18. Therefore the Lord is waiting to show you mercy,and is rising up to show you compassion, for the Lord is a just God.All who wait patiently for Him are happy.
19. For you people will live on Zion in Jerusalem and will never cry again. He will show favor to you at the sound of your cry; when He hears, He will answer you.
20. The Lord will give you meager bread and water during oppression, but your Teacher will not hide Himself any longer. Your eyes will see your Teacher,
21. and whenever you turn to the right or to the left, your ears will hear this command behind you: “This is the way. Walk in it.”
22. Then you will defile your silver-plated idols and your gold-plated images. You will throw them away like menstrual cloths, and call them filth.
23. Then He will send rain for your seed that you have sown in the ground, and the food, the produce of the ground, will be rich and plentiful. On that day your cattle will graze in open pastures.
24. The oxen and donkeys that work the ground will eat salted fodder scattered with winnowing shovel and fork.
25. Streams flowing with water will be on every high mountain and every raised hill on the day of great slaughter when the towers fall.
26. The moonlight will be as bright as the sunlight, and the sunlight will be seven times brighter — like the light of seven days — on the day that the Lord bandages His people’s injuries and heals the wounds He inflicted.
27. Look, Yahweh comes from far away,His anger burning and heavy with smoke. His lips are full of fury,and His tongue is like a consuming fire.
28. His breath is like an overflowing torrent that rises to the neck. He comes to sift the nations in a sieve of destructionand to put a bridle on the jaws of the peoplesto lead them astray.
29. Your singing will be like thaton the night of a holy festival,and your heart will rejoicelike one who walks to the music of a flute,going up to the mountain of the Lord,to the Rock of Israel.
30. And the Lord will make the splendor of His voice heardand reveal His arm striking in angry wrathand a flame of consuming fire,in driving rain, a torrent, and hailstones.
31. Assyria will be shattered by the voice of the Lord.He will strike with a rod.
32. And every stroke of the appointed staffthat the Lord brings down on himwill be to the sound of tambourines and lyres;He will fight against him with brandished weapons.
33. Indeed! Topheth has been ready for the king for a long time now.Its funeral pyre is deep and wide,with plenty of fire and wood.The breath of the Lord, like a torrent of brimstone,kindles it.