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.

Lord, you are my God. I will honor you and praise who you are, because you have done wonderful things that you planned long ago. You are faithful and trustworthy!

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.

You have turned the city into a pile of rubble; the fortified town is now a ruin; the foreigner palace is gone. It is no longer a city and it 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.

Because of this powerful nations will honor you; cities of brutal nations will be in awe 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,

But you have protected the poor and needy when they were in trouble, you shielded them from storms and shaded them from the heat. For the actions of brutal people are like rain 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.

like heat in a desert. You end the noisy uprising of foreigners. In the same way that a cloud's shadow cools down the heat of the day, so the song sung by brutal people is silenced.

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.

On this mountain the Lord Almighty will prepare a feast for all nations, a lavish feast of aged wines, rich food, and the best meat.

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.

On this mountain he will destroy the veil that covers all the nations, the sheet that is over everyone.

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 will destroy death forever. The Lord God will wipe away all tears, and everywhere he will take away the humiliation suffered by his people. The Lord has spoken.

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]!”

At that time his people will say, “Look! This is our God; we have trusted in him and he has saved us! This is the Lord we have been looking for. Now we can be happy and celebrate the salvation he brings!”

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].

The Lord's hand of protection will be on this mountain. But the Moabites will be trampled underfoot like straw into the water of a manure pit.

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.

They will reach out their hands to try and save themselves, like swimmers using their hands to swim, but their pride will be humbled however much they thrash about.

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

Moab, he will demolish your fortress with the high walls, bringing it down to the ground, into the dust.