On that day this song will be sung in the land of Judah:

We have a strong city.
Salvation is established as walls and ramparts.

You will keep the mind that is dependent on You
in perfect peace,
for it is trusting in You.

I long for You in the night;
yes, my spirit within me diligently seeks You,
for when Your judgments are in the land,
the inhabitants of the world will learn righteousness.

Lord, Your hand is lifted up to take action,
but they do not see it.
They will see Your zeal for Your people,
and they will be put to shame.
The fire for Your adversaries will consume them!

Lord, You will establish peace for us,
for You have also done all our work for us.

Your dead will live; their bodies will rise.
Awake and sing, you who dwell in the dust!
For you will be covered with the morning dew,
and the earth will bring out the departed spirits.

For look, the Lord is coming from His place
to punish the inhabitants of the earth for their iniquity.
The earth will reveal the blood shed on it
and will no longer conceal her slain.

On that day the Lord with His harsh, great, and strong sword, will bring judgment on Leviathan, the fleeing serpent—Leviathan, the twisting serpent. He will slay the monster that is in the sea.

I am not angry,
but if it produces thorns and briers for Me,
I will fight against it, trample it,
and burn it to the ground.

In days to come, Jacob will take root.
Israel will blossom and bloom
and fill the whole world with fruit.

Therefore Jacob’s iniquity will be purged in this way,
and the result of the removal of his sin will be this:
when he makes all the altar stones
like crushed bits of chalk,
no Asherah poles or incense altars will remain standing.

For the fortified city will be deserted,
pastures abandoned and forsaken like a wilderness.
Calves will graze there,
and there they will spread out and strip its branches.

When its branches dry out, they will be broken off.
Women will come and make fires with them,
for they are not a people with understanding.
Therefore their Maker will not have compassion on them,
and their Creator will not be gracious to them.

On that day
the Lord will thresh grain from the Euphrates River
as far as the Wadi of Egypt,
and you Israelites will be gathered one by one.

On that day
a great trumpet will be blown,
and those lost in the land of Assyria will come,
as well as those dispersed in the land of Egypt;
and they will worship the Lord
at Jerusalem on the holy mountain.

Look, the Lord has a strong and mighty one—
like a devastating hail storm,
like a storm with strong flooding waters.
He will bring it across the land with His hand.

The majestic crown of Ephraim’s drunkards
will be trampled underfoot.

The fading flower of his beautiful splendor,
which is on the summit above the rich valley,
will be like a ripe fig before the summer harvest.
Whoever sees it will swallow it
while it is still in his hand.

On that day
the Lord of Hosts will become a crown of beauty
and a diadem of splendor
to the remnant of His people,

So He will speak to this people
with stammering speech
and in a foreign language.

For you said, “We have cut a deal with Death,
and we have made an agreement with Sheol;
when the overwhelming scourge passes through,
it will not touch us,
because we have made falsehood our refuge
and have hidden behind treachery.”

Therefore the Lord God said:
“Look, I have laid a stone in Zion,
a tested stone,
a precious cornerstone, a sure foundation;
the one who believes will be unshakable.

And I will make justice the measuring line
and righteousness the mason’s level.”
Hail will sweep away the false refuge,
and water will flood your hiding place.

Your deal with Death will be dissolved,
and your agreement with Sheol will not last.
When the overwhelming scourge passes through,
you will be trampled.

Every time it passes through,
it will carry you away;
it will pass through every morning—
every day and every night.
Only terror will cause you
to understand the message.

For the Lord will rise up as He did at Mount Perazim.
He will rise in wrath, as at the Valley of Gibeon,
to do His work, His strange work,
and to perform His task, His disturbing task.

So now, do not mock,
or your shackles will become stronger.
Indeed, I have heard from the Lord God of Hosts
a decree of destruction for the whole land.

I will oppress Ariel,
and there will be mourning and crying,
and she will be to Me like an Ariel.

I will camp in a circle around you;
I will besiege you with earth ramps,
and I will set up my siege towers against you.

You will be brought down;
you will speak from the ground,
and your words will come from low in the dust.
Your voice will be like that of a spirit from the ground;
your speech will whisper from the dust.

Your many foes will be like fine dust,
and many of the ruthless, like blowing chaff.
Then suddenly, in an instant,

you will be visited by the Lord of Hosts
with thunder, earthquake, and loud noise,
storm, tempest, and a flame of consuming fire.

All the many nations
going out to battle against Ariel—
all the attackers, the siege works against her,
and those who oppress her—
will then be like a dream, a vision in the night.

It will be like a hungry one who dreams he is eating,
then wakes and is still hungry;
and like a thirsty one who dreams he is drinking,
then wakes and is still thirsty, longing for water.
So it will be for all the many nations
who go to battle against Mount Zion.

For you the entire vision will be like the words of a sealed document. If it is given to one who can read and he is asked to read it, he will say, “I can’t read it, because it is sealed.”

And if the document is given to one who cannot read and he is asked to read it, he will say, “I can’t read.”

therefore I will again confound these people
with wonder after wonder.
The wisdom of their wise men will vanish,
and the understanding of the perceptive will be hidden.

Isn’t it true that in just a little while
Lebanon will become an orchard,
and the orchard will seem like a forest?

On that day the deaf will hear
the words of a document,
and out of a deep darkness
the eyes of the blind will see.

The humble will have joy
after joy in the Lord,
and the poor people will rejoice
in the Holy One of Israel.

For the ruthless one will vanish,
the scorner will disappear,
and all those who lie in wait with evil intent
will be killed—

Therefore, the Lord who redeemed Abraham says this about the house of Jacob:

Jacob will no longer be ashamed
and his face will no longer be pale.

For when he sees his children,
the work of My hands within his nation,
they will honor My name,
they will honor the Holy One of Jacob
and stand in awe of the God of Israel.

Those who are confused will gain understanding,
and those who grumble will accept instruction.

Woe to the rebellious children!
This is the Lord’s declaration.
They carry out a plan, but not Mine;
they make an alliance,
but against My will,
piling sin on top of sin.

But Pharaoh’s protection will become your shame,
and refuge in Egypt’s shadow your disgrace.

everyone will be ashamed
because of a people who can’t help.
They are of no benefit, they are no help;
they are good for nothing but shame and reproach.

An oracle about the animals of the Negev:

Through a land of trouble and distress,
of lioness and lion,
of viper and flying serpent,
they carry their wealth on the backs of donkeys
and their treasures on the humps of camels,
to a people who will not help them.

Go now, write it on a tablet in their presence
and inscribe it on a scroll;
it will be for the future,
forever and ever.

this iniquity of yours will be
like a spreading breach,
a bulge in a high wall
whose collapse will come in an instant—suddenly!

Its collapse will be like the shattering
of a potter’s jar, crushed to pieces,
so that not even a fragment of pottery
will be found among its shattered remains—
no fragment large enough to take fire from a hearth
or scoop water from a cistern.”

For the Lord God, the Holy One of Israel, has said:
“You will be delivered by returning and resting;
your strength will lie in quiet confidence.
But you are not willing.”

You say, “No!
We will escape on horses”—
therefore you will escape!—
and, “We will ride on fast horses”—
but those who pursue you will be faster.

One thousand will flee at the threat of one,
at the threat of five you will flee,
until you alone remain
like a solitary pole on a mountaintop
or a banner on a hill.

For you people will live on Zion in Jerusalem and will never cry again. He will show favor to you at the sound of your cry; when He hears, He will answer you.

The Lord will give you meager bread and water during oppression, but your Teacher will not hide Himself any longer. Your eyes will see your Teacher,

and whenever you turn to the right or to the left, your ears will hear this command behind you: “This is the way. Walk in it.”

Then you will defile your silver-plated idols and your gold-plated images. You will throw them away like menstrual cloths, and call them filth.

Then He will send rain for your seed that you have sown in the ground, and the food, the produce of the ground, will be rich and plentiful. On that day your cattle will graze in open pastures.

The oxen and donkeys that work the ground will eat salted fodder scattered with winnowing shovel and fork.

Streams flowing with water will be on every high mountain and every raised hill on the day of great slaughter when the towers fall.

The moonlight will be as bright as the sunlight, and the sunlight will be seven times brighter—like the light of seven days—on the day that the Lord bandages His people’s injuries and heals the wounds He inflicted.

Your singing will be like that
on the night of a holy festival,
and your heart will rejoice
like one who walks to the music of a flute,
going up to the mountain of the Lord,
to the Rock of Israel.

And the Lord will make the splendor of His voice heard
and reveal His arm striking in angry wrath
and a flame of consuming fire,
in driving rain, a torrent, and hailstones.

Assyria will be shattered by the voice of the Lord.
He will strike with a rod.

And every stroke of the appointed staff
that the Lord brings down on him
will be to the sound of tambourines and lyres;
He will fight against him with brandished weapons.

But He also is wise and brings disaster.
He does not go back on what He says;
He will rise up against the house of wicked men
and against the allies of evildoers.

Egyptians are men, not God;
their horses are flesh, not spirit.
When the Lord raises His hand to strike,
the helper will stumble
and the one who is helped will fall;
both will perish together.

For this is what the Lord said to me:

As a lion or young lion growls over its prey
when a band of shepherds is called out against it,
and is not terrified by their shouting
or subdued by their noise,
so the Lord of Hosts will come down
to fight on Mount Zion
and on its hill.

Like hovering birds,
so the Lord of Hosts will protect Jerusalem—
by protecting it, He will rescue it,
by sparing it, He will deliver it.

For on that day, every one of you will reject the silver and gold idols that your own hands have sinfully made.

Then Assyria will fall,
but not by human sword;
a sword will devour him,
but not one made by man.
He will flee from the sword;
his young men will be put to forced labor.

His rock will pass away because of fear,
and his officers will be afraid because of the signal flag.

This is the Lord’s declaration—whose fire is in Zion and whose furnace is in Jerusalem.

Indeed, a king will reign righteously,
and rulers will rule justly.

Each will be like a shelter from the wind,
a refuge from the rain,
like streams of water in a dry land
and the shade of a massive rock in an arid land.

Then the eyes of those who see will not be closed,
and the ears of those who hear will listen.

The reckless mind will gain knowledge,
and the stammering tongue will speak clearly and fluently.

A fool will no longer be called a noble,
nor a scoundrel said to be important.

In a little more than a year
you overconfident ones will shudder,
for the vintage will fail
and the harvest will not come.

For the palace will be forsaken,
the busy city abandoned.
The hill and the watchtower will become
barren places forever,
the joy of wild donkeys,
and a pasture for flocks,

until the Spirit from heaven is poured out on us.
Then the desert will become an orchard,
and the orchard will seem like a forest.

Then justice will inhabit the wilderness,
and righteousness will dwell in the orchard.

The result of righteousness will be peace;
the effect of righteousness
will be quiet confidence forever.

Then my people will dwell in a peaceful place,
in safe and secure dwellings.

But hail will level the forest,
and the city will sink into the depths.

Woe, you destroyer never destroyed,
you traitor never betrayed!
When you have finished destroying,
you will be destroyed.
When you have finished betraying,
they will betray you.

Your spoil will be gathered as locusts are gathered;
people will swarm over it like an infestation of locusts.

There will be times of security for you—
a storehouse of salvation, wisdom, and knowledge.
The fear of the Lord is Zion’s treasure.

“Now I will rise up,” says the Lord.
“Now I will lift Myself up.
Now I will be exalted.

You will conceive chaff;
you will give birth to stubble.
Your breath is fire that will consume you.

The peoples will be burned to ashes,
like thorns cut down and burned in a fire.

he will dwell on the heights;
his refuge will be the rocky fortresses,
his food provided, his water assured.

Your eyes will see the King in His beauty;
you will see a vast land.

Your mind will meditate on the past terror:
“Where is the accountant?
Where is the tribute collector?
Where is the one who spied out our defenses?”

You will no longer see the barbarians,
a people whose speech is difficult to comprehend—
who stammer in a language that is not understood.

Look at Zion, the city of our festival times.
Your eyes will see Jerusalem,
a peaceful pasture, a tent that does not wander;
its tent pegs will not be pulled up
nor will any of its cords be loosened.

For the majestic One, our Lord, will be there,
a place of rivers and broad streams
where ships that are rowed will not go,
and majestic vessels will not pass.

For the Lord is our Judge,
the Lord is our lawgiver,
the Lord is our King.
He will save us.

Your ropes are slack;
they cannot hold the base of the mast
or spread out the flag.
Then abundant spoil will be divided,
the lame will plunder it,

and none there will say, “I am sick.”
The people who dwell there
will be forgiven their iniquity.