54
"But now listen! Do you hear it? A cry out of Babylon! An unearthly wail out of Chaldea!
55
God is taking his wrecking bar to Babylon. We'll be hearing the last of her noise - Death throes like the crashing of waves, death rattles like the roar of cataracts.
56
The avenging destroyer is about to enter Babylon: Her soldiers are taken, her weapons are trashed. Indeed, God is a God who evens things out. All end up with their just deserts.
57
"I'll get them drunk, the whole lot of them - princes, sages, governors, soldiers. Dead drunk, they'll sleep - and sleep and sleep . . . and never wake up." The King's Decree. His name? God-of-the-Angel-Armies!
58
God-of-the-Angel-Armies speaks: "The city walls of Babylon - those massive walls! - will be flattened. And those city gates - huge gates! - will be set on fire. The harder you work at this empty life, the less you are. Nothing comes of ambition like this but ashes."
59
Jeremiah the prophet gave a job to Seraiah son of Neriah, son of Mahseiah, when Seraiah went with Zedekiah king of Judah to Babylon. It was in the fourth year of Zedekiah's reign. Seraiah was in charge of travel arrangements.
60
Jeremiah had written down in a little booklet all the bad things that would come down on Babylon.
61
He told Seraiah, "When you get to Babylon, read this out in public.
62
Read, 'You, O God, said that you would destroy this place so that nothing could live here, neither human nor animal - a wasteland to top all wastelands, an eternal nothing.'
63
"When you've finished reading the page, tie a stone to it, throw it into the River Euphrates, and watch it sink.
64
Then say, 'That's how Babylon will sink to the bottom and stay there after the disaster I'm going to bring upon her.'"