< Isaiah 25 >
1 O Lord, you are my God! I will exalt you, and I will confess your name. For you have accomplished miracles. Your plan, from antiquity, is faithful. Amen.
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 For you have appointed a city as a tomb, a strong city for ruination, a house of foreigners: so that it may not be a city, and so that it may not be rebuilt forever.
[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 Concerning this, a strong people will praise you; a city with a robust people will fear you.
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 For you have been the strength of the poor, the strength of the indigent in his tribulation, a refuge from the whirlwind, a shadow from the heat. For the spirit of the mighty is like a whirlwind striking against a wall.
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 You will bring low the uprising of foreigners, just as heat brings thirst. And like heat under a torrential cloud, you will cause the offshoot of the strong to wither away.
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 And the Lord of hosts will cause all the peoples on this mountain to feast on fatness, to feast on wine, a fatness full of marrow, a purified wine.
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 And he will cast down violently, on this mountain, the face of the chains, with which all peoples had been bound, and the net, with which all nations had been covered.
[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 violently cast down death forever. And the Lord God will take away the tears from every face, and he will take away the disgrace of his people from the entire earth. For the Lord has spoken it.
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 And they will say in that day: “Behold, this is our God! We have waited for him, and he will save us. This is the Lord! We have endured for him. We will exult and rejoice in his salvation.”
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 For the hand of the Lord will rest upon this mountain. And Moab will be trampled under him, just as stubble is worn away by a wagon.
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 And he will extend his hands under him, like a swimmer extending his hands to swim. And he will bring down his glory with a clap of his hands.
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 And the fortifications of your sublime walls will fall, and be brought low, and be torn down to the ground, even to the dust.
The high walls [around the cities] in Moab will be torn down; they will be demolished and fall into the dust/dirt.