Isaiah 13:6–16

^6–8Wail! God’s Day of Judgment is near—

an avalanche crashing down from the Strong God!

Everyone paralyzed in the panic,

hysterical and unstrung,

Doubled up in pain

like a woman giving birth to a baby.

Horrified—everyone they see

is like a face out of a nightmare.

^9–16“Watch now. God’s Judgment Day comes.

Cruel it is, a day of wrath and anger,

A day to waste the earth

and clean out all the sinners.

The stars in the sky, the great parade of constellations,

will be nothing but black holes.

The sun will come up as a black disk,

and the moon a blank nothing.

I’ll put a full stop to the evil on earth,

terminate the dark acts of the wicked.

I’ll gag all braggarts and boasters—not a peep anymore from them—

and trip strutting tyrants, leave them flat on their faces.

Proud humanity will disappear from the earth.

I’ll make mortals rarer than hens’ teeth.

And yes, I’ll even make the sky shake,

and the earth quake to its roots

Under the wrath of God-of-the-Angel-Armies,

the Judgment Day of his raging anger.

Like a hunted white-tailed deer,

like lost sheep with no shepherd,

People will huddle with a few of their own kind,

run off to some makeshift shelter.

But tough luck to stragglers—they’ll be killed on the spot,

throats cut, bellies ripped open,

Babies smashed on the rocks

while mothers and fathers watch,

Houses looted,

wives raped.