1For Yahweh will show compassion to Jacob, and will again choose Israel, and settle them in their own land. Foreigners will join them and become part of Jacob's family.
2Other nations will take them and bring them to their place. The people of Israel will take those nations as servants and maidservants in Yahweh's land. They will capture those who once captured them, and they will rule over their oppressors.
3On that day, Yahweh will give you rest from your sorrow, your trouble, and the hard labor you were forced to do.
4Then you will sing this taunt against the king of Babylon and say, "How the oppressor has stopped! How the cruel city has ended!"
5Yahweh has broken the power of the wicked, the scepter of the rulers,
6who furiously struck down nations with endless blows, who angrily ruled over nations with relentless persecution.
7The whole earth is at rest and quiet. People burst into song.
8Even the cypress trees and the cedars of Lebanon rejoice over you, saying, "Since you have been brought down, no lumberjack has come to cut us down."
9The grave below is stirring, ready to greet you when you arrive. It rouses the spirits of the dead for you, all the former rulers of the earth. It has made all the kings of the nations rise from their thrones.
10They will all speak up and ask you, “Have you also become as weak as we are? Have you become just like us?”
11Your impressive display has been brought down to the grave, along with the music of your stringed instruments. Maggots are spread out beneath you, and worms cover you.
12How you have fallen from heaven, morning star, son of the dawn! How you have been cut down to the ground, you who used to defeat nations!
13You said to yourself, “I will go up to heaven! I will set my throne above God's stars! I will sit on the mountain where the gods meet, in the farthest north!
14I will rise above the tops of the clouds! I will make myself like the Most High God!”
15Yet you will be brought down to the grave, to the very bottom of the pit.
16Those who see you will stare at you. They will think about you, saying, “Is this the man who made the earth tremble, who shook kingdoms;
17who made the world like a desert, and destroyed its cities; who did not send his prisoners home?”
18All the kings of the nations rest in honor, each in his own tomb.
19But you are thrown out of your grave like a despised branch, covered with the slain who were stabbed with a sword, who go down to the stones of the pit; like a dead body trampled underfoot.
20You will not be buried with them, because you have ruined your own land. You have killed your own people. The children of evil-doers will never be remembered.
21Prepare to kill his children because of their fathers' evil deeds, so they won't rise up and take over the earth, and fill the world with cities.
22“I will rise up against them,” says Yahweh of Armies, “and wipe out Babylon's name and its people, its son and grandson,” says Yahweh.
23“I will also make it a home for porcupines and pools of water. I will sweep it away with the broom of destruction,” says Yahweh of Armies.
24Yahweh of Armies has sworn an oath, saying, “Just as I planned, so it will happen; and just as I intended, so it will stand:
25that I will crush the Assyrian in my land, and trample him on my mountains. Then his burden will be lifted from them, and his heavy load will be taken off their shoulders.”
26This is the plan decided for the whole earth. This is the hand stretched out over all the nations.
27For Yahweh of Armies has planned it, and who can stop it? His hand is stretched out, and who can turn it back?
28This message came in the year King Ahaz died.
29Don’t be happy, all of you Philistines, just because the rod that struck you is broken. From the root of that snake, a more dangerous snake will emerge, and its offspring will be a fiery, flying serpent.
30The poorest people will have food, and those in need will rest safely. But I will kill your family line with hunger, and your remaining people will be destroyed.
31Cry out, city gates! Wail, city! All of Philistia, you are destroyed, because smoke comes from the north, and no one escapes from its armies.
32What will they tell the messengers from other nations? That Yahweh has established Zion, and his suffering people will find safety there.