Go, my people! Enter your inner rooms! Close your doors behind you! Hide for a little while, until his angry judgment is over! ¹ 

I will make justice the measuring line, fairness the plumb line; hail will sweep away the unreliable refuge, ¹  the floodwaters will overwhelm the hiding place.

Your treaty with death will be dissolved; ¹  your agreement ²  with Sheol will not last. ³  When the overwhelming judgment sweeps by, ⁴  you will be overrun by it. ⁵ 

“Listen to me in silence, you coastlands! ¹  Let the nations find renewed strength! Let them approach and then speak; let us come together for debate! ² 

Look, all who were angry at you will be ashamed and humiliated; your adversaries ¹  will be reduced to nothing ²  and perish.

“Look, I am making you like ¹  a sharp threshing sledge, new and double-edged. ²  You will thresh the mountains and crush them; you will make the hills like straw. ³ 

Yes, your land lies in ruins; it is desolate and devastated. ¹  But now you will be too small to hold your residents, and those who devoured you will be far away.

The one who vindicates me is close by. Who dares to argue with me? Let us confront each other! ¹  Who is my accuser? ²  Let him challenge me! ³ 

Look, the sovereign Lord helps me. Who dares to condemn me? Look, all of them will wear out like clothes; a moth will eat away at them.

You will be reestablished when I vindicate you. ¹  You will not experience oppression; ²  indeed, you will not be afraid. You will not be terrified, ³  for nothing frightening ⁴  will come near you.

They ¹  will go into caves in the rocky cliffs and into holes in the ground, ²  trying to escape the dreadful judgment of the Lord ³  and his royal splendor, when he rises up to terrify the earth. ⁴ 

Now I will inform you what I am about to do to my vineyard: I will remove its hedge and turn it into pasture, ¹  I will break its wall and allow animals to graze there. ² 

At that time ¹  they will growl over their prey, ²  it will sound like sea waves crashing against rocks. ³  One will look out over the land and see the darkness of disaster, clouds will turn the light into darkness. ⁴ 

Syria from the east, and the Philistines from the west, they gobbled up Israelite territory. ¹  Despite all this, his anger does not subside, and his hand is ready to strike again. ² 

In the evening there is sudden terror; ¹  by morning they vanish. ²  This is the fate of those who try to plunder us, the destiny of those who try to loot us! ³ 

like heat ¹  in a dry land, you humble the boasting foreigners. ²  Just as the shadow of a cloud causes the heat to subside, ³  so he causes the song of tyrants to cease. ⁴ 

At that time ¹  the Lord will punish with his destructive, ²  great, and powerful sword Leviathan the fast-moving ³  serpent, Leviathan the squirming serpent; he will kill the sea monster. ⁴ 

Whenever it sweeps by, it will overtake you; indeed, ¹  every morning it will sweep by, it will come through during the day and the night.” ²  When this announcement is understood, it will cause nothing but terror.

His battle cry overwhelms like a flooding river ¹  that reaches one’s neck. He shakes the nations in a sieve that isolates the chaff; ²  he puts a bit into the mouth of the nations and leads them to destruction. ³ 

The Lord will give a mighty shout ¹  and intervene in power, ²  with furious anger and flaming, destructive fire, ³  with a driving rainstorm and hailstones.