6-8. “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 heras I pay her back for her sins.Babylon was a fancy gold chaliceheld in my hand,Filled with the wine of my angerto make the whole world drunk.The nations drank the wineand they’ve all gone crazy.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.
10. “God has set everything right for us.Come! Let’s tell the good newsBack home in Zion.Let’s tell what our God did to set things right.
11-13. “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.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.You have more water than you need,you have more money than you need—But your life is over,your lifeline cut.”
14. God-of-the-Angel-Armies has solemnly sworn:“I’ll fill this place with soldiers.They’ll swarm through here like locustschanting victory songs over you.”
15-19. By his power he made earth.His wisdom gave shape to the world.He crafted the cosmos.He thunders and rain pours down.He sends the clouds soaring.He embellishes the storm with lightnings,launches the wind from his warehouse.Stick-god worshipers look mighty foolish!god-makers embarrassed by their handmade gods!Their gods are frauds, dead sticks—deadwood gods, tasteless jokes.They’re nothing but stale smoke.When the smoke clears, they’re gone.But the Portion-of-Jacob is the real thing;he put the whole universe together,With special attention to Israel.His name? God-of-the-Angel-Armies!
20-23. God says, “You, Babylon, are my hammer,my weapon of war.I’ll use you to smash godless nations,use you to knock kingdoms to bits.I’ll use you to smash horse and rider,use you to smash chariot and driver.I’ll use you to smash man and woman,use you to smash the old man and the boy.I’ll use you to smash the young man and young woman,use you to smash shepherd and sheep.I’ll use you to smash farmer and yoked oxen,use you to smash governors and senators.
24. “Judeans, you’ll see it with your own eyes. I’ll pay Babylon and all the Chaldeans back for all the evil they did in Zion.” God’s Decree.
25-26. “I’m your enemy, Babylon, Mount Destroyer,you ravager of the whole earth.I’ll reach out, I’ll take you in my hand,and I’ll crush you till there’s no mountain left.I’ll turn you into a gravel pit—no more cornerstones cut from you,No more foundation stones quarried from you!Nothing left of you but gravel.” God’s Decree.
27-28. “Raise the signal in the land,blow the shofar-trumpet for the nations.Consecrate the nations for holy work against her.Call kingdoms into service against her.Enlist Ararat, Minni, and Ashkenaz.Appoint a field marshal against her,and round up horses, locust hordes of horses!Consecrate the nations for holy work against her—the king of the Medes, his leaders and people.