Isaiah 26

A Song of Praise

¹ In that day this song will be sung in the land of Judah:
We have a strong city;
God makes salvation
its walls and ramparts.

² Open the gates
that the righteous nation may enter,
the nation that keeps faith.

³ You will keep in perfect peace
him whose mind is steadfast,
because he trusts in you.

⁴ Trust in the LORD forever,
for the LORD, the LORD, is the Rock eternal.

⁵ He humbles those who dwell on high,
he lays the lofty city low;
he levels it to the ground
and casts it down to the dust.

⁶ Feet trample it down—
the feet of the oppressed,
the footsteps of the poor.

⁷ The path of the righteous is level;
O upright One, you make the way of the righteous smooth.

⁸ Yes, LORD, walking in the way of your laws, ^[a]
we wait for you;
your name and renown
are the desire of our hearts.

⁹ My soul yearns for you in the night;
in the morning my spirit longs for you.
When your judgments come upon the earth,
the people of the world learn righteousness.

¹⁰ Though grace is shown to the wicked,
they do not learn righteousness;
even in a land of uprightness they go on doing evil
and regard not the majesty of the LORD.

¹¹ O LORD, your hand is lifted high,
but they do not see it.
Let them see your zeal for your people and be put to shame;
let the fire reserved for your enemies consume them.

¹² LORD, you establish peace for us;
all that we have accomplished you have done for us.

¹³ O LORD, our God, other lords besides you have ruled over us,
but your name alone do we honor.

¹⁴ They are now dead, they live no more;
those departed spirits do not rise.
You punished them and brought them to ruin;
you wiped out all memory of them.

¹⁵ You have enlarged the nation, O LORD;
you have enlarged the nation.
You have gained glory for yourself;
you have extended all the borders of the land.

¹⁶ LORD, they came to you in their distress;
when you disciplined them,
they could barely whisper a prayer. ^[b]

¹⁷ As a woman with child and about to give birth
writhes and cries out in her pain,
so were we in your presence, O LORD.

¹⁸ We were with child, we writhed in pain,
but we gave birth to wind.
We have not brought salvation to the earth;
we have not given birth to people of the world.

¹⁹ But your dead will live;
their bodies will rise.
You who dwell in the dust,
wake up and shout for joy.
Your dew is like the dew of the morning;
the earth will give birth to her dead.

²⁰ Go, my people, enter your rooms
and shut the doors behind you;
hide yourselves for a little while
until his wrath has passed by.

²¹ See, the LORD is coming out of his dwelling
to punish the people of the earth for their sins.
The earth will disclose the blood shed upon her;
she will conceal her slain no longer.

Isaiah 27

Deliverance of Israel

¹ In that day,
the LORD will punish with his sword,
his fierce, great and powerful sword,
Leviathan the gliding serpent,
Leviathan the coiling serpent;
he will slay the monster of the sea.

² In that day—
“Sing about a fruitful vineyard:

³ I, the LORD, watch over it;
I water it continually.
I guard it day and night
so that no one may harm it.

⁴ I am not angry.
If only there were briers and thorns confronting me!
I would march against them in battle;
I would set them all on fire.

⁵ Or else let them come to me for refuge;
let them make peace with me,
yes, let them make peace with me.”

⁶ In days to come Jacob will take root,
Israel will bud and blossom
and fill all the world with fruit.

⁷ Has the LORD struck her
as he struck down those who struck her?
Has she been killed
as those were killed who killed her?

⁸ By warfare ^[c] and exile you contend with her—
with his fierce blast he drives her out,
as on a day the east wind blows.

⁹ By this, then, will Jacob’s guilt be atoned for,
and this will be the full fruitage of the removal of his sin:
When he makes all the altar stones
to be like chalk stones crushed to pieces,
no Asherah poles ^[d] or incense altars
will be left standing.

¹⁰ The fortified city stands desolate,
an abandoned settlement, forsaken like the desert;
there the calves graze,
there they lie down;
they strip its branches bare.

¹¹ When its twigs are dry, they are broken off
and women come and make fires with them.
For this is a people without understanding;
so their Maker has no compassion on them,
and their Creator shows them no favor.

¹² In that day the LORD will thresh from the flowing Euphrates ^[e] to the Wadi of Egypt, and you, O Israelites, will be gathered up one by one. ¹³ And in that day a great trumpet will sound. Those who were perishing in Assyria and those who were exiled in Egypt will come and worship the LORD on the holy mountain in Jerusalem.