The Hebrew Prophets

They are worthless, a work to be mocked. In the time of their punishment they will perish.

The Portion of Jacob is not like these, for He is the Maker of all things, and of the tribe of His inheritance— the LORD of Hosts is His name.

“You are My war club, My weapon for battle. With you I shatter nations; with you I bring kingdoms to ruin.

With you I shatter the horse and rider; with you I shatter the chariot and driver.

With you I shatter man and woman; with you I shatter the old man and the youth; with you I shatter the young man and the maiden.

With you I shatter the shepherd and his flock; with you I shatter the farmer and his oxen; with you I shatter the governors and officials.

Before your very eyes I will repay Babylon and all the dwellers of Chaldea for all the evil they have done in Zion,” declares the LORD.

“Behold, I am against you, O destroying mountain, you who devastate the whole earth, declares the LORD. I will stretch out My hand against you; I will roll you over the cliffs and turn you into a charred mountain.

No one shall retrieve from you a cornerstone or a foundation stone, because you will become desolate forever,” declares the LORD.

“Raise a banner in the land! Blow the ram’s horn among the nations! Prepare the nations against her. Summon the kingdoms against her— Ararat, Minni, and Ashkenaz. Appoint a captain against her; bring up horses like swarming locusts.

Prepare the nations for battle against her— the kings of the Medes, their governors and all their officials, and all the lands they rule.

The earth quakes and writhes because the LORD’s intentions against Babylon stand: to make the land of Babylon a desolation, without inhabitant.

The warriors of Babylon have stopped fighting; they sit in their strongholds. Their strength is exhausted; they have become like women. Babylon’s homes have been set ablaze, the bars of her gates are broken.

One courier races to meet another, and messenger follows messenger, to announce to the king of Babylon that his city has been captured from end to end.

The fords have been seized, the marshes set on fire, and the soldiers are terrified.”

For this is what the LORD of Hosts, the God of Israel, says: “The Daughter of Babylon is like a threshing floor at the time it is trampled. In just a little while her harvest time will come.”

“Nebuchadnezzar king of Babylon has devoured me; he has crushed me. He has set me aside like an empty vessel; he has swallowed me like a monster; he filled his belly with my delicacies and vomited me out.

May the violence done to me and to my flesh be upon Babylon,” says the dweller of Zion. “May my blood be on the dwellers of Chaldea,” says Jerusalem.

Therefore this is what the LORD says: “Behold, I will plead your case and take vengeance on your behalf; I will dry up her sea and make her springs run dry.

Babylon will become a heap of rubble, a haunt for jackals, an object of horror and scorn, without inhabitant.

They will roar together like young lions; they will growl like lion cubs.

While they are flushed with heat, I will serve them a feast, and I will make them drunk so that they may revel; then they will fall asleep forever and never wake up, declares the LORD.

I will bring them down like lambs to the slaughter, like rams with male goats.

How Sheshach has been captured! The praise of all the earth has been seized. What a horror Babylon has become among the nations!

The sea has come up over Babylon; she is covered in turbulent waves.