1. The Lord will have compassion on Jacob, will again choose Israel, and will give them rest in their own land. Immigrants will join them, and attach themselves to the house of Jacob.
2. The peoples will take them and will bring them to their own place. The house of Israel will possess them as male and female slaves in the Lord’s land, making captives of their captors and ruling their oppressors.
3. When the Lord has given you rest from pain and trouble and from the hard labor that you perform,
4. you will take up this taunt against the king of Babylon:How the oppressor has ceased!How the flood has receded!
5. The Lord has broken the staff of the wicked,the rod of tyrants
6. that struck peoples in rage with ceaseless blows,that ruled nations with anger,with relentless aggression.
7. All the earth rests quietly,then it breaks into song.
8. Even the cypresses rejoice over you,the cedars of Lebanon:"Since you were laid low,no logger comes up against us!"
9. The underworld beneath becomes restless to greet your arrival.It awakens the ghosts,all the leaders of earth;it makes the kings of the nations rise from their thrones.
10. All of them speak and say to you:"Even you’ve become weak like we are!You are the same as us!"
11. Your majesty has been brought down to the underworld,along with the sound of your harps.Under you is a bed of maggots,and worms are your blanket.
12. How you’ve fallen from heaven,morning star, son of dawn!You are cut down to earth,helpless on your back!
13. You said to yourself, I will climb up to heaven;above God’s stars, I will raise my throne.I’ll sit on the mount of assembly,on the heights of Zaphon.
14. I’ll go up to the cloud tops;I’ll be like the Most High!
15. But down to the underworld you are brought,to the depths of the pit.
16. Those who see you will stare at you;they will examine you closely:"Is this the man who rattled the earth,who shook kingdoms,
17. who made the world a wastelandand tore down its cities,and wouldn’t let his prisoners go home?"
18. All the kings of the nations lie down honored,all of them, each in his own tomb.
19. But you are cast away from your own gravelike a rejected branch,covered by the deadand those pierced by the sword—who go down to the stony pit—like a trampled corpse.
20. You won’t join them in burial,for you destroyed your own land;you killed your own people.Such evil offspring will never be mentioned again!