Isaiah 13:1–14:23

Babylon Will Be Punished

¹This is the divine revelation which Isaiah, son of Amoz, saw about Babylon. 

²Raise a banner on the bare mountaintop. 

Call loudly to them. 

Signal them with your hand to enter the nobles’ gates.^a

³I’ve commanded my holy ones. 

I’ve called my mighty men to carry out my anger. 

They find joy in my triumphs. 

⁴Listen to the noise on the mountains. 

It is like the sound of a large army. 

It is the sound of kingdoms and nations gathering together. 

The Lord of Armies is assembling his army for battle. 

⁵His army is coming from a distant land, 

from the ends of heaven. 

The Lord is coming with the weapons of his fury 

to destroy the whole world. 

⁶Cry loudly, for the day of the Lord is near. 

It will come like destruction from the Almighty. 

⁷That is why every hand will hang limp, 

and everyone’s courage will fail. 

⁸They’ll be terrified. 

Pain and anguish will seize them. 

They’ll writhe like a woman giving birth to a child. 

They’ll look at one another in astonishment. 

Their faces will be burning red. 

⁹The day of the Lord is going to come. 

It will be a cruel day with fury and fierce anger. 

He will make the earth desolate. 

He will destroy its sinners. 

¹⁰The stars in the sky and their constellations 

won’t show their light anymore. 

The sun will be dark when it rises. 

The moon won’t shine. 

¹¹I will punish the world for its evil 

and the wicked for their wrongdoing. 

I will put an end to arrogant people 

and humble the pride of tyrants. 

¹²I will make people harder to find than pure gold 

and human beings more rare than gold from Ophir. 

¹³I will make heaven tremble, 

and the earth will be shaken from its place 

when the Lord of Armies is angry. 

At that time he will be very angry. 

¹⁴They’ll be like hunted gazelle 

and like sheep with no one to gather them. 

Everyone will return to his own people 

and flee to his own land. 

¹⁵Whoever is found will be stabbed to death. 

Whoever is captured will be executed. 

¹⁶Their little children will be smashed to death right before their eyes. 

Their houses will be looted and their wives raped. 

¹⁷I’m going to stir up the Medes against them. 

They don’t care for silver and aren’t happy with gold. 

¹⁸But their bows will smash the youth. 

They’ll have no compassion for babies, 

nor will they look with pity on children. 

¹⁹Babylon, the jewel of the kingdoms, 

the proud beauty of the Chaldeans, 

will be like Sodom and Gomorrah when God destroyed them. 

²⁰It will never be inhabited again, 

and no one will live in it for generations. 

Arabs won’t pitch their tents there. 

Shepherds won’t let their flocks rest there. 

²¹Desert animals will lie down there. 

Their homes will be full of owls. 

Ostriches will live there, 

and wild goats will skip about. 

²²Hyenas will howl in Babylon’s strongholds, 

and jackals will howl in its luxurious palaces. 

Its time has almost come. 

Its days will not be extended. 

14TH CHAPTER

Israel Will Be Rescued from Babylon

¹The Lord will have compassion for Jacob and again choose Israel. 

He will resettle them in their own country. 

Foreigners will join them 

and unite with the descendants of Jacob. 

²People will take them 

and bring them to their own place. 

The nation of Israel will possess nations 

as male and female slaves in the Lord’s land. 

They will take their captors captive 

and rule their oppressors. 

³When that day comes, the Lord will give you relief 

from your pain and suffering, 

from the hard slavery you were forced to do. 

⁴Then you will mock the king of Babylon with this saying, 

“How the tyrant has come to an end! 

How his attacks have come to an end!” 

⁵The Lord has broken the staff of the wicked, 

the scepter of rulers. 

⁶They struck the people with fury, 

with blows that didn’t stop. 

They ruled nations in anger, 

persecuting them without restraint. 

⁷The whole earth rests and is peaceful. 

It breaks out into shouts of joy. 

⁸Even the cypresses rejoice over you. 

The cedars of Lebanon say, 

“Since you have fallen, 

no lumberjack has come to attack us.” 

⁹Sheol below wakes up to meet you when you come. 

It wakes up the ghosts of the dead, 

all who were leaders on earth. 

It raises all who were kings of the nations from their thrones. 

¹⁰All of them will greet you, 

“You also have become weak like us! 

You have become like one of us!” 

¹¹Your pride has been brought down to Sheol 

along with the music of your harps. 

Maggots are spread out ⸤like a bed⸥ under you, 

and worms cover you. 

¹²How you have fallen from heaven, you morning star, son of the dawn! 

How you have been cut down to the ground, you conqueror of nations! 

¹³You thought, 

“I’ll go up to heaven and set up my throne above God’s stars. 

I’ll sit on the mountain far away in the north 

where the gods assemble. 

¹⁴I’ll go above the top of the clouds. 

I’ll be like the Most High.” 

¹⁵But you’ve been brought down to Sheol, 

to the deepest part of the pit. 

¹⁶Those who see you stare at you; they look at you closely and say, 

“Is this the man who made the earth tremble, 

who shook the kingdoms, 

¹⁷who made the world like a desert and tore down its cities, 

who didn’t let his prisoners go home?” 

¹⁸All the kings of the nations, all of them, 

have been buried with honor, each in his own tomb. 

¹⁹But you are thrown out of your tomb like a rejected branch. 

You are covered with those who were killed in battle. 

You go down to the stones of the pit like a trampled corpse. 

²⁰You won’t be joined by the kings in the tomb, 

because you have destroyed your land and killed your people. 

The descendants of the wicked will never be mentioned again. 

²¹Prepare a place to slaughter their sons 

because of their ancestors’ guilt. 

They won’t be able to rise, possess the earth, 

and rebuild cities all over it. 

²²“I’ll rise up against them,” declares the Lord of Armies. 

“I’ll cut off the name of the survivors from Babylon, 

its offspring and descendants,” declares the Lord. 

²³“It will become the possession of herons. 

It will become pools of water. 

I’ll sweep it with the broom of destruction,” declares the Lord of Armies.