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16 Yahweh, in trouble they have visited you.
    They poured out a prayer when your chastening was on them.
17 Just as a woman with child, who draws near the time of her delivery,
    is in pain and cries out in her pangs,
    so we have been before you, Yahweh.
18 We have been with child.
    We have been in pain.
We gave birth, it seems, only to wind.
    We have not worked any deliverance in the earth;
    neither have the inhabitants of the world fallen.
19 Your dead shall live.
    My dead bodies shall arise.
Awake and sing, you who dwell in the dust;
    for your dew is like the dew of herbs,
    and the earth will cast out the departed spirits.

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16 Yahweh, in distress they have visited you;
    they poured out an incantation;[a]
    your discipline was on them.
17 Like a pregnant woman on the point of giving birth, she writhes;
    she cries in her labor pains.

So we were because of your presence, Yahweh.

18 We became pregnant, we writhed;
    we gave birth to wind.
We cannot bring about deliverance on the earth,
    and no inhabitants of the world are born.
19 Your dead shall live; their corpses[b] shall rise.
    Wake up and sing for joy, dwellers of the dust,
for your dew is celestial dew,[c]
    and the earth will give birth to dead spirits.[d]

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Footnotes

  1. Isaiah 26:16 Literally “whispering”
  2. Isaiah 26:19 Literally “my corpse;” some manuscripts propose an emendation to the suffix to change it to third person masculine plural (“their corpses”), which makes better sense
  3. Isaiah 26:19 Literally “dew of light”
  4. Isaiah 26:19 Or “you make the land of Rephaim fall”