Jeremiah 51
World English Bible Protestant Edition, 2020 stable text
41
“How Sheshach is taken! How the praise of the whole earth is seized! How Babylon has become a desolation among the nations!
42
The sea has come up on Babylon. She is covered with the multitude of its waves.
43
Her cities have become a desolation, a dry land, and a desert, a land in which no man dwells. No son of man passes by it.
44
I will execute judgment on Bel in Babylon, and I will bring out of his mouth that which he has swallowed up. The nations will not flow any more to him. Yes, the wall of Babylon will fall.
45
“My people, go away from the middle of her, and each of you save yourselves from the LORD’s fierce anger.
46
Don’t let your heart faint. Don’t fear for the news that will be heard in the land. For news will come one year, and after that in another year news will come, and violence in the land, ruler against ruler.
47
Therefore behold, the days come that I will execute judgment on the engraved images of Babylon; and her whole land will be confounded. All her slain will fall in the middle of her.
48
Then the heavens and the earth, and all that is therein, will sing for joy over Babylon; for the destroyers will come to her from the north,” says the LORD.
49
“As Babylon has caused the slain of Israel to fall, so the slain of all the land will fall at Babylon.
50
You who have escaped the sword, go! Don’t stand still! Remember the LORD from afar, and let Jerusalem come into your mind.”
51
“We are confounded because we have heard reproach. Confusion has covered our faces, for strangers have come into the sanctuaries of the LORD’s house.”
52
“Therefore behold, the days come,” says the LORD, “that I will execute judgment on her engraved images; and through all her land the wounded will groan.
53
Though Babylon should mount up to the sky, and though she should fortify the height of her strength, yet destroyers will come to her from me,” says the LORD.
54
“The sound of a cry comes from Babylon, and of great destruction from the land of the Chaldeans!
55
For the LORD lays Babylon waste, and destroys out of her the great voice! Their waves roar like many waters. The noise of their voice is uttered.
56
For the destroyer has come on her, even on Babylon. Her mighty men are taken. Their bows are broken in pieces, for the LORD is a God of retribution. He will surely repay.
57
I will make her princes, her wise men, her governors, her deputies, and her mighty men drunk. They will sleep a perpetual sleep, and not wake up,” says the King, whose name is the LORD of Armies.
58
The LORD of Armies says: “The wide walls of Babylon will be utterly overthrown. Her high gates will be burned with fire. The peoples will labor for vanity, and the nations for the fire; and they will be weary.”
59
The word which Jeremiah the prophet commanded Seraiah the son of Neriah, the son of Mahseiah, when he went with Zedekiah the king of Judah to Babylon in the fourth year of his reign. Now Seraiah was chief quartermaster.
60
Jeremiah wrote in a book all the evil that should come on Babylon, even all these words that are written concerning Babylon.
61
Jeremiah said to Seraiah, “When you come to Babylon, then see that you read all these words,
62
and say, ‘LORD, you have spoken concerning this place, to cut it off, that no one will dwell in it, neither man nor animal, but that it will be desolate forever.’
63
It will be, when you have finished reading this book, that you shall bind a stone to it, and cast it into the middle of the Euphrates.
64
Then you shall say, ‘Thus will Babylon sink, and will not rise again because of the evil that I will bring on her; and they will be weary.’ ” Thus far are the words of Jeremiah.