Isaiah 26:14-18
New American Standard Bible
14 (A)The dead will not live, the [a]departed spirits will not rise;
Therefore You have (B)punished and destroyed them,
And You have eliminated all remembrance of them.
15 (C)You have increased the nation, Lord,
You have increased the nation, You are glorified;
You have (D)extended all the borders of the land.
16 Lord, they sought You (E)in distress;
They [b]could only whisper a prayer,
Your discipline was upon them.
17 (F)As the pregnant woman approaches the time to give birth,
She writhes and cries out in her labor pains;
This is how we were before You, Lord.
18 We were pregnant, we writhed in labor,
We (G)gave birth, as it seems, only to wind.
We could not accomplish deliverance for the earth,
Nor were (H)inhabitants of the world [c]born.
Footnotes
- Isaiah 26:14 Or shades
- Isaiah 26:16 Lit sound forth a whisper
- Isaiah 26:18 Lit fallen
Isaiah 26:14-18
Common English Bible
14 The dead don’t live; ghosts don’t rise.
Indeed, you have punished and destroyed them,
and abolished all memory of them.
15 You’ve enlarged the nation, Lord.
You’ve enlarged the nation; you are glorified.
You’ve expanded all the land’s boundaries.
16 Lord, in distress they sought you out;
they poured out prayers to you when you disciplined them.
17 As a pregnant woman close to childbirth is in labor pains,
crying out in her pangs,
so were we because of you, Lord.
18 We were pregnant, we writhed,
but we gave birth to wind.
We have achieved no victories on earth;
the inhabitants of the earth never fall.
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Copyright © 2011 by Common English Bible