The Utter Destruction of Babylon
1Thus says the LORD:
“Behold, I will raise up against aBabylon,
Against those who dwell in 1Leb Kamai,
b A destroying wind.
2And I will send cwinnowers to Babylon,
Who shall winnow her and empty her land.
d For in the day of doom
They shall be against her all around.
3Against her elet the archer bend his bow,
And lift himself up against her in his armor.
Do not spare her young men;
f Utterly destroy all her army.
4Thus the slain shall fall in the land of the Chaldeans,
g And those thrust through in her streets.
5For Israel is hnot forsaken, nor Judah,
By his God, the LORD of hosts,
Though their land was filled with sin against the Holy One of Israel.”
6i Flee from the midst of Babylon,
And every one save his life!
Do not be cut off in her iniquity,
For jthis is the time of the LORD’s vengeance;
k He shall recompense her.
7l Babylon was a golden cup in the LORD’s hand,
That made all the earth drunk.
m The nations drank her wine;
Therefore the nations nare deranged.
8Babylon has suddenly ofallen and been destroyed.
p Wail for her!
q Take balm for her pain;
Perhaps she may be healed.
9We would have healed Babylon,
But she is not healed.
Forsake her, and rlet us go everyone to his own country;
s For her judgment reaches to heaven and is lifted up to the skies.
10The LORD has trevealed our righteousness.
Come and let us udeclare in Zion the work of the LORD our God.
Gather the shields!
w The LORD has raised up the spirit of the kings of the Medes.
x For His plan is against Babylon to destroy it,
Because it is ythe vengeance of the LORD,
The vengeance for His temple.
12z Set up the standard on the walls of Babylon;
Make the guard strong,
Set up the watchmen,
Prepare the ambushes.
For the LORD has both devised and done
What He spoke against the inhabitants of Babylon.
13a O you who dwell by many waters,
Abundant in treasures,
Your end has come,
The measure of your covetousness.
14b The LORD of hosts has sworn by Himself:
“Surely I will fill you with men, cas with locusts,
And they shall lift dup a shout against you.”
15e He has made the earth by His power;
He has established the world by His wisdom,
And fstretched out the heaven by His understanding.
16When He utters His voice—
There is a multitude of waters in the heavens:
g“He causes the vapors to ascend from the ends of the earth;
He makes lightnings for the rain;
He brings the wind out of His treasuries.”
17h Everyone is dull-hearted, without knowledge;
Every metalsmith is put to shame by the carved image;
i For his molded image is falsehood,
And there is no breath in them.
18They are futile, a work of errors;
In the time of their punishment they shall perish.
19The Portion of Jacob is not like them,
For He is the Maker of all things;
And Israel is the tribe of His inheritance.
The LORD of hosts is His name.
20“Youj are My battle-ax and weapons of war:
For with you I will break the nation in pieces;
With you I will destroy kingdoms;
21With you I will break in pieces the horse and its rider;
With you I will break in pieces the chariot and its rider;
22With you also I will break in pieces man and woman;
With you I will break in pieces kold and young;
With you I will break in pieces the young man and the maiden;
23With you also I will break in pieces the shepherd and his flock;
With you I will break in pieces the farmer and his yoke of oxen;
And with you I will break in pieces governors and rulers.
24“Andl I will repay Babylon
And all the inhabitants of Chaldea
For all the evil they have done
In Zion in your sight,” says the LORD.
25“Behold, I am against you, mO destroying mountain,
Who destroys all the earth,” says the LORD.
“And I will stretch out My hand against you,
Roll you down from the rocks,
n And make you a burnt mountain.
26They shall not take from you a stone for a corner
Nor a stone for a foundation,
o But you shall be desolate forever,” says the LORD.
27p Set up a banner in the land,
Blow the trumpet among the nations!
q Prepare the nations against her,
Call rthe kingdoms together against her:
Ararat, Minni, and Ashkenaz.
Appoint a general against her;
Cause the horses to come up like the bristling locusts.
28Prepare against her the nations,
With the kings of the Medes,
Its governors and all its rulers,
All the land of his dominion.
29And the land will tremble and sorrow;
For every spurpose of the LORD shall be performed against Babylon,
t To make the land of Babylon a desolation without inhabitant.
30The mighty men of Babylon have ceased fighting,
They have remained in their strongholds;
Their might has failed,
u They became like women;
They have burned her dwelling places,
v The bars of her gate are broken.
31w One runner will run to meet another,
And one messenger to meet another,
To show the king of Babylon that his city is taken on all sides;
The reeds they have burned with fire,
And the men of war are terrified.
33For thus says the LORD of hosts, the God of Israel:
“The daughter of Babylon is ylike a threshing floor
When zit is time to thresh her;
Yet a little while
a And the time of her harvest will come.”
34“Nebuchadnezzar the king of Babylon
Has bdevoured me, he has crushed me;
He has made me an cempty vessel,
He has swallowed me up like a monster;
He has filled his stomach with my delicacies,
He has spit me out.
35Let the violence done to me and my flesh be upon Babylon,”
The inhabitant of Zion will say;
“And my blood be upon the inhabitants of Chaldea!”
Jerusalem will say.
36Therefore thus says the LORD:
“Behold, dI will plead your case and take vengeance for you.
e I will dry up her sea and make her springs dry.
37f Babylon shall become a heap,
A dwelling place for jackals,
g An astonishment and a hissing,
Without an inhabitant.
38They shall roar together like lions,
They shall growl like lions’ whelps.
39In their excitement I will prepare their feasts;
h I will make them drunk,
That they may rejoice,
And sleep a perpetual sleep
And not awake,” says the LORD.
40“I will bring them down
Like lambs to the slaughter,
Like rams with male goats.
41“Oh, how iSheshach3 is taken!
Oh, how jthe praise of the whole earth is seized!
How Babylon has become desolate among the nations!
42k The sea has come up over Babylon;
She is covered with the multitude of its waves.
43l Her cities are a desolation,
A dry land and a wilderness,
A land where mno one dwells,
Through which no son of man passes.
44I will punish nBel4 in Babylon,
And I will bring out of his mouth what he has swallowed;
And the nations shall not stream to him anymore.
Yes, othe wall of Babylon shall fall.
45“Myp people, go out of the midst of her!
And let everyone deliver 5himself from the fierce anger of the LORD.
46And lest your heart faint,
And you fear qfor the rumor that will be heard in the land
(A rumor will come one year,
And after that, in another year
A rumor will come,
And violence in the land,
Ruler against ruler),
47Therefore behold, the days are coming
That I will bring judgment on the carved images of Babylon;
Her whole land shall be ashamed,
And all her slain shall fall in her midst.
48Then rthe heavens and the earth and all that is in them
Shall sing joyously over Babylon;
s For the plunderers shall come to her from the north,” says the LORD.
49As Babylon has caused the slain of Israel to fall,
So at Babylon the slain of all the earth shall fall.
50t You who have escaped the sword,
Get away! Do not stand still!
u Remember the LORD afar off,
And let Jerusalem come to your mind.
51v We are ashamed because we have heard reproach.
Shame has covered our faces,
For strangers whave come into the 6sanctuaries of the LORD’s house.
52“Therefore behold, the days are coming,” says the LORD,
“That I will bring judgment on her carved images,
And throughout all her land the wounded shall groan.
53x Though Babylon were to 7mount up to heaven,
And though she were to fortify the height of her strength,
Yet from Me plunderers would come to her,” says the LORD.
54y The sound of a cry comes from Babylon,
And great destruction from the land of the Chaldeans,
55Because the LORD is plundering Babylon
And silencing her loud voice,
Though her waves roar like great waters,
And the noise of their voice is uttered,
56Because the plunderer comes against her, against Babylon,
And her mighty men are taken.
Every one of their bows is broken;
z For the LORD is the God of recompense,
He will surely repay.
57“And I will make drunk
Her princes and awise men,
Her governors, her deputies, and her mighty men.
And they shall sleep a perpetual sleep
And not awake,” says bthe King,
Whose name is the LORD of hosts.
58Thus says the LORD of hosts:
“The broad walls of Babylon shall be utterly cbroken,8
And her high gates shall be burned with fire;
d The people will labor in vain,
And the nations, because of the fire;
And they shall be weary.”
Jeremiah’s Command to Seraiah
59The word which Jeremiah the prophet commanded Seraiah the son of eNeriah, the son of Mahseiah, when he went with Zedekiah the king of Judah to Babylon in the fourth year of his reign. And Seraiah was the quartermaster.
60So Jeremiah fwrote in a book all the evil that would come upon Babylon, all these words that are written against Babylon.
61And Jeremiah said to Seraiah, “When you arrive in Babylon and see it, and read all these words,
62“then you shall say, ‘O LORD, You have spoken against this place to cut it off, so that gnone shall remain in it, neither man nor beast, but it shall be desolate forever.’
63“Now it shall be, when you have finished reading this book, hthat you shall tie a stone to it and throw it out into the Euphrates.
64“Then you shall say, ‘Thus Babylon shall sink and not rise from the catastrophe that I will bring upon her. And they shall be weary.’ ” Thus far are the words of Jeremiah.
The Fall of Jerusalem Reviewed
(2 Kin. 24:18—25:26; 2 Chr. 36:11–20; Jer. 39:1–10)
1Zedekiah was atwenty-one years old when he became king, and he reigned eleven years in Jerusalem. His mother’s name was Hamutal the daughter of Jeremiah of bLibnah.
2He also did evil in the sight of the LORD, according to all that Jehoiakim had done.
3For because of the anger of the LORD this happened in Jerusalem and Judah, till He finally cast them out from His presence. Then Zedekiah crebelled against the king of Babylon.
4Now it came to pass in the dninth year of his reign, in the tenth month, on the tenth day of the month, that Nebuchadnezzar king of Babylon and all his army came against Jerusalem and encamped against it; and they built a siege wall against it all around.
5So the city was besieged until the eleventh year of King Zedekiah.
6By the fourth month, on the ninth day of the month, the famine had become so severe in the city that there was no food for the people of the land.
7Then the city wall was broken through, and all the men of war fled and went out of the city at night by way of the gate between the two walls, which was by the king’s garden, even though the Chaldeans were near the city all around. And they went by way of the 1plain.
8But the army of the Chaldeans pursued the king, and they overtook Zedekiah in the plains of Jericho. All his army was scattered from him.
9eSo they took the king and brought him up to the king of Babylon at Riblah in the land of Hamath, and he pronounced judgment on him.
10fThen the king of Babylon killed the sons of Zedekiah before his eyes. And he killed all the princes of Judah in Riblah.
11He also gput out the eyes of Zedekiah; and the king of Babylon bound him in 2bronze fetters, took him to Babylon, and put him in prison till the day of his death.
The Temple and City Plundered and Burned
12hNow in the fifth month, on the tenth day of the month (iwhich was the nineteenth year of King Nebuchadnezzar king of Babylon), jNebuzaradan, the captain of the guard, who served the king of Babylon, came to Jerusalem.
13He burned the house of the LORD and the king’s house; all the houses of Jerusalem, that is, all the houses of the great, he burned with fire.
14And all the army of the Chaldeans who were with the captain of the guard broke down all the walls of Jerusalem all around.
15kThen Nebuzaradan the captain of the guard carried away captive some of the poor people, the rest of the people who remained in the city, the defectors who had deserted to the king of Babylon, and the rest of the craftsmen.
16But Nebuzaradan the captain of the guard left some of the poor of the land as vinedressers and farmers.
17lThe mbronze pillars that were in the house of the LORD, and the carts and the bronze Sea that were in the house of the LORD, the Chaldeans broke in pieces, and carried all their bronze to Babylon.
18They also took away nthe pots, the shovels, the trimmers, the 3bowls, the spoons, and all the bronze utensils with which the priests ministered.
19The basins, the firepans, the bowls, the pots, the lampstands, the spoons, and the cups, whatever was solid gold and whatever was solid silver, the captain of the guard took away.
20The two pillars, one Sea, the twelve bronze bulls which were under it, and the carts, which King Solomon had made for the house of the LORD—othe bronze of all these articles was beyond measure.
21Now concerning the ppillars: the height of one pillar was eighteen 4cubits, a measuring line of twelve cubits could measure its circumference, and its thickness was 5four fingers; it was hollow.
22A capital of bronze was on it; and the height of one capital was five cubits, with a network and pomegranates all around the capital, all of bronze. The second pillar, with pomegranates was the same.
23There were ninety-six pomegranates on the sides; qall the pomegranates, all around on the network, were one hundred.
The People Taken Captive to Babylonia
24rThe captain of the guard took Seraiah the chief priest, sZephaniah the second priest, and the three doorkeepers.
25He also took out of the city an 6officer who had charge of the men of war, seven men of the king’s close associates who were found in the city, the principal scribe of the army who mustered the people of the land, and sixty men of the people of the land who were found in the midst of the city.
26And Nebuzaradan the captain of the guard took these and brought them to the king of Babylon at Riblah.
27Then the king of Babylon struck them and put them to death at Riblah in the land of Hamath. Thus Judah was carried away captive from its own land.
28tThese are the people whom Nebuchadnezzar carried away captive: uin the seventh year, vthree thousand and twenty-three Jews;
29win the eighteenth year of Nebuchadnezzar he carried away captive from Jerusalem eight hundred and thirty-two persons;
30in the twenty-third year of Nebuchadnezzar, Nebuzaradan the captain of the guard carried away captive of the Jews seven hundred and forty-five persons. All the persons were four thousand six hundred.
Jehoiachin Released from Prison
31xNow it came to pass in the thirty-seventh year of the captivity of Jehoiachin king of Judah, in the twelfth month, on the twenty-fifth day of the month, that 7Evil-Merodach king of Babylon, in the first year of his reign, ylifted8 up the head of Jehoiachin king of Judah and brought him out of prison.
32And he spoke kindly to him and gave him a more prominent seat than those of the kings who were with him in Babylon.
33So 9Jehoiachin changed from his prison garments, zand he ate bread regularly before the king all the days of his life.
34And as for his provisions, there was a regular ration given him by the king of Babylon, a portion for each day until the day of his death, all the days of his life.