25
Isaiah praises God for having good judgment and providing salvation
1 Yahweh, you are my God;
I will honor you and praise you [MTY].
You do wonderful things;
you said long ago that you would do those things,
and now you have done them like you said that you would.
2 Sometimes you have caused cities to become heaps of rubble,
cities that had strong walls around them.
You have caused palaces in foreign countries to disappear;
they will never be rebuilt.
3 Therefore, people in powerful nations will declare that you are very great,
and people in nations whose leaders are ruthless/cruel will revere you.
4 Yahweh, you are like [SIM] a strong tower where poor people can ◄find refuge/be safe►,
a place where needy people can go when they are distressed.
You are like [MET] a place where people can find refuge in a storm
and where they can be shaded from the hot sun.
Ruthless/Cruel people oppress us;
they are like [SIM] a storm beating against a wall,
5 and like [SIM] the intense heat in the desert.
But you cause the roaring of people in foreign nations to cease.
Like the air cools when a cloud comes overhead,
you stop ruthless/cruel people from singing songs boasting about their being very great.
6 Here in Jerusalem, the Commander of the armies of angels will prepare a wonderful feast for all the people of the world.
It will be a banquet with plenty of good meat and fine well-aged [DOU] wine.
7 People here are sad;
their being sad is like a dark cloud that hangs over them,
like they experience when someone dies.
But Yahweh will enable them to quit being sad.
8 He will get rid of death forever!
Yahweh our God will cause people to no longer mourn because someone has died.
And he will stop other people insulting and making fun of his land and us his people.
That will surely happen because Yahweh has said it!
9 At that time, people will proclaim,
“Yahweh is our God!
We trusted in him, and he rescued us!
Yahweh, in whom we trusted, has done it;
we should rejoice because of his saving/rescuing us!”
10 Yahweh [MTY] will protect and bless Jerusalem.
But he will crush the people in the land of Moab;
they will be like [SIM] straw that is trampled in the manure and left to rot.
11 Yahweh will push down the people of Moab
like [SIM] a swimmer pushes the water with his hands.
He will cause them to cease being proud,
and he will show that all the things that they have done are worthless.
12 The high walls around the cities in Moab will be torn down;
they will be demolished and fall into the dust/dirt.