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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.