Jeremiah 51:3-13

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."

Jeremiah 51:3-13 Meaning and Commentary

INTRODUCTION TO JEREMIAH 51

The former part of this chapter is a continuation of the prophecy of the preceding chapter, concerning the destruction of Babylon, Jer 51:1-58; the latter part of it contains a prophecy of Jeremiah sent to the captives in Babylon by the hand of Seraiah, with the copy of the above prophecy against Babylon, and an order to fasten a stone to it, and cast it into the river Euphrates, as a sign, confirming the utter and irreparable ruin of Babylon, Jer 51:59-64.

Published by permission. Originally published by NavPress in English as THE MESSAGE: The Bible in Contemporary Language copyright 2002 by Eugene Peterson. All rights reserved.