Isaiah
14 For Jehovah will be tender toward Jacob, and again choose Israel, and will set them down on their own soil; and the immigrants shall unite with them and attach themselves to the house of Jacob. 2* And peoples shall take them and bring them to their place, and the house of Israel shall have them on Jehovah’s soil as an estate of slaves and shall become captors of their captors and have the mastery over their bosses. 3 And on the day when Jehovah gives you rest from your woes and vicissitudes and from the hard work you have been kept at, 4* you shall strike up this lay against the king of Babylon:
How slave-driving has left off,
browbeating left off!
5 Jehovah has broken malefactors’ batons,
rulers’ scepters,
6 What beat peoples in wrath,
a belaboring that never shifted,
What lorded it over nations in anger,
a domineering that never checked.
7 All the earth is at rest and quiet,
it breaks out in shouting.
8 The very cypresses rejoice over you,
the cedars of Lebanon,
“Since you are down, no cutter
is coming up against us.”
9 The realm of death below stirs for you,
to meet your coming,
Rouses shades for you,
all magnates of earth,
Makes all kings of nations
stand up from their thrones.
11 Your pride is brought down to the grave,
the din of your harps,
The bed made under you is maggots,
your coverlet worms.
12* How you have fallen from the sky,
morning star, child of the dawn!
You are chopped to the earth,
lifeless over nations.
13 And you had said to yourself
“I will go up to the sky,
Above God’s stars
I will uplift my throne,
I will sit on the Council Mount
deep in the north;
14 I will go up on the heights of cloud,
be the same as the Most High”—
15 Only you were to be sent down to the realm of death,
deep into the pit.
16 Those who see you shall observe
and take note of you:
“Is this the man that set the earth to trembling,
that shook kingdoms,
17 That made the world like the wilderness
and demolished its cities,
never unfastened his prisoners to go home?”
19 But you are thrown out graveless
like a repulsive abortion,
Clad with slaughtered men transfixed with swords
that go down among the stones of a pit like a trampled corpse;
20 You are not to be united with them in burial
because you have ruined your country,
slaughtered your people;
The posterity of harmers
shall forever not be named.
21* Get ready a slaughtering-place for his sons
on account of their fathers’ guilt,
That they may not stand up and take possession of earth
and fill the face of the world with awe.
22 And I will stand up against them, quoth Jehovah of Armies, and bereave Babylon of name and remnant, quoth Jehovah. 23** And I will make her into a domain of porcupines, and pools of water, and I will sweep it with a scraping broom, quoth Jehovah of Armies.
24 Jehovah of Armies swears “As I had thought of having it, so it came; and as I have planned, so it shall be made good: 25 to wreck Assyria in my country and trample it on my mountains, and have its yoke off from them and its load off his shoulder; 26 this is the plan laid out for all the earth, and this the hand stretched out over all the nations. 27 For Jehovah of Armies has planned, and who shall thwart? and his hand is stretched out, and who shall turn it back?
28 In the year of King Ahaz’s death there was this boding:
29* Do not be all elated, Philistia, because a cudgel that beat you is broken; for out of a snake’s stock will come out a cobra, and its fruit will be a flying wildfire-snake. 30***** And poor men shall pasture in the Cretan country, and needy men have their flocks lie down unafraid; and I will bring your stock to starvation, and it shall kill your remnant. 31* Howl, gate; cry out, city; come and go all of you, Philistia; for out of the north comes a smoke, and no one is by himself at their rendezvous. 32** And what answer shall they give the messengers of a heathen nation? that Jehovah has laid Sion’s foundations and in him the downtrodden of his people shall take refuge.