For the Lord, the Lord of armies, is about to make destruction complete in all the land.

For in a very short time my passion will be over, and my wrath will be turned to their destruction.

And the Lord of armies will be shaking a whip against him, as when he overcame Midian at the rock of Oreb: and his rod will be lifted up against them as it was against the Egyptians.

And in that day the weight which he put on your back will be taken away, and his yoke broken from off your neck.

They have gone across the mountain; Geba will be our resting-place tonight, they say: Ramah is shaking with fear; Gibeah of Saul has gone in flight.

And there will come a rod out of the broken tree of Jesse, and a branch out of his roots will give fruit.

And the spirit of the Lord will be resting on him, the spirit of wisdom and good sense, the spirit of wise guiding and strength, the spirit of knowledge and of the fear of the Lord;

And he will not be guided in his judging by what he sees, or give decisions by the hearing of his ears:

But he will do right in the cause of the poor, and give wise decisions for those in the land who are in need; and the rod of his mouth will come down on the cruel, and with the breath of his lips he will put an end to the evil-doer.

And righteousness will be the cord of his robe, and good faith the band round his breast.

And the wolf will be living with the lamb, and the leopard will take his rest with the young goat; and the lion will take grass for food like the ox; and the young lion will go with the young ones of the herd; and a little child will be their guide.

And the cow and the bear will be friends while their young ones are sleeping together.

And the child at the breast will be playing by the hole of the snake, and the older child will put his hand on the bright eye of the poison-snake.

There will be no cause of pain or destruction in all my holy mountain: for the earth will be full of the knowledge of the Lord as the sea is covered by the waters.

And in that day, the eyes of the nations will be turned to the root of Jesse which will be lifted up as the flag of the peoples; and his resting-place will be glory.

And in that day the hand of the Lord will be stretched out the second time to get back the rest of his people, from Assyria, and from Egypt, and from Pathros, and from Cush, and from Elam, and from Shinar, and from Hamath, and from the sea-lands.

And he will put up a flag as a sign to the nations, and he will get together those of Israel who had been sent away, and the wandering ones of Judah, from the four ends of the earth.

And the envy of Ephraim will be gone, and those who make trouble for Judah will come to an end: Ephraim will have no more envy of Judah, and there will be an end of Judah's hate for Ephraim.

And they will be united in attacking the Philistines on the west, and together they will take the goods of the children of the east: their hand will be on Edom and Moab; and the children of Ammon will be under their rule.

And the Lord will make the tongue of the Egyptian sea completely dry; and with his burning wind his hand will be stretched out over the River, and it will be parted into seven streams, so that men may go over it with dry feet.

And there will be a highway for the rest of his people from Assyria; as there was for Israel in the day when he came up out of the land of Egypt.

And in that day you will say I will give praise to you, O Lord; for though you were angry with me, your wrath is turned away, and I am comforted.

See, God is my salvation; I will have faith in the Lord, without fear: for the Lord Jah is my strength and song; and he has become my salvation.

So with joy will you get water out of the springs of salvation.

And in that day you will say, Give praise to the Lord, let his name be honoured, give word of his doings among the peoples, say that his name is lifted up.

Make a song to the Lord; for he has done noble things: give news of them through all the earth.

They come from a far country, from the farthest part of heaven, even the Lord and the instruments of his wrath, with destruction for all the land.

For this cause all hands will be feeble, and every heart of man be turned to water;

Their hearts will be full of fear; pains and sorrows will overcome them; they will be in pain like a woman in childbirth; they will be shocked at one another; their faces will be like flames.

For the stars of heaven and its bright armies will not give their light: the sun will be made dark in his journey through the heaven, and the moon will keep back her light.

And I will send punishment on the world for its evil, and on the sinners for their wrongdoing; and I will put an end to all pride, and will make low the power of the cruel.

I will make men so small in number, that a man will be harder to get than gold, even the best gold of Ophir.

For this cause the heavens will be shaking, and the earth will be moved out of its place, in the wrath of the Lord of armies, and in the day of his burning passion.

And it will be that, like a roe in flight, and like wandering sheep, they will go every man to his people and to his land.

Everyone who is overtaken will have a spear put through him, and everyone who goes in flight will be put to the sword.

Their young children will be broken up before their eyes; their goods will be taken away, and their wives made the property of others.

And Babylon, the glory of kingdoms, the beautiful town which is the pride of the Chaldaeans, will be like God's destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah.

People will never be living in it again, and it will have no more men from generation to generation: the Arab will not put up his tent there; and those who keep sheep will not make it a resting-place for their flocks.

But the beasts of the waste land will have their holes there; and the houses will be full of crying jackals, and ostriches will have their place there, and evil spirits will be dancing there.

And wolves will be answering one another in their towers, and jackals in their houses of pleasure: her time is near, and her days of power will quickly be ended.

For the Lord will have mercy on Jacob, and will again make Israel his special people, and will put them in their land; and the man from a strange country will take his place among them and be joined to the family of Jacob.

And the people will take them with them to their place: and the children of Israel will give them a heritage in the Lord's land as men-servants and women-servants, making them prisoners whose prisoners they were; and they will be rulers over their masters.

And it will be, in the day when the Lord gives you rest from your sorrow, and from your trouble, and from the hard yoke which they had put on you,

That you will take up this bitter song against the king of Babylon, and say, How has the cruel overseer come to an end! He who was lifted up in pride is cut off;

All the earth is at rest and is quiet: they are bursting into song.

The underworld is moved at your coming: the shades of the dead are awake before you, even the strong ones of the earth; all the kings of the world have got up from their seats.

They all make answer and say to you, Have you become feeble like us? have you been made even as we are?

For you said in your heart, I will go up to heaven, I will make my seat higher than the stars of God; I will take my place on the mountain of the meeting-place of the gods, in the inmost parts of the north.

I will go higher than the clouds; I will be like the Most High.

But you will come down to the underworld, even to its inmost parts.

Those who see you will be looking on you with care, they will be in deep thought, saying, Is this the troubler of the earth, the shaker of kingdoms?

All the kings of the earth are at rest in glory, every man in his house,

As for your fathers, you will not be united with them in their resting-place, because you have been the cause of destruction to your land, and of death to your people; the seed of the evil-doer will have no place in the memory of man.

For I will come up against them, says the Lord of armies, cutting off from Babylon name and offspring, son and son's son, says the Lord.

And I will make you a heritage for the hedgehog, and pools of water: and I will go through it with the brush of destruction, says the Lord of armies.

The Lord has taken an oath, saying, My design will certainly come about, and my purpose will be effected:

To let the Assyrian be broken in my land, and crushed under foot on my mountains: there will his yoke be taken away from them, and his rule over them come to an end.

This is the purpose for all the earth: and this is the hand stretched out over all nations.

For it is the purpose of the Lord of armies, and who will make it of no effect? when his hand is stretched out, by whom may it be turned back?

Be not glad, O Philistia, all of you, because the rod which was on you is broken: for out of the snake's root will come a poison-snake, and its fruit will be a winged poison-snake.

And the poorest of the land will have food, and those in need will be given a safe resting-place: but your seed will come to an end for need of food, and the rest of you will be put to the sword.

Send out a cry, O door! Make sounds of sorrow, O town! All your land has come to nothing, O Philistia; for there comes a smoke out of the north, and everyone keeps his place in the line.

What answer, then, will my people give to the representatives of the nation? That the Lord is the builder of Zion, and she will be a safe place for the poor of his people.

The waters of Nimrim will become dry: for the grass is burned up, the young grass is coming to an end, every green thing is dead.

For this cause they will take away their wealth, and the stores they have got together, over the stream of the water-plants.

And they will send ... to the mountain of the daughter of Zion.

For the daughters of Moab will be like wandering birds, like a place from which the young birds have gone in flight, at the ways across the Arnon.

Then a king's seat will be based on mercy, and one will be seated on it in the tent of David for ever; judging uprightly, and quick to do righteousness.

For this cause everyone in Moab will give cries of grief for Moab: crushed to the earth, they will be weeping for the men of Kir-hareseth.

For this cause my sorrow for the vine of Sibmah will be like the weeping for Jazer: my eyes are dropping water on you, O Heshbon and Elealeh! For they are sounding the war-cry over your summer fruits and the getting in of your grain;

And all joy is gone; no longer are they glad for the fertile field; and in the vine-gardens there are no songs or sounds of joy: the crushing of grapes has come to an end, and its glad cry has been stopped.

And when Moab goes up to the high place, and makes prayer in the house of his god, it will have no effect.

But now the Lord has said, In three years, the years of a servant working for payment, the glory of Moab, all that great people, will be turned to shame, and the rest of Moab will be very small and without honour.

The strong tower has gone from Ephraim, and the kingdom from Damascus: the rest of Aram will come to destruction, and be made like the glory of the children of Israel, says the Lord of armies.

And it will be in that day that the glory of Jacob will be made small, and the strength of his body will become feeble.

And it will be like a man cutting the growth of his grain, pulling together the heads of the grain with his arm; even as when they get in the grain in the valley of Rephaim.

But it will be like a man shaking an olive-tree, something will still be there, two or three berries on the top of the highest branch, four or five on the outside branches of a fertile tree, says the Lord, the God of Israel.

In that day a man's heart will be turned to his Maker, and his eyes to the Holy One of Israel.

He will not be looking to the altars, the work of his hands, or to the wood pillars or to the sun-images which his fingers have made.

In that day your towns will be like the waste places of the Hivites and the Amorites which the children of Israel took for a heritage, and they will come to destruction.

But he will put a stop to them, and make them go in flight far away, driving them like the waste of the grain on the tops of the mountains before the wind, and like the circling dust before the storm.

Which sends its representatives by the sea, even in ships of papyrus on the waters. Go back quickly, O representatives, to a nation tall and smooth, to a people causing fear through all their history; a strong nation, crushing down its haters, whose land is cut through by rivers.

All you peoples of the world, and you who are living on the earth, when a flag is lifted up on the mountains, give attention; and when the horn is sounded, give ear.

For this is what the Lord has said to me: I will be quiet, watching from my place; like the clear heat when the sun is shining, like a mist of dew in the heat of summer.

For before the time of getting in the grapes, after the opening of the bud, when the flower has become a grape ready for crushing, he will take away the small branches with knives, cutting down and taking away the wide-stretching branches.

They will be for the birds of the mountains, and for the beasts of the earth: the birds will come down on them in the summer, and the beasts of the earth in the winter.

In that time an offering will be made to the Lord of armies from a people tall and smooth, causing fear through all their history; a strong nation, crushing down its haters, whose land is cut through by rivers, an offering taken to the place of the name of the Lord of armies, even Mount Zion.

The word about Egypt. See, the Lord is seated on a quick-moving cloud, and is coming to Egypt: and the false gods of Egypt will be troubled at his coming, and the heart of Egypt will be turned to water.

And I will send the Egyptians against the Egyptians: and they will be fighting every one against his brother, and every one against his neighbour; town against town, and kingdom against kingdom.

And the spirit of Egypt will be troubled in her, and I will make her decisions without effect: and they will be turning to the false gods, and to those who make hollow sounds, and to those who have control of spirits, and to those who are wise in secret arts.

And I will give the Egyptians into the hand of a cruel lord; and a hard king will be their ruler, says the Lord, the Lord of armies.

And the waters of the sea will be cut off, and the river will become dry and waste:

And the rivers will have an evil smell; the stream of Egypt will become small and dry: all the water-plants will come to nothing.

The grass-lands by the Nile, and everything planted by the Nile, will become dry, or taken away by the wind, and will come to an end.

The fishermen will be sad, and all those who put fishing-lines into the Nile will be full of grief, and those whose nets are stretched out on the waters will have sorrow in their hearts.

And all the workers in linen thread, and those who make cotton cloth, will be put to shame.

And the makers of twisted thread will be crushed, and those who ... will be sad in heart.

The Lord has sent among them a spirit of error: and by them Egypt is turned out of the right way in all her doings, as a man overcome by wine is uncertain in his steps.

And in Egypt there will be no work for any man, head or tail, high or low, to do.

In that day the Egyptians will be like women: and the land will be shaking with fear because of the waving of the Lord's hand stretched out over it.