Isaiah 13

Isaiah

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

⁷Therefore all hands will be feeble;
every human heart will melt.

⁸And they will be dismayed,
pangs and agonies will seize them;
they will writhe like a woman in labor.

They will be astonished, one with another;
their faces will be faces of flames.

⁹Behold, the day of the LORD comes—
cruel, wrath, and fierce anger—

to make the land desolate;
and He will destroy its sinners from it.

¹⁰For the stars of heaven
and its constellations will not shine their light;

the rising sun will be darkened,
and the moon will not cause its light to shine.

The Lord

¹¹And I will punish the world for its evil
and the wicked for their iniquity;

I will cause the arrogance of the proud to cease
and will lay low the haughtiness of the ruthless.

¹²I will make men scarcer than fine gold,
and a human, than the pure gold of Ophir.

Therefore, I will make the heavens tremble,
and the earth will shake out of its place,

¹³at the wrath of the LORD of Hosts,
and in the day of His fierce anger.

¹⁴Then like a gazelle that is hunted,
or like sheep that no one gathers,

everyone will turn to his own people,
and everyone will flee to his own land.

¹⁵Every one who is [proud][1] will be pierced through;
[yea], and everyone who is joined [to the wicked] will fall by the sword.

¹⁶Their children will be dashed to pieces before their eyes;
their houses will be plundered
and their wives ravished.

¹⁷Behold, I am stirring up against them the Medes,

who do not have regard for silver,
nor delight in gold.

¹⁸Their bows will dash the young men to pieces,
and they will have no compassion on the fruit of the womb;
their eyes will not pity children.

¹⁹And Babylon, the beauty of kingdoms,
the glory and pride of the Chaldeans,

will be as when God overthrew Sodom and Gomorrah.

²⁰It will never be inhabited
or lived in from generation to generation,

nor will the Arabian pitch a tent there,
nor shepherds will make their flocks lie there.

²¹But desert animals will lie there,
and their houses will be full of howling creatures,

and ostriches will dwell there,
and wild goats will leap about there.

²²And hyenas will cry in their palaces
and jackals in their palaces of pleasure.

Her {Babylon’s} time is about to come,
and its days will not be prolonged.

[For I will destroy her speedily;

yea, for I will be merciful unto My people,
but the wicked will perish.][2]