This is what the Lord says: Prisoners will be freed from mighty men. Loot will be taken away from tyrants. I will fight your enemies, and I will save your children.
At that time their burden will be removed from your shoulders. Their yoke will be removed from your neck. The yoke will be torn away because you have grown fat.
I send them against a godless nation. In my fury I order them against the people to take their belongings, loot them, and trample on them like mud in the streets.
The Lord will have compassion for Jacob and again choose Israel. He will resettle them in their own country. Foreigners will join them and unite with the descendants of Jacob.
People will take them and bring them to their own place. The nation of Israel will possess nations as male and female slaves in the Lord’s land. They will take their captors captive and rule their oppressors.
These objects will be a sign and a witness that the Lord of Armies is in Egypt. When the people cry to the Lord because of those who oppress them, he will send a savior and defender to rescue them.
You have been a refuge for the poor, a refuge for the needy in their distress, a shelter from the rain, and shade from the heat. (A tyrant’s breath is like a rainstorm against a wall,
On that day ⌞his people⌟ will say, “This is our God; we have waited for him, and now he will save us. This is the Lord; we have waited for him. Let us rejoice and be glad because he will save us.”
“Speak tenderly to Jerusalem and announce to it that its time of hard labor is over and its wrongs have been paid for. It has received from the Lord double for all its sins.”
The Lord your God defends his people. This is what your master says: I’m taking from your hand the cup that makes people stagger, the bowl, the cup of my fury. You will never drink from it again.
“I am against you, Nineveh,” declares the Lord of Armies. “I will send your chariots up in smoke, and a sword will kill your young lions. I will remove your prey from the earth, and no one will ever hear the voice of your messengers again.”
This will be the plague the Lord will use to strike all the people from the nations that have gone to war against Jerusalem. Their flesh will rot while they are standing on their feet. Their eyes will rot in their sockets, and their tongues will rot in their mouths.
“No one can go into a strong man’s house and steal his property. First he must tie up the strong man. Then he can go through the strong man’s house and steal his property.
The person who lives a sinful life belongs to the devil, because the devil has been committing sin since the beginning. The reason that the Son of God appeared was to destroy what the devil does.