27
"Lift up a banner in the land! Blow the trumpet among the nations! Get the nations ready for battle against Babylon. Call these kingdoms of Ararat, Minni, and Ashkenaz to fight against her. Choose a commander to lead the army against Babylon. Send so many horses that they are like a swarm of locusts.
28
Get the nations ready for battle against Babylon -- the kings of the Medes, their governors and all their officers, and all the countries they rule.
29
The land shakes and moves in pain, because the Lord will do what he has planned to Babylon. He will make Babylon an empty desert, where no one will live.
30
Babylon's warriors have stopped fighting. They stay in their protected cities. Their strength is gone, and they have become like frightened women. Babylon's houses are burning. The bars of her gates are broken.
31
One messenger follows another; messenger follows messenger. that his whole city has been captured.
32
The river crossings have been captured, and the swamplands are burning. All of Babylon's soldiers are terribly afraid."
33
This is what the Lord All-Powerful, the God of Israel, says: "The city of Babylon is like a threshing floor, where people crush the grain at harvest time. The time to harvest Babylon is coming soon."
34
"Nebuchadnezzar king of Babylon has defeated and destroyed us. In the past he took our people away, and we became like an empty jar. He was like a giant snake that swallowed us. He filled his stomach with our best things. Then he spit us out.
35
Babylon did terrible things to hurt us. Now let those things happen to Babylon," say the people of Jerusalem. "The people of Babylon killed our people. Now let them be punished for what they did," says Jerusalem.
36
So this is what the Lord says: "I will soon defend you, Judah, and make sure that Babylon is punished. and make her springs become dry.
37
Babylon will become a pile of ruins, a home for wild dogs. People will be shocked by what happened there. No one will live there anymore.