⁶ Wail ye; for the day of Jehovah is at hand; as destruction from ^[a]the Almighty shall it come. ⁷ Therefore shall all hands be feeble, and every heart of man shall melt: ⁸ and they shall be dismayed; ^[b]pangs and sorrows shall take hold of them; they shall be in pain as a woman in travail: they shall look in amazement one at another; their faces shall be faces of flame. ⁹ Behold, the day of Jehovah cometh, cruel, with wrath and fierce anger; to make the land a desolation, and to destroy the sinners thereof out of it. ¹⁰ For the stars of heaven and the constellations thereof shall not give their light; the sun shall be darkened in its going forth, and the moon shall not cause its light to shine. ¹¹ And I will punish the world for their evil, and the wicked for their iniquity: and I will cause the arrogancy of the proud to cease, and will lay low the haughtiness of the terrible. ¹² I will make a man more rare than fine gold, even a man than the pure gold of Ophir. ¹³ Therefore I will make the heavens to tremble, and the earth shall be shaken out of its place, in the wrath of Jehovah of hosts, and in the day of his fierce anger. ¹⁴ And it shall come to pass, that as the chased ^[c]roe, and as sheep that no man gathereth, they shall turn every man to his own people, and shall flee every man to his own land. ¹⁵ Every one that is found shall be thrust through; and every one that is ^[d]taken shall fall by the sword. ¹⁶ Their infants also shall be dashed in pieces before their eyes; their houses shall be rifled, and their wives ravished.

¹⁷ Behold, I will stir up the Medes against them, who shall not regard silver, and as for gold, they shall not delight in it. ¹⁸ And their bows shall dash the young men in pieces; and they shall have no pity on the fruit of the womb; their eye shall not spare children. ¹⁹ And Babylon, the glory of kingdoms, the beauty of the Chaldeans’ pride, shall be as when God overthrew Sodom and Gomorrah. ²⁰ It shall never be inhabited, neither shall it be dwelt in from generation to generation: neither shall the Arabian pitch tent there; neither shall shepherds make their flocks to lie down there. ²¹ But wild beasts of the desert shall lie there; and their houses shall be full of doleful creatures; and ostriches shall dwell there, and wild goats shall dance there. ²² And ^[e]wolves shall ^[f]cry in their castles, and jackals in the pleasant palaces: and her time is near to come, and her days shall not be prolonged.

14 For Jehovah will have compassion on Jacob, and will yet choose Israel, and set them in their own land: and the sojourner shall join himself with them, and they shall cleave to the house of Jacob. ² And the peoples shall take them, and bring them to their place; and the house of Israel shall possess them in the land of Jehovah for servants and for handmaids: and they shall take them captive whose captives they were; and they shall rule over their oppressors.

³ And it shall come to pass in the day that Jehovah shall give thee rest from thy sorrow, and from thy trouble, and from the hard service wherein thou wast made to serve,

³¹ The sun shall be turned into darkness, and the moon into blood, before the great and terrible day of Jehovah cometh. ³² And it shall come to pass, that whosoever shall call on the name of Jehovah shall be delivered; for in mount Zion and in Jerusalem there shall be those that escape, as Jehovah hath said, and ^[a]among the remnant those whom Jehovah doth call.

¹⁵ For the day of Jehovah is near upon all the nations: as thou hast done, it shall be done unto thee; thy ^[a]dealing shall return upon thine own head.