Isaiah

¹ The Message on Babylon. Isaiah son of Amoz saw it:

² Yell loud. Get their attention. Wave them into formation. Direct them to the nerve center of power.

³ called up my crack troops. They're bursting with pride and passion to carry out my angry judgment."

⁴ 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.

⁵ 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 an avalanche crashing down from the Strong God!

⁷ hysterical

⁸ 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 Cruel it is, a day of wrath and anger, A day to waste the earth and clean out all the sinners.

¹⁰ will be nothing but black holes. The sun will come up as a black disk, and the moon a blank nothing.

¹¹ 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.

¹² I'll make mortals rarer than hens' teeth.

¹³ and the earth quake to its roots Under the wrath of God-of-the-Angel-Armies, the Judgment Day of his raging anger.

¹⁴ like lost sheep with no shepherd, People will huddle with a few of their own kind, run off to some makeshift shelter.

¹⁵ throats cut, bellies ripped open,

¹⁶ while mothers and fathers watch, Houses looted, wives raped.

¹⁷ Against Babylon, I'm inciting the Medes, A ruthless bunch indifferent to bribes, the kind of brutality that no one can blunt.

¹⁸ wantonly kick and kill even babies.

¹⁹ the pride and joy of Chaldeans, Will end up smoking and stinking like Sodom, and, yes, like Gomorrah, when God had finished with them.

²⁰ generation after generation a ghost town. Not even Bedouins will pitch tents there. Shepherds will give it a wide berth.

²¹ filling the vacant houses with eerie night sounds. Skunks will make it their home, and unspeakable night hags will haunt it.

²² and the howling of coyotes will give you the shivers. "Babylon is doomed. It won't be long now."