1.9 KiB
Chapter 27
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In that day the LORD will take his terrible, swift sword and punish Leviathan, the swiftly moving serpent, the coiling, writhing serpent. He will kill the dragon of the sea.
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"In that day,
sing about the fruitful vineyard.
- I, the LORD, will watch over it,
watering it carefully.
Day and night I will watch so no one can harm it.
- My anger will be gone.
If I find briers and thorns growing,
I will attack them; I will burn them up--
- unless they turn to me for help.
Let them make peace with me;
yes, let them make peace with me."
- The time is coming when Jacob's descendants will take root.
Israel will bud and blossom
and fill the whole earth with fruit!
- Has the LORD struck Israel
as he struck her enemies? Has he punished her
as he punished them?
- No, but he exiled Israel to call her to account.
She was exiled from her land
as though blown away in a storm from the east.
- The LORD did this to purge Israel's wickedness,
to take away all her sin.
As a result, all the pagan altars will be crushed to dust.
No Asherah pole or pagan shrine will be left standing.
- The fortified towns will be silent and empty,
the houses abandoned, the streets overgrown with weeds.
Calves will graze there,
chewing on twigs and branches.
- The people are like the dead branches of a tree,
broken off and used for kindling beneath the cooking pots.
Israel is a foolish and stupid nation,
for its people have turned away from God.
Therefore, the one who made them
will show them no pity or mercy.
- Yet the time will come when the LORD will gather them together like handpicked grain. One by one he will gather them--from the Euphrates River in the east to the Brook of Egypt in the west.
- In that day the great trumpet will sound. Many who were dying in exile in Assyria and Egypt will return to Jerusalem to worship the LORD on his holy mountain.