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From: Isaiah 26:7-9, 12, 16-19
The righteous call on the Lord
[12] O Lord, thou wilt ordain peace for us,
thou hast wrought for us all our works.
[16] O Lord, in distress they sought thee,
they poured out a prayer
when thy chastening was upon them.
[17] Like a woman with child,
who writhes and cries out in her pangs,
when she is near her time,
so were we because of thee, O Lord;
[18] we were with child, we writhed,
we have as it were brought forth wind.
We have wrought no deliverance in the earth,
and the inhabitants of the world have not fallen.
[19] Thy dead shall live, their bodies shall rise.
O dwellers in the dust, awake and sing for joy!
For thy dew is a dew of light,
and on the land of the shades thou wilt let it fall.
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Commentary:
26:7-19. Now comes a personal dialogue with God in the form of a prayer or sa-
piential psalm (vv. 7-10). Here the greatness of the Lord is not being described to
third parties nor are his works being praised: the prophet is addressing him direct-
ly, to tell him that he trusts in Him (vv. 7-8), to express his innermost feelings (v.
9a; cf. Ps 42), to ask him to reveal his righteousness (vv. 9b-10) and intervene (v.
11) and bring peace (v. 12), and to celebrate enduring fidelity to the Lord (vv. 13-
19). Verse 19 is a ray of hope in personal resurrection, although here, as in 25:8,
it refers to the resurgence of the nation, as in the vision of the bones restored to
life in the book of Ezekiel (cf. Ezek 37:1-14). Daniel 12:1-3 clearly predicts the
resurrection of people from the dead. Commenting on v. 10, St Bernard addres-
ses God, saying: “Father of mercies, may your anger he roused against me —
the anger that chastens a soul who has lost his way, not the wrath by which
you seal off the path of righteousness” (”In Cantica Canticorum”, 42, 4).
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Source: “The Navarre Bible: Text and Commentaries”. Biblical text from the
Revised Standard Version and New Vulgate. Commentaries by members of
the Faculty of Theology, University of Navarre, Spain.
Published by Four Courts Press, Kill Lane, Blackrock, Co. Dublin, Ireland, and
by Scepter Publishers in the United States.