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 Yahweh! my God, thou art, I will exalt thee, I will praise thy Name, For thou hast done a wonderful thing, —Purposes of long ago Faithfulness in truth.

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 thou hast made, of a citadel, a mound, of a defenced city, a ruin, —palaces for foreigners to be no city, To times age-abiding, shall it not be built.

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! shall glorify thee—a strong people, the city of tyrannous nations shall revere thee;

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 thou didst become A refuge to the weak. A refuge to the needy, when distress was upon him, —A shelter from the storm. A shade from the heat, When the blast of tyrants was like a storm 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.

As heat in a desert, the pomp of foreigners, wilt thou subdue, —Heat—with the shade of a cloud, The song of tyrants! become low.

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.

Then will Yahweh of hosts prepare for all the peoples in this mountain, A banquet of fat things, A banquet of old wines, —Of fat things full of marrow, Of old wines well 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 will swallow up in this mountain, The mask of the veil, the veil that is upon all the peoples, —And the web that is woven 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!

Having swallowed up death itself victoriously, My Lord, Yahweh, will wipe away, tears from off all faces, —And the reproach of his own people, will he remove from off all the earth, For, Yahweh, hath 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]!”

So shall it be said, in that day, Lo! our God, is this! We waited for him, that he might save us, —This, is Yahweh! We waited for him, Let us exult 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 Yahweh will settle down in this mountain, —Then shall Moab be trodden down in its place, Like the treading down of a strawheap in the water of 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.

Should he spread forth his hands in the midst thereof, As a swimmer spreadeth forth to swim, Then would be laid low his pride, together with the devices 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.

Yea, the lofty stronghold of thy walls, Hath he brought down—Laid low—Levelled to the ground even unto the dust.