Terror and horror will fall on them. When they see your strength, they will be as still as a rock. They will be still until your people pass by, Lord. They will be still until the people you have taken as your own pass by.
Now this is what the Lord says. He created you, people of Jacob; he formed you, people of Israel. He says, “Don’t be afraid, because I have saved you. I have called you by name, and you are mine.
I have swept away your sins like a big cloud; I have removed your sins like a cloud that disappears into the air. Come back to me because I saved you.”
His people will be called the Holy People, the Saved People of the Lord, and Jerusalem will be called the City God Wants, the City God Has Not Rejected.
People of Jerusalem, strain and be in pain. Be like a woman trying to give birth, because now you must leave the city and live in the field. You will go to Babylon, but you will be saved from that place. The Lord will go there and buy you back from your enemies.
Christ took away the curse the law put on us. He changed places with us and put himself under that curse. It is written in the Scriptures, “Anyone whose body is displayed on a tree is cursed.”
But the Lord chose you because he loved you, and he kept his promise to your ancestors. So he brought you out of Egypt by his great power and freed you from the land of slavery, from the power of the king of Egypt.
He gave himself for us so he might pay the price to free us from all evil and to make us pure people who belong only to him—people who are always wanting to do good deeds.