31
Messenger races to meet messenger, and herald to meet herald, to announce to the king of Babylon that his city has been captured from end [to end].
32
The fords have been seized, the marshes set on fire, and the soldiers are terrified.
33
For this is what the Lord of Hosts, the God of Israel, says: The daughter of Babylon is like a threshing floor at the time it is trampled. In just a little while her harvest time will come.
34
"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; he filled his belly with my delicacies; he has vomited me out,"
35
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.
36
Therefore, this is what the Lord says: I am about to plead your case and take vengeance on your behalf; I will dry up her sea and make her fountain run dry.
37
Babylon will become a heap of rubble, a jackals' den, a desolation and an object of scorn, without inhabitant.
38
They will roar together like young lions; they will growl like lion cubs.
39
While they are flushed with heat, I will serve them a feast, and I will make them drunk so that they revel. Then they will fall asleep forever and never wake up. [This is]*The bracketed text has been added for clarity. the Lord's declaration.
40
I will bring them down like lambs to the slaughter, like rams together with male goats.
41
How Sheshach has been captured, the praise of the whole earth seized. What a horror Babylon has become among the nations!