Isaiah 26-27

New Revised Standard Version Catholic Edition

⁷ The way of the righteous is level;
    O Just One, you make smooth the path of the righteous.
⁸ In the path of your judgments,
    O Lord, we wait for you;
your name and your renown
    are the soul’s desire.
⁹ My soul yearns for you in the night,
    my spirit within me earnestly seeks you.
For when your judgments are in the earth,
    the inhabitants of the world learn righteousness.
¹⁰ If favor is shown to the wicked,
    they do not learn righteousness;
in the land of uprightness they deal perversely
    and do not see the majesty of the Lord.
¹¹ O Lord, your hand is lifted up,
    but they do not see it.
Let them see your zeal for your people, and be ashamed.
    Let the fire for your adversaries consume them.
¹² O Lord, you will ordain peace for us,
    for indeed, all that we have done, you have done for us.
¹³ O Lord our God,
    other lords besides you have ruled over us,
    but we acknowledge your name alone.
¹⁴ The dead do not live;
    shades do not rise—
because you have punished and destroyed them,
    and wiped out all memory of them.
¹⁵ But you have increased the nation, O Lord,
    you have increased the nation; you are glorified;
    you have enlarged all the borders of the land.

¹⁶ O Lord, in distress they sought you,
    they poured out a prayer^[b]
    when your chastening was on them.
¹⁷ Like a woman with child,
    who writhes and cries out in her pangs
    when she is near her time,
so were we because of you, O Lord;
¹⁸     we were with child, we writhed,
    but we gave birth only to wind.
We have won no victories on earth,
    and no one is born to inhabit the world.
¹⁹ Your dead shall live, their corpses^[c] shall rise.
    O dwellers in the dust, awake and sing for joy!
For your dew is a radiant dew,
    and the earth will give birth to those long dead.^[d]

²⁰ Come, my people, enter your chambers,
    and shut your doors behind you;
hide yourselves for a little while
    until the wrath is past.
²¹ For the Lord comes out from his place
    to punish the inhabitants of the earth for their iniquity;
the earth will disclose the blood shed on it,
    and will no longer cover its slain.

² On that day:
A pleasant vineyard, sing about it!
³     I, the Lord, am its keeper;
    every moment I water it.
I guard it night and day
    so that no one can harm it;
⁴     I have no wrath.
If it gives me thorns and briers,
    I will march to battle against it.
    I will burn it up.
⁵ Or else let it cling to me for protection,
    let it make peace with me,
    let it make peace with me.

⁶ In days to come^[e] Jacob shall take root,
    Israel shall blossom and put forth shoots,
    and fill the whole world with fruit.

⁷ Has he struck them down as he struck down those who struck them?
    Or have they been killed as their killers were killed?
⁸ By expulsion,^[f] by exile you struggled against them;
    with his fierce blast he removed them in the day of the east wind.
⁹ Therefore by this the guilt of Jacob will be expiated,
    and this will be the full fruit of the removal of his sin:
when he makes all the stones of the altars
    like chalkstones crushed to pieces,
    no sacred poles^[g] or incense altars will remain standing.
¹⁰ For the fortified city is solitary,
    a habitation deserted and forsaken, like the wilderness;
the calves graze there,
    there they lie down, and strip its branches.
¹¹ When its boughs are dry, they are broken;
    women come and make a fire of them.
For this is a people without understanding;
    therefore he that made them will not have compassion on them,
    he that formed them will show them no favor.