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And: 'My blood be upon the inhabitants of Chaldea',

Shall Jerusalem say.

 

³⁶Therefore thus saith the Lord:

Behold, I will plead thy cause,

And take vengeance for thee;

And I will dry up her sea,

And make her fountain dry.

³⁷And Babylon shall become heaps,

A dwelling-place for jackals,

An astonishment, and a hissing,

Without inhabitant.

³⁸They shall roar together like young lions;

They shall growl as lions' whelps.

³⁹With their poison I will prepare their feast,

And I will make them drunken, that they may be convulsed,

And sleep a perpetual sleep, and not wake,

Saith the Lord.

⁴⁰I will bring them down like lambs to the slaughter,

Like rams with he-goats.

⁴¹How is Sheshach taken!

And the praise of the whole earth seized!

How is Babylon become an astonishment

Among the nations!

⁴²The sea is come up upon Babylon;

She is covered with the multitude of the waves thereof.

⁴³Her cities are become a desolation,

A dry land, and a desert,

A land wherein no man dwelleth,

Neither doth any son of man pass thereby.

⁴⁴And I will punish Bel in Babylon,

And I will bring forth out of his mouth that which he hath swallowed up,

And the nations shall not flow any more unto him;

Yea, the wall of Babylon shall fall.

⁴⁵My people, go ye out of the midst of her,

And save yourselves every man

From the fierce anger of the Lord.

⁴⁶And let not your heart faint, neither fear ye,

For the rumour that shall be heard in the land;

For a rumour shall come one year,

And after that in another year a rumour,

And violence in the land, ruler against ruler.

⁴⁷Therefore behold, the days come,

That I will do judgment upon the graven images of Babylon,

And her whole land shall be ashamed;

And all her slain shall fall in the midst of her.

⁴⁸Then the heaven and the earth, and all that is therein,

Shall sing for joy over Babylon;

For the spoilers shall come unto her

From the north, saith the Lord.

⁴⁹As Babylon hath caused the slain of Israel to fall,

So at Babylon shall fall the slain of all the land.

⁵⁰Ye that have escaped the sword,

Go ye, stand not still;

Remember the Lord from afar,

And let Jerusalem come into your mind.

⁵¹'We are ashamed, because we have heard reproach,

Confusion hath covered our faces;

For strangers are come

Into the sanctuaries of the Lord's house.'

 

⁵²Wherefore, behold, the days come, saith the Lord,

That I will do judgment upon her graven images;

And through all her land the wounded shall groan.

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