Isaiah 14:3-11

Amplified Bible, Classic Edition

³ When the Lord has given you rest from your sorrow and pain and from your trouble and unrest and from the hard service with which you were made to serve,

⁴ You shall take up this [taunting] parable against the king of Babylon and say, How the oppressor has stilled [the restless insolence]! The golden and exacting city has ceased!

⁵ The Lord has broken the staff of the wicked, the scepter of the [tyrant] rulers,

⁶ Who smote the peoples in anger with incessant blows and trod down the nations in wrath with unrelenting persecution—[until] he who smote is persecuted and no one hinders any more.

⁷ The whole earth is at rest and is quiet; they break forth into singing.

⁸ Yes, the fir trees and cypresses rejoice at you [O kings of Babylon], even the cedars of Lebanon, saying, Since you have been laid low, no woodcutter comes up against us.

⁹ Sheol (Hades, the place of the dead) below is stirred up to meet you at your coming [O tyrant Babylonian rulers]; it stirs up the shades of the dead to greet you—even all the chief ones of the earth; it raises from their thrones [in astonishment at your humbled condition] all the kings of the nations.

¹⁰ All of them will [tauntingly] say to you, Have you also become weak as we are? Have you become like us?

¹¹ Your pomp and magnificence are brought down to Sheol (the underworld), along with the sound of your harps; the maggots [which prey upon dead bodies] are spread out under you and worms cover you [O Babylonian rulers].