Isaiah 25

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.

O Lord, you are my God; I will give praise to you, I will give honour to your name; for you have done great acts of power; your purposes in the past have been made true and certain in effect.

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.

For you have made a town a waste place: a strong town a mass of broken walls; the tower of the men of pride has come to an end; it will never be put up again.

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.

For this cause will the strong people give glory to you, the town of the cruel ones will be in fear of 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,

For you have been a strong place for the poor and the crushed in their trouble, a safe place from the storm, a shade from the heat, when the wrath of the cruel ones is like a winter storm.

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.

As heat by the shade of a cloud, the noise of the men of pride has been made quiet by you; as heat by the shade of a cloud, the song of the cruel ones has been stopped.

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.

And in this mountain will the Lord of armies make for all peoples a feast of good things, a feast of wines long stored, of good things sweet to the taste, of wines long kept and tested.

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.

And in this mountain he will put an end to the shade covering the face of all peoples, and the veil which is stretched over all nations.

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!

He has put an end to death for ever; and the Lord God will take away all weeping; and he will put an end to the shame of his people in all the earth: for the Lord 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]!”

And in that day it will be said, See, this is our God; we have been waiting for him, and he will be our saviour: this is the Lord in whom is our hope; we will be glad and have delight in his salvation.

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].

For in this mountain will the hand of the Lord come to rest, and Moab will be crushed down in his place, even as the dry stems of the grain are crushed under foot in the waste place.

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.

And if he puts out his hands, like a man stretching out his hands in swimming, the Lord will make low his pride, however expert his designs.

12 The high walls [around the cities] in Moab will be torn down; they will be demolished and fall into the dust/dirt.

And the strong tower of your walls has been broken by him, made low, and crushed even to the dust.