31
One runner will run to meet another, And one messenger to meet another, To show the king of Babylon that his city is taken on all sides;
32
The passages are blocked, The reeds they have burned with fire, And the men of war are terrified.
33
For thus says the Lord of hosts, the God of Israel: "The daughter of Babylon is like a threshing floor When it is time to thresh her; Yet a little while And the time of her harvest will come."
34
"Nebuchadnezzar the king of Babylon Has devoured me, he has crushed me; He has made me an empty vessel, He has swallowed me up like a monster; He has filled his stomach with my delicacies, He has spit me out.
35
Let the violence done to me and my flesh be upon Babylon," The inhabitant of Zion will say; "And my blood be upon the inhabitants of Chaldea!" Jerusalem will say.
36
Therefore thus says the Lord: "Behold, I will plead your case and take vengeance for you. I will dry up her sea and make her springs dry.
37
Babylon shall become a heap, A dwelling place for jackals, An astonishment and a hissing, Without an inhabitant.
38
They shall roar together like lions, They shall growl like lions' whelps.
39
In their excitement I will prepare their feasts; I will make them drunk, That they may rejoice, And sleep a perpetual sleep And not awake," says the Lord.
40
"I will bring them down Like lambs to the slaughter, Like rams with male goats.
41
"Oh, how Sheshach is taken! Oh, how the praise of the whole earth is seized! How Babylon has become desolate among the nations!
42
The sea has come up over Babylon; She is covered with the multitude of its waves.
43
Her cities are a desolation, A dry land and a wilderness, A land where no one dwells, Through which no son of man passes.
44
I will punish Bel in Babylon, And I will bring out of his mouth what he has swallowed; And the nations shall not stream to him anymore. Yes, the wall of Babylon shall fall.
45
"My people, go out of the midst of her! And let everyone deliver himself from the fierce anger of the Lord.
46
And lest your heart faint, And you fear for the rumor that will be heard in the land (A rumor will come one year, And after that, in another year A rumor will come, And violence in the land, Ruler against ruler),
47
Therefore behold, the days are coming That I will bring judgment on the carved images of Babylon; Her whole land shall be ashamed, And all her slain shall fall in her midst.
48
Then the heavens and the earth and all that is in them Shall sing joyously over Babylon; For the plunderers shall come to her from the north," says the Lord.
49
As Babylon has caused the slain of Israel to fall, So at Babylon the slain of all the earth shall fall.
50
You who have escaped the sword, Get away! Do not stand still! Remember the Lord afar off, And let Jerusalem come to 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.