How the hammer of the whole earth is chopped off and broken! How Babylon has become a desolation among the nations!

Woe to Assyria, the rod of My anger! And the staff in their hand is My indignation.

Shall the ax boast itself against him who chops with it? Shall the saw magnify itself against him who moves it? As if the rod could swing itself at those who lift it up! As if a staff could rise up, as though it were not wood!

They come from a distant land, from the ends of the heavens; Jehovah and the weapons of His indignation, to destroy the whole land.

Jehovah has broken the staff of the wicked, the scepter of the rulers

who struck peoples in wrath, strokes without letup, ruling the nations in anger, a persecution without restraint.

Have you not heard from distant lands how I have done it? Even from ancient times I have formed it. Now I have brought it to pass, that your fortified cities should be caused to crash into heaps of ruins.

Behold, I have made you into a new sharp threshing instrument having teeth; you shall thresh the mountains, and beat them fine, and shall make the hills like chaff.

You shall winnow them, and the wind shall carry them away, and a tempest shall scatter them. And you shall rejoice in Jehovah and shall glory in the Holy One of Israel.

Rise up and thresh, O daughter of Zion, for I will make your horn iron, and I will make your hooves bronze, and you shall crush many peoples. And I will consecrate their gain to Jehovah, and their wealth to the Lord of the whole earth.

For I have bent Judah for Me as a bow, filled it with Ephraim, and stirred up your sons, O Zion, against your sons, O Greece, and made you as the sword of a mighty man.

Then Jehovah will be seen over them, and His arrow shall go out as lightning; and the Lord Jehovah shall blow the shofar and shall go forth with the tempests of the south.

But when the king heard about it, he was angry. And he sent out his armies, destroyed those murderers, and burned up their city.

behold, I will send and take all the families of the north, says Jehovah, and Nebuchadnezzar the king of Babylon, My servant, and will bring them against this land, and against its inhabitants, and against all these nations all around. And I will completely destroy them, and make them a waste, and a hissing, and perpetual ruins.

And this whole land shall be a ruin and a waste. And these nations shall serve the king of Babylon seventy years.

I have made the earth, man, and the animals on the face of the earth, by My great power and by My outstretched arm, and have given it to whom it seemed right to Me.

And all nations shall serve him, and his son, and his son's son, until the time of his land comes. And then many nations and great kings shall make him serve them.