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 YHWH, You [are] my God, I exalt You, I confess Your Name, For You have done a wonderful thing, Counsels of old, steadfastness, O steadfast One.

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 made of a city a heap, Of a fortified city a ruin, A high place of strangers from [being] a city, It is not built for all time.

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.

Therefore a strong people honors You, A city of the terrible nations fears 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 stronghold for the poor, A stronghold for the needy in his distress, A refuge from storm, a shadow from heat, When the spirit of the terrible [is] as a storm—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.

As heat in a dry place, You humble the noise of strangers, [As] heat with the shadow of a thick cloud, The singing of the terrible is humbled.

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 YHWH of Hosts has made, For all the peoples in this mountain, A banquet of fat things, A banquet of preserved things, Fat things full of marrow, Preserved things—refined.

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 He has swallowed up in this mountain The face of the wrapping that is wrapped over all the peoples, And of the covering that is spread over all the 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 swallowed up death in victory, And Lord YHWH has wiped [the] tear from off all faces, And He turns aside the reproach of His people from off all the earth, For YHWH 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]!”

And [one] has said in that day, “Behold, this [is] our God, We waited for Him, and He saves us, This [is] YHWH, we have waited for Him, We are glad and rejoice 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 the hand of YHWH rests on this mountain, And Moab is trodden down under Him, As straw is trodden down on a dunghill.

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 He spread out His hands in its midst, As the swimmer spreads out to swim; And He has humbled his excellence With the machinations of his hands.

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 fortress of the high place of your walls He has bowed down—He has made low, He has caused [it] to come to the earth—to dust.