5. For her sins are piled up as high as heaven,and God remembers her wicked ways.
6. Treat her exactly as she has treated you;pay her back double for all she has done.Fill her cup with a drink twice as strongas the drink she prepared for you.
7. Give her as much suffering and griefas the glory and luxury she gave herself.For she keeps telling herself:‘Here I sit, a queen!I am no widow,I will never know grief!’
8. Because of this, in one day she will be struck with plagues —disease, grief, and famine.And she will be burnt with fire,because the Lord God, who judges her, is mighty.”
9. The kings of the earth who took part in her immorality and lust will cry and weep over the city when they see the smoke from the flames that consume her.
10. They stand a long way off, because they are afraid of sharing in her suffering. They say, “How terrible! How awful! This great and mighty city Babylon! In just one hour you have been punished!”
11. The merchants of the earth also cry and mourn for her, because no one buys their goods any longer;
12. no one buys their gold, silver, precious stones, and pearls; their goods of linen, purple cloth, silk, and scarlet cloth; all kinds of rare woods and all kinds of objects made of ivory and of expensive wood, of bronze, iron, and marble;
13. and cinnamon, spice, incense, myrrh, and frankincense; wine and oil, flour and wheat, cattle and sheep, horses and carriages, slaves, and even human lives.
14. The merchants say to her, “All the good things you longed to own have disappeared, and all your wealth and glamour are gone, and you will never find them again!”
15. The merchants, who became rich from doing business in that city, will stand a long way off, because they are afraid of sharing in her suffering. They will cry and mourn,