Jeremiah 51:20–46

²⁰“You are My war club,

My weapon for battle.

With you I shatter nations;

with you I bring kingdoms to ruin.

²¹With you I shatter the horse and rider;

with you I shatter the chariot and driver.

²²With you I shatter man and woman;

with you I shatter the old man and the youth;

with you I shatter the young man and the maiden.

²³With you I shatter the shepherd and his flock;

with you I shatter the farmer and his oxen;

with you I shatter the governors and officials.

²⁴Before your very eyes I will repay

Babylon and all the dwellers of Chaldea^e

for all the evil they have done in Zion,”

declares the LORD.

²⁵“Behold, I am against you,

O destroying mountain,

you who devastate the whole earth,

declares the LORD.

I will stretch out My hand against you;

I will roll you over the cliffs

and turn you into a charred mountain.

²⁶No one shall retrieve from you a cornerstone

or a foundation stone,

because you will become desolate forever,”

declares the LORD.

²⁷“Raise a banner in the land!

Blow the ram’s horn among the nations!

Prepare the nations against her.

Summon the kingdoms against her —

Ararat, Minni, and Ashkenaz.

Appoint a captain against her;

bring up horses like swarming locusts.

²⁸Prepare the nations for battle against her —

the kings of the Medes,

their governors and all their officials,

and all the lands they rule.

²⁹The earth quakes and writhes

because the LORD’s intentions against Babylon stand:

to make the land of Babylon a desolation,

without inhabitant.

³⁰The warriors of Babylon have stopped fighting;

they sit in their strongholds.

Their strength is exhausted;

they have become like women.

Babylon’s homes have been set ablaze,

the bars of her gates are broken.

³¹One courier races to meet another,

and messenger follows messenger,

to announce to the king of Babylon

that his city has been captured from end to end.

³²The fords have been seized,

the marshes set on fire,

and the soldiers are terrified.”

³³For this is what the LORD of Hosts, the God of Israel, says:

“The Daughter of Babylon is like a threshing floor

at the time it is trampled.

In just a little while

her harvest time will come.”

³⁴“Nebuchadnezzar king of Babylon has devoured me;

he has crushed me.

He has set me aside like an empty vessel;

he has swallowed me like a monster;

he filled his belly with my delicacies

and vomited me out.^f

³⁵May the violence done to me

and to my flesh

be upon Babylon,”

says the dweller of Zion.

“May my blood be on the dwellers of Chaldea,”

says Jerusalem.

³⁶Therefore this is what the LORD says:

“Behold, I will plead your case

and take vengeance on your behalf;

I will dry up her sea

and make her springs run dry.

³⁷Babylon will become a heap of rubble,

a haunt for jackals,^g

an object of horror and scorn,

without inhabitant.

³⁸They will roar together like young lions;

they will growl like lion cubs.

³⁹While they are flushed with heat,

I will serve them a feast,

and I will make them drunk

so that they may revel;

then they will fall asleep forever and never wake up,

declares the LORD.

⁴⁰I will bring them down like lambs to the slaughter,

like rams with male goats.

⁴¹How Sheshach^h has been captured!

The praise of all the earth has been seized.

What a horror Babylon has become

among the nations!

⁴²The sea has come up over Babylon;

she is covered in turbulent waves.

⁴³Her cities have become a desolation,

a dry and arid land,

a land where no one lives,

where no son of man passes through.

⁴⁴I will punish Bel in Babylon.

I will make him spew out what he swallowed.

The nations will no longer stream to him;

even the wall of Babylon will fall.

⁴⁵Come out of her, My people!ⁱ

Save your lives, each of you,

from the fierce anger of the LORD.

⁴⁶Do not let your heart grow faint,

and do not be afraid

when the rumor is heard in the land;

for a rumor will come one year—

and then another the next year—

of violence in the land

and of ruler against ruler.