Isaiah 26:12-18
Peace is God’s work; self-generated deliverance is empty.
12 Yahweh, you will ordain peace for us, for you have also done all our work for us.
13 Yahweh our God, other lords besides you have had dominion over us, but we will only acknowledge your name.
14 The dead shall not live. The departed spirits shall not rise. Therefore you have visited and destroyed them, and caused all memory of them to perish.
15 You have increased the nation, O Yahweh. You have increased the nation! You are glorified! You have enlarged all the borders of the land.
16 Yahweh, in trouble they have visited you. They poured out a prayer when your chastening was on them.
17 Just as a woman with child, who draws near the time of her delivery, is in pain and cries out in her pangs, so we have been before you, Yahweh.
18 We have been with child. We have been in pain. We gave birth, it seems, only to wind. We have not worked any deliverance in the earth; neither have the inhabitants of the world fallen.
Peace is God’s work; self-generated deliverance is empty.
To confess the LORD as the source of peace and deliverance while lamenting Israel’s inability to produce lasting salvation through its own strength.
Israel had experienced domination by foreign powers, making the confession of exclusive allegiance to the LORD especially significant.
The Song of Judah: Trust in the Everlasting Rock, Resurrection Hope, and Hidden Refuge Until Judgment Passes
Isaiah 26 teaches God’s people to sing, trust, wait, and hope because the LORD is the everlasting Rock who establishes peace, brings down the proud, raises his dead, hides his people, and comes to judge the earth’s guilt.