Jeremiah 51:39-57

39When they are inflamed [with wine and lust during their drinking bouts], I will prepare them a feast [of My wrath] And make them drunk, that they may rejoice And may sleep a perpetual sleep And not wake up,” declares the Lord.

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

41“How Sheshak (Babylon) has been captured, And the praise of the whole earth been seized! How Babylon has become an astonishing desolation and an object of horror among the nations!

42The sea has come up over Babylon; She has been engulfed with its tumultuous waves.

43Her cities have become an astonishing desolation and an object of horror, A parched land and a desert, A land in which no one lives, And through which no son of man passes.

44I will punish and judge Bel [the handmade god] in Babylon And take out of his mouth what he has swallowed up [the stolen sacred articles and the captives of Judah and elsewhere]. The nations will no longer flow to him. Yes, the wall of Babylon has fallen down!

45“Come out of her midst, My people, And each of you [escape and] save yourself From the fierce anger of the Lord.

46Now beware so that you do not lose heart, And so that you are not afraid at the rumor that will be heard in the land— For the rumor shall come one year, And after that another rumor in another year, And violence shall be in the land, Ruler against ruler—

47Therefore behold (listen carefully), the days are coming When I will judge and punish the idols of Babylon; Her whole land will be perplexed and shamed, And all her slain will fall in her midst.

48Then heaven and earth and all that is in them Will shout and sing for joy over Babylon, For the destroyers will come against her from the north,” Says the Lord.

49Indeed Babylon is to fall for the slain of Israel, As also for Babylon the slain of all the earth have fallen.

50You who have escaped the sword, Go away! Do not stay! Remember the Lord from far away, And let [desolate] Jerusalem come into your mind.

51We are perplexed and ashamed, for we have heard reproach; Disgrace has covered our faces, For foreigners [from Babylon] have come Into the [most] sacred parts of the sanctuary of the Lord [even those places forbidden to all but the appointed priest].

52“Therefore behold, the days are coming,” says the Lord, “When I will judge and punish the idols [of Babylon], And throughout her land the mortally wounded will groan.”

53“Though Babylon should ascend to the heavens, And though she should fortify her lofty stronghold, Yet destroyers will come on her from Me,” says the Lord.

54The sound of an outcry [comes] from Babylon, And [the sound] of great destruction from the land of the Chaldeans!

55For the Lord is going to destroy Babylon and make her a ruin, And He will still her great voice [that hums with city life]. And the waves [of her conquerors] roar like great waters, The noise of their voices is raised up [like the marching of an army].

56For the destroyer is coming against her, against Babylon; And her mighty warriors will be captured, Their bows are shattered; For the Lord is a God of [just] restitution; He will fully repay.

57“I will make her princes and her wise men drunk, Her governors and her commanders and her mighty warriors; They will sleep a perpetual sleep and not wake up,” Says the King—the Lord of hosts is His name.