The earth trembles and shakes because the LORD is carrying out his plan to make Babylonia a desert, where no one lives.

That country will become a pile of ruins where wild animals live. It will be a horrible sight; no one will live there, and all who see it will be terrified.

"And so Babylon will be haunted by demons and evil spirits, and by unclean birds. Never again will people live there, not for all time to come.

The same thing will happen to Babylon that happened to Sodom and Gomorrah, when I destroyed them and the nearby towns. No one will ever live there again. I, the LORD, have spoken.

They did not care about me, even though I rescued them from Egypt and led them through the wilderness: a land of deserts and sand pits, a dry and dangerous land where no one lives and no one will even travel.

No one will ever live there again. No wandering Arab will ever pitch a tent there, and no shepherd will ever pasture a flock there.

I am your enemy and the enemy of your Nile. I will make all of Egypt an empty wasteland, from the city of Migdol in the north to the city of Aswan in the south, all the way to the Ethiopian border.

No human being or animal will walk through it. For forty years nothing will live there.