The Judgment of Babylon
1 The oracle concerning fBabylon which gIsaiah the son of Amoz saw.
2 On a bare hill hraise a signal;
cry aloud to them;
wave the hand for ithem to enter
the gates of the nobles.
3 I myself have commanded my consecrated ones,
and have summoned my mighty men to execute my anger,
my proudly exulting ones.1
4 The sound jof a tumult is on the mountains
as of a great multitude!
The sound of an uproar of kingdoms,
of nations gathering together!
kThe Lord of hosts is mustering
a host for battle.
5 lThey come from a distant land,
from the end of the heavens,
the Lord and the weapons of his indignation,
to destroy the whole land.2
6 mWail, for nthe day of the Lord is near;
as destruction from the Almighty3 it will come!
7 Therefore all hands will be feeble,
and every human heart owill melt.
8 They will be dismayed:
ppangs and agony will seize them;
qthey will be in anguish like a woman in labor.
They will look aghast at one another;
their faces will be aflame.
9 Behold, nthe day of the Lord comes,
cruel, with wrath and fierce anger,
to make the land a desolation
and rto destroy its sinners from it.
10 sFor the stars of the heavens and their constellations
will not give their light;
tthe sun will be dark at its rising,
and the moon will not shed its light.
11 I will punish uthe world for its evil,
and the wicked for their iniquity;
I will vput an end to the pomp of the arrogant,
wand lay low the pompous pride of the ruthless.
12 I will make xpeople more rare than fine gold,
and mankind than the ygold of Ophir.
13 Therefore zI will make the heavens tremble,
and the earth will be shaken out of its place,
at the wrath of the Lord of hosts
in the day of his fierce anger.
14 And like a hunted gazelle,
or like sheep with none to gather them,
aeach will turn to his own people,
and each will flee to his own land.
15 Whoever is found will be thrust through,
and whoever is caught will fall by the sword.
16 bTheir infants will be dashed in pieces
before their eyes;
their houses will be plundered
and their wives ravished.
17 Behold, cI am stirring up the Medes against them,
who have no regard for silver
and do not delight in gold.
18 dTheir bows will slaughter4 the young men;
they will have no mercy on the fruit of the womb;
their eyes will not pity children.
19 And Babylon, ethe glory of kingdoms,
the splendor and pomp of the Chaldeans,
will be flike Sodom and Gomorrah
when God overthrew them.
20 gIt will never be inhabited
or lived in for all generations;
no hArab will pitch his tent there;
no ishepherds will make their flocks lie down there.
21 But jwild animals will lie down there,
and their houses will be full of howling creatures;
and there wild goats will dance.
22 Hyenas6 will cry in its towers,
and ljackals in mthe pleasant palaces;
its time is close at hand
and its days will not be prolonged.
The Restoration of Jacob
1 nFor the Lord will have compassion on Jacob and will again choose Israel, and owill set them in their own land, and psojourners will join them and will attach themselves to the house of Jacob. 2 And qthe peoples will take them and bring them to their place, and the house of Israel will possess them in the Lord’s land ras male and female slaves.7 sThey will take captive those who were their captors, tand rule over those who oppressed them.
1 And the fifth angel blew his trumpet, and qI saw a star fallen from heaven to earth, and he was given rthe key to the shaft of sthe bottomless pit.1 2 He opened the shaft of the bottomless pit, and from the shaft trose smoke like the smoke of a great furnace, and uthe sun and the air were darkened with the smoke from the shaft. 3 Then from the smoke came vlocusts on the earth, and they were given power like the power of scorpions of the earth. 4 They were told wnot to harm xthe grass of the earth or any green plant or any tree, but only those people who do not have ythe seal of God on their foreheads. 5 They were allowed to torment them zfor five months, but not to kill them, and their torment was like the torment of a scorpion when it stings someone. 6 And in those days apeople will seek death and will not find it. They will long to die, but death will flee from them.
7 bIn appearance the locusts were like horses prepared for battle: con their heads were what looked like crowns of gold; their faces were dlike human faces, 8 their hair like women’s hair, and etheir teeth like lions’ teeth; 9 they had breastplates like breastplates of iron, and the noise of their wings was flike the noise of many chariots with ghorses rushing into battle. 10 They have tails and stings like scorpions, and their power to hurt people hfor five months is in their tails. 11 They have ias king over them the angel of the bottomless pit. His name in Hebrew is jAbaddon, and in Greek he is called Apollyon.2
12 kThe first woe has passed; behold, two woes are still to come.
13 Then the sixth angel blew his trumpet, and I heard a voice from lthe four horns of the golden altar before God, 14 saying to the sixth angel who had the trumpet, “Release mthe four angels who are bound at nthe great river Euphrates.” 15 So the four angels, who had been prepared for the hour, the day, the month, and the year, were released oto kill a third of mankind. 16 The number of pmounted troops was qtwice ten thousand times ten thousand; rI heard their number. 17 And this is how I saw the horses in my vision and those who rode them: they wore breastplates the color of fire and of sapphire3 and of sulfur, and the heads of the horses were slike lions’ heads, and fire and smoke and sulfur came out of their mouths. 18 By these three plagues a third of mankind was killed, by the fire and smoke and sulfur coming out of their mouths. 19 For the power of the horses is in their mouths and in their tails, for their tails are like serpents with heads, and by means of them they wound.
20 The rest of mankind, who were not killed by these plagues, tdid not repent of uthe works of their hands nor give up worshiping vdemons wand idols of gold and silver and bronze and stone and wood, which cannot see or hear or walk, 21 nor did they repent of their murders or their xsorceries or their sexual immorality or their thefts.
