Study Desk

Against her the bow of the archer is bent, and he puts on his coat of metal: have no mercy on her young men, give all her army up to the curse.

For Israel has not been given up, or Judah, by his God, by the Lord of armies; for their land is full of sin against the Holy One of Israel.

Go in flight out of Babylon, so that every man may keep his life; do not be cut off in her evil-doing: for it is the time of the Lord's punishment; he will give her her reward.

We would have made Babylon well, but she is not made well: give her up, and let us go everyone to his country: for her punishment is stretching up to heaven, and lifted up even to the skies.

Make bright the arrows; take up the body-covers: the Lord has been moving the spirit of the king of the Medes; because his design against Babylon is its destruction: for it is the punishment from the Lord, the payment for his Temple.

He has made the earth by his power, he has made the world strong in its place by his wisdom, and by his wise design the heavens have been stretched out:

At the sound of his voice there is a massing of the waters in the heavens, and he makes the mists go up from the ends of the earth; he makes the thunder-flames for the rain and sends out the wind from his store-houses.

Then every man becomes like a beast without knowledge; every gold-worker is put to shame by the image he has made: for his metal image is deceit, and there is no breath in them.

The heritage of Jacob is not like these; for the maker of all things is his heritage: the Lord of armies is his name.

With you the keeper of sheep with his flock will be broken, and with you the farmer and his oxen will be broken, and with you captains and rulers will be broken.

Make the nations ready for war against her, the king of the Medes and his rulers and all his captains, and all the land under his rule.

One man, running, will give word to another, and one who goes with news will be handing it on to another, to give word to the king of Babylon that his town has been taken from every quarter:

Nebuchadrezzar, king of Babylon, has made a meal of me, violently crushing me, he has made me a vessel with nothing in it, he has taken me in his mouth like a dragon, he has made his stomach full with my delicate flesh, crushing me with his teeth.

Her towns have become a waste, a dry and unwatered land, where no man has his living-place and no son of man goes by.

And I will send punishment on Bel in Babylon, and take out of his mouth what went into it; no longer will the nations be flowing together to him: truly, the wall of Babylon will come down.

And I will make her chiefs and her wise men, her rulers and her captains and her men of war, overcome with wine; their sleep will be an eternal sleep without awaking, says the King; the Lord of armies is his name.

The order which Jeremiah the prophet gave to 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 rule. Now Seraiah was the chief controller of the house.

Zedekiah was twenty-one years old when he became king; he was king for eleven years in Jerusalem: and his mother's name was Hamutal, the daughter of Jeremiah of Libnah.

And in the ninth year of his rule, on the tenth day of the tenth month, Nebuchadrezzar, king of Babylon, came against Jerusalem with all his army and took up his position before it, building earthworks all round it.

And the Chaldaean army went after King Zedekiah and overtook him on the other side of Jericho, and all his army went in flight from him in every direction.