51. “We are confounded, because we have heard reproach. Confusion 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 the sky, and though she should fortify the height of her strength, yet destroyers will come to her from me,” 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. 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, her wise men, her governors, her deputies, and her mighty men drunk. 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 wide walls of Babylon will be utterly overthrown. Her high gates will be burned with fire. The peoples will labor for vanity, and the nations for the fire; and they will be weary.”
59. The word which Jeremiah the prophet commanded Seraiah the son of Neriah, the son of Mahseiah, when he went with Zedekiah the 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 will dwell in it, neither man nor animal, but that it will be desolate forever.’
63. It shall 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. Then you shall say, ‘Thus will Babylon sink, and will not rise again because of the evil that I will bring on her; and they shall be weary.’” Thus far are the words of Jeremiah.