1This is what Yahweh says:
2I will send a foreign army to come to get rid of Babylonia
3I will tell them, ‘Do not allow the archers of Babylon to have time to put on their armor
4Their soldiers will fall dead in Babylonia;
5I, the Commander of the armies of angels, the Israelis’ God, have not abandoned Israel and Judah.
6You people of Israel and Judah, flee from Babylon!
7Babylon has been like [MET] a gold cup in my hand, a cup that is full of wine
8But suddenly Babylon will be conquered.
9We foreigners would have tried to heal them,
10Yahweh has ◄vindicated us/shown that we were right►;
11You enemy soldiers, sharpen your arrows!
12Lift up a battle flag close to the walls of Babylon!
13Babylon is a city near the great Euphrates River,
14The Commander of the armies of angels has solemnly promised, using his own name,
15Yahweh created the earth by his power;
16When he speaks loudly, there is thunder in the sky;
17People are senseless, and they know very little [HYP];
18Idols are worthless; they deserve to be ridiculed;
19But the God whom we Israelis worship is not like those idols;
20Yahweh says about the army of Babylonia (OR, about a nation that will attack Babylonia),
21With your power I have shattered armies of other nations:
22With your power I shattered men and women,
23With your power I shattered shepherds and their flocks of sheep,
24But, Yahweh also says,
25Babylonia is [APO] like [MET] a great mountain
26Your city will be abandoned forever;
27Tell the nations to lift up a battle flag!
28Prepare the armies of other nations,
29When they attack Babylon, it will be as though the earth will shake and writhe in pain,
30When their enemies attack, the strongest warriors in Babylon will not fight.
31Messengers will go quickly, one after another,
32The places at which people can cross the river to escape from the city will be blocked.
33This is what the Commander of the armies of angels, the God whom we Israelis worship, says;
34The army of Nebuchadnezzar, the King of Babylon, has attacked and crushed us Israeli people,
35So the people of [PRS] Jerusalem say to Yahweh,
36And this is what Yahweh replies to the people of Jerusalem:
37Babylon will become a heap of ruins,
38The people of Babylon will all roar like young lions;
39But while they are extremely hungry,
40I will bring them down to a place where they will be slaughtered,
41People all over the earth now ◄honor/praise► Babylon;
42The enemies of Babylon will cover the city like huge waves of the sea [DOU].
43The towns in Babylonia will become ruins,
44And I will punish Bel, the god that the people of Babylon worship,
45Yahweh also says, “My people, come out of Babylon!
46Do not be discouraged/worried [IDM] or afraid
47But it will soon be the time for me to get rid of the idols in Babylon.
48Then all the angels in heaven and all the people on [PRS] the earth will rejoice,
49Like the soldiers of Babylon killed the people of Israel
50You Israeli people who have not been killed [MTY], get out of Babylon!
51The Israeli people say,
52Yahweh replies, “That is true, but there will soon be a time when I will destroy the idols in Babylon,
53Even if the walls around Babylon could extend up to the sky,
54Listen to the people of Babylon crying for help!
55Yahweh will be destroying Babylon.
56Enemy troops will surge against the city like [SIM] a great wave.
57The king, the Commander of the armies of angels says,
58Yahweh also says,
59Seraiah was the man who made arrangements for the King of Babylon whenever he traveled. He was the son of Neraiah and grandson of Mahseiah. When he was about to go to Babylon with King Zedekiah, after Zedekiah had been ruling Judah for almost four years, the prophet Jeremiah gave him a message.
60Jeremiah had written on a scroll a list of all the disasters that he had written about, disasters that would soon occur in Babylon.
61He said to Seraiah, “When you arrive in Babylon, read aloud everything that I have written on this scroll.
62Then pray, ‘Yahweh, you said that you will thoroughly destroy Babylon, with the result that people and animals will no longer live there. You said that it will be desolate forever.’
63Then, when you have finished reading what I have written on the scroll, tie it to a heavy stone and throw it into the Euphrates River.
64Then say, ‘In the same way, Babylon and its people will disappear and never exist again, because of the disasters that Yahweh will cause to occur there’ ”