¹The oracle of Babylon, which Isaiah son of Amoz saw.

²On a bared mountain lift up a banner; raise your voice to them; wave the hand, so that they may enter the doorways of the nobles.

³I myself have commanded my consecrated ones; I have also called my mighty men for my anger, the jubilant ones of my majesty.

⁴The sound of a crowd on the mountains, the likeness of a numerous people! The sound of the uproar of kingdoms of nations gathered together! Yahweh of hosts is mustering an army for war.

⁵They are coming from a land far away, from the end of the skies — Yahweh and the weapons of his indignation — to destroy all the land.

⁶Wail, for the day of Yahweh is near; it will come like destruction from the Almighty.

⁷Therefore all hands will go slack, and every human heart will melt.

⁸They will be terrified; pangs and pains will seize them; they will writhe like a woman giving birth. Each will look in astonishment at his neighbor; their faces will be faces of flames.

⁹Look, the day of Yahweh is coming, cruel, with wrath and burning anger, to make the land a desolation, and he will exterminate its sinners from it.

¹⁰For the stars of the skies and their constellations will not shine with their light; the sun will be dark when it goes out, and the moon will not shine with its light.

¹¹I will punish the world for its evil and the wicked for their guilt; I will put an end to the pride of the arrogant, and bring low the haughtiness of the ruthless.

¹²Men I will make rarer than refined gold, and humankind than the gold of Ophir.

¹³Therefore I will make the skies tremble, and the land will shake from its place, at the wrath of Yahweh of hosts, on the day of his burning anger.

¹⁴They will be like a gazelle driven away, and like a flock with no one to gather them; each will turn to his own people, and each will flee to his own land.

¹⁵Everyone who is found will be pierced through, and everyone swept away will fall by the sword.

¹⁶Their infants will be dashed to pieces before their eyes; their houses will be plundered, and their wives will be lain with.

¹⁷Look, I am rousing Media against them, who do not reckon silver, and gold — they take no delight in it.

¹⁸Bows will dash to pieces youths; they will have no compassion on the fruit of the womb; their eye will not look with pity on children.

¹⁹Babylon, the beauty of kingdoms, the splendor of the majesty of the Chaldeans, will be like God's overthrow of Sodom and Gomorrah.

²⁰It will not be dwelt in forever, nor be settled from generation to generation; no Arab will pitch a tent there, and shepherds will not make their flocks lie down there.

²¹Desert-dwellers will crouch there, and their houses will be full of jackals; ostriches will dwell there, and goats will leap about there.

²²Howlers will answer in its widowed palaces, and jackals in the palaces of delight; her time is near to come, and her days will not be prolonged.