He brings all of them up with a hook; he drags them away in his net; he gathers them in his dragnet; so he rejoices and exults. Therefore he sacrifices to his net and burns incense to his dragnet—the personification of Babylon as fisherman celebrating the catch emphasizes both the delight taken in conquest and the implicit deification of the instruments of power. The reference to sacrificing to 'net' and 'dragnet' invokes the self-deification mentioned earlier; the Chaldean ruler worships his own military machinery. The verse accentuates the moral grotesqueness of unrestrained power celebrating itself.

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