32. So the passages are seized. They have burned the reeds with fire. 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 shall come for her.”
34. “Nebuchadnezzar the king of Babylon has devoured me. He has crushed me. He has made me an empty vessel. He has, like a monster, swallowed me up. He has filled his mouth with my delicacies. He has cast me out.
35. May the violence done to me and to my flesh be on Babylon!” the inhabitant of Zion will say; and, “May my blood be on the inhabitants of Chaldea!” will Jerusalem 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, I will make their feast, 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! and the praise of the whole earth 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, 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 shall 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 Yahweh’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 Yahweh.
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 Yahweh from afar, and let Jerusalem come into your mind.”