Jeremiah 51:35-61

³⁵The one who lives in Zion will say, 'May the violence done to me and my flesh be on Babylon.' Jerusalem will say, 'May my blood be on the inhabitants of Chaldea.'

³⁶Therefore Yahweh says this: See, I am about to plead your case and bring about vengeance for you. For I will dry up Babylon's waters and make her springs run dry.

³⁷Babylon will become heaps of rubble, a den of jackals, a horror, an object of hissing, where there are no inhabitants.

³⁸The Babylonians will roar together like young lions. They will growl like lion cubs.

³⁹When they become hot with greed, I will make a feast for them; I will make them drunk so they become happy, and then sleep an unending sleep and not wake up—this is Yahweh's declaration—

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

⁴¹How Babylon has been captured! So the praise of all the earth is seized. How Babylon has become a ruined place among the nations.

⁴²The sea has come up over Babylon! She is covered with its roaring waves.

⁴³Her cities have become a desolation, a dry land and a wilderness, a land that no one inhabits, and no human being passes through.

⁴⁴So I will punish Bel in Babylon; I will bring out from his mouth what he swallowed, and the nations will no longer flow to him with their offerings. The walls of Babylon will fall.

⁴⁵Go out from her midst, my people. Let each of you save his own life from the fury of my wrath.

⁴⁶Do not let your hearts be timid or fear the news that is heard in the land, for the news will come one year. After it in the next year there will be news, and violence will be in the land. Ruler will be against ruler.

⁴⁷Therefore, see, days are coming when I will punish the carved idols of Babylon. All of her land will be ashamed, and all of her slaughtered ones will fall in her midst.

⁴⁸Then the heavens and the earth, and all that is in them will rejoice over Babylon. For destroyers will come for her from the north—this is Yahweh's declaration.

⁴⁹As Babylon has made the killed of Israel fall, so the killed of all her land will fall in Babylon.

⁵⁰Survivors of the sword, go away! Do not stay still. Call Yahweh to mind from far away; let Jerusalem come to mind.

⁵¹We are ashamed, for we have heard insults; reproach has covered our faces, for foreigners have entered the holy places of Yahweh's house.

⁵²Therefore, see, days are coming—this is Yahweh's declaration—when I will punish her carved idols, and the wounded people will groan in all of her land.

⁵³For even if Babylon went up to the heavens or fortified her highest fortresses, destroyers would come from me to her—this is Yahweh's declaration.

⁵⁴A shout of distress came from Babylon, a great collapse from the land of the Chaldeans.

⁵⁵For Yahweh is destroying Babylon. He is causing her loud voice to perish. Their enemies roar like the waves of many waters; their noise becomes very strong.

⁵⁶For the destroyers have come against her—against Babylon!—and her warriors have been captured. Their bows are broken, for Yahweh is the God of vengeance; he will surely carry out this repayment.

⁵⁷For I will make her princes, her sages, her officials, and her soldiers drunk, and they will sleep in an unending sleep and never wake up —this is the King's declaration: Yahweh of hosts is his name.

⁵⁸Yahweh of hosts says this: The thick walls of Babylon will be completely demolished, and her high gates will be burned. Then the peoples coming to her aid will labor uselessly; everything that the nations try to do for her will be burned up.”

⁵⁹This is the word that Jeremiah the prophet commanded Seraiah son of Neriah son of Mahseiah when he went with Zedekiah king of Judah to Babylon in the fourth year of his reign. Now Seraiah was a chief officer.

⁶⁰For Jeremiah had written in a scroll about all the disaster that was going to come on Babylon—all these words that were written about Babylon.

⁶¹Jeremiah said to Seraiah, “When you go to Babylon, then you will see and you will read these words aloud.