Chapter 51
1Thus says Yahweh: Behold, I will raise up against Babylon, and against
those who dwell in Lebkamai, a destroying wind.
2I will send to Babylon
strangers, who shall winnow her; and they shall empty her land: for in the
day of trouble they shall be against her round about.
3Against him
who bends let the archer bend his bow, and against him who lifts
himself up in his coat of mail: and don’t you spare her young men;
destroy you utterly all her army.
4They shall fall down slain in the
land of the Chaldeans, and thrust through in her streets.
5For Israel is
not forsaken, nor Judah, of his God, of Yahweh of Armies; though their land is
full of guilt against the Holy One of Israel.
6Flee out of the midst of
Babylon, and save every man his life; don’t be cut off in her iniquity: for
it is the time of Yahweh’s vengeance; he will render to her a recompense.
7Babylon has been a golden cup in Yahweh’s hand, who made all the earth
drunken: the nations have drunk of her wine; therefore the nations are mad.
8Babylon is suddenly fallen and destroyed: wail for her; take balm for
her pain, if so be she may be healed.
9We would have healed Babylon, but
she is not healed: forsake her, and let us go everyone into his own country;
for her judgment reaches to heaven, and is lifted up even to the skies.
10Yahweh has brought forth our righteousness: come, and let us declare in
Zion the work of Yahweh our God.
11Make sharp the arrows; hold firm the
shields: Yahweh has stirred up the spirit of the kings of the Medes; because
his purpose is against Babylon, to destroy it: for it is the vengeance of
Yahweh, the vengeance of his temple.
12Set up a standard against the
walls of Babylon, make the watch strong, set the watchmen, prepare the
ambushes; for Yahweh has both purposed and done that which he spoke
concerning the inhabitants of Babylon.
13You who dwell on many waters,
abundant in treasures, your end is come, the measure of your covetousness.
14Yahweh of Armies has sworn by himself, saying, Surely I will
fill you with men, as with the canker worm; and they shall lift up a shout
against you.
15He has made the earth by his power, he has established the
world by his wisdom, and by his understanding has he stretched out the
heavens:
16when he utters his voice, there is a tumult of waters in the
heavens, and he causes the vapors to ascend from the ends of the earth; he
makes lightning for the rain, and brings forth the wind out of his
treasuries.
17Every man is become brutish and is without
knowledge; every goldsmith is disappointed by his image; for his molten image
is falsehood, and there is no breath in them.
18They are vanity, a work
of delusion: in the time of their visitation they shall perish.
19The
portion of Jacob is not like these; for he is the former of all things; and
Israel is the tribe of his inheritance: Yahweh of Armies is his name.
20You are my battle axe and weapons of war: and with you will I break in
pieces the nations; and with you will I destroy kingdoms;
21and with you
will I break in pieces the horse and his rider;
22and with you will I
break in pieces the chariot and him who rides therein; and with you will I
break in pieces man and woman; and with you will I break in pieces the old
man and the youth; and with you will I break in pieces the young man and the
virgin;
23and with you will I break in pieces the shepherd and his flock;
and with you will I break in pieces the farmer and his yoke of oxen;
and with you will I break in pieces governors and deputies.
24I will
render to Babylon and to all the inhabitants of Chaldea all their evil that
they have done in Zion in your sight, says Yahweh.
25Behold, I am against
you, destroying mountain, says Yahweh, which destroys all the earth; and I
will stretch out my hand on you, and roll you down from the rocks, and will
make you a burnt mountain.
26They shall not take of you a stone for a
corner, nor a stone for foundations; but you shall be desolate for ever, says
Yahweh.
27Set up a standard in the land, blow the trumpet among the
nations, prepare the nations against her, call together against her the
kingdoms of Ararat, Minni, and Ashkenaz: appoint a marshal against her; cause
the horses to come up as the rough canker worm.
28Prepare against her the
nations, the kings of the Medes, the governors of it, and all the deputies of
it, and all the land of their dominion.
29The land trembles and is in
pain; for the purposes of Yahweh against Babylon do stand, to make the land
of Babylon a desolation, without inhabitant.
30The mighty men of Babylon
have forborne to fight, they remain in their strongholds; their might has
failed; they are become as women: her dwelling places are set on fire; her
bars are broken.
31One runner will run to meet another, and one messenger
to meet another, to show the king of Babylon that his city is taken on every
quarter:
32and the passages are seized, and the reeds they have burned
with fire, and the men of war are frightened.
33For thus says Yahweh of
Armies, the God of Israel: The daughter of Babylon is like a threshing floor
at the time when it is trodden; yet a little while, and the time of harvest
shall come for her.
34Nebuchadnezzar the king of Babylon has devoured me,
he has crushed me, he has made me an empty vessel, he has, like a monster,
swallowed me up, he has filled his maw with my delicacies; he has cast me
out.
35The violence done to me and to my flesh be on Babylon, shall the
inhabitant of Zion say; and, My blood be on the inhabitants of Chaldea, shall
Jerusalem say.
36Therefore thus says Yahweh: Behold, I will plead your
cause, and take vengeance for you; and I will dry up her sea, and make her
fountain dry.
37Babylon shall become heaps, a dwelling place for jackals,
an astonishment, and a hissing, without inhabitant.
38They shall roar
together like young lions; they shall growl as lions’ cubs.
39When they
are heated, I will make their feast, and I will make them drunken, that they
may rejoice, and sleep a perpetual sleep, and not wake, says Yahweh.
40I
will bring them down like lambs to the slaughter, like rams with male goats.
41How is Sheshach taken! and the praise of the whole earth seized! how is
Babylon become a desolation among the nations!
42The sea is come up on
Babylon; she is covered with the multitude of the waves of it.
43Her
cities are become a desolation, a dry land, and a desert, a land in which no
man dwells, neither does any son of man pass thereby.
44I will execute
judgment on Bel in Babylon, and I will bring forth out of his mouth that
which he has swallowed up; and the nations shall not flow any more to him:
yes, the wall of Babylon shall fall.
45My people, go you out of the
midst of her, and save yourselves every man from the fierce anger of Yahweh.
46Don’t let your heart faint, neither fear for the news that shall
be heard in the land; for news shall come one year, and after that in another
year shall come news, and violence in the land, ruler against ruler.
47Therefore, behold, the days come, that I will execute judgment on the
engraved images of Babylon; and her whole land shall be confounded; and all
her slain shall fall in the midst of her.
48Then the heavens and the
earth, and all that is therein, shall sing for joy over Babylon; for the
destroyers shall come to her from the north, says Yahweh.
49As Babylon
has caused the slain of Israel to fall, so at Babylon shall fall the slain of
all the land.
50You who have escaped the sword, go you, don’t
stand still; remember Yahweh from afar, and let Jerusalem come into your
mind.
51We are confounded, because we have heard reproach; confusion has
covered our faces: for strangers are come into the sanctuaries of Yahweh’s
house.
52Therefore, behold, the days come, says Yahweh, that I will
execute judgment on her engraved images; and through all her land the wounded
shall groan.
53Though Babylon should mount up to the sky, and though she
should fortify the height of her strength, yet from me shall destroyers come
to her, says Yahweh.
54The sound of a cry from Babylon, and of great
destruction from the land of the Chaldeans!
55For Yahweh lays Babylon
waste, and destroys out of her the great voice; and their waves roar like
many waters; the noise of their voice is uttered:
56for the destroyer is
come on her, even on Babylon, and her mighty men are taken, their bows are
broken in pieces; for Yahweh is a God of recompenses, he will surely requite.
57I will make drunk her princes and her wise men, her governors and her
deputies, and her mighty men; and they shall sleep a perpetual sleep, and not
wake up, says the King, whose name is Yahweh of Armies.
58Thus says Yahweh
of Armies: The broad walls of Babylon shall be utterly overthrown, and her
high gates shall be burned with fire; and the peoples shall labor for vanity,
and the nations for the fire; and they shall be weary.
59The word which
Jeremiah the prophet commanded Seraiah the son of Neriah, the son of
Mahseiah, when he went with Zedekiah the king of Judah to Babylon in the
fourth year of his reign. Now Seraiah was chief chamberlain.
60Jeremiah
wrote in a book all the evil that should come on Babylon, even all these
words that are written concerning Babylon.
61Jeremiah said to Seraiah,
When you come to Babylon, then see that you read all these words,
62and
say, Yahweh, you have spoken concerning this place, to cut it off, that
none shall dwell therein, neither man nor animal, but that it shall be
desolate forever.
63It shall be, when you have made an end of reading
this book, that you shall bind a stone to it, and cast it into the midst of
the Euphrates:
64and you shall say, Thus shall Babylon sink, and shall
not rise again because of the evil that I will bring on her; and they shall
be weary. Thus far are the words of Jeremiah.