Isaiah 13-15

Common English Bible

⁶ Wail, for the day of the Lord is near.
    Like destruction from the Almighty^[b] it will come.
⁷ Then all hands will fall limp;
    every human heart will melt,
⁸     and they will be terrified.
Like a woman writhing in labor,
    they will be seized by spasms and agony.
They will look at each other aghast,
    their faces blazing.

⁹ Look, the day of the Lord is coming with cruel rage and burning anger,
    making the earth a ruin,
    and wiping out its sinners.
¹⁰ Heaven’s stars and constellations won’t show their light.
The sun will be dark when it rises;
    the moon will no longer shine.
¹¹ I will bring disaster upon the world for its evil,
    and bring their own sin upon the wicked.
I will end the pride of the insolent,
    and the conceit of tyrants I will lay low.
¹² I will make humans scarcer than fine gold;
    people rarer than the gold of Ophir.
¹³ I will rattle the heavens;
    the earth will shake loose from its place—because of the rage
    of the Lord of heavenly forces
        on the day his anger burns.
¹⁴ They will be like hunted gazelles, like sheep without a shepherd;
    all will turn to their own people
    and flee to their own lands.
¹⁵ Whoever is found will be stabbed;
    whoever is caught will fall by the sword.
¹⁶ Their infants will be crushed before their eyes;
    their houses plundered, their women raped.

¹⁷ Look! I’m rousing the Medes against them;
    the Medes pay no mind to silver, no desire for gold.
¹⁸ Their bows will smash youths;
    they will be merciless to newborns, pitiless to children.
¹⁹ So Babylon, a jewel among kingdoms,
    the Chaldeans’ splendor and pride,
    will be like Sodom and Gomorrah,
        destroyed by God.
²⁰ No one will ever resettle
    or live there for generations.
No Arab will camp there;
    no shepherds will rest flocks there.
²¹ Wildcats will rest there;
    houses will be filled with owls.
Ostriches will live there,
    and goat demons will dance there.
²² Hyenas will howl in its strongholds,
    and jackals in its luxurious palaces.
Babylon’s^[c] time is coming soon;
    its days won’t drag on.

⁷ All the earth rests quietly,
    then it breaks into song.
⁸ Even the cypresses rejoice over you,
    the cedars of Lebanon:
    “Since you were laid low,
        no logger comes up against us!”

⁹ The underworld^[f] beneath becomes restless to greet your arrival.
It awakens the ghosts,
    all the leaders of earth;
it makes the kings of the nations rise from their thrones.
¹⁰ All of them speak and say to you:
    “Even you’ve become weak like we are!
    You are the same as us!”
¹¹ Your majesty has been brought down to the underworld,^[g]
    along with the sound of your harps.
Under you is a bed of maggots,
    and worms are your blanket.

¹² How you’ve fallen from heaven,
    morning star, son of dawn!
You are cut down to earth,
    helpless on your back!
¹³ You said to yourself, I will climb up to heaven;
    above God’s stars, I will raise my throne.
I’ll sit on the mount of assembly,
    on the heights of Zaphon.
¹⁴ I’ll go up to the cloud tops;
    I’ll be like the Most High!
¹⁵ But down to the underworld^[h] you are brought,
    to the depths of the pit.

¹⁶ Those who see you will stare at you;
        they will examine you closely:
    “Is this the man who rattled the earth,
        who shook kingdoms,
¹⁷         who made the world a wasteland
        and tore down its cities,
        and wouldn’t let his prisoners go home?”
¹⁸ All the kings of the nations lie down honored,
        all of them, each in his own tomb.
¹⁹     But you are cast away from your own grave
        like a rejected branch,
        covered by the dead
        and those pierced by the sword—
        who go down to the stony pit—
        like a trampled corpse.
²⁰ You won’t join them in burial,
    for you destroyed your own land;
    you killed your own people.
Such evil offspring will never be mentioned again!