Isaiah 13:18

THE MESSAGE

Parallel Translations

Christian Standard Bible®
Their bows will cut young men to pieces.They will have no compassion on offspring;they will not look with pity on children.

Hebrew Names Version
[Their] bows shall dash the young men in pieces; and they shall have no pity on the fruit of the womb; their eye shall not spare children.

King James Version
Their bows also shall dash the young men to pieces; and they shall have no pity on the fruit of the womb; their eyes shall not spare children.

English Standard Version
Their bows will slaughter the young men; they will have no mercy on the fruit of the womb; their eyes will not pity children.

New American Standard Bible
And their bows will mow down the young men, They will not even have compassion on the fruit of the womb, Nor will their eye pity children.

New Century Version
Their soldiers will shoot the young men with arrows; they will show no mercy on children, nor will they feel sorry for little ones.

Amplified Bible
Their bows will cut down the young men [of Babylon]; They will take no pity on the fruit of the womb, Their eyes will not look with compassion on the children.

World English Bible
[Their] bows shall dash the young men in pieces; and they shall have no pity on the fruit of the womb; their eye shall not spare children.

Geneva Bible (1587)
With bowes also shall they destroy ye children, and shall haue no compassion vpon the fruit of the wombe, and their eies shall not spare the children.

Legacy Standard Bible
And their bows will dash the young men to pieces,They will not even have compassion on the fruit of the womb,Nor will their eye pity children.

Berean Standard Bible
Their bows will dash young men to pieces; they will have no mercy on the fruit of the womb; they will not look with pity on the children.

Contemporary English Version
Their arrows will slaughter the young men; no pity will be shown to babies and children.

Complete Jewish Bible
Their bows will tear young men to pieces, they will have no pity on the fruit of the womb, their eye will not spare children."

Darby Translation
And [their] bows 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.

Easy-to-Read Version
They will walk on the bows of the young soldiers of Babylon. The enemy soldiers will not show any kindness or mercy even to the babies and young children.

George Lamsa Translation
The bows of young men shall be broken in pieces; and they shall have no pity on the fruit of the womb; their eyes shall not spare children.

Good News Translation
With their bows and arrows they will kill the young men. They will show no mercy to babies and take no pity on children.

Lexham English Bible
And their bows will shatter young men. And they will not show mercy on the fruit of the womb; their eyes will not look compassionately on children.

Literal Translation
And bows shall also smash the young men to pieces; and they shall have no pity on the fruit of the womb; their eye shall not spare sons.

Miles Coverdale Bible (1535)
Then shall yonge mens bowes be knapped asunder. The Medes shal haue no pitie vpo wome wt childe, & their faces shall not spare ye childre.

American Standard Version
And their bows shall dash the young men in pieces; and they shall have no pity on the fruit of the womb; their eye shall not spare children.

Bible in Basic English
In their hands are bows and spears; they are cruel, violently putting the young men to death, and crushing the young women; they have no pity for children, and no mercy for the fruit of the body.

JPS Old Testament (1917)
And their bows shall dash the young men in pieces; and they shall have no pity on the fruit of the womb; their eye shall not spare children.

King James Version (1611)
Their bowes also shall dash the yong men to pieces, and they shall haue no pitie on the fruit of the wombe; their eye shall not spare children.

Bishop's Bible (1568)
With bowes shall they destroy the young men, and haue no pitie on women with chylde, and their faces shall not spare the chyldren.

Brenton's Septuagint (LXX)
They shall break the bows of the young men; and they shall have no mercy on your children; nor shall their eyes spare thy children.

English Revised Version
And their bows shall dash the young men in pieces; and they shall have no pity on the fruit of the womb; their eye shall not spare children.

Wycliffe Bible (1395)
but thei shulen sle litle children bi arowis, and thei schulen not haue merci on wombis yyuynge mylk, and the iye of them schal not spare on sones.

Update Bible Version
And [their] bows shall dash the young men in pieces; and they shall have no pity on the fruit of the womb; their eye shall not spare sons.

Webster's Bible Translation
[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.

New English Translation
Their arrows will cut young men to ribbons; they have no compassion on a person's offspring, they will not look with pity on children.

New King James Version
Also their bows will dash the young men to pieces, And they will have no pity on the fruit of the womb; Their eye will not spare children.

New Living Translation
The attacking armies will shoot down the young men with arrows. They will have no mercy on helpless babies and will show no compassion for children."

New Life Bible
Their bows will cut down the young men. They will have no pity on babies. Their eyes will not pity children.

New Revised Standard
Their bows will slaughter the young men; they will have no mercy on the fruit of the womb; their eyes will not pity children.

J.B. Rotherham Emphasized Bible
And, bows, shall dash the young to pieces, - And on the fruit of the womb, will they have no pity, Over children, will their eye throw no shield.

Douay-Rheims Bible
But with their arrows they shall kill the children, and shall have no pity upon the sucklings of the womb, and their eye shall not spare their sons.

Revised Standard Version
Their bows will slaughter the young men; they will have no mercy on the fruit of the womb; their eyes will not pity children.

Young's Literal Translation
And bows dash young men to pieces, And the fruit of the womb they pity not, On sons their eye hath no pity.

New American Standard Bible (1995)
And their bows will mow down the young men, They will not even have compassion on the fruit of the womb, Nor will their eye pity children.

Contextual Overview

⁶Wail! God 's Day of Judgment is near— an avalanche crashing down from the Strong God! Everyone paralyzed in the panic, hysterical and unstrung, Doubled up in pain like a woman giving birth to a baby. Horrified—everyone they see is like a face out of a nightmare. ⁹"Watch now. God 's Judgment Day comes. Cruel it is, a day of wrath and anger, A day to waste the earth and clean out all the sinners. The stars in the sky, the great parade of constellations, will be nothing but black holes. The sun will come up as a black disk, and the moon a blank nothing. I'll put a full stop to the evil on earth, terminate the dark acts of the wicked. I'll gag all braggarts and boasters—not a peep anymore from them— and trip strutting tyrants, leave them flat on their faces. Proud humanity will disappear from the earth. I'll make mortals rarer than hens' teeth. And yes, I'll even make the sky shake, and the earth quake to its roots Under the wrath of God -of-the-Angel-Armies, the Judgment Day of his raging anger. Like a hunted white-tailed deer, like lost sheep with no shepherd, People will huddle with a few of their own kind, run off to some makeshift shelter. But tough luck to stragglers—they'll be killed on the spot, throats cut, bellies ripped open, Babies smashed on the rocks while mothers and fathers watch, Houses looted, wives raped. ¹⁷"And now watch this: Against Babylon, I'm inciting the Medes, A ruthless bunch indifferent to bribes, the kind of brutality that no one can blunt. They massacre the young, wantonly kick and kill even babies. And Babylon, most glorious of all kingdoms, the pride and joy of Chaldeans, Will end up smoking and stinking like Sodom, and, yes, like Gomorrah, when God had finished with them. No one will live there anymore, generation after generation a ghost town. Not even Bedouins will pitch tents there. Shepherds will give it a wide berth. But strange and wild animals will like it just fine, filling the vacant houses with eerie night sounds. Skunks will make it their home, and unspeakable night hags will haunt it. Hyenas will curdle your blood with their laughing, and the howling of coyotes will give you the shivers. "Babylon is doomed. It won't be long now."

Bible Verse Review
  from Treasury of Scripure Knowledge

shall dash: Isaiah 13:16, 2 Kings 8:12, Hosea 13:16, Nahum 2:1, Nahum 3:10

their eye: 2 Chronicles 36:17, Ezekiel 9:5, Ezekiel 9:6, Ezekiel 9:10

Reciprocal: Genesis 45:20 - regard not 2 Chronicles 36:22 - the Lord stirred Psalms 109:12 - favour Isaiah 9:17 - have no joy Isaiah 9:19 - no man Isaiah 21:1 - from Isaiah 21:2 - Go up Isaiah 21:5 - arise Isaiah 40:30 - General Isaiah 48:14 - he will do Jeremiah 6:23 - They shall Jeremiah 21:7 - he shall Jeremiah 28:8 - prophesied Jeremiah 50:3 - out of the Jeremiah 50:9 - none Jeremiah 50:14 - in array Jeremiah 50:25 - opened Jeremiah 50:41 - General Jeremiah 50:42 - they are cruel Jeremiah 50:45 - surely he Jeremiah 51:11 - the Lord hath Daniel 7:5 - Arise Revelation 17:16 - these

Cross-References

Genesis 8:20
Noah built an altar to God . He selected clean animals and birds from every species and offered them as burnt offerings on the altar. God smelled the sweet fragrance and thought to himself, "I'll never again curse the ground because of people. I know they have this bent toward evil from an early age, but I'll never again kill off everything living as I've just done.

Genesis 13:8
Abram said to Lot, "Let's not have fighting between us, between your shepherds and my shepherds. After all, we're family. Look around. Isn't there plenty of land out there? Let's separate. If you go left, I'll go right; if you go right, I'll go left."

Genesis 14:13
A fugitive came and reported to Abram the Hebrew. Abram was living at the Oaks of Mamre the Amorite, brother of Eshcol and Aner. They were allies of Abram. When Abram heard that his nephew had been taken prisoner, he lined up his servants, all of them born in his household—there were 318 of them—and chased after the captors all the way to Dan. Abram and his men split into small groups and attacked by night. They chased them as far as Hobah, just north of Damascus. They recovered all the plunder along with nephew Lot and his possessions, including the women and the people.

Genesis 18:1
God appeared to Abraham at the Oaks of Mamre while he was sitting at the entrance of his tent. It was the hottest part of the day. He looked up and saw three men standing. He ran from his tent to greet them and bowed before them.

Genesis 35:27
Finally, Jacob made it back home to his father Isaac at Mamre in Kiriath Arba, present-day Hebron, where Abraham and Isaac had lived. Isaac was now 180 years old. Isaac breathed his last and died—an old man full of years. He was buried with his family by his sons Esau and Jacob.

Genesis 37:14
He said, "Go and see how your brothers and the flocks are doing and bring me back a report." He sent him off from the valley of Hebron to Shechem.

Joshua 14:13
Joshua blessed him. He gave Hebron to Caleb son of Jephunneh as an inheritance. Hebron belongs to Caleb son of Jephunneh the Kenizzite still today, because he gave himself totally to God , the God of Israel.

1 Timothy 2:8
Since prayer is at the bottom of all this, what I want mostly is for men to pray—not shaking angry fists at enemies but raising holy hands to God. And I want women to get in there with the men in humility before God, not primping before a mirror or chasing the latest fashions but doing something beautiful for God and becoming beautiful doing it.

Gill's Notes on the Bible

[Their] bows also shall dash their young men to pieces,.... That is, the bows of the Medes should dash in pieces the young men of the Babylonians. The meaning is, either that they should put them into their bows, instead of arrows, and shoot them upon the ground, or against a wall, and so dash them to pieces; or that they should first shoot them through with their arrows, and then dash them with their bows; according to Xenophon l, Cyrus came to Babylon with great numbers of archers and slingers:

and they shall have no pity on the fruit of the womb; even of those that were in the womb, but should rip up women with child, and cut them in pieces:

their eyes shall not spare children; in the arms of their parents, or running to them, shrieking and crying, and in the utmost fright; and yet their tender and innocent age would meet with no mercy. The Medes were notorious for their cruelty m, and which issued at last in the ruin of their empire.

l Cyropaedia, l. 2. sect. 1. m Ammian. Marcellin. l. 23. c. 6. Diodor. Sicul. l. 13. p. 342.

Barnes' Notes on the Bible

Their bows also - Bows and arrows were the usual weapons of the ancients in war; and the Persians were particularly skilled in their use. According to Xenophon, Cyrus came to Babylon with a great number of archers and slingers (Cyrop. ii. 1).

Shall dash the young men ... - That is, they shall dash the young men to pieces, or kill them by their bows and arrows. Vulgate, ‘And with their arrows shall they slay the young.’ The meaning of the word here rendered ‘dash to pieces,’ is to smite suddenly to the ground.

Clarke's Notes on the Bible

Verse Isaiah 13:18. Their bows also shall dash - "Their bows shall dash"] Both Herodotus, i. 61, and Xenophon, Anab. iii., mention, that the Persians used large bows τοξαμεγαλα: and the latter says particularly that their bows were three cubits long, Anab. iv. They were celebrated for their archers, see Isaiah 22:6; Jeremiah 49:35. Probably their neighours and allies, the Medes, dealt much in the same sort of arms. In Psalms 18:34, and Job 20:24, mention is made of a bow of steel; if the Persian bows were of metal, we may easily conceive that with a metalline bow of three cubits' length, and proportionably strong, the soldiers might dash and slay the young men, the weaker and unresisting of the inhabitants (for they are joined with the fruit of the womb and the children) in the general carnage on taking the city. תרתשנה terattashnah, shall be broken or shivered to pieces. This seems to refer, not to נערים nearim, young men, but to קשתות keshathoth, their bows. The bows of the young men shall be broken to pieces.

On the fruit, &c. - "And on the fruit," &c.] A MS. of Dr. Kennicott's reads ועל פרי veal peri and on the fruit. And nine MSS. (three ancient) and two editions, with the Septuagint, Vulgate, and Syriac, add likewise the conjunction ו vau, and, to על al, upon, afterwards.