Isaiah
13 The boding for Babylon, which Isaiah the son of Amos beheld.
2* On a scalped mountain raise a signal, sound for them a powerful call, wave a hand that they may come to nobles’ gates. 3 I myself have given orders to the men I have consecrated, have summoned my champions too for my anger, my men hilarious in pride. 4 Hark, the sound of an uproar on the mountains, the seeming of a great body of people! hark, the sound of a hubbub of kingdoms, nations coming together! Jehovah of Armies is mustering a war-expedition. 5 From a faraway country, from the end of the sky, come Jehovah and the instruments of his hostility to ruin all the earth. 6 Howl, because Jehovah’s day is near, like a shattering from Shaddai it comes. 7 Therefore all hands shall be unstrung and every heart of man shall melt down, 8 and they shall be in consternation, seized with throes and pains and feeling the pangs of a woman in childbirth, appealing to each other in bewilderment, their faces faces of flame.
9 Here is Jehovah’s day coming, a cruel one, and wrath and anger, to make the earth a desolation and root out its sinners out of it; 10* for the stars of the sky and its great starry shapes shall not beam; the sun darkens as it comes out, and the moon shall not shed its rays. 11 And I will punish the world for viciousness and wicked men for their crimes, and put a stop to the pride of audacious men and bring down the pretensions of arrogant men, 12 and make a human being more of a rarity than red gold, and mankind than nuggets from Ophir. 13 Therefore I will set the sky to trembling, and the earth shall shake loose from its place in the wrath of Jehovah of Armies and in the day of his anger; 14 and like a broken-up troop of gazelles, like sheep that have no one to round them up, they shall turn each toward his own people and take flight each to his own country. 15 Everyone that is found shall be run through, and everyone that is caught in the sweep shall fall by the sword, 16 and their children’s brains shall be dashed out before their eyes; their houses shall be pillaged and their wives ravished.
17 Here I am stirring up against them the Medes, who think nothing of silver and care nothing for gold; 18* and bows shall dash out young men’s brains, and they will have no regard for the fruit of bodies, and their eyes will have no mercy on sons. 19 And Babylon, most splendid of capitals, magnificence of the Chaldeans’ pride, shall become like God’s overthrow of Sodom and Ghomorrah: 20 it shall nevermore be inhabited, it shall be unoccupied generation after generation, no Arab shall tent there, no shepherds rest their flocks there. 21** And wildcats shall stretch themselves there, and their houses shall be full of polecats, and ostriches shall dwell there and satyrs shall dance there; 22* and hyenas shall howl in its palaces, and jackals in its dainty halls. And its time is nearly come, its days will not be prolonged.