The Enemy Has Been Defeated

⁷ The way of the righteous is smooth;
O Upright One, make the path of the righteous level.
⁸ Indeed, while following the way of Your judgments, Lord,
We have waited for You eagerly;
Your name, and remembering You, is the desire of oursouls.
⁹ At night my soul longs for You,
Indeed, my spirit within me seeks You diligently;
For when the earth experiences Your judgments,
The inhabitants of the world learn righteousness.
¹⁰ Though the wicked person is shown compassion,
He does not learn righteousness;
He deals unjustly in the land of uprightness,
And does not perceive the majesty of the Lord.

¹¹ Lord, Your hand is lifted up, yet they do not see it.
They see Your zeal for the people and are put to shame;
Indeed, fire will devour Your enemies.
¹² Lord, You will establish peace for us,
Since You have also performed for us all our works.
¹³ Lord, our God, other masters besides You have ruled us;
But through You alone we confess Your name.
¹⁴ The dead will not live, the departed spirits will not rise;
Therefore You have punished and destroyed them,
And You have eliminated all remembrance of them.
¹⁵ You have increased the nation, Lord,
You have increased the nation, You are glorified;
You have extended all the borders of the land.
¹⁶ Lord, they sought You in distress;
They could only whisper a prayer,
Your discipline was upon them.
¹⁷ 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 gave birth, as it seems, only to wind.
We could not accomplish deliverance for the earth,
Nor were inhabitants of the world born.
¹⁹ Your dead will live;
Their corpses will rise.
You who lie in the dust, awake and shout for joy,
For your dew is as the dew of the dawn,
And the earth will give birth to the departed spirits.

²⁰ Come, my people, enter your rooms
And close your doors behind you;
Hide for a little while
Until indignation runs its course.
²¹ For behold, the Lord is about to come out from His place
To punish the inhabitants of the earth for their wrongdoing;
And the earth will reveal her bloodshed
And will no longer cover her slain.

² On that day,
“A vineyard of beauty, sing of it!
³ I, the Lord, am its keeper;
I water it every moment.
So that no one will damage it,
I guard it night and day.
⁴ I have no wrath.
Should someone give Me briars and thorns in battle,
Then I would step on them, I would burn them completely.
⁵ Or let him rely on My protection,
Let him make peace with Me,
Let him make peace with Me.”
⁶ In the days to come Jacob will take root,
Israel will blossom and sprout,
And they will fill the whole world with fruit.

⁷ Like the striking of Him who has struck them, has He struck them?
Or like the slaughter of His slain, have they been slain?
⁸ You contended with them by banishing them, by driving them away.
With His fierce wind He has expelled them on the day of the east wind.
⁹ Therefore through this Jacob’s wrongdoing will be forgiven;
And this will be the full price of the pardoning of his sin:
When he makes all the altar stones like pulverized chalk stones;
When Asherim and incense altars will not stand.
¹⁰ For the fortified city is isolated,
A homestead deserted and abandoned like the desert;
There the calf will graze,
And there it will lie down and feed on its branches.
¹¹ When its limbs are dry, they are broken off;
Women come and make a fire with them,
For they are not a people of discernment,
Therefore their Maker will not have compassion on them.
And their Creator will not be gracious to them.