Beginning
51 Thus says the LORD: “Behold, I will raise up a destroying wind against Babel, and against the inhabitants who lift up their hearts against Me.
2 “And I will send fanners to Babel which shall fan her and shall empty her land. For on the day of trouble, they shall be against her on every side.
3 “Also, to the bender who bends his bow, and to him who lifts himself up in his armor: ‘Do not spare her young men. But destroy all her army.’
4 “Thus the slain shall fall in the land of the Chaldeans, and those who are thrust through in her streets.
5 “For neither Israel nor Judah has been widowed by his God, the LORD of Hosts, though their land was filled with sin against the Holy One of Israel.”
6 Flee out of the midst of Babel; and everyone deliver his soul! Do not be destroyed in her iniquity! For this is the time of the LORD’s vengeance. He will render to her a recompense!
7 Babel has been as a golden cup in the LORD’s Hand, that made all the Earth drunk. The nations have drunk her wine; therefore, the nations rage.
8 Babel has suddenly fallen and been destroyed. Howl for her! Bring balm for her sore, if she may be healed.
9 We wanted to heal Babel; but she was not healed. Forsake her and let everyone go into his own country. For her judgment has come up into Heaven and has been lifted up to the clouds.
10 The LORD has brought forth our righteousness. Come and let us declare the work of the LORD our God in Zion!
11 Make the arrows bright. Gather the shields. The LORD has raised up the spirit of the king of the Medes. For His purpose is against Babel, to destroy it, because it is the vengeance of the LORD, the vengeance of His Temple.
12 Set up the standard upon the walls of Babel. Make the watch strong. Set up the watchmen. Prepare the scouts. For the LORD has both devised and done that which He spoke against the inhabitants of Babel.
13 O you who dwell upon many waters, abundant in treasures! Your end has come, the end of your covetousness!
14 The LORD of Hosts has sworn by Himself: “Surely, I will fill you with men, as with caterpillars; and they shall cry and shout against you!”
15 He has made the Earth by His power, and established the world by His wisdom, and has stretched out the sky by His discretion.
16 By His Voice He gives the multitude of waters in the sky; and He causes the clouds to ascend from the ends of the Earth. He turns lightning to rain, and brings forth the wind out of His treasures.
17 All mankind is unintentionally brutish. Every metalsmith withers before his carved image. For his molten image is falsehood; and there is no breath in it.
18 They are meaningless, the work of errors. At the time of their reckoning, they shall perish.
19 The Portion of Jacob is not like them. For He is the Maker of All Things, and the Rod of His Inheritance. The LORD of Hosts is His Name.
20 “You are My hammer, and weapons of war. For with you I will break the nations; and with you I will destroy kingdoms;
21 “And by you I will break horse and horseman; and by you I will break the chariot and its rider.
22 “By you, also, I will break man and woman; and by you I will break old and young; and by you I will break the young man and the maid.
23 “I will also break the shepherd and his flock by you. And by you I will break the farmer and his yoke of oxen; and by you I will break the dukes and princes.
24 “And I will render to Babel, and to all the inhabitants of the Chaldeans, all their evil that they have done in Zion, in your sight,” says the LORD.
25 “Behold, I come to you, O destroying mountain which destroys all the Earth,” says the LORD! “And I will stretch out My Hand upon you, and roll you down from the rocks, and will make you a burnt mountain.
26 “They shall take neither a stone for a corner nor a stone for foundations. But you shall be destroyed forever,” says the LORD.
27 Set up a standard in the land. Blow the trumpets among the nations. Prepare the nations against her. Call up the kingdoms of Ararat, Minni, and Ashkenaz against her. Appoint the prince against her. Cause horses to come up as rough locusts.
28 Prepare the nations against her, with the kings of the Medes, its dukes, and its princes, and all the land of his dominion.
29 And the land shall tremble and sorrow. For the plan of the LORD shall be performed against Babel, to make the land of Babel waste, without an inhabitant.
30 The strong men of Babel have ceased to fight. They have remained in their strongholds. Their strength has failed; they were like women. They have burnt her dwelling places. Her bars are broken.
31 A runner shall run to meet a runner, and a messenger to meet a messenger, to show the king of Babel that his city has been captured on all sides,
32 and that the passages are blocked, and the reeds burnt with fire, and the men of war frightened.
33 For thus says the LORD of Hosts, the God of Israel: “The daughter of Babel is like a threshing floor at the time of her treading. Yet a little while, and the time of her harvest shall come.”
34 “Nebuchadnezzar, the king of Babel, has devoured me and destroyed me. He has made me an empty vessel. He swallowed me up like a dragon and filled his belly with my delicacies and has cast me out.
35 “‘The plunder of me, and that which was left of me, be upon Babel,’ the inhabitant of Zion shall say. And ‘My blood be upon the inhabitants of Chaldea,’ Jerusalem shall say.
36 “Therefore thus says the LORD: ‘Behold, I will maintain your cause, and take vengeance for you. And I will dry up the sea and dry up her springs.
37 ‘And Babel shall be heaps, a dwelling place for dragons, an astonishment and a hissing, without an inhabitant.
38 ‘They shall roar together like lions, and yell as the lion’s whelps.
39 ‘In their heat I will make them feasts. And I will make them drunk, so that they may rejoice and sleep a perpetual sleep and not wake,’ says the LORD.
40 ‘I will bring them down like lambs to the slaughter, like rams and goats.
41 ‘How Sheshach has been captured! And how the glory of the whole Earth has been captured! How Babel has become an astonishment among the nations!
42 ‘The sea has come up upon Babel. She is covered with the multitude of its waves.
43 ‘Her cities are desolate. The land is dry and a wilderness, a land in which no man dwells, nor does the son of man pass by it.
44 ‘I will also visit Bel in Babel. And I will bring out of his mouth that which he has swallowed up. And the nations shall no longer run to him. And the wall of Babel shall fall.
45 ‘My people! Go out from the midst of her! And deliver every man’s soul from the fierce wrath of the LORD,
46 ‘lest your heart faint, and you fear the rumor that shall be heard in the land. The rumor shall come this year. And after that, in another year, a rumor shall come, and cruelty in the land, and ruler against ruler.
47 ‘Therefore, behold, the days come that I will bring judgment upon the images of Babel. And the whole land shall be ashamed; and all her slain shall fall in the midst of her.
48 ‘Then the heavens and the Earth, and all that is in them, shall rejoice for Babel. For the destroyers shall come to her from the North,’ says the LORD.”
49 As Babel caused the slain of Israel to fall, so by Babel the slain of all the Earth fell.
50 You who have escaped the sword, go away! Do not stand still! Remember the LORD from far away; and let Jerusalem come into your mind.
51 We are ashamed because we have heard reproach. Shame has covered our faces, for strangers have come into the Sanctuaries of the LORD’s House.
52 “Therefore, behold, the days come,” says the LORD, “that I will visit her carved images. And the wounded shall groan throughout all her land.
53 “Even if Babel were to mount up to the heavens, and even if she were to defend her strength on high, her destroyers shall still come from Me,” says the LORD.
54 A sound of a cry from Babel, and great destruction from the land of the Chaldeans,
55 because the LORD has laid Babel waste and destroyed her great voice. And her waves shall roar like great waters. A sound was made by their noise
56 because the destroyer has come upon her (upon Babel) and her strong men are taken; their bows are broken. For the LORD God, Who repays, shall surely repay.
57 “And I will make her princes drunk, and her wise men, her dukes, and her nobles, and her strong men. And they shall sleep a perpetual sleep, and not wake,” says the King, Whose Name is the LORD of Hosts.
58 Thus says the LORD of Hosts: “The thick wall of Babel shall be broken, and her high gates shall be burnt with fire, and the people shall labor in vain, and the folk in the fire, for they shall be weary.”
59 The Word which Jeremiah the Prophet commanded Seraiah, the son of Neriah, the son of Mahseiah, when he went with Zedekiah, the king of Judah into Babel, in the fourth year of his reign (and this Seraiah was a peaceable Prince):
60 So Jeremiah wrote in a Book all the evil that would come upon Babel, all these things that are written against Babel.
61 And Jeremiah said to Seraiah, “When you come to Babel, and shall see and shall read all these words,
62 “then you shall say, ‘O, LORD, You have spoken against this place, to destroy it, so that none would remain in it, neither man nor beast, but that it should be desolate forever!’
63 “And when you have finished reading this book, you shall bind a stone to it and cast it in the midst of Euphrates,
64 “and shall say, ‘Thus shall Babel be drowned and shall not rise from the evil that I will bring upon her! And they shall be weary!’” Thus far are the Words of Jeremiah.
52 Zedekiah was twenty-one years old when he began to reign. And he reigned eleven years in Jerusalem. And his mother’s name was Hamutal, the daughter of Jeremiah of Libnah.
2 And he did evil in the eyes of the LORD, the same as all that Jehoiakim had done.
3 For the following happened in Jerusalem and Judah at that time, until He had cast them out from His presence, because of the wrath of the LORD. Zedekiah rebelled against the king of Babel.
4 Now, in the ninth year of his reign, in the tenth month, the tenth day of the month, came Nebuchadnezzar, king of Babel, he and all his army, against Jerusalem, and pitched against it and built forts against it all around.
5 So the city was besieged until the eleventh year of King Zedekiah.
6 Now, in the fourth month, the ninth day of the month, the famine was severe in the city, so that there was no more food for the people of the land.
7 Then, the city was broken up. And all the men of war fled and went out of the city by night, by way of the gate between the two walls, which was by the king’s garden (though the Chaldeans were near the city, all around). And they went by way of the wilderness.
8 But the army of the Chaldeans pursued after the king and took Zedekiah in the desert of Jericho. And all the army was scattered from him.
9 Then they took the king and carried him up to the king of Babel, to Riblah, in the land of Hamath, where he gave judgment upon him.
10 And the king of Babel killed the sons of Zedekiah before his eyes. He also killed all the princes of Judah in Riblah.
11 Then, he put out the eyes of Zedekiah. And the king of Babel bound him in chains and carried him to Babel and put him in prison until the day of his death.
12 Now, in the fifth month, on the tenth day of the month (which was the nineteenth year of King Nebuchadnezzar, king of Babel) came Nebuzaradan, chief steward, who stood before the king of Babel in Jerusalem
13 and burnt the House of the LORD and the king’s house and all the houses of Jerusalem. And he burnt all the great houses with fire.
14 And all the army of the Chaldeans who were with the chief steward broke down all the walls of Jerusalem all around.
15 Then, Nebuzaradan the chief steward carried away captive some of the poor people, and the rest of the people who remained in the city, and those who had fled and fallen to the king of Babel, with the rest of the multitude.
16 But Nebuzaradan the chief steward left some of the poor of the land to dress the vines and to till the land.
17 Also, the bronze pillars that were in the House of the LORD, and the pedestals, and the bronze sea that was in the House of the LORD, the Chaldeans broke. And they carried all their bronze to Babel.
18 Also, the pots and the shovels, and the snuffers, and the basins, and the incense dishes, and all the bronze vessels with which they ministered, they took away.
19 And the bowls and the ashpans and the basins and the pots and the candlesticks and the incense dishes and the cups—all that was of gold and all that was of silver—the chief steward took away
20 with the two pillars, one sea, and twelve bronze bulls that were under the bases which King Solomon had had made for the House of the LORD. The bronze of all these vessels was without measure.
21 And concerning the pillars, the height of one pillar was eighteen cubits. It measured twelve cubits around and its thickness was four fingers (it was hollow).
22 And a capital of bronze was upon it. And the height of one capital was five cubits with a network of pomegranates upon the capitals, all around, all of bronze. The second pillar and the pomegranates were also like these.
23 And there were ninety-six pomegranates per side. All the pomegranates, all around the network, were one hundred.
24 And the chief steward took Seraiah the High Priest, and Zephaniah the second priest, and the three keepers of the door.
25 He also took a eunuch out of the city who had oversight of the men of war, and seven men who were in the king’s presence who were found in the city, and the principal quartermaster 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.
26 Nebuzaradan, the chief steward, took them and brought them to the king of Babel, to Riblah.
27 And the king of Babel struck them and killed them in Riblah, in the land of Hamath. Thus, Judah was carried away captive out of his own land.
28 These are the people whom Nebuchadnezzar carried away captive in the seventh year: three thousand twenty-three Jews.
29 In the eighteenth year of Nebuchadnezzar, he carried away captive from Jerusalem eight hundred thirty-two people.
30 In the twenty-third year of Nebuchadnezzar, Nebuzaradan the chief steward carried away captive seven hundred forty-five Jewish people. All together there were four thousand six hundred.
31 And 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, Evil-Merodach king of Babel, in the first year of his reign, lifted up the head of Jehoiachin king of Judah, and brought him out of prison,
32 and spoke kindly to him, and set his throne above the throne of the kings who were with him in Babel,
33 and changed his prison garments. And he regularly ate bread before him, all the days of his life.
34 His ration was a continual ration, given to him by the king of Babel, a portion each day, all the days of his life, until he died.
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