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36 Therefore Yahweh says:

“Behold, I will plead your cause,
    and take vengeance for you.
I will dry up her sea,
    and make her fountain dry.
37 Babylon will become heaps,
    a dwelling place for jackals,
    an astonishment, and a hissing,
    without inhabitant.
38 They will roar together like young lions.
    They will growl as lions’ cubs.
39 When they are heated, I will make their feast,
    and I will make them drunk,
that they may rejoice,
    and sleep a perpetual sleep,
    and not wake up,” says Yahweh.

40 “I will bring them down like lambs to the slaughter,
    like rams with male goats.

41 “How Sheshach is taken!
    How the praise of the whole earth is seized!
    How Babylon has become a desolation among the nations!
42 The sea has come up on Babylon.
    She is covered with the multitude of its waves.
43 Her cities have become a desolation,
    a dry land, and a desert,
    a land in which no man dwells.
    No son of man passes by it.
44 I will execute judgment on Bel in Babylon,
    and I will bring out of his mouth that which he has swallowed up.
The nations will not flow any more to him.
    Yes, the wall of Babylon will fall.

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The Lord’s Vengeance on Babylon

36 This is what the Lord says to Jerusalem:

“I will be your lawyer to plead your case,
    and I will avenge you.
I will dry up her river,
    as well as her springs,
37 and Babylon will become a heap of ruins,
    haunted by jackals.
She will be an object of horror and contempt,
    a place where no one lives.
38 Her people will roar together like strong lions.
    They will growl like lion cubs.
39 And while they lie inflamed with all their wine,
    I will prepare a different kind of feast for them.
I will make them drink until they fall asleep,
    and they will never wake up again,”
    says the Lord.
40 “I will bring them down
    like lambs to the slaughter,
    like rams and goats to be sacrificed.

41 “How Babylon[a] is fallen—
    great Babylon, praised throughout the earth!
Now she has become an object of horror
    among the nations.
42 The sea has risen over Babylon;
    she is covered by its crashing waves.
43 Her cities now lie in ruins;
    she is a dry wasteland
    where no one lives or even passes by.
44 And I will punish Bel, the god of Babylon,
    and make him vomit up all he has eaten.
The nations will no longer come and worship him.
    The wall of Babylon has fallen!

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Footnotes

  1. 51:41 Hebrew Sheshach, a code name for Babylon.