Jeremiah 51

1 Thus says the LORD: See! I rouse against Babylon, and against those who live in Chaldea, a destroying wind.
2 Against Babylon I will send winnowers to winnow her and lay waste her land; They shall besiege her from all sides on the day of affliction.
3 Let the bowman draw his bow, and flaunt his coat of mail; Spare not her young men, doom her entire army.
4 The slain shall fall in the land of Chaldea, the transfixed, in her streets;
5 For Israel and Judah are not widowed of their God, the LORD of hosts, And the Chaldean land is full of guilt to be punished by the Holy One of Israel.
6 Flee out of Babylon; let each one save his life, perish not for her guilt; This is a time of vengeance for the LORD, he pays her her due.
7 Babylon was a golden cup in the hand of the LORD which made the whole earth drunk; The nations drank its wine, with this they have become mad.
8 Babylon suddenly falls and is crushed: howl over her! Bring balm for her wounds, in case she can be healed.
9 We have tried to heal Babylon, but she cannot be healed. Leave her, let us go, each to his own land. Her judgment reaches heaven, it touches the clouds.
10 The LORD has brought to light our just cause; come, let us tell in Zion what the LORD, our God, has done.
11 Sharpen the arrows, fill the quivers; The LORD has stirred up the spirit of Media's kings; Babylon he is resolved to destroy. Yes, it is the vengeance of the LORD, vengeance for his temple.
12 Against the walls of Babylon raise a signal, make strong the watch; Post sentries, arrange ambushes! For the LORD has planned and he will carry out his threat against the inhabitants of Babylon.
13 You who dwell by mighty waters, rich in treasure, Your end has come, the term at which you shall be cut off!
14 The LORD of hosts has sworn by himself: I will fill you with men as numerous as locusts, who shall raise over you the vintage shout!
15 He has sworn who made the earth by his power, and established the world by his wisdom, and stretched out the heavens by his skill.
16 When he thunders, the waters in the heavens roar, and he brings up clouds from the end of the earth; He makes the lightning flash in the rain, and releases stormwinds from their chambers.
17 Every man is stupid, ignorant; every artisan is put to shame by his idol: He molded a fraud, without breath of life.
18 Nothingness are they, a ridiculous work, that will perish in their time of punishment.
19 Not like these is the portion of Jacob, he is the creator of all things; Israel is his very own tribe, LORD of hosts is his name.
20 You are my hammer, my weapon for war; With you I shatter nations, with you I destroy kingdoms.
21 With you I shatter horse and rider, with you I shatter chariot and driver.
22 With you I shatter man and wife, with you I shatter old and young, with you I shatter the youth and maiden.
23 With you I shatter the shepherd and his flock, with you I shatter the farmer and his team, with you I shatter satraps and prefects.
24 Thus will I repay Babylon, and all who live in Chaldea All the evil they did to Zion, as you shall see with your own eyes, says the LORD.
25 Beware! I am against you, destroying mountain, destroyer of the entire earth, says the LORD; I will stretch forth my hand against you, roll you down over the cliffs, and make you a burnt mountain:
26 They will not take from you a cornerstone, or a foundation stone; Ruins forever shall you be, says the LORD.
27 Raise a signal on the earth, blow the trumpet among the nations; Dedicate peoples to war against her, summon against her the kingdoms, Ararat, Minni, and Ashkenaz; Appoint recruiting officers against her, send up horses like bristling locusts.
28 Dedicate peoples to war against her: the king of Media, Its governors and all its prefects, every land in his domain.
29 The earth quakes and writhes, the LORD'S plan against Babylon is carried out, Turning the land of Babylon into a desert where no one lives.
30 Babylon's warriors have ceased to fight, they remain in their strongholds; Dried up is their strength, they have become women. Burned are their homes, and broken their bars.
31 One runner meets another, herald meets herald, Telling the king of Babylon that all his city is taken.
32 The fords have been seized, and the fortresses set on fire, while warriors are in panic.
33 For thus says the LORD of hosts, the God of Israel: Daughter Babylon is like a threshing floor at the time it is trodden; Yet a little while, and the harvest time will come for her.
34 He has consumed me, routed me, (Nebuchadnezzar, king of Babylon,) he has left me as an empty vessel; He has swallowed me like a dragon: filled his belly with my delights, and cast me out.
35 My torn flesh be upon Babylon, says the city on Zion; My blood upon the people of Chaldea, says Jerusalem.
36 But now, thus says the LORD: Surely I will defend your cause, I will avenge you; I will dry up her sea, and drain her fountain.
37 Babylon shall become a heap of ruins, a haunt of jackals; A place of horror and ridicule, where no one lives.
38 They all roar like lions, growl like lion cubs.
39 When they are parched, I will set a drink before them to make them drunk, that they may be overcome with perpetual sleep, never to awaken, says the LORD.
40 I will bring them down like lambs to the slaughter, like rams and goats.
41 How has she been seized, made captive, the glory of the whole world! What a horror has Babylon become among nations:
42 against Babylon the sea rises, she is overwhelmed by the roaring waves!
43 Her cities have become a desert, parched and arid land Where no man lives, and no one passes through.
44 I will punish Bel in Babylon, and make him disgorge what he swallowed; peoples shall stream to him no more. The wall of Babylon falls!
45 Leave her, my people, let each one save himself from the burning wrath of the LORD.
46 Be not discouraged for fear of rumors spread in the land; this year the rumor comes, then violence in the land, tyrant against tyrant.
47 But behold, the days are coming when I will punish the idols of Babylon; her whole land shall be put to shame, and all her slain shall lie fallen within her.
48 Then heaven, and earth, and everything in them shall shout over Babylon with joy, when the destroyers come against her from the north, says the LORD.
49 Babylon, too, must fall, O slain of Israel, as at the hands of Babylon have fallen the slain of all the earth.
50 You who have escaped the sword, go on, stand not still; Remember the LORD from afar, let Jerusalem come to your minds.
51 We are ashamed because we have heard taunts, confusion covers our faces; strangers have entered the holy places of the house of the LORD.
52 But behold, the days are coming, says the LORD, when I will punish her idols, and in her whole land the wounded will groan.
53 Though Babylon scale the heavens, and make her strong heights inaccessible, destroyers from me shall reach her, says the LORD.
54 Hear! loud cries from Babylon, dire destruction from the land of the Chaldeans;
55 For the LORD lays Babylon waste, stills her loud cry, Though her waves were roaring like mighty waters, and their clamor was heard afar.
56 For the destroyer comes upon her, (Babylon,) her heroes are captured, their bows broken; The LORD is a God who requites, he will surely repay.
57 I will make her princes and her wise men drunk, her governors, her prefects, and her warriors, so that they sleep an eternal sleep, never to awaken, says the King, whose name is the LORD of hosts.
58 Thus says the LORD of hosts: The walls of spacious Babylon shall be leveled utterly; her lofty gates shall be destroyed by fire. The toil of the nations is for nothing; for the flames the peoples weary themselves.
59 This was the errand given by the prophet Jeremiah to Seraiah, son of Neriah, son of Mahseiah, when he went to Babylon for the king in the fourth year of the reign of Zedekiah; Seraiah was chief quartermaster.
60 Jeremiah had written all the misfortune that was to befall Babylon in a single book: all these words that were written against Babylon.
61 And Jeremiah said to Seraiah: When you reach Babylon, see that you read aloud all these words,
62 and then say: O LORD, you yourself threatened to destroy this place, so that neither man nor beast should dwell in it, since it would remain an everlasting desert.
63 When you have finished reading this book, tie a stone to it and throw it in the Euphrates,
64 and say: Thus shall Babylon sink. Never shall she rise, because of the evil I am bringing upon her. (To weary themselves are the words of Jeremiah.)

Jeremiah 52

1 Zedekiah was twenty-one years old when he became king, and he reigned eleven years in Jerusalem. His mother's name was Hamutal, daughter of Jeremiah of Libnah.
2 He did what was evil in the eyes of the LORD, just as Jehoiakim had done.
3 Indeed, what was done in Jerusalem and in Judah so angered the LORD that he cast them out from his presence. Zedekiah rebelled against the king of Babylon.
4 In the tenth month of the ninth year of his reign, on the tenth day of the month, Nebuchadnezzar, king of Babylon, and his whole army advanced against Jerusalem, encamped around it, and built siege walls on every side.
5 The siege of the city continued until the eleventh year of King Zedekiah.
6 On the ninth day of the fourth month, when famine had gripped the city and the people had no more bread,
7 the city walls were breached. Then all the soldiers took to flight and left the city by night through the gate between the two walls which was near the king's garden. With the Chaldeans surrounding the city, they went in the direction of the Arabah.
8 But the Chaldean army pursued the king and overtook Zedekiah in the desert near Jericho, while his whole army fled from him.
9 The king, therefore, was arrested and brought to Riblah, in the land of Hamath, to the king of Babylon, who pronounced sentence on him.
10 As Zedekiah looked on, the king of Babylon slew his sons as well as all the princes of Judah at Riblah.
11 Then he blinded Zedekiah, bound him with fetters, and had him brought to Babylon and kept in prison until the day of his death.
12 On the tenth day of the fifth month (this was in the nineteenth year of Nebuchadnezzar, king of Babylon), Nebuzaradan, captain of the bodyguard, came to Jerusalem as the representative of the king of Babylon.
13 He burned the house of the LORD, the palace of the king, and all the houses of Jerusalem; every large building he destroyed with fire.
14 And the Chaldean troops who were with the captain of the guard tore down all the walls that surrounded Jerusalem.
15 Then Nebuzaradan, captain of the guard, led into exile the rest of the people left in the city, and those who had deserted to the king of Babylon, and the rest of the artisans.
16 But some of the country's poor, Nebuzaradan, captain of the guard, left behind as vinedressers and farmers.
17 The bronze pillars that belonged to the house of the LORD, and the wheeled carts and the bronze sea in the house of the LORD, the Chaldeans broke into pieces; they carried away all the bronze to Babylon.
18 They took also the pots, the shovels, the snuffers, the bowls, the pans, and all the bronze vessels used for service.
19 The basins also, the fire holders, the bowls, the pots, the lampstands, the pans, the sacrificial bowls which were of gold or silver, these too the captain of the guard carried off,
20 as well as the two pillars, the one sea, and the twelve oxen of bronze under the sea, and the wheeled carts which King Solomon had made for the house of the LORD. The bronze of all these furnishings could not be weighed.
21 Each of the pillars was eighteen cubits high and twelve cubits in diameter; each was four fingers thick, and hollow inside.
22 A bronze capital five cubits high surmounted the one pillar, and a network with pomegranates encircled the capital, all of brass; and so for the other pillar. The pomegranates...
23 there were ninety-six pomegranates. There were a hundred pomegranates, all around the network.
24 The captain of the guard also took Seraiah, the high priest, Zephaniah, the second priest, and the three keepers of the entry.
25 And from the city he took one courtier, a commander of soldiers, and seven men in the personal service of the king who were present in the city, and the scribe of the army commander who mustered the people of the land, and sixty of the common people who were in the city.
26 The captain of the guard, Nebuzaradan, arrested these and brought them to the king of Babylon at Riblah,
27 who had them struck down and put to death in Riblah, in the land of Hamath. Thus was Judah exiled from her land.
28 This is the number of the people whom Nebuchadnezzar led away captive: in his seventh year, three thousand and twenty-three people of Judah;
29 in the eighteenth year of Nebuchadnezzar, eight hundred and thirty-two persons from Jerusalem;
30 in the twenty-third year of Nebuchadnezzar, Nebuzaradan, captain of the guard, exiled seven hundred and forty-five people of Judah: four thousand six hundred persons in all.
31 In the thirty-seventh year of the exile of Jehoiachin, king of Judah, on the twenty-fifth day of the twelfth month, Evil-merodach, king of Babylon, in the inaugural year of his reign, took up the case of Jehoiachin, king of Judah, and released him from prison.
32 He spoke kindly to him and gave him a throne higher than that of the other kings who were with him in Babylon.
33 Jehoiachin took off his prison garb and ate at the king's table as long as he lived.
34 The allowance given him by the king of Babylon was a perpetual allowance, in fixed daily amounts, all the days of his life until the day of his death.