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Song of Praise for God’s Favor

25 O Lord, You are my God;
I will exalt You, I will praise and give thanks to Your name;
For You have done miraculous things,
Plans formed long, long ago, [fulfilled] with perfect faithfulness.

For You have made a city into a heap [of trash],
A fortified city into a ruin;
A palace of [a]foreigners is no longer a city,
It will never be rebuilt.

Therefore a strong people will honor You;
Cities of terrible and violent nations will fear You.

For You have been a stronghold for the helpless,
A stronghold for the poor in his distress,
A shelter from the storm, a shade from the heat;
For the breath of tyrants
Is like a rainstorm against a wall.

Like heat in a dry land, You will subdue the noise of foreigners [rejoicing over their enemies];
Like heat in the shadow of a cloud, the song of the tyrants is [b]silenced.


On this mountain [Zion] the Lord of hosts will prepare a lavish banquet for all peoples [to welcome His reign on earth],
A banquet of aged wines—choice pieces [flavored] with marrow,
Of refined, aged wines.

And on this mountain He will destroy the covering that is [cast] over all peoples,
And the veil [of death] that is woven and spread over all the nations.

He will swallow up death [and abolish it] for all time.
And the Lord God will wipe away tears from all faces,
And He will take away the disgrace of His people from all the earth;
For the Lord has spoken.(A)

It will be said in that day,
“Indeed, this is our God for whom we have waited that He would save us.
This is the Lord for whom we have waited;
Let us shout for joy and rejoice in His salvation.”
10 
For the hand of the Lord will rest on this mountain [Zion],
And Moab will be trampled down in his place
As straw is trampled down in the [filthy] water of a manure pile.
11 
And Moab will spread out his hands in the middle of the filth
As a swimmer spreads out his hands to swim,
But the Lord will humiliate his pride in spite of the [skillful] movements of his hands.
12 
The high fortifications of your walls He will bring down,
Lay low, and cast to the ground, to the dust.

Song of Trust in God’s Protection

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

“We have a strong city;
He sets up salvation as walls and ramparts.

“Open the gates, that the righteous nation may enter,
The one that [c]remains faithful and trustworthy.

“You will keep in [d]perfect and constant peace the one whose mind is steadfast [that is, committed and focused on You—in both [e]inclination and character],
Because he trusts and takes refuge in You [with hope and confident expectation].

“Trust [confidently] in the Lord forever [He is your fortress, your shield, your banner],
For the Lord God is an everlasting Rock [the Rock of Ages].

“For He has thrown down the [arrogant] ones who dwell on high, the lofty and inaccessible city;
He lays it low, He lays it low to the ground, He hurls it to the dust.

“The foot will trample it,
Even the feet of the suffering, and the steps of the helpless.”


The way of the righteous [those in right-standing with God—living in moral and spiritual integrity] is smooth and level;
O Upright One, make a level path for the just and righteous.

Indeed, in the path of Your judgments, O Lord,
We have waited expectantly for You;
Your name, even Your memory, is the desire and deep longing of our souls.

In the night my soul longs for You [O Lord],
Indeed, my spirit within me seeks You diligently;
For [only] when Your judgments are experienced on the earth
Will the inhabitants of the world learn righteousness.
10 
Though the wicked is shown compassion and favor,
He does not learn righteousness;
In the land of uprightness he deals unjustly,
And refuses to see the majesty of the Lord.

11 
Though Your hand is lifted up [to strike], O Lord, the wicked do not see it.
Let them see Your zeal for Your people and be put to shame;
Indeed, let the fire reserved for Your enemies consume them.
12 
Lord, You will establish peace for us,
Since You have also performed for us all that we have done.
13 
O Lord our God, other masters besides You have ruled over us;
But through You alone we confess Your name.
14 
The [wicked] dead will not live [again], the spirits of the dead will not rise and return;
Therefore You have punished and destroyed them,
And You have wiped out every memory of them [every trace of them].
15 
You have increased the nation, O Lord;
You have increased the nation, You are glorified;
You have extended all the borders of the land.
16 
O Lord, they sought You in distress;
They managed only a prayerful whisper
When Your discipline was upon them.
17 
As a woman with child approaches the time to give birth,
She is in pain and struggles and cries out in her labor,
So we were before You, O Lord.
18 
We have been with child, we have twisted and struggled in labor;
We gave birth, as it seems, only to wind.
We could not accomplish salvation for the earth,
Nor were inhabitants of the world [f]born.
19 
Your dead will live;
[g]Their dead bodies will rise.
You who lie in the dust, awake and shout for joy!
For your dew is a dew of [celestial] light [heavenly, supernatural],
And the earth will give birth to the spirits of the dead.(B)

20 
Come, my people, enter your chambers
And shut your doors behind you;
Hide for a little while
Until the [Lord’s] [h]wrath is past.
21 
Listen carefully, the Lord is about to come out of His [heavenly] place
To punish the inhabitants of the earth for their wickedness [their sin, their injustice, their wrongdoing];
The earth will reveal the [innocent] blood shed upon her
And will no longer cover her slain.

The Deliverance of Israel

27 In that day the Lord will punish Leviathan the fleeing serpent
With His fierce and great and mighty sword [rescuing Israel from her enemy],
Even Leviathan the twisted serpent;
And He will kill the dragon who lives in the sea.


In that day [it will be said of the redeemed nation of Israel],
“A vineyard of [i]wine, sing in praise of it!

“I, the Lord, am its Keeper;
I water it every moment.
So that no one will harm it,
I guard it night and day.

“I have no wrath.
Should anyone give Me briars and thorns in battle,
I would step on them, I would set them all on fire.

“Or let him (Israel) cling to My strength and rely on My protection [My stronghold],
Let him make peace with Me,
Let him make peace with Me.”

[j]In the generations to come Jacob will take root;
Israel will blossom and sprout,
And they will fill the surface of the world with fruit.(C)


Like the striking [k]by Him who has struck them, has He struck them?
Or like the slaughter of His slain, have they been slain?

You contended with them by exile, by driving them away [from Canaan];
He has expelled them with His fierce wind on the day of the east wind.

Therefore through this the wickedness [the sin, the injustice, the wrongdoing] of Jacob (Israel) will be atoned for and forgiven;
And this will be [l]the full price [that God requires] for taking away his sin:
When Israel makes all the stones of the [pagan] altars like crushed chalk stones;
When the Asherim and the incense altars will not stand.
10 
For the fortified city is isolated,
A settlement deserted and abandoned like the desert;
There the calf will graze,
And there it will lie down and [m]feed on its branches.
11 
When its branches are dry, they are broken off;
The women come and [n]make a fire with them.
For they are not a people of understanding,
Therefore He who made them will not have compassion on them,
And He who created them will not be gracious to them.

12 In that day the Lord will thresh [out His grain] from the flowing stream of the River [Euphrates] to the Brook of Egypt, and you will be gathered up one by one, O sons of Israel. 13 It will come to pass in that day that a great trumpet will be blown, and those who were lost and perishing in the land of Assyria and who were scattered in the land of Egypt will come and worship the Lord on the holy mountain at Jerusalem.(D)

Footnotes

  1. Isaiah 25:2 Or strangers.
  2. Isaiah 25:5 Lit humbled.
  3. Isaiah 26:2 Lit keeps trustworthiness.
  4. Isaiah 26:3 Lit peace, peace, a Hebrew idiom of emphasis.
  5. Isaiah 26:3 The Hebrew word for inclination became a technical term in Jewish tradition, and the rabbis frequently referred to the “evil inclination” much in the same sense as the sin nature. They also recognized a “good inclination,” which the righteous choose to follow, and urged people to make their good inclination king over the evil inclination.
  6. Isaiah 26:18 Lit fallen.
  7. Isaiah 26:19 So with some ancient versions; MT reads My dead body.
  8. Isaiah 26:20 Lit curse.
  9. Isaiah 27:2 So DSS; MT reads beauty.
  10. Isaiah 27:6 Lit Those coming, Jacob.
  11. Isaiah 27:7 Or of him, referring to an enemy of Israel.
  12. Isaiah 27:9 Lit all the fruit.
  13. Isaiah 27:10 Lit consume.
  14. Isaiah 27:11 Lit set light to.

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