1 At that time, people will sing this song in Judah: ˻The Lord˼ gives us our salvation. We have a strong city. Our city has strong walls and defenses. 2 Open the gates and the good people will enter. Those people obey God’s good teachings. 3 Lord, you give true peace to people who depend on you, to people who trust you. 4 So, trust the Lord always. Why? Because in the Lord Yah, you have a place of safety forever! 5 But the Lord will destroy the proud city. And he will punish the people living there. The Lord will throw that high city down to the ground. It will fall into the dust. 6 Then poor and humble people will walk on those ruins. 7 Honesty is the way of living for good people. Good people follow the way that is straight and true. And God, you make that way smooth and easy to follow. 8 But Lord, we are waiting for your way of justice. Our souls want to remember you and your name. 9 My soul wants to be with you at night. And the spirit in me wants to be with you at the dawning of every new day. When your way of justice comes to the land, people will learn the right way of living. 10 An evil person will not learn to do good if you show him only kindness. An evil person will do bad things, even if he lives in a good world. That evil person might never see the Lord’s greatness. 11 But Lord, get ready to punish those people. Surely they will see it, won’t they? Lord, show the evil people the strong love that you have for your people. Surely the evil people will be ashamed. Surely your enemies will be burned in their own fire ˻(evil)˼. 12 Lord, you have succeeded in doing all the things that we tried to do. So give us peace. 13 Lord, you are our God. But in the past, we followed other lords. We belonged to other masters. But now we want people to remember only one name, your name! 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 You have helped the nation you love. You stopped other people from defeating that nation. 16 Lord, people remember you when they are in trouble. People say quiet prayers to you when you punish them. 17 Lord, when we are not with you, we are like a woman giving birth to a baby. She cries with birth pains. 18 In the same way, we have pain. We give birth, but only to wind. We don’t make new people for the world. We don’t bring salvation to the land. 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 a new time is coming when the earth will give up the dead people that are in it.” 20 My people, go into your rooms. Lock your doors. Hide in your rooms for a short time. Hide until God’s anger is finished. 21 The Lord will leave his place to judge the people of the world for the bad things they have done. The earth will show the blood of the people that have been killed. The earth will not cover the dead people anymore.
