Sing to God! Sing praises to his name! Exalt the one who rides on the clouds! ¹  For the Lord is his name! ²  Rejoice before him!

like heat ¹  in a dry land, you humble the boasting foreigners. ²  Just as the shadow of a cloud causes the heat to subside, ³  so he causes the song of tyrants to cease. ⁴ 

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.

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 

Highways are empty, ¹  there are no travelers. ²  Treaties are broken, ³  witnesses are despised, ⁴  human life is treated with disrespect. ⁵ 

I will make streams flow down the slopes and produce springs in the middle of the valleys. I will turn the desert into a pool of water and the arid land into springs.

Like lions his enemies roar victoriously over him; they raise their voices in triumph. ¹  They have laid his land waste; his cities have been burned down and deserted. ² 

But the Babylonian army chased after the king. They caught up with Zedekiah in the plains of Jericho, ¹  and his entire army deserted him.

Indeed, ¹  Gaza will be deserted ²  and Ashkelon will become a heap of ruins. ³  Invaders will drive away the people of Ashdod by noon, ⁴  and Ekron will be overthrown. ⁵ 

For he is the one about whom Isaiah the prophet had spoken: ¹  “The voice ²  of one shouting in the wilderness, ‘Prepare the way for the Lord, make ³  his paths straight.’” ⁴ 

Now when Jesus heard this he went away from there privately in a boat to an isolated place. But when the crowd heard about it, ¹  they followed him on foot from the towns. ² 

The disciples said to him, “Where can we get enough bread in this desolate place to satisfy so great a crowd?”

Then Jesus said to them, “This night you will all fall away because of me, for it is written: ‘I will strike the shepherd, and the sheep of the flock will be scattered.’ ¹ 

Then ¹  Jesus ²  got up early in the morning when it was still very dark, departed, and went out to a deserted place, and there he spent time in prayer. ³ 

When it was already late, his disciples came to him and said, “This is an isolated place ¹  and it is already very late.

Then ¹  Jesus said to them, “You will all fall away, for it is written, ‘I will strike the shepherd, and the sheep will be scattered.’ ² 

As it is written in the book of the words of Isaiah the prophet, “The voice ¹  of one shouting in the wilderness: ²  ‘Prepare the way for the Lord, make ³  his paths straight.

John ¹  said, “I am the voice of one shouting in the wilderness, ‘Make straight ²  the way for the Lord,’ ³  as Isaiah the prophet said.”

Just as ¹  Moses lifted up the serpent ²  in the wilderness, ³  so must the Son of Man be lifted up, ⁴ 

Thus Jesus no longer went ¹  around publicly ²  among the Judeans, ³  but went away from there to the region near the wilderness, to a town called Ephraim, ⁴  and stayed there with his disciples.