Isaiah 26:13-19

Easy-to-Read Version

¹³ Lord, you are our God,
    but in the past, we followed other lords.
We belonged to other masters,^[a]
    but now we want people to remember only one name—yours.
¹⁴ Those dead lords will not come to life.
    Those ghosts will not rise from death.
You decided to destroy them,
    and you destroyed everything that makes us think about them.
¹⁵ Lord, you have helped the nation you love.
    You made our nation grow
    and brought honor to yourself.^[b]
16 Lord, people remember you
    when they are in trouble.
So because of your punishment,
    we called out to you.
¹⁷ Lord, because of you we were in pain,
    like a woman giving birth,
    who struggles and cries out when it is time.
¹⁸ But we struggled in pain for nothing.
    We gave birth only to wind.
We did nothing to save the land.
    No one was born to live in the world.
¹⁹ But the Lord says,
“Your people have died,
    but they will live again.
The bodies of my people
    will rise from death.
Dead people in the ground,
    stand and be happy!
The dew covering you is like
    the dew sparkling in the light of a new day.
It shows that a new time is coming,
    when the earth will give birth to the dead who are in it.”