Isaiah 13:5

²⁰“You are my battle ax and weapons of war. With you I will break the nations into pieces. With you I will destroy kingdoms. ²¹With you I will break in pieces the horse and his rider. ²²With you I will break in pieces the chariot and him who rides therein. With you I will break in pieces man and woman. With you I will break in pieces the old man and the youth. With you I will break in pieces the young man and the virgin. ²³With you I will break in pieces the shepherd and his flock. With you I will break in pieces the farmer and his yoke. With you I will break in pieces governors and deputies.

²⁴“I will give to Babylon and to all the inhabitants of Chaldea all their evil that they have done in Zion in your sight,” says the LORD. ²⁵“Behold, I am against you, destroying mountain,” says the LORD, “which destroys all the earth. I will stretch out my hand on you, roll you down from the rocks, and will make you a burned mountain. ²⁶They won’t take a cornerstone from you, nor a stone for foundations; but you will be desolate forever,” says the LORD. ²⁷“Set up a standard in the land! Blow the trumpet among the nations! Prepare the nations against her! Call together against her the kingdoms of Ararat, Minni, and Ashkenaz! Appoint a marshal against her! Cause the horses to come up as the swarming locusts! ²⁸Prepare against her the nations, the kings of the Medes, its governors, and all its deputies, and all the land of their dominion! ²⁹The land trembles and is in pain; for the purposes of the LORD against Babylon stand, to make the land of Babylon a desolation, without inhabitant. ³⁰The mighty men of Babylon have stopped fighting, they remain in their strongholds. Their might has failed. They have become as women. Her dwelling places are set on fire. Her bars are broken. ³¹One runner will run to meet another, and one messenger to meet another, to show the king of Babylon that his city is taken on every quarter. ³²So the passages are seized. They have burned the reeds with fire. The men of war are frightened.”

³³For the LORD of Armies, the God of Israel says: “The daughter of Babylon is like a threshing floor at the time when it is trodden. Yet a little while, and the time of harvest comes for her.” ³⁴“Nebuchadnezzar the king of Babylon has devoured me. He has crushed me. He has made me an empty vessel. He has, like a monster, swallowed me up. He has filled his mouth with my delicacies. He has cast me out. ³⁵May the violence done to me and to my flesh be on Babylon!” the inhabitant of Zion will say; and, “May my blood be on the inhabitants of Chaldea!” will Jerusalem say.

³⁶Therefore the LORD says: “Behold, I will plead your cause, and take vengeance for you. I will dry up her sea, and make her fountain dry. ³⁷Babylon will become heaps, a dwelling place for jackals, an astonishment, and a hissing, without inhabitant. ³⁸They will roar together like young lions. They will growl as lions’ cubs. ³⁹When they are inflamed, I will make their feast, and I will make them drunk, that they may rejoice, and sleep a perpetual sleep, and not wake up,” says the LORD. ⁴⁰“I will bring them down like lambs to the slaughter, like rams with male goats. ⁴¹“How Sheshach is taken! How the praise of the whole earth is seized! How Babylon has become a desolation among the nations! ⁴²The sea has come up on Babylon. She is covered with the multitude of its waves. ⁴³Her cities have become a desolation, a dry land, and a desert, a land in which no man dwells. No son of man passes by it. ⁴⁴I will execute judgment on Bel in Babylon, and I will bring out of his mouth that which he has swallowed up. The nations will not flow any more to him. Yes, the wall of Babylon will fall. ⁴⁵“My people, go away from the middle of her, and each of you save yourselves from the LORD’s fierce anger. ⁴⁶Don’t let your heart faint. Don’t fear for the news that will be heard in the land. For news will come one year, and after that in another year news will come, and violence in the land, ruler against ruler.

⁹For, behold, I will stir up and cause to come up against Babylon a company of great nations from the north country; and they will set themselves in array against her. She will be taken from there. Their arrows will be as of an expert mighty man. None of them will return in vain.

³¹He will send out his angels with a great sound of a trumpet, and they will gather together his chosen ones from the four winds, from one end of the sky to the other.

³For a nation comes up out of the north against her, which will make her land desolate, and no one will dwell in it. They have fled. They are gone, both man and animal.

¹Behold, the LORD makes the earth empty, makes it waste, turns it upside down, and scatters its inhabitants.

¹⁷Behold, I will stir up the Medes against them, who will not value silver, and as for gold, they will not delight in it.

²⁶He will lift up a banner to the nations from far away, and he will whistle for them from the end of the earth. Behold, they will come speedily and swiftly.

¹¹“Make the arrows sharp! Hold the shields firmly! The LORD has stirred up the spirit of the kings of the Medes, because his purpose is against Babylon, to destroy it; for it is the vengeance of the LORD, the vengeance of his temple.