Isaiah 13:9-22 - God's Judgment Against Babylon

⁹
Listen carefully, the day of the Lord is coming,
Cruel, with wrath and raging anger,
To make the land a horror [of devastation];
And He shall exterminate its sinners from it.
¹⁰
For the stars of heaven and their constellations
Will not flash with their light;
The sun will be dark when it rises,
And the moon will not shed its light.
¹¹
In this way I will punish the world for its evil
And the wicked for their wickedness [their sin, their injustice, their wrongdoing];
I will also put an end to the arrogance of the proud
And will abase the arrogance of the tyrant.
¹²
I will make mortal man more rare than fine gold,
And mankind [scarcer] than the pure gold of Ophir.
¹³
Therefore I will make the heavens tremble;
And the earth will be shaken from its place
At the wrath of the Lord of hosts
In the day of His burning anger.
¹⁴
And like the hunted gazelle,
Or like sheep that no man gathers,
Each [foreign resident] will turn [and go back] to his own people,
And each one flee to his own land.
¹⁵
Anyone who is found will be pierced through,
And anyone who is captured will fall by the sword.
¹⁶
Their children also will be smashed to pieces
Before their eyes;
Their houses will be looted
And their wives ravished. ¹⁷
Listen carefully, I will put the Medes [in motion] against them,
Who have no regard for silver and do not delight in gold [and therefore cannot be bribed].
¹⁸
Their bows will cut down the young men [of Babylon];
They will take no pity on the fruit of the womb,
Their eyes will not look with compassion on the children.

¹⁹
And Babylon, the glory of kingdoms, the beauty of the Chaldeans’ pride,
Will be like Sodom and Gomorrah when God overthrew them.
²⁰
Babylon will never be inhabited or lived in from generation to generation;
Nor will the Arab pitch his tent there,
Nor will the shepherds let their sheep lie down there.
²¹
But desert creatures will lie down there,
And their houses will be full of owls;
Ostriches also will live there, and wild goats will dance there.
²²
Hyenas will howl in their castles,
And jackals in their luxurious palaces.
Babylon’s time has nearly come,
And her days will not be prolonged.