Study Desk

"But I will repay Babylon and all the inhabitants of Chaldea for all their evil that they have done in Zion before your eyes," declares the LORD.

So the land quakes and writhes, For the plans of the LORD against Babylon stand, To make the land of Babylon A desolation without inhabitants.

The warriors of Babylon have ceased fighting, They stay in the strongholds; Their strength is exhausted, They are becoming like women; Their homes are set on fire, The bars of her gates are broken.

One courier runs to meet another, And one messenger to meet another, To tell the king of Babylon That his city has been captured from end to end;

For this is what the LORD of armies, the God of Israel says: "The daughter of Babylon is like a threshing floor At the time that it is tread down; In just a little while the time of harvest will come for her."

"Nebuchadnezzar the king of Babylon has devoured me, he has crushed me, He has set me down like an empty vessel; He has swallowed me like a monster, He has filled his stomach with my delicacies; He has washed me away.

"May the violence done to me and to my flesh be upon Babylon," The inhabitant of Zion will say; And, "May my blood be upon the inhabitants of Chaldea," Jerusalem will say.

"Babylon will become a heap of ruins, a haunt of jackals, An object of horror and hissing, without inhabitants.

"How Sheshak has been captured, And the praise of the whole earth has been seized! How Babylon has become an object of horror among the nations!

"The sea has come up over Babylon; She has been engulfed by its roaring waves.

"I will punish Bel in Babylon, And I will make what he has swallowed come out of his mouth; And the nations will no longer stream toward him. Even the wall of Babylon has fallen down!

Therefore behold, days are coming When I will punish the idols of Babylon; And her whole land will be put to shame. And all her slain will fall in her midst.

"Then heaven and earth and everything that is in them Will shout for joy over Babylon, Because the destroyers will come to her from the north," Declares the LORD.

Indeed, Babylon is to fall for the slain of Israel, As the slain of all the earth have also fallen for Babylon.

"Though Babylon ascends to the heavens, And though she fortifies her lofty stronghold, Destroyers will come from Me to her," declares the LORD.

The sound of an outcry from Babylon, And of great destruction from the land of the Chaldeans!

For the LORD is going to destroy Babylon, And He will make her loud noise vanish from her. And their waves will roar like many waters; The clamor of their voices sounds forth.

For the destroyer is coming against her, against Babylon, And her warriors will be captured, Their bows shattered; For the LORD is a God of retribution, He will fully repay.

This is what the LORD of armies says: "The broad wall of Babylon will be completely demolished, And her high gates will be set on fire; So the peoples will labor for nothing, And the nations become exhausted only for fire."

The command that Jeremiah the prophet gave Seraiah the son of Neriah, the grandson of Mahseiah, when he went with Zedekiah the king of Judah to Babylon in the fourth year of his reign. (And Seraiah was quartermaster.)