1The LORD will show compassion for Jacob and will once again make Israel his choice. He will settle them on their own soil, and strangers will come to join them and attach themselves to Jacob. 2Many nations shall escort Israel to her place, and she shall employ them as slaves and slave-girls on the land of the LORD; she shall take her captors captive and rule over her task-masters.
3When the LORD gives you relief from your pain and your fears and from the cruel slavery laid upon you, 4you will take up this song of derision over the king of Babylon: See how the oppressor has met his end and his frenzy ceased!
5The LORD has broken the rod of the wicked,
the sceptre of the ruler
6who struck down peoples in his rage
with unerring blows,
who crushed nations in anger
and persecuted them unceasingly.
7The whole world has rest and is at peace;
it breaks into cries of joy.
8The pines themselves and the cedars of Lebanon exult over you:
Since you have been laid low, they say,
no man comes up to fell us.
9Sheol below was all astir
to meet you at your coming;
she roused the ancient dead to meet you,
all who had been leaders on earth;
she made all who had been kings of the nations
rise from their thrones.
10One and all they greet you with these words:
So you too are weak as we are,
and have become one of us!
11Your pride and all the music of your lutes
have been brought down to Sheol ;
maggots are the pallet beneath you,
and worms your coverlet.
12How you have fallen from heaven, bright morning star,
felled to the earth, sprawling helpless across the nations!
13You thought in your own mind,
I will scale the heavens;
I will set my throne high above the stars of God,
I will sit on the mountain where the gods meet
in the far recesses of the north.
14I will rise high above the cloud-banks
and make myself like the Most High.
15Yet you shall be brought down to Sheol,
to the depths of the abyss.
16Those who see you will stare at you,
they will look at you and ponder:
Is this, they will say, the man who shook the earth,
who made kingdoms quake,
17who turned the world into a desert
and laid its cities in ruins,
who never let his prisoners go free to their homes,
18the kings of every land?
Now they lie all of them in honour,
each in his last home.
19But you have been flung out unburied,
mere loathsome carrion,
a companion to the slain pierced by the sword
who have gone down to the stony abyss.
And you, a corpse trampled underfoot,
20shall not share burial with them,
for you have ruined your land and slaughtered your people.
Such a brood of evildoers shall never be seen again.
21Make the shambles ready for his sons
butchered for their fathers' sin;
they shall not rise up and possess the world
not cover the face of the earth with cities.
22I will rise against them, says the LORD of Hosts; I will destroy the name of Babylon and what remains of her, her offspring and posterity, says the LORD; 23I will make her a haunt of the bustard, a waste of fen, and sweep her with the besom of destruction. This is the very word of the LORD of Hosts.
28In the year that King Ahaz died this oracle came from God:
32What answer is there for the envoys of the nation?
This, that the LORD has fixed Zion in her place,
and the afflicted among his people shall take refuge there.
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