By the voice that he uttered, there was a tumult of waters in the heavens, And he caused vapours to ascend from the end of the earth, - Lightnings for the rain, made he, And brought forth wind out of his treasures.

Every man is brutish by his knowledge; every founder is confounded by the graven image: for his molten image is falsehood, and there is no breath in them.

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

An axe art thou to me -- weapons of war, And I have broken in pieces by thee nations, And I have destroyed by thee kingdoms,

And I have broken in pieces by thee horse and its rider, And I have broken in pieces by thee chariot and its charioteer,

And I have broken in pieces by thee man and woman, And I have broken in pieces by thee old and young, And I have broken in pieces by thee young man and virgin,

And I have broken in pieces by thee shepherd and his drove, And I have broken in pieces by thee husbandman and his team, And I have broken in pieces by thee governors and prefects.

“Behold, I am against you,
O destroying mountain [conqueror of nations],
Who destroys the whole earth,” declares the Lord,
“I will stretch out My hand against you,
And roll you down from the [rugged] cliffs,
And will make you a burnt mountain (extinct volcano).

And they shall not take of thee a stone for a corner, nor a stone for foundations; but thou shalt be desolate for ever, saith the LORD.

Let a flag be lifted up in the land, let the horn be sounded among the nations, make the nations ready against her; get the kingdoms of Ararat, Minni, and Ashkenaz together against her, make ready a scribe against her; let the horses come up against her like massed locusts.

And the land shall tremble and sorrow: for every purpose of the LORD shall be performed against Babylon, to make the land of Babylon a desolation without an inhabitant.

The soldiers of Babylonia will stop fighting. They will remain in their fortified cities. They will lose their strength to do battle. They will be as frightened as women. The houses in her cities will be set on fire. The gates of her cities will be broken down.

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:

For the Lord God of Israel who rules over all says, 'Fair Babylon will be like a threshing floor which has been trampled flat for harvest. The time for her to be cut down and harvested will come very soon.'

The violence done to me and to my flesh be upon Babylon, shall the inhabitant of Zion say; and my blood upon the inhabitants of Chaldea, shall Jerusalem say.

Therefore the Lord says, "I will stand up for your cause. I will pay the Babylonians back for what they have done to you. I will dry up their sea. I will make their springs run dry.

“They (the Chaldean lords) will be roaring together [before their sudden capture] like young lions [roaring over their prey],
They (the princes) will be growling like lions’ cubs.

In their heat I shall set drink before them, and they shall be drunken for joy: Then shall they sleep an everlasting sleep, and never wake, sayeth the LORD.

"I will lead them off to be slaughtered like lambs, rams, and male goats."

"How Sheshak will be captured, and the prince of all the earth seized! How Babylon will become an object of horror among the nations!

The sea has risen over Babylon, she has been covered by the roar of its waves.

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 lest your heart faint, and ye fear for the rumour that shall be heard in the land; a rumour shall both come one year, and after that in another year shall come a rumour, and violence in the land, ruler against ruler.

Therefore, behold, the days come, that I will do judgment upon the graven images of Babylon: and her whole land shall be confounded, and all her slain shall fall in the midst of her.

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 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].

For this reason, see, the days are coming, says the Lord, when I will send punishment on her images; and through all her land the wounded will be crying out in pain.

A piteous cry shall be heard from Babylon, and a great misery from the land of the Chaldeans:

for a destroyer is coming against her,
against Babylon.
Her warriors will be captured,
their bows shattered,
for the Lord is a God of retribution;
He will certainly repay.

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.

Thus saith the LORD of hosts; The broad walls of Babylon shall be utterly broken, and her high gates shall be burned with fire; and the people shall labour in vain, and the folk in the fire, and they shall be weary.

Jeremiah wrote in a book all the misery that should come upon Babylon; yea, and all these sermons that be written against Babylon;

Then shalt thou say, O LORD, thou hast spoken against this place, to cut it off, that none shall remain in it, neither man nor beast, but that it shall be desolate for ever.

And it shall be, when thou hast made an end of reading this book, that thou shalt bind a stone to it, and cast it into the midst of Euphrates:

And thou shalt say, Thus shall Babylon sink, and shall not rise from the evil that I will bring upon her: and they shall be weary. Thus far are the words of Jeremiah.

And it will be in the ninth year to his reigning, in the tenth month, in the tenth to the month, Nebuchadnezzar king of Babel came, he and all his army, against Jerusalem and they will encamp against her, and a watchtower against her round about

So the town was shut in by their forces till the eleventh year of King Zedekiah.

By the ninth day of the fourth month the famine was so severe in the city that the people of the land had no food.

Then the city was broken up, and all the men of war fled, and went forth out of the city by night by the way of the gate between the two walls, which was by the king's garden; (now the Chaldeans were by the city round about:) and they went by the way of the plain.

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.

The king of Babylon also caused Zedekiah's sons to be slain before his face; yea and put all the princes of Judah to death at Riblah.

Moreover, he put out the eyes of Zedekiah, caused him to be bound with chains, to be carried unto Babylon, and let him live in prison till he died.

And the walls round Jerusalem were broken down by the Chaldaean army which was with the captain.

But Nebuzaradan the captain of the guard left of the poorest of the land to be vinedressers and husbandmen.

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.

They also took the pots, shovels, trimming shears, basins, pans, and all the bronze utensils used by the priests.

The bronze of the items that King Solomon made for the Lord's temple (including the two pillars, the large bronze basin called "The Sea," the twelve bronze bulls under "The Sea," and the movable stands) was too heavy to be weighed.

and had a bronze capital on top of it. One capital, encircled by bronze latticework and pomegranates, stood 7½ feet high. The second pillar was the same, with pomegranates.

The king of Babylon ordered them to be executed at Riblah in the territory of Hamath. So Judah was taken into exile away from its land.

In the first year of his reign, King Evil-merodach of Babylon, showed favor to King Jehoiachin of Judah by releasing him from prison on the twenty-fifth day of the twelfth month in the thirty-seventh year of the exile of King Jehoiachin of Judah.

and for his allowance, there was a continual allowance given him by the king of Babylon, every day a portion until the day of his death, all the days of his life.

See her seated by herself, the town which was full of people! She who was great among the nations has become like a widow! She who was a princess among the countries has come under the yoke of forced work!

She weepeth sore in the night, And her tear is on her cheeks, There is no comforter for her out of all her lovers, All her friends dealt treacherously by her, They have been to her for enemies.

Jerusalem keeps in mind, in the days of her sorrow and of her wanderings, all the desired things which were hers in days gone by; when her people came into the power of her hater and she had no helper, her attackers saw their desire effected on her and made sport of her destruction.

Is it nothing to you, all ye that pass by? behold, and see if there be any sorrow like unto my sorrow, which is done unto me, wherewith the LORD hath afflicted me in the day of his fierce anger.

From on high he has sent fire into my bones, and it has overcome them: his net is stretched out for my feet, I am turned back by him; he has made me waste and feeble all the day.

The yoke of my transgressions is bound by his hand: they are wreathed, and come up upon my neck: he hath made my strength to fall, the Lord hath delivered me into their hands, from whom I am not able to rise up.

Zion spreadeth forth her hands, and there is none to comfort her: the LORD hath commanded concerning Jacob, that his adversaries should be round about him: Jerusalem is as a menstruous woman among them.

They have heard that I sigh: there is none to comfort me: all mine enemies have heard of my trouble; they are glad that thou hast done it: thou wilt bring the day that thou hast called, and they shall be like unto me.

How has the daughter of Zion been covered with a cloud by the Lord in his wrath! he has sent down from heaven to earth the glory of Israel, and has not kept in memory the resting-place of his feet in the day of his wrath.

He hath bent his bow like an enemy: he stood with his right hand as an adversary, and slew all that were pleasant to the eye in the tabernacle of the daughter of Zion: he poured out his fury like fire.

And he hath violently taken away his tabernacle, as if it were of a garden: he hath destroyed his places of the assembly: the LORD hath caused the solemn feasts and sabbaths to be forgotten in Zion, and hath despised in the indignation of his anger the king and the priest.

The Lord determined to lay in ruins
The [city] wall of the Daughter of Zion.
He has stretched out a line,
He has not stopped His hand from destroying.
He has caused the rampart and the wall to lament (mourn in grief);
They have languished together.

The leaders of cherished Zion sit silently on the ground; they throw dust on their heads and dress in mourning clothes. The young women of Jerusalem bow their heads in sorrow.

Consumed by tears have been my eyes, Troubled have been my bowels, Poured out to the earth hath been my liver, For the breach of the daughter of my people; In infant and suckling being feeble, In the broad places of the city,

What can be said about you? To what should you be compared, fair Jerusalem? To what may I liken you, so I may comfort you, fair one of Zion? Indeed, your wound is as deep as the sea who can heal you?

Your prophets have seen (imagined) for you
False and foolish visions;
And they have not exposed your wickedness
To restore you from captivity [by teaching you to repent],
But they have seen (imagined) and declared to you false and misleading oracles.

All that pass by clap their hands at thee; they hiss and wag their head at the daughter of Jerusalem, saying, Is this the city that men call The perfection of beauty, The joy of the whole earth?

(Pe) All your enemies gloated over you. They sneered and gnashed their teeth; they said, "We have destroyed her! Ha! We have waited a long time for this day. We have lived to see it!"

{Pe} The LORD hath fulfilled the thing that he was purposed to do; and performed that he had devised long ago. He hath destroyed; and not spared. He hath caused thine adversary to triumph over thee; and set up the horn of thine enemy.

Let your cry go up to the Lord: O wall of the daughter of Zion, let your weeping be flowing down like a stream day and night; give yourself no rest, let not your eyes keep back the drops of sorrow.

Up! give cries in the night, at the starting of the night-watches; let your heart be flowing out like water before the face of the Lord, lifting up your hands to him for the life of your young children who are falling down, feeble for need of food, at the top of every street.

Behold, O LORD, and consider to whom thou hast done this. Shall the women eat their fruit, and children of a span long? shall the priest and the prophet be slain in the sanctuary of the Lord?

The young and the old lie on the ground in the streets: my virgins and my young men are fallen by the sword; thou hast slain them in the day of thine anger; thou hast killed, and not pitied.

As in the day of a holy meeting you have made fears come round me on every side, and no one got away or was kept safe in the day of the Lord's wrath: those who were folded in my arms, whom I took care of, have been sent to their destruction by my hater.

I am the man that hath seen affliction by the rod of his wrath.

By him I have been made to go in the dark where there is no light.

My flesh and my skin have been used up by him and my bones broken.

He hath set me in dark places, as they that be dead of old.

By him my ways have been turned on one side and I have been pulled in bits; he has made me waste.

He hath bent his bow, and set me as a mark for the arrow.

I am a laughingstock to all my people,
mocked by their songs all day long.

By him my teeth have been broken with crushed stones, and I am bent low in the dust.

Remember well, and bow down doth my soul in me.

It is by Jehovah's kindnesses that we are not destroyed, because His mercies never fail.

The Lord is good to those who wait [confidently] for Him,
To those who seek Him [on the authority of God’s word].

Good it is - both to wait and to be silent, for the deliverance of Yahweh;

Let him sit alone and be silent when he has laid it on him.

He putteth his mouth in the dust; if so be there may be hope.

Let him give his cheek to him that smiteth him; let him be filled full with reproach.

For if He causes grief,
Then He will have compassion
According to His abundant lovingkindness and tender mercy.

Who is able to say a thing, and give effect to it, if it has not been ordered by the Lord?

We have been dissemblers, and have offended; will thou therefore not be intreated?

Thou hast made us outcasts, and to be despised among the Heathen.

(Pe) All our enemies have gloated over us;

(Ayin) Tears flow from my eyes and will not stop; there will be no break

Without cause my enemies
Hunted me down like a bird;

My voice came to you; let not your ear be shut to my breathing, to my cry.

You come near when I call on You;
You say: “Do not be afraid.”