For LORD has comforted Zion. He has comforted all her waste places, and has made her wilderness like Eden, and her desert like the garden of LORD. Joy and gladness shall be found therein, thanksgiving, and the voice of melody.
And they shall build the old wastes. They shall raise up the former desolations, and they shall repair the waste cities, the desolations of many generations.
For ye shall go out with joy, and be led forth with peace. The mountains and the hills shall break forth before you into singing, and all the trees of the fields shall clap their hands.
Go ye forth from Babylon. Flee ye from the Chaldeans. With a voice of singing declare ye, tell this, utter it even to the end of the earth. Say ye, LORD has redeemed his servant Jacob.
who confirms the word of his servant, and performs the counsel of his messengers, who says of Jerusalem, She shall be inhabited, and of the cities of Judah, They shall be built, and I will raise up the waste places of it,
Sing, O ye heavens, for LORD has done it. Shout, ye lower parts of the earth. Break forth into singing, ye mountains, O forest, and every tree therein. For LORD has redeemed Jacob, and will glorify himself in Israel.
For it is written, Rejoice, thou barren woman not giving birth. Burst forth and shout, thou not suffering birth pains, because many more are the children of the desolate than of her who has the husband.
Sing, O heavens, and be joyful, O earth, and break forth into singing, O mountains. For LORD has comforted his people, and will have compassion upon his afflicted.
But now thus says LORD who created thee, O Jacob, and he who formed thee, O Israel: Fear not, for I have redeemed thee. I have called thee by thy name, Thou are mine.
In all their affliction he was afflicted, and the [heavenly] agent of his presence saved them. In his love and in his pity he redeemed them. And he bore them, and carried them all the days of old.
Be in pain, and labor to bring forth, O daughter of Zion, like a woman in travail. For now thou shall go forth out of the city, and shall dwell in the field, and shall come even to Babylon. There thou shall be rescued. There LORD w