Isaiah 66:7-23

7What is happening? Zion is giving birth to a son before she has her birth pains!

8Nobody has ever heard of anything like that. Nobody has ever seen that happen before. Can a country be born in just one day? Can a nation be born in a moment? But as soon as Zion's birth pains begin, she has already given birth to her children!

9The Lord your God says, ‘When I bring a baby to the moment of birth, the child is always born. I do not stop its birth.’

10All you people who love Jerusalem, join together with its people and be happy. You have been sad to see what has happened to the city, but now you should shout with joy!

11Jerusalem will take care of you like a mother. She will give you all that you need, like a mother that feeds her baby with milk. The great blessing that comes from her full breasts will make you very happy.

12The Lord says, ‘Look! I will give peace to Jerusalem, like a great river. Riches from other nations will pour into the city, like a stream that is full of water. Jerusalem will take care of you like a mother that feeds her baby. She will carry you in her arms, and she will hold you on her knees.

13I will comfort you, as a mother comforts her child. As you live in Jerusalem, you will be happy again.’

14And when you see these things happen, you will feel very happy! You will become strong and healthy, like fresh grass. The Lord's servants will know that he is there to bless them. But his enemies will see that he is angry with them.

15Look! The Lord is coming with fire. His chariots will blow in like a strong storm. People will see his great anger, as he comes to punish his enemies with flames of fire.

16The Lord will use fire and his sword to judge all people. The Lord will kill many people.

17The Lord says, ‘I will destroy people who prepare themselves to worship their false gods. They make themselves clean and they follow one another into their special gardens. They eat unclean meat from pigs and rats and other disgusting animals. They will all come to their deaths together.

18I know everything that they do and everything that they think. So I will come. I will bring together the people from all nations and those who speak all languages. I will show them how great I am.

19I will do a great thing among them, to show them my power. I will send some of the people who are still alive to other nations. They will go to: Tarshish, Libya, Lydia (where their soldiers shoot arrows very well), Tubal, Greece, and lands far away, where people have never heard about me and they do not know how great I am. Those people will tell other nations about my great glory.’

20The Lord says, ‘They will bring back all your relatives who still live in other countries. They will bring them to my holy hill in Jerusalem, as a gift to me, the Lord. They will come on horses, in chariots, in carts, on mules and on camels. They will bring them in the way that the Israelites bring grain offerings to me in my temple. They bring their offerings in holy dishes.’

21The Lord says, ‘I will choose some of them to be priests. And I will choose some of them to serve me as Levites.’

22The Lord says, ‘The new heavens and the new earth that I will make will always be there. In the same way, your descendants and your family name will always continue.’

23The Lord says, ‘Everybody will come to worship me. They will come at each New Moon and on every Sabbath day.