Baruch 4:30-5:9

Good News Translation

Jerusalem Is Assured of Help

³⁰ Take courage, Jerusalem. God, who gave you your name, will now bring comfort to you. ³¹ Misery will come to those who mistreated you and then rejoiced when you fell. ³² Misery will come to those cities that made your children slaves. Misery will be the fate of Babylon, that city which swallowed up your children. ³³ Just as that city rejoiced when you fell and took delight in your ruin, so now she will mourn when she herself is deserted. ³⁴ I will turn her proud boastings into mourning and take away her large population in which she took pride. ³⁵ I, the Eternal God, will send down fire on her, and it will burn for many days. Her ruins will be haunted by demons for a long time to come.

³⁶ Look to the east, Jerusalem, and see the joy that God is bringing to you. ³⁷ Look, your children are coming home, the children that were taken from you. They have been gathered together from the east and from the west by the command of God, the Holy One. And now they are coming home, rejoicing in the glory of God.

5 ^(A)Jerusalem, take off the clothes you have worn in your mourning and distress, and put on the eternal splendor of God's glory. ² Put around you the cloak of God's righteousness. Place on your head the crown of the glory of the Eternal God. ³ God will show your splendor to every nation on earth. ⁴ Forever he will say to you:

⁵ Get up, Jerusalem, stand on the mountaintop; see where God, the Holy One, is bringing your children together from the east and from the west. They are rejoicing that God has remembered them. ⁶ Jerusalem, your children were led away by their enemies; they left you on foot, but God is bringing them back to you, carried in royal splendor. ⁷ God has commanded that every high mountain and the everlasting hills shall be made low; he has commanded that the valleys shall be filled and the ground leveled, so that the people of Israel may come safely home in the glory of God. ⁸ At the command of God, forests of fragrant trees will spring up to provide shade for the people of Israel. ⁹ God will lead Israel home. They will return with great joy, guided by his mercy and righteousness, surrounded by the light of his glorious presence.