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.
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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.
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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.
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Babylon shall become a heap, A dwelling place for jackals, An astonishment and a hissing, Without an inhabitant.
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They shall roar together like lions, They shall growl like lions' whelps.
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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.
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"I will bring them down Like lambs to the slaughter, Like rams with male goats.
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"Oh, how Sheshach is taken! Oh, how the praise of the whole earth is seized! How Babylon has become desolate among the nations!
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The sea has come up over Babylon; She is covered with the multitude of its waves.
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Her cities are a desolation, A dry land and a wilderness, A land where no one dwells, Through which no son of man passes.
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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.
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"My people, go out of the midst of her! And let everyone deliver himself from the fierce anger of the Lord.
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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),
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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.
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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.
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As Babylon has caused the slain of Israel to fall, So at Babylon the slain of all the earth shall fall.
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You who have escaped the sword, Get away! Do not stand still! Remember the Lord afar off, And let Jerusalem come to your mind.
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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.
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"Therefore behold, the days are coming," says the Lord, "That I will bring judgment on her carved images, And throughout all her land the wounded shall groan.
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Though Babylon were to mount up to heaven, And though she were to fortify the height of her strength, Yet from Me plunderers would come to her," says the Lord.
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The sound of a cry comes from Babylon, And great destruction from the land of the Chaldeans,
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Because the Lord is plundering Babylon And silencing her loud voice, Though her waves roar like great waters, And the noise of their voice is uttered,
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Because the plunderer comes against her, against Babylon, And her mighty men are taken. Every one of their bows is broken; For the Lord is the God of recompense, He will surely repay.
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"And I will make drunk Her princes and wise men, Her governors, her deputies, and her mighty men. And they shall sleep a perpetual sleep And not awake," says the King, Whose name is the Lord of hosts.
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Thus says the Lord of hosts: "The broad walls of Babylon shall be utterly broken, And her high gates shall be burned with fire; The people will labor in vain, And the nations, because of the fire; And they shall be weary."
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The 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. And Seraiah was the quartermaster.
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So Jeremiah wrote in a book all the evil that would come upon Babylon, all these words that are written against Babylon.
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And Jeremiah said to Seraiah, "When you arrive in Babylon and see it, and read all these words,
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then you shall say, 'O Lord, You have spoken against this place to cut it off, so that none shall remain in it, neither man nor beast, but it shall be desolate forever.'
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Now it shall be, when you have finished reading this book, that you shall tie a stone to it and throw it out into the Euphrates.
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Then you shall say, 'Thus Babylon shall sink and not rise from the catastrophe that I will bring upon her. And they shall be weary.' " Thus far are the words of Jeremiah.