Isaiah 14:9–32

And the underworld dead are all excited,

preparing to welcome you when you come.

Getting ready to greet you are the ghostly dead,

all the famous names of earth.

All the buried kings of the nations

will stand up on their thrones

With well-prepared speeches,

royal invitations to death:

“Now you are as nothing as we are!

Make yourselves at home with us dead folks!”

¹¹This is where your pomp and fine music led you, Babylon,

to your underworld private chambers,

A king-size mattress of maggots for repose

and a quilt of crawling worms for warmth.

¹²What a comedown this, O Babylon!

Daystar! Son of Dawn!

Flat on your face in the underworld mud,

you, famous for flattening nations!

^13–14You said to yourself,

“I’ll climb to heaven.

I’ll set my throne

over the stars of God.

I’ll run the assembly of angels

that meets on sacred Mount Zaphon.

I’ll climb to the top of the clouds.

I’ll take over as King of the Universe!”

^15–17But you didn’t make it, did you?

Instead of climbing up, you came down—

Down with the underground dead,

down to the abyss of the Pit.

People will stare and muse:

“Can this be the one

Who terrorized earth and its kingdoms,

turned earth to a moonscape,

Wasted its cities,

shut up his prisoners to a living death?”

^18–20Other kings get a decent burial,

honored with eulogies and placed in a tomb.

But you’re dumped in a ditch unburied,

like a stray dog or cat,

Covered with rotting bodies,

murdered and indigent corpses.

Your dead body desecrated, mutilated—

no state funeral for you!

You’ve left your land in ruins,

left a legacy of massacre.

The progeny of your evil life

will never be named. Oblivion!

²¹Get a place ready to slaughter the sons of the wicked

and wipe out their father’s line.

Unthinkable that they should own a square foot of land

or desecrate the face of the world with their cities!

^22–23“I will confront them”—Decree of God-of-the-Angel-Armies—“and strip Babylon of name and survivors, children and grandchildren.” God’s Decree. “I’ll make it a worthless swamp and give it as a prize to the hedgehog. And then I’ll bulldoze it out of existence.” Decree of God-of-the-Angel-Armies.

Who Could Ever Cancel Such Plans?

^24–27God-of-the-Angel-Armies speaks:

“Exactly as I planned,

it will happen.

Following my blueprints,

it will take shape.

I will shatter the Assyrian who trespasses my land

and stomp him into the dirt on my mountains.

I will ban his taking and making of slaves

and lift the weight of oppression from all shoulders.”

This is the plan,

planned for the whole earth,

And this is the hand that will do it,

reaching into every nation.

God-of-the-Angel-Armies has planned it.

Who could ever cancel such plans?

His is the hand that’s reached out.

Who could brush it aside?

^28–31In the year King Ahaz died, this Message came:

Hold it, Philistines! It’s too soon to celebrate

the defeat of your cruel oppressor.

From the death throes of that snake a worse snake will come,

and from that, one even worse.

The poor won’t have to worry.

The needy will escape the terror.

But you Philistines will be plunged into famine,

and those who don’t starve, God will kill.

Wail and howl, proud city!

Fall prostrate in fear, Philistia!

On the northern horizon, smoke from burned cities,

the wake of a brutal, disciplined destroyer.

³²What does one say to

outsiders who ask questions?

Tell them, “God has established Zion.

Those in need and in trouble find refuge in her.”