Isaiah

¹ But not so with Jacob. God will have compassion on Jacob. Once again he'll choose Israel. He'll establish them in their own country. Outsiders will be attracted and throw their lot in with Jacob.

² The nations among whom they lived will actually escort them back home, and then Israel will pay them back by making slaves of them, men and women alike, possessing them as slaves in God's country, capturing those who had captured them, ruling over those who had abused them.

³ When God has given you time to recover from the abuse and trouble and harsh servitude that you had to endure,

⁴ Can you believe it? The tyrant is gone! The tyranny is over!

⁵ the power of the bully-rulers

⁶ A relentless rain of cruel outrage Established a violent rule of anger rife with torture and persecution.

⁷ Burst into song! Make the rafters ring!

⁸ giant Lebanon cedars are relieved, saying, "Since you've been cut down, there's no one around to cut us down."

⁹ preparing to welcome you when you come. Getting ready to greet you are the ghostly dead, all the famous names of earth. All the buried kings of the nations will stand up on their thrones

¹⁰ royal invitations to death: "Now you are as nothing as we are! Make yourselves at home with us dead folks!"

¹¹ to your underworld private chambers, A king-size mattress of maggots for repose and a quilt of crawling worms for warmth.

¹² Daystar! Son of Dawn! Flat on your face in the underworld mud, you, famous for flattening nations!

¹³ "I'll climb to heaven. I'll set my throne over the stars of God. I'll run the assembly of angels that meets on sacred Mount Zaphon.

¹⁴ I'll take over as King of the Universe!"

¹⁵ Instead of climbing up, you came down— Down with the underground dead, down to the abyss of the Pit.

¹⁶ "Can this be the one Who terrorized earth and its kingdoms,

¹⁷ Wasted its cities, shut up his prisoners to a living death?"

¹⁸ honored with eulogies and placed in a tomb.

¹⁹ like a stray dog or cat, Covered with rotting bodies, murdered and indigent corpses. Your dead body desecrated, mutilated—

²⁰ You've left your land in ruins, left a legacy of massacre. The progeny of your evil life will never be named. Oblivion!

²¹ and wipe out their father's line. Unthinkable that they should own a square foot of land or desecrate the face of the world with their cities!

²² "I will confront them"—Decree of God-of-the-Angel-Armies— "and strip Babylon of name and survivors, children and grandchildren.

²³ " God's Decree. "I'll make it a worthless swamp and give it as a prize to the hedgehog. And then I'll bulldoze it out of existence." Decree of God-of-the-Angel-Armies.

²⁴ "Exactly as I planned, it will happen. Following my blueprints, it will take shape.

²⁵ and stomp him into the dirt on my mountains. I will ban his taking and making of slaves and lift the weight of oppression from all shoulders."

²⁶ planned for the whole earth, And this is the hand that will do it, reaching into every nation.

²⁷ Who could ever cancel such plans? His is the hand that's reached out. Who could brush it aside?

²⁸ In the year King Ahaz died, this Message came:

²⁹ the defeat of your cruel oppressor. From the death throes of that snake a worse snake will come, and from that, one even worse.

³⁰ The needy will escape the terror. But you Philistines will be plunged into famine, and those who don't starve, God will kill.

³¹ Fall prostrate in fear, Philistia! On the northern horizon, smoke from burned cities, the wake of a brutal, disciplined destroyer.

³² outsiders who ask questions? Tell them, "God has established Zion. Those in need and in trouble find refuge in her."