Thematic Bible




Thematic Bible



The beginning of his kingdom was Babel and Erech and Accad and Calneh, in the land of Shinar [in Babylonia].

Now the Chaldeans (Babylonians) smashed the bronze pillars which were in the house of the Lord and their bases and the bronze sea (large basin) which were in the house of the Lord, and carried the bronze to Babylon.

that you will take up this taunt against the king of Babylon, and say,

“How the oppressor has ceased [his insolence],
And how the fury has ceased!


Babylon has suddenly fallen and is shattered!
Wail for her [if you care to]!
Get balm for her [incurable] pain;
Perhaps she may be healed.

Twelve months later he was walking on the upper level of the royal palace of Babylon.

She [the church] who is in Babylon, chosen together with you, sends you greetings, and so does my son [in the faith], Mark.


Judah and the land of Israel, they were your traders; with the wheat of Minnith [in Ammon], cakes, honey, oil, and balm they paid for your goods.

Then their father Israel said to them, “If it must be so, then do this; take some of the choicest products of the land in your sacks, and carry it as a present [of tribute] to the man [representing Pharaoh], a little balm and a little honey, aromatic spices or gum, resin, pistachio nuts, and almonds.


Babylon has suddenly fallen and is shattered!
Wail for her [if you care to]!
Get balm for her [incurable] pain;
Perhaps she may be healed.

Then they sat down to eat their meal. When they looked up, they saw a caravan of Ishmaelites coming from Gilead [east of the Jordan], with their camels bearing ladanum resin [for perfume] and balm and myrrh, going on their way to carry the cargo down to Egypt.


Is there no balm in Gilead?
Is there no physician there?
Why then has not the [spiritual] health of the daughter of my people been restored?


Go up to Gilead and obtain [healing] balm,
O Virgin Daughter of Egypt!
In vain you use many medicines;
For you there is no healing or remedy.



Therefore his people return to this place,
And waters of abundance [offered by the irreverent] are [blindly] drunk by them.


For all the tables are full of filthy vomit, so that there is no place [that is clean.]


For a cup [of His wrath] is in the hand of the Lord, and the wine foams;
It is well mixed and fully spiced, and He pours out from it;
And all the wicked of the earth must drain it and drink down to its dregs.


Wake yourself up! Wake yourself up! Stand up, O Jerusalem,
You who have drunk at the hand of the Lord the cup of His wrath,
You who have drunk the cup of staggering and intoxication to the dregs [leaving only sediment].

You have walked in the way of your sister [Samaria, Israel's capital]; therefore I will give her cup into your hand. Thus says the Lord God: You shall drink of your sister's cup which is deep and wide and brimful; you shall be laughed to scorn and held in derision, for it contains much [too much to endure]. You shall be filled with drunkenness and sorrow, with the cup of wasting astonishment and horror and desolation, with the cup of your sister Samaria. read more.
You shall drink it and drain it out, and then gnaw the pieces of it [which in your drunkenness you have broken] and shall tear your [own] breasts; for I have spoken it, says the Lord God.

Therefore, now hear this, you who are afflicted, and [who are] drunk, but not with wine [but thrown down by the wrath of God]. Thus says your Lord, the Lord, and your God, Who pleads the cause of His people: Behold, I have taken from your hand the cup of staggering and intoxication; the cup of My wrath you shall drink no more. And I will put it into the hands of your tormentors and oppressors, those who said to you, Bow down, that we may ride or tread over you; and you have made your back like the ground and like the street for them to pass over.


“I trampled the peoples in My anger
And made them drunk with [the cup of] My wrath,
And I spilled their lifeblood on the earth.”

For thus says the Lord, the God of Israel, to me: Take this cup of the wine of wrath from My hand and cause all the nations to whom I send you to drink it. They shall drink and reel to and fro and be crazed because of the sword that I will send among them.

Then you shall say to them, Thus says the Lord of hosts, the God of Israel: Drink, be drunk, vomit, and fall to rise no more because of the sword which I am sending among you. And if they refuse to take the cup from your hand to drink, then you shall say to them, Thus says the Lord of hosts: You shall surely drink!

Babylon was a golden cup in the Lord's hand, making all the earth drunken. The nations drank of her wine; therefore the nations have gone mad. Babylon has suddenly fallen and is shattered (destroyed)! Wail for her [if you care to]! Get balm for her [incurable] pain; if [you do] so she may [possibly] be healed! We would have healed Babylon, but she is not healed. Forsake her and let us each go to his own country, for her guilt and the judgment against her reach to heaven and are lifted even to the skies.


He has filled me with bitterness;
He has made me drunk with wormwood (bitterness).

Woe to him who gives his neighbors drink, who pours out your bottle to them and adds to it your poisonous and blighting wrath and also makes them drunk, that you may look on their stripped condition and pour out foul shame [on their glory]! You [yourself] will be filled with shame and contempt instead of glory. Drink also and be like an uncircumcised [heathen]! The cup [of wrath] in the Lord's right hand will come around to you [O destroyer], and foul shame shall be upon your own glory!