Through My Bible Yr 01 – December 25

Through My Bible – December 25

Isaiah 26 – 27 (EHV)

See series: Through My Bible

We have a strong city.
God sets up salvation as its walls and ramparts.
² Open the gates,
so that the righteous nation may enter,
the nation that guards the truth. ^[1]
3 You preserve perfect peace for the person
    whose resolve is steadfast,
because he trusts in you.
⁴ Trust in the Lord forever,
for Yah the Lord ^[2] is the eternal Rock.
⁵ He humbles those who live in a high place,
    in a high, secure city.
He brings it down!
He brings it down to the ground!
He throws it down into the dust!
⁶ It is trampled down
by the feet of the poor,
by the soles of the feet of the helpless.

⁷ The way of the righteous is level and smooth.
You are righteous. ^[3] You smooth the path for the righteous.
⁸ Truly, Lord, we have waited for you on the path of your judgments.
Your name and your renown are what our soul desires.
⁹ My soul longs for you during the night.
My spirit within me looks for you early in the morning,
because when your judgments are known on earth,
the inhabitants of the world will learn what righteousness is.
¹⁰ Although grace is shown to the wicked,
they do not learn righteousness.
They will continue to act unjustly even in a righteous land.
They will not recognize the Lord’s majesty.
¹¹ Lord, your hand is raised, ready to strike,
but they do not see it.
But they will see your zeal for the people,
and they will be put to shame.
May fire consume your enemies.
¹² O Lord, you establish peace for us.
Everything we have done, you have accomplished for us.
¹³ O Lord our God, other lords besides you have ruled over us,
but we honor only your name.
¹⁴ They are dead. They will not live again.
Their departed spirits will not return.
You have dealt with them and destroyed them.
You have wiped out all memory of them.
¹⁵ You have enlarged the nation, O Lord.
You have enlarged the nation!
You are glorified!
You have extended all the borders of the land.

¹⁶ O Lord, they appealed to you in distress.
They whispered a prayer as you disciplined them.
¹⁷ Just as a pregnant woman nearing the time of her delivery
    writhes and cries out in her pain,
so we have done before you, O Lord.
¹⁸ We have been in pain
    as if we were about to give birth to a child,
but we gave birth only to wind.
We have not brought salvation for the earth.
We have not given birth to people who can inhabit the world. ^[4]
19 But your dead ones will live.
Their ^[5] dead bodies will rise.
Wake up and sing for joy,
you who dwell in the dust,
because your dew will glisten like morning light,
and the earth will give up the spirits of the dead. ^[6]
20 Go, my people, go into your rooms,
and shut the doors behind you.
Hide yourselves for a little while,
until his wrath has passed over.
²¹ Look! The Lord is coming out of his place
    to deal with the guilt of those who live on the earth.
Then the earth will reveal the blood shed on it.
It will no longer cover those who have been killed.

² On that day, sing about a delightful vineyard! ^[9]
3 I, the Lord, am serving as its caretaker.
I water it constantly.
So that nothing will damage it,
I guard it night and day.
⁴ I am not angry,
but if I do find briers and thorns there,
I will fight them!
I will charge against them and set them all on fire.
⁵ To prevent this, let them turn to me for protection
and make peace with me.
Let them make peace with me! ^[10]

⁶ In days to come,
Jacob will take root.
Israel will blossom and bud.
It will fill the whole world with fruit.

⁷ Has he struck Israel the way he struck those who struck them?
Have they been killed the same way those who killed them were killed?
⁸ When you drive them away ^[11] and send them into exile,
you make your case against them.
He drives them out with his violent storm,
as on a day when the hot east wind blows.
⁹ In this way the guilt of Jacob will be atoned for,
and this will be all the fruit that results from taking away his sin.
He will make all the altar stones like chalk that has been crushed,
and no Asherah poles or incense altars will remain standing.
¹⁰ Then the fortified city will be all alone,
a dwelling place, deserted and forsaken, like a wilderness.
Calves will graze there.
They will lie down there and eat all the leaves off the branches.
¹¹ When its twigs are dried up, they are broken off.
Women will come and build a fire with them.
Because they are a people who have no understanding,
therefore their Maker will have no compassion on them.
He who formed them will not be gracious to them.

Footnotes

1. Isaiah 26:2 Or remains faithful
2. Isaiah 26:4 The Hebrew text here includes both the short and long forms of the divine name, Yah and Yahweh. Since we usually translate Yahweh as Lord and there is no difference in meaning between the two terms, Yah is left untranslated.
3. Isaiah 26:7 The grammatical construction of the line is unclear. The word translated you are righteous is the same Hebrew root that means level and smooth. It does not appear in the Greek text and perhaps should be omitted.
4. Isaiah 26:18 The meaning of this line is uncertain.
5. Isaiah 26:19 The Hebrew reads my dead body, but the verb is plural.
6. Isaiah 26:19 The last lines of the verse are difficult.
7. Isaiah 27:1 Leviathan is well known in the literature of the ancient Near East. It is a dragon or sea serpent that represents chaos and disorder. Like the dragon in Revelation 12, it can represent Satan.
8. Isaiah 27:1 Hebrew tannin
9. Isaiah 27:2 Hebrew variant a vineyard of red wine
10. Isaiah 27:5 The precise line of thought in verses 4 and 5 is uncertain.
11. Isaiah 27:8 The meaning of this phrase is uncertain.
12. Isaiah 27:12 One of the intermittent streambeds near the border of Egypt, not the Nile