Bring up horses like a swarm of locusts.

28 Prepare nations to attack Babylon.

Prepare the king of the Medes, their governors, all their deputies, and all the countries that they rule.

29 The earth trembles and writhes in pain.

Yahweh carries out his plans against Babylon to make Babylon a wasteland so that no one will live there.

30 The warriors of Babylon have stopped fighting.

They stay in their fortified cities.

Their strength has failed. They have become women.

Their buildings are set on fire.

The bars across their gates are broken.

31 Runners run to meet runners.

Messengers follow messengers.

They inform the king of Babylon that his entire city is captured.

32 The river crossings have been taken.

The enemy has burned its marshes, and its soldiers are terrified.

33 This is what Yahweh Tsebaoth , the Elohim of Israel, says: The people of Babylon are like a threshing floora at the time it is trampled.

Their harvest time will come soon.

34 King Nebuchadnezzar of Babylon has devoured us.

He has thrown us into confusion.

He has turned us into empty jars.

He has swallowed us like a monster.

He has filled his belly with our delicacies.

Then he spit us out.

35 The people who live in Zion say, "May the violence done to us be done to Babylon."

Jerusalem says, "May the people of Babylon be held responsible for our deaths."

36 This is what Yahweh says: I am going to take up your cause and get revenge for you.

I will dry up Babylon's sea and make its springs dry.

37 Babylon will become piles of rubble.

It will become a dwelling place for jackals, something horrible, and an object of contempt, where no one lives.

38 Its people are like roaring lions and growling lion cubs.

39 When they are excited, I will prepare a feast for them and make them drunk so that they will shout and laugh.

They will fall into a deep sleep and never wake up again, declares Yahweh.

40 I will take them to be slaughtered like lambs, rams, and male goats.

41 "Sheshach has been captured.

Babylon, the city that the whole world praised, has been taken captive.

42 What a horrifying sight Babylon will be to the nations!

The sea will rise over Babylon, and its roaring waves will cover it.

43 Its cities will be ruined.

It will become a desert, a land where no one lives and where no human travels.

44 I will punish Bel in Babylon.

I will make Bel spit out everything that it has swallowed.

Nations will no longer stream to Babylon, and its walls will fall.

45 "Leave it, my people!

Run for your lives!

Run from the burning anger of Yahweh.

46 Don't lose courage or be afraid when rumors are heard in the land.

One rumor comes one year; another rumor comes the next year.

Rumors of violence are in the land.

Rumors that one ruler will fight against another are in the land.

47 That is why the days are coming when I will punish Babylon's idols.

The whole country will be put to shame, and all its soldiers will lie dead.

48 Then heaven and earth and everything in them will rejoice over Babylon, because destroyers from the north will attack it,"

declares Yahweh.

49 Because the people of Babylon have killed many Israelites and because they have killed many people throughout the earth, Babylon must fall.

50 You people who escaped from the sword, leave!

Don't just stand there.

Remember Yahweh in a distant land, and think about Jerusalem.

51 We have been put to shame, and we have been disgraced.

Shame covers our faces, because foreigners have gone into the holy places of Yahweh's temple.

52 "That is why the days are coming," declares Yahweh, "when I will punish their idols, and those who are wounded will moan everywhere in the land.

53 The people of Babylon might go up to heaven.

They might fortify their strongholds.

But destroyers will still come from me against them,"

declares Yahweh.

54 Cries of agony are heard from Babylon.

Sounds of terrible destruction are heard from the land of the Babylonians.

55 Yahweh will destroy Babylon.

He will silence the loud noise coming from it.

Waves of enemies will come roaring in like raging water.

The noise will be heard everywhere.

56 A destroyer will attack Babylon, its soldiers will be captured, and their bows and arrows will be broken.

"I, Yahweh, am a God who punishes evil.

I will certainly punish them.

57 I will make their officials and wise men drunk, along with their governors, officers, and soldiers.

They will fall into a deep sleep and never wake up,"

declares the Melek , whose name is Yahweh Tsebaoth .

58 This is what Yahweh Tsebaoth says: The thick walls of Babylon will be leveled, and its high gates will be set on fire.

People exhaust themselves for nothing.

The nations wear themselves out only to have a fire.

59 This is the message that the prophet Jeremiah gave to Seraiah, son of Neriah and grandson of Mahseiah, when Seraiah went to Babylon with King Zedekiah of Judah in the fourth year of Zedekiah's rule. (Seraiah was the quartermaster.) 60 Jeremiah wrote on a scroll all the disasters that would happen to Babylon. He wrote all these things that have been written about Babylon. 61 Jeremiah said to Seraiah, "When you come to Babylon, see that you read all this. 62 Then say, 'Yahweh , you have threatened to destroy this place so that no person or animal will live here, and it will become a permanent ruin.' 63 When you finish reading this scroll, tie a stone to it and throw it into the middle of the Euphrates River. 64 Say, 'Babylon will sink like this scroll. It will never rise again because of the disasters that I will bring on it.'"

The words of Jeremiah end here.

The Fall of Jerusalem-2 Kings 24:18-25:26; 2 Chronicles 36:11-12; Jeremiah 39:1-10 52 1 Zedekiah was 21 years old when he began to rule, and he ruled for 11 years in Jerusalem. His mother's name was Hamutal, daughter of Jeremiah from Libnah. 2 Zedekiah did what Yahweh considered evil, as Jehoiakim had done. 3 Yahweh became angry with Jerusalem and Judah and threw the people out of his sight.

Zedekiah rebelled against the king of Babylon. 4 On the tenth day of the tenth month of the ninth year of Zedekiah's reign, King Nebuchadnezzar of Babylon attacked Jerusalem with his entire army. They set up camp and built dirt ramps around the city walls. 5 The blockade of the city lasted until Zedekiah's eleventh year as king. 6 On the ninth day of the fourth month, the famine in the city became so severe that the common people had no food.

7 The enemy broke through the city walls, and all Judah's soldiers fled. They left the city at night through the gate between the two walls beside the king's garden. While the Babylonians were attacking the city from all sides, they took the road to the plain of Jericho. 8 The Babylonian army pursued King Zedekiah and caught up with him in the plain of Jericho. His entire army had deserted him. 9 The Babylonians captured the king and brought him to the king of Babylon at Riblah in Hamath, where the king of Babylon passed sentence on him. 10 The king of Babylon slaughtered Zedekiah's sons as Zedekiah watched. He also slaughtered all the officials of Judah at Riblah. 11 Then he blinded Zedekiah and put him in bronze shackles. The king of Babylon took him to Babylon and put him in a prison, where he stayed until he died.

12 On the tenth day of the fifth month of Nebuchadnezzar's nineteenth year as king of Babylon, Nebuzaradan, who was the captain of the guard and an officer of the king of Babylon, came to Jerusalem. 13 He burned down Yahweh's temple, the royal palace, and all the houses in Jerusalem. Every important building was burned down. 14 The entire Babylonian army that was with the captain of the guard tore down the walls around Jerusalem.

15 Nebuzaradan, the captain of the guard, captured the few people left in the city, those who surrendered to the king of Babylon, and the rest of the population. 16 But Nebuzaradan, the captain of the guard, left some of the poorest people in the land to work in the vineyards and on the farms.

17 The Babylonians broke apart the bronze pillars of Yahweh's temple, the stands, and the bronze pool in Yahweh's temple. They shipped all the bronze to Babylon. 18 They took the pots, shovels, snuffers, bowls, dishes, and all the bronze utensils used in the temple service. 19 The captain of the guard also took pans, incense burners, bowls, pots, lamp stands, dishes, and the bowls used for wine offerings. The captain of the guard took all of the trays and bowls that were made of gold or silver. 20 The bronze from the 2 pillars, the pool, and the 12 bronze bulls under the stands that King Solomon had made for Yahweh's temple couldn't be weighed. 21 One pillar was 27 feet high and 18 feet in circumference. It was three inches thick and hollow. 22 The capital that was on it was 7 feet high with a filigree and pomegranates around it. They were all made of bronze. The second pillar was the same. It also had pomegranates. 23 There were 96 pomegranates on the sides. The total number of pomegranates on the surrounding filigree was 100.

24 The captain of the guard took the chief priest Seraiah, the second priest Zephaniah, and the 3 doorkeepers. 25 From the city he also took an army commander, 7 men who had access to the king whom he found in the city, the scribe who was in charge of the militia, and 60 common people whom he found in the city. 26 Nebuzaradan, the captain of the guard, took them and brought them to the king of Babylon at Riblah. 27 The king of Babylon executed them at Riblah in the territory of Hamath. So the people of Judah were captives as they left their land.

28 These are the people Nebuchadnezzar took captive: In his seventh year as king, he took 3,023 Jews. 29 In his eighteenth year, Nebuchadnezzar took 832 people from Jerusalem. 30 In Nebuchadnezzar's twenty-third year as king, Nebuzaradan, the captain of the guard, took away 745 Jews. In all, 4,600 people were taken away.

King Jehoiakin Released from Prison-2 Kings 25:27-30 31 On the twenty-fifth day of the twelfth month of the thirty-seventh year of the imprisonment of King Jehoiakin of Judah, King Evil Merodach of Babylon, in the first year of his reign, freed King Jehoiakin of Judah and released him from prison. 32 He treated him well and gave him a special position higher than the other kings who were with him in Babylon. 33 Jehoiakin no longer wore prison clothes, and he ate his meals in the king's presence as long as he lived. 34 The king of Babylon gave him a daily food allowance as long as he lived.

a Addison H. Leitch, "Righteousness,"Zondervan Pictorial Encyclopedia of the Bible, ed. Merrill C. Tenney (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 1975), 5:115.

a 1:11-12 There is a play on words here between Hebrew shaked (almond tree) and shoked (watching).

a 2:7 "Unclean" refers to anything that Moses' Teachings say is not presentable to God.

b 2:20 A yoke is a wooden bar placed over the necks of work animals so that they can pull plows or carts.

a 4:11 Winnowing is the process of separating husks from grain.

a 5:5 A yoke is a wooden bar placed over the necks of work animals so that they can pull plows or carts.

a 7:30 "Unclean" refers to anything that Moses' Teachings say is not presentable to God.

a 9:1 Jeremiah 9:1-26 in English Bibles is Jeremiah 8:23-9:25 in the Hebrew Bible.

b 9:3 Greek; Masoretic Text "They bend their tongue. Their bow is falsehood. And not for truth are they strong in the land."

c 9:6 Greek; Masoretic Text "Your sitting is in the midst of deceit."