Therefore hear, you nations, and know, O congregation, what is coming upon them.

Hear the Word of Jehovah, O nations, and declare it on distant shores; and say, He who scattered Israel will gather him, and keep him as a shepherd keeps his flock.

Declare among the nations, proclaim, and lift up a banner. Proclaim and do not hide it; say, Babylon is captured, Bel is ashamed, Merodach is broken in pieces; her images are withered up, her idols are broken in pieces.

Come near, you nations, to hear; and you people, pay attention; let the earth hear, and its fullness; the world, and all its offspring.

Like keepers of a field, they are against her all around; because she has rebelled against Me, says Jehovah.

Therefore a lion out of the forest shall kill them, and a wolf of the deserts shall destroy them; a leopard shall watch over their cities. Everyone who goes out from there shall be torn in pieces, because their transgressions are many and their backslidings are increased.

Both the great and the small shall die in this land. They shall not be buried, nor shall men mourn for them, nor cut themselves, nor make themselves bald for them.

In the ninth year of Zedekiah king of Judah, in the tenth month, Nebuchadnezzar king of Babylon and all his army came against Jerusalem, and besieged it.

Lo, I will bring a nation against you from afar, O house of Israel, says Jehovah. It is an enduring nation, it is an ancient nation, a nation whose language you do not know, nor understand what they say.

Jehovah will bring a nation against you from afar, from the ends of the earth, as the eagle flies, a nation whose language you will not understand,

And they shall eat the fruit of your livestock and the fruit of your land, until you are destroyed; they shall not leave you grain or new wine or oil, or the offspring of your cattle or the increase of your flocks, until they have destroyed you.

Then Isaiah the prophet came to King Hezekiah, and said to him, What did these men say? And where did they come from to you? And Hezekiah said, They have come to me from a distant land, from Babylon.

The young lions roared against him; they uttered their voice. And they made his land a waste; his cities are burned without inhabitant.

In his right hand is the divination for Jerusalem: to set up battering rams, to call for a slaughter, to lift the voice with shouting, to set battering rams against the gates, to heap up a mound, and to build a siege wall.