All of you assemble and listen: Who among you declared these things? The one the Lord loves shall do his will against Babylon and the offspring of Chaldea.
You will see and your heart shall exult, and your bodies shall flourish like the grass; The Lord’s power shall be revealed to his servants, but to his enemies, his wrath.
See, I am stirring up against Babylon a band of great nations from the land of the north; They are arrayed against her, from there she shall be taken. Their arrows are like the arrows of a skilled warrior who never returns empty-handed.
Sharpen the arrows, fill the quivers; The Lord has stirred up the spirit of the kings of the Medes, for his resolve is Babylon’s destruction. Yes, it is retribution from the Lord, retribution for his temple.
Listen! the cry of the daughter of my people, far and wide in the land! “Is the Lord no longer in Zion, is her King no longer in her midst?” Why do they provoke me with their idols, with their foreign nonentities?
Therefore I have poured out my fury upon them; with my fiery wrath I have consumed them, bringing down their ways upon their heads—oracle of the Lord God.
And he will send out his angels with a trumpet blast, and they will gather his elect from the four winds, from one end of the heavens to the other. The Lesson of the Fig Tree.