Day 205: Promise to Zion (2026)

**Fr. Mike Schmitz** (0:04)
Hi, my name is Fr. Mike Schmitz, and you're listening to The Bible in a Year podcast, where we encounter God's voice and live life through the lens of scripture. The Bible in a Year podcast is brought to you by Ascension. Using The Great Adventure Bible Timeline, we'll read all the way from Genesis to Revelation, discovering how the story of salvation unfolds and how we fit into that story today. It is day 205, we're reading Isaiah 30 and 31, also Zephaniah 3, there's only three chapters in Zephaniah. I'm not sure if I said there were four yesterday, but if you divide chapter three into two parts, there's three and four. That's not how it is though, we're only Zephaniah chapter three. Also reading Proverbs chapter 11 verses 13 through 16 As always, the Bible translation that I'm reading from is the revised standard version, the second Catholic edition. I'm using The Great Adventure Bible from Ascension. If you want to download your own Bible in a Year reading plan, you can visit ascensionpress.com/bible in a Year. You can also subscribe to this podcast, and if you do, you get to receive, you get the great prize of daily episodes that you probably already figured out after 200 or so days. Because today is 205 and we're reading Isaiah 30 and 31, Zephaniah 3, which is also the last chapter of Zephaniah, and Proverbs 11, verses 13 through 16
The Book of the Prophet, Isaiah 30, a rebellious people.
Woe to the rebellious children, says the Lord, who carry out a plan, but not mine, who make a league, but not of my spirit, that they may add sin to sin, who set out to go down to Egypt, without asking for my counsel, to take refuge in the protection of Pharaoh, and to seek shelter in the shadow of Egypt. Therefore, the protection of Pharaoh shall turn to your shame, and the shelter in the shadow of Egypt to your humiliation. For though his officials are at Zohan, and his envoys reach Hanes, every one comes to shame through a people that cannot profit them, that brings neither help nor profit, but shame and disgrace.
An Oracle on the Beasts of the Negev.
Through a land of trouble and anguish, from where come the lioness and the lion, the viper and the flying serpent, they carry their riches on the backs of donkeys, and their treasures on the humps of camels, to a people that cannot profit them. For Egypt's help is worthless and empty. Therefore, I have called her Rahab, who sits still. And now, go, write it before them on a tablet, and inscribe it in a book, that it may be for the time to come as a witness forever. For they are a rebellious people, lying sons, sons who will not hear the instruction of the Lord, who say to seers, see not, and to the prophets, prophesy not to us what is right, speak to us smooth things, prophesy illusions. Leave the way, turn aside from the path, let us hear no more of the Holy One of Israel.
Therefore, thus says the Holy One of Israel, Because you despise this word, and trust in oppression and perverseness and rely on them? Therefore, this iniquity shall be to you like a break in a high wall bulging out and about to collapse, whose crash comes suddenly, in an instant, and its breaking is like that of a potter's vessel, which is smashed so ruthlessly that among its fragments, not a shard is found with which to take fire from the hearth, or to dip up water out of the cistern. For thus said the Lord God, the Holy One of Israel, In returning and rest you shall be saved, in quietness and in trust shall be your strength. And you would not. But you said, No, we will speed on horses, therefore you shall speed away. And we will ride upon swift steeds, therefore your pursuers shall be swift. A thousand shall flee at the threat of one. At the threat of five you shall flee till you are left like a flagstaff on the top of a mountain, like a signal on a hill.
Therefore the Lord waits to be gracious to you. Therefore He exalts Himself to show mercy to you. For the Lord is a God of justice. Blessed are all who wait for Him.
God's promise to Zion.
Yes, O people in Zion who dwell at Jerusalem, you shall weep no more. He will surely be gracious to you at the sound of your cry when he hears that he will answer you. And though the Lord give you the bread of adversity and the water of affliction, yet your teacher will not hide himself anymore. But your eyes shall see your teacher, and your ears shall hear a word behind you saying, This is the way. Walk in it when you turn to the right or when you turn to the left. Then you will defile your silver-covered graven images and your gold-plated molten images. You will scatter them as unclean things. You will say to them, Be gone! And he will give rain for the seed with which you sow the ground, and grain, the produce of the ground, which will be rich and plenteous. In that day your flock will be given pasture, and the lamb will graze in open fields, and the oxen and the donkeys that till the ground will eat salted food which has been winnowed with shovel and fork. And upon every lofty mountain and every high hill there will be brooks running with water in the day of the great slaughter when the towers fall.