Study Desk

This is what the Lord says: I am about to stir up a destructive wind^[a] against Babylon^(a) and against the population of Leb-qamai.^[b][c]

I will send strangers to Babylon who will scatter her and strip her land bare,^(b) for they will come against her from every side in the day of disaster.

Don't let the archer string his bow; don't let him put on^[d] his armor.^(c) Don't spare her young men; completely destroy her entire army!

Those who were slain will fall in the land of the Chaldeans, those who were pierced through, in her streets.^(d)

For Israel and Judah are not left widowed by their God, the Lord of Hosts, though their land is full of guilt against the Holy One of Israel.^(e)

Leave Babylon;^(f) save your lives, each of you!^(g) Don't perish because of her guilt. For this is the time of the Lord 's vengeance— He will pay her what she deserves.^(h)

Babylon was a gold cup in the Lord 's hand,⁽ⁱ⁾ making the whole earth drunk. The nations drank her wine;^(j) therefore, the nations go mad.^(k)

Suddenly Babylon fell and was shattered. Wail for her; get balm^(l) for her wound— perhaps she can be healed.

We tried to heal Babylon, but she could not be healed. Abandon her! Let each of us go to his own land,^(m) for her judgment extends to the sky and reaches as far as the clouds.⁽ⁿ⁾

The Lord has brought about our vindication;^(o) come, let's tell in Zion what the Lord our God has accomplished.^(p)

Sharpen the arrows! Fill the quivers! The Lord has put it into the mind of the kings of the Medes because His plan is aimed at Babylon to destroy her, for it is the Lord 's vengeance, vengeance for His temple.^(q)

Raise up a signal flag^(r) against the walls of Babylon; fortify the watch post; set the watchmen in place; prepare the ambush. For the Lord has both planned and accomplished what He has threatened against those who live in Babylon.

You who reside by many waters,^(s) rich in treasures, your end has come, your life thread is cut.

The Lord of Hosts has sworn by Himself: I will fill you up with men as with locusts, and they will sing the victory song over you.

He made the earth by His power, established the world^(t) by His wisdom,^(u) and spread out the heavens by His understanding.^(v)

When He thunders,^[e] the waters in the heavens are in turmoil,^(w) and He causes the clouds to rise from the ends of the earth. He makes lightning for the rain and brings the wind from His storehouses.^(x)

Everyone is stupid and ignorant. Every goldsmith is put to shame by his carved image,^(y) for his cast images are a lie;^(z) there is no breath in them.^(aa)

They are worthless,^(ab) a work to be mocked. At the time of their punishment they will be destroyed.^(ac)

Jacob's Portion^[f] is not like these because He is the One who formed all things.^(ad) Israel is the tribe of His inheritance;^(ae) Yahweh of Hosts is His name.^(af)

You are My battle club, My weapons of war. With you I will smash nations; with you I will bring kingdoms to ruin.

With you I will smash the horse and its rider; with you I will smash the chariot and its rider.

With you I will smash man and woman;^(ag) with you I will smash the old man and the youth; with you I will smash the young man and the young woman.

With you I will smash the shepherd and his flock; with you I will smash the farmer and his ox-team.^[g] With you I will smash governors and officials.

"I will repay Babylon and all the residents of Chaldea for all their evil they have done in Zion before your very eyes."^(ah) This is the Lord 's declaration.

Look, I am against you, devastating mountain— this is the Lord 's declaration— you devastate the whole earth. I will stretch out My hand against you,^(ai) roll you down from the cliffs, and turn you into a charred mountain.

No one will be able to retrieve a cornerstone or a foundation stone from you, because you will become desolate forever. This is the Lord 's declaration.

Raise a signal flag^(aj) in the land; blow a ram's horn among the nations; set apart the nations against her.^(ak) Summon kingdoms against her— Ararat, Minni, and Ashkenaz. Appoint a marshal against her; bring up horses like a swarm^[h] of locusts.

Set apart the nations for battle against her— the kings of Media, her governors and all her officials, and all the lands they rule.

The earth quakes^(al) and trembles because the Lord 's intentions against Babylon stand: to make the land of Babylon an uninhabited desolation.

Babylon's warriors have stopped fighting;^(am) they sit in their strongholds. Their might is exhausted; they have become like women. Babylon's homes have been set ablaze, her gate bars are shattered.^(an)

Messenger races to meet messenger,^(ao) and herald to meet herald, to announce to the king of Babylon that his city has been captured from end to end.

The fords have been seized,^(ap) the marshes set on fire, and the soldiers are terrified.

For this is what the Lord of Hosts, the God of Israel, says: Daughter Babylon is like a threshing floor at the time it is trampled.^(aq) In just a little while her harvest time will come.^(ar)

"Nebuchadnezzar of Babylon has devoured me; he has crushed me. He has set me aside like an empty dish; he has swallowed me like a sea monster;^(as) he filled his belly with my delicacies; he has vomited me out,"^[i]

says the inhabitant of Zion; "Let the violence done to me and my family be done to Babylon. Let my blood be on the inhabitants of Chaldea," says Jerusalem.

Therefore, this is what the Lord says: I am about to plead your case^(at) and take vengeance on your behalf; I will dry up her sea^(au) and make her fountain run dry.

Babylon will become a heap of rubble, a jackals' den, a desolation and an object of scorn,^(av) without inhabitant.

They will roar together like young lions; they will growl like lion cubs.

While they are flushed with heat, I will serve them a feast, and I will make them drunk so that they revel.^[j](aw) Then they will fall asleep forever and never wake up. This is the Lord 's declaration.

I will bring them down like lambs to the slaughter, like rams together with male goats.^(ax)

How Sheshach has been captured, the praise^(ay) of the whole earth seized. What a horror Babylon has become among the nations!^(az)

The sea has risen over Babylon;^(ba) she is covered with its turbulent waves.

Her cities have become a desolation,^(bb) a dry and arid land, a land where no one lives, where no human being passes through.

I will punish Bel^(bc) in Babylon. I will make him vomit what he swallowed. The nations will no longer stream to him; even Babylon's wall will fall.

Come out from among her, My people!^(bd) Save your lives, each of you, from the Lord 's burning anger.

May you not become cowardly and fearful when the report is proclaimed in the land, for the report will come one year, and then another the next year. There will be violence in the land with ruler against ruler.

Therefore, look, the days are coming when I will punish Babylon's carved images.^(be) Her entire land will suffer shame, and all her slain will lie fallen within her.^(bf)

Heaven and earth and everything in them will shout for joy^(bg) over Babylon because the destroyers from the north will come against her. This is the Lord 's declaration.

Babylon must fall because of the slain of Israel, even as the slain of all the earth fell because of Babylon.

You who have escaped the sword,^(bh) go and do not stand still! Remember the Lord from far away, and let Jerusalem come to your mind.

We are ashamed because we have heard insults.^(bi) Humiliation covers our faces because foreigners have entered the holy places of the Lord 's temple.^(bj)

Therefore, look, the days are coming— this is the Lord 's declaration— when I will punish her carved images, and the wounded will groan throughout her land.

Even if Babylon should ascend to the heavens^(bk) and fortify her tall fortresses, destroyers will come against her from Me. This is the Lord 's declaration.

The sound of a cry from Babylon!^(bl) The sound of great destruction from the land of the Chaldeans!

For the Lord is going to devastate Babylon; He will silence her mighty voice. Their waves roar like abundant waters; the tumult of their voice resounds,

for a destroyer is coming against her, against Babylon. Her warriors will be captured, their bows shattered, for the Lord is a God of retribution; He will certainly repay.

I will make her princes and sages drunk, along with her governors, officials, and warriors. Then they will fall asleep forever and never wake up.^(bm) This is the King's declaration; Yahweh of Hosts is His name.^(bn)

This is what Yahweh of Hosts says: Babylon's thick walls will be totally demolished, and her high gates consumed by fire. The peoples will have labored for nothing;^(bo) the nations will exhaust themselves only to feed the fire.

This is what Jeremiah the prophet commanded Seraiah son of Neriah son of Mahseiah,^(bp) the quartermaster, when he went to Babylon with King Zedekiah of Judah in the fourth year of Zedekiah's reign.

Jeremiah wrote on one scroll about all the disaster that would come to Babylon;^(bq) all these words were written against Babylon.

Jeremiah told Seraiah, "When you get to Babylon, see that you read all these words aloud.

You must say, ‘ Lord , You have threatened to cut off^(br) this place so that no one will live in it—man or beast. Indeed, it will remain desolate forever.'

When you have finished reading this scroll, tie a stone to it and throw it into the middle of the Euphrates River.^(bs)

Then say, ‘In the same way, Babylon will sink and never rise again because of the disaster I am bringing on her. They will grow weary.'" The words of Jeremiah end here.

Zedekiah was 21 years old when he became king and reigned 11 years in Jerusalem. His mother's name was Hamutal daughter of Jeremiah; she was from Libnah.

Zedekiah did what was evil in the Lord 's sight just as Jehoiakim had done.^(a)

Because of the Lord 's anger, it came to the point in Jerusalem and Judah that He finally banished them from His presence. Nevertheless, Zedekiah rebelled against the king of Babylon.^(b)

In the ninth year of Zedekiah's reign, on the tenth day of the tenth month, King Nebuchadnezzar of Babylon advanced against Jerusalem with his entire army. They laid siege to the city and built a siege wall all around it.

The city was under siege until King Zedekiah's eleventh year.

By the ninth day of the fourth month the famine was so severe in the city that the people of the land had no food.

Then the city was broken into, and all the warriors fled. They left the city by night by way of the gate between the two walls near the king's garden, though the Chaldeans surrounded the city. They made their way along the route to the Arabah.^(c)

The Chaldean army pursued the king and overtook Zedekiah in the plains of Jericho. Zedekiah's entire army was scattered from him.

The Chaldeans seized the king and brought him to the king of Babylon at Riblah in the land of Hamath, and he passed sentence on him.

At Riblah the king of Babylon slaughtered Zedekiah's sons before his eyes and also slaughtered the Judean commanders.

Then he blinded Zedekiah and bound him with bronze chains. The king of Babylon brought Zedekiah to Babylon, where he kept him in custody^[a] until his dying day.^(d)

On the tenth day of the fifth month—which was the nineteenth year of King Nebuchadnezzar, king of Babylon—Nebuzaradan, the commander of the guards, entered Jerusalem as the representative of^[b] the king of Babylon.

He burned the Lord 's temple, the king's palace, all the houses of Jerusalem, and all the houses of the nobles.

The whole Chaldean army with the commander of the guards tore down all the walls surrounding Jerusalem.^(e)

Nebuzaradan, the commander of the guards, deported some of the poorest of the people, as well as the rest of the people who were left in the city, the deserters who had defected to the king of Babylon, and the rest of the craftsmen.

But some of the poorest people of the land Nebuzaradan, the commander of the guards, left to be vinedressers and farmers.^(f)

Now the Chaldeans broke into pieces the bronze pillars for the Lord 's temple and the water carts and the bronze reservoir that were in the Lord 's temple,^(g) and carried all the bronze to Babylon.

They took the pots, shovels, wick trimmers, sprinkling basins, dishes, and all the bronze articles used in the temple service.

The commander of the guards took away the bowls, firepans, sprinkling basins, pots, lampstands, pans, and drink offering bowls^(h)—whatever was gold or silver.

As for the two pillars, the one reservoir, and the 12 bronze bulls under the water carts that King Solomon had made for the Lord 's temple, the weight of the bronze of all these articles was beyond measure.

One pillar was 27 feet^[c] tall, had a circumference of 18 feet,^[d] was hollow—four fingers thick—

and had a bronze capital on top of it.⁽ⁱ⁾ One capital, encircled by bronze latticework and pomegranates, stood 7½ feet^[e] high. The second pillar was the same, with pomegranates.

Each capital had 96 pomegranates all around it. All the pomegranates around the latticework numbered 100.

The commander of the guards also took away Seraiah the chief priest, Zephaniah the priest of the second rank, and the three doorkeepers.

From the city he took a court official who had been appointed over the warriors; seven trusted royal aides^[f] found in the city; the secretary of the commander of the army, who enlisted the people of the land for military duty; and 60 men from the common people who were found within the city.

Nebuzaradan, the commander of the guards, took them and brought them to the king of Babylon at Riblah.

The king of Babylon put them to death at Riblah in the land of Hamath. So Judah went into exile from its land.^(j)

These are the people Nebuchadnezzar deported:^(k) in the seventh year, 3,023 Jews;

in his eighteenth year,^[g] 832 people from Jerusalem;

in Nebuchadnezzar's twenty-third year, Nebuzaradan, the commander of the guards, deported 745 Jews. All together 4,600 people were deported.

On the twenty-fifth day of the twelfth month of the thirty-seventh year of the exile of Judah's King Jehoiachin, Evil-merodach king of Babylon, in the first year of his reign, pardoned King Jehoiachin of Judah and released him from prison.

He spoke kindly to him and set his throne above the thrones of the kings who were with him in Babylon.

So Jehoiachin changed his prison clothes, and he dined regularly in the presence of the king of Babylon for the rest of his life.

As for his allowance, a regular allowance was given to him by the king of Babylon, a portion for each day until the day of his death, for the rest of his life.^(l)