They will be questioning about the way to Zion, with their faces turned in its direction, saying, Come, and be united to the Lord in an eternal agreement which will be kept in mind for ever.

My people have been wandering sheep: their keepers have made them go out of the right way, turning them loose on the mountains: they have gone from mountain to hill, having no memory of their resting-place.

Because you are glad, because you are lifted up with pride, you wasters of my heritage, because you are playing like a young cow put out to grass, and you make a noise like strong horses;

Your mother will be put to shame; she who gave you birth will be looked down on: see, she will be the last of the nations, a waste place, a dry and unwatered land.

Give a loud cry against her on every side; she has given herself up, her supports are overturned, her walls are broken down: for it is the payment taken by the Lord; give her payment; as she has done, so do to her.

Let the planter of seed be cut off from Babylon, and everyone using the curved blade at the time of the grain-cutting: for fear of the cruel sword, everyone will be turned to his people, everyone will go in flight to his land.

So this is what the Lord of armies, the God of Israel, has said: See, I will send punishment on the king of Babylon and on his land, as I have given punishment to the king of Assyria.

And I will make Israel come back to his resting-place, and he will get his food on Carmel and Bashan, and have his desire in full measure on the hills of Ephraim and in Gilead.

Go up against the land of Merathaim, even against it, and against the people of Pekod; put them to death and send destruction after them, says the Lord, and do everything I have given you orders to do.

How is the hammer of all the earth cut in two and broken! how has Babylon become a waste among the nations!

From his store-house the Lord has taken the instruments of his wrath: for the Lord, the Lord of armies, has a work to do in the land of the Chaldaeans.

Come up against her one and all, let her store-houses be broken open: make her into a mass of stones, give her to the curse, till there is nothing of her to be seen.

Put all her oxen to the sword; let them go down to death: sorrow is theirs, for their day has come, the time of their punishment.

The voice of those who are in flight, who have got away safe from the land of Babylon, to give news in Zion of punishment from the Lord our God, even payment for his Temple.

Send for the archers to come together against Babylon, all the bowmen; put up your tents against her on every side; let no one get away: give her the reward of her work; as she has done, so do to her: for she has been uplifted in pride against the Lord, against the Holy One of Israel.

For this cause her young men will be falling in her streets, and all her men of war will be cut off in that day, says the Lord.

See, I am against you, O pride, says the Lord, the Lord of armies, for your day has come, the time when I will send punishment on you.

And pride will go with uncertain steps and have a fall, and there will be no one to come to his help: and I will put a fire in his towns, burning up everything round about him.

Their saviour is strong; the Lord of armies is his name: he will certainly take up their cause, so that he may give rest to the earth and trouble to the people of Babylon.

For this reason the beasts of the waste land with the wolves will make their holes there and the ostriches will be living in it: never again will men be living there, it will be unpeopled from generation to generation.

Bows and spears are in their hands; they are cruel and have no mercy; their voice is like the thunder of the sea, and they go on horses; everyone in his place like men going to the fight, against you, O daughter of Babylon.

So give ear to the decision of the Lord which he has made against Babylon, and to his purposes designed against the land of the Chaldaeans; Truly, they will be pulled away by the smallest of the flock; truly, he will make waste their fields with them.

At the cry, Babylon is taken! the earth is shaking, and the cry comes to the ears of the nations.

And I will send men to Babylon to make her clean and get her land cleared: for in the day of trouble they will put up their tents against her on every side.

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.

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.

Sudden is the downfall of Babylon and her destruction: make cries of grief for her; take sweet oil for her pain, if it is possible for her to be made well.

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.

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.

And I will give to Babylon, and to all the people of Chaldaea, their reward for all the evil they have done in Zion before your eyes, says the Lord.

And the land is shaking and in pain: for the purposes of the Lord are fixed, to make the land of Babylon an unpeopled waste.

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:

May the violent things done to me, and my downfall, come on Babylon, the daughter of Zion will say; and, May my blood be on the people of Chaldaea, Jerusalem will say.

For this reason the Lord has said: See, I will give support to your cause, and take payment for what you have undergone; I will make her sea dry, and her fountain without water.

I will make them go down to death like lambs, like he-goats together.

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.

As Babylon had the dead of Israel put to the sword, so in Babylon the dead of all the land will be stretched out.

We are shamed because bitter words have come to our ears; our faces are covered with shame: for men from strange lands have come into the holy places of the Lord's house.

Even if Babylon was lifted up to heaven, even if she had the high places of her strength shut in with walls, still I would send against her those who will make her waste, says the Lord.

For the Lord is making Babylon waste, and putting an end to the great voice coming out of her; and her waves are thundering like great waters, their voice is sounding loud:

The Lord of armies has said: The wide walls of Babylon will be completely uncovered and her high doorways will be burned with fire; so peoples keep on working for nothing, and the weariness of nations comes to an end in the smoke.

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.

And Jeremiah put in a book all the evil which was to come on Babylon.

And Jeremiah said to Seraiah, When you come to Babylon, see that you give them all these words;

And after reading them, say, O Lord, you have said about this place that it is to be cut off, so that no one will be living in it, not a man or a beast, but it will be unpeopled for ever.

And it will be that, when you have come to an end of reading this book, you are to have a stone fixed to it, and have it dropped into the Euphrates:

And you are to say, So Babylon will go down, never to be lifted up again, because of the evil which I will send on her: and weariness will overcome them. So far, these are the words of Jeremiah.

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.

In the fourth month, on the ninth day of the month, the store of food in the town was almost gone, so that there was no food for the people of the land.

Then an opening was made in the wall of the town, and all the men of war went in flight out of the town by night through the doorway between the two walls which was by the king's garden; (now the Chaldaeans were stationed round the town:) and they went by the way of the Arabah.

Then they made the king a prisoner and took him up to the king of Babylon to Riblah in the land of Hamath to be judged.

And the king of Babylon put the sons of Zedekiah to death before his eyes: and he put to death all the rulers of Judah in Riblah.

And he put out Zedekiah's eyes; and the king of Babylon, chaining him in iron bands, took him to Babylon, and put him in prison till the day of his death.

Now in the fifth month, on the tenth day of the month, in the nineteenth year of King Nebuchadrezzar, king of Babylon, Nebuzaradan, the captain of the armed men, a servant of the king of Babylon, came into Jerusalem.

Then Nebuzaradan, the captain of the armed men, took away as prisoners the rest of the people who were still in the town, and those who had given themselves up to the king of Babylon, and the rest of the workmen.

But Nebuzaradan, the captain of the armed men, let the poorest of the land go on living there, to take care of the vines and the fields.

And the brass pillars which were in the house of the Lord, and the wheeled bases and the great brass water-vessel in the house of the Lord, were broken up by the Chaldaeans, who took all the brass away to Babylon.

The two pillars, the great water-vessel, and the twelve brass oxen which were under it, and the ten wheeled bases, which King Solomon had made for the house of the Lord: the brass of all these vessels was without weight.

These Nebuzaradan, the captain of the armed men, took with him to the king of Babylon at Riblah.

And the king of Babylon put them to death at Riblah in the land of Hamath. So Judah was taken prisoner away from his land.

And in the eighteenth year of Nebuchadrezzar he took away as prisoners from Jerusalem eight hundred and thirty-two persons:

And in the thirty-seventh year after Jehoiachin, king of Judah, had been taken prisoner, in the twelfth month, on the twenty-fifth day of the month, Evil-merodach, king of Babylon, in the first year after he became king, took Jehoiachin, king of Judah, out of prison.

And he said kind words to him and put his seat higher than the seats of the other kings who were with him in Babylon.

And his prison clothing was changed, and he was a guest at the king's table every day for the rest of his life.

And for his food, the king gave him a regular amount every day till the day of his death, for the rest of his life.