Bible Verses About Persia

Yirmeyahu had written on a separate scroll all the above words describing the disaster that was to befall Bavel.

Yirmeyahu said to S'rayah, "See to it that when you arrive in Bavel you read all these words aloud. Then say,

'ADONAI, you have promised to destroy this place, that no one will live here, neither human nor animal, but that it will be desolate forever.'

When you finish reading this scroll, tie a rock to it, throw it into the middle of the Euphrates,

and say, 'Like this, Bavel will sink, never to rise again, because of the disaster I am bringing on her; and they will grow weary.'" (Up to here, these have been the words of Yirmeyahu.)

Men from Paras, Lud and Put were [mercenaries] in your army; hanging shield and helmet on you, they showed off your splendor.

"'Eilam is there, with her hordes around her grave, all of them slain, killed by the sword, descended uncircumcised to the underworld, those who terrorized the land of the living; they bear their shame together with those who descended to the pit.

They have given her a bed among the slain with her hordes; her graves are all around them, all of them uncircumcised, killed by the sword, because they terrorized the land of the living; they bear their shame with those who descended to the pit; they are put among those who were slain.

Paras, Ethiopia and Put are with them, all with breastplates and helmets;

"Your majesty had a vision of a statue, very large and extremely bright; it stood in front of you and its appearance was terrifying.

The head of the statue was of fine gold, its chest and arms of silver, its trunk and thighs of bronze,

its legs of iron, and its feet partly of iron and partly of clay.

As you watched, a stone separated itself without any human hand, struck the statue on its feet made of iron and clay, and broke them in pieces.

Then the iron, the clay, the bronze, the silver and the gold were all broken into pieces which became like the chaff on a threshing-floor in summer; the wind blew them away without leaving a trace. But the stone which had struck the statue grew into a huge mountain that filled the whole earth.

"That is what you dreamt, and now we will give the king its interpretation.

Your majesty, king of kings, to whom the God of heaven has given the kingdom, the power, the strength and the glory;

so that wherever people, wild animals or birds in the air live, he has handed them over to you and enabled you to rule them all -you are the head of gold.

But after you another kingdom will rise, inferior to you; then a third kingdom, of bronze, which will rule the whole world.

The fourth kingdom will be as strong as iron. Iron can break anything into pieces, pulverize it and crush it. So just as iron can crush anything, this kingdom will break the other kingdoms into pieces and crush them.

Finally, you saw the feet and toes made partly of pottery clay and partly of iron; this will be a divided kingdom; yet it will have some of the firmness of iron, since you saw the iron mixed with clay from the ground.

Just as the toes of the feet were part iron and part clay, this kingdom will be partly strong and partly brittle.

You saw the iron mixed with clay; that means that they will cement their alliances by intermarriages; but they won't stick together any more than iron blends with clay.

"In the days of those kings the God of heaven will establish a kingdom that will never be destroyed, and that kingdom will not pass into the hands of another people. It will break to pieces and consume all those kingdoms; but it, itself, will stand forever -

like the stone you saw, which, without human hands, separated itself from the mountain and broke to pieces the iron, the bronze, the clay, the silver and the gold. The great God has revealed to the king what will come about in the future. The dream is true, and its interpretation is reliable."

'P'res'- your kingdom has been divided and given to the Medes and Persians."