Isaiah 26–27

Chapter 26

¹In that day this song will be sung in the land of Judah:

“We have a strong city;

he sets up salvation

as walls and bulwarks.

²Open the gates,

that the righteous nation which keeps faith

may enter in.

³Thou dost keep him in perfect peace,

whose mind is stayed on thee,

because he trusts in thee.

⁴Trust in the Lord for ever,

for the Lord GOD

is an everlasting rock.

⁵For he has brought low

the inhabitants of the height,

the lofty city.

He lays it low, lays it low to the ground,

casts it to the dust.

⁶The foot tramples it,

the feet of the poor,

the steps of the needy.”

⁷The way of the righteous is level;

thou^m dost make smooth the path of the righteous.

⁸In the path of thy judgments,

O Lord, we wait for thee;

thy memorial name

is the desire of our soul.

⁹My soul yearns for thee in the night,

my spirit within me earnestly seeks thee.

For when thy judgments are in the earth,

the inhabitants of the world learn righteousness.

¹⁰If favor is shown to the wicked,

he does not learn righteousness;

in the land of uprightness he deals perversely

and does not see the majesty of the Lord.

¹¹O Lord, thy hand is lifted up,

but they see it not.

Let them see thy zeal for thy people, and be ashamed.

Let the fire for thy adversaries consume them.

¹²O Lord, thou wilt ordain peace for us,

thou hast wrought for us all our works.

¹³O Lord our God,

other lords besides thee have ruled over us,

but thy name alone we acknowledge.

¹⁴They are dead, they will not live;

they are shades, they will not arise;

to that end thou hast visited them with destruction

and wiped out all remembrance of them.

¹⁵But thou hast increased the nation, O Lord,

thou hast increased the nation; thou art glorified;

thou hast enlarged all the borders of the land.

¹⁶O Lord, in distress they sought thee,

they poured out a prayer

when thy chastening was upon them.

¹⁷Like a woman with child,

who writhes and cries out in her pangs,

when she is near her time,

so were we because of thee, O Lord;

¹⁸we were with child, we writhed, we have as it were brought forth wind.

We have wrought no deliverance in the earth,

and the inhabitants of the world have not fallen.

¹⁹Thy dead shall live, their bodies^o shall rise.

O dwellers in the dust, awake and sing for joy!

For thy dew is a dew of light,

and on the land of the shades thou wilt let it fall.

²⁰Come, my people, enter your chambers,

and shut your doors behind you;

hide yourselves for a little while

until the wrath is past.

²¹For behold, the Lord is coming forth out of his place

to punish the inhabitants of the earth for their iniquity,

and the earth will disclose the blood shed upon her,

and will no more cover her slain.

Chapter 27

¹In that day the Lord with his hard and great and strong sword will punish Leviathan the fleeing serpent, Leviathan the twisting serpent, and he will slay the dragon that is in the sea.

²In that day:

“A pleasant vineyard, sing of it!

³I, the Lord, am its keeper;

every moment I water it.

Lest any one harm it,

I guard it night and day;

⁴I have no wrath.

Would that I had thorns and briers to battle!

I would set out against them,

I would burn them up together.

⁵Or let them lay hold of my protection,

let them make peace with me,

let them make peace with me.”

⁶In days to come^q Jacob shall take root,

Israel shall blossom and put forth shoots,

and fill the whole world with fruit.

⁷Has he smitten them as he smote those who smote them?

Or have they been slain as their slayers were slain?

⁸Measure by measure, by exile thou didst contend with them;

he removed them with his fierce blast in the day of the east wind.

⁹Therefore by this the guilt of Jacob will be expiated,

and this will be the full fruit of the removal of his sin:

when he makes all the stones of the altars

like chalkstones crushed to pieces,

no Asherim or incense altars will remain standing.

¹⁰For the fortified city is solitary,

a habitation deserted and forsaken, like the wilderness;

there the calf grazes,

there he lies down, and strips its branches.

¹¹When its boughs are dry, they are broken;

women come and make a fire of them.

For this is a people without discernment;

therefore he who made them will not have compassion on them,

he that formed them will show them no favor.

¹²In that day from the river Euphrates to the Brook of Egypt the Lord will thresh out the grain, and you will be gathered one by one, O people of Israel. ¹³And in that day a great trumpet will be blown, and those who were lost in the land of Assyria and those who were driven out to the land of Egypt will come and worship the Lord on the holy mountain at Jerusalem.