Set up the standard toward Zion. Take refuge! Do not delay! For I will bring disaster from the north, And great destruction."

"O you children of Benjamin, Gather yourselves to flee from the midst of Jerusalem! Blow the trumpet in Tekoa, And set up a signal-fire in Beth Haccerem; For disaster appears out of the north, And great destruction.

Thus says the LORD: "Behold, a people comes from the north country, And a great nation will be raised from the farthest parts of the earth.

Behold, the noise of the report has come, And a great commotion out of the north country, To make the cities of Judah desolate, a den of jackals.

Behold, I will bring them from the north country, And gather them from the ends of the earth, [Among] them the blind and the lame, The woman with child And the one who labors with child, together; A great throng shall return there.

" Egypt [is] a very pretty heifer, [But] destruction comes, it comes from the north.

For behold, I will raise and cause to come up against Babylon An assembly of great nations from the north country, And they shall array themselves against her; From there she shall be captured. Their arrows [shall be] like [those] of an expert warrior; None shall return in vain.

" Behold, a people shall come from the north, And a great nation and many kings Shall be raised up from the ends of the earth.

" I have raised up one from the north, And he shall come; From the rising of the sun he shall call on My name; And he shall come against princes as [though] mortar, As the potter treads clay.

Then I looked, and behold, a whirlwind was coming out of the north, a great cloud with raging fire engulfing itself; and brightness [was] all around it and radiating out of its midst like the color of amber, out of the midst of the fire.