Context
17All mankind is stupid, devoid of knowledge;
Every goldsmith is put to shame by his idols,
For his molten images are deceitful,
And there is no breath in them.
18They are worthless, a work of mockery;
In the time of their punishment they will perish.
19The portion of Jacob is not like these;
For the Maker of all is He,
And of the tribe of His inheritance;
The LORD of hosts is His name.
20He says, “You are My war-club, My weapon of war;
And with you I shatter nations,
And with you I destroy kingdoms.
21“With you I shatter the horse and his rider,
And with you I shatter the chariot and its rider,
22And with you I shatter man and woman,
And with you I shatter old man and youth,
And with you I shatter young man and virgin,
23And with you I shatter the shepherd and his flock,
And with you I shatter the farmer and his team,
And with you I shatter governors and prefects.
24“But I will repay Babylon and all the inhabitants of Chaldea for all their evil that they have done in Zion before your eyes,” declares the LORD.
25“Behold, I am against you, O destroying mountain,
Who destroys the whole earth,” declares the LORD,
“And I will stretch out My hand against you,
And roll you down from the crags,
And I will make you a burnt out mountain.
26“They will not take from you even a stone for a corner
Nor a stone for foundations,
But you will be desolate forever,” declares the LORD.
27Lift up a signal in the land,
Blow a trumpet among the nations!
Consecrate the nations against her,
Summon against her the kingdoms of Ararat, Minni and Ashkenaz;
Appoint a marshal against her,
Bring up the horses like bristly locusts.
28Consecrate the nations against her,
The kings of the Medes,
Their governors and all their prefects,
And every land of their dominion.
29So the land quakes and writhes,
For the purposes of the LORD against Babylon stand,
To make the land of Babylon
A desolation without inhabitants.
30The mighty men of Babylon have ceased fighting,
They stay in the strongholds;
Their strength is exhausted,
They are becoming like women;
Their dwelling places are set on fire,
The bars of her gates are broken.
31One courier runs to meet another,
And one messenger to meet another,
To tell the king of Babylon
That his city has been captured from end to end;
32The fords also have been seized,
And they have burned the marshes with fire,
And the men of war are terrified.
33For thus says the LORD of hosts, the God of Israel:
“The daughter of Babylon is like a threshing floor
At the time it is stamped firm;
Yet in a little while the time of harvest will come for her.”
34“Nebuchadnezzar king of Babylon has devoured me and crushed me,
He has set me down like an empty vessel;
He has swallowed me like a monster,
He has filled his stomach with my delicacies;
He has washed me away.
35“May the violence done to me and to my flesh be upon Babylon,”
The inhabitant of Zion will say;
And, “May my blood be upon the inhabitants of Chaldea,”
Jerusalem will say.
36Therefore thus says the LORD,
“Behold, I am going to plead your case
And exact full vengeance for you;
And I will dry up her sea
And make her fountain dry.
37“Babylon will become a heap of ruins, a haunt of jackals,
An object of horror and hissing, without inhabitants.
38“They will roar together like young lions,
They will growl like lions’ cubs.
39“When they become heated up, I will serve them their banquet
And make them drunk, that they may become jubilant
And may sleep a perpetual sleep
And not wake up,” declares the LORD.
40“I will bring them down like lambs to the slaughter,
Like rams together with male goats.
41“How Sheshak has been captured,
And the praise of the whole earth been seized!
How Babylon has become an object of horror among the nations!
42“The sea has come up over Babylon;
She has been engulfed with its tumultuous waves.
43“Her cities have become an object of horror,
A parched land and a desert,
A land in which no man lives
And through which no son of man passes.
44“I will punish Bel in Babylon,
And I will make what he has swallowed come out of his mouth;
And the nations will no longer stream to him.
Even the wall of Babylon has fallen down!
45“Come forth from her midst, My people,
And each of you save yourselves
From the fierce anger of the LORD.
46“Now so that your heart does not grow faint,
And you are not afraid at the report that will be heard in the land—
For the report will come one year,
And after that another report in another year,
And violence will be in the land
With ruler against ruler—
47Therefore behold, days are coming
When I will punish the idols of Babylon;
And her whole land will be put to shame
And all her slain will fall in her midst.
48“Then heaven and earth and all that is in them
Will shout for joy over Babylon,
For the destroyers will come to her from the north,”
Declares the LORD.
49Indeed Babylon is to fall for the slain of Israel,
As also for Babylon the slain of all the earth have fallen.
50You who have escaped the sword,
Depart! Do not stay!
Remember the LORD from afar,
And let Jerusalem come to your mind.
51We are ashamed because we have heard reproach;
Disgrace has covered our faces,
For aliens have entered
The holy places of the LORD’S house.
52“Therefore behold, the days are coming,” declares the LORD,
“When I will punish her idols,
And the mortally wounded will groan throughout her land.
53“Though Babylon should ascend to the heavens,
And though she should fortify her lofty stronghold,
From Me destroyers will come to her,” declares the LORD.
54The sound of an outcry from Babylon,
And of great destruction from the land of the Chaldeans!
55For the LORD is going to destroy Babylon,
And He will make her loud noise vanish from her.
And their waves will roar like many waters;
The tumult of their voices sounds forth.
56For the destroyer is coming against her, against Babylon,
And her mighty men will be captured,
Their bows are shattered;
For the LORD is a God of recompense,
He will fully repay.
57“I will make her princes and her wise men drunk,
Her governors, her prefects and her mighty men,
That they may sleep a perpetual sleep and not wake up,”
Declares the King, whose name is the LORD of hosts.
58Thus says the LORD of hosts,
“The broad wall of Babylon will be completely razed
And her high gates will be set on fire;
So the peoples will toil for nothing,
And the nations become exhausted only for fire.”
59The message which Jeremiah the prophet commanded Seraiah the son of Neriah, the grandson of Mahseiah, when he went with Zedekiah the king of Judah to Babylon in the fourth year of his reign. (Now Seraiah was quartermaster.) 60So Jeremiah wrote in a single scroll all the calamity which would come upon Babylon, that is, all these words which have been written concerning Babylon. 61Then Jeremiah said to Seraiah, “As soon as you come to Babylon, then see that you read all these words aloud, 62and say, ‘You, O LORD, have promised concerning this place to cut it off, so that there will be nothing dwelling in it, whether man or beast, but it will be a perpetual desolation.’ 63“And as soon as you finish reading this scroll, you will tie a stone to it and throw it into the middle of the Euphrates, 64and say, ‘Just so shall Babylon sink down and not rise again because of the calamity that I am going to bring upon her; and they will become exhausted.’” Thus far are the words of Jeremiah.
NASB ©1995
Parallel Verses
American Standard VersionEvery man is become brutish and is without knowledge; every goldsmith is put to shame by his image; for his molten image is falsehood, and there is no breath in them.
Douay-Rheims BibleEvery man is become foolish by his knowledge: every founder is confounded by his idol, for what he hath cast is a lie, and there is no breath in them.
Darby Bible TranslationEvery man is become brutish, so as to have no knowledge; every founder is put to shame by the graven image, for his molten image is falsehood, and there is no breath in them.
English Revised VersionEvery man is become brutish and is without knowledge; every goldsmith is put to shame by his graven image: for his molten image is falsehood, and there is no breath in them.
Webster's Bible TranslationEvery 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.
World English BibleEvery man is become brutish [and is] without knowledge; every goldsmith is disappointed by his image; for his molten image is falsehood, and there is no breath in them.
Young's Literal Translation Brutish hath been every man by knowledge, Put to shame hath been every refiner by a graven image, For false is his molten image, And there is no breath in them.
Library
The Power of Assyria at Its Zenith; Esarhaddon and Assur-Bani-Pal
The Medes and Cimmerians: Lydia--The conquest of Egypt, of Arabia, and of Elam. As we have already seen, Sennacherib reigned for eight years after his triumph; eight years of tranquillity at home, and of peace with all his neighbours abroad. If we examine the contemporary monuments or the documents of a later period, and attempt to glean from them some details concerning the close of his career, we find that there is a complete absence of any record of national movement on the part of either Elam, …
G. Maspero—History Of Egypt, Chaldaea, Syria, Babylonia, and Assyria, V 8The Unseen Watcher
[This chapter is based on Daniel 5.] Toward the close of Daniel's life great changes were taking place in the land to which, over threescore years before, he and his Hebrew companions had been carried captive. Nebuchadnezzar, "the terrible of the nations" (Ezekiel 28:7), had died, and Babylon, "the praise of the whole earth" (Jeremiah 51:41), had passed under the unwise rule of his successors, and gradual but sure dissolution was resulting. Through the folly and weakness of Belshazzar, the grandson …
Ellen Gould White—The Story of Prophets and Kings
'As Sodom'
'Zedekiah 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. 2. And he did that which was evil in the eyes of the Lord, according to all that Jehoiakim had done. 3. For through the anger of the Lord it came to pass in Jerusalem and Judah, till he had cast them out from his presence, that Zedekiah rebelled against the king of Babylon. 4. And it came to pass, in the ninth year of his reign, …
Alexander Maclaren—Expositions of Holy Scripture
The Last King of Judah
Zedekiah at the beginning of his reign was trusted fully by the king of Babylon and had as a tried counselor the prophet Jeremiah. By pursuing an honorable course toward the Babylonians and by paying heed to the messages from the Lord through Jeremiah, he could have kept the respect of many in high authority and have had opportunity to communicate to them a knowledge of the true God. Thus the captive exiles already in Babylon would have been placed on vantage ground and granted many liberties; the …
Ellen Gould White—The Story of Prophets and Kings
How those who Fear Scourges and those who Contemn them are to be Admonished.
(Admonition 14.) Differently to be admonished are those who fear scourges, and on that account live innocently, and those who have grown so hard in wickedness as not to be corrected even by scourges. For those who fear scourges are to be told by no means to desire temporal goods as being of great account, seeing that bad men also have them, and by no means to shun present evils as intolerable, seeing they are not ignorant how for the most part good men also are touched by them. They are to be admonished …
Leo the Great—Writings of Leo the Great
Christian Meekness
Blessed are the meek, for they shall inherit the earth Matthew 5:5 We are now got to the third step leading in the way to blessedness, Christian meekness. Blessed are the meek'. See how the Spirit of God adorns the hidden man of the heart, with multiplicity of graces! The workmanship of the Holy Ghost is not only curious, but various. It makes the heart meek, pure, peaceable etc. The graces therefore are compared to needlework, which is different and various in its flowers and colours (Psalm 45:14). …
Thomas Watson—The Beatitudes: An Exposition of Matthew 5:1-12
"The House of Israel"
In proclaiming the truths of the everlasting gospel to every nation, kindred, tongue, and people, God's church on earth today is fulfilling the ancient prophecy, "Israel shall blossom and bud, and fill the face of the world with fruit." Isaiah 27:6. The followers of Jesus, in co-operation with heavenly intelligences, are rapidly occupying the waste places of the earth; and, as the result of their labors, an abundant fruitage of precious souls is developing. Today, as never before, the dissemination …
Ellen Gould White—The Story of Prophets and Kings
Covenanting Adapted to the Moral Constitution of Man.
The law of God originates in his nature, but the attributes of his creatures are due to his sovereignty. The former is, accordingly, to be viewed as necessarily obligatory on the moral subjects of his government, and the latter--which are all consistent with the holiness of the Divine nature, are to be considered as called into exercise according to his appointment. Hence, also, the law of God is independent of his creatures, though made known on their account; but the operation of their attributes …
John Cunningham—The Ordinance of Covenanting
A Discourse of the House and Forest of Lebanon
OF THE HOUSE OF THE FOREST OF LEBANON. ADVERTISEMENT BY THE EDITOR. That part of Palestine in which the celebrated mountains of Lebanon are situated, is the border country adjoining Syria, having Sidon for its seaport, and Land, nearly adjoining the city of Damascus, on the north. This metropolitan city of Syria, and capital of the kingdom of Damascus, was strongly fortified; and during the border conflicts it served as a cover to the Assyrian army. Bunyan, with great reason, supposes that, to keep …
John Bunyan—The Works of John Bunyan Volumes 1-3
Jeremiah
The interest of the book of Jeremiah is unique. On the one hand, it is our most reliable and elaborate source for the long period of history which it covers; on the other, it presents us with prophecy in its most intensely human phase, manifesting itself through a strangely attractive personality that was subject to like doubts and passions with ourselves. At his call, in 626 B.C., he was young and inexperienced, i. 6, so that he cannot have been born earlier than 650. The political and religious …
John Edgar McFadyen—Introduction to the Old Testament
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