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And will lay low the haughtiness of the tyrants.

¹²I will make man more rare than fine gold,

Even man than the pure gold of Ophir.

 

¹³Therefore I will make the heavens to tremble,

And the earth shall be shaken out of her place,

For the wrath of the Lord of hosts,

And for the day of His fierce anger.

¹⁴And it shall come to pass, that as the chased gazelle,

And as sheep that no man gathereth,

They shall turn every man to his own people,

And shall flee every man to his own land.

¹⁵Every one that is found shall be thrust through;

And every one that is caught shall fall by the sword.

¹⁶Their babes also shall be dashed in pieces before their eyes;

Their houses shall be spoiled,

And their wives ravished.

 

¹⁷Behold, I will stir up the Medes against them,

Who shall not regard silver,

And as for gold, they shall not delight in it.

¹⁸And their bows shall dash the young men in pieces;

And they shall have no pity on the fruit of the womb;

Their eye shall not spare children.

¹⁹And Babylon, the glory of kingdoms,

The beauty of the Chaldeans' pride,

Shall be as when God overthrew Sodom and Gomorrah.

 

²⁰It shall never be inhabited,

Neither shall it be dwelt in from generation to generation;

Neither shall the Arabian pitch tent there;

Neither shall the shepherds make their fold there.

²¹But wild-cats shall lie there;

And their houses shall be full of ferrets;

And ostriches shall dwell there,

And satyrs shall dance there.

²²And jackals shall howl in their castles,

And wild-dogs in the pleasant palaces;

And her time is near to come,

And her days shall not be prolonged.

14For the Lord will have compassion on Jacob, and will yet choose Israel, and set them in their own land; and the stranger shall join himself with them, and they shall cleave to the house of Jacob. ²And the peoples shall take them, and bring them to their place; and the house of Israel shall possess them in the land of the Lord for servants and for handmaids; and they shall take them captive, whose captives they were; and they shall rule over their oppressors.

³And it shall come to pass in the day that the Lord shall give thee rest from thy travail, and from thy trouble, and from the hard service wherein thou wast made to serve, ⁴that thou shalt take up this parable against the king of Babylon, and say:

How hath the oppressor ceased!

The exactress of gold ceased!

⁵The Lord hath broken the staff of the wicked,

The sceptre of the rulers,

⁶That smote the peoples in wrath

With an incessant stroke,

That ruled the nations in anger,

With a persecution that none restrained.

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