20. Though the Lord gives you the bread of distress and the water of oppression, your teacher will no longer hide, but you will see your teacher.
21. If you stray to the right or the left, you will hear a word that comes from behind you: "This is the way; walk in it."
22. You will defile your silver-plated idols and your gold-covered priestly vest, and you will scatter them like menstrual rags. "Get out," you will say to them.
23. God will provide rain for the seed you sow in the ground, and the food the ground produces will be rich and abundant. On that day, your cattle will graze in large pastures.
24. The oxen and donkeys that are working the ground will eat tasty feed spread for them with shovel and fork.
25. On every lofty mountain, and on every high hill, streams will run with water on the day of the great massacre, when the towers fall.
26. The light of the moon will be like the light of the sun, and the light of the sun will be seven times brighter—like the light of seven days—on the day that the Lord bandages the people’s brokenness and heals the wounds inflicted by his blows.
27. Look there! The Lord is coming from far away;his anger blazing, his smoke-cloud thick.His lips are full of fury;his tongue is like a devouring fire.
28. His breath is like a raging river that reaches up to the neck,to shake the nations with a sieve of destruction,and to put a misleading rein on the people’s jaws.
29. There will be singing for youas on the night that people celebrate a festival.The heart will be joyful as it is when one goes with a fluteto the Lord’s mountain,to the rock of Israel.
30. The Lord will unleash his majestic voiceand display his crushing armin furious anger, with a flame of consuming fire,in stormy rain and hail.
31. The Lord’s voice will terrify Assyria;with a rod he will smite it.
32. And every crack that is made in the foundation wall,which the Lord will bring down upon him,will be accompanied by timbrels and lyres.The Lord will raise his arm and fight against Assyria in battle.
33. His place for burning was arranged long ago;it is indeed made ready for a king.God has made its wood pile wide and deep,fire and wood in abundance.The breath of the Lord, like a stream of brimstone, ignites it.