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for a destroyer has come against her, against Babylon; her warriors are taken, their bows are broken; for the Lord is a God of recompense, he will repay in full.
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I will make her officials and her sages drunk, also her governors, her deputies, and her warriors; they shall sleep a perpetual sleep and never wake, says the King, whose name is the Lord of hosts.
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Thus says the Lord of hosts: The broad wall of Babylon shall be leveled to the ground, and her high gates shall be burned with fire. The peoples exhaust themselves for nothing, and the nations weary themselves only for fire.
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The word that the prophet Jeremiah commanded Seraiah son of Neriah son of Mahseiah, when he went with King Zedekiah of Judah to Babylon, in the fourth year of his reign. Seraiah was the quartermaster.
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Jeremiah wrote in a scroll all the disasters that would come on Babylon, all these words that are written concerning Babylon.
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And Jeremiah said to Seraiah: "When you come to Babylon, see that you read all these words,
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and say, "O Lord, you yourself threatened to destroy this place so that neither human beings nor animals shall live in it, and it shall be desolate forever.'
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When you finish reading this scroll, tie a stone to it, and throw it into the middle of the Euphrates,
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and say, "Thus shall Babylon sink, to rise no more, because of the disasters that I am bringing on her.' " Thus far are the words of Jeremiah.