“I am going to make you into a new threshing sledge with sharp, double-edged teeth. You will thresh the mountains and crush them to dust. You will turn the hills into straw.
The people will make noise like raging water. But the Lord will yell at them, and they will run far away. They will be chased away like husks on the mountains being blown by the wind, like whirling dust being blown by a storm.
This is what the Lord of Armies, the God of Israel, says: The people of Babylon are like a threshing floor at the time it is trampled. Their harvest time will come soon.
I will cry and weep for the mountains. I will sing a funeral song for the pastures in the wilderness. They are destroyed so that no one can travel through them. No one can hear the sound of cattle. Birds and cattle have fled. They are gone.
I will turn the land into a barren wasteland. People will no longer brag about its power. The mountains of Israel will become so ruined that no one will travel through them.
Then all at once, the iron, clay, bronze, silver, and gold were smashed. They became like husks on a threshing floor in summer. The wind carried them away, and not a trace of them could be found. But the stone that struck the statue became a large mountain which filled the whole world.
Get up and thresh, people of Zion. I will make your horns as hard as iron and your hoofs as hard as bronze. You will smash many nations into small pieces. You will claim their loot for the Lord, their wealth for the Lord of the whole earth.
The few people left from Jacob will be among the nations, among many people. They will be like a lion among animals in the forest, like a young lion among flocks of sheep. When a lion hunts, it tramples ⌞its victims⌟ and tears ⌞them⌟ to pieces, and there is no one to rescue them.
What a high mountain you are! In front of Zerubbabel you will become a plain. He will bring out the topmost stone with shouts of ‘Blessings, blessings on it!’ ”
The mountain region will be yours as well. It is a forest, so you will have to clear it. All of it will be yours. But you must force out the Canaanites, even though they are strong and have chariots made of iron.”