Isaiah 26–27

Chapter 26

A Song of Praise to the Lord

In that day, everyone in the land of Judah will sing this song:

Our city is strong!

We are surrounded by the walls of God’s salvation.

²Open the gates to all who are righteous;

allow the faithful to enter.

³You will keep in perfect peace

all who trust in you,

all whose thoughts are fixed on you!

⁴Trust in the Lord always,

for the Lord God is the eternal Rock.

⁵He humbles the proud

and brings down the arrogant city.

He brings it down to the dust.

⁶The poor and oppressed trample it underfoot,

and the needy walk all over it.

⁷But for those who are righteous,

the way is not steep and rough.

You are a God who does what is right,

and you smooth out the path ahead of them.

⁸Lord, we show our trust in you by obeying your laws;

our heart’s desire is to glorify your name.

⁹In the night I search for you;

in the morning I earnestly seek you.

For only when you come to judge the earth

will people learn what is right.

¹⁰Your kindness to the wicked

does not make them do good.

Although others do right, the wicked keep doing wrong

and take no notice of the Lord’s majesty.

¹¹O Lord, they pay no attention to your upraised fist.

Show them your eagerness to defend your people.

Then they will be ashamed.

Let your fire consume your enemies.

¹²Lord, you will grant us peace;

all we have accomplished is really from you.

¹³O Lord our God, others have ruled us,

but you alone are the one we worship.

¹⁴Those we served before are dead and gone.

Their departed spirits will never return!

You attacked them and destroyed them,

and they are long forgotten.

¹⁵O Lord, you have made our nation great;

yes, you have made us great.

You have extended our borders,

and we give you the glory!

¹⁶Lord, in distress we searched for you.

We prayed beneath the burden of your discipline.

¹⁷Just as a pregnant woman

writhes and cries out in pain as she gives birth,

so were we in your presence, Lord.

¹⁸We, too, writhe in agony,

but nothing comes of our suffering.

We have not given salvation to the earth,

nor brought life into the world.

¹⁹But those who die in the Lord will live;

their bodies will rise again!

Those who sleep in the earth

will rise up and sing for joy!

For your life-giving light will fall like dew

on your people in the place of the dead!

Restoration for Israel

²⁰Go home, my people,

and lock your doors!

Hide yourselves for a little while

until the Lord’s anger has passed.

²¹Look! The Lord is coming from heaven

to punish the people of the earth for their sins.

The earth will no longer hide those who have been killed.

They will be brought out for all to see.

Chapter 27

In that day the Lord will take his terrible, swift sword and punish Leviathan, the swiftly moving serpent, the coiling, writhing serpent. He will kill the dragon of the sea.

²“In that day,

sing about the fruitful vineyard.

³I, the Lord, will watch over it,

watering it carefully.

Day and night I will watch so no one can harm it.

⁴My anger will be gone.

If I find briers and thorns growing,

I will attack them;

I will burn them up—

⁵unless they turn to me for help.

Let them make peace with me;

yes, let them make peace with me.”

⁶The time is coming when Jacob’s descendants will take root.

Israel will bud and blossom

and fill the whole earth with fruit!

⁷Has the Lord struck Israel

as he struck her enemies?

Has he punished her

as he punished them?

⁸No, but he exiled Israel to call her to account.

She was exiled from her land

as though blown away in a storm from the east.

⁹The Lord did this to purge Israel’s wickedness,

to take away all her sin.

As a result, all the pagan altars will be crushed to dust.

No Asherah pole or pagan shrine will be left standing.

¹⁰The fortified towns will be silent and empty,

the houses abandoned, the streets overgrown with weeds.

Calves will graze there,

chewing on twigs and branches.

¹¹The people are like the dead branches of a tree,

broken off and used for kindling beneath the cooking pots.

Israel is a foolish and stupid nation,

for its people have turned away from God.

Therefore, the one who made them

will show them no pity or mercy.

¹²Yet the time will come when the Lord will gather them together like handpicked grain. One by one he will gather them—from the Euphrates River in the east to the Brook of Egypt in the west. ¹³In that day the great trumpet will sound. Many who were dying in exile in Assyria and Egypt will return to Jerusalem to worship the Lord on his holy mountain.