39. While they are inflamed I will prepare them a feastand make them drunk, that they may become merry, then sleep a perpetual sleepand not wake, declares the Lord.
40. I will bring them down like lambs to the slaughter,like rams and male goats.
41. “How Babylon is taken, the praise of the whole earth seized!How Babylon has becomea horror among the nations!
42. The sea has come up on Babylon;she is covered with its tumultuous waves.
43. Her cities have become a horror, a land of drought and a desert, a land in which no one dwells,and through which no son of man passes.
44. And I will punish Bel in Babylon,and take out of his mouth what he has swallowed. The nations shall no longer flow to him; the wall of Babylon has fallen.
45. “Go out of the midst of her, my people!Let every one save his lifefrom the fierce anger of the Lord!
46. Let not your heart faint, and be not fearful at the report heard in the land, when a report comes in one yearand afterward a report in another year,and violence is in the land, and ruler is against ruler.
47. “Therefore, behold, the days are comingwhen I will punish the images of Babylon; her whole land shall be put to shame,and all her slain shall fall in the midst of her.
48. Then the heavens and the earth,and all that is in them,shall sing for joy over Babylon, for the destroyers shall come against them out of the north,declares the Lord.
49. Babylon must fall for the slain of Israel, just as for Babylon have fallen the slain of all the earth.
50. “You who have escaped from the sword,go, do not stand still!Remember the Lord from far away,and let Jerusalem come into your mind:
51. ‘We are put to shame, for we have heard reproach; dishonor has covered our face, for foreigners have comeinto the holy places of the Lord’s house.’
52. “Therefore, behold, the days are coming, declares the Lord,when I will execute judgment upon her images, and through all her landthe wounded shall groan.