The Lord has broken the club of the wicked, the scepter of rulers.

Many will stumble over the stone and the rock, and will fall and be seriously injured, and will be ensnared and captured.”

The ruined town is shattered; all of the houses are shut up tight.

I cry out until morning; like a lion he shatters all my bones; you turn day into night and end my life.

A crushed reed he will not break, a dim wick he will not extinguish; he will faithfully make just decrees.

“I will go before you and level mountains. Bronze doors I will shatter and iron bars I will hack through.

“Do I bring a baby to the birth opening and then not deliver it?” asks the Lord. “Or do I bring a baby to the point of delivery and then hold it back?” asks your God.

I will break Assyria in my land, I will trample them underfoot on my hills. Their yoke will be removed from my people, the burden will be lifted from their shoulders.

Don’t be so happy, all you Philistines, just because the club that beat you has been broken! For a viper will grow out of the serpent’s root, and its fruit will be a darting adder.

Look what’s coming! A charioteer, a team of horses.” When questioned, he replies, “Babylon has fallen, fallen! All the idols of her gods lie shattered on the ground!”

It shatters in pieces like a clay jar, so shattered to bits that none of it can be salvaged. Among its fragments one cannot find a shard large enough to scoop a hot coal from a fire or to skim off water from a cistern.”

When its branches get brittle, they break; women come and use them for kindling. For these people lack understanding, therefore the one who made them has no compassion on them; the one who formed them has no mercy on them.

So the Lord’s word to them will sound like meaningless gibberish, senseless babbling, a syllable here, a syllable there. As a result, they will fall on their backsides when they try to walk, and be injured, ensnared, and captured.

The spirit of the sovereign Lord is upon me, because the Lord has chosen me. He has commissioned me to encourage the poor, to help the brokenhearted, to decree the release of captives, and the freeing of prisoners,