1. FOR THE Lord will have mercy on Jacob [the captive Jews in Babylon] and will again choose Israel and set them in their own land; and foreigners [who are proselytes] will join them and will cleave to the house of Jacob (Israel). [Esth. 8:17.]
2. And the peoples [of Babylonia] shall take them and bring them to their own country [of Judea] and help restore them. And the house of Israel will possess [the foreigners who prefer to stay with] them in the land of the Lord as male and female servants; and they will take captive [not by physical but by moral might] those whose captives they have been, and they will rule over their [former] oppressors. [Ezra 1.]
3. When the Lord has given you rest from your sorrow and pain and from your trouble and unrest and from the hard service with which you were made to serve,
4. You shall take up this [taunting] parable against the king of Babylon and say, How the oppressor has stilled [the restless insolence]! The golden and exacting city has ceased!
5. The Lord has broken the staff of the wicked, the scepter of the [tyrant] rulers,
6. Who smote the peoples in anger with incessant blows and trod down the nations in wrath with unrelenting persecution–[until] he who smote is persecuted and no one hinders any more.
7. The whole earth is at rest and is quiet; they break forth into singing.
8. Yes, the fir trees and cypresses rejoice at you [O kings of Babylon], even the cedars of Lebanon, saying, Since you have been laid low, no woodcutter comes up against us.
9. Sheol (Hades, the place of the dead) below is stirred up to meet you at your coming [O tyrant Babylonian rulers]; it stirs up the shades of the dead to greet you–even all the chief ones of the earth; it raises from their thrones [in astonishment at your humbled condition] all the kings of the nations.
10. All of them will [tauntingly] say to you, Have you also become weak as we are? Have you become like us?
11. Your pomp and magnificence are brought down to Sheol (the underworld), along with the sound of your harps; the maggots [which prey upon dead bodies] are spread out under you and worms cover you [O Babylonian rulers].
12. How have you fallen from heaven, O light-bringer and daystar, son of the morning! How you have been cut down to the ground, you who weakened and laid low the nations [O blasphemous, satanic king of Babylon!]