“What a generation you turned out to be! Didn’t I tell you? Didn’t I warn you? Have I let you down, Israel? Am I nothing but a dead-end street? Why do my people say, ‘Good riddance! From now on we’re on our own’? Young women don’t forget their jewelry, do they? Brides don’t show up without their veils, do they? But my people forget me. Day after day after day they never give me a thought. * * *

From early on your Sanctuary was set high, a throne of glory, exalted! O God, you’re the hope of Israel. All who leave you end up as fools, Deserters with nothing to show for their lives, who walk off from God, fountain of living waters— and wind up dead! * * *

“This is God’s Message: “‘You’re a burned-out case, as good as dead. Everyone has given up on you. You’re hopeless. All your fair-weather friends have skipped town without giving you a second thought. But I delivered the knockout blow, a punishment you will never forget, Because of the enormity of your guilt, the endless list of your sins. So why all this self-pity, licking your wounds? You deserve all this, and more. Because of the enormity of your guilt, the endless list of your sins, I’ve done all this to you.

“Babylon is finished— the pride of the whole earth is flat on her face. What a comedown for Babylon, to end up inglorious in the sewer! Babylon drowned in chaos, battered by waves of enemy soldiers. Her towns stink with decay and rot, the land empty and bare and sterile. No one lives in these towns anymore. Travelers give them a wide berth. I’ll bring doom on the glutton god-Bel in Babylon. I’ll make him vomit up all he gulped down. No more visitors stream into this place, admiring and gawking at the wonders of Babylon. The wonders of Babylon are no more. Run for your lives, my dear people! Run, and don’t look back! Get out of this place while you can, this place torched by God’s raging anger. Don’t lose hope. Don’t ever give up when the rumors pour in hot and heavy. One year it’s this, the next year it’s that— rumors of violence, rumors of war. Trust me, the time is coming when I’ll put the no-gods of Babylon in their place. I’ll show up the whole country as a sickening fraud, with dead bodies strewn all over the place. Heaven and earth, angels and people, will throw a victory party over Babylon When the avenging armies from the north descend on her.” God’s Decree!