Yahweh Will Show Mercy

18 Therefore Yahweh waits to be gracious to you,

and therefore he will rise up to show you mercy,

for Yahweh is a God of justice;

blessed are all those who wait for him.

19 For people will live in Zion;

in Jerusalem, you will surely not weep.

Surely he will be gracious to you;

when he hears the sound of your cry, he will answer you.

20 And the Lord will give you the bread of distress

and the water of oppression,

buty your teachers will not hide themselvesz any longer.

And your eyes ⌊shall see⌋a your teachers.

21 And your ears shall hear a word from behind you, saying,

“this is the way; walk in it,”

when you go to your right

and when you go to your left.

22 And you will defile the plating of your silver idols

and the covering of your gold image.

You will scatter them like contaminated things;b

you will say to it, “Filth!”c

23And he will give rain for your seed with which you sow the ground,

and grain, the produce of the ground, and it will be rich and ⌊fertile⌋.d

On that day, your cattle will graze in broad pastures;e

24 and the oxen and the donkeys that tillf the ground will eat fodder, sorrel

that has been winnowed with shovel and pitchfork.

25 And there will be streams on every high mountain and elevated hill,

watercourses of water, on a day of great slaughter, when towers fall.

26 And the light of the full moon will be like the light of the sun,

and the light of the sun will be sevenfold, like the light of seven days,

on the day when Yahweh binds up the breakage of his people,

and he heals the wound of his blow.