Isaiah 26–27

A Song of Praise to God

26At that time people will sing this song in Judah:

We have a strong city.

God protects us with its strong walls and defenses.

²Open the gates,

and the good people will enter,

those who follow God.

³You, Lord, give true peace

to those who depend on you,

because they trust you.

⁴So, trust the Lord always,

because he is our Rock forever.

⁵He will destroy the proud city,

and he will punish the people living there.

He will bring that high city down to the ground

and throw it down into the dust.

⁶Then those who were hurt by the city will walk on its ruins;

those who were made poor by the city will trample it under their feet.

⁷The path of life is level for those who are right with God;

Lord, you make the way of life smooth for those people.

⁸But, Lord, we are waiting

for your way of justice.

Our souls want to remember

you and your name.

⁹My soul wants to be with you at night,

and my spirit wants to be with you at the dawn of every day.

When your way of justice comes to the land,

people of the world will learn the right way of living.

¹⁰Evil people will not learn to do good

even if you show them kindness.

They will continue doing evil, even if they live in a good world;

they never see the Lord’s greatness.

¹¹Lord, you are ready to punish those people,

but they do not see that.

Show them your strong love for your people.

Then those who are evil will be ashamed.

Burn them in the fire

you have prepared for your enemies.

¹²Lord, all our success is because of what you have done,

so give us peace.

¹³Lord, our God, other masters besides you have ruled us,

but we honor only you.

¹⁴Those masters are now dead;

their ghosts will not rise from death.

You punished and destroyed them

and erased any memory of them.

¹⁵Lord, you multiplied the number of your people;

you multiplied them and brought honor to yourself.

You made the borders of the land wide.

¹⁶Lord, people remember you when they are in trouble;

they say quiet prayers to you when you punish them.

¹⁷Lord, when we are with you,

we are like a woman giving birth to a baby;

she cries and has pain from the birth.

¹⁸In the same way, we had pain.

We gave birth, but only to wind.

We don’t bring salvation to the land

or make new people for the world.

¹⁹Your people have died, but they will live again;

their bodies will rise from death.

You who lie in the ground,

wake up and be happy!

The dew covering you is like the dew of a new day;

the ground will give birth to the dead.

Judgment: Reward or Punishment

²⁰My people, go into your rooms

and shut your doors behind you.

Hide in your rooms for a short time

until God’s anger is finished.

²¹The Lord will leave his place

to punish the people of the world for their sins.

The earth will show the blood of the people who have been killed;

it will not cover the dead any longer.

27At that time the Lord will punish Leviathan, the gliding snake.

He will punish Leviathan, the coiled snake,

with his great and hard and powerful sword.

He will kill the monster in the sea.

²At that time

people will sing about the pleasant vineyard.

³“I, the Lord, will care for that vineyard;

I will water it at the right time.

No one will hurt it,

because I will guard it day and night.

⁴I am not angry.

If anyone builds a wall of thornbushes in war,

I will march to it and burn it.

⁵But if anyone comes to me for safety

and wants to make peace with me,

he should come and make peace with me.”

⁶In the days to come, the people of Jacob will be like a plant with good roots;

Israel will grow like a plant beginning to bloom.

Then the world will be filled with their children.

The Lord Will Send Israel Away

⁷The Lord has not hurt his people as he hurt their enemies;

his people have not been killed like those who tried to kill them.

⁸He will settle his argument with Israel by sending it far away.

Like a hot desert wind, he will drive it away.

⁹This is how Israel’s guilt will be forgiven;

this is how its sins will be taken away:

Israel will crush the rocks of the altar to dust,

and no statues or altars will be left standing for the Asherah idols.

¹⁰At that time the strong, walled city will be empty

like a desert.

Calves will eat grass there.

They will lie down there

and eat leaves from the branches.

¹¹The limbs will become dry and break off,

so women will use them for firewood.

The people refuse to understand,

so God will not comfort them;

their Maker will not be kind to them.

¹²At that time the Lord will begin gathering his people one by one from the Euphrates River to the brook of Egypt. He will separate them from others as grain is separated from chaff. ¹³Many of my people are now lost in Assyria. Some have run away to Egypt. But at that time a great trumpet will be blown, and all those people will come and worship the Lord on that holy mountain in Jerusalem.