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⁵³Though Babylon should mount up to heaven,

And though she should fortify the height of her strength,

Yet from Me shall spoilers come unto her, saith the Lord.

⁵⁴Hark! a cry from Babylon,

And great destruction from the land of the Chaldeans!

⁵⁵For the Lord spoileth Babylon,

And destroyeth out of her the great voice;

And their waves roar like many waters,

The noise of their voice is uttered;

⁵⁶For the spoiler is come upon her, even upon Babylon,

And her mighty men are taken,

Their bows are shattered;

For the Lord is a God of recompenses,

He will surely requite.

⁵⁷And I will make drunk her princes and her wise men,

Her governors and her deputies, and her mighty men;

And they shall sleep a perpetual sleep, and not wake,

Saith the King, whose name is the Lord of hosts.

 

⁵⁸Thus saith the Lord of hosts:

The broad walls of Babylon shall be utterly overthrown,

And her high gates shall be burned with fire;

And the peoples shall labour for vanity,

And the nations for the fire;

And they shall be weary.

⁵⁹The word which Jeremiah the prophet commanded 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 reign. Now Seraiah was quartermaster. ⁶⁰And Jeremiah wrote in one book all the evil that should come upon Babylon, even all these words that are written concerning Babylon. ⁶¹And Jeremiah said to Seraiah: 'When thou comest to Babylon, then see that thou read all these words, ⁶²and say: O Lord, Thou hast spoken concerning this place, to cut it off, that none shall dwell therein, neither man nor beast, but that it shall be desolate for ever. ⁶³And 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 the Euphrates; ⁶⁴and thou shalt say: Thus shall Babylon sink, and shall not rise again because of the evil that I will bring upon her; and they shall be weary.'

Thus far are the words of Jeremiah.

52Zedekiah was one and twenty years old when he began to reign; and he reigned eleven years in Jerusalem; and his mother's name was Hamutal the daughter of Jeremiah of Libnah. ²And he did that which was evil in the sight of the Lord, according to all that Jehoiakim had done. ³For through the anger of the Lord did it come to pass in Jerusalem and Judah, until He had cast them out from His presence. And Zedekiah rebelled against the king of Babylon. ⁴And it came to pass in the ninth year of his reign, in the tenth month, in the tenth day of the month, that Nebuchadrezzar king of Babylon came, he and all his army, against Jerusalem, and encamped against it; and they built forts against it round about. ⁵So the city was besieged unto the eleventh year of king Zedekiah. ⁶In the fourth month, in the ninth day of the month,

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