dry land, and the…
- Isaiah 33: At Home with a Holy Fire
After a woe on a destroyer never yet destroyed, worn-down people pray for grace and strength every morning (33:1-2). The LORD answers that now he will rise (33:10). His holiness…
- Isaiah 34: Not One Word Will Go Missing
Isaiah 34 is among the hardest chapters in the book. The nations are summoned to hear that the LORD is angry with them, and the picture is unsparing: unburied dead, mountains…
- Isaiah 35: A Road Built for the Weak
After the ash and thorns of chapter 34, the desert bursts into bloom, and people see the glory of the LORD (35:1-2). Then the prophet turns to the weak, calling for tired hands…
- Isaiah 36: The Question Behind the Taunts
Assyria has taken every fortified city in Judah when the Rabshakeh arrives at Jerusalem's walls (36:1-2). His speech is dangerous because parts of it are true. Egypt really is a…
- Isaiah 37: Rage That God Already Knew
Sennacherib thinks he is writing the story. His letter mocks Hezekiah's trust, and his boasts are grand: chariots on the highest mountains, the tallest cedars cut down, Egypt's…
- Isaiah 38: A Song from Death's Edge
Isaiah brings Hezekiah a blunt message: he will not recover (38:1). Hezekiah turns his face to the wall, prays, and weeps bitterly. Then God gives Isaiah a new message. He has…
- Isaiah 39: Showing Off the Wrong Treasure
Two chapters earlier, Hezekiah prayed that every kingdom on earth would know that the LORD alone is God (37:20). Now envoys arrive from a distant land, Babylon, after hearing of…
- Isaiah 40: The Shepherd Who Never Tires
After the warning that closes chapter 39, God's first word is comfort, spoken twice. Jerusalem's hard service is over and her guilt is pardoned (40:1-2). A voice calls for a road…
- Isaiah 41: Held by the Right Hand
God summons the nations to court. He has stirred up a conqueror from the east, and the coastlands tremble (41:1-5). Their response is almost comic: craftsmen cheer each other on…
- Isaiah 42: Gentle with the Bruised
God presents his Servant, the one he upholds and delights in, and puts his Spirit on him to bring justice to the nations (42:1). The surprise is how he does it. He does not shout…
- Isaiah 43: Erased for His Own Sake
God speaks to Israel as their Creator and Redeemer, the one who has called them by name and claims them as his own (43:1). He does not promise them an easy road. He promises his…
- Isaiah 44: Worshiping What We Made
Chapter 44 opens with God promising to pour out his Spirit on Israel's descendants, so that one after another they will say they belong to the LORD (44:3-5). Then Isaiah tells a…
- Isaiah 45: An Open Call to the Earth
God speaks to Cyrus by name and calls him his anointed, promising to go before him and break open bronze gates (45:1-2). Twice he says this is happening even though Cyrus does not…
- Isaiah 46: Carried Rather Than Carrying
Babylon's great gods, Bel and Nebo, have a problem: they cannot walk. In this chapter they are loaded onto weary animals and hauled away, unable to save even themselves from…
- Isaiah 47: Pride That Claims God's Place
Babylon, pictured as a pampered royal daughter, is ordered off her throne and into the dust to grind grain like a servant (47:1-2). God had handed his people over to her, but she…
- Isaiah 48: Refined but Not Cut Off
God does not flatter his people in this chapter. They swear by his name, but not in truth (48:1-2). He calls them stubborn, with necks like iron and foreheads like bronze, and…
- Isaiah 49: Kept Always Before Him
The Servant speaks, telling how the LORD called him before birth (49:1). He admits to feeling that he has labored for nothing, yet he leaves his reward with God (49:4). God…
- Isaiah 50: Leaning on God in the Dark
The chapter opens with God answering an unspoken charge. Israel's exile does not mean he lacked strength to redeem them. They were sent away for their own sins (50:1-2). Then the…
- Isaiah 51: Comfort Larger Than Fear
God speaks to those who are seeking him, and his first word points backward. They should look to Abraham and Sarah, the rock they were cut from. Abraham was one man when God…
- Isaiah 52: Freedom No Money Could Buy
Zion is told to wake up, shake off the dust, and remove the chains from her neck (52:1-2). Then God explains the terms of her release. No money changed hands when she was sold,…
- Isaiah 53: Wounded in Our Place
Isaiah 53 is written as a confession. The Servant was despised, rejected, and familiar with grief, and the speakers looked away, assuming God was punishing him (53:2-4). Then the…
- Isaiah 54: Love Steadier Than Mountains
Zion is pictured as a childless woman, abandoned and ashamed, and God tells her to sing and enlarge her tent, because her children will spread in every direction (54:1-3). The…
- Isaiah 55: The Word Always Does Its Work
Chapter 55 opens like a market where nothing has a price. The thirsty are called to drink, and those with no money are told to come and eat (55:1). God asks why people spend money…
- Isaiah 56: Room for the Outsider
Two kinds of people in this chapter expect to be shut out. The foreigner assumes the LORD will separate him from his people, and the eunuch, who will have no children, sees…
- Isaiah 57: The High God Lives Low
The chapter begins with righteous people dying unnoticed, though they have been spared from evil and have entered peace (57:1-2). Then God exposes a people chasing idols on the…
- Isaiah 58: Religion That Loosens Chains
The people in this chapter look devout. They seek God daily and fast with bowed heads, then complain that he has not noticed (58:2-3). His answer is direct. On the very days they…
- Isaiah 59: When No One Could Intercede
Isaiah begins by clearing God's name. The LORD is still strong enough to save and still listening. The problem is on the other side: the people's sins have built a wall between…
- Isaiah 60: Light Not Our Own
Zion is told to rise and shine, but the light is not hers. It has come to her, and the LORD's glory rises over her while thick darkness covers the peoples (60:1-2). The rest of…
- Isaiah 61: Dressed in Salvation
The speaker in Isaiah 61 has been anointed by the Spirit of the Lord GOD to rescue. He brings good news to the poor, binds up the brokenhearted, and announces freedom for captives…
- Isaiah 62: Named by His Delight
The speaker refuses to keep quiet until Jerusalem's righteousness shines like a torch before the nations (62:1-2). Then the LORD renames her. She will no longer be called Forsaken…
- Isaiah 63: He Shared Their Suffering
The chapter opens with a disturbing figure. A warrior comes from Edom in crimson-stained clothes. He has trodden the winepress of judgment alone, and his own arm brought salvation…
- Isaiah 64: Clay in the Potter's Hands
The prayer in chapter 64 begins with a longing many believers know: for God to tear the sky open and come down, so that the nations tremble (64:1-2). He has done awesome things…
- Isaiah 65: Found by Those Not Looking
The chapter opens with a surprise. God made himself known to people who were not asking for him, and he was found by those who were not looking (65:1). Paul quotes this verse to…
- Isaiah 66: Esteemed by the God of Heaven
The last chapter of Isaiah opens with a question no one can answer. Heaven is God's throne and the earth his footstool, so what house could anyone build for him (66:1)? Yet the…