Isaiah 26:11-18

11O Lord, you are ready to act, but they don’t even notice. They will see and be put to shame by your angry judgment against humankind, yes, fire will consume your enemies.

12O Lord, you make us secure, for even all we have accomplished, you have done for us.

13O Lord, our God, masters other than you have ruled us, but we praise your name alone.

14The dead do not come back to life, the spirits of the dead do not rise. That is because you came in judgment and destroyed them, you wiped out all memory of them.

15You have made the nation larger, O Lord, you have made the nation larger and revealed your splendor, you have extended all the borders of the land.

16O Lord, in distress they looked for you; they uttered incantations because of your discipline.

17As when a pregnant woman gets ready to deliver and strains and cries out because of her labor pains, so were we because of you, O Lord.

18We were pregnant, we strained, we gave birth, as it were, to wind. We cannot produce deliverance on the earth; people to populate the world are not born.