Isaiah 14:3-23

Amplified Bible, Classic Edition

³ When the Lord has given you rest from your sorrow and pain and from your trouble and unrest and from the hard service with which you were made to serve,

⁴ You shall take up this [taunting] parable against the king of Babylon and say, How the oppressor has stilled [the restless insolence]! The golden and exacting city has ceased!

⁵ The Lord has broken the staff of the wicked, the scepter of the [tyrant] rulers,

⁶ Who smote the peoples in anger with incessant blows and trod down the nations in wrath with unrelenting persecution—[until] he who smote is persecuted and no one hinders any more.

⁷ The whole earth is at rest and is quiet; they break forth into singing.

⁸ Yes, the fir trees and cypresses rejoice at you [O kings of Babylon], even the cedars of Lebanon, saying, Since you have been laid low, no woodcutter comes up against us.

⁹ Sheol (Hades, the place of the dead) below is stirred up to meet you at your coming [O tyrant Babylonian rulers]; it stirs up the shades of the dead to greet you—even all the chief ones of the earth; it raises from their thrones [in astonishment at your humbled condition] all the kings of the nations.

¹⁰ All of them will [tauntingly] say to you, Have you also become weak as we are? Have you become like us?

¹¹ Your pomp and magnificence are brought down to Sheol (the underworld), along with the sound of your harps; the maggots [which prey upon dead bodies] are spread out under you and worms cover you [O Babylonian rulers].

¹² How have you fallen from heaven, O ^[a]light-bringer and daystar, son of the morning! How you have been cut down to the ground, you who weakened and laid low the nations [O blasphemous, satanic king of Babylon!]

¹³ And you said in your heart, I will ascend to heaven; I will exalt my throne above the stars of God; I will sit upon the mount of assembly in the uttermost north.

¹⁴ I will ascend above the heights of the clouds; I will make myself like the Most High.

¹⁵ Yet you shall be brought down to Sheol (Hades), to the innermost recesses of the pit (the region of the dead).

¹⁶ Those who see you will gaze at you and consider you, saying, Is this the man who made the earth tremble, who shook kingdoms?—

¹⁷ Who made the world like a wilderness and overthrew its cities, who would not permit his prisoners to return home?

¹⁸ All the kings of the nations, all of them lie sleeping in glorious array, each one in his own sepulcher.

¹⁹ But you are cast away from your tomb like a loathed growth or premature birth or an abominable branch [of the family] and like the raiment of the slain; and you are clothed with the slain, those thrust through with the sword, who go down to the stones of the pit [into which carcasses are thrown], like a dead body trodden underfoot.

²⁰ You shall not be joined with them in burial, because you have destroyed your land and have slain your people. May the descendants of evildoers nevermore be named!

²¹ Prepare a slaughtering place for his sons because of the guilt and iniquity of their fathers, so that they may not rise, possess the earth, and fill the face of the world with cities.

²² And I will rise up against them, says the Lord of hosts, and cut off from Babylon name and remnant, and son and son’s son, says the Lord.

²³ I will also make it a possession of the hedgehog and porcupine, and of ^[b]marshes and pools of water, and I will sweep it with the broom of destruction, says the Lord of hosts.