Isaiah

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

God’s covenant people

“We have a strong city;
He {the Lord} makes salvation as its walls and its rampart.

²Open Your[1] gates that the righteous nation,
which keeps faith, may enter in.

³You will keep those in perfect peace,
whose mind rests on You, because they trust in You.

⁴Trust in the LORD forever and ever,
because the LORD, the LORD is the Everlasting Rock.

For He has brought low those who dwell on high;
a lofty town, He lays it low.

⁵He lays it low, to the ground;
He casts it to the dust.

⁶The foot tramples it, the feet of the poor,
the footsteps of the needy.

God’s covenant people

⁷The way of the righteous, it is a level path;
it is level, the path of the righteous.

⁸Yea, O  Lord, we wait in the path of Your judgments;
{our} soul’s desire are for Your name and Your remembrance.

Unnamed individual

⁹With my soul, I long for You in the night;
yea, with my spirit within me, I seek You early.

For when Your judgments are on the earth,
the inhabitants of the world learn righteousness.

¹⁰Though grace is shown to the wicked, he does not learn righteousness.
In the land of uprightness, he deals with corruption and does not see the majesty of the LORD.

¹¹O  Lord, Your hand is lifted up, but they will not see;
but let them see and be ashamed

for the envy of the people;
yea, let the fire for Your adversaries consume them.

God’s covenant people

¹²O  Lord, You will offer peace for us,
for You have performed all of our works for us.

¹³O  Lord, our God, lords besides You have ruled over us;
in You alone, we bring to remembrance Your name.

¹⁴They are dead; they live no more.
Their spirits do not arise.

Therefore, You have punished them,
and You have destroyed them
and have made all memory of them to perish.

¹⁵You have increased the nation, O  Lord;
You have increased the nation; You are glorified.
You have extended all the boundaries of the land.

¹⁶O  Lord, they sought You in distress;
they poured out a whisper when Your chastening was upon them.

¹⁷Like a woman with child when she is about to give birth,
who writhes and cries out in her pangs, so were we, because of You, O  Lord.

¹⁸We were with child;
we writhed. It is as though we have given birth to wind.

We have not brought salvation to the earth,
and the inhabitants of the world have not come to life.

The Lord

¹⁹Your dead will live;
their bodies will rise.

Awake and sing gladly, O you who dwell in the dust.
For your dew is a dew of lights[2] and the earth will cast out the dead.

²⁰Go, My people, enter your chambers and shut your doors behind you;
hide for a little moment until the wrath has passed over.

Isaiah

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 reveal the bloodshed upon it
and will no longer cover its slain.