Isaiah 14

¹ Yes, Yahweh will have pity on Jacob, he will choose Israel once more and settle them in their own country. The foreigner will join them and attach himself to the House of Jacob.

² Nations will take them and lead them to the place they came from, and the House of Israel will adopt them in the land of Yahweh as slaves and slave-girls. They will capture those who captured them and master their oppressors.

³ The day Yahweh gives you rest after your suffering and torment and the grim servitude to which you were forcibly enslaved,

⁴ you are to recite this satire on the king of Babylon: What was the end of the tyrant? What was the end of his arrogance?

⁵ Yahweh has broken the staff of the wicked and the sceptre of tyrant –

⁶ which angrily thrashed the peoples with blow after blow, which furiously tyrannised over the nations, persecuting without respite.

⁷ The whole earth is at rest, it is calm, shouting for joy.

⁸ The cypresses, the cedars of Lebanon rejoice at your fate, ‘Now that you have been laid low, no one comes up to fell us.’

⁹ On your account Sheol beneath us is astir to greet your arrival. To honour you he rouses the ghosts of all the rulers of the world. He makes all the kings of the nations get up from their thrones.

¹⁰ Each has something to say and what they will say to you is this, ‘So you too have been brought to nothing, like ourselves. You, too, have become like us.

¹¹ Your magnificence has been flung down to Sheol with the music of your harps; underneath you a bed of maggots, and over you a blanket of worms.

¹² How did you come to fall from the heavens, Daystar, son of Dawn? How did you come to be thrown to the ground, you who enslaved the nations?

¹³ You who used to think to yourself, “I will climb up to the heavens; and higher than the stars of God I will set my throne. I will sit on the Mount of Assembly in the recesses of the north.

¹⁴ I will climb to the top of thunderclouds, I will rival the Most High.”

¹⁵ What! Now you have fallen to Sheol to the very bottom of the abyss!’

¹⁶ All who see you will gaze at you, will stare at you, ‘Is this the man who made the earth tremble, and overthrew kingdoms,

¹⁷ who made the world a desert and levelled cities, who never to his captives opened the prison gates?’

¹⁸ All the kings of the nations lie honourably, each in his tomb.

¹⁹ But you, you have been expelled from your grave like loathsome dung, buried under the slaughtered, under those cut down by the sword, and thrown on the stones of the ditch like a mangled carcase.

²⁰ You are never going to rejoin them in the grave, for you have brought your country to ruin and destroyed your people. The offspring of the wicked will leave no name behind them.

²¹ Start slaughtering the sons for the guilt of their fathers! Never again must they rise to conquer the earth and spread across the face of the world.

²² I will rise against them – it is Yahweh Sabaoth who speaks – and wipe out name and remnant from Babylon. No offspring, no posterity – it is Yahweh who speaks.

²³ I will turn it into marshland, into a place for hedgehogs. I will sweep it with the broom of destruction – it is Yahweh Sabaoth who speaks.

²⁴ Yahweh Sabaoth has sworn it, saying: Yes, what I have planned shall happen, what I have decided shall be fulfilled-

²⁵ to break Assyria in my country, to crush him on my mountains. His yoke will slip from them, his burden from their shoulder.

²⁶ This is the decision taken against the whole world; this, the hand stretched out against all the nations.

²⁷ When Yahweh Sabaoth has made a decision, who would dare cancel it? When he stretches out his hand, who can make him withdraw it?

²⁸ In the year Ahaz died[*a] this oracle was pronounced:

²⁹ Do not rejoice, whole country of Philistia, because the rod that beat you has broken, since the serpent’s stock can still produce a basilisk and the offspring of that will be a flying dragon.

³⁰ But the poor are going to feed in my pastures and beggars rest in safety, while I let your posterity die out through hunger, killing off any that survive.

³¹ Howl, Gate; cry, City; shudder, whole country of Philistia! For a smoke is coming from the north, and there are no deserters in those battalions.

³² What reply will he given then to the messengers of that nation? ‘Yahweh has laid the foundations of Zion, and there the poor of his people shall find refuge.’

¹ Yes, Yahweh will have pity on Jacob, he will choose Israel once more and settle them in their own country. The foreigner will join them and attach himself to the House of Jacob.

² Nations will take them and lead them to the place they came from, and the House of Israel will adopt them in the land of Yahweh as slaves and slave-girls. They will capture those who captured them and master their oppressors.

³ The day Yahweh gives you rest after your suffering and torment and the grim servitude to which you were forcibly enslaved,

⁴ you are to recite this satire on the king of Babylon: What was the end of the tyrant? What was the end of his arrogance?

⁵ Yahweh has broken the staff of the wicked and the sceptre of tyrant –

⁶ which angrily thrashed the peoples with blow after blow, which furiously tyrannised over the nations, persecuting without respite.

⁷ The whole earth is at rest, it is calm, shouting for joy.

⁸ The cypresses, the cedars of Lebanon rejoice at your fate, ‘Now that you have been laid low, no one comes up to fell us.’

⁹ On your account Sheol beneath us is astir to greet your arrival. To honour you he rouses the ghosts of all the rulers of the world. He makes all the kings of the nations get up from their thrones.

¹⁰ Each has something to say and what they will say to you is this, ‘So you too have been brought to nothing, like ourselves. You, too, have become like us.

¹¹ Your magnificence has been flung down to Sheol with the music of your harps; underneath you a bed of maggots, and over you a blanket of worms.

¹² How did you come to fall from the heavens, Daystar, son of Dawn? How did you come to be thrown to the ground, you who enslaved the nations?

¹³ You who used to think to yourself, “I will climb up to the heavens; and higher than the stars of God I will set my throne. I will sit on the Mount of Assembly in the recesses of the north.

¹⁴ I will climb to the top of thunderclouds, I will rival the Most High.”

¹⁵ What! Now you have fallen to Sheol to the very bottom of the abyss!’

¹⁶ All who see you will gaze at you, will stare at you, ‘Is this the man who made the earth tremble, and overthrew kingdoms,

¹⁷ who made the world a desert and levelled cities, who never to his captives opened the prison gates?’

¹⁸ All the kings of the nations lie honourably, each in his tomb.

¹⁹ But you, you have been expelled from your grave like loathsome dung, buried under the slaughtered, under those cut down by the sword, and thrown on the stones of the ditch like a mangled carcase.

²⁰ You are never going to rejoin them in the grave, for you have brought your country to ruin and destroyed your people. The offspring of the wicked will leave no name behind them.

²¹ Start slaughtering the sons for the guilt of their fathers! Never again must they rise to conquer the earth and spread across the face of the world.

²² I will rise against them – it is Yahweh Sabaoth who speaks – and wipe out name and remnant from Babylon. No offspring, no posterity – it is Yahweh who speaks.

²³ I will turn it into marshland, into a place for hedgehogs. I will sweep it with the broom of destruction – it is Yahweh Sabaoth who speaks.

²⁴ Yahweh Sabaoth has sworn it, saying: Yes, what I have planned shall happen, what I have decided shall be fulfilled-

²⁵ to break Assyria in my country, to crush him on my mountains. His yoke will slip from them, his burden from their shoulder.

²⁶ This is the decision taken against the whole world; this, the hand stretched out against all the nations.

²⁷ When Yahweh Sabaoth has made a decision, who would dare cancel it? When he stretches out his hand, who can make him withdraw it?

²⁸ In the year Ahaz died[*a] this oracle was pronounced:

²⁹ Do not rejoice, whole country of Philistia, because the rod that beat you has broken, since the serpent’s stock can still produce a basilisk and the offspring of that will be a flying dragon.

³⁰ But the poor are going to feed in my pastures and beggars rest in safety, while I let your posterity die out through hunger, killing off any that survive.

³¹ Howl, Gate; cry, City; shudder, whole country of Philistia! For a smoke is coming from the north, and there are no deserters in those battalions.

³² What reply will he given then to the messengers of that nation? ‘Yahweh has laid the foundations of Zion, and there the poor of his people shall find refuge.’