The Empire Falls: Babylon’s Reckoning
Jeremiah 50 — The Fall of Babylon
1 Yahweh spoke through Jeremiah the prophet concerning Babylon and concerning the land of the Chaldeans:
2 “Declare among the nations and publish, and set up a banner; publish, and don’t conceal it. Say, ‘Babylon is taken, Bel is disappointed, Merodach is dismayed. Her images are disappointed. Her idols are dismayed.’
3 For a nation comes up out of the north against her, which will make her land desolate, and no one will dwell therein. They have fled. They are gone, both man and animal.
4 “In those days, and in that time,” says Yahweh, “the children of Israel will come, they and the children of Judah together. They will go on their way weeping, and will seek Yahweh their God.
5 They will inquire concerning Zion with their faces turned toward it, saying, ‘Come, and join yourselves to Yahweh in an everlasting covenant that will not be forgotten.’
6 “My people have been lost sheep. Their shepherds have caused them to go astray. They have turned them away on the mountains. They have gone from mountain to hill. They have forgotten their resting place.
7 All who found them have devoured them. Their adversaries said, ‘We are not guilty, because they have sinned against Yahweh, the habitation of righteousness, even Yahweh, the hope of their fathers.’
8 “Flee out of the middle of Babylon, and go out of the land of the Chaldeans. Be as the male goats before the flocks.
9 For, behold, I will stir up and cause to come up against Babylon an assembly of great nations from the north country. They will set themselves in array against her. From there she will be taken. Their arrows will be as of an expert mighty man. None will return in vain.
10 Chaldea will be a prey. All who prey on her will be satisfied,” says Yahweh.
11 “Because you are glad, because you rejoice, you who plunder my heritage, because you are wanton as a heifer that treads out the grain, and neigh as strong horses,
12 your mother will be utterly disappointed. She who bore you will be confounded. Behold, she will be the least of the nations, a wilderness, a dry land, and a desert.
13 Because of Yahweh’s wrath she won’t be inhabited, but she will be wholly desolate. Everyone who goes by Babylon will be astonished, and hiss at all her plagues.
14 “Set yourselves in array against Babylon all around, all you who bend the bow. Shoot at her. Spare no arrows, for she has sinned against Yahweh.
15 Shout against her all around. She has submitted herself. Her bulwarks have fallen. Her walls have been thrown down, for it is the vengeance of Yahweh. Take vengeance on her. As she has done, do to her.
16 Cut off the sower from Babylon, and him who handles the sickle in the time of harvest. For fear of the oppressing sword, they will each turn to his people, and they will each flee to his own land.
17 “Israel is a scattered sheep. The lions have driven him away. First, the king of Assyria devoured him; and now at last Nebuchadnezzar king of Babylon has broken his bones.”
18 Therefore Yahweh of Armies, the God of Israel, says: “Behold, I will punish the king of Babylon and his land, as I have punished the king of Assyria.
19 I will bring Israel again to his pasture, and he will feed on Carmel and Bashan. His soul will be satisfied on the hills of Ephraim and in Gilead.
20 In those days, and in that time,” says Yahweh, “the iniquity of Israel will be sought for, and there will be none; and the sins of Judah, and they won’t be found; for I will pardon them whom I leave as a remnant.”
21 “Go up against the land of Merathaim, even against it, and against the inhabitants of Pekod. Kill and utterly destroy after them,” says Yahweh, “and do according to all that I have commanded you.
22 A sound of battle is in the land, and of great destruction.
23 How the hammer of the whole earth is cut apart and broken! How Babylon has become a desolation among the nations!
24 I have laid a snare for you, and you are also taken, Babylon, and you weren’t aware. You are found, and also caught, because you have fought against Yahweh.
25 Yahweh has opened his armory, and has brought out the weapons of his indignation; for the Lord, Yahweh of Armies, has a work to do in the land of the Chaldeans.
26 Come against her from the farthest border. Open her storehouses. Cast her up as heaps, and destroy her utterly. Let nothing of her be left.
27 Kill all her bulls. Let them go down to the slaughter. Woe to them! For their day has come, the time of their visitation.
28 The voice of those who flee and escape out of the land of Babylon, to declare in Zion the vengeance of Yahweh our God, the vengeance of his temple.
29 “Call together the archers against Babylon, all those who bend the bow. Encamp against her all around. Let none of it escape. Repay her according to her work. According to all that she has done, do to her; for she has been proud against Yahweh, against the Holy One of Israel.
30 Therefore her young men will fall in her streets. All her men of war will be brought to silence in that day,” says Yahweh.
31 “Behold, I am against you, you proud one,” says the Lord, Yahweh of Armies; “for your day has come, the time that I will visit you.
32 The proud one will stumble and fall, and no one will raise him up. I will kindle a fire in his cities, and it will devour all that is around him.”
33 Yahweh of Armies says: “The children of Israel and the children of Judah are oppressed together. All who took them captive hold them fast. They refuse to let them go.
34 Their Redeemer is strong. Yahweh of Armies is his name. He will thoroughly plead their cause, that he may give rest to the earth, and disquiet the inhabitants of Babylon.
35 “A sword is on the Chaldeans,” says Yahweh, “and on the inhabitants of Babylon, and on her princes, and on her wise men.
36 A sword is on the boasters, and they will become fools. A sword is on her mighty men, and they will be dismayed.
37 A sword is on their horses, and on their chariots, and on all the mixed people who are in the middle of her; and they will become as women. A sword is on her treasures, and they will be robbed.
38 A drought is on her waters, and they will be dried up; for it is a land of engraved images, and they are mad over idols.
39 Therefore the wild animals of the desert with the wolves will dwell there, and the ostriches will dwell in it. It will be inhabited no more forever; neither will it be lived in from generation to generation.
40 As when God overthrew Sodom and Gomorrah and its neighbor cities,” says Yahweh, “so no man will dwell there, neither will any son of man live therein.
41 “Behold, a people comes from the north. A great nation and many kings will be stirred up from the uttermost parts of the earth.
42 They take hold of bow and spear. They are cruel, and have no mercy. Their voice roars like the sea, and they ride on horses, everyone set in array, as a man to the battle, against you, daughter of Babylon.
43 The king of Babylon has heard the report of them, and his hands become feeble. Anguish has taken hold of him, and pains as of a woman in labor.
44 “Behold, he will come up like a lion from the pride of the Jordan against the strong habitation; for I will suddenly make them run away from her. Who is chosen, I will appoint him over her; for who is like me? Who will appoint me a time? Who is the shepherd who will stand before me?”
45 Therefore hear the counsel of Yahweh, that he has taken against Babylon; and his purposes, that he has purposed against the land of the Chaldeans: Surely they will drag them away, even the little ones of the flock. Surely he will make their habitation desolate over them.
46 At the noise of the taking of Babylon the earth trembles, and the cry is heard among the nations.
Jeremiah 51 — Babylon’s Destruction
1 Yahweh says: “Behold, I will raise up against Babylon, and against those who dwell in Lebkamai, a destroying wind.
2 I will send to Babylon strangers, who will winnow her. They will empty her land; for in the day of trouble they will be against her all around.
3 Against him who bends, let the archer bend his bow, and against him who lifts himself up in his coat of mail. Don’t spare her young men. Utterly destroy all her army.
4 They will fall down slain in the land of the Chaldeans, and thrust through in her streets.
5 For Israel is not forsaken, nor Judah, by his God, by Yahweh of Armies; though their land is full of guilt against the Holy One of Israel.
6 “Flee out of the middle of Babylon, and every man save his life! Don’t be cut off in her iniquity; for it is the time of Yahweh’s vengeance. He will render to her a recompense.
7 Babylon has been a golden cup in Yahweh’s hand, that made all the earth drunken. The nations have drunk of her wine; therefore the nations are mad.
8 Babylon has suddenly fallen and been destroyed. Wail for her! Take balm for her pain; perhaps she may be healed.
9 “‘We would have healed Babylon, but she is not healed. Forsake her, and let’s each go into his own country; for her judgment reaches to the sky, and is lifted up even to the heavens.
10 “‘Yahweh has produced our righteousness. Come, and let’s declare in Zion the work of Yahweh our God.’
11 “Make sharp the arrows; hold firm the shields. Yahweh has stirred up the spirit of the kings of the Medes, because his purpose is against Babylon, to destroy it; for it is the vengeance of Yahweh, the vengeance of his temple.
12 Set up a standard against the walls of Babylon. Make the watch strong. Set the watchmen. Prepare the ambushes; for Yahweh has both purposed and done that which he spoke concerning the inhabitants of Babylon.
13 You who dwell on many waters, abundant in treasures, your end has come, the measure of your covetousness.
14 Yahweh of Armies has sworn by himself, saying, “Surely I will fill you with men, as with the canker worm; and they will lift up a shout against you.”
15 “He has made the earth by his power. He has established the world by his wisdom, and by his understanding he has stretched out the heavens.
16 When he utters his voice, the waters in the heavens roar, and he causes the vapors to ascend from the ends of the earth. He makes lightnings for the rain, and brings the wind out of his treasuries.
17 “Every man has become brutish and without knowledge. Every goldsmith is disappointed by his engraved image; for his molten images are falsehood, and there is no breath in them.
18 They are vanity, a work of delusion. In the time of their visitation they will perish.
19 The portion of Jacob is not like these; for he is the former of all things; and Israel is the tribe of his inheritance. Yahweh of Armies is his name.
20 “You are my battle ax and weapons of war. With you I break the nations in pieces. With you I destroy kingdoms.
21 With you I break in pieces the horse and his rider.
22 With you I break in pieces the chariot and him who rides in it.
23 With you I break in pieces man and woman. With you I break in pieces the old man and the youth. With you I break in pieces the young man and the virgin.
24 With you I break in pieces the shepherd and his flock. With you I break in pieces the farmer and his yoke of oxen. With you I break in pieces governors and deputies.
25 “Behold, I am against you, destroying mountain,” says Yahweh, “which destroys all the earth. I will stretch out my hand on you, and roll you down from the rocks, and will make you a burnt mountain.
26 They won’t take a stone from you for a cornerstone, nor a stone for foundations; but you will be desolate forever,” says Yahweh.
27 “Set up a standard in the land. Blow the trumpet among the nations. Prepare the nations against her. Call together against her the kingdoms of Ararat, Minni, and Ashkenaz. Appoint a marshal against her. Cause the horses to come up as the rough canker worm.
28 Prepare against her the nations, the kings of the Medes, its governors, all its deputies, and all the land of their dominion.
29 The land trembles and is in pain; for the purposes of Yahweh against Babylon stand, to make the land of Babylon a desolation, without inhabitant.
30 The mighty men of Babylon have stopped fighting. They remain in their strongholds. Their might has failed. They have become as women. Her dwelling places are set on fire. Her bars are broken.
31 One runner will run to meet another, and one messenger to meet another, to show the king of Babylon that his city is taken on every quarter.
32 So the passages are seized, and the reeds they have burned with fire, and the men of war are frightened.”
33 For Yahweh of Armies, the God of Israel, says: “The daughter of Babylon is like a threshing floor at the time when it is trodden. Yet a little while, and the time of harvest comes for her.”
34 “Nebuchadnezzar the king of Babylon has devoured me, he has crushed me, he has made me an empty vessel. He has swallowed me up like a monster. He has filled his belly with my delicacies. He has cast me out.
35 The violence done to me and to my flesh be on Babylon,” the inhabitant of Zion will say; “and my blood be on the inhabitants of Chaldea,” Jerusalem will say.
36 Therefore Yahweh says: “Behold, I will plead your cause, and take vengeance for you. I will dry up her sea, and make her fountain dry.
37 Babylon will become heaps, a dwelling place for jackals, an astonishment, and a hissing, without inhabitant.
38 They will roar together like young lions. They will growl as lions’ cubs.
39 When they are heated up, I will make their feasts, and I will make them drunk, that they may rejoice, and sleep a perpetual sleep, and not wake up,” says Yahweh.
40 “I will bring them down like lambs to the slaughter, like rams with male goats.
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 wilderness, a land in which no man dwells, neither does any son of man pass 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 no longer flow to him. Yes, the wall of Babylon will fall.
45 “My people, go out of the middle of her, and each of you save yourselves from Yahweh’s fierce anger.
46 Don’t let your heart faint, neither 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; and all her slain will fall in the middle of her.
48 Then the heavens and the earth, and all that is in them, will sing for joy over Babylon; for the destroyers will come to her from the north,” says Yahweh.
49 “As Babylon has caused the slain of Israel to fall, so at Babylon the slain of all the land will fall.
50 You who have escaped the sword, go, don’t stand still! Remember Yahweh from afar, and let Jerusalem come into your mind.”
51 “We are confounded, because we have heard reproach. Shame has covered our faces; for strangers have come into the sanctuaries of Yahweh’s house.”
52 “Therefore behold, the days come,” says Yahweh, “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 heaven, and though she should fortify the height of her strength, yet destroyers will come from me to her,” says Yahweh.
54 “The sound of a cry comes from Babylon, and of great destruction from the land of the Chaldeans!
55 For Yahweh 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, and her mighty men are taken. Their bows are broken in pieces; for Yahweh is a God of recompenses. He will surely repay.
57 I will make her princes and her wise men drunk, her governors, her deputies, and her mighty men. They will sleep a perpetual sleep, and not wake up,” says the King, whose name is Yahweh of Armies.
58 Yahweh of Armies says: “The broad walls of Babylon will be utterly overthrown, and her high gates will be burned with fire; and the peoples will labor for vanity, and the nations for the fire; and they will be weary.”
59 The message that Jeremiah the prophet commanded Seraiah the son of Neriah, the son of Mahseiah, when he went with Zedekiah 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, ‘Yahweh, you have spoken concerning this place, to cut it off, that no one shall dwell therein, neither man nor animal, but that it shall 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 and 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.
Jeremiah 52 — Jerusalem Falls
1 Zedekiah was twenty-one years old when he began to reign; and he reigned eleven years in Jerusalem. His mother’s name was Hamutal the daughter of Jeremiah of Libnah.
2 He did that which was evil in Yahweh’s sight, according to all that Jehoiakim had done.
3 For through Yahweh’s anger this happened in Jerusalem and Judah, until he had cast them out from his presence. Zedekiah rebelled against the king of Babylon.
4 In the ninth year of his reign, in the tenth month, in the tenth day of the month, Nebuchadnezzar king of Babylon came, he and all his army, against Jerusalem, and encamped against it; and they built forts against it all around.
5 So the city was besieged until the eleventh year of king Zedekiah.
6 In the fourth month, in the ninth day of the month, the famine was severe in the city, so that there was no bread for the people of the land.
7 Then a breach was made in the city, and all the men of war fled, and went out of the city by night by the way of the gate between the two walls, which was by the king’s garden; (now the Chaldeans were against the city all around;) and they went by the way of the Arabah.
8 But the army of the Chaldeans pursued the king, and overtook Zedekiah in the plains of Jericho; and all his army was scattered from him.
9 Then they took the king, and carried him up to the king of Babylon to Riblah in the land of Hamath; and he gave judgment on him.
10 The king of Babylon killed the sons of Zedekiah before his eyes. He also killed all the princes of Judah in Riblah.
11 He put out the eyes of Zedekiah; and the king of Babylon bound him in fetters, and carried him to Babylon, and put him in prison until the day of his death.
12 Now in the fifth month, in the tenth day of the month, which was the nineteenth year of Nebuchadnezzar king of Babylon, Nebuzaradan the captain of the guard, who stood before the king of Babylon, came into Jerusalem.
13 He burned Yahweh’s house, and the king’s house; and all the houses of Jerusalem, even every great house, he burned with fire.
14 All the army of the Chaldeans, who were with the captain of the guard, broke down all the walls around Jerusalem.
15 Nebuzaradan the captain of the guard carried away captive some of the poorest of the people, and the rest of the people who were left in the city, and those who had fallen away, who fell to the king of Babylon, and the rest of the multitude.
16 But Nebuzaradan the captain of the guard left some of the poorest of the land to be vineyard keepers and farmers.
17 The Chaldeans broke the pillars of bronze that were in Yahweh’s house, and the bases and the bronze sea that were in Yahweh’s house in pieces, and carried all their bronze to Babylon.
18 They also took the pots, the shovels, the snuffers, the basins, the spoons, and all the vessels of bronze with which they ministered.
19 The captain of the guard took away the cups, the fire pans, the basins, the pots, the lamp stands, the spoons, and the bowls; that which was of gold, in gold, and that which was of silver, in silver.
20 The two pillars, the one sea, the twelve bronze bulls that were under the bases, which king Solomon had made for Yahweh’s house—the bronze of all these vessels was without weight.
21 As for the pillars, the height of one pillar was eighteen cubits; and a line of twelve cubits encircled it; and its thickness was four fingers; it was hollow.
22 A capital of bronze was on it; and the height of one capital was five cubits, with network and pomegranates on the capital all around, all of bronze. The second pillar also had the same, with pomegranates.
23 There were ninety-six pomegranates on the sides; all the pomegranates were one hundred on the network all around.
24 The captain of the guard took Seraiah the chief priest, Zephaniah the second priest, and the three keepers of the threshold.
25 Out of the city he took an officer who was set over the men of war; and seven men of those who saw the king’s face, who were found in the city; and the scribe of the captain of the army, who gathered the people of the land; and sixty men of the people of the land, who were found in the middle of the city.
26 Nebuzaradan the captain of the guard took them, and brought them to the king of Babylon to Riblah.
27 The king of Babylon struck them, and put them to death at Riblah in the land of Hamath. So Judah was carried away captive out of his land.
28 This is the people whom Nebuchadnezzar carried away captive: in the seventh year, three thousand twenty-three Jews;
29 in the eighteenth year of Nebuchadnezzar he carried away captive from Jerusalem eight hundred thirty-two persons;
30 in the twenty-third year of Nebuchadnezzar, Nebuzaradan the captain of the guard carried away captive of the Jews seven hundred forty-five persons. All the persons were four thousand six hundred.
31 In the thirty-seventh year of the captivity of Jehoiachin king of Judah, in the twelfth month, in the twenty-fifth day of the month, Evil-merodach king of Babylon, in the year that he began to reign, lifted up the head of Jehoiachin king of Judah, and brought him out of prison;
32 and he spoke kindly to him, and set his throne above the throne of the kings who were with him in Babylon.
33 He changed his prison garments, and Jehoiachin ate bread before him continually all the days of his life.
34 For his allowance, there was a continual allowance given him by the king of Babylon, every day a portion until the day of his death, all the days of his life.
Scripture text: World English Bible Classic (WEB), public domain.
