Isaiah - The Old Testament

¹ That day, this song will be sung in Judah: 'We have a fortress city, the walls and ramparts provide safety.

² Open the gates! Let the upright nation come in, the nation that keeps faith!

³ This is the plan decreed: you will guarantee peace, the peace entrusted to you.

⁴ Trust in Yahweh for ever, for Yahweh is a rock for ever.

⁵ He has brought low the dwellers on the heights, the lofty citadel; he lays it low, brings it to the ground, flings it down in the dust.

⁶ It will be trodden under foot, by the feet of the needy, the steps of the weak.'

⁷ The path of the Upright One is honesty; you smooth the honest way of the upright.

⁸ Following the path of your judgements, Yahweh, we set our hopes in you, your name, your memory are all our soul desires.

⁹ At night my soul longs for you and my spirit within me seeks you out; for when your judgements appear on earth the inhabitants of the world learn what saving justice is.

¹⁰ If pity is shown to the wicked without his learning what saving justice is, he will act wrongly in the land of right conduct and not see the majesty of Yahweh.

¹¹ Yahweh, your hand is raised but they do not see! The antagonists of your people will look and grow pale; with your fiery wrath you will devour your enemies.

¹² Yahweh, you will grant us peace, having completed all our undertakings for us.

¹³ Yahweh our God, other lords than you have ruled us but, loyal to you alone, we invoke your name.

¹⁴ The dead will not come back to life, the shadows will not rise again, for you have punished them, annihilated them, wiping out their very memory.

¹⁵ You have made the nation larger, Yahweh, made the nation larger and won yourself glory, you have rolled back the frontiers of the country.

¹⁶ Yahweh, in distress they had recourse to you, they expended themselves in prayer, since your punishment was on them.

¹⁷ As a pregnant woman near her time of delivery writhes and cries out in her pangs, so have we been, Yahweh, in your eyes:

¹⁸ we have been pregnant, we have writhed, but we have given birth only to wind: we have not given salvation to the earth, no inhabitants for the world have been brought to birth.

¹⁹ Your dead will come back to life, your corpses will rise again. Wake up and sing, you dwellers in the dust, for your dew will be a radiant dew, but the earth will give birth to the shades.

²⁰ Go, my people, go to your private room, shut yourselves in. Hide yourselves a little while until the retribution has passed.

²¹ For see, Yahweh emerges from his dwelling to punish the inhabitants of earth for their guilt; and the earth will reveal the blood shed on it and no longer hide its slain.