Ah, destroyer, and yourself not destroyed!
    And treacherous one, and no one has dealt treacherously with him!
When you cease destroying, you will be destroyed.
    When you stop dealing treacherously, one will deal treacherously with you.
Yahweh, be gracious to us, we wait for you.
    Be our arm in the mornings,
    indeed our salvation in the time of trouble.
At the sound of tumult, peoples fled;
    because of your exaltation, nations scattered.
And your spoil is gathered,
    as the gathering of the locust,
        as a swarm of locusts storming on it.
Yahweh is exalted, for he dwells on high;
    he filled Zion with justice and righteousness,
and he will be the security of your times,
    an abundance of salvation, wisdom, and knowledge.

Look! Their heroes cry out in the street;
    the messengers of peace weep bitterly.
Highways are deserted;
    the traveler on the road ceases.
One breaks a treaty,
    he rejects the cities,
    he does not hold man in high regard.
The land mourns; it languishes.
    Lebanon feels abashed; it withers.
Sharon is like the desert,
    and Bashan and Carmel are losing their leaves.
"Now I will arise," says Yahweh.
    "Now I will lift myself up proudly;
    now I will raise myself.
You conceive dry grass, you bring forth stubble;
    your breath is a fire; it will consume you.
And the peoples will be burning to lime—
    they are burned like thorns that have been cut down in the fire.
You who are far away, hear what I have done;
    and you who are near, know my might!"
Sinners are afraid in Zion;
    trembling has seized the godless:
"Who of us can live with devouring fire?
    Who of us can live with everlasting consuming hearths?"
He who walks in righteousness
    and speaks uprightness,
who rejects the gain of extortion,
    who refuses a bribe,
who stops up his ears from hearing bloodshed
    and shuts his eyes from seeing evil.
That one will live on the heights;
    the fortresses of rocks will be his refuge.
His food will be given;
    his waters will endure.
Your eyes will see the king in his beauty;
    they will see a distant land.
Your mind will meditate on the terror:
    "Where is the one who counted?
Where is the one who weighed out?
    Where is the one who counted the towers?"
You will not see the insolent people,
    the people whose language is too obscure to understand,
        whose stammering of tongue cannot be understood.
Look on Zion, the city of our appointed festivals!
    Your eyes will see Jerusalem,
an undisturbed settlement,
    a tent that is not moved.
No one will ever pull out its tent pegs,
    and none of its ropes will be torn in two.
Rather, there Yahweh will be mighty for us,
    a place of rivers and broad streams,
a galley ship with oars cannot go in it,
    and a mighty ship cannot pass through it.
For Yahweh is our judge; Yahweh is our lawgiver.
    Yahweh is our king; he is the one who will save us.
Your riggings hang slack;
    they do not hold the base of their mast firm,
        they do not spread out the sail.
Then the prey of spoil in abundance will be divided;
    the lame will take plunder.
And no inhabitant will say, "I am sick";
    the people who live in it, their iniquity will be taken away.

Come near, nations, to hear;
    and peoples, listen attentively!
Let the earth hear, and that which fills it;
    the world and all its offspring.
For the anger of Yahweh is against all the nations,
    and his wrath is against all their armies;
he has put them under a ban,
    he has given them up for slaughter.
And their slain shall be cast out;
    as for their corpses, their stench shall go up.
And the mountains shall melt with their blood,
    and all the host of heaven shall rot.
And the skies shall roll up like a scroll,
    and all their host shall wither
like the withering of a leaf from a vine,
    or like the withering from a fig tree.

look! It will descend upon Edom,
    and upon the people of my ban, for judgment.

it is full of blood.
    It is covered with fat,
with the blood of lambs and goats,
    with the fat of the kidneys of rams,
for Yahweh has a sacrifice in Bozrah
    and a great slaughter in the land of Edom.
And wild oxen shall go down with them,
    and steers with strong bulls.
And their land shall be drenched with blood,
    and their soil shall be fattened with fat.
For Yahweh has a day of vengeance,
    a year of retribution for the strife of Zion.
And its streams shall be changed to pitch and its soil to sulfur,
    and its land shall become like burning pitch.
Night and day it shall not be quenched;
    its smoke shall go up forever.
From generation to generation it shall be in ruins;
    forever and ever there will be no one who passes through her.
But the large bird and the hedgehog shall take possession of it,
    and the owl and the raven shall live in it.
And he shall stretch the measuring line of confusion out over it,
    and the plumb line of emptiness.
Its nobles—but no kingdom is there—shall call,
    and all its princes shall be nothing.
And thorns shall go up her citadel fortress,
    weeds and thistle plants in her fortresses;
and it shall be the settlement of jackals,
    green grass for the daughters of an ostrich.
And desert creatures shall meet with hyenas,
    and a goat-demon shall call to his neighbor;
surely there Lilith shall repose,
    and she shall find a resting place for herself.
There the owl shall nest and lay
    and hatch and care for her chicks in her shadow;
surely there the birds of prey shall be gathered,
    each one with her mate.

none of these shall be missing;
    none shall miss her mate.
For my mouth is the one that has commanded,
    and his spirit is the one that has gathered them.
And he is the one that has cast the lot for them,
    and his hand has apportioned it to them with the measuring line;
they shall take possession of it forever,
    they shall live in it from generation to generation.

Wilderness and dry land shall be glad,
    and desert shall rejoice and blossom like the crocus.
It shall blossom abundantly,
    and it shall rejoice indeed with rejoicing and exulting.
The glory of Lebanon shall be given to it,
    the majesty of Carmel and Sharon.
They are the ones who shall see the glory of Yahweh,
    the majesty of our God.
Strengthen the weak hands
    and make the staggering knees firm.

"Be strong; you must not fear!
    Look! your God will come with vengeance,
with divine retribution.
    He is the one who will come and save you."
Then the eyes of the blind shall be opened,
    and the ears of the deaf shall be opened.
Then the lame shall leap like the deer,
    and the tongue of the dumb shall sing for joy,
for waters shall break forth in the wilderness
    and streams in the desert.
And the parched ground shall become a pool,
    and the thirsty ground springs of water.
Her resting place is in a settlement of jackals;
    the grass shall become like reeds and rushes.
And a highway shall be there, and a way,
    and it shall be called the way of holiness.
The unclean shall not travel through it,
    but it is for them, he who walks on the way;
    and fools shall not wander about.
No lion shall be there,
    and no ferocious wild beast shall go up it.
It shall not be found there,
    but the redeemed shall walk there.
And the ransomed of Yahweh shall return,
    and they shall come to Zion with rejoicing.
And everlasting joy shall be on their head;
    joy and gladness shall overtake them,
        and sorrow and sighing shall flee.