Isaiah 13
13
Babylon Is Doomed!
1The Message on Babylon. Isaiah son of Amoz saw it:
2-3“Run up a flag on an open hill.
Yell loud. Get their attention.
Wave them into formation.
Direct them to the nerve center of power.
I’ve taken charge of my special forces,
called up my crack troops.
They’re bursting with pride and passion
to carry out my angry judgment.”
4-5Thunder rolls off the mountains
like a mob huge and noisy—
Thunder of kingdoms in an uproar,
nations assembling for war.
God-of-the-Angel-Armies is calling
his army into battle formation.
They come from far-off countries,
they pour in across the horizon.
It’s God on the move with the weapons of his wrath,
ready to destroy the whole country.
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.
17-22“And now watch this:
Against Babylon, I’m inciting the Medes,
A ruthless bunch indifferent to bribes,
the kind of brutality that no one can blunt.
They massacre the young,
wantonly kick and kill even babies.
And Babylon, most glorious of all kingdoms,
the pride and joy of Chaldeans,
Will end up smoking and stinking like Sodom,
and, yes, like Gomorrah, when God had finished with them.
No one will live there anymore,
generation after generation a ghost town.
Not even Bedouins will pitch tents there.
Shepherds will give it a wide berth.
But strange and wild animals will like it just fine,
filling the vacant houses with eerie night sounds.
Skunks will make it their home,
and unspeakable night hags will haunt it.
Hyenas will curdle your blood with their laughing,
and the howling of coyotes will give you the shivers.
“Babylon is doomed.
It won’t be long now.”
Currently Selected:
Isaiah 13: MSG
Highlight
Share
Copy
Want to have your highlights saved across all your devices? Sign up or sign in
THE MESSAGE: The Bible in Contemporary Language copyright © 1993, 2002, 2018 by Eugene H. Peterson. All rights reserved. Used by permission of NavPress. Represented by Tyndale House Publishers.
Isaiah 13
13
XIII
1the ORACLE CONCERNING BABYLON, WHICH WAS REVEALED UNTO ISAIAH, THE SON OF AMOZ.
2Upon a lofty mountain erect the standard;
Exalt the voice unto them; beckon with the hand;
That they may enter the gates of princes.
3To my appointed ones I have given command;
I have also called my strong ones to execute my wrath;
My proudly exulting ones.
4Hark! a sound of a multitude in the mountains, as of a great people;
A sound of the tumult of kingdoms, of nations gathered together!
Jehovah of hosts mustereth the armies for the battle.
5They come from a far country, from the end of the heavens;
Jehovah, and the instruments of his wrath, to destroy the whole land.
6Howl ye, for the day of Jehovah is at hand:
As a destruction from the Almighty shall it come.
7Therefore shall all hands be slackened,
And every heart of mortal shall melt;
8And they shall be terrified: pangs and sorrows shall take hold of them;
As a woman in travail shall they be in pain:
They shall look one upon another with astonishment;
Faces of flames shall be their faces.
9Behold the day of Jehovah cometh, cruel,
And full of fury and burning anger,
To make the earth a desolation:
And her sinners he shall destroy from out of her.
10For the stars of heaven, and the constellations thereof,
Shall not send forth their light:
The sun is darkened in his going forth,
And the moon shall not cause her light to shine.
11And I will punish the world for its evil,
And the wicked for their iniquity:
And I will cause the arrogancy of the proud to cease;
And I will lay low the haughtiness of tyrants.
12I will moke a mortal more precious than fine gold;
Yea a man, than the golden wedge of Ophir.
13Wherefore I will make the heavens tremble,
And the earth shall be shaken out of her place,
During the indignation of Jehovah of hosts;
And in the day of his burning anger.
14Then shall every one be, as a roe that is chased,
And as a flock of sheep, when there is no one to gather them together,
They shall look, each man towards his own people;
And they shall flee, every one into his own land.
15Every one that is overtaken, shall be thrust through;
And all that are rallied together shall fall by the sword.
16Their children also shall be dashed in pieces before their eyes;
Their houses shall be plundered, and their wives ravished.
17Behold, I stir up the Medes against them,
Who shall hold silver of no account;
And as for gold, they shall not delight in it.
18Their bows shall dash the young men to pieces,
And they shall have no pity on the fruit of the womb:
Their eye shall not spare the children.
19And Babylon, the beauty of kingdoms,
The glory of the pride of the Chaldeans,
Shall be as Sodom and Gomorrah, which God overthrew.
20It shall not be inhabited for ever,
Neither shall it be dwelt in from generation to generation:
Neither shall the Arabian pitch his tent there;
Neither shall the shepherds make their flocks to rest there.
21But there shall the wild beasts of the deserts couch them down;
And yelling creatures shall fill their houses;
And there shall the daughters of the ostrich dwell;
And there shall the satyrs lead their dances.
22And wolves shall howl to one another in their palaces;
And jackals in their temples of pleasure.
And her time is near to come;
And her days shall not be prolonged.
Currently Selected:
:
Highlight
Share
Copy
Want to have your highlights saved across all your devices? Sign up or sign in
Translated by Rev John Jones (Ioan Tegid).Published at Oxford in 1830, second edition 1842.