Chapter 51

1; So says YAHWEH, Behold, I am arousing a destroying wind against Babylon and against those dwelling in the heart of My foes.

2; And I will send foreigners to Babylon who will sift her and shall empty her land. For in the day of evil they shall be against her all around.

3; Do not let the one treading fully tread his bow, nor go up in his armor. And do not spare her young men; utterly destroy all her army.

4; So the slain shall fall in the land of the Chaldeans, yea, pierced through in her streets.

5; For neither Israel nor Judah has been widowed by his Elohim, by YAHWEH of Hosts, though their land was filled with guilt against the Set-Apart One of Israel.

6; Flee from the midst of Babylon; yea, each man deliver his soul. Do not be silenced in her iniquity. For it is the time of the vengeance of YAHWEH. He will give her a just recompense. He will repay her.

7; Babylon was a golden cup in the hand of YAHWEH, making all the earth drunk. The nations have drunk of her wine, therefore the nations are mad.

8; Suddenly Babylon has fallen, and it is broken. Wail for her, take balm for her pain, if perhaps she may be healed.

9; We would have healed Babylon, but she is not healed. Forsake her, and let us go, each one into his own country. For her judgment reaches to the heavens and is lifted up to the skies.

10; YAHWEH has brought forth our righteousness; come and let us declare in Zion the work of YAHWEH our Elohim.

11; Purify the arrows, fill the shields; YAHWEH has aroused the spirit of the kings of the Medes. For His plan is against Babylon, to destroy it, because it is the vengeance of YAHWEH, the vengeance of His sanctuary.

12; Lift up the banner upon Babylon's walls, make the watch strong; set up the watches, prepare the ambushes. For YAHWEH has both planned and has done that which He spoke against the people of Babylon.

13; O you who live by many waters, rich in treasures, your end has come, the measure of your unjust gain and covetousness.

14; YAHWEH of Hosts has sworn by Himself, saying, Surely I will fill you with men as with locusts, and they shall lift up a shout against you.

15; He has made the earth by His power, He has established the world by His wisdom, and stretched out the heavens by His understanding.

16; When He gives His voice, a multitude of waters is in the heavens, and He causes the mists to ascend from the end of the earth. He makes lightnings for rain, and brings forth the wind out of His treasuries.

17; Every man is foolish in knowledge, every refiner is put to shame by idols. For his cast image is a lie, and no breath is in them.

18; They are vanity, the work of errors; in the time of their punishment they shall perish.

19; The Portion of Jacob is not like them, for He is the Former of all things, and He is the rod of His inheritance, YAHWEH of Hosts is His name.

20; You are My war club and weapons of war, for with you I will shatter nations and with you I will destroy kingdoms.

21; And with you I will shatter the horse and his rider, and with you I will shatter the chariot and his charioteer.

22; And I will shatter man and woman with you, and with you I will shatter old and young, and with you I will shatter the young man and the girl.

23; And I will shatter the shepherd and his flock with you. And I will shatter the farmer and his team with you, and with you I will shatter heads and rulers.

24; And I will give to Babylon, and to all the people of Chaldea all the evil that they have done in Zion, before your eyes, declares YAHWEH.

25; Behold, I am against you, O destroying mountain, declares YAHWEH, who destroys all the earth. And I will stretch out My hand on you, and will roll you down from the rocks, and I will make you a burned mountain,

26; and they shall not take a stone from you for a corner, or a stone for foundations, but you shall be a waste forever, says YAHWEH.

27; Set up a banner in the land. Blow a rams horn among the nations; consecrate nations against her. Make to hear the kingdoms of Ararat, Minni, and Ashkenaz together against her, set a marshal against her. Cause the horses to come up like rough locusts.

28; Consecrate nations against her, with the kings of the Medes, her governors and all her rulers, and all the land of his dominion.

29; And the land trembles and writhes in pain. For every purpose of YAHWEH shall be done against Babylon, to make the land of Babylon a waste without one living in it.

30; The mighty men of Babylon have stopped fighting. They have dwelt in their strongholds; their might has withered; they became as women; they have burned their houses, her bars are broken.

31; A runner shall run to meet a runner, and a herald to meet a herald, to announce to the king of Babylon that his city is captured from end to end,

32; and that the fords are captured. And they have burned the reeds with fire, and the men of war are terrified.

33; For so says YAHWEH of Hosts, the Elohim of Israel, The daughter of Babylon is like a grain floor, it is time to trample her. Yet a little while, and the time of her harvest will come.

34; Nebuchadnezzar, the king of Babylon, has devoured us. He has crushed us. He has made us an empty vessel. He has swallowed us like a jackal. He has filled his belly with delicacies. He has thrown me out.

35; The violence done to me and to my flesh is on Babylon, the one living in Zion shall say. And Jerusalem shall say, My blood shall be on those living in Chaldea.

36; So YAHWEH says this: Behold, I will strive for you and take vengeance for you. And I will dry up her sea and make her well dry.

37; And Babylon shall become heaps, a home for jackals, a horror and a hissing, without even one inhabitant.

38; They shall roar together like lions, they shall growl like lions' cubs.

39; In their heat, I will make their feasts, and I will make them drunk so that they rejoice and sleep a never ending sleep and never awaken, says YAHWEH.

40; I shall bring them down like lambs to the slaughter, like rams with he-goats.

41; How Sheshach is captured! And how the praise of all the earth is seized! How Babylon has become a ruin among the nations!

42; The sea has come up over Babylon, she is covered with the multitude of its waves.

43; Her cities have become a ruin, a dry land and a wilderness, a land in which no man dwells, nor does any son of man pass by it.

44; And I will punish Bel in Babylon, and I will bring forth out of his mouth that which he has swallowed up. And the nations shall not flow together any more to him; yea, the wall of Babylon shall fall.

45; My people, go out of her midst, and deliver each man his soul from the burning anger of YAHWEH.

46; And that your heart not faint, and you fear the report that shall be heard in the land, the report shall come in a year. And after that the report shall come in another year, and there shall be violence in the land, governor against governor.

47; So behold, the days come that I will punish on the idols of Babylon. And all her land shall be put to shame, and all her slain shall fall in her midst.

48; Then the heavens and the earth, and all that is in them, shall shout for Babylon. For the plunderers shall come to her from the north, says YAHWEH.

49; As Babylon is to fall for the slain of Israel, so for Babylon the slain of all the earth shall fall.

50; You who have escaped the sword, go away. Do not stand still. Remember YAHWEH afar off, and let Jerusalem come into your mind.

51; We have turned pale because we have heard reproach, dishonor has covered our faces. For foreigners have come into the Set-Apart places of the house of YAHWEH.

52; So, behold, the days are coming, says YAHWEH, that I will punish on her idols, and through all her land the wounded shall groan.

53; Though Babylon should ascend up to the heavens, and though she should fortify her strong height, plunderers shall come from Me to her, states YAHWEH.

54; A sound of a cry from Babylon, and great ruin from the land of Chaldeans!

55; For YAHWEH is stripping Babylon, and the great voice will perish out of her. And her waves will roar like many waters, the noise of their voice is given.

56; Because the plunderer is coming on her, on Babylon, and her mighty men are captured, their bows are shattered; for YAHWEH the El of vengeance, surely shall repay.

57; And I will make her rulers drunk, also her wise ones, her governors, and her rulers, and her prefects; and they shall sleep a never-ending sleep, and not awaken, says the King whose name is YAHWEH of Hosts.

58; So says YAHWEH of Hosts, The broad walls of Babylon shall be utterly laid bare, and her high gates shall be burned with fire. And the peoples shall labor as for vanity, and the peoples as for fire; and they shall be weary.

59; The word which Jeremiah the prophet commanded Seraiah, the son of Neriah, the son of Maaseiah, when he went with Zedekiah, the king of Judah, to Babylon in the fourth year of his reign. And Seraiah was a chief official.

60; So Jeremiah wrote in a book all the evil that should come on Babylon, all these words that are written against Babylon.

61; And Jeremiah said to Seraiah, When you come to Babylon and shall see and shall cry all these words,

62; then you shall say, O YAHWEH, You have spoken against this place to cut it off so that none shall remain in it, from man to animal, but it shall be a ruin forever.

63; And it shall be, when you have finished calling out this book, you shall tie a stone to it and throw it into the middle of the Euphrates.

64; And you shall say, In this way Babylon shall sink and shall not rise from the evil that I am bringing on her. And they shall be weary. So far are the words of Jeremiah.

 

Chapter 52

1; Zedekiah was a son of twenty-one years when he began to reign, and he reigned eleven years in Jerusalem. And the name of his mother was Gametal, the daughter of Jeremiah of Libnah.

2; And he did evil in the eyes of YAHWEH, according to all that Jehoiakim had done.

3; For it was because of the anger of YAHWEH in Jerusalem and Judah that Zedekiah rebelled against the king of Babylon, until YAHWEH had cast them out from His face.

4; And in the ninth year of his reign, in the tenth month, in the tenth day of the month, King Nebuchadnezzar of Babylon came, he and all his army against Jerusalem, and pitched against it, and built a siege wall against it all around.

5; And the city came under siege until the eleventh year of King Zedekiah.

6; And in the fourth month, in the ninth of the month, the famine was severe in the city, so that there was no food for the people of the land.

7; Then the city was breached, and all the men of war fled, and went out of the city by night by the way of the gate between the two walls, which was by the king's garden. And the Chaldeans lay all around the city. And they went by the way of the Arabah.

8; But the army of the Chaldeans pursued the king and overtook Zedekiah in the Arabah of Jericho. And all his army was scattered from him.

9; And they took the king and carried him up to the king of Babylon, to Riblah in the land of Hamath, where he gave judgments against him.

10; And the king of Babylon slaughtered the sons of Zedekiah before his eyes. He also slaughtered all the rulers of Judah in Riblah.

11; And he blinded the eyes of Zedekiah. And the king of Babylon bound him in bronze fetters and carried him to Babylon. And he put him in prison until the day of his death.

12; And in the fifth month, in the tenth of the month, which was the nineteenth year of King Nebuchad- nezzar of Babylon, Nebuzaradan, the chief of the executioners, who stood before the king of Babylon, came into Jerusalem.

13; And he burned the house of YAHWEH and the king's house. And he burned all the houses of Jerusalem with fire, and all the houses of the great ones.

14; And all the army of the Chaldeans with the chief of the executioners broke down all the walls of Jerusalem all around.

15; Then Nebuzaradan, the chief of the executioners, exiled some of the poor of the people, and the rest of the people who remained in the city, and those who fell away, who fell to the king of Babylon, and the rest of the multitude.

16; But Nebuzaradan, the chief of the executioners, left some of the poor of the land for vinedressers and for farmers.

17; Also the Chaldeans broke the pillars of bronze that were in the house of YAHWEH, and the bases, and the bronze sea in the house of YAHWEH, and carried all the bronze from them to Babylon.

18; They also took away the pots, and the shovels, and the snuffers, and the bowls, and the spoons, and all the vessels of bronze with which they served.

19; And the chief of the executioners took away the basins, and the fire- pans, and the bowls, and the pots, the lampstands, and the spoons, and the cups; what was gold, in gold, and what was silver, in silver,

20; the two pillars, one sea, and twelve bronze bulls that were under the bases, which King Solomon had made in the house of YAHWEH. The weight of the bronze of all these vessels was not known.

21; And the pillars: the height of one pillar was eighteen cubits, and a line of twelve cubits went around it, and its thickness was four fingers; it was hollow.

22; And a capital of bronze was on it; and the height of one capital was five cubits, with grating and pomegranates on the capitals all around, all of bronze. And like these was the second pillar, and the pomegranates.

23; And ninety-six pomegranates were on a side; all the pomegranates on the grating were a hundred all around.

24; And the chief of the executioners took Seraiah the head priest, and Zephaniah the second priest, and the three doorkeepers.

25; He also took out of the city one eunuch who was in charge of the men of war, and seven men who saw the king's face, who were found in the city, and the commander of the army's scribe who mustered the people of the land, and sixty men of the people of the land who were found in the middle of the city.

26; And Nebuzaradan, the chief of the executioners, took them and led them to the king of Babylon, to Riblah.

27; And the king of Babylon struck them and slaughtered them in Riblah in the land of Hamath. And Judah was exiled from off his land.

28; This is the people whom Nebuchadnezzar exiled: In the seventh year, three thousand and twenty three Jews;

29; in the eighteenth year of Nebuchadnezzar, eight hundred thirty two souls from Jerusalem;

30; in the twenty third year of Nebuchadnezzar, Nebuzaradan, the chief of the executioners, exiled seven hundred forty five souls of the Jews. All the souls were four thousand and six hundred.

31; And it happened in the thirty seventh year of the exile of Jehoiachin, king of Judah, in the twelfth month, in the twenty fifth of the month, Evil- Merodach, king of Babylon, in the year of his reign lifted up the head of Jehoiachin, king of Judah, and brought him from the prison house.

32; And he spoke good to him and set his throne above the throne of the kings who were with him in Babylon.

33; And he changed his prison garments, and he ate bread before his face continually all the days of his life.

34; And his allowance, in continual allowance, was given to him from the king of Babylon, the matter of a day in its day, until the day of his death, all the days of his life.