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58     Thus says the Lord of hosts:
The walls of spacious Babylon shall be leveled to the ground,
    its lofty gates destroyed by fire.
The toil of the peoples is for nothing;
    the nations weary themselves for what the flames consume.(A)

The Prophecy Sent to Babylon. 59 The mission Jeremiah the prophet gave to Seraiah,[a] son of Neriah, son of Mahseiah, when he went to Babylon with King Zedekiah, king of Judah, in the fourth year of his reign; Seraiah was chief quartermaster. 60 Jeremiah wrote down on one scroll the disaster that would befall Babylon;[b] all these words were written against Babylon.

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Footnotes

  1. 51:59 Seraiah: the brother of Baruch; cf. 32:12. He may have gone to Babylon to explain away the presence of foreign ambassadors in Jerusalem that same year; cf. 27:3.
  2. 51:60 Jeremiah prophesied against Babylon, even as he foretold Judah’s release from Babylon’s power (3:14–18; 32:15; 33:6–9, 12–13); but his scroll against Babylon was thrown in the Euphrates (v. 63). Some of the preceding oracles may have been composed by later writers; see note on 50:1–51:58.