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Jeremiah 51

New Living Translation NLT

1 This is what the LORD says: “I will stir up a destroyer against Babylon and the people of Babylonia.

2 Foreigners will come and winnow her, blowing her away as chaff. They will come from every side to rise against her in her day of trouble.

3 Don’t let the archers put on their armor or draw their bows. Don’t spare even her best soldiers! Let her army be completely destroyed.

4 They will fall dead in the land of the Babylonians, slashed to death in her streets.

5 For the LORD of Heaven’s Armies has not abandoned Israel and Judah. He is still their God, even though their land was filled with sin against the Holy One of Israel.”

6 Flee from Babylon! Save yourselves! Don’t get trapped in her punishment! It is the LORD ’s time for vengeance; he will repay her in full.

7 Babylon has been a gold cup in the LORD ’s hands, a cup that made the whole earth drunk. The nations drank Babylon’s wine, and it drove them all mad.

8 But suddenly Babylon, too, has fallen. Weep for her. Give her medicine. Perhaps she can yet be healed.

9 We would have helped her if we could, but nothing can save her now. Let her go; abandon her. Return now to your own land. For her punishment reaches to the heavens; it is so great it cannot be measured.

10 The LORD has vindicated us. Come, let us announce in Jerusalem everything the LORD our God has done.

11 Sharpen the arrows! Lift up the shields! For the LORD has inspired the kings of the Medes to march against Babylon and destroy her. This is his vengeance against those who desecrated his Temple.

12 Raise the battle flag against Babylon! Reinforce the guard and station the watchmen. Prepare an ambush, for the LORD will fulfill all his plans against Babylon.

13 You are a city by a great river, a great center of commerce, but your end has come. The thread of your life is cut.

14 The LORD of Heaven’s Armies has taken this vow and has sworn to it by his own name: “Your cities will be filled with enemies, like fields swarming with locusts, and they will shout in triumph over you.”

15 The LORD made the earth by his power, and he preserves it by his wisdom. With his own understanding he stretched out the heavens.

16 When he speaks in the thunder, the heavens roar with rain. He causes the clouds to rise over the earth. He sends the lightning with the rain and releases the wind from his storehouses.

17 The whole human race is foolish and has no knowledge! The craftsmen are disgraced by the idols they make, for their carefully shaped works are a fraud. These idols have no breath or power.

18 Idols are worthless; they are ridiculous lies! On the day of reckoning they will all be destroyed.

19 But the God of Israel is no idol! He is the Creator of everything that exists, including his people, his own special possession. The LORD of Heaven’s Armies is his name!

20 “You are my battle-ax and sword,” says the LORD . “With you I will shatter nations and destroy many kingdoms.

21 With you I will shatter armies— destroying the horse and rider, the chariot and charioteer.

22 With you I will shatter men and women, old people and children, young men and young women.

23 With you I will shatter shepherds and flocks, farmers and oxen, captains and officers.

24 “I will repay Babylon and the people of Babylonia for all the wrong they have done to my people in Jerusalem,” says the LORD .

25 “Look, O mighty mountain, destroyer of the earth! I am your enemy,” says the LORD . “I will raise my fist against you, to knock you down from the heights. When I am finished, you will be nothing but a heap of burnt rubble.

26 You will be desolate forever. Even your stones will never again be used for building. You will be completely wiped out,” says the LORD .

27 Raise a signal flag to the nations. Sound the battle cry! Mobilize them all against Babylon. Prepare them to fight against her! Bring out the armies of Ararat, Minni, and Ashkenaz. Appoint a commander, and bring a multitude of horses like swarming locusts!

28 Bring against her the armies of the nations— led by the kings of the Medes and all their captains and officers.

29 The earth trembles and writhes in pain, for everything the LORD has planned against Babylon stands unchanged. Babylon will be left desolate without a single inhabitant.

30 Her mightiest warriors no longer fight. They stay in their barracks, their courage gone. They have become like women. The invaders have burned the houses and broken down the city gates.

31 The news is passed from one runner to the next as the messengers hurry to tell the king that his city has been captured.

32 All the escape routes are blocked. The marshes have been set aflame, and the army is in a panic.

33 This is what the LORD of Heaven’s Armies, the God of Israel, says: “Babylon is like wheat on a threshing floor, about to be trampled. In just a little while her harvest will begin.”

34 “King Nebuchadnezzar of Babylon has eaten and crushed us and drained us of strength. He has swallowed us like a great monster and filled his belly with our riches. He has thrown us out of our own country.

35 Make Babylon suffer as she made us suffer,” say the people of Zion. “Make the people of Babylonia pay for spilling our blood,” says Jerusalem.

36 This is what the LORD says to Jerusalem: “I will be your lawyer to plead your case, and I will avenge you. I will dry up her river, as well as her springs,

37 and Babylon will become a heap of ruins, haunted by jackals. She will be an object of horror and contempt, a place where no one lives.

38 Her people will roar together like strong lions. They will growl like lion cubs.

39 And while they lie inflamed with all their wine, I will prepare a different kind of feast for them. I will make them drink until they fall asleep, and they will never wake up again,” says the LORD .

40 “I will bring them down like lambs to the slaughter, like rams and goats to be sacrificed.

41 “How Babylon is fallen— great Babylon, praised throughout the earth! Now she has become an object of horror among the nations.

42 The sea has risen over Babylon; she is covered by its crashing waves.

43 Her cities now lie in ruins; she is a dry wasteland where no one lives or even passes by.

44 And I will punish Bel, the god of Babylon, and make him vomit up all he has eaten. The nations will no longer come and worship him. The wall of Babylon has fallen!

45 “Come out, my people, flee from Babylon. Save yourselves! Run from the LORD ’s fierce anger.

46 But do not panic; don’t be afraid when you hear the first rumor of approaching forces. For rumors will keep coming year by year. Violence will erupt in the land as the leaders fight against each other.

47 For the time is surely coming when I will punish this great city and all her idols. Her whole land will be disgraced, and her dead will lie in the streets.

48 Then the heavens and earth will rejoice, for out of the north will come destroying armies against Babylon,” says the LORD .

49 “Just as Babylon killed the people of Israel and others throughout the world, so must her people be killed.

50 Get out, all you who have escaped the sword! Do not stand and watch—flee while you can! Remember the LORD, though you are in a far-off land, and think about your home in Jerusalem.”

51 “We are ashamed,” the people say. “We are insulted and disgraced because the LORD ’s Temple has been defiled by foreigners.”

52 “Yes,” says the LORD, “but the time is coming when I will destroy Babylon’s idols. The groans of her wounded people will be heard throughout the land.

53 Though Babylon reaches as high as the heavens and makes her fortifications incredibly strong, I will still send enemies to plunder her. I, the LORD, have spoken!

54 “Listen! Hear the cry of Babylon, the sound of great destruction from the land of the Babylonians.

55 For the LORD is destroying Babylon. He will silence her loud voice. Waves of enemies pound against her; the noise of battle rings through the city.

56 Destroying armies come against Babylon. Her mighty men are captured, and their weapons break in their hands. For the LORD is a God who gives just punishment; he always repays in full.

57 I will make her officials and wise men drunk, along with her captains, officers, and warriors. They will fall asleep and never wake up again!” says the King, whose name is the LORD of Heaven’s Armies.

58 This is what the LORD of Heaven’s Armies says: “The thick walls of Babylon will be leveled to the ground, and her massive gates will be burned. The builders from many lands have worked in vain, for their work will be destroyed by fire!”

59 The prophet Jeremiah gave this message to Seraiah son of Neriah and grandson of Mahseiah, a staff officer, when Seraiah went to Babylon with King Zedekiah of Judah. This was during the fourth year of Zedekiah’s reign.

60 Jeremiah had recorded on a scroll all the terrible disasters that would soon come upon Babylon—all the words written here.

61 He said to Seraiah, “When you get to Babylon, read aloud everything on this scroll.

62 Then say, ‘ LORD, you have said that you will destroy Babylon so that neither people nor animals will remain here. She will lie empty and abandoned forever.’

63 When you have finished reading the scroll, tie it to a stone and throw it into the Euphrates River.

64 Then say, ‘In this same way Babylon and her people will sink, never again to rise, because of the disasters I will bring upon her.’” This is the end of Jeremiah’s messages.

The Message Bible MSG

1 There's more. God says more: "Watch this: I'm whipping up A death-dealing hurricane against Babylon - 'Hurricane Persia' - against all who live in that perverse land.

2 I'm sending a cleanup crew into Babylon. They'll clean the place out from top to bottom. When they get through there'll be nothing left of her worth taking or talking about. They won't miss a thing. A total and final Doomsday!

3 Fighters will fight with everything they've got. It's no holds barred. They will spare nothing and no one. It's final and wholesale destruction - the end!

4 Babylon littered with the wounded, streets piled with corpses.

5 It turns out that Israel and Judah are not widowed after all. As their God, God-of-the-Angel-Armies, I am still alive and well, committed to them even though They filled their land with sin against Israel's most Holy God.

6 "Get out of Babylon as fast as you can. Run for your lives! Save your necks! Don't linger and lose your lives to my vengeance on her as I pay her back for her sins.

7 Babylon was a fancy gold chalice held in my hand, Filled with the wine of my anger to make the whole world drunk. The nations drank the wine and they've all gone crazy.

8 Babylon herself will stagger and crash, senseless in a drunken stupor - tragic! Get anointing balm for her wound. Maybe she can be cured."

9 "We did our best, but she can't be helped. Babylon is past fixing. Give her up to her fate. Go home. The judgment on her will be vast, a skyscraper-memorial of vengeance. Your Lifeline Is Cut

10 "God has set everything right for us. Come! Let's tell the good news Back home in Zion. Let's tell what our God did to set things right.

11 "Sharpen the arrows! Fill the quivers! God has stirred up the kings of the Medes, infecting them with war fever: 'Destroy Babylon!' God's on the warpath. He's out to avenge his Temple.

12 Give the signal to attack Babylon's walls. Station guards around the clock. Bring in reinforcements. Set men in ambush. God will do what he planned, what he said he'd do to the people of Babylon.

13 You have more water than you need, you have more money than you need - But your life is over, your lifeline cut."

14 God-of-the-Angel-Armies has solemnly sworn: "I'll fill this place with soldiers. They'll swarm through here like locusts chanting victory songs over you."

15 By his power he made earth. His wisdom gave shape to the world. He crafted the cosmos.

16 He thunders and rain pours down. He sends the clouds soaring. He embellishes the storm with lightnings, launches the wind from his warehouse.

17 Stick-god worshipers look mighty foolish! god-makers embarrassed by their handmade gods! Their gods are frauds, dead sticks - deadwood gods, tasteless jokes.

18 They're nothing but stale smoke. When the smoke clears, they're gone.

19 But the Portion-of-Jacob is the real thing; he put the whole universe together, With special attention to Israel. His name? God-of-the-Angel-Armies! They'll Sleep and Never Wake Up

20 God says, "You, Babylon, are my hammer, my weapon of war. I'll use you to smash godless nations, use you to knock kingdoms to bits.

21 I'll use you to smash horse and rider, use you to smash chariot and driver.

22 I'll use you to smash man and woman, use you to smash the old man and the boy. I'll use you to smash the young man and young woman,

23 use you to smash shepherd and sheep. I'll use you to smash farmer and yoked oxen, use you to smash governors and senators.

24 "Judeans, you'll see it with your own eyes. I'll pay Babylon and all the Chaldeans back for all the evil they did in Zion." God's Decree.

25 "I'm your enemy, Babylon, Mount Destroyer, you ravager of the whole earth. I'll reach out, I'll take you in my hand, and I'll crush you till there's no mountain left. I'll turn you into a gravel pit -

26 no more cornerstones cut from you, No more foundation stones quarried from you! Nothing left of you but gravel."

27 "Raise the signal in the land, blow the shofar-trumpet for the nations. Consecrate the nations for holy work against her. Call kingdoms into service against her. Enlist Ararat, Minni, and Ashkenaz. Appoint a field marshal against her, and round up horses, locust hordes of horses!

28 Consecrate the nations for holy work against her - the king of the Medes, his leaders and people.

29 "The very land trembles in terror, writhes in pain, terrorized by my plans against Babylon, Plans to turn the country of Babylon into a lifeless moonscape - a wasteland.

30 Babylon's soldiers have quit fighting. They hide out in ruins and caves - Cowards who've given up without a fight, exposed as cowering milksops. Babylon's houses are going up in flames, the city gates torn off their hinges.

31 Runner after runner comes racing in, each on the heels of the last, Bringing reports to the king of Babylon that his city is a lost cause.

32 The fords of the rivers are all taken. Wildfire rages through the swamp grass. Soldiers desert left and right.

33 I, God-of-the-Angel-Armies, said it would happen: 'Daughter Babylon is a threshing floor at threshing time. Soon, oh very soon, her harvest will come and then the chaff will fly!'

34 "Nebuchadnezzar king of Babylon chewed up my people and spit out the bones. He wiped his dish clean, pushed back his chair, and belched - a huge gluttonous belch.

35 Lady Zion says, 'The brutality done to me be done to Babylon!' And Jerusalem says, 'The blood spilled from me be charged to the Chaldeans!'

36 Then I, God, step in and say, 'I'm on your side, taking up your cause. I'm your Avenger. You'll get your revenge. I'll dry up her rivers, plug up her springs.

37 Babylon will be a pile of rubble, scavenged by stray dogs and cats, A dumping ground for garbage, a godforsaken ghost town.'

38 "The Babylonians will be like lions and their cubs, ravenous, roaring for food.

39 I'll fix them a meal, all right - a banquet, in fact. They'll drink themselves falling-down drunk. Dead drunk, they'll sleep - and sleep, and sleep . . . and they'll never wake up." God's Decree.

40 "I'll haul these 'lions' off to the slaughterhouse like the lambs, rams, and goats, never to be heard of again.

41 "Babylon is finished - the pride of the whole earth is flat on her face. What a comedown for Babylon, to end up inglorious in the sewer!

42 Babylon drowned in chaos, battered by waves of enemy soldiers.

43 Her towns stink with decay and rot, the land empty and bare and sterile. No one lives in these towns anymore. Travelers give them a wide berth.

44 I'll bring doom on the glutton god-Bel in Babylon. I'll make him vomit up all he gulped down. No more visitors stream into this place, admiring and gawking at the wonders of Babylon. The wonders of Babylon are no more.

45 Run for your lives, my dear people! Run, and don't look back! Get out of this place while you can, this place torched by God's raging anger.

46 Don't lose hope. Don't ever give up when the rumors pour in hot and heavy. One year it's this, the next year it's that - rumors of violence, rumors of war.

47 Trust me, the time is coming when I'll put the no-gods of Babylon in their place. I'll show up the whole country as a sickening fraud, with dead bodies strewn all over the place.

48 Heaven and earth, angels and people, will throw a victory party over Babylon When the avenging armies from the north descend on her." God's Decree! Remember God in Your Long and Distant Exile

49 "Babylon must fall - compensation for the war dead in Israel. Babylonians will be killed because of all that Babylonian killing.

50 But you exiles who have escaped a Babylonian death, get out! And fast! Remember God in your long and distant exile. Keep Jerusalem alive in your memory."

51 How we've been humiliated, taunted and abused, kicked around for so long that we hardly know who we are! And we hardly know what to think - our old Sanctuary, God's house, desecrated by strangers.

52 "I know, but trust me: The time is coming" - God's Decree - "When I will bring doom on her no-god idols, and all over this land her wounded will groan.

53 Even if Babylon climbed a ladder to the moon and pulled up the ladder so that no one could get to her, That wouldn't stop me. I'd make sure my avengers would reach her." God's Decree.

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.'"