The splendor of its forests and orchards, both soul and body, it will completely destroy, as a sickness consumes a man.

Through your servants you have taunted the Lord, and you have said: “With my many chariots I have ascended to the heights of the mountains, to the remote peaks of Lebanon. I have cut down its tallest cedars, the finest of its cypresses. I have reached its farthest heights, the densest of its forests.

I will appoint destroyers against you, each man with his weapons, and they will cut down the choicest of your cedars and throw them into the fire.

Egypt will hiss like a fleeing serpent, for the enemy will advance in force; with axes they will come against her like woodsmen cutting down trees. They will chop down her forest, declares the LORD, dense though it may be, for they are more numerous than locusts; they cannot be counted.

There is no longer praise for Moab; in Heshbon they devise evil against her: ‘Come, let us cut her off from nationhood.’ You too, O people of Madmen, will be silenced; the sword will pursue you.

This is what the LORD says: “Though they are allied and numerous, yet they will be cut down and pass away. Though I have afflicted you, O Judah, I will afflict you no longer.

Open your doors, O Lebanon, that the fire may consume your cedars! Wail, O cypress, for the cedar has fallen; the majestic trees are ruined! Wail, O oaks of Bashan, for the dense forest has been cut down!

“Then Assyria will fall, but not by the sword of man; a sword will devour them, but not one made by mortals. They will flee before the sword, and their young men will be put to forced labor.

Then the angel of the LORD went out and struck down 185,000 men in the camp of the Assyrians. When the people got up the next morning, there were all the dead bodies!

Bless the LORD, all His angels mighty in strength who carry out His word, who hearken to the voice of His command.

As I lay on my bed, I also saw in the visions of my mind a watcher, a holy one, coming down from heaven. He called out in a loud voice: ‘Cut down the tree and chop off its branches; strip off its leaves and scatter its fruit. Let the beasts flee from under it, and the birds from its branches. ... And you, O king, saw a watcher, a holy one, coming down from heaven and saying: ‘Cut down the tree and destroy it, but leave the stump with its roots in the ground, and a band of iron and bronze around it, in the tender grass of the field. Let him be drenched with the dew of heaven, and graze with the beasts of the field till seven times pass him by.’

and to grant relief to you who are oppressed and to us as well. This will take place when the Lord Jesus is revealed from heaven with His mighty angels

Yet not even angels, though greater in strength and power, dare to bring such slanderous charges against them before the Lord.

Then I saw another mighty angel coming down from heaven, wrapped in a cloud, with a rainbow above his head. His face was like the sun, and his legs were like pillars of fire.

Then a mighty angel picked up a stone the size of a great millstone and cast it into the sea, saying: “With such violence the great city of Babylon will be cast down, never to be seen again.