Praise to God

25 O Lord, You are my God.I will exalt You,I will praise Your name,For You have done wonderful things;Your counsels of old are faithfulness and truth.² For You have made a city a ruin,A fortified city a ruin,A palace of foreigners to be a city no more;It will never be rebuilt.³ Therefore the strong people will glorify You;The city of the terrible nations will fear You.⁴ For You have been a strength to the poor,A strength to the needy in his distress,A refuge from the storm,A shade from the heat;For the blast of the terrible ones is as a storm against the wall.⁵ You will reduce the noise of aliens,As heat in a dry place;As heat in the shadow of a cloud,The song of the terrible ones will be diminished.

⁶ And in this mountainThe Lord of hosts will make for all peopleA feast of choice pieces,A feast of wines on the lees,Of fat things full of marrow,Of well-refined wines on the lees.⁷ And He will destroy on this mountainThe surface of the covering cast over all people,And the veil that is spread over all nations.⁸ He will swallow up death forever,And the Lord God will wipe away tears from all faces;The rebuke of His peopleHe will take away from all the earth;For the Lord has spoken.

⁹ And it will be said in that day:“Behold, this is our God;We have waited for Him, and He will save us.This is the Lord;We have waited for Him;We will be glad and rejoice in His salvation.”

¹⁰ For on this mountain the hand of the Lord will rest,And Moab shall be trampled down under Him,As straw is trampled down for the refuse heap.¹¹ And He will spread out His hands in their midstAs a swimmer reaches out to swim,And He will bring down their prideTogether with the trickery of their hands.¹² The fortress of the high fort of your wallsHe will bring down, lay low,And bring to the ground, down to the dust.

A Song of Salvation

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

“We have a strong city;God will appoint salvation for walls and bulwarks.² Open the gates,That the righteous nation which keeps the truth may enter in.³ You will keep him in perfect peace,Whose mind is stayed on You,Because he trusts in You.⁴ Trust in the Lord forever,For in YAH, the Lord, is everlasting strength.^[a]5 For He brings down those who dwell on high,The lofty city;He lays it low,He lays it low to the ground,He brings it down to the dust.⁶ The foot shall tread it down—The feet of the poorAnd the steps of the needy.”

⁷ The way of the just is uprightness;O Most Upright,You weigh the path of the just.⁸ Yes, in the way of Your judgments,O Lord, we have waited for You;The desire of our soul is for Your nameAnd for the remembrance of You.⁹ With my soul I have desired You in the night,Yes, by my spirit within me I will seek You early;For when Your judgments are in the earth,The inhabitants of the world will learn righteousness.¹⁰ Let grace be shown to the wicked,Yet he will not learn righteousness;In the land of uprightness he will deal unjustly,And will not behold the majesty of the Lord.¹¹ Lord, when Your hand is lifted up, they will not see.But they will see and be ashamedFor their envy of people;Yes, the fire of Your enemies shall devour them.

¹² Lord, You will establish peace for us,For You have also done all our works in us.¹³ O Lord our God, masters besides YouHave had dominion over us;But by You only we make mention of Your name.¹⁴ They are dead, they will not live;They are deceased, they will not rise.Therefore You have punished and destroyed them,And made all their memory to perish.¹⁵ You have increased the nation, O Lord,You have increased the nation;You are glorified;You have expanded all the borders of the land.

¹⁶ Lord, in trouble they have visited You,They poured out a prayer when Your chastening was upon them.¹⁷ As a woman with childIs in pain and cries out in her pangs,When she draws near the time of her delivery,So have we been in Your sight, O Lord.¹⁸ We have been with child, we have been in pain;We have, as it were, brought forth wind;We have not accomplished any deliverance in the earth,Nor have the inhabitants of the world fallen.

¹⁹ Your dead shall live;Together with my dead body^[b] they shall arise.Awake and sing, you who dwell in dust;For your dew is like the dew of herbs,And the earth shall cast out the dead.

Take Refuge from the Coming Judgment

²⁰ Come, my people, enter your chambers,And shut your doors behind you;Hide yourself, as it were, for a little moment,Until the indignation is past.²¹ For behold, the Lord comes out of His placeTo punish the inhabitants of the earth for their iniquity;The earth will also disclose her blood,And will no more cover her slain.

27 In that day the Lord with His severe sword, great and strong,Will punish Leviathan the fleeing serpent,Leviathan that twisted serpent;And He will slay the reptile that is in the sea.

The Restoration of Israel

² In that day sing to her,“A vineyard of red wine!^[c]3 I, the Lord, keep it,I water it every moment;Lest any hurt it,I keep it night and day.⁴ Fury is not in Me.Who would set briers and thornsAgainst Me in battle?I would go through them,I would burn them together.⁵ Or let him take hold of My strength,That he may make peace with Me;And he shall make peace with Me.”

⁶ Those who come He shall cause to take root in Jacob;Israel shall blossom and bud,And fill the face of the world with fruit.

⁷ Has He struck Israel as He struck those who struck him?Or has He been slain according to the slaughter of those who were slain by Him?⁸ In measure, by sending it away,You contended with it.He removes it by His rough windIn the day of the east wind.⁹ Therefore by this the iniquity of Jacob will be covered;And this is all the fruit of taking away his sin:When he makes all the stones of the altarLike chalkstones that are beaten to dust,Wooden images^[d] and incense altars shall not stand.¹⁰ Yet the fortified city will be desolate,The habitation forsaken and left like a wilderness;There the calf will feed, and there it will lie downAnd consume its branches.¹¹ When its boughs are withered, they will be broken off;The women come and set them on fire.For it is a people of no understanding;Therefore He who made them will not have mercy on them,And He who formed them will show them no favor.

¹² And it shall come to pass in that dayThat the Lord will thresh,From the channel of the River^[e] to the Brook of Egypt;And you will be gathered one by one,O you children of Israel.

¹³ So it shall be in that day:The great trumpet will be blown;They will come, who are about to perish in the land of Assyria,And they who are outcasts in the land of Egypt,And shall worship the Lord in the holy mount at Jerusalem.

Woe to Ephraim and Jerusalem

28 Woe to the crown of pride, to the drunkards of Ephraim,Whose glorious beauty is a fading flowerWhich is at the head of the verdant valleys,To those who are overcome with wine!² Behold, the Lord has a mighty and strong one,Like a tempest of hail and a destroying storm,Like a flood of mighty waters overflowing,Who will bring them down to the earth with His hand.³ The crown of pride, the drunkards of Ephraim,Will be trampled underfoot;⁴ And the glorious beauty is a fading flowerWhich is at the head of the verdant valley,Like the first fruit before the summer,Which an observer sees;He eats it up while it is still in his hand.

⁵ In that day the Lord of hosts will beFor a crown of glory and a diadem of beautyTo the remnant of His people,⁶ For a spirit of justice to him who sits in judgment,And for strength to those who turn back the battle at the gate.

⁷ But they also have erred through wine,And through intoxicating drink are out of the way;The priest and the prophet have erred through intoxicating drink,They are swallowed up by wine,They are out of the way through intoxicating drink;They err in vision, they stumble in judgment.⁸ For all tables are full of vomit and filth;No place is clean.

⁹ “Whom will he teach knowledge?And whom will he make to understand the message?Those just weaned from milk?Those just drawn from the breasts?¹⁰ For precept must be upon precept, precept upon precept,Line upon line, line upon line,Here a little, there a little.”

¹¹ For with stammering lips and another tongueHe will speak to this people,¹² To whom He said, “This is the rest with whichYou may cause the weary to rest,”And, “This is the refreshing”;Yet they would not hear.¹³ But the word of the Lord was to them,“Precept upon precept, precept upon precept,Line upon line, line upon line,Here a little, there a little,”That they might go and fall backward, and be brokenAnd snared and caught.

¹⁴ Therefore hear the word of the Lord, you scornful men,Who rule this people who are in Jerusalem,¹⁵ Because you have said, “We have made a covenant with death,And with Sheol we are in agreement.When the overflowing scourge passes through,It will not come to us,For we have made lies our refuge,And under falsehood we have hidden ourselves.”

A Cornerstone in Zion

¹⁶ Therefore thus says the Lord God:

“Behold, I lay in Zion a stone for a foundation,A tried stone, a precious cornerstone, a sure foundation;Whoever believes will not act hastily.¹⁷ Also I will make justice the measuring line,And righteousness the plummet;The hail will sweep away the refuge of lies,And the waters will overflow the hiding place.¹⁸ Your covenant with death will be annulled,And your agreement with Sheol will not stand;When the overflowing scourge passes through,Then you will be trampled down by it.¹⁹ As often as it goes out it will take you;For morning by morning it will pass over,And by day and by night;It will be a terror just to understand the report.”

²⁰ For the bed is too short to stretch out on,And the covering so narrow that one cannot wrap himself in it.²¹ For the Lord will rise up as at Mount Perazim,He will be angry as in the Valley of Gibeon—That He may do His work, His awesome work,And bring to pass His act, His unusual act.²² Now therefore, do not be mockers,Lest your bonds be made strong;For I have heard from the Lord God of hosts,A destruction determined even upon the whole earth.

Listen to the Teaching of God

²³ Give ear and hear my voice,Listen and hear my speech.²⁴ Does the plowman keep plowing all day to sow?Does he keep turning his soil and breaking the clods?²⁵ When he has leveled its surface,Does he not sow the black cumminAnd scatter the cummin,Plant the wheat in rows,The barley in the appointed place,And the spelt in its place?²⁶ For He instructs him in right judgment,His God teaches him.²⁷ For the black cummin is not threshed with a threshing sledge,Nor is a cartwheel rolled over the cummin;But the black cummin is beaten out with a stick,And the cummin with a rod.²⁸ Bread flour must be ground;Therefore he does not thresh it forever,Break it with his cartwheel,Or crush it with his horsemen.²⁹ This also comes from the Lord of hosts,Who is wonderful in counsel and excellent in guidance.