Howl ye; for the day of the Lord is at hand;

It shall come as a destruction from the Almighty. Therefore shall all hands be faint,

And every man's heart shall melt:

And they shall be afraid: pangs and sorrows shall take hold of them;

They shall be in pain as a woman that travaileth:

They shall be amazed one at another;

Their faces shall be as flames.

Behold, the day of the Lord cometh,

Cruel both with wrath and fierce anger,

To lay the land desolate:

And he shall destroy the sinners thereof out of it. For the stars of heaven and the constellations thereof shall not give their light:

The sun shall be darkened in his going forth,
And the moon shall not cause her light to shine.
And I will punish the world for their evil,
And the wicked for their iniquity;

And I will cause the arrogancy of the proud to cease,
And will lay low the haughtiness of the terrible.
I will make a man more precious than fine gold;
Even a man than the golden wedge of Ophir.
Therefore I will shake the heavens,

And the earth shall remove out of her place,
In the wrath of the Lord of hosts,

And in the day of his fierce anger.

And it shall be as the chased roe,

And as a sheep that no man taketh up:

They shall every man turn to his own people,
And flee every one into his own land.

Every one that is found shall be thrust through; And every one that is joined unto them shall fall by the sword.

Their children also shall be dashed to pieces before

their eyes;

Their houses shall be spoiled, and their wives ravished.

Behold, I will stir up the Medes against them,
Which shall not regard silver;

And as for gold, they shall not delight in it.

Their bows also shall dash the young men to pieces;

And they shall have no pity on the fruit of the womb; Their eye shall not spare children.

And Babylon, the glory of kingdoms,

The beauty of the Chaldees' excellency,

Shall be as when God overthrew Sodom and Gomorrah.

It shall never be inhabited,

Neither shall it be dwelt in from generation to generation:

Neither shall the Arabian pitch tent there;

Neither shall the shepherds make their fold there. But wild beasts of the desert shall lie there;

And their houses shall be full of doleful creatures;

And owls shall dwell there,

And satyrs shall dance there.

And the wild beasts of the islands shall cry in their desolate houses,

And dragons in their pleasant palaces:

And her time is near to come,

And her days shall not be prolonged.

For the Lord will have mercy on Jacob,
And will yet choose Israel,

And set them in their own land:

And the strangers shall be joined with them,
And they shall cleave to the house of Jacob.
And the people shall take them, and bring them
to their place:

And the house of Israel shall possess them in the land of the Lord

For servants and handmaids:

And they shall take them captives, whose captives they were;

And they shall rule over their oppressors.

And it shall come to pass in the day that the Lord shall give thee rest from thy sorrow, and from thy fear, and from the hard bondage wherein thou wast made to serve, that thou shalt take up this proverb against the king of Babylon, and say,