Isaiah 26:12-18

26:12 O Lord, you make us secure,

for even all we have accomplished, you have done for us.

26:13 O Lord, our God,

masters other than you have ruled us,

but we praise your name alone.

26:14 The 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.

26:15 You 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.

26:16 O Lord, in distress they looked for you;

they uttered incantations because of your discipline.

26:17 As 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.

26:18 We 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.