6 Wail, for the day of the Lord is at hand; as destruction from the Almighty and Sufficient One [Shaddai] will it come! [Gen. 17:1.]
7 Therefore will all hands be feeble, and every man's heart will melt.
8 And they [of Babylon] shall be dismayed and terrified, pangs and sorrows shall take hold of them; they shall be in pain as a woman in childbirth. They will gaze stupefied and aghast at one another, their faces will be aflame [from the effects of the unprecedented warfare].
9 Behold, the day of the Lord is coming!–fierce, with wrath and raging anger–to make the land and the [whole] earth a desolation and to destroy out of it its sinners. [Isa. 2:10-22; Rev. 19:11-21.]
10 For the stars of the heavens and their constellations will not give their light; the sun will be darkened at its rising and the moon will not shed its light.
11 And I, the Lord, will punish the world for its evil, and the wicked for their guilt and iniquity; I will cause the arrogance of the proud to cease and will lay low the haughtiness of the terrible and the boasting of the violent and ruthless.
12 I will make a man more rare than fine gold, and mankind scarcer than the pure gold of Ophir.