Daniel 7:4

⁷A lion has gone up from his thicket, and a destroyer of nations. He is on his way. He has gone out from his place, to make your land desolate, that your cities be laid waste, without inhabitant.

¹³You said in your heart, “I will ascend into heaven! I will exalt my throne above the stars of God! I will sit on the mountain of assembly, in the far north! ¹⁴I will ascend above the heights of the clouds! I will make myself like the Most High!” ¹⁵Yet you shall be brought down to Sheol,^[+] to the depths of the pit. ¹⁶Those who see you will stare at you. They will ponder you, saying, “Is this the man who made the earth to tremble, who shook kingdoms, ¹⁷who made the world like a wilderness, and overthrew its cities, who didn’t release his prisoners to their home?”

⁶For, behold, ^[+] I am raising up the Chaldeans, that bitter and hasty nation who march through the width of the earth, to possess dwelling places that are not theirs. ⁷They are feared and dreaded. Their judgment and their dignity proceed from themselves. ⁸Their horses also are swifter than leopards, and are more fierce than the evening wolves. Their horsemen press proudly on. Yes, their horsemen come from afar. They fly as an eagle that hurries to devour.

³and say, ‘The Lord GOD says: “A great eagle with great wings and long feathers, full of feathers which had various colors, came to Lebanon and took the top of the cedar.

⁵Yes, moreover, wine is treacherous: an arrogant man who doesn’t stay at home, who enlarges his desire as Sheol;^[+] he is like death and can’t be satisfied, but gathers to himself all nations and heaps to himself all peoples.

⁶Won’t all these take up a parable against him, and a taunting proverb against him, and say, ‘Woe to him who increases that which is not his, and who enriches himself by extortion! How long?’ ⁷Won’t your debtors rise up suddenly, and wake up those who make you tremble, and you will be their victim? ⁸Because you have plundered many nations, all the remnant of the peoples will plunder you because of men’s blood, and for the violence done to the land, to the city and to all who dwell in it.

⁹Woe to him who gets an evil gain for his house, that he may set his nest on high, that he may be delivered from the hand of evil! ¹⁰You have devised shame to your house by cutting off many peoples, and have sinned against your soul.

²⁸For wherever the carcass is, that is where the vultures^[+] gather together.

¹⁸“To you, king, the Most High God gave Nebuchadnezzar your father the kingdom, and greatness, and glory, and majesty. ¹⁹Because of the greatness that he gave him, all the peoples, nations, and languages trembled and feared before him. He killed whom he wanted to, and he kept alive whom he wanted to. He raised up whom he wanted to, and he put down whom he wanted to. ²⁰But when his heart was lifted up, and his spirit was hardened so that he dealt proudly, he was deposed from his kingly throne, and they took his glory from him. ²¹He was driven from the sons of men, and his heart was made like the animals’, and his dwelling was with the wild donkeys. He was fed with grass like oxen, and his body was wet with the dew of the sky, until he knew that the Most High God rules in the kingdom of men, and that he sets up over it whomever he will.

²²“You, his son, Belshazzar, have not humbled your heart, though you knew all this, ²³but have lifted up yourself against the Lord of heaven; and they have brought the vessels of his house before you, and you and your lords, your wives, and your concubines, have drunk wine from them. You have praised the gods of silver and gold, of bronze, iron, wood, and stone, which don’t see, or hear, or know; and you have not glorified the God in whose hand your breath is, and whose are all your ways.

⁶How much less man, who is a worm, and the son of man, who is a worm!”

³⁸He has left his covert, as the lion; for their land has become an astonishment because of the fierceness of the oppression, and because of his fierce anger.

¹⁹Our pursuers were swifter than the eagles of the sky. They chased us on the mountains. They set an ambush for us in the wilderness.