The Day of the LORD Terrifies Babylon

The day of the LORD is near, and human hands go slack

Howl ye; for the day of the LORD is at hand; it shall come as a destruction from the Almighty. Therefore shall all hands be faint, and every man's heart shall melt: and they shall be afraid: pangs and sorrows shall take hold of them; they shall be in pain as a woman that travaileth: they shall be amazed one at another; their faces shall be as flames.

Behold, the day of the LORD cometh, cruel both with wrath and fierce anger, to lay the land desolate: and he shall destroy the sinners thereof out of it. The stars of heaven and the constellations thereof shall not give their light: the sun shall be darkened in his going forth, and the moon shall not cause her light to shine. Cosmic darkening and labor-pain language portray Babylon's collapse as world-ending for that empire. Divine-war imagery does not authorize human holy war, delight in civilian terror, or treating children and families as legitimate targets.

Medes who do not take silver are the oracle's shock troops, and the rhetoric is not a license

I will punish the world for their evil, and the wicked for their iniquity; I will cause the arrogancy of the proud to cease. I will make a man more precious than fine gold. Therefore I will shake the heavens, and the earth shall remove out of her place, in the wrath of the LORD of hosts, and in the day of his fierce anger. Every one shall flee to his own land. Every one that is found shall be thrust through.

Behold, I will stir up the Medes against them, which shall not regard silver; and as for gold, they shall not delight in it. Their bows also shall dash the young men to pieces; and they shall have no pity on the fruit of the womb; their eye shall not spare children. The Medes' refusal of ransom and the pitiless lines describe imperial fall in the harshest register. Readers must not take that description as permission to copy it. The day of the LORD here is Babylon's terror, not a warrant for modern massacre.