1 The Lord will take pity on Jacob, he will choose Israel again and set tle them in their own land. Then foreigners will join them and be counted with the people of Jacob.
2 Nations will take them and bring them to their own place. But as soon as they are back home, the people of Israel will subdue them and make them servants and maids. Thus the people of Israel will make captives of their captors and rule over their oppressors.
How you have fallen, shining star!
3 On the day Yahweh gives you rest from your suffering and turmoil, from your fear and your cruel bond age,
4 you will take up this taunt against the king of Babylon:
How has the oppression ceased?
How has the strongman ended?
5 Yahweh has broken the staff of the wicked,
the scepter of the tyrant
6 who struck down the people
with blow after blow,
who ruled the nations in anger,
with unrelenting persecution.
7 The whole earth is at rest and at peace,
breaking forth into song.
8 Even the cypresses exult
and the cedars of Lebanon say:
“Now that you have fallen,
no loggers come to cut us down.”
9 The netherworld is all astir
to meet you when you come.
It stirs up the dead to greet you –
all who were leaders of the world.
It raises from their thrones –
all who were kings of the nations.
10 They all speak and say to you:
“You have also been thrown to the ground and have become like us!
11 All your pomp has been brought down to the Kingdom of death,
along with the sound of your harps;
maggots are the bed beneath you
and worms are your blanket.”
12 How you are fallen from heaven,
O Lucifer, son of the morning!
How you are cast down to the ground,
you who mowed down the nations!
13 You said in your heart,
“I will ascend to heaven,
I will raise my throne
higher than the stars of God;
I will sit on the Mount of Assembly,
in the far recesses of the North.
14 I will climb up above the clouds;
I will be like the Most High!”
15 But down to the netherworld you go,
to the deep recesses of the Pit.
16 All who see you stare at you
and ponder over your fate:
“Is this the man who shook the earth,
who made kingdoms quake,
17 who made the world a waste,
who overthrew its cities
and would not give its captives
release?”
18 All kings of nations lie in state,
each in his own tomb.
19 You are nevertheless cast out of the tomb,
like a rejected untimely birth,
like a trampled corpse buried
under the slaughtered,
under those cut down by the sword,
thrown into the common grave.
20 You were not given a monument
for you have brought your land to ruin,
and caused your people to be slain.
May the descendants of evildoers never be mentioned again!
21 Go up, slaughter the sons for the sins of their fathers,
lest they rise and possess the land
and cover the earth with their cities.
22 “I will rise up against them,” says Yah weh Sabaoth. “I will cut off from Baby lon her name, her remnant, offspring and posterity,” says Yahweh.
23 “I will turn her into a swampland, a habitation of reptiles and crocodiles; I will sweep her with the broom of destruction,” says Yahweh Sabaoth.
24 Yahweh Sabaoth has sworn:
“As I have planned, so will it be!
As I have decided, so will I do;
25 I will destroy the Assyrian in my land,
trample him down on my mountains;
take his yoke off my people’s neck,
and remove his burden from their shoulders.
26 This is the sentence he pronounced for the whole earth; with his hand stretched out over all nations.
27 Yahweh has made a decision, and who will annul it? His hand is stretched out, and who can turn it back?
Warning to the Philistines
28 In the year King Ahaz died this oracle was proclaimed:
29 “Rejoice not, all you Philistines, that the rod which smote you is broken; for from the root of the snake will come forth a viper, and its offspring will be a flying dragon.
30 On that day my poor will have their fill with the fruits of my fields and the helpless will rest secure. But through famine I will kill your children and slay even your remnant.”
31 Wail, O gate! Cry, O city!
tremble in fear, all you Philistines!
For smoke comes from the north –
a great army sweeps down on you.
30 What answer will then be given to the messengers of that nation? “Yahweh has laid the foundation of Zion, and there his afflicted people will take refuge.”
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Comments Isaiah, Chapter 14
• 14.3 See 14:2: it is still far from the Gospel and the missionary spirit!
The poem in 14:3-21 was spoken by Isaiah on the occasion of the death of an Assyrian king: here these words are applied much later to the ruin of Babylon which had become the symbol of the fall of God’s enemies.
It is worth noting how those empires of Assyria, Babylon and Egypt which dominated the world and made the Jews tremble disappeared without leaving a trace.