All your fortifications will be like fig trees with first-ripe fruit: If they are shaken, their figs will fall into the mouth of the eater!

Your shepherds are sleeping, O king of Assyria! Your officers are slumbering! Your people are scattered like sheep on the mountains and there is no one to regather them!

The Babylonian tyrant pulls them all up with a fishhook; he hauls them in with his throw net. When he catches them in his dragnet, he is very happy.

Because of his success he offers sacrifices to his throw net and burns incense to his dragnet; for because of them he has plenty of food, and more than enough to eat.

The Lord responded: “Write down this message! Record it legibly on tablets, so the one who announces it may read it easily.

For recognition of the Lord’s sovereign majesty will fill the earth just as the waters fill up the sea.

“You who force your neighbor to drink wine are as good as dead – you who make others intoxicated by forcing them to drink from the bowl of your furious anger, so you can look at their genitals.

I will remove those who worship the stars in the sky from their rooftops, those who swear allegiance to the Lord while taking oaths in the name of their ‘king,’

a day of trumpet blasts and battle cries. Judgment will fall on the fortified cities and the high corner towers.

This is how they will be repaid for their arrogance, for they taunted and verbally harassed the people of the Lord who commands armies.

Here then is what the Lord who rules over all says: ‘Think carefully about what you are doing.

This is why the sky has held back its dew and the earth its produce.

The Lord will take possession of Judah as his portion in the holy land and he will choose Jerusalem once again.

There are also two olive trees beside it, one on the right of the receptacle and the other on the left.”

Next I asked the messenger, “What are these two olive trees on the right and the left of the menorah?”

So he said, “These are the two anointed ones who stand by the Lord of the whole earth.”

He replied, “To build a temple for her in the land of Babylonia. When it is finished, she will be placed there in her own residence.”

So on that day I will set out to destroy all the nations that come against Jerusalem.”

Bring out with you all the living creatures that are with you. Bring out every living thing, including the birds, animals, and every creeping thing that creeps on the earth. Let them increase and be fruitful and multiply on the earth!”

That is why its name was called Babel – because there the Lord confused the language of the entire world, and from there the Lord scattered them across the face of the entire earth.